Part 60 (1/2)

Jake turned away, saw the old Chinese, propped against the bole ofa tree. Pain made of his face a lopsided mask. He knelt beside him. ”You're Huaishan Han,” he said in Mandarin.

The old man seemed surprised. ”Surely your late father never mentioned my name.”

”It was given to me at the point of death,” Jake said, ”by one of your diqui network. The diqui is yours, is it not?”

”Mine,” the old man said, ”and Chen Ju's. It gave him power.”

”And you?” Jake said. ”What did it give you, old man?”

”Me? Why, it gave me back my life.” Huaishan Han reached out with a taloned claw and drew Jake toward him. ”A life that had been taken from me by your father. He took everything from me: my wife, my child, my career. He ruined me utterly. The diqui brought me a reason to live. It brought me back into the good graces of a Communist Chinese regime whose memory had grown dim. I was no longer remembered. The old guard was all gone: purged or died of natural causes. Except your father. He was the only one who would remember. And seek to stop my rise to power again inside China.” He c.o.c.ked his head as if the barking crackle of the gargantuan fire were speaking to him. ”He had to die, you see. Only he could have stopped me. And, of course, you.”

”You had my father murdered.” Only the mountain knows, Hige Moro had said. The Shan.

”Revenge,” Huaishan Han said, ”is its own reward. Your father destroyed me once. He did more than destroy me. He destroyed my future as well. My wife, my dearest Senlin, and my unborn child. In the well at Shuang jing. He threw me down into darkness. Into h.e.l.l.” The old man's eyes were fever bright. The chemical flames were reflected in their glossy depths.

”He had done something to Senlin, you see, your father. Something despicable, something unspeakable. Her mind, her entire personality was twisted beyond recognition. Still, I wanted her; still, I loved her. She was the only one I ever loved!”

It was a wail, a terror-filled, anguished sound unlike any Jake had ever heard before. The rain beat a solid tattoo against Huaishan Han's white face. He breathed as if he were running a race he could never finish.

”In the well,” he said. ”I lived in that h.e.l.lish place for almost a week. My back was broken. I could barely move. But when I fell, I took my Senlin with me.” His eyes were filled with tears. They made the flames, in reflection, seem chimerical, changing shape in the manner of windblown clouds. ”She was above me. My own batteredbody protected her from serious injury. The same stone outcropping that broke my back now saved us from an endless descent into the depths.”

His head drooped on his stalklike neck, his sharp chin brus.h.i.+ng his fluttering chest. ”Oh,” he cried, ”she could have saved me. She could have saved us both. But, no, she began to fight me. She was under your father's spell. Some terrible, unimaginable sorcery he had worked on her.

”I could scarcely believe it. I begged her to save us. It was in her power to do so. I could hear your father calling to her from above. How I hated him! I sent my hate upward as if it could entwine itself about him and strangle the life from him.

”But my Senlin was gaining in strength and she began to pummel me. She was a madwoman. I looked in her face and knew that she was no longer sane, no longer mine. No longer Senlin at all.

”She was a stranger,” Huaishan Han panted. ”A stranger who was trying to kill me.” He looked up at Jake. ”I did the only thing I could, you see. She had told me that she was pregnant and at that moment I, too, must have gone mad. I remember thinking, It is his child, not mine!

”So I killed her and killed it. The baby. The future. In an instant it was all gone. Everything. And for a week afterward they were my sole companions.”

Now the old man's head came up and he clutched more firmly at Jake. ”So you see, it was not enough to kill your father, s.h.i.+ Jake.” The tears were gone, the eyes were clear and colorless in their pa.s.sion. Jake imagined that Huaishan Han had gazed upon his Senlin with such a baleful expression in the split instant before he reached out and snuffed out her life and that of the baby growing inside her.

Abruptly nauseated, Jake broke the old man's hold on him. But Huaishan Han's taloned claws sought to hold on. It was like being in a field of nettles.

”It was not enough, s.h.i.+ Jake,” the old man screamed. ”Your father took from me not only my love, my life, but my future. Is it not fitting that I destroy his now!”

With a great effort, Jake pushed the demented old man away from him. He was disgusted. Horrified at the depths to which the human soul could sink, he turned away toward the flickering fire. He meant to find Simbal and Bennett but, instead, he saw a figure walking slowly toward him.

The hair was cut short, the fire threw it into stark silhouette againstthe pelting downpour. Then it turned and he saw it was a woman. The figure came steadily toward him and at last he could see the face, that familiar face that had haunted his dreams from the moment Nichiren had shot her at the Sumchun River four years ago.

Lan, his daughter! Alive!

”Lan,” he said, elation filling him. ”Lan!”

”h.e.l.lo, bah-ba,” she said and, as Colonel Hu had instructed her, pulled out the automatic, aimed it and pulled the trigger.

When Tony Simbal heard the shot, he whirled around, the rain flying off him. He got the briefest glimpse of Jake facing a shadowy figure. Then Bennett took off and Simbal went after him.

