Rayna made her move. She dashed to the table and pushed it over. The vase holding the flowers toppled and broke. She picked up several of the glass fragments, expertly heaving them at her assailant.
Jun advanced toward his prey, nimbly avoiding the onslaught of sharp, translucent shards. Out of glass fragments, Rayna appeared helpless as Jun charged at her, knocking her to the floor.
Smirking smugly, he was about to put his hands around Rayna’s neck again to choke her when Rayna reached over and snatched Mary’s designer handbag. Before Jun could react, she yanked the metal chain strap off and wrapped it around his neck, pulling as hard as she could with her hands while kicking at his groin with her feet.
Jun struggled, but it was no contest. Lightheadedness, then darkness swallowed the muscled criminal.
The naked Amazon had defeated the armed enforcer.
Rayna walked to the door that separated her room from China HQ.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Arthur, Barry and Chuck had no clue what had been going on next door. When Rayna entered au naturel, the men were speechless.
But not Rayna. She walked directly to the washroom door, stopped, then turned to face her gawkers. “The weasel’s name is Deng. He’ll be in Linfu in the evening. There are also a couple of dead people in my room.” Without waiting for a response, she turned, closed the door and headed directly to the shower.
The three amigos hopped to Rayna’s room and shook their heads.
“Damn fool for trying to mess with my girl,” stated Chuck as he got down on his knees to examine what Rayna had done to Jun’s eyes.
“And there’s a drowned rat in here,” said Barry, coming out of the bathroom.
Arthur called in for a team of three to sweep her room and clean up the situation while Barry transmitted all the data from Jun and Mary’s cell phones to Julio at CenCom. Similar individuals were sent to Mary and Jun’s apartments, as well as to the Mandarin’s office.
***
Twenty-seven minutes later, the group of high level Fidelitas operatives met in China HQ. Julio and his wife Helena participated by video conference.
The smiling Helena waved at Rayna, Hi, then began, “We took the data from Mary’s cell phone and tracked it as best we could. The calls came from somewhere in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The last communication we had was at 2:00 when Arthur was also at the meeting. Since then, there have been no other calls.”
“Mary told me Deng was working on delivery ‘soon,’” interjected Rayna. “We can probably assume that Pyongyang is where the N115 is being manufactured. But then she said Deng would be in Linfu tonight.”
“The China side of the North Korean border,” mused Arthur. “Do you think they’re done making the product and are bringing it over the border? Did you get a sense, Rayna?”
The Asian woman shook her head. “Why don’t you call our North Korean contacts?”
“Because we don’t have any,” sighed Arthur. “Fidelitas has done zero work there and no one from the Hermit Kingdom has approached us. In other words, to find the Mandarin and his source of drugs, we would be flying blind into a morass of government and military obfuscation, denial and half-truths.”
The group digested this information. This was so not good. The Mandarin was bad enough, but to have North Korea involved? Economic mismanagement and natural disasters led to millions of starving citizens who continued to rely on foreign aid to eat. Since the end of WWII, the mysterious hermit nation had been ruled with an iron fist. Human rights were non-existent with rumors of public execution, slave labor, prison camps and hundreds of thousands in detention facilities. The country, led by a dynasty of ruthless men characterized by extravagant excess and quirky unpredictable personalities, sent out dangerous mixed signals. The Supreme Leader’s whims and dictates were backed up by unethical government officials purported to have the world’s highest rate of corruption, and a huge military that pervaded the life of every single inhabitant in the country.
Arthur looked at the video monitor. “Helena and Julio, have you gone through the guest lists of Linfu hotels to see if any persons named Deng are registered?”
“Yes, we are doing that now but I’m not hopeful. Someone like the Mandarin who is a maniac about hiding info about himself has likely either paid cash so there is no record or used a pseudonym.”
“Not to mention Deng is one of the most common surnames in China,” added Helena.
