Stealing the Dragon

by Tim Maleeny

  “He’s got a point, Xan.” The voice was muffled slightly, making it hard to pinpoint the location, but it seemed to come from directly behind Xan.

  Xan whirled and thrust his right arm forward, his hand open and turned sideways.

  Cape watched as a chain twenty feet long shot from Xan’s sleeve, its barbed tip flying through the air toward the bamboo stand at the edge of the roof. By its speed alone, it would impale anyone in its path. The sound of wood splintering was followed by a sudden clang of metal against metal, and Xan lurched forward, suddenly off-balance as the chain was torn from his arm.

  Xan grunted and peered into the darkness as he rolled sideways, changing his position before a counterattack could begin.

  He was too slow.

  Three shuriken whistled through the air, the first two spinning over Cape’s head, their sound the only way to track them. The third throwing star also made a sound as Xan bellowed with rage. Turning his head, Cape saw why.

  The six-pointed star, three inches in diameter, was embedded deeply in Xan’s right knee. He staggered and brought his left arm up in a swinging motion as he struggled for balance. Metal darts glinted in the half-light from the moon as they flew from his hand. Xan strained his ears for sounds of impact, but as he shifted his weight onto his left leg, a shape darker than the shadows materialized behind him.

  The wooden sword swung low and wide, knocking Xan’s legs out from under him. Even as he fell, Xan managed to pull a knife, a tanto, from his belt, but the sword caught his wrist on the backswing with a loud crack. The knife slid across the roof, coming to a stop between Cape’s legs, the point of the blade barely penetrating the crotch of his jeans and nicking his thigh.

  Cape’s breath hissed through his teeth in a mixture of primal fear and relief. With an effort, he tore his eyes from his crotch and saw the cloaked figure had dropped the sword to bring both hands down in a chopping motion, so fast that Cape never saw the impact, but Xan’s head jolted sideways. The hands came up again, repeating the strike, Xan slumping face-first onto the tiles.

  From where Cape was sitting, spread-eagled at knife point, he couldn’t tell if Xan was still breathing. He didn’t need Sally to remove the black cloth from her face to know who had come to his rescue and almost castrated him in the process.

  Sally shook out her hair and looked from Cape to the knife and back again.

  “Oops.” Sally winced apologetically. “A couple more inches and that would have really hurt.”

  “A couple more inches…you referring to the knife, or was that meant to be ambiguous?”

  Sally smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  Cape exhaled loudly. “Thanks.” He nodded with his chin toward Xan. “I take it you know him.”

  Sally looked down at Xan and nodded slowly.

  “He was my…” She started to say teacher but stopped. When she turned to Cape, she had a bemused expression on her face.

  “Let’s just say I grew up in his shadow.”

  “Don’t you think you were a little rough on him?”

  Sally looked at Cape, a slight smile on her face but her eyes as cold as emeralds.

  “Do you have any doubt he would have killed you?”

  “Nah, he was just warming up to me.”

  Sally shook her head. “You’re delusional.”

  Cape let it go, holding his arms up and back as Sally cut the ropes binding his wrists. Both arms tingled from lack of circulation.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Sally shook her head. “Not yet.”

  She walked over to Xan and turned him over. Blood soaked his pants around the right knee. Sally pulled the throwing star free and Xan grunted but remained unconscious. She wrapped the cloth that had been covering her face around the knee and pulled it tight, then turned to Cape and held out her hand.

  “Hand me those ropes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Definitely,” replied Sally. “He’s coming with us.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  One-eyed Dong never claimed to be a brave man, and though he’d count himself smarter than most, he considered his real strength to be self-awareness. He knew he could never adapt to the new Dragon Head, so he left. Well, he fled, but that’s only because he couldn’t trust the bastard not to kill him. Dong was as mercenary as anyone else, even if he did have better table manners, and the Dragon Head couldn’t risk him jumping to a rival clan.

  Zhang Hong, the previous Dragon Head, had lasted a long time, as respected and trusted as a career criminal could be—bold, visionary, and undeniably ruthless, but still fair in his own way. He honored his ancestors and kept to the code. But his son, Zhang Hui, was a bloody shark. Dong had no doubt Hui had killed his father to become Dragon Head. He suspected Hui would knock off his own mum if there was profit in it.

  His only hope was to keep moving long enough for Hui’s greed to be his undoing. But sitting in a tunnel beneath a strange city, Dong wondered if even he had the patience to wait that long, or if his desperate circumstances would force him to act. He was running out of cities, and his chances were getting worse the closer he came to being cornered. He rolled his glass eyeball back and forth, letting the noise lull him into a trance where time and distant enemies held no sway.

  Footsteps broke his reverie. Shen, the taller of his two guards, was approaching the desk. Shen and the other guard, Lok, were brothers whom Dong had rescued from abject poverty by recruiting them into the Triad. Fearless young men with flexible moral constitutions were always in demand, so Dong made arrangements to have money sent to the boys’ family every month. They were fiercely loyal and had risked everything by coming along on his self-imposed exile.

  Lok’s name meant happy, and he certainly was, even in this cluttered, damp basement that had become their base of operations. Shen’s name meant deep-thinking, but tragically he was as dumb as a dish of soap.

