as it ran out of control. It made a sharp right turn, careering over a steep ridge, and bounced its way down a long, rocky slope, finally coming to a jarring stop at the bottom of a gully.
T HE GULLY was too narrow to allow the helicopter access. All it could do was hover while Kang screamed into his handset for his ground troops to locate the stricken vehicle. It would take them almost thirty minutes to reach the base of the gully, where they found the 4x4 and three dead occupants.
Loy Hung, Dar Tan and Sammy Cho were gone.
And so, too, was the circuit board.
I T WAS near dark, freezing cold with food or water, and Sammy Cho was wounded. He had taken a couple of bullets in his right side.
But at least they had their weapons and the circuit board.
Loy Hung hoped that was enough. They were alone in the foothills, being pursued by Major Kang and his squad, which was as bad as it could get. At least, Hung thought, the major was denied the use of his helicopter until dawn. The machine was of little use in the dark, so Kang was having to depend on his ground troops.
It gave Hung and his men something of a chance to stay ahead. Not much, but at least a little advantage.
“Loy, we have to stop,” Dar Tan called. “Sammy’s wounds are bleeding again.”
They crouched in the semidarkness, able to see only what the thin moonlight allowed. While Hung kept watch, Tan did what he could for Cho. Tan had managed to rescue the first-aid bag from the 4x4 when they had been forced to abandon it. The bag held only basic first-aid items, certainly not advanced enough to deal with two bullet wounds. Tan had used some of the sterile pads to cover the holes, then bound them in place with some of the bandage from a roll. For his part Sammy Cho made no sound, offered no complaints and managed to keep up with his partners.
That had been three hours ago. Now Cho was showing signs of slowing down. He kept stumbling and when Tan had a look at his bandage he saw it was oozing blood heavily. When Cho fell to his knees this last time, he couldn’t get up.
“You should leave me. I can hold them off for you.”
“So you can be a hero?” Tan smiled at his friend. “You’d love that. So all the girls can flock around you while you tell the story?”
While he spoke to distract Cho, his fingers loosened the sodden bandage. Peeling back the inner dressing, he saw that the bullet wounds had swollen around the entry points. They were still bleeding, too. Tan feared they had become infected. His problem was that he had little idea what he really needed to do. The bullets needed extracting and the wounds cleaning and sealing. For once in his life Tan felt utterly helpless.
“That bad?” Cho asked. “Must be to stop you talking, Dar.”
“Sammy, I wish I could do more for you. But this is something I can’t deal with.”
Hung knelt beside them. “Can you keep moving? I think we’re not far from the village now. If we get there we only have to wait for Mei Anna and her friends. They’ll surely have someone experienced to deal with your wounds.”
“Well, I don’t have many other choices, do I?”
Tan dressed the wounds and replaced the bloody bandage with a fresh one. They stayed for a little while longer, giving Cho more rest.
Hung took a look around, checking the direction they had come. If it had been daylight, he might have been able to spot Kang’s men. The semidark, layering the terrain with deep shadows, made it impossible to identify anything. He decided they would just have to keep moving, hoping the encroaching night would slow Kang as much as it had them. He preferred that way of thinking rather than imagining everything was running smoothly for their pursuers.
Their luck seemed to be holding. Despite the fact they had to move slowly, they spotted the village just after midnight. The temperature had dropped even further. The wind coming down from the higher slopes of the hills dragged at their clothing, pushing them around, and with the ground underfoot being unsafe, it made travel difficult.
“Will Kang know about this place?” Tan asked.
“He might, but what else can we do?” Hung said. “If we stay in the open, we might freeze. Out here we’re too exposed. If we can get under cover, we’ll be out of the wind and at least have a place to defend.”
“When you say it like that,” Tan remarked, the trace of irony in his voice not lost on Hung.
“I didn’t expect it to turn out like this, Dar. This wasn’t the plan.”
“I’m not blaming you. We all knew what we were letting ourselves get into when we joined the group. I don’t regret it. I just hope we have the chance to make something out of this. It would be a shame if we lost everything after getting this far.”
They reached the village a short time later, making their way past the razed buildings until they reached the one remaining that would still provide some shelter. This semiderelict house still had a couple of rooms and a door they could close against the bite of the wind. Pushing open the door they got the semiconscious Cho inside. Hung secured the door, then crossed to the single window slot that allowed him to look back the way they had come.
Tan had Cho propped up in a corner. He found some discarded, dusty blankets and covered the man as best he could. Then he joined Hung at the window.
“It’s the best we can do. Pity we can’t risk a fire to get a little heat in here.”
Hung squatted with his back to the wall, hugging the backpack that contained the circuit board to his body.
“The only thing we can do now is wait.”
CHAPTER THREE
Townsend Ranch, South Texas
Oliver Townsend, former Major Oliver Townsend, U.S. Army, retired from active service for the past three years, was the driving force behind the covert organization Shadow. Depending on your stand, Shadow was either an inspired business enterprise or an illegal operation.
As far as Townsend was concerned, his operation was pure genius. In a world dominated by global enterprises, many of them partly funded and under the protective umbrella of federal government, Shadow might have been small. It did, however, cater to a specific need—that of providing military ordnance and technology to the specific requirements of its clientele. In essence Townsend did his business with those customers who, by whatever misdeed, were considered untouchable by the legitimate suppliers. There was a great deal of hypocrisy in that. It was a well-documented fact that overseas regimes once favored by government could fall into the black hole of becoming non gratis due to political expediency, power change or not adhering to nonspecified rules. The delicate balance in the political game was easily tipped. Today’s friend was tomorrow’s enemy. It was a simple equation that highlighted the power struggles and the watch-your-back mentality.
Townsend had been a spectator to much of this during his military career, his final two years spent at the Pentagon, and he had realized that there was much to be made from the infinitely complex machinations of the strategy game. He had acquired a great deal of insight, background knowledge and, importantly, contacts, a number of whom were instrumental in backing his enterprise and working behind the scenes. They were powerful men,
