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| Miwu Cun Village Constable Pak Budi |
Thursday, August 15, 2024 - 8:30 AM - Mannu District
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the twat saw you at Cabbage. Maybe she’ll scare…not so bad. That she got as far as Miwu Cun is more than I expected. Are you in Yung Fa Ho?”
Sapptoso stopped in mid-sentence, listening to the flip phone plastered against his left ear. He stood in his office, a converted exam room in the abandoned Mannu Clinic, gazing out the window at the moss-covered canal that nonetheless opened to the South China Sea. He took a slug of his beer; the day promised to be hot. He’d keep cool in his trench waiting for events to percolate, perhaps better than he had planned. Revenge was so sweet…if he could have it. Suddenly, Sapp put down his beer and turned sharply in a huff, listening to his phone.
“What d’ya mean there’re two?” His eyelids blinked away a cobweb. “What? There were three?” Sapp’s whole body shook in disgust. “Let me get this straight. Phillipo grabbed two girls? Are they healthy, good-lookin'?”
Sapp listened.
“Marco, if the kid saw Sully’s weird van and can give a description, she'll find them." Sapptoso paced as he listened.
“And she’s alone? Good! Better than I hoped for. Okay, listen. Here’s what we do. VJ is letting us know where she is, so you don't need to track her. Stay with the kids, Phillipo, and Da Rik. Grab the bitch when she shows up at Sully’s and eliminate her. Three against one should be a snap for you three grunts.”
Sapp scratched a mosquito bite on his neck, then looked at his hand to see a smear of blood. He spit on his hand and rubbed the bite again.
“Naw, she won’t stay at Miwu Cun long. Sully’s van is well known up there. She’ll find it, and then you three can take care of business. It’s like I was hoping, the kid is bait. Be as rough as you want."
Sapp listened, frowned, and threw back his head in disgust. “No! I want her gone…all of her.”
There was more chatter on the other end of the call.
“Yeah, yeah! Don't worry. I’ll come and get the kids before she shows up. Again, you three and the kids stay put at Sully’s place. Yeah, I know it’s a junk yard, but it’s safe.”
Sapp slapped his flip phone shut and put it in his jeans’ back pocket, looked around for his can of beer, shook his head in frustration, and downed the rest of the warm brew. “Jerks, all of ’em. Can’t follow the simplest of instructions.”
Walking to the hallway door, he yelled down the corridor, “Sarsak!? Get your ass in here.”
A barbell clanked onto the floor, and Sarsak, a 19-year-old Pellagorian, muscle-bound, protégé thug in training, jogged out of a doorway toward Sapp.
“Provision the Tank,” demanded Sapp. “Two days to the mountains. Those idiots are going to need help getting our merchandise down here. Flippin’ retards.”
As Sarsak jogged off, Sapptoso slipped into his Kasdan throne room, knelt before the mammoth bronze representation of his god, lit three candles, and bowed low, praying for sweet revenge.
Thursday, August 15, 2024 - 9:27 AM - Northwest of Miwu Cun
The broken herringbone gold chain, the description of the frog-green van, the tread impression in the mud, and Constable Pak Budi’s suggestion that the Southern Veil gang was involved prompted Sabriya to waste no time in retrieving her SEC from the village, maneuvering it through the underbrush, and heading off to the northwest on the overgrown roadbed, all the while looking for tread marks to confirm she was on the right path.
The going was slow due to the overgrowth. She concluded that the sides of the van must have been scratched while getting through the road. She flicked the toggle on the bike’s console to activate the full duplex comm channel. “Scorp. Sabriya. Copy?”
A moment later, Landon’s voice filled her helmet. “Copy, Sabriya.”
“Are you tracking my movements? I just left Miwu Cun, heading northwest.”
“Yes, we have you moving where there doesn’t seem to be a road.”
“It’s barely one, but it was used by the van that drove off with the kids. I’ve found evidence, a tire tread mark…there’s another one in a bit of mud… and I have a good description of the van. There were two men, ski-masks, all black, muscular. The boy’s not hurt physically, but the village is still in shock. Is David over his vexation?”
There was a pause before Landon came back. “I just sent Vinnie to find him. Any sign of the Chinese?”
“None. No foreign elements or military. I did talk with the part-time village constable. A guy named Pak Budi. He's not aware of any trafficking activity in this region, but his weekly police briefings match the M.O. of Jia Kun's kidnapping with the House of Southern Veil, a mostly coastal trafficking ring.”
