Thursday, August 15, 2024 - 12:15 PM
The road east out of the Pangina Mountains toward Yung Fa Ho was paved, smooth, yet undulating as it wove through the rain forest toward the agricultural plains and the South China Sea. As she approached Yung Fa Ho, Sabriya slowed her SEC and looked for a sparse row of corrugated-iron sheds, a junkyard, and a water tank atop a building. It didn’t take long, as she almost missed the sheds; there were only two, and the junk yard had fewer than a dozen old vehicles, partially covered by overgrowth and vines. The water tank, as the young monks had described, was perched atop an old, decrepit cinderblock building that looked like a garage. The tank was perhaps five meters high and as wide around, made of weathered gray wooden slats, held together by rusty iron straps, and topped with a pointed metal roof. The garage-like building was faced with two roll-up steel bay doors, an attached office, and was surrounded by a jungle of trees and underbrush. But what she had come for was there in plain sight, parked conspicuously…strangely conspicuously next to the building...out in the open, like a roadside banner. The van was like Liang had described it—pale frog green, no windows on the sides or rear, and rust around the bottom.
The stealthiness of the SEC would pay off now, as she coasted to a stop on the perimeter of the helter-skelter yard and positioned the cycle for a fast escape. Studying the tableau, the only tire tracks led to the parked frog van and to one of the two windowless garage doors, both of which were closed. Whatever was happening inside the garage was happening without prying eyes. No one wandered the yard. Between the cackle of birds, she listened, hoping to hear the cries of girls. But nothing. Were the girls even here? It had been over a day since they had been taken during their trek to school. Sabriya’s heart beat strong, her senses alert. This is what she had come for, or was it? Would she find the girls or even a clue of their existence? Early afternoon under the full Pellagorian sun was no time for stealth. She could not hide.
Crouching next to her SEC, half hidden behind foliage, her helmet still on, Sabriya initiated the encrypted comm channel: “Scorp. Sabriya. Copy?”
Major Landon responded instantly. “Sabriya. Copy. You’re near Yung Fa Ho, please report.”
“I have found the kidnapper’s van near a garage. I have not approached. No activity. Are there police nearby that can come, search, or apprehend?”
A few minutes later, Landon reported back: “Sabriya, negative. Police have refused. Don’t do anything foolish.”
“The foolishness took place yesterday morning.”
Sabriya locked her helmet on the SEC, checked the load on her P250, made sure her expandable bo staff was secure on her belt, scanned the property, and maneuvered behind the derelict vehicles to survey the back of the building. There was only one other door in the back, but vegetation had overgrown the sill…not used, if the door opened at all. The only other door, other than the bay doors, led into the office from the front, near where the frog van was parked. No one was visible through the office windows or in the van’s front seats. The van’s side door was unlocked. She opened it slowly, looked inside, and her heart skipped a beat. On the far side, wedged between the otherwise bare plywood floor and the bare metal frame, was a girl’s brown sandal. It could have been Jia Kun's, but she was unsure. Without getting into the cargo area, she looked carefully, and as expected, there were strands of long black hair caught in the fibers of the flooring. Her anger rose. This was the van Jia Kun and Gely had shared when abducted.
With her P250 in hand, she slowly opened the front door of the office. It made little noise. Stepping inside, she listened carefully. Water was running. Checking the floor for debris, she walked carefully through the vacant office into a corridor that led further back, where the water noise was louder. A few steps in, she peeked to her left around a corner into a narrow hallway where brooms and mops hung on the wall. At the end of the hallway, a man showered behind a curtain. She let him continue. Turning to the opposite side of the corridor, she trained her pistol toward a door and carefully opened it. She gazed into the vacant, two-bay garage, where there were no vehicles and only one bay appeared to contain any repair tools and a workbench. Nothing else.
Back to the narrow hallway, the shower, and the man scrubbing dirt from his body and no doubt his conscience—he was obviously the frog van’s driver. She holstered her pistol, retrieved her bo staff, and extended it a half-meter, for close-quarter strikes. The shower had been installed at the end of the hallway, almost as an afterthought, she thought, converting the hallway into an elongated shower room and storage niche. The only way out was back through the corridor. She stepped toward the shower, making sure her shadow didn’t obscure the ceiling light and alert the occupant prematurely to her presence. Grabbing the edge of the cotton curtain, she yanked it to the side. Not surprisingly, she was greeted by a 50-year-old naked man, who jumped back from the intrusion.
