by Marc Cameron
“But they are coming tonight?”
“That is what the man on the phone said.”
“What time?” Fu asked.
Qassim shrugged. “I do not know. I brought tea and noodles, so I am prepared to wait. He said he would pay me for ten hours even if we were only out for two.”
Fu nodded to one of his men. “Restrain and gag him so he can’t raise an alarm. Put him up front in the V-berth, out of sight.”
“Please, sir,” Qassim said. “You do not have to tie me. I do not know these people. I have no allegiance to them. If they have done something wrong, I am happy to help you capture them.”
Fu ignored him, nodding again to his man to get on with it.
“Could I at least call my wife?” Qassim asked. “She worries.”
Fu sat on one of the bench seats and took out his knife. It had seen much use lately and needed some time on the stone. Blessedly, Qassim fell quiet at the sight of it.
“Better,” Fu said, closing his eyes for a moment to enjoy the sound of the Uyghur’s silence. He set his hat on a small chart table beside him, and took a whetstone from his coat pocket, drawing the blade across it as he spoke. “At times, I want my bait to make noise, to draw my prey in closer with their screaming.”
The Uyghur licked his lips, swallowing hard. His eyes wide as teacups. “I . . . I . . . can scream. You do not have to cut me.”
Fu smiled. “Tonight,” he said, “I want my bait to be silent. You will be gagged, so the rats will come to you. Remain quiet and you may survive to return to the arms of your bothersome wife.”
Fu set the knife on the chart table next to his hat and tried calling Qiu again. Still nothing. Odd that he would not answer. The man knew Fu expected a report. What could possibly be taking them so long? A lone woman should pose no problem for them at all.
58
Ryan bailed out of the van before it skidded to a complete stop. The transmission chattered, protesting being thrown into Park while the wheels were still rolling.
Ryan had slid in sideways, putting himself directly on top of the action but forcing Adara to run around the vehicle to engage.
“Shit, Jack!” she snapped, flinging the passenger door open.
Surprised by the oncoming van, the two Chinese men had bunched together, shoulder to shoulder, throwing up their arms against the headlights, firing blindly. Bullets thwacked off the hood. Glass shattered as at least one round hit the windshield. Another took the side mirror off the door, missing Ryan by inches.
He didn’t care.
Microtech Halo in his left hand, Beretta pistol in his right, Ryan ignored the oncoming gunfire and charged straight at the men as soon as his boots hit the pavement. Instead of moving off-line, the pug in the leather jacket attempted to backpedal, firing as he went. Ryan brought the Microtech around in a tight arc, burying the blade in the side of the man’s neck, yanking him sideways by the collarbone in a combination brachial stun and hooking maneuver. Momentum threw him sideways before he realized his throat had been cut.
Pivoting a hair, Ryan brought the muzzle of the Beretta in line with the other shooter’s face. He fired four shots in rapid succession. The Bowers Group Bitty muffled but did not completely silence the report. It didn’t matter. The guy was well beyond hearing anything after the first round. Mouse-gun .22 though it was, the little thirty-five-grain slugs had done their job, and done it well.
Ryan turned back to where the pug lay clutching his neck, blood pouring from between his fingers. Ryan anchored him with two quick shots behind the ear. He had been the one to shoot Lisanne.
Four seconds after he left the van, Ryan stood and scanned the sidewalk. A thin curl of gray smoke rose from the muzzle of the Bowers Bitty.
Adara was on her knees, one hand pressed to Lisanne’s upper arm, the other under her shirt, searching for other wounds. “Help me get her to the van! Stay with me, Leese.”
Training overcame panic, and Ryan lowered the hammer on the Beretta before stuffing it into his pocket. He grabbed Lisanne’s legs as gently as he could. Her head lolled to the side, a swath of arterial blood bathing her cheek. Adara carried her under each arm.
Hi-Lo sirens wailed in the distance.
“Get her in the van, Jack,” Adara said. “I’ll work on her while you drive.”
