Girl Goes To Wudang: An Emily Kane Adventure, #7

By Jacques Antoine

With Li Li in tow, Emily seeks something new at the home of Daoist martial arts, but surviving the trip may require more of her old skills.

A plum assignment to the Defense Attaché's office in Beijing ought to signal the beginning of easier times for Emily Kane. But dangers remain, even though tensions within China after a failed coup attempt seem to have subsided, and when an acquaintance in the Chinese intelligence service asks a favor, both their lives may be on the line. Li Li Tang longs to be reunited with her uncle, but If Emily is caught bringing her over, he will appear to be a traitor, and she'll be branded a spy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amaterasu Press
• Release date: Feb 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386974048

Book preview

1

Lugging The Guts

Will you knock it off, LT? I mean, really….

Sergeant Mick Durant labored along Hutchins Road, his morning run tracing the northern edge of USMC Base Quantico, and skirting the cordon of still-forested land shielding the fences from public view. As they made the turn, following the rise east, the edge of the sun sent a sharp ray into their faces, or more precisely into his face, since Lieutenant Michiko Tenno had been pacing him for the last quarter mile running backwards. Do you have to rub it in?

I thought you’d be honored to have my back, Sarge. You’ve always been my eyes, when things get… you know, twisted around.

Well, I am honored… truly, I am. Now will you turn around before even more people see us?

Fine, whatever. But I don’t think you can keep my pace for long, and I was hoping not to have to say anything.

You don’t have to wait for me. But dammit, LT, you got shredded worse than me on that God-forsaken island. How come you’re up to speed already?

Emily righted herself and flashed a smile over a shoulder, and then accelerated past him. His voice reached her one more time before she was out of earshot, calling to her to wait in mocking tones, though a note of resignation was still audible even at that distance. It wasn’t fair that she healed so much more quickly than the ‘old man,’ but she didn’t care to explain herself to him, or anyone else for that matter. She’d come to an understanding with her mother about it, and with herself, and she no longer saw any point in raking over cold coals… except maybe for Perry. A SEAL Lieutenant Commander, she’d already revealed some of her secrets to him, though perhaps not enough for him to really understand. But it was as much as she felt comfortable letting run free in the world.

It wasn’t long before she was in danger of catching up to the two squads of Marines who’d passed them a few moments earlier, triggering Durant’s existential sarcasm. What emotions had it stirred in him to watch as a pack of Devil Dogs picked ’em up and put ’em down, almost in unison, moving at a respectable clip, the soles of their running shoes slapping out a martial rhythm against the pavement? Perhaps it was something not so different from her own feelings – if only she could get clear on what exactly she did feel. Four miles in, they’d given up whatever songs and banter had sustained them initially. Now, only a sense of duty, tinged with a soupçon of competitiveness, propelled them.

Jarheads, Emily muttered. As long as she stayed in their acoustic blindspot, she could keep a comfortable pace. But if they became aware of her, they’d either feel compelled to outrun her, unable to endure the idea that a girl could keep up, or, if they recognized her rank, they’d slow down so she could pass… which would be even more irritating. Around the next bend, a path veered off into the trees, where she could run in peace. They wouldn’t leave the pavement, she was confident of that much, since the path was narrow and would require sorting themselves into a single file, and that’s just not how they think.

A chill morning was made even cooler by the shade and shelter, where pockets of night air still clung to the dips in the terrain, not yet dissipated by sunlit breezes off the Potomac and the Chesapeake. The dirt path was softer than the road, and quieter, and her thoughts drifted inward, guided by the sound of her breath, made hectic earlier by Durant’s presence, but now finding a slower pace, until finally her mind seeped past it, through the froth of the blood pulsing through her neck and chest, making the cells in her brain buzz with activity. The truly quiet place was not far to seek, deeper inside, closer to her center-line, just inside the beating of her heart. She listened until it seemed to beat no more, and her feet found their own way, pushing past the occasional low hanging branch, or spray of leaves reaching out for her calves.

The sun had begun its ascent across the vault of the sky, and now flashed and peeked through gaps in the foliage, leoparding across her eyelids when she closed them. Dew still clung to some of the lower leaves, and she felt a drop splash her cheek, and then another, like rain on a cloudless day. The breeze picked up and the sky grew dark, and then darker, as if a storm had overtaken her. The air felt warm on her face, and heavy.

