Hostile Takeover

by Shane Kuhn

  Because I didn’t have the resources Alice had, I figured I would have to try to gain the upper hand by getting to Zhen before she did. That way, I would have some element of surprise when she showed up to reprise the Tet Offensive on Zhen and his crew. So, I started looking for other access points to Zhen and turned my sights on his bread and butter: corporate espionage. I needed to find one of his prime intel sources and tap my own needle into that vein. Disrupting the flow of invaluable information to Beijing would not only get Zhen’s attention, but it would also flush him out of his natural habitat and put him on the warpath.

  “When your enemy makes his battle cry is when you reach in and pull his nuts out through his neck,” Griner used to say.

  He was right. We’re never more vulnerable than when we’re on the attack. And to get Zhen to that point, I needed to get my hook into his biggest fish, one that could drown him and take his three wishes with it. So I did what any decent FBI agent would do and I followed the money. Whoever was getting the biggest payday from Zhen was going to become my bestie.

  This is where Harold Leung came in handy. When Alice first started stalking him, I had Sue break into his car and install a modified RFID reader, similar to the ones thieves use to steal your credit card numbers just by standing near your wallet. While he drove home, the reader captured and uploaded his laptop data. Within twenty-four hours of Leung’s demise, I checked the data dumps and found a client list. To say it was shocking is the understatement of the century. Suffice it to say that the Chinese government owns this country. We are the lion at the end of the tamer’s whip and every advance we make is assimilated and perfected by them. Put simply, American “progress” is the fuel that they will use to burn us out when they are no longer amused with our stupid movies and require a million acres of our Pacific coastline to establish a new province.

  Every industry, from agriculture to medicine, to electronics and utilities, and everything in between, had blue-chip players on Zhen’s roster. Want to know what Apple’s iPhone is going to look like in ten years? Ask Zhen. How about which big pharmaceutical company may have a cure for cancer in five years? Zhen plays golf with their CEO. But, as you can imagine, all of these things were of minor importance to Zhen’s MVP squad—military weapons contractors. Want to know how to shut down our missile defense systems and conquer the greatest country in the world in fewer than forty-eight hours? Zhen has the blueprints and the companies that our government pays to develop technology handed to him on a silver platter.

  Enter Craig Davison, CEO of Bear River Industries, named after Craig’s hometown in Idaho and, incidentally, the site of the worst massacre of Native Americans in U.S. history. Ain’t white folks grand? Craigy was one of the richest men in the world and his specialty was feeding the U.S. military’s hunger for “push button weaponry.” Basically, Americans don’t like to wage war with actual people because they end up dying and making everyone feel bad. George W. Bush and his cronies introduced the erroneous notion that you could sit your sorry ass in a Barcalounger and blast bitches into submission before last call. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, this philosophy is not only going strong but is also well funded by the Pentagon.

  Craigy was truly an enemy of the state. Not only was he selling his own product intel to Zhen, but he was also using his security clearance to help Zhen access other DOD information he was privy to. Craig Davison was robbing Peter to pay Zhen and putting the American people at risk. And Zhen had him so deep in his pocket he was going to become a piece of lint any day. There’s no telling how many American soldiers have died in Iraqistan because of Craig’s treason. All I needed to do was position myself between Craig and Zhen and I would have my access point.

  Now, let’s go back to the world’s greatest treasure trove of knowledge: movies. No matter what, I can design any scenario based on what I’ve seen in a movie. For this little caper, Scarface came to mind. There was a sequence in that movie when Tony Montana was trying to work his way up to doing business with Alejandro Sosa, the über drug lord living in Bolivia with the CIA in his pocket. Tony quickly realized that Frank, the guy who brought him into the big show, would make a pretty convenient stepping-stone to Sosa. So, he exploited Frank’s increasingly apparent weaknesses until Frank fucked up royally and tried but failed to take Tony out.

  Tony knew that all he really needed to do was replace Frank with himself and everyone could go on with business as usual, with very few ruffled feathers. Not only did Tony pull it off, but he also managed to take Frank’s wife, Elvira, played by the sublime Michelle Pfeiffer. After that, he had free access to Sosa and from there he built his massive, albeit relentlessly tacky, empire. Who buys a tiger? Imagine the cage cleanup for an animal that devours ten chickens a day. Anyway, Craig had to go out and I had to slip into his skin in a smooth and inconspicuous way that maintained the flow of information critical to Zhen’s survival. If I pulled it off, I would be in the inner circle of the lucrative supply chain in record time, and Zhen would demand an audience with me shortly thereafter.

  For that kind of access, I would need to be a new and improved version of Craig, capturing Zhen’s attention with more lucrative intel and prompting him to relax a little with his trust issues. Once I had his ear, Alice would go into full panic mode, wondering if I intended to kill him or expose her, or both! Of course, I had no intention of killing Zhen. I would simply use him to flush her out and force her to make a move on him out of pure desperation. And when one fails to look before she leaps, one tends to land in a pit of sharpened bamboo punji sticks coated with human feces. Just saying. I rousted Sue and we got to work. Right away Sue pulled together a highly actionable plan to get Craig in our net. Things were starting to look up, but that’s usually when you don’t see the size-twelve, steel-toed boot that’s about to land square in your balls.

