by Rob Wood
Then she heard it: a sizzling sound, like yak butter in the pan. It was coming from behind her head. She reached her hand back. The water was inexplicably warmer here. Then her fingers touched hot, jagged metal. The rebreather case had been torn, or the welded seam had given way. She could not tell which. The only thing she knew for certain was that this was bad. Very bad.
Raj’s words came back to her: “Potassium superoxide produces a hot, explosive reaction in water. It can kill you.”
She took a last breath, slipped out of the rebreather harness, and began clawing her way backwards. She pushed and clawed until her shoulders ached. The urge to gulp air, when there was none to breathe, welled up within her. Then the explosion came, popping her out of the tube like a champagne cork. She tumbled backwards, and her left hand caught the safety line she had strung. She could follow this back to Dak! Yes, she could see his light glimmering there! She pulled hand over hand. She kicked her feet. She sailed into him and grasped his face in her hands.
It was not Dak. “Where is Dak?” Her mind fumbled for answers. Why wasn’t Dak behind her? This was Turk, looking at her with a wide-eyed, vacant stare. He was very frightened.
Lily sawed her finger back and forth across his throat. The international sign for “out of air” was to draw a hand across your own throat. But Lily knew that Turk was not all there; he needed to feel, as well as see. He blinked. Lily removed his mouthpiece and drank in the air from his rebreather, hugging him to her as she did so.
Pressed forehead to forehead against him, she replaced the mouthpiece. He breathed. She breathed.
A shadow moved toward them. She caught it just out of the corner of her eye. Turk saw it, too, and he shrank against the karez wall. In the bobbing beams of their wrist lights, Lily could see him shiver with fright.
The shadow dropped back, then glided forward. It squeezed toward them in the press of the tunnel. When it closed again, Lily could see that it was Che, his wispy beard trailing in the water, his arms extended like a dark gull. His left arm slid up and over Turk, who squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his face into the wall. Che looked at them and smiled. The rebreather tube was not in his mouth.
Lily felt for a pulse in the carotid artery. She dug her thumbnail into his cheek. Nothing. Che was dead. And the corpse seemed bent on embracing the boy.
All the reasonable causes of death flashed through Lily’s mind: Blunt trauma from being slammed into a rock wall, simple drowning, heart failure… there was no way to tell. She retrieved his rebreather hose and inhaled softly. Everything seemed to work. She disengaged his canister pack, slipped into the harness, and bit down firmly on the mouthpiece. Time to go.
She squeezed by Turk, took his hand in hers, then placed his hand on his tow motor. She looked him squarely in the face. He was coming around now, regaining his focus. She bet he wanted out of here badly. She pushed off, engaged her own tow on low speed, checking to see that Turk was following.
At least the two of them could reach the second well. The plan had been to exit the well in front of the cave and take a position behind the drug dealer and his men, so that they were pincered. That plan now came down to Lily and a boy. “No matter,” she thought. “They were Uighurs.”
She felt for the guide rope she had strung. She found it, reassuring as an old friend. She glanced back. Turk had copied her gesture. She ramped up the speed on the tow, and they shot down the tunnel at what she figured was a blistering five miles per hour.
A boulder on the karez floor, the gouges and flutes in the walls—all these landmarks were coming back to her as familiar signposts. She watched the wall dip to her left, as she sailed past. In the murk of the tunnel, she could identify two amorphous shapes darker than the surrounding water. The one to the left must have been the dead-end she’d been blown down. The amazing thing was that the guide rope continued right across the mouth of the opening. Dak had been here! He’d picked up where she’d left off, lining the tunnel with pitons and rope. He must be just up ahead.
They made good time through this stretch and burst into the opening of Well 2, lit by a semicircle of brilliant sun. “Damn!” she thought. That semicircle meant that the sun was no longer directly overhead. It was past noon. They were late.
She looked up the wellbore. No sign of Dak. No sign of anyone. And no sound. But he’d been here. She could see Stubai pitons driven into the wall to provide hand and footholds up the well bore to the surface. She unsnapped her fins from her boots and started climbing.
