by David Archer
The other two security men were standing near the walls, but Summer motioned with her head for them to leave. When they were out of the room, she walked towards the man, smiling as she looked his body over.
“You’re a good-looking guy,” she said. “How did you end up in a life like this?”
There was no response. She walked around him, carefully staying out of reach of his legs should he decide to try to kick out at her.
“Oh, come on, don’t be shy. You could at least tell me your name. What is it? I know your ancestors were Asian, but I get the impression you grew up here in the area. Let me guess, is it David? John? What is it?”
There was still no response. Summer walked around him once more, and when she came around the front again, she stopped and stared into his face for a moment.
“Does it seem a little hot in here?” She reached up and unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt, spreading it open to show her ample cleavage. The man hanging by his wrists glanced at her, his eyes flicking down at the views she had just exposed, but then he turned away again. “What? You don’t like what you see? Well, I do. Like I said earlier, you’re a good-looking guy. If you were on our team, well, let’s just say that I think you and I would be very good friends.”
She walked slowly around him again, and watched as she came back into view. His eyes were drawn to her cleavage again, but he looked away as soon as he was aware that she had noticed.
“Oh, come on, it’s okay to look. There’s nobody in here but you and me, and I like it when you look. It’s okay. I mean, I’m looking at you, right?”
He glanced at her face, then down at her cleavage once more. He let his eyes linger for a couple of seconds, then looked back into her eyes.
“Well, that’s a start,” she said. “Want me to show a little more?”
He looked away for a moment, then turned back to look at her face. He nodded once, and she smiled.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You tell me your name, just your first name, and I’ll open the rest of the buttons. Deal?”
He stared into her eyes for a moment, dropped his eyes to her chest for a couple of seconds, then looked back at her face. “Herbert,” he said.
Summer’s face lit up in a bright smile. “Well, hello, Herbert,” she said. She unfastened the other four buttons and let the shirt hang free. “Is that better?”
Herbert’s eyes roamed down from her face to her cleavage, the exposed portions of her bra and down her flat belly. The corners of his mouth twitched up in the ghost of a smile.
Summer walked around him again. As she did so, she continued speaking.
“It’s really too bad you decided on a life of crime,” she said. “I wasn’t kidding. If you were on our side, I think you would have seen more than this, by now.” She watched closely as she came in front of him again, and smiled as his eyes tried to devour what he could see.
“You could switch sides,” she said. “If you decided to help us, we could sort of forget that you were working for Fei, and maybe we would even give you a chance on our side. Maybe that would give you and me a chance to really get to know each other. Would you like that?”
It’s very difficult to shrug your shoulders when you’re hanging by your wrists, but he tried. She figured out what he was doing from his facial expression, and she smiled at him.
“Well, at least I know you’re willing to consider the possibility,” she said. “What would it take? What would I have to do to get you to tell me where we can find Fei?”
All trace of the smile disappeared, and he looked away quickly. He started to say something, but then clamped his mouth shut.
“Oh, Herbert, don’t be like that,” she said. “I know, I know, he scares you. Think about it, though, he doesn’t scare us. We just took away the prize he already had, and kept him from getting the one he wanted. If you tell us where he is, he’ll never be able to bother you again, or anyone else. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
“Fei will kill you,” Herbert said. “If I speak against him, he’ll know it, and then he would kill me as well.”
“He can’t kill you if we lock him up,” Summer replied. “Herbert, Herbert, come on. Please tell me. I really would like for you and me to get to know each other a lot better. If you tell me, then we can start thinking about how to enjoy that.”
“Do you know how many have tried to arrest Fei? The FBI, the police, the sheriff, even the CIA one time. None of them had been able to touch him. Why do you think you can?”
“Well, mostly because we’re pretty bad ass,” she said, “but also because we aren’t as limited as law enforcement organizations. We don’t have to abide by their rules, we don’t have to follow their instructions. We will attempt to take him into custody, but if it turns out that’s impossible, then we’re going to make sure he isn’t around by whatever means is necessary.”
