Jon kicked himself for saying that earlier. Damn. “State Department.”
“Really?” She seemed to study him, as if she knew what a State agent looked like. Maybe she did.
Asgar’s voice was harsh. “Ahead!”
Jon saw the uniforms. A police car blocked half the road. It was a checkpoint.
“Toktufan, in back again!” Asgar ordered.
Toktufan slid out of the front of the slow-moving Land Rover and squeezed in among the others in the rear once more. The Land Rover inched ahead in a snakelike line of pickups, old cars, and bicycles. At the head of the line, drivers and cyclists held up papers. The officer in charge was leaning sleepily back against his car, yawning. Every now and then, he barked an order.
The policemen, however, were busy. They checked identifications and lifted canvases covering loads, whether small or large. When the Land Rover reached the front, the sleepy officer did a double take. He straightened alertly and snapped an order.
The two patrolmen gaped at the eight packed into the Rover. One scanned the papers held out by Alani and Asgar as the second grinned, entertained. The officer barked again, marched forward, and took the papers. He studied them and peered up at Asgar and Alani. Alani smiled.
A winning, almost flirtatious smile this time. The officer blinked and stared.
Jon scrunched low to hide his height and build, and the others pressed closer. One of the policemen trained his light across all their faces and said something in Han that included the word Uigher.
The officer, still gazing at Alani, nodded and snapped another order.
The policemen turned their attention to the next two cyclists in line.
The officer smiled, nodded to Alani, and waved them on.
As Asgar drove away, Jon resisted the urge to look back. Everyone breathed deeply, relieved. The night enclosed the Land Rover with anonymity, and they smiled and whispered among themselves.
But Jon did not smile or whisper. He asked Alani, “Are checkpoints like that common?”
“Sometimes in the city, not usually in rural areas.”
“They’ve been alerted by the Public Security Bureau to look for someone.”
Asgar nodded. “But not for Uighers.”
“An American like me,” Jon agreed.
“It means they don’t know where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re going to do next. If they did, they’d be swarming the coast right now.”
“They’re obviously thinking I could be trying to leave, or they wouldn’t have alerted the police so far from Shanghai.”
“That’d be true for any agent whose cover was shattered.”
Jon liked none of it. Someone in Public Security suspected he would call for help so had ordered the coastal area around Shanghai on alert.
Patrol boats and fighters might be prepared to scramble, too. The patrol boats did not worry him particularly. Jets were another matter.
But he soon had something else to think about. Toktufan leaned forward, spoke in Uigher, and gestured eagerly to the left, away from the sea.
Through the press of bodies and heads, Jon caught a glimpse of a narrow building high on the top of an inland hill. Its roof lines were up-curved, in the silhouette of a Chinese pagoda. Excitement rippled through the group.
With a spin of the wheel, Asgar drove the Land Rover abruptly off toward the ocean. The Rover rattled down into a gully hidden from the road.
Asgar pulled under the cover of a willow and parked. The sudden quiet of the vehicle made all of them sit still a moment, appreciating it. Shaken by the long, bone-jarring ride, everyone crawled stiffly out and crouched in a circle around Asgar and Toktufan. Trees and bushes surrounded them.
Asgar did the talking in Uigher, with Toktufan throwing in comments and pointing in various directions in the waning moonlight. When they finished, one of the women stood up and vanished among the growth, heading back toward the road above the gully.
Alani turned to Jon. “Asgar sent Fatima to the pagoda with an electric lantern and a shielding sleeve. She’ll put it in a window embrasure at the top, with the shield protecting it from being seen from land.” She nodded in the opposite direction, toward the water. “The beach is about five hundred meters in a straight line from the pagoda. It’s normally deserted, especially at this hour, but there are those who like to fish or crab at night. There’s also the chance the police could be watching through night-vision binoculars.”
“Then we should avoid the beach as long as possible.”
She nodded. “We’re armed. We’ll go with you as soon as we see the light in the pagoda.”
The group stayed together, hunched down in the thick growth, tall trees rising and arching toward an imaginary ceiling overhead. Every second seemed like a minute, every minute an hour. The low whispering from the Uighers was subdued, concerned, and deadly serious. Alani crouched beside him in silence, busy with her thoughts.
A sudden, distant point of light appeared high in the night sky. Asgar materialized among them. He spoke quickly in Uigher and turned to Jon.
“Time to move, Jon. I’m not completely certain, but I believe I heard someone near the road while I was crossing. I saw nothing, so I hope I’m wrong. No reason to take chances. We don’t know how far offshore your people are, or if they’re here at all. Still, we’d best hurry.”
“It’s time, so they’re here,” Jon assured him.
Toktufan trotted in the lead, snaking his way through the brush and trees like a phantom. The rest of the Uighers were right behind, weapons in hand. Jon followed with his Beretta ready, while Asgar and Alani brought up the rear. The hushed procession seemed to float among the grasses, wraiths no more substantial than the fog.
At last, Jon heard the splash of breaking waves. A salty breeze stung his face. The trees and brush reached to a low ridge of tufted grass that dropped off perhaps four feet to a narrow, rocky little beach. Jon and the Uighers squatted inside the edge of trees to wait. The moon was nearly down over the black sea, projecting a silvery path toward the horizon. Tall trees swayed, leaves rustling eerily.
There was a flash of light out at sea. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then darkness again — and an abrupt sound. A stumble. A grunt. An angry oath.
“Under the bank!” Jon whispered urgently and rolled.
At the same time, Alani shouted in Uigher.
They slid and dove into the cover of the bank at the edge of the beach nearly simultaneously with a fusillade that exploded in an arc from deep among the trees. The bullets burst into the sand and rained into the surf.
“Wait until you see them!” Jon yelled over the din.
Asgar repeated it for the Uighers. No one panicked. They waited with their backs to the sea, calm, with a sense of cold inevitability.
Another fusillade erupted, and Jon saw movement deep among the trees to his left. He fired. A distant cry. He had hit one, whoever they were.
Someone else fired, and then a third shot. There were no cries, no crashing through the undergrowth.
Asgar cursed in Uigher and yelled angrily.
A third volley thundered from ahead, but weaker this time, ragged, and Jon saw to his left that shadows were running from the trees and out into the open swath of tall grass before the beach.
“They’re outflanking us!”
Alani repeated his warning, and Jon wondered — were these the same people who had attacked him and Mondragon on Liuchiu Island and then at Yu Yongfu’s mansion? Feng Dun once more, using his favorite tactic?
He had no time to analyze further. No matter who they were, they outnumbered the Uighers, and they were closing in. Already Jon could see more movement, visible now, much nearer the front line of trees. So could the Uighers, who opened a careful, lethal fire, sending the approaching attackers to ground.
Asgar crouched beside him. His breath was hot and worried in Jon’s ear.
“We can hold them for a time, but when those others up the beach move in, they’ll trap us if we don’t clear out of here soon.”
