Blackbird, Chapter 8

No one left behind

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If you missed earlier chapters, here: https://wyattwerne.substack.com/s/blackbird

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With one eye through a sliver of glass, the rest of her face in the dark and covered by pale yellow curtains, Shi studied the boyish soldier below her window. The radio in her hand felt like a stone. She wanted to break her living room window and then fling it at the corporal in green camouflage fatigues. But the radio’s smooth black plastic felt slick in her sweaty palms, her hands shook, worried, and anyway, the boy held his assault rifle at low ready, a banana clip extending from the bottom of his QBZ-95 bullpup like a panther’s claw waiting to tear her to shreds. His red dot scope and barrel would pounce on her face before the glass cracked. The last thing she’d see would be the muzzle flash from a boy barely older than her daughter.

No, she exhaled. The boy was probably seventeen or eighteen, five years older than Jing. The boy was old enough for the military to pluck him from a rural area, hand him the latest rifle, put his finger on the trigger and fill his brain with powerful meanness and glorious visions, but too young to understand that another’s death would haunt him forever. Behind his childish eyes and green and gray army uniform, his automatic rifle guarded immature thoughts of roughing up citizens as they walked in their own neighborhood, to their own houses. The streetlamp cast a shadow of malice, an eagerness to whip her neighbors, maybe her daughter, to prove his worth to his superiors.

And where was her daughter, Jing? She fought back a replay of the screaming argument and the terrifying sound of the door slamming.

It started when Jing dumped her backpack on the kitchen table and the radios spilled out. She exploded. Her daughter had radios. How and where did a twelve-year-old child know to get something that protestors used to hide from the police?

I’m almost thirteen, Mom, and I am not saying. You’ll tell someone and get them in trouble.

When did Jing start lying to her? Had she been protesting? Did she understand the police would disappear her? Drag her away? If she were lucky, they’d only shoot her. She stopped screeching before her tongue could lash Jing with all the ways the Ministry of State Security would torture her. A twelve-year-old girl should be innocent, not be thinking of such atrocities.

Mom, we need these radios. Jing met Shi’s anger with an equal and opposite exasperatingly cool sigh and eye roll. It felt like an accusation, as if she’d said of course you would overreact.

Jing lectured that the radios had five buttons, a stubby antenna, silent operation, privacy codes, a knob to switch between one of thirty-six encrypted channels, and a black-on-orange LCD display with signal and battery bars.

Privacy codes and encryption, words that branded her and stung because now she had something to hide.

I am not telling you where I got them. Would you rather I lie to you and make something up? This is our life now. You need to calm down and accept it.

Calm down. Her blood flashed over and her face felt like it was on fire. Her whole body shook with rage. Had Jing been lying? Sneaking around?

I am going to Li’s house. Make yourself ji qing hua tea until I get back.

Such impudence, telling her mother to make passionflower tea to calm down. Shi picked up the teakettle and thrust it towards Jing, but stopped before she hurled it.

Jing pivoted for the door. Shi chased her with the teakettle in hand. She didn’t want her daughter leaving the house and hiding from the police.

And who was this Li? With one hand on the door, Jing cocked her head to the side and her eyes curled up into a provocative smirk. He’s my boyfriend, Mom. What do you think?

Shi screamed at the door as it slammed. Jing was too young for a boyfriend.

When her shrieks of come back died, a new silent terror filled her second-floor condo.

Jing was gone.

Nature was crazy, she mused while watching the corporal below her light a cigarette. It gave teens the hormones and the urge to assert their independence, but not the brains to make good decisions or understand the tradeoffs. Action was better than inaction, but Jing acted impulsively, like her father. Stealing radios would get them both gang raped and tortured.

Who was she kidding? That might be her fate, no matter what Jing did.

She stared at her door after it shuddered on its frame, willing Jing to return, but Jing didn’t come back. Her heart refused to stop beating in her throat, and she felt herself panic.

