by Ronie Kendig
With care, Heath scanned the striations on the opposing ridge.
A glint flashed at him. As bad as flashing their backside. He wanted to laugh. The sun had been in the favor of his team, glinting off the reticle of a weapon. Heath used the mental snapshot of where that glint appeared and homed in on the spot. Though he saw nothing that would mark a sniper, he fired.
“What’re you shooting at?”
A shape shifted in the reticle.
“Gotcha.” Heath waited and saw more forms lined up. His heart pounded. “Lower left ridge, two mil right.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a barrage of weapons fire assaulted the position.
“Ghost, move!”
Heath grabbed Trinity’s lead and hauled it up the path and around the bend. Out of sight, he hoped, of the shooters. Using the bend for cover, he aimed in the direction of the ledge and provided suppressive fire as Watters and the rest hustled into the safety and protection of the bend. Once clear, Heath eased out of sight and slunk back to the team, who’d huddled.
“Keep moving, people. Don’t give them an excuse to find us.” Watters’s direction was met with groans but also compliance. They all knew he was right. They had to keep moving, not just to avoid getting shredded by bullets but because of Jia. She was out there, somewhere. Injured, if their guess was right.
Heath drifted closer to Haur—and noticed Bai clutching his arm. “You got hit.”
Bai shrugged. “A graze.”
“Hold up,” Heath called to the front where Watterboy and Candyman led the pack. He tugged Bai’s hand away and nodded. Seared by the bullet trail, the flesh hovered red and angry around a hole. “You bit one.”
Bai pried away Heath’s arm. “I will survive.”
“No, you need to have that looked at.”
“It is nothing.”
“Yeah.” Watterboy motioned a sergeant toward him. “Well, my guy will make sure.”
Heath tugged Haur aside, away from the captain. “Hey, Jianyu—would he be the type to seek help for his man if he got shot?”
Haur looked at Bai. “Most likely, he would shoot him and finish him off.”
Yeah. Exactly. “That’s what I thought.”
“Why?” Watterboy’s voice was close and drew Heath around.
“Jianyu’s behavior indicates he has one goal in mind. We don’t know what that is, but I don’t think he’s going to let anything get in his way, especially not a wounded soldier. It’d slow him down, cost him time and resources.”
Watterboy tilted his head to the side. “So if the wounded was a soldier, he’d kill to get him out of the way.”
Heath nodded. “That was my thinking.”
“Or it is Jianyu,” Haur said.
Heath considered Haur, the reason behind the suggestion. Was he trying to wear down their defenses, or was he legitimately trying to help them process this situation? “True, but they’re moving too fast for their leader to be down.”
“Agreed.” Watterboy smiled at Heath.
“What?”
Head down, barely concealing a smile, Watterboy shook his head. “Nothing.”
Only it wasn’t nothing. It was a grin of approval. Finally! He’d done something that merited the proverbial thumbs-up from the men he once considered to be like brothers.
“Incoming from Command,” Candyman shouted.
Watterboy clapped Heath on the back and stalked away. “Fire it up.”
Still soaking in the pleasure of gaining Watterboy’s approval, Heath stared down at Trinity. Yeah, it’d given him pleasure, but not as much as he thought it would’ve. Tides were shifting.
“My brother will stop at nothing once his mind is made up.”
To his left and behind a bit, Haur’s voice drifted around Heath in the swirling elements. Heath waited, surprised the man had opened up. But he also seemed to be telling him something, or trying to imply something. “And what is his mind made up about?”
Snow crunched as Haur came forward and his gaze slid to Heath’s.
Speaking of tides, Heath felt the tidal shift of two countries. An ominous element shrouded this night.
“Ghost!”
He pried his gaze from Haur’s to Watterboy.
“UAV has movement ten klicks north. Team of twelve, holing up in a village.” Watters ordered the men to eat and rest up before they headed out to engage or capture their targets.
“General Zheng drove Jianyu from his arms, but my brother bore a wound more grievous. One that drove him mad, changed him.”
