Clive cusslers dark vect.., p.22
Clive Cussler's Dark Vector, page 22
“Let’s hope we’re in the right spot,” Joe said.
“Should be,” Kurt replied. “I just hope I don’t come up under someone’s shoe.”
He cut down and across and then up and back across the other way. As he connected the last incision to the first, the panel above him wobbled. Kurt handed the saw down to Joe before working the board loose.
It slid free and Kurt pulled it down while looking up. He spied the startled faces of two young children looking back at him. Yan’s daughter, who was fourteen, had furrowed eyebrows and a stern gaze. She was the spitting image of her mom. Yan’s son, who was ten, stared with wide eyes, astonished at what he was seeing. Behind them Kurt saw an older woman with a nervous look on her face. Yan’s mother.
Kurt smiled and held his finger to his lips, hoping the universal shush translated across languages. “Don’t make any noise.”
Yan’s daughter nodded. “Okay,” she said in English. “Who are you?”
Kurt introduced himself and pointed to Joe. “We’re friends of your mother. We work with her. We’re going to get you out of here. But we need to hurry.” He waved for them to come forth. “Send your brother down first.”
The boy shook his head and backed away. Whatever Emmerson’s thugs had threatened him with, he was afraid.
This was a bad development. Kurt pulled himself up and found Yan’s daughter arguing with her brother in hushed but urgent whispers. “I promise, we’ll keep you safe. But we have to move quickly.”
The kid continued shaking his head and Kurt considered grabbing and tossing him down to Joe, but the last thing they needed was a ten-year-old screaming loud enough to draw Emmerson’s heavies.
Needing a plan that didn’t include gagging the kid, Kurt remembered Yan mentioning how her son loved old movies and pretending he was a character in them.
“It’ll be like The Great Escape,” Kurt said. He began whistling the famous theme music to the best of his ability.
“Great Escape,” the boy said haltingly. “With Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.”
Kurt grinned at the reference. He had a soft spot for anyone who loved old movies. “Don’t forget James Coburn,” Kurt said, picking the kid up and lowering him down to Joe. “If we’re going to be characters from the movie, we might as well be someone who actually made it out.”
Yan’s daughter smiled and went next. Finally, Kurt helped lower their grandmother through the gap. She let go a little too quickly, but Joe caught her like they were an ice-skating duo performing a trick.
Now it was Kurt’s turn. He swung his feet back over the edge and was just about to drop in when a key hit the lock on the door.
Damn, Kurt thought. We were that close.
The door pushed open and one of Emmerson’s men stepped in casually. He froze, dumbfounded at the sight of a fully grown man sitting on the floor with his legs through what looked like a trapdoor.
While he didn’t understand that particular vision, there was no mistaking the meaning of the 9mm pistol with a suppressor attached that Kurt had pointed at his heart.
Kurt saw the clarity on the man’s face. With his free hand, Kurt waved for the man to finish entering and move across the room to the far wall.
Hesitation followed. A moment of indecision.
Don’t do it.
The man grabbed for a gun that was tucked into his waistband, snatching it free with surprising speed.
Kurt fired two shots. The first shell hit the man’s leg, causing him to stumble into the room instead of back out onto the second-floor walkway. The second shot hit his center mass.
The man fell onto a desk in the corner of the room. Other than a grunt, he made no sound, slumping flat and sliding off the wooden surface.
As he fell to the floor, the pistol dropped from his hand. It hit grip first and discharged loudly, shattering the office window with an errant shot.
So very close.
Kurt jumped up, grabbed the dead man’s weapon and glanced out the shattered office window. Several of Emmerson’s men were looking up toward the second level. One of them was pointing right at the window. The shot came from up there, he imagined them saying.
Leaving the window, he came back to the square hole he’d cut in the floor.
“Sounds like we’ve lost the element of surprise,” Joe said, looking up.
“We’re about to,” Kurt said. “Several of Emmerson’s men are heading this way. Time for a new plan. I’m going to keep their attention focused up here while you get Yan’s family out of here and back to the Phantom.”
As Joe had mentioned earlier, that was easier said than done. “I suppose we could steal one of the boats, but we still have to get the hangar doors open to get out. Most likely, the controls are at the end of the dock. How long do you think you can occupy these guys without getting shot?”
“I have a few jokes I can tell,” Kurt said, “but I wouldn’t dawdle if I was you. Put your earpiece back in. Might as well stay in contact.”
Joe wedged the earpiece into his right ear. Kurt did the same and stepped away from the opening and back to the window. He pressed himself flat against it, looking out at an oblique angle.
A couple of Emmerson’s men were on the stairs, several more were rushing over from the concrete dock. “I’ve got five or six coming my way,” Kurt said. “The rest are still working.”
“We’re ready to make a break for it,” Joe said. “Give ’em something to think about.”
Kurt intended to do just that. He unscrewed the suppressor from his weapon so it would discharge with the maximum noise possible and positioned the dead man’s gun in his other hand. Squinting at the target, he opened fire with both guns.
