“Jump in! Jump in, my friends!”
Luca and Shane turned to see the cackling, toothless grin of their pedicab driver. “Jump! Jump!” he told them. “Now! Now!” he warned.
Luca and a scantily clad Shane needed no further coaxing. They leapt into the pedicab, and with a clown-car honk, the cab whizzed off into the night, leaving Betty to howl and clutch at the cash still stuffed in her corset as her filthy firetrap burned to the ground.
XIII
Somewhere over Mainland China
SNOW CLOUDS HAD MOVED IN OVER THE MOUNTAINS OF Shandong. The lakes along the ranges had already frozen over and a blizzard warning had been issued. So the black Bombardier Learjet tilted its wings and altered course, heading east before circling Beijing and approaching from the north to avoid the bad weather in the south.
Xi sat at the flight deck controls. Mya sat in one of the white leather passenger seats in the main cabin, facing backward, her back to the cockpit, her eyes fixed on Will and Bradley. The two captives sat facing forward, directly opposite Mya, their hands tied behind their backs. Mya trained her small, diamond-studded pistol on Will, her hand steady even through the occasional turbulence caused by the cloud bank building up outside.
Suddenly there was a loud
pop!
Will and Bradley both flinched, then realized it wasn’t the gun going off, but the cork of a bottle of Moët unleashing a gentle fizz of tiny bubbles. In the galley behind them, Chad began to pour two glasses of champagne.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be damned if I let the two of you stand in the way of us celebrating.” At that moment the jet hit a pocket of air, and Chad spilled some champagne from the bottle. “Xi!” he screamed at his pilot.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Chambers,” was Xi’s obsequious response.
“Just keep the damn plane steady and get us there in one piece.”
“And where is there?” Will asked, not taking his gaze off Mya.
“Beijing, of course. Where the second bomb will be detonated. But first, we’re all going to take a train ride up through the mountains and bid a fond farewell to the Zhang diamond mines—as well as the two of you, Sen, and that interfering old Professor of yours.”
Chad set the bottle down on the galley counter and returned with two glasses of champagne, handing one to Mya.
“The others will find us,” Will said confidently.
Chad laughed. “The others won’t find anything. Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Hunter, but we’ve removed the tracking device from inside the old man. If you could see your watch you’d know this, but of course your hands are tied on the matter.”
Will struggled in vain at his ropes and Chad laughed more, then calmed himself down with a sip of bubbles. “As I was saying, the others won’t find anything. Not a single piece. Eventually the investigators will uncover a shadow of DNA left in the rubble, once they excavate the entire mine. But by then you’ll be a distant memory. Along with all the other shadows they’ll discover lost in the ruins of Beijing. You have no idea the power of zidium.”
“Then tell us,” Will pressed.
Chad hesitated a moment, reluctant to divulge. But there was little Will and Bradley could do to stop things now, so where was the harm? “Mya, would you like to explain?”
“My absolute pleasure,” Mya said, then swallowed a sip and smiled. “The zidium device is a fission design, made up of two separate cylinders of zinc and iridium, contained within a plutonium core, housed in a titanium sphere. The device is activated with a four-digit code and a countdown timer set to a designated time. Ten minutes from the end of the countdown, the cylinders inside the sphere break open. When mixed together, zinc and iridium are two of the most volatile, unpredictable substances on the planet. Once the device goes supercritical and the plutonium shell compresses, however, the results are assured: utter destruction. When the first bomb goes off in the mines it will implode the entire center of the mountain. Every shaft, every tunnel, every pick and mine car left lying around will be completely destroyed. The second bomb will be sent back to Beijing on the train, a one-way trip to annihilation, timed to go off as the train arrives in Central Beijing.”
“Of course we’ll be long gone by then,” Chad added. “Our colleague is bringing the chopper, and somewhere between the Zhang mines and the soon-to-be-destroyed Beijing, while the train steams its way to disaster, we’ll fly away into the night headed toward a new world order.”
“By the way,” Mya smiled. “The zidium comes with its own built-in fail-safe device. A defense mechanism. If somebody tries to interfere with the bomb, whether or not the countdown has been activated, the device automatically triggers the ten-minute destruction timer. The cylinders inside will crack open, the zinc and iridium will mix, and nothing will stop it from destroying everything within five miles. Tampering with the bomb is simple suicide.”
Will eyed the gun in Mya’s hand, then switched his angry stare from Chad to Mya and back again. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“So you said back in Hong Kong,” Mya snapped.
“When you tried to kill us and failed,” Will snapped back.
“Don’t tempt me!”
Mya cocked the hammer on the glittering petite pistol. “Mya,” Chad said with a warning tone in his voice. “I don’t want bullet holes in the leather if we can help it. Or the fuselage, for that matter! It’ll be a lot more fun blowing these boys to kingdom come in the mines, don’t you agree?”
Mya and Chad looked at each other, and Mya’s anger melted into delight. The two stole a moment to chink glasses and giggle, then suddenly—
—the jet hit another pocket of air and dropped sharply.
The bottle of Moët fell from the galley counter and rolled down the aisle, gushing its contents on the carpet. Mya’s and Chad’s champagne launched from their glasses. In a reflex reaction they tried to avoid the spillage, juggling their slender champagne flutes.
As champagne splashed everywhere, Chad gripped the arm of his seat with his free hand.
Mya lost focus on the pistol.
Will noticed.
With a sharp snap of his leg, Will’s foot flew into the air in front of him, connecting with the pistol in Mya’s hand. She gasped as she felt it leave her grip and fling into the air.
Xi regained control of the jet, which leveled out, a little too quickly. Mya leapt into the air to catch her gun, trying to push her weight up as gravity forced her down with the leveling jet. But Will was already up, hands tied behind his back, putting his shoulder into Mya’s stomach. He knocked Mya against Chad’s seat. She bounced off and collapsed in the aisle, winded.
