Rise of the White Lotus

by H L Stephens

  "I have no doubt they did," he said. "You have saved your friend's life. Now, let's go get her and get the two of you out of here, shall we?"

  I shook my head.

  "They have taken at least one other girl, and I still haven't found Dorthia," I said. "You get Meiqiang to safety. I will keep looking. Just please, save Meiqiang."

  "I will do my best," Jameson said. "Be careful."

  I gave Jameson a smile and bowed to his entourage. I was glad to see my friend had so many men with him. Dú jiàn had not skimped in her promise of fighters. I could hear fire fight in the distance, and every so often, I felt the jolt of an explosion as another section of the plant was penetrated by the Triad army.

  "Marcus, I need your eyes," I called out once I had cleared Jameson and his men. "I need you to give me something, anything that looks like a plausible location for the second girl."

  "Give me just a sec," Marcus said. "I have two possibles for you. They are both heavily guarded. Neither location has eyes on the inside, however. I have been scanning for other streams but haven't found any so far."

  "Sounds like my kind of party," I said. "What direction are they in?"

  "There's the kicker," Marcus said. "They are at opposite sides of the compound you are in, so you are going to have to pick a location and see what's there. If it looks like a dead end, you can go to the other. It is the best I have right now, Bo Peep. I'll keep looking though."

  "It works for me," I said. "Just point me in a direction. I don't care which one it is. Pick the one that is closest."

  Marcus directed me through a maze of hallways. If this was the shortest and closest of the two targets, I hated to see what the farther target's route looked like. I dropped three Bratva along the way with the mini-Uzi. When Marcus warned me that I was nearing my target, I changed my mode of attack to the silent elegance of my blades. I took down two more Bratva in that manner. When I was in sight of my objective, I was flabbergasted by what I saw.

  "Who in the name of Pete are they guarding?" I whispered to Marcus. "The freaking President?"

  Eight Bratva milled about the colossal metal door, and it was anybody's guess how many were inside. It was like they were waiting for their turn outside the only public restroom at a bran muffin festival. Anxiety and impatience permeated their every move. Their eyes darted back and forth, as if enemies lurked in every one. They jumped at every noise and seemed ready to shoot each other if the need arose. Every one of them was heavily armed, which made their jumpiness even worse. It was a deadly combination of variables for one single person to handle.

  I could not break through a line of eight Bratva giants with ants in their pants who were suffering from paranoid itchy trigger finger syndrome; not with the sounds of distant battles making them nervous and jumping at their own shadows. I wouldn't get close enough to throw the first punch or cut through the first layer of tissue. A gun battle wouldn't go over very well either because they were better armed, and I was outnumbered. I was too far away for the Sem-58 to be of much use. This situation required a completely different tactic. It was time to kill them with cuteness.

  I wasn't certain how many of the little pineapple grenades it would take to fell eight men. Avery didn't have a chance to demonstrate the adorable little explosives. All he had said was the grenades were designed for minimal structural damage. But what did that mean, really? Would three be enough and would four be too many? I didn't want to cause the building to come crashing down around my head, but in my current physical state, I didn't feel like fighting a hoard of Bratva. Regardless of what you see in the movies, if you get hit enough times, it really does begin to hurt after a while.

  With two of the pineapples in hand, I held down their clips and pulled their pins. I didn't want to risk doing three at a time because my hands weren't large enough to accommodate them all at once, even with as small as they were. I gave the two a toss towards the Bratva and began working on the third.

  The grenades gave a loud metallic tink as they made contact with the concrete floor and rolled to a stop in front of the milling crowd of men. How long it would take for these little babies to go off was anybody's guess. Avery hadn't said and I had been too enthralled by their adorable size at the time to ask. Big mistake on my part. I lobbed the third pineapple and sat back in my hidey hole waiting for the fireworks to begin.

