Choke Point (21 page)

“
Whoop-de-do!
If you had told me about this little excursion, I could have had them send the Gulf 5 up from Bangkok. We could have flown right over those babies.”

“Yeah, and I could have called a press conference, too.”

“Oh, right, clandestine mission.” She flashed one of her sassy smiles and
du-dummed
the theme music from
Mission: Impossible.
“I forgot.”

“That’s right, Rynerson, it was supposed to be a…” He was about to say “secret,” but the word got hung up in his brain as a collection of random images and displaced bits of information came together in a disturbing collage.

“Simon…?”

“What’s the nearest airport?”

Her expression mutated instantly from playful to stony serious, her right hand going for the portfolio of maps in the expansion pocket next to her seat. “Why?”

“There may be a problem with the plane.”

Her gaze swept the instrument panel. “Everything looks normal. What are you talking about?”

He ignored the question and began banking the plane toward the coast. “Just find me a place to land.”

Atherton, who was sitting in a rear-facing seat immediately behind the cockpit, poked his head through the open door. “What’s going on?”

“Simon thinks we may have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

Simon glanced at Kyra, who had the portfolio open and was looking for the right map. “Didn’t you think it was odd the way Robbie tried so hard to talk you out of going?”

She pondered the question for no more than a second. “No. He wasn’t concerned about the flight. He wanted to make sure I had security when we landed.”

“Yet he didn’t ask where you were going.”

“He didn’t?”

“No.”

She hesitated, thinking about it. “I don’t remember…but even so, he’s just a kid. Who knows what—”

“A former member of the SAS.”

“So?”

“You ever hear of someone in the Special Air Service who didn’t like to fly?”

She frowned in disbelief. “Oh, hell, Leonidovich, lots of people don’t like to fly.”

Atherton glanced back and forth between them, his tan face suddenly ashen. “What are you saying? You think that security guy might have done something to the plane?”

“No,” Simon answered, “I don’t see how that’s possible. He didn’t have an opportunity, but…” He hesitated, his mind still splicing the various bits of information into something that sounded reasonable.

“But what?” Kyra demanded. “Just because he’s worried about me, doesn’t mean—”

“It’s more than that,” Simon interrupted. “I always thought it was odd the way two members of your security detail disappeared on the same day. The only ones who spoke English.”

She shook her head, as if trying to wave off her own doubts. “I think your imagination is working overtime.”

“There’s something else. Something I saw at Madame Chiang’s. A note with a name and phone number. I knew I’d seen the name somewhere, but I didn’t put it together until now. The Kowloon Security Service. It was on Robbie’s profile sheet—the company he worked for in Hong Kong.”

The last of the color drained from Atherton’s face. “Oh, Jesus.”

It took Kyra another second to grasp the significance. “Holy shit! Now you remember! What the hell happened to that photographic memory of yours, Leonidovich?”

Good question,
though he felt certain it had something to do with a very large lump on the back of his head. “Momentarily out of film, I guess.”

“Find us a place to land!” She slapped the map portfolio onto his lap. “I’m taking control.”

“Took you long enough.”

She grabbed the yoke on her side, pushing it forward in the same motion. “Hang on, I’m going to put this thing on the deck!”

Simon glanced back, but Atherton had already withdrawn into his seat, only his right arm and the titanium cable attached to the security case still visible through the narrow opening.

“What do you think?” Kyra asked, her voice rising as she increased power. “Should we call it in?”

He knew what she was asking. Was he sure? Was he confident enough in his theory to declare an emergency before they really had one? Did he want to explain why, and risk sounding like an idiot? Even more important, did he want to try and explain to some low-level bureaucratic investigator why he was transporting a priceless Chinese artifact to Taiwan? “We’re not that far out of Hong Kong. Maybe we should wait.”

“Okay by me. Check the map, see if there’s any place to put down between here and there. Maybe one of those islands has a strip.”