This wasn’t just information for information’s sake. The man had thrown down the die. “I’ll play your game,” Heath said as he tugged his bite straw loose. “What was that wound?”
“A spy, one who infiltrated the highest levels of our government, dug beneath the impenetrable barriers of one of the nation’s most ardent loyalists—my brother.” Haur lowered his head. “General Zheng discovered the spy’s activities before my brother, but he did not tell him. They fed the operative false information, trapping the spy. And my brother. I think it angered the general that his own son could not see what was happening, even though all had been deceived.” Haur toyed with the tattered edges of his gloves. “They disgraced Jianyu for failing to detect and stop her.”
“Her?” Heath choked on a draught of water. “The spy was a woman?”
Haur gave a slow nod. “Known as Meixiang, she destroyed my brother’s life.”
Heath’s heart chugged through the swampy story the man had just churned.
“It is ironic, is it not, that one of the two Americans missing is a woman.” He dragged his attention to Heath. “And the only vengeance my brother has ever sought was to throw an American woman at the mercy of the Chinese government.”
“Are you telling me you think the woman we’re searching for …”
“I do not know who we are searching for, only that it is one American woman and one male.” Haur’s smile did not reach his eyes. “But the irony does not escape me.”
“No kidding.” Was it … could it be…? What if Jia was this spy? Oh man, that made so much sense. Didn’t it? Or did it? In a blink, everything seemed tenuous. Innocuous. Veiled.
“If my brother found this woman”—serene, thoughtful eyes drifted to the darkening horizon—“I would fear for her life.”
Camp Loren, CJSOTF-A, Sub-Base
Bagram AFB, Afghanistan
“Enter.”
The door creaked and musty air snuck into his office as he glanced once more at the UAV images.
“General Burnett, you have a, uh, visitor.” Otte slunk into the office.
“You know I don’t have time for this. Tell him to come back.” Was this really a Russian tanker sitting in the middle of the Hindu Kush? What were the Chinese and Russians planning? Could he head them off in time?
“Uh, sir—”
“Are you still here?” Lance threw down a pen and groaned. “Didn’t I tell you I was too busy?”
“Yes, sir.” The man shifted, nervous. “But … but I think you’ll want to see this … visitor.”
“And why would you think that?” Lance snatched some printed images from the shelf behind him. Compared the two. Flipped to the enhanced images. Confirmed twelve men and a woman.
“Because, sir, it’s General Zheng.”
His mind staggered over that name as he continued studying the images, thinking, plotting. As he did, the title of Colonel fell away from his expectation and skipped to what had just been said. “Wait. Did you just say General Zheng? As in Zheng Xin?”
Otte shifted on his long, lanky legs. “Yes, sir.”
“Why on God’s green earth didn’t you say so in the first place?” He punched to his feet. “Where is he?”
“General Early won’t let him—”
“Good for him,” Lance said with a laugh. Anything to annoy the crud out of that arrogant Asian. “Keep the Chinese on their toes.” He shoved around the side of his desk.
Lance stormed down the hall to the secure conference room, which—to his dismay—was right next door to the command center overseeing the mission to track down the man’s son and Darci.
Voices, raised but controlled, sifted out of the room and drew Lance inside. Early sat at the head of the table, leaning forward and pointing a finger at Zheng. “I don’t care what your reason is. This will not fly.”
“And what would that be?” Lance asked.
Early pushed back, eyes ablaze. “You were right.”
“Yeah?”
Nostrils flared, Early flung daggers at Lance. “I don’t like you much right now.”
“Ah.” So he’d found out about Darci. Ignoring the revelation, Lance shook hands with Zheng. “General, a surprise to find you here. You Chinese are getting mighty slippery, getting past our security forces.”
“General Burnett,” Early said with a huff. “I think you’ll find his story amusing.”
Lance stayed on his feet, opting to maintain a sense of control, of which he clearly had none if two high-ranking Chinese officers could slip into this sub-base without his awareness. “That so?”
