Ghost Sniper

46

Thirty-year-old Captain Fa Chao of the Chinese Ministry of State Security stood looking at the partially charred bodies of the dead Russian Bratva lying crumpled on the floor of the elevator, their clothes burned away almost completely. The stench made his stomach turn, but important people would be watching him very carefully to see how he handled this, so it was imperative that he dominate his nausea and look the part of an experienced and capable leader.

“Who are they?” he asked peremptorily.

The head police investigator offered him a paper sack containing three scorched Russian passports. “The fire burned itself out quickly. The passports are still legible.”

Chao examined the passport photos, noting the Bratva tattoos about the men’s necks. “They’re Mafia?”

“It’s possible,” the investigator said. “We think they were killed by an American staying at the hotel across the street. The concierge over there said these men were asking about him yesterday morning. The propellant was gasoline, but what we still don’t understand is how he managed to trap these men inside the elevator.”

Chao leaned into the elevator, looking up at the trapdoor. “Has anyone checked the roof of the car?”

The investigator turned to one of his men, barking orders to get a ladder.

A stepladder was produced within minutes, and one of the Chinese officers pushed open the trapdoor, climbing onto the roof of the car with a flashlight in his teeth. A minute later, he stuck his head down through the hole. “Someone has wired an electrical switch into the control panel.” He handed down Gil’s rucksack. “He left a screwdriver and this empty backpack.”

The investigator took the rucksack and gave it to Chao.

Chao looked inside and handed it back. “I want to talk to that concierge.”

Again the investigator barked his orders, and two officers went to bring the concierge.

They returned five minutes later with the nervous-looking young man standing between them.

Chao gazed at him, his eyes menacing. “I want to know everything. Lie to me, and you will be very sorry.”

The concierge told him all that he knew, admitting that the Russians had offered him a week’s pay to call them the second the American or his woman showed up in the lobby.

One of the police officers produced the hotel ledger, pointing out Gil’s alias: Conner MacLoughlin.

Chao looked at the concierge. “The ledger says he’s Canadian.”

“Yes, I know,” the concierge said. “But the Russians said he was American.”

Chao took the investigator aside, talking in a low voice. “Go across the street and take custody of the security video. If these Russians believed their killer was American, he could be CIA. I want him caught before sunset — alive. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” The investigator disappeared down the stairs.

Chao returned his attention to the concierge, gesturing at the bodies with the charred passports. “You admit to calling these men when the Swiss woman came down to the lobby?”

“Yes,” answered the concierge, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple.

“Place this man under arrest,” Chao said to the officers. “He’s an accomplice to murder.”

“That’s not true!” the concierge blurted, pointing at the bodies. “I was helping them, not the American!”

Chao, recognizing his blunder at once, was embarrassed to have it pointed out to him by a simple-minded concierge. “So you say!” he snapped. “But if you had not called them, they would not have been trapped in this elevator to be burned alive!”

The concierge lowered his eyes, unable to refute the fact placed before him.

Chao smirked in satisfaction. “Take him away.”

The investigator called Chao to meet him across the street in the hotel security office, where they reviewed the security video together. They saw very clearly the American pantomiming shooting the concierge with his finger before grabbing the Swiss woman by the arm and practically dragging her out the door.

“It appears the woman might be in danger as well,” Chao said. “Send the suspect’s photo to the Ministry of State in Beijing immediately. They can scan it with facial recognition software to learn if he’s in the database.”

The investigator snapped his fingers, signaling for one of his men to take care of it at once.

Two more police officers appeared. “These tourism brochures were found in their hotel room.”

Chao looked the brochures over. “They were planning to visit the Zhangjiajie Forest.”

Another officer stepped into the doorway appearing slightly winded, as if he had been running. “The suspect was just spotted fleeing south in a black Land Rover. One of our men is in pursuit.”

Chao and the investigator shouldered past him out the door and ran across the lobby toward the exit.

“Be sure he’s taken alive!” Chao repeated as they jumped into a waiting police car in front of the hotel. “I don’t care how many of your men he kills—I want him alive!”

“We’ll do our best,” promised the investigator.

Chao knew that catching an American CIA agent alive in the middle of Hunan Province would be a lot like catching a unicorn, only better, because it would guarantee him a promotion to the Beijing office.

The investigator got on the radio, making it clear to his men that the suspect was not to be killed under any circumstances.

