Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7) Read online

  Girl Goes To Wudang

  An Emily Kane Adventure

  Jacques Antoine

  Contents

  1. Lugging The Guts

  2. Getting One’s Bearings

  3. Raising The Dead

  4. Learning to Speak in Tones

  5. Making Landfall

  6. An Apartment Search

  7. A Stagnant River

  8. The Tiger and the Rabbit

  9. The Road Down From Chiang Rai

  10. Writing Home Writing Home Writing Home

  11. A Meeting With Two Presidents

  12. A Side Door

  13. How did it come to this?

  14. Dress Alpha

  15. Rubbing Elbows

  16. Crossing the River at Mae Sai

  17. A Night on the Town

  18. Taking Her Leave

  19. The Sixty-Four Hands

  20. Traveling with the Wa Army

  21. The Little Ones

  22. A Death in Seoul

  23. The Damsel in Distress

  24. A Diplomatic Passport

  25. Wudangshan

  26. An Unexpected Phone Call

  27. Just Keep Moving

  28. An Incident in Kunming

  29. The Road to Pu’er

  30. Yu Fei’s Story

  31. A Women’s Reunion

  32. Crossing Borders

  33. Back in Beijing

  Also By Jacques Antoine

  Girl Goes to Wudang, copyright 2016, by Jacques Antoine

  Cover art by Torrie Cooney at TorrieCooney.com.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Sign up to be notified when the next installment of The Emily Kane Adventures is released.

  Created with Vellum

  To Miki and Jenny,

  for seeing it all through with me,

  and to Lu Mengfei, Zhu Yuejia and Zhang Keming, for helping me fit names to characters,

  and to Carol Zhang, Wang Xile and Xie Fei, who helped me hear how the characters would speak to one another,

  and to Zhang Danchen and Wang Jiawen, who helped me appreciate Yunnan Province and the city of Kunming.

  To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (Robert Herrick, 1648)

  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

  Old Time is still a-flying;

  And this same flower that smiles today

  To-morrow will be dying.

  …

  Then be not coy, but use your time,

  And, while ye may, go marry:

  For having lost but once your prime,

  You may forever tarry.

  Romance of the Three Kingdoms (from Chapter One)

  “We come together as brothers by oath, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, even though each of us has a different surname. From this day, we join hearts and wills to a common purpose: to save the troubled and to aid those in peril…. We may not have been born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year, but we vow to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year.”

  1

  Lugging The Guts

  “Will you knock it off, LT? I mean, really….”

  Sergeant Mick Durant labored along Hutchins Road, his morning run tracing the northern edge of USMC Base Quantico, and skirting the cordon of still-forested land shielding the fences from public view. As they made the turn, following the rise east, the edge of the sun sent a sharp ray into their faces, or more precisely into his face, since Lieutenant Michiko Tenno had been pacing him for the last quarter mile running backwards. “Do you have to rub it in?”

  “I thought you’d be honored to have my back, Sarge. You’ve always been my eyes, when things get… you know, twisted around.”

  “Well, I am honored… truly, I am. Now will you turn around before even more people see us?”

  “Fine, whatever. But I don’t think you can keep my pace for long, and I was hoping not to have to say anything.”

  “You don’t have to wait for me. But dammit, LT, you got shredded worse than me on that God-forsaken island. How come you’re up to speed already?”

  Emily righted herself and flashed a smile over a shoulder, and then accelerated past him. His voice reached her one more time before she was out of earshot, calling to her to wait in mocking tones, though a note of resignation was still audible even at that distance. It wasn’t fair that she healed so much more quickly than the ‘old man,’ but she didn’t care to explain herself to him, or anyone else for that matter. She’d come to an understanding with her mother about it, and with herself, and she no longer saw any point in raking over cold coals… except maybe for Perry. A SEAL Lieutenant Commander, she’d already revealed some of her secrets to him, though perhaps not enough for him to really understand. But it was as much as she felt comfortable letting run free in the world.

  It wasn’t long before she was in danger of catching up to the two squads of Marines who’d passed them a few moments earlier, triggering Durant’s existential sarcasm. What emotions had it stirred in him to watch as a pack of Devil Dogs picked ’em up and put ’em down, almost in unison, moving at a respectable clip, the soles of their running shoes slapping out a martial rhythm against the pavement? Perhaps it was something not so different from her own feelings – if only she could get clear on what exactly she did feel. Four miles in, they’d given up whatever songs and banter had sustained them initially. Now, only a sense of duty, tinged with a soupçon of competitiveness, propelled them.

  “Jarheads,” Emily muttered. As long as she stayed in their acoustic blindspot, she could keep a comfortable pace. But if they became aware of her, they’d either feel compelled to outrun her, unable to endure the idea that a girl could keep up, or, if they recognized her rank, they’d slow down so she could pass… which would be even more irritating. Around the next bend, a path veered off into the trees, where she could run in peace. They wouldn’t leave the pavement, she was confident of that much, since the path was narrow and would require sorting themselves into a single file, and that’s just not how they think.

