been recruited by the MSS in one capacity or another. Among the Elite Forces, even the junior officers also held ranks in the intelligence agency, answering to two masters. Jia had been prepared to obey Governor Shao if Shao met him with the appropriate codes. Instead, it looked as if the compartmentalized nature of the MSS had worked against itself. Jia couldn’t be sure when Shao or Zheng joined the Second Department forces moving against him, but, after the door was smashed in, the best case scenario would have been if General Zheng arrived late, trying to stop the governor from interfering. That was why Jia waited — but Zheng was not part of the conspiracy.
Before the Second Department troops did irreparable damage to his computers, Jia uttered one sentence to the general. “The autumn rain is cold and sweet,” he said.
“Stop!” Zheng yelled.
His troops paused. One of Jia’s display screens lay shattered on the floor. Sergeant Bu clutched a laptop in his hands, and another man had grabbed a handful of cables, yet no more harm was done.
Governor Shao’s brown face jumped with fear as Jia and Zheng stared at each other. “I represent the Communist Party!” Shao said. The old man recognized Jia’s non sequi tur as an MSS directive. He knew what was happening, but he fought it anyway. “I am the governor! You will obey my orders!”
Shao’s bodyguards lifted their rifles only to find half a dozen submachine guns aimed at them. The Second Department troops had reacted with equal speed, and they outnumbered Shao’s bodyguards more than three to one.
“Don‘t,” Dongmei whispered to both sides. Her voice was an odd, lilting counterpoint to the men’s voices.
“Hold your fire,” Zheng said.
“Obey me!” Shao screamed, stabbing his finger at the bank of electronics again. “Shut it down!”
Zheng said, “The rains give way to winter.”
“But winter must always come before the spring,” Jia said, completing the protocol.
The crowded room was still. The laptop in Bu’s hands beeped once, and, on the floor, Yi brought his palm to his bleeding cheek. Somewhere, a headset murmured.
Zheng turned suddenly on the governor. “Take him alive,” Zheng said, indicating Shao — but he dismissed the governor’s bodyguards with the same curt, slicing motion of his hand.
Shao’s men yelled as the submachine guns blazed. One fired his rifle into the knot of black-uniformed troops, toppling three of them. Then it was over. Zheng’s troops restrained Shao as others knelt to tend to the wounded and killed. One soldier screamed and screamed, clutching at the splintered bone shoved through his elbow.
In the swarm of black uniforms, Jia swung on one man in particular. Sergeant Bu had dropped the laptop to bring his own weapon to bear, running forward to shield General Zheng. “Be careful!” Jia shouted. Bu had charged right to the edge of the bodyguard’s gunfire, and Jia’s feelings turned heartsick at the sight of Bu missing a bullet by inches.
Then he realized the danger in showing his emotions.
“You clumsy bastard, I’ll put you in the labor camps if you broke that laptop!” Jia said, finding another reason to berate the other man. Was he overdoing it? No. All of them were shaken, and most of their attention was on the screaming soldier or Governor Shao. “What is your name?” Jia shouted.
“Sir, my duty is to the general,” Bu said, stupidly prolonging the exchange.
Jia almost struck him. He even raised his fist. But in Bu’s dark eyes, Jia saw unmistakable affection and distress. Bu’s heart had also been betrayed by the close-quarters gunfire. In fact, Jia wondered if Bu hadn’t run to protect General Zheng but to save
Jia turned from his lover, snapping orders to his squad. “Back to your stations. Confirm all contacts. Lieutenant Cheng, you may need to hand your aircraft off to the others if your station is down.”
“Assist them,” Zheng said, directing Bu and two more of his soldiers away from the bloody floor. “Colonel, what else can I do? We need to bring our forces to full alert. You must have other signals to send, too.”
“Sir. Yes, sir. We’ll give those orders now,” Jia said. “With your permission, please allow me to reestablish command over our attacks before I explain.”
“Yes,” Zheng said.
