Shadow of the Dragon

by Marc Cameron

  “It is him,” Hala whispered again.

  “Ren,” Clark said under his breath. Of course. He’d heard Hala use that name before. The major bore an uncanny resemblance to the man Hala and her aunt had been fighting with when Clark first stepped into their home—the same man he’d finished off with the cleaver.

  Major Ren Shuren waved his men along, scanning the crowds like a machine as he stalked forward. He hadn’t made eye contact with Clark yet, but he was close, less than thirty feet away, and closing fast.

  40

  There’d been no way for Midas to reach the rally point on time. He was nearly run over by police patrols twice. Black uniforms were around each corner, beside every flock of sheep, their boots visible beneath the bellies of standing camels. They were everywhere. Midas resorted to combat breathing—four seconds in, four seconds out—willing himself to remain calm. It made no sense to rush into danger when he could stroll his way out and approach the situation from a more strategic angle. So he walked slowly, taking in the sights, doing his best to play tourist.

  At half past nine, he decided to go check out the carpet lady. There didn’t seem to be quite as much law enforcement in this area of the market, and it made sense that Clark might try and link up with Yao’s contact when Midas missed the meet.

  A shepherd with a half-dozen sheep bosh boshed him again just as he reached the corner, grabbing his attention for an instant. A cloud of greasy meat smoke hit him in the face as he made the turn. When he stepped out of the smoke, he forgot about his combat breathing entirely.

  Forty feet away, John Clark stood by a pile of colorful carpets, chatting with a round lady in a white scarf and heavy coat. A group of very grumpy-looking soldier cops stalked directly toward him.

  A man to Midas’s left held up a glass of red juice, grinning broadly. His daughter, a girl of ten or twelve, sat behind a table full of glasses, pressing more juice. Without a second thought, Midas turned toward the man, nodding, reaching for the juice. Up until now, he’d worked hard to make himself insignificant, small, a tourist not worth noticing. Now he straightened up to his full height, making no attempt to hide the hint of belligerence that was usually present in his bearing. Two feet from the man, he dragged his lead foot, stumbling forward in the gravel. He knocked the glass from the man’s hand, spilling the juice and crashing headlong into the table. The array of full glasses flew everywhere, shattering into the ground. The table was a flimsy affair, nothing more than a few wood planks set atop two sawhorses. It gave way quickly, allowing Midas to stumble past the cursing man and into the juice press where the young woman sat, knocking her to the ground.

  Midas caught the girl by her hand, mid-fall. She cried out in surprise, covered in bright red pomegranate juice and seeds from the juicer. She hit the ground on her butt, startled but uninjured.

  The XPCC authorities were looking for a tall man with a Uyghur girl, and when the man approaching Clark turned at the sound of breaking glass to look at Midas, that is exactly what they saw.

  Midas scrambled to his feet, helping the girl. She tried to pull her hand away, but Midas held her for a moment, long enough, he hoped, to give the impression that she was with him.

  Her hand locked in his, Midas looked toward the officers. They were all running in his direction. He released his grip, allowing the girl to scramble to the safety of her father. On the far side of the oncoming policemen, John Clark caught Midas’s eye for a fleeting second and gave him a nod of thanks for the distraction.

  “I’m sorry,” Midas said to the juice seller, taking out his wallet as he watched Clark hustle Hala Tohti away. He shoved a wad of cash toward the other man. “I can pay. I’m sorry. I’m sor—”

  A blur of black body armor bowled him over, cutting his apology short and knocking the wind out of him.

  You’re on your own now, Mr. C., he thought, as a knee speared him in the small of his back and a forearm smeared his cheek into the dust.

  * * *

  —

  The commotion with Midas drew every available soldier and policeman at the market, leaving Clark and Hala unimpeded as they left the scene. Clark found a likely vehicle at the far edge of the parking area—an old Toyota flatbed truck with the key still in the ignition. Even the farmers were interested in Midas’s commotion, so the area was all but deserted.

