The Wuhan Mission

“Roger that. So… the lab is big. Dr. Wu has a secure area that nobody else is welcome in. He’s always in there by himself. Two guards, machine guns. Metal detector. It’s secure alright… so something’s going on in there.”

“I’ll talk to Roet and see what he’s prepared to share. He’s been a total prick about it so far. Trust issues I guess.”

“Alright Blue Eyes. I’ll go check my Hello Kitty for a good movie. Talk soon!”

“Over and out.”

Xue Lin dismantled the radio and stashed it. She pulled the eye out of her Hello Kitty and plugged it in to her laptop.

Two guys, searching the room, but not very professionally. One of them planted the three audio bugs while the other looked under the table and checked the floorboards and in all the drawers. She got a good freeze frame of each of them looking almost directly at the camera, and took a moment to memorize their faces in case she should see them again.

Chapter 20 Drinks

During her next day at the lab, Xue Lin suggested to the other new girl that they have drinks to celebrate starting their new jobs. They decided on eight o’clock, and as Xue Lin pleaded that her apartment was still ‘unfurnished and messy’, the other girl suggested that they do it at her place.

Xue Lin dropped by her red brick wall to pick up the bug sweeper and arrived on her bike at the girl’s building a few minutes after eight. She parked her bike and turned the bug sweeper on, still on vibrate, and put it back in her backpack, pulling out a bottle of plum wine imported from Korea. Pressing the buzzer, the front door soon clicked open and she headed up the stairs to the fourth floor where the door was already open and the girl whom she had come close to strangling a few days earlier was standing there smiling sweetly, beckoning her to come in.

Xue Lin held out the bottle of plum wine, keeping her backpack slung over her front. Xue Lin made her way around the room commenting on the decorations and the furniture.

“Let me give you a tour!” the girl said, offering to take her bag and coat.

“I’ll put them down in a minute. Show me your beautiful place!”

By the end of the three minute tour, the sweeper had not vibrated at all. She turned the device off inside her bag.

“Here!” the girl said, insisting now that she hand over her coat and backpack to hang up in the hall.

Xue Lin sat on the couch thinking about how she was being singled out for surveillance, and what that might mean. All she could think of was that there was a leak or a rat. Jimmy was clearly open to suspicion, but he’d given her the tools to find the bugs, so that ruled him out.

“Do you want to start with beer? I have dumplings too so we don’t get too drunk. I just have to quickly fry them” said the girl when she came back.

“Yes, beer! I could really use a beer.”

Xue Lin ran through the people in her circuit. There was only Roet, Sam and Jimmy. No-one could have followed her on her complex route to Wuhan from America. She’d been too careful. Maybe it was someone higher up at the CIA.

Her attention returned to the beer now being poured in the kitchen by her lab colleague with the delicate neck. Looking at her reminded Xue Lin that she really must get around to sharpening her chopsticks soon.

The girl handed Xue Lin a glass of beer and they both began to drink. It felt good to finally relax.

Chapter 21 Casing the Lab

The two armed guards stood on either side of the security door of the Biosafety Level IV lab, down the hall from Xue Lin’s cubicle. They wore black suits and cheap black business shoes. She noted their weapons, with which she was only summarily familiar with. She had never used a JS9mm noise suppressed submachine gun, but she had been made familiar with its specs during training.

Without knowing how many weeks or months she might be working at the lab, she launched in on her recon from the outset with intensity. Running all possible scenarios in her head was standard procedure for a mission that had unspecified goals.

The shift change that she was most interested in happened in the morning. The night guards silently changed position with the two day guards. It was likely that they could all handle themselves in close quarters, probably with specialized training on top of their PLA basics. None of them were large men, but they would need to be neutralized together, making it a much more challenging take-down. There was a long tradition of hand-to-hand combat training in the People’s Liberation Army. Xue Lin was deadly, with or without a weapon, but she would be alone against whomever would stand in her way. The quietest approach would be to divide and conquer. Ideally she needed the whole thing to go without a shot fired.

She would have to find the guard’s patterns of behavior. When they used the bathroom, typically, or took a break. This would take her some time to observe routines.