Girl Rides the Wind (10 page)

“We’re still just a family operation,” Andie said.

“But SECNAV can’t see it that way… plus Theo’s career could be jeopardized by it as well.”

“The most important thing is not to let the Chinese know we have it,” Connie said. “That’s why we’re going to the trouble of avoiding digital comms, right?”

Michael grumbled as he thought this over. “Yes. It’s not like we’re worried about NSA snooping, not with Meacham out of the picture.”

“At least the timing was in our favor this time,” Andie said. “I mean for delivering that video. Do we know where she is?”

“They’re steaming to the Northern Marianas for one more set of exercises before returning to Kyushu,” Michael said.

“Maybe the solution is for me to bring the letter to Naval Intell,” Connie said. “ Let’s just say Kano relayed it to me through Theo, and she’s completely out of the loop, and Theo’s still within protocol.”

“Okay,” Michael said. “But let’s digitize it, and keep the paper copy here. Once ONI has it, those precautions don’t serve us anymore.”

“… and the trail of a piece of paper would have to be accounted for much more scrupulously,” Connie added.

“I’m not sure Emily interpreted this message correctly,” Yuki said, standing across from Michael and Andie, her elbows on the counter as she examined the letter.

“What do you mean?” Michael asked.

“It’s this phrase here,
josha-hissui
, you know, the
yojijukugo
,” she replied, lost in thought.

“The what?”

She looked up at the puzzled faces across the counter. “Oh, sorry. I mean these four
kanji
, they’re a famous grouping, like a slogan or an epigram.”

“What are you thinking?” Connie asked.

“It means something like ‘All glories will fade’ … which is sort of a spiritual sentiment. It’s from the opening lines of the
Tale of the Heike
. Anyone in Japan would probably recognize it.” She paused for a moment to consider what she’d just said. “Well, maybe not anyone, but it’s quite well known.”

“Isn’t the book about a war between rival clans in medieval Japan?” Ethan asked. Everyone looked at him in astonishment. “What? I read stuff, too.”

“You’re right,” Yuki said. “It’s the story of the Genpei War, when the Taira clan fell from power after they were defeated by the Minamotos. The name Heike is another way of referring to the Taira.”

“Wait a minute,” Andie said, in a hush. “Isn’t Minamoto the name of the clan you said the Crown Princess thinks you and Emily belong to?”

“Perhaps, though not all the Minamotos were directly related. The name is as much a title as a bloodline. But I’m thinking of it in more general terms. The Heike fell and the Minamotos rose. The Crown Princess might be trying to point out the conspirators for us.”

“Are there any of the Heike left?”

“Probably. But she may just mean that the danger comes from the old families, whoever they may be.”

Connie had been muttering under her breath this whole time, chewing on the implications of Yuki’s conjectures. After a moment in which the others had fallen silent, she offered her own interpretation of the message. “Perhaps this is also the Crown Princess’s way of asking for Emily’s help, you know… only a Minamoto can save the little Princess.”

“She doesn’t ask for much, does she?” Andie snorted.

“The trouble is, Emily will respond whenever she calls,” Yuki said.

“Because of a sense of duty, or honor?”

“More like she feels a spiritual connection to Princess Toshi,” Yuki said, with an air of finality.

Another silence gripped the crowd in the kitchen, as the meaning of those words took hold.

“We still have to decide what to do about the Chinese,” Connie said. “Dark clouds suggests some turmoil over there. Should we leak it to them?”

“But to whom?” Ethan asked. “Do we know who isn’t implicated in whatever this is?”

“I think it’s safe to assume Jiang isn’t involved,” Connie said. “And he may need a heads-up to avoid getting hurt in the fallout.”

“I agree,” Michael said. “Besides, we owe him after all he’s done for Emily.”

“He probably doesn’t see it that way,” Yuki said. “I’m sure he thinks the debt to her will never be repaid, and I imagine he draws some comfort from that thought.”

“What about Ambassador Zhang?” Connie asked. “We have good reason to think he’s not part of whatever plot General Diao is hatching.”

