The answer was simple. These high-profile projects were loss leaders, designed to get him big contracts where he could take advantage of what he saw as a tremendous opportunity—taking advantage of what he felt was a false prediction by the government.
At the turn of the new millennium, the Chinese government targeted certain areas for industrial growth, funding them with massive resources. They built cities full of housing units, shopping malls, office buildings, entertainment complexes, sports stadia, bridges, highways… all that was needed was for people and industry to move in.
But the anticipated boom didn’t materialize. While the mass exodus from the country to the city occurred, the “millions of jobs” that were promised did not, so no one could afford to live there. Millions of the planned urban units throughout China stood empty. They were nicknamed “Ghost towns.” However, this was a misnomer—these complexes were never, ever alive. These were the white elephants that foolish bureaucrats from years past built as monuments to their own inept forecasts.
The prescient Ming thought that might happen. He gave lowball bids and was awarded almost one hundred lucrative contracts for supplying cement. Figuring that no one would ever find out because the ghost cities would never be inhabited, Ming substituted cheap sea sand into the cement mixtures while charging full prices. If there was ever a problem in the future, he would claim that it was lack of maintenance to the empty buildings, not the materials he provided. He made hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of the Chinese yuan.
However, Ming had a weak spot—greed. He didn’t really need the money, but couldn’t resist the offer when Wen approached him about cutting a deal with him for the contract to provide concrete for the building of two schools in Zongtian—it was money dropping from the sky. For Ming, it was pocket change, but it was easy pocket change.
When the earthquake hit in Zongtian, Ming was concerned only mildly. Like the rest of the corrupt officials and contractors, Ming wasn’t worried about Wen speaking out. The bureaucrat loved his wife and son and knew one false word would mean their death—or worse. Prolonged, living torture.
While he was sure Wen would never betray him, Ming had an insurance policy. He would have Wen killed in prison. The only question was when.
***
Like many top-earners around the world concerned for personal safety who hired ex- Special Forces operatives for protection, Ming employed a team of twenty, including former members of Russia’s Spetsnaz, Britain’s SAS, and America’s Delta Force. Most of the time, six stayed with Ming and the rest rotated services between “disciplining” non-conforming employees or protecting Ming’s new gated compound.
Back at Cencom, Julio had been mining every bit of information he could from Wen’s list. Finding out about Ming’s housewarming, he discovered that songstress Anita Kwok, the temperamental Taiwanese superstar, would be the headline entertainment in the mansion’s private theater. As soon as her private jet in Taipei lifted off, Julio sent a message to Ming’s organizers that Anita wanted a full security detail of fifty when she landed in an hour and a half.
The staff was frantic, trying to find people that matched Anita’s stringent requirements. Ex-special forces preferred, no local Chinese military acceptable. What was worse was that communication with anyone on Anita’s jet was unavailable. There was no choice but to send all but two of Ming’s security staff to the airport to attend to the diva and her entourage.
This left the home with minimal security staff.
***
Barry and Chuck’s Imperial Suite at the Oceania had been christened “China HQ.” Although they ignored the luxury of spectacular views, English sycamore paneling, and custom Japanese furnishings, the Fidelitas group found the important feature was the mid-size cherry table modified to have wires feed up from the floor through the center post. This allowed the four Fidelitas members ample room to sit comfortably and have three monitors set up without gangling wires in their way.
Julio, from one of the monitors, pronounced, “You’ve only got two hours. After that, everyone will descend on the place for the final preparations.”
“Sounds like we go without eating again,” grumbled Chuck.
No one laughed. There was a job to do.
Chapter Twelve
A boring, small delivery truck rattled up to the gatehouse. A uniformed black security guard, obviously ex-military, asked the driver, an older middle-aged man, “What is your purpose here?”
Arthur, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, looked like thousands of other delivery drivers in the world. He cocked his head at the guard as if he were crazy. “Can’t you read the side? I’m bringing flowers for the concert tomorrow.”