She watched from the window as Jing walked by the soldier below. What had Jing said as she passed? Something that made him smile. A twelve-year-old girl should not know how to activate that smile in a boy soldier and shouldn’t speak to her mother with that mouth.

That was twenty-five minutes ago. As the soldier chain-smoked cigarettes under the streetlamp, her terror receded to worry. She’d overreacted. Jing was coming back. Li was not her boyfriend. At least, she didn’t think so.

Commander Heng was her husband’s Executive Officer, and Li was Heng’s son, fifteen years old. Her husband’s message said for Li and his mother to meet them and move to the beach so he could pick them up. Jing took it upon herself to get them.

“I’m here, Mother.” A chirp from the radio in her hand and then her daughter’s voice brought a wave of relief. Mother. Jing was still angry.

“I’m sorry I overreacted. But you should have discussed this with me first.”

“You would have said no. Listen, Mom, this is not private. Read the back, follow directions, and then destroy the tape.”

Shi turned the radio over. On the back, a slip of cellophane tape glistening with sweat. Written in black permanent marker on the tape, instructions to change the channel and enter a privacy code.

“I don’t want to lose you. I’d rather wait until you come back.”

“Mom, no, just trust me for once. We need to change channels.”

“You should have told me before you left.”

“You were too busy yelling at me.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’ll work. Just do it. I am switching now.”

The radio chirped, and then Shi was listening to silence.

She shook her head, hoping she didn’t lose Jing for a second time. After opening the radio’s menu and entering the codes on the back, the radio chirped twice.

The LCD display informed her she was on a new, encrypted channel with four bars. Jing had explained the math of the bars when she emptied her backpack. Shi had been focused on her own anger, but now remembered that the radios had a range of five kilometers in the city, and four bars meant Jing was close.

“Jing, are you there?”

“Keep it short, Mom. Don’t drain the battery.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, I’m your mother.”

“It’s just a fact, Mom. Talking drains the battery.”

“Talking to you like this drains my battery. Come back here so we can talk about this.”

Jing didn’t respond. Below, the soldier’s cigarette burned bright red, and he tensed, his eyes catching something down the street, out of her view.

She’d never ask her daughter to skulk around like this. But Jing was right, she could move invisibly amongst the soldiers stationed every block.

After a few moments of the soldier’s puffing, Jing said, “Li’s mom is gone.”

“To where?”

“Li doesn’t know. His mom said we are supposed to meet her at the beach.”

“I should go look for her.”

“Li says no.”

Li says no. Her life was controlled by a fifteen-year-old, a twelve-year-old, the military, the PLA, everyone but her. She should go down and rip that soldier’s rifle from his chest and beat him with it.

The curtain tugged against its rod and she realized she was clutching it and almost yanked it down.

Silence. Shi waited a few beats, watching the soldier on the street fumble a cigarette from his arm sleeve pocket and light another. He shouldn’t be smoking so much, and shouldn’t be smoking on duty. Her husband would never tolerate such behavior.

The soldier lit his cigarette, took a drag, but then stamped it out quickly. Someone was coming.

She clicked the radio. “Where are you? Are you on your way yet?”

No answer.

“Jing?”

What happened to Jing? Below, the soldier waved away the blue smoke and then stood at attention.

“Jing?” The radio chirped expectantly.

No answer.

“Jing!” she whispered loudly, as if the soldier could hear her through the window.

“Mom, stop it.”

“Where did you go?”

“I left the radio on the bed while I used the bathroom.”

“What is going on?”

“We are leaving.”

A tall shadow crossed below her window. The soldier saluted it. “Someone is coming.”

She heard the downstairs door slam, and then footfalls in the hallway. She scanned her apartment. Damn open floor plan. She had nowhere to hide. Her phone was on the dining room table with incriminating messages from Yi. Locked. Her fingerprint would open it with or without her finger attached to her hand. The radio in her hand felt electric and heavy.

