Beyond all Limits (32 page)

5

Cole had been counting, in an effort to chart the course of time as well as being a way of keeping his mind off the depravities that Zhou had in store for him, and knew it must now be the morning after his capture. He couldn’t be sure about the time after so many hours, inaccuracy in his counting was bound to have crept in – but guessed it wasn’t long after dawn.

He wondered what General Wu had wanted with Zhou, but knew there was no sense in thinking too deeply about it; his mind was better off concentrating on finding a way out.

While he’d been counting, forcing the images of Zhou from his troubled mind, he’d also been scouring the room with his eyes, looking for any possible way out, anything he could use to aid his escape. If he could escape, there might still be a chance to end this thing.

The room was dark, but his eyes had adjusted after so many hours of captivity and he could now see everything quite clearly. But what he saw didn’t provide him with much hope; it was just a plain concrete cell with hooks and metal D-rings in the ceiling and walls for securing ropes or other devices.

And then there was the door – what looked like steel, with only a narrow slat to see through. But the slat was covered by a metal cover on the other side.

But even if the door had been easy to breach, he still had to work out how to get down from the incredibly painful, debilitating position he had been forced into. The problem was, he couldn’t get any purchase on the floor, and his arms were too taut to be of any use to him. He could barely move.

But as he counted the time, his mind raced through scenario after scenario, trying desperately to come up with some manner of escape.

And then he heard the locks turning in the door, and he steeled himself for another visit by Zhou, still horrified that the man had seen through his attempts to bite him. What chance would he have now?

But it wasn’t Zhou at all – instead, three armed guards walked into the room, one covering him with an automatic rifle while the other two marched past him on either side, hands reaching up to the walls that the chains were secured to, unhooking his bindings from the D-rings.

They were getting him down!

His mind reeled at the possibilities. Were they taking him somewhere else? Were they going to give him food? Water? Medical attention?

As the chains were detached from their moorings, they slipped quickly through the D-rings and Cole dropped heavily to the floor, his legs unable to carry him.

The blood rushed suddenly back into his arms, his chest, and he was overcome by pain, blinding pins and needles shooting through his upper body as sensation returned to the tortured area.

The soldiers approached him from either side to loosen the tight metal bracelets from his wrists, and his mind instantly clarified, everything at once perfectly clear, so clear.

Despite the pain that clogged every inch of his naked body, the perfect clarity of the moment suddenly overtook everything, delivering him at once from the pain and the agony.

He saw the cell in perfect focus, the position of the armed guard ahead of him, the angle of the gun, the distance between his crumpled body and the men on either side of him, even the presence of the two more armed soldiers who stood sentry outside his cell.

And in that moment of perfect clarity, he acted; an animal operating on pure, unbridled instinct.

Yanking inwards on his chains, he pulled the two soldiers together, hands snaking up between them, grasping their heads and smashing them together with a heavy, sickening
crack
.

And already he was moving again, before the man with the gun had a chance to react; before he’d even had a chance to
breath
.

The heavy chain shot out, still attached to Cole’s wrist, and then he snapped it taut and the metal links jerked powerfully across the guard’s head, knocking him out instantly.

Cole was on his feet before the guard hit the floor, weak legs nevertheless imbued with the pure energy of adrenalin, and he jumped over the soldier’s unconscious, slumping body, racing for the doorway.

The two men were turning into the empty space, guns rising towards him as if in slow motion, as if they were in a swimming pool and had to drag the guns through the heavy resistance of the water.

Cole was there before they could fire, before they could call out for help, the hardened fingertips of one hand firing out into the first soldier’s unprotected throat; and as the man’s eyes bulged wide, his hands dropping the gun and going to his neck in a pitiful attempt to rescue the damaged tissue, the broken cartilage, Cole pivoted to the other side and chopped the edge of his callused hand across the side of the second soldier’s neck, the force of the blow snapping the vertebrae and severing the spinal cord in one ferocious movement. The man fell to the floor, paralyzed, with no knowledge of what had happened to him.

