Typhoon Fury (Oregon Files 12)

ZHONG WAS ASTONISHED when David Yao shot the American in the foot, primarily because he thought the machine pistol wasn’t loaded.

Blood erupted from the American’s foot and he went down howling in agony. Yao pulled him back up and pointed the gun at his head.

“Tell us!” he shouted.

“All right, I’ll tell you,” the American gasped. “But how do I know you won’t kill me?”

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nbsp; “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell us,” Zhong said. “You can be sure of that.”

“Then my men will kill you.”

“They can try.”

A strange look came over Yao’s face, and he began dragging the American backward toward the rear of the train.

“Come with me if you want to live,” Yao said.

Zhong moved forward. “Yao, what are you doing?”

“I think you’re going to kill both of us when you get the flash drive. I’ll make him give it to you, but then I’m going to take my chances with asylum in the United States.”

Zhong laughed. “You think they’ll give you asylum after what you’ve done?”

“If I save an American agent, they might.” He withdrew into the space connecting the dining car with the one behind it and stopped. He pressed the gun harder into the American’s temple. “Now tell them where the flash drive is or we all die together.”

The American gritted his teeth, but his eyes flicked over to one of the seats near where Zhong and his men had found a Lenovo laptop during the search of the dining car.

Zhong smiled. With his assault rifle still pointing at the two of them, he edged forward and knelt beside the seat. He pushed his hand deep into the seat cushion and ran his fingers along the back until they brushed against hard plastic. He removed it and saw that it was the flash drive. The serial number on it matched the one that had been stolen.

He grinned and was about to give the order to fire when the American surged backward, pushing Yao with him. With Yao’s balance thrown off, the machine pistol fired into the air, and they both tumbled to the floor in the next car.

Then the section between the cars exploded.

The coupling must have been the target because the brakes squealed on the car behind them and it began to fall back. That was the Americans’ exit strategy all along, and it was the reason they had the explosives to sever the link to the cars carrying Zhong’s other agents. The car with the Americans would come to a stop near the beginning of the bridge they were now crossing.

Gunfire came from Americans in the receding train car, but Zhong didn’t care about a fight with them anymore. They could do what they wanted with Yao. It didn’t matter now that he had the flash drive.

He plugged it into the adapter on his phone and initiated the memory wipe just in case the Americans had more surprises in store up ahead and tried to recapture the flash drive. In thirty seconds, the app responded that the flash drive had been completely overwritten seventy-five times. Now no computer on earth could recover the data it had carried.

Zhong smiled and pocketed the flash drive to show to his superiors. He also had Jimmy Su still alive to interrogate and find out how the Ghost Dragons had stolen the drive in the first place.

He notified the pilots to have the helicopters meet them at the rendezvous point. But he’d teach a lesson to the agents who’d let themselves be cut off from the rest of the train. They could hike out of the jungle and hitch a ride home.

• • •

AS HE WATCHED the train disappear, Juan said, “Is everyone all right?”

He got four affirmatives.

Eric knelt down by the blood-soaked bullet wound in Juan’s foot. “That’s cool. It looks so real.”

“When I told Kevin Nixon what we were planning, he didn’t think it was so cool knowing he’d have to patch up my prosthetic foot yet again.” To complete the illusion, the blood was his own, drawn by the Oregon’s doctor, Julia Huxley, the day before and sealed in a packet inside his boot.

He leapt to his feet, none the worse for the experience, and clapped Eddie on the shoulder. “That was some nice acting back there. You almost had me convinced you were a Ghost Dragon.”

“I’m just glad I was able to get my hands on one of the spare magazines.”