Wiser Than Serpents (3 page)

After that, something had died inside their mother, as well. About then, Yanna had graduated from college, stepped in and taken over the raising of Elena. Perhaps this was why Yanna couldn’t forgive Elena for abandoning her for a man. This, too, felt like a legacy from their mother.

In a few days, the only thing she’d have left of Elena would be her hand-me-down jeans and one of the matching silver lockets they’d exchanged last year for Christmas.

Katya emerged with the potatoes as the doorbell rang again. Yanna opened it to three of Elena’s group-mates from school. They charged into the flat, dumping their sandals and book bags, and turned up Valery Meladze on the stereo. Yanna felt young again as the music found her heartbeat. The bell rang a second time, and Vicktor, Roman and Sarai stood just outside the metal door. Yanna’s contingency.

Sarai gave her a quick hug. “How are you holding up?” She had to nearly shout.

Yanna shrugged. Although she and Sarai had only met for a summer years ago, and hadn’t seen each other until this past winter when Roman rescued Sarai from becoming a political prisoner, Yanna felt as if she had known the blond American doctor all her life. Or maybe she simply reminded Yanna of Sarai’s brother, David. Probably another good reason Yanna enjoyed having Sarai around.

Roman handed her a bouquet of flowers. “For the bridesmaid.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and Yanna was touched by his kindness. The Cobra captain with the tawny-brown hair and hazel-green eyes seemed so much happier with Sarai around, and the wounds he’d received in gulag had healed nicely, especially under Sarai’s care.

Walking in right behind them, Vicktor caught her before Yanna could follow Roman and Sarai into the flat. Vicktor had an intensity about him, from his dark hair to his toned frame that scared away most women. But Yanna and, most of all, Gracie, his fiancée, knew that underneath that take-no-prisoners exterior resided a man who would give his life for his friends.

“Gracie said she’d meet Elena in Seattle. She’s there working with a new project, so she said she could sneak away. I sent her the flight information.”

Yanna nodded, hating the sudden prick of tears his words caused. His blue eyes softened, and he reached out and gave her a one-armed squeeze.

“Thanks, Vita,” she said. She’d planned on asking her friend Mae—a national guard pilot who’d recently moved to Seattle—or even David to keep tabs on Elena, and the fact that Vicktor had suggested his fiancée, well, all at once Yanna felt that maybe Elena would be okay, after all.

Yanna followed him into the family room, where everyone crammed around the table. Some merciful soul had opened the windows to her flat, and when Katya switched off the music, street traffic three stories below drifted up, adding an early evening ambience. The smell of hydrangeas and dahlias lifted from the bouquet on the table, now covered with bowls of salads, cutlets, mashed potatoes, and glasses of prune
sok.

Elena emerged from the kitchen, carrying her masterpiece, a tall Napoleon cake of thin layers and abundant cream. Yanna couldn’t help but notice how she glowed, just like a bride should. She’d pulled her dark brown hair back, and it cascaded in curls along the neckline of her sleeveless tank. With a hint of tan on her arms and nose, she looked about sixteen. Yanna could hardly believe this was what Elena really wanted. But then again, if Yanna were to look deeply, perhaps her dreams weren’t so very different. Not really.

Someone to love her? To count on? No, that wasn’t so foreign a desire.

Yanna picked up her glass of
sok,
raised it to the group. “To Katya and Elena.
Cheslivaya Vechnaya!
”

“Happily ever after,” they all chorused as they touched their glasses for a toast.

He’d never eaten deep fried frog on a stick, but David Curtiss was a patriot, and he’d do just about anything for his country.

“Shei-shei,”
he said as he took the delicacy from the vendor, fished out a New Taiwan dollar and dropped it into the vendor’s hand.

He wondered what might leave a worse taste in his mouth, fried frog, or meeting a man who had beheaded the two undercover agents who had tried this trick before David. But if all went as planned, his culinary sacrifice would lead him to the identity of Kwan-Li, leader of the Twin Serpents, the largest organized crime syndicate in eastern Asia.

