China Dolls

by Rob Wood

  “Menodarwar . . . it is said you are bringing drugs across the border into Xinjiang—heroine . . . methamphetamine. Have you seen what it does? I think you have: It turns a healthy child into a skeleton. Some have rotten teeth. Some shake. They sweat with the stink of cat urine. That is a crime against your fellow Muslims. It is a crime against my people. It is a crime against God.”

  A gaunt brown man, with a face that was all creases and no features, spat into the fire.

  “Who says this?”

  “It doesn’t matter who says it,” replied Lily. “What matters is whether it is true. Or whether, if true, Menodarwar has the wisdom to stop.”

  “I am only a humble shepherd.”

  “A humble shepherd who is heavily armed.”

  “Snow leopards.”

  “You poison a yak carcass if you want to stop a leopard. You don’t need an army of thugs toting Soviet automatic weapons supplied by the Taliban.”

  The wrinkled man gestured at the Uighurs filling the shadows behind Lily. “To each his own, Lady General. Your people have weapons, too.”

  “They say, Menodarwar, that you live in a fine home, with a golden door, and a story each for family and in-laws.”

  “Business is good.”

  “What business is it? Surely not sheep.”

  The man opened his hands as if he were holding a large globe. “Whatever I do turns to gold. Hides. Sheep. Merchandise.”

  “If I were you, I would be lying, too. Afghans pay you well to finance their war by moving drugs into my country.”

  “I have heard it said . . . .” Menodarwar smiled, a black hole where his incisor should have been. “I have heard it said that it is like the Silk Road of old—in reverse. Now all things move east to Shanghai.”

  Lily nodded. “I know the route well. And I know the time value of money. It takes time to move the drugs to Shanghai. The impatient dealers are offloading more and more of their poison in Xinjiang, where the payoff is smaller—but immediate. Menodarwar, you should hate and despise those who are turning Muslim children into addicts.”

  “Allah gave man free will, Loulan.”

  “And Allah will strengthen the righteous and smite the sinner.” Lily turned a smoldering gaze on him, though her voice was quiet and detached. “I have asked my Uighur brothers to interdict any weapon, any drug, anything at all crossing the border that would be an offense to God and hurtful to his people.”

  “I give you my word, Loulan. There is nothing.”

  Lily stood and tossed the cup of tea disdainfully on the ground. “Good. I am glad we have spoken. We will take our leave.” A dozen Uighurs fell in behind her, their robes falling across the barrels of their rifles.

  Simon Raj came up beside her. “The bastard!” he muttered. “He didn’t even give us the courtesy of a credible lie.”

  “Of course there are drugs here,” said Lily. “What do they think pays for the war? And perhaps it is an opportunity for us. I am thinking of doing for drug smuggling what Rockefeller’s Standard Oil did for American wildcatters. Quality control, uniformity, low cost.”

  Raj, no student of American history, let that comment pass. “And what about the nuclear material the Americans are worried about?”

  “I no longer think it would have gone over the pass. It takes too long. Also, there’s no indication of radiation exposure among the border guards—or Menodarwar’s men, for that matter.”

  “They could have shielded it,” observed Simon Rai.

  “I would have done so,” said Lily. “But that would have meant a very heavy container that would best be moved with a forklift. Nobody noticed that. Nobody saw a truck frame sinking low in its withers or observed an exceptionally deep rut in the snow or mud. Drugs are commonplace here. But a heavy cargo, a highly radioactive cargo—that would have been noticed, I’m convinced.”

  “Nevertheless, it is my opinion,” said Simon Raj, “that we are not yet finished. We should still ask more questions.”

  “I agree. If it came through here, it came through the border crossing. I say we ask the Chinese guards.”

  “What makes you think they’ll tell us?”

  Lily turned and looked at him full in the face. “We won’t ask nicely,” she said.

  31

  TEARS OF ALLAH

  The next morning, Lily, Raj, and a dozen Uighurs wheeled into the Khunjerab border crossing on ATVs. It was a little like Hell’s Angels in Sturgis, South Dakota. True, this sure wasn’t Sturgis; it was China. But the Hell’s Angels part was apt.

