by Greg Dragon
She rolled the man onto his side and propped one arm under his head to cradle it. The other she used as a brace to keep him from rolling forward again so he wouldn’t suffocate in his own blood or vomit. Then she bent his top leg forward so he wouldn’t roll back and choke on his tongue.
Finally, she stuck his pistol into her own waistband. It was a SIG-Sauer P226. Or a reasonable Chinese clone of one, anyway. She recognized the shape and knew how to fire it, but the markings were different.
“Let’s go. You need a hospital.”
The girl lay still on the floor, her eyes rolled back into her head and her hands held her belly. Another spasm passed through her.
Angel tried to lift her up, to get her back onto her feet, but she was a dead weight, once more unresponsive and unaware. Blood soaked through the shirt where she’d reopened the wounds on her abdomen.
Seeing her dead phone on the countertop, Angel dug through the man’s pocket and found his. She sent a quick text message to the man who’d called twenty minutes earlier, hoping to delay his arrival. Then she removed the battery, fearing that it might be trackable.
Finally, she pulled Jamie by her shoulders out of the room, stopping only briefly to question whether she should tie the man up.
No time! Just get out of here!
The urge to run was overwhelming, and with Jamie fighting her, the window for escaping was rapidly closing. “Stop second guessing yourself and go!” she hissed.
She draped the girl’s arm over her shoulder and tried to lift her up. After stumbling into the wall, she managed to get them both moving. Jamie bore none of her own weight, but at least her legs were moving instead of dragging behind.
Out at the car, Angel laid her down on the back seat. Then she jumped into the front and turned the key, which she’d left in the ignition. The gauges woke. Cold air blasted through the vents, still strong with the stink of burning plastic and metal. The starter motor churned. The car rocked as the engine tried to catch. And failed.
She turned it again, slamming her foot hard onto the gas pedal, pumping. But the result was the same.
Any moment now, he’s going to come through that door!
She gave the engine one last crank. This time, the starter motor ground to a halt and went silent.
His car! He must have a car somewhere here!
“Stay put, Jamie!” she shouted, jumping out. “I’ll be right back.”
She sprinted down the length of the building with the berm of rock and dirt on her left. She hadn’t seen a car on their way in, so she figured it had to be around the back side. Her feet slipped on the loose gravel, yet she stayed upright.
The berm dropped away at the corner, opening up a view of the valley below. Sunlight glinted off a tiny stream where it had carved a shallow notch along the bottom. The dark, shiny ribbon of water was bordered by a dense, dark green sedge.
But there was no car.
She spun around the corner, resuming her sprint, and reached the next corner fifteen seconds later.
Debris lay in piles all around, most of it half-overgrown with grass. Beyond them was the hill with the road to the train stop. And there! A hundred meters away, nearly hidden from view, was the car.
Gasping for air, her head pounding, she ran, slamming into it. She hooked her fingers under the door handle, pulled, slipped, and fell on her ass.
“What the hell?” she cried, picking herself up. “Who the hell locks their car in the middle of nowhere?”
She checked the other doors and found them similarly locked.
When she arrived back at Jian’s car, the back seat was empty. All that was left was a small splotch of blood and a trail of it leading to the factory door.
“Jamie!” Angel cried in frustration. “I told you to stay put!”
Her fingers slipped over the bloody keypad, hitting the wrong buttons. On the third attempt, she wrenched the door open and stepped in, then made her way quickly over to the inner door. She could hear Jamie screaming in pain on the other side.
Hands shaking, she carefully pressed the numbers this time, flicked the handle, and stepped through. “I told you—!”
“Not another step!” The man they’d left behind was awake. He had a hold of Jamie, one arm crooked around her chest, the other up near her throat. He pressed his knife against her neck. “I’ll kill her.”
Angel froze. But after seeing how much he was struggling — to hold Jamie up, to focus his eyes — and the amount of blood glistening on his face and shirt, she knew he hadn’t fully recovered from the blow. She stepped toward him.
He jerked the knife. “I said stop!”
But she had the gun out by then, relieved that it hadn’t fallen out of her waistband when she was running.
An ex-Albanian on the Lyon Police Municipale had once shown her how to fire the P226. He’d had quite the collection of handguns, but the SIG-Sauer was his favorite, as it was the weapon of choice by ECTLO, the counter-terrorist and hostage rescue squad of the French Navy, to which he aspired. “It’s big enough for my hands,” he’d bragged. “And has no safety.” Then he wrapped his beefy arms around her to help her aim. “Big and ready to go. Just like me.”
She had liked the feel of the weight in her hands, though not his arms around her, and despite his clumsy attempts to bed her, he’d never succeeded.
Angel pointed the gun at the man’s head and took a step forward.
“I told you to stop!” he told her.
“And if I do, she will die. If I don’t, you’ll kill her anyway. I have nothing to lose, nor does she. But you . . . .”
Doubt flickered in his eyes.
“She needs medical attention. I intend to see that she gets it. Now let her go, and I promise I won’t shoot you.” She took another step.
