Empire of the Dragon Read online

  “Well, if it works, at least it will act like a signal flare to anyone who sees it. Maybe the damn Mongolian guides will come back and guide us out of here,” Birnbaum joked.

  Sarah once more poured the line of kerosene from one end of the table to the anchored cup. She then pulled the plastic caps from the large flares and struck them to life. They gave off so much smoke that the table and experiment vanished momentarily. Then Sarah swallowed and looked back at Anya who nodded her head for encouragement as she confidently hid herself behind a large boulder. Sarah ignited the line of kerosene and then dove away and covered her head.

  Again, it seemed as if the flame didn’t do what was intended, and McIntire was just about to look up to find the problem, when the air became alive with power. The steel cables held. They tightened to piano string tightness and then the cup exploded from the steel table and into the air. The anvil went with it. It had gone so far out of sight that the observers were left wondering if the thing had just exploded into a million pieces of steel. It was Professor Birnbaum who saw the flares high in the sky and the barely perceptible line of smoke.

  “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed as he shielded his eyes.

  “Its gone, just gone,” Professor Anderson said as he watched and tried to keep his recording cell phone on the diminishing trail high above.

  Sarah stood and brushed herself off. “Anya, you know speed somewhat, what would you guess the accelerated rate of climb might be?”

  “Are you kidding? It took less time than the tick of a second hand for that damn thing to get higher than eighty thousand feet.” She shook her head. “And that’s just a guess.”

  “We have something here that could change the world,” Sarah said as she turned to face the others. Her eyes held firmly on one man. The one holding the pistol in her direction.

  “Is that standard issue at Temple University, Professor?” Anya asked when she also noticed the gun.

  James Anderson was smirking. “No, but it is a must have item in my line of work.”

  “May we take it the real Professor Anderson is laying in a Beijing alley somewhere with a bullet in his head?” Sarah asked as the other scientists moved away from the gun toting imposter.

  “Shot, stabbed, drowned, I don’t go into instructive murder instruction with the enemies of my nation.”

  Sarah and Anya almost said too much simultaneously. They had a deep suspicion that this man worked for the same people and organization Jack and Carl were searching the world over for.

  “Right at this moment, I don’t care for any harshness with you people.” With a weary eye on his captives, the man they knew as Anderson looked at his watch and then pulled the smallest satellite phone they had ever seen from his back pocket and then pushed several buttons. There was static and then they heard the voice in the clear.

  “You have reached the Captain, 04582. You have broken your field cover. This is unacceptable.”

  “The mission parameters have changed. A rather fortuitous event has taken place.” Anderson saw Sarah move a hand toward her fanny-pack and the imposter impersonating Professor Anderson pointed the small .32 caliber pistol in her direction. He frowned and then moved toward her and reached into the pack and then his brows rose as he found Sarah’s hidden Glock nine-millimeter pistol. He angrily placed the satellite phone between his shoulder and chin as he shoved her away. “I will download my visual report and await instruction. Sending video feed now.” Anderson connected his cell phone to the larger satellite phone and then pushed a few buttons. “Transmission sent. I will await your orders.” He lowered both phones and then pointed his pistol at Anya. “May I take it for granted that you are also armed, Major Korvesky?”

  The other geologists with their hands in the air looked around in confusion. “Who in the bloody hell is Major Korvesky, mate?” Birnbaum asked.

  The man posing as Anderson smiled as his eyes were still on Anya. “I’m afraid that I am not the only one posing as someone they are not. Would you care to explain that fact to these learned scholars, Major?”

  Anya remained silent as all of the geologists save Sarah looked her way.

  Anderson looked at the Australian. “She’s former Mossad. I’m sure you have heard of their murderous exploits in defense of the Israeli nation?”

  “Is anyone here actually who they say they are?” Birnbaum asked, looking from professor to professor.

  Sarah lowered her eyes.

  “Oh, come on?” Birnbaum said as he saw the guilt cross McIntire’s face.

  “Actually, Captain McIntire here is an actual geologist. But the Major, well, she’s more in the framework of a professional killer.”

  “Captain McIntire?” Professor Lee Hong asked, shocked.

  “Don’t read too much into it,” Sarah said as she kept her hands high in the air. “My government is here to assist in finding the resources the Chinese government needs to rebuild, nothing more.”

  “Maybe being straight forward in the beginning would be a good start,” Lee said.

  “Now, Comrade, what were your orders?” Anya asked as she eyed the chance at getting to her packed case and her own Glock.

  “Simple. Keep an eye on you four,” Anderson said as he made sure Anya knew he suspected her thoughts and moved the gun to point at her head. Anya deflated.

  “Four?” Lee again asked. “There are four of you?”

  “Yes, Professor Ellenshaw and our Commander Ryan. All here under a false flag of friendship,” Anderson said with a smirk. “Now, speak of the devil, where are your two associates?”

  Neither Sarah nor Anya said a word. Instead they were watching the sand dune just to the rear of the camp.

  “I don’t think our associates are your immediate concern, my Russian friend,” Anya said as her eyes started counting.