“Well, it seems that the first thing we have to do is get some weapons and send a group of us to Linfu,” said Chuck. Chuck mimed a machine gun spitting out its pellets of death.
“That won’t work, Chuck. Too risky,” advised Julio. “There are no private airfields so you’d have to use the Linfu airport. Because it’s small and there’s nothing else to do, half the time security goes overboard either to get a bribe or to escape boredom. Either way, we’d never get weapons in. But we do need to send someone there.”
“I’ve booked your flight, Rayna,” announced Helena. “You leave in an hour.”
“What about me? Rayna needs back up,” said Chuck. “We can’t send her in alone.”
Arthur disagreed. “Chuck, a big, hulking black man towering over a sea of Asians? You’d be as conspicuous as a red rose in a garden of daffodils. Barry’s the same deal and unfortunately, I still have limited mobility from the gunshot wounds.”
“Not to mention that Deng saw Arthur and Barry on his spycam when they were in his office,” added Julio. “Rayna’s got to go in solo.”
“So I’m going to a place with no intel, no cover and no weapons?” mumbled Rayna.
Barry, who had spoken very little, chimed the immortal words. “Don’t forget, ‘And no plan.’”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Rayna was stuck going to Linfu in economy. Not that she was a snob and didn’t want to mix with the masses. No, she’d done that all her life and hardly considered herself a member of the elite class. The problem was that, with only a remote chance she could get a secure Internet connection, she wouldn’t be able to liaise with Julio and Helena—or to get any updates on her father’s condition.
She found herself in the middle seat between two late middle-aged Chinese women who fancied themselves as cougars who had just taken a “girls bonding trip” to Guangzhou. Rayna had barely buckled in before she felt a migraine coming on. In addition to crying the blues about skinflint husbands, there was incessant nattering between them about the young studs that each of them had treated themselves to on their last night. Rayna offered to exchange seats so they could sit beside each other instead of leaning over Rayna to talk.
They looked at her as if she were crazy.
“What? I want see outside the window,” responded one.
“Are you crazy? I have to have an aisle seat so I can go to the bathroom without climbing over anybody,” replied the other.
Naturally, neither looked out the window or used the bathroom during the five-hour flight. Rayna wished she could escape until the conversation switched to another popular women’s topic.
“Your new boobs are fantastic.”
“I just love them. No scars, nothing. The doctors in Guangzhou are the best!”
“For sure. I don’t know how they do it, but when I had my tummy tuck last year, you couldn’t see any marks or anything. I told everyone that I did ten thousand sit-ups!”
Rayna’s ears perked. No scarring? When their gales of laughter died down, Rayna asked, “I have a friend who got some surgery but she couldn’t get rid of all the ugly marks. There were still lines and blotches. She has enough money to get the best in the world. I couldn’t figure it out.”
“Where were they?”
Rayna pointed to the areas around her breasts and just above the midriff.
One of the women snickered. “You are very pretty but you are dumb. Where you pointed has nothing to do with the surgery. They don’t cut there.”
“Oh! What can cause that then?”
&n
bsp; For the rest of the flight, Rayna had an in-depth course in the pros and cons, the successes and botched jobs of cosmetic surgery. Ice broken, the trio began chatting girl talk about men, clothing and shoes for the rest of the trip. After the plane landed, her new friends, Anna and Lily, offered Rayna to “help with anything” she needed in Linfu and gave her their phone numbers.
When the plane landed, she quickly thanked them, then dashed away to call Julio and Helena. As she punched the numbers into her phone, she took a quick look at the airport—austere, small and grungy. Not a place to want to hang out in.
“Hello, Mario’s Pizza. Can I take your order please?”
“Julio, anything new on Deng?”
“Sorry, Rayna. We’re coming up with doughnuts. We’ve found half a dozen different persons with the surname of Deng registered at various hotels but none of them seem remotely possible.”
“How about the N115?”
“Well, nobody knows anything about it or maybe there’s fifty possibilities. There are rumors but nothing concrete.”
