“Who are you?” Chen asked.
“I’m a backpacker,” Michael said.
“Nice to meet you, Backpacker.”
In the next instant Michael felt his head smashed down to the deck of the injection molding machine. What had been a knife to his Adam’s apple was replaced by a cold metal bar. Michael was beginning to reconsider his tactics. Perhaps a reasoned response wasn’t the way to deal with these guys. But he wasn’t an idiot. A break for it now would likely result in a snapped neck, so he breathed the best he could through his constricted throat, waiting for an advantage. His cheek to the metal press of the molding machine, he looked up to see the other half of the mold on its hydraulic piston. The only positive thing about the situation was that the machine wasn’t turned on. That advantage was quickly stripped from him with Chen’s depression of the industrial grade switch.
“What are you doing here?”
Michael tried to respond, but found his tongue didn’t work very well with his face flattened on top of the steel mold. What he got out was a mumble, barely discernible even to him.
“I said, why are you here?”
“Traveling,” Michael managed to grunt out.
“Whom do you work for?”
“Nobody.”
“Do you think I am a fool?”
Chen signaled his goons and they powered the metal bar down further across Michael’s throat. Michael knew that it would take only a hint more pressure to collapse his trachea; he just hoped that his aggressors knew it too. After all, if they wanted information, killing him wasn’t the way to go. Of course neither was molding his face into a cheery half globe of the Earth, but given the sudden hiss of the hydraulics above, Michael couldn’t dismiss that the latter might be exactly what they had in mind.
“I said nobody, I don’t work for anybody.”
The hydraulic press began its descent toward Michael’s face.
“Why are you here?”
“I was curious.”
Chen filled Michael’s entire field of vision now, his thin nose and coal black eyes boring into him from above.
“Me too,” Chen said. “I am curious.”
As the hydraulic press lowered, Michael’s cheek suddenly stung as a drop of molten plastic hit it from above. It was now readily apparent that regardless of whether Michael could move or not, he’d have to do something if he wanted out of there alive. It didn’t matter that they’d break his neck if he moved; they’d mash his head with a hydraulic press if he didn’t.
“I came here,” Michael said, “to find my father.”
“Your father?” Chen said, leaning closer.
“What about him?”
“You tell me, American.”
And Michael stole his moment. Kicking out with his outer leg despite the pressure on his throat, he arced his right leg around in a solid rotation, knowing that if he didn’t drop Chen he was done for. He felt the top of his foot connect with Chen’s calf and was able to follow through, sweeping him to the concrete below. Michael heard a scream and he knew the sweep had achieved what he’d hoped. Most people don’t know how to fall. The natural inclination is put your hand out to break the fall, but the inclination is wrong. If you take the full force of your body weight on your hand instead of rolling and spreading the force across your entire body, you’re more than likely to break your wrist, which given Chen’s scream, Michael assumed had happened. But it wasn’t over yet. He’d need to get Chen firmly under control if he was going to have any leverage with the two thugs holding him down. Fortunately, Chen fell right into the sweet spot. And even though the thugs were now hammering down on the bar hard, Michael was able to pin Chen’s neck between his foot and the floor in an improvised hold.
“Let me go or I’ll snap his neck.”
The hydraulic press continued its slow descent, Michael increasing the pressure on Chen’s neck.
“Do it. Now.”
One of the goons hit the stop button on the press and the hydraulic piston came to a standstill, the mold an inch above Michael’s ear. But the bar was still there, holding him in place. Michael leaned down harder on Chen’s throat, Chen finally letting out a wheezing gasp.
“Off.”
The two goons warily removed the bar allowing Michael to pull his head off the molding machine.
“Now, move over there,” Michael commanded.
The goons backed away.
“Not so fast.”
Michael wasn’t sure where the voice had come from, but he knew it wasn’t Chen’s. It didn’t come from the blue-suited goons either, whose arms were now extended out at either side as if to demonstrate that they were unarmed. No, the voice belonged to someone else entirely. Kate.
“Let him go, Michael.”
Kate’s words were steady, her semi-automatic pistol squarely covering the five of them. Chen moaned and Michael increased the pressure on his throat reflexively.
“The bastard tried to kill me.”
“I said let him go.”
Eyeing Kate’s weapon warily, Michael eased up on his foot, relieving the pressure on Chen’s windpipe. All was quiet for a long moment, Kate breathing coolly, expertly controlling the situation. Then, she aimed the pistol squarely between Michael’s eyes and twisted the corners of her mouth up into an ironic smile.
“It’s time you and I had a talk,” she said.
Chapter 9
Kate held the gun to the small of Michael’s back, just below the Cordura bottom of his climbing pack. She had held it there while she locked Chen and his men on the factory floor and she held it there for the long silent cab ride back to the city. Being held at gunpoint wasn’t a feeling you got used to, Michael thought, but he didn’t feel as hopeless as he had as a seventeen-year-old boy back in Peru. Michael felt somehow more in control of the situation. Stronger. He reasoned that if Kate intended to shoot him, she would have done it already. No, she was after something more.
The cab pulled off the street and Kate led him into a busy back alley. The narrow corridor was lined twelve feet high with bamboo cages housing live animals of all descriptions. There were turtles and monkeys and pigs and snakes and it smelled, Michael thought, like a low rent pet store, except these animals were more likely to end up on a plate than as somebody’s beloved companion. Kate prodded Michael forward past the woman slicing a bulbous strong smelling yellow fruit on a cart, past the man gutting a meaty corpse, and past the entrails strewn across the stained concrete. Air conditioners moaned, dripping their condensation from the high windows above, laundry fluttering on bowed lines. Kate gave no indication of where they were going or when they would get there. She didn’t speak at all. She merely prodded Michael ever further up the narrow alley until it dead ended at a weathered wooden gate.
Behind the gate was a temple. Not a monument to capitalism like the theme parks and skyscrapers Michael had encountered so far. But a genuine Buddhist temple, its traditional wooden frame and graceful curving tiled roof a reminder of life in a simpler time. Entering its high wooden door, incense hung thick in the dark air, smoky gold leaf covering the walls. The temple looked very old, but in this city there was no way to be sure. It didn’t matter though, because something about Kate’s stride told Michael they weren’t there for the architecture. She led him past a wall of deities where the faithful wafted their sticks of burning scent into a narrow hallway. Kate bowed her head to a young man with a shaved head and they entered a door on the left.