Black dragon, p.26
Black Dragon, page 26
Yuri headed for the nearest table and was about to pick up a dust-covered book when Mitchell grabbed his hand from behind.
“Wait a second,” cautioned Mitchell as he shone his light along the table. Pulling Yuri a couple of steps back, Mitchell pointed to the desk. The shadow of a thin trip wire led back to where it had been tied to on the old book. Mitchell followed the wire along the table and saw that the wire was connected to a hand grenade placed inside a small wooden box. As soon as Yuri would have picked up the book, the trip wire would have released the safety clip on the grenade, allowing it to detonate, killing Yuri and anyone else unlucky enough to be close by.
“Jesus, I never saw that,” said Yuri, his voice shaky and scared.
“Luckily, I saw plenty of these in Afghanistan. They’re easy to find if you know what you’re looking for,” said Mitchell calmly.
“I’m a pilot and a smuggler, not a soldier like you, Ryan.”
“Well, I still need you in one piece to help us discover what was going on in here. Why don’t I lead and you follow in my footsteps?”
“Da, brilliant plan,” replied Yuri, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Carefully, Mitchell began to methodically search each table against the wall, looking for any more booby traps, while Yuri tried to find anything that might help solve the mystery.
Jackson peered over his shoulder as Mitchell and Yuri began their search. They were moving far too slow. It would take them hours to search the room at the pace they were going. It was only a matter to time before Cypher’s goons caught up with them and the last place he wanted to be was trapped in a room with no way out.
A couple more minutes passed. So far, the search had turned up nothing of value. Mitchell was beginning to think that they were wasting their time and that they should leave when Yuri tapped him on his shoulder. Mitchell’s eyes widened when he saw hanging from a strong metal winch was the oddest bomb he had ever laid his eyes on. It looked like something from a Jules Verne novel or a cheap science-fiction film. This had to be the device the Russians had been working on when the war ended. It was about seven meters in length and had large tail fins on the back of the bomb to keep it stable as it fell, but the nose of the weapon was what caught his attention. A large tapered drill with rows of sharp teeth for digging through rock was not what Mitchell had ever expected to find on a bomb. The shell of the bomb was open. Shining his flashlight inside, he could see that the device was unarmed. The explosive charge had never been placed inside the deadly bomb.
“Ryan, look past the bomb,” said Yuri as if he had just seen a ghost.
Mitchell moved his light and almost jumped back when he saw the skeletal remains of five men. Their empty eye sockets seemed to be staring right at him, sending a chill down his spine. They looked like they had been tied to their chairs and then shot in the head, one by one. Their old white lab coats had turned yellow with age and hung loose off their bones.
“The Russian scientists, I presume,” said Mitchell.
“This place is creeping me out,” said Yuri, looking over at his dead countrymen.
Mitchell had to agree. The room was like being inside a tomb lost to the ravages of time. “Come on, let’s see if we can find something on the corpses, and then get the hell out of here.”
After quickly checking the skeletons for booby traps, Mitchell and Yuri began to go through the dead men’s clothes, looking for anything, no matter how small, that might help them.
With a look of disgust on his face, Yuri reluctantly pulled open the dusty lab coat of the skeleton nearest him. His discomfort rose as he looked into the empty chest cavity of the skeleton. He was about to move onto the next man when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye lying on the floor beside the chair. Carefully bending down, he saw that it was a thick wad of paper, rolled up tightly. He reached over, grabbed hold of the paper and picked it up. Blowing off the years of dust, Yuri waited for the thick cloud to dissipate.
A second later, a smile emerged on his face. “Ryan, these are blueprints for the bomb.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can read Russian. Trust me; these were probably hidden in the coat of the poor soul tied to this chair. When his body decomposed, they must have fallen to the ground and laid there ever since.”
“Thank God, let’s get out of here.”
The sound of Jackson opening fire startled both Mitchell and Yuri, who instinctively went for their weapons.
