by Chuck Dixon
Estrella gave them the finger and swung open the screen door of the hooch to stumble inside.
“Jorgito... Jorgito...”
The others returned to the porch, sharing predictions of what Jorgito would do to the poor bastard.
“Jorgito!” Estrella was out of the hooch as if launched. The screen door banged open as he shouldered through it, hands held before him. His hands, fingers splayed, were black in the glow of the pole lamp. He rushed to the others who were off the porch in a rush. The pit bulls were roused by the shouts. They joined the noise, barking and running in circles.
“Está muerto! Como un cerdo!” Estrella was shrieking now in a high falsetto, holding out his blood-streaked hands as evidence. The dogs went mad with the scent of it, leaping in the air at the edge of the clutch of men.
“Good girl,” Dwayne said as he rushed to the rear wall of the shed. Two good kicks and a steel panel tore loose at one corner. Wide enough to allow him to squeeze through. He crouched outside in the cool night air, listening to the sound of the shouting men and barking dogs rising in volume. There was a haze of white smoke coming through the trees. It came from the hangar building, dense smoke spilling from under the eaves of the roof like a silent waterfall. The scent of the smoke was pungent and sweet.
N’itha had kakked the weightlifter then slipped away to set fire to their stash of marijuana.
The men were moving toward the hangar. Their shouts were joined by sporadic gunfire. Shooting at shadows or letting off rounds from sheer frustration. These assholes didn’t know the first thing about weapons discipline.
Behind him, inside the shed, Dwayne heard the door squealing on its hinges. Feet pounded on the wood floor. Dwayne ran low across the alley toward the fallen casa next door. The door of the shed crashed shut. A man called out.
Rounds kicked up fountains of dust behind Dwayne. He dove to the ground and belly-crawled into the crawl space under the veranda. In the bar of light behind him, he saw that two men were racing for him. One had a rifle raised to his shoulder. The other fired single shots from the hip, working the bolt furiously to chamber a new round. A finger of moonlight lanced down through a bullet hole punched through the rotten wood near his head. Then another. He scrambled forward, fingers searching the sand. He found the checkered wooden butt of the .45. A man dropped to hands and knees and poked the barrel of an AK-47 into the dark. The first round took the man under his right eye. The back of his skull showered his crouching amigo with blood and brains. Startled, the second man fell backward out of his crouch to land on his ass. A double flash of light from the shadows under the veranda. Two rounds to the abdomen hammered the second man full onto his back, legs kicking.
Dwayne put another round through each man before clambering out into the smoky moonlight. He snatched up the dropped AK and checked the magazine load. At least fifteen rounds. The second man had the battered old deer rifle. Dwayne left it but pulled a revolver from the waistband of the man’s jeans, checked it for loads, and stuck it under his belt. He slung the Kalashnikov over his shoulder.
The gully was filling with white smoke carried away from the burning pot barn by a wind dropping down the rock walls. The building glowed orange from within as flames reached the bales of dried weed. The men were hustling before the hangar and levering the big swing doors open. A gout of fire reached out for them. They stumbled backward, screaming in terror and frustration. The dogs ran yelping from the ball of flame to vanish into the surrounding dark.
Dwayne trotted behind the buildings, away from the fire and the shouting men. He made it into a thick stand of paloverde trees. He turned at a sharp hissing sound.
N’itha separated herself from the shadows to approach him. She was black to the elbows with blood. Her hair was matted with it. The sweat on her face and breasts shone crimson with Jorgito’s blood. The Metallica shirt was gone now. Her mouth parted to show a grin of white teeth. In her fist was a bone-handled knife he’d last seen sheathed on Jorgito’s belt.
“He died fast for a big man,” she said.
Dwayne grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the ground with him. To the west, through the swirling smoke, a white glare was growing in brightness. The glare grew harsher, breaking into wavering blades of light stabbing at them out of the night.
Headlights. A column of vehicles. Heading their way from the desert.