  Most people have an unnatural desire to pickup, touch and inspect foreign items they cannot identify by mere sight. Like a dog that just has to eat everything it finds on the floor, whether it is edible or not. For people who suffer from the TOUCH ME affliction, if a questionable object is dangerous, disgusting, or otherwise should be left alone at all costs, they are inclined to touch it, poke at it, or mess with it in a way that brings them into close, intimate contact with the object so they are prone to injury or contamination of one form or another.

  My friend Iggie had the odd habit of accidentally picking up stray pieces of poop that had camouflaged themselves as other things like sticks, leaves, bugs, books, you name it. I was always warning him not to touch things, but he was always saying his famous last words of, "Don't worry, it's just a...." right before picking up what always turned out to be some type of transmogrified turd. You would think Iggie would have learned from the first million or so times he made that mistake, but he never did.

  In the case of this particular group of Bratva, they had a knack for picking up incendiary devices that would become the source of their demise. Their curiosity got the best of them. All three grenades found themselves in the hands of one of the men guarding the door. The ones who were not holding the grenades were closely examining them and offering accompanying commentary as they all tried to figure out what they were looking at.

  The thing about changing the form of an otherwise easy-to-identify object is that the brain has difficulty making the transition. Pattern recognition is tied into the size, color, and shape of an item. Change any one of the three, and it can take longer for the brain to identify the item. It may only take a second longer, but in the case of an incendiary device, a split second is all you need.

  Such was the case with the Bratva and the mini pineapple grenades. By the time recognition began to dawn on their faces, it was too late for any of them to act in their defense and throw the grenades away. The explosions were loud and larger than I was expecting. They made the Sem-58 patches seem like firecrackers in comparison. One grenade might have sufficed under the circumstances, but hindsight wasn't going to help me in this instance.

  The area looked like a warzone. The concrete was blasted into chunks. All eight Bratva were dead. The lights were knocked down from the ceiling, and the big metal door that had been my biggest impediment was partially blown off the hinge. As I sat there crouched in my hiding place, I found myself praying that I had not just killed the very person I had been hoping to rescue. I was cursing my overzealousness with the grenades when I heard voices coming from the room beyond. Three people were talking in Russian from what I could tell at my distance. The group was comprised of two men and one woman, and the woman sounded peeved beyond measure.

  Getting any intel from Marcus at that point would be like getting blood from a turnip. It wasn't going to happen. I had knocked out the cameras in the blast, and besides, Marcus had warned me he would be tied up for a while helping Oz and Avery overcome the tough opposition they were facing. Our guys desperately needed the kind of details Marcus could provide with his electronic eyes and ears plugged into the Bratva's main surveillance system.

  For now, I was on my own, but with only three combatants, I figured it couldn't be that hard. After all, I had already taken out six Bratva with my exploding frock, three with my mini-Uzi, two with my blades, and eight with my charming pineapple grenades. Three Bratva holed up in a room would be a cakewalk, and I loved cake. I had nothing to worry about.

  Famous last words.

  Kung Fu Fighting & a Poke in the Keester

  They say there is no honor a
mong thieves. In my latter years as an operative, I would argue, the opposite to be true. Honor of a sort does reign within the criminal underworld, otherwise the very foundation of the criminal world would crumble. The thief must trust his black market broker and the black market broker must trust the web of buyers he sells to. Though it is tenuous and as shifting as the sands, some semblance of honor exists within the darkness. It does not mean the enemy fights fair.

  In the infancy of my experience as an operative, I expected the enemy to fight with some sense of fairness. But such naive hope was like expecting the school bully to pick on someone who had the capacity to fight back rather than the terrified runt of the student body. For those of us who have ever been the object of a bully's attentions, we know bullies never go after the kid who has a fighting chance.

  I believed the Bratva would fight like men, with guns blasting, blades flashing, or bombs lobbing, in a manner that was, if not admirable, at least worthy of an honorable opponent. I had obviously watched too many movies, read too many books, and gave people too much credit when it came to their character. The reality was that most ruthless, corrupt criminals were cowards when it came down to brass tacks and would throw their own mother before a firing squad if they thought it would buy them one more second on this earth. I learned the Bratva in that room were no different.

