Windburn

by Kenny Soward

  “Jade Tiger. Watch yourself!”

  Jake’s eyes jerked down from the rearview to see that he was coming up on the Humvee fast. He gasped and slammed on his breaks just before he rear-ended the vehicle. As the Explorer drifted back, he slowly let out a long breath and shook his head. Looking up, he saw the soldier grinning down at him before he pointed to his own eyes and then pointed at Jake.

  Jake nodded and returned a weak salute, indicating that he got the message.

  It dawned on him that getting home wasn’t going to be so easy.

  Chapter 25

  Yi, The Lodge, Gatlinburg, Tennessee

  Yi knew something was wrong before they reached the end of the lodge’s long driveway. He had a sixth sense about such things. Violence was like a rumble of thunder in his head, death a shiver up his spine. Yi believed he’d been born with the ability, and it had kept him and his soldiers mostly alive.

  “Stop here,” Yi told Chen while they were still thirty yards from the lodge even though Katrya’s two SUVs continued past the building and parked in their usual spots.

  Chen stopped their SUV, and Yi popped the door and got out, narrowing his eyes at the lodge as if looking for its secret. He raised his weapon and pointed it at the building, cross-stepping slowly to his right to get a better angle on the front porch, since hedges and low bushes blocked his view.

  Katrya’s soldiers exited their vehicles casually, rifles slung over their shoulders as they chatted quietly amongst themselves. Katrya stepped out of the passenger side of one SUV and looked over at Yi. She hadn’t noted the danger right away, but when he glanced over at her and she saw that he was in a firing stance, she instantly swung her rifle up and hissed orders to her soldiers. They were surprised at first and then recovered quickly, splitting into two groups and sprinting around both sides of the lodge to surround the place.

  Yi continued to sidestep until he was looking straight down the walkway to the front door. The front door stood open, and there were bloody handprints on the door frame.

  “A calculated assault?” Katrya sidestepped to meet him with her rifle stock resting against her shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Yi said, then he looked askance at her. “May I?”

  “Knock yourself out, comrade,” Katrya responded.

  Setting his jaw, Yi moved down the walkway, eyes darting around as he allowed his instincts to take over. His senses gathered input and sent it to his brain, where his experience and training parsed through the data as fast as a computer, free to command his body into action at the first sign of trouble without extraneous thoughts or feelings.

  He paused at a strip of clothing laying on the path. Kneeling to get a closer look, he saw it was a piece of bloodstained material that looked familiar.

  “The girl escaped.” His tone was flat and professional, though he could not hide a note of spite.

  “What?” Katrya asked.

  “This material is from her pajamas.”

  Katrya cursed as Yi continued forward, coming to the front porch steps where he noticed the bloody handprints on one of the porch columns.

  He turned his head without taking his eyes off the front door. “The handprints are small hands, probably the hands of the girl.” Then he went up the steps, his boots hardly making a sound on the wood.

  Jiao lay unmoving in a pool of blood just inside the foyer, causing Yi to rush forward, but he stopped just short of going inside. His eyes took in the grand living room, the shattered glass along the back wall and what appeared to be Alina laying on the floor near the bathroom. Glancing down, Yi saw that Jiao’s body was riddled with holes, and she was quite clearly dead.

  Yi’s grip tightened on his weapon, and he took a deep breath to keep his emotions packed down tight. Then he stepped over Jiao’s body and into the foyer, looking and listening for any signs of the enemy. Katrya sneaked in behind him and moved quickly to Alina’s body, kneeling next to her. Yi glanced over to see that the woman had been shot at least twice, her blood sprayed across the wall. Her glasses sat awkwardly on her nose, and music still piped through her earbuds.

  “Someone surprised her.” Katrya’s eyes looked from the communications officer to the bathroom.

  “They have a dog,” Yi stated, noting how Alina’s arm was twisted at an odd angle, and her wrist mangled to the point that her hand hung by a few threads of tendon and muscle.

  “A big one,” Katrya agreed, standing up and looking around.

  By that time, several of Katrya’s soldiers had filtered into the room along with Yi’s soldiers, and they set about clearing the lodge of any lingering intruders.

  “We need to move our—” Yi started to say, but Katrya’s face grew alarmed and she rushed across the living room with a cry.

  Yi saw what Katrya was upset about as soon as he turned. The Box was gone, along with its case. Someone had packed it up and taken it with them. Katrya placed her rifle on the table and leaned on it with both hands, seething with anger as she cursed.

  “This is not a good thing,” Yi said.

  “They will not be able to access the computer core.” Composing herself, Katrya stood and turned, hands on her hips tiredly as she addressed Yi.

  “Even if they cannot access the computer core, they will still understand its importance.”