The smells of the rainforest reached out to her as she picked her way through the densely tropical foliage, while heavy winds lashed the surf. The larger palm fronds needed to be treated with care lest they give her away, though perhaps this concern was misplaced, given the way the wind riffled the trees on all sides. She saw the glow in the distance, and circled around to her left, like a herding dog. Never a direct line to the enemy, always a vector. Time was short, with Durant crawling toward the last Zodiac and the edge of the tide, eating sand the whole way.

She picked up her pace, and arrived unseen behind Diao’s fire team, four men distracted by something on a hand-held video screen, laughing together in their ignorant defiance of the storm and her deadly intentions. She burst into the clearing, and dispatched the men with the stolid efficiency necessary to protect Durant. A high kick sent one man head first into a heavy trunk, and as he slid to the ground, two more lunged at her, barehanded in their surprise, instead of reaching for their weapons, paying for the mistake with their lives. The last man tried to bring his rifle around, but too slowly, and the wakizashi came whistling over her shoulder and sliced through radius and ulna, taking his arm off just below the elbow.

He smiled at her, eyes wide as saucers, as she slipped the blade under the body armor and between two ribs to find his heart. I’m sorry about this, she tried to say in Mandarin, but the words wouldn’t come. With his remaining hand, he gestured to the video screen lying face up a few feet away, and she caught a glimpse of the little girl playing on her mother’s lap, and her tiny laugh found Emily’s ears.

You never showed me that, she cried out. I didn’t see her. It’s not fair. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and the wind whipped around her body, but the dying man merely smiled until the light left his eyes.

The sky cracked open in a spleen, and the flash of light backlit everything around her, becoming warmer and brighter, almost caressing her, until the blue of the sky could again be seen over the meadow she knew so well. Insects flitted over the tall grass, and a stream burbled in the near distance, and she reached out to steady herself against an elm tree. How long had she been standing there, nowhere near the forest path? A cold sweat clung to her face and shoulders, and the small of her back, and she glanced about to find her way again.

By the time Durant caught up with her, she was sitting in the bleachers on the edge of the stadium next to the Barber Physical Activity Center, brooding over her ghosts, wishing she knew how to send them on, and staring at an official-looking envelope with her name on it.

Hey, LT, you okay?

She said nothing, merely handing him the letter.

What’s this? The Defense Attaché’s office… what do they want with you?

Read it, she grunted.

I didn’t know you’d put in for the Attaché service, LT. Don’t you need like twenty weeks training, or something, and isn’t there a huge waiting list?

I didn’t, and you do.

What the hell’s this, then? It says you’ve already been assigned to the embassy in Beijing. When Emily didn’t respond right away, he studied the contents of the letter a second time. Is this what you’ve been stewing over for the last few days?

I don’t think I can go?

Why the hell not? I know loads of guys would kill for a plum assignment like this, and you’ve already got the language skills, which must be why they leapfrogged you over the line…

Not Beijing… the other thing.

You mean Tarot’s family’s thing? When she ducked her head, Durant bent over to find an angle on her eyes. You’ve gotta go, LT. Don’t you think we owe it to them?

That’s the problem. I owe them too much. I can’t… I…

I’m sure it’s not gonna be like that. They don’t want to collect a debt. They just want to close the circle, you know, meet his comrades in arms… and maybe understand why he’d have sacrificed himself for us.

"You mean for me, don’t you?"

No, LT. I mean for all of us. It wasn’t just you.

I was so reckless, so selfish, as if nobody but me could stop Diao. But if I hadn’t… if I’d listened to Connie and Perry, maybe we could have found another way to contain Diao’s men… and Tarot might still be alive.

You don’t know that.

Oh, yes I do. I know it right here. Emily pounded her chest as she spoke. I know it clear as day.

When she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes were red, as if she’d been weeping, but they were actually dry, and she felt their warmth on her cheeks. Durant recoiled at the sight.

You need to come with us all the same. Emily stuffed the letter back in the pocket of her sweats and got up to leave. And don’t forget that other favor…

What? Oh, that… you want me to ruin someone’s Professional Training, right?

No, I just want you to round out one particular mid’s experience. He’s got a little too much bluster under sail, and could use a trim.

Is there a hand-to-hand class this morning?

Durant glanced at his watch. Yeah, starting in about ten minutes.

… and you want me to kick his ass?

I would have said ‘give him a tune-up,’ but you could put it that way. Plus you’d be giving the women in his platoon something to aspire to.

Fine, whatever. You realize if they need me to set an example, they probably belong behind a desk, right?

