Metal Lies: Shadowfast Action Thriller, #2

By Cole Chase

When the going gets tough, the tough get metal in this action-packed follow-up to the page-turning Metal Spies.

 

In the neon streets of Seoul, con man Quinn Richards scrambles to expose tech billionaire Brody Bach's malicious plot. If Quinn and his heavy metal band and heist crew, Shadowfast, fail to stop Bach, they face prison—and the global balance of power falls into chaos.

 

But musicians aren't spies. Yes, Rory's daring tarot card ruse nearly reveals Bach's scheme. And Night Boy's desperate knife fights in darkness expose unexpected foes. Yet Shadowfast seems outmatched and outnumbered.

 

When Quinn uncovers a startling personal connection to a past POTUS, he realizes his team could be risking everything for a lie.  To win their lives back, Quinn must outwit armed kidnappers, murderous auto-bots, three major governments, and an untrustworthy ally.

 

But anyone who knows Quinn, also knows: no one outsmarts him. Shadowfast has merely begun to fight.

 

Metal Lies is Book 2 in the Shadowfast Thrillogy, the three-part debut from action thriller author Cole Chase. Fans of Mission: Impossible, Mark Greaney, Lee Goldberg, and Jason Kasper should not miss this acclaimed, compelling series.

 

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

 

"When I came across the Shadowfast series, I found myself deliriously enjoying the fast-paced and witty trilogy packed with badass action and cool characters.  …You simply are compelled to read all these books one after the other. …Delivers for fans seeking a cerebral narrative as much as it caters to readers looking for their next memorable action-packed read.  –Kashif Hussain, Best Thriller Books dot com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fevered Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223329329

Book preview

SEOUL MUSIC VOL. 2

CHAPTER

ONE

MYEONG-DONG DISTRICT, SEOUL, KOREA

Harwell! Brody calls, as he jumps to his feet.

The security man materializes as if he can teleport.

Brody glances around the crowded restaurant. We must disappoint my guests. Is there a back exit?

Of course.

From below, at the base of the stairway lined with waiting diners, whistles blow. A voice comes through a bullhorn, speaking authoritatively in Korean. Then it repeats in English. This is the Korean National Police. Stay where you are. Do not interfere as we perform this arrest. Do not move.

The patrons in line on the stairs look to one another for what to do. But before the English instructions have finished, Brody cues Harwell with a jerk of his chin, and they hurry for the kitchen. As they cross the room, the bespectacled functionary joins them. Harwell slams into the swinging kitchen door, and the trio vanishes.

Rory relaxes for the first time in an hour. It’s on, she says to the air. Target moving to you.

As she gathers the cards, the pen, the Queen of Shadows placard, and her purse, she admires Quinn’s forking plan. She almost got Brody to say what his plot is. That failed, almost predictably—it’s difficult to invoke magic and mystery in a lit, noisy restaurant.

But she passed him the pendant with the tracker in it. In fact, he practically begged for it.

Now they see who he runs to.

CHAPTER

TWO

South Korea didn’t embrace Western pastries until the twenty-first century. Then they got on board in a big way, Quinn thinks, as he hurries past a four-story Dunkin’ Donuts with a line of customers extending out the door. Improvising, he joins the line. It seems to be moving slowly enough that he’ll be here awhile.

He thinks he has enough manpower. Bach and Harwell would certainly notice if an individual shadowed them down the street. But Quinn has studied the map of Seoul and has seen that most blocks have few ways out. He’s stationed himself, Cooper, Danny, and Night Boy at separate intersections. The plan is that as soon as anyone spots Bach, they announce his location and direction to the others on their phones. Everyone then hustles up to the next intersections on parallel streets, so no matter which way he turns, someone can see where he heads. In a sense, no one is tailing him at all; they’re spotting him at each turn in his path. If time goes by and he doesn’t emerge from a block, they’ll converge on that block.

All that is the backup plan. Rory and Manny spent hours online and with the files from The Man, until they noticed the necklace on Brody’s mom in an old photo. When they had the replica made, they installed an RFID gps transmitter in the pendant. Quinn could hear from the bug under the restaurant table that Rory managed to plant the necklace on their target, so they can track him using gps.

