Hong Kong Black: A Thriller (A Nick Foley Thriller)

by Alex Ryan

  It’s like Bruce Lee and Satan had a child, Nick thought.

  “I am Feng, both student and master of the Five Pains,” the man said in clipped, flawless English. “Let us begin with the first pain.”

  Feng’s right hand struck with lightning speed, the first two fingers extended. Nick was too slow to block the jab but moved just enough that the fingers failed to gouge his eye out, the nails instead laying open a deep cut extending from beneath his left eye all the way into the hairline at his temple. In seconds, Feng’s hands were back up defensively, guarding his smiling face, the sinewy cords of muscle in his forearm reminding Nick of a tangle of woody vines.

  Nick swallowed hard while resisting the urge to wipe away the blood flowing down his left cheek. He had not actually seen the strike, just a blurry streak in the air, and he wondered how anyone could move that fast. He hunched into a combat crouch, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet and raising his own hands. The next gouging blow came without warning, but he managed a partial deflection, Feng’s fingernails this time tearing a chunk from his right ear.

  The blended martial arts style he had learned in the SEAL Teams—borrowed heavily from the Israeli Defense Forces’ Krav Maga—was designed to be universally lethal against all variants of hand-to-hand combat. But he had never encountered anything like this. He had never sparred with someone like the man standing before him. Feng was kung fu perfected, a weapon honed over what must have been decades of disciplined and dedicated training.

  I’m screwed, he thought. I’m going to lose.

  The next attack from Feng was a combination, but the punches proved to be a feint, because Nick didn’t see the brutal kick directed at his left knee until it was too late. Instinctively, Nick shifted weight to his right leg, absorbing the blow by letting it drive his left leg backward—probably the only thing that prevented his knee from snapping. But the pain was immediate and severe. He felt his knee instantly begin to swell with blood rushing to fill the joint cavity. Hopefully, no tendons or ligaments ruptured. He could still bear weight, but only by ignoring the pain.

  Feng dropped his hands to his side and bounced gently up and down on his toes. Then he began to circle.

  “You are Nick, yes? An American military man?”

  Nick said nothing but sidestepped to match Feng’s rotation on his unstable left leg while trying to anticipate the next attack.

  “How is it that your military is so feared, if this is how your warriors fight?”

  Feng’s voice hit a high-pitched crescendo, and the man was airborne, his right foot flying toward Nick’s head. Nick juked right, avoiding the foot but not the elbow that smashed against the side of his face so violently it knocked him to the floor. He crawled on his stomach, searching the ground for anything he could use as a weapon. The fire extinguisher caught his eye, and he lunged for it, rolling right a split second before the madman’s knee struck the ground where Nick’s head had just been. The force of Feng’s knee was so great that Nick thought, had it connected, it would have split his skull open like a sledgehammer, spilling his brains onto the floor. And then, to Nick’s dismay, Feng sprang instantly back to his feet with no hint of pain from the impact.

  He grabbed the fire extinguisher with both hands and rolled to face Feng.

  A flash of blue raced toward his face. He raised the fire extinguisher just in time to deflect an arcing kick. Feng’s shin crashed into the canister, knocking it from Nick’s hands and sending it careening across the deck. Feng grunted in pain, and Nick seized the opportunity to crab toward Feng’s discarded knife, which lay under a nearby table. He dove for the weapon, and his fingers found the hilt. Without needing to look, he knew a savage attack was coming, and he rolled onto his knees, slashing in a broad horizontal arc, opening a deep laceration along the killer’s thigh. Energized by his successful strike, Nick sprung back to his feet. His left knee responded by howling with pain, and he immediately shifted his weight to his good leg.

