Invasion: California Read online

  Paul limped toward a long-bed vehicle, what looked like a big missile carrier. This must be “Blue Swan,” a new kind of missile. Pulling out a digital camera, Paul began taking pictures. The thing was huge.

  A shout brought him around.

  He spied Maria on the lip of the road. She waved, and Paul realized the last burning vehicles illuminated him. It showed, at least, that the two surviving Chinese hadn’t doubled back. Only one of the original six guerillas stood with Maria. The two of them began down the road toward him.

  Paul heard approaching helicopters then, a loud whomp-whomp sound. Those couldn’t be the Air Force, at least not the American Air Force.

  Biting his lower lip with indecision, Paul stood beside the damaged missile carrier for three seconds. Then he bolted toward the carrier bed. Despite his ankle, he climbed the flatbed and took close-up shots of the crumpled nosecone, the warhead. Fluids leaked from it. He poured water out of a canteen and collected some of the warhead fluid. He also aimed the camera at Chinese characters on the warhead, clicking like mad.

  Maria’s shout brought him around. She cupped her hands, yelling, “The White Tigers are coming!” Then she pointed up into the air.

  Paul needed the satellite phone. Did America have any more air-fighting drones here? What was he supposed to do now?

  Then Paul received the greatest shock of the night. He looked up sharply as he heard a faint sound. The strangest helicopter he’d ever seen hovered about sixty feet above him. It had four rotors at four equidistant points. Did it have a cloaking device? Or had it moved soundlessly? He heard it now, a whispering noise. This was incredible.

  It dropped lower so he could see an undercarriage bay door open. A rope ladder slithered down toward him.

  The CIA officer hadn’t said anything about this. Was he supposed to climb up into the helicopter?

  The rope ladder almost struck his shoulder the first time. The craft maneuvered into a better position and now the ladder touched his shoulder. Paul didn’t need any more invitation. He grabbed rope, hoisted up and got a foot onto a rung. He climbed toward the bay door. It took him a second to realize that as he climbed the craft lifted higher.

  “What about Maria?” he shouted.

  No one poked a head out of the bay door to look down and answer. There was only the whistling wind and the dropping ground. It was too late to let go, so Paul kept climbing. He looked down and saw Maria staring at him. She turned to the guerilla. They talked, and they ran back up the road.

  Paul saw the first enemy helicopter. It was small and black, with a machine gunner sitting with his weapon to the side. The vehicle belonged to the White Tigers. Paul knew because he’d seen these in Hawaii hunting American commandos.

  A second helo appeared. The machine gunners didn’t blaze at Maria. She kept sprinting for safety as the guerilla beside her stopped, knelt and aimed his assault rifle at a helo. The two gunners opened up then. One of them at least proved himself a marksman. The guerilla pitched violently to the ground, riddled with exploding bullets as his body turned into gory ruin.

  Do they know it’s Colonel Valdez’s daughter?

  Paul shuddered and he kept climbing. He stopped just before reaching the bay door, because he spied Chinese characters painted on the bottom of this machine.

  They tricked me.

  He went cold inside until he wondered if Americans had painted that on the drone in order to fool the enemy.

  Paul stared at the ground. It was a long drop. The wind whistled past his face, making his eyes water. It wasn’t hot anymore, but getting cold.

  I guess there’s only one way to find out. Paul climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and reached the door. He pulled himself within.

  The rope ladder coiled in fast, a roller whizzing with automated speed. His last sight was a concussion grenade knocking Maria off her feet. Then the hatch shut with a clang and a light appeared. Paul spied three small seats and little else, no windows, no speakers, just walls. He secured himself in a seat, buckling in. Either this was a clever enemy trick or the newest American extraction drone. The idea of waiting to find out made Paul’s gut seethe.

  “How about telling me what’s going on?” he said in the cramped area.

  No one answered.

  Scowling, Paul folded his arms and tried to make himself comfortable. It was impossible. He kept thinking about Maria Valdez in the hands of Chinese Intelligence.

