“Three nights this week, we’ve shown we can hit them from any direction. Killing them wouldn’t serve her purpose any better. Besides, I didn’t see you going for any headshots either.”
“I’m just saying… but you’re right, she does prefer that we not kill them.”
Danko’s fire team stored the scooters in a shed just outside of Kunlong where Tammy maintained a temporary arms depot. Two pickup trucks waited to return the men to Kutkai, and a sedan idled nearby to bring Connie and Danko to a safe house nestled in an elbow of the Nam Ting River just outside of Hopang, where Tammy had arranged Hsu Qi’s accommodations for this evening, courtesy of the military governor of the Wa State.
“Even if I have lost my edge, you know who’s responsible, right?”
“Your girl, I suppose.”
“You were busy insinuating that she’s David Walker’s daughter, and she’s the one who doesn’t want me killing anyone.”
“Yeah, my people-reading skills may be a bit rusty.”
Approaching the town center, Connie tried to spot the security teams Tammy had posted, but they kept a low profile. She took a moment to marvel at the impact of having a black-ops mercenary like Danko to train their men, not just in their ability to mount night raids like the one they’d just carried out, but also in the overall security it afforded to Hsu Qi, who would probably have been captured or killed long since without him.
Ironies abounded, however, since outside the residence a line of well-wishers and favor-seekers curled down the street on most days. If the Tatmadaw had access to any live satellite imagery, finding Hsu Qi would not be difficult – wherever the people were assembled, she was bound to be nearby – though acting on this intel might prove more challenging. An evergreen hedge lined the outer wall, and the courtyard was filled with benches to accommodate the afternoon crowds.
Danko had proposed posting snipers on the roof to guard against suicide attacks, but Hsu Qi had vetoed this idea. Tammy’s compromise involved sending men and women in plain clothes into the town to listen for rumors and gossip, and maybe even to look out for people with intemperate sentiments on any subject.
Standing in the courtyard, once the car had been put away, and the gates of the compound secured, Connie paused to admire Danko for the crafty old ruffian he was – tall and lean, rough stubble and graying auburn hair. It was easy to see how Hsu Qi had captured his heart, but it took a greater effort of imagination to see the relation-ship from the other side, and it testified to some expansiveness of spirit in Hsu Qi that she’d been able to find something in him.
The sun would rise in a couple of hours, so sleep was likely to prove elusive, and the sounds of someone bustling in the kitchen could be heard. Danko had already left in search of a pillow to rest his head, and Connie was weighing the desirability of a cup of tea when Ip came running from the main house brandishing a mobile phone.
“You must call, Mrs. Connie… your American family.” This was more English than she’d heard Ip speak in the entire time she’d known her. “They need you.”
Hidden depths, Connie supposed. She’d have to ask Michael how they’d found her. It had to be his doing, though she hadn’t noticed anyone who might be an agency asset in Kutkai or Hopang. He might have relied on SIGINT through NSA, but that seemed less likely, since he’d always been wary of exposing his family to the vagaries of interagency cooperation. But there was a more pressing problem: the incoming call had left no trace in the call log of the phone Ip had handed her.
She found her in the kitchen, Hsu Qi, dressed in a flowing robe and preparing the tea she’d contemplated earlier. She’d prepared a lavish greeting for them in Kutkai when they first arrived, and thanked her for taking such good care of sifu Danko, and even found a place for Ip in her household, who was busy making herself indispensable.
“This is the number they left for you.” Hsu Qi held out a slip of paper with a long string of digits written in an elegant hand. “It sounds important.”
“Did you speak to them yourself?”
“Yes, briefly.”
“Was it a man or a woman? How did they seem?”
“A man with a deep voice, and two women in the background. There was much agitation, and they seemed all quite … anxious to speak to you.”
