Crux

26 ASIAN TRAVELS

Wednesday October 24th

It took Kevin Nakamura twenty-eight hours to reach Saigon disguised as a civilian. He could have come faster via military transport, but that would risk DOD finding out about his mission. Which CIA was adamant could not happen. He pondered this as the cab took him towards the nicer end of town, to his apartment. He paid the taxi fare, took his entirely innocuous luggage, and rode the elevator to his floor.

At the door hidden biometric sensors identified him. Anyone who failed that identification would soon find themselves in for some very rude questions.

Inside the apartment he found the gear, cunningly hidden, all there. He found himself smiling, whistling as he inspected it, found everything ready and top notch.

And out there, in the countryside, and under the waters off the coast. Resources the DOD and DHS and Congress didn’t know CIA had. Resources that even the White House might not know about. Resources he’d never known existed, and that he had access to now.

That alone told him how important this task was.

Will the White House know when I’ve snatched Lane out from under the ERD? he wondered.

Doubtful.

What did that say about his mission?

Nakamura pulled the small Toyota four-wheeler out of the garage an hour later, loaded with fuel, food, cash, and hidden weapons. This would be his mobile command center, taking him wherever he needed to go to find Sam. To find Lane, he corrected himself.

The wind blew through his hair as he drove into the early evening traffic. Saigon was alive in the way that only developing world cities ever were. The traffic was complete chaos, cars going to and fro, scooters and tuk-tuks racing between them, pedestrians playing a deadly game of Frogger with the vehicular traffic.

Sidewalk vendors had their fires going, offering noodle soups, roasted corn, spicy sandwiches, whole birds cooked on spits. Music blared from a dozen directions. Lights were coming on in shops. Brilliant signs over storefronts were starting to glow in a riot of colors. Sidewalk entrepreneurs sold watches, slates, phones, belts, shoes, drugs, all shouting out their offers, competing with one another for the attention of the crowd.

Nakamura smiled. He felt alive in the field. He didn’t belong in DC, taking briefings or writing reports. Out here, where chaos rules, where his wits and his skill were all that stood between life and death, that’s where he was meant to be.

Six hours later, well after midnight, he was in the hills above Ayun Pa.

Three monasteries attacked. Two of them burned to the ground.

And this one, Ayun Pa. Local police reports – cracked by CIA – showed nine dead, four assailants and five monks. No women dead. Not in any of the three monasteries.

Nakamura left the four-wheeler, activated his chameleonware suit, and hiked up in the darkness to look down onto the monastery. His pupils dilated in the moonlight. Enhanced rod and cone density sucked up every available photon. The scene was leached of color, but as bright as day to his eyes. That thrill of the mission, of being on the edge of danger, of discovery, of action, tickled up his spine again.

The monastery complex was walled, roughly oval, with a handful of buildings, a wide open courtyard, two entrances large enough for vehicles to come through.

The autopsies revealed that one man had died from bone fragments driven into his brain. Two had died from broken necks. The last from a crushed larynx.

Sam could have done that, Nakamura thought. She always liked to go for the throat.

He pulled up orbital reconnaissance photos of the site in his mind’s eye. Retinal implants superimposed them on his vision. Remote Vietnam was not a high priority target for the National Reconnaissance Office, but with more than three hundred recon birds circling in low earth orbit, now, and most of them taking frames five hundred miles square, every patch of the planet was photographed at least once an hour.

Those photos had revealed two hard-top four-wheel drive vehicles hidden in the brush, off-road, a few hundred yards from the back entrance. They’d been there for three hours before the shootings.

Then, next frame. An open-top jeep is now in the courtyard. Dozens of monks out there as well.

Next frame, almost an hour later. All three vehicles are gone. Multiple bodies lie prone.

The police had found tire tracks, but no vehicles. The assailants had run.

Three monasteries attacked. They were bounty hunters, he was sure, seeking the ten million dollar reward ERD had offered for Lane’s live capture.

Nakamura tried to imagine the scene as it had played out here. The bounty hunters, closing in on Lane, somehow knowing where he would be, then surprised to find Sam at his side. Four of them dead in seconds. The other two, in the trucks, frightened, taking off to save their own skins.

Yes, that could have happened.

But most importantly, where was Sam now? How would she think? No. How would Lane think?

Nakamura closed his eyes, thought back to everything he knew about Lane. He’d spent eight weeks with the boy, two or three hours a day, training him. Lane had been a hopeless liar, too nervous, too earnest. Not a natural-born deceiver. Not a killer, either. Not a monster. But someone who resented the ERD, hated it for what it had done to him and others he loved. Hated it enough to be willing to coerce Sam, turn her into his personal bodyguard.

Nakamura had gone over everything CIA had on Lane. He knew this boy. Lane was an idealist, in way over his head. If he was here in Vietnam, then his pact with the Chinese had evaporated. Either Shu’s death had canceled it, or Lane himself had backed out, running from them.

Yes. That was right. Lane wouldn’t willingly serve the Chinese either. He’d want to be free, free to pursue his idealistic pursuits.

He tried to imagine being Lane. Protected by monks. But on the run. He’d know about the bounty on his head, the attacks on the other monasteries, the monks dying to protect him.

How would he react? Seek out another monastery?

Oh no. Lane would be scared, but his idealism would be stronger. He wouldn’t want any more blood on his hands.

He’d find another way, put as much distance between himself and the monks as possible, reduce the risk to them as much as he could. And the opposite of a remote monastery… was a big city.