  The man impersonating Professor Anderson turned slightly and his heart froze. At least a hundred Mongolian tribesmen, none of them looking too friendly were there. They were all pointing what looked like AK-47’s down into the camp. The Range Rovers stood behind them. Empty. There were no sign of the twelve scientists that had left camp earlier and their equipment had already been stripped from the vehicles.

  “I think we just found out why our Mongol guides stole one of our Range Rovers, bloody thieves,” Birnbaum said, as his attention went from being held at gunpoint by a Russian posing as one of them, to a hundred angry tribesmen who had obviously ambushed their colleagues somewhere in the desert on their return trip east.

  “I should have known by the way they knew how to get here. These are Rangoli tribesmen. They are outlaws of the worst sort. Hated by all and loved only by their own murderous kind,” Professor Lee said. “May I suggest you lower that weapon before these unimaginative people take offense.”

  Anderson did lower and then drop the small pistol as the one hundred brutal looking Mongolians advanced down into the camp of the invaders to their world.

  Before Sarah knew what was happening, the satellite phone she had was ripped from her hand and smashed. When she was pushed to the ground and searched, her last thoughts were ones of hope that the signal she just sent made it out of the valley and that Jason and Charlie were high in the rocks watching them.

  There were eyes watching. They just weren’t the eyes of Ryan or Ellenshaw.

  * * *

  District Four, thirty miles Northwest

  of Ho Chi Minh City

  The boy struggled with the two-wheeled fish cart as his sandaled feet fought with the uneven and cracked pavement that had turned into more or less a dirt road version of itself in very large spots. The grandfather assisted as much as he could by adding his meager weight to pushing the overflowing cart with his back to the wooden frame.

  The cart maneuvered down the alley from a street where vendors sold everything from pork and chicken to fine examples of local jewelry making. The small town had been the service providers for the region since long before the war with the French and the Americans.


  “This is good,” the grandfather said as the cart was now far enough away from the other vendors that lined the street far to the front. The grandson eased the long handles of the cart to the filthy alley floor and then wiped his brow.

  “I can’t believe you, grandfather, throwing two days’ worth of catch away for this American.”

  “If you cannot believe it, why dwell upon it?” the old man said as his eyes gazed upward at the row of apartments that seemed to be hidden away from the street by a dozen or more clothes lines stretched between the two buildings lining the alley. “I just hope the old fool is in.”

  “What old fool? Why did we not take this man to the village doctor instead of traveling for eight hours to this…” he looked around at the filth of the alley, “stinky hell hole?”

  “As I said, this does not concern you. It is enough to say that I am paying back an old debt, and once that is done, so is my long obligation. Now, hand me that stone at your feet.”

  The boy did as his grandfather asked and tossed him the small rock. He watched as his grandfather looked around as if in great conspiracy and then raised the small stone up and tossed it up in the air. The boy heard the ping as it struck the window four flights up. The old man waited and nervously watched the street that was fifty yards away, and then looked at the passersby. He saw that no one granted the alley any special notice.

  “I have heard many bad things about District Four, Grandfather. Is it true this is the place where all the war traitors are watched? That most of its citizens had to undergo reeducation training after the war?”

  The old man ignored his grandson’s questioning nature and then reached down for another, larger stone. Before he could raise the rock to throw once more at the window, the clothes that were hung out to dry parted with an angry swipe. The flow of Vietnamese curses came before the face was even visible through the parting wash.

  “It has always amazed me, old friend, how fast and in inventive ways you come up with your foul language.”

  “Who is that, and why are trying your best to break my window? Do you know how hard glass is to come by around here?” The face in the dirty open window frame finally spied the two people below in the alley. “Oh, I thought you were that evil property owner of mine who I owe three months’ rent to.” The old face in the window finally changed expression as old memories flooded into his mind. “Is that you, Dai Mihn?” came the shrill voice. “Wait, I will come down.”

  The grandson finally joined the old man at the front of the cart, stopping momentarily to rearrange the fish in the cart so as to completely cover their strange cargo.

  “Who is this man, Grandfather?” The boy nudged him and joked. “He’s almost as old as you.”

  Dai Mihn only looked at the boy with no humor on his wrinkled features.

  “I cannot believe it, are you still alive, my old friend?” came the voice from their left.

  The grandfather lost the stern countenance on his face as he was greeted. “No, I am the ghost of better days here to escort you to your ancestors.” He smiled broadly. “Thuyền trưởng, it is good to see you once more.”

  The two old men embraced, with the stranger hugging the boy’s grandfather tight while patting him on the back. “No one has called me Thuyền trưởng in over forty years.” The two men finally parted as they both had tears in their eyes.

  “You will always be my Captain,” Dai Mihn said as he held the man by his shoulders as they hugged once more. “I am glad to see that your reeducation did not kill you.” They finally parted as the newcomer wiped the tears away.

  The Nationalist reeducation program started after the downfall of Saigon in 1975. Many of the South Vietnamese army veterans were either executed for their wartime failure of vision or were sent to reeducation camps to learn how to be good communists once again. Many in the current government had learned the failure of that program and had since concluded that if you left people alone they would eventually follow of their own accord without ‘reeducation’ programs.