The man pressed the knife deeper into Jamie’s neck, stifling her cries. A line of red appeared at the edge of the blade. Angel hesitated.
“You’re not leaving here,” the man shouted at her.
“I am. Please, don’t make me shoot you.”
“You’re a doctor. You took a vow to do no harm. I’m thinking you won’t.”
Angel sighted the gun. Her hand was shaking badly, and she was having trouble breathing. Very little of the man’s body was exposed to her. If she missed . . . .
She took a breath and held it. “You might want to rethink that,” she said, and squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Norstrom watched the investigation team spread out over the crash scene. They had all donned white protective suits of thin plastic, which billowed and flapped in the brisk wind. The hoods were pulled up over their heads and cinched tight. None wore masks. Aston had convinced them that there was no risk of toxic exposure, claiming that any hazardous chemicals had already burned away. Norstrom was certain they wouldn’t find anything more toxic than diesel, since his team had planted nothing more than that.
Three cars lay on their sides in a tangled mess, including the engine, and the men were beginning to work their way around and through them, photographing the scene from every possible angle on the ground for their analysis. One man was preparing a large copter drone to get views from the air, but it didn’t look like he’d be able to fly it in this stiff of a breeze.
The cars appeared to have been torn open by the force of the crash. Their contents lay strewn over the ground. Most of it — junk — was burnt beyond recognition, just piles of molten plastic and twisted metal and ashes. Two more cars, still partially intact, rested upright on their wheels. Norstrom’s men had filled them with crates of cheap computer casings and useless components. Those were for show. They had made it appear as if the blaze had gone out before it could destroy the entire lot. After all, there had to be something for the team to find.
But there would be nothing else, and that was the point. Just what the company wanted the investigators to see and nothing more. No fancy staging. The simpler the scene, the faster the agents would reach the desired conc
lusion, that this was nothing more than an unfortunate accident caused by an act of—
man
—nature. They would conclude that the train traveling along this section of rail would have been going full speed, somewhere just north of eighty miles an hour. It hit a gap where the track had become displaced by ground swell. It derailed, crashed, burned. All five men, the standard crew complement for a freight train of this size, would have died immediately upon impact. All of the bodies were burnt beyond forensic identification.
The desired conclusion, with no room for any other interpretation.
But now, Norstrom wasn’t so sure he wanted them to reach it so quickly. He almost hoped the investigator would find something else, something . . . suspicious.
A mercenary with a conscience? Aston’s voice mocked. Second guessing yourself now? Isn’t it a bit late for that?
He dropped his eyes to the second text message he received from his man at the factory. It said that the reporter had escaped, though didn’t describe how. She was heading for Chifeng, and he was in hot pursuit. He’d report back when the situation was back under control.
Norstrom rubbed his cheek, hoping to massage that nagging twitch out of it. He would be glad when this job was over. It just kept getting worse and worse. If he had known it was going to be like this when he signed on . . . .
What? Would you have done anything differently?
He sighed and shook his head at himself.
Aston was going over the materials manifest with the lead investigator, their heads bowed over the clipboard trying to block out the wind. The agent didn’t seem to be very pleased about something. He spoke in a loud, clipped voice to his translator, giving Norstrom the impression that he wasn’t buying Aston’s explanations.
All three men looked up as he approached. Relief flushed over Aston’s face. He took the opportunity to change the subject, introducing Norstrom as his assistant. Norstrom shook hands with Agent Jingping and the translator, a short, plump fellow by the name of Andrew Tan, who had unusually large hands and ears for his stature.
“Can you run Mister Jingping through this?” Aston asked.
Norstrom shook his head. “I’d like to. But I just received a call about the reporter.”
Aston’s eyes widened. “Oh?”
“Seems she was held up in Immigration.”
Mister Tan relayed the message.
“I offered to . . . meet her in Chifeng.” He made a show of checking the time on his phone. “I’ll need to leave now if I’m to rendezvous with her.” He gave Aston a pointed look. “That’ll save her an unnecessary trip out here. You don’t need her getting into the middle of—“
“Mister Jingping says he will like to speak with her,” Mister Tan interrupted.
“No no! She’ll just get in the way, contaminate the scene,” Aston replied. “Maybe tomorrow?”
Once more, the exchange was translated. Mister Jingping stared at Aston for several seconds without giving any clue to his thoughts. Then he turned back to the manifest and grunted something incoherent, after which he spun on his heels and headed over to his team. He began shouting orders and gesturing. Mister Tan stumbled after him.
“That guy’s a real hard ass,” Aston growled. “Are you really going to meet her in Chifeng?”
“She showed up at the factory. My man was holding her.”
“Was?”
“She got away and is headed back there. He’s going after her.”
“Incompetent fool!” Aston sputtered. He waggled a finger in Norstrom’s face.
“I’m going to lend a hand.”
“Well, you damn well better catch her!”
“There’s a lot of road between Wenbai and Chifeng. We’ll catch them.”
“Them? There’s more than one reporter?”
