clattered onto the metal, onto the road, and was crushed under the wheels.
The window, inches above my head, exploded. Shards blew out, stinging my scalp. The passenger, firing in panic. I wrenched my hand, shifted my weight, pulled my legs against the door for leverage, covered my head with my arm, all in one fluid move, like I was jumping onto a public-housing railing in London.
I threw myself through the window, head first, my back slamming against the edge of it. I wriggled, trying to get leverage, elbowing the passenger hard in the throat, knocking him into the driver.
I had five seconds to win this fight. The driver whipped a gun from his left hand to his right, toward me. He fired, and the bullet skittered a path along the very top of my scalp, hot and vicious. I seized the gun’s barrel and pushed down; he had to keep one hand on the wheel and he pulled the trigger in reaction. The next bullet hammered into the seat by the passenger’s leg. He screamed and, in panic, wriggled past me. I threw a kick at him and he slammed into the door and crumpled.
Now I barreled hard into the driver, shoving him into his door. Where the bullet had grazed me, the pain was like a burning match dragged along my skin.
He knocked me back, but my heels hit the windshield and I powered back into him. I threw hard, fast punches into his throat, eyes.
The truck veered wildly and he dropped the gun, but I felt the tires leave the asphalt and brush along an unpaved surface, grass, a skid beginning.
I levered my foot up, snaked an arm around his neck. “I’ll break it,” I said in Mandarin. “You listen to me. The man with me, he will kill you. I will not. All we want is the cargo. He will kill you if you do not cooperate. I will let you live. Do you understand me?” And I gave his neck the slightest wrench. He nodded.
I grabbed the gun and pressed its heat to the driver’s ribs. “Drive. Normally.”
The driver settled the truck, guided it back onto the highway. We earned a roaring honk from a Mercedes that powered past us, the driver shaking a fist, blind to the struggle inside the cab.
The van pulled alongside us, like a teenager sidling up to the dream girl at a dance. A bullet hole marred its roof. Piet leaned forward—with extreme caution. I waved.
“The man in the van will kill you,” I said again. “Do you speak English?”
“A little,” the driver said.
“Don’t let him know you understand. He’s crazy. I’m your only hope right now, you got me?”
The driver nodded. The passenger, unconscious, did not contribute to the discussion.
“Tell the guard in the trailer that we’re pulling over, and he’s to lay down his weapons, come out with hands up. You tell him any different, I shoot you in the knee.”
The driver obeyed, speaking into a walkie-talkie.
I gestured for Piet to drive behind us and, at my order, the driver took the next exit. I blinked away wetness on my face. We pulled four kilometers or so down the road. Now I saw empty stretches of land with a shawl of gray mist hovering above the ground. Cows grazed. Maybe a dairy close by. No sign of people, and the road was an old, narrow affair, rough around the edges. In the distance I saw a rough stone building; it looked like a storage facility.
I said in Chinese, “Remember, do what I say, no matter what I say to the man in the van. We will walk to the storage shed and then we’ll take the truck. You understand me?”
The driver nodded.
Piet crept up from where he’d parked the van, a gun at the ready. I pulled the driver out, keeping the gun on him.
I turned and heard a creak of metal. The back of the trailer opening, Piet jumping back. The driver called in Mandarin, “Do what I told you.”
“Don’t shoot!” the guard yelled. He came out, hands raised.
Crime is a kind of war. But while soldiers will die for their country, few people will die for lords like the Lings. Loyalty is a smoke that inches up from the ashes of greed in this world. A change in wind scatters it.
“How do I know you won’t kill me?” the driver said in Chinese.
“Because you’d already be dead if we wanted you dead,” I said.