Rogue Angel - False Horizon Part 32

It wasn't a shout. It just a simple command. Softly spoken. But most definitely a stern command.

Tuk frowned. Something about that voice reminded him of someone.

"Put your weapons down or we will shoot you where you stand."

"Mike?" Tuk whispered.

"Better do it, Tuk. There's a gun barrel aimed at the base of my skull right now and I don't think these guys are fooling around."

Tuk lowered his weapon.

"Very good. Now both of you turn around very slowly. If either of you moves too fast, we will shoot."

Tuk gulped and then turned around slowly. Mike was in front of him but he heard the surprise in Mike's voice. "You."

"Move aside so I can see the man behind you, Mike."

Mike moved and Tuk was startled. Three men stood there. He recognized the sneering smiles on the faces of Burton and Kurtz.

And in the middle, his eyes hidden behind a huge pair of sungla.s.ses, stood Mr. Tsing. He held a silenced pistol in his hand and gestured with it. "Step away from the doorway. We wouldn't want to interrupt the party out there too soon, now, would we?"

Mike kept his hands up. "What's this all about Tsing?"

"It's about me making sure my investment doesn't run away from me."

"I'm not running."

Tsing smiled. "I must say you've done a fantastic job, Mike. I almost didn't expect you to find it. But you have. And I'm ready to take it over for my very own paradise."

Mike shook his head. "I don't think you want to do that. This isn't Shangri-La at all. It's a nuclear waste treatment facility disguised by the Chinese as a palatial tropical paradise."

Tsing laughed. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I wish I was," Mike said. "But the woman who created this entire mess is standing right outside. You can ask her if you want."

Tsing eyed Mike but then frowned as he cast a glance at the doorway. "Perhaps I shall."

34.

"No one move, please."

Annja looked up and gasped as she heard the voice and saw Mr. Tsing striding out into the open pavilion. He paused, looked up at the sky and seemed vaguely annoyed that the sun was out. But he merely adjusted his sungla.s.ses and kept walking ahead.

Behind him came Tuk and-Mike! Annja was so happy she almost forgot to stay still. Then, behind Tuk and Mike came Tsing's two thugs, Burton and Kurtz. The automatic rifles they held didn't look the least bit friendly.

Tsing directed Tuk and Mike to one side with Kurtz covering them. He pointed at Burton. "Stand there and cover everyone else, but particularly that woman there." This last statement was directed at Hsu Xiao. "If anyone moves, kill her first."

Hsu Xiao glared at Tsing. "I should have killed you when I had the chance."

"Well, it's not as though you didn't try, my dear. After all, that nasty little neurotoxin you put into my gla.s.s was something else. A rather spectacular little drug, isn't it? Unfortunately, I simply wasn't feeling like a drink, so after you left, I happened to pour it into the large fern in the study. Imagine my surprise when the d.a.m.ned thing toppled and the fronds turned that horrible shade of brown." He smiled. "Of course, by then you had already departed Katmandu for places unknown-until now. We scoured the city for you, of course. I'm not exactly fond of people who attempt to poison me or want to see me shuffle off this mortal coil."

Hsu Xiao said nothing, but Annja could feel the rage boiling off of her. She wanted to strike Tsing down badly.

Vanya must have sensed it, too, because she spoke quietly in Chinese to Hsu Xiao and it seemed to at least calm her down somewhat.

Tsing smiled. "I'll bet you really want to have a go at me right now, don't you? Make up for all those times I forced myself upon you? All the times you pleaded with me to stop because you didn't like it and yet I continued because you were mine. All along it must have driven you nearly insane not being able to slice my throat with those ridiculous claws of yours. But you hadn't yet found out what you needed to know, had you?"

Hsu Xiao said nothing.

Tsing leaned back against the wall and looked at Annja. "You see, Hsu Xiao was a plant. She needed to know if I had any inkling of the location of this place. It was imperative that I didn't, I imagine. Because if I'd caught wind of it, then I could have taken steps to ensure that that woman there," he said, pointing at Vanya, "couldn't go ahead with her plans."