  Feng floated left, his body flowing like water in a way that defied physics. He laughed and taunted Nick with his defenseless posturing—arms loose at his sides, chin up, feet dancing. Not once did Feng’s eyes tick down to the bloody gash across his thigh, which Nick noted was bleeding profusely. He waited patiently for Feng to close the gap. Eventually, Feng stepped in. Nick slashed at the man’s neck, but Feng spun an arm around, easily deflecting the blow. The block felt like someone had smashed a piece of firewood into Nick’s wrist. Feng laughed once more with an eerie, maniacal howl that sounded to Nick like the shriek of a bird of prey the instant before it tears apart its quarry with razor-sharp talons.

  “You know I’m better than you, Nick. In a minute, I will reclaim my knife, and when I do, I’m going to give you the same gift I offered Dr. Chen. I’m going to slice you open and rip out your organs while you watch. A fitting reversal, don’t you think? You will fulfill your lover’s death sentence, while she is powerless to stop me.”

  Rage consumed Nick. He drew his right hand back, ready to slash at Feng’s chest, when a voice from his past screamed inside his head.

  He’s baiting you, Foley, barked the voice of the Master Chief who had taught him hand-to-hand combat years ago. Don’t let him make your fight his fight. Fight your fight. If your opponent uses a short reach, stay long. If his reach is long . . .

  “Fight short,” Nick mumbled to himself. He pulled the knife back and held it close to his body. He crouched and slid left just as Feng’s foot whizzed past his temple. Despite his opponent’s short stature, Feng fought with a long reach. On top of that, Feng was lightning fast. Even without his injured knee, Nick realized he was not built to trade blows and kicks with Feng. He needed to get inside of that reach—inside where he could grapple and, in doing so, leverage his bulk and sixty-pound weight advantage.

  Getting inside to grapple was going to hurt, but Nick knew he needed to commit to the strategy before Feng took out his good knee. Nick advanced quickly and directly, stepping inside the range of Feng’s reach. He tried for a takedown, but the madman only smiled and danced backward, landing a painful jab on Nick’s sternum for the effort. Nick closed again, this time faking upward with the knife. But when Feng swung his ironwood arms to block, Nick spun in a full, tight circle, driving his left elbow, the true weapon for this attack, at the side of Feng’s head with all his might.

  The impact made a loud crunch, and Nick couldn’t tell if the crunch was from Feng’s temporal bone cracking or his own elbow shattering against the killer’s skull. From the pain that shot up his arm, he figured the best-case scenario was both. Without missing a beat, Feng spun right, stepped through Nick’s legs, and grabbed him by the kit. The smaller Chinese man used his angular momentum and positioning to throw Nick, but Nick anticipated the countermove. It’s exactly what he would have done. As he fell, Nick clutched Feng and used his weight to accelerate their rotation, spinning Feng beneath him. He landed with his full weight on top of the madman, while driving his elbow into the center of Feng’s chest. His two hundred ten pounds and their combined momentum multiplied the impact force. Nick heard a satisfying crunch and felt his opponent’s sternum crack in half beneath him. Feng screamed like a wild beast as the ragged ends of his breastbone tore through soft tissue—undoubtedly damaging both heart and lungs. Nick switched the knife from his right hand to his left, arched his back, and slashed deep across the maniac’s throat. An explosion of blood soaked Nick’s face and neck as he sat up, swung his leg around, and straddled his opponent’s chest. He drew back the knife for a second strike but saw that none was required.

  It was over.

  And then hands tightened around his throat like iron claws.

  Suddenly, Feng’s fingers were crushing his windpipe, cutting off the air and bringing a sharp, ripping pain, the likes of which he’d never felt before. He stabbed downward, sinking the blade all the way to the hilt somewhere in the tattooed villain’s torso, but he couldn’t see where. He blinked furiously, trying to
clear the blood from his eyes. How was this man not dead? Nick’s head begin to swim as the viselike fingers expertly cut off the flow of blood in his carotid arteries, starving his brain of oxygen. Somehow, he’d lost his grip on the knife. He groped for the handle, desperately wanting to stab again, but he couldn’t feel it anywhere. As the world started to go black, his final thought was to slip both of his thumbs up and under the thumbs that were choking the life out of him.