Cole looked around the cell, breathing hard. Five men down all around him, taken out in as many seconds.

He paused; perhaps he wasn’t as injured as he’d suspected? But he knew that it was just the hormonal supercharging of adrenalin that was making his body perform, and knew just as well that when it emptied from his system, he would be left a useless, quivering wreck.

And so he carried right on going, determined to keep up the pace, keep the adrenalin driving through his body, letting it perform its magic.

He knelt down by the first two men, struck them on the sides of their heads with the metal bracelets to make sure they were definitely out of it, and retrieved the key for the cuffs, unlocking them and letting the chains fall to the floor.

He went to the bodies, stripped one of them and put on the clothes, careful not to look at the damage to his penis; he could worry about that later.

He took two pistols, a radio, one of the automatic rifles; pulled one of the soldier’s hats down low over his head and exited the cell, looking cautiously up and down the corridor.

Empty.

He quickly returned to the cell, turned the other radios off, and gagged the men; and then, taking the keys, he left the cell once and for all, locking it behind him.

Keep on going
, he ordered himself as he rushed down the corridor.
Keep on going.

Pushing forwards is your only chance
.

The man in front of President Abrams on the video screen wasn’t the one she had been expecting.

As First Vice Premier, she had thought it would be Liang Huanjia who she would be dealing with, given the deaths of Tsang, Fang and Hua.

But instead it was – and aide quickly informed her – the Second Vice Premier, Chang Wubei.

‘Mr. Chang,’ Abrams said kindly, ‘I hope you are not finding things too hard after your terrible ordeal.’

Chang smiled. ‘Not at all, Madam President. On  the contrary, we are all in good health, and owe a debt of gratitude to you and the United States.’

‘And will it be you with whom I will be dealing?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Chang said. ‘I am afraid Mr. Liang has . . . how shall I put it? He has . . . lost the confidence of the Politburo, and it was decided that I should take over until things return to some sense of normality.’

‘Okay,’ Abrams said, assessing the man before her and liking what she saw. Charismatic, urbane, and confident; he would be a good man to deal with. ‘Tell me everything you can about Wu and the regime there,’ she said, ‘anything you know about his plans, and the workings inside the Zhongnonhai. Anything you can tell us that will help us avoid a catastrophe in Japan.’

Chang nodded his head, eager to help. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I will tell you everything.’

‘Good,’ Abrams said. ‘Let’s start with – ’

A buzzer sounded next to her, and her head snapped round. ‘Excuse me one moment,’ she said to Chang, answering the emergency call. A voice on the other end spoke, and her eyes opened in amazement.

‘Really?’ she said, excited. ‘Can you patch them through? . . . Excellent.’

She nodded her head, turned back to look at Chang. ‘Mr. Chang,’ she said, ‘you’re not going to believe what’s just happened.’

6

Cole poked his head slowly around the corner of the corridor, saw that it too was empty, and headed down the hall towards the elevator banks at the end.

Two men turned into the corridor from a connecting hallway then, and Cole fired towards them as he ran, taking them both down before they could react.

But his shots hadn’t been suppressed, and now anyone on this subbasement level would know that something was going on, and would be rushing to investigate.

A door opened to his left and he span and fired as he saw the target, kicking the door open and bursting inside before whatever other occupants who might be inside could react; there were two more soldiers reaching for their guns, but Cole beat them to it, hitting them both in center mass.

He pulled back into the corridor, stalking steadily towards the turn-off where he’d shot the first two soldiers; he could hear booted feet running down the hall, coming his way.

He couldn’t be sure, but he could have also sworn he could hear gunfire echoing from above him. Why would that be happening?

He shook his head, recognizing that it was probably just his tired, edgy mind playing tricks on him.

But then he heard noises coming down the stairwell too, saw the elevator lights ahead of him come on as a car started to descend to this level.

He was about to be surrounded.

He gathered himself, checked his rifle, swapped the magazine for a fresh one, and pulled back along the corridor.