Their time had run out—they were trapped.
37
The room
Tara broke out in a cold sweat the second she heard the sound of automatic gunfire tearing through the air.
In front of her, the lead thug’s head snapped back. Blood and gore splattered the tunnel wall.
With animal-like reflexes, she jumped back, disappearing safely around the corner of the tunnel.
Another burst of gunfire hit the concrete wall where she had been standing barely a second ago, striking the wall harmlessly.
“What happened?” asked Atsuko, her voice betraying her fear.
“We lost the man on point,” replied Tara coldly.
“We should get out of here before anyone else dies,” said Atsuko.
Tara looked into Atsuko’s terrified eyes. “Not yet, Miss Satomi. We haven’t finished what we came to do.”
With that remark, fear turned Atsuko’s mouth drier than the Sahara under a blistering noonday sun. She wasn’t a fighter. She knew that she couldn’t wrestle a weapon away from one of the guards if she tried. Atsuko knew she was going to die soon.
“Talk to me, Nate,” called out Mitchell.
“The bad guys have found us. Dropped one, but I saw another dive for cover. Not sure how many of them are out there,” replied Jackson.
“Close the door and get back here.”
Quickly throwing his weight behind the door, Jackson pushed the heavy metal door closed. Outside, he could hear the sound of bullets ricocheting off the door. It was far too thick for any small-arms fire to penetrate.
Carefully making his way over beside Mitchell, Jackson removed his NVGs and wondered what his friend was thinking. He had just closed the only way in or out of the room.
“I hate to break it to you, Ryan, but the way out is back that way,” said Jackson, pointing at the closed door.
“They built things in here. There has to be a ventilation system of some sort,” said Mitchell, looking up at the roof.
Yuri aimed his flashlight at the roof. “There, above the bomb,” said Yuri excitedly.
Mitchell and Jackson looked over.
There it was: a ventilation shaft.
Mitchell shone his light up into the shaft. It was narrow, but could fit a man.
“Jesus,” muttered Jackson, “not again. That’s smaller than the elevator hatch we had to climb out of.”
“Strip down or wait here for our attackers to blast their way in.”
Jackson mumbled something to himself as he began to remove his clothes.
“Yuri, you’re the skinniest one of all of us. You go first,” said Mitchell.
Yuri dropped his vest to the floor and began to scale up the crane holding up the bomb. When he shone his light inside the ventilation shaft, he could see that it went for about ten meters and then turned to the right. He dragged himself up inside and began to crawl down the long, narrow tunnel.
Outside, Tara placed her surviving people alongside the tunnel wall near the closed door.
“Blow the door,” said Tara to a tall, black-haired man with a deep scar down the side of his face.
With a sharp nod, the man dug out a pre-made charge from his small pack and placed it against the metal frame of the door. He set the timer for ten seconds and stepped back slightly.
Anticipation mixed with fear began to build inside the killers waiting to pounce upon their prey trapped inside the workroom.
Atsuko scared beyond measure nearly leapt out of her skin when a rough hand unexpectedly grabbed her from behind.
The blast, when it came, wasn’t half as loud or as terrifying as Atsuko had feared. Designed to blow the door off its frame, the charge knocked the door back into the workroom with a loud thud, sending decades of dust flying into the air when it hit the floor.
“Now,” said Tara to the thug holding onto Atsuko.
Pushed from behind, Atsuko’s heart raced wildly in her chest as she was forced forward through the gaping hole that had once been the doorway. Her eyes couldn’t see a thing. It was as dark as a crypt inside. With a hard push from behind, Atsuko blindly stumbled into the room. With her arms flailing in the air, Atsuko tripped over something and fell face first onto the dust-covered floor.
Jackson was at the ventilation shaft when the door blew inward.
“Go,” yelled Mitchell to his friend as he lowered his NVGs over his eyes and brought up his rifle to his shoulder, ready to engage anyone who tried to enter the room.