  Somehow, in the mangled mess of it all, they knew I had come for whomever they were holding, and the bastards tried to leverage it to their advantage. When the door creaked open and fell at a painful angle to the side, I saw not some beefy Russian miscreant with a gun ready to shoot his way out at all costs but a half beaten Asian girl that was being propped up by some simpering coward hunched down behind her. The look of abject terror on her face was enough to make me nauseous, and her being used as a human shield outraged me beyond what I could have imagined.

  The Bratva had already begun to work their magic on the girl, if you can call beating the ever living crap out of someone magical. Her face was beginning to swell, and as she was pushed forward, she winced and caught at her side, making me think she had either a bruised or broken rib. Seeing her condition and the cowardice of her captors flipped a switch in my brain that made me want to take action in a deadly and permanent way that rarely ended well for the other party.

  When I was twelve, a bully named Charles Dalton crossed my path. He loved to torment any creature he deemed weaker than he was. It didn't matter how many legs it had. He was a big brute of a boy who was ruthlessly effective at getting away with the malicious things he did. His daddy was a deputy in the Parsonville Sheriff's Department, a fact Charles used to his advantage every chance he got. There were two monstrous mistakes Charles made in his young life, however. Tormenting a stray dog and doing it front me.

  I had gained a reputation for being somewhat of a hellcat, so Charles didn't have the gumption to test me with physical violence in the same way he did the other children. Instead, he got it into his head that I would be paralyzed with girly horror and would shrivel up into a ball of inaction if he acted against another living creature in my presence. He was sadly mistaken and learned a hard lesson the day he attempted his big experiment with me. It was a lesson which stuck with him the rest of his pathetic little life.

  What Charles meant to do to that dog was unspeakable and unmistakable. If the brutal beating of the dog hadn't been enough, the can of gasoline and the lighter were the final straw for me.

  Charles never saw the rock coming, but he felt the impact it made on the back of his head, and he felt the full force of my body as I tackled him to the ground. The other children who were there said they had never seen fists fly in such rapid succession in all their life. When they pulled me off of Charles, he was crying like a little girl, wetting his pants in front of half the neighborhood children. He threatened me with his father's deputy standing, but Charles never counted on the fact that my dad was friends with the Sheriff himself - good friends. When the situation was investigated and the other children were interviewed, the truth of what Charles had done came out. Charles was sent to juvie, and Rascal - the dog that was brutalized - came to live with us.

  Rascal didn't live more than a year or so after that. He had been an old dog, and he had a lot of health problems that complicated his life. Years on the street hadn't helped, and neither had the encounter with Charles. Doc Baker, the local vet, had done everything he could to help us give Rascal the best life possible, but in the end, we had to say goodbye sooner than we wanted to.

  As I crouched there watching another dog-kicking coward hide behind his victim, the same unbridled rage gurgled into my throat just as it had done the day Charles and Rascal came across my path. This wasn't going to end well for that Bratva. I was going to see to it.

  To his credit, the weasel kept his upper body well hidden from my view. I had my Ruger in hand waiting for a moment of vulnerability, but the jerk never gave me a clear target. Then I noticed his legs. His big, beefy legs. The guy was yelling out all sorts of things to me in Russian that I could not understand - threats, offers of trade, recipes for borsht - who knows. Whatever it was he was shouting, it didn't matter to me. I was staring at his legs.

  The Asian girl was small, with thin doll-like legs. His legs were ultra meaty and buckled down because of his cowardly pose. It was like looking at two toothpicks dangling in front of twin sausages. I couldn't miss. I took aim and fired. The Bratva went down like a lead cannonball, and as soon as his head was in view, I shot. He didn't move again.

  One down, two to go.