  Cai’s contact was a sheep farmer ten kilometers farther out of the city. He knew they were coming, which meant it could be a trap. Clark reasoned that if Cai had wanted to turn him in, she could have done it at the market—unless, of course, she wanted to blame it on someone else so she could keep the arrangement with Adam Yao. Unless . . . It was all too easy to work yourself into a lather on what might happen. That was one of the greatest stresses of intelligence work. Everyone involved was lying. Some lied to safeguard their own skin, some to protect secrets—or a ten-year-old Uyghur girl. Some lied for money or to settle ancient feuds. Hui and Uyghurs hadn’t always gotten along, each contending the other group were the outsiders. But then, the Uyghur man at the caravanserai had proven that people were people, and he could not trust someone with Hala’s safety simply because they shared a common ethnicity. Conversely, he could not write off Mrs. Cai simply because she did not.

  Circumstances often forced an intelligence officer to approach strangers in strange lands. Time and again, these people were no more than the proverbial friend of a friend—or, worse, the enemy of a common enemy. No matter how tenuous the connection, there had to be some trust to move forward in any mission.

  And then there was the problem of the mole hiding out somewhere in the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community. Yao’s contacts in and around Kashgar didn’t have to be bad themselves. They could simply be compromised—and that would drop everyone in the grease.

  The driver’s-side door of the old pickup creaked and groaned when Clark pulled it open. Too late to quit now, he didn’t even look around to see if anyone had heard. Instead, he waved Hala in ahead of him. She scuttled quickly across the bench seat and ducked down while he shut the door. The inside of the truck smelled like tobacco and lanolin—sheepherder smells. Exploring, Hala opened the glove box and found a loaf of bread and a can of apple juice.

  “Lunch,” she said, holding them. A half-moon of saliva dampened the collar of her shirt, but she was smiling now instead of chewing it—breathless and elated at having gotten away.

  Clark was relieved, too, but had enough experience to know all of that could change in a heartbeat. Midas would be fine, so long as his cover held.

  Clark turned the ignition. The truck started up without a fuss, and he pulled out onto the road, rattling east, out of town, away from the dusty livestock market, and the dead man in the slumping caravanserai—outlaws on the Silk Road.

  41

  Illegal entry into a hostile nation was beyond tricky.

  Adam Yao weighed the pros and cons carefully of which point of entry would be best to take the Campus operators across. Holograms and embedded biometrics had rendered forged passports all but anachronistic. Fortunately, stolen passports still worked, so long as the offended country didn’t report the missing numbers. The Finnish documents Yao provided were genuine, with matching biometrics and authentic barcodes. To add a touch of even more veracity, VICAR, Yao’s agent in place in Russian SVR, had arranged for a Russian entry and exit stamp, with which Yao was able to mark each visa. Travelers with some history drew less scrutiny—at least that was the theory. Thanks to Yao’s contact in Beijing, the last-minute Chinese tourist visas were all in order. Probably. Trust was always a risk. CIA did have the mole, but Yao told himself he’d mitigated that by keeping his asset off the radar, paying him off the books with discretionary funds. Assets were supposed to have control numbers, files. Langley, and, more important, Congress, liked to know where their money was going. Thank God he’d broken the rules on that one.

  They’d seriously considered
crossing by bus at Maikapchagai, Kazakhstan, into Jeminay, a sparsely populated county in western Xinjiang. Locals used the crossing, so tourists, even benign Finnish ones, would raise a fuss. Still, the border guards were poorly paid, and Yao felt certain he’d be able to sort it out with a few hundred well-placed American dollars. Scrutiny sometimes wasn’t quite as tight at land crossings as it was at airports.

