Sunshine or Lead

by Adam Van Susteren

  Xiaowan nodded. She stood, took a deep breath, and exited the hotel room to meet with Zhou.

  Aurora, confident the room could not be bugged yet, was uncertain if all outgoing lines had been tapped. She was well aware that every foreign agency could readily monitor all calls going in and out of the hotel in the hopes of catching something interesting. The question was whether they wanted to monitor and sort through all the irrelevant conversations.

  Aurora pulled out a slip of paper from her wallet and dialed the numbers on it. “Hola, major viaje,” was said into the phone.

  “Habla ingles?”

  “Yes, how can I help you?” asked the voice on the other end.

  “I need a pickup for four people to go near the water for a nice place to eat in a half hour.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “The Hotel Montecarlo on Las Ramblas.”

  “You are only a few blocks away from the water. There should be plenty of taxis along the street if you have difficulty walking. If you should need a ride to the airport or a distant attraction, please call back.”

  Aurora nodded at Jessica and Tina, then said into the phone, “Thank you, sorry for the trouble.” After she hung up, she assured Tina and Jessica, “We have support watching us…”

  “How will we know who?” Tina asked.

  “Ask them who the best basketball player of all time is. Both of them will agree it was Kobe Bryant.”

  “Kobe Bryant? Kor would argue with these guys for hours,” Jessica said.

  “The beauty of a good pass-phrase is that in passing conversation, it won’t stick out.” Aurora looked at her watch but was disappointed when it didn’t tell her how much time they should give Xiaowan before checking on her and Zhou. Aurora opened her purse and pulled out two pens. She positioned one on the desk directly across from the front door, then clicked it. She set the other on top of a notepad on the little round table in the corner and clicked it.

  Tina and Jessica watched intently.

  “Motion sensor camera pens. Just in case anyone comes in, it will send pictures across a secure network that we can use to identify who we may be dealing with.”

  “Not going to lie, I’m not sure that makes me feel more or less safe. This is definitely more wild than I thought my bachelorette party would be.”

  “By having fun and relaxing, you will be supporting Xiaowan. Let’s go find her.”

  As they were about to leave the room, Jessica asked Tina, “I wonder how the boys are doing in Macau.”

  Chapter 20

  “Omaha?” Kor asked Aaron as he looked at the exit through the disco lights spinning across the dark club.

  Aaron nodded.

  Kor asked the Asian man in the suit, “Can we at least get one last beer while we talk about this bill?”

  The man nodded and yelled in English to the bar, “Two more Bud Light.” He looked back at Kor, pointed to the bill. “You pay or we call cops.” He smirked. “Or if you have money on you, we find it,” He signaled over his shoulder to the four bouncers in the club.

  Aaron, Kor, Leonard, and Josh were all inside a gentlemen’s club in Macau. It was nearly eight am, and while the club ran twenty-four hours per day, there was almost no one left inside that early in the morning.

  There was one dancer on stage and two Asian men sitting at the meat rack, the chairs right in front of the stage. Aaron and Kor were sitting in oval-backed chairs wide enough for them to sit comfortably in, or big enough for two slender women to sit next to each other. Opposite them were two similar chairs where two young ladies were sitting just a few minutes ago until they realized that neither Aaron nor Kor would ever go to their champagne room to pay for extra services.

  The exit to the establishment was about one hundred and fifty feet away. The large rectangular stage and a dozen little tables and surrounding plush chairs were between the guys and the exit. The man who brought the bill that they cleverly nicknamed Suity, because he was wearing a suit, was directly between Kor and Aaron, and the stage. To Kor and Aaron’s left was one bouncer, maybe 5’8”, who filled out a tight black t-shirt with a weightlifter’s physique. To their right, and the right of Len and Josh, were two more bouncers around the same size as T-shirt.

  Across from the exit, about thirty feet past where the main bar ended, was a DJ booth; there was another bouncer in the booth. Normally, Suity would have let a few of the bouncers go home already but he was going to put the squeeze on the boys and wanted to have the muscle around.

