by Marc Cameron
She choked out a scream, her senses flooded with nausea from the pain. Scrambling onto her back, she chambered her good leg, ready to kick any son of a bitch who came near her again. She screamed again, ragged, torn, her voice already hoarse from the bar.
The tall man in the hat stood there looking down at her, almost bored, while the other two approached from her head and her feet. It was impossible to fight them both at once, injured like she was. She felt someone move and turned in time to see the syringe the moment before Pukwudgie jabbed her in the neck.
She felt herself detaching, floating away. This was bad.
The pain in her knee and wrist faded away . . . No, that wasn’t right. It was still there. She just didn’t care. The men stood back, waiting for the drug to take effect. The syringe was huge. Whatever they’d given her, it had been a big dose.
Then she saw the spiders. Hairy. Black eyes. Obsidian fangs, dripping with venom. Dozens of them pouring out cracks in the ground. She tried to run, but floundered, falling again—into the path of the spiders.
A light came on in one of the apartments above. Someone shouted in Albanian—muffled, distorted. In her stupor, Murphy couldn’t make it out.
“It’s okay!” the man in the hat yelled in English. “My friend has had too much rakia!”
A dark panel van screeched down the alley and they shoved her inside facedown on the metal floor, leaving poor Joey where he lay.
Her face pressed against the cold floor, she tasted blood, smelled puke and urine. So dizzy . . . Her lungs were heavy.
This was where they’d killed Joey . . .
* * *
—
She came to slowly at first, willing her eyes to open, then jerking, jolted by the cold chill of the van’s metal floor against her bare skin. She was naked, hog-tied, hands and ankles zip-tied behind and then tied together. Arched backward by the bonds, it put excruciating pressure on her injured knee and shattered wrist.
Whatever they’d given her, Murphy metabolized it quickly. Probably a ketamine dart—straight into her muscle. That would explain why she hadn’t dropped immediately. Her memory of the attack was fraught with gaping holes. She remembered the spiders, though. She’d never forget those. Yeah, it was ketamine, all right.
The van was moving, bouncing over a rough road. That told her nothing. Many of the streets around Tirana were in a constant state of repair. The men spoke among themselves in hushed Mandarin, ignoring her for the time being.
Murphy shut her eyes, struggling not to let her breathing get away from her. She needed to calm her thoughts, no easy task naked and bound in the back of a van with three dudes.
Pain and the drugs had turned her brain to mush. Her thoughts were fuzzy, unhinged and without defined edges. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt.
Was this random? Did they plan to take her somewhere and rape her? Panic bore down, crushing her chest. No. Rapists didn’t tie your feet together. Did they?
Come on, Leigh. Think. They trained you for this at The Farm.
No, they didn’t. Not really. There was no way to train for something this horrific, this futile.
They wanted her awake. That meant they wanted to question her. She blinked, trying to remember. Adam. They would want to know about Adam.
The man in the gray hat sat on an overturned bucket behind the driver. He reached down to pat her cheek, gently at first. Hard enough to rattle her teeth when she clenched her eyes.
He’d cocked his felt hat back, revealing a high forehead and passive eyes, accustomed to hiding their cruelty. “We are going for a drive in the countryside.” He smiled benignly. “How long we drive is up to you.”
She licked her lips, then craned her neck to get a better look at him, trying to speak. He raised a hand to shush her. “I do not want to kill you,” he said. “But it is important that you know I will.”
“Just get to—”
The man in the hat nodded to his companions. The short one, Pukwudgie, flipped her on her side, and then pressed his boot to her injured knee, bearing down hard, slowly, like grinding out a cigarette.
She screamed and kept screaming until the one in the hat kicked her in the face.
He took a folding knife from his pocket. It was small, with a turned-down Wharncliffe blade. The needle-sharp point and scalpel edge allowed him to perform extremely intricate work. “Listen to me carefully. I will now ask you a few questions about your conversation with Urkesh Beg, the Uyghur man you spoke with today. If you lie, I will make a small cut, somewhere on your body. I have not decided where yet. If you refuse to talk, I will do the same.” He gave a long, sad sigh and then leaned back on the bucket, crossing his knees, bouncing the butt of the knife against his thigh, almost as an afterthought. “In my experience, the process works better if it is done slowly, so you have more time to consider your answers between each incision. Unfortunately, I do not have much time. How did you learn of Urkesh Beg?”
Murphy began to sob. “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man’s hand flashed, like a viper, his blade neatly bisecting the brow over her left eye. It stung, but the pain wasn’t as horrible as she’d anticipated. Blood poured from the wound, burning her eye, a constant reminder that she’d been cut.
He prodded her with the toe of his boot. “I have many questions and little time.” He waved the blade over the top of her body. “It is a shame to ruin such beautiful skin.”
Head lolling, cheek against the cold steel of the floor, Leigh Murphy clenched her eyes shut. Tears pressed from her lashes, mingling with the blood.