“Okay. Did our team take any photos of Mary when they cleaned up? If so, can you bring them up?”
“Sure, will do. Any particular reason?”
“This might be just a shot in the dark, but he might have some unusual sexual preferences.”
“Yeah?” interjected Helena skeptically. “Him and every other being with a stick between their legs.”
“Yeah, and I’m thinking that he might have had a relationship with Mary.”
“I thought she was gay.”
“She might have swung both ways—she was fanatically loyal to Deng and might have been in love or lust with him, too. When we were together, she not only craved sexual satisfaction but wanted a strong dominating person or it wouldn’t be enough. She was also one of the most plastic people I’ve met. Not in personality, but because she had more plastic surgery and artificial enhancements than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
“So your theory is that she was doing this for Deng?”
“No, my theory isn’t that she was doing this for Deng but because of Deng. When I saw Mary’s body, I noticed some unusual scarring. I thought that whoever she hired for the surgery just did a lousy job. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the physical abuse that Mary suffered was so extensive, that was about as good a job of patching her up as could be done. She could afford the best so the skin defects make no sense.”
Helena drew in a long breath of air, then exhaled loudly. “I’ve got the photos of Mary’s body up right now and yes, I can see that your theory is plausible. Not saying it’s right, but it hangs together.”
“Have you dug up anything for me in the way of weapons?”
“Not anybody we can trust just yet,” admitted Julio.
Rayna saw a porter pushing a cart with Lily’s luggage toward the door. She ended the call with Julio, then rushed up to her.
“Hi, Rayna! You want to join me? I can give you a ride in my husband’s limo to wherever you want to go,” offered Lily.
“That would be great and, actually, I’m wondering if you can help me with something else,” said Rayna with strained concern.
“Oh, what’s the matter?”
“I’ll tell you inside the car,” whispered Rayna.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Inside Lily’s limo, Rayna took a breath and confided, “I’m not really who you think I am.”
“You mean you’re not a hooker coming here to make some money?” asked Lily, furrowing her brow.
Rayna looked at Lily with surprise. “Am I that obvious? You figured that out.”
“You don’t need to be obvious. No one, especially a girl as pretty as you, ever comes to Linfu except to make money. And, no offense, but from the way you talk, the way you are, there’s only one way you can earn some. You’re not exactly a genius, you know.”
Rayna fought back mock tears. “Yeah, I know but what works, works. A girl’s got to make a living somehow.”
Lily put her arm around Rayna. “What’s happening, Rayna? You can tell me everything.”
Rayna could sense Lily’s vicarious excitement with how she imagined Rayna’s life.
“I’m worried about my client. Just before I left, I found out he can be rough. He paid the girl good but now she can’t work for a month. I… I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t do it then.”
Rayna choked out the words. “My pimp won’t let me. The client is a Guangzhou businessman and girls like me are his hobby.”
“Girls like you?”
Rayna swallowed and stretched out each word. “I do special… things… I’m the best so I cost more. A lot more. The client is here in Linfu, bored with the local girls and doesn’t want a Korean.”
Lily nodded in empathy. “We should castrate all of them.” She tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Give me my other bag.”
The driver reached into the glove compartment and took out a handbag. He reached over and handed it to Lily in the back seat.
Lily opened the handbag up and pulled out a pocket pistol. Rayna stifled a gasp. In disbelief, she asked, “You own a Sig Sauer P238?” The P238 was one of the most popular small handguns in the United States, definitely not a lady’s weapon.
Lily handed it to Rayna. “Of course. A lady needs real protection. You keep this. If it’s small, he won’t notice so much. Don’t worry. I’ve got a dozen of them.”
“You are amazing.”
Lily didn’t flinch or acknowledge the compliment. “Keep it close and be ready to use it. Where are you staying?”
“That’s another problem. I’m waiting for his call. My pimp said to wait for a call from Deng or the Mandarin. He’s in a hotel.”
