by Fritz Galt
“Relationships. Go figure.”
“So, we’re lying down at the bottom of this canyon next to my wreck, and I’m thinking we gotta call the police or something. But the girl, who incidentally won’t tell me her name, insists that we don’t call anyone. So, we leave the pickup in the gully and start hiking. I’m just trying to keep from falling off the trail with my banged-up knee, but even so, she starts lagging behind me. Then I hear someone at the top of the ravine climbing down towards us.”
“The guy from the SUV?”
“So I thought, when all of a sudden my gal runs up from behind and grabs me.”
“Grabs you? Where?”
“In the ravine, of course. Anyway, so she starts making out with me like we’re a couple of sex-crazed teenagers.”
“I knew it. Man those Asian girls are hot.”
“But psycho, too, ’cause she wouldn’t stop for nothing. Right there on the trail, we were going at it like a couple of rabbits. Then it turns out it’s her girlfriend, the other hottie from the Grill, who’s strolling down the trail casual as a clam. My gal pulls away and hooks up with the girlfriend and starts walking away like nothing happened. Now I’m thinking to myself, what’s going on here?”
“I’m wondering if her friend has a thing for virile, intellectual white males.”
“Know any? So, we finally get back up to the road and we hitch a ride in some rancher’s old beater of a truck into town. Then we walk to the Desert View Condos. Now, neither woman has said a word to me since we got out of the ravine. I don’t know if I should tag along or hobble on home.”
“So, like the old-world gentleman that you are, you invited yourself in.”
“Well, it’s not like I was stalking them. I mean, one of them was hanging all over me an hour earlier. They never once asked me to get lost. So now we’re at the condos. She tells me to wait across the street. So I crouch there behind some bushes like a pervert, not really sure what to do. I must have waited another thirty minutes or more. My knee hurt like mad, but I didn’t care. Then she comes to the front door and waves me in. I go into the place, and she’s all over me again. I’m getting nervous that Mad Max is going to show up. But turns out she knows the guy and figures he’s at the base.”
“Base?”
“I guess he’s from Davis, but I didn’t ask. Then the other girl, who rents the condominium we’re in, comes half-naked out of the shower, and we stop what we’re doing.”
“Why stop?”
“’Cause her gal pal interrupted us to give us a brew.”
“I see your reasoning.”
“The hottie in the towel kisses my girl and gives us both a ‘come hither’ look and heads for the bedroom. I was so offended, all I could do was drool.”
“You shoulda called me up for mixed doubles.”
Brad looked at him with feigned disgust. “I didn’t think your racket was big enough. So anyway, the other girl heads for her bedroom, and I’m thinking maybe we’ll all be in there soon, when my gal matter-of-factly sits back down, opens up some Chinese envelope, pulls out the letter, reads it and suddenly asks me to leave.”
“Not a good sign.”
“So I head out the door and into the street. When I turn around, the towel girl comes out of the bedroom and my gal starts crying on her shoulder.”
“So, did you get their number?” Earl asked. “Better yet, did you get her roommate’s towel size?”
“Actually, I didn’t get any number at all. It was kinda hard considering her face was all knotted up and she was crying.”
“You dope. At least tell me you remember where they live.”
“Of course, but I’m not going back there. It’s just too weird. And you never know when the motor city madman is going to show up.”
“So, what will you do?”
“Stay put. Do nothing. Nada.”
“Too bad, compadre. You could have used a new squeeze with an extra place to crash, ’cause you just received this eviction notice from campus housing.”
Earl tossed him a slip of pink paper.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to vacate the premises.”
Later that night at Jade’s condo, May sat down with the letter in her lap. Her father had tried to conceal his fear, but it came out between the lines of poetic observations. After her close encounter with death that evening, the thought of someone trying to harm her father made her angry. Her fingers were still trembling when she picked up the phone to dial Liang.
“Where have you been?” she shot at him.
“Hey, my little butterfly. I’ve been out for a ride.”
“That’s what I thought. You tried to run me off the road.”
“What were you doing off base? I said good-night to you already.”
She swallowed hard. “What I do in my free time is none of your business.”
“Well, I think it is my business if my fiancée is out drinking with the local cowboys. But I wouldn’t know about that, would I.”
“And just how would you know where I was?”
“Maybe a little bird told me.”
That was it. Her suspicions were confirmed. Jade must be spying on her for Liang. That would also explain how she turned up on the rocky path down in the ravine where she had crashed the pickup truck. No matter how far they were from their homeland, the old ways never died. The old connections still applied.
Liang had already known Jade in the air force when May had come along, a naïve young girl and an easy target for a hot shot like him. Whether Jade worked for Liang or owed him an old debt didn’t matter. She could no longer trust Jade.
“I’ll be returning to Beijing tomorrow,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can run around on me. After all, there is your father to consider.”
And the phone clicked off.
It was so unfair. Liang was using every trick in the book to make her his bride. He had tried threats. He had tried intimidation. He had even tried being nice to her. For Liang they were like every other relationship, a power struggle. And she just wasn’t willing to give in…just yet.
