Rise of the White Lotus

by H L Stephens

  I didn't know what I would find inside - treasure, drugs, guns, pallets of money, the Holy Grail. To see Dorthia standing there free and untethered, pacing the floor like a caged tiger, was a shock to my system. When our eyes met, I can't say who was more surprised; her or me. When my stupefaction wore off a bit, I moved to throw my arms around her, but she stopped me in midstep.

  "No, don't," she said in a sharp whisper. Her eyes darted to a location an upper corner across the room from her. "He is watching. I do not want him to know I care for you. He will use it against me."

  I stopped where I stood.

  "Who is he?" I whispered back.

  "Gadyuka," Dorthia said, "my brother."

  A cold chill ran down my spine at Dorthia's words. To hear 'Gadyuka' and 'brother' in the same sentence coming from Dorthia was like hearing my mother use 'Satan' and 'boyfriend' in a similar manner. I couldn't process the information. It was as shocking and mind numbing as the blast had been.

  The able bodied Triad men who were standing in the doorway began streaming into the room. I waved them back and whispered for them to return to the corridor. I told them we were being watched from within.

  "Can he hear us as well?" I asked Dorthia.

  "No," Dorthia said. "Of that I am certain, but I do not want him to see us together. He will use it as ammunition against me, and he has enough already as it is."

  "Well, stop standing there Dorthia and come on," I said. "We have an army of men to protect you. We can get you out of here safely."

  I held out my hand to my friend, but she shook her head. Her face was filled with sorrow.

  "I can't love," she said. Tears began to course down her cheeks. "If I step foot across that threshold, he will kill us all. He wants me here, with him."

  Dorthia lifted the shirt she was wearing. Fastened around her midsection was some sort of device. I had seen enough movies to know what it was. Dorthia was rigged with an explosive device, but hers was smaller than what you see in the movies and more sophisticated. It had been well hidden beneath her clothing. In fact, undetectable until she elected to expose its existence. A wave of shock and dismay crashed over me. At first I was paralyzed. Then I was pissed.

  "This is bullshit, Dorthia," I said and ran into the room.

  "Jane, don't," Dorthia cried, trying to stop my forward momentum. "He'll see you."

  "Screw him," I said and flipped the bird at the secret corner where the camera of doom was supposed to reside. "I don't care if he sees me. If I thought I could get away with mooning the guy, I would, but we don't have time for me to strip out of my tactical suit."

  Dorthia laughed against her will.

  "Now let me take a look at that thing," I continued. "You know I have been working with Marcus, and I have been reading quite a bit on my own. I don't forget anything, so there may be a light at the end of this tunnel that isn't an oncoming train."

  I pulled out a mini-Maglite I always carried with me and took a closer look at the device. It was elegant. An unbidden flicker of admiration coursed through me. The person who designed and created this used a measure of craftsmanship that took skills which were beyond me; perhaps even beyond Marcus. It might have been a creature of rare beauty were it not strapped to my dear friend. For just a moment, hope sparked within me that I could find a way of disarming the beautiful monstrosity, even though the chances were slim. A thorough examination of the device dashed my hopes to tiny bits.

  "Hey Marcus," I called on the com. "Are you there? I found Dorthia, but we have a problem. She's wired to explode if she leaves the room, and I need your help to disarm the device so I can get her out."

  I received no answer in reply.

  "Marcus."

  Still nothing.

  "Marcus........Damn it. They must be jamming the signal somehow."

  The more I examined the device, the more I realized there wasn't a chance in Hades that I could disarm it. Only its maker had the secret of unlocking it. Gadyuka had to be the damnable architect of this malignant instrument of death. It was too intimate a creation for anyone else to have done it. I despised him for it. I realized my only course of action was to do my best to memorize its design and bring back the intel to Marcus so we could hopefully reverse engineer it later and uncover its mysteries.

  "I can't do it Dorthia," I said. "I can't disarm it. I don't know how."

