The Secret Cardinal

61

Kilkenny buzzed the outskirts of Rutog fifty feet off the ground. The whine of the turbine engine frightened livestock unfamiliar with the high-pitched sound and drew the curious from their modest dwellings. He waved to the grinning children who raced after the BAT, excitedly trying to keep pace; for many, this was the first aircraft they had ever seen at close range. Kilkenny noticed some adults running toward the center of the village, doubtless to report the sighting. His visit to Rutog was brief but sufficiently sensational to attract attention.

From Rutog, he flew northwest toward the village of Bar, careful to stay above the slowly dissipating blanket of fog. The view as he cruised through the valley was absolutely breathtaking. On either side stood softly rolling mountains, chocolate brown in color and ground into fantastic shapes by eons of glacial weathering. In the distance stood the giants — the sharp-edged peaks of the Himalayas. The granite blues and pure whites of the world’s tallest mountains were dazzling in the morning sun.

Near Bar, Kilkenny turned due west following a line down the center of a narrow canyon that snaked its way toward the Sino-Indian border. He heard the thump of rotors as he approached the first waypoint on his path west. Glancing over his left shoulder, he saw the Harbin, tail high and bearing down on him at three times the BAT’s top speed. He checked the seat beside him to confirm that the large bundle of camouflage tarp was securely strapped in place. Then he began flying with evasive maneuvers, trying to make the BAT a harder target for the helicopter’s bristling arsenal of weapons to find.

‘Blast it out of the sky!’ Liu ordered.

The weapons operator selected the Harbin’s fixed cannons, opened fire, and twelve-point-seven-millimeter rounds spat from the nose-mounted muzzles — the line of the shell’s flight described by bright orange streaks of the tracer rounds. The pilot slowed to avoid overflying the enemy aircraft and adjusted his line of attack, trying to keep pace with his prey’s erratic maneuvers.

Kilkenny imagined the smell of cordite as the tracers flew past, his mind recalling from memory the distinct scent of combat. He pitched the BAT’s nose down while simultaneously executing a half roll to the right. The BAT’s pilot-friendly flight characteristics compensated for Kilkenny’s rudimentary skill at the stick, resulting in a passable split-S maneuver. As the BAT dropped into the fog, the roll changed direction 180 degrees. Kilkenny saw the shadow of the Harbin race past overhead, slowing as it reached the spot where he disappeared into the fog.

He reached over to the seat beside him and unlatched the five-point restraint. With his right hand firmly holding the tarp in place, Kilkenny pulled back on the stick and put the BAT into a loop.

‘Hah! And Mom thought all those hours playing Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat were wasted time.’

‘Did you hit it?’ Liu shouted.

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ the weapons operator replied.

‘He may be trying to double back on us,’ the pilot said. ‘Everyone keep your eyes open.’

The pilot slowed the Harbin and began a cautious turn to the right. Seated behind the pilot on the right side of the aircraft, Peng searched the fathomless haze for any sign of the enemy lurking beneath. He hadn’t noticed, but his helmet cropped off the outer edges of his peripheral vision, serving not quite as blinders but reducing his field of view by ten percent. Whether that missing percentage would have made the difference, Peng didn’t know, but when he finally saw the BAT, it was shooting straight up out of the fog like a missile.

‘He’s behind us!’ Peng shouted.

The pilot pulled the stick hard to the right, bringing his guns around, but the BAT was now above them. Inverted over the Harbin, Kilkenny pulled the tarp out of the seat and dumped it out behind his wings. The Harbin’s main rotors sucked in and devoured the lightweight bundle of fabric. The tarp flapped furiously against the blades like a flag in a gale, creating a camouflage green halo.

‘Something’s on the rotor!’ Peng shouted.

‘I feel it,’ the pilot cried out. ‘It’s affecting the controls.’ The pilot’s hard right turn continued past the point where the BAT emerged from the fog and raced toward a full revolution. The weapons operator spied the black form overhead and squeezed the trigger on the forward guns. At close range, the Harbin raked the fragile BAT with a punishing fusillade. Heavy rounds pierced the articulating wings and tore the nacelle from its mounts. The BAT shuddered under the barrage. Kilkenny felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as shells whizzed past, some just inches behind him as he dived through the line of fire. Once hit, the nacelle above Kilkenny’s head consumed itself and disgorged a cloud of ceramic fragments. Like the men of BAT-2, Kilkenny felt a stinging rain of shards piercing his skin. He fought to control the BAT as it plunged back into the mist.

Above the Harbin, the main rotor shredded Kilkenny’s only weapon, transforming the large tarp into hundreds of ragged strips.