“You want to kill him? Because that’s the only way, and even that has been tried. The other gangs, the other triads, they have all tried. No one has ever gotten close enough. Fei is too smart, he will not walk into a trap. He can see what will happen no matter what he does, he knows the future. You cannot kill someone who knows what you’re going to do.”
Summer chuckled. “Nobody knows the future, Herbert,” she said.
“Fei does,” Herbert replied. “He told us that this would happen. That you would take us and try to turn us against him. He told me that Joel Zhang and I would survive, but that Nguyen and Chen would die, and they are the two that you killed. He always knows what will happen.”
A slight chill ran down Summer’s spine. “There are a lot of people who are pretty good at figuring out what might happen,” she said. “He probably just thought about how those men would react if we tried to take them, and then figured from that that they would get themselves killed. That doesn’t take a crystal ball, you only need to understand the people you’re dealing with. Many leaders are very good at that. It doesn’t mean they can see the future.”
Herbert smiled. “He even told me you would say that. He told me that the beautiful white woman would be the one to ask the questions, and that she would try to use her wiles against me.” He shook his head. “Do you truly want to know where Fei is? Because he told me that I could tell you. He said I could tell you where to find him because it would be a trap for you, one that none of you would survive. Since you’re going to kill me anyway, I’d like to know that you’re going to walk into that trap. Shall I tell you?”
Summer looked into his eyes for a moment, and then she smiled. “Unlike Fei, we do not kill those we have captured. Arrangements are being made now for the FBI to take you into custody. The man you held prisoner is considered a federal agent, and so you’re facing charges that will send you to federal prison for the rest of your life. I’m sure there will be triads in prison, so you should feel right at home when you get there.”
Summer buttoned up her shirt and tucked it into her pants, then turned her back and started walking toward the door. She was just about to reach for the doorknob when he called her back. She stopped and turned, just looking at him.
“Tell me the truth,” Herbert said. “Do you honestly believe you can kill Fei?”
“If it becomes necessary,” she said. “Like I told you, we would prefer to take him into custody and let him pay for his crimes according to our law. But yes, if we cannot do that, we would kill him.”
“If you give me to the FBI, Fei will make certain I know better than to talk. He will still have my family, and my sister will be forced into the triad.”
Summer stared at him. “He’ll hold them hostage? To make sure you stay quiet?”
Herbert stared at her for several seconds. “Few of us serve Fei by choice,” he said finally. “Almost every member of the triad is there because he has control over those we love. This is how he has become so powerful in such a short time. He learns things about us, about our families, and uses those things against us. If we do not do as
he says, it’s our families who suffer. He has already crippled my father, because I did not wish to be a part of the triad. He has threatened my mother and my sisters. He always knows where they are, every second of the day. If he thinks that I do not wish to do as he says, he tells me where they are. He tells me how easily he could kill them, and so I do as I’m told.”
The chill hit again. “Herbert,” she said, “how does he know these things? Does he call someone to find out where they are?”
Herbert shook his head. “He simply knows. No one understands it, but he knows.”
Summer stared into his eyes. “And he does this to everyone? Then why has no one tried to kill him? Someone inside the triad.”
“They have. And each time, Fei knows what they are planning and his people are always waiting for them. Each time, the one who wished him dead was the one to die, and then his family died. All of them, no matter how old or how young. It’s the one rule we all understand. If we try to kill him and fail, our entire families will be put to death.” He swallowed. “My sister has a baby. If I help you and you fail, my father, my mother, my sister, and her baby will all die.”
“And yet, you’re thinking about it. Herbert, I can thoroughly understand why you obey his orders, especially if it would mean that your family would suffer. But if you help us, we will do everything we can to put an end to his reign of terror.” He started to speak, but she held up her hand. “However—there is always the chance that we will fail. I can’t let you give us any information, after what you just told me, without making sure you understand that.”