  To look up into Dorthia's eyes and admit my failure to her was an impossible thing for me to do, yet as I scanned her features for any hint of disappointment in me, all I saw was tenderness. She even smiled at me with a small little smile and stroked the one cheek that wasn't beginning to bruise.

  "It's okay Jane," she said. "I don't think even Marcus could disarm this thing if he was here."

  Suddenly Dorthia went rigid, and I saw goose pimples form on her exposed flesh.

  "Jane, you need to go now," she said in a sharp whisper. "He's coming. I don't know what he will do if you are here. I don't want anything to happen to you. You must go now, before it is too late."

  "I am not leaving you, and that's final," I said. "I want to see this monster in the flesh. I want to know his face so I know who to kill when I have the chance."

  My voice was hard and full of a burning rage that was growing inside me, fuelled by the sense of impotence I felt.

  Dorthia hugged me and whispered in my ear, "Tell Avery that Kazakhstan was a lie." Dorthia paused and held me tight. "I love you Jane. Never forget that; no matter what happens to me."

  Dorthia pushed me away from her just before half of the wall opened up behind her to the outside world. If I had not been impressed before by the design of the device installed around my friend's waist; the show of force behind the wall was enough to bring me to my knees had I been inclined to yield to such displays. The first thing that caught my attention was the large helipad that was accommodating a modified British Apache gunship with front shooting auto cannons. It had side installed rotating rapid-fire machine guns and what looked like an AGM-114 Hellfire missile system. Behind the gunship were countless Light Truck Shīn fighting vehicles with heavy machine guns mounted on the roll bars, as well as over a dozen Cougar armoured fighting vehicles. I couldn't even begin to count the number of scary Bratva who were fanned out like a wall of angry, soulless, well-armoured soldiers, guns ready. A flesh and bone extension of the metal mechanisms of war.

  I didn't have enough rounds of ammo strapped to my body to take them all out, even with my modified mini-Uzi. I wondered as I stood there looking into the glaring lights of these machines whether I was looking into the dawning of my last night on earth.

  From the midst of the wall of war walked the silhouetted form of a man. His features were impossible to distinguish, but like an ancient gods of old, he seemed to rise from the gale force winds that came from the rotors of the Apache, as if he was born from the chaos itself. He carried no weapons that I could see with the Army of Hell at his backside, he didn't need one. He had nothing to fear, and he knew it.

  I pulled out my Ruger and had it at the ready. It may not have been much when compared to the firepower before me, but it gave me confidence to feel the cold steel in my hand. I also grabbed two pineapple grenades from their holster and tucked them under my arm for good measure.

  The tactical maneuvers available to me weren't many. I had few weapons with limited ammunition and a small brigade of wounded Triads behind me. It wasn't much, but those who were at the ready would fight to the death. I called over my shoulder for the men to be ready in case an opportunity presented itself for us to make a reasonable attack.

  It was difficult to envision a winnable scenario when faced with a wall of impenetrable might, but I thought about the 300 Spartans and what they accomplished against an impossible army. Like them, I wasn't ready to lay down my sword and surrender. I took up a defensive position near Dorthia and waited.

  Dorthia stood out in the open. Here was the typical battle ready woman, acting like the nameless victim in every movie I
had ever seen; the one that always got killed or taken first.

  At one point I told her to get down.

  "There is no point in doing that," she said and left it at that.

  When the man neared Dorthia, he held out his hand to her and beckoned her to come to him. She took a few steps towards him.

  "Dorthia, stop!"

  I was not certain if my words would carry above the roar of the Apache's blades.

  The man glanced in my direction but his expression implied I was of no consequence. He beckoned her again.

  "Leave her alone you son of a bitch," I yelled, but this time I leveled my Ruger at him. The man narrowed his eyes at me, but again turned his attentions back to Dorthia. I was annoying him, but nothing more. I realized I needed to get his attention in a more definitive way.