Hsu Qi rose and reached across the table to touch Connie’s hand, then gestured to Ip to leave her the privacy of the kitchen. Once they’d gone, she contemplated the slip of paper, with the numbers written in a fine hand. There were two many digits for this to be an ordinary phone, nineteen altogether, and the first few didn’t resemble any country code she could think of. It would be early afternoon in Virginia if she called now, which meant this was as good a time as any. She got halfway through the sequence when she heard a loud series of clicks and buzzes, which told her everything. This was a VOIP connection, probably transmitted over unused fax machines and video recorders, which could function as shadow servers, as long as the owners hadn’t changed the factory default passwords – and who bothers to change the default password on their video camera?
“Omagod,” was all she could say, once Michael had broken the bad news, and before she had time to catch her breath. That Emily had gone missing was bad enough, but Li Li was with her – Connie’s ears started ringing on hearing this information, and she felt a bit dizzy. Michael related the rest: indications of a gun battle on Wudang Mountain, the last place they knew she’d been, had been crackling over the backchannels he knew how to work so well. Four ministry agents dead, six more severely injured, that much had made the newswire, but Michael had reason to think they’d targeted Emily specifically and wondered if it wasn’t backlash from the failed coup.
“It could be aimed at undermining President Liang.”
“I’m not following you,” she said. “How would killing Emily have any impact on Liang?”
“It’s a long story… but what matters is that whoever’s behind it knows who she is. That much I’m sure of. Her face has been splashed all over the Chinese tabloids.”
Connie could only shake her head at the strangeness of this statement – the most camera-shy girl she’d ever met is on the cover of a magazine? That definitely did not compute. But whatever mental static this thought might occasion, she had a feeling Michael wasn’t finished relaying bad news.
“Stone’s gone after them.”
Connie felt the pressure of her heart beating in her ears. “How does that even make sense? I mean, how could…”
“We’re not in Virginia.”
“Oh.”
“Andie and Yuki brought him to Japan to see Li Li off, and to spend a little time with Emily.”
“… when everything went south?”
“You get the picture. When Jiang’s contact was killed, and Emily brought her to Wudang instead, they didn’t want to return home… you know, in case they could be of use… and they came to Beijing.”
“He must have overheard and figured it out… but how is he able to travel? How can he communicate with anyone, or buy bus or train tickets?”
“We don’t have any intel on that. He doesn’t have a mobile phone, so he’s pretty much untrackable. But I can tell you that he’s been studying Mandarin since last summer, and he and Li Li were practicing their calligraphy. I think he’s probably passing notes to communicate.”
Connie sat in silence and let the horrors of this conversation wash over her, as Michael laid out what little intel they had – a ping on the satphone somewhere north of Chengdu, and then nothing. The one ray of hope either of them could cling to was the fact that there’d been no mention of her in the Chinese news media.
“If she’d been captured or killed, the tabloids would have splashed it all over the front page.” This certainty made more sense to Michael than to her, but Connie was prepared to accept his conclusion, since to do otherwise would be crushing.
“I have to go,” she said to Danko, once he’d roused himself and stumbled into the kitchen. It only took a fe
w minutes to apprise him of the situation. Michael was unable to provide any material assistance, though he’d already sent Ethan to Chengdu to see what support he might provide.
“It’ really just a matter of getting you across the border,” Hsu Qi said, when she heard the news.
“Your passport is valid, and you’re not on any watchlists, are you?” Danko tilted his head as he said this, as if he were tallying up the likelihoods. “You should be able to cross in the ordinary way.”
“Visa?” Connie asked.
“I think it depends on where you cross. The station at Chinshwehaw is fully equipped, but over at Namtit, the crossing isn’t manned outside of business hours.”
“Too isolated… Chinshwehaw,” Ip said. She turned to Hsu Qi and spoke in a soft rapid fire. After a moment, she gestured to the others, and Hsu Qi translated.
“She says it will take you two full days to get to Lincang, and another day from there to Kunming.
“What does she suggest?” Connie asked.
“Mongmao,” Ip said.