The percussive blasts echoed through the cavernous building. The approaching men threw themselves flat against the stairs and the men on the deck took cover as well. But Kurt was not firing at them. He was aiming upward at the banks of lights in the rafters. With a handful of well-placed shots, he took out three of the nearby arc lights.
Shattered glass and glowing filament sections fell like embers across the dock. The section above the offices went dark as a wave of return fire came in his direction.
Kurt dropped to the floor, moved to the door and cracked it open, firing out the tiny gap he’d made.
There was a lull in the shooting. Orders were shouted across the dock. A high-intensity light was trained on his position. It lit up the second-floor walkway while leaving the lower level that much darker in contrast.
Kurt knew what came after being illuminated. He dove backward as a hail of bullets tore into the corrugated metal wall.
“I seem to have their attention,” he said. “Make a break for it next time I open fire.”
“When is that going to be?” Joe asked.
“In three . . . two . . . one . . .”
* * *
—
As Kurt traded fire with the men on the stairs, Joe cracked open the door that led to the newly darkened dockside. The trusty cart with its payload of wooden crates remained where they’d left it.
“Follow me,” he said to the children. “Stay close and tell your grandmother we’re going to one of those boats.”
The gunfire had unnerved the kids. The boy seemed more frightened than ever, but his sister grabbed his hand and spoke to their grandmother. They pulled in beside Joe, ducking down low, as he pushed the cart across the darkened pier.
One of Emmerson’s men spotted Joe, but instead of attacking, he shouted a warning, waving to Joe to back up and take cover. Joe stopped in his tracks and waved back. The man rushed off to join the fight against Kurt, having never seen the three escapees hiding behind the boxes.
Hoping not to draw any further attention, Joe changed course, weaving to the dockside and quickly reaching the first boat.
“Get in and hide,” Joe said to Yan’s daughter, asking her to tell the others. “Keep your heads down and don’t make a sound.”
The grandmother went first, helped by Yan’s daughter. Yan’s son hopped over the transom with ease. All three ducked down.
The small craft had an outboard motor, high gunwales to keep the spray out and a pedestal seat at the helm. The space between the center console and the side wall created the perfect spot to hide as long as everyone lay flat.
“I’ll be right back,” Joe said.
He left the cart and ran along the dockside toward the giant hangar door, finding the controls right where they belonged by the side of the door itself. There was only one problem. They were locked in the down position and Joe had neither a key card nor the password required to release them.
* * *
—
Up on the second level, Kurt was wondering about Joe’s progress while trying hard to avoid getting shot to pieces.
He stuck his hand out the door, firing blindly down the catwalk at the men who were coming for him. Three quick shots and a retreat. He rolled away from the door as a hail of return fire tore into the office from several angles.
Light streamed in as punctures appeared in the door and the thin corrugated wall. The remains of the glass exploded out of the window frames. A drawer slammed open, releasing papers that fluttered around the room like feathers from a wounded bird.
Kurt pulled back farther, but the withering round of fire he expected did not come. He had something going for him that was even better than luck. Emmerson’s men had to assume that Yan’s mother and her kids were still in the room and they knew he would be enraged if they killed his valuable hostages.
Still, a charge would soon be launched. “How’s it going down there?” Kurt called out.
“We’ve run into a snag,” Joe said. “The hangar doors are locked down tight. I can’t release them from here. Which means time for a new new plan.”
A bullet hit the door. And another. They were clearly aiming for the hinges. A third shot took out the top hinge and the door swayed at an odd angle.
Kurt pushed over the file cabinet in the back half of the room and dropped down behind it for extra protection. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly. I get the feeling these guys are moving closer.”
Guessing at their approximate location outside the office, Kurt aimed toward the thin wall and fired off several rounds. Waiting a few seconds before firing again, he tried to conserve ammo, but he’d soon burned through everything in the dead man’s gun and the last few shots from his own. He tossed the borrowed gun aside and replaced the magazine in his own weapon with his only spare.
He was more cautious with the rest of the ammo, triggering off shots sporadically, doing his best to space them out and give Joe time for whatever he had in mind.
CHAPTER 40
Joe’s new plan took him in a different direction. He ran across the dock with his head down, trying to avoid getting shot. As he sprinted for cover, he looked like any other regular worker in the hangar. Just a man trying not to get hit by stray bullets.
But instead of taking cover, Joe climbed onto the ladder fixed to the wall. The one that led up to the enclosed booth where the crane operator sat.
He scaled the ladder with surprising speed, his hands and feet flying over the rungs. Reaching the underside of the small cab, he threw open the hatch and pulled himself up.
The crane operator turned as the hatch banged against the stops. The man had been watching the shoot-out down below. A bird’s-eye view to the chaos.
He glanced Joe’s way, said something in Mandarin and shifted forward.
Joe sprang from the top of the ladder and rushed the man, gathering his momentum and swinging a haymaker left hook.
The crane operator was knocked from his chair. He banged against the glass panel on the side of the booth, which kept him upright. His adrenaline surged and he lunged toward Joe in the constricted space, grasping at Joe’s coveralls with one hand and clamping the other around Joe’s neck.
