Chapter Twenty-Six
It was early evening when they reached the low, single-story house of Tiao and Alton’s sister. The sun had just begun to dip behind the horizon. Thick, noxious clouds hovered over the collection of tiny shops and homes. An explosion of orange and purple tinted the sky above them … particles and debris in the air, reflecting the last dying beams of daylight.
Tiao paid the sunset no mind. He did not look back at the stunning sky as he shuffled from the truck towards his front door.
Alton’s sister Guan-yin, an attractive but tired-looking woman in her thirties, opened the door. She greeted Tiao with a hug and kiss on his cheek. He grunted a few words to her, then stepped into the house. Guan-yin wiped some sweat from her brow. She beamed a radiant smile at Alton and the others and greeted each of them as they walked through the door. “Huan-ying, huan-ying,” she said, giving Alton a hug as he walked past.
She followed them inside and gently guided Caine by the shoulder to the kitchen. “Xie xie ni ba wo de xiongdi,” she said, offering him a slight bow. “Baitou ni bixu chi.”
Alton sat down at a large, simple wooden table that dominated the room. “She thanked you for bringing me home. Said we have to eat.”
A large cast iron pot was bubbling on the stove. The hearty scent of braised beef and ginger filled the air. It had been hours since any of them had eaten a proper meal, and Caine’s stomach growled with hunger.
“Thank you, we're star—"
Jia rested a hand on his knee and squeezed, cutting off his words. “We’re so grateful for your hospitality," she said. "But we couldn’t possible impose. You and your husband must eat first.” She and Guan-yin spoke back and forth in rapid Chinese, and finally Jia nodded. “Xie xie, we are in your debt.”
She turned to Caine and whispered in his ear. “You must refuse at least once. It is rude to be so eager.”
Caine’s stomach emitted another low rumble. “Tell that to my stomach,” he muttered. “It doesn’t speak Chinese.”
The group watched as Guan-yin rolled a large block of dough onto a wooden cutting board. When the dough formed a thin, square sheet, she held the cutting board above a pot of boiling water. Using a small, square-shaped knife, she made a series of quick, slicing motions over the dough.
With each stroke, the knife shaved a long thin strip of dough off the board. The knife-cut noodles, known as Dao Xiao Mian, fell into the bubbling water and began to cook. Caine watched as Guan-yin shaved the last of the dough into the water. Then she used a wire strainer to sift out the cooked noodles, dropping them into large white bowels. She ladled a generous portion of beef broth over the noodles and set them down on the table.
Caine used a pair of chopsticks to shovel the noodles into his mouth. They were thick, chewy, and satisfying. The amount of meat in the bowl was small, but each chunk of beef had been boiled to exquisite tenderness. It fell apart in his mouth, mixing with the ginger, onion, and other flavors in the hearty soup broth.
As they ate, Tiao sat in a rocking chair, facing away from them. He appeared fixated by the local news playing on a small TV in the corner. He rocked back and forth, slurping soup from his bowl with a white plastic spoon.
“Alton,” Sean mumbled, as he stuffed his mouth full of noodles. "You gotta tell your sister, this is amazing.”
Alton spoke to his sister in Chinese. She smiled, took Sean’s bowl from the table, and refilled it. “Yeah, she good cook,” Alton said. “She use bottled water for the soup, so no worries. We used to purify the river water with aluminum powder, but now it get so bad, we can’t drink it. Only use for bath and shower.”
“Niang,” a small voice called out. A young girl had wandered into the kitchen. Her skin was pale and had a sallow look to it. Her short, dark hair was braided into twin pigtails that hung from the sides of her head at odd angles. Caine guessed her to be about eight years old. She moved towards them with small, weak steps.
“Wo xiang yixie tangle,” she said.
Alton dropped his chopsticks and grinned ear to ear. “Baozhai, you’re awake? You mother says you supposed to be sleeping.”
Guan-yin gave the girl a concerned look, but she did not intervene as Alton lifted her onto the bench next to him. She coughed, then looked up at him and smiled.
“This is my niece, Baozhai," Alton said. "Her name means ‘stockade of treasure.’”
