Max Gates and his quartet of spec warriors lay camouflaged in the semi-arid scrub surrounding Chifeng Prison. Existing on bottled water and energy bars over the past few days, the soldiers were an insurance policy they hoped Kilkenny's team wouldn't have to cash in. A
coded request for
divine intervention
notified Gates and his team that something had gone awry and that their people inside the prison needed to make a fast retreat.
“Two heavies outbound at the main G,” Chun continued.
“Copy that,” Gates replied. “Fire in the hole.”
Chun retreated into a foxhole he had dug less than a hundred yards from the main gate. He could hear the low growl of diesel engines growing louder as the trucks approached, seeming to gain aural dominance over the high-pitched wail of the sirens.
Â
Â
THE WRECKAGE of the double gates lay stacked like toppled dominos; the coils of razor wire were trapped beneath the chain-link mesh and flattened by the escaping truck. The driver of the lead truck in pursuit accelerated, building speed to climb over the tangle of metal. So intent was he on guiding his rig over the debris that he never saw the rocket-propelled grenade racing toward his truck grille.
The RPG round exploded on contact, stripping the hood and fenders from the front of the truck and tearing the engine from its mounts. The driver and the soldier seated beside him died instantly, their bodies torn by shards of metal and glass. The shock of the blast ripped through the undercarriage, cracking open the fuel tank and triggering a secondary explosion that separated the body of the truck from the frame. Though protected by the cab from the initial detonation, the men in the back of the truck were incinerated by the second blast.
Liu's driver veered from the flaming wreck, piloting the truck through a turn nearly sharp enough to roll the heavy rig on its side. Shrapnel from the double blast rained down like blackened hail, and the air was choked with the acrid smell of burning rubber and plastic. Fuel from the ruptured tank spread out on the ground, flames impatiently transforming every ounce of the liquid into heat, light, and smoke.
The second truck stopped a safe distance from what remained of the first, the driver's hands fused, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel. The man was almost hyperventilating, his heart leaping inside
his chest. Any closer to the lead truck and they too would have been engulfed in the conflagration. Liu unbuckled the shoulder harness and stepped out of the cab, leaving the driver to recover alone.
Over the roaring fire and the unrelenting siren, came the sound of another explosion ripping through the air. A thick black cloud rose from the opposite side of the prison, and Liu knew the brickyard had also been struck. There were only two roads out of Chifeng Prison, and Liu envisioned a burning semi and several tons of bricks now blocking the second.
“
Cao,
” Liu cursed, the profanity flowing from his mouth in a slow hiss of breath.
30
“Wake them up!” Roxanne Tao shouted.
She knelt between body bags, her jacket folded into a pillow beneath Kilkenny's head, the aged Yin's head cradled in her lap. Both men looked cadaverous, their lips and fingernails tinged blue with hypoxia. The ride out of the prison was jolting, and she had tried to protect the two unconscious passengers from injury.
“Pull up their shirts,” Chuck Jing said as he ripped open his med kit.
Tao rolled Yin's loose-fitting top up to his armpits, exposing a hairless chest of smooth white skin stretched taut over a rib cage so clearly articulated that the poorly set breaks in Yin's bones were unmistakable.
“Jeez, they really gave him a beating,” Paul Sung said, catching sight of the mottled bruising and lash strokes on Kilkenny's torso.
“I'll take a look at those in a sec,” Jing promised. “Who first?”
“Yin,” Tao answered. “At his age, he shouldn't be kept under any longer than necessary.
Jing swabbed Yin's chest with Betadine, the antiseptic a bright shock of color against the bleached canvas of skin. He thrust a long syringe into the concave valley between a pair of bony ribs into the man's heart and pushed down on the plunger. The synthetic adrenaline poured into the imperceptibly beating cardiac muscle as the medic worked to initiate a strong, steady heart rhythm. Yin's body suddenly tensed, his back arching. His eyes bulged, and his first panicked breaths came in rapid gasps, as if he were a drowning man clawing to the surface for air. Stimulant delivered, Jing retracted the needle and pressed a sterile dressing over the tiny wound.
