by Theo Cage
Lui turned. The two soldiers were returning. Rice had been successful somehow. But he had been up there a long time.
Slowly, the soldiers climbed into their jeep, started the engine and followed the commander’s SUV away towards the south.
Lui waited until they were out of sight, then ran up the path to the cave. He melted into the darkened opening and climbed down to the water’s edge. He expected to see the American standing by the water or sitting by the pool, catching his breath. Lui peered into the murky green water, his eyes not yet adjusted to the darkness of the cave.
Where did Rice go? Lui stepped into the water, felt the warmth on his legs, sensed the calming effect of the cave fall over him like a blanket. He stared into the depths. First, he saw a hand, then an arm, a body stretched out, submerged, the head hanging down and almost touching the jumble of rocks at the bottom.
Lui leapt into the pool and dove down, grabbed the arm and pulled. He could see that the magic was too strong for the American. He put his arm under Rice’s head and lifted him, his face breaking the surface. Water ran from the man’s nose. Lui hefted him onto the shore, his head lolling on the rocky shore.
He squeezed Rice’s nose shut and blew air into his lungs, thumped his chest and breathed into him again. He had seen this once in a movie; that was the extent of his knowledge of CPR. A husband, blowing life into his wife’s lifeless body, pressing down hard on her chest. He didn’t know if this would work but he had no other ideas. He kept at it, knowing the cave’s magic could kill both of them if he took too long. He felt the need to drag the American out onto the path, into the sunlight, but he was unsure if he could lift the bigger man. And he didn’t want to waste the time trying.
Lui blew harder, longer, growing dizzy himself. He finally stopped, both fists on Rice’s body. He hit the American hard on the chest, angry that he had sent him here to die.
The American seemed to explode, coughing up water that shot out of his nose and mouth. He rolled over on his side, puking up his breakfast onto the rocks, coughing up the green pond water.
“We have to get out of here,” Rice croaked. “Help me.”
Lui lifted one of Rice’s arms and together they stumbled out into the sunshine. Rice sat down hard on the path, a few feet away from the village shrine, gulping air.
“Do you know what CO is?” he asked Lui, between gasps.
“See ohhh?”
“Carbon monoxide.”
Lui shook his head.
“Your truck. The exhaust that comes out the back. It’s very bad.”
Lui’s eyes grew wide. “Once a young man in our village ended his life. He breathed the black smoke and died.”
“That’s carbon monoxide.”
Lui sat down next to Rice, his face pale with exhaustion.
“That cave?” said Rice. “It’s filled with carbon monoxide.”
Lui waggled his head in confusion. “No one can see this monoxide? Or smell it?” He shrugged his boney shoulders.
“It’s invisible.” The Chinese farmer shook his head not understanding.
“You can’t see it. You can’t smell it,” added Rice, coughing long and hard.
Lui nodded. “Magic.”
Rice put one arm around the man.
“Yes, but not good magic. Bad magic. Very bad magic.”
Lui turned and looked back at the mouth of the cave. “Bad magic that saved you from the soldiers.”
“Where did you learn how to…” Rice made a gesture, pantomiming breathing air into someone, delivering CPR, saving their life?”
“A movie,” said Lui.
“What movie?”
Lui thought for a minute, looking up into the clouds. “The Abyss.”
Rice laughed. James Cameron’s famous movie where even a defibrillator doesn’t work to revive the victim until Ed Harris slaps his wife repeatedly and screams at here to wake up. That’s how we learn, now. Hollywood University. Well, it worked after all. But Rice felt that something had changed permanently inside of him. He had grown to believe over the years that water was his friend; that it could never hurt him. He had learned that as a Navy SEAL. That belief evaporated today. He had drowned today. He had sucked water into his lungs and said goodbye to everything he knew and loved. Less than half an hour ago.
Who was he now? What kind of man was he and what did he believe in anymore?
传真
T H E F A X
Beijing
KI BANG WAS BORN in Seoul, educated at UCLA in California, currently living in Beijing where he ran a small company that specialized in arranging tours of Chinese temples.
His office was tiny and out of the way, basically two desks pushed together, one for him, one for his wife of five years, a Chinese citizen who spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin. She had stepped away for a cigarette break when his fax machine buzzed.
Back in the states Ki hated smokers, but in Beijing, everybody was addicted to tobacco. They probably figured it couldn’t be worse than breathing the yellow smog that hung over the city every afternoon.
Fax machines were still fairly common in China, but Ki liked his for a specific reason: they were totally secure. You couldn’t hack a fax machine. And documents could not be intercepted if the analog message was encrypted.
Ki’s machine burped out a single piece of thermal paper. He pulled it off the tray with a flick of his wrist. He could tell right away that this was not an order for a tour or a confirmation of a bus schedule. There was no header or footer, no graphics or logos. This came directly from Langley.
Can you arrange a tour for a single American citizen?
A tour in this context meant a meet or a pickup. There was an asset somewhere in the country who needed assistance.
He is willing to pay for luxury service.
Luxury meant urgent, as in ‘this needs to be done yesterday’.
Will require assistance. Open to price.