Jia leaned over the table and adjusted one of the girl’s pigtails. “What a pretty name for such a pretty girl.”
“She said she wants some soup,” Alton said. He brought a spoon of broth to the girl’s mouth. She sipped it, and her face lit up with a wide grin. He gave her some more, but stopped when she began to cough again. Her tiny, frail body shook as the spasm of coughing grew worse.
Guan-yin dropped her dishrag into the sink and hurried over. She wrapped the small, shaking girl in her arms and carried her from the table. “That’s enough, little one,” she said. “Ni bizu xiuxi, you must rest.”
Jia looked at the table. Her eyes squinted at a small spray of red flecks where the child had been sitting. “Oh my God, is that blood?”
Alton sighed. “She is sick. She is the reason I go to Beijing. I petition the capital. Try to make them close down Fang’s factory, make him and others like him pay for what they have done to us. What they have done to our children.”
He paused a moment. Guan-yin had taken his niece to the back of the house. They could still hear her faint coughing in the distance.
“She has lung cancer,” Alton said. He pushed the bowl of soup away and stood up from the table. “Eight years old, and she has lung cancer. Whoever heard of such a thing?”
He glared at Caine. “You still think Fang is no monster? That he is just a man, like any other? What kind of man could do this to innocent children?”
Caine's emerald eyes met Alton’s angry gaze. “I said he was no vampire," Caine replied. "Trust me, I’ve known plenty of monsters. They were all just men. That’s all it takes.”
“He is jiangsi.”
Everyone turned and looked at Tiao. The thick, tall man had stood up from the rocking chair. His face held a blank, emotionless stare. His eyes looked towards the back of the house. In the distance, Baozhai continued to cough. They heard Guan-yin try to comfort her with soft, gentle whispers.
“He is a demon,” Tiao said in a low, scratchy voice. “He feeds off the living. And I am no better.”
Tiao did not look them as he walked towards the bedroom. He slammed the door closed behind him.
Alton looked at the others. “He works at the Fang factory. Everyone here does, or at one of other factories in the area. There is an aluminum plant, and a natural gas mine as well. Those are the only jobs left. Everything else is gone.”
Jia stood up. She put an arm on Alton’s shoulder. “You are a good brother. And a good uncle.”
She looked up at Caine. “I’ll see if I can help Guan-yin.”
Jia and Alton left the room and headed towards the back of the house. Sean stood up to follow them, but Caine grabbed his arm.
“Sean … sit down.”
Sean gave a him a strange look, but he sat back down at the table.
Caine looked him in the eye. “We need to talk.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ted slid his finger across the phone’s screen. He watched as the camera zoomed in closer on houses spread around the tree-lined cul-de-sac. He tapped on one of the roofs, and the camera dipped down. It moved closer and closer, isolating it in the frame. The other high-priced homes in the pastoral Virginia suburb fell off the screen.
He kneeled down on the lush, green grass of his front lawn. A young boy with shaggy blond hair and bright, intelligent eyes stood next to him. The boy smiled and pointed at the image on the screen. “That’s our house, Daddy!”
“That’s right, Junior, that’s our house!” Ted laughed, and tapped the screen again, bringing up a few simple controls on the drone’s app. “You see this circle? If you
move your finger here, you can make the drone fly higher, or lower. Want to try?”
The boy looked up and shielded his eyes from the morning sun. “I don’t see it. Is it invisible?”
“No,” Ted chuckled. “But if you can make me an invisible drone someday, I’ll give you a million bucks! It’s just really high up in the air, buddy. Here …” He handed the boy the phone.
The child began jabbing at the screen. The camera veered left and right, spinning in an erratic circle.
“Gentle, son, like I showed you. You only have to move a little bit.”
Ted took the child’s wrist in his hand and moved it in a slow circle across the screen. The whine of the mini-drone’s engine became audible. The tiny aircraft lowered its altitude and dropped into view. It looked like some kind of freakish mechanical insect, hovering in the air beneath the blur of four spinning plastic rotors.
