Asian Identity Thriller: Midnight in Karakorum – Pt. 7

As he's finishing up a midnight inspection of the Jack Tang estate, Special Aide Chip Garrison is surprised by armed intruders, forcing him to fight for his life in total darkness. Tom Kagy (00:01.038) Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom. Special aide Chip Garrison is just wrapping up his midnight inspection of Jack Tang's estate when he's interrupted by a pair of intruders. It quickly becomes apparent that these men know who Garrison is and just want to dispose of him expeditiously. No questions asked. What ensues is the fight of Garrison's life in total darkness against men who have no trouble seeing him. This is the second half of the very long chapter seven of Midnight in Karakorum. Chapter SEVEN Changing cartridges in the tiny vacuum, Garrison swept the insides of a few pairs that looked like they had actually known feet.  Suddenly his ears felt as though they were giving out.  He could hardly hear the vacuum.  They had been designed to be super-quiet, but they usually emitted a high-pitched whine that he could easily hear.  But now he could hardly hear the whine.  The sound was so faint it felt as though he were merely imagining it.  To check his ears, he rapped his knuckles against the wooden rack.  The rapping was audible but each rap sounded as though it had been cut short, sort of broken in half.  Strange.  He tried it again.  Same effect.  He turned off the vacuum and back on again.  This time he noticed that for a split second the whining sounded almost normal before quickly fading out to near inaudibility.  The unit’s vibration told him it was working all right.  Probably just the strange acoustics in the closet, Garrison told himself without quite believing it.  He went to the door and turned off the light before opening it.  On a hunch, he turned on the vacuum still in his hand.  The sound was normal.  He turned on the light.  A split second later, the vacuum’s whine diminished down to practically nothing.  The room was equipped with a sound neutralizing device switched to the light.  That explained the furnishings.  Tang had used the closet as a conference room where he could talk without being overheard.  The neutralizer had been designed to neutralize the sounds generated in the closet for the purpose of foiling high-powered directional microphones trained on bedroom windows from the street.  The neutralizer detected sounds and generated waves identical in amplitude and frequency but out of phase, thereby canceling them.  Garrison recalled the intelligence report on Tang’s suspicious overseas calls.  He had had reason to be paranoid. Garrison flicked off the lights again and opened the closet door.  Damn, it was solid, and heavy, requiring some shoulder to open and close.  Twenty past midnight.  He had spent way too much time in the house.  A few more minutes with the bathroom, then he’d be out of there.  Damn, the bathroom had windows.  He’d have to work darkling again.  He had just pulled out his penlight to rummage through the cabinets under the bathroom counter when he heard footsteps.  They were coming from the stairway, and were getting closer.  Sounded like two men.  Shit, Garrison thought.  It was too late to slip out of the master suite and get back down past them.  Maybe he would duck back into the closet.  At least he knew its layout.  Worst came to worst, he would just fess up and ask their cooperation in keeping his White House connection quiet.  Then he heard voices.  “The fucker’s up there,” one muttered.  He didn’t sound particularly concerned about being heard.  “Right in there.”  He was practically talking in a normal voice.  Whoever they were, they weren’t afraid of him.  They either thought he was harmless or figured they had him trapped and outgunned.  But how could they be so damned sure? “Yeah, I see him,” a deeper voice said.  “He’s in the bathroom.” They see me? Garrison thought frantically.  How could they possibly see me?  Then it occurred to him.  Heatscopes.  His body radiated heat, creating a heat signature which could be seen by heat scopes, right through most walls and around corners, like Superman with his X-ray vision.  He couldn’t see them but they could see him as plain as day.  They sure as hell weren’t the local sheriff’s investigators, but he was a fish in a barrel.  Maybe whoever discovered him in the house had called in the nearest S.W.A.T. team.  Time to put an end to this before someone got hurt, most like him.  After all, they were all law enforcement. “Boys, this is Chester Garrison, FBI,” said Garrison.  “I’ll come out with my hands up and you can check my badge.”  Raising his arms—which their heat scopes would show as clear as day—he took a couple of steps toward the door leading out of the bedroom suite.  That brought him alongside the open closet door, just in case. There was a brief silence before the deep voiced guy said, “We know who you are, Garrison.  Keep coming.” Something about the guy’s tone sent a chill down Garrison’s spine.  Law enforcement officers were trained to cut tension, not to raise it, and the guy’s voice was dripping with provocation.  That instant Garrison knew exactly what would happen when he reached that door with his hands up.  He’d get drilled.  If he dropped his hands and grabbed the 9mm in his bag, they’d run up and probably drill him anyway, seeing as how there was nowhere to run.  But at least he’d have a slim chance, as long as there weren’t more than those two. “Guys, I’m reaching into my bag for my badge, okay?” Garrison said.  Without waiting for a reply he reached in and gripped his SIG-Sauer P220.  The damned thing, with its 9 mm ammo, only nine rounds, felt puny.  Why hadn’t he brought an extra clip?  Better yet, why hadn’t he brought his trusty Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with 10 30-round magazines loaded with jacketed hollow-point?  And worn his bulletproof vest? “Bullshit!” said the higher-pitched voice.  The flurry of footsteps told Garrison they were rushing the last few steps.  They had to be carrying Uzis and wearing bulletproof vests, Garrison thought.  They had come specifically to waste him.  Otherwise nobody was that foolhardy.  In the same instant Garrison whipped out his 9 mm SIG, he slipped around the doorframe and into Tang’s closet.  Then he scrambled to put his shoulder behind the heavy door and pushed it shut.  As he reached for a deadbolt he wasn’t sure was there, Garrison felt the shockwaves from the Parabellum rounds—fired point-blank and from Uzis judging by the 10-per-second rate—against a steel-plated door.  No wonder the damned door had been so heavy.  Yes—there was a deadbolt! He latched it, grateful for Tang’s well-founded paranoia.  His closet was a pocket citadel.  The next instant the goons were blasting the wall around the door, but that too was steel reinforced.  The steel armor rendered his cellphone useless but would buy him a little time.  Maybe Tang had equipped his desk with a phone.  Nope.  What would have been the point?  He probably figured it would only have gotten tapped like all his other lines.  A justifiably paranoid guy like Tang might have equipped the room with something useful.  It was hard to think with the deafening racket of ordinance slamming steel.  The neutralizer certainly hadn’t been designed to protect people inside the closet from the deafening rattle of gunfire.  Frantically Garrison pulled at the knobs on the drawers of the teak desk.  Maybe he had some stashed firearms, maybe some protective gear.  The drawers didn’t open, probably locked.  On closer inspection he saw they weren’t actually drawers at all, just knobs attached to an artful facade.  Then he notice that one of the knobs pulled out a couple of inches, but nothing happened.  Another knob could be pulled out as well.  Again, nothing.  Garrison tried pulling both at the same time.  The desk began swinging around slowly.  Just in time, Garrison crawled into the well beneath the desk and found himself swinging around to the other side of the wall. When the turning stopped, Garrison was looking out at a small sheet metal landing leading to a spiraling metal stairway like the one he had once climbed as a kid to get to the Statue of Liberty’s head.  Only this one spiraled down into blackness.   It was steep as hell, too, with the steps barely wide enough for Garrison’s feet.  His heart was pounding with the thought that once the goons blasted into the closet—which wouldn’t take more than half a minute—they’d see him gone and figure out the rotating desk in seconds.  Then, if they were as mean and determined as they gave every indication of being, they could drop a couple of grenades down the stairwell.  That was the worry that kept Garrison tromping helter-skelter down a frigging spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever.  Worried the living daylights out of him, to be quite frank.  Shit!  He’d tripped down at least forty feet, he figured—equivalent to a four-story building—and the bottom wasn’t even in sight.  Of course, it being so damned dark and his penlight being so feeble, he couldn’t see more than six steps down.  