Annja frowned. "Who exactly are you, Mr. Tsing?"

He smiled. "Me? Why I'm just your average Chinese businessman. That's all. Nothing special about me."

Vanya laughed. "Tsing is the resident Chinese intelligence officer in charge of Katmandu. It is his responsibility to report on anything that might jeopardize the control China has over Tibet from this side of the border."

Tsing shook his head. "Now, really, was it necessary for you to reveal that? I believe she might have readily accepted my other explanation, but no, you had to go and ruin it. Shame."

"Annja is too intelligent to fall for that. It doesn't add up."

Tsing smiled at Annja. "Vanya is upset because I report to the very people she would no doubt like to see removed from power-one way or another. And it was my job to make sure our operations in the area were safe and secure."

He got up and walked around the courtyard. "Imagine my surprise then when the transponder we placed in the plane we loaned you and Mike started beeping from this very mountain. It was rather amusing, actually. And at first I couldn't believe it. You see, I'd seen the map, and never imagined that you would find yourselves here rather than the exact position the map shows. But then the universe is a strange thing, isn't it? And whether through luck or serendipity or what have you, you and Mike, and even that little insignificant speck of dust called Tuk, found yourselves here."

Annja saw fury blaze across Tuk's face. "So you knew about this place all along?" she said.

Tsing smiled. "My dear, I helped build this place. It is here because I sought out a special location for us to conceal our activities. My government has been trying for years to come up with a means to dispose of certain elements of our waste. We've tried all manner of things and nothing worked."

"So you came here."

"We came here because one of our scientists had an idea. He said that if we could harness the heat from the waste and channel is just so, we could turn a frozen landscape into a tropical one. The idea was a bit far-fetched but it grew to gain support and the initiative was launched several years back. It was incredibly expensive, but we thought that if we could achieve what the scientist claimed, we might actually turn this place into a tourist spot."

Annja's eyebrows shot up as high as they could go. "You wanted to bring tourists here atop a pile of nuclear waste?"

Tsing chuckled. "I know it seems crazy, but really, look around. You must admit that we did an amazing job building it. Look at the incredible statues. It's all very convincing. Even the fruit trees are real."

Annja felt sick at the thought that she'd eaten a peach off of one of them a few hours earlier. Had she known about the nuclear waste, she wouldn't have been so gung-ho about it.

"The resort itself was obviously designed to help us offset our costs. And we know the lure of Shangri-La is so great that we would draw hundreds of thousands every year. But more importantly, if the technology worked, then we would put it to use in certain other areas of our country where the land is less than optimal for growing food."

"This is insane," Annja said. "You're talking about burying nuclear waste in the ground. The consequences of that would kill thousands."

Tsing held up his hand. "We are talking about burying it, but not in the manner you think. We don't just lob it into the soil and be done with it. We plant a containment device that not only keeps the waste from leeching into the soil, but generates and channels incredible energy. Not only does it enable the soil to grow warmer and more fertile, but we also thought we could siphon off some of the heat to help keep houses warm. Imagine being free of oil as a heating implement. The savings alone in that field would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars."

"But at what cost?" Annja asked.

Tsing smiled. "Well, there's the rub, as you say. We needed workers to handle it and we would have to swear them to secrecy. The only way to guarantee that they didn't talk was to move their families in with them. They would work at the resort and reap the benefits." He frowned. "Speaking of which, where are all the workers?"

Mike cleared his throat. "They're dead."

Tsing whirled around. "Dead? How? There were six hundred of them stationed here. How did they die?"

Mike pointed at Vanya. "She had them killed."

Tsing turned back on Vanya. "You did what? You killed them? My G.o.d, woman, there were children with their parents here."

"Not any longer," Mike said. "Every last one of them is dead."

Tsing leaned against the wall. "This is not the news I was hoping to hear."

Annja shook her head. "I find it difficult believing you, considering you threw a man off the roof the night you met with us."