Meet the proprietor of Sully’s Garage and Van Service, a short 1.6-meter-tall, dark-skinned Laotian, whose black hair fell over his eyes from the water cascading from the showerhead above. His hands grabbed his privates, about which Sabriya was uninterested. Flicking her bo staff with her right hand, she pinned his throat against the back wall, while her left hand turned off the water. There was a towel on a hook to her left, but she wanted him wet, cold, and vulnerable.
With piercing eyes and a balanced pose, she stuck a foot into the shower and forced her bo staff deeper into the man’s neck, “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?” she screamed. Sully shook his head violently, pretending he didn’t know. “WHERE?!” Sabriya screamed again, pushing her staff against his larynx, deciding that if he tried to speak, she might back off on her threat of a tracheostomy.
Frightened, shaken, and, of course, naked as the day he was born, the man screamed in Lao, “SUAY! SUAY DAE!” which Sabriya interpreted as Help! Help me!
“NO ONE IS GOING TO HELP YOU,” she screamed back. “I know you kidnapped two children in your van. WHERE ARE THEY?”
But the man just shook his head violently, stuttering even as he whimpered, “Bor, mae khoy! Bor, mae khoy!”
“If not you, who?” Sabriya demanded, slightly releasing her bo staff’s pressure on his exposed throat.
But suddenly, with a pronounced and even greater fear in his eyes, Sully’s attention moved off Sabriya and shifted behind her. Everything happened in a flash. Turning her head toward the narrow passage behind her, Sabriya saw three tall, muscular men in black T-shirts and hoods stacked behind her. The man in front jumped forward and, from behind, grabbed her left forearm and twisted her body away from the shower. The movement rotated Sabriya’s body counterclockwise, allowing her right hand, which held the short bo staff, to swing violently toward the man. Taking advantage of the rotational acceleration, Sabriya added her body weight to the momentum of the turn and whiplashed her bo staff around and down hard on the man’s left shoulder bone. With a CRACK, the man collapsed to the floor in pain, his left clavicle having been snapped barbarically in two. The narrow hall allowed only one man at a time to get to her, which also allowed her to focus on one man at a time, although there would be no roundhouse kicks.
The second man yelled, “Sully, grab her.”
Sabriya realized that Sully was the man in the shower and that her back was turned toward him. She was about to lift and thrust her left heel into Sully’s gut when she realized the naked man was so scared he was sitting on the floor of the shower, in a fetal position, crying. Forget him. Quickly turning her attention back to man number two, who was grabbing for her throat with both hands, but she dropped her head just enough so the man thrashed at the air above her. In thrusting for her, the man exposed his own throat to her three-thrusting fingers of her right hand. But at the last second, he too dipped his shoulders, and she missed her target. In close now, the man grabbed Sabriya’s forearms and yanked her forward. All right, if you must…she thought, and grabbed his head and pulled it down into her right knee that she raised sharply into his face. He dropped suddenly to the floor, as she, not relinquishing her grip on his black balaclava, ripped it off. She turned him over and looked at his face … a sudden rush of repulsion. He was a Filipino, but all Filipinos looked alike, and she found them a distasteful breed. Who was he? She felt she should know, but she couldn’t remember.
Two down and one to go, Sabriya locked eyes with man number three, who was wielding a broom handle he had acquired off the wall. She was suddenly without her bo staff, as the man threatened a lethal strike. She hadn’t practiced it before, but where one’s life is threatened, there’s a way, and she quickly drew her P250, and with both hands to steady it, aimed the muzzle at the man’s center, only to realize the gun’s safety was on, and in the heat of battle her thumb wasn’t strong enough, or positioned correctly enough, to push the lever up and disengage the safety. The gun was useless when she needed it most. But her opponent’s eyes caught her own intense stare down the barrel, and that was enough. In an instant, he dropped the broom handle along with his courage and fled like a frightened mongoose through the front door.
