Surveillance still felt natural.
For quite a while I saw nothing interesting. A steady stream of college students entered and departed the dorm. Most toted backpacks containing obviously heavy textbooks and laptop computers.
I continued watching, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Then at about 10:45, Sara exited the dorm. She looked around briefly, probably trying to see where I was.
Sorry, Dear. You won’t be seeing me. Proper surveillance is one way only.
I waited a few moments more, watching for any suspicious characters in pursuit. No joy. So I stood up with my paper and struck out after Sara. I could barely see her in front of me, but I knew where she was headed.
He would, too.
Sara had passed the Student Center and was nearing the history building when I spotted him. It was almost too easy. Mongolian features, white long-sleeved shirt, jeans, tennis shoes. He was lurking in an alcove of the Administration Building across the commons from Sara’s classroom.
I stepped sideways behind the boughs of a convenient spruce and continued observing the stalker.
As soon as Sara disappeared into the history building, he left the alcove and headed my way. That was helpful. I was between him and his apparent destination.
When he passed my position, I followed. He wasn’t expecting a tail and that made him easy to pursue. He continued away from the academic buildings and past the dorms. He was headed for his car.
It turned out to be a long walk. He had parked in an outlying lot, apparently to avoid attracting either unwanted attention, or campus parking tickets. The remote lot would be a great spot for us to get to know each other.
He approached, then unlocked, the driver’s door of a green Hyundai. I stifled a chuckle. Gansükh had been reduced from international arms dealer to sub-compact status. I almost felt sorry for him.
As soon as the man opened the door and began to sit, I broke from my latest position in a row of bushes. I had about fifty feet of pavement to cover and arrived at the Hyundai just as the door was closing.
Before he knew what was happening, I had jerked the door open, leaned into the car, and acquired a firm grip on his throat with my left hand.
"Let’s get out and have a little talk," I said coolly, just as he thrust the heel of his right hand up toward my nose.
I turned my head in time… barely… but he still caught me pretty hard in the left eye. And the hand to the face had distracted me enough for him to wriggle out of my throat grip.
He was tougher than he looked. Fortunately, so was I.
As I assessed my next move, he dove for the glove box on the passenger side of the dash. I knew he had a gun in there and I didn’t want to have to shoot him. He was just a flunky. I needed Gansükh himself. As he fumbled to open the compartment, I grabbed his belt, yanked him from the car, and flung him onto the asphalt.
He scrambled to a crouch, then tried sweeping my legs with one of his. He made contact, but I had braced myself for the impact and didn’t go down.
I waited for him to get to his feet. He tried a left-footed head kick, which I ducked, landing a firm right fist to his left kidney as he rotated.
He was down again, but not for long.
This time he popped to his feet, jabbing at me with a right. I deflected the punch. He followed with a left hook, which I ducked again, this time using my momentum to drive my left shoulder into his solar plexus.
Churning forward with my legs, I pinned him hard against the Dodge parked two spots over. He groaned. With my head still down, I gave him two quick jabs to the stomach, putting all my weight into them.
Then I backed away — my body poised in a defensive stance, boxing-style. He wasn’t coming any more. I watched as his back slid slowly down the side of the car until he sat on the dirty black pavement, a limp and dusty mess, struggling to catch his breath.
I reached down. Pulling him up by the front of his shirt, I turned him against the car and bent his right arm high between his shoulder blades. He groaned again.
I looked around. Apparently, no one had noticed our scuffle and this remote location seemed as good as any for our chat. With his right arm still pinned against his back, I escorted him into a sheltered area of evergreens, just off the lot and out of sight from everywhere but up.
"Like I said," I repeated in his ear, "we need to talk."
CHAPTER 15
Acetylene torches generate such extreme heat that many metals, including many grades of steel, turn to liquid when the torch is applied. The result is commonly referred to as ‘cutting,’ though ‘melting’ is a more accurate description.
John’s project at the nuclear plant this evening was a cutting job, requested not by his employer, but by his conspiratorial superiors. He pulled the two-wheeled torch cart out of the storage shed and across the concrete pad to the pump house. Opening the door to the metal building, he turned on the interior light and wheeled the cart in behind him. The door swung shut with a clank.
This building held a three dimensional maze of pipes, junctions, pumps, connections, and valves of various types and sizes. Each had a specific purpose. John knew them all.
He moved directly to the valve he would be adjusting tonight. This particular valve controlled the flow in a twelve-inch-diameter water line. John knew why this line was important. It should definitely be properly maintained.
Although there was no water flowing in the line at present, John needed to close this valve before working on it. He knew that if he closed the valve without taking preventive measures, he would set off an alarm in the Plant Operator’s control room. Since he didn’t want to trigger any bells or buzzers, he bypassed the remote monitoring system with a short length of wire. With this adjustment in place, the valve would always register as ‘open’ in the control room, whether it was, in fact, open or not. Now he could proceed with his work without interruption.
Frequently, maintenance of a valve requires removal of its bonnet, the metal housing that holds the valve’s parts together. John used a large socket wrench to remove the one inch nuts that joined the bonnet’s two sections, then lifted the top of the bonnet from its seat. He would repaint the nuts and bolts when he was done, leaving no evidence of his activities.
Using a fair amount of effort, and steeling himself against the cancer pain that stabbed through his gut, John rotated the two foot diameter wheel at the end of the valve stem clockwise until it wouldn’t turn any more. Now this valve was fully closed.
Next he opened the tank valves on his cart — first the oxygen, then the acetylene, which had a left-handed thread to assure that welders wouldn’t open this cylinder of highly explosive gas by mistake. He pulled the gas flow trigger on the cutting torch, simultaneously squeezing a hand striker to create a spark. One scratch across the striker was all it took and the torch was lit.
A throaty hiss emanated from the lit torch head — like air jetting from a compressor. John made fine adjustments to the gas flow to assure an optimum combustion mixture. For a moment he looked back and forth between the torch and the water valve.
This project would be evilly satisfying.
Flipping down his shaded welder’s mask, he set to work.
CHAPTER 16
Having acquired the location of Gansükh’s present hideout from his assistant, I dragged the Mongolian flunky back to his Hyundai.