“If the dark clouds refer to Diao, then showing the letter to Zhang may throw a monkey-wrench into the works, at least slow things down,” Michael said. “As long as we don’t think it’ll make Emily vulnerable in some other way,” he added, after a moment’s reflection.

O
ne summer day
, deep in Fujian province, a girl who was a bit of a tom-boy – so much so that her father taught her the little bit of
wushu
he knew – grew weary of her chores and, distracted by a large bird, thought of chasing it away from the berries in her mother’s garden. The bird proved elusive, but did not fly off, even after she picked up a stick and tried to strike it.

She poked at the bird, and it pushed the stick to the side with its wing. When she swung the stick, the bird blocked it with a wing or a claw, and when she aimed at its head, it stepped forward, under her stroke, and pecked at her hand.

The bird returned the next evening, and the girl ran outside to see it, but it wouldn’t come near her until she picked up another stick. The dance began again in earnest, until she grew tired and her mother called her in for bath and bed. By the end of the summer, a bit more bruised than her parents might have expected, the girl had grown wise in the
wushu
of the white crane – the secret of making oneself elusive, striking sharply on sensitive spots, and above all letting an opponent’s strength make him vulnerable – and she showed her father what she had learned.

When the rice had all been harvested for that year, her father took her to visit a holy man who lived in the woods outside a nearby town. After a demonstration of her knowledge, the holy man begged permission to take her on a journey of many days to the north, to train in the mountains with other members of his sect. Her father and mother never saw the girl again, though they heard rumors of a young woman who had been received in a monastery, where no women had been permitted before.

The villagers in Fujian say that many years later, the girl returned, now fully-grown and prosperous, accompanied by a retinue of monks. Her parents had died several years earlier, and no one recognized her until after she had gone. The village elder sent some young boys to bring her back so that she could be properly welcomed.

When she returned, she thanked the people of the village for what they told her of her parents, and in gratitude established a school on the outskirts of the village, where girls and boys could practice meditation and martial arts together.

“
W
hat’s
she so pissed about, Sarge?” Tarot asked in a whisper from the edge of the mat. “She keeps saying we’re in danger, but it’s like she’s taking it out on us.”

Durant stared at the action in the center of the room, which had gotten pretty intense even in the short time he’d been watching. “How the hell should I know, Corporal? Did you say something to set her off? And how’d
he
get involved?”

“We didn’t say nothing. We were just talking about how cool the Chinese training sessions are.”

Racket sat quietly on a rolled up mat at the far end of the room, his massive bulk seemingly unstrung by some unexpected trauma, though no visible marks on him could account for it, at least not from that distance. Durant made his way around the edge of the room, picking a passage through seated and standing Marines, who couldn’t take their eyes off the main event: a sparring match between Lt ‘Ninja’ and one of the Chinese soldiers, Lt Yan.

“I’m okay, Sarge,” Racket said. “I just got the wind knocked out of me.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I don’t really remember. LT threw me into the bulkhead a little harder than she meant to.”

“She what?”

“Yeah. She was trying to explain something about how we should be careful around the Chinese, and especially Capt Diao, and she made us spar with her.”

“She made you?”

“Yeah, I know. It sounds strange, since any of us would jump at the chance, you know. But it wasn’t really sparring… more like fighting. She wasn’t gonna wear any pads, and she kept shrieking at us to hit her as hard as we could.”

“What the hell is going on with her?”

“That’s what we said, Tarot and Colón and me, and Pennybaker and Farah. She practically ordered us to fight her. Of course, we said no, not without pads.”

“I should hope so,” Durant muttered.

“After she put on gloves and headgear, we agreed, but if we didn’t try hard enough to hit her, she’d start yelling at us.”

“Did you?”

“Hit her, you mean?”

Durant glowered at him, as if he’d just asked the stupidest question an enlisted man could ask. “What’d you think I meant?”

“We tried, you know. But it’s not so easy, because she’s so small, plus you’re not really sure you want to make contact even if you could.”

“I take it no one did.”

“Nope… at least not at first.”