She clutched her father’s letter so tightly that the paper formed new wrinkles. His life hung in the balance, perhaps even more than Liang was letting on.
It had taken months for the letter to catch up with her. And she hadn’t heard from him since it was postmarked early that spring. He never was an easy man to find as he traveled abroad frequently to attend scientific seminars and he had various excavation projects underway around China.
In fact, her only recent news from her father had been Liang’s veiled threats about his wellbeing. If she didn’t play his game, Liang would do something unpleasant to him. And judging from the letter, her father’s very life seemed at stake. The letter wasn’t specific about the threats or even his whereabouts. But the more obscure his references, the more concerned he was with secrecy and the more she feared for his life.
She would have to pass the letter on to someone immediately, someone with the will to help and the brains to piece the puzzle together. Her mind flashed back to the Scientific American and the box of rocks sitting on the front seat of the young man’s pickup truck. Then she savored the touch of his lips. She could still feel them tenderly lingering on hers.
She would have to pass her father’s letter on to West Brad West.
Brad didn’t feel so great. His insides roiled with a potent mixture of alcohol, hormones, pain and wounded pride. It had been one of the most pitiful and euphoric days of his life.
And for the moment, his anger at his stepfather was trumping any good feelings he had felt about himself that day.
So University Housing didn’t want him. He could feel Richter’s big foot pressing down on his trachea. Well, he didn’t have much left in his life, but he still had his self-respect.
He didn’t need twenty-four hours to vacate the premises. “I’m moving out tonight,” he told his friend.
“They won’t have Dick Nixon to kick arou
nd any more.”
Brad turned to Earl and sighed. What did he know about losing everything in one’s life?
Earl rose from the director’s chair and left the room with a shrug.
Brad took quick stock of his limited options. The Chinese girls were out. He had no truck to sleep in. Was this when park benches began to look attractive? Okay, so he had no options. All he knew was that he wasn’t wanted and he needed to make a clean break.
So he began to stuff his belongings into his backpack.
“Here, let me help,” Earl said upon reentering the room.
Together, they shoehorned the last of his clothes into the pack and leaned on the straps to fasten it shut.
Brad rose as best he could to his full height and watched Earl busily tidy up the room. His helpfulness wasn’t exactly helping Brad’s mood.
Earl was beginning to paw over the books on Brad’s shelf with considerable interest.
“There’s no way I can move all those books,” Brad said. “Not to mention my exotic collection of milk crate furniture.” In fact, there was nothing to move them in and nowhere to move them to. “I’ll probably have to sleep in the park tonight.”
“No, you bloody well won’t,” Earl said. “I’ve already got you covered.” He wrote down an address on a slip of paper. “Free lodging for the next month.”
“My, aren’t we resourceful. What a true pal. I bequeath unto you my finest beanbag chair.”
“The house is off campus, but it’s cool,” Earl assured him.
“Okay. This is it, buddo.” Brad hefted his backpack and stood in his doorway for the last time.
“Hey, let’s do a power lunch tomorrow,” Earl said. “It’s on me. My service will call your service.” Then, reaching up to clasp his friend by both shoulders, he said, “And don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll find another roommate.”
“Don’t get all girly on me now.” Brad patted his pal on top of the head. He turned to go. “Later patator. See ya for lunch.”
So for the second time that night, he limped across town. This time, he was staggering under the weight of his overloaded backpack. Was he on his way to homelessness?
Several co-eds switched sides of the street in a not-so-subtle ploy to avoid crossing paths.
Oh, great. Maybe he should have changed his bloodstained and mangled shirt.
His new pad was a ramshackle house on the outskirts of town. Neither the grad student, nor the owner was even home. He let himself in anyway, flopped down on the couch, and didn’t bother to unpack.
While waiting for someone to show up, he’d catch a few winks.
He found a good position on the couch that didn’t put much pressure on his knee and finally drifted off to sleep. It was a restless sleep tormented by dreams of faceless, dark-haired beauties tugging on his shirt and pants, and speaking a language he wished he could understand.
Chapter 6
Across town at the air force base, Liang was sleeping poorly.
The mattress felt just as uncomfortable as those at Chinese bases. And his mind swirled uncomfortably with images of the Three Gorges Dam and a tiny old man holding a fossilized skull.
The dream continued in all its clarity, replaying his concept of the near future.
On the auspicious date of 7/7, he would throw the switch that closed the dam. Within a day, the backwash would swamp the nearest upstream tributary. Less than a week later, the floodwaters would inundate a second tributary. Within a month, the distant megalopolis of Chongqing would see a dramatic rise in water level. And within a year, the scenic Three Gorges of the Yangtze River would become a quiet, if deep, millpond.
But the old man held the human skull high, proclaiming that China’s heritage lay in the riverbed. And his wild and beautiful daughter clung to her father as the water rose around them. The river was rising, inch by inch, until it reached their defiant chins…
Finally the sun broke through on Liang’s nightmare. He awoke with his skin cold and clammy. It was time for a shower.