It took him less than a minute to find the right map and determine that the only thing flat between them and Hong Kong International was a very deep ocean. “Nope. Kia Tak’s our best bet.”

She nodded, an expression that could have taught stoniness to a mountain. “It’s probably nothing.” She sounded more hopeful than confident.

“Right.” Never in his life had he wanted so much to be so wrong. He took a deep breath, trying to control the rising pace of his heart. “What’s your plan?”

“I’ll level off at a thousand feet,” she answered. “If something happens, I should be able to control the glide from that altitude.”

“Sounds good,” but they both knew if something happened to the flight controls, there would be no
glide,
and even from a thousand feet the water would be like cement. “Maybe we should island hop our way in…just in case.”

She cut a glance back and forth across the seascape. “It would take longer.”

“Not much, and if we go down, we might be close enough to something to get ashore.”

They passed through 4,000 feet and she started to ease back on the yoke. “Okay. You pick the route, but keep us in as straight a line as possible.”

He began to trace a route with his finger, a connect-the-dots island hop right into Hong Kong. “This shouldn’t add more than a couple minutes to our time.”

She leveled off at a thousand feet, not more than thirty miles and ten minutes out of Kia Tak. “I need to call in.”

He nodded, his heart rate beginning to settle. “I’ll do it.” He felt responsible. The plane, he suspected, would be okay, and all he had done was scare the bejesus out of everyone by twisting a bunch of innocent remarks into a conspiracy.

She shook her head. “No, let me. I’ve got the seniority. I’ll just tell them we’re experiencing some sporadic instrumentation problems. That we want to get on the ground before—” Without so much as a sputter or cough, both engines shut down, every needle and light on the instrument panel going dead and dark. Her final words—“something happens”—loud and ominous in the eerie silence.

Before her words faded, Simon had his fingers on the ignition switch. The faint
click-click-click
confirmed what already seemed obvious: complete electrical failure. “Dead.”
Clever choice of words, Leonidovich.

Behind them, Atherton groaned, the pitiful sound of a wounded animal caught in a trap.

“Help me!” Kyra yelled, struggling to keep the nose up. “I can barely hold it.”

“There!” Simon answered, pointing his chin toward an island less than a mile in the distance. “Two o’clock!”

Working together they managed to ease the plane toward the slender mountain of vegetation, but it was hopeless, the dark-blue sea rising to meet them faster than they could close the distance.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

South China Sea

Tuesday, 10 July 09:32:18 GMT +0800

From the moment they took off, Mawl had kept his attention glued to the tracking device attached to the instrument panel. At one hundred and thirty knots, a mere fifty feet above the water, just looking at the dark, undulating surface for more than a few seconds gave him a feeling of vertigo. Determined not to expose his weakness, he concentrated on the transponder’s small red dot and waited for it to disappear.

For twenty minutes, the distance between the helicopter and the plane had continued to widen, then the Beech King took a sudden and unexpected turn toward the coast. Mawl pressed the
COM
button on his headphones. “What’s going on?”

Chricher shook his head, not taking his eyes off the horizon.

“Well, something’s not right. Maybe the acid only took out part of the circuitry.”

Chricher shook his head again.

“How do you know? They could be trying to make an emergency landing in Hong Kong.”

Chricher reached up and tapped one of the bubble earphones that covered his ears. “There’s been no emergency call. I would have heard it.”

“Their radio might be out.”

“They haven’t changed altitude,” Chricher answered. He pointed to the altimeter reading on the transponder. “I don’t know what they’re doing, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Mawl nodded and glanced at his watch.
Twenty-one minutes.
They would know soon enough.

Two minutes later it happened; the altimeter reading on the transponder rolling downward like an out-of-control slot machine. “You were right,” Mawl shouted, barely able to contain his excitement. “They’re going down.”

Chricher’s lips curled slightly, a look of vindication.

“How long will it take us to get there?”

Chricher glanced at the transponder, mentally calculating the distance against the speed of the helicopter. “Fifteen minutes.” He took one hand off the pitch lever and rolled it back and forth. “Give or take.”