“Your license plate is not on the list of vehicles expected.”
“That’s because we’re not. We don’t need to be,” growled Rayna, sitting on the passenger side. “I’m Anita Kwok’s personal florist. Who are you? She never, ever performs without me making the stage a garden wonderland first.”
The guard gritted his teeth. “What’s with this Anita, anyway? She’s got all of us jumping over…” Before he could finish his sentence, someone crept out from behind the guardhouse and cracked an elbow into the man’s head. Chuck hauled the body inside as Arthur ripped open the back of the truck.
Chuck gave the unconscious security officer’s windpipe a quick stomp before stripping off his uniform and putting it on himself. “Sorry, bro, but you joined the dark side,” muttered Chuck as Arthur and Rayna hid the corpse beneath the flowers in the truck.
Chuck casually took the guard’s place in the gatehouse. “Good thing we all look the same. Right?”
It was a play on the expression that, “All Chinese look the same.” A joke that neither Arthur nor Rayna found amusing, but hopefully it was still true.
Chuck snatched up the phone and punched in the number to the main house.
“What do you want?” asked a woman with a Filipino accent.
“There’s a couple here with a truckload of flowers saying they’re for Anita Kwok’s concert.”
“Wait while I check.”
Five seconds later, there was a twenty-second tirade of cursing. After the expletives stopped, a Chinese man’s grim voice grunted. “Bring the damned flowers in.”
Arthur mouthed to Rayna and Chuck, “That must be Ming.”
The truck glided down the fifty-yard gravel path and parked in front of the monolithic house. There was a lone guard outside the ten-foot tall solid oak doors. The dark suit could not hide the man’s powerful physique—definitely ex-Special Ops. But of more acute interest was the AK47 he carried at the low ready and the bulky ballistic plate carrier barely hidden on his chest. Rayna and Arthur brought no weapons, knowing they would not get through the metal detectors at the front gate if they did. Besides, if they needed one, there’d be plenty lying around.
“You stay in the truck,” declared the armed guard to Arthur.
“But she needs help carrying the flowers in.”
“I don’t care. You just stay in the truck.”
Rayna got out of the cab and strolled to the back with the guard stalking alongside her, his muzzle tracking her every motion.
As she popped the van doors open, Rayna took advantage of his drifting eyes and whipped one fist at his temple. With her other hand, she tried to grab the assault rifle, but the guard yanked it from her reach.
Which left his torso exposed. Rayna snapped off a swift kick right into his solar plexus.
The big man gasped, but didn’t lurch over. Instead, he dropped the rifle, snagged her exposed foot and twisted.
Rayna let her body follow the curve of the guard’s motion. She added an extra twist to free herself and send him to the ground.
He whipped out a Beretta with suppressor attached and fixed it on her. There was no way she was going to escape unless… Rayna squinted at some tattoo insignia on his neck. Who dares, wins. The motto of the British Special Air Service.
Rayna sa
t upright and smirked cockily. “You Limeys are wusses. Need a gun to beat a girl. Not man enough to do it yourself.”
The guard snapped. “So you got a little kung fu in you. Big deal.”
Rayna’s eyes bored into her opponent. “A little kung fu? How about five black belts in different disciplines? How about a hundred kills in the Middle East? How about commander in JFT2? What about you? Water boy? Boot licker?”
The guard jerked his weapon to the side and fired at the truck’s cab. Arthur saw the arm swinging in the rearview and ducked, for what little good it did. One round nicked his upper arm, spraying blood into his eyes. Blinded, he didn’t see the second shot that hit somewhere in his chest.
Rayna didn’t hesitate. The change in the gunman’s angle gave her a brief opportunity. She threw her whole body weight against his knees, knocking him to the ground and sending the gun skittering across the driveway.
The muscles in her taut arms bulged as she pounded on his face. Right. Left. And again.
But the ex-serviceman deflected each of the blows with ease.
