Beijing Red

by Alex Ryan

  A crowd of people waiting for the traffic light to change blocked Nick’s path at the intersection. He pushed through them with harried dread, knocking shoulders and stepping on toes. He ignored the dirty looks and clipped rebukes; rude was rude in any language. He pressed up on his toes to see over the crowd. At six foot three, he was taller than most Chinese, but it didn’t matter. He’d lost sight of his marks. Emerging from the crowd, he paused at the curb and scanned down the street. A block and a half away, he spied what looked like a blue-and-white Beijing subway sign.

  Had she already gone underground?

  Had they followed her?

  He didn’t have time to wait for the damn light any longer.

  Fuck it.

  With his arms raised—palms facing out like a traffic cop with a death wish—he stepped into the street. Horns blared and brakes squealed while Nick tried to dodge and juke his way across four lanes of heavy traffic. A motorcycle, shooting the gap between the lanes, clipped his hip and sent him spinning onto the hood of a compact white sedan. He felt the thin sheet metal buckle beneath his weight as he rolled over the top and off the other side. He landed on his feet and felt the wind from a delivery truck passing by six inches from his face. He glanced back at the driver of the white car, who was making obscene gestures and screaming incomprehensible profanities out the window. Nick waved an apology and sprinted through a gap in traffic to safely reach the other side of the street.

  With most of the pedestrians trapped behind him still waiting to cross at the intersection, the west sidewalk along Sanktun was relatively empty. He scanned straight ahead.

  Nothing.

  He looked down the sidewalk on the other side of the street and spied a woman walking between two men. A third man was walking in front, leading. The woman’s posture was rigid, her gait a nervous shuffle.

  That’s her.

  The man to Dash’s left had a hand on her waist in an attempt to look familiar, but her body language screamed fear. He watched the lead man look up and down the street and then bark an order over his shoulder. The two others dragged Dash behind them into an alley halfway down the block. The leader looked left and right and, seemingly satisfied, disappeared into the alley.

  By now, the light had changed, and the oncoming traffic was beginning to move.

  Damn it. Not again.

  Heart pounding, adrenaline surging, he bolted into traffic a second time.

  He dodged a silver sports car but was not fast enough to clear the speeding red Chery Tiggo. The compact SUV swerved left just in time to avoid completely clobbering him, but he still slammed into the rear passenger door. The impact spun him right, and he slid down the rear fender, hitting the street hard on his left elbow. He rolled out of the fall—his training taking over—and vaulted upright with his right hand and leg. The Tiggo crashed into a taxi and mayhem erupted. Horns blared and all the traffic around him squealed to a stop.

  Without missing a beat, he was through the gaps and sprinting down the sidewalk toward the alley. Something terrible was about to happen to Dash. He could feel it in his bones. He visualized the worst possible scenario and readied himself. He reached the corner of the white stone building that formed the corner of the alley and skidded to a stop, forcing himself to assess.

  Assess . . . aim . . . fire . . . move.

  Nick pressed himself against the wall and listened a moment. He heard angry but controlled Chinese, he assumed from the leader, and then heard a terrified, choking reply from Dash. He glanced around the corner for a microsecond and then jerked his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes and processed the mental snapshot: One man, his back to my approach, his right forearm wrapped around Dash from behind. A second man to the right, standing at a forty-five-degree angle. The third, facing Dash and the alley entrance, perhaps two paces separation from Dash.

  He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and turned the corner into the alley.

  He wobbled like a drunken sailor and then chortled in a loud and obnoxious voice. Three more wobbly paces and he stumbled to his knees. One of the men barked an order at him in Chinese, no doubt an order to “go the fuck away.”

  “I’m looking for Gina.” Nick hollered back in a thick slur. “Hey, is that Tony? What the hell are you doing here, man?”

  The leader barked an order and the other two thugs turned to look at Nick. The jackass on the left spat onto the ground and pushed Dash into the leader’s clutches. The other one reached into his pocket. They looked at each other, nodded, and began their approach. Nick looked at Dash and saw her eyes go wide with surprise and hope.

  He winked at her.

  He got to his feet and stumbled onward, closing the gap. The two meatheads began to diverge, preparing to hit him from both sides. He squinted his eyes as if trying to sharpen his vision and stumbled right, trying to center himself between the two men. They closed to within a yard of him and then the man on his left snapped out a short, metal baton that made a metallic click as it locked into place.

  “Hey,” Nick said with a burp and a laugh. “You’re not Tony.”

  The two men exchanged grins, and the man on the left said something that made them both chuckle. The jackass with the baton raised his right arm, ready to turn Nick’s brains into scrambled eggs, but the opportunity never came.