Pukwudgie readied another syringe.
Leigh Murphy began to tremble, her entire body wracked with sobs. Oh, Adam. You told me too much.
* * *
—
I may have a location,” Fu Bohai said when he telephoned Admiral Zheng four hours later.
The American CIA officer had been incredibly resilient. She’d borne much of the pain in silence, passing out much later than others to whom he’d given the same treatment. In the end, no one could hold up to drugs and pain. The mind simply let go.
The admiral grew animated on the other end of the line as Fu repeated the details of what she’d given up.
“You must go at once,” the admiral said, breathless. “Take as many men as you need. Kill the Wuming filth, kill the Americans, or do not. I do not care. But you must bring me Medina Tohti alive and intact. I cannot stress that enough. I need her coherent and talking. Now go, take the company plane. I want you at this mysterious lake as soon as humanly possible. Before that would be even better.”
“I understand,” Fu said. “But . . .”
“What is it?”
“Forgive me,” Fu said. “But please trust my expertise in this area. Even the most determined person will eventually talk, but the more determined one is, they are often far from coherent when they do finally break.”
Admiral Zheng scoffed. “Do not concern yourself with that. Just bring Medina Tohti to me. Your expertise is not required beyond finding her and getting her to my office. Harsh methods will not be necessary. Her daughter and sister are in Kashgar. Their safety will be all the incentive she needs to assist us.”
38
Clark’s eye flicked open at the sound of shuffling footsteps—too big and heavy to be a rat. The room was hazy with the muted gray light of an overcast dawn outside the tiny window. He moved slowly, feeling the familiar pops and cracks that greeted each morning even when he slept in a soft bed. A cloud of white vapor blossomed around his face when he breathed.
The sound bounced off the clay walls, making it difficult to pinpoint where it was coming from. He caught movement in the shadows, tensed, then relaxed a hair, falling back into his blanket when Hala’s silhouette came into focus, her small face framed by the white fake fur ruff of her coat.
“You okay?”
“John . . .”
The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat upright, throwing off his blanket.
“What is it?” he whispered, still raspy from his sleep.
Hala went to the window. She had to tiptoe to peek out. She ducked her head away as soon as she’d looked. “He’s coming!”
Clark rolled to his feet and drew the girl near so she could explain quietly. “Who’s coming?”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I had to pee. There was a man driving by on the road. I think he had stopped to pee as well. I did not think he saw me at first, but then he called out. I’m very sorry. It was an accident—”
“It’s okay,” Clark said. “Is he a policeman?”
She shook her head. “No. I do not think so.”
“Is he alone?”
She nodded. “I saw his car. There was no one else. Maybe he is—”
A wary voice called from outside the walls of the caravanserai. She was right. The man was Uyghur—and he was close.
Clark held up his hand to shush her while the man spoke, then leaned in so she could whisper in his ear to translate.
“He . . . He wants to know what I am doing out here all by myself.”
The man outside spoke again, louder this time, bolder, more demanding.
Hala gasped and began to shake at what she heard.
“What is it?” Clark asked.
“He knows the Bingtuan are looking for a runaway child,” she said. “He said he will not call them if I do not fight him.” She looked up at Clark. “He is a very bad man.”
“Yes, he is,” Clark said. He stood, stepping sideways inch by inch, “cutting the pie” until he brought the shadowed figure outside into view.
He was dressed like a workingman—dark trousers, white shirt, dark sport jacket under a heavier wool coat. He wore a black fur hat with the earflaps down against the morning cold. Clark estimated him to be in his early thirties, but it was difficult to tell in this part of the world. Life in western China tended to age people beyond their years. He could just as easily have been twenty-five.
Clark assessed the man quickly as an opponent. He didn’t appear to have a weapon. His hands were empty. No cell phone at the ready. He could have already called and reported his find, but Clark doubted that. Not if he wanted to be alone with his newly found young treasure. No, he’d wait until he was done—or, more likely, he’d forgo calling the police at all. He’d just do what he wanted and leave. Fugitives didn’t call the police, if he even let her live.
The man called out again, whistling as if summoning a pet.
Hala’s hand shot to her lips, covering a gasp. “He said he’s coming in. He warned me not to run . . .”
Clark scanned the room. There’d been nothing to use as a weapon when they’d come in, but maybe he’d missed something.
Nope.
Clark dropped to his knees in front of Hala, taking her by both shoulders. “I need you to trust me.”
She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
Clark stood and took the little douk-douk out of his pocket, opening the scimitar blade. He placed it on the ground, and then stepped on the handle, pinching the two metal sides together, effectively turning it into a fixed-blade knife. The cutting edge was just four inches long, not optimal for stabbing, but there were other ways to cause chaos and doom with a knife.
Clark nodded toward the entrance. The place where the wall had collapsed formed a natural funnel that would send the man to them.
