The Identity Mine

XXXIX

Ethan ran hard as the white van accelerated away, turning in the middle of the street as it sought to escape back toward the south and the district. Ethan heard the squeal of its tires on the asphalt as it spun round and saw the face of the driver as he hauled on the wheel.

Oriental, maybe thirty years of age.

The van’s rear quarter presented itself to Ethan as he ran, and he stretched out and jumped up onto the rear step as the vehicle rushed away from the storage buildings. His hands slipped on the surface of the van and Ethan’s heart missed a beat as he flailed and thought that he was going to slip and fall. He let his gun fall from his grasp as he reached out and his fingers gripped the edges of the closed door, barely hanging on as the van lurched from left to right in an effort to shake him off.

The rear door of the van burst open alongside Ethan and a Chinese man poked his head out, a pistol in his grip as he turned and looked at Ethan in surprise.

Ethan grabbed the man’s collar and hauled himself up again as the gunman grabbed the door rail in terror and he tried to stop himself from being pulled out of the vehicle. Ethan pulled hard on him as though to throw him out onto the asphalt racing past inches beneath them, and then purposefully shoved him back into the vehicle.

The unexpected change of motion caught the gunman off guard and he tumbled back into the van as Ethan grabbed the open door and launched himself inside. The gunman crashed onto his back in a tangle of limbs alongside two men sitting at computer consoles who were staring in wide eyed terror as Ethan flew past them and crashed down on top of the gunman.

Ethan’s left hand clamped around the gunman’s wrist and smashed it down against the metal floor of the van as he let his right knee plough deep into the gunman’s plexus. The Chinese man’s eyes bulged and he folded up at the waist as his head raised toward Ethan in sympathy with the blow, and Ethan ducked his head down and thrust it forward in time to smack into the man’s nose with a sickening crunch.

The gunman’s eyes rolled up into their sockets and he slumped back again, the back of his head hitting the floor of the van with a resounding thump as Ethan grasped for the pistol.

‘Don’t move!’

Ethan froze, one hand on the weapon as he swiveled his gaze to his right and saw both of the computer technicians standing, reared up against their consoles as the open door of the van swung against its hinges. One of them was holding a pistol close to Ethan’s head, the man’s aim trembling as he spoke in heavily accented English.

‘Hands behind your head!’

Ethan hesitated, then glanced at the cab where the driver and another passenger were looking over their shoulders and waiting to see what would happen. Ethan looked back to where the technician was aiming the pistol, barely inches from Ethan’s temple. Too close, within easy reach.

Ethan nodded slowly, released the gun he was pinning to the floor of the vehicle and began slowly to raise his hands, his right hand only inches from his assailant’s pistol. As he did so, the gunman took an instinctive step back to give himself space, lifting one foot off the floor of the van to do so.

‘No!’

The driver’s warning was too late as Ethan’s right hand whipped sideways and knocked the pistol away from his head. Ethan drove upward with one foot and turned as he swung his left fist and it impacted the technician’s jaw with a loud crack.

The technician’s body whirled and flew sideways as it hit the open door at the back of the van and flew out into mid — air. Ethan saw the man’s body smack down onto the hot asphalt behind them and roll to a halt in an unconscious tangle of limbs as vehicles swerved in chaos to avoid it.

The second technician’s right hand swept toward Ethan’s throat in a scything motion designed to collapse his thorax and choke him to death. Ethan jerked his left forearm up vertically and blocked the blow as he turned on one heel and slammed his right knee up into the Chinaman’s groin.

The technician’s eyes bulged like fishbowls as Ethan’s knee crunched into his testicles and he folded up with an agonized gasp. Ethan pivoted to his left and lifted his left boot up as he drove his right elbow down into the back of the technician’s skull, just behind his right ear. The blow sent the smaller man sprawling across the floor of the van as Ethan ducked down, grabbed the discarded pistol from the floor and aimed it into the cab.