Ryan climbed backward through the side door, lifting Lisanne so she rested on the backseat, her head and shoulders in Adara’s lap.
Lisanne’s mouth opened and closed, making croaking sounds like a fish out of water. She arched her back at a sudden pain, and then collapsed from the effort. Her eyes fluttered and she looked up at Adara.
Her words were a forced whisper. “You . . . guys . . . came . . .”
“Of course we came,” Adara said, sounding much calmer than Ryan felt. “You can’t have all the fun.” Adara searched frantically through torn flesh and shards of shattered bone for the bleeder under Lisanne’s biceps.
Ryan grabbed her medical kit from the back and touched Lisanne’s cheek. “She’s gonna fix you up.”
The sirens were getting louder, closer—just blocks away now.
Adara glanced up at Ryan, her hands, her face, the front of her coat, covered in Lisanne’s blood. “Jack.” She shook her head, gritting her teeth, squinting away tears. She unwound a rubber tourniquet and wrapped it high and tight under Lisanne’s armpit as she spoke. “Turning her over to the authorities might be the only chance she has.”
Ryan nodded toward the dead men on the ground—the men he’d just killed. “I think those were the authorities. They didn’t have any intention of taking her to a hospital. If we take her with us, at least she has a chance. Leave her behind and . . .”
Adara shook her head, eyes welling with frustration and the unbearable pain of losing another friend. “Jack . . .”
Ryan knew exactly what she meant. In all likelihood, Lisanne Robertson would die no matter what they did. Ryan put the van in gear and made a U-turn, avoiding the street with oncoming police cars as he headed north toward Kanas Lake.
At least this way she would die among friends.
59
Yao’s heart fell when Chavez lowered the phone and shook his head. Medina was at the end of her rope, unstrung, a mother helpless to aid a child in danger.
Chavez had turned off his Bluetooth in order to attempt the call, and Ryan’s frantic voice crackled over the net for all to hear. Chavez started to answer, but Ma held a finger to his lips.
“Ding! Adam!” Ryan hailed again. “I’m not reading you. Transmitting in the blind. Lisanne’s been shot. It’s bad, Ding.” His voice caught, as he found it difficult to speak. “Really bad. We’re headed for exfil. In the black now, but not sure for how long. Hope you’re getting this.” His voice dropped lower. “Hurry . . . Like I said, it’s really bad.”
Yao pressed his jaw against the muzzle of Medina’s gun. “Go ahead and shoot if you’re going to,” he said. “The men after you have already tortured and murdered one of my dearest friends, and now they’ve severely wounded another.”
Yao had made a career of reading people, but Medina’s face was stone. There was nothing else to do but lay all his cards on the table. He spoke quickly. Ryan would beat them to the boat if they didn’t leave in the next five minutes. “Hala is with one of the most capable men I know.”
“My sister?”
“Listen to me!” Yao snapped. “We don’t have time if you stop and ask questions. Your sister was killed trying to save Hala. My friend killed the man that killed her. He got Hala out of China and she is safe. The men after you are with the Chinese intelligence. They believe you have information that could help them find a missing scientist, Liu Wangshu.”
Medina’s mouth fell open, astonished. “Professor Liu? What information?”
“Beijing believes you know where to find him,” Yao said. “They are usi
ng every means to find you. They know you are affiliated with Wuming.”
“What do you care?” Ma asked. “Uyghur injustice is a low priority for the United States.”
“And most Han,” Yao said, nodding at Ma. “You know too well that these are issues of humankind, not ethnicity. But, to be honest, I work for the U.S. government, and we want to find Professor Liu as well.”
“Why do you want him?” Medina asked.
“Honestly,” Yao said, “we want to find him because Beijing is interested. We believe he has something to do with a missing submarine.”
Medina lowered the pistol. “A Chinese submarine?”
“Correct,” Yao said. “Now we really need to go. My friend is in trouble—”
Chavez’s phone buzzed. Ma nodded for him to put it on speaker.