Norstrom thought back to the way the text message had been worded: THEY ESCAPED. ON ROAD TO CHIFENG. STAY THERE. WILL CALL WHEN CAUGHT. They, rather than she.
“He didn’t exactly specify, but I have reason to believe the American was with her when she showed up at the factory.”
Aston paled. “Why the hell would that woman go back there?”
“Why indeed.”
Norstrom waited for an answer, but none ever came. Instead, Aston’s mood seemed to shift, apparently lightened by a new thought. “When you catch them, I want you to dispose of the reporter. Permanently. No, make it look like an accident, a car crash on her way here. I don’t care how, just do it.”
“And the American, the factory girl?”
“I realize I was thinking about her as a liability, but I’ve since changed my mind. I want to understand what made her return to the factory. Call me when you have them. I’ll send for my chopper to meet with you as soon as we’re done here.”
There was something in the man’s eyes that Norstrom didn’t like, something that danced and played like a tiny black spark over a pool of gasoline.
Aston gave him a cold smile. “I told you that this will all be over soon. Looks like I was right.”
Chapter Thirty Nine
The concussion from the gunshot disoriented Angel for a moment. But it was the force of the recoil knocking her onto her heels that jolted her back to her senses. She cursed herself for forgetting her range practice and locking her elbows.
A small puff of dust and a hole appeared inches to the right of the man’s head. He flinched as a piece of the cement from the wall cut a thin line across his cheek.
“Next one goes through your forehead,” Angel warned, striding toward him. The suddenness of her advance took him by surprise, and before he could move, she was standing only a meter away. “I can’t miss from here. Even if I wanted to.”
She could sense him trying to decide what to do.
“Drop the knife.”
“When this is all said and done,” he told her, as he slowly released the pressure of the blade from Jamie’s throat, “you’re going to wish you hadn’t wasted that bullet.”
“I said drop the knife and let her go.”
Jamie’s screams had died away, and her body went slack. She looked like she had fainted. But the man continued to hold her up, leaning back with her body draped over his own as a shield. He also continued to grip the blade.
“Do as I say. Let her go. We’re leaving.”
“It’s too late for that, and you know it. She’s going to die. It’s obvious. There’s nothing you can do to help her. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
Angel’s eyes narrowed. “And you do?”
“Look, I’m not—“ he started, then seemed to struggle with his thoughts. “All I know is we were brought in to clean up a crash site, take care of any witnesses. Whatever the company people are doing here, I’m not at a high enough pay grade to know, but I can sure as hell guess that it’s something bad.”
“Guess?” Angel spat, glowering at him. “Of course you know nothing. “You’re just the . . . the . . . le nettoyeur, the cleaner person. How do you say? The man who takes out the trash and cleans the toilets.”
She could see him struggling to hold Jamie up. His arm was quivering from the effort. He had his fist pressed up against her sternum, just beneath her breasts. If he were to let go, Jamie would slip and impale herself on the knife he refused to let go.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m a janitor. Just a guy doing a job.”
“It changes nothing! You’re still a murderer.”
“I’ve killed no one!”
“Hundreds of people died!”
“Not by me! They were already dead. We didn’t—“
“I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about the village! I watched you people burn it and the villagers. I was there!”
“I wasn’t!”
“I don’t care! You murdered them, and all for what? To hide this?” She waved her free hand around to include the factory. “You are going to tell me right now what is going on here. You will tell me what all those people had t
o die to keep hidden!”
“I’d like to know that, too.”
“Don’t play games with me.”
Jamie’s head lolled over his arm. She let out a moan.
The man shifted her, redistributing her weight to his other hip. “Look, I’m not hiding anything,” he panted.
“What about that bone in there? I heard you mention it to the other man.”
“The doctors removed it from her leg. I was told to collect it, to bring it here and check it out.”
“For what? What did you find?”
“I’m not qualified to say. All I know is that it didn’t seem . . . natural.”
That last word pounded through Angel’s mind, though in Jamie’s voice rather than his. She had said the exact same thing when they were at the hospital.
“It has to be what’s wrong with her,” he said, nodding at Jamie’s slumped form.
“What’s wrong with her is the crash,” Angel snapped. “It has nothing to do with a piece of bone! She’s bleeding internally and needs surgery to fix it. And the longer we wait, the less likely she’ll survive. Let us go, or you’ll have her death on your hands, too!”
“This isn’t bleeding!” he cried back. “Look at her! Even I can see that. Whatever is happening to her, it’s not natural either! You say you’re a doctor, then you go take a look and tell me what you think.”
“I’m not—“
Jamie’s body went rigid, causing the man to lose his balance. Angel stepped forward, but he thrust the knife out at her, warning her to back off. Then he pressed it back against Jamie’s neck again. A bloodcurdling scream rose up out of her throat, and she clutched at her stomach, bunching up the shirt and drawing it over her abdomen.
Angel was horrified at the sight of her skin stretched taut over those odd protrusions. Gasping, she took an involuntary step back, nearly dropping the gun. “What the hell?” she whispered.
“The answer is back in that lab.”
