The First End (20 page)

Then he screamed again, but this time in joy. He
was still alive!

He just lay there, his body slumped up against
the driver’s side door that lay against the ground. Suddenly a hand
reached in and grabbed him by his shirt and began hauling him out.
He yelped, struggling to free himself, but his strength was gone.
He couldn’t resist the insistent pull. When his head cleared the
wreckage, a tough looking Chinese man dressed in black fatigues and
sporting a wicked looking P90 automatic rifle, started jabbering
over his shoulder. Another Chinese man came running up. This one
was dressed more casually and his features seemed more subdued.

“Are you Mr. Gardner?” he asked in excellent
English.

Bill nodded. “Yeah, that’s me.”

The man raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Was that
your work?” He nodded towards the destroyed hanger. The lawyer
peeked around the overturned truck. The entire hanger and much of
the buildings next to it had been leveled. Fire and debris were
spread in a huge arc around where the plane had been. He blinked,
shocked. He hadn’t thought the explosion would have been that
large. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“The plane,” the man said, his eyes turning
insistent. “Did you destroy the aircraft?”

“It’s in a million pieces,” Bill affirmed.

The man turned and whistled. Instantly about a
score of heavily armed men began to extricate themselves from cover
and dashed back down the streets. The man turned to Bill. “Mr.
Gardner, my name is John Cho.”

“John?” Gardner asked incredulously.

“Yep, born in Arizona. My parents wanted me to
have an American name. Come, we must go now. My men have reported
reinforcements on their way.”

“That’s a good idea,” Bill agreed. “Only I don’t
think I have much strength to run on my own.”

John said something to the other man and
together they draped Bill’s arms over their shoulders and began
trotting from the scene of battle.

Sometime later, John gently lowered Bill onto a
cot within a small apartment about two miles from the warehouse.
John flopped into a wooden chair and wiped his brow with the back
of his hand. “Well, Mr. Gardner, you’re supposed to be dead,” he
said without preamble. He folded his arms, kicked his feet out in a
relaxed manner, and gave a half smile. No one else had come into
the room, so it was just the two of them.

“What do you mean,
supposed to be dead
?”
Bill asked.

“Well, when we found you had been taken captive,
we all just naturally assumed you had been killed by that pig
Lee.”

“Who is
we
?”

John held up a hand. “Let me get to that. We
thought you were dead, which I must tell you was part of the plan.
I say that so you don’t confuse our actions as a rescue attempt. We
were after the plane, just as you were. Our mission was to blow the
plane up.” He cocked his head slightly and frowned. “You were
supposed to be the diversion, something to keep Chinese
intelligence from noticing my team. Once we destroyed the plane,
you and that rat Frank Vellore would be pinned as the saboteurs.
And it worked, except we couldn’t get near the plane. Our attack
failed. We were pinned down and on the verge of being trapped by
reinforcements…until you blew up the plane.” He leaned forward. “Do
you understand what I am saying?”

Bill nodded. “Yes. I was sent on a suicide
mission, one meant to give your team the freedom to do the actual
dirty work. I was to take the blame as was Wastend.” Bill felt his
heart sink. “You work for General Hynes.”

“Yes. I am actually Colonel John Cho, Special
Forces. So we have two problems now. One is that you are still
alive, making it difficult to pin this on you. A problem that we
can easily resolve by throwing you back to the Chinese. However,
and here is the second problem, you saved our lives and completed
the mission where we could not.”

“That’s a problem?”

“In a way. We owe you, Mr. Gardner. My entire
team does. This is not something we take lightly. To kill you or to
hand you back to the Chinese is a lousy way to repay such a debt.
But at the same time, if we don’t blame someone, we run the risk of
an international incident that could jeopardize the lives of
millions of people.”

“I’m going to kill him!” Bill hissed.

“The general?”

“Yes.”

Cho smiled. “I would feel the same way in your
shoes. But I would put that aside for right now. He was put in an
untenable situation. He had to make a choice between a single evil
and an even greater wicked one.”

