Emerald Buddha

Chapter 47

Reggie threw the thin sheet from his legs and groped for the phone as he eyed the LED clock readout on the hotel nightstand: twelve thirty a.m. His fingers found the call button, and he punched it to life.

“Hello?”

“Wake up. Something big just happened at the Red Moon factory.” The control officer’s voice was tight, which woke Reggie as effectively as being doused with ice water.

“What?”

“We picked it up on satellite. Blasts. Big explosions.”

“Damn. What do you think? An accident with the chemicals?”

“Anything’s possible, but we need to know for sure. How long will it take you to get there?”

“Right now?” Reggie considered the distance he’d need to travel, first by car and then on foot. “Probably… six hours.”

“By dawn?”

“Correct. When will the team arrive?”

“Right around then. I’ll arrange for them to rendezvous with you. Get moving, and report back as soon as you understand what we’re looking at.”

Reggie cleared his throat. “Are we the only player on the field on this one?”

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as a little coincidental that the site gets blown up right before we go in?”

“We don’t know that it got blown up, just that there have been explosions,” the control officer corrected.

“You get my point, though, right?”

“I do. We’re not aware of any other group in the mix.”

“Fine. I’ll be on the road in ten and will call as soon as I’m in place.”

Reggie disconnected and glanced at his bag. The sat phone was charged, he had weapons, he had a car he’d bought — probably stolen from Thailand, but he didn’t care — so all that remained was to dress and drive north. Of course, what his control hadn’t taken into consideration was how actively dangerous it was to drive after dark in that area of Myanmar, more so once he was on the dirt road that ran to the top of the peak overlooking the clearing where the factory was situated. But that was par for the course. It was up to Reggie to figure out how to get there in one piece.

Four hours later he was slogging through rain forest, his night vision goggles lighting the way, his submachine gun clutched in one hand and a razor-sharp machete in the other. His GPS had told him that he was only a half mile away, and he slowed his pace as he neared.

Reggie smelled the reek of smoke before he came over the rise and saw the building. He moved as close as he felt was prudent and watched as Shan Army fighters collected bodies and tossed them onto a pile — a funeral pyre. The work went on by torchlight, and after observing for thirty minutes, Reggie powered his satellite phone on and called his control.

When the man’s nasal voice came on the line, Reggie spoke in a hushed whisper.

“The place is crawling with Shan Army. I mean, hundreds of them. Looks like there was a full-scale war down there. They’re dragging bodies to the perimeter, and I count at least fifty.”

“Any sign of the woman?”

“Negative. It’s a killing field, though. The outlying building’s just a smoking crater, and there are corpses lying around everywhere. If I had to bet, I’d guess that the Red Moon organization is history.” Reggie paused. “I wouldn’t send the team in. There’s no way they can go up against hundreds of Shan. They look well equipped, and they’re obviously on alert.”

The control officer sighed. “Continue monitoring the situation while I get feedback.”

“Will do. But I’d rather not be here come first light, in case these guys come looking for stragglers.”

“Roger. Stand by.”

The phone went dead and Reggie frowned at it. Another desk jockey caught with his pants down while Reggie waited in purgatory. That was always the way it seemed to go down. He was in enemy territory with no backup, and his superior wanted him to wait while they had a meeting back at the ranch.

As the minutes ticked by, Reggie’s self-preservation instinct battled with his loyalty, and he was considering disobeying his orders when the phone vibrated in his hand.

“Yes?”

“Stay in position until the team’s on the ground and we can get better intel. We can’t risk that the girl is still inside and we didn’t do everything we could to rescue her.”

“All due respect, the jungle will be crawling with hostiles shortly. If this was a rout of the Red Moon group, they’ll be looking to finish it — and I’m at ground zero.”

“Understood, but word came down that leaving is not an option. Take all necessary evasive steps, but stay on site until you get word from us.”

Reggie hung up and watched the activity below anxiously. The orders were idiotic, in his opinion. Then again, nobody had solicited his views. He was just the field talent and would be expected to put himself in harm’s way unquestioningly.