  The problem was one of logistics. Entry with a stolen passport was one thing. But regulations at the Maikapchagai/Jeminay crossing required them to take a bus rather than a private or rented vehicle. It was much closer to their destination on a map, but the realities of vehicle procurement and border delays could add hours or even days to the journey. A commercial flight into Urumqi had put them seven hours away, but at least they had the independence of their own transportation. Security had been tense, but they’d been admitted with Yao, a Hong Kong resident, acting as their guide and minder. Yao slapped magnetic signs on both sides of the rented van, proclaiming them a “Sun Country” guided tour to ease the minds of jumpy security patrols. Chavez had wanted two vehicles, but the XPCC officials were suspicious of outsiders as it was. An extra vehicle without someone Chinese driving it would be an extra chance for random search—particularly in the off season, when tourists were rare and personnel at the checkpoints had little to occupy their time. So far, they’d passed three, and Yao had gushed about the beauty and glory of mainland China at every turn.

  A Web search revealed Lake Kanas, a day’s drive north of Urumqi, was situated in a mountainous forest on a small protrusion that was bordered by Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia. It was remote, and difficult to police. It was also famous for a large fish that was said to drag unsuspecting horses into the water while they were drinking. Beginning in May, tourists would flock to the lake for the numerous tour boat excursions, hoping to catch a glimpse of China’s version of the Loch Ness Monster.

  Ding Chavez rode shotgun, with Adara and Lisanne behind him. Ryan took the rearmost seat with some of the luggage. They didn’t have much, just a duffel apiece, but needed enough to pass for tourists. Most had grabbed catnaps along the way, wanting to be as fresh as possible when they arrived so they could hit the ground running.

  An hour south of Burqin village—the entrance to Kanas Lake Park—Chavez got everyone’s attention. Yao was guide, but as an NOC, he operated by himself so much that he was more than happy to yield the role of team leader.

  “Let’s do a quick gear check,” Chavez said. “Everyone up on commo?”

  The group answered in turn.

  Gavin Biery had modified their cell phones so they could function as radio and intercoms, allowing them a common net even when there was no cell service. Gone were the copper near-field neck loops and belt-pack radios. Linked to the Sonitus Molar Mics attached to each operative’s rear tooth, the entire communications system had been reduced to what looked and outwardly functioned exactly like a normal cell phone, and a piece of plastic that resembled a small retainer. It would be discovered only during an extremely invasive search.

  Chavez looked across the front seat at Yao. “I know you didn’t want to dig out weapons prior to the checkpoints.”

  “Now is probably okay,” Yao said. “Ryan, grab that camera bag in the back.”

  Ryan did, passing it over the seat to Lisanne, who gave it to Chavez.

  Yao nodded at the hard plastic case. “They’re in there. Two wide body cameras, a couple of lenses, and ten rolls of film.”

  Chavez scoffed. “You’re still using film?”

  Yao chuckled. “I’m not taking pictures, dude. Those little black film canisters are about the same size as the suppressors. Helps them blend in. The pistols are wedged in the camera bodies. Should be four total. One for each of you.”

  Adara and Lisanne leaned forward to get a look. All the way in the rear, Ryan looked on glumly, chin resting in his hands over the backseat, waiting his turn.

  “How’d you get this through security at the airport?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” Yao said. “The case was waiting for me at the rental car place in Urumqi.”

  “You’ve got some serious contacts, my friend,” Lisanne said.

  “A lot of people in this part of the country are good and pissed at their Chinese overlords,” Yao said. “I can usually find someone willing to do something for me as long as they figure I’m sticking it to Beijing. I use a couple of assets as cutouts, to keep my face off the transaction.” He shrugged. “Plus, you can accomplish more with a good cause and a duffel bag of cash than you can with a good cause alone.”

  Chavez flipped open one of the cameras. “What the hell?” He held up a small black Beretta semiautomatic Bobcat.

  “You got us toy guns?”

  Ryan groaned from the rear seat. “You know what Colonel Jeff Cooper said about the .25 auto? You better not carry one because you might have to shoot someone with it, and if you shoot someone with it, they just might realize they were shot and it might piss them off . . . or something like that.”

  “Shows how much you know,” Yao said. “These Bobcats are .22-caliber.”

  “A .22 . . .” Ryan fell back against his seat. “Well, that is just fabulous news.”

  Chavez passed one of the diminutive black pistols over the seat for Adara and Lisanne to look at.