“There are only two hotels that a respectable Guangzhou businessman stays in. The Hennessy or the Linfu Plaza. The Hennessy has the best food and entertainment. The Linfu Plaza isn’t as fancy, but a lot of Chinese stay there because North Koreans prefer to do business there.”
Bingo! Thank you, Lily. “Lily, thank you so much for all you’ve done for me. I don’t want to trouble you anymore. Just drop me off anywhere. I’ll wait for Deng’s call.”
“Are you sure? I’m happy to stay with you.”
“No, no. I’ll be okay but I’m not… You don’t want to be anywhere close.”
Lily shot Rayna a puzzled glance and saw the fiery determination on Rayna’s face. She doesn’t need me. Lily instructed the driver to pull over to the curb in front of a department store.
Rayna got out and waved goodbye as Lily’s car drove off. After the car disappeared from sight, Rayna pulled out her cell and sent a text. Hey, Julio, can you go through the guest list at the Linfu Plaza? I think Deng is there.
***
It was only a minute before Rayna got a call from Julio. “Okay, I’m looking at the Linfu Plaza now. Two hundred and fifty rooms. Presently forty percent occupied. Are you sure? There’s the Hennessy Hotel, which is a lot more upscale with a sixty percent occupancy.”
“Focus on the Plaza. See who’s there by themselves from Guangzhou and checked in today or will check in later.”
“Yeah, yeah. Give me some time.”
Helena burst into the conversation. “I just found this. A hooker, age thirty-two, was admitted to Linfu General Hospital yesterday five days ago with overt sexual trauma. She died within an hour of admittance. Sodomized. Hands, breasts, butt and thighs severely bruised… “
“Hands?” asked Rayna. “If her hands are bruised, maybe she tried to fend him off.”
“Or maybe he’s got some bruises on his body. They’ve already cremated her so there’s no way to check anything else.” Helena continued. “Her body was found in a construction site two blocks from the Linfu Plaza Hotel. The building being constructed is owned by Sunmoon Holdings, a company with headquarters in Pyongyang.”
“Okay, okay,” said Julio. “There are twenty-seven possible candidates currently staying at the Linfu Plaza. None of them are named Deng or are f
rom Guangzhou.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Any of them on the contact list of Mary’s cell phone?” asked Rayna.
“No. Twenty of them have been there for two to three nights and the rest checked in or will be checking in today. I’m sending the list to you now.”
“Book me a room, Julio. I’m on my way there now. And send me any information you can about the murdered girl.”
“Will do. And get back to us when you check in.”
“Of course.”
Rayna thumbed her cell off, then stepped into the department store. Half an hour later, she had racked up a bill of three thousand dollars on two outfits, not an easy thing to do in this non-cosmopolitan town. The admiring salesclerk marveled, “You look dressed to kill.”
Chapter Sixty
Half an hour later, Rayna was in her room at the Linfu Plaza back in conversation with Helena. Definitely not the Oceania, it was more Holiday Inn than Ritz Carlton. “Rayna, I’ve tried to get more info but not having any luck. It seems a lot pay cash, use their own phones or have their own packages for Internet use. If you’re Chinese, you don’t want anyone to know you’re doing business with the Koreans. If you’re Korean, you don’t want anyone to know you’re doing business with the Chinese.”
“You got anything I can use?”
“Got room numbers for twenty of the possibilities.”
“It might take me hours or even longer to check them out individually,” mumbled Rayna, shaking her head.
“He’s been calling Mary’s cell for hours,” reported Helena.
“He’s probably freaked or pissed or both that she’s not picking up. Hm. Where is he?”
“I can’t figure that out.”
“That indicates he might still be in North Korea because of telecommunication weirdness?” It was more of a question than statement.
Helena laughed. “Love your use of technical terms. Yeah, something like that. Why don’t you sit in the bar and see who approaches you?”
The Mandarin's Vendetta (Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 2) Page 20