  “Yes, comrade, though none of those things are most important.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If our employers know the Box has fallen into enemy hands.” Katrya raised her hand to the back of her ear and made an explosive gesture. “They might assume we have fallen into enemy hands as well.”

  “They will activate the implant in our heads.”

  Katrya shrugged. “At least it will be a quick death.”

  Yi stared at the woman in disbelief. Their lives and the lives of their people seemed like a game to her, and she didn’t seem to care who won as long as she was entertained by it all.

  A soldier stepped up with the frail-looking doctor, Boris, in tow.

  “Ah, Boris,” Katrya said as she turned to face them. “You are alive. That is some good news.”

  Boris gave Katrya a brief bow, and a shock of his yellow hair fell over his weasel eyes.

  “We found him hiding in the closet,” the soldier said, the right side of his lip curling slightly.

  “What happened here?” Yi asked him, forcefully. “What did you see?”

  “I saw nothing, comrade,” Boris replied unapologetically, and Yi glared at the man as if he wanted to rip his head off. “I stayed hidden, as I’m ordered to do in all battle situations.”

  Pointing at Jiao’s corpse laying in the foyer, Yi spat, “You couldn’t have picked up a gun and offered some resistance?”

  “Boris is just doctor,” Katrya countered. “He is not trained to fight.”

  “He cannot fight, but he can torture people?” Yi clenched his fist at his waist, recalling Boris’s satisfied expression after torturing the lodge family.

  “He is a valuable asset to our team and performs the duties required to keep us fighting.” Katrya’s tone had turned challenging. “Jiao was alive because of Boris.”

  “I would take one Jiao to ten of Boris.”

  “To each their own,” Katrya said with a snide uptick of her mouth, then she turned her attention to her soldier. “What else?”

  “The girl from the family is gone. She cut herself free using a metal nail file. Her ropes are still in the room.”

  “You did not search them before tying them up?” Yi asked in an accusatory tone.

  Katrya shot Yi a warning glance and then ordered Boris and the soldier away. “Go and start cleanup operations. We’re moving to a new base and burning this one to the ground.”

  Boris and the soldier gave her a nod before attending to her orders.

  Katrya spun on Yi. “I warned you about speaking to me that way in front of my soldiers.”

  Yi glanced over at Ivan and Chen and his men standing in the foyer area. Ivan wa
tched the pair intently, his gun cradled easily in his arms. That gave Yi a small bit of confidence, although the tattooed gang members, Jacques and Victoro, stood nearby as well, watching the pair with equal interest.

  “Perhaps you allowed your own self-interests to jeopardize our operations here.” Yi’s eyes found Katrya’s, and he pressed his point harder now that his men had his back. “You did not plan this mission properly. You should have left a real team of guards here.”

  “Perhaps you and yours?” Katrya suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Yi agreed. “This certainly would not have happened had we been here, although you would have been gunned down by large-caliber bullets.”

  “Do you think that’s a shame?” Katrya asked with a sneer. When Yi did not answer her immediately, her sneer fell away and her tone turned condescending as if she were talking to a child. “Next time, we will put you and your little team on guard duty where you can stay at base and be safe and warm.”

  Yi sighed and looked around as the soldiers prepared the home for burning. They’d brought in several cans of gasoline and placed them at the foot of the stairs. Yi noticed someone had moved Jiao’s body to the couch where the dead dragon would rest forever.

  Some of Yi’s anger melted away as he refocused on the reason for them being here. To bring the destruction of the great imperialistic nation that plagued mankind. They couldn’t do that if they were dead, which he believed would happen if they did not find their missing property.

  “We may not ever know what happened here,” Yi said, “but we need to find the Box. That must be our priority.”

  “I agree.”

  “The Box could be anywhere by now, a hundred miles in any direction.”

  “You are right, comrade,” Katrya said, “and that is why I am glad we have this.” She removed something from a pocket on her combat suit and held it up like a precious diamond. It was a black, oval-shaped device twice the size of Katrya’s thumb with a simple screen and a blinking red light on it.

  “A location tracker,” Yi’s tone was hopeful.

  “It is not as convenient as a GPS, though it will give us the general direction of the Box in relation to our position. We may have to dig around little bit, but we will find it.”

  “Good,” Yi said, feeling better about their chances. “Now if we only knew who we were up against.”

  Once again, Katrya’s smile widened, and a malicious gleam entered her eyes. “Alina mentioned that there are cameras all around the house and a surveillance room located upstairs off the master bedroom.”

  “There might be video of the attack?”

  Katrya nodded, her grin as hungry and toothy as a shark’s.

  WEATHERING THE STORM Book 5

  Available Here

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