Face red, Early leaned forward. “Go ahead, Zheng. Regale him. Tell him the tale you told me.”
Placid and unaffected by the hatred roiling off Early, Zheng took a long, measured breath. Then delivered the death knell. “My son is here on an unauthorized mission.”
With a hearty laugh, Lance leaned back and shook his head. “Hate to disappoint you, General, but we already know about Colonel Wu’s activities.”
The face remained unmoved save a twitch of the man’s right eyebrow. “I do not speak of Jianyu.”
Lance frowned, his heart powering down.
“I come to you to find and stop the boy I attempted to raise as my own, the boy I tried to influence and provide with a solid, exemplary upbringing.” He looked stricken. Ashamed. “It is true, as they say, ‘distance tests the endurance of a horse; time reveals a man’s character.’” Chest drawn up, he let out a weighted breath. “The one who must be stopped at all costs is Haur.”
Thirty
Deep in the Hindu Kush
15 Klicks from Chinese Border
Taking risks had a certain amount of stupidity to it. Most times, a person risked that vulnerable part in the belief that things would work to the benefit. And for the most part, Peter Toque had gambled and won, came out on top, ahead of the game, ahead of the target.
Maybe his luck had run out. After all, a man could get so far on raw luck and experience, right?
He fisted his hands as the Yanjingshe, handpicked by Jianyu, huddled around the fire pit in the middle of the hut. Snow twinkled down into the fire, melting before even being kissed by a spark. Blazing, the fire roared, spreading its heat throughout the twenty-by-twenty space. An Afghan village gathering hut overtaken by Chinese warriors.
Once they’d entered the village, the men swept through, ruthlessly overpowering the villagers, who were even now holed up in their homes. Two had been shot and killed in their attempt to defend their village. A village that had put them in a daunting proximity to the Afghan-Chinese border.
In fact, Peter grew more convinced with each passing minute that his gamble on fronting Darci Kintz—a maneuver designed to ingratiate himself with Wu Jianyu and ultimately control the man—had failed. It wasn’t because of bad intel that he’d misjudged this man. He’d studied the Zheng dynasty, knew of the bad blood between the young colonel and his father, knew of the former’s expulsion from grace and power. A shift had occurred in Wu Jianyu, one that made predicting his actions next to impossible.
Which explained how he’d ended up here without anyone in the “spyverse” knowing. No word had filtered through the back channels about the man’s location, so to find him slinking around the mountains of Afghanistan, where he just so happened to find Darci …
What were the odds? Had someone tipped Jianyu off that she was in the area? Or was it just dumb luck on the part of the fierce, revenge-driven soldier?
Peter’s superiors had monitored Darci’s movements since her narrow escape from the clutches of the Chinese. When she’d started the gig for the geology team, they knew something was going down. Forty-eight hours later, he had a new identity—Peter Toque—and an entire new history to corroborate even the most thorough of checks.
Why? Because while Darci Kintz didn’t hold the record as the best operative—that title usually went to the more flamboyant, kick-butt operatives—his brief encounter with her a decade ago told him she was someone to watch. His instincts proved correct. She’d gotten into the heart of Chinese intelligence, slept with the enemy as it were, and gotten out alive—she was ahead of the game and a master at her job. He’d been told to try to pull her into working with them, doubling of sorts. But he’d told his people that the loyalty pumping through her veins was too thick to allow her to break that morality code. Peter liked her. Admired her. Held her in the highest esteem.
And you just fed the lamb to the wolf.
And the lamb’s father was in danger now, too. Dumb, dumb move. He’d need to send a relay as soon as they got out of here, to alert his people to monitor Kintz’s father. Even though he’d given Jianyu the wrong state, the man would no doubt feed Li Yung-fa to the beast of China—his father.
Two for one.
Peter cursed himself.
The door burst in and with it Darci Kintz. Yanked in, she tumbled and landed with a thud against the wood floor. A deathly silence dropped on the room, backlit only by the fire and its thundering cracks and pops. At least they seemed to thunder over the hollow quiet.
