But as they drove on, Carstairs’s instincts alerted him that something was wrong. He glanced at the driver, who navigated the cramped side streets with ease. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about him—just another Chinese national who had gotten a job driving for one of the many embassies in Beijing, a highly prized position in the city. And yet… Carstairs began reviewing the events of the evening.
He hadn’t seemed surprised by the two men at Liao’s house, he thought. However, as the ambassador had said, the government had its hand in most everything here, so perhaps it just wasn’t that surprising to see them following a US Embassy car with diplomatic plates.
But what about that pit maneuver? That was more uncommon, as was the way he had handled the chase in general.
Glancing at the man again, Carstairs was surprised to see part of a tattoo, consisting of Chinese characters, on his forearm. “That’s a nice tattoo. What does it mean?”
His driver glanced down, then sidelong at the American before replying. “‘Loyalty to the nation.’”
His words sent a chill through Carstairs. While that could have been any loyal young Chinese’s man’s symbol of dedication to his country, he knew that particular tattoo had special meaning for those in the Chinese military.
The phrase had become famous since the twelfth century when a Chinese army general named Yue Fei had quit his post and returned home, only to be scolded by his mother for leaving his post and abandoning his duty to his country. According to legend, she had tattooed that exact same phrase on his back, and he had returned to duty, becoming one of China’s most celebrated warriors. To this day, many lifelong military recruits, especially among the younger generations, got the same tattoo as a symbol of their fidelity to the military and the People’s Liberation Army in particular. Carstairs had become aware of it during his studies of Chinese military history.
Shit, he’s military intelligence!
Carstairs slid his hand around the pepper spray again and waited for the opportunity to strike. He had one shot at surprising the man, who was probably equally trained in hand-to-hand combat as he was, maybe better.
Ahead, a small traffic jam made the driver slow the vehicle as a motorcycle rickshaw had collided with a panel truck. The accident blocked the entire street and traffic was at a standstill. The moment the car pulled to a stop, Carstairs made his move.
Flipping up the safety cover, he brought the container out of his pocket and blasted the driver in the face. But instead of screaming and trying to protect himself, the Chinese man shoved his arm up, deflecting the tear gas spray into the roof. Quicker than Carstairs could react, he brought his left arm over, grabbed the wrist of Carstairs’s canister-holding hand and twisted it toward the windshield. The chemical was having some effect—his eyes were red and watering, and his nose was dripping, as well—but the man didn’t seem incapacitated in the least.
He’s had chemical desensitizing, Carstairs realized before a fist streaked toward his face. The blow was off balance and startled him more than doing any real damage. His head bounced off the door window, and he managed to throw his left arm up to block the second punch coming his way.
The pain in his wrist was increasing, but Carstairs managed to turn the canister toward the man’s face and blast him again. Although the chemicals didn’t faze him, the buffeting spray did make him instinctively turn his face away, which was what Carstairs had wanted.
Plucking the canister out of his pinned hand, he smashed it into the driver’s face, feeling the man’s cheekbone break with a palpable snap. Carstairs didn’t let up; driving the end of the plastic-and-metal device into the side of the man’s face, ignoring his weakening attempts to fend him off.
Finally, when the driver was bloody and semiconscious, and no longer an immediate threat, Carstairs reached across, opened the driver’s door and shoved him into the street.
Sliding into the driver’s seat and trying not to cough at the lingering wisps of gas, he put the car in Reverse and began backing up to the nearest intersection. Fortunately there was no one behind him.
“What was all that? Why did you do that to him?” Mrs. Liao asked.
“He was Chinese military,” Carstairs said between coughs. “Whatever your husband has done, a lot of people want him really bad—”
As he said that, they reached the intersection and were immediately flooded with bright white floodlights. Carstairs had just enough time to look over when the car was broadsided by a huge truck. The impact sent them flying across the intersection and into the side street, where the car landed on its roof.
Flung around by the crash, Carstairs found himself lying on the ceiling of the overturned car, a heavy tightness compressing his chest. He tasted blood. One eye was swelling shut and a dull pain bloomed in his ribs. Even so, he knew he had to get Mrs. Liao and her children out and away before more soldiers came. He tried to move, but found himself pinned by the seat. He looked around for his phone but couldn’t see it nearby.
Footsteps crunched on the shattered glass from the window and Carstairs looked out to see a pair of wing tips standing next to the wrecked sedan.
Sets of combat boots appeared next to the shoes and a face leaned down to look in at him in surprise. “The American is still alive.”
“Kill him and collect the others,” came a curt reply. “Make it look like the car accident did it.”
The man looking in on him produced a pistol and turned it around so he was holding it by the barrel. Trapped and unable to move, Edward Carstairs watched as, without a word, the Chinese soldier began crawling toward him, pistol held at the ready to bash his skull in.
“Well, it just goes to show that you can always trust the State Department to take what should be a simple extraction job and screw up the entire thing.”
Mission controller Barbara Price stared at Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, for a long moment before shaking her head. “Coming down a bit hard on State, aren’t you, Hal? It’s one thing to dodge the local police, or even the ministry. It’s another thing to go up against the Chinese military—”
The gruff man sitting across from her snatched the chewed-to-death cigar from his mouth and used it like a big, brown exclamation point as he interrupted her. “Whenever an officer of the United States government is performing his duty in what is perceived as a foreign environment, which by nature should be considered potentially hostile, all necessary precautions must be taken to ensure his safety as well as the safety of those he comes into contact with.”
Brognola stuck the remains of the unlit cigar back into a corner of his mouth. “Above all, the embassy should not send out just one man to collect the family of the biggest potential defector since Tretyakov! Now it’s turned into the largest screwup since Wang Lijun!”
“The hero police chief of Chonqing City, who was also investigated for the organ transplant facility he founded—”
“Organ transplant facility, my ass,” Brognola interrupted again. “Those butchers are harvesting the insides of political prisoners like the Falun Gong and selling them to the highest bidder. They conveniently get rid of their ‘protestors’ once and for all, and make a tidy profit to boot. Wang tried to buy his way into the US with a trove of documents implicating several high-ranking Chinese officials. Supposedly, although we were never able to confirm this, those documents were instrumental in taking down power politician Bo Xilai. And when State gets the chance to pull in someone who’d make Wang’s knowledge look like peanuts, they bungle the whole thing from the start. Now he’s in the wind and nobody knows where the family went! Balcius will be lucky to keep his job after all this. Not to mention we have to go in and somehow clean up this unholy