  -2-

  The Darkness

  MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

  Captain Wei sat in his office, smoking an American cigarette as he stared into space. The smoke curled from the glowing tip, adding to the office’s fumes. As he smoked, Wei blanked his mind, trying not to think about anything.

  He was an interrogator for Dong Dianshan—East Lightning. Originally, they had been China’s Party Security Service. With the creation of the Pan Asian Alliance, their powers had broadened. They were particularly apt at extracting information from reluctant individuals and getting to the root of a matter.

  Wei was a small man with large ears and careworn lines on his face. He’d practiced his trade for uncounted years. He wore the customary brown uniform with red belts and an armband with a three-pronged lightning bolt.

  A buzzer on the littered desk sounded. Captain Wei checked his cell phone and sighed. His ten minutes of solitude was over. He sucked on the cigarette a last time, inhaling deeply. The American cigarettes were good. He exhaled while mashing the cigarette into an overflowing ashtray.

  He opened a drawer and reached to the back, unhooking a hidden container. He opened it, staring at five blue pills. It was going to be a long interrogation, and according to the information he had received, Maria Valdez was a tough-minded partisan. Captain Wei sighed, shaking his head. He was weary beyond endurance with his tasks. Yes, he was good at it, perhaps the best in Mexico. But it was so tedious and predictable. Worse, his tasks had begun to bother him. This mutilation of flesh and twisting a person’s psyche, it hurt the soul—

  Wei had been reaching for a pill. Now, his hand froze. Did humans possess souls? It was a preposterous notion. Humans were like any other animal, a mass of biological tissue with electrical nerve endings, a meat-sack of noxious fumes. People excreted, vomited, sweated and urinated, a wretched pile of filth that groveled under too much pain. Everyone broke. It used to be intriguing figuring out how to do it.

  “No,” Wei whispered. His dark eyes had been reflective. Now the reptilian look appeared, revealing him as the predator he was.

  The tips of his thumb and forefinger pinched a blue pill. He deposited the pill onto the tip of his tongue, using his tongue to roll the pill back. He gulped, swallowing. A tiny smile played on the edges of mouth. Soon, the drug would numb the pestering qualms that had become stronger this last year. One patient had told him these qualms were his conscience. As he aged—the patient had said—he must realize the end of this existence was much nearer than, say, seven years ago.

  “Seven?” Wei had snapped. He’d wanted to know why the patient had picked the number seven. Seven years ago, he’d interrogated Henry Wu, who had been an insignificant worm, a former American caught on video during a Chinese food riot. It had been then that the first glimmer of…unease, yes, unease had begun with his various interrogations. Seven years ago, Wei had increased the number of cigarettes he smoked and the number of whiskey shots he gulped. These days, whiskey was not enough. He needed the blue pills to ease him through each tedious day. Unfortunately, these cost cash and he had begun taking more of them lately.

  The desk buzzer sounded a second time.

  Captain Wei straightened his uniform and marched for the door. It was time to fix the little traitor and pry information out of her.

  He strode down a long corridor, a flight of stairs and passed several open windows. Mexico City seethed with traffic, with small cars thirty years out of date, with thousands of bicyclists and tens of thousands of pedestrians. Smoke stacks chugged black fumes into the air
from coal furnaces. Yet farther away in the center of the city gleamed new glass towers, thanks to the latest construction boom with the influx of Chinese troops. Mexico was a land of extremes, with the basest poverty and the most incredible wealth.

  Captain Wei left the windows behind, opening a door and descending to the basement. The first tendrils of drugged numbing soothed his bad mood. By the time he reached the patient’s door, the feeling had changed his mood altogether.

  You are a meat-sack, Maria Valdez, one I will turn into a quivering hulk, a fountain of information.

  Wei opened the door, expecting a number of quite predictable possibilities. The patient lay strapped to a table, naked, defenseless and primed for interrogation. An operative—a man—had shaved off every particle of the patient’s hair. Wei found that most effective with females. The operative had also attached a host of leads to sensitive body-areas. Maria Valdez should have pleaded with him now or glared in defiance or stared into space, in shock, or sobbed uncontrollably. She did none of these things. Instead, with eyes closed, the patient whispered, speaking to an imaginary entity, it appeared.

