by Chuck Dixon
Troops were concentrated on the outer defenses. There were no patrols within the city. There was nothing left to loot. Awnings drooped over market stalls standing open and empty.
Many buildings, once grand homes or businesses were blackened skeletons where they’d been set ablaze by rockets or balls of heated cannon shot. Others lay collapsed in upon themselves, victims of the stone balls fired from mortars. These derelicts stood by buildings that remained untouched by the siege. Many of the streets were torn up, leaving only the bare soil beneath. The stones paving the street had been pulled up to create shot for the many cannons defending the city.
The trio came at last to the three-story wall that served to separate the Heavenly King and his most loyal acolytes from the unwashed masses of greater Nanking. They followed it along a frontage road toward a gate. From the shadows of a ruined home, they considered the tall gatehouse topped by timber ramparts covered with a tiled roof. Loitering before the gate, under guttering torchlight, was a gang of men in black silks and turbans. They were armed with axes and swords. Some leaned on muskets. They were sharing a pot of some kind of gruel bubbling over a fire built on the cobbles before the gate.
“True believers,” Jimbo whispered.
“No bullshitting our way past them,” Chaz replied. Wei shook his head slowly at them, eyes hard.
They turned at a creak of rusting metal. Across the lane from where they crouched concealed, a vertical bar of radiance grew wider within a shadowed recess of the wall. It was a doorway cleverly concealed in a niche. As it opened, it revealed the light of a lantern reflecting off the street cobbles.
Jimbo met Chaz’ eyes. His brother Ranger nodded, and they moved to the light in time to find a man dumping out buckets of wet slop into a gutter at the curb. A second man held a lantern high to provide light.
The Rangers struck the pair, driving them back into a narrow corridor built within the base of the twenty-foot thick wall. The servants crashed to the floor. The buckets of piss and feces they were dumping spilled across the cobbles. The lantern fell into the spreading puddle with a hiss, the flame dying. The pair of men struggled and were still. Jimbo heard the man under him mewl in protest and go silent. His eyes adjusted to the gloom to see the man grinning from a new mouth slashed across his throat. He heard a rustle of cloth and a grunt from Chaz Raleigh. The Ranger was shoving Wei against the wall. At their feet, the second servant lay kicking out the last of his life; his throat sliced open like the other. A knife, gleaming black with blood, fell from Wei’s hand.
Jimbo pulled Chaz away from the smaller man. “He killed them,” Chaz snapped.
“It had to be done,” he said through his teeth.
“But I wanted it to be my idea,” Chaz growled back, a last cuff to Wei’s shoulder as they parted.
“Now he owns it,” Jimbo said and pushed Chaz along down the corridor.
Wei stooped to wipe the blade of his knife on the tunic of one of the servants then rose to follow the Americans toward the uncertain lights of the City of Heavenly Contentment.
46
An Embarrassment of Riches
As it turned out, there were a lot of palaces on the grounds of the inner city.
They were set back behind decorative curtain walls along cobbled streets once lined with flowering trees. The steep angles of tiled rooftops could be seen over the tops of the walls. Hand-carved beams atop the crests were fashioned in the shapes of dragons, tigers and angels, all accented in gold leaf. The only remnant of the trees along the lane were stumps where they’d been cut down for firewood.
“Damn. This map’s no good,” Jimbo cursed, the chart created by Dr. Fong in his hands illuminated by the flickering light of an oil lamp held by Wei.
“What’s the trouble?” Chaz said.
“I don’t see how it relates to where we are.”
“We’re gonna need to ask for directions,” Chaz said, looking the length of the long street and seeing not a single living thing.
Jimbo held the map up to Wei and stabbed a finger at the location that Wesley Fong marked as the likely location for the East King’s palace. Wei nodded, first at the map and then at the two Rangers. He trotted down the broad pebbled street.
The Rangers stepped into the shadows of a shrine set in the niche of a wall. They took a seat on a bench within the enclosure. A jade statue stood against the back wall of the closet-sized shrine. It was unmistakably Jesus Christ.
