The Lives of Tao (20 page)

By two and half hours, they were heading to the rendezvous point. The sun was starting to set by the time they reached Theater on the Lake. It was an old building in a forested area just north of the beach. The area was quiet, with only the sound of cars from the highway behind her.

Sonya’s squad fanned out to establish a perimeter. She knelt down and made a fist with her hand. The squad settled in and waited. At the three-hour mark, all was still quiet. Sonya motioned for cover and moved up to the front door. It wasn’t locked.

She pointed at two of the agents to follow her in and they searched the small theater. Most of the interior was caked with dust, except for a portion near the entranceway; that area was spotless. She motioned to the other agents to search the area. Sonya bent down and sniffed the floor. There was a faint aroma of bleach.

A few minutes later, one of the agents called her into the restroom. He pointed at a soft portion of the concrete wall that was still damp. Sonya drew her knife and cut into the wall. It was patched recently. Embedded into the concrete, she found a bullet.

“Definitely a .45 ACP by the looks of it,” Sonya said. “There’s been cleaners here.” She dug out the bullet and rolled it between her thumb and index finger. Sonya shook her head and buried her face in her hands. If she had only listened to him. At least Gaston might have had a chance then.

You cannot blame yourself for this.
 

“Of course I can, Baji. I followed orders and protocol when I should have followed my gut. Damn it!”

She checked her watch and looked at the rest of her team. “Wrap it up.” There was nothing else they could do here tonight. Hopefully, she was wrong and Gaston could somehow get in touch with them soon, but she feared the Prophus would never hear from him again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TRAINING WHEELS OFF

Zhu Yuanzhang was quick to accept me, believing that the Ho Lung had come to him in his people’s time of need. The people of the Han were currently in the oppressive grip of my own creation, as the ruling Yuan Dynasty were the descendants of Genghis Khan. As the leader of the Red Turban sect, Zhu preached a peaceful resolution with the foreign dynasty, balking when all others cried for war. Together, we planned to build a new world through peaceful means. Then one night, I received a visit from the Council.
 

Roen caught a glint of black hair fifty meters in front of him. It was on the other side of the street approaching the intersection. He kept his face looking forward, only glancing at his mark every few seconds. He nearly tripped on a fire hydrant as he hastened along.

You are too stiff. A good tail is always relaxed and blends in with the environment. Just pretend you are shopping like everyone else down the street. She just turned down Oak. Go!
 

Roen started sprinting, crossing in the middle of the street, causing a few cars to angrily honk at him.

Stop causing a scene. Blend, I said! That is important even when your mark is out of sight.
 

“If I don’t hurry, I’m going to lose her.”

Do not forget to report to your team.
 

“Oh yeah. Sorry. Sky Eagle, this is Training Wheels. I have eyes on the mark. Mark has just turned down Oak and proceeding... um... east, no, west. Mark is heading west. Did you really have to call me Training Wheels?”

This is Sky Eagle. West on Oak is dark. No agents in vicinity. Reestablish visual. And yes, “Training Wheels” is an apt code name for you.
 

Roen turned onto Oak and his heart sank. There were a hundred people walking along both sides of the street. His mark was nowhere in sight. He looked around wildly, running around and peering into store windows.

Training Wheels, what is your status?
 

“Uh... I do not have eyes. Crap, I think I lost... there she is!” Roen slowed down to a trot and closed in on the mark again.

Update the team. Always keep your team in the loop.
 

“Sorry. Sky Eagle, visual has been reestablished. Mark is continuing west down Oak crossing Rush. Wait, she stopped at the intersection.”

Roen immediately stopped walking and pretended to be very busy looking at purses in the corner window. He kept tabs on her as the mark stopped to get a newspaper out of the bin. She then proceeded to head south-east on Rush Street.

Roen crossed the street and kept a safe distance behind her, trying to match her steps. His heart began to beat faster. He looked down at his watch: twenty-two minutes. Things were looking good. Then the mark stopped again, looked up at the street sign, and then looked back – directly at Roen. He stopped again and looked at the window display, this time a shop selling lifelike dolls that could be custom made to look like the little girl who owned it.

No, Roen! What is the second rule of tailing a mark?
 

“Do not react to your mark’s movements.”

And what part of not reacting means coming to an abrupt stop every time your mark does?
 

“What should I have done then?”

You should have kept walking forward as if her stopping meant nothing to you. Pass her if you have to and then backtrack.
 

It seemed that Tao wasn’t the only one who noticed Roen’s jerky movements. The mark gave him one suspicious look and then immediately took off, running at full speed across the street and through the park. Roen immediately gave chase. She was fast, weaving through people and trees, turning abruptly several times, trying to throw him off. He kept his head up and tried to keep track of her, running parallel to her when he could, hoping she would get disoriented with his position.

Update your team!
 

“Sky Eagle, target has taken off on foot, heading south and west through um... trees and grass... some park, just passing Delaware.”

Trees and grass? That was useful.
 

Roen stopped at the intersection and looked around wildly. At this point, he didn’t care if people thought he was acting strange. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flutter of black hair down a side street and took off after it. He was starting to close in on the mark again, when she made a quick right into the alley. Roen sprinted as hard as he could, his heart pounding out of his chest.

He looked down at his watch: twenty-eight minutes. Almost a new record. Then as he turned the corner into an alley, an arm appeared at his neck level and clotheslined him. He flipped backwards and did a somersault onto his face.