Chao sat in the backseat as they raced through the streets of Zhangjiajie in a wild attempt to join the chase. Excited reports were now coming over the radio saying the suspect in the Land Rover was driving like a lunatic, and that so far he had already taken out three police cars by ramming them off the street.

“Drive faster!” Chao shouted. “I want to be there when he’s caught!”

The land rover was battered, but it was built like a tank compared with the Chinese-made Chery QQ patrol cars chasing after it.

“Break it in the way you’re gonna drive it!” Gil snarled, ramming the tiny police car out of his way as it tried to get alongside him. The police car jumped the curb and crashed into the corner of a building. “Three down, half a million to go.”

He was disoriented now because of the chase, listening in frustration as the GPS system tried bringing him back on course for the city of Chongqing. He and Lena had never made it to the Dragon Wall. The local police had responded far more quickly than he’d planned for, giving him serious doubts about his escape plan.

Maybe burning three men alive in an elevator had been a little overkill.

“Well, go big or go home,” he muttered, cutting the wheel and gunning it around a corner to bring himself back onto the proper heading. He didn’t think it would be much longer before the police started shooting at him. Their fuel-efficient little cars couldn’t keep up with the Land Rover, and they were just no match in a ramming contest.

He felt sorry for the person Nahn had stolen the Rover from, because the truck wouldn’t be fit to use for a garbage can by the time he was finished with it.

Chao was on the phone calling for a roadblock to be set up on the far side of the Lishui River. “If he’s stupid enough to try for Chongqing, we’ll trap him on the bridge!” he said excitedly, tossing aside the phone. “Do your men understand he’s to be taken alive?”

The investigator was getting tired of the government man’s incessant hounding. “They understand very well. There’s no need to continue pestering me about it.”

Chao took immediate umbrage as they flew past a disabled police car that had crashed into the back of a city bus. “Do you realize how important this is? If this man is CIA—”

“I understand very well!” the investigator barked over the back of the seat. “And he’ll be taken alive. So relax and let us do our jobs!”

The driver cut the wheel so sharply that Chao had to grab the handhold over the door to keep from being thrown across the seat. The radio was alive with a cacophony of excited calls requesting additional units. They were trying to box in the suspect, but there were never enough cars because the American was picking them off one at a time.

Someone called out asking for permission to open fire on the tires.

“No shooting!” Chao shouted. “Tell them no shooting!”

The investigator grabbed the radio, ordering no shooting under any circumstance.

“He’s definitely headed for Chongqing,” the driver remarked. “There’s no other place for him to go from here. It’s the bridge or nowhere.”

Chao sneered. “We have him. He’ll never make it off the bridge.”

Gil answered his phone, knowing it would be Nahn. “Whattaya got?”

“You’d better hurry!” Nahn said. “They’re blocking the far side of the bridge.”

“They sure got their shit together in a hurry!” Gil checked the mirror to see that he’d picked up another cop car. There was steam coming from beneath his hood now, and there was a bad shimmy in the front right. “Have your people gotten Lena to the airport?”

“She’ll be on the ground in Taiwan in six hours.”

“Excellent.” Gil jerked the wheel to ram the lone police car out of the way. “How’s the fog on the bridge?”

“Thick but passable.”

Gil saw the pillars of the Lishui River Bridge drawing into view over the hill. “See you in a bit.”

He tossed the phone out the window and jammed the pedal to floor, speeding up the grade to the bridge approach. As the suspension bridge came fully into view, he glanced up at the mirror to see five police cars in hot pursuit, finally enough of them to box him in. He saw brake lights in the fog on the bridge and realized traffic was coming to a stop because of the roadblock at the far end.

“Not a good sign,” he muttered, cutting onto the safety median and racing past the slowing cars. The police cut onto the median right behind him, lining up to follow in echelon along the four-foot-high guardrail.

Out of the fog appeared a flatbed tow truck with its ramp down, its yellow lights flashing atop the cab. “This is gonna taste like shit!” Gil locked up the brakes, skidding out of control up the ramp.

Chao leaned forward in the backseat of the fourth police car in the line, watching in triumph as the battered black Land Rover slid cockeyed up the tow truck’s ramp to slam into the back of the cab. He let out with a cheer, but sucked it back in as the Land Rover caromed off the cab and careened over the guardrail.

“No!” he shouted, watching the Land Rover tumble off the bridge and disappear into the fog. “No, no, no!” He banged his fists on the seat like a child throwing a tantrum, all hopes of securing a Beijing post lost forever.

The investigator smiled in the front seat, Chao’s livid outburst music to his ears.