Herokiller

by Paul Tassi

  “Shit!” Mark yelled as he searched the landscape. He found him almost instantly on the empty terrain, as the bike had pulled off the main drag onto a dirt road leading out to the badlands, which blew up a line of dust in his wake. Mark cornered so hard he almost flew off the bike, but regained his balance and took off in pursuit.

  Here the road twisted and turned, and Mark had no idea if the tires he was riding on were cleared for dirt, but they seemed to grip well enough, so he tried not to think about it. The man lobbed a few shots his way that went well over his head from that distance. Mark didn’t want to return fire until he was closer, and now he only had a single mag in the submachine gun to work with. He tossed the machine pistol away, and adjusted the knife in his belt, which was starting to dig into his thigh uncomfortably.

  As he was heading to the fight, Mark wasn’t wearing his secure S-lens that connected him to Brooke. He only had his phone, but going over a hundred miles an hour on a bike on a bumpy dirt road while holding a gun, he didn’t feel like grabbing it to make a call. He tried to shout voice commands at it as he drove, but the roar of the wind was too loud.

  “I’m sorry, can you say that again, Mark?” chirped the peppy little voice in his pocket.

  “Fucking fuck—”

  More bullets whizzed by his head as the biker swerved again. They were now in some rundown old ghost town that Vegas had crushed into oblivion decades ago.

  Mark was gaining on the man. Smoke was trickling from the chassis of the bike ahead. It was possible it had already taken a bullet. Mark saw several holes in his own bike, but from its performance, it didn’t appear as if the rounds had hit anything vital.

  They were down to about 60 mph now, which felt like crawling in comparison. Mark kept his distance as he didn’t feel like taking a round to the face, but he knew he’d have to make a move soon.

  He tried to make precision shots at the bike to further cripple it, but the rider veered left to avoid them and one only clipped the taillight. He returned fire and Mark felt a bullet tear through the tail of his suit jacket but miss his flesh.

  He only had six bullets left, according to the digital ammo readout. He fired one of them. Mercifully, it found its mark. The tiny trickle of smoke coming from the fleeing bike became a large plume, which enveloped the rider completely. He swerved and braked and had to leap from the bike, rolling expertly as he landed in the driveway of an ancient, decaying autobody shop.

  As soon as the assailant righted himself, he lunged for the gun he’d dropped a few feet away, but Mark took aim and shot the weapon, which sparked and spiraled away from his grip. The rider flung himself backward, dodging Mark’s next shot, but the final bullet in the chamber dove straight into his leg. Mark heard him cry out under the helmet, and he ran up and planted his foot right in the visor, making it spiderweb and knocking the man hard into the pavement. Mark grabbed him by the back of his shredded leather suit and quickly hauled him inside the door of the body shop, slamming it shut behind him.

  The man was still conscious, his head rolling around on his shoulders. Mark quickly flung him in a nearby rusted office chair and handcuffed his wrists and ankles to one another with the bindings he’d swiped from CMI security.

  He dialed Brooke, thankful his phone still had reception in the middle of the desert. His message was short and curt, that he needed immediate extraction at his GPS coordinates. That he’d landed a whale.

  He turned back to the groaning black figure and pulled off his helmet.

  There he found a shaved head and a bloodied face full of old, tiny scars.

  Not again. Not now.

  He blinked. The thin, scarred face remained. His lips parted to reveal a red smile.

  “Hello, Mark,” Zhou said. “It’s been too long.”

  40

  THE COAST GUARD REPORTED Major Zhou boarded a watercraft at approximately 9:08 a.m., twenty minutes after the explosion at your residence.”

  “You look surprised to see me.”

  “The craft was able to outrun local enforcement, so a V7 Hellbird was scrambled from Hickam AFB. It engaged Major Zhou’s craft five miles off the coast.”

  “They told you I was dead, didn’t they?”

  “The fuel line of Major Zhou’s craft was struck in the firefight. The ship burned, and divers were dispatched to recover the remains. Those remains are in front of you, and have been verified through dental and DNA testing.”