  Nick shifted his weight onto the ball of his left foot and exploded forward. He blocked upward with his left arm as he spun. The outside of his wrist hit the assailant’s wrist, stopping the baton midswing and deadening the attacker’s right forearm. Still rotating, Nick clasped his foe’s right arm and took control of the limb, pulling the thug toward him and off balance. Simultaneously, he drove his right elbow up into the man’s left temple with an audible crack. Still rotating counterclockwise, Nick stepped across with his right foot so that his back was now facing his dazed attacker, brought his striking arm up, relocked his elbow, and then dropped his full weight onto the assailant’s captured arm. The blow landed between the thug’s shoulder and elbow, and Nick heard a crunch as the other man’s humerus shattered. The scream that followed reminded Nick of a wild animal. Nick released the arm, raised his right knee, and then kicked sharply behind him, snapping the man’s left knee backward, parting the ligaments meant to prevent the movement from their bony connections. A second primal howl came from the man as he crumbled to the ground behind Nick.

  Nick turned to jackass number two, who stood, mouth open and eyes wide, hands at his side. Without a second’s hesitation, Nick drove his right palm into the thug’s nose, rupturing bone and cartilage in an explosion of gore. With his left foot, Nick kicked the soft organs between the other man’s legs, and then he stepped through the gap, locked his left leg behind the man’s right ankle, and delivered a right hammer fist across the man’s throat, which sent the smaller man toppling backward over Nick’s leg. Jackass number two hit the ground hard, his head whiplashing against the unforgiving pavement with an audible thud. The body went limp and urine began to pool beneath.

  The fight was over in less than three seconds.

  Nick glanced down at his first adversary to make sure the man with two broken limbs hadn’t pulled a handgun while he was vanquishing the partner. Satisfied, he raised his hands in a combat spread and turned his attention to the crew leader.

  The remaining thug stood behind Dash, one arm wrapped around her neck in a headlock-style choke hold. The leader met Nick’s gaze while he whispered something in Dash’s ear.

  “Let her go,” Nick said, his voice hard and clinical.

  The leader released his grip on Dash’s neck and shoved her roughly toward Nick, who caught her just as her left knee struck the pavement. She groaned in pain as the nameless thug disappeared into the night, abandoning his fallen accomplices. Nick lifted Dash to her feet and tilted her face up by her chin.

  Her eyes swam in tears, which spilled down her exquisite cheekbones, leaving behind trails of mascara.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

>   She started to say something, couldn’t, and then just nodded instead.

  Nick knelt beside the unconscious man to his left, making sure to stay out of reach of the other moaning figure writhing in pain farther away. He began to rifle through the man’s pockets.

  “What are you doing?” Dash asked. There were tears on her cheeks, and she looked anxiously up and down the alley. “What if he comes back?”

  “I’m looking for some identification—something to tell me who these assholes are. If they work for Zhang or Li, they’ll be carrying military identification.”

  “That is insane. Commander Zhang would never try to hurt me, and Major Li already has control. I told you, this is not my government doing this.”

  Nick flipped the unconscious man unceremoniously over onto his face and pulled a wallet from his back pocket—no military ID, just cash and a civilian work ID.

  “Besides, if they were military, how would you defeat them so easily?” Dash demanded. “No—these men are thunks.”

  Nick smiled and shook his head.

  “You know, I am a Navy SEAL,” he said as a way of explanation.

  “I thought you were out of the military now?” She started dancing up and down, a bundle of nerves, her voice cracking as she spoke.

  “It’s not the type of training you forget.” He stood up. “But you’re right. They don’t seem to be military.”

  “Of course not,” she snorted. “Please,” she said, looking at him and squeezing her eyes shut. “Get me out of here.”

  Nick put an arm around her waist and pulled her beside him. “C’mon, let’s go,” he whispered, and he felt her soft hand grip his forearm. They stepped around the two remaining assaulters, one motionless and the other gurgling in agony over his shattered arm and ruined knee, which was still bent backward at an unnatural angle.

  Dash walked on her toes as they passed them as if she might somehow get contaminated by the carnage.

  “How did you do that?” she whispered.

  “An old friend taught me,” he said.

  An image of the Senior Chief—his big, powerful hands on his hips, standing victorious over Nick after taking him to the mat during close quarters combat training in SQT—flashed into Nick’s mind. The SEAL instructor’s words echoed in his head: “Hand-to-hand combat is life or death. There is no time to think. You will practice these katas until they are automatic—until muscle memory makes the movements rote. Trust me, Foley, when you need the hammer, it will be there.”

  Dash looked up at him, confused.

  He smiled down at her. She pressed her face against his shoulder and squeezed his arm. When they reached the corner and stepped onto the sidewalk, she instantly collected herself and let go of his arm. She straightened her silk top, adjusted her skirt, and wiped her cheeks dry.

  “Thank you, Nick Foley,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, scanning up and down the street for the escaped thug and any other “reserve” threats.

  “I really must go,” she said, taking a step away from him toward the metro sign on the other side of the street.

  “Not that way,” Nick said, draping an arm around her shoulders and redirecting her toward the busy intersection a block away. “You’re taking a cab. I insist.”

  When she again started to object, he silenced her with a look: Trust me on this, will ya?

  She nodded in surrender and folded her arms across her chest.

  They walked north back toward Workers Stadium North Road. A million questions raced through his head, but he didn’t know where to start or how. He looked at her. Just minutes after being assaulted in an alley by three men, she had already found her composure. Most people would be catatonic. Or hysterical. Not Dash. There was mettle in this woman, despite the fact she couldn’t weigh more than a buck ten.

