“Ah,” the Guardian Inspector said. She was watching him closely. “You interest me, Captain. You’re relieved at the charge, not worried as you should be.”
“I assure you—”
“No!” she said. “Do not assure me of anything. You are a snake, Captain Wei. You have abused your privileged post in order to practice a loathsome habit. How can we trust your judgment if you’re addled with drugs? You are an addict. You ingest drugs to sustain yourself instead of hardening your resolve for the good of the State. You have stained yourself. You are no longer worthy of your rank or your station. I begin to wonder now about this report of yours concerning Maria Valdez.”
Was she playing him like a mongoose with a cobra? That must be it. It couldn’t really be about drug addiction. Besides, he wasn’t an addict. He merely used the pills to ease his burden. He was hard inside. He did work for the good of the State. China was everything and he was nothing, an ant tirelessly working for the nation, for the people.
The Guardian Inspector shrugged. “By his actions, our Great Leader has stamped your Maria Valdez report with approval.”
“Ah,” Wei said. “That disproves your charge then. My hard work—”
She held up a gloved hand. The glove was thin leather with little holes running up and down the fingers. The gesture was menacing, as it seemed to Wei that if she should drop her hand too quickly, the three enforcers would open fire.
“Your report has reached too high for us to dig too deeply into it,” she said. “But is there anything you wish to tell me about it, anything you wish to confess?”
He tried to appear contrite, but it was so foreign to him. He had dominated shackled patients too long, perhaps. He had always been in control.
“It is true I have sipped a drink to…to pass the time,” he said.
“You were going to say something else. Tell me what it was. Confess to me, Captain, and you may find mercy.”
Wei smiled softly. Did the Guardian Inspector not realize she spoke to the premier extractor of truths? He sifted truth and lies many times a week. He would never tell her that he took the blue pills to dull his conscience. No! That wasn’t even true. He took the pills in order to pass the tedium of life. But he would never tell her that, either. It would simply be too dangerous. High-ranking, East Lighting operatives knew nothing about mercy except that it was a word for fools and weaklings.
“You are a snake,” she said, as if pronouncing judgment on him. “Despite your glorious service to China, we must punish you, Captain. We are impartial, the dog and broom of the Socialist-Nationalist Revolution. We sniff out troublemakers and sweep them away.”
Wei’s throat felt gritty. He told himself it was the smoke of his cigarette. Yet if that was so, why hadn’t his throat ever felt this way before?
“I have never performed less than excellently while, ah, ingesting a stimulant,” he said.
“I’m sure that’s a lie,” she said. “Thus, it proves to me how low you’ve fallen from the height of dedicated service. Even in my presence, you dare to act like a snake, a liar and a drug addict.”
“Not an addict,” he protested.
“Spare both of us any breast-beating of innocence. You are charged, found guilty and will now hear your sentence, your punishment.”
Wei hid his surprise. The charge of drug addiction in East Lightning usually brought swift death. He had been waiting for bullets to smash his body.
“You are surprised,” she said, nodding, “as am I. Left up to me, my enforcers would kill you like a pig. Yet it is true that you have performed several notable services for China. Thus, you will have a chance at rehabilitation.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She shook her head. “I doubt you’ll thank me a week from now. You are being reassigned, Captain.”
“May I ask where?”
“To a penal battalion,” she said.
He frowned. “I thought only the military possessed those.”
She smiled like a hungry leopard. “You will join a shock battalion. It is a fancy title for those who clear minefields.”
“I’m untrained in such—”
She held up her hand again.
The three guards grew tense. Wei noticed one smiling in anticipation under his visor. The man was just tall enough for him to spot it. Wei gulped, dreading to know what a bullet entering his body felt like.
“The mine clearing is a simple process,” she said. “The battalion runs across it, exploding the mines with their feet. If you survive that, you will then become shock troops, charging enemy strongholds.”
“But—”
She stared at him, wilting his speech.
“You will still be East Lightning. You will be one of the enforcers, guarding and goading the penal troops to courageous acts of bravery. I’m told these troops often turn their guns and grenades on their enforcers. So you will need to remain vigilant. If you become drug-addled while performing your duties, well, we both know what will happen: Your commanding officer will draw his gun and shoot you in the head.”
Wei sat back. This was disastrous. What had he ever done to deserve this? It was viciously unfair.
“If you survive a year of combat,” the Guardian Inspector said, “I shall review your case. If I find you have purged yourself of this filthy drug habit, I will reinstate you in your regular command.”
“Thank you,” Wei managed to say.
“But we both know that you will not survive,” she said. “Good-bye, Captain Wei. Remember, if you can, to always act like an East Lightning hero, rooting out traitors to the State.”
She slings jokes into my teeth in my hour of doom. I will remember this.
The Guardian Inspector stood. Wei sat in his chair, staring helplessly at her, wishing he could order her stripped and secured to an informant table. He would spend days on her, days of agony for this mocking bitch.
“Help him,” the Guardian Inspector told her enforcers.
Each man slid his carbine into a large holster. Then, as one, they came around the desk, putting their iron-strong hands on him. With unnecessary brutality, they dragged Wei out of the chair, out of the office and propelled him down the corridor. He stumbled his way toward a penal battalion, one that would no doubt soon see military action.
Colonel Valdez sat in a dark room, smoking a cigar. When the glowing tip brightened as he inhaled, it showed hard, dark eyes and a pitted forehead. As a young man he had contracted chicken pox, and it had ravaged his features. The rage in his heart over his daughter’s death and dismemberment had changed to ice, and like a glacier, he remorselessly ground toward his goal in his mind.
He would have to leave Laredo soon. He seldom stayed in one locale for more than two days. The Chinese wanted him, but not nearly as badly as the new puppet President of Mexico did. The war of assassins between them continued despite the Americans and the Chinese. It was a ruthless contest between warring tribes, and Valdez had the weaker hand. Yet he had survived the SNP due to cunning, ruthlessness and the ability to instill fierce loyalty in his people.
“Maria,” he whispered.
The Chinese had sent him her parts piece by piece. He would make them pay. He would discover who had done this thing and he would do terrible things to them. The Americans had come to him earlier, begging for his best man. Instead, he had given them his daughter, because she had known the countryside better than any of his men did. He had told the CIA man that he wanted his daughter back. Oh, the CIA man had assured him she would be safe because America was sending its best men with her. He had been a fool to believe that or believe they would take care of his daughter. He had learned the man’s name. Yes. Paul Kavanagh the Marine had flown free, leaving his daughter behind to face the torturers.