The Devil You Know

by Sam Sisavath

“I saw it.”

  “Ah.” He sighed. “Social media. That footage spread like wildfire.”

  “I’m surprised your bosses allowed it to.”

  “The only thing that can stop a viral video once it’s out there is another viral video. We’re working on it.”

  “That’s good to hear. You’re full of good news today, Porter,” she said, and smiled at him.

  He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Am I?” Then, “Ah. You didn’t know Xiao was still alive, did you?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “I guess I sort of let the cat out of the bag. Oh well. It’s not like there’s going to be a reunion anytime soon.”

  We’ll see about that, she thought, but said, “It really is you, isn’t it?”

  He ran a couple of fingers across his cheeks and slightly longer jaw. “Don’t get used to this new look. I’m due for a new face soon. Maybe I can even get a little closer to my old self. What do you think?”

  “I think you can eat shit and die, Porter.”

  “That’s not very ladylike.”

  “The lady took a hike when you tied me to this friggin’ chair.”

  “Be thankful it’s just a chair and not the chair.”

  He’s got a point there.

  “Where are the others?” she asked instead. “What did you do to them?”

  “We definitely have plans for them. Well, everyone except the reporter. Right now she’s just a loose end. In a few days, her body will be found by the police. Suicide. Her case will be closed and she’ll become a footnote in Houston journalism lore; a few people will remember her ten years from now, but everyone else will have already moved on to the next pretty blonde.” Porter crouched in front of her, providing her with an even better look at his new face. “He’s in line for a promotion, you know. Ringo. Your former FBI flame.”

  “He’s not my flame.”

  “That’s not how he tells it.”

  “Ringo’s a liar in addition to being a real bastard.”

  “Well, that lying bastard is going places. You know the guy they killed out there? The one that didn’t blow up with the RV?”

  Owen. His name is Owen, you sonofabitch.

  “He’s getting a makeover as we speak,” Porter said. “I’m getting a new face and he’s getting this one. After all, there is a video of him trying to assassinate a presidential candidate. Ringo was the one who led the assault on the would-be assassin’s RV in, of all places, a lonely Houston road in the middle of nowhere. In the ensuing gun battle, the assassin was killed along with a couple of unnamed, unidentifiable bodies. The case of the century, solved in one afternoon. For all his faults, Ringo is very good on camera. We’re going to let him go on the cable talk show circuit. The hero FBI Special Agent. He’ll probably get a medal or two.”

  Quinn could see it on his face: Porter was enjoying every second of this.

  “What did they do to you, Porter?” she asked.

  “They opened my eyes, Quinn.”

  “To what?”

  “The truth. I know you won’t believe me. Xiao didn’t, either.”

  “Maybe she’s just not a fan of your new face.”

  “That’s entirely possible. It does take some getting used to. Anyway, I was hoping you might know who her accomplice was. It had to be same person who helped you back at the Wilshire service center. A woman… I remember you saying it was a woman?”

  He doesn’t know. I thought he knew who she was when I told him about her then, and that he was just keeping it a secret, but he really doesn’t know.

  How is that possible?

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “We’ll figure it out. She won’t come into work tomorrow, and we’ll narrow the names down. Then we’ll tear her life apart and we’ll find her. We always get our man, eventually.”

  Quinn smirked. “Gee, Porter, when did you become such a company man? ‘We’ this, ‘we’ that. You fucking sellout.”

  He laughed and stood back up. “You can’t be a hippie all your life, Quinn. Sooner or later, we all have to grow up.”

  “And did you? Grow up?”

  “Yes. But it took a lot of help. I want to offer you that same helping hand. You and Sarah both.”

  “Sarah?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Your father would be so mad at me right now,” Sarah had said. Of all the things the other woman could have possibly said to Quinn as she lay on that stretch of road, half of her body eaten away by the blast, that was the thing that seemed most important for her to get out.

  Why? Why?

  “She didn’t tell you,” Porter continued without waiting for her to answer. “Interesting.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s recovering from her injuries as we speak.”

  “She’s alive…”

  “Yes. And she’ll stay that way, because that’s what we want. The Rhim always gets what it wants in the end, Quinn. The faster you realize that, the better your future will be.”

  “Are you saying I have a future?”

  “Of course. And it’s a bright one.” He shook his head, and she thought he almost looked like he was pitying her. “You have no idea how important you are to us. To the whole plan. That’s why the Old Men are going to look after you from now on. You and Sarah, and even Aaron, because I know you’ve grown fond of him.”

  “You’re going to give me back to Hofheinz, aren’t you?”

  “No. No more Hofheinz. Others will be assigned to work with you. A woman this time, if it’ll make you more comfortable.”

  “What would make me more comfortable is getting the hell out of this hellhole of yours.” She struggled against the zip ties holding her arms and legs against the chair but only succeeded in hurting her joints again. “Goddammit,” Quinn said, frustrated. “Don’t you think four sets of zip ties is a little overkill?”

  “Considering your record of escaping captivity? I’d say it’s the prudent thing to do.”