Jia saluted again, admiring Dongmei’s self-control as the Second Department troops helped them reorganize their electronics. She had never seen combat before. Her chest rose and fell against her uniform as she laid one slender hand over her breast, trying to calm herself… but it was the lines of Bu’s shoulders and narrow hips that distracted Jia’s gaze from his team.
The other man truly cared for him. Jia was surprised. He’d thought their relationship was merely convenient. As far as he knew, there was no one else like the two of them in Los Angeles. It had been a pleasure to find Bu Xiaowen even though Jia was ashamed of what they did together. Now he was shamed in a different way to think he’d been rejecting the possibility of something more meaningful. Fortunately, there was no time to brood.
“Colonel, I’ve lost my connection with our UAVs,” Yi reported, and Huojin said, “Sir, there are more enemy fighters scrambling out of Wyoming.”
“My systems are down, sir,” Dongmei said, tapping swiftly at her laptop.
“Have our aircraft hit their targets yet?” Jia asked as he sat down at his own station. It was past time to send new commands to their orbital cameras, and he was worried about Yi’s unmanned aerial vehicles. His team wasn’t running those UAVs directly. Jia didn’t have the manpower. “Call the Air Force units controlling your drones,” he said to Yi.
As he spoke, Jia dared another glance at Bu, who lingered nearby, sorting out the last of the cables on the floor. Usually it had been days at a time before the two of them found an opportunity to talk privately, even a few words here and there. These bunkers were overcrowded. They were on duty at different times. Their physical liaisons had been even rarer, and Jia wondered when the chance would come again.
Then he saw General Zheng watching his eyes.
If ever there was a nation that was primed to endure a holocaust and move against its rivals, it was twenty- first-century China. Even before the end of the world, they were a country of desperate young men.
In the late 1970s, the Communist Party initiated their historic population control laws, the so-called One Child policy. Although widely opposed, the laws had prevented more than 420 million births. One couple, one baby. It was the only way to ensure better education and health care and to revolutionize the People’s Republic from a rural, peasant state into a technological force. Their population had skyrocketed after World War II, leaving the world’s largest nation in danger of collapsing from within. Merely keeping everyone housed and fed became their greatest industry, which was the main reason why they lagged behind other developed countries in the space race, the nuclear race, and in modernizing their armies — but forty years later, the law had changed the People’s Republic in unforeseen ways. Forced abortions and sterilizations were not uncommon as local authorities pursued the severe birth quotas set by Beijing. Many families also elected to abort healthy female fetuses, swayed by a preference for male heirs to carry on their name, their businesses, or their place in society. Girls were subject to infanticide and abandonment.
In most areas there had been many, many more young men than women, sometimes by a ratio as steep as five to one. Gay women especially were ostracized because lesbians might rob China of their wombs. Men faced an enormous pressure to avoid failing their ancestors.
Growing up, Jia Yuanjun didn’t understand there was anything wrong with him. In fact, he noticed he was better than average. He wasn’t weakened by a certain anxiety that affected the other boys in their male-only classes. He was comfortable without girls. They were not. So while the others bickered, looking for something they couldn’t find, Jia was able to focus instead on his studies and his teachers.
His career in the People’s Liberation Army was respectable and covered his basic needs, allowing him to send his small wages home to his parents. A star lieutenant, Jia was approached in his early twenties by the MSS. The intelligence agencies were always looking to recruit overachievers, but by then he’d realized he had a terrible secret. The furtive trysts that so many of his school-age peers engaged in, not only in search of physical relief but also to develop emotional connections, had also been full of dominance games and menace. Boys who were outed were expelled from the military. Perhaps worse, that stain often denied them any high-paying jobs in the cities as word percolated down from the Party of their offense.
There was another risk. Condoms were expensive. Most of his intercourse was unprotected. HIV was rampant in Asia, and if Jia ever tested positive it would be difficult to explain, a death sentence in two ways. There would be no medical care for an officer banished in disgrace.
