Black Star

CHAPTER 19 — GHOST

Feingold had vanished.

Lutz waited at the terminal gate to observe each load of passengers board the nightly flight. Feingold was not among them. He hadn’t answered his phone at the lab, nor had he shown up as he usually did for a beer in the club lounge.

They’d grabbed him. That had to be it. Lutz could picture the physicist’s terrified denials as he was being grilled by the FBI stooges. It made him laugh. Feingold, with his compulsive blabbiness and taste for the Vegas fleshpots, was the perfect fit for the FBI’s stereotyped spy. The case against him would build until the lack of evidence became so apparent that even the feds figured it out. Then they resume the hunt for the real spy.

At least he had bought time.

Lutz boarded the last of the 737s bound for Las Vegas. His gut was empty tonight, no data capsule residing in his intestine to be deposited in a slot machine tray. It was too dangerous. He had to assume everyone associated with Calypso Blue was under intense scrutiny.

He heard the engines spin up, then felt the lurch as the brakes released and the jet accelerated down the runway. Yielding to his ingrained ritual, he hit the timer button on his chronometer. As the nose of the 737 lifted, he hit the button again.

Twenty-eight seconds. Same as always, give or take a few seconds. One more reason to be glad Feingold was gone. He would be sitting there, making one of his typically banal comments about the length of the take-off roll and how things never changed. For the rest of the flight he would pester Lutz with that insipid crap about how many kilowatts Las Vegas uses or how many tons of sewage are treated annually in Nevada.

Good riddance.

Watching the blackness of Groom Lake drop away beneath him, Lutz thought about the future. The end game was near. The danger level had become unacceptable. The time was near when he would either be snared by the FBI, or the Chinese would throw him to the wolves.

But not quite. There were still secrets that the Chinese needed to keep their own Black Star invulnerable to new detection technology.

Already stored in Lutz’s accounts was a fair sum of money, nearly half a million, deposited by his Chinese employers. But it was still not enough. He needed to milk it longer, collect the final large sum they still owed him.

Then one fine Nevada day they would come looking for Raymond Lutz in his lab at Groom Lake, and they would find him gone. The man who had enabled the People’s Republic of China to acquire twenty years of stealth technology in less than three years would be as invisible as the Black Star.

Gone where?

The matter of where Lutz — or whoever he decided to become — would live the rest of his life had occupied much of his conscious thought this past year. Anywhere in the U.S. was out of the question. The war against terrorists had generated rapid advances in personal identification technology. It had become nearly impossible to change one’s identity.

No, it would have to be a third world country, but one with a culture and climate that suited the needs of a polymath like Raymond Lutz. A place where, if the danger of his being discovered became a concern, he could slip away to the sanctuary of China.

Sri Lanka. It was a richly endowed country, located on the rump of the Indian sub-continent, filled with ancient art and culture but beset by civil war and turmoil. He could settle there, live well but not conspicuously so, and indulge himself in all the comforts and stimuli that he needed.

These days, whenever Lutz suffered from one his increasingly frequent anxiety attacks, he forced himself to think about the new life. In Sri Lanka he would have servants, women, spacious gardens, a security system that would protect him from all his enemies.

The lurch and thunk of the 737’s landing gear extending returned his thoughts to the present. The lights of Las Vegas were illuminating the desert like a field of fire.

Catfish Bass was getting a bad feeling.

Mai-ling was missing, and since he couldn’t remember any woman, Chinese or Caucasian, being more of a world class pain in the ass, he ought to be having a celebration. But now Chiu had gone missing too. It could mean only one thing.

He had gone to put a bullet in Mai-ling’s brains.

So good riddance. Who cared?

Certainly not him, he told himself as he tried to make sense of the rear cockpit displays in the Black Star. Why should he care? He didn’t know, except that whenever he got a feeling like this, it usually meant that he was about to do something stupid.

Okay, Bass, get it over with.

He threw a leg over the cockpit rail and climbed down from the Black Star. Maxwell was still in the front seat, trying to decipher his own panel. One of the commandos stood watch at the entrance to the shelter. The other had gone off with Chiu.

“We need pneumatic power to crank the engines,” said Bass.

“Use your Chinese on the crew chief,” said Maxwell. “Get him to cooperate.”

“I’ll tell him Chiu will cut his balls off.”

“Good idea. That’ll win his heart and mind.”

Bass went to the workshop area in the back of the shelter where the crew chief was tie-wrapped to the leg of a sturdy bench. A section of duct tape covered his mouth.

Bass lifted one end of the duct tape from the prisoner’s mouth. “Where is the rear exit door?” he said in halting Mandarin.

Gazing at him with wide, terrified eyes, the crew chief blurted an answer.

“No comprendez, pal,” said Bass. He hadn’t understood a single syllable. He explained to the crew chief that he was talking to a Santa Monica Chinese, not the real thing. “Try it again, ve-ry slo-wly this time.”