  “Of course they did.”

  “I hope this brings some solace to you, Agent Wei, in what the Agency knows is an incredibly difficult time.”

  Mark felt like he was choking. This couldn’t be real. The man in front of him had to be some kind of hallucination. Zhou was dead. Zhou was soggy ash and bone in a bag somewhere, with the rest of him at the bottom of the ocean.

  And yet here he was, smiling, talking, breathing.

  Mark punched him.

  Zhou’s head snapped back and his eyes unfocused. Mark shook out his hand, he felt real enough.

  Finally, he gathered himself to say only one word.

  “How?”

  Zhou winced, his eye swelling almost immediately. He dropped the smile.

  “There was indeed an explosion out on the Pacific that day. But it was the Hellbird, not my ship. I had anti-air ordnance for such an occasion.”

  Mark’s next question was why. Why would the CIA tell him that Zhou was dead? Why the fuck would they do that when the man had just killed his family?

  “They did not want you going off book for retaliation. Re-invading China to kill me, I suppose,” Zhou said, reading his mind. His English was almost flawless. Mark had never heard him speak it before.

  “You killed my wife. My child!” Mark shouted, lashing out with another strike that rocked Zhou’s head back.

  “You think you lost things?” Zhou said, his tone changing. His eyes narrowed and his voice dripped with contempt. “After the admiral’s assassination I was accused of treason. My entire family was rounded up and interrogated for weeks. My grandfather died in captivity from a stroke. My mother caught yellow lung and died a few weeks later. Even after I was cleared and reinstated, my family has never spoken to me again. Fathers forbid their daughters from marrying me.”

  “So you went back for what, revenge?” Mark said coldly.

  Zhou spit out a gooey stream of blood onto the cracked floor of the garage.

  “I came back to cleanse my shame. The Ministry sent me to kill the American spy who infiltrated our ranks to spark a civil war. But none of the other factions believed the US was responsible for the killings and the chaos. Or they just refused to accept it. By the time I missed my window with you, the country was crumbling and I was recalled. One man no longer meant anything, and my skills were needed elsewhere.”

  Mark had to push past the shock that Zhou was alive. The CIA’s exfil team was on its way, and even though they were deep in the badlands, it was possible Crayton’s people could find them. He would have to process this later.

  “Tell me why you’re trying to kill Cameron Crayton, why you’re trying take your own piece off the board.”

  Zhou’s jaw snapped shut, suddenly no longer in the mood to talk.

  “Fine,” Mark said. “Fortunately, you trained me for just this occasion.”

  Mark whipped Easton’s knife out of his belt, and before Zhou could even blink, he tore through the restrained man’s motorcycle leathers. The material and the skin beneath it split open, drawing a line of blood. Zhou clenched his teeth, but he didn’t cry out.

  “No?” Mark said. He sliced upward this time, perfectly bisecting the first wound.

  Zhou grimaced again, but this time choked out a laugh.

  “You are wasting your time. Your treachery saw to that.”

  Mark saw pale skin underneath the torn leather and something caught his eye. He grabbed a corner of the cut fabric and pulled. A patch of Zhou’s chest was exposed, revealing long-healed, thin scars. The same kind that covered Mark�
�s own body.

  “The Ministry was … thorough when trying to determine my innocence,” Zhou said. “You do not have the time or energy to carve the information out of me. Though I remember you were good with the knife. All those dissidents, offering up anything and everything at the end of your blade. And that poor American soldier too. What was his name? Oh-something.”

  Lieutenant Marcus O’Connor. United States Army. Service Number 8355521. D.O.B. 6/22/2002.

  He’d never forget it.

  But Zhou was right, and Mark knew it. It could take months to extract anything out of him by force, though more likely he’d die first out of pure spite.

  Mark jammed the knife into Zhou’s leg, the one that hadn’t been shot, and the man finally cried out, a mix of surprise and pain.

  “What … did I just … say?” Zhou said, cringing as Mark slowly pulled the knife out.

