Shadow of the Dragon

38

Clark’s eye flicked open at the sound of shuffling footsteps — too big and heavy to be a rat. The room was hazy with the muted gray light of an overcast dawn outside the tiny window. He moved slowly, feeling the familiar pops and cracks that greeted each morning even when he slept in a soft bed. A cloud of white vapor blossomed around his face when he breathed.

The sound bounced off the clay walls, making it difficult to pinpoint where it was coming from. He caught movement in the shadows, tensed, then relaxed a hair, falling back into his blanket when Hala’s silhouette came into focus, her small face framed by the white fake fur ruff of her coat.

“You okay?”

“John…”

The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat upright, throwing off his blanket.

“What is it?” he whispered, still raspy from his sleep.

Hala went to the window. She had to tiptoe to peek out. She ducked her head away as soon as she’d looked. “He’s coming!”

Clark rolled to his feet and drew the girl near so she could explain quietly. “Who’s coming?”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I had to pee. There was a man driving by on the road. I think he had stopped to pee as well. I did not think he saw me at first, but then he called out. I’m very sorry. It was an accident—”

“It’s okay,” Clark said. “Is he a policeman?”

She shook her head. “No. I do not think so.”

“Is he alone?”

She nodded. “I saw his car. There was no one else. Maybe he is—”

A wary voice called from outside the walls of the caravanserai. She was right. The man was Uyghur — and he was close.

Clark held up his hand to shush her while the man spoke, then leaned in so she could whisper in his ear to translate.

“He… He wants to know what I am doing out here all by myself.”

The man outside spoke again, louder this time, bolder, more demanding.

Hala gasped and began to shake at what she heard.

“What is it?” Clark asked.

“He knows the Bingtuan are looking for a runaway child,” she said. “He said he will not call them if I do not fight him.” She looked up at Clark. “He is a very bad man.”

“Yes, he is,” Clark said. He stood, stepping sideways inch by inch, “cutting the pie” until he brought the shadowed figure outside into view.

He was dressed like a workingman — dark trousers, white shirt, dark sport jacket under a heavier wool coat. He wore a black fur hat with the earflaps down against the morning cold. Clark estimated him to be in his early thirties, but it was difficult to tell in this part of the world. Life in western China tended to age people beyond their years. He could just as easily have been twenty-five.

Clark assessed the man quickly as an opponent. He didn’t appear to have a weapon. His hands were empty. No cell phone at the ready. He could have already called and reported his find, but Clark doubted that. Not if he wanted to be alone with his newly found young treasure. No, he’d wait until he was done — or, more likely, he’d forgo calling the police at all. He’d just do what he wanted and leave. Fugitives didn’t call the police, if he even let her live.

The man called out again, whistling as if summoning a pet.

Hala’s hand shot to her lips, covering a gasp. “He said he’s coming in. He warned me not to run…”

Clark scanned the room. There’d been nothing to use as a weapon when they’d come in, but maybe he’d missed something.

Nope.

Clark dropped to his knees in front of Hala, taking her by both shoulders. “I need you to trust me.”

She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

Clark stood and took the little douk-douk out of his pocket, opening the scimitar blade. He placed it on the ground, and then stepped on the handle, pinching the two metal sides together, effectively turning it into a fixed-blade knife. The cutting edge was just four inches long, not optimal for stabbing, but there were other ways to cause chaos and doom with a knife.

Clark nodded toward the entrance. The place where the wall had collapsed formed a natural funnel that would send the man to them.

“He’s going to come from there,” Clark whispered. “I will stand by the door. When I raise my hand, you make a noise. Don’t call to him, but let him hear you. Do you understand?”

She looked up with brown doe eyes, nodded around a mouthful of shirt collar.

“When you see him at the door, I want you to run.” Clark pointed to the far corner of the room.

“Run where?” Hala whispered, terrified. “There is nowhere to go.”

Clark gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “True,” he said. “But he does not know that. He will not be able to resist chasing you.”

“What if he catches—”

“He won’t,” Clark said, already moving to the door. None of this would work if the man saw or heard him.

Clark had the newcomer in height and weight, but that whole vitality-of-youth thing would be a problem. Fortunately, Clark had what Ding called “old-man strength,” which was really not strength at all, but cunning and pure meanness in the face of battle. He didn’t intend to let this evolve into a contest of strength or determination. In fact, if Clark did this right, there would be no fight at all. It would be an assassination.

Clark stood to the right of the door, opposite where the man’s sight line would be when he heard Hala. He held the douk-douk in his right hand, firmly but relaxed. A clenched fist moved much too slowly for what he needed to do.

He raised his left hand, listening for the tentative footsteps. The man called out again, just a few feet down the dark hall. Clark couldn’t understand a word, but the cruel intent came through clearly enough.

Clark let his left hand drop.

At the signal, Hala gave a gasp, shuffling her feet on the ground as if scrambling to get away.

The man laughed, whistling again, calling out. Clark imagined him saying, “I have you now…”

Clark caught movement to his left, checked his breathing, lowered his center, ready to move.

Hala sprang from her spot, digging in as though she intended to run straight through the far wall of the earthen chamber. Clark hadn’t told her to scream, but she did, and it only added to the effect.

The man’s predatory drive kicked in immediately at the sight of his fleeing quarry. He shouted at her to stop and bolted after her, thinking there must be a door in the shadows, and unwilling to let her slip away.

Clark stepped sideways, snaking his left hand behind the man’s neck and around his face, forearm to forehead, yanking him backward as his legs tried to run out from under him. At the same moment, Clark buried the blade into the side of the man’s exposed neck, impacting the brachial nerve so hard that his body jolted as if hit with an electric shock. The little douk-douk’s scimitar point slid in as if the flesh were butter, just behind the windpipe. Clark felt a sudden pulse of blood slap his arm, moist and hot. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and he’d rolled his sleeve above the elbow in anticipation of this to keep it clean.

With the edge of the blade facing forward, Clark pushed at the same time he gave a sharp backward tug on the man’s forehead, severing the trachea with a sickening pop.

The man struggled, but only for a moment, before becoming heavy. Clark let go, allowing him to pitch forward, face-planting on the floor.

Hala ran to him, ignoring the dying man’s agonal gasps, to grab Clark’s arm with both tiny hands. She was frantic with worry at the blood dripping from his elbow.

“John, you are hurt!”

He took a deep breath. “No,” he said, turning so she faced away from the gore. “I’m fine. It’s his. Not mine.”

“Okay,” she said, panting, lifting his arm to check it thoroughly, unconvinced.

He switched the open douk-douk to his left hand to keep from accidentally cutting her.

“Really,” he said, “I’m okay.”

Clark rubbed as much of the blood off his arm as he could with a blanket, and then went to look out the window. He’d thought to move the man’s car before anyone noticed it, but there was too much traffic for that. A steady line of open trucks and trailers filled with camels, cattle, goats, donkeys, and the odd, fat-bottomed sheep of the region formed an early-morning parade line toward the market grounds. None of them paid any heed to the thirty-year-old Dongfeng sedan that had apparently broken down on the side of the road.

Clark turned to see the girl standing over the dead man.

“Gather your things,” he said. “We should find another place to wait. It’s only six thirty. Still over two hours until we can meet my friend. This will be difficult to explain if anyone else happens along.”

Hala didn’t move until he took her gently by the shoulder and herded her into the corridor.

“I’m sorry you had to see such awful things,” he said.

She leaned against his leg and sighed. Still trembling, she spoke matter-of-factly, like a woman twice her age. “It was awful, that is true, but if you had not been here, it would have been much worse.”