  The move bought him a moment of relief, and he felt the whoosh of blood moving up his neck once again. His vision returned, and he stared down.

  To his wonderment, Feng’s face was perfectly composed. He saw no fear, no pain, no panic—just cold, black eyes with a laser focus Nick had never witnessed before. Despite the blood pouring from his body, the maniac maintained perfect concentration. Just below Feng’s Adam’s apple, the white cartilage was splayed open and bloody bubbles formed and popped as air hissed from his trachea. On each side of the gash, geysers of bright-red blood shot several feet into the air in twin carotid fountains with each beat of Feng’s heart, but the grip on Nick’s throat did not waver. In fact, Nick felt the man’s ironwood fingers squeezing tighter and tighter, driving Nick’s thumb knuckles deep into his neck. How was Feng not unconscious? How was he not dead? Most of his blood volume was already on the floor, and yet he was still trying to crush Nick’s windpipe.

  But time was Nick’s ally now.

  As dark clouds once again crept into his visual field, the blood gushing from Feng’s neck began to weaken. With each heartbeat, the arcs became shorter and shorter as the last of the madman’s blood leaked from his throat. Eventually, it was little more than a pulsatile pool, dribbling onto the floor.

  And yet the iron claws persisted, clenching his throat.

  Feng’s eyes clouded and then drifted slowly up and to the left as the life began to leave him. His shoulders sagged. His head lolled to the right, but somehow the man’s fingers were still suffocating Nick. With all his might, Nick gripped the dying man’s thumbs and twisted. He heard twin pops—as if he’d just wrenched a drumstick from a turkey—and the dislocated thumbs finally went limp. A beat later, his attacker’s hands collapsed into the lake of blood pooling on the floor with a soft splash.

  Nick rolled off of the dead man’s chest and backpedaled away, feeling the warm blood soak through his cargo pants. He crabbed backward with both lingering fear and disgust, imagining that somehow Feng’s corpse was about to reanimate and finish the job.

  He sat with his back against the wall, massaging his throat and coughing violently. He closed his eyes and used four-count tactical breathing to regulate his rasping breath until another coughing fit seized control.

  “Team two, this is lead. We have control of the ship. Report status,” he heard Zhang’s voice say, but far away. He reached up and found his earpiece dangling, and he shoved it back into his ear canal, then pulled the mike to his mouth. He tried to talk, but he couldn’t stop coughing.

  “Nick, this is Lankford, over . . . Nick, this is Lankford, do you copy?”

  Unlike Zhang’s call, Nick heard fear and worry in the CIA man’s voice. A sudden pang of panic gripped him. Something was wrong. Was it possible she bled out?

  He keyed his mike again and tried to talk but could only manage a single raspy word: “Daaashhh?”

  Nick felt tears well in his eyes and looked at the dead man in the lake of blood. Oh my God, while I was fighting this maniac, Dash died on the table.

  Then, as if reading his thoughts, Lankford said, “Dash is okay . . . She’s awake, and she’s asking for you, Nick.”

  Nick was on his feet, the pain in his knee and throat now just background noise. He scooped up his assault rifle and forced himself to methodically clear for threats as he moved toward the only door that mattered now.

  A smile crept across his battered face as he keyed his mike. “Tell her I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER 33

  The first piece of her humanity that Dash reclaimed was the ability to blink. A minute later, she was able to move her eyes. Then, as her body metabolized the succinylcholine in her bloodstream, she was able to move her jaw, then her diaphragm, and then her fingers. The moment she’d started wiggling her fingers, she really got their attention. The three men in the room with her—two Snow Leopards and Lankford—were powerless to help her. None of them had any medical training to speak of. The next five minutes were absolute torture as she had to suffer the agony of being fully conscious and intubated with her gag reflex restored, all the while lacking the muscle tone and dexterity to disconnect the ventilator and rip the breathing tube out of her throat. When she was finally able to manipulate her arms, she extubated herself.