  38

  When I showed up to work at CIS on a Monday morning, Alice had gone AWOL. I did my rounds, looking for her in the usual places, but she was nowhere to be found. I had Sue track down her phone and it was somewhere on the twentieth floor. That was the floor just below the penthouse level, where Zhen worked. I didn’t think it was possible that she was going to attempt to break through the ceiling or scale the glass outside, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had put her in a desperate position and Alice never thought twice about resorting to desperate measures.

  Getting to the twentieth floor was no joke. I was in the Donkey Kong world of Draconian corporate hierarchies and CIS was the pinnacle of that ethos. Everyone had a key card that contained the secrets to their status and the keys to their relative kingdoms. As I was a lowly intern, my key card had limited access to the building, but it was slightly better than most because I was in the Human Resources department.

  My supervisor had the ability to swipe it and give me temporary access for special circumstances. Rhonda-Pat was a chunky soccer mom with a cubicle full of kid and pet photos and the persistent smell of canned tuna. She loved coffee and she especially loved the coffee I made for her, which was a rare Peruvian bean that, unbeknownst to her, had been cured in a vat of goat cud for six weeks before being bagged and shipped to market. The fermented ruminant (basically goat puke) gave the coffee a peppery aroma and flavor, much like a complex rye whiskey.

  I deliberately didn’t bring her a cup at the usual time so I could get her jones going. Then I got to work running around the office looking busy. She finally intercepted me in the hallway with that smile people give you when they are either going to change your life with horrible news or they want something petty and are afraid to ask. I preempted her question, relieving her of the embarrassment while ensuring her cube stayed vacated for a while.

  “Hey, Rhonda-Pat. Sorry. I have a pot brewing in the kitchen right now.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “Ten minutes tops.”

  “Oh, John. That’s wonderful. Maybe I’ll just—”

 
“You should go wait for it. A couple of guys from Risk Management were milling around in there—”

  “Thanks!”

  And she took off like a shot. I had set the coffeemaker to start just prior to seeing her, so I knew it was going to be more like fifteen minutes. I went straight to her cube, typed her cat’s name in the password field, and authorized my card for the twentieth floor.

  * * *

  When I finally made it up there, Sue vectored me into Alice’s location. Based on the coordinates, she was smack-dab in the middle of the men’s executive washroom. I crept up to the door and put my ear against it. I heard something but I wasn’t sure what at first. Then it got louder and I realized it was Alice. She wasn’t speaking, just making odd sounds. They got louder and then I knew what I was hearing.

  It was the sound of Alice having sex.

  In the throes of passion, she would coo, almost like a dove or a baby dolphin. It would get louder and louder until . . . well, you know the rest. It was getting louder and louder and in about ten seconds flat I went from cool, calculating assassin to raging, jealous husband. Next thing I knew, I had barged into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. As soon as I entered the absurdly luxurious bathroom—complete with espresso machine, bar cart, and leather furniture—the noise stopped. The stall door was closed. I looked under the door and saw nothing. But there was no place else for them to hide, so I figured they must have had their feet up and out of sight.

  “Alice?”

  No answer. I gently nudged the thick stall door. It was locked.

  “Banging our way to the bottom, are we? You make me sick.”

  Still no answer. Not a sound.

  “I know you’re in here. You and your mark. I’ll bet his name is Mark. That would be perfect. Fuck you too, Mark.”

  Total silence.

  “I’m actually glad it’s going to end this way. I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it, killing you, but now I know it won’t be a problem at all. A pleasure, in fact. I’ll even enjoy killing you, Mark. She may have led you in here by your angry inch, but she’s still my wife, mother—”

  “—fucker,” Alice said, behind me.

  I turned and the barrel of a Kimber Tactical Pro II .45 with a barrel suppressor was in my face. Alice grinned at me triumphantly.

  “Let me guess. No funny stuff?” I said.

  39

  You were actually jealous, John.” She laughed.

  I was so enraged I could feel my fingernails cutting into my palms as I clenched my fists.

  “On your knees.”

  “Nope,” I replied casually.

  She cocked back the hammer.

  “Okay, that’s your final ‘I mean business’ move,” I said. “Looks like all you have left is to shoot.”

  I spit in her face and used the half second afforded me by her knee-jerk repulsion to grab the suppressor on the gun. She managed to fire a round that whipped past my face and punched a hole in the brass paper towel dispenser. I then tore the gun out of her hand and threw it through the window in one motion. Alice’s trigger finger was bleeding as the Kimber sailed to the street below.

  We stared each other down in a Mexican standoff scored by a hideous Muzak version of “You Light Up My Life.” In moments like that, it’s important to have a strategy well before first strike. It’s not a time for improvisation. So, we did the same thing—faced off, clicked into a premeditated plan we hoped would give us each a slight advantage, and waited for the other to make the first move.

  “You first,” I said.

  “Age before beauty,” she said.