That was simple: weapons needed. And Ki got to choose what he thought would be appropriate for the circumstances.
Interested in other forms of transportation. May need a car or bike.
Confirmation code: A923?BBS397?GX14
The confirmation code was a transposition cipher, polyalphabetic, meaning the final message would have substitutions occurring in different positions in the text. The code method was hundreds of years old: often called a running key cipher because it used a very long passage from a book as the code key. That passage changed daily, based on the headline from the New York Times for that day. Easily Googled. The Chinese government could track Ki’s online habits, but visiting an American newspaper online was fairly common practice.
It took Ki several minutes to decrypt the message. The confirmation code was the GPS location of the pickup. A cipher like this one was not the most sophisticated available but protected from external access by the encrypted electronic signal reaching the fax machine. If an enemy had the actual printed sheet, it’s quite possible they could decode the message—if they knew the key passage. That was unlikely, but just to be safe, Ki would shred the fax as soon as he deciphered the location.
The substituted text pointed to a village about four hours away. The American to be picked up was named Rice.
Odd. Ki translated the code a second time to be sure. Rice just seemed too obvious a name for an exfiltration in China. But his was not to reason why.
Ki drove a Wuling Hongguang MPV, one of the most popular vehicles in China, nondescript grey, very little chrome. Under the rear storage area in the rear was a hidden compartment containing two Type 64 7.62mm semi-automatic pistols obtained illegally from one of the members of the People's Armed Police (PAP). Thirty rounds a minute using a zigzag stack magazine that held fifteen rounds. Fixed iron sights.
If the guns were ever found, Ki could face ten to fifteen years at hard labor. If they learned he worked for the CIA, he would almost assuredly never be heard from again.
Ki wrote a brief note to his wife telling her
he was checking out a new tourism site and would be back in the morning. He was going to add I love you to the bottom of the note but thought that that might alarm her unnecessarily. It wasn’t something he typically ended his messages with. He wasn’t even sure why he thought of adding it now.
He packed a few things, locked the door of their office and drove away.
火焰
F I R E
RICE WAS UP BEFORE DAWN. He went immediately to the back of Lui’s house and picked up an armful of dry sticks and carried them into the hearth. There was a box of matches on the mantle, mixed sizes and colors, collected over the years by his host from restaurants in nearby towns.
Rice started a fire and stared into the flames. At least he had matches now. He’d gotten by with much less in the past.
For years he followed a similar routine, up in the mountains near Rainier in Washington State. He lived for almost a decade in a hand-made cabin with a stone fireplace that was drafty and smoky and difficult to light, the heat it produced barely enough to warm the tiny space to the point where the single window would fail to clear of hoarfrost on some mornings.
Rice was hiding from the world; he told himself he was protecting family and friends, which was essentially true, but buried under those obligations and concerns was a deeper horror: the bad guys were winning.
The President that Rice had formerly served was no longer a patriot in his eyes. Self-interest and self-preservation became the new guiding light for the man. Rice, who had been treated like a hero by the Intelligence community all through his years with the CIA and DIA, became a suspect. His dedication to the cause made people like the DIA Director and the executive uncomfortable. Eventually he became a target. That resulted in an assassination attempt in the Greek Islands that accidentally took his first wife’s life.
A wave of anger settled on the ex-agent again after all those years. What a waste! And what a cowardly act. Rice had become concerned for others in his orbit like his brother Scott and his family. The people he used to work for had zero scruples. If they had even the smallest inkling of Rice’s whereabouts at the time, Scott and his wife would be put in danger. Or worse. The man who ran operations at that point, a head spook by the name of Kreegar, was well known for his support of torture.
Rice had disappeared into the wilderness, guessing his enemies would imagine him holed up in some hot and sunny third world country. Let them waste their time searching Mexico and South America while he was living with the blackflies and jackdaws up in the jack pine mountains.
But that was then, and this is now.
Rice held his hands up, let the warmth from the fire heat his bones. His wrist was still swollen and stiff, but he was used to the pain now, it had become background noise. He wondered momentarily what had become of his jailer and what would Rice do if he met him in a crowded street. Oddly, he felt no animosity towards the man, though he had beat Rice mercilessly. He was a victim in a way as much as he was. If he didn’t treat the prisoners at Quinjang the way his superiors demanded, he would soon find himself in his own filthy cell. He had little choice.
What a strange trip Rice’s life had become! He just wanted some peace now, felt he deserved that much for all the sacrifices he had made. He pictured himself back home in the USA, a modest home in the country, Britt at his side, kids in the yard. Was that possible? Or was that just the soldier’s delusion—peace and quiet. And companionship that didn’t consist of three other dusty platoon mates tucked up against you in a smelly foxhole.
Rice stood and stretched. He had to leave today. He didn’t know where he was going yet but he had overstayed his welcome. It wasn’t unusual to see American’s traveling alone in rural China, but if he was stopped, he would be asked for ID. Without a proper passport he would be detained immediately, and likely find himself back in prison again.
The message on Lui’s roof with the stones had been a waste of time. Rice couldn’t help but laugh at himself. He really thought that scrap of plywood with his crude rendition of a butterfly flapping its wings would get Hunter’s attention. If he ever found his way home, he was sure Hunter would find the idea hilarious.