Tsing sniffed. "The man I threw off the roof worked for Vanya. He was attempting to penetrate my organization. When we got wind of it, we took care of matters. He was an interloper. Had I known I had not one but two such traitors in my midst, I surely would have delighted in taking care of the other one, as well."

Hsu Xiao spit in his direction. "You make me sick."

Tsing laughed. "Yes, well, funny how times change, isn't it? I can vividly recall you begging me to do some very interesting things to you. Such a dirty little girl you are." He glanced at Vanya. "I'm a.s.suming you trained her to do that, as well."

Vanya glared at him. "Hsu Xiao is a true servant of the people."

"Yes, whatever. Save me the propaganda speeches, would you? It seems to me that we have a few things to clear up here."

Annja smiled. "This ought to be good."

Tsing looked at Mike. "Where are the bodies of the workers? They will need a proper burial and my superiors will need to be informed."

Mike shook his head. "Well, then you've got a serious problem."

"Why is that?"

"Because Einstein over there had the bodies thrown into the treatment facility beneath us."

Annja thought she saw the color drain from Tsing's face. "Please tell me that you're lying."

"I wish I was, but it's the truth. Ask Tuk and he'll confirm it."

Tsing whirled around and stared at Tuk. "Is it true?"

Tuk, despite his obvious hatred, nodded. "I saw the bodies on the security cameras inside the mountain."

Tsing turned around and looked back at Vanya. "You did this?"

Vanya smiled. "I did."

"You know what this will do?"

"Of course."

Mike nodded. "Yeah, see, that's the other problem. By my watch, if I was reading those levels right back in the computer room, we've got maybe ten minutes before this place starts to melt right into the earth or blow up. Either way, it's not going to be a good thing."

Tsing frowned. "I a.s.sume there's no way to stop it?"

Vanya laughed. "Perhaps if you were to go down into the treatment facility and pull every last body from it, it might help ease the tension."

"You know as well as I do that we cannot enter that facility without the proper equipment," Tsing shouted.

Mike cleared his throat. "Then it might be a good time to tie up your loose ends and get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge. I certainly don't want to hang around here any longer than absolutely necessary."

Tsing walked over to Burton. He whispered something in his ear and Burton nodded.

The air exploded with two shots that tore into Vanya's chest. The 7.62 mm rounds ripped her open and she dropped to the ground. Blood pumped out onto the stone floor and Tsing regarded her as if she had been a mere nuisance to him.

"She should have endured far greater pain and misery before I released her to death." He pointed at Hsu Xiao. "You will suffer for her crimes back in Beijing, I a.s.sure you."

"There is nothing they can do to me that would be worse than the horror of having your seed inside of me," she said.

Tsing laughed. "No, you see, that's where you're wrong. There is a great deal they can do to you that will make you wonder how much better it would be to reside in h.e.l.l. The men in Beijing are masters of what they do. And they exist for the suffering of people like you who would see our state undermined for the petty purposes of personal grandeur."

Hsu Xiao fell silent.

Annja looked at Burton and Kurtz. They hadn't moved or said anything since Tsing's last order.

Annja spoke up. "So, I guess now would be a good time to leave?"

Tsing shook his head. "I'm afraid not. The last thing I can afford is to have you or anyone else left alive who can tell the world what has happened here."

"The world's going to find out, anyway, when this place blows up," she said.

Tsing shrugged. "They might think they know, but there will be no proof to find. All of the contractors involved in the construction of this facility have already been killed and their remains scattered. There are no notes of the construction that took place. In short, there's really nothing around that would ever tie the Chinese government to the horrible human tragedy about to befall this place."

"Someone will find out."

Tsing shook his head. "I doubt that very much."

"So, you're going to kill us?"

Tsing smiled. "Well, what would you do in my place, Annja? Let you all live and go free? Come on now, you're not that naive and neither is your friend Mike. Even Tuk there knows that he can't walk away from this one."

Tsing smiled once more and then turned to Kurtz. "Shoot them."