Mawl nodded, unable to take his eyes off the plunging numbers. It must be strange, he thought, to know the exact moment of death, to see it hurtling toward you, knowing you could do nothing to stop it. Not the way he wanted to go. Too much time. Too much thinking and waiting. He could visualize exactly what they were going through: the uncontrollable panic, the frantic effort to gain control, the erosion of hope, and finally…
splish, splash, you is takin’ a bath.
He smiled to himself; no playing hide-the-gun this time, Leonidovich. Then, as the numbers rolled past 4,000 feet, they began to slow dramatically, as if the plane had suddenly hit a layer of thick air. “What the…?”

Chricher cut a look toward the transponder. “Bloody hell.”

“Bloody hell what! What’s going on, Chrich? Talk to me.”

“They’re leveling off. It looks like they’ve gained control.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said,” Chricher interrupted. “It’s not possible. Something must have—”

“Don’t bloody fucking tell me it’s not possible! Look at that!” He pointed at the numbers, which had stopped at a thousand feet, moving neither up or down.
Leonidovich!
Somehow that Houdini bastard had managed to do it again. “Now what?”

Chricher shrugged, his eyes shifting back and forth between the transponder and the horizon. “That’s awful damn low. They still might—” He hesitated as the numbers on the altimeter suddenly renewed their downward spiral.

800

500

300

100

Then the red dot disappeared and the final readings on the transponder locked in place. “That’s it. Splashdown.”

Mawl nodded. But were they dead? He reached down, unzipped the small flight bag lying between his feet, and began pulling together the items he might need: a 9mm Micro Uzi, two twenty-round clips, and two five-hundred-gram concussion grenades. “Just get me there.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

South China Sea

Tuesday, 10 July 09:37:35 GMT +0800

Too late,
Simon thought, as they struggled to bring up the nose. For one heart-stopping moment nothing happened, the dark water rushing toward them like a tsunami, then they caught an updraft off the water and the plane flared, the nose rising just enough for the main fuselage to take the impact, momentarily launching them back into the air. Though teeth rattling, the jolt was less than Simon expected, and for a few seconds he thought they might actually survive; then the left wingtip dipped beneath the surface and they were cartwheeling across the water.

Somewhere in the middle of a roll, the windscreen popped, and for the second time in a week something slammed into the back of his head.
No-Noo-Noooo…
He tried to fight the darkness, that fade into oblivion, but he could feel the weight leaving his body…his face going numb…

He came awake with a jolt, the plane lying dead in the water—a wingless tube of aluminum—floating right-side up, the pilot seat empty. “Kyra!”

“Back here.” Her voice seemed far away, as if coming from the back of a deep cave. “You okay?”

He had no idea, but he was still alive and that was enough for the moment. “I think so.” He reached down to release his seatbelt, then realized his watch was missing and his left arm was broken, halfway between the elbow and wrist.
Damn!
“You?”

“I’m fine. See if you can help Jim. He’s still in his seat.”

“Yeah, sure.” He popped the belt with his right hand and stood up, being careful not to bang his head on the overhead. “Where—” Then he saw her, near the back of the cabin, a dark silhouette beyond the odd reflections of fluttering sunlight streaming through the small windows along the top of the fuselage. “What are you doing back there?”

“I’m checking the storage closet. There’s supposed to be a raft somewhere. I thought I better find it before it was too late.”

“Oh, right.” Nice to know someone could think. He squeezed past the control console, his feet sloshing through ankle-deep water. “We need to get out of this thing! It’s a floating coffin.”

“Don’t panic,” she answered. “As long as we don’t open the door, I think we’re good for a few minutes. We can exit through the cockpit window.”

Panic?
Did he sound panicky? He stepped into the cabin—which, despite its post-tornado appearance, had managed to survive its loop-to-loop tumble without breaking apart—and bent down next to Atherton. The man looked undamaged except for a vagueness in his amber eyes. “Jim, you okay?”