Where had the men come from, she wondered? She considered chasing number three, but the Filipino had awakened and grabbed one of her legs and was trying to take her down. Kicking free, she managed to back away from him, which also allowed him to get up and come at her again. He dove at her with both of his muscular arms, but she stayed put, lowered and balanced her stance, and let his momentum drive his face into her ready, pounding fists, and then a knee to his now in-close groin. The Filipino doubled over and fell to the floor, groaning.
“WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?” she yelled at him, but he only grunted back, then fumed in a thin voice, “You’ll never find them. They’re gone.” With blood drooling from his mouth, the man fell unconscious, or so it seemed. Never believe a lying thug, Sabriya reminded herself as she tried to calm her heart and the adrenaline flooding her veins. She felt like emptying a 9mm clip into him, but her conscience overruled the impulse and let him lie in his blood. He wasn’t dead, but how she wished he was.
She turned in a fury, wondering where the third man had run. She worried about her SEC but realized it was keyed to the short-range ignition fob on her belt; the cycle was going nowhere. She tripped over the two men, one in pain on his back with a broken shoulder, picked up her collapsible bo staff, and confronted Sully, the naked wimp in the shower. Towering over the broken heap, she screamed at him in Lao. “Where are the girls? Where did they take them?” She threatened to hit him with her bo staff or poke him full of holes.
Through tears, the man whimpered, “Pohan…a…pothecary, guy name might be Tgang…Thung…Thanng. I dunno.”
“Where in Pohan?”
“I don’t know, please believe me. I never been there. They just borrowed my van. Please don’t hurt me.”
Sabriya stared at the man and realized there was nothing more to get out of him.
Leaving the building, she jogged to her SEC and then doubled back. She hadn’t killed anyone yet, but perhaps there was another way to relieve her rage. Keeping a good distance from the frog van, she eyed the vehicle’s slightly exposed fuel tank from the rear, released the safety on her P250, and BAM! BAM! BAM! … KABOOM! An explosion ripped into the air, vaporizing the van, igniting the nearby vegetation, and spilling toward the building. She turned to go again, but stopped again. Not wanting to be guilty of manslaughter, she calculated the water’s trajectory and emptied the rest of her clip into the water tank, creating eight streams of water that arched onto the ground, creating a firebreak between the van and the building’s entrance. Not the best way to stop the spread of a gasoline fire, she thought. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. But she had no intention of sticking around to see.
Time to get out of here,” she thought. Where was the Pohan pothecary, and who was Thang? No doubt in Pohan about two hours east in the northern part of Meijing. But where exactly?
As Sabriya’s SEC raced east, she called Landon, or rather, he called her.
“Sabriya, David’s here and Hannah. What’s going on? Your biometrics went off the charts? Did you find the girls?”
“No girl. I just tangled with four thugs who. Whoever sent them took the girls, one of them said so. In the meantime, you might want to call the local fire brigade, if there is one. There was an explosion of a van’s gasoline tank, and the building next to it may be on fire with three men inside. I think they’re still alive, but I didn’t stick around to check their vitals.”
David’s panicked voice came over the channel, “What have you done, Sabriya?”
“It’s what I haven’t done, my dear. I have not found my daughter or Gely. Now, tell me, Landon, somewhere in or near Pohan is a pothecary, but knowing the area, I doubt it’s a public pharmacy. Could be some discredited pill pusher dealing drugs, name might be Thang, Thun, or Thanng. It’s not an affluent or rich area. That’s where the girls might be. I do know that Pohan’s in northwest Meijing.”
David interrupted, “Sabriya, what about those men you said are in the fire, can you rescue them?”
“Not a chance. darling. My rescue schedule for the day is booked.”
David continued. “Well, you need to hear what I didn’t want to know. About an hour ago, the Meijing police put out an All Points Bulletin for a woman on an electric cycle who is wanted for terrorizing citizens. You may be riding into a trap.”
“That was an hour ago? Why would that be me?”
“They’ll also be after you for arson,” quipped Landon.
“Maybe you ought to quit, before you get burned,” said David.
“I’m sorry, dear, can’t hear you. You’re breaking up. Landon, find the Pohan place and get me there.”
“Will do,” said Landon, who added, “David left grumbling about calling MI6 to clean up an international incident.”
“There will be more to clean up if I don’t find my daughter. Tell him I’ll try to wrap up before British Special Forces arrive.”
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