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Page 5.
 Here in Baotou, a key industrial city along the north Chinese steppe, lay the administration of one of the world’s most important mining complexes. Run efficiently for years by the Chinese government, and supplying the world with key industrial elements, the Bayan Obo area north of here had recently been gutted by criminal elements with claws in Chinese bureaucracy and across world financial capitals. One of Yang’s many front companies, Sunrise Engine Corp, had quietly bought up (or bullied, embezzled, and murdered their way to) a large stake in 99% of the world’s rare earths supply right here. These rare earths—with strange names like Dysprosium and Gadolinium; with atomic numbers confined to their own remote oasis in the Periodic Table of Elements—were vital to making everything from computers to medical equipment around the world. Without them, modern civilization would be crippled. The former communist nation had been a responsible shepherd for this key part of the world economy—until now. Some of the foreign agents now recalled had joked about this being Route 66, for the atomic number of Dysprosium. That element had been named (in English, ‘hard to get’) by its French discoverer in 1886 after a disastrous love affair—despite his name, Lecoq (rooster).
Mindful of how dozens of leading nations had formed a military alliance to retake the oil fields of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1991—and thus guaranteed global stability in a world dependent on oil—modern China had preemptively worked with government agencies from around the world to expose the cancer. Tonight’s raid would eviscerate Yang’s criminal syndicate, and thus avoid a war like the one decades ago in the Persian Gulf.
The job of internationals was done. Their agents and networks had been ordered to leave China. Jack was being paid as a freelancer working for Claire Lightfield of the U.S. government, through the offices of Compass News (freelance spy agency) in Langley. He was off the clock, and his handlers were anxious to get him out of China as soon as possible. They would call again any moment, of that he was sure. He could not spill the beans to them via phone, because he had to assume his calls were being monitored by MSS.
The Chinese, rightfully, had decided to act in their own sovereign interests, and had ordered the outsiders out of the country. Technically, right now, Jack was supposed to be boarding a passenger liner out of Beijing’s Daxing International Airport. In reality, he was in a very big personal mess here, which he had created because he knew Big Yang was not about to be stopped by legitimate means.
Jack’s U.S. controllers knew he was going rogue. There was nothing they could do to stop him. They were about to call (again) any moment to try and talk sense into him. He’d been ordered out of the country, so his presence on this balcony—with his weapon and the intention to kill a Chinese national—amounted to a whole lot of legal trouble; maybe even prison time in some dingy dungeon overlooking city sewers, or worse.
Through his own diligent investigation, Jack had wind of a certain amount of corruption in the local and regional party apparatus. He did not know who, but he had suspects in mind including his own Chinese intelligence liaison, the Dragon Lady who was coordinating the coming assault. He knew that Yang had paid off the right people, and would walk away unscathed while his underlings were thrown to the wolves. Jack had other ideas for Yang.
The order to pack up and leave for home had originally come from Madame Colonel Zhang Mei—his liaison with the MSS (Ministry of State Security, Guojianbu), China's equivalent of the CIA. The Dragon Lady had been difficult to work with over the past several months, which had raised Jack’s suspicions of her.
Big Yang was a master of payoffs, bribes, and other corruption in high places. Crime moguls like Yang always had a back door, oiled with payola among hungry government bureaucrats. It wasn’t just China. It was the Human Condition.
To get close to the action, without getting in the way, Jack had chosen this wonderful vantage point on a balcony overlooking one of Baotou’s main traffic intersections. The headquarters of Sunrise Engine Corp was directly across the street, past a central traffic island manned (or womanned) by a rather austere but attractive militia woman with nice legs and a certain rhythm with her traffic control signal on a stick.
Criss-cross palm fronds waved like elegant, living calligraphy over Jack's shadowy figure as he sipped at his gin and tonic and waited. Around him, corner trellises were smothered in jasmine, frangipani, and bougainvillea. Random, gentle traffic noises rose to his ears in the warm, dry evening air.
A pair of high-powered, compact, night vision binoculars lay on the stone sill before him, for when the shooting began and that little dot of a man started running for safety—into the car of whomever he was bribing high up in MSS or some other top government department.
The traffic cop was worth raising the binoculars for. It dawned on Jack that she would be the canary in the coal mine. When the shooting began, she would be ordered to hurry off her tower in the roundel, and block normal traffic so military and police vehicles could angle in with sirens keening and lights strobing. Or she might just run for her life. Either way, she would be Jack’s tip-off. The unknown lady cop could be admired from a distance—a mix of ironed, military décor and sexy, feminine contours. Watching her was more fun than watching trucks smoke past in the rondel below, or elderly couples dancing in the ballroom behind him.
Jack sipped his drink and enjoyed the orange-red sunset. He could almost see Xue’s sultry eyes gazing toward him, across the hot Mongolian plains. He thought of her slender arms and legs tangling with his amid clean Beijing hotel sheets. He imagined her smooth, pale features looking at him as they shared a bubble bath, champagne, and fine chocolates.
China controlled 99% of the world’s supply of valuable rare earths, right here in the Mongolian steppe near Baotou. Those elements made clocks tick, space ships fly, toasters toast, computers compute, and banks handle the world’s money. An hour's drive north of here lay the crux of Jack Gray's investigative mission of the past three months—Bayan Obo Mining District, where much of the world's rare earths or lanthanides were produced. Without these seventeen elements and associated alloys or compounds, 21st Century civilization could virtually collapse. Despite their obscure names (Cerium, Promethium, Yttrium, etc.), they were essential in many modern industrial processes and products. They formed key components in nuclear batteries, YAG lasers, superconductors, carbon arc lighting, ceramic capacitors, neutron trapping, vanadized steel, portable X-Jack machines, PET Scan technologies—a sprawl of applications across every industry from earth to space.
