Beyond all Limits (26 page)

4

The explosion from the southeast stopped Cole for less than a second; he merely registered it, recognized that it meant Navarone and the rest of Force One must now be on the first leg of their escape, and then turned his attention back to his current problem – the 130-ton Type 218 patrol boat which had drawn alongside his dragon boat, its twin 14.5mm machine guns pointed straight at him.

The boat had finally caught up to them, and its crew had been trying to throw grappling hooks onto the dragon boat to stop and secure it, pull it across so that Cole could be captured. And he was sure that this was what was happening now – an operation to capture him rather than to kill him, no doubt so that he could be interrogated. If they wanted to kill him, the twin machine guns would have made short work of the wooden dragon boat.

But now he saw that the explosion – although expected by Cole, somewhere within his own subconscious – had come as a complete shock to the crew of the patrol boat.

The pilot, the machine gunners, the grappling hook gang, even the captain –  who had until now been screaming at Cole through his loudspeaker –  were all utterly distracted, their gazes drawn to the huge plumes of smoke rising high above the terracotta roofs of the Forbidden City, muted only slightly by the heavy rainfall.

The crew of his own boat had started to slow too, everyone looking the same way; even the drummer had stopped keeping the beat.

Cole, however, acted instantly, injecting himself into this gap in the patrol boat crew’s attention with perfect timing.

He stood up and wrenched the steering oar from the back, reaching up for the hull of the patrol boat beyond and launching himself towards the guard rail.

He was on the side of the larger vessel before its crew had looked away from the burning flames of the Forbidden City, up and over the guard rail by the time they’d realized he’d even moved.

He targeted the machine gunners first, swiping at their heads with vicious blows of the oar, knocking them unconscious across the deck.

The men with the grappling hooks turned to him then, retrieving their ropes from the water, sharp hooks gleaming at the ends.

As they approached, Cole also saw the captain throw down his loudspeaker and go for the pistol held in the holster at his waist, and quickly sidestepped the oncoming sailors, smashing the steering oar down onto the man’s gun arm. Cole heard the bones in the forearm break, the captain’s screams heard even over the roaring thunder of the continuing storm.

Cole turned back just in time to see the first hook sailing towards him, thrown forcefully by one of the sailors. He blocked it with the wooden oar, letting the sharp metal embed itself into the surface. He then yanked backwards on the oar, ripping the other end of the rope from the sailor’s hands.

Cole caught it in midair as it came back to him, ducking as another grappling hook slashed through the air above him. As the same time as he ducked, Cole pulled the hook from the oar and swung his own rope back towards the sailors, the hook lashing out across the deck, the attached rope wrapping round the legs of two of the men.

Cole pulled back instantly, the taut rope toppling the two sailors to the deck. Cole leapt forward, stamping down on one of the bodies and using it as a platform to kick off, his leather-soled shoe catching another man flush in the face.

He sensed movement from the side and turned as another sailor rushed at him, holding the sharp hook in his hand and using it as a slashing weapon, swinging it wildly at Cole in a rapid figure-eight pattern.

Cole swiftly dodged the incoming strikes, reading the pattern as he moved and throwing a counterpunch straight into the man’s face as he reached the downward portion of his swing, the hook momentarily at a safe distance.

The blow rendered the sailor unconscious immediately, and Cole immediately skipped over the deck to one of the men he’d knocked down before; he was getting back to his feet, reaching for a grappling hook, and Cole knocked him back down with the oar.

The sailors were all down now, the captain still moaning in agony on the deck, but Cole could see other boats moving in to help, and the sound of feet heading his way from the other side of the patrol boat – other sailors, coming to help.

He looked across the bow towards the northeast, seeing the edge of Beihai Lake in the distance, dark and murky through the rain.

A speedboat was coming in fast on the other side, two more dragon boats travelling in opposite directions between them, caught in the middle of something they had never expected.

He saw the shadowy images of the sailors as they approached, saw they held assault rifles, and burst once more into action, his eyes on the far side of the deck and the guard rail which led back to the water.

He dropped the oar as he sprinted, jumping over the discarded bodies of the crew as he went, increasing speed, accelerating toward the guard rail.

He saw the look of surprise on the faces of the crew of the first dragon boat as he sailed high over the rail in a flying leap, his body arcing out across the water towards them.

He landed on the side of the dragon boat, its lightweight frame bucking wildly as he regained his balance, arms out wide to steady himself, and then he stepped between the legs of one of the terrified rowers, balancing once again on the other side of the hull.

The second dragon boat was approaching now, their paths crossing over each other, and Cole stepped off from the first, shaky legs taking him across the dark waters of the lake to rest precariously on the side of the second ship’s hull; with both boats going in different directions, he felt his legs being pulled dangerously apart, feet slipping. But he kept his momentum going, body tilting wildly before he regained his balance and stepped fully into the boat.

He heard warning shots being fired from the patrol boat behind him, but ignored them; they wanted to capture him, not kill him. Besides which, he doubted their marksmanship would be good enough to hit a small moving target in a cloudy storm, while stood on top of a moving ship.

He again kept his forward momentum going, stepping onto the far side of the second boat, the speedboat now in his sights as it cut through the water towards him.

It curved away from the dragon boat, but Cole was already in the air, legs exploding underneath him to propel him once more through the damp, wet air.

