If there was any reply, he didn’t hear it. The only sound he heard was that of a heavy vehicle, one with a diesel-powered engine, grinding its way down a dirt track between two hills on the north side of the Chinese woman’s property. He could see the headlights in the rain and the outline of the extended cab and the large bed in back. It was an expensive vehicle that could seat a driver and five passengers easily. What was it doing in these hills at this time of night? It was now dipping off the road, proceeding down a long incline that fed into flatland and a string of cedar fence posts with no wire.
Cody got into his pickup and rolled down the passenger window so he could watch the diesel-powered truck as it approached the back of Anton Ling’s house, its headlights turned off.
Maybe they’re part of her Underground Railroad or whatever the hell they call it, he told himself.
But he knew better. He opened his cell phone and looked at the screen. No service. Well, that’s the breaks, he thought. What had she told him? To get out, to never come back? Something like that. So, sayonara, see you tomorrow, or whatever they said over there. Maybe next time you’ll appreciate it when a good man comes around. Voyeur, my dadburned foot, he thought.
He clicked on his headlights, dropped his transmission into gear, and drove south into the rain, away from Anton Ling’s property, the clouds crackling like cellophane behind him.
It was still dark when she woke and realized that the four men standing around her bed were not part of a dream. She could smell the mud on their boots and the rain and leaves on their hooded slickers. She could hear their weight shift on the boards in the floor. She could see their gloved hands and the heavy dimensions of their torsos and arms. The sense of physicality in the three men who stood closest to her was overwhelming, as palpable as a soiled hand violating one’s person. The fourth man, who stood in the background, did not seem to belong there. He was much shorter, his physical proportions lost inside his raincoat. The only thing she couldn’t see were their faces, which were covered with a camouflage-patterned fabric that had been drawn tight against the skin, the material creased with lines like a prune might have.
She sat up in bed, the sheet pulled to her waist, her heart beating high up in her chest. She waited for one of them to speak. But none of them did. The luminous clock on her dresser said 4:54 A.M. Another hour until sunrise. “The doors were dead-bolted,” she said.
“Not anymore they’re not,” one man said. He was taller than the others, maybe wearing cowboy boots, a military-style wristwatch with no reflective surfaces strapped just above the glove on his left hand.
“I’m of no value to you,” she said.
“What makes you think this is about you?” the man asked.
“The man you’re looking for stayed here briefly. I gave him food and dressed his wounds. But he’s not here anymore, and I don’t know where he has gone. So I’m in possession of nothing you want.”
“You never can tell,” the man said.
She tried to look straight into his eyes and confront his sexual innuendo. But she could see nothing behind the holes in his mask. “How many of you are outside?” she asked.
“What makes you think anyone is outside?”
“There are at least two. One in front, one in back. Because you used four men to confront one woman inside the house, you have personnel to spare. So there are at least two outside.”
“You’re a smart lady,” the tall man said. “But we knew that when we came here.”
“Then you know I’m not trying to deceive you. It wouldn’t be in my interest or in the interest of the work I do. I have no personal agenda and nothing I need to hide from you.”
“Maybe I know that. But others may not. You were in Laos and Cambodia. You were in Tibet, too. You did airdrops to the Tibetan resistance. Not many people have a history like that.”
“More than you think.”
“The Communists had their hands on you for a while. Where did that happen?”
“In Tibet.”
“What was that like?”
“Not very pleasant.”
“Your record indicates you gave them nothing and lived to tell about it. So others might take that to mean we shouldn’t believe anything you say unless it withstands the test of ordeal. Don’t make us go through that, ma’am.”
“Do you think politeness in language excuses you from what you’re doing? You break in to my home and wake me from my sleep and suggest you might torture or rape me, then address me as ‘ma’am’? What kind of men are you? Does it bother you that you mask your faces in order to bully a woman?”
She realized she was saying too much, that she was taking the exchange over the edge and ignoring the fact that her intruders wore masks because they did not plan to kill her. She tried to keep her face empty of expression, to not signal them in any way that she understood their thought processes or the methods they were considering using against her. It was time to distract them by giving them information they probably already had that would indicate she was telling the truth but be of no help to them. “The man you’re searching for is probably with a homicidal lunatic by the name of Jack Collins.”
“You have any idea where Collins might be?”
“Are you serious?” she replied.
In the silence, she could hear the tall man breathing and see the camouflaged fabric ruffling around his mouth. Why was he breathing through his mouth? In anticipation of what he was about to do? Was he about to make a decision that would take him and her across a personal Rubicon she did not want to think about?
“Collins is a religious head case. He seems to have obsessions with women in the Bible,” the tall man said. “You might fit the bill. What’s your opinion on that?”
Don’t let him know you’re afraid, a voice inside her said. “I think you’re an idiot.”
The short man standing behind the others peered through the corner of the window shade into the yard. He wore heavy boots that looked like they had elevated soles and heels. She saw his head tilt upward and guessed that he was checking for the first glow of dawn beyond the ridgeline. Then she realized that the tall man was watching the man at the window shade. The tall man was not in charge. He was waiting on the man at the window to tell him what to do.
The man at the window did not speak but made a rotating motion with his index finger, as though saying either “continue” or “wrap it up.”
But which?
The tall man went to the closet and threw a robe on Anton Ling’s bed. “Put it on,” he said.
“What for?” she asked.
“Certain things have to be done. Don’t make them harder than they already are.”
“Who do you work for?”
“The country. The people who want it to remain free. You think protecting a traitor like Noie Barnum is a noble act?”
“I won’t put a robe on. I won’t move. I have no control over what you’re about to do. But I won’t cooperate with it.”
The tall man leaned down and took her wrist in his hand. His fingers went easily all the way around it, as though he were compressing a stick in his palm. “Get up.”
“No.”
“You’re making this personal, Ms. Ling. It’s unwise.”
“Don’t use my name. I don’t know you and have no intention of knowing you. Don’t you dare address me as though you know me.”
“I heard you were arrogant, a Mandarin princess or something.” He jerked her up from the bed and knotted her hair in his fist, twisting it hard, pulling her head back until her mouth fell open. “We used to call this cooling out a gook. Is that what you want? Tell me. Tell me now.” He twisted her hair tighter. “I don’t like to do this. This is all on you. I can make it worse and worse and worse, to the point I start to enjoy it. Don’t make me do that.”
When he released her hair so she could speak, she gathered all the saliva in her mouth and spat it full in his face. Then he hit her so hard with his fist that two picture frames fell to the floor when she crashed against the wall. Two of the other men picked her up and shoved her toward the doorway. She thought she heard the sound of water running in the kitchen sink.
Cody Daniels kept his truck pointed south, slamming over the ruts, water splashing up on the hood and