He would wait here for them, let them channel themselves towards him down one single entryway, and then he would fire his weapons until he had nothing left to fire with; and then he would charge them with his bare hands.

He pulled the corpses out of the office, stacking the bodies to act as a makeshift barricade, and stockpiled the weapons next to him.

He prepared himself as the boots reached the bottom of the stairwell, the elevator car
pinged
its arrival, the first soldiers from the adjacent hallway finally reached the turn into the corridor.

He rested the barrel of the Chinese QBZ-95 bullpup assault rifle on top of the dead body in front of him, targeting the far end of the corridor through the weapon’s iron sights.

His finger rested on the trigger, and as the first man turned the corner from the side hallway, he opened fire, shooting him in the head, the man who followed him in the chest.

The others leapt back to safety, but then the stairwell doors opened, and the elevator doors, and Cole aimed again, but  . . .
what the hell?

Jake Navarone and Julie Barrington came bursting out of the elevator, the other three members of the Force One team crashing through the stairwell doors at the other side, and Cole watched in amazement as they opened fire down the hallway in front of them where the Chinese soldiers had retreated.

Cole was on his feet in moments, racing down the corridor to fight by the team’s side, their superior skills quickly overcoming the token resistance of the basement guards.

Ten seconds later it was all over, gun smoke pouring through the hallway and the unpleasant, though familiar, smell of coppery blood hanging in the air.

‘Secure that corridor,’ Navarone ordered Grayson and Collins, who raced off down the hallway to make sure there were no others soldiers.

‘What the hell are you guys doing here?’ Cole asked Navarone in amazement.

Davis answered before Navarone had the chance. ‘We saw you on the news, Mr. Secret Agent Man. We came back here to save your ass.’

Cole smiled. ‘Well, don’t think I don’t appreciate it,’ he said, ‘but how did you guys manage to break in here?’

‘We had a bit of help,’ Barrington explained as she checked her rifle, quickly changing magazines.

Navarone nodded. ‘She’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s get this level secure, and then we’ll go back upstairs. You’re gonna love it.’

Navarone was right; Cole
did
love it.

The entire command center on the basement’s upper level had been taken over by Captain Liu and a contingent of ‘Hunting Leopards’ special operations soldiers.

Brought into the Zhongnonhai on official duty, they had quickly overpowered the ill-prepared guards, using the element of surprise to huge advantage.

Apparently, Liu had not known whether they would go along with his plan, or whether they would want to remain loyal to the military regime; but it turned out that they had been waiting for such an opportunity, as disgusted with Wu’s behavior as Liu had been.

And when the Hunting Leopards had raided the Zhongnonhai and captured most of the senior officers of the Central Military Commission and the de facto military regime, other local special operations units had also re-pledged their loyalty to the People’s Republic and the leadership of the Politburo, and had joined them in securing the government compound.

The Force One members had liaised with Liu upon their brave return to Beijing, and Liu had guided them inside and sent them down to secure the lower basement levels.

‘So what’s the current status?’ Cole asked, ignoring the pain that was starting to creep back across his body. He already knew that the Politburo had been successfully rescued, and had also learned the details of the proposed Chinese invasion of Japan.

His mind had flickered again to images of Michiko, trapped there, but he had cut them off at once. There was nothing he could do about that now; in fact, the best thing he could do was try and stop the invasion from happening at all.

‘This is the main control center for our military forces,’ Liu explained, coming over to them. ‘We have control over air defenses, missile systems, radar and satellite surveillance.’

‘So we can shut down the invasion from here?’ Cole asked.

Liu shook his head. ‘At the minute, no. Only the generals can access the systems and – although they’ve surrendered – they’re not talking.’

‘Would the Politburo members also have access?’ Cole asked.

‘Yes,’ Liu said, ‘I believe so.’

‘Good,’ Cole said. ‘Can you get me President Abrams on the line?’

Navarone smiled. ‘We’ve just called her.’