“My family lives in terror,” Herbert said. “They are frightened that I’ll make a mistake, that Fei will become angry with me and hurt them. They cannot be happy when they are always frightened. It's not possible. For several weeks, I've considered that they might be better off if I were dead, but Fei would only take my sister into the triad, and there would be no end to their fears.” He swallowed again, and Summer saw tears running down his cheeks. “They cannot live the way people should live under such fear. It would be better for them to die than to continue to live this way.”
She looked at him and nodded. “It’s your choice,” she said.
Herbert stared at her for several more seconds, then he closed his eyes. “I’ll give you Fei.”
*
Police were still prowling around the industrial park when Denny and the security men arrived, but they were concentrating their efforts around Fa Ling’s office building. They had no trouble driving up to the building where Denny had left the drone, and it took him only a couple of minutes to bring it down, with the app he had installed on the borrowed phone. The rubber glove was still attached, and he opened it to be certain the flash drives were safe inside. When they spilled into his hand, he finally breathed a sigh of relief. Then he tucked them into his pocket.
“Okay, mates,” he said. “Let’s get back to the boss man.”
They turned the car around and started out of the park, then headed toward the highway. They had gone less than half a mile when the driver suddenly turned to his partner.
“We picked up a tail,” he said. “Three cars back, a white Chevy Malibu. It got on us as we left the industrial area and has stayed just close enough to keep us in sight.”
Denny turned around and looked out the back window, but the car was hidden behind the ones in between. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m certain. I know it’s the same car because the left front marker light is out. Staying that steady distance behind us, that’s a pretty good sign that we’re being followed.”
“Then we’d best be getting rid of them,” Denny said. “Can’t be leading them right back to the others.”
“I agree,” said the man riding shotgun. “We also need to be changing up our route. Whoever it is could be setting up an ambush up ahead.”
The driver nodded and then made a sudden hard right to take the exit ramp they were about to pass. Denny turned around and watched, and sure enough, the white Malibu took the same exit.
At the bottom of the ramp, the driver turned left. He floored the accelerator as soon as he was out of the turn, then ran the red light on the other side of the underpass. Several cars slammed on brakes to avoid hitting them, and the Malibu had to stop to stay out of the pile-up. A block later, the driver took a right and then an immediate left into an alley, killing his lights as he did so. Halfway down the alley, he found a vacant lot behind a building and turned into it, slamming the car into park to bring it to a stop without activating the brake lights.
The Malibu raced down the street they had turned off, sailing past the alley without even noticing it. The driver put the car back into drive and made a big U-turn in the vacant lot, going down the alley the way they had come. There was no sign of the Malibu, but the driver went straight across the street into another alley and then let the car idle along until he got to the next street. He sat there for a moment, listening with the windows down for any sign of a frantically searching Malibu, then turned right and went back to the main street. There, he took a left and went back toward the highway, but instead of getting on at the ramp, he followed the frontage road that paralleled it. He stayed on the frontage road for three miles, then finally took the next ramp to get back on.
“I think we got rid of them,” he said, and the shotgun nodded his agreement. Denny kept watch out the back window, but they made it back to San Francisco without any further evidence of surveillance. The driver had the address of the building they were going to, and programmed it into his GPS. It was only five minutes away, and Denny finally began to relax.
A white Malibu came out of a side street, and Denny saw it only a second before it rode up beside them on the left, the passenger windows down, and automatic weapons fire erupted. The two men in the front seat died instantly, both of them shot through the head, but Denny dived for the floorboard. The car suddenly accelerated, and then it struck a fire hydrant and spun around, just before rolling several times. It came to rest on its roof, and Denny was laying half in and half out, his head and right arm outside the car, and he could smell gasoline.
The Malibu skidded to a stop right beside him, and he twisted his neck to look up at the four men who climbed out of it. He tried to pull himself inside the car, but he couldn’t get a grip on anything that wasn’t broken free, so he grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on and brought it out to try to use as a weapon, one of the small machine guns, but the muzzle caught on the back of the front seat as he tried to swing it around.