No sooner had he emerged from the shower, than the phone rang in the living room. Still wet, he passed through the hallway, dried off his ears and picked up the phone. There was the dissonant beep of a scrambler, a device used by the Chinese military to render calls untraceable.
“Wei?” he answered. Hello?
“You asked me to report,” a husky voice said in Chinese from a long way away. It was a member of his personal cadre, General Chen at China’s Southern Command.
“How is the old scientist?” Liang asked.
“We’re working on him every hour of the day. He’s a very stubborn man.”
“Like his daughter.” Liang shook his head to fling away irritating droplets.
“It seems like he can go into a trance and forget everything around him. Then there are times when the water torture is excruciating.”
“Has he confessed?”
“Not yet. He still claims that there are great finds to be made along the river.”
“The old fool.” Liang flung his wet towel across the room. “Increase the pressure until he cracks.”
No sooner had he thrown the phone down, than it rang again. He shivered in the direct flow of an air conditioner. Once more, he heard the dissonant beep.
“Wei?”
A woman purred in Chinese, “May is leasing a commercial helicopter from the local airport.” It was Jade Wang, coming through once again with timely information.
“Flying solo?”
“No. With the local cowboy.”
He frowned. When would May ever learn? “It’s time for another lesson, my beautiful gem,” he said, and gazed into the bedroom at the twisted sheets on his bed, the bed that May had yet to sleep in. Instead, she had slept somewhere that he couldn’t find despite all the assets that the espionage network of the Ministry of State Security had put at his disposal.
“Send me a remote,” he said. “And plant a small charge on the controls.”
“Not on the fuel tank?”
Liang hesitated. Setting off a small detonation at the controls of a helicopter would make the ensuing crash look like operator error, but also give the pilot, only a very experienced pilot, a chance to minimize the effect of any resulting crash. And May was a very experienced pilot.
“No. Just on the controls,” he said firmly. Anybody related to Dr. Yu should be eliminated in a way that would throw off suspicion of foul play. This would do the trick, even if May was fortunate enough to survive his little punishment.
And what if she did survive?
The sun’s rays were just breaking over the headquarters of that offensive Colonel Philips. How that abusive man still burned him up. Then a plan began to form in his mind. “I have a second mission for you.” Suppose May and the cowboy were also framed for a crime. “I need you to obtain the cowboy’s fingerprints or a DNA sample. I want them on something sharp, but commonplace.”
“How will that help?” she said, her voice still low and innocent.
“Call it a little insurance policy.” He grinned, which stopped the chatter of his teeth. “These foreigners are big on insurance, so I will have some of my own in case May and the cowboy survive.”
He set the phone down and once again gazed out at Colonel Philips’ airbase. He would be a very naughty boy that day.
Half an hour later, Liang entered the mess hall for breakfast and nearly puked at the smell of milk, butter and cheese. Nevertheless, he grabbed some fruit and set it down on a dining table.
By 8:00, he was back outside. Strolling past a hangar, he glimpsed Colonel Philips fuming over something. Liang paused to see what it was. A jet engine lay disassembled on the ground. The officer’s head popped up, and his cool eyes stared levelly at Liang. Much as Liang hated the man, the guy was alert and watchful.
Despite his clearly being a micromanager, the American commander had a legendary reputation as a warrior. He’d been called to Afghanistan to coordinate close air support for ground troops. A
day after arriving, he was at 3,000 meters directing assaults against entrenched Taliban guerillas.
When his planes returned from their first mission drilled full of bullet holes and his pilots badly shaken by the experience, he had ordered a Cobra attack helicopter fueled immediately and personally flew it back into the mountains.
Reports had it he turned the tide of Operation Anaconda in favor of the American and friendly Afghan forces by taking out numerous sniper and mortar nests.
He had returned to base with smoke trailing from his engine, his front window shattered, and part of his shoulder missing. And the icy air rushing into the cockpit had caused severe frostbite to the exposed flesh of his left arm.
The Chinese Air Force, which had studied the American air operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with awe, had focused on the colonel’s exploits in particular.
Despite all the attempts by Liang’s commanding officer to highlight the superior derring-do of Chinese pilots, there just was no substitute for the combat experience of the Americans. Damn them.
Brad headed into campus for lunch with Earl. What good was going to the cafeteria with a growling stomach? The university had probably already closed out his student account and his food pass would be invalid.
The place didn’t have the same welcoming feel that it had had just the day before. His entire universe had altered as soon as he was expelled from grad school.
He walked through the gaggle of students eating and studying at the same time. He didn’t even have books to read or papers to grade.
He found Earl at a table with two trays of chicken beefsteak and mashed potatoes spread out before him. Earl was already rubbing it in.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Earl said. “I got one of these trays for you.”
“Hey, you’re okay. And I don’t care what your mother says about you in her sleep.” Brad fell into the seat opposite his friend.