The crew chief nodded, then told him in deliberate, schoolchild Mandarin that Bass would find the exit door in the rear corner of the shelter between the air compressor and the oxygen storage tank. And be careful not to trip over the hoses on the floor.

“Thanks, chum.” Bass replaced the tape over the man’s mouth. “I’ll see to it you get a bonus for this.” He ignored the worried look of the commando, observing them from the front of the shelter.

The rear exit door opened to a darkened driveway that connected the backs of all four shelters. The area behind each hangar was cast in darkness, shielded from the light of the petroleum fires. Even with the NVG, Bass had difficulty picking out details.

He wished he had brought his pistol. It still lay in the satchel that he left in the rear cockpit. Maxwell would have asked him what the hell he was doing. Instead, he took the assault rifle — the knock-off AK-47 that Chiu had thrust on him. He wondered if the thing would actually fire. The crude ammo magazine didn’t seem to fit. It was loose, rattling ominously inside the lower receiver.

Reverse engineering. He remembered hearing the Taiwanese pilots joke about it. It was the core of China’s research and development program — steal someone’s shitty product, then make it shittier.

He adjusted the NVG, peering in each direction along the darkened pathway. He had no idea where to look, nor what he expected to find. Where would she go? Back the way they came, or to the left, in the direction of Shelter Four?

Left, he decided. That was her most logical escape route. He had no idea why Mai-ling had flown the coop, but he doubted that she was a double. Maybe she was looking for another Black Star. Or, more likely, she concluded that Chiu was going to kill her and she saw a chance to slip out of the noose. Give the chick credit. She wasn’t dumb.

Five minutes, he told himself. That was all. Do a quick sweep, just in case she was in real trouble, then get back to the Black Star and help Maxwell.

Holding the clunky assault rifle in front of him, he headed for the darkened area behind Shelter Four. He moved quickly across the open tarmac between the shelters, aware that the flickering tank fires made him a target.

He made it to the deep shadow behind Shelter Four without drawing fire. For several seconds he remained motionless, listening for movement, studying the darkened pathway behind the shelter.

Gradually the details emerged from the darkness. There were doors in the wall. He saw an object… what the hell was it? Some kind of vehicle in the pathway.

Bass worked his way along the back wall, stopping every few meters to check for signs of activity. He saw nothing. No sentry, no sign of life.

He reached the vehicle, a square-shaped thing that looked like an ugly jeep. More Chinese reverse engineering. It was parked next to a metal door in the wall of the shelter.

From inside the door Bass could hear the faint buzz of voices. Someone inside was speaking in Mandarin.

He cupped his ear to the door. He heard a man’s voice. And then a woman’s.

It happened so quickly. While she stared in disbelief, he reached over and snatched the Beretta from her hand, and she was disarmed.

She was seeing a ghost.

Mai-ling knew she had to be dreaming. None of this was making sense. Nothing in the room came close to reality. She stood there like a sleepwalker, listening to the smiling apparition say unspeakable things.

“Stupid whore.” It was Shaomin’s voice, that much she knew. But it couldn’t be Shaomin because he was gone, and even from another world he would never call her such a thing. Not her beloved Shaomin.

“Why did you come back?” he said. “Did you think I would sleep with you again?”

“You’re not Shaomin,” she heard herself say. “Shaomin is dead.”

This brought a laugh, that old familiar dry rasp — just like Shaomin’s. The sound sent a tingle like an electric current through her. It was his laugh. She had lain awake these countless nights yearning to hear it again.

“The Shaomin you knew is dead,” he said, “because he never existed. I let you think I was a dissident so that I could penetrate the circle of traitors in the PLA.” He smiled again. “For which I thank you.”

It couldn’t be Shaomin. She stared at the man’s face, looking for the telltale evidence that it was someone else. This man, whoever he was, had Shaomin’s same handsome features, the high cheekbones and fine, chiseled nose. He laughed like Shaomin, even possessed the same mannerisms, leaning his elbow on the desk as Shaomin liked to do while he talked.

“You loved me,” she blurted. “I know you did. What we had was real.”

“Love.” He spat the word out as if it were something vile in his mouth. “I endured your pathetic fantasies, that’s all. Don’t you realize that I can have any woman — any real woman — I want in China? Why would I willingly make love to a slut like you?”

The words pelted her like hammer blows. Tears filled her eyes. She wanted this nightmare to be over. Living in loneliness for the rest of her life, even death, was preferable to this pain.

Through the blur of tears she glimpsed the Beretta on the desk beside him. She lunged for the gun, not caring whether he killed her or not.

He caught her by the shoulder, yanked her upright, then brought the back of his hand in a smack across her face. The blow stunned her, rendering her nearly senseless. She felt a warm trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. His hand grasped her shoulder, squeezing like a vise.

The backhanded slap had brought clarity to her thinking. She gazed at him again. Yes, she made herself admit, it was Shaomin. She had been deceived. She was a gullible fool.