  “I would not have survived it if my vital skills were not needed after the war.”

  “Yes, good doctors were hard to find. It does my heart and soul good to see you.”

  The man was named Hùng Quốc Vương. A former Captain and physician from the old South Vietnamese army. Dai Mihn had been his special protector on many operations around the old Ho Chi Minh Trail where north and south forces met in combat on many occasions.

  “The funny thing is, the profession that saved me from many months of torture was not needed as badly as first thought. I am ashamed to say I have not practiced my arts since those darkest of days.”

  “Then my friend, I give you that opportunity this day. I need your help.”

  Hùng Quốc Vương looked from his old friend to the boy who stood silent as he learned about a mysterious life that had never been told to him by his parents, nor his grandfather.

  “And who is this?” Hùng asked as he eyed the boy suspiciously.

  “This is my grandson, he assisted me in finding you.”

  “To assist this old fool in this,” the boy said, as he shoved a few of the large catfish and blue gill out of the way to expose the face of the American.

  Hùng lost the color in his features. He looked from the face of the American to his oldest friend. He backed away from the cart.

  “Why have you brought him here?”

  “He needs your help. I could not have taken him to the local doctor, he is a true believer and would have turned him over to the authorities, and you know what they would do to him. He would have turned him over to the pigs that run our province. Children that don’t understand the intricacies of our shared past. They would have imprisoned him. Until we learn why he was shot and thrown into the Mekong, he deserved a chance to at least tell us his story.” Dai watched as the old doctor took in his excuse for possibly getting him shot for the charge of conspiring with a foreign element.

  “Well, you have made a great error, my friend. Take him from here and put him back into the river. I need no part in this.”

  The old man lost his patience and then started to throw fish from the cart. He dug until he found the muscled arm of the American. He turned the wrist over to expose the forearm. The SEAL tattoo was easily visible even with the fish blood and foulness that covered it. Hùng looked from the tattoo to his old protector.

  “Yes, you recognize the symbol, don’t you?”

  “Get that boy of yours and assist me in getting him into the apartment before someone sees us.” He stopped as he reached for the body in the cart and looked at Dai. “This is not for you brother Dai, but for him,” he said as he held up the filthy arm.

  It took thirty long minutes to maneuver the large American up the rickety stairs of the apartment complex. There had been a few curious looks from neighbors, but Hùng’s reputation as a surly old fool kept most seekers of curiosity at bay.

  Dai and his grandson left the apartment and the grandfather instructed his grandson to set up on the street and to sell as much of the fish as possible to cut down on their losses. He returned just as Hùng finished wrapping the American’s head with a semi-filthy gauze.

  “Will he live?” Dai asked as he stood at the foot of the splintering cot.

  “He is a big man. He has many old and deep scars upon him. Yes, he will survive. Two gunshots. One to the right side, just missing his liver. A graze to his right temple that would have slammed into his central lobe if it had been half an inch closer. And a knife wound to his abdomen. All grave, but survivable. Here,” he handed Dai a small object, “you may find this of interest. This is the bullet I pulled from near his liver. You see something familiar?”

  “It seems this is the same strange caliber bullet we came across a few times after battle with our Northern brothers. Russian?”

  “Yes, a few of our officers had captured pistols such as this during the war. Believe me I took out many a bullet from soldiers on both sides, and I will never
forget what pistol was used to deliver them.”

  A dawning of understanding crossed the old soldier’s face. “A Russian made RSh-12.”

  “Yes, the most powerful handgun the Russian pigs make. And if this American had been shot by any other weapon, it would have lodged in his liver instead of just nicking it. But being as powerful as the bullet is, it just passed right through and lodged against his back bone, barely missing the spine. Luckily for this man, I was able to just cut to the skin and the bullet popped free.”

  Dai placed the bullet next to the head of the wounded man.

  “I have given him all the antibiotics I had on hand, but infection could still kill him. As much as we both owe this group of soldiers, you may have to get him to the hospital. The American SEALs saved our lives many times, but I’m afraid I am out of practice in saving theirs.”

  Dai looked sad as he thought about turning over his charge to people that may or may not help him to survive. The two governments, both American and Vietnamese, may be getting closer in international relations, but they still had a way to go to quell old memories of a war long dead.

  “If his fever grows worse, I will have no choice but to take him to the hospital,” Dai finally admitted.

  “No…hospital…no…hospital.”

  Both men looked at the prone American who was moving his bandaged head from side to side. Hùng went to the man’s side and raised his wrist. His pulse was stronger than before, but still worrisome.

  “You are near Ho Chi Minh City. Do you know who shot you? Was it government forces?” he asked as his eyes flicked over to Dai.

  The man lay still for the longest time. Then one blue eye fluttered open. The left eye, still visible under the makeshift bandage, looked and then focused on Hùng.

  “How long…how long…”

  Dai Mihn stepped forward and looked down at the large man. “We found you in the river a day ago. We thought you dead,” he said in broken English, a language he hadn’t used since the war’s end forty years before. “What is your name and your purpose being in a country you have no right to be in?”