32
View from the High Ground
Lee leaned into an embrasure atop Dibai Castle’s tallest tower. From his vantage point, he could see a broad grassy slope leading from the opposite bank of the canal below them to the northern expanse of Nanking’s outer walls. Puffs of smoke drifted from firing ports all along the defenses as the city answered its attackers with stone shot.
“I say it’s a thousand yards thereabouts. You two are the snipers. Distance is your thing,” Lee said, sliding from the embrasure. A flurry of tile chips spilled over him from a stray round striking the roof above.
“I make it closer to twelve hundred. But I’ve only got one eye now. I bow to the lady’s estimation,” Jimbo said, peering through his telescope in another embrasure. Byrus, his constant companion, stood on tiptoes, craning his neck to see through the narrow gap between the Pima and the stone crenulation.
“Thirteen hundred yards and a skosh. Add another fifty to be sure,” Bat said, leaning out to study the stone fortifications. A combination of morning mist and gun smoke created a fog around the base making the walled city appear to be floating on a swirling cloud.
Despite the constant noise, soldiers in lacquered bamboo armor slept by a rocket battery on the plank floor of the tower’s roof. On the broad ramparts beneath the tower artillery crews worked a pair of long siege guns. Stone shot the size of basketballs was slathered with lard and lifted into the muzzle with a rolling block and tackle. The shot was packed down atop cloth bags of powder. Men worked as a team to jam the load in place with plungers twelve feet in length. The cannons were then trundled into their sand-bagged embrasures along iron tracks set on the ancient stone of the castle. The crews fled for cover, hands clapped over ears, as a cannoneer atop a ladder set and lit the fuse. This man leapt from the top of the ladder to bolt back to where the others cowered behind a barrier of sand-filled gabions.
The big siege guns went off one second after the other, rumbling back against stops constructed of heavy timbers braced with iron. A blinding smog of gray smoke obscured everything. From their vantage point, Bat and Jimbo could see the stone balls sail upwards in a shallow trajectory toward Nanking’s walls. The first struck a round tower about midway up its height. It served to widen and deepen a crater already formed there by countless prior shots. The second crashed into the battlements, sending stones and timbers flying as it caromed in a nearly vertical rebound to arc high into the air and tumble down out of sight beyond the walls.
The cannon crews stood atop the walls to peer through the dense fog for signs of where their shot had fallen. When it cleared sufficiently, they cheered and waved banners for their enemy to see. Somewhere gongs were being struck in celebration. But then, day and night, there were always gongs being struck somewhere.
“We need to be here in less than two weeks,” Shan said, unfolding a chart that had been prepared with the help of Dr. Wesley Fong. It was rendered on vellum by hand in a style that would not draw attention to it in this period. Just another document in a society already buried in paperwork.
The two Rangers and Bat studied the map. Shan pointed to a section of wall that bowed out between two towers visible to them from their current vantage point.
“The storehouse we are looking for is here,” Shan said, laying his forefinger on a rectangle that looked to be ten blocks within the inner defensive wall. This wall ran in a concentric ring within the larger ring that formed the outer defensives. This fortress within a fortress protected the city of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace and its many palaces.
“So, near a quarter mile to get us inside and then, what, a
nother half mile to the storehouse?” Jimbo said.
After a moment to make the rough conversion to metric in his head, Shan said, “That is approximate.”
“It’s all approximate,” Lee said. “We could go through all that out there and find nothing but a solid gold shithouse.”
“How far have the tunnels been dug already?” Jimbo asked.
“I have spoken to coolies who tell me they are within a week of finishing a series of three mines leading to the midway point of this wall.” Shan’s fingers brushed a stretch of wall to the west of the place where they needed to enter.
“What good does that do us?” Lee said.
“There are ten mines in total. They progress toward different destinations. Some serve only as defensive tunnels to prevent counter mines being dug from within the city,” Shan said. “One of them, Mogui Gangmen, takes us closest to where we need to be.”
