by Cole Reid
Although he considered the five men the closest he had to family, his considerations of family were not lasting. He didn’t look at family as a direction to go for help, only a place to find extra hands. He was wise enough to know when he couldn’t make do on his own. It was the benefit of being locked in a cage. He had to find away to deal with his opponent in the limited reality of the cage. But the world at large was big. Fighting one-on-one in the cage gave way to his adaptability. Fighting in the world favored the many over the few. Extra fingers for extra triggers were a must. But Mr. Li knew enough to know he couldn’t see everything. He was adaptable. But he knew he could only adapt so far. He had years and experience. But the years had the effect of deteriorating his ability to think of something new. He had a bad habit. More and more, he looked back not ahead. But he accepted it. He was raised in the cage but he had grown out of it. It wasn’t the kind of childhood to be desired. He didn’t long to be a child again. He was fine where he was. He enjoyed the day, a rarity. He saw his sister and his brothers. The day went into its latter stages and Mr. Li and the five men carried on like roommates. Knowing more about Mr. Li, made the five men feel closer to him. He came to them as an outsider. The perception had not left on its own. They had to be given more to see how human he was. He was billed on his fantastic ability. He had talents that could be weaponized. You didn’t see him if you didn’t see it. What went missing was the little boy who left home at eight years old. The world never chose to see that. The five men weren’t ever in a position to see it. He showed up a stranger and came back a soldier. They never saw him as a son or a brother but they were beginning to. The day went dark like the warehouse itself. But Mr. Li came into the light. The picture of the boy who was pulled and pitched as the next Jade Soldier was clear enough. Mr. Li told them he was going to meet his sister for dinner. All five men were happy for him and encouraged him to go.
• • •
The day’s hiccup came late. It was 7:45 in the evening when Mr. Li called Xiaofeng. The number rang to voicemail. The voice of Professor Wendy Lee suggested leaving a message. He did and waited for a callback that never came. At half-passed eight, he called her number again. His Mandarin message got stuck on top of his first message. But he got no callback. He waited with nothing else to do. Nerves wouldn’t let him wait as long as the first time. Ten minutes later, he called again—voicemail. The calling and waiting created a quiet disturbance. He had twenty-two years between him and his sister. Now the minutes were an opportunity but they went by. He went to visit his sister because of shared blood. Living to see her again wasn’t something he took for granted. But he saw her. He experienced the awkwardness that was guaranteed. And he had gotten over it. Now, he was anxious to see her again. Despite the twenty-two years, he had matured the most in the last twenty-four hours. His fury went away, so did his blame. His sister in her simple house with her simple life wasn’t worth getting mad at. She had chosen a direction, simple. It was the same for all living things. He thought of the five remaining Sheltered Ones. He felt sorry for them. Seven had died. The five that remained were still young. They had more years and more choices. They would have to make choices while the years closed in on them. It was what they all had to do. If his sister had died, he would have blamed her. But she had lived, so he forgave her. He was sympathetic toward the living. She had to continue, so did he. Without knowing the outcome they both had to make choices leading to the future. It was living. It was tough. But Mr. Li could forgive her in that position.
The unanswered calls bothered him. It bothered him more that the five men sharing the warehouse were aware of it. He called seven times with no answer. He called until her voicemail was full. He could leave no more messages. It was 10:47pm. The late hour added to his frustration. He and his sister were supposed to go out for dinner. If she didn’t call back soon, they would lose the opportunity to dine out. They did. He stopped caring about whether the Sheltered Ones noticed his frustration. He let it show. He thought of taking the Escort and going to her house. But if she didn’t want to see him, she wouldn’t want to see him. His mind settled. He returned to his fury or it returned to him. She left him as a child, now again as an adult. All forgiveness was gone. His anger reversed itself and took her as its target. He felt foolish for letting himself fall for the same trick twice. She didn’t care for him. She pretended to care for eight years. But that was as long as she could manage. She was weak. He was strong. He wouldn’t be drawn in by feelings for such a weak one again. Blood didn’t matter. Blood could be spilled. Loyalty mattered. And the five men with him were loyal. He realized he could count all ties that way. Blood could leave the body. Loyalty was defined by not leaving at all. He renewed his focus. At midnight, he gave the Sheltered Ones a bedtime story. He told them of Mykola Voloshyn—the big brut—the stocky Ukrainian who was drafted to Caprice. He told them how he tracked down Voloshyn. Voloshyn’s sympathies had led him to a church in Rome, a hiding spot in plain sight. The story was interesting. It took his mind off his second abandonment. It took their minds off it as well.