“She knows someone in Mongmao who can drive you to Pu’er,” Hsu Qi said. “… and then it’s a straight shot on a well-maintained highway to Kunming.”
“Two problems with her plan,” Danko said. “Getting to Mongmao, and maneuvering in China without a proper border stamp in your passport.”
“You won’t be able to bring any weapons across the border,” Tammy said. He’d been listening quietly for the last few minutes. “Especially at Chinshwehaw. But the Wa community straddles the border near Mongmao. You can cross in the open, get a stamp, and the Wa can get any equipment you might need through the old smuggler’s passes.”
“Any idea what sort of ‘equipment’ you might need?” Danko asked.
“Not a clue,” Connie said. “But you know me… I’m best with a long-barrel of some sort.”
“I think we can help you out there.”
27
Just Keep Moving
The rattle and bounce roused her, and it took a moment to gain some sense of her surroundings, which now appeared to be the back of a utility service truck, or a workman’s panel truck. Shovels, chains and assorted hand tools shivered all at once with each bump in the road.
“She’s awake,” Li Li’s voice said, and Emily felt a hand clutch at her shoulder.
“It’s good to see you again, Sifu,” the woman in the braid said.
“We’re almost there,” the scholar’s voice called back.
“Where are we going?” Emily asked, the words stumbling half-formed across her lips.
“We need to patch you up, Sifu. There’s a few extra holes in you now.”
“I’m sorry we were late to the party,” the woman said. “We didn’t realize at first that you’d gone into the forest.”
The scene tilted out of control again before Emily could ask who these people were, and why they’d come to the rescue. The last thing she saw was Li Li’s face, unsmiling and confused, but at least not contorted in terror… or worse. It was too difficult to focus on deeper questions, like whether she’d really seen Kit Yee ordering men to shoot her own fiancé’s child, and why she might want to do such a thing. Perhaps this was just a fever dream or some other delirium, a distorted byproduct of the unfounded suspicions she’d harbored about Jiang Xi’s fiancée.
The only thing she could turn her mind to, if only dimly, was a voice calling to her as if across a great distance. “Ama,” she thought it said, and as she tried to bring it into clarity, the darkness in her mind grew gradually bright, even dazzling. Golden yellow, at first, warm and reassuring, and then sharper and piercing, until it seemed white hot and she felt its touch sear her flesh, but was unable to cry out, no matter how she tried.
“I’ve done what I can for her,” a new voice said in the cool darkness, sounding like it came from another room. “Have her take these. One bullet passed through. I dug the others out. Now you must go.”
“It isn’t safe to move her yet,” the woman said. “She may start to bleed internally. We need to shelter here overnight.”
“No, Yu Fei. Ministry operatives are everywhere. You must leave now.”
“That’s a death sentence, and you know it.”
“Did you kill those men at the Jade Void? At least five dead, several more maimed… they may not all survive. What were you thinking… to bring her here?”
“You know what we were thinking,” the scholar’s voice interrupted. “The Ministry was not interested in capturing them. Should we have left them for dead?”
Some time later, though she hardly knew how much, Emily opened her eyes again, and the room was dark, and the woman was helping her drink some warm broth. When she noticed the shine on Emily’s eyes, the woman helped her to prop herself up and take the bowl. Broth dribbled out the side of her mouth as she tried to slurp it down.
“Welcome back,” the woman whispered. “Just in time, too.
The scholar poked his head through a curtain. “They’re gone. Is she ready?”
With a good deal of groaning, and a bout or two of scorching pain, Emily was bundled into the back seat of an older model sedan and covered with a blanket. Li Li perched by her head and they rumbled off, down darkened side streets, heading for even darker climes.
“If we come to a checkpoint, sifu, pull the blanket over your head,” the scholar said over his shoulder.
“… and if they want to search the car?” Emily croaked.
“We’ll figure it out… if we have to.”
“Who are you … and why did you save us?” Neither one responded right away, and Emily thought she might press a little harder. “It would go a long way towards reassuring my young friend here if we got to know each other a bit better.”
