The Wuhan Mission

“Sir, she has left Wuhan.”

His superior officer looked quizzically at him. The mention of Wuhan had confused him.

“Ah sir, you remember? You ordered me to inform you if she leaves Wuhan. The adopted girl. American parents, possible CIA, enemies of China?”

“Yes, of course!” he said, mind ticking over, connecting this Jimmy Lin who was being looked into, and now the girl in Wuhan too.

“Where is she?”

“Sir, she is traveling east on highway G50.”

“Watch her” he said, picking up his phone to call the investigator in Wuhan.

The Investigator answered his phone, it showed that it was the Third Department calling.

“This is the 3PLA. I have some new information that may be related.”

“Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“We are showing a chipped woman leaving Wuhan. She entered China four months ago, and has been in Wuhan since then.”

“Anything else in her file?” the investigator asked.

“Born in 1991, adopted in Beijing in ‘95 by Americans, possibly CIA. Expelled from China in 2003.”

“Send me the locator map immediately.”

“Yes sir. Did you have any luck finding Jimmy Lin’s Mercedes?”

The investigator abruptly hung up without answering the question.

The Investigator texted the Chairman:

“Female lab assistant was chipped in ’95.

Possible CIA.

She has just left Wuhan in a vehicle.

3PLA are tracking her location.

Instructions?”

The Chairman read the text, and quickly called back.

“You can let her go. I have other plans for her now.”

“Yes sir. Ah sir, she probably has Dr. Wu with her, and possibly Jimmy Lin also sir.”

“All in good time. There is a new plan in place. I’ll be putting it into motion soon enough. We have been listening in on her for four months since she started work at the lab, but she seems to have been aware of the surveillance, so she has been leaking misinformation to our analysts, and curiously, also seems to have taken up playing the ‘erhu’ in her spare time.”

“I see sir. That’s… interesting to know. I… wish I had known that sooner… sir. I have to call off the dogs.”

The Chairman hung up, leaving the investigator perturbed about the roadblocks and the urgent bulletins of ‘armed and dangerous fugitives’ that he had recently put out over the radio. It would take some organization to call the search off again and pull back the roadblocks. It might take an hour to completely reel it all back in.

*

Jimmy looked far ahead up the highway. It had been clear of traffic until now but there seemed to be a bit of a bottle neck coming up in a couple of kilometers.

“Xue Lin, put that machine gun out of sight, but accessible, and make sure you have access to your pistol. Dr. Wu, pass me my bag.”

Xue Lin dipped into the depths of her backpack and grabbed three magazines for the machine gun and put them in the backpack’s front pocket for easier retrieval.

Jimmy pulled some clips from his bag and threw the bag back to Dr. Wu saying: “There’s a vest in there. Put it on! Put your sweater on over the top of it.”

“Really?” said Wu in disbelief.

“Do it now! We’ll be there in one minute, and they are probably looking for two men and a woman. Well, you could almost pass for a woman in that wig.” Jimmy smiled weirdly, already being affected by the adrenaline.

Dr. Wu struggled into the bullet proof vest. Xue Lin put her kevlar backpack on her front and did up the waist band tight. She extracted the three biohazard carry cases and put them under the seat.

“Everyone’s ID out. Not passports, just ID cards. Passports would be weird. Dr. Wu looks weird enough already.”

Jimmy screwed the suppressor on to his pistol saying: “You know what Wu? Just wave your head around like you are on drugs.”

Jimmy gently pressed down on the brakes, bringing the car to a stop behind five other cars. There was just one officer looking in each car, checking IDs. There were three patrol cars angled across the highway, leaving one lane open for cars to pass through one at a time.

“We have six cops. Probably pistols only. Dr. Wu stay in the car, no matter what happens.”

Xue Lin looked at Jimmy: “Plan?” she asked raising her eyebrows.

“We’ll try with the IDs. He has been handing them straight back to the drivers without further checks. If he walks away from us with the IDs, it means we are as good as dead, so we need to dismount and open fire. You go up the right flank, I’ll take this side.”

“Copy that.” Xue Lin slid her pistol out from under her leg, and threaded her belt through its holster pulling her blouse over the top of it. The machine gun was on the floor, barely out of sight.

The officer passed the ID back to the driver of the sedan in front and waved him through. Jimmy slowly pulled up and put the van in neutral, leaving the engine running. The officer arrived at the window and had a good look inside the van, seeing the hippy waving his head around in the back, and the beautiful gothic girl in the passenger seat batting her eyelashes at him.

“IDs please.”