  The rearmost of the Uighurs formed a defensive perimeter, automatic rifles at the ready. The others pulled up alongside two wide-eyed, slack-jawed guards. Lily strode into the customs shack with the air of Douglas MacArthur about to receive the surrender of the Japanese.

  “Good morning, Captain.” Lily saluted smartly. “I have some questions to ask you concerning goods crossing your checkpoint.”

  “I answer only to my superiors in Urumqi.”

  Lily unholstered her side arm, tapped the man’s cheek with it, pulled the trigger guard back, with her left hand, and released it, instantaneously chambering a cartridge. The Chinese captain’s eyes widened as he heard the ominous click. Lily placed the barrel against the man’s right ear. She looked him directly in the eyes. She pulled the trigger.

  The Chinese captain screamed, sank to his knees, and cupped his hands over both ears. He held this position several seconds, panting, staring at the floor.

  “With your remaining good ear, you will listen and answer my questions,” said Lily calmly. “Has anything new passed your checkpoint, something out of the ordinary bound east over the pass? A vehicle perhaps? One you have not seen before? Individuals you have not seen before? A cargo that seemed out of the ordinary?”

  “No. No. No!” wailed the Chinese, still on the ground, still holding his ear.

  They were interrupted by the approach from the Pakistani side of the border of a rusted blue livestock trailer. It wallowed and yawed so badly that it slid the sheep on the truck bed back and forth against the wooden slats that penned them in.

  “What’s that?’ Lily looked up.

  The Chinese captain got up off the floor and glanced out. “It’s just Menodarwar’s sheep.”

  A Chinese guard asked the driver for his papers, gave the truck a cursory glance, and waved it on. Perhaps he was eager to get away from the mad bleating and the sheep stench. Or perhaps there was another reason.

  As they pulled out, Lily noticed the truck was dripping a trail of dark spots on the road sand.

  “What’s that?’ she asked, half to herself.

  “Probably just motor oil. You can see the old crate is on its last legs.”

  Lily pushed the guard captain outside with her pistol. She bent and smoothed a pinch of the damp sand between two fingers and brought it to her lips.

  “It’s blood,” she said. Standing, she fired her pistol into the air. “Stop the truck!” she ordered. Two of her Uighurs moved into its path and leveled rifles at the driver.

  Herding both the captain and the inspecting guard forward, she stopped by the truck bed and peered through the slats at the sheep. Every one of them had red, raw bellies. She could see the blood oozing from a rough whipstitch used to sew the bellies shut.

  “Open them up. Gut them,” she said. One of the Uighurs leaped into the truck, lifting a sheep by the throat. He held it so its back was against him and ran a knife between the flailing legs. A fist-size bag tumbled out, swaddled in bloody polyethylene plastic. He pricked it with the knife tip, lifting half a gram of white powder to his nose and mouth. Then he spit it out.

  “The tears of Allah,” he said. “Heroin. Very potent.”

  There was a moment of dense quiet. The only sound was the wind which moaned down from the Karakoram Mountains. Eyes turned to Lily.

  “Machine gun the sheep,” she said. “Burn the truck.”

  “What about the Chinese guards?”

  “Burn
them, too.”

  “Wait!” protested the Captain. “I’ll give you anything you want!”

  “I want to know if anything unusual passed the check point. Something extremely heavy. Perhaps it was the size of a trunk. It would have been moved by strangers.”

  “No. No,” he shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth,” said Simon Rai.

  “Don’t burn him, then,” returned Lily. “Just shoot him.”

  32

  CACHE AND CARRY

  For Cochrane, and she presumed for Purdy, too, it was one long, cold, and silent drift to earth. She kept glancing at the glow from her altimeter and compass. She did it just for the company. The electronic glow was a comfort high in the cold, thin air.

  Of course, “alone” was the way they wanted it. Stealth was the operative word. But she felt as if she were in another dimension. Was this hypoxia? Her thoughts raced from one mental vignette to another—her arguments with her father, who always expected more from her. . . her sister who held her when her mother died . . . her last lover who was there in the vignette somewhere in the shadows. Then she hit, tumbled, and rolled.