  Wei scowled, with his good feeling evaporating. Invisible entities did not exist. There was only power and the scramble to be the inflictor of pain instead of the receiver. It was the law of the jungle, of tooth and claw.

  “Leave us,” Wei told the operative.

  The man bowed his head, hurrying for the door, never once lifting his gaze off the floor.

  Wei listened for and heard the snick of the closing door. “Maria Valdez,” he said sharply.

  The patient ignored him as she kept on whispering.

  That would not do, no, no. Wei strode to the controls and tapped a pain inducer.

  The patient grunted and her eyes bulged open. She twisted on the table. She was shapely, if too thin and bony for Wei’s tastes. She was also too tall, taller than he was—something he intensely disliked.

  “Do I have your attention?” Wei asked in a considerate tone. It unbalanced and often unhinged patients to hear the solicitude in his voice and yet receive agony from his hands.

  “I’m here,” she said, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  They both spoke English, as Wei had taken language courses and become proficient in the American usage.

  Wei now forced himself to smile. “I’m sure you understand the situation.”

  “Yes! You’re one of the pigs invading my country.”

  “My dear, please allow me to interject a factual point. You are the one who exudes a noxious odor. I refer to your sweat. We Chinese do not possess the same pig-like glands that you do.”

  “Go to Hell!”

  Captain Wei smiled, stepping away from the controls. He put a gentle hand on her left thigh, causing the patient to stiffen.

  “You are in Hell, my dear,” he said.

  “Wrong! In Hell, no one drinks beer.”

  Wei frowned. What an odd statement. Was she already unhinged? “I do not care for your attitude.”

  “That’s because you’re an invading hog,” she said.

  “Maria,” he said, squeezing her thigh. It made her stiffen. He would teach her respect. Oh, she would learn to curb her tongue. First, he would begin her disorientation through soft speech. “You must not think of me as your enemy. I am here to help you.”

  “You’re a worthless liar.”

  A flicker of annoyance entered his eyes. “I can make your existence gruesome or I can ease your suffering. It is my choice. Fortunately for you, my dear, I am easy to please. All I ask is for a few tidbits of information from you.”

  “I understand. I have what you want. But you have nothing I want except for your death, and I don’t think you’ll do me the favor of slitting your ugly throat.”

  Wei smiled faintly. “You are a veritable she-tiger, but you are also a liar.”

  “I curse you in the name of God.”

  Wei’s smile slipped as he removed his hand from her thigh. Scowling, he went to the controls. He looked up at her. She grinned viciously, mocking him.

  No, that would not do. He was in charge here. He would show her.

  Captain Wei began to tap the controls hard with his fingertips. He winced once because he’d cut the nail down too much the other day on his left-hand middle finger. Then Maria Valdez screamed and thrashed on the table, causing him to forget about his own discomfort. Wei continued to inflict pain for some time, delighting in her various octaves. Finally, Maria slumped, unconscious.

  Turning away, Wei stared up at the ceiling. What had overcome him? He’d never lost control of his emotions like this before. He was an interrogator, one of the best—no, the best in Mexico. He had a long list of questions his superiors wanted answered, yet now he’d needlessly tired out his patient. He should have already received a litany of her lies so he could compare her later answers and begin to pry out the truth. Never once during the torment had she cried out, offering to speak to end the pain. Obviously, the direct approach was the wrong method with this one. He must practice subtlety.

  Wei cracked his knuckles and stepped beside a medical board. He selected a hypodermic needle and a vial of AE7. She was stubborn, possessing a core belief system that added to her rigid worldview. A double dose, yes, she would need a greater dosage to force her thoughts into a fantasy delusion. Then she would begin to tell him what he needed to learn.