For a moment he feared he wouldn’t make it, would end up helpless in the lake, but then his hands made contact with the front of the speedboat, then his knees and feet, his body going flat, clinging to the long front-end as the pilots screamed at him and accelerated away, cutting across the bow of the patrol boat.

Cole knew they were trying to swing the craft around as fast as they could in a desperate attempt to throw him off, but it was no good; he had a secure grip, and slowly started to edge up the boat toward the cabin.

One of the three men in the open cabin leant out of the boat, pointing a pistol at him, but didn’t shoot. Frustrated, the man cried out, then fired two shots into the air as a warning, before pointing the weapon back at Cole once more.

But Cole was too fast, having worked his way up the long bow section to the windshield; and when the gun came down towards him again, he reached out and plucked it straight from the hands of the shocked man.

He knelt up on the bow, pointing the gun through the windshield at the men inside, their faces registering total fear.

Cole moved ahead even further, one hand going to the rim of the windshield, one leg stepping over, coming down on top of the controls inside. Keeping the gun aimed at the men, he stepped over with his other leg, now inside the cabin.

He gestured with the gun to the lake beyond. ‘Out,’ he said in Mandarin. ‘Now.’

The men didn’t have to be told twice, and jumped for their lives. They knew they’d probably get picked up by the patrol boat; and if not, they could always swim to the shore anyway. But either way, it was better than facing a bullet, and the look Cole had given them was enough to convince them that he was prepared to kill if pushed.

Once they were clear, Cole gunned the engines and pulled the boat around, once more headed towards the northeastern corner of the lake, and at a much faster speed than he’d been getting out of the dragon boat crew.

He just hoped his research of the area had been accurate; if it was not, he would be heading straight for a dead end, and a premature conclusion to his desperate escape attempt.

President Ellen Abrams sat in the corner wing chair of her private sitting room, which lay sandwiched between her bedroom on one side and the Yellow Oval Room on the other, looking at the telephone as it rang on the credenza by her side.

It was obscenely early, but she was already up and dressed, not having been able to go back to sleep since Eckhart’s earlier call, and she was now drinking strong black coffee as she mentally prepared herself for the day ahead.

The White House was a big place to live in alone, but it was something she had long grown accustomed to. Besides which, there was always plenty of staff milling around so she wasn’t exactly ever truly alone. But sometimes, she reflected, it would have been nice to have someone to talk to outside of her official circle of advisors and aides.

She’d had someone once, long ago; married him right out of law school, a wonderful man named Lance Tully. They had lived in perfect happiness for a time, her husband happy to support her fledgling political career. They’d even had a child, a little girl called Jessica. They were times that Abrams looked back on fondly, perhaps the happiest of her life.

But then Jessica had died mysteriously in her sleep, a tragedy the doctors assigned to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or crib death; there had never been any real explanation, and Abrams had never really recovered from it.

Certainly her marriage hadn’t made it through intact, the distress forcing both of them into one argument after another until divorce became the only option. The space she had after the divorce gave her the room she needed in which to grieve properly, until finally she reemerged – back with her maiden name of Abrams – into public life with a vengeance, charged up and aiming for the top. She had never had the time – or, she admitted now, the inclination – to find a second husband, despite the widely held consensus that the American public wouldn’t elect an unmarried president.

But she had proven them wrong – not only was she the first woman to be elected to the highest office in the land, but also the only president except for Reagan who had been divorced. She wasn’t the first to be elected without a spouse by her side; there had been six others over the years. However, the last one had been Grover Cleveland back in 1885, so it wasn’t hard to understand the media’s doubts about her nomination.

But she had proven everyone wrong, and been elected – and not just once, but twice. And the same media commentators now decided that perhaps part of her appeal was her tragic family background.

Abrams couldn’t have said whether it added to her appeal, but she knew that the death of her infant daughter had definitely changed her as a person – made her more driven, more single-minded, more absolutely determined to succeed.

Had it been worth it?

She finally picked up the ringing telephone, looking around her sitting room as she did so, taking in its luxurious fittings and beautifully organized décor; considered the power she held, as commander in chief of the world’s premier superpower; and knew that she would happily trade it all in, every single last bit of it, if it meant that her daughter was still alive today. She would make the decision in the blink of an eye, with no regrets.

But it was too late for that; what had happened was in the past now, and nothing could be done to change it. Her daughter was dead, and she was the president of the United States of America. She had a duty to discharge, and she knew she would do it to the best of her ability.

She reflected briefly on whether the death of her daughter was why she placed so much trust in Mark Cole, why she felt such an affinity for him; for he too had been touched by tragedy. It was a link they shared, known but never spoken about.

The thought left her as the voice on the other end of the telephone came through. ‘Madam President,’ James Dorrell said, ‘sorry to trouble you so early but I thought I would call you first; we’ve had word from our CIA station in Beijing about some developments there.’

Abrams’ heart started beating faster as she thought about what Dorrell could possibly be about to tell her. Like the commander of JSOC, Dorrell didn’t officially know about Force One, but he was smart enough to put two and two together, especially as his assets were often used during the group’s missions. He knew that a US team was operating in Beijing – his people there were assisting them, after all – but he didn’t know who they were. There was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in operation, and the Director of Central Intelligence was happy enough to play along; he didn’t need to know who they were, only what they were up to.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

‘Well, apparently the radio networks are going crazy, our station there can’t even begin to process the information. But eyewitness reports indicate that there’s been an explosion of some kind within the Forbidden City, and there’s talk of some sort of assassination attempt being made against General Wu.’