Bill frowned as he watched the other man pull
some chewing tobacco out of a vest pocket and put a small piece
into his mouth. The man regarded his fingers while waiting for Bill
to reply.

“He either had to pin it on me and Wastend, or
face international backlash.”

Cho nodded, his jaw working furiously at his
tobacco. “They said you were smart, Captain. We couldn’t use just
anyone. The person we used—”

“Sacrificed,” Bill inserted, bitterly.

Cho shrugged. “Sacrificed, then. The person we
sacrificed needed to have military experience as well as a
connection to Wastend. All roads had to lead back there. You were
the only one with both the experience, expertise, and connections
to pull it off.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing personal, Captain. Trust me, it
wasn’t an easy decision to make either. General Hynes argued
against the plan, but he was overruled by the Joint Chiefs.” Cho
leaned over and spat into a bucket next to his chair. The wet, rust
looking blob of spit missed, striking the edge and half ran the
outside edge. Cho grunted. “So that brings us back to my
problem.”

“The fact that I saved your team and destroyed
the plane anyway?” Bill shifted around on the cot, uncomfortable
with the direction the conversation was going.

“Exactly. We still need to have a scapegoat,
Captain. We need someone to take the blame…or at least shift the
blame from the US Government. I’m to go to ground now. The Chinese
will never know that I am even here and my dual citizenship helps
to mask the fact.”

“Can you contact General Hynes?”

“No. My unit is dark, Captain. We are to make no
contact for the next month. All of my soldiers are either Chinese
natives or American Chinese. They have dispersed into the city
life, either resuming jobs, rejoining family, or just
disappearing.” He leaned forward, his jaw working like a piston on
his chewing tobacco. “That doesn’t negate my responsibility. You
were to either die or be captured. We would raise a stink about an
American being held, they would show proof that you committed an
act of sabotage, we would demur, they would insist, we would give
in, you would either die or go to prison, and the whole thing
dropped. Now what do I do?”

Bill sighed. He couldn’t quite bring himself to
feel any sympathy for John or General Hynes—not when the scapegoat
happened to be him! Nevertheless, he could see what Cho was
building up to. “You still want me to be that guy, don’t you?”

Cho shook his head. “No. You saved our
collective fannies, Bill. We owe you. I’m just trying to figure a
way out of this.”

“Why not let me try to make my way back myself?
If I get caught, your plans go forward as normal. If I get away,
well, I get away. Everything still points back to me or Wastend,
and this way I at least get a chance to make it out alive.”

Cho spat into the bucket and sat back again.
“It’s a good suggestion. The only concern is about what you may say
once you are free and back home. You’re a lawyer, Mr.
Gardner—though I don’t understand how any soldier would ever make
that a career choice.”

“I still like a good fight, Colonel.”

The man laughed. “Anyway, what is to prevent you
from suing the US? That would create quite the pickle for all of
us.”

“One thing.” Bill held up a finger.
“Retribution. Do you think the Chinese will forgive this slight to
their country? Not only was a secret military aircraft destroyed,
but men died. If I start making waves about this incident, what do
you think they will do?”

Cho’s eyes glittered. “They would send their
best assassins.”

“Exactly. It would be in my best interest to
keep my big mouth shut.”

John stood up. “Well then, Captain. It seems we
have a deal. I’ll cut you loose in the morning and you can make
your way back as best you can.”

“What about the man I came with, Hu?”

“Don’t know who you are talking about. We did
catch someone lurking around the perimeter on our way in. If this
was your guy, I’m sorry, we had to take him out. We didn’t know who
he was and we couldn’t take a chance.”

Bill sighed, profoundly troubled. Hu may have
very well been trying to find a way to help while Gardner had been
a captive of the Chinese. The man had died at the hands of the
people he was trying to help. Life wasn’t fair. Not one bit.

John saw the look. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
“We were under orders.”

“Colonel, how many good men have died for so
little reason?”

“Undoubtedly more than either of us would care
to contemplate. Ask yourself this, Captain, how many more would
have died if we had not followed those orders?”