A cluster of tiny cameras hung beneath the mini-drone. The app on Ted’s phone stitched their video feeds into a seamless, 360-degree view of the neighborhood.
“There it is!” Teddy Junior cried, pointing up to the sky.
“Yeah. Now see if you can make it fly over the neighbor’s house. Remember, gentle …”
A buzzing in Ted’s pocket interrupted him. It was his encrypted phone. The one he used to contact his asset, Red Phoenix.
The phone buzzed again. He knew he had to answer.
“Okay, buddy, you try. Take it easy, go slow. I’ll be right back.”
Ted walked away from his son to the side of his house and slipped the phone from his pocket. He had received a text. He opened the secure texting app and checked the message’s content.
RED PHOENIX REPORTING. SOME COMPLICATIONS. PROCEEDING ON MISSION.
Ted breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he thought. Some good news.
He typed a reply. BE AWARE, CIA ASSET MAY BE IN PLACE. DO NOT LET THEM ACQUIRE THE PACKAGE FIRST. LETHAL FORCE IS SANCTIONED.
He waited a few minutes, but there was no reply. Then the phone buzzed again.
COPY. HAVE HER READY. I WANT TO SPEAK TO HER.
Ted thought for a moment, then closed the chat window. He typed in another number from memory.
RED PHOENIX BACK ON MISSION. HOW SHOULD I PROCEED?
He didn’t have time to slip his phone back in his pocket before it buzzed again. This time the reply was from the second number.
GO TO FARMHOUSE. ELIMINATE LOOSE ENDS. PREPARE TO MOVE. NO MISTAKES.
Ted felt a cold, dark knot form in the pit of his stomach. He had been lucky with Ganda, and the incident with Rebecca. Accessing the police report had been a trivial matter for someone in his position. Forensic reports indicated no prints or blood found in the alley. They had recorded the incident as a simple mugging gone wrong.
But did Rebecca really believe that, he wondered? He had purposely avoided contact with her since then. As far as he knew, she had made no calls or attempts to reach his office.
She’s smart. Don’t underestimate her, he thought. Don’t make the same mistake Bernatto did.
Eliminate loose ends. Those were his instructions.
Ganda was definitely a loose end, he decided. A thread that led back to the botched kidnapping attempt on Rebecca. A thread that had to be snipped.
And after this was over, when TANGENT was secure? He had not been given specific instructions, but he had a pretty good idea what would happen. Red Phoenix, and the leverage at the farmhouse … they were all part of a colossal mess. When a mess got this big, it had to be cleaned up. No matter how valuable an asset was, in the end, it all went back to risk versus reward.
When the risks were this high, the only winning move was to cash out your chips and go home.
Josh struggled to focus on the farmhouse in distance. The two-story building was in good shape and looked like it had been recently painted. The wood planks that made up its outer walls were a deep, dark brick-red. The rich, crimson paint had not yet faded from exposure to the sun and elements. Someone was taking good care of the place.
Josh tried to catalog these and other specifics, to focus his mind on noticing the tiny details. Tiny details, he knew, could mean the difference between life and death.
But instead, his thoughts continued to drift to the events of the precious night. Like a boat moored by a short length of rope, he found himself dragged again and again into the swift currents of memory. Had he done the right thing? Had he overstepped his bounds? Had he taken advantage of her? Or was it the other way around?
He shook his head and forced himself to return his attention to the farmhouse. Two men crossed the verdant, dew-covered grass, heading towards the red building. Josh twisted the focus knob of the Rothco Compact binoculars he held in his hands. The twin lenses magnified the figures. As the image resolved, details came into view.
One of the men had tan skin, salt and pepper hair, and dark, furtive eyes. He turned left and right, scanning the perimeter as he approached the door of the farmhouse.
It was Wallace Ganda. His contact, a man called Tiny, had come through.
Tiny ran a biker bar in Leesburg. The beefy, rotund man had put on weight since the last time Josh had seen him. But back in the day, Tiny had been a bona fide ass kicker. He was a former Marine, Force Recon, just like Josh. After his discharge, Tiny had done some time as an independent contractor … a polite way of saying “hired muscle.” Now, he was a recruiter of sorts. He had ties to private security, mercenaries, and other soldiers of fortune.