After all the hours in the water, her arms and legs felt rubbery. The climb was harder than she’d imagined. Her breath was hard and labored. She heard Turk coming up behind her. Anxiety drove her to move quicker than she’d thought possible.
And then there was Dak, craning over the lip of the well, reaching down a hand to help her up.
“We’re alone here,” he said. “Everyone’s up at the cave. The vehicles are secure. And, by the way, I’m glad to see you.”
“Right,” said Lily. That word would have to hold a world of emotion. She turned to help Turk up.
“The four of us can use their vehicles as defensive shields,” said Dak. “I’ve moved them so that we have a semicircular field of fire on the cave mouth.”
“The three of us,” Lily corrected. “Che’s dead.”
Dak started to speak, but Lily interrupted. “I’m going to the cave. You two cover me.”
“Two of us?” Dak’s eyes widened.
“They won’t know there’s only two,” said Lily, already striding toward the cave. It was less than a hundred yards. As she neared the cave mouth, she became aware of a new sensation: heat. Topside in the desert was more than 50 degrees hotter than the karez.
62
LOULAN!
Lily’s determined stride ate up the distance. Her arms pumped. Her jaw was set. As the desert sun stretched her shadow into the cave, the eyes of everyone inside turned to face this figure looming in the cave mouth. The searing heat raised steam from her damp hair and wet suit. She looked like an apparition stepping out of a cloud.
“Loulan!” someone whispered.
Napoleon turned away from Raj and looked to the cave mouth. Lily was silhouetted against the sand and sun of the desert, with drifts of steam swirling about her like early morning fog.
Napoleon extended his right hand, palm up, in a theatrical gesture. “The great Loulan, I presume!” He paused and added, “Sounds like the dialogue from one of Lily Zhang’s not-so-good films.”
Lily suppressed an involuntary shiver. She knew she was going to dislike this man. It was almost as if the scent of him called resentments and fears to mind.
Lily returned a cold smile. “Are you the supplier—or merely the intermediary?”
“I assure you. I am your man. This is my operation. No one else could have delivered so much . . . so soon. Isn’t that so?”
Lily spoke slowly as if making an assessment. “Very likely,” she said.
“I plan on establishing a name for myself in this business,” Napoleon said, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest.
“You have a name.” Lily spit the words out. “It’s Cao Kai.”
The man startled, eyes wide as saucers in a crude face.
“No doubt your PLA bosses would be interested in knowing where you are and what you’re doing.” Lily drew the words out like a languorous threat.
Cao lowered his scarf and peered at her, almost coyly. “I suppose it was too hard to hide my identity from my one true love.”
“Whore is more like it,” she said.
He shrugged. “Still, you remembered.”
“I deduced,” she corrected. “Twenty years ago, Cao Kai was stationed in Xinjiang, providing military security for Sinopec’s oil production. That’s when you first fell in love with oil.
“And,” Lily continued, “you were here long enough to learn some local customs—like the function of the karez. Later, I watched the American, Cochrane, put a bullet in your upper arm. I enjo
yed that.”
“This?” Cao Kai flicked his right hand toward his pinioned left arm. “A recent accident… already on the mend.”
“It looks to me like Erb’s palsy,” Raj interjected. “As if the nerves of the brachial plexus were shattered by a rifle round. Did you self-treat that wound?”
“No,” Napoleon sighed. “Actually, I had the benefit of Venezuelan military doctors.”
“Is that how you got out of the helicopter you ditched in the swamp? The Vens helped you?” Lily was rapidly piecing together the puzzle in her mind.
“Basically,” answered Cao Kai laconically. “If you’re interested, we left American shores under the cover of darkness in a small sub.”
“A sub? Are you kidding?”
“A Kevlar-coated cigar tube, like the first small U-boats, running diesel power on the surface and battery-drive when submerged. Works pretty well. Hauls a lot of dope.“
“You built that?”