That’s not how your friend Lt Tanahill tells it… and Lt Talib, too. According to them…

Emily held up a hand. Enough, Sarge. I get it. He was right, of course, even if he didn’t know enough details to really understand why. But she’d had to help her friends find a different sort of fortitude, even if it came at the cost of some harrowing experiences, especially for CJ… and she was a better sailor for it. This was the truth she didn’t want to face, that she had to expose her friends to the fire to make them hard enough to endure what might come their way because of their proximity to her. This was what friendship with her meant.

Back in the Barber Center, in the main gymnasium, some thirty or so men and women watched a hand-to-hand demonstration, led by two familiar faces, Gunnery Sgt Perez and Sgt McIntyre. The students were mainly midshipmen, 3/Cs sent down for their PROTRAMID, the training sessions intended to acquaint them with the basic dimensions of a billet in the Corps, in case that’s where their ambitions would lead them, but also to give them a better sense of what battlefield conditions feel like, through carefully designed simulations of urban warfare, night-time insertions into hostile territory, gas attacks, and underwater recovery.

It also included advanced hand-to-hand training, one point of which was to confront the mids with situations in which they could not prevail. This was relatively easy to achieve with the women, and only slightly more difficult with most of the men. But one particular mid, 3/C Richard Callahan, was a little too skilled, and large enough to pose a problem for Sgt McIntyre. Durant probably could have managed him easily enough, if he’d been healthy.

Emily had watched from the back wall as McIntyre demonstrated their limitations to most of the women in the class – primarily through bear hugs and choke-holds – and Perez would have to call out Callahan’s name soon, or risk creating the impression that he’d intimidated them… which, to some extent he had. Durant gestured to her to come to the front, and Perez nodded to Callahan.

What’s this, Gunnery Sergeant? Do you want me to demonstrate a hold on her?

Not exactly, Perez replied. Lt Tenno has agreed to help out today.

I don’t get it, Callahan said, towering over Emily. What am I supposed to do, pretend she’s strong enough to hold me?

One thing you could do for a start is learn to shut up in the presence of a superior officer, Emily snapped.

Yes, sir… I mean ma’am.

Is it general grappling today, Gunny? Emily glanced over to Perez, who nodded. She turned to Callahan, looked him up and down, and sneered, eyes hard. You have a decision to make, Mr. Callahan. Either subdue me in any hold of your choosing, or run as fast as you can and see if you can make it to that door.

The class laughed nervously, uncertain of the tone of her humor. Callahan glanced at the door, and then back at her, started to move towards her, and then paused. Do you want to put on some pads, ma’am?

Not particularly. How about you? When he hesitated, Emily nodded to McIntyre, who tossed a couple pairs of grappling gloves onto the mat. Will these do? Emily strapped on the smaller pair and gestured to him to do the same. Satisfied? When he held his hands out in a standard defensive position, she turned to the class. This isn’t a sparring lesson, Mr. Callahan.

Of course, she knew this would give him the opening he so craved, and he obliged by lunging towards her, huge arms straining to reach her neck, no doubt meaning to wrap her into a choke-hold. But she pivoted into a back-kick at the last instant and jammed the heel of her right foot into the soft spot just below the sternum. The force of the blow straightened him up for a moment, gasping, and she allowed the momentum of the kick to bring her about, seizing his wrist and kipping up to scissor her legs around his neck. Her weight and rotational inertia soon twisted him down until he ended up lying on his face, her legs choking him off, and one arm caught in a wrist-lock that was looking to become very painful. Without releasing him, Emily addressed the class.

While Mr. Callahan entertains his options, the rest of you should notice that a fight is not always decided by physical strength. It can also be decided by mental sharpness. As you saw, he made a lazy attack and paid the price for it. She twisted the captive hand slightly, and after a high-pitched yelp, he slapped the mat.

With all due respect, ma’am, that wasn’t really fair, Callahan said, once he’d regained his footing. I didn’t know we’d be using our feet.

Fine. Would you care to lay down the rules of engagement? What would you consider fair?

Karate sparring rules.

No grappling, then? You do realize this is a hand-to-hand class, don’t you?

Sparring rules with hand-holds, okay, ma’am?

As you wish, Midshipman.

In the background, the sergeants snorted, and the class fell quiet. Perhaps too many of them had already been handled roughly by this young man in practice sessions – but was he a bully, or did his sneering arrogance merely indicate the last vestiges of an adolescence the Academy’s ‘harassment package’ had yet to shake out of him? He raised his hands once again into the usual sparring position, one hand in front, one foot forward, but Emily merely closed her eyes and stood straight up, facing the class.

