Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

When he reached the place where he’d been sitting with Jimmy Su, he yelled, “Clear!” That was the signal.

Eddie, who was pretending to be one of the dead Ghost Dragons, leapt up and grabbed Juan around the neck, pressing a machine pistol against his temple. Juan dropped the P90, and Eddie kicked it backward.

Eddie shouted something in Chinese, and three MSS agents jumped up from their hiding places. Zhong was in front, and all three had assault rifles pointed at him and Eddie.

“Where’s the flash drive?” Zhong demanded in English.

“If you kill me, you’ll never find it,” Juan said.

“It’s obviously still in the dining car somewhere,” Eddie said, “or he wouldn’t have come back in here.”

“Can you be sure about that? How do you know I didn’t toss it out the window somewhere along the way?” Juan made it sound like a bluff.

“What if we don’t kill you?” Eddie said. “What if we just hurt you?”

Then, with lightning speed, he jerked the gun down and shot Juan in the foot.

• • •

ZHONG WAS ASTONISHED when David Yao shot the American in the foot, primarily because he thought the machine pistol wasn’t loaded.

Blood erupted from the American’s foot and he went down howling in agony. Yao pulled him back up and pointed the gun at his head.

“Tell us!” he shouted.

“All right, I’ll tell you,” the American gasped. “But how do I know you won’t kill me?”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t tell us,” Zhong said. “You can be sure of that.”

“Then my men will kill you .”

“They can try.”

A strange look came over Yao’s face, and he began dragging the American backward toward the rear of the train.

“Come with me if you want to live,” Yao said.

Zhong moved forward. “Yao, what are you doing?”

“I think you’re going to kill both of us when you get the flash drive. I’ll make him give it to you, but then I’m going to take my chances with asylum in the United States.”

Zhong laughed. “You think they’ll give you asylum after what you’ve done?”

“If I save an American agent, they might.” He withdrew into the space connecting the dining car with the one behind it and stopped. He pressed the gun harder into the American’s temple. “Now tell them where the flash drive is or we all die together.”

The American gritted his teeth, but his eyes flicked over to one of the seats near where Zhong and his men had found a Lenovo laptop during the search of the dining car.

Zhong smiled. With his assault rifle still pointing at the two of them, he edged forward and knelt beside the seat. He pushed his hand deep into the seat cushion and ran his fingers along the back until they brushed against hard plastic. He removed it and saw that it was the flash drive. The serial number on it matched the one that had been stolen.

He grinned and was about to give the order to fire when the American surged backward, pushing Yao with him. With Yao’s balance thrown off, the machine pistol fired into the air, and they both tumbled to the floor in the next car.

Then the section between the cars exploded.

The coupling must have been the target because the brakes squealed on the car behind them and it began to fall back. That was the Americans’ exit strategy all along, and it was the reason they had the explosives to sever the link to the cars carrying Zhong’s other agents. The car with the Americans would come to a stop near the beginning of the bridge they were now crossing.

Gunfire came from Americans in the receding train car, but Zhong didn’t care about a fight with them anymore. They could do what they wanted with Yao. It didn’t matter now that he had the flash drive.

He plugged it into the adapter on his phone and initiated the memory wipe just in case the Americans had more surprises in store up ahead and tried to recapture the flash drive. In thirty seconds, the app responded that the flash drive had been completely overwritten seventy-five times. Now no computer on earth could recover the data it had carried.

Zhong smiled and pocketed the flash drive to show to his superiors. He also had Jimmy Su still alive to interrogate and find out how the Ghost Dragons had stolen the drive in the first place.

He notified the pilots to have the helicopters meet them at the rendezvous point. But he’d teach a lesson to the agents who’d let themselves be cut off from the rest of the train. They could hike out of the jungle and hitch a ride home.

• • •

AS HE WATCHED the train disappear, Juan said, “Is everyone all right?”

He got four affirmatives.

Eric knelt down by the blood-soaked bullet wound in Juan’s foot. “That’s cool. It looks so real.”

“When I told Kevin Nixon what we were planning, he didn’t think it was so cool knowing he’d have to patch up my prosthetic foot yet again.” To complete the illusion, the blood was his own, drawn by the Oregon ’s doctor, Julia Huxley, the day before and sealed in a packet inside his boot.

He leapt to his feet, none the worse for the experience, and clapped Eddie on the shoulder. “That was some nice acting back there. You almost had me convinced you were a Ghost Dragon.”

“I’m just glad I was able to get my hands on one of the spare magazines.”

“I did like the expression on Zhong’s face when he realized the gun he gave you was no longer empty.”

“You should have seen the look on Jimmy Su’s face when he saw David Yao alive and kicking, literally,” Eddie said. “He must have thought his own men betrayed him and didn’t kill Yao as ordered.”

“Well, you can go back to being yourself, and Yao’s remains will be ‘discovered’ in about a week when the Navy gets rid of the body. If anything, Zhong will think the triad got back at him for his betrayal.”

“You know, I think you should keep some of those tattoos,” MacD said, pointing at Eddie’s neck. “The dragon looks pretty awesome.”

“No, thanks. I’m washing them off as soon as we get back to the Oregon .”

“Speaking of which,” Linc said, “we should get going. I don’t want to be here when the Vietnamese find out what we’ve done to their train system.”

“Good point,” Juan said. He called Hali. “Is the RHIB still where we left it?” They had pre-positioned the rigid-hulled inflatable boat before the mission started, prepped for a quick getaway should one have been required.

After a moment, Hali replied, “Thanks to Gomez’s drone, we’ve got eyes on it. It’s still hidden in the bushes by the river’s edge.”

“Then tell Max to lay in a course to Guam.”

“He says we’re ready to go when you are.”

“Thanks.” Juan hung up and said, “Let’s get moving. I’m starving.”

They got out of the train car, which had traveled twenty yards onto the trestle. He saw Eddie peering over the side at the water far below.

Juan stopped next to him and smiled. “Aren’t you glad we didn’t have to go to Plan D?”

Eddie nodded and grinned back at him. “I think a nice hike down the slope is going to be much more relaxing than jumping from a moving train.”

13

THAILAND

“What are you doing?” Udom demanded.

Trying to keep my hands from shaking, Beth Anders thought about saying as she hunched over the painting with armed men surrounding her. Instead, she said, “I’m checking the edges of the Manet.”

“Why?” asked Tagaan, who she’d learned was Filipino. He was holding the bronze eagle finial, which was apparently his. She tried to stay far away from him since he smelled of rancid garlic.