A rendition attempt on the Director of the National Clandestine Service was out of Tiny’s league. But if the men involved were in town, Tiny would know about it.
It took Josh a few broken bottles and the business end of a pool cue to make his point. In the end, he had convinced Tiny that protecting a washed-out piece of shit like Wallace Ganda was not in his best interests.
Ganda had made a mistake. He had attacked Rebecca.
Josh respected the director. She was like him. A fighter. A warrior. And it was his duty to protect her. She was his people. And one thing Josh had learned in his years of combat: When the enemy struck your people, you hit back twice as hard.
Now, after last night, things had become even more personal.
Josh returned his attention to Ganda. He and another man approached the door. Both wore jeans, casual shirts, and windbreakers. Ganda was carrying bags from a local grocery store.
The other man hefted cases of bottled water and soda on his shoulder. He was tall and well-built. Wraparound sunglasses covered his eyes, and his head was shaved. A thick mustache and goatee covered his chin. Like Ganda, his movements were smooth and precise. Ex-military, Josh thought. Just like the others.
So far Josh had counted at least four people entering and leaving the house at various points in time. Judging by the items they were carrying, it appeared Ganda and his partner had gone on a food run. But why were these men camped out in this remote farmhouse in the first place?
Even if they believed the police report and thought there was no evidence left behind in the alley, they had still bungled a high-profile snatch. The safest course of action would have been to leave town. Unless there was some other priority here. Something special at this location that Josh hadn’t seen yet. Or a mission parameter that had yet to be completed.
Josh heard the sound of footsteps crunching across dead leaves. They grew louder. Someone was approaching his position. With slow, silent movements, he tucked the binoculars into a pocket on his 5.11 Response jacket. His hand darted inside the jacket, reaching for the Glock 19 pistol he carried in a shoulder rig.
He stopped himself. The sound of a gunshot would carry. If Ganda and his men heard it, they would pack up and leave. And if that happened, he and Rebecca might never find out exactly what they were doing here.
The sound was closer … beneath him.
Josh stretched out his body, trying to blend into the shadows of the tree branches. He was perched fifteen feet off the ground, nestled in the
branches of a Carolina Poplar tree. Hundreds of identical trees lined the acreage around the farmhouse.
The morning sun was low. Pinpoints of light reflected off the droplets of moisture that dotted the ground. The orange and red leaves surrounding him were still shrouded in shadow. It was a decent hide, but if the man moving beneath him looked up, Josh doubted he would escape notice.
The man stopped beneath Josh’s tree. Peering down, Josh spotted the black stock and barrel of a Bushmaster M4 carbine.
Okay, Josh thought. Things are getting serious up here.
Civilian M4 models were semi-automatic only. They fired a single 5.56 x45 NATO round each time the trigger was depressed. But simple aftermarket kits could convert the rifle to burst and full-auto fire. Josh had no doubt these men would have installed such modifications on their weapons
A pair of mourning doves burst into the air, to the man’s right side. He spun around. The barrel of his M4 tracked the explosion of fluttering wings and feathers as the birds took flight. As the man turned, Josh caught a glimpse of his features. He was new. Josh had not seen him entering the house earlier. That brought the total count to at least six hostiles.
The odds were getting worse.
The guard swept the area one more time with his rifle, taking long, slow glances to his left and right. Then he moved on. The crunching of his footsteps grew fainter. He descended the hill and headed across the field towards the big red house.
Once he was out of view, Josh took a deep breath and shimmied down the tree. He ducked into the forest on the perimeter of the property, then made his way back to the winding dirt road where he had parked his car. As he walked, he scanned the tree line. He searched for any signs of movement in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the thick forest. But the trees were still, unmoving.
He slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed Rebecca’s number.
She picked up on the first ring. “Josh, I was worried. You were supposed to report in an hour ago,” she said.
“Sorry. Almost got spotted. Had to lay low for a while.”
Red Phoenix: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 2) Page 21