  Being the only single guy in the group, Len was looking forward to hanging out with a hottie in the back room to see if she would like him enough to help give his night a happy ending. An hour ago when he went into the VIP room, Josh went with him, somewhat reluctantly, under the “don’t leave your wingman” agreement. They were quoted a rate of four hundred euros each.

  James had given each of the guys one thousand euros from the money Xiaowan had gotten from Zhou. Suity noticed the drunk guys flashing money whenever they paid for anything.

  If they were in the United States, Aaron would have no problem calling the police to help out in this situation. Had they not had a plane to catch to help illegally smuggle two Chinese citizens into the Unites States, Aaron would have been willing to call the police in Macau to have their help in straightening this out. He figured a city that depends so heavily on tourism in the age of social media and lightning fast reviews wouldn’t take too kindly to shakedowns like this.

  Kor and Aaron both understood they didn’t have time for this shit. If Aaron had the cash, he might have even paid the bill that Suity presented, just to get out of there. But the bill sitting on the table in front of them came out to twenty-three thousand euros. Suity said they would settle for twenty thousand United States dollars.

  Even though it was the middle of summer, like a bunch of drunken idiots, the guys were yelling out “Omaha” and “hurry, hurry” all throughout the night like quarterback Peyton Manning would when calling an audible at the line of scrimmage.

  Leonard played football at USC with Kor. He was a safety in college and stayed in great shape. At just a hair under 6’0” and nearly two hundred pounds, he looked like a bodybuilder that never quite achieved a steroid-induced size.

  Josh was a soccer player in high school and college and got into Cross Fit, even taking part and placing in some Cross Fit competitions. At 5’8”, one hundred seventy pounds, he was the smallest in the group, yet he was as big as the largest bouncer inside the club.

  Playing the drunken idiot card, Kor stood up and shouted at Aaron, “Omaha!” He looked at Len and Josh and shouted, “Omaha!”

  He said, “Forty-two Sam. Forty-two Sam!” Kor looked at Aaron and continued shouting slurred words in a football cadence. “A-B, Will.” He looked back over at Josh and said, “Cleveland, wingman, wingman.”

  “Seven on Mike!” Kor yelled. “Omaha! Omaha!”

  Every eye in the bar was looking at Kor wondering what this drunk guy was yelling. Kor yelled, “Hit!”

  Aaron and Len shot up from their chairs and Kor lunged forward towards Suity. Josh saw the quick motion and shot up a half second behind Len.

  Aaron rushed the bouncer that was to his left and grabbed at his shirt to pull up, using the momentum of his two hundred and forty pound body to lift him off his feet and slam him to the ground.

  Kor lowered his shoulder into Suity and hit him so hard that he crashed into a bar stool just behind the spot Aaron deposited a bouncer.

  The two bouncers that Len was aiming for got ready to make a tackle. Len lowered his shoulders and pushed right between them. He didn’t knock either one to the ground, but when Josh came up behind him a half second later, he knocked the one on the right into the wall. The one on the left dove and tripped up Josh’s legs.

  Kor jumped up on the stage and was even with Len. Aaron was running to the left of the stage putting the three men in a perfect line. Len saw he was free but turned his head back and saw that one
of the bouncers was holding onto Josh’s leg. Len turned around, took three steps, and with a full wind-up, let loose a kick to the man’s shoulder. The kick hurt enough to make the man let go of Josh.

  The two patrons at the meat rack were in utter shock. They didn’t move. The stripper that was circling the pole closest to them jumped high on the pole as she saw Kor jump up onto the stage near her. Kor stomped with such speed and power that the stage shook with each footfall. When the vibrations went up the pole, the men seated in front of the stage could see the silicone ripple in her breasts with each of Kor’s strides.

  The bouncer in the DJ booth darted down the stairs and took a good look at Aaron coming towards him. He was able to note the damage the Americans inflicted and decided to lay flat against the wall rather than step into this path of destruction.

  Kor jumped off the stage and was the first one to burst outside into the overcast morning light. A second behind him was Aaron, followed by Josh and then Len. If Len didn’t go back to kick Josh free, he would have been the first one out instead of the last.