  I switched the Ruger to my other hand and grabbed the pineapple grenades from under my arm. I pulled the clips with my teeth and lobbed them one after the other at the Apache. I put everything I had into those two throws. It was an impossible distance from where I stood, but I had played softball back in Ironco. Though we had never won a state championship in the history of the town, the years I was on the team were the best years they ever had. I had a mean arm and could strike out the best batters of the competing teams. I just imagined the Apache was some chunky girl from Parsonville that had pissed me off during practice.

  Twice I was rewarded with the familiar tink of metal on metal. Not that you could hear it over the roar of the blades, but I knew I had hit my mark. In the time it took me to think Eat that you son of a bit..., that beautiful Apache helicopter was exploding into a thousand bits.

  It was glorious. The explosion took out several of the surrounding Light Truck Shīn fighting vehicles and at least two of the armoured Cougars. It made me laugh. It made the Triads cheer, but it did one very important thing. It got the man's attention. He turned around, and it was not his happy face which greeted me.

  I smiled at him, Ruger leveled at him as it had been before.

  "It would appear I have your attention now," I said.

  "To your detriment, yes you do," he replied. "I might have forgiven and forgotten you before this moment. Forgotten that you took Kovalski from me...a man who was a good soldier....a man who will most certainly be dead to me now. I might have forgotten the fact that you helped destroy my drug manufacturing facility. I might even have forgotten how many of my soldiers you have killed, but for this," he said indicating towards the now decimated helicopter, "I will never forget this and I will never forget you. There is no room to forgive you now. No, for this little one, I shall hunt you to the farthest corners of the world until you have no more breath left to run. But not today. Today, I have other business to attend to."

  Again, he moved as if he would take hold of Dorthia and leave. Rage rose like a hot bile inside of me, spreading from my stomach out to my extremities. The world turned to burning red embers, and I knew there was only one response left for me to give this man. I shot him. Actually, I grazed his arm. Nicked it might be a more accurate description, but it was a nick he could not ignore.

  This time, he charged me as if he would rip my throat out with his bare hands. Dorthia was the one to stop him in his tracks before he could get within ten paces of me.

  "She didn't miss Bastian," Dorthia said. "It was a warning."

  Bastian glared at me. If he could have killed me with a look, he would have. I could feel the deadly intent in his eyes, and I did my best to match it dagger for dagger.

  "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

  I smiled at him.

  "My friends call me YanMei," I said. I let the smile slip from my expression. "You are not a friend, so you may call me White Lotus."

  Bastian's jaw muscles thumped beneath his skin. I could see the familial resemblance between him and Dorthia, but he had none of the beauty of spirit that made Dorthia worth knowing. Bastian's eyes were as dead as his soul.

  "I am Gad...." he began.

  "I know who you are," I interrupted him with a yawn. "You are Gadyuka. The dreaded killer of babies and raper of the defenseless Russian countryside. You feed off of people's fear. You prey on their weaknesses and glean riches in the shadow of their silence. You are what the Chinese hunters scrape from the bottom of their shoes when they misstep over a log. You are what is left behind at the southern end of a northern bound mule. You don't frighten me."

  "I should frighten you," Bastian said. "Do you know why? Because you will never beat me. No flower that thrives in the swamp will ever beat me. I will win every time. I always win."

  I tilted my head towards his defunct helicopter that still sputtered and popped as pockets of volatile gas exploded in the heat.

  "Yes, I see how infallible you are," I said with a laugh that was meant to taunt. "Just remember this you stinking piece of donkey shit. You may have your prize today, but there is no corner of hell on this earth where I won't find you. You see, the beauty of the lotus flower is that it can spring forth anywhere, in places where you least expect it. It sprouts from the muck; sometimes out of the foulest conditions. So as you celebrate your victory and you revel in your perception of infallibility, remember that your kingdom is ripe for the White Lotus to appear and take everything away from you."