“You mean you actually managed to hit her?” Durant asked, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

“Not exactly. I mean, she ran us ragged, and trying to hit her is like trying to hit smoke… and every time we’d miss she’d nail us with some really sharp strike, you know, to soft spots you don’t really know exist until she hits ’em. Man, those hurt.”

“I’ve been there,” Durant muttered, underneath the beginnings of a bittersweet smile.

“It’s not even like they’re real punches. Sometimes it’s just a little two-fingered poke, but where she gets you, it’s like you’ve been speared. The nastiest was the blocks, where you get frustrated and really load up a haymaker, and it looks like you have an opening, and then she jams her elbow into your fist before you can really straighten out your arm, and your wrist buckles… I swear, my whole shoulder went numb from one of those.”

“So how’d you hit her? Did she make a mistake?”

“Nope. After about an hour of this… and we’re all totally shell-shocked… she says she’s gonna show us how to defend against what she’s been doing to us.”

“She said what?”

“Yeah, exactly, Sarge. This is exactly what she said – ‘If you’re in a fight with someone as evil as I am, like Diao, you need to stay within your stance, let them hit you, but don’t let them hurt you’.”

“Whoa…”

“Then she makes us start hitting her, like before, only now she’s not blocking at all, and hardly evading. She’s just got her guard up and she’s gonna take it.”

“And you guys hit her?” Durant growled, his temper beginning to show.

“Well, yeah… sort of,” Racket said, practically whimpering, like a schoolboy who’s just been caught doing something he knows he shouldn’t. “It’s not like we really had a choice, Sarge. And every once in awhile, she’d respond if we made ourselves vulnerable, and she’d lash out, you know, counterpunch. That’s how she got me. I overextended a hook, and she grabbed my wrist and threw me across the room.”

“So how does Yan figure in this?”

“He must have been watching for some time – I don’t really know when he got there – but after she throws me, he applauds, only in this mocking way, and Tarot and Farah think he’s sincere, and they start talking with him… which isn’t easy because he doesn’t know much English. Well, LT hears them talking and she gets all in Yan’s face, and they’re snarling at each other in Chinese, which she apparently speaks, though I thought for sure she’s Japanese, you know, not Chinese, but whatever…”

“… and then what, he starts fighting her?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like they agreed to a demonstration, you know, with pads and stuff. He’s been all civilized… but, man, he’s quick. I don’t know how she’s still standing, even with the padding.”

Just then, the action in the center of the main mat captured Durant’s full attention. Emily stood there, in the center, hunched over behind her elbows, head held low, a purely defensive position, and Yan kept jabbing at her like a prizefighter trying to create an opening. Her guard is too good, though she’s taking a beating on her arms, but she doesn’t seem to be looking for a way to counter-attack, which is really out of character for her. Yan is quick, and strong, and his skills are really sharp, much sharper than Tsukino’s, who’d given Durant a thrashing in a tournament a few short weeks ago. He rubbed his nose at the reminder.

“How long can she keep doing this, letting him tee-off on her like that?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, Sarge,” Racket said. “She’s been down here all morning. She must be exhausted.”

Durant hadn’t expected an answer – he hadn’t even meant to speak out loud – but he turned toward Racket, and noticed Diao watching from the doorway, an odd gleam in his eyes. “If Yan can dominate her like this, she wouldn’t stand a chance against Diao,” he thought, careful not to give voice to this reflection. “I wonder if she knows he’s watching.”

Her guard crept up for the briefest of moments, and Yan saw it and slipped a right hook under her elbow and tagged her on the ribs. She squirmed away, trying to hide how much it hurt, but everyone in the room noticed, and the Marines winced in sympathy. Yan tried to press his advantage as she pivoted away to guard her flank, but she managed to poke away the overhand right he aimed at her face. Diao seemed to lose interest – perhaps thinking she had no chance against his subordinate, so that there was really nothing here that required his attention – and turned back into the passageway, off on whatever errand had sent him in that direction in the first place.