But he sweated with the fear that he might be descending some kind of eighth wonder of the world—the longest spiral stairway ever built!  Maybe soon he’d start finding skeletons of guys who’d never made it all the way.  Fuck!  Why did he have to open his big mouth and get sucked into this mission?  It wasn’t even his job.  About now he could be rolling over onto Deanne for round three before dropping off to sleep.  Instead he was about to get shredded by a grenade chock full of sharp objects while, for all he knew, Deanne was getting it on with someone richer and better hung.  Maybe she was even going down on the guy, on the first date!  Just how fucking deep was this damned pit anyway!  He was now at least fifty feet below where he’d started.  That meant he was below the basement, even below the foundation.  The muffled sound of automatic gunfire had stopped.  Another scary thought popped into Garrison’s head.  What if one or more guys had gone around to the other entrance to this bottomless pit?  The guys back upstairs had sure acted like they knew the place.  He could be rushing into an ambush!  He could be screwed on either end.  That nearly stopped him in his tracks.  But then he remembered the grenade.  Better to take his chances with a couple of guys on level ground than become minced squab on this stairway to hell. Suddenly a shaft of light came down the stairwell from above.  The light lasted only a second or two, the time it took the desk to make its rotation.  At least one of the goons was up there now, possibly pulling the pin on a grenade.  With his teeth.  But there was no sound of a grenade clanging down.  Maybe the goon was spooked by the stairwell and was hesitating.  Just then Garrison almost fell on his face.  His right foot had reached down for the next step, but there wasn’t one.  Instead, he was on his hands and knees looking into a concrete tunnel longer than his penlight’s reach.  He must be sixty or more feet below where he had started.  As he started trotting down the tunnel, another shaft of light reached down, then faded.  Garrison stopped and turned off his penlight.  He couldn’t make out their words through all the echoing steel surfaces between them.  In the pitch blackness Garrison shuffled into the tunnel, hands out front like a blind man.  No way they could catch him now unless they had someone waiting on this end.  He found a concrete wall and used one hand to follow it and kept the other in front.  He wasn’t about to turn on his penlight and tip off his position.  Their heatscope would be useless through the foot-thick concrete around the tunnel.  He heard no clanging of steps to suggest they were following him down the stairway.  They sounded stupid, Garrison thought, but they knew when to stop eating dust.  After going a good hundred feet into the tunnel without hearing anything, Garrison considered risking turning on his penlight A blast of automatic gunfire came from the stairwell.  By reflex Garrison fell flat against the cold moist concrete floor.  They must have fast-roped down the gap between the stairway and the stairwell wall, regaining much of the precious fifteen-second lead Garrison had been counting on.  The fuckers were meaner and smarter than he had thought.  The next instant Garrison was on his feet, scampering down the tunnel in an erratic zigzag.  A second gun joined in the insults.  How long was this damned tunnel anyway?  He needed a fix.  Without stopping, Garrison turned on his penlight.  Good thing too.  Less than ten feet ahead was a drop.  Coming closer he saw it was only a three-foot downjog of the tunnel, but that wasn’t evident until you were right at it.  From a distance, it might as well be the Grand Canyon.  If he kept running, they’d see him as plain as day.  The only chance he had was to get some lead into them, and this could well be his last chance to do that.  And he’d somehow have to leave the penlight before the drop to give him a little light to work with.  As he reached the drop, Garrison made a show of hesitating before jumping.  Dropping the penlight so it would hopefully land shining more light toward them than him, he jumped. Mid-jump he felt a crunching impact in his right calf that flipped out his legs, making him land on his left side just past the drop.  Hot lead hadn’t figured in his little plan, but he had to admit it definitely added a touch of realism to the fall.  He stayed flat, wondering when the pain would stab his consciousness.  Sure enough, there it was!  Now he had to stay still and pray the goons would think he had made a longer jump that put him too low to return fire.  