The Mandarin's Vendetta (Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 2)

by Wesley Robert Lowe

  Rayna had nothing to lose by telling all—she really didn’t have any options. Using flares might have worked with pinpoint shots at the chemicals in the manufacturing facility but that seemed like a long shot.

  “I need portable IEDs. And/or grenades. And/or C4… I am going to blow up a meth lab in Pyongyang but it’s not meth I’m destroying. It’s a new synthetic drug that kills with very small doses.”

  Lily and her mother looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

  “I always told Lily, if you tell a lie, make it the biggest one you can but I’ve never heard such a crazy story from a hooker.”

  Rayna stepped to a clunker of a washing machine. She stooped down and grabbed its bottom. She slowly stood up, extending her right arm out, lifting the washing machine to shoulder level. She held it still without wavering for three seconds before placing it gently back in position.

  “Elite fitness. Canadian Special Forces. Do you want to see me shoot?”

  “No, no,” gaped Anna. “I believe you. I don’t have what you’re asking for but I do have something that will suit your purposes. Give me a moment.”

  As Anna went to the back of the store, the puzzled Rayna turned to Lily and asked, “What is going on? I don’t get it.”

  Lily snickered. “My mother is a businesswoman. Weapons are her specialty and she sells mainly to North Korean businessmen and officials.”

  “Because they’re illegal there.”

  “Exactly. But people still want them.”

  Mama carried in a cardboard box. “Here you go.” She opened it up and inside were half-pound bricks of Belgium’s Finest White Chocolate. “Be careful with these. It’s my own brand of plastic explosive. The blast sets off at high heat. All you need to do is set fire to the paper. Each brick will be enough to blast an area within a six-foot diameter. Heat waves will be over a thousand degrees.”

  “That’s ingenious,” nodded Rayna with admiration.

  “It is a best seller for those who want to pay for it. How many do you want? They are five thousand dollars each and I only take cash.”

  “Have you got twenty?”

  Lily was shocked. “You carry that much with you?”

  “You never know when you’ll need it. Can you wrap them in Ziploc or plastic bags?”

  Lily shook her head. “That’s not a good idea. It makes them stand out if you are checked.”

  “Yes, but I have to cross the Yalu River, then steal a car to get to Pyongyang.”

  “That’s how you’re planning to get there? That’s stupid, crazy and dangerous.”

  “How would you get there then?”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Lily’s limo dropped Rayna off on a stretch of highway outside of Linfu that was lined with canteen kitchens. Every one of the truck stops had a number of long- and short-haul vehicles parked outside.

  “Good luck. And be careful,” cautioned Lily.

  “Thanks for everything.” Rayna stepped outside with her new backpack. She looked to see which of the roadside restaurants had the most trucks outside and stepped toward it.

  Arriving, she entered. Her senses were assaulted with the stench of cheap booze, greasy food and kimchi, the fiery Korean fermented spiced dishes of vegetables.

  Rayna looked around, her eyes shifting as she studied the room. Anna told her to pick a table with girls. They were either “mules” for drugs or North Korean government-sponsored waitresses. Both would likely be hitching rides with truckers back to the big city.

  Rayna approached one table where a trucker sat with a couple of twenty-something young things. “Do you have room for one more?” asked Rayna. “I’m going to Pyongyang.”

  “I’m full,” said the trucker.

  Rayna reached into her pocket and pulled out an American twenty dollar bill. “I don’t mind staying in the back as long as there’s something to lie on.”

  The trucker took the twenty and beamed as he stuffed the bill into his jeans. “I’ll take you for free for ten minutes alone.”

  “The ride will be enough.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  At the border checkpoint, the truck and its passengers were cursorily searched but there was nothing out of the ordinary. One of the guards on duty hoped Rayna might offer him one of her chocolate bars as a bribe but she stood her ground, saying that those were treats for some of the millions of malnourished orphans. Clearing inspection, all were ushered through. Rayna knew she was just imagining it but, as the truck crossed the boundary from China into North Korea, she felt an insidious evil penetrating her soul.

  As if ignoring Rayna’s fantasies, the truck traveled quietly without incident for the next hour and a half. It was almost 4 a.m. by the time it arrived in Pyongyang at the industrial park where the drug factory was housed.

  The unremarkable, small three-story building in Pyongyang’s industrial area had been shuttered for more than five years. When it first opened at the turn of the new millennium, it was to great fanfare. After all, the North Korean pharmaceutical company Geongang Products claimed to have developed a super drug that was the cure for MERS and SARS, combining Korean ginseng, trace minerals, and rare earth elements. However, it turned out to be false hoopla, so typical of the extravagant claims made by the Supreme Leader. The state-of-the-art factory closed down.

  However, the facility continued to generate enormous profits. It became a leading manufacturer of crystal meth. For this, North Korea’s claim of purity in production was absolutely true. The meth produced out of this building was sold throughout North Korea, China and Asia until pressure from the Chinese government, which was dealing with an addiction crisis, again caused the factory to close its doors.

  At least officially. Unofficially, business continued without a hiccup, the main difference being that the chemists, instead of being hired by the state, were now freelancers who worked for the contractors that hired them.