  A chill morning was made even cooler by the shade and shelter, where pockets of night air still clung to the dips in the terrain, not yet dissipated by sunlit breezes off the Potomac and the Chesapeake. The dirt path was softer than the road, and quieter, and her thoughts drifted inward, guided by the sound of her breath, made hectic earlier by Durant’s presence, but now finding a slower pace, until finally her mind seeped past it, through the froth of the blood pulsing through her neck and chest, making the cells in her brain buzz with activity. The truly quiet place was not far to seek, deeper inside, closer to her center-line, just inside the beating of her heart. She listened until it seemed to beat no more, and her feet found their own way, pushing past the occasional low hanging branch, or spray of leaves reaching out for her calves.

  The sun had begun its ascent across the vault of the sky, and now flashed and peeked through gaps in the foliage, leoparding across her eyelids when she closed them. Dew still clung to some of the lower leaves, and she felt a drop splash her cheek, and then another, like rain on a cloudless day. The breeze picked up and the sky grew dark, and then darker, as if a storm had overtaken her. The air felt warm on her face, and heavy.

  The smells of the rainforest reached out to her as she picked her way through the densely tropical foliage, while heavy winds lashed the surf. The larger palm fronds needed to be treated with care l
est they give her away, though perhaps this concern was misplaced, given the way the wind riffled the trees on all sides. She saw the glow in the distance, and circled around to her left, like a herding dog. Never a direct line to the enemy, always a vector. Time was short, with Durant crawling toward the last Zodiac and the edge of the tide, eating sand the whole way.

  She picked up her pace, and arrived unseen behind Diao’s fire team, four men distracted by something on a hand-held video screen, laughing together in their ignorant defiance of the storm and her deadly intentions. She burst into the clearing, and dispatched the men with the stolid efficiency necessary to protect Durant. A high kick sent one man head first into a heavy trunk, and as he slid to the ground, two more lunged at her, barehanded in their surprise, instead of reaching for their weapons, paying for the mistake with their lives. The last man tried to bring his rifle around, but too slowly, and the wakizashi came whistling over her shoulder and sliced through radius and ulna, taking his arm off just below the elbow.

  He smiled at her, eyes wide as saucers, as she slipped the blade under the body armor and between two ribs to find his heart. “I’m sorry about this,” she tried to say in Mandarin, but the words wouldn’t come. With his remaining hand, he gestured to the video screen lying face up a few feet away, and she caught a glimpse of the little girl playing on her mother’s lap, and her tiny laugh found Emily’s ears.

  “You never showed me that,” she cried out. “I didn’t see her. It’s not fair.” Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and the wind whipped around her body, but the dying man merely smiled until the light left his eyes.

  The sky cracked open in a spleen, and the flash of light backlit everything around her, becoming warmer and brighter, almost caressing her, until the blue of the sky could again be seen over the meadow she knew so well. Insects flitted over the tall grass, and a stream burbled in the near distance, and she reached out to steady herself against an elm tree. How long had she been standing there, nowhere near the forest path? A cold sweat clung to her face and shoulders, and the small of her back, and she glanced about to find her way again.

  By the time Durant caught up with her, she was sitting in the bleachers on the edge of the stadium next to the Barber Physical Activity Center, brooding over her ghosts, wishing she knew how to send them on, and staring at an official-looking envelope with her name on it.

  “Hey, LT, you okay?”

  She said nothing, merely handing him the letter.

  “What’s this? The Defense Attaché’s office… what do they want with you?”

  “Read it,” she grunted.

  “I didn’t know you’d put in for the Attaché service, LT. Don’t you need like twenty weeks training, or something, and isn’t there a huge waiting list?”

  “I didn’t, and you do.”

  “What the hell’s this, then? It says you’ve already been assigned to the embassy in Beijing.” When Emily didn’t respond right away, he studied the contents of the letter a second time. “Is this what you’ve been stewing over for the last few days?”

  “I don’t think I can go?”

  “Why the hell not? I know loads of guys would kill for a plum assignment like this, and you’ve already got the language skills, which must be why they leapfrogged you over the line…”

  “Not Beijing… the other thing.”

  “You mean Tarot’s family’s thing?” When she ducked her head, Durant bent over to find an angle on her eyes. “You’ve gotta go, LT. Don’t you think we owe it to them?”

  “That’s the problem. I owe them too much. I can’t… I…”

  “I’m sure it’s not gonna be like that. They don’t want to collect a debt. They just want to close the circle, you know, meet his comrades in arms… and maybe understand why he’d have sacrificed himself for us.”

  “You mean for me, don’t you?”

  “No, LT. I mean for all of us. It wasn’t just you.”

  “I was so reckless, so selfish, as if nobody but me could stop Diao. But if I hadn’t… if I’d listened to Connie and Perry, maybe we could have found another way to contain Diao’s men… and Tarot might still be alive.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, yes I do. I know it right here.” Emily pounded her chest as she spoke. “I know it clear as day.”