Yao nearly collapsed when Clark’s voice came across, loud and clear, as if he were in the room beside them.
“You called?”
“No time to explain, John,” Chavez said. “But I have Hala’s mother here. She wants to say hello.”
* * *
—
Easy, Jack,” Adara said, cursing softly as Ryan drifted the van through a sweeping corner, chattering the rear tires.
“Sorry,” he said, stomach in his throat. He’d adjusted the rearview mirror so he could keep an eye on what was happening in the back.
Covered in blood, Adara cradled Lisanne’s shoulders in her lap, working frantically. She’d applied a SWAT-T Tourniquet first—essentially a long strip of rubber—as soon as they were in the van. It was small, always in her pocket, and handy, so it went on while Ryan was getting the bag. She’d put a windless tourniquet over that one by the time they hit the edge of town, twisting it tight enough to make Lisanne wince from the pain. People liked to argue tourniquets in the comfort of their living rooms, throwing out stats about lost limbs and less drastic alternatives. Rolling down a mountain road in the back of a van in a hostile country with blood squirting out a brachial artery—all such arguments were void. Lisanne could well lose her arm if circulation wasn’t restored in the next few hours, but Adara had seconds to stop the bleeding.
“How . . .” Lisanne gave a hollow cough. It was weak, little more than a gagging click. “How . . . bad?”
“You’re hanging on,” Adara said. “And that is amazing.”
“Don’t . . . sugarcoat . . .” Lisanne said.
Ryan wiped away a tear with his forearm.
“We’ve stopped the bleeding in your arm,” Adara said.
“Hurts like hell,” Lisanne said. “What else?”
“Two shots to the abdomen,” Adara said. “No exit wounds.”
Lisanne arched her back, grimacing, and then fell limp.
Adara patted her cheek. “Hey, kiddo! Lisanne!” She put two fingers to Lisanne’s neck, sighing in relief, sniffing back tears like she had a cold. “I have a pulse. It’s fast as a runaway train from blood loss, but it’s still there. The shots missed her lungs, but one of the bullets went in right where her spleen is.”
Ryan glanced in the rearview mirror. He swallowed, straining to get the words out of his throat. “What . . . can you do?”
Adara shook her head. “If the bullet hit her spleen and she’s bleeding internally . . . there’s nothing I can do.”
Ding’s voice came over the net. “Jack, Jack, Ding. How’s she holding up?”
“Not good,” Ryan said. “We’re coming into the village now . . .” He tapped his brakes, slowing to let a dark beater crew-cab pickup coming in from the west turn onto the road ahead of him.
“Tell me that’s you,” Chavez said.
Ryan flicked his brights on and off.
“Gotcha,” Chavez said.
Ryan chanced a look over his shoulder. “How we doing?”
Adara shook her head. “Same. She’s out, but still breathing on her own and I have a pulse. She’s a tough lady.”
“No kidding . . .”
Ahead, the little pickup truck’s headlights went dark. Still well away from the docks, it stopped in the middle of the road.
* * *
—
Tell Jack to stand by,” Yao said from the front seat of the Great Wall pickup. Ma drove. Chavez sat in the middle. Medina and the two Uyghur men sat in the back. The men made no secret of the fact that if they suspected either intruder of treachery that would harm Medina, they would not hesitate to shoot.
Yao had to ask to borrow the night-vision goggles back from the young Uyghur, Perhat, who seemed particularly fascinated by it.
“Something isn’t right,” Yao said. “The skipper is supposed to be alone.” He passed the NVGs to Ma.
“Alone?” Ma said, peering through the device. “This boat is very crowded at the moment.”
* * *
—
Lisanne was awake again, whimpering softly, grimacing from the pain.
Yao came over the net, hollow. “We’re blown,” he said. “I don’t know how, but there are people on the boat. I can’t be certain, but I think it’s the tall guy with the hat.”
“We can’t be blown,” Ryan said. “We’ll just have to take the boat back from them.”