  I had hoped that as soon as the girl was liberated, she would do what I thought any normal human being would do under the same circumstances. Run for her bloody life and never look back. Instead, the girl just stood there, frozen with fear. The whole point of my being there was to save her, and if I didn't act quickly, any momentum I had gained by killing her one captor would be lost. Risking everything, I left the relative comfort and safety of my hiding place and raced towards the girl, doing my best to limit my exposure as a target. When I was close enough, I grabbed the girl's arm and yanked.

  I envisioned us making a clean get away as I reached for the Asian statue. I had snagged a beautiful Beretta 92 Brigadier pistol from a dead Bratva and found a sense of poetic justice at the thought of using it to eliminate his brethren. I would have used my gun but the clip was empty, and I didn't want to take the time to scramble for the backup clips strapped to my legs; not when I had a throwaway gun within easy reach. My plan was uncomplicated. With borrowed pistol in one hand and bruised Asian girl in the other, I figured we would make a run for it, shooting our way out if need be.

  I was not expecting to have a sudden game of tug-of war between me and another mammoth Bratva who found the wherewithal to reach over his fallen comrade and prevent me from bringing my prize to safety. We were like two kids on the playground fighting over the same toy, but based on the size of my opponent, I knew who was going to win this game, and it wasn't going to be me.

  Rather than taking the risk of ripping the girl's arms off in what was an uneven contest, I let go. The girl went spinning into the room, while the Bratva thug lost his footing and fell flat on his derriere, slipping gracelessly on the blood of his fallen friend. When I laughed against my will, it annoyed him. I basically waved a red flag in front of a bull's face. Better yet, it was like running up to a bull and smacking it on the nose with a wadded up newspaper. Before I had time to raise my gun and put the bull down on the ground for good, I got his horns right in the solar plexus.

  There must have been something within the Russian mobster's fighting manual that said the best way to start any fight was with a head butt. I had to admit, it was an effective maneuver for any 300 pound gorilla, but it was starting to get annoying. I was pretty sure that the manual was one giant picture book which started and ended with a giant head butt.

  This core of evil doers had not developed much variety in their routine of attacks, and I was beginning to anticipate ea
ch and every move. Once I got my breath back in my lungs, I was able to handle myself rather well. The head butt had knocked the Beretta from my hands, but I saw where it had landed. If I worked the fight in the direction where it fell, I could end this once and for all.

  The bad thing about being a 300 pound gorilla is that maneuverability is hard. You may be as strong as an ox but moving all that muscle takes effort. I was small, lithe, and could strike fast while still being able to get out of my opponent's way. My Ka-Bar fixed blade knife helped in bleeding him, but my wrist was getting tired from all this endless fighting.

  The pain of the cuts didn't seem to bother him either, which worried me. It made me wonder if he was jacked up on some wonder drug, courtesy of Kovalski's chemists. I had read about people on PCP and similar drugs that made them impervious to pain. Such drugged individuals would keep attacking even if they had been shot a bazillion times.

  I didn't have the stamina for an endless death dance. My goal was to nab the girl and go find Dorthia, who was probably being held at the other location. The longer I wasted here with this guy, the more time Dorthia had to be broken or killed, if she was even there at all. I couldn't take that risk. When I saw an opening, I ran for the Beretta, did a nice little summersault, and came up ready to shoot the oncoming train of solid flesh.

  The thing was, the Bratva train reached me before I was ready, and grabbed me around the throat with his two massive hands. I didn't think you could actually lift a person by their throat, but apparently if the lifter is big enough and the liftee is small enough, it is possible to do. My attacker brought me up to eye level and smiled at me with a look of perverse pleasure as he tried to squeeze the life out of me.

  I will never know if he felt the gun go off or if he noticed that I emptied the entire clip of my borrowed Italian-made gun into the hollow of his chest. All I know is that his grip never slackened until I saw the light dim in his eyes, as he went on to his reward; whatever that might have been.