“We are vagabonds,” the scholar offered, after another uncomfortable silence.
“You mean ‘vagabond warriors’, like ninja or ronin in Japan?” Li Li asked, suddenly animated by the conversation.
“Maybe, a little bit. But in China, the history is different and people like us come from the slums, not the feudal aristocracy.”
The woman had grown impatient with this explanation and cut the scholar off. “His name is Shao Yao, and he comes from a comfortable, middle-class family, no matter what he says. He went to college, read too many books, especially wuxia romances, and then dropped out. I am Meng Yu Fei.”
“… and why did you come to our rescue?”
“Because you needed help, Sifu,” Shao Yao said.
“We couldn’t just leave you there. Those men would have killed you,” Meng Yu Fei added. “That’s not the kind of thing you just stand and watch.”
“But if those were Interior Ministry agents, won’t they hunt you down?” Emily asked. “I mean, you must have killed several of them. How can you ever hide from the Ministry in a country like China?”
“Like he said before, we’re vagabonds,” Meng Yu Fei said. “The central government is very good at keeping tabs on people with money, not people like us. There is no grid for us.”
“Perhaps you’d like to tell us who you might be, Sifu,” Shao Yao said.
“Yes, your Putonghua is excellent, but you sound meiguoren,” Meng Yu Fei said, and Li Li giggled to hear it.
“Very perceptive,” Emily said. “My name is Emily Kane, and this is my niece, Li Li.”
“You are Chinese-American, then?”
“No. Japanese-American.” Li Li was about to say something until Emily shook her head. “My Japanese name is Tenno Michiko, and I am an officer in the US Marine Corps.”
“How strange to find a foreign military operative way out here in Wudang,” Shao Yao observed.
“… or one so learned in the Dao.”
“I was posted to the embassy in Beijing as a Military Attaché.”
“She speaks the truth,” Meng Yu Fei said holding some papers from Emily’s bag in her lap, then turned to Emily. “Please forgive us, Tenno Michiko. We looked through your things earlier and found all thi
s out while you were unconscious. It was impolite, and I apologize for our indiscretion, but it was necessary. Still, your statement hardly explains why Ministry operatives would make you a target, or why you would have made your way to this obscure outpost.”
“I don’t exactly know why those people were hunting us.”
“For all their flaws of character and heart, Ministry officials usually have a reason for what they do,” Shao Yao said. “I doubt this happened by accident.”
“I must admit to being reluctant to tell you everything I know for fear of placing you, and my niece, in even more danger.”
“I doubt very much we could be in more danger than we are in already.”
Emily took as deep a breath as she could endure, though the pain in her chest and ribs was severe, and let it out as slowly as she could manage. There had to be a compromise she could make with her desire for absolute secrecy, some amount of information she could share.
“I played a role in thwarting the recent coup attempt by General Diao.”
“Yes, we heard rumors about that even out here.” Meng Yu Fei snorted at Shao Yao’s sarcasm.
“Emmy rescued the Princess of Japan, Princess Akane,” Li Li protested, perhaps a bit more vehemently than she’d intended. “…and the President of China gave her a medal.”
“Forgive my manners, little one,” Shao Yao said. “It’s just that when you spend your life beyond the margins of society, you develop a bad habit of dismissing its great events as so much clucking in a chicken yard.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Emily said. “He’s right. I would have much preferred not to receive a medal, or any official notice of what happened. I did what I did then for the same reason they came to our rescue today… or yesterday… How long was I out?”
“Two days,” Li Li said.
“So, are you saying the Ministry is after you because of whatever it was Liang zhuxi gave you a medal for?” Shao Yao asked.
“No, not really… but maybe, in a sense. The failed coup gave Liang zhuxi an excuse to purge lots of enemies from the ministries and the army, which means that the quickest path to promotion is to discover that someone who holds the office you aspire to might be a traitor.”
Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7) Page 29