Nostrils flared, Jianyu sneered around the room as Lieutenant Colonel Tao eased in behind him and closed the door. If there was ever a doubt about the fear this man instilled in his men, it flickered away like a wisp of smoke.
“Secure her.” Jianyu waved a hand toward Darci and smoothed back his hair with the other.
The men were swift as they hauled Darci up and held out her arms. Firelight glistened over her hip. Peter frowned. A fresh circle of blood spread out on the new shirt they’d stuffed her in. A sheen covered her face, which seemed paler than normal.
Lip curling, Jianyu turned to Peter. “You.” His head bobbed. “You say you are on my side.” He held out a Tokarev. Why use a Russian handgun? So he could blame his new bedmates? “Prove it. Shoot her. Get rid of this woman.”
Peter might’ve been wrong in handing Darci to them, but he knew what road to take now. “I am not on your side. And if you’d wanted her dead, you would’ve done it yourself hours ago rather than have your surgeon tend her. And I see now you have injured her further.”
Uncertainty trickled through the man’s face, and he looked at Darci, then glowered at Peter. “You admit you are not aligned with me and expect to live?”
“I admit that I do not take sides. What has passed between you and this American woman has nothing to do with me, save that we’re all breathing the same air.” Easy, now. Jianyu had his heart planted in the middle of this fiasco. And his attachment to Darci was palpable. If he felt Peter was willing to get rid of her … wait … it was a test. “Personally, I like her. She’s smart. Attractive—”
As soon as the man shifted and dropped his shoulder, Peter knew what was coming. Since he wasn’t about to eat another boot, he ducked. The strike sailed just millimeters past his head. He stepped back—
Thud!
The hit from behind stung. Peter stumbled forward, pain spiraling through his neck and shoulders. Another blow sent him to his knees. Fingertips on the dirty floor, he coughed, trying to recapture the breath they’d knocked out of him.
Laughter filtered through the room. Peter didn’t care—he saw Jianyu’s boots moving away. And that meant for now, he was alive.
Easing back to his feet, Peter froze midmove.
Jianyu’s men had anchored Darci’s arms out, tethering them to the wall. She had a sweet, innocent face, one that—were her features a bit more
Chinese and less European thanks to her mother—belonged on a geisha. Fair skin blotched from a blow or two but appealing against her jet-black hair. Even in a dirty brown tunic, tactical pants, and hiking boots, she seemed delicate.
But he knew better. He still had an imprint, at least mentally, of her boot on his face.
Wariness crowded the soft features of her face as she wobbled but braced herself. She swallowed and looked at Peter.
No regret. No anger.
Pure determination—to survive.
“I want to know,” Jianyu stood behind Darci, “who worked with you in Taipei City.”
“Nobody worked with me,” Darci gritted out.
Standard answer. Peter expected no less. But even that single question ramped up his pulse. Darci was in no shape to endure hours of torture. She’d hold on for a while, but if she wasn’t rescued soon … He gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod, encouraging her to hang in there. Help was coming. At least he hoped it was.
“That is not the truth.” Hands behind his back, Jianyu circled her until he severed Peter’s visual connection with her. “We have surveillance of you in the Crypt. You’re hidden in the shadows, but there is a man with you.”
“There was no man,” Darci said.
Jianyu’s shoulders drew up.
“Except your Colonel Tao.”
Rage flung through the colonel’s face. He shifted toward her, jabbed a flat-handed thrust into her side.
“No!” Peter’s shout mingled with Jianyu’s.
A strangled, blood-curdling scream shot from Darci.
She dropped to her knees, limp.
Deep in the Hindu Kush
17 Klicks from Chinese Border
Hunched against the brutal, driving elements, Heath knelt and shielded Trinity from the bitter wind as the team paused to strategize. He tugged his zipper up, wishing he had a thermal suit. Anything to ward off the cold that snuck past the gaps, that whipped into his nostrils each time he breathed.