The impact threw Joe back. He slammed against the rear wall of the cab. The crane operator pressed hard, trying to crush Joe’s windpipe, but Joe’s arms were free and a steam-piston blow to the man’s gut knocked the fight out of him.
The crane operator doubled over, holding his stomach. Joe dropped a hammer of an elbow on the back of his head.
The operator crumpled to the deck. Joe looked around for something to keep him subdued. Finding a small electric fan that was plugged into a socket, he yanked it free, flipped the man over and hog-tied him with the cord.
Just to ensure that no one surprised him in a similar fashion, Joe shut the lower hatch and shoved the unconscious man’s body on top of it.
“Now,” Joe said to himself. “Time to make an exit door where there is none.”
He climbed onto the seat and looked over the controls. He’d operated plenty of cranes before. And even though the writing was all in Chinese, he had a pretty good idea which controls did what.
Looking out the glass, he saw the entire hangar below him—the small boats, the delta-winged skimmers, even the top of the Ekranoplan. As he studied the big plane, he noticed classic Russian designer touches. A random bulge here, an odd indentation there. The roof of the aircraft sported a couple hatches and mountings for machine guns—though Emmerson had clearly removed the weapons. There was a forest of antennas sprouting from the fuselage just behind the cockpit and a dark strip down the spine of the aircraft that appeared to be a nonslip surface for crewmen to walk on.
Quite a machine, he thought, turning his attention to the task at hand. He couldn’t get the doors to open from up here, but he could make his own door.
He looked to the heavy load suspended on a platform beneath the moving trolley. He counted four pipeline welders, the same machines that had attacked Kurt days before. Each of them weighing several hundred pounds. That should do the trick.
Using a small joystick to move the load sideways and tapping a second control that operated the cable, Joe raised the platform and moved it toward the back of the hangar.
“Phase one complete,” he called out to Kurt. “What’s your situation?”
“Bad and getting worse,” Kurt replied. “I took a quick look. They’ve finished building their battering ram and they’re coming this way.”
Looking over at the walkway, Joe saw that the men lining up behind the battering ram were only the first problem. A second group was using a ladder to climb up to the walkway on the other side of Kurt’s position.
“They’ve got you surrounded,” Joe said. “But don’t worry, help is on the way.”
“Just get the door down and get out of here,” Kurt ordered.
Using the small joystick on the panel in front of him, Joe controlled the crane’s direction and speed. He moved the load away from the walkway, let out a fair amount of slack and sent it back toward the second-level walkway at full speed.
The platform at the bottom of the cable picked up speed and momentum. Just as the trolley from which the load was suspended reached its maximum rate of travel, Joe began retracting cable.
The trolley hit the end of the track, banging against the stops, cushioned by large rubber bumpers. The heavy pallet continued to swing, accelerating as Joe pulled in more cable. The girders above creaked as they strained under the load. The men on the upper walkway who’d built the battering ram never saw it. A shout from below alerted them at the last second.
The men turned and scattered just as the makeshift wrecking ball hit the walkway. Two of them jumped to safety, the rest were tossed about like bowling pins.
The surface of the walkway folded up as if it was made of tinfoil while the corrugated metal wall beyond caved in.
As the pendulum expended its energy and swung backward, the surviving men tumbled onto the dockside. One man clung to the pallet until it was over the water, falling with a splash.
* * *
—
Kurt felt the impact as the entire room around him buckled and swayed. The metal walls twisted, warping and releasing fasteners that pinged around the office like pellets from a BB gun.
“Well, that shook things up,” Kurt said.
Stealing a glance out the battered doorway, he studied the carnage. Joe had wiped out the threat from the right side, but the men coming in from the other direction were still in place.
“Phase two beginning,” Joe called out. “Time to bust open the hangar door. Also, I’m definitely going to wrecking ball school when we get back home. You have no idea how much fun this is.”
Kurt could imagine. But the problem was, Joe’s effort had gotten everyone’s attention. Shouting and gunfire were now directed his way. Several men raced toward the ladder that led up to the control cab.
Kurt opened fire, scattering them and keeping the heat off Joe for a moment, but he couldn’t do much more.
“Make a hole and get out quickly,” Kurt said. “You’ve had enough fun for today.”
“Love to,” Joe said. “But I’m not sure how I’m going to get down. You get to Yan’s mother and kids. I’ll bust the door down so you can escape. They’re hiding in one of the boats.”
Kurt didn’t much like that idea, but he lost any chance to argue the point when two of Emmerson’s men peered around the door.
Kurt fired once, brushing them back and buying himself some time.
They flinched, ducked out of sight and gathered themselves for an assault. Whipping around the corner, knocking the door off its remaining hinge in the process, they opened fire with everything they had. They shot high and low and all around.
Orders be damned, they riddled the office with bullets. Blasting the filing cabinet, the desk and the mattress. Anything a man might try to hide behind.
Feathers flew from the comforter as bullets ripped it, stuffing exploded out of the mattress, sparks jumped from the metal walls.