Quinn’s plan has flaws. Myeong-dong shopping street has modern Western structure, with long streets and obvious intersections. But if Bach has a meeting in the old Namdaemun market district, it’ll be a labyrinth of twisting alleys and forks, almost none of them a modern right-angle intersection. Then he’ll have to station a team member on each side of the market and send in one person to tail. But the market is closed at night, and dark; surely Bach won’t have business in there. The other hitch would be if Bach goes down into the underground mall near the Lotte Hotel Seoul, where the gps signals would likely get lost.

He can only do the best he can with his small team.

For now, it seems his effort is paying off. This part of the shopping district allows no cars. Pedestrians saunter down broad walkways, drawn from one colorful storefront to the next. The tense energy of Bach, Harwell, and the minion, speed-walking twice as fast as everyone else, sticks out like a yellow suit at a funeral. Quinn turns his back to them, pretending to contemplate a giant poster advertising Halloween donuts. He doesn’t need to watch the trio because he can hear their progress. Bach quietly motormouths a stream of murmured orders to his henchpersons, the only English floating on the night air.

Quinn mutters, and his earbuds transmit, Package heading north up Toegye-ro 22.

A second later, Cooper replies over the phone, Heard and seen. Crossing Toegye-ro main, just west of the bus stop.

Moving to intercept, Danny says. Quinn stationed him west of Myeong-dong and wonders how Danny can catch up to men who are nearly running, and who have a head start of several blocks. Moments later, he hears a motor scooter engine over the phone. It cuts off just as Danny adds, In position at Toegye-ro main and Myeong-dong 10-gil.

Copy, Quinn responds. He hustles north and to the east. He enters a dark block where most of the stores have been vacated, casualties of the COVID pandemic. The night air is cool and still. The block offers the usual Seoul mix of East and West: several shops with signs written only in Korean, then a store oddly named Isaac Toast, and something on the corner called Music Restaurant that sells Chicken2beers. A high-rise Daiso illuminates the area with a huge lit cube on its roof, offices of a Japanese sundries chain finding success in Korea.

He slips through the shadow of the high-rise and arrives at Toegye-ro just as a bus blasts past, leaving a cloud of diesel fuel so thick on the night air that Quinn tastes it. Rory’s voice crackles in his earbuds. They’re in front of KB bank, heading east.

Stand down, Quinn says. You were made. We can’t let them see you.

I’m not following them. I’m walking back to the hotel. But I see them.

Stay back!

It’s cool, boss. There’s a hundred yards between us, and I’m turning off their street.

Quinn lets it go as he takes in Toegye-ro. Any Korean street name ending in ro means that street can have two to seven lanes, in contrast to names ending in -daero, which means the street has eight or more lanes. Most of Toegye-ro is a busy, broad four-lane highway, but here, it is one lane in each direction. This part of the road spans a river far below, so the median between the lanes is a drop of sixty feet. He sees no obvious way to cross Toegye-ro, without traversing east or west long distances.

He spots movement across the wide boulevard. He can make out the shapes of Bach and his two helpers. On his side of Toegye-ro, a white police car speeds past, its light bar flashing blue and red. Across the street, the trio freezes.

Minions peeling off. It’s Manny. Somehow, he got ahead of them.

Stay with primary, Quinn responds. Harwell and the other guy reverse direction. Bach keeps heading east, alone.

Why would a billionaire dismiss his security when he thinks the police are after him? They must’ve decided an all-points bulletin described them as three white males.

Or maybe Bach has a mission so secret, even his body man doesn’t get to know.

Stay with him, Quinn urges. Danny, he’s heading away from you, so leapfrog east two blocks— wait one. He sees Bach turn left past the bank. Package moving north to 8ga-gil, between the bank and Namsan Tower.

I can see that intersection, comes Night Boy’s voice. I’m outside 7-Eleven, one block east.

Manny, Quinn asks. Can you calculate a destination?

Quinn walks past a 7-Eleven and a Starbucks before Manny answers. Seoul has so many 7-Elevens, probably every member of the team is outside one.

Too much guesswork, Manny says. Biggest thing east of him on the map is the cathedral.

Quinn paces east along the main boulevard, craning his neck to see how he might cross. When he studied Seoul before the trip, the Myeong-dong Cathedral kept showing up in tourist materials and YouTube walking videos. Manny, is the cathedral open?

After a wait, Manny replies, I can’t tell using a phone. Most of their site is in Korean. Youth Mass was at 1900 hours.