Ethan offered the two occupants a breathless grin. ‘Fancy a chat?’

The two Chinamen looked at each other, and Ethan could see that they both knew that they had no plays left. The van began to slow as the driver sought a place to pull over.

The impact came from behind Ethan, his only warning the sound of a screaming engine. He turned in time to see through the open rear door the shape of a dark blue Chevrolet just as it smashed into the rear quarter of the van with the force of a fallen angel. Ethan was hurled across the rear of the van and smashed into the sidewall even as he heard cries of fear and pain from the cab.

The van mounted the sidewalk and as Ethan was smashed into the computer terminals he heard the engine roar and felt the vehicle lift off. He glimpsed through the windshield leaves and branches looming before them before the van suddenly smashed into a large tree.

Ethan crashed into the rear of the cab as though he had been hit by a train. His vision starred and dimmed and he sensed rather than felt himself collapse onto the floor in the rear of the vehicle as the computers smashed into the rear of the cab and toppled down onto him, the body of the gunman and technician landing alongside the equipment and pinning Ethan in place.

Ethan lay stunned and silent for a few moments, became aware of an acrid burning smell wafting through the vehicle. He tried to get up but his limbs felt numb and the weight of the computer equipment and two bodies was too great for him to budge. A bolt of nausea poisoned his guts as his vision swirled. He closed his eyes for a moment as he waited for the nausea to pass so that he could reach out and once more make a grab for either of the pistols on the floor of the van.

The rear of the vehicle moved, sank down, and Ethan opened one eye to see a figure vault lithely inside and move toward him, the bright sunlight from outside flaring and forcing Ethan to squint. Ethan shifted his hand to where he thought a pistol might be and instantly the shadowy figure lunged forward. A heavy shoe pressed down on Ethan’s wrist and pinned it in place.

The man leaned down and picked up the pistol, and then he looked at Ethan and aimed the weapon at him.

Ethan lay on his back, disorientated and pinned down by the computer equipment as he looked up into the eyes of Aaron Mitchell. The assassin looked back down at Ethan as in the distance the sound of wailing sirens grew louder.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Ethan croaked.

Mitchell looked down at Ethan for a moment longer, and then with his free hand he reached out and grabbed hold of a computer hard drive that was hanging by a set of leads from the twisted wreckage of the desks. Mitchell yanked the drive free and then looked back down at Ethan.

‘The right time,’ he replied in his deep, gravelly voice.

Mitchell lowered the pistol as he turned and jumped down from the rear of the van, and then vanished from sight. Ethan fought to right himself and sat up, pushing the wreckage off his chest bit by bit until he was able to struggle to his feet. Beside him lay the Chinese man he had struck first, groaning now as blood oozed in thick lumps from his shattered nose, his labored breath rattling in his throat. The technician was still unconscious, as were the two men in the front of the vehicle, their faces lost in impact bags that had burst from the dashboard before them. Ethan dragged the first gunman onto his side, fearful that he would suffocate, and then stepped down out of the vehicle and looked around.

Mitchell was nowhere to be seen, and Ethan slumped wearily onto the rear step of the van and sat there until SUVs screeched to a halt nearby and DIA agents sprinted toward him.

One of them vaulted up into the vehicle and crouched down alongside Ethan, handing him back the pistol he had dropped when he had pursued the van.

‘You okay, man?’

Ethan nodded as he slipped the gun back into his shoulder holster.

‘Two more in the cab,’ he gasped. ‘Get these assholes out of here and back to the DIAC building. They’ve got some talking to do.’

‘Roger that,’ came the reply.

‘Did you see the other guy? Six four, two hundred fifty pounds, African American?’

The agent looked at Ethan strangely. ‘I didn’t see anybody else in the vicinity.’

Ethan sighed as the agent held out a hand and hauled Ethan to his feet. Mitchell was here, and that meant that the MJ–12 now had the Chinese technology that Ethan had been trying to hunt down.

