Brute Force

Chapter 13

Ehmet Feng tied the father of the family to a chair and killed him last — slowly, after he’d been made to watch his wife and children beg and scream for their lives. Feng’s clothing was covered in blood, but he was the same size as his victim. The man’s wife had been a fine housekeeper before Ehmet had killed her, so it would not be a problem to find something freshly laundered that he could wear.

Yaqub had grown used to the cruelty of his brother over the years. Ehmet had a strict code of eye-for-an-eye justice. Even as a child, the slightest breach of trust brought more suffering and pain than Yaqub had thought possible — but something had happened to Ehmet in prison, as if some terrible demon had been released.

This man was an informant, the man responsible for telling Chinese authorities their identities after the train bombing in Urumqi — and, because of that, for their eventual capture by the Americans in Afghanistan. Death, even a slow death, had come as a mercy to the traitor. Ehmet had forced him to watch the killing of his wife and two small children. Yaqub could understand the reasoning behind it, but there was something broken inside his brother, something that looked for reasons to punish — and then relished the opportunity like others relished a delicious dessert. It made Yaqub want to sleep behind a locked door at night, for fear of what his brother might do.

Finished with the gruesome butchery, Ehmet dropped the knife in the bound man’s lap and looked up at a silent Jiàn Zŏu, who sat at a small kitchen table with a pile of papers and passports. The woman of the house had been preparing a late evening meal when they’d arrived and the snakehead had pushed all the food to the side to give himself room to work. As far as Yaqub could tell, Jiàn Zŏu wasn’t so much surprised by his brother’s violent activity as he was put out by the time it took when he felt they should be on the move. Head bent over a passport now, pen in hand, he seemed to have blocked out the wailing and death that had just taken place a few feet away from where he sat.

Ehmet waved a hand in front of his face to shoo away a fly that had already followed the scent of blood through the open balcony window of the traitor’s apartment. “I am ready to go now if you have the arrangements made.”

Jiàn Zŏu shook his head without looking up.

“What were you doing while I was busy here?” Ehmet’s face darkened. “You have not made arrangements?”

The Chinese man suddenly pushed back from the table. “If you are done with this business,” he said. “A Tajik friend of mine has arranged passage on a cargo flight in a few hours.”

Ehmet leaned against a wall and wiped the blood from his hands on rag he’d gotten from the kitchen. He glared at Jiàn Zŏu through narrow eyes. Yaqub knew from growing up with Ehmet that with him it was not so much what you said, as how you said it. “You don’t approve of my actions?” he said, giving Jiàn Zŏu a confrontational shrug.

“I personally do not care who you butcher along our route,” Jiàn Zŏu said. “Your actions are your business. Getting us out of China is mine.”

“Well said, Mr. Zŏu,” Ehmet said, rifling through the dead man’s closet for a clean shirt. “As long as you remember your business, we may all live through the week.”

Yaqub considered the job that lay ahead and decided the odds of any of them living more than a few days were extremely slim, no matter what Jiàn Zŏu did or did not remember.