He spun her around, then seized the back of her neck. She remembered how Shaomin had always prided himself on the strength of his hands. His daily martial arts drills included smashing through layers of fiber board with the edges of his hands.

“The enemy has come here to destroy the Dong-jin,” he said. She could feel the powerful fingers burrowing into her flesh through the collar of the black utilities. “And it was you who brought them, wasn’t it.”

She didn’t answer.

The fingers tightened. “Answer me. It was you, wasn’t it?”

She tried to close her mind to the pain. She kept her silence.

“Bitch! The interrogators will make you answer. They will peel away so much of your flesh you’ll look like a skinned rat.”

Keeping one hand clamped on her neck, he shoved her toward the door. On the way out, he flipped the light switch, extinguishing the red overhead lamp. The room was plunged into darkness.

In the pathway outside the briefing room door, she was still blind. She stumbled on the hard surface, nearly suspended by the vise-like hand on her neck. She knew she was being taken to the Laogai—the dreaded place she had never seen but everyone in the PLA knew about. People who went there never came out.

She was dimly aware of the box-shaped Bei-jung parked in the pathway — the vehicle she thought looked like Shaomin’s old car. The truth struck her. Because it was Shaomin’s vehicle, you idiot. How many clues did you need?

He was holding her at arm’s length, shoving her head down so that he could stuff her into the right seat of the Bei-jung, when she caught something — a dark blur of movement in her peripheral vision.

Shaomin saw it too. He whirled, almost in time, but not quite.

Thunk. The object — she saw that it was the barrel of some kind of weapon — struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder, dropping him to his knee. Mai-ling felt the grip release on her neck as Shaomin spun to confront his attacker.

She glimpsed a figure in ninja-like utilities, blackfaced, wearing NVG. One of the commandos? Chiu?

No. She saw that he was swinging the assault rifle like a baseball bat. Mai-ling’s heart sank. Only an American klutz would do something like that. “Shoot, you idiot! Shaomin will—”

Too late. Shaomin aimed a kick at him, hitting him in the chest and knocking him backwards. The assault rifle spun out of his grip, clattering on the concrete.

Hearing the breath whoosh out of him, seeing the awkward way he fought Shaomin — she knew who it was.

Shaomin launched another kick. The man dodged, seizing Shaomin’s ankle. With the intruder clinging to his leg, Shaomin danced on one foot, yanking him around, while he drew an automatic pistol from his shoulder holster.

Mai-ling leaped on him. The three went down in a heap, writhing on the concrete, Shaomin atop the man in black, Mai-ling on Shaomin’s back, clawing and flailing at him.

The man on the bottom — she knew now it was Catfish Bass — had both hands fastened on Shaomin’s gun hand, trying to wrest the pistol from him.

With a violent lurch, Shaomin flung Mai-ling loose. Using his left hand, he swung a roundhouse blow that caught her on the side of the head, sending her rolling across the concrete.

The two men rolled over each other, still grappling for possession of the pistol. Reeling from the blow to her head, Mai-ling rose to her knees, trying to see in the darkness. Six feet away she saw the dark shape of Bass’s assault rifle.

Scuttling like a crab across the concrete, she snatched up the weapon. She jumped to her feet, training the gun on the bodies grappling on the ground. Without the NVG it was hard to see who was on top. She had to be careful. She might shoot through one and hit the other.

In the dim light she picked out the drab flight suit of Shaomin. He was the one on top, at least for the moment. They were still fighting for the pistol.

She aimed the rifle. Was it on automatic or single fire? She couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. Shoot the damned thing. See what happens.

She squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. Damn it.

She squeezed the trigger harder. Nothing.

Was the safety on? No. She stared at the receiver mechanism, at the trigger guard, ran her hand around the barrel. It was some kind of PLA weapon that she vaguely recognized but had never fired. The magazine rattled inside the receiver as if something didn’t fit.

Why doesn’t the damned thing shoot?

She had no idea except that it was some piece-of-shit Chinese knock-off assault rifle that didn’t work. Period. Which was why Catfish Bass, the klutz, had been swinging the thing like a bat.

She heard the pistol fire.

Horrified, Mai-ling froze, still clutching the useless rifle. For a moment, neither man on the ground moved.

She saw Bass start to sit up. He stared at her for a moment with an intense, serious expression. He gasped, closed his eyes, and dropped back to the concrete.

Shaomin rose to his feet. In his eyes was something she hadn’t seen before — a gleaming that sent a chill through her. He looked at the useless rifle in her hands. Then he glanced at the body of Catfish Bass.

“Incompetent bitch. You and your gwai-lo lover would have killed me if you weren’t so stupid.” His eyes fixed on her like lasers as he raised the pistol.

Mai-ling didn’t try to escape. Better a bullet than the interrogation chamber of the Laogai. Get it over with.

She flinched as a gunshot split the air.