  The man Josh knocked into the wall had pulled out a gun and was aiming it right at Len’s back.

  Suity yelled at the man with the gun, “Tingzhi!”

  Crack! The door slammed shut behind Len. The man with the gun asked Suity, “Boss, why did you tell me to stop?”

  Suity composed himself. We don’t need the police. We wanted to get money from them and we have their credit card.” He started laughing.

  The rest of the bruised and battered bouncers started laughing with him. It wasn’t a heartfelt victory, but they did have a credit card to run. The one that Len kicked in the shoulder said, “Looks like we gave them a big enough distraction to forget the card.”

  Outside in the sunlight, the four men were running down the street checking behind them. Josh was the third one out but he overtook Aaron, then Kor, to be first. Aaron looked over his shoulder and saw Len right behind him. He felt his lungs burning and his legs starting to fill with lactic acid.

  Aaron thought it looked clear behind Len. He looked over his shoulder again and didn’t see anyone chasing them or even coming out after them. He looked around the streets.

  He yelled, “Kor, Josh!” as he started to slow to a jog.

  Len said, “Come on big man, keep moving.”

  Aaron shouted, “They’re not coming, look!”

  Kor was starting to slow. He stopped to look back over his shoulder and shouted up to Josh who was almost a hundred feet ahead and still moving, “Josh, stop!”

  Josh turned around and moved towards the three stragglers. Aaron said between breaths, “Good chance…they are getting…a car. We should…get off…the street.”

  It was as if God had answered their prayers with a little yellow box on wheels. Aaron held his hand up to flag down the taxi cab. He jogged up to the front seat while the other three guys piled into the back seat. The driver could tell the car was noticeably more sluggish with the eight hundred pounds of sweaty drunken Americans in it. He just hoped they wouldn’t vomit.

  “Victory Casino,” Aaron said. “But go straight for a while. We, uh, want to see a bit of the city.”

  “Okay boss,” the driver said in English.

  As their nervous energy was starting to fade, Josh said, “That was fucking awesome. How did you guys do it?”

  Kor, sandwiched in the middle, said, “That’s what quarterbacks do, buddy.”

  Josh reached his right hand over to slap Kor’s chest and shoulder. “Fuck yeah. How?”

  “You know how we were yelling ‘Omaha’ all night, like at the casino when we decided to leave to the club and roll the dice?”

  “Yeah, called an audible like Peyton Manning.”

  “Right,” said Kor. “So I checked with Aaron on whether we should call an audible instead of waiting to pay the bill when that guy talked about the police.”

  “I know that,” Josh said exasperatedly. “But how did you get them on the same page?”

  “Did you get what I said to you?”

  Josh said, “You got my attention with Cleveland, cause that’s where I’m from. Then you said wingman, so I looked at Len, my wingman tonight. That’s who I followed.”

  Len shouted across Kor, “And you did great for a soccer player.”

  Josh didn’t know if that was a compliment or jibe, so he let it slide.

  Kor continued, “I played with Len at USC, he was a safety and wore number forty-two. So I called out his number, then I called out Sam. And then I called out Will for A-B.”

  “So?” Josh asked.

  Len interrupted, “So I got the Sam and A-B’s got the Will. The fuck you think it means?”

  The taxi made a right-hand turn as Kor continued, “The bouncers were set up kind of like a defense and we were the offense. Sam is a football term for the strong-side linebacker. You had two bouncers bunched there. You had the strong side.”

  “I figured Aaron could run through the one guy on his own so I called out Aaron to take the Will, the weak-side linebacker. Then to let you guys know the play, since my old number was seven, I called out the Mike, or middle linebacker, for myself.”

  After a block, the taxi made another right so that they were no longer going past the strip club but were on another thoroughfare.

  “Fucking A! A-B, how did you know the snap count?”

  “We can thank Peyton for that. Len, Kor, and I were over at Lackner Sports Bar watching the Chargers/Denver game when we kept seeing him change plays with his hands. The play clock was getting down under five, so then he’d call ‘Omaha, hurry, hurry,’ then the ball would be snapped on the first hit, hut, hike, or whatever.”