Meanwhile, the momentum of Will’s tackle sent him sprawling toward the cockpit, collapsing on the threshold. The gun came down. Chad reached for it in midair.
Bradley jumped out of his seat and rammed his shoulder into Chad’s chest, pinning him back down. Chad’s fingers missed the gun by an inch. It bounced and skipped down the aisle toward Mya.
Will clambered to his knees. Mya snatched the gun. She pointed recklessly and pumped off two shots in Will’s direction. Will dropped instantly to the floor.
The first bullet whizzed past him and shot straight through the windshield of the jet, punching a hole in the glass. It didn’t crack, but sucked the pressure clean out of the aircraft.
The second bullet hit even lower, smashing into the controls of the cockpit in a shower of sparks before ricocheting off and slicing a divot out of Xi’s temple, deep enough for his eyes to roll, his consciousness to slip away, and his cast-iron frame to slump against the steering column.
The jet swooned into a nosedive.
Mya hit the deck. The pistol rattled down the aisle. She made a grab for it again, but Bradley kicked it under a seat. Mya grabbed the next best thing, the Moët bottle rolling along the floor. She seized it by the neck, like a bat, and with all her angry strength made a swing for Bradley.
Bradley ducked. The bottle swung wide and hard—
—and slammed directly into Chad’s forehead with a heavy dull
THUNK!
Chad’s head wobbled, eyes stunned and staring blankly at the ceiling before he passed out, slumping forward in his chair.
The jet continued to dive, a deafening drone of doom filling the fuselage.
Mya glared at Bradley, her face red with rage, and made a lunge at him with bottle in hand. But Will was on his feet now and threw himself on top of her in mid-lunge. Bradley sidestepped and fell against a seat as Will and Mya went crashing to the floor. One of the champagne flutes smashed under their weight.
Her face pressed against the carpet, Mya opened her eyes and saw her diamond-handled pistol wedged under a seat.
Will looked behind him, back toward the flight deck. Through the windshield he saw the peaks of mountains fast approaching. “Bradley! The controls! Get to the controls!”
Bradley jumped into action. “But I don’t know how to fly,” was all he could mumble, let alone the fact that his hands were still tied behind his back. But it didn’t stop him from stumbling through the cockpit door and dropping down into the copilot seat beside the unconscious Xi. A powerful arrow of air pierced the hole in the windshield, turning the entire jet into a wind tunnel. Papers flew through the air. Bradley stared uncomprehendingly at the control panel, sizzling and sparking from the bullet wound it had received. Computer screens blinked on and off madly, filled with a scramble of digits and readings that made no sense to Bradley, with the exception of one screen. “Altitude,” Bradley read. The numbers on the screen were dropping faster than he could read them.
Bradley blinked away his fear and stared straight ahead at the ever-shrinking distance between himself and the jagged mountains below. He struggled with the ropes behind his back, but he couldn’t get his hands free. Instead he hoisted his legs up, hooking his right leg around the right handle of the controls and locking his left leg around the left hand side of the steering column. Then, in his best contortionist act, he pushed down with both legs, trying to pull the plane out of its deadly dive.
In the cabin behind him, Mya pushed Will off her and tried desperately to reach for the gun. It was stuck tight and even her small hands had trouble getting under the seat.
With a thud Will landed on his bare back and felt daggers of shattered glass cut into him as the second champagne glass broke beneath him. He felt a razor-sharp shard at his fingertips. Quickly he gripped it, twisted it in his hands, and started slashing at his ropes.
From the flight deck he heard Bradley shout, “Will, I need help here!”
Entwined around the wheel, Bradley’s legs trembled and throbbed as the entire jet began to shudder violently. “We’re falling too fast! I can’t pull up!”
Mya’s fingers touched the tip of the gun.
Will cut frantically through the rope, slashing his fingers and wrists in the process. The glass began to cut through the twine.
Through the windshield, over the ridge of a fast-approaching mountain, Bradley caught sight of something long and serpentine, dipping and climbing across the landscape.
Mya managed to hook the handle of the pistol in her fingers, got a firm grip on it, and pulled the gun out from under the seat.
The rope broke. Will’s hands pulled free. He grabbed the first thing he saw.
Mya sat up and turned to face Will, bringing the gun up in one swift move.
And suddenly—
WHACK!
The wide heavy base of the champagne bottle slammed into Mya’s cheek. She folded instantly, flopping to the floor, limp and unconscious.
Will dropped the bottle and turned to the cockpit, clambering to the front of the shuddering plane. “We have to try to land,” he said desperately, unbuckling Xi’s belt and hauling the heavy henchman out of the pilot’s seat. Will took the chair and seized the controls in both hands, pulling back as hard as he could.
“Land?” Bradley gasped. “Where?”
Will gestured dead ahead with a dip of his chin. “There!”
As the plane slowly began to pull out of its dive, a long, straight landing strip appeared before them. Only it wasn’t a landing strip at all.
“The Great Wall! Will, are you crazy?!”
“Pretend it’s a runway.” Will glanced at the craggy slopes of the mountains on either side of the ancient slender wall. “Besides, we ain’t got much choice!”
Terrified, Bradley took a deep breath. This far north, the sections of the wall were deserted, crumbling and crippled by centuries of erosion, making it unsuitable for tourists—but perfect for jets with nowhere else to crash-land.
Will tilted the wheel left, then swung right, trying to level the craft, pull out of the dive, and line up the narrow wall all at the same time, aiming for a long section of wall between two fortresslike watchtowers. The nose began to tilt upward, but he had to get it higher. His fists quaked but didn’t let go of the shaking controls.
Through the windshield, the wall zoomed toward them.