“He’s going to come from there,” Clark whispered. “I will stand by the door. When I raise my hand, you make a noise. Don’t call to him, but let him hear you. Do you understand?”
She looked up with brown doe eyes, nodded around a mouthful of shirt collar.
“When you see him at the door, I want you to run.” Clark pointed to the far corner of the room.
“Run where?” Hala whispered, terrified. “There is nowhere to go.”
Clark gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “True,” he said. “But he does not know that. He will not be able to resist chasing you.”
“What if he catches—”
“He won’t,” Clark said, already moving to the door. None of this would work if the man saw or heard him.
Clark had the newcomer in height and weight, but that whole vitality-of-youth thing would be a problem. Fortunately, Clark had what Ding called “old-man strength,” which was really not strength at all, but cunning and pure meanness in the face of battle. He didn’t intend to let this evolve into a contest of strength or determination. In fact, if Clark did this right, there would be no fight at all. It would be an assassination.
Clark stood to the right of the door, opposite where the man’s sight line would be when he heard Hala. He held the douk-douk in his right hand, firmly but relaxed. A clenched fist moved much too slowly for what he needed to do.
He raised his left hand, listening for the tentative footsteps. The man called out again, just a few feet down the dark hall. Clark couldn’t understand a word, but the cruel intent came through clearly enough.
Clark let his left hand drop.
At the signal, Hala gave a gasp, shuffling her feet on the ground as if scrambling to get away.
The man laughed, whistling again, calling out. Clark imagined him saying, “I have you now . . .”
Clark caught movement to his left, checked his breathing, lowered his center, ready to move.
Hala sprang from her spot, digging in as though she intended to run straight through the far wall of the earthen chamber. Clark hadn’t told her to scream, but she did, and it only added to the effect.
The man’s predatory drive kicked in immediately at the sight of his fleeing quarry. He shouted at her to stop and bolted after her, thinking there must be a door in the shadows, and unwilling to let her slip away.
Clark stepped sideways, snaking his left hand behind the man’s neck and around his face, forearm to forehead, yanking him backward as his legs tried to run out from under him. At the same moment, Clark buried the blade into the side of the man’s exposed neck, impacting the brachial nerve so hard that his body jolted as if hit with an electric shock. The little douk-douk’s scimitar point slid in as if the flesh were butter, just behind the windpipe. Clark felt a sudden pulse of blood slap his arm, moist and hot. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and he’d rolled his sleeve above the elbow in anticipation of this to keep it clean.
With the edge of the blade facing forward, Clark pushed at the same time he gave a sharp backward tug on the man’s forehead, severing the trachea with a sickening pop.
The man struggled, but only for a moment, before becoming heavy. Clark let go, allowing him to pitch forward, face-planting on the floor.
Hala ran to him, ignoring the dying man’s agonal gasps, to grab Clark’s arm with both tiny hands. She was frantic with worry at the blood dripping from his elbow.
“John, you are hurt!”
He took a deep breath. “No,” he said, turning so she faced away from the gore. “I’m fine. It’s his. Not mine.”
“Okay,” she said, panting, lifting his arm to check it thoroughly, unconvinced.
He switched the open douk-douk to his left hand to keep from accidentally cutting her.
“Really,” he said, “I’m okay.”
Clark rubbed as much of the blood off his arm as he could with a blanket, and then went to look out the window. He’d thought to move the man’s car before anyone noticed it, but there was too much traffic for that. A steady line of open trucks and trailers filled with camels, cattle, goats, donkeys, and the odd, fat-bottomed sheep of the region formed an early-morning parade line toward the market grounds. None of them paid any heed to the thirty-year-old Dongfeng sedan that had apparently broken down on the side of the road.<
br />
Clark turned to see the girl standing over the dead man.
“Gather your things,” he said. “We should find another place to wait. It’s only six thirty. Still over two hours until we can meet my friend. This will be difficult to explain if anyone else happens along.”
Hala didn’t move until he took her gently by the shoulder and herded her into the corridor.
“I’m sorry you had to see such awful things,” he said.
She leaned against his leg and sighed. Still trembling, she spoke matter-of-factly, like a woman twice her age. “It was awful, that is true, but if you had not been here, it would have been much worse.”
39
Midas Jankowski was pretty damned certain that no one in the history of history had ever calmed down because someone else told them to “calm down.” Fortunately, no matter what Gerry Hendley was reading into his tone, Midas wasn’t spun up, he was just surrounded by camels and goats and weird-looking big-assed sheep.
A Uyghur with four goats stacked like cordwood on the back of a three-wheeled motorcycle truck barked “bosh-bosh, bosh-bosh” as he nosed Midas aside with the front tire and rode past. Hendley must have heard the change in Midas’s voice and was doing his level best to try and talk him off some ledge.
A woman’s voice playing an incessant loop over a loudspeaker forced him to cup his hand over the phone in order to be heard.