Rayna heard the truck door open. Out the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a bleeding Arthur tumbling to the ground.
In that split second of distraction, her assailant countered with a two-hundred-and-twenty pound thrust of his own. Rayna instinctively rolled her head to the side so that the man’s steam-powered fist shot by her. Or at least mostly…
She howled through the pain and stars in her eyes. With a quick twist, she locked his beefy arm in a tight hold and tried to break it, but the guy only laughed. There was no way Rayna was going to overcome someone who could bench press four hundred pounds. He jerked his arm out of Rayna’s clutches and hit her on the side of the head.
She tumbled backward, but not too far. She leveled her swimming head just as the guard readied himself for another wallop.
Behind him Arthur, crawling on all fours, managed to flounder over to the Beretta. Just as the ex-SAS operative pile-drove his arm into Rayna’s face, a bullet shattered his balled fist. Another muffled shot put a hole in his forehead.
Amazingly, Rayna didn’t get a drop of blood on her. She crawled over and gave Arthur’s wound a quick look.
“It’s a through-and-through shot, Rayna,” he told her. “No arteries or bones hit. Just bandage me tight and I’ll be good to go.”
There was no point arguing. She would never be able to complete the mission on her own. Chuck was too far away at the gatehouse. She and Arthur hastily loaded the dead guard onto the truck. Rayna ripped off the man’s jacket and shirt while Arthur removed his blood-soaked shirt. Rayna tore off the lining from the jacket and used it to bind Arthur’s wound tightly. They quickly hid the body beside the other guard.
They each picked up two large colorful plants, then closed the door. They rushed to the door and rang the bell, calming themselves immediately.
A young female voice answered the intercom. “Hello.”
“Flowers for the stage set-up for Anita Kwok.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Thirty seconds later, a uniformed maid opened the door to see Rayna and Arthur carrying the displays of exotic flowers. “I’ll take you to the theater.”
“No, no. These flowers are a special gift from Anita to Mr. Ming. She asked us to personally deliver them to him.”
“That I cannot do. He will not take visitors unless he authorizes them.”
Arthur angled his body with Rayna stepping beside him. Her position blocked the myriad video cameras in the hall from seeing Arthur’s hand reaching into his pocket and slipping out the Beretta.
“Anita will be very disappointed. No one ever turns down her gifts. If she finds out about this insult, I wouldn’t be surprised if she just stays on her plane and returns to Taipei.”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to contact Mr. Ming,” whimpered the trembling girl.
“Bring them to the Dragon room,” boomed a male voice from some loudspeaker. “If Anita wants to give me a gift, I’ll be happy to take it. The bitch charges me enough.”
The maid led Arthur and Rayna down a long hallway, passing a labyrinth of rooms, each with its own decor motif: Japanese, Hollywood, Ming Dynasty, Cubist… Each room contained at least two million dollars’ worth of artwork and artifacts. The Dragon Room was at the far end of the hall. It was instantly recognizable because, in the center of the room, was a large jade dragon sculpture with intricate paintings of Chinese dragons on each wall.
“We are here,” muttered the girl.
“Where is Mr. Ming?” asked Rayna.
“You can just leave the plants on the floor,” announced the same male voice that boomed in the lobby. “Tell Anita I love them.”
“Anita gave direct orders to give them to you personally,” objected Rayna.
“Don’t worry about it,” retorted Arthur. “We got the rest of the truck to unload.”
“This totally sucks,” seethed Rayna. “It’s idiotic. Stupid. Who the hell does Ming think he is? The arrogant prick. Does he know who Anita is? She’s the biggest damned star in the universe, and he’s some pipsqueak with a few bucks.” Rayna picked up a small, multi-colored dragon ceramic and threw it against the jade dragon sculpture. The ceramic shattered, sending fragments flying around the room, and leaving a big gouge in the jade piece. Rayna pulled a watercolor painting off the wall and tore it in half. “And this stupid house! You think for fifty million bucks you’d get something that was better than some tasteless piece of crap. Everybody that’s coming is going to think he’s just another rich bozo who has no idea what to do with his money.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” A large door hidden behind a painting swung open. Out stormed a very angry Chinese man, followed by yet another ex-military goon with an AK pointed at Rayna. “I am Ming, and you have just destroyed eight hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Chinese history!”