  “Are you scared of me, Porter? Is that it?”

  “No, Quinn, I’m not scared of you. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.” He glanced at his watch. “I want you to arrive at our destination in mint condition.”

  “Wait, destination? Are we moving?”

  Porter might have been about to answer when something that sounded like an electronic horn came alive outside the room. It began as a low whine that gradually increased in decibel until the steel walls around them began vibrating.

  Before she could ask what was happening, Porter had unclipped a two-way portable radio from behind him and pressed the transmit lever. “What’s going on out there?”

  A male voice, slightly muffled, answered: “Sir, it looks like we’re being intercepted.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know, sir. They’re coming at us from the air.”

  “Coast Guard?”

  “Unknown. They’re not responding to hail, but they’re getting closer, and we’re definitely their objective. They could have gone around us a few miles back, but they’re clearly on a direct approach.”

  Porter looked down at her as if she should know the answer.

  “What?” Quinn said.

  He smirked, then said into the radio: “We’re about to be boarded. Get ready for an assault.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man on the radio said.

  Outside, the klaxons grew in intensity.

  “Sounds like trouble,” Quinn said. She couldn’t quite stop the corners of her mouth from tugging upward into a smile. “Maybe we’re not going to be reaching that destination after all, Porter.”

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Porter said.

  “Are you sure? Your man didn’t sound very confident. In fact, I think he was about to pee his pants.”

  She was hoping for some kind of emotional response, but instead Porter reached up for the lightbulb dangling above her head.

 
“Hey, don’t,” Quinn said, just a second before the room was bathed in darkness again. “Porter!”

  His silhouetted form turned and walked away until he was just a patch of darkness in a room full of shadows.

  “Porter!”

  Something that sounded like metal cogs grinding against each other from the other side of the room, just before Porter threw open twin doors to reveal—

  Moonlight and empty black skies…and rows and rows of rectangular metal containers of various colors stacked on top of one another. Shipping containers.

  I’m on a ship. I’m on a cargo ship!

  Porter stepped out of the metal box. “Sit tight. I’ll be back, and we’ll finish this chat when I’m done out here.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Go to hell, Porter.”

  He grinned—or she thought he did, but it was difficult to be sure with most of his face hidden in shadows—before he swung the twin metal doors in a wide arc. Clang!

  Complete darkness again, except this time she had no trouble hearing the sirens (were there more than one?) wailing outside through the 14-gauge steel walls. The entire length of the cargo container, from the ceiling to the wooden floor below her feet, seemed to shake and tremble with every growing noise.

  Voices. Footsteps. A lot of footsteps, as people ran back and forth.

  She didn’t know how long she waited in the darkness—a minute? Two? Maybe thirty?—before the first signs of the “assault” that Porter had warned about finally happened.

  The sudden bursts of gunfire made her snap upright. They seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, and she thought she could hear the clink-clink-clink of bullet casings raining down on containers around her.

  Then, a massive Boom! as something exploded and the walls shook and the room got suddenly very, very hot.

  Chapter 25

  Xiao

  “What do you need?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Xiao, I’ve been preparing for this day for over five years. Tell me what you need, and you’ll get it.”

  “You got an army somewhere back there?”

  “Is that all?”

  “For starters…”

  It started with an army and ended with four, all-black Bell 412EP helicopters repurposed for combat. Xiao sat in one of them now as the aircraft glided over the calm waves of the Gulf of Mexico with what looked like a herd of whales just under the surface below them. Moonlight glinted off the suppressor attached to the barrel of the FN P90 clutched by the man leaning out the open hatch next to her, an identical weapon to the one hanging off a strap in front of Xiao at the moment.

  “There it is!” the man pointed. She could hear his Swedish accent just fine even with the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades and turboshaft engine ringing in her ears.

  Xiao looked where Stormare was pointing.

  It was hard to miss: a four-hundred-meter long and nearly sixty-meter wide baby blue vessel in the middle of the dark ocean. Its top was dotted with varied colored rectangular-shaped metal boxes, while a large white building extended past the tallest pile of containers near the back. There was nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction, and it was easy to imagine the vessel as the last evidence of a lost civilization. But of course it wasn’t—it was just one of thousands of cargo ships built for ferrying commercial products from port to port around the world.

  “How much longer?” Xiao shouted.

  “ETA?” Stormare said into his headset’s mic. Then, to her, “Five minutes until intercept.”

  “Can they see us yet?”

  “If we can see them, it’s a good bet they can see us. Though they probably have no idea who we are or what we’re doing out here. We have the element of surprise, but that’s not going to last for very long.”

  Xiao glanced over her shoulder at the men sitting behind her and Stormare. There were eight of them in the back of the helicopter, with plenty of space left to move around. The black-clad figures were busy checking their gear, their painted faces giving off the right combination of somber determination and fearlessness. Of course, she didn’t believe the latter for even a second. She’d only met them hours ago and didn’t even know their names, but people were people and no one was ever really fearless. The ones she was looking at now were all male, but there were a couple of females spread out among the tailing three choppers. Not that Xiao cared about gender equality during an assault.

