***
Michael and Kate stepped off West Street and onto an ancient stone bridge gracefully arched over the dark water of a canal. Yangshuo was an old town, rich in history, but Michael’s attention was more squarely focused on Kate than the surroundings. Part of it was just good common sense. He still didn’t know the woman and he wasn’t ready to trust her. But the bigger part was that latent energy he felt growing between them. He had felt it as he held her down on the cold metal floor of the airplane and he felt it here in the South China night. It was a dangerous energy, a force that if not properly harnessed, might just kill him.
It was this sobering thought that grounded Michael. Kate looked up at him as if she sensed the change in his mood. They were nearly halfway across the bridge now, the newly risen yellow moon reflecting off the swift moving water below. Five men pushing two large vegetable carts approached from the other end of the bridge. They wore wide-brimmed straw farmer’s hats on their heads and worn flip-flops on their feet. The bulbous yellow fruit in their carts emitted a sweet nearly overpowering odor that Michael recognized from his trip through the Shenzhen market the day before. Durian. According to his guidebook, the Chinese called it the god of all fruit. What caught Michael’s attention, however, was not the pungence of their cargo, nor the wear of their shoes, but a glint off the ear of one of the farmers.
Michael wasn’t sure if it was the cart or the farmer that moved first, but whichever it was, several hundred pounds of freshly harvested fruit headed down the bridge straight for them. Michael instantly pushed Kate out of the cart’s way to the side of the bridge, the first of the men brandishing a sickle blade. Time seemed to slow in that moment. Michael recognized the arced blade as being about thirteen inches long, similar to what he had seen the farmers use in the fields, but unlike those, this one shone with a finely honed razor edge. The blade brought Michael back nine long years to the mountain mine in Peru where his abductors had held him.
The kidnappers hadn’t said what they wanted. But when they took out the blade and the video camera, it soon became apparent that it wasn’t him. No, Michael was the leverage, not the prize. Even he could see that. They drew blood that day. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make a point on camera. Then they gave him a rag for a bandage and told him to clean up. But where was his father? When was his dad going to save the day?
The very thought of his father rocketed Michael back to the here and now. He involuntarily touched the lone raised scar his kidnappers had left him behind his ear. He was no longer seventeen and he was well aware that if anybody was going to save the day, it was going to have to be him. But he was also aware that a close quarter knife fight involved a serious risk of being cut, something he didn’t want and couldn’t afford, even if it meant subduing his attacker. No, what he needed was an exit strategy because a quick glance from left to right informed him that all five men were closing in fast.
The first cart hit the stone balustrade just below them, while the second impacted above. The intended effect seemed to be to box them in and it worked like a charm. It was fight or flight time and Kate was ready to fight. Michael could see it in her eyes. What worried him now was her gun. Michael knew she could probably get several shots off before their sickle wielding attacker got any closer, but it wouldn’t do either of them any good if at the end of the day they were left with a bridge full of bloody men, a handful of witnesses, and the local cops investigating the crime.
The farmer with the sickle slashed. Michael pivoted to the side and sucked in his abdomen handily escaping the blade, but the largest of the farmers now blocked all exit. The big farmer reached out with a single straight arm, drilling Michael squarely between the shoulder blades. A third assailant pawed at Michael’s pockets causing an avalanche of coins to bounce off the bridge at his feet. Michael instinctively shielded Kate with his body while looking for an opening. The farmer with the blade came in for a second jab. Michael sidestepped away, but there was still nowhere to go; the carts blocked their escape from either side.
In the time it took the farmer to ready himself for another slash, Michael faked with a front kick then let go with a roundhouse to the man’s solar plexus. The fake served to put the farmer off guard and Michael’s second kick connected with an audible crack. So far so good. Instantly, he pulled back to deliver a swift sidekick to the man’s kneecaps. Once his attacker buckled, he would follow it up by a jab to the throat which would give him the requisite millisecond to take hold of his wrist and disarm him. Then he could move on to the others, providing Kate hadn’t already shot them, of course. Except something was off. His assailant wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was staring vacantly down the bridge.
“Michael!” Kate called out.
And Michael saw what all the fuss was about. A vehicle raced toward them. It was moving so quickly that all five of their assailants had already leapt away. True, it was traveling without its headlights, nearly invisible in the blackness, but the whine of its engine was now so loud Michael had no idea how he could have missed it. Adrenalin, he thought. Adrenalin and the task at hand.
In that instant Michael and Kate leapt up onto the stone balustrade. A split second later they were both caught in the sudden glare of a single headlight as the fruit carts flew, durian cascading down like rotten rain. Michael noted that their assailants had disappeared into the darkness. Instead of looking into the eyes of five angry farmers he was now facing down the speeding vehicle which had caused the crash. It was a compact three-wheeled truck, a Chinese cross between a pickup and a motorized tricycle and its snout-like front end was thoroughly flattened by the impact, radiator belching steam into the blackness. Michael looked to Kate who seemed more shaken by this turn of events than she had been by the melee which preceded it. He noted that she had chosen this juncture to draw her Glock, aiming it squarely through the smashed driver’s side window.
“Seven-seven-seven my ass,” a disgruntled voice said from within the vehicle.
Kate kept her finger steady on the trigger.
“It was seven-seven-four and I had to dig through three editions to get that.”
The man in the truck poked his head past the deployed airbag and out the window, revealing his gray ponytail. It was Ted at the wheel. Kate shot Michael a glance.
“Ted,” Michael said.
“Always happy to serve.”
“How did you find us?”
“You called me, remember?”
“No. Here,” Michael said. “How did you find us here?”
“A thanks would suffice. But since you ask, I spotted you on West Street and followed you up through the crowd. Looks like you’re lucky I did too.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Kate said, lowering her weapon to her side.
“You’re telling me,” Ted said. “Now holster that thing and let’s get the hell out of here.”
* * *
Four hundred yards away, safely ensconced in his makeshift command post, MSS Captain Zu Huang expressed his displeasure with a sharp look toward his subordinates. Though the farmer peasant cover had worked well, the violence, in Huang’s opinion, had been overplayed. A simple threat, accompanied by a hip check, or a bump to the shoulder would have been more than ample to plant the device. After all, they had found the American. Their objective now wasn’t to scare him away, it was simply to follow. To wait and follow and let the People’s Republic’s superior technology sing.