  Instantly she was back on earth, experiencing a flurry of adrenaline-keyed reactions to her repeated training. Purdy landed not far from her, and together, they secured the chutes, buried them, and dressed their weapons for action, including the third member of their team, Lazyboy.

  The robot had thumped the ground, rolled, and righted itself. Pretty impressive, really. Like a devoted dog. They packed his chute, and checked his weapons and sensors.

  “Good morning, it’s 28 degrees and chilly here at an altitude of 15,000 feet,” Cochrane smiled, as she read off Lazyboy’s initial report. “All systems are go.”

  The landing, gear retrieval, and cache had consumed precious minutes. They now set off toward the Pass, Lazyboy running along behind them and easily matching their pace on its all-terrain tracks. The ground was hard, reddish, and brushed with grass bent and sheathed in a light frost.

  As the sun rose, the day warmed. There was a brief stir of wildlife. They caught a glimpse of Marco Polo sheep, moving down off a crag to graze. Their horns curled in enormous spirals. In silhouette it seemed as if they were wearing the big hair of the 1980s. Suddenly the orderly flock broke and scattered, skittering stones down the cliff side. A moment later Purdy and Cochrane heard it, too: the sound of gunfire.

  They picked their way around boulders the size of tractor trailers, ducking and scrabbling their way toward the sound. It had been inevitable that they move into the mountains, because that was the only cover. With sufficient elevation, they could put their glasses on the pinpoints of light that indicated muzzle flash in the distance.

  “Looks like a dozen or so got charged by a larger force out on the plain and were surrounded,” said Purdy from under the field glasses. “Now they’re being pincered. The squad in the center is holding off the pursuit on one flank and trying to fight through the other line to high ground. Someone’s picked up a lot of enemies. The squad in the center is taking a pounding, but returning fire. I’m not sure why they’re not falling like bowling pins.”

  “Body armor?” asked Cochrane.

  “Must be. Pretty good stuff, if it’s taking repeated hits.”

  “Well, the million-dollar question is ‘who are those guys?’ Is this some tribal dust-up?”

  “I doubt it. Based on the ordinance and the numbers, this isn’t about stealing sheep. Know anything else they take seriously?”

  “Only one thing—drugs.”

  “That’s my bet. We’re looking at Miami Vice, up in the Karakoram Steppe.” After a pause, Purdy continued his narration. “So, it looks like the squad in the center has dropped a defensive line behind some ATVs and Land Rovers. That’s the cover. Those guys are running through cartridges like they’re losing lottery tickets. So far, their suppressing fire is holding back the east side of the pincer. There are three separate groups tying up the other flank, trying to force the enemy to fall back or break so the squad can take the high ground on that side. And who is this on point? Oh, my God. . . . !”

  33

  NO LUCK, NO TIME,

  NO AMMO

  If Lily had had a moment to curse herself it would be for not anticipating that Menodarwar would move so swiftly or marshal so many forces. She had relied on the agility of her “cavalry”—Uighurs mounted on ATVs with a couple of Land Rover support vehicles. But Menodarwar knew the way back to Xinjiang as well as she, and he had turned out a superior force, one group rushing her from the Chinese border side, one coming from behind in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan area. They had caught her on the plateau so her ATVs had no special advantage compared to the motorcycles, transports, and old Indian trucks that roared up, offloading drug-crazed or greed-crazed tribesmen from the Gilgit.

  Her best chance was to beat each of the enemy divisions to the high ground. This would involve triage, sacrificing nearly half her men so the other half of the contingent could possibly win their way to defensible peaks. A high price, but never had the Karakoram foothills looked so inviting.

  Menodarwar had armed most of his men with small caliber automatic weapons. As a result, the air hummed with a cloud of lethal projectiles. It was as if the air was filled with hornets. So many slugs! A collision with any one of them could mean death.

  “Keep your heads down. Use your weapon sights. Move from cover to cover,” Lily shouted to her troops.