That may have been the job, but at the moment Reggie was seriously questioning his continued commitment to his choice of careers. His superiors were safe in an office where the biggest risks were a paper cut or catching a chill from the air-conditioning, and Reggie’s ass was hanging out while death roamed the field below.

Reggie grumbled an oath and settled in for what he was sure would be an agonizing wait. He just hoped that headquarters came to its senses before he paid for their cavalier attitude with his life.

Christine swallowed hard as three pairs of eyes bored holes through her.

“Liu was my boyfriend. We met through an acquaintance at my meditation center. He was Chinese, a couple years older than me, and the smartest man I’ve ever met. He was easily a genius — anything having to do with computers or technology, he was like a fish in water.” She winced as a flash of pain shot through her shoulder, and gasped as it took all her effort not to cry out. When the spell had passed, she continued. “Anyway, to make a long story short, it was boy meets girl, both fall head over heels. Fairy tale, except that he was also kind of a radical. Turns out he blamed the U.S. government for a lot of the world’s misery, and he had been working with a group of hackers to, as he put it, expose them for what they are.”

Allie nodded an understanding she didn’t feel, encouraging Christine to continue.

“So we’re together for three months, and one day he announces that he cracked the code. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he explained it, I was scared witless. He’d somehow penetrated the Pentagon’s files and downloaded a ton of top-secret evidence — information he said would make the whole Snowden revelations about the NSA read like a greeting card. And then he gave me an example, and I realized instantly that what he had was dynamite.” She sniffed back a tear. “That’s when I made my first mistake.”

“Which was?”

“I called my dad.”

“You told him what Liu did?”

“No, I just asked him some questions. Told him I’d seen some stuff on the web, where I was in China. I asked if he had any way of confirming it was true — I mean, he’s like a bigwig in Washington and chairs a committee that deals with the military. I know my father — there’s no way he would be a party to the kinds of atrocities Liu had told me about. I mean, it’s beyond criminal stuff. Terrorism. False-flag attacks. Assassinations. Massacres. Lies about some of the biggest events of the last hundred years that are accepted as gospel.”

“And?”

“My dad told me that he had no idea what I was talking about, but that there were a lot of people who hated America because of our prosperity, because of our freedom, and they would invent lies, but not to believe them.”

Spencer’s face could have been cast from bronze. He raised an eyebrow. “But you didn’t buy it, did you?”

“Something about his voice. It was like, all of a sudden he was really distant-sounding. I don’t know if he was afraid someone was listening in or what, but no, I didn’t believe him.” She sat up straighter and wiped away the tears that were streaming down her face. “Liu was out of town. I… I didn’t tell him I’d talked to my father. I should have, but I didn’t want to think…” She choked up and couldn’t continue.

Drake asked gently, “What happened then?”

“One of his cyber-buddies posted an alert about an impending attack in Pakistan. It never took place, so I thought he’d gotten it wrong, and I relaxed some. Next thing I know he’s back home and telling me we need to run, that something went wrong, that he’d also been snooping around in the Chinese defense department’s servers, and somehow they’d caught on. So we leave in the dead of night, and… and you know the rest. The plane went down, he’s dead, and now the Chinese are after me.”

Spencer shook his head. “Why?”

“They probably think I know more than I do.”

Allie rose. “We should get moving. We’re assuming these four were the only ones. There could be more.”

“Do you think you can make it?” Spencer asked Christine.

“I’ll do my best.”

Drake let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding and asked the question that was nagging at him. “Do you think… do you think you’ll be safe if you go home?”

The look she gave him was bleak. She held his stare and then looked away. “I don’t know where home is anymore. But if you’re asking whether my father would actively conspire to have me silenced?” Christine struggled to her feet. “The truth is that I have no idea. I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”

“And the computer?”

“Liu’s. It’s encrypted, so nobody but me can access it. I’m the only one who knows the password.”

Spencer stood without speaking for a moment, his attention on Jiao, whose lifeblood was draining from him. “The Chinese would gladly kill you to get their hands on it.”

“Sounds like they’d have to stand in line, doesn’t it?”

“What are you going to do?” Allie asked softly.

Christine tried to smile, but the effect was more of a grimace. “Try to stay alive.”