Ethan clambered to his feet as armed police rushed toward the vehicle and yanked the cab doors open. The two men were yanked from the vehicle and pinned down to the ground, a young man who remained stoically silent and an older man with a defiant set to his expression. The older man shouted a warning in heavily accented English.

‘You’ll kill them all!’

‘Stay on the ground!’ the police yelled in unison as Ethan covered them with his pistol as they manacled the two prisoners.

‘We’ll kill who?!’ Ethan demanded.

The older man glared up at Ethan, rage radiating from his expression.

‘We were trying to help! Now you’ve ruined everything!’

Ethan glanced at the police.

‘Get them back to the station as fast as you can, and get the techs’ to put these computers and screens back together. I need to know what they were doing.’

‘I want a name.’

The Chinese technician sat in the police interrogation room, his hands manacled to the Formica table top and his ankles likewise gripped in steel cuffs. He had been strip — searched, his clothes burned and was now dressed in a loose fitting gray jump suit, his nose swollen and the side of his face puffy and bruised.

Ethan sat opposite him, two law enforcement officers and two DIA agents accompanying them in the tiny room.

‘I don’t know any names,’ the technician replied miserably.

Ethan smiled bitterly.

‘I don’t think that you understand quite what’s happening here,’ he said, trying to restrain his anger. ‘All that’s standing between you and a major international incident is us, and you’re not helping. Who is your commanding officer? Who were you watching? Who sent you to Washington DC and why?’

The technician, who had revealed his name to be Sung, stared at the table top, his black hair glistening in the harsh white light from the ceiling, dried blood encrusting his lips.

Ethan smashed his fist down on the table before Sung and the Chinaman jerked in his seat and stared at Ethan.

‘I don’t know any names,’ he repeated in a monotone voice.

Ethan leaned back in his seat and folded his arms.

‘It’s your superior officers you’re afraid of, right?’ he suggested. ‘If you go home now, having told us everything, you think that you’ll be sent into some prison somewhere for betraying state secrets.’

Sung’s oriental features were hard to read, somehow less expressive than those of other races, but Ethan saw the technician’s eyes wobble in their sockets as he thought of whatever hellish prison awaited him back home for his perceived failure.

‘It’s not going to be much better here,’ Ethan said as he leaned forward on the desk. ‘You’re in the country carrying out illegal surveillance on US assets on behalf of China. You’ll be tried, sentenced and imprisoned in a high — security facility where you’ll be on permanent lockdown twenty three hours per day. On the hour that you do get out there will be killers, drug dealers, Hell’s Angels and every other maniac you can think of who’ll just love to get to know you real well, and being a foreigner who tried to kill members of our military, just how much sympathy do you think you’ll get from the guards?’ Ethan let a smile crawl across his features. ‘There’ll be nothing left of you come this time next year.’

Sung swallowed but remained silent.

‘Or, we can cut a deal,’ Ethan suggested. ‘You go free.’

Sung looked up in surprise at that. So did the police officers and DIA agents.

‘I don’t know that we can offer him that after…’ began one of them.

‘Hear me out,’ Ethan said as he raised a hand to forestall the objection and then turned back to Sung. ‘You’re a computer operator, right? Are you the superior officer?’

Sung thought for a moment and then shook his head.

‘So you were just doing your duty,’ Ethan said.

Sung nodded and Ethan went on.

‘If this attack you’ve planned goes ahead, our countries could find themselves at war, Sung. China could find itself under attack, which will then draw other nations such as Russia into the conflict. Before we know it we could all be fighting each other in World War Three. Is that something you want to be responsible for Sung? Because that’s what’s going to happen. Your failure will be not helping us and seeing millions of innocent people die both here and in your own country because you didn’t have the guts to stand up and help us stop this attack before…’

‘We’re not attacking your country!’ Sung shouted.

Ethan looked at him for a moment.