The five men were able to fall asleep by fifteen minutes after one in the morning. Mr. Li didn’t fall asleep but he was able to lie on his cot in relative silence giving the others and opportunity for quiet. Mr. Li tried to quiet his mind. The same thoughts settled like dust. He was a fool. He shouldn’t have trusted his sister a second time. But he did. He tried to put it behind him. He tried to train his mind not to think of her. His training was near complete. His training was interrupted.
• • •
His phone rang, not the Spare Tire. He thought it was Georgia calling with an update. Only she would call at such an odd hour. But the ring tone didn’t match. It was his cell phone, his sister. He didn’t know if he should answer. He wanted to return the favor, voicemail. But he knew projects had a way of turning on themselves. He went to Belgrade to find Valgani. He came back with Jusuf Juric. Things got twisted. It could happen again. Perhaps it had happened to his sister, twisted. Her car could have broken down. Her phone could have gotten lost, twisted. He was curious just how twisted her story would be. He rolled over and reached for the phone beneath his cot. The phone showed an incoming call from Wendy. It was 4:03am. Mr. Li answered the phone, wei—hello.
There was nothing on the other end of the phone. But there was breathing. The breathing continued. Jie. But the breathing continued. Jie. And the breathing continued. Jie. Then there was the voice.
“Ask me something only she would know?” said the voice. The voice wasn’t real but it wasn’t imagined. The voice was electronic—scrambled. Mr. Li recognized the voice. It was no one, a ghost. Like him, it was an agent in play. The ghost had Xiaofeng’s phone. Mr. Li went away. Reagan Lee came back, the agent. He ran the room. He put his mind into the situation. Someone was using an electronic scrambler to distort their voiceprint. Someone whose voice could be tracked, didn’t want it that way—someone from the Agency, the CIA.
“What did she call me yesterday in the hall?” said Mr. Li, “The first thing she said to me.” There was a pause.
“Shuaige,” said the scrambled voice. But there was something else, an electronic echo. The voice couldn’t avoid the echo. It wasn’t electronic. It was in fact. The voice came from a room that echoed. The space was small.
“Let her say it,” said Mr. Li.
“No,” said the voice.
“Then you say,” said Mr. Li.
“What?” asked the voice.
“The terms,” said Mr. Li, “What do you want?”
“$308 billion,” said the voice. Mr. Li paused as the gravity of the situation pulled him to the ground. He had put her in danger. He could pretend. But pretending had its limits. Reality was a rival, always a contender. The voice was the voice of the contender, reality.
“Put the money back,” said the voice, “We will check it. If it checks out, she checks out. If not, she doesn’t. Twenty-four hours on the clock. Do we understand each other?” Mr. L
i was calm, back to work.
“We do,” said Mr. Li. The connection went away along with the voice. Mr. Li was left to think. His position hadn’t changed. He was deep in the canvas of his cot, safely in his warehouse with the five people who understood him the most. His sister was in a situation she couldn’t understand and she wasn’t safe. He had reappeared in her life and threatened it. Whether she had made the connection, he didn’t know. But he thought about it and didn’t like the thought of it. But it was familiar territory. That was the hidden benefit. It was easier with the objective. It was what he was used to. There was always adaptability when there was an objective. Adaptation had to have a direction. It didn’t exist for its own sake. It needed a reason. Mr. Li had a reason to go back to work. The dragon in him came awake.