  Then she kicked me in the chest with such force, I flew back into the wall and shattered the ceramic tile. I countered with a savage front kick to her stomach. She gasped and retched as her mouth filled with blood. But this didn’t slow her down. Instead, she spat the blood in my eyes and started beating my head and neck with the marble towel rod she tore off the wall. I snatched the rod in midstrike and twisted it with all of my strength, ripping it out of her hand and burying it in her kneecaps. She went down hard on the floor. I went to body slam her and she rolled, causing me to hit the ground with my full weight on my elbow. Then she jumped on top of me and circled her arm around my neck.

  She applied a choke hold called Silkworm. Its origin is unknown, although many speculate that it comes from Naban wrestling, which originated in ancient Burma. The choke arm encircles the neck and is locked into place by the other arm, which twists through it like a pretzel and holds fast on the back of the attacker’s neck. It’s so tight initially that the inexperienced fighter will black out instantly. I was able to get my chin in the way just before she locked it off, so she was only cutting off blood flow in my right side carotid and subclavian arteries and I could still barely draw breath.

  At first, I thought about trying to flip her over my head. But then I remembered that would have been a very bad idea. If I had flipped her and she had maintained her grasp, she would have rotated in midair like a gymnast and used what’s called axial loading to break my neck. So, instead, I started lifting her off the ground, duping her into thinking I was going for the flip. She tightened her hold but then had to reposition her arms to maintain her balance when I quickly brought her back down on the floor. That shift was all I needed to rotate my body into a position wherein we were chest to chest. Before Alice could unlock her arms, I had already encircled them with mine in another famous hold—the Bear Hug. At that point, I just needed to hold her still enough to deliver a deathblow from my forehead, driving her nasal bones into her brain. She closed her eyes, seemingly waiting for death, but then pulled the one move I wasn’t expecting.

  She kissed me.

  I’m not ashamed to admit it was the hottest kiss I’ve ever had. I kissed her back and we switched gears so hard from homicidal rage to carnal fury that I thought we might spontaneously conceive a love child right there in the executive washroom.

  Then someone started knocking on the door.

  We heard urgent voices calling for whoever was in the bathroom to unlock the door. They were concerned someone might be dying in a stall and said they had called 911. Then we heard the heavy boots of the facilities maintenance crew pounding down the hallway and the telltale sound of master keys jangling from a belt holster. With the sound of the key in the lock, I threw my jacket over the window and Alice kicked out the glass. When they opened the door and started jabbering in Chinese about the damage to the bathroom, we were already outside, standing on the window ledge. By the time the hoary janitor poked his head out the window, we had both jumped to a construction scaffold attached to the building next door and gone our separate ways.

  Just another day at the office.

  I must admit, part of me was excited by our one-round knockout lavatory tryst. Clearly, the fire between us was still lit. But the next time I saw Alice, I found out the hard way that it was burning out of control.

  40

  FBI-NCAVC, Quantico, Virginia

  Present day

  I’m beginning to understand why you want to see Alice again,” Fletch says smugly.

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re still in love with her.”

  “Whatever you’re smoking, have some sent to my cell.”

  Fletch seems almost touched by the idea that my motivation to see Alice one last time is strictly romantic. This is a good thing in his mind because the holy grail of interrogation is finding that one personal hook that strikes the right chord on the subject’s heartstrings. Every terrorist has a soft spot for someone or something. Every serial killer has a favorite teddy bear. Fletch wants me to have my teddy bear to keep me cozy at night in my cold, dank cell. In this way he is a father figure and a savior all in one, bearing loaves and fishes to save my soul.

  “Are you denying it?” he asks, sounding oddly adolescent.

&nbs
p; “I’m denying you the satisfaction of familiarity, Fletch. Seeing as you’ve taken everything else from me, I think I’ll keep that to myself.”

  “That’s fine, but our only concern about you seeing Alice has been one of safety. You can imagine the kind of shit storm that would roll in if you managed to harm or even kill her in our custody.”

  “Not to mention the paperwork.”

  He ignores my bad joke and glances at the two-way mirror.

  “But if I knew your intentions for seeing her were . . . more innocuous—”

  “I get it, Fletch. Does admitting that I love Alice help my cause?”

  He shrugs a “maybe” and waits to be right again.

  “Fine. I love her. I’ve never stopped loving her. Happy?”

  He smiles. I think he really is happy. But clearly he’s not aware of the “thin line between love and hate” the Persuaders so elegantly exposed.

  “Can we move on or do you want me to show you the Alice tattoo on my d—”

  “Let’s move on. Tell me more about Craig Davison.”

  41

  I hate golf. It’s an impossibly difficult game or sport or whatever you want to call it, but it’s played by the fattest, drunkest brain-dead honkies on the planet. And I hate Florida. For all the same reasons. But there I was, John Lago, a highly trained killing machine, fresh off the red-eye wearing yellow pants and taking practice swings at Ben Hogan’s favorite course, the Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach. While I obsessively washed my ball and tried to wrap my head around “the kiss,” my new foursome partner Craig Davison joined me in the tee box. The other two players had not yet shown up yet. Hmm . . . I wonder why.