ingenuity meant. That was one of the problems, however. The East—meaning the PAA and sometimes India—had greater manufacturing ability than the rest of the world. The East had also shown the niftiest battlefield hardware in both Alaska and Hawaii.
Paul limped toward a long-bed vehicle, what looked like a big missile carrier. This must be “Blue Swan,” a new kind of missile. Pulling out a digital camera, Paul began taking pictures. The thing was huge.
A shout brought him around.
He spied Maria on the lip of the road. She waved, and Paul realized the last burning vehicles illuminated him. It showed, at least, that the two surviving Chinese hadn’t doubled back. Only one of the original six guerillas stood with Maria. The two of them began down the road toward him.
Paul heard approaching helicopters then, a loud whomp-whomp sound. Those couldn’t be the Air Force, at least not the American Air Force.
Biting his lower lip with indecision, Paul stood beside the damaged missile carrier for three seconds. Then he bolted toward the carrier bed. Despite his ankle, he climbed the flatbed and took close-up shots of the crumpled nosecone, the warhead. Fluids leaked from it. He poured water out of a canteen and collected some of the warhead fluid. He also aimed the camera at Chinese characters on the warhead, clicking like mad.
Maria’s shout brought him around. She cupped her hands, yelling, “The White Tigers are coming!” Then she pointed up into the air.
Paul needed the satellite phone. Did America have any more air-fighting drones here? What was he supposed to do now?
Then Paul received the greatest shock of the night. He looked up sharply as he heard a faint sound. The strangest helicopter he’d ever seen hovered about sixty feet above him. It had four rotors at four equidistant points. Did it have a cloaking device? Or had it moved soundlessly? He heard it now, a whispering noise. This was incredible.
It dropped lower so he could see an undercarriage bay door open. A rope ladder slithered down toward him.
The CIA officer hadn’t said anything about this. Was he supposed to climb up into the helicopter?
The rope ladder almost struck his shoulder the first time. The craft maneuvered into a better position and now the ladder touched his shoulder. Paul didn’t need any more invitation. He grabbed rope, hoisted up and got a foot onto a rung. He climbed toward the bay door. It took him a second to realize that as he climbed the craft lifted higher.
“What about Maria?” he shouted.
No one poked a head out of the bay door to look down and answer. There was only the whistling wind and the dropping ground. It was too late to let go, so Paul kept climbing. He looked down and saw Maria staring at him. She turned to the guerilla. They talked, and they ran back up the road.
Paul saw the first enemy helicopter. It was small and black, with a machine gunner sitting with his weapon to the side. The vehicle belonged to the White Tigers. Paul knew because he’d seen these in Hawaii hunting American commandos.
A second helo appeared. The machine gunners didn’t blaze at Maria. She kept sprinting for safety as the guerilla beside her stopped, knelt and aimed his assault rifle at a helo. The two gunners opened up then. One of them at least proved himself a marksman. The guerilla pitched violently to the ground, riddled with exploding bullets as his body turned into gory ruin.
Paul shuddered and he kept climbing. He stopped just before reaching the bay door, because he spied Chinese characters painted on the bottom of this machine.
He went cold inside until he wondered if Americans had painted that on the drone in order to fool the enemy.
Paul stared at the ground. It was a long drop. The wind whistled past his face, making his eyes water. It wasn’t hot anymore, but getting cold.
The rope ladder coiled in fast, a roller whizzing with automated speed. His last sight was a concussion grenade knocking Maria off her feet. Then the hatch shut with a clang and a light appeared. Paul spied three small seats and little else, no windows, no speakers, just walls. He secured himself in a seat, buckling in. Either this was a clever enemy trick or the newest American extraction drone. The idea of waiting to find out made Paul’s gut seethe.
“How about telling me what’s going on?” he said in the cramped area.
No one answered.
Scowling, Paul folded his arms and tried to make himself comfortable. It was impossible. He kept thinking about Maria Valdez in the hands of Chinese Intelligence.
-2-
The Darkness
Captain Wei sat in his office, smoking an American cigarette as he stared into space. The smoke curled from the glowing tip, adding to the office’s fumes. As he smoked, Wei blanked his mind, trying not to think about anything.
He was an interrogator for
Wei was a small man with large ears and careworn lines on his face. He’d practiced his trade for uncounted years. He wore the customary brown uniform with red belts and an armband with a three-pronged lightning bolt.
A buzzer on the littered desk sounded. Captain Wei checked his cell phone and sighed. His ten minutes of solitude was over. He sucked on the cigarette a last time, inhaling deeply. The American cigarettes were good. He exhaled while mashing the cigarette into an overflowing ashtray.
He opened a drawer and reached to the back, unhooking a hidden container. He opened it, staring at five blue pills. It was going to be a long interrogation, and according to the information he had received, Maria Valdez was a tough-minded partisan. Captain Wei sighed, shaking his head. He was weary beyond endurance with his tasks. Yes, he was good at it, perhaps the best in Mexico. But it was so tedious and predictable. Worse, his tasks had begun to bother him. This mutilation of flesh and twisting a person’s psyche, it hurt the soul—
Wei had been reaching for a pill. Now, his hand froze. Did humans possess souls? It was a preposterous notion. Humans were like any other animal, a mass of biological tissue with electrical nerve endings, a meat-sack of noxious fumes. People excreted, vomited, sweated and urinated, a wretched pile of filth that groveled under too much pain. Everyone broke. It used to be intriguing figuring out how to do it.
“No,” Wei whispered. His dark eyes had been reflective. Now the reptilian look appeared, revealing him as the predator he was.
The tips of his thumb and forefinger pinched a blue pill. He deposited the pill onto the tip of his tongue, using his tongue to roll the pill back. He gulped, swallowing. A tiny smile played on the edges of mouth. Soon, the drug would numb the pestering qualms that had become stronger this last year. One patient had told him these qualms were his conscience. As he aged—the patient had said—he must realize the end of this existence was much nearer than, say, seven years ago.
“Seven?” Wei had snapped. He’d wanted to know why the patient had picked the number seven. Seven years ago, he’d interrogated Henry Wu, who had been an insignificant worm, a former American caught on video during a Chinese food riot. It had been then that the first glimmer of… unease, yes, unease had begun with his various interrogations. Seven years ago, Wei had increased the number of cigarettes he smoked and the number of whiskey