  Lisanne activated the lever on the side, flipping up the barrel, obviously familiar with the weapon. “My mother had one of these. The tip-up barrel made it easier for her to chamber a round without having to work the slide. Pretty nifty, if you ask me.”

  “I agree with Ryan,” Chavez said. “I’d take nine-millimeter over nifty. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.”

  “They cannot,” Yao said, tapping the steering wheel with an open hand as he drove. “We’re in the Wild West, my friends. Adapt and overcome.” He nodded sideways to the case again, eyes on the road. There were wild horses there, and the occasional camel. “Unscrew the lenses. There should be five blades in there. Some of them are better than others. Give Ryan the Halo. Maybe a good Microtech will appease him.”

  Ding unscrewed the plastic cap on the end of a telephoto lens and dumped the knives out in his hand. All of them were Microtech automatics with OTF, or out-the-front, blades. The Halo was the largest, with a blade just over four inches long.

  “Excellent,” Chavez said. “Just in case I need a sexy knife to cut open an MRE.”

  “You will find the icing on the cake next to those film canisters we talked about,” Yao said. “It took some doing to get those babies. Everybody on my pipeline kept wanting to steal them.”

  Chavez held up a black metal cylinder, an inch in diameter and just under three inches long.

  “Small for a suppressor,” he mused.

  “You know as well as I that these things aren’t mouse-fart quiet,” Yao said. “But with subsonic ammo this thing is amazing. Solid, too. Instructions don’t call for you to shoot it wet, but I’ve put a little lithium grease on the baffles and . . . I’ve gotta tell you, it is sweet. Jack could pop a round in the backseat and we’d think we ran over a rock.”

  “Custom job?” Adara asked.

  “No,” Yao said. “Made by Bowers Group. They call it the Bitty. These are the same, they just don’t have any manufacturer’s markings, in case we have to ditch them.”

  Adara screwed it onto the threaded barrel of the Beretta Bobcat and hefted the little setup. “Bowers Bitty ‘Black,’” she said. “Makes the .22-caliber much more interesting.”

  She passed the gun over her shoulder to Ryan, who gave it a nod of approval. “I guess the little cuss grows on you after a while,” he said.

  Chavez laughed and looked back at him. “Like somebody else I know.” He turned to Yao. “There are only four. What are you going to carry?”

  “I’ll make do.” Yao chuckled. “Frankly, if things turn to shit, I plan to ru
n screaming into the woods . . .”

  * * *

  —

  Yao knew something was wrong when the Han woman at the front desk at the Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort fanned the collected passports in her hands like a poker hand, pushing his upward to separate it from the pack. She set that one aside and then gathered the rest into a neat stack before placing them on the counter. Probably in her mid-forties, her black hair had the slightly auburn tint of a person who spent a great deal of time outdoors. The tag on her navy-blue cardigan said her name was Ming.

  Absent the frown lines of someone who looked as grim as she did at the moment, she was probably a very nice woman, or she would have been had not the two hawkeyed police officers been watching from the lobby—one a bulldog, the other a whippet.

  “You may check in,” Ming said, loud enough that the two policemen could hear. “But I am sorry to inform you that we are too full to accommodate the foreign guests.”

  “I see,” Yao said. He knew full well they had plenty of rooms, but it would have done no good to call her on her lie. Instead, he gathered the Finnish passports and passed them back to their respective owners. This would have certainly been the problem if he’d tried to get them rooms at one of the hotels right next to the lake. They were notorious for telling foreigners at the last minute that they could not be accommodated. He’d hoped to mitigate it by staying in Jiadengyu fifteen minutes away. “My secretary made the reservations,” he said. “I will speak to her about the error.”

  “Perhaps,” the desk clerk said. “Or perhaps it was a problem with the computer system. It happens.”

  Yao started to leave, but then turned, as if struck by a sudden idea. “What if we were to upgrade the rooms for my foreign guests? Their budgets are large. I’m sure they would happily pay for any larger suites you might have available, and, of course, any surcharges such upgrades might include.”