Deceptively strong, Ming grabbed Rayna with both arms and tried to slam her to the floor, but she was alert enough to grasp Ming’s ears and bring him down with her.
“You bitch! Shoot her!” screeched Ming.
The guard hefted the AK to his shoulder, but Rayna rolled over and used Ming to shield her. “Yes, please shoot so I don’t have to kill him myself.”
The enforcer searched for an opening, but Ming was much bigger than Rayna—it would take a crack shot far better than him to thread a bullet through the small opportunities available.
Rayna’s hostage threw his head backward, hitting her nose. It bled profusely. With Rayna stunned for just a moment, it was exactly enough time for Ming to turn over and fling a wild swing at her head.
Rayna tilted her head at the last possible millisecond, causing Ming’s hand to crash into the marble floor.
Now the guard had a clear shot from close distance. He squeezed off several rounds.
Rayna rolled behind the marble dragon. More shells struck the curvy dragon and ricocheted upward.
Rayna leapt high in the air. With one smooth lightning move, she plucked a shard of jade debris flying through the air and flung it back at the shooter, striking him in the head. The hit knocked him backward, stunned but not dead.
Ming’s jaw dropped. He had seen moves like that in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and in Jackie Chan movies, but never in real life. Was this woman a martial arts grandmaster?
He wasn’t going to wait to find out. He snatched up the AK and flipped to full auto mode. Ming was no marksman, but his spray-and-pray technique couldn’t miss at such close quarters.
Then disaster—or a lucky break. Rayna tripped on a piece of broken jade just as Ming held the trigger down. She stuck out her hand at the last second to break the fall, slicing it open on a jagged ceramic shard. Her arm slid and her elbow smashed the floor, but at least she didn’t have any new air holes. Her arm exploded with agony as she forced herself to stand while Ming reloaded.
On the far side of the room, it took every bit of concentration Ar
thur had to fight through the stabs of excruciating pain, but he broke off the stem from one of the hollow plants. He flicked out two poisoned darts camouflaged as stigma in the petals of the large flowers.
He put one of them into his makeshift blowgun and blew it at Ming. Arthur dropped to his knees as the tip embedded itself into a vein in Ming’s neck. The toxins started spreading immediately. His body began to twitch, then spasm.
The strain of movement was too much for Arthur. Rayna hobbled to catch him before he crumpled to the floor. She pulled him up and he slid his arm around her shoulder to steady himself. Spotting the guard on the floor, Rayna plucked the other dart from Arthur and shoved it deep into his eye—he would soon meet the same fate as his boss.
Arthur’s weight was too much for Rayna to support with her own body racked in pain.
“Just go, Rayna,” quavered Arthur. “No point in two of us dying here.”
Arthur was right. If they both stayed, it was only a matter of time before they were caught. A soft rustle in the doorway snapped Rayna’s head around.
“I will help you,” uttered the maid softly as she helped lift Arthur up. “Mr. Ming... He was a very bad man.”
Between the maid and Rayna, they managed to keep Arthur upright as they slunk out the door and down the deserted hall.
Chapter Thirteen
Once outside the door, the two girls helped Arthur into the flower truck. Once inside, Rayna began dressing her wound. No big deal. Done that a thousand times before.
“Will you take me, too? Please? I will do anything,” pleaded the maid.
“Of course. Climb in,” replied Arthur.
Rayna drove to the gate. Chuck was waiting there with Barry in a Range Rover. Barry poured gas over the truck as Rayna, the maid and Chuck carried Arthur into the new vehicle.
The Mandarin's Vendetta (Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 2) Page 5