Ma’am? he said, but she didn’t respond.

Breath came in and breath pressed out, though she spent very little muscular energy on this process, preferring to let it move of its own accord, to the extent this was possible. He grew more perplexed, she felt this, but what would he do about it. Would he strike her, or merely grab her? She heard an analogous confusion in the rest of the class. They hardly breathed at all, stifled by their confusion. The sergeants, too, hardly breathed. What did they expect? By all rights, they should have known how to handle him, and asking her to do it for them seemed… well, it was amateurish. This isn’t how you train soldiers, asking someone on a temporary posting in the Office of Public Affairs to solve your problems.

There, that was it, the little bit of resentment that had been tickling the back of her mind all morning. She breathed it out, opened her eyes, and turned to face Callahan, who’d dropped his guard by now.

I’m confused, ma’am. What is it you expect me to do here?

The choice is the same as before, Mr. Callahan. Subdue me, or see if you can make it to the door.

This is kinda bogus, ma’am… I mean, permission to speak freely?

Granted.

I don’t want to hurt you…

"But you do want to vaunt over me. You do think I’m not a real opponent, despite what happened the first time you tried to grab me. I tricked you, somehow, or at least, I must have cheated. Is that it?"

Not exactly, ma’am… I guess.

You can’t just take muscles into battle, Mr. Callahan. You also need a fighting spirit. Now show me yours.

Then raise your guard, ma’am. This doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Fine, Emily said, and raised her hands, though her guard didn’t seem quite right, open hands, one held high as if in greeting, the other low as if to receive a gift.

After a tense moment, Callahan risked a roundhouse kick to the side of her head. Nice form, Emily said, as she leaned out of the way. You need to work on focus.

As he pulled the leg down, with a jab already prepared from the other side, she hooked his foot and pulled him forward and off balance. He hit the floor with a loud grunt, and just as he looked up, she placed the heel of her foot against his nose. Wide-eyed, he picked himself up and stood to face her again, but uncertain how to hold his hands or his feet.

You’re limber, Mr. Callahan, and you’ve had some training, but you’ve never actually been challenged before, have you? He didn’t respond, the same blank bewilderment still etched across his face. It’s okay, son, – did she really just call him son? Barely six years older than him, and already it felt like a younger generation crowding her. She needed a moment to gather herself from her own confusion. Do you want to try one more time?

He nodded and stood to face her again, brow furrowed, determined not to make the same error again, whatever the error had been. Emily circled to her left, crossing in front of his dominant side – would he mistake this for an opening and swing at her with his right hand? No, he was too hesitant even for that. After another moment, she stopped moving and looked him in the eyes.

You have to make a move sooner or later, young man.

You’re not making a move either, ma’am.

Why should I? You have the advantage in size and strength, and probably speed, too. It’s not to my advantage to attack.

But then this isn’t really a fair fight, ma’am, he said, dropping his guard. In this new opening, Emily slipped one foot behind the other and planted a crossover sidekick into the center of his chest, knocking him backwards several unsteady steps, as the rest of the class gasped. He found his footing, still tottering and clutching his knees, and after a few seconds of labored breathing he managed to straighten himself up.

Is it a fight now, Mr. Callahan? Something flared up behind his eyes at her taunt and he stepped back towards her. Don’t ever drop your guard and whine about fairness to me again. There’s no such thing as a fair fight. If you can’t figure that out, then a Marine billet is not for you.

She held her hands on her hips as she spoke, inviting him to attack – there’s no way he could resist the poetic justice of smacking her at least once in the face while her guard was down. A jab went awry with a nudge from the flat of her hand, and she leaned away from an overhand right, and smacked the left hook across his chest. Before he could right himself and correct for the distance to swing at her again – since she was much too close now – Emily slipped one foot between his legs and pressed up against him, and thrust a hand up to grab his throat before shoving him to the floor.

She ended up on top of him, squeezing his windpipe and holding a second strike at the ready, when he bucked her forward to get her off of him. Emily rolled and pivoted to face him as he scrambled to his feet and raised his guard. The anger and frustration in his eyes had faded away, and now she could read his perplexity and embarrassment there, and maybe even a tiny hint of resolve.

That’s better, Mr. Callahan. Now you’re ready to fight me. Show me what you’ve got.

