Beijing
China
Kaito Yoshima pulled open the pantry door and began yanking shelves out, strewing canned goods and cleaning products across the floor. Randi had her back against the wall next to the kitchen’s entrance and was watching the front door as it slowly buckled under the force of the battering ram.
“Anytime now would be good, Kaito!”
“Patience, Randi. I’m going as quickly as I can.”
She glanced at the gun in her hand and let out a long, frustrated breath. What exactly was it she thought she was going to do with that weapon? She was one of the CIA’s top operatives, and as such there was no way in hell she could start shooting at Chinese authorities. If she got caught and identified there was no telling what kind of damage it could do to the delicate relationship between the two countries. Reluctantly, she stuffed it back in her purse along with all the other deadly toys she couldn’t use.
The helicopter could still be heard hovering outside the barricaded windows but at least it had stopped shooting. On a less positive note, a chunk of door frame about the size of a basketball had been dislodged and a man’s arm was already through it feeling around for the interior locks. The temptation to wing him and slow down the assault was almost unbearable. Just a nick above the elbow…
“Kaito—” she said, but then fell silent when she turned. The back of the cabinet was on the floor, and in its place was a dark shaft bisected by a single vertical cable.
“You son of a bitch!” she shouted, running to the cabinet. “If you’ve left me—”
“Be calm, Randi. I’m here.”
The voice echoed a bit but when she looked down into the shaft, she saw him hanging from a climbing harness only a few feet below floor level.
“They used this to transport construction materials when the structure was being built,” Yoshima said. “Unfortunately, it’s small enough that the only way this has a chance of working is for you to stand on my shoulders.”
She reached down and twisted the heel on her shoe, unlocking the mechanism that held it on and then repeating the process on the other foot. She’d have to remember to send the machinist who’d done the modifications a nice bonus. If she lived that long.
Randi grabbed a kitchen towel to protect her hands from the thin metal cable and stepped onto Yoshima’s shoulders. The front door finally gave way, followed immediately by excited shouts and the sound of combat boots running in their direction.
“Close the cabinet door, Randi.”
When she did a dim red light came on, providing just enough illumination to see.
“There’s a latch on the left side. Can you find it?”
She squinted into the gloom, finally spotting it as the voices grew louder and the footfalls grew closer. At least one man was in the kitchen. Probably two.
The mechanism was completely silent and she managed to engage it right before someone jerked on the handle from outside. The impacts of a rifle butt against the cabinet door started a moment later.
Yoshima looked up at her. “I take it you found it.”
“Yes. Can we leave now?”
“Of course, but first I’d like to thank you for wearing a skirt.”
She was about to kick him in the side of the head when the sound of automatic fire erupted. Randi threw her hands up reflexively, but the bullets didn’t penetrate, instead ringing off the cabinet door’s steel reinforcements. She cursed under her breath when she heard a pained scream from one of the men trying to get at them. He’d clearly been caught with a ricochet. There was no way to hold her responsible for that, was there? Technically the moron shot himself.
“Can I safely remove the explosive taped to the back of my neck?” Yoshima asked calmly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she shouted as another deafening volley hit the cabinet door. “It’s piece of tape with a Tic Tac in it.”
Yoshima sighed as they started sliding down the cable. “Of course it is.”
The ride down took only a few seconds, which still felt like an eternity to Randi. If the men above managed to get through, they would spray bullets down into the shaft. There would be nowhere to run.
Randi crammed her knees onto the wall, taking the weight off Yoshima as he flicked on another red light and opened a panel that led to the underground garage. They climbed out, weaving through the cars parked there and watching for any sign of the Chinese authorities. Beyond the security cameras bolted near the ceiling, though, it looked clear.
Yoshima crept around a battered delivery van and waved her up as he threw a leg over a beefy BMW motorcycle that looked like it had been designed for the Baja 500.
She jumped on the back as he fired up the motor, barely getting her arms around his waist before the front wheel lifted and they started up the garage’s ramp.
They dodged around the exit gate, nearly scraping the wall as a startled attendant looked on. Yoshima put the bike into a well-practiced slide and she tried to keep her weight neutral enough to allow him to turn onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians dived in every direction as they accelerated, but to his credit Yoshima managed to miss each of them.
Behind, two unmarked cars started after them, leaving a cloud of tire smoke as they forced their way into traffic. The pursuing vehicles were bigger and less nimble than Yoshima’s bike, though, and were doing little more than racking up serious body-panel damage as they receded into the distance.
“Tell me about Fukushima!” Randi shouted as they shot up the white line between two lanes of crawling traffic. The bike’s speedometer read almost eighty as they crossed an intersection against the light, nearly taking out a group of cyclists.
“The nuclear plant?” he yelled back. “What about it?”
The regular police had joined the chase and she saw one turn into the intersection they’d just blown though. Traffic got denser and Yoshima grabbed the brakes, putting the bike into a nose wheelie that barely kept them from going broadside into an SUV. Behind, the sirens were multiplying and getting louder.
“What happened there?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me, Randi. A tsunami hit it and knocked out their power. I don’t think now is the time for an explanation of how nuclear reactors overheat.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it?”
They managed to get around the SUV and were accelerating again. Distracted by her questions, Yoshima didn’t see the car door opening in front of them until it was too late. He tried to cut left, but clipped the right side of his bars and the bike went out from under them. He hit the asphalt and she was catapulted onto the much softer hood of a Ford, sliding across it and managing to land on her feet.
“Kaito!” she shouted, running between cars and lifting the dazed man to his feet. She could hear the screeching of tires behind her but there was no time to look back. People were getting out of their vehicles, calling to the police, pointing at them. From experience, she knew that the situation could devolve quickly. It would only take one bystander to decide he was John Wayne and try to grab them for this disaster to turn into complete chaos.
“Get on!” she said, lifting the still-running bike and jumping on. Yoshima wrapped his arms around her waist and she twisted the throttle, going right for an angry-looking man blocking their path. He briefly held his ground but then thought better of it when she goosed the throttle and lifted the front wheel in preparation for running straight over him.
“Kaito! Which way do we—”
She heard a single shot and a moment later the grip on her waist lost its strength. Yoshima’s mouth brushed her ear. “I’m sorry we won’t spend that night together.”
Randi tried to get hold of him but he was already toppling backward off the bike. She slammed on the rear brake and skidded into a ninety-degree stop, looking back at him lying in the street. Two men were running in their direction from a black Audi parked horizontally across the road. One stopped to take aim at her.
Yoshima managed to prop himself on an elbow and wave her off with a smile full of bloody teeth.
Her purse was hanging across her back and she instinctively reached for it but, again, stopped herself. She couldn’t shoot these sons of bitches, and that made getting to Yoshima impossible.
With no other alternative, she planted a foot and twisted the throttle again, spinning the bike 180 degrees before accelerating toward an alleyway. Hopefully, it would give her cover from the chopper she could hear approaching from the north.