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.
‘Sit — rep’ 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 since — ’ 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 bodies — ’
‘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, window-less 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.