The next moment, Yan rocked his hips through an uppercut-hook combination that should have finished her off, but somehow went awry. Durant couldn’t exactly see how it had happened, and he doubted Yan knew either. Slightly off-balance from the misfires, he stepped back to regain his balance, but she stepped forward into the slight opening he’d left, and suddenly she was inside his defenses, unleashing a flurry of strikes – a jab to the soft spot just below where the biceps muscle meets the shoulder, a rising open-hand slap under the opposite elbow that pre-empted his counter, then a series of inverted strikes that landed just under his chin or on his ears, and which led seamlessly into a rolling salvo of short uppercuts to his ribs – the sheer variety of strikes left the Marines gaping, and their number took its toll on Yan, until he managed to stagger backwards like a drunk on the subway and get out of range.

He tried to recover himself by lunging at her, perhaps hoping to wrap her up in his arms, but he wasn’t quick enough. She’d already seized his right hand, pivoting under his elbow to throw him across the room. The twisting motion of her hands forced him to comply – and supply much of the force of the throw – so that it looked more like she’d turned his arm and shoulder into a whip, than that she’d actually lifted him off his feet. He ended up wedged upside-down against the far bulkhead, legs dangling awkwardly in the air above his head.

The room went silent, jaws hanging open uncomprehendingly, as Emily slipped off her headgear and crouched next to Yan. She helped him untangle himself, and sat cross-legged next to him as he lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling while she spoke to him in what must have been Chinese. Whatever she said must have soothed him, because a moment later she gave him a hand up, and standing on shaky legs he bowed to her, and then left the room without making eye-contact with anyone else.

“What the hell is going on in here?” a commanding voice barked out. No one made the mistake of trying to answer LCdr Hankinson. He turned to Durant and said, “Sergeant, make sure all these men are where they’re supposed to be.” Then to Emily he said, “Are you done horsing around? I need you in tactical,” and she followed him out after disposing of the rest of her pads.

A
s it turned out
, by “tactical” Perry meant that she should accompany him to the quarters he shared with Theo, which were somewhat larger and more luxurious – within the narrow limits of what is possible on a naval vessel – than what she shared with CJ and Kiku-san. She’d tolerated his peremptory tone earlier, in the training room, partly because she wanted an excuse to leave without having to speak with any of the Marines who’d gathered there, and also partly because she knew she’d come close to crossing several lines. She was ready to be chewed out, and was prepared to give as good as she got if he went too far himself.

“Theo received this from the Australians,” he said, holding out a flash-drive.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. You’ll have to judge for yourself.”

“Is it from Michael?”

“Yes, I think. It looks like it comes courtesy of someone named Jiang.”

“Finally, a familiar name,” she said.

“Who’s he? Or do I want to know?”

“He’s
Guoanbu
, Sixth Bureau, you know, Chinese counter-intelligence…”

“… and he’s family, too?”

“Yeah, sort of,” she said, with a sneaky little smile. “He’s Li Li’s uncle.”

“You mean your Li Li?”

Emily pulled a chair over to the desk and tried to sit down by the open laptop, only to yelp in pain.

“Things get out of hand down there?” Perry asked.

“Yeah. I guess.” She tugged at her shirt, gingerly at first, but them more urgently. “Help me out of this. I’m gonna need to wrap it… or cream it… or something.”

Perry pulled up on the collar from behind as she undid the buttons. “Holy crap,” he said, when he saw the bruises that were beginning to show on her ribs and forearms. “What the hell were you doing down there?”

“Oh, nothing much.” She let out another squeal as she slipped off the pants. The bruises on her legs weren’t nearly as bad, though plenty of purple had begun to show there, too.

“We may have to take you down to sick bay. This looks pretty serious.”

“How’s my face look? Any marks there?”

He looked her over, trying to avoid eye contact, since he knew what she was up to. But he could only hold out for so long, and when her hands cupped his face and she kissed him, he couldn’t help laughing at himself.

“Okay, I get it. No sick bay. But who, exactly, are you trying to protect? Did one of those Jarheads do this? Or Yan?”

“I did it to myself.”

“Huh?”

“You know, I was trying to show the guys how to defend themselves against…”

“The guys? You mean your little posse, or fan club, or whatever they are?”

“Yeah,” she said. “
My
guys.”

“Is this just more of your paranoia about Diao?”