“And how do we know that?” Jimbo said.
“You didn’t notice, Hawkeye?” Bat said, smirking as she stepped to a broad embrasure and climbed up between the protective stone works. Lee joined her.
“The grass is dead above where they’re digging,” she said and pointed to the field beyond the canal. Brown areas of grass described the tunnels that lay far below. They looked like roadways stretching toward the far walls. Some started as one tunnel to branch out in tributaries, all aimed at the city.
“There’s tunnels under each dead stretch? Men down there digging? Right now?” Lee said.
“Thousands of men,” Shan said.
“We dig?” Byrus said, happy that the conversation has turned to a subject he was familiar with.
“We dig,” Jimbo said.
33
The Way Down
They drew some attention from the curious as the team moved through the ocean of tents that formed a third massive camp on the slopes beyond Dibai Castle.
For the most part, the imperial troops, peasant conscripts, and coolies greeted them with indifference. Gweilo mercenaries were a common enough sight. And these wore the red trim at their collars and cuffs that presented them as in the pay of the emperor. It was at Shan’s suggestion that they’d purchased a few yards of red silk and sewn trim to their uniforms in order to blend in.
The only unwanted interest they attracted was from merchant-men and whores. Hucksters approached them selling knives, clocks, and iron skillets, jade, ivory, lamps, caged birds, and even kites. They trotted along, hawking their wares, faces split by grins marred with black teeth. The pupils of their eyes were blown out like black marbles. Though banned by the imperial house in Peking, everyone here seemed high as kites on opium. The many pans of smoldering incense set here, and there did little to mask the cloying sweet smell of the junk. They even saw kids who looked younger than ten puffing away on clay pipes stained black with tar. Only soldiers seemed immune to the stuff—or at least not smoking it in public.
“Guess who won the opium wars,” Jimbo said, glancing at a woman seated on the grass before a tent blowing blue smoke into the face of the infant asleep in her arms.
As bold as the merchants were, the prostitutes were worse. The team passed through a lane lined either side by tents painted with ornate depictions of every sex act imaginable. The women lounging in the shade of fringed awnings appeared to be demure as Chinese dolls in painted robes until the Rangers moved closer. The women pulled the robes open to reveal that they were naked beneath the thin layers of silk. They wore white makeup over every exposed inch of their bodies. Lacquered hair, some dyed brilliant red or silver white, was arranged with combs decorated with pearls or fashioned in the shape of birds, prancing deer or running rabbits. They each had their feet tied tight in bands of cloth twisted closed with wooden dowels.
Some had piercings of gold hoops in all manner of provocative places that they were happy to expose for potential customers. The only feature they did not display was their mouths, which they covered with fans of paper or trimmed peacock feathers. The ravages of opium left them toothless over time.
“That one’s cute. I think she likes you,” Boats said, elbowing Chaz.
Chaz turned to meet a pair of eyes circled with lamp black slowly blinking at him over the top of a fan painted with an imaginative picture of a woman being raped by a dragon. The girl was tiny, barely four feet tall. Chaz guessed she was no older than thirteen.
“You could catch something just looking at that poor child,” Bat said with a wary shake of her head.
“She love soul brother number one,” Jimbo said.
“Love you long time!” Byrus chimed in, recognizing the movie the Pima was quoting.
“Me so hawny!”
The women reclining in the shade tittered at Byrus, and he turned to trot toward them.
“Slow down, Bruce,” Jimbo said, grasping Byrus by the collar and yanking him back in line.
They ran the gauntlet of whores to enter under the gate of a stockade of log walls. Within it lay the work camp of the sappers who were digging the tunnels. The place was an anthill of activity.