  “I know, I just really wanted to do that.”

  He wiped the knife on his pants and slid it back behind his belt.

  “So you’ll admit to killing my family, but not why you just launched an all-out assault on the most famous man in America?”

  Zhou glared.

  “The man is a snake. He will explain this attack away. Just watch.”

  “If you hate him so much and want him gone, then help me. You know why I’m here, why I’m in this goddamn tournament.”

  “More of the CIA’s little games,” Zhou said. “You are their pawn yet again. Imagine my face when I saw you on television, of all places.”

  “I’m trying to take down a dangerous man. The same man you’re trying to eliminate.”

  Zhou considered that.

  “And what will I get if I share my knowledge?”

  The man was a cockroach, and knew what it took to survive. Mark was counting on that.

  “Immunity. Relocation. Money, even.”

  Zhou laughed.

  “And then the CIA will feed you my address so you can come kill me in my sleep. No, thank you.”

  Mark couldn’t deny that’s exactly what he would do.

  “If you don’t agree to detail your government’s involvement with Cameron Crayton before my backup arrives, they will take in a corpse, rather than a prisoner. That much I promise you. You may be worried I’ll kill you later, but I can promise I will kill you now if you don’t start talking.”

  Most MSS agents would indeed die before giving up anything, as the captured woman in Crayton’s compound had. But after spending years with the man, Mark knew Zhou was a pragmatist, not a fanatic. And China hadn’t exactly treated him well, it seemed. Mark watched the gears turning inside his head.

  “In writing. All of it. The whole deal. Then you’ll get what you want.”

  “I need something now. To understand what it is you have.”

  Zhou was silent, stewing.

  “Let me see your eyes,” Zhou said. Mark cocked his head. “Your eyes!”

  Mark leaned in closer to the restrained man.

  “No S-lenses, then. Take out your phone.”

  Mark hesitated, then slowly fished the phone out of his pocket. He thought he heard the distant whir of muted hexocopter blades overhead.

  “Put it there,” Zhou tapped the ground with his heel, his legs still cuffed together.

  Mark obliged, and Zhou promptly smashed the thin screen to bits under his boot.

  “No recordings until my deal is signed. But I can tell you who you are hunting. Knowing your government, you will kill the man outright before you let the world know he was ours. Heart attack. Suicide. The usual.”

  Finally, they were getting somewhere. Mark’s heart was pounding. Was this it? Would it finally be over thanks to Zhou of all people? This didn’t feel real. Every second Mark had to restrain himself from slitting the man’s throat. Asami and Riko flashed before his eyes every time he opened his mouth.

  “Who is Cameron Crayton?” Mark asked, pulling up another chair and sitting across from Zhou, who was now mostly covered in his own blood.

  “Keep in mind all of this is years before either of us were born,” Zhou said. “Crayton’s story is legend in the Ministry, and legends can be embellished. And yet, I doubt much of this was.

  “Missionaries have infected China for centuries. Invading to preach the word of their foreign lord under the pretense of helping the poor and sick. But in 1985, two came with no such noble aims. These two Americans, these ‘Olssons,’ were zealots. They planted themselves in the slums, and started shouting loudly about how the Chinese were murdering their children in the womb. They held signs with bloody masses of tissue, supposed infants, the words written in poorly translated Chinese, telling the populace they were doomed to a hell none of them even believed in.

  “It was a district so impoverished and crime-ridden, there wasn’t even a local police presence at that point. But their screaming upset the local brothel owners, their gory signs turning the stomachs of those who would otherwise be buying sex or drugs. A Triad lieutenant was finally called in to deal with the Americans. He quite generously gave them a day to leave the country, yet when he returned the next morning, there they stood. Even their child, a young boy no older than six had his own small sign with a message of damnation and blasphemy.

  “The Triads had a good laugh before they dragged the Olssons off and cut out their tongues. They chained them up and let them bleed out, taking bets on which would die first.

