Black Sun

“Stop,” the old man said. “No fight, not now.” He pointed toward the far wall. Through thin slits that might have once been gunports, the blackness beyond had turned a shade of blue. The day would be breaking soon.

“They feed us now,” he said. “No food, if we fight.”

Danielle stole a quick glance at the old man. He was skin and bones. She turned back to Zhou, and with her eyes locked on his, she stepped backward toward one of the stone bunks.

Zhou sat back down, waking another man and pointing Danielle out to him.

A few minutes later, as thin slivers of light crept across the stone wall, the rest of the prisoners began to wake. It seemed she had six cell mates: the old man, Zhou and his friend, an Indian woman who did not speak or make eye contact with anyone, and two others, who appeared to be Caucasian: a male child who looked about ten to twelve years of age and a man in his early sixties. He was short but stocky with broad shoulders.

He did not rise or look particularly well. In fact, he seemed to be dying.

CHAPTER 11

Hawker stood in line at the rental kiosk as the morning sun filtered through the skyscrapers. The streets were already clogged with a mad rush of cars, trucks, and people. Bicycles and pedestrians cut between the vehicles, seemingly unconcerned with the thought of a collision. Double-decker buses swerved around other traffic, changing lanes as if guided by Formula One drivers in training. Horns were almost omnipresent and brakes squealed at every intersection.

Renting a moped to enter that madness seemed about as smart as charging into a stampede with an umbrella for protection. But based on the line of people at the desk, both Chinese and foreign, it must have been a preferred means of transportation.

The clerk looked down the line and waved Hawker up. “Come, come,” he said. “Your bike is ready.”

Hawker stepped around a line of jealous customers and followed the clerk through the shop. He hadn’t ordered a bike of any kind, and assumed the man had recognized him.

“This way, this way.”

Hawker followed him out through the back, where a line of forty mopeds waited. As he stepped through the doorway he spotted a group of four Chinese men with weapons on display. The clerk threw up his hands as if to say he knew nothing about it and hurried back into the shop.

This was not the start he had intended.

One of the men waved Hawker toward a workbench. He was forced to sit and was then searched.

Nothing unusual was found. He sat quietly. Perhaps he’d been wrong to think Kang’s people were all he had to worry about. Looking at these men he guessed they were either the secret police or members of the Ministry for State Security, the Chinese equivalent of the FBI. Still, he was surprised to be targeted so soon, since he’d yet to do anything wrong.

Hawker’s passport was pulled and thrown over his head to someone behind him. He heard the smack of it being caught and then the pages rustling and finally a voice. “What are you doing in Hong Kong, Mr…. Francis?”

“I’m here on business,” Hawker said. “I thought I’d do some sightseeing first.”

“You must have a taste for danger,” the voice said. “Businessmen don’t rent these contraptions; they hire cars.”

The passport was dropped on the workbench beside him and a boot stepped onto the frame. He heard the slide of a gun racking behind his head.

“So what kind of danger are you looking for?” the man asked.

Hawker didn’t answer, not because he wasn’t ready to, but because he’d suddenly noticed something about the man’s accent. The English words were heavily accented, but the pronunciation wasn’t Cantonese or Mandarin, or any other Asian form, for that matter.

The man standing behind him, the man pointing the gun at him, was Russian.

CHAPTER 12

In the depths of the stone brig, Danielle watched as the food was brought to them by armed guards. It was an almost Dickensian scene, with dirty bowls of some rancid, salty broth and some hard, stale bread. Seven servings for seven prisoners, but no one moved toward the food until the guards had locked the iron gate and re-entered the elevator.

Zhou stepped forward first, taking the largest bowl of soup and gathering all the bread for himself. As he did the boy jumped down and snatched a heel.

Zhou grabbed for him, but the child was too quick. He raced back to his shelf.

“I cut your hand off for that,” Zhou said.

The boy didn’t respond. He was trying to feed the bread to the dying Caucasian man.

Zhou stormed toward the child. “Give me the bread!”

Danielle stepped in front of him. “Just let him have it,” she said.

Zhou pushed past her and snatched the bread from the child’s hand, then slapped the child across the side of the head. The young boy screamed and began to cry.

As the others cowered, Danielle stared Zhou in the face, an act he correctly viewed as a challenge. He did not back down.

“You must be something nice, I think.” He let his eyes fall across her hair and down the length of her body. “Otherwise Kang would have killed you.”

She stared back at him, now fully engaged in the test of wills.

Zhou seemed to enjoy it. “Concubine or whore,” he said, curling his lip. “I’m going to find out just what it is that you do.”

Zhou had leaned in toward Danielle, staring down at her in an obvious attempt to intimidate her, but the move had left him vulnerable, his legs straight, his body off balance.

Danielle sat down on the shelf of a bed, sliding back and creating some space between them, as if she’d been cowed by his threat. From her sitting position, she watched him smile disgustingly. She smiled back and in the blink of an eye pivoted and thrust her right leg out, slamming her heel into Zhou’s knee. The joint snapped with an ugly sound, like a firecracker going off. Zhou crumbled backward, howling in pain.

As he fell, he swung at her, but she dodged his fist and stood. With Zhou on the ground, she slammed a second kick into his face and his nose exploded in a spray of blood.

Zhou’s friend leaped from his bunk, charging toward her. He tried to tackle Danielle, grabbing for her throat, but she blocked his hands and using his own momentum against him, flung him into the wall.

Even as he crashed into the stone she held his arm, twisting it around backward and dropping a hammer blow onto his elbow. The man’s arm folded in the wrong direction and he screamed in agony. She slung him onto the floor next to Zhou, his face a bloody mask of shock.

She glared down at him. “That’s what I do, you son of a bitch.”

Zhou slid himself backward along the floor. His friend crawled alongside, and they dragged themselves to a deeper, darker part of the brig.

Around the room, the others looked on, approvingly it seemed. The old man was laughing, giggling at the entertainment. He moved forward, taking back the bread and proceeding to eat.

“Take it all,” he said to the others. “Don’t save any for them.” He was giddy. “With no teeth, they will not be needing food today.”

The young boy jumped down and took the largest bowl of soup, bringing it back to the dying man and trying to feed him.

“You eat it, Yuri,” the man said. “You need it.”

His voice was Eastern European, maybe Russian. She wondered what he and the child had done to Kang to warrant such treatment. Certainly he did not look like much of a threat. With great effort, he got to a sitting position.

“They will try to kill you now,” he told her. “They will want revenge.”

She thought back to the words of one instructor. If you move, make sure you do enough to prevent any countermove. She felt quite certain she’d done that.