  Dong popped his eye back in and waited patiently for Shen to speak. After a minute of looking hopefully at the eager young man, Dong exhaled loudly and made the first move.

  “Yes?”

  “A package was delivered.”

  “Where?” asked Dong. He hadn’t heard the trap door, and Lok had moved to guard the rear tunnel.

  “At the opening of the south tunnel. Lok went out to buy more food at the grocery that stays open all night, just a few blocks away. I disabled the trap door and covered for him. He found the box ten feet inside the tunnel, where it opens near Stockton Street.”

  “And?”

  “I have the package.”

  Here we go, thought Dong. “And?”

  “I opened it.”

  “And?”

  “I thought you’d want to know what was inside.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I thought you’d want to know what was inside the package.”

  Dong blew out his cheeks. “What was inside?”

  “A note,” replied Shen. “And…something else.”

  Dong decided he wasn’t a patient man, after all.

  “Just give it to me,” he said tersely.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Lok has it.”

  “Of course.” Dong pressed his palms against the desk and stood up, turning toward the back of the chamber. Shen followed two steps behind.

  Lok stood maybe twenty feet down the tunnel, behind a metal grate with a door set into it. On his belt was a flashlight, and over one shoulder was a sword. Over his other shoulder was a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.

  “Lok!” Dong’s voice echoed down the tunnel.

  Lok turned, smiling. He was always smiling, as long as Dong could remember. At first Dong assumed it was gratitude for being plucked from the Hong Kong slums, but now he suspected Lok suffered from the same cranial confinement as his brother.

  “The box?”

  Lok nodded and extended his right hand, palm up. It was a small cardboard box, the kind where the to
p slides over the bottom, the size that might hold business cards. Dong took it from Lok, who was still beaming, and held tight to the lid with his left hand, pulling the bottom down slowly with his right. The lid came off with a small popping sound.

  Dong stared inside the box for a full minute before putting the lid back. His hands were shaking.

  “We’re leaving,” he said, looking from Lok to Shen.

  The two brothers looked at him and then at each other. “When?” They asked in unison.

  “Immediately,” replied Dong. “Bring only what’s necessary. I will bring the heart.”

  “What about the woman?” asked Shen.

  “What about the gwai loh?” asked Lok.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  The three men jumped as the voice echoed down the tunnel, Dong almost dropping the box. Lok clicked on a flashlight to reveal Sally and Cape moving toward them, Cape holding Xan’s legs, Sally with her arms around his torso.

  Dong waved awkwardly. “We were just—”

  “Turning around,” said Sally, disgust in her voice. “Open the door.” She looked pointedly at Dong as Lok complied. She and Cape pushed past them and stutter-stepped to the nearest couch, where they deposited the still-unconscious Xan.

  Dong’s face registered shock at seeing Xan, but Sally didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “A suspicious person might think you were about to steal the heart.”

  Dong’s good eye narrowed as he stepped forward and handed her the box. “You insult me too easily,” he said quietly. “In another life, you would have worked for me.”

  “I left that life behind for a reason,” said Sally. “In your world, people can only be trusted one moment at a time.” She broke eye contact with Dong and opened the box. Her jaw set as Cape stepped beside her.

  A finger lay at the bottom of the box, severed just below the third knuckle. It was a woman’s finger, judging by the tapering and the nail, and Cape was pretty sure it was the pinky from the left hand. He had no doubt where it had come from.

  Beneath the finger was a note written in Chinese, blood spotting the paper. Sally pulled the paper out of the box and read it aloud in English. “Bring the heart or I will send you hers,” she said in a monotone, then turned to Cape. “What time is it?”

  Cape held up his watch. “Almost three in the morning.”

  “We don’t have much time.” Sally put the paper back in the box and closed the lid.

  “Where?” asked Cape.

  “Ross Alley,” replied Sally. “The bakery.”

  Cape nodded. “It’s Monday morning, isn’t it?” he said. “They’re closed Mondays.”

  Sally looked at Dong. “Naturally, he doesn’t want to meet at his office or his home.”

  Dong’s face was grim. “Lin’s already dead, little dragon,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You of all people must know this.”

  “That why you were leaving?” asked Cape.

  Dong waved his hand impatiently. “He knows about the south tunnel,” he said. “We’re sitting ducks.”

  Sally shook her head. “He won’t come here—he doesn’t know what’s down here. If he was coming to us, he’d be here by now.”

  “I can’t take that chance.”

  Sally looked at Dong and smiled briefly, then stepped intimately close and whispered, “Yes, you can.” When Sally stepped away, Cape caught a glimpse of her eyes and was very glad he wasn’t standing in Dong’s shoes.

  Sally turned her back on Dong and walked over to the couch.

  Cape took his cell phone from his pocket and checked the screen. It had rung twice on the way over, but dropping Xan to answer the phone, though tempting, didn’t seem like an idea.

  2 missed calls. 1 voice message. No signal.

  It would have to wait.

  He moved toward the couch as Sally leaned over Xan. Taking a new length of rope, she bound Xan’s wrists, ran the rope around his ankles, then brought the rope over the back of the couch and across his throat. He’d choke with every swing of an arm or kick of his legs.