With an inchoate roar, he launched himself at her, hoping to smother this tiny slip of a girl under his bulk. That’s how it must have seemed to the class, given his enormous advantage in size and muscle – and what else could he do, since his attempt at sparring with her had failed so utterly? How surprising, then, when she ducked under his outstretched arms, seized a wrist and shouldered him up and over. A tug on the wrist pulled his head and torso down into a tumble and his shoulder struck the mat before the rest of his bulk slapped down. He sprang up immediately – how had he not been injured in that fall, the class might well have wondered – and lunged back towards her, reaching out for her neck, until another spinning back-kick caught him in that same soft spot just below the sternum, and she kipped herself up along a captive arm and scissored her legs around his neck. Once again, the rotational inertia of her body, so high above his center of gravity, spun him down into the mat, and she twisted that wrist until he tapped out.

I think we’ve ended up in the same place again, Mr. Callahan, she said, before releasing him and untangling her legs. She crouched next to him as he lay on the mat for a few seconds trying to recover his breath.

How do you keep doing that to me, ma’am?

I’m a lot meaner than you are – welcome to the Marines. Maybe you can get Staff Sgt Durant to explain it to you. She reached down to give him a hand up and guided him to a place among the rest of the class, who all stared at her. Can I entrust this class to you now, Sgt Perez?

Yes, ma’am, he replied.

Thanks, LT, Durant whispered, as he walked her to the door. I think you opened his eyes.

2

Getting One’s Bearings

I need to get back, Danko shouted over his shoulder as he ran through the tunnel complex, though perhaps it would be more accurate to call them caves, or some mix of the two.

Slow down, big guy, Connie called ahead, struggling to keep up in the low light. These were his caves, not hers, after all. Get back where? Do you know where they’d have gone?

Yeah… sort of. I’m not sure. Danko stopped to consider the options, standing under a flickering fixture. Thailand, the camps south of Chiang Mai. That’s where I should start.

You mean ‘we’, right?

It took him a moment to digest her words, his eyes perhaps only now bringing her completely into focus. We?

Of course. You came along to keep my girl safe. It’s the least I can do to repay the favor.

I took too long getting back. What the hell was I thinking?

Let’s just take a moment to gather ourselves and formulate a plan. Connie pulled him away from the rough stone of the wall, which was damp from condensation. Meacham’s construction crews had come perilously close to exposing some source within the mountain, which probably would have flooded the whole complex. Then they’d have had to start from scratch on another island. As it was, water merely oozed through the wall and collected on the edge of the floor along this section of the main corridor, before seeping back into the earth. Should we look for a message?

She won’t have left a message here, not if they had to leave under fire.

Would she have taken her men directly back to the Shan Highlands? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?

No, you’re right. She’d have been careful about that. We had escape plans, and they involved island-hopping through the Pulau chain. But if the Chinese were here in force, those routes might have been compromised.

So, the question is, how do you get almost five hundred men through a naval cordon?

That’s what the Rigid-inflatables were for. First, get most of the men to Sangihe, and let them work their way up to General Santos City, where they can connect with the Moros. Most of the rest would head southwest and make for the Malacca Strait, lose themselves in the ordinary traffic in the shipping lanes. Above all, the point would be not to hurry, to draw no attention.

You said ‘most of the rest.’ Who’d be left?

Tammy and Hsu Qi. That’s who the Junta is really after. If they’re captured, the movement will fall apart, at least for this generation.

What was their escape route, then?

It was stupid… and I told her so, over and over.

Well? Connie shook him by the shoulders. Don’t keep me hanging.

She kept a catamaran disassembled in a cove at the north end of the island. The idea was to sail west, to Palawan.

Even if that’s where the enemy was… because, given the trade winds, that’s the most likely… they’d be heading right into the teeth…

Not ‘if.’ That’s what she’d be counting on. She always used to say, if you run from a wolf, it can’t help but chase you. That’s all it knows. If you run towards the wolf, it will let you pass in the confusion.

That’s very ‘zen’ of her. Who knows… it just might work. But a catamaran?

Yeah, you know the kind with no rigid deck, just canvas stretched over the spars connecting the pontoons. Since there’d be no cabin to hide in, she figured there’d be less reason to stop them to search anything. It would just be the two of them, Tammy in shorts and a floral shirt, and her in a sarong over a swimsuit.

Well, she’s got style. I’ve got to hand it to her.

And even if they were stopped, unless the Chinese have better intel, a current photo, that sort of thing – which is extremely unlikely, since she’s always been really careful about stuff like that – there’d be nothing to find in the pontoon compartments.

Just a couple of tourists who got blown too far east from Palawan.

Exactly.