In a world bathed in green, Mitchell’s thumb changed the selector switch on his rifle from safe to automatic. A second later, a person came stumbling into the room. He placed his laser sight on the chest of the intruder and took up the slack on the trigger of his weapon. He was about to fire when his brain registered that the person falling to the ground wasn’t one of Cypher’s goons, but Atsuko Satomi. The cold-hearted bastards had thrown her into the room to draw fire.
Mitchell was about to call out to Atsuko, warning her to keep down, when a man leaped into the room with his weapon tight into his shoulder. Years of training and experience kicked in, and Mitchell fired a short, deadly burst into then man’s chest, killing him.
In the dark, Atsuko screamed as the dead thug’s body fell to the ground right beside her.
Mitchell wasn’t sure how many more goons there were waiting in the hallway to burst inside the room, nor was he going to wait around to find out. He ran forward, grabbed the booby-trapped box containing the grenade he had found earlier, and then hurled it out of the open doorway. Without slowing down, he ran over to Atsuko, grabbed her by the arm and quickly hauled her up onto her feet.
“Run,” said Mitchell into her ear as he pulled her back with him.
“I can’t see,” cried Atsuko.
“I can. Now run unless you wish to die here.”
In the dark, Atsuko’s desire to live kicked in. She ran blindly forward, praying that it wasn’t too late for them.
Tara heard the burst of automatic gunfire. She knew that it wasn’t from her man. She bared her teeth in anger. She realized she had once more seriously underestimated her opponent. Killing him was going to be a pleasure. She was about to order the next man in line to enter the room when a wooden box hit the ground beside her. Her heart leapt up into her throat as a grenade rolled out of the box and onto the floor.
She dove backward. Tara never heard the blast that killed the remaining men with her. Torn open by the blast, both men died where they stood. Thrown against the wall, Tara hit her head hard and blacked out.
In the hallway, darkness and silence returned, bringing to end the deadly struggle.
Mitchell took off his NVGs and turned his flashlight back on, illuminating the area around the crane.
“Are you injured?” Mitchell asked Atsuko, who stood beside him, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
“No,” meekly replied Atsuko.
“Good. Now climb.”
“Where?”
“Up there,” said Mitchell, pointing his light at the opening to the ventilation shaft.
With a nod, Atsuko began to climb, closely followed by Mitchell. Seconds later, they both vanished from view as they made their way into the narrow tunnel.
Mitchell began to sweat. It wasn’t that he was claustrophobic, but the thought of being trapped and killed like a rat inside the shaft was not one that he relished.
38
The island
Sweat poured like a river down Mitchell’s back. His clothes were soon soaked. He wasn’t sure how long they had been crawling through the maze-like tunnel system. It felt like forever but was more like twenty minutes when, in the distance, he could see a light. His body ached all over. Mitchell’s tired and sore muscles reminded him that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. After another five minutes crawling, Mitchell could see Jackson up ahead, shining his flashlight down the tunnel, guiding them to him.
Jackson shook his head when he saw Atsuko, her face and clothes covered in dust and perspiration, making her way toward him.
“Where did you find her?” called out Jackson.
“Cypher’s goons were using her as bait,” replied Mitchell.
“Did anyone follow you?”
“No, I think I got them all. It grew real quiet after I tossed one of the old Japanese booby traps out into the hallway at them.”
They soon came out into a barren room barely large enough to move about in. Mitchell and Atsuko stood up.
“Where are we?” asked Mitchell, looking around.
“Yuri said he thinks it was an old maintenance room. He’s gone up top to take a look around,” said Jackson, pointing to a ladder built into the wall leading up to the surface.
A second later, Yuri called down, “Nate, I think you should come up here; the hatch seems jammed.”