“I’ll ask MI6 if they have anything on those names…wait a minute, Vinnie’s back.”
The comm channel went silent for a moment.
“Vinnie says David does not…well, let’s just say he’s unavailable.”
“Okay. That figures. David gets moody when he can’t get his way. Tell him I’ll call in after I defeat the People's Liberation Army and broker a treaty between China and the rest of the world.”
At that moment, the overgrown roadbed led onto a little-used concrete road, forcing Sabriya to the north or south. There were no tread marks, but there was mud debris heading north. “Landon, I just turned off the unmarked road and onto a secondary concrete route that looks familiar...been here before years ago. I’m heading north, I think toward Yung Fa Ho? If so, isn’t the Safire Wat Phra Buddhist Temple just west of the city, 15 clicks or so?”
“One moment, let me zoom in.”
There was silence for a moment as Sabriya raced north on the much better road surface.
“Yes, that’s right. You’re familiar with the Safire Wat Phra?”
“That is where Master Singha is from. I think I will pay him a visit. I know where I am, now. Talk later.”
As Sabriya accelerated her SEC as fast as she dared, she hoped Jia Kun still had the St. Michael medallion and remembered the prayer she had taught her. Jia Kun's situation was certainly different from how she had revered the amulet and prayed to find Busaba, or so she remembered.
Flashback - April 2013 - West of Meijing
In the dead of night, Sabriya and Jai escaped the house along Meijing’s Cabbage corridor and managed to evade the goons who had chased them by hiring a series of taxis and ferries, and double-backed across Meijing several times, before they ended up 100 km west of the city. The next day, about noon, they came to a cluster of village shacks stacked close together, constructed from scavenged wood and corrugated aluminum. Jia Kun was in a sling wrapped around Sabriya’s torso and shoulder. Finding what appeared to be a vacant dwelling, Sabriya sat down outside in the shade on a makeshift bench to rest and breastfed Jia Kun. While her daughter nursed, Sabriya reached into her provisioning bag, dug out Kasden’s sacred amulet. and stared at it.
Was the charm powerful enough to help her? Protect her? Give her direction? Her oppressor had used it effectively, or so it seemed, against her and those around him to gain status, exact vengeance, amass power, and accumulate some wealth. She wasn’t sure what she believed about the hunk of embossed tin. Her oppressor believed that the sacred item bestowed magical powers on whoever possessed it. She wondered if, when worn, the charm would protect and guide her, ward off evil, attract good fortune, and give her access to supernatural forces. That sounded too good to be true, but she had little choice. Intended to be worn around the neck on a lanyard, the amulet or medallion was an elaborately stamped oval of tin, 7 cm tall and 3 cm wide, depicting the god of riches, power, and wrath—Kasden —seated on a throne of gold coins and holding a skull.
Sabriya slipped the charm’s lanyard around her neck, kissed the hunk of tin, caressed it, and silently asked the god of her warden for protection and to help find her sister, Busaba. Would it work? She had never trusted in anything spiritual before. It all seemed superstitious. But she had nothing else, and the task ahead was beyond her understanding and perhaps beyond her strength.
Her objective was the Pangina Mountains. After her parents were killed and her village burned, Sabriya’s brother, Huy, and sister, Busaba, fled the northeast village of Hathou. A cryptic message from her brother, delivered by a stranger, said that Busaba and Huy were heading southeast into the Pangina Mountains, near the Chinese border, but exactly where Sabriya had no idea. She grasped the tin charm in the hope that Kasden would help, but everything she knew about the god of vengeance had led to manipulation, harm, or death.
After hitching rides among wagons and cars headed west, she came to the hill country. Busaba and Huy would never stay in a crowded shack village found on the agricultural plains; her family was mountain folk. She began to ask hill villagers if a couple matching her sister’s and brother’s description had settled there, and if not, where she might look next. There were few roads into the mountains and their fertile slopes and foothills, and into the villages, there were many paths. Finding Busaba would take a while, but she had no other choice, and so she continued to wear the amulet and revere it. She had always associated the amulet with harm, manipulation, and vengeance, so she was surprised when she and Jia Kun were treated with kindness and generosity throughout their journey.
Before long, and it was not as long as she expected, she found Busaba in the small, remote village of Miwu Cun, high in the foothills of the Pangians. Sabriya was sad that Huy had left Busaba to find work. But finding Busaba, nonetheless, was not luck—there had been supernatural help. But was the help from Kasden or something else?
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