The Rising Sea (NUMA Files 15)

Kurt used the key card to open the door, smashed the glass of a fire panel with his elbow and pulled the alarm handle. Lights began to flash and the alarm began wailing.

“Wait,” Akiko said.

She dashed back into the garage.

“Come on,” Kurt shouted. “We don’t have time.”

She returned seconds later, dragging the unconscious body of Gao behind her.

“He would have been fine,” Kurt said. “This place isn’t going to burn up like your old castle.”

“I wasn’t saving him,” she said. “We need a doorstop if we want to cause any real trouble.”

She wedged him between the door and the wall, keeping it open and allowing the hall to fill with smoke.

“A helpful touch,” Kurt said. “Let’s go.”

They were off and running, heading down the hall to the southwest. At the end of the hall, Kurt found a locked fire door, but Gao’s key card opened it. They made it through what had to be a design room, filled with scale models and computers, and then found an elevator lobby, with doors on three sides plus the one they’d come through.

Kurt rushed to the farthest door and opened it with the key card. He saw only offices and a conference room.

He turned to see Akiko, waving him over. She’d found an emergency escape plan plastered to the wall. It showed the entire floor plan.

“Three cheers for the Japanese version of OSHA,” Kurt said.

Akiko was looking out into the room and rechecking the plan. “It’s got to be that one.”

They ran to the door on their right, opened it and found a long hall that led along the front of the building. Running through it, Kurt saw the first of many flares and phosphorus explosions raining down on the lawn outside. “Rocket’s red glare,” he said. “Right on time.”

39

JOE HAD launched exactly half of his fireworks at Han’s building when he called the fire department. Using the phonetic translation Akiko had worked out for him in advance, he told them the CNR factory was exploding and burning. At least that’s what he hoped he was telling them. He repeated it twice and then hung up.

Grabbing the second set of launch tubes, he loaded more of the monster-sized bottle rockets and angled them to fire downward and onto the roof ahead of him instead of up into the sky. With the press of a button, he lit them off.

The launch filled the overlook with a swirling cloud of gray smoke. Through it, Joe saw red, white and purple explosions right above the

building. Another shell, designed to flare in a horsetail effect, hit the roof and spread out blazing golden embers in all directions. He listened to reverberating booms and the sound of fire engines coming from the outskirts of town.

“That should do it,” Joe said to himself.

He got up, tossed the camera and the binoculars into the back of the Skyline and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The sirens were growing louder by the moment; he could see the flashing lights coming down the main road a mile or two from the factory, but it was another sound that got his attention.

He turned back toward the factory and noticed lights descending toward it from Nagasaki Bay. Amid all the chaos, a helicopter was coming in for a landing.

Joe turned the key, put the Skyline in gear and spun the tires, pulling off the dirt and out onto the road. If Han’s people took Nagano out of there in a helicopter, he would never be seen again.

* * *

• • •

GAO HAD already come around by the time Han and three members of the security team reached him. Smoke was pouring into the hall through the open door to the garage, the sprinklers were blasting at full pressure, but the fire had been hidden so well, it wasn’t being doused.

“Untie him,” Han ordered one of the men. “And get someone in there to put out that damned fire.”

“What happened?” Gao asked groggily.