“That would look good in my man cave,” said Jimbo.
“That ain’t no Jesus I’ve ever seen,” Chaz said, eyeing the idol depicting the messiah battling a dog-faced demon, a sword in his fist and an expression of righteous fury on his face.
“I don’t have a man cave anyway.” Jimbo shrugged. “You’re not that kind of asshole.”
“What kind of asshole am I?”
The Rangers heard the tramp of boot soles on gravel. The clack of bamboo armor and the creak of leather reached them as the glow of an oil lamp loomed on the street outside the entrance of the shrine. A patrol of about twenty men clothed in black armor marched by. They shouldered long spears; curved swords in scabbards swung at their hips. A bannerman led the way, a lamp held on a pole before him. Fists gripping their rifles, the Rangers watched the parade go past and the street fall into darkness again.
A few moments passed before; they heard a sharp hissing sound from the darkness. It was Wei trying to get their attention from a niche in the wall two palaces down. The Rangers trotted to meet him and found him at a cleverly disguised gateway hidden in a recess. Wei had a feebly struggling man in a choke hold, a chubby guy in yellow and black striped silk pajamas and brocaded shoes with pointed toes. The captive’s eyes rolled toward Jimbo and Chaz, the pupils swirling.
“He knows the way?” Jimbo said, hushed. He jabbed a finger at the folded map.
Wei nodded and jerked his prisoner upright. The guy’s face darkened, his eyes turning up to show the whites. Jimbo pulled on Wei’s arm, and the prisoner fell to the ground.
“Who’s this dude?” Chaz asked.
“A palace eunuch,” Jimbo said and crouched to gently slap the man’s face until he responded with a yelp.
“That mean what I think it means?”
“Yeah. No balls.”
The guy came around with a gasp. Jimbo placed the barrel of the Remington against his forehead and cocked the hammer. The Pima placed a finger to first his own lips and then the eunuch’s. The smaller man grunted and nodded his assent. Wei barked at him in Mandarin and kicked him to his feet.
They followed the eunuch along a maze of decorative walls and across open areas of weed-choked dirt between dry garden ponds. Statues in marble and bronze stood on plinths depicting animals or saints. Dark structures loomed above them. High peaked rooftops, windows covered in ornate latticework and tiers of balconies rising toward the night sky. The sounds of the siege seemed far away here, the guns and rockets muffled by distance and the concentric defensive wall that encircled the city of the kings of Heaven on Earth.
The eunuch led them to a pair of massive doors of lacquered green and fortified with bronze bands. He shook with tremors that set his flab to quivering. His eyes blinked at them, sweat beading on his face. Jimbo shoved him aside. Chaz raised his rifle to follow. The Pima shook his head and slid his broad-bladed knife from the sheath at his waist. Chaz slung his rifle and drew his own blade. Together they shouldered the door open in a rush.
Two more eunuchs were startled from where they leaned, dozing on pikestaffs within a broad foyer lit by braziers. Jimbo slapped a hand over the mouth of one while, in the same motion, slamming the point of his knife upward behind the man’s chin. The blade bit in with a series of crunching sounds and the man went limp. Chaz had his man in a choke hold, lifting the eunuch guard’s feet kicking from the tiles. He drove the spade point of his knife at an angle into the man’s skull where it met the top of the spine. Chaz twisted the blade once, and the man’s arms and legs ceased their dance. Th
e sharp stink of urine filled the air. Chaz tossed the dead man aside. Wei dragged his captive inside, the little eunuch’s eyes staring, his neck turned at an obscene angle.
Together they swung the big armored doors closed and dropped a stout timber into the cross braces. The high-ceilinged foyer was lined either side by pillars of black marble streaked with red. The tiled floor was set in a pattern of large and small squares engraved with Chinese characters along with stylized crosses inlaid with onyx. At the end of the foyer was a broad staircase of carved stone leading to a higher level. Over the steps hung silk banners depicting Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King, and Jesus Christ seated on thrones of gold. Hong held what looked like a diamond the size of a cantaloupe in the palm of his hand while Christ seemed to be petting a tiger cub resting on his lap.