Jackson climbed up and switched places with Yuri. He tried to open the round metal hatch. As Yuri had guessed, the hatch wouldn’t budge an inch. He grabbed a latch on the side of the hatch and pulled as hard as he could. His muscles began to burn, but Jackson wasn’t going to quit. He sure as hell didn’t want to crawl back the way they came. Putting his shoulder up against the hatch, Jackson gritted his teeth and then pushed up. The sound of metal scraping against itself filled his ears. A second later, the hatch slowly began to lift up. The rush of cool air from above felt good on Jackson’s sweat-covered brow. He warily climbed out of the hatch and looked around. He had come up inside an abandoned garage. Rusted-out Japanese and Soviet military trucks sat quiet, relics of another time, covered in dust.
“Come on up, it’s safe,” called down Jackson.
Three minutes later, they were all standing inside the garage. Mitchell moved to the closed front door and peered out. It looked safe. He opened the door slightly and carefully stepped outside with his rifle tight into his shoulder. Waving the others to follow, Mitchell led them back toward the beach. The rain had stopped, but a cool breeze whipped across the barren terrain, making the sweat-stained group shiver in the wind.
“Now what do we do? I dropped the satphone with my vest down in the tunnel,” said Jackson, rubbing his arms as he tried to warm himself up.
“Our boat is gone,” said Yuri. “But the people who attacked us have a helicopter. It’s our only way off this island.”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” said Mitchell. Turning to look at Atsuko, a plan quickly formed in his head.
Outside of the MI-8, the pilot, a blond-haired man with a wide face and bulbous nose dug into his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Lighting one, he handed one to his co-pilot, a short, ugly man with a thick, black beard. He looked down at his watch and spat on the ground. It was getting late. Both he and his co-pilot were smugglers who flew black-market goods in and out of Russia to coastal islands of Japan for a mafia group that operated in the Far East. He had been hired for a twelve-hour job. If the people who had gone into the tunnels under the island weren’t back soon, he was going to leave them behind. He didn’t care what happened to them. He had been paid in advance. If they rotted here, it was none of his concern.
“Anatoly, look,” said the co-pilot excitedly.
The pilot raised his head and saw one of the women from the group staggering from side to side as she made her way across the open field. She looked as if she was in pain.
“Go see what is wrong with her,” ordered the pilot.
Tossing his cigarette to the ground, the co-pilot reached behind and grabbed his sub-machine gun from inside the helicopter. All of a sudden, the woman seemed to sway on unsteady feet and then collapse onto the wet grass. The co-pilot swore and began to jog over to Atsuko.
The pilot could tell that something had gone horribly wrong down in the tunnels. Not wanting to find out what had happened, he decided to get the helicopter ready to leave in a moment’s notice. When he turned about, he froze in place, his eyes widened when he found himself looking straight down the barrel of a 9mm automatic.
“I think you had best raise your arms,” said Yuri in Russian, with a wide grin on his face.
“Who the hell are you?” muttered the pilot as he slowly raised his arms in the air.
“I am the man who is going to borrow your helicopter from you,” replied Yuri. “Now tell your co-pilot to forget about the girl and to drop his weapon. If he does not, my friend, who is an excellent marksman, will put a bullet between his eyes.”
The pilot hurriedly did what he was told.
With a confused look on his face, the co-pilot dropped his weapon. A second later, Mitchell stood up from the tall grass and made his way over. He picked up the man’s discarded weapon. “Now, be a good man, turn around and slowly walk back to the helicopter.”
The mercenary did as he was told.
Jackson stayed hidden in the tall grass should either man try anything funny.
Mitchell called over Atsuko to come join him. Quickly tying both men back to back, with a pat on their heads, Mitchell left them sitting dejectedly in the cold, wet grass while Yuri made the MI-8 ready for takeoff.
At the tunnel entrance, the lone man heard the helicopter engines come to life. He popped his head up to see what was going on. The last thing he saw before tumbling back down into the tunnel unconscious was Jackson’s boot coming straight down onto his face.