The combination of the storm, the explosion and the Shan diversionary raid at the other end of the compound had put the area into chaos. Bennett chose to dart in the direction of the fire. It was the smart move. The factory was on the southern perimeter of General Kuo's encampment. Any other direction would take Bennett into the compound where he ran the risk of being stopped by Kuo's men or, worse, shot by Simbal's Shan warriors.

Simbal had this figured as well so he did not follow Bennett directly but rather made for the place beyond the burning factory he would have gone to were he in Bennett's place.

He was at the edge of the jungle. Already a tangly web of undergrowth was building its way toward the side of the factory, although there was ample evidence that it had been hacked back quite recently.

In the trees, he turned, moving the muzzle of the AK-47 in a slow, steady arc. The rain destroyed perspective and the continuing conflagration just meters away cast bizarre shadows that rose and fell with sickening rapidity.

Bennett was nowhere to be found and Simbal cursed himself. He moved off farther into the jungle, began a sweep that would take him parallel to the sh.e.l.l of the factory.

Saw a darting movement and, crouching down, began to move as quickly as he could toward the spot. In that moment, felt all the breath go out of him. He doubled over as Bennett kicked him a second time in the kidneys. Lost hold of the AK-47 and saw Bennett's bulk diving after it.

Simbal went after Bennett. He grabbed hold of the big man's legs and twisted. Bennett went down but he was already rolling, kicking upward in a vicious thrust.

The toe of his cowboy boot brushed Simbal's cheek and then theheel slammed into his jaw. Simbal reeled backward and Bennett lunged for the AK-47, took it up and aimed it hurriedly.

Simbal leapt at Bennett as the big man pulled the trigger. Felt the heat, the disintegration and he was inside the spray of bullets. Used the edge of his hand under Bennett's chin in a short, sharp chop.

Bennett let go with a ”Whoof!” of surprise and pain and Simbal brought him down, jamming an elbow into his sternum. But Bennett used the stock of the submachine gun, smas.h.i.+ng it into Simbal's groin.

Simbal saw stars. His breath was steaming in his throat and sickening bile rose upward, threatening to choke him.

Bennett scrambled to his feet, trained the AK-47 downward. ”Christ, Tony, but you were always a pain in my a.s.s. What a f.u.c.king white knight you are. I really think I'm doing you a favor now by killing you. I'm saving you from a life slaving away in the gray corridors for men with little minds and even littler pocketbooks.” He curled his forefinger around the AK-47's trigger. ”So long, Tony.”

Simbal, his right hand holding his aching lower belly, flicked his arm upward and the thin throwing knife stuck to the hilt in Bennett's chest. He looked utterly astounded and died with that expression imprinted on his face.

Taking three deep breaths, Simbal got to his knees. He took the AK-47 from Bennett's grip and staggered back toward the encampment.

Jake felt the blood running along with the rain. It pumped from him: his life draining away. He slipped to his knees, regained his feet.

”Lan,” he called. ”Lan! Oh, Buddha.”

Saw her leveling the pistol at him and thought, This is a dream, some terrible nightmare from which I will awake at any moment.

But the pain was real and with every beat of his laboring heart he could feel his strength ebbing. How could this be happening? he thought. How?

He struggled toward her. The wind and the rain scoured him. He was beaten again to his knees. Gasping, vision blurred. He tried to a.s.semble his thoughts but the sight of his daughter, and then the knowledge of what she had done to him, unnerved him. He was frozen. Shock and despair gripped him unshakably.

”Lan,” he called. ”Lan, I love you.” Had he ever told her that? When was the last time he had held her, the last time she had come to him for comfort. Had he given it even then? Probably not. He had not wanted a daughter, he realized now, had been disappointed in his first wife that she bore him a female child instead of a male.

So he had deliberately set about making her as hard in spirit as aman.

Now he knew that he had squeezed all the joy, all the life out of her. What was left had fled his unhappy household to join the radical Triad, the Steel Tigers at the border of the Mainland.

And now, insanely, she was going to kill him. He looked up through his pain and his grief to see the muzzle of the pistol coming down. It was aimed at a spot between his eyes. There was nothing in his daughter's face: no recognition, no rage, no emotion at all. She was a machine, programmed to perform this hideous task.

Jake made one last attempt to reach her. Got to his feet and took three quick, unsteady steps toward her. Then toppled to the muddy earth at her feet.

He was the only thing of which Qi Lin was aware. She heard him calling a name but was hardly aware that it used to be hers. Instead, he seemed to be mouthing some alien tongue, which struck her much like the rain. She was indifferent to its effect.

In her mind, Colonel Hu's hand stretched out along the cradle of the night, caressing her while his mind talked to hers. He told her what to do and she listened. Her finger tightened on the trigger and, for the second time, she began the slow squeezing motion that would ensure a perfectly placed shot.