The White Vixen

by David Tindell

  She removed Lu’s pistol and key ring from the gun belt and hid the belt and shoes in a nearby bucket, stuffing the uniform on top of them. Putting her coat back on, she tucked the gun into the waistband of her trousers at the small of her back. The keys went into a coat pocket. She checked her right sleeve; the second dart was still in place. Grabbing the mop, she went quickly to the doorway, surveyed the room one last time, and switched off the light.

  She had just shut the door behind her when the corporal from the front desk came down the hall. “Where is Sergeant Lu?”

  Back in her servant’s posture, Jo Ann bowed to the soldier, no more than a boy himself. “The sergeant is...resting,” she said.

  “Ah, so,” the man said.

  “He asked me to clean the empty cell before I leave.”

  “Very well,” the private said, with a last knowing glance at the closed door of the storeroom. Then he turned and walked back to his desk.

  Letting out her breath carefully, Jo shuffled down the hall and found the cellblock entrance quickly. The guard didn’t come to attention this time, but she noticed his grip tighten ever so slightly on his rifle. Jo would have to time this carefully. She bowed to the guard. “Honorable sir, Sergeant Lu ordered me to clean the empty cell.”

  The guard was older than the corporal, and smarter. He took out his keys, but then leaned over slightly and looked in the bucket. Jo had shoved the uniform down as far as she could, but it wasn’t a very deep bucket, and the guard’s eyes widened as he realized there certainly was no water inside. He dropped the key ring and took a quick step back, bringing his rifle around as he moved.

  Jo was just a bit quicker. The dart from her right sleeve was out and moving fast, but instead of embedding itself in the guard’s neck it merely grazed the skin. The guard yelped at the bite of the dart, but he was experienced enough to keep moving backward, allowing room to bring his rifle to bear.

  The broom handle became Jo’s best weapon now, and in one swift motion she used it, knowing that split seconds counted now. Her first target was the guard’s right arm, the one holding the rifle, and her hard strike was right on the money, impacting on the area containing the nerve. Her survival, and Jamison’s, now depended on her not allowing the guard to fire a shot, even as a reflex action. The nerve strike worked; the guard cried out, but his hand suddenly became useless, the fingers unable to find the trigger.

  The gun was falling to the floor as Jo struck again, whipping the end of the broom handle around with her body in a 360-degree turn, then thrusting the blunt end of the handle deeply into the guard’s abdomen. The air whooshed out of him with a guttural gasp as he bent over nearly double. Now she brought the broom up with both hands, cracking the wood solidly into his chin and snapping his head back, where it thudded against the cement wall with a crack that sounded like the world’s biggest eggshell being broken open. He slumped to the floor, unconscious, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

  She hadn’t intended to kill him, and indeed he might survive with at least a concussion and perhaps a skull fracture, but he was out. Jo pulled out the sergeant’s sidearm and reached for the guard’s keys, but another movement from down the hall caught her eye and she brought the gun up quickly.

  It was the corporal from the front desk, drawn by the commotion. “What is this?”

  “Don’t move,” she said. The pistol was pointed directly at his face, and even ten feet away the business end of the weapon must’ve looked very large to him. “Cooperate and you live. Make one sound and you die.”

  Panting, the soldier nodded a yes. “Over here,” Jo said, motioning with the pistol. The corporal obediently stood next to the downed guard. Jo had already taken the rifle; the guard had no sidearm. She tossed the key ring to the private. “Open the cellblock door,” she said. Stepping back, she gestured again with the gun just to add a little incentive. “No, the one on the other end,” she said as the corporal fumbled with the keys. “Be quick about it.”

  The soldier found the right key and unlocked the door. “You first,” Jo said. Keeping the pistol trained on him, she tucked the rifle under her other arm and picked up the bucket.

  The Chinese prisoners looked at them wide-eyed as they entered the cellblock. A stern look from Jo convinced them to keep quiet, but she knew they’d have to be bound and gagged before they left. That would take up more valuable time, but it couldn’t be helped.