The smells of night market were enough to turn even his iron gut to mush—body odor, eggs boiled in soy sauce, fresh fish and the redolence of oil from the nearby shipyard. Even worse, the fare offered in the busy open market sounded like something from a house of horrors menu: Grilled chicken feet, boiled snails, breaded salamander, poached pigeon eggs, and the specialty of the day—carp-head soup.

“What did you get me into, Chet?” he whispered, wondering if Chet Stryker, his cohort for his unfortunate op, was grinning at the other end of his transmitter. “Squid or even snails, okay, but a frog?” Chet had set up this meet—and the frog signal. “Next time, you’re going to be drinking asparagus juice, buddy.” He hoped Chet’s silence meant he still had his eyes on him. David hadn’t seen his partner in the forty-five minutes he’d been walking around the market—a sign of Chet’s skill, no doubt.

David looked at the brown and crispy frog and wondered if he was supposed to add condiments—he’d noticed a sort of ketchup and horseradish at the bar.

A few more seconds and he’d have to take a bite. It wasn’t enough to just stand here and try to blend in with the crowd, not an easy task given that every man who brushed by him stood around chin height. Even with David’s long dyed-black hair, silk Asian shirt and designer jeans, he knew he looked like a walking American billboard. Thankfully, foreigners flocked to the novelty of night market in this part of Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

He saw a couple of Americans stroll by, listened to their comments about the food, the smells. A short blonde, slightly pudgy, wearing a blue Taiwanese shirt and shorts set probably purchased in a local beach shop sucked on the straw of a jujube shake. Next to her, her husband was finishing off a grilled squid. Aid workers, probably. The island had a plethora of Americans working in relief and humanitarian aid agencies. Especially after the last earthquake.

If only that shaker had dismantled Kwan’s organization. But unlike the hospitals and island utilities, organized crime kept their systems up and running without a hiccup, transporting heroin out of mainland China, and arms and munitions in, where they ended up in rogue countries like Afghanistan, or even Iran, and in the hands of rebel groups like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and countless crime syndicates from Thailand to Malaysia.

But the disruption of services in Taiwan had given David what he needed to slip under Kwan’s radar and place himself on his doorstep. If he played this right, Kwan would agree to his offer of pistols, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, mortars, and the promise of a light howitzer, in exchange for 150 kilos of heroin. The exchange of weapons for drugs would accomplish two goals—intercept another shipment of heroin and trace the trail of arms.

Most of all, David hoped to put a face to the boss of one of the largest drug and arms trafficking rings in Southeast Asia.

Then maybe he could cut his hair, take a bath and get out of his sweaty duds and into his uniform, where he felt most comfortable.

And he’d finally write back to Yanna, who by now probably wanted to strangle him. He’d never gone this long without corresponding and every day that passed without hearing from her felt a little like a part of him had died.

Sorry, Yanna.

Perhaps, however, this time-out from their daily e-mails and instant messages had told him one thing—how much she meant to him.

He checked his watch. Kwan’s man was late. Which meant he’d have to take a bite of froggie.

He lifted the amphibian to his mouth.

“Lipley?”

He heard his alias on the lips of a small, bowed man. “I’m Ripley,” he said.

The Asian man—David placed him at fifty—nodded once and moved past him. David ditched the frog and followed, dodging shoppers, keeping the man in his sights. “Contact,” he said softly into his transmitter. But probably Chet had already seen that.

They left the press and smells of the market and crossed the street into the shipyards. The container yard of Kaohsiung Harbor—the third largest in the world—had been an easy place to mask their shipment of Remington M-24 Sniper rifles, Colt M-16s and Commandos, and way too many H & K MP5s. The CIA had also thrown in Smith & Wesson .45 caliber pistols. David had watched from the roof of a warehouse earlier today as Chet checked the supply with the head of CIA in Taiwan after sweeping the area beforehand. He’d heard Bruce okay the transaction, and even reiterate the agency’s agreement—and policy—to disavow should things go south. Figured.

Then David had cleared Chet to lock the container tight and leave, alone.

He hadn’t heard from his partner until they met over an hour ago outside the market. Until Chet had told him about the frog.