He left his cot without thinking about it. He walked off the trail of glow sticks without thinking about them, not needing them. He knew his direction. He was adapting. The switch panel that controlled the lights in the warehouse was near the bay door, on the right. He had never used the light switch before, except for now. It was 4:10am. The five men were asleep on their cots. Mr. Li turned the direction of all the switches. The flow of electricity was destructive. Gone were the darkness and the quiet. The unnatural buzz of lights above vibrated against the walls and kept it up. The light was horrible. For the first time, the warehouse was in full view. The glow sticks seemed like litter on the floor, useless.
“Get up,” said Mr. Li. Most had been asleep a few hours only.
“Immediately,” said Mr. Li. He paused to see how they were moving. It was slow.
“Now,” said Mr. Li with the force of a fluid kick. The five men wrestled with their own sleeplessness and rolled off their cots.
“Go to the cases,” said Mr. Li, “Everyone takes a gun.”
“Is this an exercise?” asked Li Tao. Liu Ping would have asked the same question but he knew Mr. Li better by an ounce.
“No,” said Mr. Li, “We’re going like before. Get your guns and your vest. We’re live.” Liu Ping could tell there was little planning in the air. They were moving with the motion. Something had changed and they were changing with it. But they did as he said. There was a beauty to organization. Mr. Li had learned it from Uncle Woo. He made the five men put their weapons back in the cases and stack them. In a rush, it made it easy to find them. The five men suited up as quickly as Mr. Li wanted them to but there was a problem. They were too many. The Escort would be weighed down by the weight of six men and their cargo. Mr. Li had to move fast. Li Tao and Wang Xi were left behind. Mr. Li took one more precaution. He took the time to remove his polymer skin. It was 4:22am. He still had a good five hours before he would need to remove it. But he was back on the job and on the clock. He had to adapt and he didn’t know when he would have another opportunity. He took off his shirt and sprayed his arms and torso. The polymer gave way and he dusted off the fake flakes. He didn’t bother to put the paint back on. He put his shirt on and put his Kevlar vest over it. He made sure he had a full magazine and a spare in his back pocket. He gave the same advice to the five men. There was nothing more for them to do in the warehouse. They had to go.
“Liu Ping,” said Mr. Li, “You drive.” Liu Ping took the keys from Mr. Li and walked toward the side door. Liu Ping opened the door while Mr. Li told Wang Xi to turn the lights off. Li Tao closed the door behind them. They left the warehouse with the glow sticks seeing them off.
“Where are we going?” asked Liu Ping.
“Where we went before,” said Mr. Li, “The rail yard next to the river. We left the container open.” Mr. Li was playing a hunch while playing against his own team. Both sides played smart. The voice on the other end of the phone was scrambled, so were all other sounds. The scrambler could hide the voiceprint but couldn’t hide the sound itself, including secondary sounds—echoes. Everything the voice said was followed by a succinct echo that snuck through the scrambler behind his voice. The voice was in a small room with hard walls that didn’t absorb sound. The Agency was about convenience. If they wanted to kill Xiaofeng they would do it in line. They wouldn’t make exceptions. Mr. Li had used the Agency line to have the MP5s and equipment delivered to Los Angeles without being flagged by customs. The shipping container that delivered the weapons was scheduled to be picked up the same week, No. Y10076090. Mr. Li and Liu Ping had left the door open. It was the ideal place for a kidnapping. The agent could kill Xiaofeng in the container and dump her body in the river. The container—the crime scene—would be removed. The agent would be invisible. Mr. Li could think of no better place to take Xiaofeng. With no time, he would have taken her to the rail yard himself.
• • •
The Venezuelan Ambassador had played his hand. He called the Agency to tell them they had a rogue agent. He knew he was dealing with a derivative group not the Agency itself. The Agency would have used the regular channels and arranged a person-for-person or information swap. Stealing a country’s life-savings was more creative than the Agency had in mind. The Venezuelan government and the Agency weren’t friends, but for the moment Mr. Li was a common enemy. They would deal with him then get back to the business of what to do about Chessmaster. The problem was they couldn’t find him. But Xiaofeng’s address was public record. And his number was in her phone. As Liu Ping drove, Mr. Li had one thing on his mind. It was a puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit to the picture, how did the Agency connect him to her. There was only one place in the world to find that data, his Caprice file. Georgia had put a knife in his back. He would return the favor. He would get his sister first.