If he stayed real flat, the solid concrete would shield his body from their heatscopes until they got to within fifteen feet or so.  Until then they would see haze from rising body heat, but no shape to give away his exact location, elevation or movement.  He slipped the 9-mm out of his shoulder bag and held it flat against his body.    The gunfire stopped.  Garrison heard a spent clip being popped out and another being jammed in.  They were about seventy feet away and approaching at a steady walk.  If he could surprise them at inside twenty feet, he might plug them both.  But they probably had body armor, which meant he’d have to hit their faces, if their face shields were up, their bellybuttons.  Not impossible under normal circumstances, but it would be trickier while lying on his side with a right leg about to go into shock from blood loss.  Hurry up, you fuckers.  Keep coming.  Fifty feet.  Forty feet.  Thirty feet.  Suddenly the footsteps stopped.  “That’s his flashlight,” the high-voiced one said.  “He must have dropped it when I hit him.” “How do you know you hit him?” the deep-voiced one said.  “Maybe I hit him.” “Wait, I think that’s him, right there,” the high-voiced one said.  “He’s playing possum.” “That’s just haze from his trail, you nervous nellie,” sneered the deep-voiced one.  “The guy’s long gone by now.” “I saw him take a hit,” said Nellie.  “He’s dead or playing possum.” “So what?  There’s two of us and one of him.  Let’s go.” “Well, there’s only one of me, John Wayne,” said Nellie.  “You go.  I’ll wait right here.” “Yeah, stand there shaking and watch a real man work.” Shit, Garrison thought.  At thirty feet Nellie could spray him with lead before Garrison could draw an accurate bead.  John Wayne resumed walking toward the drop.  Twenty-seven feet.  Twenty-four feet.  Twenty-one feet.  Eighteen feet.  Just as Garrison was about to jerk up, he heard John Wayne stop again. “See?” Wayne said.  “He’s gone.  Now come on.  If we lose him I’ll tell the boss you was hanging back jerking off.” “I’m just being professional,” Nellie said.  There was an uneasy pause.  “Okay, I’m coming.”  He began walking.  One, two, three, four steps.  Now! Garrison jerked his head and right hand up at the same time.  The little penlight didn’t throw much light, just enough so he could figure out about where John Wayne’s face ought to be.  He popped off two rounds, saw John Wayne start falling without getting off a shot, then dropped back down just in time to hear Nellie’s chattering reply whizzing past his head.  Garrison’s right leg was practically dead weight, slowing him down dangerously.  Nellie stopped firing, conserving what was left in his 25-round clip.  He wasn’t about to run out with John Wayne out of commission, not at this range, not inside a long concrete tunnel with no cover.  The way Garrison saw it, it was a Mexican standoff.  The element of surprise was gone, but there was only one of Nellie.  Nellie had the automatic and a bulletproof vest, but he had a concrete bunker.  Couldn’t blame Nellie at all if he were getting nervous out there. Then suddenly the odds changed horribly.  The penlight flickered and died.  Now they were in total darkness and Nellie had the heatscope.  Dear Mother of God, Garrison thought.  Right away he could hear Nellie getting braver, shuffling forward a few inches at a time.  Once he got inside of twelve feet, Garrison would be a sitting duck, naked and blind.  He had maybe three seconds to act.  Under the circumstances, the plan he came up with wasn’t bad.  Garrison slipped off the strap of his shoulder bag.  Having been pressed against him all this time, the bag was warm and alive, at least to Nellie’s heatscope.  Moving as quickly as his dying right leg would allow, Garrison pushed the shoulder back up with his left hand and, a split second later, raised his head.  He would have a quarter second to draw a bead on the muzzle flash of Nellie’s Uzi as it killed the shoulder bag.  Hope to god Nellie’s a good shot, Garrison prayed.  He felt the shoulder bag kicked away by Nellie’s outburst as he squeezed off his remaining seven rounds two-handed and heard Nellie cry out as one or more 9 mm slugs found him in the dark.  Nellie’s Uzi clattered onto the concrete floor at the same instant his body thudded. Now all he had to do, Garrison told himself, was somehow grope around for his shoulder bag, then drag his ass out of there before his whole body went into shock from the blood loss.  That was the last thought he managed before passing out.