Roen groaned and rolled over as Sonya squatted over him, making a gun shape with her fingers. “Bang, you’re dead,” she said, and winked. He could only try to blink the stars out of his eyes and clutch at his throat as she helped him sit up. “What did I tell you about rounding corners blind like that?” she scolded.

“Twenty-eight minutes,” he moaned. “I was so close to finishing.”

“You know what you did wrong back there, right? The mistake that allowed me to run?”

“Stopping when you did?” he said weakly.

She nodded. “The double-stop. Once is forgivable. Two means you have an amateur tail on you. Stop using bad spy movies as training material, Roen.” She helped him to his feet. “Come on, that’s enough for today. Let’s get some real work in.”

That training run was a shining example of how Roen’s July went. Having graduated from stalking inanimate objects to live target reconnaissance, he had been struggling to adapt to dealing with so many moving variables. To his surprise, tailing an individual was really hard! He lost three of his first five tails. One called the police on him and he ended up spending a night in jail, and one ended up somehow tailing him. Finally, Tao enlisted Sonya to help out. It took a month of constant practice before he improved to a level that Tao deemed as passable in the fine art of stalking. Still, it was obvious he had a long way to go.

With Lin doing the bulk of the hand-to-hand training, Sonya shifted her focus to firearms. As with hand-to-hand combat, Roen was a less than stellar gunman. When not being followed by Roen, Sonya worked on teaching him how to shoot a gun, starting with firearm safety and maintenance, and eventually moving to proper shooting techniques and squad drills.

She also made him spend hours upon hours repeating the most simplest of tasks: taking the safety off, taking the clip out, putting a new one in. He wasn’t sure why he had to keep practicing that over and over again, but Sonya insisted that the repetition was important.

There was no way to say it nicely; Roen was a terrible shot. At first, he tended to miss the target sheet entirely. But he kept at it though, running Sonya’s instructions through his head as he emptied clip after clip of ammunition at the little red dot at the center of the target sheet. He began to hate that damn red dot. After nearly three weeks of non-stop target practice, his arms felt like noodles with anchors attached to them. Slowly though, his aim improved and he was starting to hit the red center with regular frequency. By August, he had improved enough that Sonya referred to him as a you-don’t-quite-suck-anymore shooter.

“You know you can’t use a .22 in a gunfight against Kevlar,” she said after he proudly showed her his first perfect round of target shots. “The recoil is small, which helps your accuracy, but it has the stopping power of a BB gun. It won’t even slow an armored opponent.”

Might as well be firing paintballs.
 

“Hey, I’m working on it.”

Well, we will have to graduate you to a .45 soon. That peashooter will not do.
 

“It’s my first time working with these weapons. You and Tao are both on my case. Man, give me a break,” he complained. “What do you use?”

Sonya pulled out one of the guns from the rack. “I’m partial to the MK23 myself.” She pulled out her handgun, pointed it at the thirty-meter target, and hit just left of the bullseye by a scant two centimeters.

“Showoff,” he grumbled. Roen stared at her much larger pistol and then back at his own small one. It looked like a toy gun by comparison. “I just need some time to get used to it,” he grumbled, his face turning red.

“No rush. Baby steps. You’re still a man,” she said encouragingly. “You’ll get there. You just have to remember to keep your hands steady and not squeeze that trigger so hard. Come on, let’s move on to rifles.”

Thankfully, he was a much better shot with the rifle. A straight week of practicing nearly dislocated his shoulder, but Roen took to it more naturally than the pistol. Along with the rifle shooting, she began to teach him the basics of squad work, including the signals and formations utilized by Prophus teams. This part he actually enjoyed. The two made a small obstacle course where Roen could pretend to break into buildings and clear out rooms. In a way, it was a lot like playing a video game. By the end of the month, after almost fifty hours spent at the range, she had officially declared that he was ready for actual fieldwork. And it wasn’t a day too soon.

No sooner had Sonya reported that Roen completed his rifle and squad training, he was called up from the minors and sent on his first team mission. According to Command, his training was complete and he was being moved to active duty.

Sonya and Tao protested his elevation through every channel possible, but on one cloudy August afternoon, just as the hot summer was giving way to cooler winds, Roen found himself driving his Fiat hatchback through fields of dairy cows towards his first real assignment – raiding a Genjix warehouse. He felt a mixture of fear and excitement, but his main concerns were to not die, to make his mentors proud, and to not make a fool of himself, in that order of importance.

He remembered sitting in the safe house, listening as Sonya yelled at whoever was on the other line about not putting him on the assignment, but it was out of her hands. Roen promised himself that all their work would not go to waste. The drive north up into Wisconsin gave him a lot of time to reflect on what lay ahead.

“Do you think the Prophus will reimburse me for gas?”

I am glad you have your head in the game.
 

“I’ve been in the car for almost two hours now. There’s only so many ways I can imagine getting killed. Now I want to think of happier thoughts.”

Like gas reimbursement? May I remind you that we gave you this car?
 

“May I remind you, sir, that I would still have my old car if those crazy maniacs weren’t trying to kill me?”

Touché. Make a right turn here. The base of operations is that farm.
 

Roen pulled in to what seemed like a deserted farm and parked in the gravel driveway. He got out and looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He climbed up the wooden stairs to the main house and knocked on the door. With a shrug, he walked to the end of the porch and looked out at the two silos, the fields of corn, the barn, and the large pole barn at the back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of crimson light and then a small red dot climbed up his shirt. Roen paused, at first wondering where he got the stain from, and tried to brush it off. Then he realized what it was and tensed.