  When she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes were red, as if she’d been weeping, but they were actually dry, and she felt their warmth on her cheeks. Durant recoiled at the sight.

  “You need to come with us all the same.” Emily stuffed the letter back in the pocket of her sweats and got up to leave. “And don’t forget that other favor…”

  “What? Oh, that… you want me to ruin someone’s Professional Training, right?”

  “No, I just want you to round out one particular mid’s experience. He’s got a little too much bluster under sail, and could use a trim.”

  “Is there a hand-to-hand class this morning?”

  Durant glanced at his watch. “Yeah, starting in about ten minutes.”

  “… and you want me to kick his ass?”

  “I would have said ‘give him a tune-up,’ but you could put it that way. Plus you’d be giving the women in his platoon something to aspire to.”

  “Fine, whatever. You realize if they need me to set an example, they probably belong behind a desk, right?”

  “That’s not how your friend Lt Tanahill tells it… and Lt Talib, too. According to them…”

  Emily held up a hand. “Enough, Sarge. I get it.” He was right, of course, even if he didn’t know enough details to really understand why. But she’d had to help her friends find a different sort of fortitude, even if it came at the cost of some harrowing experiences, especially for CJ… and she was a better sailor for it. This was the truth she didn’t want to face, that she had to expose her friends to the fire to make them hard enough to endure what might come their way because of their proximity to her. This was what friendship with her meant.

  Back in the Barber Center, in the main gymnasium, some thirty or so men and women watched a hand-to-hand demonstration, led by two familiar faces, Gunnery Sgt Perez and Sgt McIntyre. The students were mainly midshipmen, 3/Cs sent down for their PROTRAMID, the training sessions intended to acquaint them with the basic dimensions of a billet in the Corps, in case that’s where their ambitions would lead them, but also to give them a better sense of what battlefield conditions feel like, through carefully designed simulations of urban warfare, night-time insertions into hostile territory, gas attacks, and underwater recovery.

  It also included advanced hand-to-hand training, one point of which was to confront the mids with situations in which they could not prevail. This was relatively easy to achieve with the women, and only slightly more difficult with most of the men. But one particular mid, 3/C Richard Callahan, was a little too skilled, and large enough to pose a problem for Sgt McIntyre. Durant probably could have managed him easily enough, if he’d been healthy.

  Emily had watched from the back wall as McIntyre demonstrated their limitations to most of the women in the class – primarily through bear hugs and choke-holds – and Perez would have to call out Callahan’s name soon, or risk creating the impression that he’d intimidated them… which, to some extent he had. Durant gestured to her to come to the front, and Perez nodded to Callahan.

  “What’s this, Gunnery Sergeant? Do you want me to demonstrate a hold on her?”

  “Not exactly,” Perez replied. “Lt Tenno has agreed to help out today.”

  “I don’t get it,” Callahan said, towering over Emily. “What am I supposed to do, pretend she’s strong enough to hold me?”

  “One thing you could do for a start is learn to shut up in the presence of a superior officer,” Emily snapped.

  “Yes, sir… I mean ma’am.”

  “Is it general grappling today, Gunny?” Emily glanced over to Perez, who nodded. She turned to Callahan, looked him up and down, and sneered, eyes hard. “You have a decisi
on to make, Mr. Callahan. Either subdue me in any hold of your choosing, or run as fast as you can and see if you can make it to that door.”

  The class laughed nervously, uncertain of the tone of her humor. Callahan glanced at the door, and then back at her, started to move towards her, and then paused. “Do you want to put on some pads, ma’am?”

  “Not particularly. How about you?” When he hesitated, Emily nodded to McIntyre, who tossed a couple pairs of grappling gloves onto the mat. “Will these do?” Emily strapped on the smaller pair and gestured to him to do the same. “Satisfied?” When he held his hands out in a standard defensive position, she turned to the class. “This isn’t a sparring lesson, Mr. Callahan.”

  Of course, she knew this would give him the opening he so craved, and he obliged by lunging towards her, huge arms straining to reach her neck, no doubt meaning to wrap her into a choke-hold. But she pivoted into a back-kick at the last instant and jammed the heel of her right foot into the soft spot just below the sternum. The force of the blow straightened him up for a moment, gasping, and she allowed the momentum of the kick to bring her about, seizing his wrist and kipping up to scissor her legs around his neck. Her weight and rotational inertia soon twisted him down until he ended up lying on his face, her legs choking him off, and one arm caught in a wrist-lock that was looking to become very painful. Without releasing him, Emily addressed the class.

  “While Mr. Callahan entertains his options, the rest of you should notice that a fight is not always decided by physical strength. It can also be decided by mental sharpness. As you saw, he made a lazy attack and paid the price for it.” She twisted the captive hand slightly, and after a high-pitched yelp, he slapped the mat.

  “With all due respect, ma’am, that wasn’t really fair,” Callahan said, once he’d regained his footing. “I didn’t know we’d be using our feet.”

  “Fine. Would you care to lay down the rules of engagement? What would you consider fair?”