‘You’re here,’ he replied, ‘you’ve implanted people, you were watching them on your screens Sung, I saw the video feeds before the crash.’

Sung glared at Ethan, hatred radiating from his dark eyes.

‘You Americans, always so sure of yourself and yet so simple in your thinking. We’re not attacking your country, we’re trying to stop an attack.’

Ethan frowned and leaned back in his seat.

‘Sure you are, Sung. You came all this way to protect our interests.’

‘Abrahem Nassir,’ Sung growled.

The mention of that name got Ethan’s attention and he leaned forward again. ‘What do you know about Nassir?’

‘He stole our country’s technology and we’re trying to get it back before he does anything else to provoke conflict between our nations.’

Ethan stared at Sung for a long moment. ‘You mean the technology that your country stole from ours, way back in 1997? The technology that you took from four National Security Agency employees and then killed them for it over many years?’

Sung averted his gaze, his anger deflated. ‘I was not involved in that operation. We are trying to make amends.’

‘How were you planning to do that, Sung? Who are you controlling?’

Sung smiled, his eyes still cold and black.

‘Your agents,’ he said, ‘maybe people in this room. Maybe people you know.’

Even as Ethan was about to ask who the technician was referring to, the door to the room opened and an officer urgently beckoned Ethan to join him.

‘You need to see this.’

Ethan got up and followed the officer to a second room down the corridor, where the computers and screens from the captured van had been set up again.

‘I don’t know what the hell we’ve got here,’ a police IT expert said as he sat before the screens, ‘but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’

‘I thought that the hard drive had been stolen,’ Ethan said. ‘I saw it taken.’

‘It has,’ the IT man said, ‘but the other drives were recording much of the data the Chinese must have collected since they arrived here. You’re looking at footage a few hours old.’

Ethan looked at the screens before him. Both showed images of the view through a windshield of a car driving through what looked like Washington DC, and Ethan peered at the images for a moment as he tried to figure out whose eyes he was observing the scene through.

He turned to a man sitting manacled to a chair in the same room, the older Chinese agent they had captured in the van.

‘Get him over here.’

The police hauled the man to his feet and dragged him across as Ethan pointed at the screens.

‘Who are these people?’

The man remained silent, his lips thin and straight and his gaze directed somewhere over Ethan’s shoulder. Ethan stepped forward, reached down and grabbed the man’s testicles in one hand as he twisted them and yanked them brutally upward.

The man jerked as though electric currents were seething through his body as he went up on his toes and Ethan growled into his face.

‘Ten seconds and I’ll twist them clean off! Your name and the names of those people on the screens!’

‘Jiang Sin!’ the man squealed. ‘I can’t tell you their names!’

Ethan twisted harder for a moment and then he released Jiang Sin. The Chinese man sagged, coughing and tears streaming from his eyes as he spoke.

‘We’re trying to stop Abrahem Nassir,’ he said weakly.

Ethan peered at Jiang. ‘Prove it!’

‘Nassir is trying to assassinate the Presidents of both our countries!’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes!’ Jiang insisted. ‘His plan is to start a war between China and America, and that’s something that we do not want!’

Ethan stared at the screens for a moment longer. ‘But you were watching through the eyes of two people.’

‘Yes,’ Jiang said, ‘the second signal was not ours! That person is being controlled by Abrahem Nassir! We intercepted it and were trying to track them down using the person we implanted!’

Ethan stared at the two screens, and then he saw the person in the car look across a quiet street at a row of buildings, one of which Ethan recognized instantly. Vantage Aviation Hire. He heard Jarvis’s words echo through his mind.

During the attack, several witnesses reported noticing that the general was suffering a nosebleed. The small size and design of the devices caused minimal discomfort for the wearer, but he has told us that they also caused nosebleeds from time to time.

Ethan whirled to the police officers.

‘I’ve got to move, now! Keep these men in custody, no matter what!’