“I’ve seen better velvet paintings of Elvis for sale at gas stations,” Chaz grunted.
Jimbo agreed. “All the money in the world and their taste in their ass.”
They followed Wei up the long flight of stairs to a level that ended in a mezzanine with walls papered in hand-painted silk depicting intertwined branches of rose bushes from which peeped stylized monkeys with white fur and disturbingly human eyes. The mezzanine ran along three walls around an area open to the foyer below. The only opening off the mezzanine was a pair of heavy doors set in an arched opening. The door was forged in bronze with relief sculptures of doves and dragonflies in flight. Wei tested the ornamental handles, fashioned in the shape of a pair of leaping salmon, with a push. They swung inward easily and without a sound. The Rangers raised their rifles, hammers cocked.
Beyond the massive doors was a huge black space. The fall of their boots echoed as they advanced over the tiles. Wei snatched a brazier from the mezzanine and led them in. They found other braziers and lit them with the embers from the first. The light illuminated an area around them but failed to reach either the walls or the ceiling. The chamber was enormous, supported by rows of pillars wider around than a man’s arms could encircle. They were of the same ebon marble shot through with red as the pillars in the foyer below.
Between the pillars, and stretching back into the gloom, were row after row of tables covered in silk cloths. And upon these tables were arranged an assembly of objects that shimmered and gleamed in the dancing light of the braziers.
“Shit the bed,” Chaz breathed. His voice echoed against the walls of the invisible vastness of the chamber.
“Beats the hell out of one of Saddam’s palaces, for damn sure,” Jimbo said in hushed wonder.
The three soldiers entered the treasure house of the East King. Statues, miniatures, dishware, combs, scepters, and crowns of gold and silver inlaid with rubies, emeralds, and opals were spread in either direction off a center lane. One table held nothing, but toy-sized animals carved in jade and gold-inlaid ivory. Another was stacked with mechanical clocks of all sizes fashioned from obsidian, malachite, and gold. Tables were piled six feet high with bolts of silk of every color imaginable. Another broad table was dominated by a three-dimensional map of the Heavenly City of Peace, the buildings fashioned from gold and encrusted with gems. A table of hand-painted silk fans with spines of carved ivory. Another of hair brushes cleverly fashioned from jade and obsidian in the shape of the same animals the bristles had been derived from: horses, pigs, bears, and camels. Beyond the tables were stacks of chests loaded with gems and coins. Row after row of immaculate balls of crystalline glass the size of basketballs rested on stands of carved mahogany inlaid with jade and silver. Furniture carved over every surface with images of animals or figures from Chinese mythology and legend.
Two rows of sedan chairs, carts, and rickshaws stood as if they were on a showroom floor. These were no common conveyances. They were fashioned of silk-covered wood and trimmed in either solid gold or gold leaf. The wood was heavily lacquered, and much of it was carved in intricate patterns. The velvet upholstery was accented with gems in place of buttons.
Wooden chests reinforced with bands of iron or bronze were laden with coins of gold and silver. Bullion wrapped in paper rested in pyramid stacks on pallets. There were bottles of fine porcelain in crates packed with straw; each bottle was painted with graphic pornographic images of men and women, women and women, and men and men. And more chests were amassed in piles ten feet high and packed with blocks of sticky black tar wrapped in translucent paper.
Opium.
“Pray all Sunday, sin all week,” Chaz said, shaking his head. “And this was the stash of one of the minor kings,” Jimbo said. He raised a brazier over his head.
Chaz tsked. “They looted this country dry, bro. All those people looking like they don’t have a handful of rice between them and these motherfuckers living like dot com billionaires.”
Wei was staring with wide eyes and slack jaw at the landscape of treasures as far as the glow of their braziers could reach. He spoke to himself in whispers.
“How the hell are we going to find this thing we’re looking for? There’s miles of this shit here,” Chaz said, picking up a jade statue of a naked woman astride a charging tiger.
