The Secret Cardinal

29

A cloud of gray dust swirled around Liu as he hauled himself up from the ground. He coughed, the gritty particles coating his mouth and nose with a dry, chalky residue. The truck carrying Yin and the foreigner disappeared around a building, heading toward the main gate.

Liu moved as quickly as he could toward a heap of bodies on the ground nearby. The three guards were clearly dead; entry wounds marked their chests and heads — expertly placed kill shots. The warden moaned on the ground a few feet away from the guards and clutched his leg, the shattered limb bent unnaturally at midthigh.

A squad of guards in riot gear rushed into the yard, their assault rifles carried shoulder-high, ready to fire. Liu made no sudden moves and kept his hands in plain sight.

‘They are gone!’ he called out to the point man. ‘The warden is injured and requires medical attention.’

The guard approached warily, his eyes and weapon trained on Liu. The men behind him swept the fields of view to right and left, searching for threats in every direction. A corpsman moved up from the middle of the group to deal with the warden’s injuries.

‘Report,’ the point man growled into a throat mike.

One by one, the members of the assault team sounded the all-clear for the yard and motor pool.

‘Check the others,’ the point man ordered the men behind him, his Type-85 still drawing a bead on Liu’s forehead.

‘Your comrades are all dead,’ Liu said icily. ‘Anyone with a weapon was killed.’

‘Your papers, slowly.’

Liu pulled open the left side of his blazer, revealing both the interior pockets and an empty holster. With everything in clear view, he reached into his breast pocket and extracted a thin black leather wallet containing his ministry photo ID card. He held the wallet open, which let the soldier see it without having to take a hand off his weapon. A simple gesture, but one that helped to build trust and establish rank.

‘Sir,’ the guard said, lowering his weapon.

Liu put away the wallet and buttoned his blazer. Nearby, the corpsman injected Zhong with morphine.

‘Who is the warden’s second in command?’ Liu asked.

‘Mister Tang, manager of brickyard operations. He is being escorted to the security command center.’

‘Please inform Tang that I am commandeering vehicles from the prison motor pool and that you and your men are accompanying me in pursuit of the fugitives.’

Liu recovered his weapons and moved as quickly as the pain in his back and leg allowed, alternating between a jog and a brisk walk with the prison strike team following his lead. The corpsman remained with the injured warden awaiting an ambulance for transport to Chifeng City Hospital No. 3.

The chief of the motor pool, still shaken by the outbreak of gunfire, offered no argument and quickly provided Liu with a pair of heavy trucks and drivers. Unlike their chief, the two young drivers found the excitement a welcome change from their normally tedious routine.

The officer in charge of the strike team sat up front in the lead truck. Liu positioned himself in the second vehicle. With the soldiers aboard, the drivers wasted no time starting the pursuit. The two trucks raced across the yard, following the same route to the main gate taken by their quarry.

‘Posse’s heading out,’ Gene Chun reported silently, the vibrations of his vocal cords amplified by the throat mike.

Max Gates and his quartet of spec warriors lay camouflaged in the semi-arid scrub surrounding Chifeng Prison. Existing on bottled water and energy bars over the past few days, the soldiers were an insurance policy they hoped Kilkenny’s team wouldn’t have to cash in. A coded request for divine intervention notified Gates and his team that something had gone awry and that their people inside the prison needed to make a fast retreat.

‘Two heavies outbound at the main G,’ Chun continued.

‘Copy that,’ Gates replied. ‘Fire in the hole.’

Chun retreated into a foxhole he had dug less than a hundred yards from the main gate. He could hear the low growl of diesel engines growing louder as the trucks approached, seeming to gain aural dominance over the high-pitched wail of the sirens.

The wreckage of the double gates lay stacked like toppled dominos; the coils of razor wire were trapped beneath the chain-link mesh and flattened by the escaping truck. The driver of the lead truck in pursuit accelerated, building speed to climb over the tangle of metal. So intent was he on guiding his rig over the debris that he never saw the rocket-propelled grenade racing toward his truck grille.

The RPG round exploded on contact, stripping the hood and fenders from the front of the truck and tearing the engine from its mounts. The driver and the soldier seated beside him died instantly, their bodies torn by shards of metal and glass. The shock of the blast ripped through the undercarriage, cracking open the fuel tank and triggering a secondary explosion that separated the body of the truck from the frame. Though protected by the cab from the initial detonation, the men in the back of the truck were incinerated by the second blast.

Liu’s driver veered from the flaming wreck, piloting the truck through a turn nearly sharp enough to roll the heavy rig on its side. Shrapnel from the double blast rained down like blackened hail, and the air was choked with the acrid smell of burning rubber and plastic. Fuel from the ruptured tank spread out on the ground, flames impatiently transforming every ounce of the liquid into heat, light, and smoke.

The second truck stopped a safe distance from what remained of the first, the driver’s hands fused, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel. The man was almost hyperventilating, his heart leaping inside his chest. Any closer to the lead truck and they too would have been engulfed in the conflagration. Liu unbuckled the shoulder harness and stepped out of the cab, leaving the driver to recover alone.

Over the roaring fire and the unrelenting siren, came the sound of another explosion ripping through the air. A thick black cloud rose from the opposite side of the prison, and Liu knew the brickyard had also been struck. There were only two roads out of Chifeng Prison, and Liu envisioned a burning semi and several tons of bricks now blocking the second.

‘Cao,’ Liu cursed, the profanity flowing from his mouth in a slow hiss of breath.