‘It’s breaking up,’ Peng noted.

‘Wa cao!’ the pilot cursed. ‘It’s going to destroy the engines.’

The Harbin’s twin turboshaft engines inhaled the free-flying debris, and layers of camouflage fabric choked the flow of air into the compressors. Destabilized by an unbalanced airflow, the compressor began to disintegrate. As the pilot raced to secure the engines from damage, the cabin filled with a popping sound like that from a rapid-fire gun. The two compressors were self-destructing.

‘Brace for impact!’ the pilot shouted. ‘I’m going to try a power-off landing.’

The pilot declutched the rotor from the now-failed engines, allowing the blades to autorotate. He fully lowered the collective to maintain rotor RPM and pressed down hard on the right pedal to keep the fuselage from spinning beneath the rotor. The Harbin’s nose pitched forward with the loss of power, and it slipped into the fog. The pilot pulled back on the cyclic stick to correct his angle of descent and keep air moving steadily through the main rotor. Above the cabin, the main rotor continued to spin like a maple seed corkscrewing through the air to slow the aircraft’s fall to earth. The pilot was performing the helicopter equivalent of gliding.

‘I’ll keep us up as long as I can, but we need to land fast,’ the pilot warned. ‘Find someplace flat!’

The BAT fell like a wounded goose, wings fluttering impotently as it tumbled from the sky. The RITEG had shut down, and the controls were dead. Kilkenny wondered if he soon would be as well. His body tensing, he tried to stay loose — the blow that was coming would be hard.

The BAT struck the lake inverted, its widespread wings slapping the water flat like a brake, jarring Kilkenny in his seat. Almost immediately, the BAT began to sink. With his legs braced against the frame to hold himself in place, Kilkenny popped the quick-release button on his five-point restraint. He grabbed the frame where the tubular segments joined at the top, rolled his legs forward out of the seat, and dropped into the lake.

Although most of his body was warm inside the form-fitting SEALskin suit, the icy salt water found every tiny slit cut by shards from the nacelle. In each wound, the saline solution increased the number of ions available to race through Kilkenny’s nervous system, telegraphing signals of pain to his brain. Almost as quickly, the cold numbed the areas around his exposed injuries, resulting in a neurological détente as his brain sorted through the input, deciding which sensation to recognize.

Kilkenny treaded water as he tried to regain his bearings and assess his situation. The heads-up display in his helmet flickered as lake water saturated its electronics — unlike his SEALskin suit, the helmet was not designed for immersion. But before the display shorted out, Kilkenny determined the direction of the nearest shore. He removed the helmet, which had filled with water up to his mouth, and let it sink to the bottom of the lake. He checked for his pistol and combat knife, then swam for shore at breakneck speed.

The surface of Bangong Co was as smooth as glass and deep blue even under the blanket of fog. The constant movement of his arms and legs kept a fresh supply of warm blood flowing in his extremities. The lake’s high level of salinity aided his swim by making him more buoyant, but Kilkenny’s suit was the key to his survival in the water. Without it, he would have succumbed to hypothermia long before he reached shore.

I wonder what Gates will say, Kilkenny thought, if I mention Icarus when I tell this story?

The Harbin limped along in flight, the pilot struggling to maintain altitude. The four men aboard gazed doggedly through the windscreen as if by force of will they could part the veil of mist and find a safe place to land. The fog thinned as they approached the shoreline, the combination of sun and wind flowing down from the mountains stirring the haze. By midday, it would be gone.

‘I see something,’ the weapons operator said.

Ahead loomed a mountain, and the pilot turned to parallel the shore. The slope fell almost vertically into the water, where the dropoff was steep and close to shore — a hundred feet deep just a stone’s throw from the water’s edge.

The pilot followed the contour of the lake, noting how the water bent around the mountain, flowing along the path of least resistance. On the far side of the mountain, the curve in the shoreline tapered into one of the long straight segments of the lake.

‘Look for a valley or inlet,’ the pilot ordered.

Almost as soon as he spoke, a swale between the mountains came into view. The pilot steered the Harbin in a wide arc that brought the aircraft around perpendicular to the shore and nose into the wind. Then he extended the landing gear and flared the helicopter to reduce both the rate of descent and the forward airspeed. The Harbin seemed to float, but the ground still rose up quickly. The pilot leveled out and brought the Harbin down. It landed with a crunch, and the aircraft pitched forward and about ten degrees to the left.

‘Everybody out,’ the pilot ordered.