  Kor said proudly, “I was the one who saw that first. It’s just like when you say ready, set, hike, in the back yard. But if you want to give yourself an advantage, you say, ready, set, hut, hut, hut, and your guys know you are going on four from the huddle. You don’t actually say hike.”

  Len said, “So we knew after Kor called the play. He didn’t need to set us. See, after Omaha, we knew to go on the first hit. You know the count, you fucking go, bro. You fucking go…”

  Aaron turned around. “Nice play calling, Kor.”

  The taxi driver placed a call with his cell phone and spoke quickly in Cantonese then hung up. Aaron started to feel some tension ease away as they put several blocks between them and the strip club.

  The driver’s cell phone rang. He answered and was thanked for reporting that these guys had run away from the club, but was told to just let them get to their hotel. The club already got everything they wanted from them.

  The driver smiled. These were just drunk guys telling wild stories about things that are never really as awesome as the drunks thought they were. He thought to himself and almost laughed out loud that these big, smelly, drunk Americans could never find a good Asian woman.

  Chapter 21

  Tina and Jessica were sound asleep, exhausted from the tapas and sangria they enjoyed at four different restaurants along La Rambla. Both were worried about their fiancés in Macau but had enough experience with guys’ night out to be able to trust that everything was okay.

  Xiaowan and Aurora were both half asleep, sipping on their drinks to remain sober and hoping for a secure message from Nat or a coded phone call from James at ten am Macau time.

  Xiaowan whispered, “Aurora, are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” she replied quietly.

  “I’m really worried about my parents and James.”

  Aurora sat up in the bed. “I am too. But I can tell you I have seen Aaron Baker and Nat Rossetti in the field before and there is no one on Earth that I think can handle this better than them.”

  Xiaowan sat up. “I hope so. That’s why I went to Aaron with this whole situation in the first place.” Tears started welling up in her eyes. “Can you believe that Tina and Jessica came all this way to support me?”

  “I can. You have amazing friends.”

  Xiaowa
n nodded and peeled the sheet away from the blanket to dab her eyes with it. “How did you play it so cool when you saw Zhou today? It was so funny that you asked if he was a stripper when you found me talking with him in the second floor lounge.”

  “When the girls and I went to look for you in the lobby and couldn’t find you, we asked the front desk. They said that visitors to the hotel are not allowed in the guest rooms so you and the male visitor would be in the meeting room on the second floor. I thought being in flirtatious party mode would hopefully throw him off his game.”

  “I was scared when Zhou asked why I brought you here. I was nervous but told him just what we rehearsed; that because of the attack against Tina by the burned-face guy, neither she nor Aaron wanted her to travel alone. You guys had become friends so Jessica suggested that you come. I also added that I don’t like having the FBI so close to me, but having you around might just help if I need access to something. I told him that the FBI handles U.S. crimes to assure him you have no jurisdiction in this situation. I told him he could check on that.”

  “You did perfectly. And if you were nervous, that was to be expected. You have been doing a great job.”

  “Thank you. So tomorrow, or later this morning, I am expecting Zhou or someone else to follow me to make sure I go into Ameriprobe.”

  “That’s right, and we will follow your followers so we can get an idea of who Zhou is working with, and maybe even for.” For the second time Zhou eluded Aurora’s tail. At the Hard Rock hotel in San Diego, she was able to hand over surveillance at the nightclub to two agents who confirmed he spent the night in his hotel room with a young lady. The next morning he lost them in the San Diego convention center during Comic-Con.

  This evening, Aurora had an agent follow Zhou but he lost him in a back alley near the Picasso Museum. Either Zhou was good and spotted the tail or he was really cautious and was able to avoid being followed twice.

  Xiaowan strained her ear for a second, hoping she heard the disposable cell phone ring with a text message. She picked it up and looked at it, still nothing. She sighed loudly. “I guess I should try to get some sleep.” She pulled the blanket up level with the sheet and tucked it in under her chin while she shimmied down in the bed.