“Jack,” Yao said. “I want to run down there and kill that son of a bitch. But they’d see us coming before we made it halfway down the pier.”
“I don’t care,” Jack said. “Lisanne needs a doctor—”
“It’s okay,” Lisanne whispered from the back. “It’s my fault anyway.” She coughed again. “Should have paid better attention . . .”
Ryan pounded the steering wheel with both hands.
“We can’t be blown!”
“Jack, really,” Lisanne said, every breath like she was leaking air. “It’s . . .” She licked her lips, summoning the effort for a few more words. “It’s . . . not your fault . . .”
“Stand by,” Yao said over the net. “Medina has an idea.”
* * *
—
Fu Bohai cursed himself for not telling his men to kill the woman straightaway. They had yet to answer his calls, and that had him worried. The woman’s friends must have shown up. He had little doubt now that these tourists from Finland were the ones who had chartered this boat. There were cabins around the lake. Perhaps they had knowledge that Medina Tohti was hiding out at one of them. It was the only thing that made sense in a country with security cameras on virtually every light post. Yes. She must be hiding in the wilderness, possibly being supplied by the person with the boat whose ticket stubs the CIA officer spoke of. Fu and his men would simply wait, and then force them to disclose her location. With any luck, he would have the Uyghur bitch by morning.
He tried Qiu once more on the phone . . . What had the CIA officer in Albania called him? Pukwudgie . . . What an amusing word.
Again, there was no answer.
He slapped the chart table with his palm, causing his men to glance up from their phones and the boat captain to give a muffled yelp beneath the tape over his mouth.
Yang, who was seated at the dinette, perked up and peered out the window.
“Did you hear that?”
“I heard nothing,” Fu said.
Then, far down the docks, a boat motor burbled to life.
Fu bolted to his feet, rushing out onto the deck to look down the pier. Gray hulks bobbed side by side all the way down, barely visible against the ink-black water. The engines were running, as Medina and her fellow conspirators would expect them to be when they arrived—but he’d never expected to actually launch. The boat was still tied to its moorings.
Farther down, the engine burbled louder. Something thumped against the dock. A light flashed briefly across the water—getting their bearings—and then winked out at the same moment the engine opened up. In his peripheral vision, Fu watched a small cabin runabout disap
pear into the night.
He loosed a scream of rage, pounded the bulkhead by the rear door. “Which one of you can drive a boat?”
Neither answered quickly enough. Fu strode to the V-berth and hauled the skipper to his feet, ripping away the gray tape, then spinning him to reach his bindings. He opened his knife, pointing it at Yang.
“Untie the dock lines,” he snapped, before cutting the skipper’s hands free. “You will follow that other vessel,” he said. “Catch it, and you will be greatly rewarded.”
“Y-Yes,” he stammered. “No problem. I will do that. Thank you.” The skipper’s head snapped up, looking out at the man pulling a line off the stern. “No, no, no,” he said, walking to the open door. “You must cast off the bow or you will run us into—”
The skipper stepped out as if to finish his imperative bit of instruction—but instead leaped over the side into the black water.
“Stop him!” Fu Bohai roared, then turned to his man who was left inside. “Tell me you have driven a boat before! Any boat!”
“Yes, Boss,” he stammered. “Though never one this large.”
“You take the wheel,” Fu said.
“Yes, Boss,” the man said again, tentatively sitting down to familiarize himself with the controls.
The outside man stuck his head in the door, pistol in hand, panting after running from one end of the boat to the other.
“He is gone, Boss.”
“I don’t care about him,” Fu snapped. “Are we untied?”
Yang nodded.
Fu began to pound against the seat next to the captain’s chair. “Then go! Go! Go!”
The new driver pulled the twin throttle levers toward him, causing the boat to lurch backward, burbling in the water. Away from the dock, he cut the wheel hard left and eased the throttle forward, taking the boat into the blackness of the lake.
“I said, go,” Fu snapped, and, reaching across the wheel, jammed the levers all the way to the firewall.