Irving Waters - The Wuhan Mission

Xue Lin hung up the mobile phone and turned on some heavy metal music for the bugs. Then she moved the radio to the bathroom to make her real call to Sam.

“Hello Poo Eyes, this is Ho’s Forest. Do you read me?”

“Yes, Snow Forest I do read you, unfortunately. Go ahead.”

“I’m a go here for tomorrow. I’m setting up the apartment for permanent vacation. I have a SAT-phone number, but I need you to give it to the tech guys. Jimmy gave it to me. It’s for emergencies only.”

Xue Lin read the number to him, knowing that if she had to use the SAT-phone, things must have gotten bad.

“Received, Snow Forest. You have my SAT-phone number, you call me if you need a boat.”

“Actually, Blue Eyes, the boat is sounding rather attractive right now. I think with the passengers, I’m really going to need you there waiting for us. Can I bank on that?”

“Roget that. We’ll have a team in a ‘quick boat’ off the coast of Shanghai. Just give me a couple of hours notice and we can pick you up, with your two passengers preferably, please.”

“Coordinates?” she asked.

“Standby for those.” Sam sent a text message to the Team Leader. The reply was quick. He read them out to Xue Lin.

“Memorize them,” he ordered, thinking how lucky she was to have a photographic memory.

“What’s the code name for the pickup point?”

“Empire Szechuan. Table for three, telling us how many.”

“Roger that, Blue Eyes.”

“I’m at the base in Korea. You are good to go any time from now.”

“Can you give me details on the package please?”

“Yes, you are to grab three biological vials. One is a new strain of the SARS virus, one is a vaccine, and there’s the antidote. Don’t ask me the difference between a vaccine and an antidote, I just don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ, what are they up to?”

“Diabolical shit, Snow Forest. That’s why you are there, saving the world.”

Xue Lin paused for a moment, letting it sink in.

“Roger that, Blue Eyes. And the two passengers I can shoot if they get on my nerves?”

“That is a negative on shooting the passengers, Snow Forest. Only put them down if there is no alternative. We would much prefer them breathing. Good luck, and try to go quietly like a church mouse. Don’t go ‘bang bang’ or you’ll have half of China following you.”

“ Don’t get your knickers in a knot Blue Eyes. I’ll keep the noise down if I can, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Good enough. Be careful Snow Forest. Over and out.”

Sam went back to eating his take-out kimchee as he looked over at his bed and the pistol he’d just cleaned and oiled. It was time to start planning the extraction with the SEAL Team.

Xue Lin left her phone by the lamp, playing some ‘erhu practice’ for the techs who were listening while she set about preparing her apartment for the inevitable break-in which would come soon after the heist went down. She had learned in training to organize a wild goose chase for anyone who might be trying to catch her. She took down her map and put it in the garbage for disposal and put up a second map on the wall with a misleading escape route drawn in red marker. She wrote various lists of contacts in Vietnam, which was the opposite direction to that which she was really planning on going.

She quietly chiseled away at her plaster job in the wall. When she had made a big enough gap she pried the piece of drywall out exposing the pistol and ammunition, and her fake travel papers. Next she took apart the radio and destroyed them and separated the working parts into different plastic bags to be put out in garbage bins around the block. When she was done setting up her apartment for permanent vacation, she picked up the dozen plastic bags of incriminating refuse and took them down to her bike where she spotted her tail for the evening. She took off down a cobblestone alley and turned sharply into a thin walkway that was lined with trees and sped up. The tail was already gone, allowing Xue Lin to dump the evidence around the neighborhood in different bins. She headed back to her apartment quickly to make sure that no break-in would occur.

Safely upstairs in her living room again, she packed her tools into her kevlar backpack and then took a shower which would hopefully be the last shower she would take in Wuhan. Tomorrow was a Go. She hoped Jimmy was ready with the cars. If not she would have to take travel plans into her own hands.

She set an alarm for six and put on her pink pyjamas and got into bed. She went straight to sleep and had strange dreams about opening fire in the lab with a submachine gun killing everyone but her friend, the other new lab-assistant.

Jimmy took a nap after eating dinner at home. His alarm woke him at two in the morning. Wearily he swung his legs out of bed, already in his suit. He picked up the burner phones he’d bought the day before and added them to the heavily laden Go-bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He headed out to take care of the car situation.

He drove his Government issue Mercedes to the next neighborhood which was known to be the turf of a young street gang who had been selling drugs, stealing cars and robbing old people over the last few months. He parked the car and rolled the driver side window halfway down and got out with his bag, leaving the keys in the ignition.

Then with his bag over one shoulder he wandered the neighborhood looking for a van which would serve for the highway miles they would drive if they managed to get out of the center. He found a tan colored van and broke in easily. He started it with a screw driver and drove it to a twenty-four hour gas station and filled up the tank and checked the oil. He then drove to the planned changeover point near the edge of town. He opened the glove compartment and shoved into it his new passport and ID. He opened the trunk and put his heavy bag inside, keeping only his pistol with him.

Jimmy then set out on foot to search for a Chinese-made sedan, white or black, which would serve to take the three of them from the scene to the van. He walked the streets for a good hour before he came across a black sedan that could pass for a Government vehicle. He felt under the mudguards for a spare key container. This time he was in luck. After putting Dr. Wu’s passport and ID into the glove compartment he drove the car back to his apartment and parked it a block away before heading back to bed to try and get some sleep. Tomorrow he would be leaving China forever, if all went well.

The mandatory vaccinations began in China in December. Wuhan’s outbreak had been building for a few weeks and had been receiving a good amount of publicity in China and in the foreign press. The head Doctor of the vaccination committee followed his directive to start with the large manufacturing cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing. Government teams started showing up at factories, quietly without publicity, giving everyone a small shot of the clear liquid that contained the vaccine and traces of certain metals that the Government scientists had found would work with the 5G frequencies.

The factory workers submitted their forearms willingly and without question. Everyone knew when something was ‘mandatory’ that nothing was to be gained from causing trouble or protesting. Very few of them thought about whether it was good or bad. They just knew that there was no choice.

The medical teams moved efficiently from factory to factory before moving on to smaller companies, and then finally setting up public vaccination sites in gymnasiums and halls in each neighborhood where people lined up with their identification. The elderly were vaccinated, even though it would not protect them if they were infected by the virus from Wuhan.