  They reached the end of the block. Jamison was ready, standing near the door. “Good show,” he said in English.

  Jo tossed him the sergeant’s keys and told him which one to use. Reaching through the bars, Jamison struggled a bit but managed to unlock his cell door. “There’s a uniform in the bucket,” she said in English. “Probably a bit small but it’ll have to do.”

  Twenty agonizingly long seconds later, Jamison was pulling down Lu’s coat, barely reaching his waist. The shoes were way too small. “I’d prefer not to go barefoot,” he said. He looked at the corporal. “You have some big dogs, there, son,” he said in Chinese. “Off with them.”

  Sitting on the floor of Jamison’s cell, the private pulled off his shoes and handed them over. “Stockings, too.” The plain gray socks went on easily, but Jamison had a hard time fitting the shoes. “I can put up with a little foot discomfort,” he said finally.

  “We don’t have much time,” Jo said in English. “I saw a helicopter coming in with some officers.”

  “Probably from their Central Investigative Department,” Jamison said. That was one possibility, Jo Ann knew, but they might also be from the PLA’s Second Department, which handled military intelligence. Jamison took the sergeant’s sidearm from Jo and put it in the holster. “Or perhaps from the Central Security Regiment,” he added.

  “The 8341 Unit?” Jo asked. She’d been told that particularly notorious branch, which had served as Mao Tse-tung’s personal security service and thus as China’s secret police, had been disbanded following Mao’s death five years ago.

  “Still around, yes,” Jamison said, hefting the guard’s rifle. “Nasty blokes. Let’s get moving.”

  “We have to secure the prisoners,” she said.

  “Right. I’ll take care of this fellow.” The MI-6 agent began stripping his prisoner’s tunic apart. Jo took the sergeant’s keys and went to the next cell.

  The older of the two Chinese prisoners looked at her strangely as she unlocked the door and entered. Jo realized she should’ve kept the pistol, but she couldn’t waste time to get it now. “Take your shirt off,” she ordered. The man dutifully complied, and in seconds Jo had used the filthy garment to bind the prisoner’s hands behind his head and also as a blindfold and gag, a nifty technique she’d learned from an intelligence officer who’d defected from North Vietnam.

  She was worried about the younger prisoner, who’d appeared fairly excitable. She found him holding onto the bars of his cell door. As soon as she came into view, he began jabbering. “Who are you? What did you do to the sergeant?”

  “Stay back,” she said, inserting the key in the door’s lock.

  The boy’s voice got higher. “I did nothing wrong! The other man, he told me what he wanted—”

  From next to her, Jo Ann heard a metallic click and the prisoner stopped in mid-sentence. “That’s good, son, now do as the lady says.” Jamison had the sergeant’s pistol out and carefully targeted.

  It took only moments for Jo to bind and gag the boy. “Thanks,” she said. “I owe you one.”

  “We’ll down a few in Hong Kong tonight,” he said. “Assuming, of course, that we can get out of here.”

  “There’s a boat waiting,” she said. “Two klicks past the village on the coast. I have transport waiting in the village.” Madame Zhi, her cover now blown, would be evacuated with them. She’d managed to borrow one of the village’s few vehicles, a dilapidated truck, in exchange for three cartons of American cigarettes. If their luck held, now that darkness was approaching, they could get past the base perimeter, do
wn the road to the village and then hop aboard for the two-kilometer ride to the rendezvous point. The extraction team would meet them there with a Zodiac boat.

  “There are two guards outside the building,” Jo said. “Can you imitate the sergeant’s voice?”

  “I’ll try,” he said. “Lord knows I’ve heard it often enough the past few days.”

  “Good. When I go past them, I’ll get their attention. Then you order them to avert their eyes somehow.”

  “That will be hard for them to do,” he said, and even from his battered face the smile looked appreciative. Men.

  Jo went out first. The guards stiffened automatically as they heard the door open, then relaxed as they recognized her. Back into her peasant shuffle, Jo went down the two wooden steps and scuttled off, stopping ten feet from the guards. She turned and smiled at them. “Hello, boys,” she said in perfect Mandarin. “Are you as big as your sergeant?”