More than three hours ago. Wide-open plazas surround the cathedral, which is part of a Roman Catholic campus. He can’t picture how a human could get close enough to a person near or in the cathedral to eavesdrop, unobserved. If Bach is running for help, the cathedral offers no privacy inside; it’s the classic Gothic cross-shaped floor plan with tall pillars.

Instinct speaks, and he listens. Deploy the drone, he says.

Deploy drone. Copy.

Given the battery life of the drone, Quinn is betting that Bach meets someone in less than twenty minutes. Night Boy, he says, as he trudges east on broad Toegye-ro. You’re primary. See what you can hear without being detected.

Sappy easy-listening violins come through the phone as Night Boy unmutes. Some 7-Elevens play saccharine music through speakers in the parking lots to prevent thugs from wanting to hang out there. Thought you’d never ask. The music cuts off.

Quinn pulls his phone from his jacket pocket. With a few touches, he calls up the app tracing the transmitter Rory placed on Bach. Quinn has resisted using it because he thought he might need to preserve his night vision. Sure enough, the screen blasts his eyes with a brilliant street map. He fiddles with the settings, lowering the screen brightness. There’s no need to spotlight his face for the world every time he consults his phone.

Absorbed in his screen, he’s late registering the sound of light, rapid footsteps rushing up the sidewalk behind him. By the time he notices, he only has time to half-duck, half-flinch.

Something fast and heavy bounces off his skull behind his ear.

CHAPTER

THREE

Quinn is glad he dodged even partially, because the mere glancing blow feels like a brick to the head. It sends him reeling, and he barely notices the AirPod flying from his ear. The sudden scare causes him to reflexively clench his iPhone.

He was merely passable at close quarters combat in the military. But with time to burn during the pandemic, Danny coached him in regular sparring sessions. From this training, he knows that after the opening blow comes the follow-up; so he lets the momentum of the blow carry him a few steps along the sidewalk, and he adds two more, distancing himself five steps from the attacker before he turns to see. He pockets the phone, freeing both hands.

But he turns just in time to sense a body closing with him and a fist flying toward his face. He’s ready now, so he leans his torso to the left, grabs the flying fist with his right hand, extends his right hip, and pulls the attacker over his leg.

Between the miss and the yank, the attacker, caught off balance, sprawls to the concrete. A leather sap skids across the sidewalk. That must be what Quinn felt on the opening shot. But the fall does not stun the attacker at all; he gets up fast.

Quinn faces the attacker and backpedals.

It’s a white guy. A bald white guy.

It’s Harwell.

Quinn mentally promises to rebuke himself later for focusing so much on Bach that he didn’t track his body man. What’s this about? Quinn says. You don’t look like a mugger.

Don’t play that, mate. I saw you hangin’ about outside the restaurant. Now here you are again, turning up like a bad penny.

Quinn puts up his left palm in a gesture that says, hang on a second. He also touches his right hand to his scalp, feeling the wound. He lets himself sag a little as if the blow really knocked the stuffing out of him. There must be some mistake, he begins.

Harwell closes the gap and attempts a classic right hook. Quinn ducks under it. The whole point of putting his hand to his scalp was to let him cock his right. He gets his right leg, right shoulder, right arm perfectly aligned and launches a devastating blow to Harwell’s sternum.

It feels like his fist explodes.

Quinn gasps and stumbles to one side. His back bounces off a store window and he feels a panicky sense of being cornered.

Harwell laughs. Thanks for testing my vest’s armor plate, jackass. Guess it’s harder than your fist.

Quinn clasps his right wrist with his left hand. The right throbs. He might’ve broken some bones. Why are you attacking me? he pleads.

Nunnaya, Harwell growls.

Nunnaya? Quinn repeats, unsure. He thrusts his left hand into his jacket pocket.

Nunnaya business, Harwell retorts, and launches a series of blows at Quinn’s head.

Quinn dances to the side easily. At the mansion’s outdoor track, he and Danny run quarter miles sideways, a basic boxing workout. As soon as he senses the flurry ending, he pulls his hand from his left pocket and straight-arms his Taser into Harwell’s neck. The prongs of the Taser spark and crackle like a bug zapper in a twilight swamp.

Harwell goes rigid, then drops into a lump at Quinn’s feet.

Quinn stands up straight and inhales deeply. He looks left and right. No other pedestrians in sight. Plenty of traffic zips past, but it’s probably passing too fast for anyone to react to the brief fight.

He’s got to drag Harwell’s body into the shadows, so the police don’t go into some citywide alert