  As with so many other well-known drugs, the creation of N115 was an accident. A chemist, who had worked for three days straight without sleeping, made an incorrect formulation of crystal meth, with the result being the deaths of several of his co-workers.

  The chemist’s boss, rather than getting angry and firing him, chose to hire him to refine the product.

  That boss was General Park Daesoon. It took Park less than three days to find his first client for the new deadly chemical.

  The assembled team of lab workers were working frantically to fulfill the Mandarin’s huge order of the deadly synthetic drug.

  “You sure this is the right place?” asked the driver.

  “Yes. My uncle works here and we will go the orphanage after he gets off work. Thank you very much,” said Rayna.

  The driver waved goodbye and Rayna carefully walked around the building, studying every possibility, hoping to glean some clue to help her formulate a plan. Although she could not see inside, there were lights on every floor.

  Then she rounded the building to the back and quickly flattened herself on the pot-holed asphalt. She saw two vehicles: a panel truck and a military transport van. There were three soldiers standing around at the loading bay smoking. Rayna recognized the aroma—it was around her all the time in Afghanistan. Marijuana. She inhaled gratefully. If she was going to have to take action, there was a good chance that these three jokers would not present a problem. She spotted remnants of half a dozen joints lying by the dumpster.

  There were several stacks of empty wooden pallets closer to the loading bay. She could get a better look if she could squeeze through the space between the stacks. She removed her backpack and wriggled in.

  Kneeling, Rayna crawled through the crack between two of the piles—the musty smell told her they might have been sitting there for years. She craned her neck to get a better look at the panel truck—its back door was open. Inside, there were a few small cardboard boxes, piled haphazardly.

  She surmised the truck was to carry the N117 and the military van was for protection
. The cargo was only fifty kilograms but, with a hundred million dollars at stake, there better be some kind of back up.

  And then the world went black.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  When Rayna woke up, her hands were tied in front of her and she was lying on the ground. Where, she didn’t know. All she knew was the back of her head was throbbing. She was having a hard time focusing—her heartbeat was racing and she felt really hot. Her mouth was dry and had a chalky taste. And then, she was giddy, laughing… Incredibly happy, she wished she could feel like this forever.

  And then, a flash of lucidity. She saw that she was next to an open box that contained bags of white powder, one of which had a hole in it. She realized what had happened—someone had forced crystal meth into her mouth and she was experiencing a rush.

  Because of her dead ex-fiancee Tanner, a singer/drug dealer in New York, she knew the symptoms. She loved Tanner when he was like this and she hated him when he was like this. It was artificial love. She also knew that sometime in the next half hour or so, the high was going to end and she was going to start coming down.

  Would willpower work in battling the mind-altering effects of the drugs? Yes, no, maybe so but, even if she were able to, there was still the matter of the three rounds of heavy-duty braided nylon cord wrapped around her wrists and ankles.

  Rayna forced herself to evaluate her environs. Trying to keep her movements undetected, she slowly rolled onto her back. As she did, she saw that the room was dimly lit, the walls were made of concrete and the ceiling was about twenty feet high. I’m inside the warehouse in the loading area.

  She blinked hard and clenched her fists. There was an unbearable growing smell of diesel exhaust and the sound of a large engine that threatened to explode her eardrums. She shook her head violently but that didn’t ease the anguish. Counter-intuitively, she told herself, “Relax.” She inhaled slowly, taking a dozen seconds to fill her lungs. Then she exhaled, again drawing out the time as long as she could.

  It worked. Inside the loading bay, she saw a large truck backing in. With men shouting in Korean, she figured they were giving directions, guiding the driver who was having a difficult time. She rolled onto her stomach silently to get a better look. The two-ton truck stopped and the driver got out—he was Chinese. (While many find it difficult to distinguish the ethnicities or origins of Asians, that is not difficult for many Asians. It was imperative for anyone working covertly in the Orient.)

  The truck’s back door was unlatched and its accordion door pushed up. Three men began unloading the cargo. There were two sizes of boxes. One was more rectangular, the other square. In the poor light, Rayna strained hard to see what was written on either of the boxes. It was undistinguishable until one of the men carrying a rectangular box passed briefly under a glowing low wattage bulb. In that flash of a second, Rayna saw the Chinese characters 麻黄素.

  Ephedrine. The other square boxes must be full of phenyl acetone.

  The key ingredients for making meth, ice…

  The driver spoke in Mandarin to the shippers. Rayna could see that they were having a hard time communicating. No wonder he was having a hard time parking. He doesn’t understand Korean.

  One of the shippers made a call.

  Five silent minutes passed as the men continued to unload the truck.

  Then a man about the same age as her father appeared. Stern, stout and wearing the uniform of a North Korean General.

  He barked at the Chinese driver in Mandarin. “Why didn’t the Mandarin send the regular guys who speak Korean?”

  “We do all his top jobs in China, General Park.”

  Rayna and the general did the same thing—looked over the two men that the Mandarin sent. Obviously, enforcers with experience, just in case there was a problem.

  “Okay. Let’s load up the truck.” The military officer then motioned his head toward Rayna. “And let’s send them to Yodok.”