Then the smile froze on his face. Rice heard a vehicle brake to a sudden stop just outside the front of the Lui’s hut. He heard a car door swing open, then slam.
He could tell by the sound that it wasn’t an army jeep. But it could be a command vehicle. Whoever it was, they were in a hurry.
导游人员
T H E T O U R G U I D E
KI BANG STOOD BY HIS MPV, a Seven Wolves cigarette hanging from his lower lip, looking around the untidy yard. A man lived here. Alone, he thought. The random, unkempt look of the place gave him all the clues he needed: a bachelor pad, rural Chinese style.
“Mr. Rice?” he shouted, facing the doorless front entrance to the shabby domicile. He couldn’t see in. The early morning sun was too bright. He hadn’t removed any of the guns he stored in the trunk, so he stood there, unarmed, thinking ‘what a beautiful day to be shot’.
Ki stared at the blank entryway. Did he see movement?
“Quinten gives his greetings,” he added. Quinten was a safe codeword, a conversation starter, according to the encoded fax message. There was another safe word he was saving for later.
“I am your driver, Mr. Rice. Quinten has hired me to give you a tour.”
A voice issued from inside, a nice echo due to the sparsely furnished masonry cube.
“Quinten who?” said a male American.
“Just Quinten. I understand he’s a friend of yours.”
A man emerged from the shack. He wore a loose-fitting pair of handmade pants. Hemp or ramie, course and stiff. The locals call them Ku. The shirt was also handmade, open cross collar, a style worn here for hundreds of years. The man was over six feet tall, bearded, his buzz cut skull just clearing the doorway. He walked with a slight limp and favored his left arm. Ki assumed he’d been in an accident or beaten badly.
“Mr. Rice? My name is Ki Bang. I’m your tour guide.”
The American squinted into the sun. “How do you know Quinten?”
He’s paying for your tour.” The American looked around, cautious.
“I wasn’t followed here, Mr. Rice. Just a quiet drive up from Nanguanyuan on the old Country Road.”
“I heard there’s a high military presence in the area.”
“No more than usual. But they are very sleepy in the early morning sun, like most reptiles, sluggish, groggy.”
Rice said nothing, flexing the fingers in his hands.
“I understand you have a particular interest in butterflies,” added Ki.
“Son of a bitch,” whispered Rice.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re serious?”
“About the butterflies?”
Rice smiled, showing off perfect American teeth. Like in the movies. Did every American look like a movie star, thought Ki, slightly envious of the man’s height and size and broad shoulders?
“You don’t know what the butterfly refers to?” asked the American.
“A tattoo?”
Rice put his hands on his hips. “Hah! That Quinten. He figured it out.”
“Would you like to talk to him?” asked Ki.
“How would I do that?” Ki reached in through the open driver’s window and pulled a bulky sat phone off the dash.
“I have him on speed dial.”
职责
D U T Y
KI PASSED HIS SAT PHONE over to Rice and then cautioned him. “It’s GSR-2. It’s encrypted. But that doesn’t mean someone with the right tech can’t eavesdrop.”
“Thanks,” answered Rice, the phone already to his ear.
“You're far too smart for a soldier,” said Hunter, “Is it too late for you to change careers?”
Rice closed his eyes and lifted the corners of his mouth. Almost a smile but not quite. Talking to Hunter over the phone was a unique experience. His voice, of course, was synthesized, but h
e was also communicating directly through his implant. In a way, it was like the voice of God; deep, crystal clear, the slightest echo feeding back over the long-distance digital connection. Like the voice in your head. Only a lot smarter.
“It’s been a long time since I was a soldier,” answered Rice, not using names, not making this easier for the Chinese government if they were listening in. “Maybe I should consider a career in the art world.”
“You’d be surprised what a skilled artist can do with a couple of stones.”
“And thanks for the tour. Your guide seems competent. I’m looking forward to seeing the sights.”
“Enjoy them while you can. We have work to do.”
“Who’s the client?” There was a long pause filled with the random sound of bits and bytes racing along the fiber optic lines, then beaming down from satellites in geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles above them.
“Our number one fan,” answered Hunter. Rice tried to not express his surprise. Their biggest client was the President of the United States. Always had been. This was clearly an order from the Executive.
“Do you need me back?” asked Rice.
“No, actually.”
“No?” Even Ki could see the surprise in Rice’s expression.
“This is something only you can address. I’ll send directions to your tour guide.”
“Sounds important,” Rice said, distracted by his feelings. He wanted out, badly. Too many difficult memories. Too much worry about Britt. He rotated his damaged wrist, still stiff and sore and purple on the edges. But duty called. Duty always called.
“Do you remember Gladys Knight and the Pips?” asked Hunter. Rice did. That’s what they called Evelyn Bosch and her crew. Bosch was the billionaire behind the kidnapping of the four hundred girls in the Congo. Rice’s team had dealt with her in Arizona. And that included Bosch’s personal army of smartly dressed mercenaries Jimmy called the Pips.
