manufacturing for laptops and televisions and cars, China was still growing. But no chip company would hire a sixteen-year-old boy with eight fingers and a seventh-grade education. For the low-end jobs that were left, in construction and basic laboring, Jordan was competing with men who were older and stronger than he. The cop who’d rousted him was right. Guangzhou had too many migrants.
So Jordan joined the endless stream of workers who trudged between construction sites and run down factories, offering their labor for a few yuan a day. Some days he found work, and on those nights he slept with his belly full. But even in the last few weeks the jobs had gotten scarcer, the crowds outside the factories bigger. He’d worked only three times in the last week. He’d spent his money as carefully as he could. He hadn’t permitted himself a bottle of Coke, his favorite treat, in months. Even so, he was down to his last twenty yuan — less than three dollars — hidden in the brim of his Bulls hat. He didn’t want to spend those two crumpled ten-yuan bills, didn’t want to be left with nothing. So he was holding on to them, even though he felt faint with hunger and had begun to hear the voice of his father in his head telling him to eat.
Maybe tomorrow he could convince a restaurant to let him wash dishes in return for some spoiled vegetables or day-old fish. Yes, tomorrow he’d try the restaurants. He closed his eyes and thought of steaming hot soup, thick with dumplings, as his mother had made during the good years. He took another sip of the Red Star and drifted off to sleep.
HE OPENED HIS EYES to see two men looking curiously at him. He scrambled up, keeping his back to the pylon. He had a knife in his bag, a cheap switchblade that had once been his dad’s.
But the men didn’t seem threatening. They were much older than he was, and their faces were weary. One was the thinnest man Jordan had ever seen. The other was fat and held a bottle of Red Star. As Jordan looked at him, he sat down slowly. Jordan couldn’t tell if he had meant to sit or just given up on standing.
“So you’ve found the Hotel Guangzhou,” the thin man said. He laughed, a rasping laugh that became a hacking cough that shook his body. Jordan’s mother had coughed that way a few months before she died. When the cough stopped, the man pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He put one in his mouth. “Want a cigarette, boy?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“May as well start. You’ll die faster. Less time to suffer.” The man laughed and tossed him the pack and the lighter. Jordan looked at the cigarettes. Basketball players didn’t smoke, he was sure.
“Try one,” the man said. “You’ll feel less hungry.”
At that, Jordan put the cigarette to his lips. His hand trembled as he lit it. The sour smoke filled his mouth and he coughed.
“Easy, boy. A little at a time to start.”
Jordan took a small puff and choked the smoke into his lungs. His brain seemed to come alive. The feeling wasn’t entirely pleasant, but he hadn’t felt so awake in weeks. He took a longer drag.
“Not so much, boy, or you’ll regret it.”
Too late. Nausea filled him. He slumped against the pylon. But he held on to the cigarette, and when the feeling passed he took another, more tentative puff. This time he felt better. And the man was right. His hunger was gone. “It works.”
The thin man rubbed his hands together. “Yu, I’ve gotten him hooked. My good deed for the day.” He laughed his awful hacking laugh. A moment later, Yu giggled drunkenly back, a high-pitched sound that didn’t fit his heavy body.
The thin man sat beside Jordan, who flinched. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not one of those. My name’s Song. What’s yours?”
“Jiang,” Jordan said.
“Where do you come from, Jiang?”
“Sichuan Province. I came here to work.”
“Of course you did. If only you’d come last year, or the year before that — Well, anyway.” Song braced a hand on the ground and stood, slowly unfolding his skinny limbs. Watching him made Jordan smile. Song moved like a puppet whose strings had gotten tangled.
“Do you like basketball?” Jordan said. He suddenly very much wanted Song to stay and talk. The skinny old man was the first person who’d treated him with any kindness in months.
“Sure. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you like, we can look for work together tomorrow,” Song said. “We may not find any, but at least Yu and I can show you the city. You see what a success we’ve made here.” He kicked ineffectually at Yu, who lay on his side with his eyes closed. “Don’t you want your blanket, fat pig?” But Yu simply rolled away.
“Good night, Jiang.”
“Good night, Master Song.”
And Song laughed again, so hard that he had to lean against a concrete pylon to stay upright. “Master… master…”
Jordan closed his eyes and listened to Song’s hacking. Life had to get better, he thought. It could hardly get worse. He sipped his bottle of Red Star until sleep took him. And as he finally drifted off, he had no way of imagining that soon enough he would provoke a crisis whose repercussions would echo around the world.
17
THE FLASHLIGHT FLICKED OFF and in the dark the shots ricocheted past Wells like a jackhammer gone mad. Wells pressed his head down, brushing his lips against the stone and dirt, as shards of rock rained down on him.
The pace of firing slowed and Wells lifted his head. “Stop!” he yelled in his perfect Arabic. “Stop! It’s Mohammed! Don’t shoot!”
Silence. Then another fusillade of shots. For now the darkness and the tunnel were protecting him, making it hard for the Russians to get a bead on him. Only his head and shoulders were visible, making him a very narrow target. They would need a perfect lucky shot to get him. But if they kept shooting from twenty yards out, they’d get that shot eventually. Or they might roll a grenade his way — though blowing up the tunnel would block their only sure escape route.
The shooting stopped. “Mohammed?” a man shouted.
“Mohammed, brother of Ahmed.”
“Brother of Ahmed?” The Arabic was rusty, Russian-accented.
“Brother of Ahmed!” Wells yelled. He only needed to distract them for a few seconds. “I know these tunnels. I can save us.” Wells braced his right hand, the one holding his Makarov, against the tunnel. A surge of pain ripped through his damaged shoulder and he gritted his teeth.
With his left hand, Wells reached for his flash-bang grenades. He still intended to take at least one of these men alive. He unhooked the flash-bangs and wriggled his left arm forward until the grenades were in front of him. He braced his right hand, the one holding the Makarov, against the side of the tunnel.
“Yes, my Russian brothers. I know these tunnels. The path to the left leads—”
“Wait — speak slowly—” the man at the other end called in his broken Arabic.
“
Wells had heard enough Russian during his days in Chechnya to know what that meant.
“
He chattered in Arabic down the tunnel. “You must know Ahmed. He wears his robe loose but his shorts tight. Men love him, though sheep fear him—” For the second time in an hour, the thrill of combat filled Wells. Crackheads must feel this elation when they put flame to pipe.
“