The crew and passengers exited from the right side of the aircraft. Smoke wafted from the engine intakes, tingeing the air with a pungent smell. The pilot dropped onto the ground to check the condition of his aircraft. The Harbin employed a retractable tricycle landing gear, and the rear wheel assembly on the right side had collapsed on impact with a large rock.

‘Pilot,’ Liu growled, ‘report our situation and request immediate assistance.’

‘I will,’ the pilot markedly paced his voice, ‘after I’ve assessed the condition of the aircraft.’

Peng set his helmet down and stood by the water’s edge. The lake was calm and soundlessly lapping along the shore. He picked up a smooth stone and flung it sideways into the water. It skipped twice before submerging, the sound echoing strangely. He picked up another stone and was about to send it after the first when he heard something splashing. The noise was faint, but steady and slowly growing in intensity.

‘Do you hear that?’ Peng asked.

‘What?’ Liu replied.

‘Listen.’

Liu removed his helmet and cocked an ear toward the lake. ‘Probably birds.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Peng said. ‘It’s too regular.’

Liu listened more intently and picked up on the steady rhythm of the stroke. ‘You think someone survived?’

Peng stuck his hand in the water but yanked it out quickly. ‘It’s freezing. I can’t think why anyone else would be swimming, and Kilkenny was once a SEAL — they train in cold water.’

‘Cao!’ Liu spat, staring into the fog. ‘If it’s a swimmer, where is he?’

‘Hard to tell. The sound is bouncing off the rock all around us. But it’s definitely approaching shore.’

‘You go that way,’ Liu ordered, pointing east. ‘If you find this swimmer, kill him.’

Peng nodded and the two men set off.

Liu moved carefully along the rocky shore trying to pinpoint the source of the elusive sound. It changed in intensity, but overall it seemed to be moving closer. After ten minutes, Liu estimated he had covered almost fifty meters of difficult terrain. And the sound was definitely nearby.

Through the haze, he spied a lone swimmer cutting a long smooth stroke through the placid water. Liu studied the shore and found a large boulder to conceal himself behind until the swimmer emerged. The man would be cold and tired — an easy kill.

The swimmer slowed, then stopped as he reached the shallows. All but the upper half of the man’s head and the barrel of a pistol remained submerged — he exposed only what was essential in order to survey the shore. Seeing no threats, the man dragged himself out of the water and peeled off his balaclava as he crossed the final distance to shore. Liu squeezed off a warning shot that struck the water near the swimmer’s feet. It was Kilkenny.

‘Throw your weapon into the water behind you!’ Liu shouted as he stepped out from behind the boulder.

Kilkenny stopped and shook his head in wonder. ‘Just not my day.’

‘Your weapon!’ Liu shouted again.

Kilkenny tossed his pistol over his shoulder and heard it splash into the lake.

‘Now the knife,’ Liu commanded.

With his hands in clear view, Kilkenny stripped the knife sheath from his leg and threw it back into the lake.

‘Legs apart! Hands on head, now!’

Kilkenny complied, placing his legs shoulder-width apart, slightly bent at the knees.

Liu moved closer. ‘Where is Yin Daoming?’

Kilkenny considered the question and decided he was too sore and tired to stonewall. ‘Gone.’

‘Gone?’ Liu spat back angrily. ‘Gone where?’

Kilkenny tilted his head toward the water. ‘He’s in the lake.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘I don’t think he made it to shore,’ Kilkenny replied.

Liu smiled at the thought of Yin’s body sinking into the frigid depths of the lake. He stepped closer to Kilkenny. ‘I should have killed you in Rome.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing about you.’

‘Why did you do this? What is so important about this priest?’

‘Have you ever spoken to him?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘I have. He is an old fool.’

‘Then you weren’t listening.’

‘I listened enough. You and those who sent you are all fools, deluded by your religion.’

Liu stepped directly in front of Kilkenny and pressed the end of the pistol into his captive’s abdomen. The two men stared at each other eye to eye. What Kilkenny saw sickened him.

‘You look to the heavens and see something that does not exist,’ Liu continued. ‘Your religion is nothing more than mass insanity. There is no God, and I am going to prove it to you.’

In a sharp fluid motion, Kilkenny twisted to the right and swept his left hand down and around like the blade of a windmill. The flat of his palm struck the top of Liu’s pistol hand. The force of the blow pushed the pistol away from Kilkenny’s torso and snapped the metacarpal bones of Liu’s three longest fingers. Still, Liu squeezed off a single shot before the weapon flew from his hand out into the lake, the bullet tearing into Kilkenny’s right side.