“The Venezuelan military built that. They convinced me that there was profit in drugs just as there was in oil. They’re doing a lot of drug trafficking, and Chavez is not motivated to crack down on them because he needs the military.” Cao shrugged, “Of course, Chinese parts and assistance always play a role in these developing countries. The subs work pretty well. Each of them can carry about a thousand pounds of marketable narcotics.”
Is that where you got our stuff?”
“Obviously not. That’s a different market. Yours was bundled from producers in the Golden Crescent—much closer.”
Raj took this as his cue to deliver his lines. “The stuff is garbage,” he said. “We’re being ripped off.”
“What?” Lily strode to the pallet, ripped the Visqueen off a brick and touched her finger to the powder, then moved it in a slow arc toward the tip of her tongue. She paused, closing her eyes as she concentrated.
Again a hush fell over the room. The wind moaned outside the cave face. Everyone looked toward Lily, as if to appeal the decision by Raj. A payout of millions of dollars was stacked against the effort—the arm twisting and the engineering—it had taken to assemble this huge delivery, then slip it over the border.
“No taste of bitterness or grain,” she said slowly. Then she spat out the sample. “It’s fake.”
Raj smiled. “An Academy Award performance,” he said to himself.
Cao Kai shook. “You lie!” His snarl was followed by a staccato echo, reverberating through the cave as one, then another of his men slid back the bolts on their automatic weapons.
Lily looked around the semicircle of gun barrels pointed at her. These small dark metal circles, and their unblinking certitude, contrasted with the saucer-eyed, bewildered expression on the faces of the men holding them.
She sighed deeply, as if summoning patience and reason. “Evidently there has been a mistake, Colonel Cao.”
“What are you trying to pull?” Cao Kai was shaking in anger. “What deceit is this, bitch?”
Lily answered, “I could ask you the same question—bitch. The package is unacceptable. If you want it, take it. In fact, I ask that you take it back. Peddle it where you can, but don’t foist it on me. Come back when you have legitimate product.”
“Soon the ONLY product you can get will come from me.”
Lily shrugged. “Make sure it’s legitimate.”
“You smug, arrogant whore!” Cao Kai stepped forward and whipped the back of his good hand across her face. Lily saw it coming and took it full on. The slap echoed in the cave. Lily crumpled to the ground and moaned. Blood dripped from her nose.
“Loulan!” The word escaped involuntarily from one of Cao Kai’s men.
Cao Kai, breathing heavily, turned. Cao drew his sidearm and pointed it at the man, who took a step back, his mouth open. “Is there a problem?” Cao Kai asked. He fired from ten feet away. The man’s shirt blossomed in a spreading rosette of blood. He collapsed. “No more problem,” Cao Kai said drily.
He waved his pistol at two of his men and then at the neatly wrapped bundles of yuan. “Take the money. Put it on the pallets. You others, take the pallets to the trucks.”
Lily raised herself on an elbow. “You’re no Uighur, Cao. You’re not even a Chinese. You’re a thief and a coward.”
“I will come back and pistol whip your Uighur ass,” he snarled. “You will end up begging on the streets like the other cripples and outcasts . . . while Cao Kai, as your American friends say, ‘will laugh all the way to the bank.’”
One of Lily’s Uighurs took a step forward.
“Let them go!” she sighed, defeat and resignation seeping into her words. To those who didn’t know what Lily had already fished out of the karez, it seemed Cao Kai was walking off with the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, enough to ruin Zhang Industries and the families that depended on them. “And that would be a hell of an ending,” she thought.
They watched as Cao Kai’s men plodded back through the sand and haze toward the trucks drawn up around the karez. The group had formed up again, three men moving backwards, their rifles trained on the cave opening. Cao Kai and another man were in the lead, moving rapidly toward the karez. In the middle, six men strained with the weight of the pallets of fake drugs.
Lily watched them go. They were sixty yards away when she jumped to her feet, suddenly no more defeated than a gale force wind.
“Shovels!” she shouted.
63
REAL LIFE AND MOVIES
For some time now, Cochrane and Purdy had been “keeping company.” That was the way Purdy put it, according to his Midwest understanding of courtship. There were dinners, Sunday mornings in bed comparing New York Times internet notes, and movie nights.
