Razing Beijing: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

starboard engine had
failed. The loss of symmetrical thrust pulled the plane’s nose down and to the
right. In the blink of an eye Reilly had driven his left foot hard onto the
rudder pedal. He eased back on the yoke.
    “Hold it—hold it—hold it—bring it up! Okay... Jesus,
straighten it out!” Harris shouted as if needing to get his point across. “Just
bring it up, bring IT UP!”
    As true for any pilot, flying this close to the ground
under these conditions was Reilly’s worst nightmare. “Gear DOWN!” he shouted.
    “Gear down!” Harris grabbed the landing gear handle and
shoved down hard, not realizing he’d bent it past the stop. Now both men fought
the controls.
    The old DC-9 was not a ‘fly-by-wire’ aircraft, its cockpit
controls were instead directly connected to aerodynamic control surfaces
through a series of cables, linkages, and actuators. The vertical tail
rudder—over-stressed from the combination of massive engine vibration and
Reilly’s efforts to keep the plane flying straight—communicated its enormous
oscillation to the pedal under Reilly’s foot. He had never experienced the
sensation of standing on a raging beast, even on the simulator, as the
procession of failures presently unfolding had never been conceived. This
realization compounded the pilot’s sense of doom when a sharp jolt brought the
violent shuddering to a halt—and his rudder pedal slammed to the floor.
    Harris snapped his head around. “Hydraulic pressure zero!”
    The pilots looked at each other as the controls in their
hands went all the way slack. As the nose of the airplane pitched up, filling
the windscreen with blue, neither man was aware that the aircraft’s severed
tail and engines were already tumbling down the runway. In a burst of denial
Reilly grunted as he frantically worked the controls; the plane wandered with a
mind of its own. The nose yawed freely to the right and gyrated down.
    Both men knew they would not pull up again. With the
asphalt runway looming ever closer, Reilly’s final regret was that he could do
nothing for the wild-eyed people frantically running away.
    “We bought it!”
    “Shit—”

4
    The Next Day
    Washington, D.C.
    SAMUEL MCBURNEY was
led through the pouring rain past several dozen Metro police cars, ambulances,
and government-issue sedans lining the curb in front of the Rivergate apartment
complex. McBurney knew few of the facts surrounding the double murder which had
occurred inside, even less of the unexpected discovery supposedly responsible
for his being summoned. The rear door of an idling car swung open, he climbed
inside, and was handed a towel.
    McBurney mopped his face dry. He asked, “What is it the CIA
can do for you this morning, Mr...?”
    The square-jawed man wearing wire rim glasses presented him
with a manila folder. “I’m Special Agent Peter Kosmalski, and I’m in charge
here. Can you identify this man?”
    McBurney was aware of the gaze of both Kosmalski and the
agent behind the wheel as he hesitantly opened the folder of photographs. He
realized by the infamous date on each still image that they were probably taken
from a passing tourist’s camcorder; several such recordings had surfaced
following the recent terrorist attack on Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.
McBurney considered himself good at remembering faces and he looked closely at
one profile of particular clarity. As he did, he felt a cold chill of unease. He
looked up. “This is bullshit—no way.”
    “We lifted matching prints from inside the van,” Kosmalski
explained.
    “Matching what?”
    “They match the set you took in 1982.”
    McBurney stared again at the photograph with diminishing
disbelief—at the line of the man’s jaw, the Roman nose, the heavy brow and
cheek bones. Beneath a dark wool cap were the graying sideburns consistent with
a man in his fifties, so the age was about right. The Aryan facial features had
weathered with time, but McBurney’s memory of that