  The din was astounding. It acquired a dimension, so that the sound was something you could feel. Thick rather than thin. Constant rather than spontaneous. Rocks splintered where they had been hit. Rock chips clouded the air so that you feared to draw a normal breath lest you suck them in.

  Lily knew she could not rely on voice commands, so often she stood and pointed before ducking behind a rock or ignominiously sprawling prostrate on the ground, only to get up again and try to orchestrate this madness. No conductor was ever so challenged. No symphony ever played to this tempo.

  It was essential that she keep the west flank off balance and test the entire line with three units of roving Uighur light infantry—each a potential spear point that could push through. If the enemy were to be allowed to focus on just one point, they would stop her by virtue of sheer numbers.

  Already her defensive perimeter had almost been breached as the Menodarwar forces on the Gilgit-Baltistan side had washed up against her defensive line, hiding behind an out-of-commission Land Rover. The Menodarwar forces had pounded her defenses like ocean surf. They had come so close that her Uighurs had felt their spittle coughed up on their faces, heard their grunts, and watched their eyes as they gunned them down.

  Lily was running out of ammunition, running out of time, running out of options.

  Purdy was glued to his field glasses, following the desperate run to high ground. He froze. His breath caught in his throat, then released in a low, protracted whistle.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it, Purdy?”

  “It seems that we’ve seen that general before! Only this time, she’s fighting without a bow and arrow.

  “Lily? You don’t mean?”

  “Oh, yeah. And like the old ad said, she looks lovely even without make-up.”

  “Purdy, you school-boy son of a bitch.”

  “I calls them as I sees them.”

  “They’ll obviously be occupied for a while,” said Cochrane. “Shall we call in the coordinates? That’s what we came for. One missile solves a lot of problems—puts a crimp in the drug runners and allows us to complete the mission.”

  Purdy thought. Never in his life had he disobeyed orders, but being in the field permitted you to improvise, right? “No, Cody. I don’t want to do that. At least I want to talk to her first.”

  “Roger that, partner. That’s why you wanted her to know we were coming. I don’t want to do that either.”

  “We owe her,” said Purdy. “What say we let
her know help is on the way? We let Lazyboy chunk some grenades into the anti-Zhang forces on the right. I believe you both understand the command “Suppress Enemy Forces.’” Initiate in 15 minutes. Then, charge the perimeter. You’re Lazyboy’s cover. Once they pinpoint the launch location, they’ll be coming to get him. You intercept. You mow down anything that hits your field of vision. With just one other enemy position to focus on, Zhang can shoot it out with the other group on her flank. I’ll give her a hand. Hopefully, she’ll have high ground by then.

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll make it up as we go along. Let’s use this location as our fallback point. I’ll look for you here.”

  Purdy took his M24 and darted up a ravine wall, bounding from crag to crag, trying to get high and get close to the firefight ahead. His first shots were carefully lined up, the rifle barrel balanced on the swivel bipod. Although Menodarwar’s Gilgits were dug in and well-positioned to oppose Zhang’s push to high ground, they were exposed on the flank. That’s where Purdy hit them, choosing each time to strike where a hit would enable Zhang to push higher and further, breaking the containment. Once his own position was discovered, Purdy switched from stealth mode to harrying the Gilgits from a variety of locations in quick succession, sometimes firing back along his trail to create the dust and din associated with a much larger attacking force. Still, he was only one man, though one running, crouching and firing as if possessed. He glanced at his watch. Where the heck was supporting fire from Lazyboy?

  Cochrane threaded her way through the rocks and brush of the lower mountain. Lazyboy ran on ahead, his tank treads thrumming along on the hardpan from which the foothills rose. He was a small target. He was armored. He was lethal.

  Cochrane felt like none of those things. She resented her wobbly advance and the falls that scraped the skin off her palms when she caught herself pitching forward. She resented the juxtaposition of her anxiety and Lazyboy’s mechanical sangfroid. And she resented that he so easily outpaced her. Lazyboy was even now close to the target and completely out of sight. All Cochrane had to remind her she was not alone was the electronic tether—the hand-held console that gave her the robot’s location, ops status, and accepted her commands.