  One guard laughed. “Bigger,” he said.

  “Private!” Jamison barked from the doorway. “I heard that!” The guards shot to ramrod straight attention. “One hundred push-ups! Both of you!”

  Like automatons, the guards set their rifles on the ground and assumed the universal push-up position. The guard who’d spoken started quickly, followed by his comrade a second later. “Count them off!” Jamison said.

  “One, two, three, four…”

  Without saying another word, Jamison strode past them to Jo Ann. They began walking toward the same gate Jo had used only a short time before, although it seemed like hours to her.

  “Very clever,” she whispered to the agent.

  “By the time they finish we’ll be far enough away so they won’t recognize me,” Jamison said. “How many guards at the gate?”

  “Two.”

  “Our dog and pony show won’t work there.”

  “We’ll have to be more direct. I’ll take the pistol.” Jamison handed her the sidearm and she tucked it inside her sleeve.

  Dusk was upon them, and the base’s usual high level of activity was slacking off. A half-dozen or so soldiers passed Jo Ann and the British agent, but none came within ten yards. They had another hundred meters to go to the gate, and Jo began praying that no other soldiers would choose to use it right now. She knew that most of them were probably in the mess hall for dinner, but give them another half hour and some might be off duty and ready to head to town. The officers from the helicopter were probably dining with the base commander right now, but they’d soon finish and head over to the lockup. Jo estimated they had thirty minutes, tops, before an alarm was raised. They’d be cutting it close.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fonglan Island, China

  November 1981

  Two lights at the top of the fence served to illuminate the gate, but at this hour the lights were ineffectual, and the fact that they were designed to shine on the area outside the fence, rather than inside, helped them. They would be right on top of the guards before they’d have to move.

  Jamison kept the rifle at a stiff port arms and his head down, Lu’s cap pulled low, and he hunched a bit to disguise his height. Jo took the lead as they approached the gate. One of the guards, standing outside the shack and smoking a cigarette, saw them and automatically moved to the gate, tossing the cigarette aside. Everything was quiet, so he had no reason to be suspicious of anyone coming out.

  Jo shuffled past the guard. “Thank you, sir.”

  The guard turned away from the gate as she kept moving. “Hey, you got any food left?”

  There was no way they’d bluff their way past the checkpoint. Jamison had the barrel of the rifle stuck in the side of the guard’s head as his last word was still hanging in the air. Turning and drawing her weapon in one movement, Jo aimed directly at the guard still inside the shack. “Hands behind your head!”

  Firing either weapon right now would bring the base to full alert within seconds. Jo was counting on the element of surprise, catching these two toward the end of their duty shift; tired, hungry, bored, slow to react. It worked. Instead of dropping down below the level of the open window and hitting the alarm, the guard in the shack did as he was told. Jo quickly ran the few steps to the shack and forced the guard onto the floor.

  Jamison followed with the other guard prodded ahead. Jo was using a telephone cord to tie the second guard’s wrists behind his back, and then she gagged him with his snot-encrusted handkerchief.

  “Truss this fellow up, too,” Jamison said. “I’ll take care of the alarm.”

  Jamison was panting when they started out down the road, walking quickly but resisting the urge to run. Jo could tell his reserves, depleted by the confinement and beatings, were fading fast. “Hang on,” she said. “A half klick to the village. The truck should be waiting for us.” He nodded, too tired even to speak.

  “I have two men waiting with the truck, plus a native woman we have to extract,” she said. “Two more men at the boat.”

  “We’re…slightly outnumbered, then,” he gasped.

  “If we can make the boat, we’ll be in international waters in five minutes. Help will be waiting for us.” So much depended now on how long it would take for an alarm to be raised over the escape, and how efficiently the Chinese responded. In their planning, the allied force had allowed for at least ten minutes of safety after making it through the gates. Jo thought it had been about five already and there was the truck.