• • •
Mr. Li guessed there would be more than one person. His estimate was six. They traveled in sixes, the Agency’s lucky number. With Liu Ping, Huang Sitian and Yi Le he was outnumbered. But he had two advantages. One was the fact that he didn’t have to fight it out. He had to get his sister and get out. The second advantage was the river.
• • •
At 4:43am, a body in the Los Angeles River wasn’t usually warm. Two bodies weren’t likely to be found together. They would wash up far apart. Mr. Li and Yi Le washed up on the edge of the rail yard having swum upstream along the bank of river. The proximity to Hollywood didn’t change the mentality. Mr. Li didn’t go in guns drawn. They waded along the bank with rifles slung over their shoulders, trying to keep them dry. The fenced in area was at the northwest end of the rail yard. It wasn’t difficult. Mr. Li and Yi Le came to the fence from the north. Mr. Li cut several links, while Yi Le pulled back the links making a hole for Mr. Li. The breach was misleading. The location was relatively secure. But the location was meant to warehouse empty shipping containers. Some containers had understated graffiti but for the most part there was no reason to test the security of the site. It was understood nothing of value was kept within the fence. The Agency used the location because of its function. Containers in the rail yard were supposed to be ready to use, empty. Containers weren’t supposed to be full. But sometimes they were. It made for an ideal hiding place, where nothing was supposed to be. Mr. Li found his way back to the cream colored steel box. The box was unguarded. The Agency got ahead of itself. With the threat, the Agency guessed Mr. Li would return the money. Instead, he chose to rescue his sister, deflating the threat.
The locked container confirmed his hunch. He had left the container open. It locked from the outside. Anything inside had to be let out. He opened the container slowly—six inches wide—whispering one reassuring word, jie. He raised a flashlight to shine inside the container. Her body was placed along side the container wall. Her head was facing the container door. Her hair was idle along the floor. The triangular shape of her body was revealing. She was hog-tied. Her right wrist was tied with two plastic ties to her right ankle. The same was true of her left wrist. One central tie held all the others together. The position looked uncomfortable. It was worse for Xiaofeng. He left his shoes outside, stepping on the steel floor with his bare feet. He maneuvered around he
r body and positioned himself in the light of his flashlight. He cut the plastic ties with the same cutters as the fence. Jie. She was dehydrated and exhausted from lack of sleep but her ears were unaffected. Xiaoyu.
Hearing his name in her voice meant he had weighed the risks appropriately. He kneeled down and told her to get on his shoulders. She complied as if going along with her own dream. Her body hung over his shoulders like he had arrived too late. She was breathing but exhausted. He closed the container door and shut it like it wasn’t empty. He carried her quietly back to the hole in the fence, with Yi Le waiting. Mr. Li pulled the cut flap inward and threaded her feet through the hole. He held the flap of fence while Yi Le pulled her through. Mr. Li held her arms. Yi Le began to haul Xiaofeng along the concrete bank of the river while Mr. Li closed the flap in the fence and went back for his shoes. He grabbed his shoes while grabbing the shadow behind the same cream-colored container. With his shoes on his feet, he phoned Liu Ping.
• • •
The count was almost even. Mr. Li had estimated a gang of six agents. In reality there were three. Not enough for a tactical project, but enough to kidnap an economics professor. They were seated in a minivan taking turns on watch. It was a waiting assignment more than a guarding assignment. Liu Ping and Huang Sitian were waiting in the Escort down the street from the rail yard. Mr. Li moved through the rail yard with the shipping containers as cover. He eyed the minivan. The minivan eyed him. The man in the driver’s seat got out of the minivan. The man in the passenger seat stayed put. The sliding door of the minivan came open and another man came out. The two men had a problem they couldn’t get around. They were CIA agents, civilian operatives. They were carrying civilian class weapons, Beretta PX4 subcompact. They weren’t tacticians. They weren’t supposed to get into conflicts. They were supposed to get around them. Mr. Li was never supposed to find them. He was supposed to put the money back. They were supposed to live through it.