The pit in the middle of the camp dropped into the ground to a depth of ninety feet. The interior walls of the big dig were lined with scaffolds and ladders to allow the miners access to the floor of the pit via stages of landings and ramp ways of bound bamboo. Over the pit hung a framework supporting a block and tackle system by which a bucket loaded with a ton of soil and rock could be drawn up from below. It was hauled upward by a team of over a hundred bullocks plodding a worn track leading to the north along the river. In addition to animal power, coolies climbed the ladders in an unending stream; all humping baskets loaded with dirt to the surface. Still more coolies worked with carts and shovels to move the soil up roadways that wound in a circle up man-made mountains of mud and rock. These hills were the tailings dug from the miles of tunnels being excavated below.
All the while, officers in red silks raced among the workers shouting abuse and swinging long bamboos flails. Riflemen kept watch from wooden towers surrounding the pit area. Horns blew up and down the line and from deep within the excavation, sending indecipherable signals to the workers. Atop a dais of timbers, a shirtless Mongol beat on the skin of a huge kettle drum with a pair of mallets to provide a rhythm for the laborers. And, of course, gongs sounded like wind chimes everywhere.
Shan stepped up to interrupt one of the officers’ harangues. They spoke together quietly, the officer shaking his head and Shan pointing to the opening of the excavation. At last, Shan dropped a jingling sack into the officer’s hand. The man smiled and nodded and bowed as the sack disappeared into the folds of his tunic.
Taking the lead, Shan walked to a ramp that angled down toward the first ledge of their descent. The team followed. Lee put a hand to Bat’s shoulder.
“Not you,” Lee said.
“What the hell, Lee?” she said, trying to jerk her arm from his grip.
“You and Wei are staying topside. We need someone to keep an eye out. You’re our overwatch.”
“You guys knew about this all along,” she said, eyes narrowed at Jimbo approaching with his Whitworth rifle and ammo bag held out to her.
“I didn’t want to hear your shit any longer than I needed to,” Lee said, taking the long rifle from Jimbo and pressing it into Bat’s hands.
“You’re saying that to make me pissed at you. You could say that you’re worried about me,” Bat said.
“That too, sweetie-pie,” Lee said and bent to kiss her forehead only to dodge Bat’s flattened hand swiping an inch from his face.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. But she was smiling.
Jimbo relieved her of her repeating rifle and bandolier of cartridges. The remaining men moved off down the ramp, leaving Bat and Wei watching until their comrades were out of sight in the deepening gloom of the pit.
“So, what do we do for fun?” Bat said. Wei blinked, uncomprehending.
34
Three big SUVs drove the dirt road and passed where Dwayne and
N’itha lay concealed in the shadow of the trees. The vehicles, matte black with deeply tinted windows, cut their headlights and rolled into the compound.
Dwayne watched them pull to a stop in the smoke-filled street. The doors opened, and teams of men emerged, six to a car. They wore black uniforms camo-striped with gray. Hoods, masks, and a type of night vision gear Dwayne had never seen before. With weapons shouldered, they trotted into the pall of smoke in twin “V” formations covering either side of the street.
They were military. Not Mexican army. They were from somewhere much farther away.
He turned to N’itha.
“Go back to Caroline and Ricky. Tell them to pack up and run,” he said in a whisper.
“What about you, Du-wane?” she said.
“The plan stays the same. I draw these fuckers away. You understand?”
“You run other way. Fuckers follow you.” She nodded.
“That’s right. Now don’t let them see you,” he said, a pat to her leg as she rose to a crouch.
N’itha moved away into the trees, cut north, and was gone into the rocks within seconds.
The sounds of gunfire came out of the haze of smoke enveloping the compound. The boom and blast of shotguns and rifles. It was followed closely by a peculiar burring sound. Dwayne could see threads of brilliant crimson light through the smoke cover. They pulsed like tracers, only brighter and with greater frequency. And lingering doubts about where these new arrivals had come from were wiped away.
The gunfire died away to silence, followed by a couple of short bursts of the high burring noise. Then nothing.
They’d move in an ever growing circle to find him. The bulk of them would follow what they believed was his most likely path of escape, the road out. Dwayne had to be sure they followed him and not any tracks left by N’itha.