  A siren started wailing behind them. They wouldn’t get that extra five minutes now. “Run!” she shouted, pulling out the pistol.

  In the twilight she saw two figures near the truck. One jumped into the cab and started the engine. There was a grinding, a cough, and then it thrummed to life. Another figure stood near the back of the truck, a submachine gun held ready.

  A hundred meters from the truck, Jo shouted the password in Chinese: “Pelican rising!” The man with the submachine gun, a Republic of China Marine Corps sergeant, shouted back: “Nest is waiting!” He waved them forward.

  Jo and the MI-6 agent leaped into the bed of the truck. They had barely hit the hard metal bed when the driver jammed the accelerator, throwing them backward as the vehicle lurched ahead, rear wheels spitting gravel. The truck’s tailgate had disappeared long ago, and Jo scrambled to find a grip on something to keep from sliding out. Hands grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her roughly, until she managed to find a wooden slat and steady herself. Her left shoulder throbbed where she’d landed on it. Sitting up, she fought the swaying motion of the truck. It was old, probably a Soviet-made model dating back thirty years, but it was solidly built with wooden slats extending the side walls an extra three feet up, giving them precious cover. She saw Jamison crouching near the tailgate, his rifle at the ready.

  “Any pursuit?” Jo yelled over the roar of the engine.

  “Not yet,” he said. He looked back at her. “Who are they?”

  For the first time, Jo looked at the two other figures crouching on the bed of the truck, their backs to the cab. One was Madame Zhi, the other a boy of about sixteen. “Who is the boy?” Jo asked Zhi in Mandarin.

  “My nephew,” she said. “He is my only relation in the village. They will execute him because of me. I had to bring him.”

  The boy was trembling, clearly frightened nearly out of his mind. “All right,” Jo said. To Jamison, she yelled, “They’re friends.”

  The Taiwanese marines were in the cab, and one of them shouted back through the glass-free rear window: “One more kilometer!” The driver fought the wheel, trying to avoid the chuckholes, sometimes succeeding. In the back, Jo had the pistol out but was desperately hanging on as the truck rocked and jolted.

  “Helos taking off from the base!” Jamison yelled. Risking a look, Jo clambered up one side of the box to peek over the edge of the wooden wall. Off in the distance, she saw one—no, two sets of lights rise up into the dusk. These wouldn’t be the Super Frelon, which was unarmed, but smaller and faster H-5’s. Her briefing had told her there
would be half a dozen or so on the base at any given time, with perhaps three or four ready for quick deployment. The Chinese-made version of the Soviet Mi-4 all-purpose light helicopter, code-named “Hound” by NATO, the helo could serve as a troop carrier or light attack vehicle. It was no match for British or American gunships, but wouldn’t have much trouble with an old pickup truck.

  Their only advantage now was that the Chinese didn’t know exactly where they were. The helicopters would have to deploy in a quick search pattern. Sure enough, Jo saw them split up, one heading away from them, toward the north, and the other turning toward the village. Once that pilot gained a little altitude, he would spot the truck and be after them. Jo figured they had half a minute or so before that would happen. Maybe enough time to get to the boat, maybe not. She hoped the other two commandos were ready.

  Jamison had the Type 56 ready. Jo hoped they wouldn’t have to rely on it against the Hound. “You said two men at the boat?” he yelled, his eyes never leaving the nearer helicopter as it scuttled toward the village, climbing to about three hundred feet.

  “Yes,” Jo answered, crouching next to him. “Both SBS.”

  “Good,” Jamison said, doubtless giving thanks that the troopers were Special Boat Squadron commandos, members of the Royal Marines’ elite Special Forces unit. It had been a tough go just to get this operation off the ground at all, given that the British commander in Hong Kong received only two days’ notice. Was it only three days ago she was on the beach in Singapore, enjoying a much-deserved leave? Jo forced those much more pleasant thoughts aside and kept her eye on the Hound. It was turning toward them.

  “The bugger’s spotted us,” Jamison growled, bringing the rifle up. “How much longer to the boat?”