The moan of ships moving out into the South China Sea, the smell of seaweed and oil, and the sound of seagulls calling brought David back to his last trip to Russia, only eight months ago. After helping his best friend Roman escape from a Siberian gulag, and making sure his stubborn-as-a-Russian sister, Sarai, was safe, David had accompanied Yanna to a volleyball match in Vladivostok. And afterward, they’d walked down to the wharf to watch the lights of the ships glimmer against the black sea and listen to the water lap against the massive steel hulls. Her long mink-brown hair blowing in the cold wind, and that mysterious smile on her face had nearly made him take her in his arms.

Nearly.

But he’d been dodging that impulse, with success, for almost a decade. Well, all but once. Still, starting a relationship—the kind he wanted to finish—with Yanna could only lead to heartache. And not just because they lived on different sides of the ocean. But because they lived on different sides of eternity. For now. He’d never stop hoping that might change.

“Wait here.” The little man stopped him with an outstretched hand, and David stood still, his heart thumping as he watched the man disappear behind a three-story stack of metal containers. From behind him, he heard footsteps. He turned and tried not to flinch as two of Kwan’s muscle materialized. They both looked like they’d done time in a Chinese prison—their noses set poorly, bodies wedged into ill-fitting suit pants and silk shirts. Homemade tattoos lined their forearms. He recognized silver Russian-made Makarov pistols in their grips and he kept his hands out from his pockets. “Where’s Kwan? I agreed to meet with Kwan.”

“He wants a sample of the merchandise before he’s willing to meet with you,” said the taller, nastier-looking of the two.

David shrugged. The guns were real enough. They had to be, to make it overseas and into the right hands. Yet inside each gun, the CIA had installed a surveillance chip to leave a trail that David and the other members of this op could track.

Hopefully, in the end, they’d bring down Kwan’s organization. Before they sacrificed precious lives. “Fine, I’ll want a sample of his merchandise.”

One of them smiled, and it sent a warning into David’s gut. Something didn’t feel right. He’d been undercover in enough hot spots over the world, first as a Green Beret, and then as a Delta Force operative, to recognize something sour in the air.

But he said nothing as he turned and wound his way to the container he’d set up for just this scenario. He hoped Chet had heard the exchange and had him in his sights.

Not that Chet would step in should the op turn ugly. This was important enough to both of them, to the war on terror, to the thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan being mowed down with their own American-made weapons to sacrifice David’s life, should it become necessary.

David stopped before a locked container and entered the code to the mechanical lock. The door came open with a teeth-grating whine.

“Inside.”

With the moon rising over the water, streams of hazy light raked the container yard. But it couldn’t penetrate the palpable blackness of the container. However, David had personally secreted the one crated box of weapons in the container and now walked over to it without hesitation. He reached out to crack it open when a light flickered across the crate.

“Stop.”

The voice came from the darkness, and David couldn’t make out the face of the speaker. When the light panned the floor, he plainly recognized the man writhing in the pool of luminescence, bleeding from the head, his hands tied behind him.

Chet.

David stared at him and everything inside him turned to liquid. “What’s going on?”

“We have a problem.”

David narrowed his eyes, trying to get a fix on the speaker.

“We caught your partner here working with the CIA.”

Chet glanced up at him, his face granite. David leveled the appropriate glare at Chet.
Lord…

“We’d like to think that he was double-crossing you, Ripley.”

Was that a question? David walked over to Chet, grabbed him by the hair. “Is that true, O’Hare?”

Chet looked at him, and slowly nodded.

Pain cut through him, and David thought he might gasp. Instead he backhanded Chet. His partner fell back and the sound of Chet’s ragged breathing filled the container, burned right into David’s soul.

“I think we’d like a demonstration now.”

David looked up, into the shadows. He made out a taller man, deep-set eyes, a thick build. “I was supposed to meet Kwan.”

“First a demonstration. Then Kwan will see you.”

Which meant that David couldn’t end this here, couldn’t somehow shoot their way out in a blaze of gunfire and fists.

“What demonstration?” he growled.

The man nodded past him, toward one of his men. David heard the crate being wrenched open and bile burned in his mouth. He met Chet’s gaze with a coolness meant to mask his feelings. Chet glanced away from him, closed his eyes.

No, God.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Especially since Chet was more than a partner. In a way, he was family.