Week 27.5 – Plan D

Previously: Cole told Digger it was time to try Plan D. And now…

At a traffic checkpoint just outside Nanjing, Private Wah Siu-Ming waved the Ssangyong SUV to a stop. The driver rolled down the window as he approached. The driver was a little older than Siu-Ming. He wore sunglasses and a broad, dimwitted smile. “Hello,” the driver said. “Is there a problem?”

“We’re looking for a couple of fugitives,” Siu-Ming said, looking inside the vehicle. Besides the driver, there was a woman in the back seat, holding her head as if she had a headache. “Where are you coming from?”

“Shanghai,” the driver said. “Selling our vegetables. Then we celebrated a little too much.”

Siu-Ming looked more closely at the woman. He couldn’t see her face because her head was ducked, but what he could see was pale skin under heavy make-up. “Traditionalist, eh, making your wife ride in back?”

The man chuckled. “What can I cay? I’m old-fashioned. She rides in back in the car, but I let her take the lead in the fields.”

Farmers. Which almost explained the bread shoulders on the woman, but not the pale skin or the smooth fingers. “Let me see your identification,” Siu-Ming said.

“We don’t have any,” the man said. “We were pickpocketed.”

Behind his back, Siu-Ming waved frantically at his partner as he contined to talk calmly to the man. “That’s terrible. You know, you have a very interesting accent.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”] Siu-Ming drew his pistol and aimed it at the driver. On the passenger side of the vehicle, his partner did the same…[/blockquote]The man glanced nervously at Siu-Ming’s approaching partner as he said, “Yes, my whole family thinks I sound weird. Truth is, I think I actually learned Chinese mostly from the television. So I probably have an accent.”

“Yes, you do,” Siu-Ming said. “You and your wife need to step out of the car, please.”

“That isn’t really necessary, is it?” the man asked. “She has a terrible hangover.”

“It’s necessary.” Siu-Ming drew his pistol and aimed it at the driver. On the passenger side of the vehicle, his partner did the same. “Show me your hands and take off your sunglasses.”

The driver shrugged and raised his hands. “Fine, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

He pulled off his sunglasses to reveal silver eyes. Siu-Ming saw electricity crackle from them. Just then, the wife looked up in the back seat, and Siu-Ming saw that she was actually a man in a wig and make-up. He said something in a foreign language, and before Siu-Ming could tighten his finger on the trigger, the SUV had risen into the air and flown past the checkpoint, headed west.

***

Digger yanked off his wig as the car hurtled along barely twenty feet off the ground. “Was that really necessary?”

“Yeah, actually, it was.” Cole said. As the checkpoint disappeared over the horizon, the car turned and shot to the north.

“I thought the whole point of the disguises was to avoid suspicion,” Digger said.

“The point is to avoid capture,” Cole said. “Put the wig back on. We need to switch cars again, and then you can drive us the rest of the way.”

What will happen when Cole and Digger reach the Czar’s domain? And what’s going on with Twain, Yi Fan and the bald Russian? Join us next week for the next exciting chapter!

To read from the beginning, click here…