The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [137]
“For the sunset.”
So it will be sad and beautiful, Xao thought. Appropriate.
“Have him ready,” Xao ordered.
He could sense the driver’s unease.
“Yes?” Xao asked. “Speak up, we are all socialist comrades.”
“Are you certain, Comrade Secretary, that you want to … complete the operation? There are alternatives.”
“You have become fond of him.”
There was no answer.
Xao said, “There are alternatives, but they are risky. Risks are unacceptable when so much is at stake. Our personal feelings cannot matter.”
“Yes, Comrade Secretary.”
“You must be hungry.”
“I am fine.”
“Go eat.”
“Yes, Comrade Secretary.”
The driver stepped away. Xao watched the sun rise over the Sichuan basin. He knew what the driver had been hinting at—there was no operational reason for Xao to be here at all.
True, he thought, but there is a personal one. A moral reason. When one orders the death of an innocent, one must have the character to watch it.
Xao peered into the mists below him to search for his soul.
Simms was just goddamn miserable. He had spent the night in a damp, dirty, rat-infested Buddhist Disneyland, had to squat over an open trench to take a dump, and now he was standing in the cold fog, trying to choke down a bowl of rice gruel, waiting for the sun to rise so he could climb a few thousand more steps.
He yearned for the comforts of the Peak: a decent meal, a good bottle of bourbon, a young lady wrapped in silk. The thought of spending the rest of his life in the PRC made his stomach turn more than the rice gruel did. It was so dull here, so frigging monotonous, so spartan.
The thought galvanized him, made him urge the sun to hurry up. If he didn’t do what he had to do—grease Neal Carey—he might very well have to spend his remaining days here in this communist paradise. If Carey made it back to the States and slobbered about what the mean Mr. Simms did to him, the folks at the Company might notice the conflict with his job description. They might start asking some unfortunate questions. Then even those shit-for-brains might figure out that he was taking a regular paycheck from the Chinese. And that could get ugly. Probably even that stupid geek Pendleton had put it together.
He unzipped the long case and pulled out the rifle. The Chinese 7.62 Type 53 was by no means his favorite, but it would do. He favored bolt action, and the telescopic sight adjusted nicely. He sat down behind a large rock and screwed the sight onto the barrel. Then he hoisted the rifle to his shoulder, braced it against his cheek, and checked the sight out in the gathering light.
He spotted a band of monkeys in some bamboo about two hundred yards down the slope. He thought about his confrontation the day before with the fucking little bastards. I’ll show them an ambush. He centered the cross hairs on the chest of the largest monkey in the group, and squeezed the trigger. The shot threw high and to the left. He adjusted the sights accordingly, and aimed again. The monkey continued to gnaw on some exotic piece of fruit. The bullet slammed squarely into his chest and sent him tumbling down the hill.
Okey-dokey, Simms thought as he slung the rifle over his shoulder. He tried to force the excitement of imminent revenge out of his system, but every time he thought about struggling out of that fucking river, he got angry. He had damned near drowned, and he had sure as hell scraped the shit out of his legs crawling onto those rocks and pulling himself out. So, while revenge might be unprofessional …
He walked back to the old dining hall to find Peng and that other little slant. He’d probably need a crowbar to pry them from their rice bowls. He’d just about needed a gun to force them to walk in the dark last night, the little chickenshits. What did they think flashlights were for, the movies? Well, anyway, they’d picked up a couple of hours before packing it in for the night. Now it was time to get moving again.
Neal struggled out of the kang. Just turning to put his feet on the floor hurt, and bending over to put on his