One of the men looked down at him and laughed, and then the muzzle of the Ingram submachine gun came free. Denny didn’t even bother to aim, but squeezed the trigger and sprayed the magazine at the four of them the best he could.
Three of them dropped on the spot, but the fourth fired his own weapon, aiming toward Denny but missing by inches. Another burst from Denny’s weapon caught him in the groin, and his muzzle rose as he fell backward. Denny began scrambling out of the car, and that’s when one of the stray bullets ignited the gas tank.
Burning gasoline was literally raining down on Denny as he crawled free, and he rolled several times to put out the flames on his back and legs. He could feel minor burns through the singed clothing but, as he looked down at the carnage around him, he could only whisper a prayer of thanks that he was even alive.
One of the men who had attacked him groaned, and Denny pointed his gun at the man’s head. His finger was on the trigger, but some part of his mind realized that there was no longer a threat. The groan he had heard was the last the man would ever utter.
29
“I believe we’re being set up,” Summer said. “Herbert as much as told me so, that Fei actually wanted him to tell us where to find him, because he plans to set a trap for us. For him to suddenly have a change of heart and decide he wants to help, even—no, especially if what he says about Fei using his family as leverage is true, just seems pretty suspicious.”
“I have to agree,” Sam said. “What concerns me even more, though, is what he told you about Fei being able to see the future. I’ve known people who had some pretty accurate hunches, but it strikes me odd that he could predict which of the four men were going to die, let alone that we were going to turn the tables and take Denny from them.”
“I think it was bullshit,” Steve said. “If he had known we were going to take his men down and get our guy back without delivering what we promised, he never would have let them come.”
“He might,” Pat said. “The Chinese don’t play by any rules you and I would understand. To them, life and business are like a chess game. If you got pawns, you use them as sacrifices whenever necessary, and you don’t worry about what you may have lost. What you’re thinking about is what you gain from the sacrifice itself. If he actually anticipated what was going to happen, he would simply change his plans so that he would gain a benefit from letting it take place.”
Darren frowned, but nodded. “Pat’s right about that,” he said. “The Chinese have an entirely different kind of logic structure than we do. Here in America, we figure a new business should be profitable within 3 to 5 years; in China, they don’t expect profitability for 20 to 50 years. It doesn’t matter to them, because the goal isn’t just to make a profit, it’s to own the market.”
“And that’s what Fei is out to do,” Sam said. “He wants to own the market, have control over everything. But let’s look at his entire plan, the best we can, anyway. We know that he’s out to get this BCI chip, right? What we need to find out is where he learned about what it could do. Joel? Any thoughts on this?”
Joel closed his eyes for a few seconds, then looked up at Sam. “I’ve been listening to everything Summer said about what this guy Herbert told her,” he said slowly. “I’m afraid there’s only one conclusion I can come to, and it’s so unbelievable that I’ve been bouncing it back and forth through computer simulations for the last few minutes. Unfortunately, I can’t find a flaw in it.” He looked around the table to all of their faces, then came back to Sam. “I told you that there are only two of the gen-4 chips, right? Well, there’s been a rumor, sort of an internal urban myth, that there was a third one. The story goes that the company was going to go for permission for human trials on the gen-4 chip, rather than the gen-5, but something happened to the extra chip, it got destroyed, somehow. Right about that same time, the lab made a breakthrough on the brain-chip communication platform that allows far greater interaction. I’ve told you a lot about what the new chip is capable of, and I’ve shown you what I can do with my own, but one of the things I haven’t really talked about is—well, nobody wants to play poker with me. Because of the chip, I can spot patterns in the other players’ faces and expressions, and I can keep track perfectly of what cards have been played, so I can pretty much always tell who’s got the strongest hand, who’s bluffing, and who is ready to fold. I can gauge just how strong another player’s hand is by watching the most minute facial expressions, so I know whether to fold, raise, or call. And, well, it doesn’t only work in poker.”