  As long as they can shoot, and keep me from getting dead.

  She turned back to Stormare. “Everyone know what they’re doing?”

  “We’re not rookies!” Stormare said. “We’ll get it done!”

  “How much is he paying you for this?”

  “For this? Hell, this is the reward.” Then, off her perplexed look, “You know how long we’ve been waiting for this? Me, I’ve been on his payroll for almost three years now. Some of these guys have been around for longer than that.” He grinned, showing perfect white teeth that looked even whiter against the black and green camo smeared over his face. The wind whipped renegade strands of blond hair at his handsome face. “This is what we’ve been training for!”

  Let’s just hope you trained enough.

  She looked back at the painted faces behind her. “Remember: Don’t hold back!” When they turned in her direction, “Center mass to put them down, then one more in the head to make sure they stay down! You’re not going up against ordinary men here! According to intel, that boat is crawling with Rhim!”

  “Shoot for the head!” Stormare shouted back at his men. “Don’t hesitate! Follow your training!”

  The others nodded back in silence.

  Stormare cupped his headset, listened for a moment, then said to Xiao, “They’ve spotted us!”

  “How long before—” she started to ask when she heard it: A long, wailing siren that reached all the way out to them from up ahead. “Never mind.”

  “Lock and load!” Stormare shouted back at his men.

  Xiao concentrated on her own weapon, changing up her grip for the third time in as many minutes. She wasn’t a big fan of the submachine gun, or guns with bullpup designs in general. There was always something so odd about an assault weapon with its action behind the trigger group instead of in front. But she had to admit, whatever its funky design, the Belgium-made P90’s fifty-round magazine was going to come in real handy once she found herself surrounded by enemies.

  She reached into one of her pockets and took out the small bottle of painkillers she’d grabbed before takeoff. Maybe it was the constant rush of the cold Gulf of Mexico air or the altitude, but her stitched-up side was starting to itch. She’d already taken two earlier, and the logical part of her knew two more wasn’t going to do anything for the pain right here, right now when she needed it the most, but she didn’t let that stop her.

  Next to her, Stormare cupped his headset again and said into his mic, “Choppers Two and Three! Clear us a way down there!”

  Two black shapes flashed by below them, then streaked on ahead toward the blue ship in the near distance. It was close enough now that Xiao could make out the different colored boxes on the freighter’s deck against the darkness. The USS Winter had left the Port of Houston just before nightfall, supposedly carrying farm machinery and dry goods in the stacks of forty and twenty-feet containers onboard. Supposedly.

  Stormare had taken off his bulky chopper headset and replaced it with a smaller, more ergonomic one that he attached to the radio Velcroed to his black uniform’s front lapel.

  Xiao did the same, then clicked the Push-To-Talk switch that linked her to Stormare and the other shooters through a single communications channel. She took a breath, then: “This is Xiao to assault teams. I know you’ve been told about what you’re about to face, so I’m not going to beat around the bush. They’re faster, stronger, and they don’t go down easy. And when they do go down, they don’t stay down, so don’t stop pulling the trigger until you take the headshot. Screw any part of that up, and you�
��re dead. Do you understand?”

  A few of the dark faces behind her nodded, but no one answered through the comm.

  “Also,” Xiao said, “your boss has plenty of money, so don’t worry about wasting all that ammo.”

  That got a few chuckles.

  “Any questions?” Xiao continued. “Ask now or forever hold your peace.”

  “I got a question,” someone said through the comm.

  “What is it?” Stormare said.

  “How sure are we that isn’t just some innocent commercial vessel down there?”

  “Sure enough that they sent us up here. Any more questions?”

  “No, sir,” the voice said.

  Xiao turned to Stormare. “Do me a favor, hot stuff? Try not to sink the boat. My friends are onboard.”

  Stormare grinned back. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Xiao looked back at the Winter as it slowly grew in front of them. The two black Bells that had gone on ahead were almost on top of the cargo liner when the wailing siren seemed to actually get louder and more intense.

  “Here we go!” Stormare shouted.

  He hadn’t finished go when tracer fire appeared from the Winter’s deck and streaked through the sky toward the two approaching helicopters, the brap-brap-brap of heavy machine guns echoing all the way to their current position. The two choppers took evasive actions, banking in different directions as the rounds chased them like sentient fireflies.

  Farm machinery and dry goods, my ass.

  “Here we go,” Stormare said, and grabbed onto the handhold on the ceiling above them.

  Xiao did the same, watching as one of the Bells unleashed its primary weapon and red and orange fire spat from the side of the chopper as it swooped over the large ship, raking the white tower that housed the bridge and navigation—the “brain” of the Winter. A large mast toppled even as something caught fire, flames thrusting out from the multi-level building that controlled the vessel.

  “Jesus Christ, look at that thing,” Stormare said almost breathlessly next to her. She wouldn’t have been able to hear him against the engine noise if not for the fact he had said it into their shared comm line. “I’m glad those guys are on our side.”