The Prisoner's Gold

47

Chen Jie pulled his jacket closer to his chest, performing the twin tasks of cutting out the chill of the wind and further hiding his Chinese Type 95 rifle.

He had a team of five men with him, and each man wore a similarly long coat to hide the compact weapons. They were strange rifles to his eyes. He’d seen them before, but he personally had never used one. With its curved magazine set behind the pistol grip and trigger guard, the ‘bullpup’ style rifle looked to him like an American M-16 that had been squashed and put together with all its pieces in the wrong places. But when it came to taking lives, he had been assured the weapons would do the trick just fine.

Chen and his men ignored each other while they blended in with the tourists, who were checking out the lower reaches of the Potala’s property. Knowing that the main part of the palace wasn’t open yet, a few intrepid souls would always wander its lower slopes in the mornings, admiring the architecture and the view over the city. The monks were used to these early-morning visitors, and mostly ignored them until opening time. On occasion they allowed a few people in before the start of the day — as they had just done with the two Americans and the Chinese woman.

Chen reviewed his mental files on the intruders. Jackson Cobb was ex-military, and the biggest threat of the three. Maggie Liu was a tour guide for the rich and famous. She had cut her hair, but Chen still recognized her at once. The third woman, a dark-haired beauty, was clearly the blonde who had been spotted with the others in Hong Kong.

Another disguise, but a minimal attempt at concealment.

One of Chen’s men had been in place to get a photograph of her in the market before the intruders had begun their ascent of the tiered stairs in front of the palace. Chen had sent the photo to Hong Kong for further research. It was the best picture they had taken of the woman so far, but he didn’t expect to receive any information on her today.

These things took time.

In the meantime, his orders were odd. He was to shadow the intruders and see where their day led them. If at any point the Americans started to dig in Chinese soil, he was to kill them immediately and prevent anyone else — including the military or the police — from examining the site. On the other hand, if they merely moved about the city he was to simply record their behavior in hopes that their movements might hint at where they were headed next.

Based on these instructions and his observations from Xinjiang, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on. The Americans were seeking a treasure but were still looking for clues. Chen couldn’t imagine what treasure might connect Lhasa with distant Loulan, but he was hardly a student of history. His specialty was beating up people who disobeyed the Fists or failed to pay their bills on time. When he wasn’t doing that, he was running security at the potash mine.

He had come from humble beginnings in Xi’an, working his way up in the street gangs of that humid city until his father revealed that their family had been members of the Fists for decades and they had a higher purpose for him. Since then, he’d felt a kinship and a belonging — even after his father had passed away. He knew he was little more than a thug for the organization, but he was treated well, and that was what mattered most.

Today he was hoping his unusual orders would lead to an opportunity for revenge. His bosses had been lenient with his failure in the desert, but mostly because of the death of his friend, Zhang. Also, no one had expected the foreigners to be ex-military, and Feng He, the charismatic man who led the Fists, sounded intrigued by their incursion.

Chen noted with dismay the absence of the American sniper. The team, including the freshly shorn Marine, had been spotted entering a guesthouse the previous night. One of Chen’s men had kept an eye on the place until dawn, when Chen’s entire crew had dispersed through the neighborhood to wait for the foreigners to depart their guesthouse. But only Cobb, the American woman, and Liu had exited in the morning. The others had all stayed behind. Chen had a man there to keep an eye on them, but who knew if they were still inside?

Chen was suddenly haunted by a thought.

What if the sniper slipped out the back?

The man was responsible for Zhang’s death from over a mile away. He was clearly one of the best snipers on Earth. The notion that he could be out there, perched in the surrounding mountains, made Chen’s skin crawl. He imagined himself in the crosshairs of a scope, the barrel of a powerful rifle pointed at his back.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

From his position on the whitewashed stairway, Chen started examining all the outlying structures around the base of the palace. He scrutinized every building, wall, and shed. Every bump and slope in the rocky ground. Every tree and scraggly bush on the hillside.

Was one of those a cleverly disguised American sniper?

It was only because of his paranoid search for an American boogeyman that he even noticed the convoy in the distance on Beijing East Road. The soldiers were still far off in the morning mist, but in his heart Chen knew the vehicles were coming to the Potala.

Probably for the same thing his men were supposed to find.

The same thing the intruders were after.

Treasure.

If the men in the convoy had heard about it — if they had even gotten a whiff of its scent — they would come crawling over everything like ants.

Suddenly patience was a luxury he no longer possessed.

Chen pulled out his phone and quickly dialed Hong Kong.

Lim Bao picked it up on the second ring. ‘Yes?’

‘The army is coming. They will be here soon. What should I do?’