  When that was done, she cried. And when that was done, she had one of the Snow Leopards help bandage her abdomen from sternum to pubis—fixing the gauze in place that Nick had packed into her incision.

  Now she sat naked on the operating table, her legs dangling off the side, waiting for the strength to stand. But before that happened, she began to shudder uncontrollably.

  I’m just cold. Malignant hyperthermia is an extremely rare complication of succinylcholine. The drug is nearly gone. The half-life is only five to eight minutes, so I will feel more myself any moment.

  Seeing her shake, one of the Snow Leopards left the room. He returned thirty seconds later with a heavy cotton blanket and draped it over her back and shoulders. Then he helped her gather it closed in front.

  She looked up at him. “Thank you,” she wheezed, barely able to speak the words.

  Lankford, who she just now realized had been shot, hobbled over until he was in front of her. He met her eyes and gave her his best smile.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Where is Nick?” she whispered.

  “He went after Feng.”

  Dread washed over her, and she suddenly felt like she might vomit.

  “Call him,” she said.

  Lankford keyed his radio and made the call.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she heard Nick’s raspy voice come back over the radio.

  The next thing she knew, he was there, standing in the doorway. At first, the look of him startled her. Tears came unbidden. His left cheek and temple glistened with blood. Another small stream trickled down the right side of his neck from a gouge in the top of his ear. But none of this compared to his neck, which was so bruised, it had turned black along his trachea and on both sides.

  “What happened to you?” she sobbed.

  “Feng,” he said simply, and then he came to her.

  “Me too,” she said, looking down at her stomach.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as his eyes—those strong Navy SEAL eyes—filled with tears.

  “Yes,” she said and eased herself off the operating table and onto unsteady legs.

  He unslung his rifle, set it on the table, and then opened his arms to her.

  She collapsed against his chest as tears continued to stream down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and felt his strong arms envelope her. He pulled her closer, until she could hear the pounding of his heart in his chest. After a long embrace, she loosened her grip on him, and he did the same. She tilted her chin up, closed her eyes, and waited for his lips to find hers. And into this kiss, they both poured all their joy and their pain, all their hope and their fear, and shared a moment of profound and fragile communion that only two strong yet wounded souls can recognize. She felt the kiss through her whole body, and when their lips parted, she shuddered.

  She exhaled and opened her eyes. A black-clad figure in the doorway caught her attention. She shifted her gaze and locked eyes with Commander Zhang. The look on his face was strange and one she hadn’t seen before, but before she could blink, he turned his back on her and walked away.

  “Not at all how I had imagined our first kiss,” Nick said, staring down at her and smiling.

  “But you had imagined it?” she said, meeting his stare.

  “Ma
ny, many times.”

  She hugged him, but this time, she was acutely aware of the searing pain along her wound. She winced and bent at the waist.

  “We need to get you dressed and then on a helo to a hospital,” he said.

  “Agreed, but the two of you,” she said, looking from Nick to Lankford and back again, “are coming with me.”

  And for once, neither man argued with her.

  PART III

  CHAPTER 34

  Xi’an, China

  Two days later

  0850 hours local

  Nick noticed that Dash let go of his hand the instant Zhang pulled up to the hotel in a hired car. She hadn’t really been “holding” his hand anyway—more like letting him hold hers. It was fine, Nick decided. Emotionally, this was a challenging time for all of them, but especially her. He opened the front passenger door for her and then climbed into the back. His abused muscles, bones, joints, lacerations, and throat all screamed out in pain as he contorted his body to get into the cramped rear seat. But the physical pain he was feeling paled in comparison to the growing apprehension he felt about the meeting he was headed to with Agent Ling. The female MSS agent had given them forty-eight hours to rescue Dash, complete their operation, and turn themselves in or face dire consequences. This was them following through on their half of the bargain, but to Nick, the impending drive to the Ministry of State Security field office felt like walking the green mile.

  “I don’t know where Lankford is,” Nick mumbled as he buckled his seat belt. “He never came down this morning.”