“The end justifies the means?”

“Or the greater good.”

Bill sighed. “The age old ‘soldier’s dilemma.’ I
hate it.”

“Me too. Get some sleep. I will help you get out
of the city, but after that, you are on your own. I’ll spread a
rumor that an American was killed during the attack. That should
give you enough of a chance to slip out of the country
unnoticed.”

“I appreciate the chance, Colonel.”

Cho grinned. “Make it back Captain. I would like
to see those staff Generals eat their smug smiles.”

“That,” Bill said, echoing the man’s grin,
“would be my pleasure.”

A combination of incredible luck and some skills
had gotten Bill to a point near the Vietnam-Chinese border—still
alive, and still kicking. He studied the checkpoint, wondering if
it wouldn’t be best to just simply try to find another crossing. He
had made it this far due to the theft of an American tourist’s
wallet. No doubt the man had reported it stolen, but few Chinese
agencies would even care about some American who lost his credit
cards. Identity theft wasn’t quite the deal it was in the US.

To most Chinese, one American looked much like
another. Bill had cut and dyed his hair to match that of the man on
the driver’s license he had stolen. To anyone that took a close
look it would be obvious that the men were different, but most had
only given a cursory glance and then waved him on. He dared not
risk an international flight, but he did book a small plane that
had flown him from Beijing to Kunming. From there, he had taken a
train to Honghe in the province of Yunnan near the border. Now he
had to just get across somehow.

Pretending to be an American tourist helped and
few in Honghe had actually ever seen an American up close. Children
followed him around, pointing and giggling. He made a point of
wandering around aimlessly, looking at buildings, going into shops,
and doing whatever else a tourist would do. So far, other than
curiosity, he had been ignored. The local police never even gave
him a second glance.

Eventually he had found a friendly native that
spoke passing English and had prevailed upon the young woman, and
her even younger brother to act as tour guides to the area. Now
they sat about two hundred yards from the border checkpoint. A
river marked the boundary between the two nations and only a few
bridges spanned it. Looking at the murky water, Gardner decided
that swimming it would not be a good idea. He had no clue as to how
dangerous the current might be.

The crossing they stood near was the closest one
and even this one had taken a good four hours to reach by car. Bill
stood at the edge of the road, looking down the bank to the slow
moving waters. He held a camera in one hand which he would
occasionally make a fuss over, taking pictures of the area and of
his companions—just like any good tourist would do.

“See it?” the young woman, Ye Shiwen, asked,
pointing across the river. “Vietnam just there.”

Bill nodded. “I see it. Wow, this is really
neat. I’ve never been to Vietnam before,” he lied. “Do you think we
could visit?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh no! My brother and me no
have passport. We no go.”

Bill expected as much, but he looked profoundly
disappointed. “Are you sure there is no way for me to visit?”

“You have passport?”

“Yes.”

She grinned. “You pay money. Show passport. You
visit.”

“Can you help me?”

“Right on!” she exclaimed gleefully. Gardner
idly wondered what American movie she had watched to pick up that
phrase.

Her little brother, a teenager around fifteen,
grinned and echoed, “Right on!”

“Right on!” Bill added. It seemed appropriate
somehow.

Ye’s small red car—Bill suspected she had
borrowed it from her parents—moved towards the checkpoint.

“You’ll have to translate for me,” he said. “I
don’t speak Chinese too well.”

“No problem!” she said, grinning. Her teenage
brother echoed the grin, although he didn’t understand a word of
English as far as the lawyer could tell.

“What about transportation on the other side?
How will I get around?”

“Cars…how do you say…for sale, but not for
sale?”

“For rent?”

“Yes. That is it! For rent. On other side.”

Leaving the car, they walked along the bank of
the river until they reached the checkpoint. Two bored looking
guards idled in a booth like structure that allowed them to operate
the gate arm that blocked the bridge. They glance up to see the
trio approaching. The older one’s eyes narrowed when he saw the
American, while the younger one had eyes only for the girl walking
at Bill’s side.