  “The boy was a special case. He could be killed too, yes. But he could also be sold. Such pretty blond hair and blue eyes. The lieutenant fetched a high price for him after a bidding war from local flesh merchants. They thought he would do well with tourists and diplomats, a booming market thanks to the depravity of Western society. But on his first job, the boy stabbed a Ukrainian businessman in a leg with a corkscrew, and he bled out on the floor. Rather than kill him, his owner had another idea. He was sold again, this time to a different sort of master.

  “It’s hard to overstate the plague of street children that surged through Beijing back then. Discarded second children usually died, but those that didn’t roamed the streets, stealing, begging, becoming nearly feral. Some of the local gangs got it in their heads that there was money to be made from the hunger and desperation of these children. So they built pens. And cages. They turned them loose on each other, and made a fortune from the gambling returns.

  “The boy spent a year in dark basements and hidden back rooms, beating other children to death at the behest of his various masters. He was their prize dog, and was sold repeatedly for huge sums of money. He destroyed every other child put in his path, and eventually one of his owners started collecting the milk teeth from his fallen opponents, and strung them into a necklace he wore to every fight. Whispers of the ‘White Devil’ began to spread throughout Beijing’s underground. The undefeated demon child.

  “Eventually, a young Ministry officer named Zhu Meng found himself at one of the Devil’s fights. They were putting him against much older children now, to see if he could still win. After the child shoved half a broken bottle into the lung of an eleven-year-old kung-fu prodigy, Zhu Meng started asking around. He heard his story, and learned that because of the Olssons’ outcast status in the US, no one was looking for the boy. He purchased him outright for triple his previous price, believing if he took him off the streets now, there would be some semblance of his sanity left. And he had big plans for the young Devil.

  “At the time, there was a new MSS pilot program called ‘Project Embryo.’ It was a training initiative that took children from birth and raised them to be elite soldiers, assassins, and infiltrators. The training was extensive, and brutal, and many of the children were dying in the process. But in the young White Devil, Zhu Meng saw a child already hardened to steel, and white as well. It was an unimaginable opportunity, and Meng was given full authority to oversee the boy’s training personally.

  “It was there, in Embryo, that ‘Cameron Crayton’ was truly born. He was a construct, his st
ory written by a panel of officers, scientists, and Zhu Meng himself. It took a full year to put his mind back together from what he’d endured since he’d arrived in China. He gave no indication he remembered his parents, or America, so he was a blank slate. They reformed him to their will.

  “No one was even allowed to speak Chinese in his presence. He was given all Western teachers in every subject. Trained with Western mercenaries for his combat drills. He was to be the ultimate plant in the US. Not some politician the MSS would blackmail, or a businessman looking to make a few tax-free billion on the side. Such endeavors were unreliable at best, and dangerous at worst. But this, someone they could shape from such a young age to do their bidding. This was always the ultimate goal of Embryo, and Cameron Crayton was their best hope for success to date.

  “Crayton grew up exactly how they wanted. How they engineered him to be. He was intelligent, well-spoken, and charming, without a hint of his previous insanity cracking through the surface. He loved Meng, and his caretakers, and understood his mission once he reached his teens. It would take almost a lifetime, but in the end, it would be worth it.

  “After Crayton was smuggled into the States at seventeen, he was funneled enough money to start making investments in companies. His background was forged, but the money was real, and China ensured the companies he was funding succeeded, in one way or another. His fortune grew until he was able to found CMI on his own at thirty.

  “The ultimate goal was to have Crayton become one of the West’s most influential media figures. A country like the US is a slave to its news media, and Crayton would be in a position to push whatever agenda the Ministry wanted. If his influence expanded enough, he could sway huge portions of the American public with his programming.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mark broke in, his head spinning from the weight of all this. “Why the hell are you trying to kill him? You raised him from birth to be your man, and now you want him dead? That makes no sense.”

  Zhou glared at him. One of his eyes was now completely swollen shut.

  “Would you like to keep talking, or should I continue? You should be on your knees thanking me I am telling you this much.”