Gradually, Yin's breathing and heart rate returned to normal. He blinked several times, squinting, his eyes not accustomed to light.
“These should help, sir,” Jing said, slipping a pair of wraparound
sunglasses from his med kit onto Yin's face. Before leaving the States, Jing had consulted with doctors who treated POWs from the Vietnam War about the needs of patients long deprived of light.
Now Jing pressed a stethoscope against Yin's chest, listening for any sign of a dangerously irregular rhythm and found none.
“How do you feel?” Tao asked in Mandarin.
Yin looked toward the comforting voice, then reached up and touched Tao's face.
“Like someone who has been reborn from darkness and pain into the light.”
“Do you know where you are?” Jing asked.
“Outside the walls of Chifeng Prison,” Yin replied.
“Sounds lucid to me. Now for our other escapee.”
Jing plunged a second syringe into Kilkenny's chest. Kilkenny bolted upright as an energized flow of blood raced through his body. His skin felt prickly, each nerve hammered by the throbbing that pulsed through even the tiniest capillaries.
“Sitârep” Kilkenny gasped, his breathing ragged, asking for a situation report.
“The execution went fine,” Tao replied, “but things got a little crazy after that.”
Kilkenny glanced at the frail man whose head lay in Tao's lap. “He okay?”
“Near as I can tell, he's coming around nicely,” Jing replied. “Just a little spent by the zapper.”
Kilkenny nodded. “I haven't felt this hungover sinceâ” His words trailed off as he recalled his last brutal morning-after.
“You are the one who spoke with me last night, yes?” Yin asked in English.
“I am,” Kilkenny replied.
Yin smiled. “That is the answer I always expected to hear upon my release from prison, though not to that question.”
“What was the question you thought you'd be asking?”
“The one Moses asked the burning bush on Sinai,” Yin replied. He changed the subject. “How did you create the illusion of our deaths?”
“Better living through technology.” Kilkenny grinned.
“The hoods we placed over your heads,” Tao explained, “contained a pouch of fake blood and a squib charge. That was to give the illusion that you'd been shot, because the pistol I used was packed with electronics instead of bullets. You both received a jolt to your nervous systems near the base of your brains that suppressed your breathing and heartbeat, simulating death.”
“I still think a fake lethal injection would have hurt less than zapping the back of my skull,” Kilkenny groused.
“That may be,” Tao replied, “but it wouldn't have worked without the right kind of truck, and trucks equipped for lethal injection are hard to come by.”
“Ow!” Kilkenny howled as Jing tended to his wounds.
“I'm sorry about that,” Tao said. “I stopped the guards as quickly as I could.”
“Professional hazard. Just a few new dings for my collection.”
“Judging by what I'm seeing,” Jing offered, “I think you got the whole set now.”
“It sure feels like it. So what happened after you popped me in the back of the head?”
“A man from the Ministry of State Security arrived with orders to execute Bishop Yin,” Tao replied.
“Then it is fortunate you executed me first,” Yin said.
Tao smiled at the bishop's show of gallows humor. “This guy insisted on inspecting the bodiesâ”
“I see where this is going. How'd we do?” Kilkenny asked.
“Not a scratch on our side,” Jing replied, “but we had to take out a few of theirs. Gates's squad covered our exit. No sign of pursuit.”
Yin tensed in Tao's lap, his arms folded and drawn tightly against his chest.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Have you killed to win my freedom?”
“Yes,” Kilkenny replied. “We had hoped deception would be enough, but my team did what was necessary to save their lives and ours.”
“To kill in self-defense is no sin,” Yin said calmly, “but still I grieve for the lives that were lost.”
Tao said, “I got quite the opposite feeling from Liu Shing-Li.”
“Who?” Kilkenny asked.
“The man who was sent to end my life,” Yin answered.
“A soulless monster if I ever met one,” Tao added.