It just might work. Connie tried to make eye-contact with Danko, to shore him up with a stern glance. Look, our best move is to act on the assumption that she made it through. If she hasn’t, we’ll find that out soon enough. It’s not like the Junta would keep it a secret. They’d trumpet it across every news cycle. That means we still have at least a couple of weeks to find a rendezvous, since they’re not likely to get back to Chiang Mai much sooner than that.

"Right, I suppose we should go back to Davao, and then head to Malaysia. I’m still persona non grata in Thailand, so the border crossing will be tricky."

In that case, maybe we could fly into Hanoi and cross through Laos. A sickly smile crept over Danko’s face at these words. In bad odor in Vietnam, too, then? We can always do it the old-fashioned way and fake the papers.

I’d rather avoid border control altogether, if it’s all the same to you. He straightened himself up with these words, as if bringing a difficult task into pragmatic focus made it easier to face the other uncertainty. If we fly into Penang and take a ferry to Langkawi… from there, it’s a short boat ride to Satun, and we can swim ashore.

I guess we’ll need to do some shopping in Davao. When Danko tilted his head uncomprehendingly, she explained. I’m gonna need a new swimsuit, and you’ll need some board shorts, or at least something touristy.

This isn’t Phuket, or one of the other tourist beach towns. We’re gonna be picking our way through rubber plantations and the occasional mangrove forest.

You really know how to show a girl a good time.

On the ride back to Kamako, where Connie had rented the fishing boat, his mood lightened, and he became more talkative. Spray flared over the open cabin as they bucked a bit of chop before cresting the riptide at the mouth of the harbor, and he shouted perhaps louder than necessary.

I don’t think she heard me.

Who? Connie turned to examine his face. Hsu Qi?

No. Tenno… I mean Emily, you know… George’s daughter. I don’t think she heard what I said. At least I hope not.

You mean about all the killing?

Yeah. I felt kinda bad about that. It’s just that Tammy lost his whole family to Walker, and she looks so damn much like him… and when I saw her use that sword…

She’s got a way of reading people, whether she heard you or not. It’s best not to dwell on it. Just keep thinking of her as Kane’s daughter. She’s much more like him than she is like her uncle.

Maybe she is, though George would never use a sword… something about killing too quickly, before you get a chance to see if it’s possible to keep someone alive. That’s why he didn’t care for long rifles. He preferred to meet the enemy face to face, and left the long-range stuff to me… and that was just fine by me.

I didn’t really have a chance to get to know him, and he was damned psycho through and through, but he had a similar preference. He’d never look through a scope. It was always face to face with him, too.

Yeah, but he liked killing, and George didn’t.

Do you seriously think she enjoyed what she had to do on Itbayat?

The question silenced Danko, and he scanned the harbor to avoid turning to face her.

She did what was necessary, even if it meant sacrificing herself, Connie continued, growing agitated. Can you picture Walker ever doing something like that? Seriously, would he ever have sacrificed himself for anyone?

No. I guess not.

Connie cut the RPMs and let the bow glide to the pier, spinning the wheel hard to starboard at the last second, while Danko swung the bumpers over the port side. She reversed the propeller for a moment and the gunwales came to rest inches from two pilings.

Tie her off at the stern and let’s head to the airstrip, see if we can catch a lift to Davao before it gets dark.

3

Raising The Dead

Sgt Durant had been jabbering about some hand-to-hand class for most of the ride down to Charlottesville, and Lt Cmdr Hankinson had long since wearied of it. He’d have cranked up the radio an hour ago to drown it out, if it weren’t all country stations in this stretch.

But how’d you get her to agree to come, Sarge? I’d already given up the cause.

That’s what I’ve been trying to explain, LC.

Perry tilted his head to the side as he considered Durant’s beef-steak face. Was some subtle wisdom hidden there, in the most unlikely of places? Sorry… what? She taught some kid a lesson and that…

Exactly. This kid was huge, and full of beans, you know…

… just like Tarot. Perry shook his head in disbelief. You non-comms aren’t as stupid as everyone thinks.

I wish I could say the same for the officers, Durant replied for Perry’s benefit.

They passed through a few toney neighborhoods on the north end of town, and followed a winding road through the foothills. An opening in the tree-cover on the right revealed an unpaved, narrow road, and Perry turned the car down it and slowed in anticipation of a much rougher ride. A few dead trunks here and there had fallen against neighboring trees and now hung suspended on one side or the other of the roadway.

This is definitely defensible, Durant observed.