  I saw a flash of uncertainty flow across Bastian's features like ripples on the surface of a pond. Perhaps I wasn't such an easy target after all. I was pretty sure Gadyuka had never been threatened by someone like me before, and being shot in the arm was enough to knock anyone off their game. Unfortunately, any uncertainty he felt wasn't enough for him to be deterred from doing what he came to do.

  I had to watch him walk away with Dorthia. The sense of helplessness I felt was not unlike what I had felt the day my family was murdered before my eyes. In some ways, this moment was worse because I had a gun and training, but I couldn't use any of it to save Dorthia. Even if I took out Gadyuka or Bastian or whatever you called the bastard who was leading my friend away into the bowels of the nether-world, I still had his army and their war machines to contend with. I would gain nothing by killing him except a moment of satisfaction right before we were destroyed in one inglorious blaze of rapid machine gun fire.

  Bastian may have won the day, but there would be other battles. I just had to ensure I survived to fight them. As Dorthia disappeared into the blaze of lights with what was to become my greatest adversary, I did the only thing I could do knowing I was dealing with a man who had no honor. I turned and ran like the Devil himself was nipping at my heels.

  Aftermath

  Whoever said Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned never met a global organized crime leader who just got his ass handed to him by a wisp of a teenage girl. My instinct to turn tail and skedaddle out of Dodge was the best choice I had made that day. As soon as Dorthia and her peckerwood of a brother were safely ensconced in whatever was the replacement transportation for the ruined Apache, Bastian gave the order to his men to open fire on the room the three of us had once occupied.

  My Triad escorts had just enough time to grab the injured and hot foot it out of there. Not everyone made it out alive. As it was, I was grazed by more than one bullet, and several of the men to my left and right flank fell under the volley of bullets that rained down upon us before we reached the relative safety of the concrete corridors. Even after we were out of range, the barrage of bullets continued as a warning to any who dared follow Bastian and his men.

  The loss of Dorthia along with so many men at Bastian's hand made me despise the man with all my heart. From the expression on the Triad leader's face, his sentiments were much the same as my own. Bastian made a terrible mistake crossing this branch of the Triad. It was an error that would haunt him for some time to come and would be a great asset to me as my hunt for him continued later on.

  On this particular day, however, we had wounds to lick, dead to mourn, and plans to make before any further action could be taken against what had become our common enem
y.

  When I was able to reach Marcus again, I gave him a brief rundown of the events and had him send reinforcements to help with our fallen comrades. He was silent on the subject of Dorthia. To tell him there was much to disclose about Dorthia was like saying Niagara had a lot of water. What I had to impart to the crew must be done in person, especially with regards to Gadyuka being her brother. It wasn't news you broke over the com.

  The remainder of our forces gathered together at the eastern end of the Butimen Ash plant. Avery and his men had spent most of their time laying explosives in the heart of the plant. As we made our retreat, those explosives were detonated, turning the chemical plant into an inferno. There would be nothing for the Bratva to salvage. Nothing left to rebuild their drug manufacturing facility. It was our only consolation as we dragged ourselves back home to lick our wounds.

  I wanted nothing more than to rest when we returned to the safety of the warehouse. The promise of oblivion which exhausted sleep offered was a comfort to me, but too much needed to be said and it could not wait for my recovery to be over.

  As our wounds were being tended to, all eyes rested upon me. No one wished to press me too hard for they knew I had been through a harrowing ordeal, as had we all, but they were anxious for news about what had happened. They knew I had seen Dorthia but nothing more than that. They had a right to know the truth.

  As I looked at the crew, I felt my confidence fade. How could I tell them I had failed Dorthia? How could I tell them I had run like a coward away from Bastian and his men? I felt naked as I recounted the events at the plant in all their inglorious detail. I began my narrative at the moment I was captured and concluded with the moment we were reunited, just before we made our retreat to the warehouse. My tears were abundant as my shame. I figured the guys would think I was a coward or worse, just a crybaby girl not worthy of their time. When I looked at their faces after my narrative was complete, their expressions didn't match what I was expecting.