“We have until noon tomorrow. I’m guessing that’s about eight hours from now give or take,” Jimbo said. “That’s when the mine blows. Even more time before the imperial army fights its way this far. We should have time to locate it and get our asses clear.”
“Let’s go shopping,” Chaz said with a grin.
“We’ll start at the back and work forward,” Jimbo said, holding the brazier high and searching the dark for the limits of the vast chamber.
The Rangers and Wei headed for the back wall of the treasure room. They froze in mid-step. From below them came a rhythmic booming sound. It was the big doors on the first level. Someone was knocking.
47
The General
The pounding on the doors increased in frequency and volume. Rather than a fist, it sounded like the doors were being struck with a blunt object. The butt of a pike or pommel of a sword. A voice, muted but discernibly emphatic, could be heard even through the thickness of the wood. The impacts stopped after moments of steady banging. The voice could no longer be heard.
Jimbo and Chaz stood at the top of the long staircase, Wei behind them in the open doorway of the treasure vault.
“They went away. Nobody home.” Chaz sighed.
“They’ll be back,” Jimbo said.
The door below shuddered under the weight of something on the other side. A rumbling boom echoed up to them. The timber bar stayed in place, but the doors trembled under the blow. The impact was repeated and continued with the steady cadence of a heartbeat.
“Somebody went and got a ram,” Jimbo said.
“A lot of somebodies,” Chaz said, checking his rifle for a load and thumbing back the hammer.
“That’s some serious doors. They’ll be a while busting in.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. You and Wei look for the booby prize,” Chaz said, handing his rifle to Jimbo.
“And a back door,” Jimbo said, moving back into the vault with Wei following.
“We’re gonna need one of them too,” Chaz said, turning to the doors below, quaking in their hinges under the relentless assault from without.
The sun rose to the thunder of drums.
The entire siege camp was roused to wakefulness by the beat provided by a company of men hammering in time on rows of kettle drums six feet across.
An area was cleared on the broad field used as a parade ground at the center of the sea of tents. Bawling bannermen raced across the trampled grass, swinging their silk flags and shouting words to rouse the martial spirits. Soldiers, sappers, coolies, merchants, and whores gathered in deep ranks along the edges of the field to witness the arrival of the general who had been commanding the siege effort. Even the artillery went silent, the gun crews, black with expelled powder, stood watching with ramrods in hand.
Bat stuck close by Lee as the Ranger wended through the crowd toward the front rows. They’d
lost Boats and Byrus somewhere behind them.
“What do you think this is?” She shouted to be heard over the babble of voices.
“Final orders,” Lee said. “This whole thing kicks off in a few hours.”
They got within ten rows of the open field. Close enough to see over the heads of the shorter men standing before them. The crowd was hushing now, turning in anticipation to the end of the field.
The big man rode onto the field, astride a massive white stallion that made him appear to be the size of a child in comparison. General Hsui Shen Sang wore leather armor the color of flames, trimmed in high polished gold with gold bucklers studded across every surface. Atop his head was a tall conical helmet ending in a curved point and festooned in black ostrich feathers. Behind him trotted his lieutenants in armor only slightly less resplendent than the general’s. Behind them rode a thousand or more Tartar archers in fur-trimmed armor. To either flank sprinted thousands more bannermen, holding aloft a forest of streaming flags and banners. They took up positions along the edges of the crowd that lined the field and glowered with cold menace at the onlookers.
The General made no speech, no promises of victory. He reined in his horse and sat tall in the saddle, or as tall as he could manage, for all to take in his bellicose magnificence.
From somewhere in his entourage, a voice shrieked an order. The ocean of pressed humanity shouted back, repeating the phrase as if from one throat. The invisible crier screamed another order, and the response was delivered with even more gusto from a half a million throats. Bat held her hands over her ears to cut out the din that went on and on, call and response after call and response. The mob around her grew more passionate as the ceremony went on. They went from indifference to howling in fury, shrieking madly, faces dark with rage and weapons held over their heads in fists with knuckles turned white. Bat saw a man from the cook tents standing with a stirring paddle raised to the sky in warlike fervor.