  “Did you know those men?” he asked. He was still a long way from trusting her, but there was something much bigger than both of them going on here.

  She shook her head.

  “What did the leader say to you? What did they want?”

  He waited while she thought a moment, probably deciding what she should share.

  “He told me to stop asking questions that were not my business. He said if I didn’t stop meddling, they would come back and hurt me. That is when you came.”

  “The leader whispered something in your ear before he pushed you. What did he say?”

  She looked at her feet and muttered something in Chinese.

  “What does that mean—in English?” Nick asked.

  “It means, back off, bitch, or next time we’ll kill you.”

  “Obviously they’re talking about Kizilsu. Major Li must have sent these guys,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “These are not men of my government, Nick Foley. They are not military. These men were thunks.”

  “Thugs,” Nick said, correcting her absently with a nod. “Yes, but who sent them?”

  Dash shook her head.

  “Someone besides Major Li who does not want me knowing who killed the Uyghurs in Kizilsu.”

  “And someone who does not want you asking questions about the weapon used to kill them.”

  “Yes, precisely.”

  She raised her hand to signal a taxi, and within seconds a taxi had pulled along the curb. Nick opened the door for her and then handed the driver a wad of money from his pocket.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked her, ducking his head to look at her in the backseat through the open rear door.

  She smiled at him—a beautiful and genuine smile.

  “Yes, Nick,” she said, dropping the formal “Nick Foley,” he noticed. She touched his hand on the doorframe. “Thank you.”

  “Will I see you again?” he asked, surprised to hear the words spilling from his lips.

  She looked down. “Yes, maybe,” she said, and she looked up to meet his gaze. “I may still need your help.”

  He closed her door and watched the cab pull away until it disappeared into traffic.

  He stood at the curb, suddenly exhausted, his hip and left elbow throbbing. Right now, his number one priority was sleep.

  Tomorrow, he would think about his next move.

  Tonight’s events had settled the only decision that really mattered—come hell or high water, he was not leaving China.

  Chapter 17

  The shaking started in her legs, despite the fact that she was sitting.

  What is happening to me? Dazhong thought as she trembled uncontrollably in the backseat of the taxi.

  The doctor in her head answered, calm and clinical: Physiological response to an adrenaline surge triggered by a traumatic, life-threatening event. Epinephrine release causes elevated heart rate, increased respiration, muscle contraction, and the rapid metabolism of glycogen and lipids. Shaking is completely normal. Take slow, deep breaths and try to relax.

  She inhaled and blew a long, stuttering exhalation through pursed lips. She felt the taxi driver’s eyes on her and glanced up at the rearview mirror to confirm her suspicion. She quickly looked away from his judgmental gaze and exhaled another shaky breath. Her mobile phone rang inside her handbag, startling her despite the familiar ringtone. With clumsy fingers, she fumbled with the bag’s zipper and managed to retrieve the phone before the call went to voicemail.

  “Hello?” she said, trying to sound normal.

  “You said you were going to text me when you got home,” Jamie Lin said accusingly on the line. “I sent you three text messages. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Your voice sounds funny.”

  Dazhong felt tears coming and tried to steel herself. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be fine?” Jamie Lin said. “Now I’m worried. I’m coming over.”

  “No. You can’t . . . I’m not at home.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a taxi.”

  “Dazhong, tell me what the
hell is going on. You’re scaring me.”

  “After I left the club, some men pulled me into an alley,” she stammered. “I thought they were going to . . . I thought they were going to hurt me, but they didn’t.”

  “Oh my God. Did you call the police?”

  “No.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone right now. Tell the taxi driver to drive you to my apartment. I’ll be waiting outside at the curb.”

  “Are you sure, Jamie Lin?”

  “I insist.”

  “All right, see you soon.”

  Dazhong ended the call and informed the taxi driver of the change of address. Fifteen minutes later, she was inside Jamie Lin’s apartment, sitting on the sofa, her best friend cradling her in a hug. When the tears came, they came in heavy, violent sobs—weeks of pent-up emotion, frustration, and uncertainty spilling out in a much-needed emotional release. She had been strong—assertive in her dealings with Director Wong and Commander Zhang, brave in confronting Major Li and her unpredictable husband, and confident in front of Nick Foley. But the attack in the alley had unwound all that in a single instant. She felt like someone had kicked her feet out from underneath her, landing her flat on her back and gasping for air in a state of emotional hyperventilation.

  When Jamie Lin asked her what happened, everything came spilling out in one long, incoherent, blubbery diatribe. She vented about her professional frustrations working for the CDC and what an asshole Major Li was. She talked about the gruesome deaths she had witnessed in Kizilsu and her concerns about a scandalous cover-up sanctioned at the highest levels of government. She explained how an American named Nick Foley had single-handedly fought off three thugs in the alley and saved her life. Throughout her long and detailed purge of the events, a voice whispered quietly for her to stop, to shut up, that she was sharing government secrets she had sworn to protect. But she ignored the voice. She was tired of being alone. She was tired of being strong. She made no effort to filter details or her emotions, and eventually the little voice gave up and disappeared entirely.