of water funneled down and tumbled five stories to the muddy courtyard below.
After calling once more into his radio, Fang decided to check in with his snipers. No response from the first.
But the second man's voice came tight with exertion: 'Captain, I think I've spotted someone along the south ridge. Another sniper, maybe. Need time to confirm, over.'
'You find out who that is.'
'I will, sir.'
Fang immediately called out to his first team of guards in the east building. After a long pause, only Sergeant Keng, the guard posted outside Admiral Cai's door, responded. Fang demanded to know what was happening with the others, but Keng was not sure. He could only see the courtyard from his vantage point.
Fang rushed along the balcony and toward the staircase. He ordered one of Sergeant Chung's men to come up and assume his position, but again, his order was met with static.
It took incredible force of will for Mitchell to crouch there, peering from behind the cracked door as Fang Zhi jogged right by him.
Yes, Mitchell could have chanced an interception. But any noise, even the slightest, could alert Colonel Xu — and he was the true target.
Behind Mitchell, Smith held the young village man and his wife at gunpoint, his finger to his lips after he'd ordered them to be quiet in Mandarin.
For a long moment, Mitchell remained there, just breathing, his thoughts lost in another decade, in a moment that turned his blood cold.
'Boss? We ready?'
Mitchell stared through the sergeant. Only one fact registered: that he had allowed Fang to walk away.
'Boss?'
'Yeah. Come on. Three doors down. Let's do it.'
Mitchell stood, slid over his Cross-Com's monocle, then he and Smith reached into their packs and tugged out their lightweight enhanced night-vision goggles (ENVGs). Their eyes had adjusted to the outside, but they wouldn't take chances within the darker confines of Xu's room. The straps fit firmly over their heads.
Mitchell opened the door and returned to the balcony. He skulked along the wall with Smith in his shadow. They reached Xu's door and took up positions on either side. Mitchell gave Smith a terse nod.
As the sergeant's size-thirteen foot connected with the warped wood, a gunshot rang out in the distance, leaving Mitchell confused as the door swung open and he dropped to the floor, with Smith coming in above him.
In a bed on the opposite side of the room lay a screaming woman pulling blankets up to her neck. Next to her, on the side nearest Mitchell, was the young colonel, who rolled over toward a small nightstand, where his sidearm sat in its holster.
TWENTY-SEVEN
After more than an hour's worth of dizzying passion, Colonel Xu Dingfa had fallen onto the bed, breathless and relaxed, with the comfort girl's head resting gently on his chest. He had vowed in the morning to ask her name and make arrangements to see her again.
He'd thought he'd been dreaming when the door had smashed inward, the faint light from the candle near the bed illuminating two figures, their faces concealed by masks, their night-vision goggles protruding like antennae from their heads. One was hunkered down, one stood, and as Xu's eyes had opened wider, he'd spotted their guns.
The reach for his own weapon was instinctual, worthless, really, but he couldn't just lie there.
Now, as the girl screamed and the first silenced rounds finished her, Xu wondered who was responsible for his death. Who had betrayed him? Fang? Had the man been lying in wait for these past four years, a tiger himself? No, it couldn't be. Could it?
The shots ripped through Xu's chest, and it took another second for the pain to register like a claw shredding his gut with slow, even strokes. He coughed, and his mouth immediately filled with blood.
Xu felt no sorrow for himself, only for his dear mother and father, whom he had failed. They would not see their lost children, and that was the greatest tragedy.
As the men rifled through his belongings, Xu thought of raising his fist in one last act of defiance, but the room had already grown dark around the edges, and there was only the strength for one final breath.
As Huang and Pan had stood facing each other on the balcony, Huang had realized that Pan was not going to leave and had every intention of shooting him.
So Huang had lashed out, seizing Pan's wrist to shift away the gun. Pan had fought against Huang's grip with one hand while clubbing Huang in the head with his flashlight.
Even as the blow seemed to reverberate through Huang's head, the gun had gone off, the round tearing through Huang's shoulder.
Pan gasped, muttered his disbelief that he had fired, and the gun slipped from his grip. Huang kicked the weapon away and shoved Pan against the railing with so much force that the warped and rotting wood cracked and gave way.
Pan flailed his arms and screamed as he fell back into the chutes of rain, plunging five stories to splash hard to his death.
Huang's wife was crying and rushed up beside him. Down in the courtyard, one of Fang's guards ran up to Pan's body and checked for a pulse. Then he gazed up at Huang and screamed, 'I heard the shot! What's going on here?'
Clutching his bleeding shoulder, Huang was about to answer when a click sounded from below, and the guard's head snapped back before he toppled.
Huang gasped as a fresh volley of automatic weapons fire rattled loudly through the courtyard.
Buddha sat in the idling SUV, chomping on a chocolate bar and staring at the streaming video of the castle being fed to his laptop. Boy Scout was doing likewise and issuing his banal and obvious commentary on the action.
That first shot had been barely audible from their range, but Buddha had pricked up his ears and now leaned out the window, grimacing over a lot more gunfire.
'You were right,' came Boy Scout's voice from the phone on the seat.
'About the noise, yes,' Buddha answered. 'I was hoping I would not be.'
'We should get in closer. The cowboys will need us soon.'
'We stay here.'
'That's a mistake, old man.'
'Shut up. Do what I say.' Buddha wiped his hands on his jeans and stared at Boy Scout's SUV, just ahead.
If the kid acted rashly, he would not live to regret it.
Beasley had shot the guard who'd run into the courtyard, then he'd paused and frowned. There were two bodies lying there. He glanced up, saw an old couple staring down at him from the fifth-floor balcony, the railing busted away.
The other two guards had come in from the north side entrance of the building, and one of them had begun firing at Jenkins and Hume, who were about ten meters behind Beasley, close to the wall.
