James Rollins - The Eye of God - A Sigma Force Novel

It was an uncanny match to the silver serpent at her throat.

“Where is she now?” Guan-yin asked, her voice rising in volume, showing again that steel. “Where is my daughter?”

Gray swallowed back the awe at the sight of her face and quickly explained about the attack, its aftermath, and the abduction on the street.

“Tell me about the man you saw standing beside the car,” Guan-yin demanded.

Gray described the tall powerful-looking man with the trimmed beard. “He looked Portuguese, with maybe some Chinese blood.”

She nodded. “I know him well. Ju-long Delgado, the boss of all Macau.”

A shadow of concern swept her features.

If this hard woman was worried, that was a bad sign.

9:18 A.M.

With a complaint of brakes, the vehicle came to a stop.

Seichan heard the stranger speak in low tones to the driver in Portuguese, but she didn’t understand the language. Doors opened and slammed.

A hand reached to her face. She thrashed back, but fingers merely removed her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden glare.

“Calm yourself,” her captor said. “We still have a long way to go.”

The man was dressed meticulously in a finely tailored silk suit and jacket. His dark brown eyes matched his shaggy hair and manicured beard, the latter shorn tight to his cheeks and square chin. His eyes, pinched slightly at the corners, revealed his mixed-blood heritage.

A glance around revealed she was on the floor of a panel van.

The rear door popped open, stabbing her eyes again with brighter light. Another man stood outside: he was younger, a smooth-faced brute with cropped black hair and massive shoulders that strained his suit jacket. He had striking ice-blue eyes.

“Tomaz,” her captor said. “Are we ready for the flight?”

A nod. “ Sim, Senhor Delgado. The plane is ready.”

The man called Delgado turned to her. “I’ll be accompanying you on this flight,” he said. “To ensure I receive full compensation, but also I believe it would be a good time for me not to be in Macau. Not after what is about to transpire in Hong Kong. The aftermath will be bloody for some time.”

“Where are you taking me?”

Ignoring her, he scrambled out of the van and stretched his back. “It looks to be a beautiful day.”

His underling, Tomaz, grabbed her bound ankles and yanked her into the morning sunlight. A dagger appeared in his hands and sliced the plastic ties. Her wrists remained bound behind her back.

Placed roughly on her feet, she realized she was on the tarmac of some remote airstrip. A sleek jet waited thirty yards away. Its stairs were down, ready to receive its passengers. A figure appeared in the open doorway and stepped into the light.

A large splinted bandage covered his broken nose.

Dr. Hwan Pak.

“Ah, our benefactor.” Delgado headed toward the jet, checking the Rolex on his wrist. “Come. We don’t want to be anywhere near Hong Kong after the next few minutes.”

9:22 A.M.

“That’s all you know?”

A mother’s love for her daughter ached in Guan-yin’s voice. She had questioned Gray intently for the past several minutes, probing Seichan’s past, trying to understand how she could still be alive.

They had retreated to one of the sofas.

Zhuang stood guard beside her. Kowalski had wandered over to the fish tank, tapping at the glass, his nose close to its surface.

Gray wished he could fill in more blanks for Guan-yin, but even he did not know the full extent of Seichan’s history, only fragments: a series of orphanages, a rough time on the streets, a recruitment into a criminal organization. As Gray recounted this past, Guan-yin seemed to understand. In some ways, both mother and daughter had taken parallel paths, hardened by circumstances but still able to rise above it, to survive and flourish.

In the end, Gray could not paint a full enough picture to satisfy a mother who missed so much of her daughter’s life. He doubted any number of words could fill that void.

“I will find her,” Guan-yin swore to herself.

She had already passed down a command through her organization to discover where Ju-long Delgado might have taken her daughter. They still awaited word.

“In the past, I failed her,” Guan-yin said, as one finger rose to wipe a tear from the edge of her dragon scar. “My Vietnamese interrogators were cruel, crueler than I suspected even back then. They told me my daughter was dead.”

“To make you despair. To make it easier to break you.”

“It only made me angry, more determined than ever to escape and get vengeance, which eventually I did.” A glint of fire burned through her haunted look. “Still, I did not give up. I searched for her, but it was made difficult in those early years, as I dared not set foot again in Vietnam after escaping. Eventually I had to give up.”

“It hurt too much to keep looking,” he said.

“Hope is sometimes its own curse.” Guan-yin looked to her folded hands in her lap. “It was easier to bury her in my heart.”

Several long moments of silence stretched, marked by the tinkling of the fountain in the atrium.

“And you?” Guan-yin asked, her voice faint. “You have risked much to bring her here, to come to me now.”

Gray did not need to acknowledge that aloud.

She lifted her face to stare him in the eye. “Is it because you love her?”

Gray met those eyes, knew he could not lie—when the first explosion shook the complex.

The blast rocked the entire apartment tower. Water sloshed in the fish tank. The long-stemmed orchids swayed.

“What the hell!” Kowalski yelled.

Guan-yin was on her feet.

Her shadow, Zhuang, already had a phone at his ear, talking swiftly, moving to the wall of windows. Smoke rose up through the rain from below.

Another explosion erupted, sounding farther away.

Guan-yin followed her lieutenant to the window, towing Gray and Kowalski with her. She translated what she overheard from Zhuang.

“Cement trucks have pulled up to all the entrances, coming from all directions at once.”

Gray pictured the large vehicles squeezing down the narrow canyons surrounding this mountain, converging here in a coordinated assault. But they were not cement trucks . . .

Another blast from another direction.

. . . but bombs on wheels.

Someone intended to bring this entire place down around their ears. Gray could guess who: Ju-long Delgado. He must have discovered Gray and Kowalski had come here. The passage of their pale faces through here would be hard to miss.

“We need to get out!” Gray warned. “Now!”

Zhuang heard him and agreed, turning to his mistress. “We must get you to safety.”

Guan-yin stood her ground, back straight, the dragon shining more prominently on her angry face. “Mobilize the Triad,” she ordered. “Get as many residents to safety as possible.”

Gray pictured the mass of humanity below.

“Use our underground tunnels,” she said.

Of course, the Triad would have secret ways into and out of their stronghold.

“You must first go yourself,” Zhuang pressed.

“After you pass on that order.”

It seemed this captain was willing to go down with her ship—and it was coming down. Loud splintering crashes echoed as parts of the complex collapsed. The pall of black smoke now covered the entire wall of windows, as if driven upward by the muffled screams from below.

Zhuang returned to his phone, shouting now to be heard. Moments later, loudspeakers blared throughout the complex, echoing across its many levels, as the command of the dragonhead was spread to all.

Only then did Guan-yin relent.