  Thirty seconds later, Wei slid the needle into her flesh, sinking the plunger as he pumped the drug into her bloodstream. It would take time before the AE7 brought her to the required state. Using his cell phone, he checked the time. Ah, he could go into the other room and smoke a cigarette.

  Captain Wei slipped into the hall, entering an empty room. He found that his hands were shaking. How odd. Taking a pack of Lucky Strikes, he extracted a cigarette, stuck it between his lips and used his lighter. Soon, he stared blankly at the ceiling, occasionally watching the smoke curl. He refused to think about her words, her foolish curse or the way her body had contorted on the table. He had seen such things a thousand, a million times before. Instead, he smoked, emptying himself of thoughts, of emotions and emptying himself of the tedium of life. Mechanically, he shook out a second and later a third cigarette, enjoying them in the solitude of the basement.

  The effects of the blue pill must have dulled his sense of time. Much later and with a start, Captain Wei took out his cell phone, checking it. Thirty-seven minutes had passed.

  The small East Lightning officer rushed out of the smoky room and ran to the interrogation chamber. Sometimes, there were bad reactions to AE7. He had forgotten that and his dismissal of a watching operative.

  Captain Wei threw open the door. “No,” he whispered. He rushed to the table. Maria Valdez lay still, with a serene smile on her face. He checked her pulse and snatched his hand away, horrified. She was already cold. He hated everything about corpses, their stiffness, their chill, their—

  “No,” he said again. Wei blinked rapidly. What was he going to do? Higher command wished to know many things concerning her sabotage. Now—

  Rushing to the computer, Wei sat down. He ran his fingers through his hair and logged in. Time. He had to register her time of death, her answers, her—

  Wei licked his lips. What had he read about her earlier?

  You need to think. You need to cover yourself. Is this her curse starting to work?

  The thought sobered him. He needed a cigarette. No. He needed to use his years of expertise, giving High Command what it feared most. That way, they would worry more about the repercussions of her sabotage than how he had interrogated her.

  Captain Wei of East Lightning began typing fabricated answers, turning dead guerillas into American commandos. It was clear by Wei’s false answers that some Americans had escaped with knowledge of Blue Swan. The leak of the convoy’s route and time of travel—it had occurred according to what Wei wrote because of a traitor on the Occupation Staff. Wei hated the Chinese Army, the way many soldiers looked at
him with distain when they thought he wasn’t looking. Yes. Wei grinned as he typed. The Americans had suborned this person because of his relatives living in North America. High Command would devour that, as they feared Chinese-Americans infiltrating their ranks.

  Wei became thoughtful. How should he word this? Hmm. In his zeal to uncover more, there had been an accident. Yes, he had injected her with—

  “No.” He needed a doctor. There would be an autopsy. Wei considered ordering the body incinerated, but that would be a risk. He had already broken protocol ordering the operative away. Any more deviations would invite a full-scale investigation, just the thing he was trying to avoid.

  Wei stared at his answers, checking them, looking for flaws or red flags. Returning to his office first and fortifying himself with another blue pill, he returned to the corpse and called for the resident doctor. He would say little, waiting for the doctor to tell him why the patient had died. Then he would concoct the end of the story and hope no one ever dug too deeply into what had really happened.

  LAS VEGAS TESTING GROUNDS, NEVADA

  A defeated Stan Higgins sat in his base house at his desk. It was in a small cubicle and blocked by a closed door. He could hear his wife in the other room watching Hartford Wives. She couldn’t believe the news and had blanked it out. She escaped into the never-land of TV soap operas.

  Stan stared at a computer screen, studying the judge’s sentence: induction into a Detention Center until someone posted a ten thousand new-dollar bail. Stan massaged his forehead. Where was he supposed to get enough money to pay for his son’s bail? Why had the young fool gone and protested? Why couldn’t Jake stick to his engineering studies? It had been hard enough gathering the tuition costs.

  In his day, kids got student loans from the government. With the Sovereign Debt Depression that had gone the way of the dinosaur. Now, people had to scrape enough together to send their children to college. It meant fewer people went to college, making high school more important again for a person’s future.