They raised up enough to see the road was a luminous white ribbon and soon spotted Chinese soldiers approaching at a brisk march. There were ten soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, led by an infantry captain.
Chiavelli whispered, “How many men in a squad of PLA infantry?”
“I don’t know.”
They had no more time to think about that. Chiavelli took careful aim with the AK-47 and squeezed off a single shot.
The first of the marching soldiers cried out and dropped to the ground, holding his leg and writhing.
At the same time, Thayer held the Beretta in both hands and fired. The bullet struck the road twenty feet in front of the column, sending up a geyser of dirt. The nine soldiers jumped into the undergrowth, dragging their injured comrade with them. Seconds later, they returned a barrage of fire in the general direction of the limousine, but not directly at it.
Chiavelli whispered, “They don’t know where we are yet. They’re firing wild.” A voice barked in Chinese, and the gunshots ceased. Chiavelli and David Thayer waited. Sooner or later the soldiers would have to advance, but the longer they remained hidden, the better. Thayer’s face seemed flushed. Chiavelli had that heightened sense of reality combat always brought. A light sweat covered him. Another bark, and Thayer shuddered.
The nine rose in unison from the brush lining the road on both sides and charged, their moonlit white eyes searching for the enemy, and shooting as they came. Thayer leaned around the rear of the limo and fired three quick shots. His aim was better this time, and a cry of pain from the brush rewarded him. “Maybe we can drive them off,” he exulted, perhaps remembering all the pain of more than fifty years of captivity far from home. The soldiers dove for cover in a panic, leaving the man Thayer had hit trying to crawl from the road on his own. They were as poorly trained as everyone in the service had told Chiavelli to expect.
Obviously, they had no combat experience. He doubted whoever was barking orders would get them to charge again in a hurry. Chiavelli and Thayer stayed down, out of sight, counting the minutes and waiting. Time crawled. Twenty minutes, and still no attack. Good minutes, since they kept the squad away from the Sleeping Buddha. Then Chiavelli caught a silvery flash. Moonlight had reflected off something, perhaps the dial of a wristwatch. He had an uneasy feeling, then a sensation of sound and movement. Suddenly, the bushes seemed to be crawling toward them, not ten yards away. “Fire!” he whispered wildly. “Open fire, Mr. Thayer!
Fire!” His AK-47 on top of the car, he ripped off a long string of bullets as the Beretta screamed with gunshots next to him. But the angle was bad, and they had to stay up on their toes in order to see well enough to aim. Suddenly, two shots exploded into the limo. The hot smell of burned metal singed Chiavelli’s nose. Shots sounded from behind.
Voices shouted in Chinese. Thayer’s skin turned as ghostly white as the moon. “They’re telling us to freeze, drop our weapons and surrender, or they’ll kill us. We can still?” “Absolutely not. Forget it.” He had promised he would keep the president’s father safe, and a return to prison was better than being dead. As long as they both remained alive, he still had a chance of being able to continue to protect him. “We’ve held them a half hour at least. Sometimes a half hour can make all the difference.”
He gave the AK-47 a shove and let it fall on the far side of the limo.
He raised his hands high over his head.
Trembling, David Thayer dropped the Beretta and put his hands on the top of his Mao cap. His few hours of freedom had ended. “Alas,” he whispered.
The eight soldiers in front, supporting their two wounded, rose from the brush and advanced. They picked up the discarded weapons, grinning as two more soldiers appeared behind Thayer and Chiavelli. Apparently, there were twelve men in a PLA infantry squad.
The officer — a captain with his pistol out — stopped in front of them, speaking angrily. Thayer translated, “He’s asking who we are. He’s figured out we’re Americans. He … oh, God.” He glanced at Chiavelli.
“He wants to know whether we’re part of the spy team with Colonel Jon Smith.”
In the valley of the Baoding Crescent, Feng Dun’s surviving gunslingers and soldiers had taken cover and were beginning to return a weak, sporadic fire.
“Cease fire,” Jon told Asgar.
“You’re sure, my friend? Some are still alive and kicking. Shouldn’t we go down and mop up? At least, make sure that monster Feng Dun is dead.
I’m fairly certain I hit him.”
“No! Fan out and search the slopes wherever Li Kuonyi could have hidden but seen what happened. The survivors will run away now.”
“You think—?”
“She and Yu are up there somewhere with the manifest. Let’s find them.”
Asgar gave the order, urging his men to sweep through the vegetation at a dog trot, circling around Feng’s remaining men. “It’s less than an hour until dawn, and that firefight will have been heard halfway to Chongqing.”
“I know.” Jon trotted ahead over the difficult terrain. He looked left and right at the long Uigher line as they searched. He knew their chances were slight, plus time was running out. They had little time to locate Li and Yu, get the manifest, and somehow send it to Washington.
Suddenly, gunfire echoed from less than a hundred yards ahead. Jon wrenched his head around, staring at a spot directly above and to the left of the Sleeping Buddha. Gunfire from an assault rifle — and response from a single pistol.
“Hold it,” Jon called to Asgar. He crouched in the brush.
Asgar raised his hand to stop his fighters and lowered it palm down to tell them to go to ground and be quiet. He whispered, “What do you think, Jon?”
“Feng maybe?”
Asgar grimaced in regret. “We should’ve hied ourselves down to examine the bodies in the valley.”
“There wasn’t time. We had to try to get to Li Kuonyi first.”
“If it’s Feng, it seems we failed.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Motioning his men to move quietly, Asgar joined Jon. Minutes later, the line of Uighers approached a clearing. Asgar signaled to stop at the edge where they could retain cover. Jon nodded to their left. The clearing ended at the cliff above the crescent of carvings, where someone looking down would have a direct view of the valley as well as the slope and walkway in front of the Sleeping Buddha.
“Li Kuonyi could’ve seen everything from there,” Jon said.
Asgar sighed and nodded.
On their right, an assault rifle fired a short burst of three from a towering rock formation, where clusters of large boulders jutted above the trees and brush. It was some fifty yards from the edge of the cliff, overlooking the Buddha valley.
The gunfire was answered by a single pistol shot from a grove of trees closer to the edge, directly in front of where Jon, Asgar, and the Uighers hid. The bullet exploded sharp, deadly stone chips from the rock formation.
“Look,” Asgar said.
Only ten yards from the cluster of rocks, closer to where Jon and the Uighers watched, was a smaller rock group. A large tree had fallen across the boulders, and Jon saw movement behind it. As he studied it, the assault rifle squeezed off another short burst from its higher vantage point, detonating wood splinters from the fallen tree.
A low, mesmerizing voice Jon had hoped never to hear again said in English, “A neat trap, Madame Li. As good as any I’ve seen. Your hired hands killed many of my men, but — unluckily for you — failed to kill me.”
Li Kuonyi, her musical tones as calm as if she were greeting a visitor in her Shanghai living room, spoke from behind the fallen tree, protected from the rear by the rocks. “I also failed to get the money. I expect you have that, which makes me surprised that you returned.” Feng said, “I still need the invoice manifest, and I suspect, dear lady, you’ve run out of ammunition. You should be dead, and I’d have it, except for your friend over there in the trees. I wonder who he could be?”
Asgar whispered, “Why are they speaking English?”
“Damned if I know,” Jon said. “Maybe Feng’s got some men hidden somewhere that he doesn’t want to