  Rayna’s head jolted. There were two things in Park’s last short comment that surprised her. He said, “Them.” Plural. That meant there was more than just her. The other word was “Yodok.” This was for prisoners who were deemed “enemies of the state.” Prisoners here were given the harshest treatment and living conditions, if they were allowed to live at all. Unsubstantiated rumors of systematic torture, rape and organ harvesting abounded.

  ***

  A soldier carrying a rifle with its bayonet pointed at two grim-faced North Korean prisoners whose hands were also tied, approached her. The soldier’s bayonet poked them toward a military van and motioned them to get inside. The three prisoners complied. The two North Koreans sat on a bench that ran lengthwise in the back of the van. Rayna and the soldier sat on the other side of the van on a bench that faced the Koreans. A metal barrier with a thick glass window separated the prisoner containment area and the front of the truck where another soldier drove with Park in the passenger seat.

  Rayna watched the truck carrying the N117 pull out of the parking area. Five seconds later, the military vehicle left the drug factory, too.

  There was tense silence for five minutes. Rayna turned her head to look out the front window and saw that the truck was two hundred feet ahead. She saw her guard glaring at her. She spoke to the soldier in a friendly tone. “You’re ugly. Uglier than my ex-boyfriend’s dog. Maybe you are a dog.”

  Rayna flashed a broad smile. “And you are stupid. Really stupid.”

  The soldier’s angry expression melted away.

  “He doesn’t understand English,” said one of Rayna’s fellow prisoners.

  “That’s what I was hoping for,” advised Rayna, smile still plastered on her face at her captor. “Do you want to get out of this?”

  “Of course. But there’s no way,” claimed her other prison mate. “They caught us… I’m Minjoon and he’s my brother Woojin… we found out they were ramping up production for the last few days and wanted to steal some of their drugs. We need money for food and we don’t have any other way to get any.”

  “Don’t underestimate the situation. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  Minjoon and Woojin nodded.

  “When I count to three, I want you to scream as loudly as you can and then duck. One. Two. Three!”

  The young men started howling. As per Rayna’s instructions, they fell off their bench to the floor. The soldier did exactly as Rayna anticipated he would. He looked at the prisoners on the floor and prepared to shoot.

  That gave Rayna the opportunity she wanted. She lunged at the soldier and butted him in the head. Yelling, he dropped the bayonet. She quickly cut her bonds free, then grabbed the soldier’s balls and squeezed as hard as she could, incapacitating him.

  Park, noticing the commotion in the back, ordered the window down and whipped around to fire. Rayna hoisted the pained soldier in front of her as a shield and angry bullets lodged in his neck. Blood gushed from a punctured vein. Rayna pushed the dead soldier at the general, knocking him to the side.

  “Get out,” screamed Rayna as she made like Supergirl launching herself through the barrier’s window to the front cab.

  No argument there. Minjoon and Woojin leapt out, taking the bayonet with them to cut their own bonds.

  Rayna launched a right hook to Park’s head, knocking him out.

  A left elbow met the driver’s jaw. He flinched, allowing Rayna to grab the steering wheel and pull herself into the front.

  The driver, regaining his composure, started hammering at Rayna’s arm. As Rayna swung the wheel back and forth to avoid his fists, the truck swerved violently to the left and right.

  Rayna slammed on the brakes and gripped the wheel tightly. The driver’s momentum carried him forward, and his head collided with the windshield. Rayna reached over quickly and opened the driver’s door, then pushed the soldier out. The truck carrying the N117 was now about a thousand feet ahead of her. Rayna killed the headlights in the military vehicle and put pedal to the metal.

  Chapter Sixty-F
ive

  The driver of the panel truck turned to his partner. “Hey, do you hear that? Kind of a rumbling.”

  “There’s nothing. Let me sleep. I’ll take over at the border.”

  As his partner closed his eyes and leaned against the window, using it as a pillow, the driver looked in his rear view mirror.

  Aiyah! A woman was jumping out of a military transport vehicle at a hundred-and-fifty miles per hour, less than twenty feet behind.

  That was the last thing he ever saw as the vehicle collided with the truck. The synthetic drugs ignited almost instantly, incinerating everything inside both vehicles.

  ***

  At the side of the road, Rayna caught a glimpse of the incendiary explosion as she rolled on the ground. She came to a stop and took a glance to confirm that yes, the truck carrying the Mandarin’s deadly cargo was destroyed, along with all participants and witnesses.

  She then started running back to the meth factory. Bypassing Minjoon and Woojin, she shouted, “Come with me.”

  The two got up and joined her in the run.

  “What do you need us for?” asked Woojin.

  “I like your voices,” replied Rayna. “They work well.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  After fifteen minutes, they arrived back at the meth factory. Rayna went to the spot where she was initially knocked out. Good. Her knapsack was still there. She turned to her new accomplices. “Move to the right twenty feet. When I get to the entrance, I want you two to start shouting as loudly as possible.”

  “You kinda like shouting, don’t you?”

  Rayna snickered. “Only if it’s a good joke.” She turned serious. “Then go back onto the road we were running along. I’ll pick you up.”