Irving Waters - The Wuhan Mission

“I see sir. That’s… interesting to know. I… wish I had known that sooner… sir. I have to call off the dogs.”

The Chairman hung up, leaving the investigator perturbed about the roadblocks and the urgent bulletins of ‘armed and dangerous fugitives’ that he had recently put out over the radio. It would take some organization to call the search off again and pull back the roadblocks. It might take an hour to completely reel it all back in.

Jimmy looked far ahead up the highway. It had been clear of traffic until now but there seemed to be a bit of a bottle neck coming up in a couple of kilometers.

“Xue Lin, put that machine gun out of sight, but accessible, and make sure you have access to your pistol. Dr. Wu, pass me my bag.”

Xue Lin dipped into the depths of her backpack and grabbed three magazines for the machine gun and put them in the backpack’s front pocket for easier retrieval.

Jimmy pulled some clips from his bag and threw the bag back to Dr. Wu saying: “There’s a vest in there. Put it on! Put your sweater on over the top of it.”

“Really?” said Wu in disbelief.

“Do it now! We’ll be there in one minute, and they are probably looking for two men and a woman. Well, you could almost pass for a woman in that wig.” Jimmy smiled weirdly, already being affected by the adrenaline.

Dr. Wu struggled into the bullet proof vest. Xue Lin put her kevlar backpack on her front and did up the waist band tight. She extracted the three biohazard carry cases and put them under the seat.

“Everyone’s ID out. Not passports, just ID cards. Passports would be weird. Dr. Wu looks weird enough already.”

Jimmy screwed the suppressor on to his pistol saying: “You know what Wu? Just wave your head around like you are on drugs.”

Jimmy gently pressed down on the brakes, bringing the car to a stop behind five other cars. There was just one officer looking in each car, checking IDs. There were three patrol cars angled across the highway, leaving one lane open for cars to pass through one at a time.

“We have six cops. Probably pistols only. Dr. Wu stay in the car, no matter what happens.”

Xue Lin looked at Jimmy: “Plan?” she asked raising her eyebrows.

“We’ll try with the IDs. He has been handing them straight back to the drivers without further checks. If he walks away from us with the IDs, it means we are as good as dead, so we need to dismount and open fire. You go up the right flank, I’ll take this side.”

“Copy that,” Xue Lin slid her pistol out from under her leg, and threaded her belt through its holster pulling her blouse over the top of it. The machine gun was on the floor, barely out of sight.

The officer passed the ID back to the driver of the sedan in front and waved him through. Jimmy slowly pulled up and put the van in neutral, leaving the engine running. The officer arrived at the window and had a good look inside the van, seeing the hippy waving his head around in the back, and the beautiful gothic girl in the passenger seat batting her eyelashes at him.

“IDs please.”

Jimmy handed the three identity cards to him. The officer looked at him for a long couple of seconds, then at the three IDs, then back at Jimmy and then said: “I’ll be back with these in just a few minutes.”

“Go,” Jimmy said rather calmly as he shot the cop from his window and got out quickly enough to catch him before he fell. Skillfully wrapping his left arm around the cop’s neck he walked him forward using him as a shield, raising the barrel of his own pistol in the direction of the cops ahead.

Xue Lin was already out of the van. She lifted the machine gun and took a knee next to the open door and squeezed the trigger spraying the heads of the two cops still in their car, then she smoothly jogged up the right side of the road to get an angle on the second and third police cruisers.

“Two down!” yelled Xue Lin, aiming at car doors behind which the cops were attempting to take cover. She fired a short spurt piercing the doors of the second cruiser. “Four down!”

Jimmy aimed his pistol at the last cop who was trying to radio for backup from inside the third car. He pulled the trigger releasing a single slug into the forehead of the cop.

“Two down. That’s all of them. Check them!”

Xue Lin efficiently looked over each of the cops, almost casually putting a bullet in the head of the sole remaining badly injured cop who was defiantly trying to lift his pistol.

“Let’s go!” yelled Xue Lin. “No, wait! Jimmy get the IDs from your human shield there.”

Jimmy located the three IDs on the ground near the cop’s body and brought them back to the driver’s side.

“Any bullet holes anyone?” Jimmy said flippantly, looking in at Dr. Wu huddled in the back seat.

“No… bullet… holes.” Wu answered.

“Well that went well,” said Xue Lin sarcastically. Pulling out the magazine to check how many she had left. She replaced it with a full one.

“Maybe we should clean this shit up before someone comes along,” said Jimmy.

“And grab one of their radios. They will have the new channel. We can listen in again.”

Xue Lin and Jimmy, working as quickly as a team, put the six bodies in the trunks of the cruisers and parked them on the side of the road behind a cement barrier. Perhaps motorists might see them in their rearview mirror after they had passed, but the bullet holes would not be apparent. It would seem strange, but hopefully not strange enough to report.

“Let’s go Jimmy. We need to put some miles between us and this mess.”

Jimmy put his foot down and the van lurched forward onto the highway. His driving had suddenly become much more aggressive. There was no point sticking to the speed limit now. As long as they stuck to this highway there likely wouldn’t be any more roadblocks. Xue Lin turned up the volume of the cop’s radio that Jimmy had picked up and listened intently for new information.

The Chairman summoned his assistant to his office.

“I need you to get me the Director of the Ministry of State Security. Get him in my office this afternoon please.”

“Yes sir. Will that be all for now sir?”

“A pot of tea.”

“Yes sir.”

The Chairman felt an old excitement creeping back. It had been all politics. Shaking hands with Presidents. The espionage of late had been a welcome diversion and the thought of increasing China’s power was an exhilarating one. Some of the coming changes may have a certain amount of blowback on the Communist Party, but it would all be worth it in the long term.

This morning’s theft of bio-materials by an American spy could easily be spun into an elegant conspiracy theory by the Ministry of Propaganda. It would muddy the waters when the press started to point fingers. America’s own propaganda machine would crank up, trying to cast blame on China.

The lack of speed of contagion in the West was the only thing he was worried about. Relying solely upon tourism to spread the virus would reduce the sudden impact he was hoping for, even if entire cruise ships of full of infected tourists were unleashed upon major cities in the West, it may still be too slow to cause the hospitals to be overrun, which was the key to forcing quarantine conditions.

His assistant knocked three times and entered. “Your tea sir.”

Jimmy had been at the wheel for three hours since the roadblock. Doctor Wu was still looking shocked in the back seat. It was approaching noon as Jimmy announced that they would be needing gas shortly. He was still dumbfounded at the unexpected police radio transmission they had overheard an hour ago.

“Why on earth would they call off the search already?” asked Xue Lin, incredulously. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”