Of course, they had a penchant for Chinese films. Not that there were many to choose from, even at the wonderful E Street Cinema between 10th and 11th Streets in Washington.
It was a lovely spring day, and the scent of a recent rain was still on the pavement. Purdy was nursing one of the theater lobby espressos as he ambled down 10th Street, Cochrane hanging on to his free hand.
“Lily’s “One Hundred Steps” didn’t open to a very big audience,” he reflected.
“Still, it was fun to see her again,” Cochrane smiled. “If only as a digital image. The crowd is . . . the crowd is what you’d expect. It’s just like every other Chinese film I can think of. ‘Red Cliff,’ for example. It chalked up pretty small numbers.”
“Hey,” Purdy interrupted, “you want to duck into Bistro D’Oc for a light supper?”
“Well, I think my favorite gastronome does.”
“And you?”
“Works for me.” She laughed at him “What adventure awaits us here?”
It was still early and they had the place to themselves—just the way they liked it.
It was quiet. The sound of downtown traffic was shut out by the big stone walls. At a small corner table, Cochrane straightened the napkin on her lap and looked up.
“Suppose we trade courses?” she suggested. “I’ll get the salads. You order the entre. I’ll get the wine.”
Purdy nodded.
“I’ll open with mixed lettuces and julienne of apple in a buttermilk dressing,” Cochrane said.
“I’ll see your mixed greens,” he said in a mock serious tone, “and answer with the hanger steak and pomme frittes.”
Returning to the original conversation, Cochrane mulled over the box office fate of Lily’s movie. “Unless it’s strictly kung fu mayhem,” she said, “ these films don’t seem to stand much of a chance commercially. Many of them can’t even find an American distributor, right?”
“Well it’s the heavy-handed historical format,” returned Purdy. “Lily’s ‘One Hundred Steps’ for instance. It’s a case in point. ‘Historical epic?’ That’s just subterfuge. It’s because these films look backward that they get approved by the state film board in China.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t teach us anything. Say, this steak isn’t a
ll that big!”
“It’s an onglet. It’s not supposed to be big; it’s supposed to be intensely flavored. The menu said it’s Australian-pastured Wagyu beef.”
“And you believed them?” Cochrane teased.
“The point is that’s the same breed they use in Japan for Kobe steaks. This is good stuff.” After another mouthful, he said, “Now these films may teach the Chinese something—they are the ones who are attuned to costume dramas with warring kingdoms and the welter of names that’s as confusing as a Russian novel. But the message is lost on Hollywood-Bollywood audiences.”
“I disagree,” said Cochrane. “This film had a message for the Chinese, of course. It’s about time their culture stopped inhibiting self-expression in women. Women can be movie directors, heroines, and actors on the world stage—including politics. No gender can monopolize ability or capability. And, by the way, that’s a message that needs to be repeated in our country.”
“You get no argument from me there.”
“And consider,” added Cochrane, “that Lily’s character took on the Chinese state as well as the big Western powers like Great Britain.”
“Like I said, that’s a message for the Chinese.”
“No,” Cochrane insisted. “It’s more. Everyone needs to be reminded of the power of an individual—and the vaIue of individualism.”
“Especially in a nation of a billion conformists,” Purdy sniffed.
“No—everywhere,” Cochrane insisted. “And what was Lily’s strength as an individual? Mostly guile, of course. But let’s not forget that her character was also loving and loyal.”
“And unbelievable. Do you really think one person wielding a sword….”
“A pudao,” Cochrane corrected.
“One person wielding a pudao could hold off a battalion of soldiers climbing up to destroy her little love nest?”
“History says it happened.”
“And I say real life ain’t like the movies.”
64
SHOVELS!
On the word “shovels” Lily’s men dashed to the back of the cave, each taking a spade from the wall and reporting to a pre-determined spot on the string grid. Each spade tip found a buried box corner to pry up. Each box held a rifle. One held a heavy Type 88 general-purpose machine gun with folding tripod and quick release barrel.