Kilkenny spun back for the return stroke, but the shock of his injury robbed the blow of strength and speed. Liu leaned back and used his right arm to easily deflect Kilkenny’s elbow and forearm. Like a gear, Liu turned with his opponent and took control of the exchange. He blocked Kilkenny’s right fist with the palm of his left hand, and as it slipped past, he grabbed the wrist and drove his knee into Kilkenny’s side.

The pain blinded Kilkenny, leaving him barely aware of his arm being rotated behind his back as he doubled over. Liu spun him around, pinning the trapped forearm up between his shoulder blades and turning Kilkenny toward the lake.

‘Move!’ Liu shouted, jabbing the thumb of his damaged hand into the wound in Kilkenny’s right side.

Kilkenny felt his knees weaken as pain shot through his body, overwhelming his senses. He staggered forward, then planted his right leg, folded his left up to his chest, and pivoted around with what strength he could muster. As he turned, Kilkenny twisted his trapped arm free and grabbed Liu’s wrist. With his own center of gravity well off of his right foot, Kilkenny used Liu as a counterbalance. He felt the Asian trying to pull away to avoid the hammer blow from his incoming fist. When he was almost completely around, Kilkenny let go. Released, Liu shot back, avoiding the fist but not the foot.

The blade of Kilkenny’s foot landed squarely in the center of Liu’s chest and fractured his sternum. Liu toppled back onto the rocky beach, and Kilkenny landed in a foot of water. Liu could barely catch his breath but knew he couldn’t wait for the next attack. He pulled the balisong knife from his boot and opened it with a practiced flick of the wrist. As a knife fighter, Liu was ambidextrous.

Both men were slow in gaining their feet. Liu had trouble breathing, and Kilkenny experienced a new level of pain as salty lake water flushed the wound in his side. Liu charged, and Kilkenny backpedaled into the lake. The SEALskin kept Kilkenny’s feet warm, but Liu found his freezing to the bone as the icy water seeped into his black leather boots. Kilkenny stood with his left side toward Liu, his left arm raised to block while his right protected his wounded side. Liu mirrored Kilkenny’s stance, his damaged hand protecting his chest with the knife hand forward.

Like the shore, the ground they stood on was rocky and uneven, and with each passing second, Liu lost feeling in his feet. He jabbed with the knife and Kilkenny expertly parried the strike. Injured and without a solid footing, neither man could deliver a forceful blow.

Liu telegraphed a second jab, and when Kilkenny moved to block, he turned his hand and drove the knife down. The blade plunged into Kilkenny’s thigh. Kilkenny snapped an uppercut that connected with Liu’s chin. Liu retracted the knife as he reeled back with the blow, but he regained his footing and charged again. He drove with his whole body, but Kilkenny twisted and the blade found only air. Liu collided with Kilkenny, and both men fell into the icy lake.

Liu’s fist plunged into the shallow water and struck a jagged rock. The balisong slipped from his grasp and disappeared. Kilkenny landed prone with Liu on top of him. Recognizing his advantage, Liu sat up and drove his knee down on Kilkenny’s wounded side. The air exploded from Kilkenny’s mouth and he struggled to stay conscious, to keep his head above water. Liu grabbed a clump of hair and plunged Kilkenny’s face into the lake.

Saltwater burned inside Kilkenny’s nostrils and leaked into his mouth as his face went numb. Liu pulled Kilkenny’s head up, allowing him to catch another breath, prolonging the end.

‘Wo xi wang ni man man si, dan kuai dian xia di yu!’ Liu growled, his guttural cadences primal and menacing.

Liu plunged Kilkenny’s head in the water again, pressing his face into the rocks. What little air Kilkenny captured burst from his lungs, and as he choked, Liu pulled him up once again.

‘In your barbarian tongue,’ Liu hissed, ‘I wish you a slow death but a quick ride to hell.’

The icy lake enveloped Kilkenny’s head once more, and he knew Liu would not bring him up again. He reached back, trying to grab anything he could use to dislodge his attacker, but Liu shifted his weight and drove his knee down harder into Kilkenny’s side.

The air burst from Kilkenny’s mouth, and his choked spasms drew in ounce upon ounce of brackish water. He pushed his hands down to the lake bottom and tried to lift himself up, but the uneven rocks beneath him gave way, unable to hold his weight. The palms of his hands lost purchase, and his chest dropped back onto the rocks. More bubbles escaped from his lips as lake water slipped down his throat.

As Kilkenny’s consciousness ebbed around him, his thoughts lingered on Kelsey, the child they lost, and the family they would never have. Everything went black.