  “This guy that dangerous?” asked Cape.

  “He trained me.”

  “You sure one rope’s enough?” asked Cape. “Maybe we should drop an anvil on his head, or a safe.”

  Sally ignored him. Cupping Xan’s neck in her right hand, she tensed her fingers and squeezed where the neck met the skull, then set her left hand under his chin and twisted violently, stopping the motion after just a few inches.

  Cape grimaced. “I had a chiropractor do that once.”

  Sally nodded but kept her eyes on Xan. “It’s the same basic movement. If I keep going, it would break his neck.” She released Xan’s head and took a step back from the couch, then started counting just under her breath.

  “Five…four…three…”

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Lin opened her eyes.

  Her pupils were dilated, her vision blurry. Her shoulder was cold, almost numb, but she could feel something warm and wet running across her elbow and assumed she was still bleeding. She blinked and tried to take deep breaths to clear her head, but her lungs felt like they had collapsed, an invisible elephant sitting on her chest.

  Her arms were tied behind her back and she couldn’t feel her hands. Rocking forward, she shifted her weight, and on the third try managed to sit upright and get her legs under her. Almost immediately her left hand started to pulse, then throb, until she almost fainted from the pounding and the dull, ragged pain.

  That’s when she remembered the knife.

  She didn’t have to see her hand to know her finger was gone. She tried to control her breathing, the way she’d been taught, but she could only manage shallow breaths. Her head was still cloudy, and she struggled to keep her eyes open.

  She was sitting in a small room, almost a closet, maybe four by four with a ceiling roughly eight feet high. Buckets and mops had been pushed into one corner, and shelves covered the wall to her left, stacked with toilet paper, paper towels, tampons, and cleaning supplies. The wall behind her was empty, painted white. To her right was a door with a deadbolt lock. Directly in front of her, set against the far wall, a video camera rested on a rolling table. The red light above the lens was illuminated.

  Beneath the camera was a monitor, a new TV with picture-in-picture, a little square in the corner of the screen showing one scene and the big screen showing another. On the big screen was a room dominated by some kind of conveyor belt running down the center, with a large central structure jutting upward like a smokestack toward the ceiling. At the end of the conveyor was a beige mountain almost ten feet high. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a pile of fortune cookies.

  It took Lin a moment to make sense of the image in the small screen until she moved, because she didn’t recognize herself. Haggard and bloody, she bore no resemblance to the girl who boarded that ship in Fuzhou such a short time ago.

  Lin closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw the bomb.

  She saw it on the monitor first, sitting on the floor next to her, in plain sight but off to the side. A gray square with texture like clay, wires wrapped around it leading to a digital clock. Lin squinted at the small screen and then twisted her head around. The clock was counting backward in minutes.

  She said the number as it changed, as if saying it aloud would give her control over its inexorable decline.

  “Fifty-three…”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  “…two…one.”

  Xan opened his eyes.

  He turned his head slowly and studied the ropes binding his hands, then looked at Cape with a bemused expression. Then he noticed Sally and almost smiled. When he saw Dong standing a few feet away, he scowled.

  He turned back to Sally. “So it’s true,” he said in Cantonese.

  “What?” she replied in English, wanting Cape to follow the conversation.

  “You’re part of the conspiracy, little dragon?”

  “What conspirac
y?”

  Xan shook his head sadly and changed to English. “You’re denying you have the heart?”

  “No, we’ve got it.”

  “You admit it!”

  “Aren’t you going to ask where we got it?”

  “You stole it, obviously.”

  “Why is that obvious?”

  “It was stolen,” said Xan. “And you have it.”

  Sally shook her head sadly. “You haven’t changed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Things were never complicated for you.”

  Cape noticed a change in Xan’s eyes, as if he were about to say something and caught himself. Cape didn’t know Xan, but he knew Sally. He wondered if she had been the only complicated thing in Xan’s world.

  Xan asked, “Then where did you get it?”

  “Lin brought it here.”

  “Lin is in Fuzhou.”

  Sally raised her eyebrows but said nothing, challenging him with her eyes.

  “I sent her there myself,” said Xan indignantly.

  “On whose orders?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Lin boarded a freighter in Fuzhou,” said Sally. “She took the heart, smuggled herself onboard, and came here.”

  Xan stared at her, then looked over at Dong, who nodded.

  Cape stood back, watching Xan’s reactions, surprised at how little emotion he betrayed for a man tied to a couch. The wound in his leg had to hurt, but he did not flinch, totally focused on the mission that brought him here. It reminded Cape of Sally. She hadn’t said hello, nice to see you after all these years, you’re an asshole, why didn’t you write? Nothing mattered but the present situation and her ability to control it.

  Sally studied Xan for a minute, then said, “You didn’t know.”

  She produced a knife and bent down to cut the ropes.

  Dong, watching, raised his hands. “Are you sure…?”

  Sally waved him off as Xan slowly shook off the ropes. He remained seated in a nonthreatening pose and tilted his head from side to side, sharp cracking sounds coming from his neck.

  “You caught me off guard,” he said.