Lethal Circuit by Lars Guignard Page B

the open door as they secured the capsule in place.
    “Good. Now follow me.”
    Michael followed Kate toward the cockpit, moonlit clouds visible though the open door below. When they reached the cockpit Michael was surprised to discover that he could see the stars through an open escape hatch in the top of the fuselage. There was a single pilot at the controls. He was Chinese, maybe thirty years old and solidly built, and he seemed to know Kate.
    “Almost didn’t make it,” he said in passable English.
    Kate responded in Cantonese, then added, “I’ve brought a friend.”
    The pilot turned his head to Michael and smiled. Michael smiled back, but his grin faltered as his glance wandered over the pilot’s muscular neck. There was a tattoo inked there: a disturbingly familiar image of a lone tiger wrestling a snake.
    “Everything okay?” Kate asked.
    Everything was all right, Michael thought. Everything was just fine other than the fact that he might be totally screwed. Because Michael had seen the pilot’s tattoo before. It was the same tattooed tiger and snake worn by their attacker at Chungking. There was no mistaking it. Like Zebra before him, the pilot belonged to one of Hong Kong’s oldest and most brutal Triads. He was a Tiger Snake Boy.
    “Kate?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Can I see you for a second?”
    Kate looked to Michael, then followed him out of the cockpit. Once they were out of earshot, Michael got to the point.
    “That guy is Triad.”
    “I’m a quarter Welsh.”
    “The guy who murdered Larry was Triad.”
    Wind whipped at Kate’s face through the open cargo door. “Look, I know how this looks.”
    “Do you?”
    “It’s like this. The pilot is a private contractor. Contracted by my government to provide a service. He no doubt doesn’t know who we are, and I don’t want to know who he is. It’s cleaner that way.”
    “You’re telling me you didn’t know who he was?”
    “I’m telling you all I did was put in a call for an extraction. I’m NOC. I’m operating under non official cover, get it? Six contracts out my support to the locals. This is Tiger Snake Boy territory. Of course they’re going to get the gig.”
    Michael considered her words. He wanted to believe her. But he wanted to know the truth more. And with Kate, he sensed, there was one way to be sure. Physically. In one deft move Michael rotated his hips and swept Kate’s legs out from under her. Unlike Chen, Kate knew how to roll. But she had to expose her back to Michael for a fraction of a second to do so. And that fraction of a second was all it took for Michael to disarm her. Michael had done take down weapons training in his martial arts days. Everybody had. But it was only after his abduction in Peru that he had taken it seriously. Michael regarded it as a personal failure that the kidnappers had been able to abduct him. It was the beginning of the most horrific experience in his life and after rescue had finally come, he had vowed never to allow something like it to happen again. Not ever.
    Michael tossed Kate’s Glock to the rear of the plane and followed through with an improvised head lock, holding her neck firmly between his forearm and the floor. It was more of a judo style move, but it made the point.
    “Jesus Christ,” Kate moaned. “How the hell did you learn how to do that?”
    “My father. Same guy who taught me that the gun you were carrying is a Glock 26 with a five-and-a-half-pound trigger and a ten round magazine. Same guy who said if I’m in downtown Seattle and I see a guy with shiny shoes and a snake crawling down his neck, I should probably keep my distance. Same guy I came here to find.”
    Michael adjusted his position. His right forearm barred over her neck, her head in the crook of his left arm. He straddled her, a leg on either side of her torso. It was a submission hold from which she could not likely escape. Not if she wanted to keep her head attached to her neck. “Now I have some