As Jack tasted the sweet, bitter tang of his drink, he felt satisfied that he was doing the right thing. The risk was necessary, not frivolous. The reward for success, on the other hand, would be downright delightful.
As his ear phone birbled (as Jack liked to call the tiny cricket sound), a robo-fem voiced announcer spoke in his ear in an underwater-sounding voice: Tijuana Tap Water calling…You have a call from Tijuana Tap Water…
It was his code name for the handlers in Washington, D. C. and Langley. They wanted to try yet once more to rein in Jack Gray.
He took the call. “Yes.” He had never turned down a call from either of his friends, though he realized their words tonight might compromise his delicate situation. Claire Lightfield and Rector were the only two human beings whom he trusted with his life and the lives of those he loved. There were aspects of his personal world he never took with him into the field, either as Jack Gray or as Pathfinder.
Rector was the man who signed his exceedingly large checks. Rector was CEO and sole operator of Compass News at Langley, Virginia.
Claire Lightfield was the woman, employed by the U.S. Government and by a vast, powerful corponation, at another big glass building in Langley outside Washington, D.C. who sometimes called on Compass News when a situation was outside her organization’s capacity to handle.
Jack’s personal life stayed secretly on a ranch in California, along with his loved ones. There, he left his real life behind each time he came out to play these deadly games. He never allowed his mind to wander there, even for a second, when away on assignment. The D Ranch was where he went to heal when one of these gigs was over. Catherine’s grave was there, on a windy, grassy hilltop. His married sister co-owned and ran the place. His and Catherine’s daughters lived there, never knowing what daddy did for a living. The two different worlds were separated by Jack’s ferocious, unstoppable determination they should never intersect.
Nobody but Claire and Rector would ever know. God help anyone who sniffed it out—Pathfinder would be unleashed—Jack’s code name from a long ago and distant war. Hell was a carnival mask compared to the fury of Pathfinder on the loose, hackles out and moonlight in his crazed eyes, nose to the ground like the war dogs he had run with, seeking his doomed prey. Leave it behind, Jack. Heal. Get on with it. Catch the bad guys. Save the world. Keep it light, dude. Voice of a long-ago comrade, now deceased in the line of duty.
Jack stood hidden in plain sight at this perfect observation post, holding his drink like any other guest. With the index finger of his free hand, he touched his phone’s ear-piece as his facilitators spoke.
“Jack, get out of China now,” said Claire Lightfield into his earphone from the opposite side of the globe. “Your job is done. Let the Chinese handle it from here.”
“While you still can,” added Rector on the conference line. “Claire is right. You’re in a danger zone getting scarier by the minute. Get out, Jack.”
Jack listened, with an occasional nod, shrug, or grunt. He thought of MSS listeners who were certainly hearing the conversation. “I’m heading for the plane as we speak,” he lied. “The situation here will be over in an hour or two. I have my plane ticket right here in my hand, and my suitcase in my other hand, so why don’t you two relax?”
Jack could taste the threat of violence in the alluring, musky Asian air. As night fell, a red, angry sunset swirled over the western horizon, while cold twilight ruled in the east. It was the hour between day and night, between life and death, between love and extinction.
Claire Lightfield said: “Jack, let the Chinese mop up the final details. It’s over. Come home.” He could picture her—tall, willowy, understated, elegant, lightly freckled all over—in her sunny Langley office. She’d be wearing a cheery sun dress and have her straight, rather mousy hair tied back under a horn comb. If Claire wasn’t jazz per se, she was the elegant silences between the notes. But she was married, out of bounds. Jack never fooled with married women, though he couldn’t resist flirting anyway. He was, as a matter of record, a widower. He was a player, not by choice, but by circumstance. He played hard, and he played well.
Rector, a strong man himself, graying and authoritative, pleaded: “Jack, I have other work for you—I need you to come in.” Rector, in a clip playing in Jack’s head, was a trim, smallish man of indeterminate age. Dark skin signaled his mixed European-Ethiopian heritage. His short, kinky, prematurely white hair looked just right on him, with his thoughtful mien and piercing gray eyes.
Jack’s fingertip turned white on the earpiece. His voice became a tight growl as he hoped Rector and Claire would read between the lines. “I am leaving, but the game’s not over. We are this close to really grabbing this bastard and shutting his operation down. We have to make absolutely sure the Chinese capture Big Yang, not just his henchmen.”
Claire sounded edgy and nearly impatient in her always controlled way. “How do you become so certain at moments like this?”
“Can’t talk now.” Would they get the hint?
“You’re off the clock,” Rector said.
“I’m walking through the departure lounge,” Jack said.
“What if you’re wrong?” Claire said. She liked Jack, and she did not want to see her handsome, dashing field agent become a sad memory. Jack knew all about sad memories. He wasn’t about to give anyone the satisfaction.
“You’re not even being paid for this,” Rector ventured.
“My work is its own reward,” Jack said, thinking of Xue.
Three quick taps on the ear-piece cut the connection to Langley to terminate the conversation
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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