“Oh, Liu has a soul,” Yin corrected her, “but his actions put it at grave risk.”
“Two minutes to swap point,” David Tsui reported from the front seat.
Jing and Sung checked their weapons and reloaded their magazines. Tao traded her stun pistol for a real one and offered another to Kilkenny.
“You up to this?” she asked.
Kilkenny held out his hand and noticed a slight tremor. “I won't win any medals for marksmanship today, but I shouldn't embarrass myself in a fight either.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” Yin asked.
“No,” Kilkenny replied, “but I prefer to err on the side of caution.”
Bob Shen guided the truck through the old industrial district on the northern periphery of Chifeng, an urban landscape of narrow rutted roads and squat, windowless buildings clad in tile roofs and soot-stained masonry. He drove into the open end of a long, single-story warehouse, now an idled facility. A rolling steel door dropped to seal the entry.
Kilkenny heard a voice outside the truck, a man conversing rapid-fire with Shen and Tsui. He glanced at Tao, who was straining to catch both sides of the exchange, for any sign of alarm. Jing and Sung listened too, but both men focused their eyes and weapons on the rear door.
Several questions were asked and answered, then the voices on both sides grew friendly.
“It's our contact,” Tao said, relieved.
“Tsui and I will run a perimeter sweep,” Shen called from the cab. “The rest of you can offload.”
Sung was first out the back of the truck, his assault rifle held at the ready. Jing filled the doorway with his muscled frame. Both men visually swept the warehouse for targets.
A small group of people cautiously approached the truck, men and women of widely varied ages and a few young children. None were armed. Sung and Jing lowered the muzzles of their weapons.
“
Ni hao
,” a young girl with long black hair said, breaking the nervous quiet.
“
Ni hao
,” Sung replied softly. “What is your name?”
Now the center of attention, the girl shyly looked to her mother for permission to answer. The mother nodded.
“Ke Li.”
“How old are you?”
“Six,” she replied, holding up both hands with the correct number of digits extended.
“I have a little boy who is just your age.”
The girl's face brightened and she pointed at the truck. “Is he in there?”
“No, he is far away.”
“Is it true?” asked an old man who stood beside the girl's mother. “Have you freed Bishop Yin?”
“It is,” Yin answered from within the truck.
A nervous energy swept through the people gathered around the truck, a palpable excitement that comes when a fervent prayer is answered.
Jing jumped down from the truck and stepped aside, revealing Yin in the doorway. Awestruck, the people dropped to their knees, hands clasped and heads bowed reverentlyâall but the little girl.
Sung offered an arm for support and helped Yin dismount the truck. Ke Li stared at the disheveled prisoner, a confused look on her face.
“Are you really a priest?” she asked skeptically.
The faces of Ke Li's parents and grandparents blanched, but Yin gazed warmly at the child.
“Yes, my child, I am.”
“But you are so dirty,” Ke Li remarked.
“I know, but like sin, dirt can be washed away.”
Ke Li considered this for a moment, then suddenly remembered something and began patting her shirt. Finding what she was looking
for, she looped a thumb around a thin cord that ran across the back of her neck and fished out a simple wooden cross, which she proudly held out for Yin to see.
“My grandfather made this for me when I was born.” The girl's voice dropped to a whisper. “It's a secret. I have to keep it in a special place or someone will take it away. Do you have one?”
“I did once, long ago. I was not very good at keeping it a secret.”
With the impulsiveness of her age, Ke Li removed her cross and offered it to Yin. “You can use mine until you get a new one.”
Yin beamed at the child's generosity and knelt down to her level. “Will you put it on me?”
Ke Li nodded enthusiastically and slipped the cord loop over Yin's head, her tiny hands brushing the sides of his face. In return, Yin placed his hands on the child's head and whispered a blessing.
Yin stood and, to Kilkenny's eyes, seemed taller. Ke Li scampered back to her mother's proud embrace. Kilkenny didn't understand a word of the exchange, but the imagery could not have been clearer.