Her door rattled. Surely, the harsh hand of the Ministry of State Security.

She twisted the radio’s volume knob and tossed it under a pillow on her couch.

Before she could get to her phone, her doorknob clicked and the blazing black steel muzzle of a QSZ-92 pistol was peering through her door. Her husband carried one just like it. Behind the pistol, a burly man in a green uniform with the intimidating blazon of State Security.

She froze like the cornered animal she was, eyeing neither the man, nor the phone on her table.

Behind the MSS agent, a young soldier strode through her threshold, sweeping his assault rifle over first her, then her dining room, and then her belongings. His eyes reflected the same learned hatefulness as the soldier outside her window.

With a wordless gesture from the MSS agent’s pistol, the soldier marched to her bedroom. She heard drawers being emptied on the floor and porcelain breaking as the soldier shoved pictures and figurines off the dresser.

“Where is your daughter, Jing?”

As the agent asked, the soldier stepped out of her bedroom, rifle high, and kicked her daughter’s bedroom door.

She couldn’t work her mouth to answer the question. Drawers and then books and boxes crashed in Jing’s bedroom. It sounded as though the soldier had knocked over an entire bookcase.

“I asked you where your daughter is?”

Shi watched the hall, waiting for the soldier to come out, still unable to move her mouth. The radio under the couch needled her like a splinter in her brain.

“Answer me! Where is your daughter!” The agent barked like a drill sergeant.

The soldier stepped out of Jing’s bedroom and into the kitchen. The agent flicked his head, and the apartment exploded with gunfire. Fireballs thundered from the muzzle like dragon’s breath. Her apartment rattled to its wood-framed bones. A blue and gray, foul smelling hot cloud hung in the air.

Her ears rang, she couldn’t speak, and now she couldn’t hear.

Her kitchen, the center of the soldier’s performance art, was splattered with black, sooty holes. Black holes cracked the microwave’s glass. Holes in the cabinets, her stove, her fridge, and her wall. Her refrigerator door quivered on its hinges. Pink and white liquid drooled from the bottom.

The dining room table had two charred, round holes, and her phone had bounced to the floor.

Through the blue haze, the MSS agent’s mouth was moving. He was waving the pistol, gesturing for her to sit at her kitchen table. The soldier crossed behind the agent and exited, closing the door.

She sat in a chair as a cloud of gun smoke drifted over her. The MSS agent stepped toward her and then saw the phone. He bent over and picked it up. After inspecting it, he tossed it on the table in front of her.

Over the buzzing in her ears, he said, “Your husband is a traitor. He has something we need.”

“If he’s a traitor, you made him that way.” She couldn’t control her mouth. The rifle’s discharge shattered a connection between her brain and tongue.

“Don’t be foolish, woman. Where is your daughter?”

“I don’t know. We had a fight. She left. I am sure you know all about it.”

“She went to Heng’s.”

It was a statement. The agent knew where Jing went, so she said nothing, instead looking away. The refrigerator door had bounced open, revealing a punctured milk box and a pink seltzer bottle. Their contents were pooling on her kitchen floor.

She realized she was giggling, thinking she would have to clean it up. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she would not be coming back here.

“We will find her.” The MSS agent dragged a chair in front of her and sat in it.

Wisps of blue clung to her yellow living room curtains. The fabric seemed to attract the smoke. She hoped the gunfire scared Jing away. “You won’t. Jing is too smart for you.”

“For me, yes. But we will bring people in to hunt her.”

In the hall, there was a heavy thud on the floor, like a body toppling. The agent didn’t turn his head.

“What was that sound?”

He smiled, as if he’d expected the sound, and he had something she wanted. A wave of nausea gagged her, picturing Jing lying on the floor, dead, her eyes open.

“What do you want?”

Her door’s shadow moved. She returned her gaze to the pink ooze dripping from her fridge.

She heard a whoosh, and the agent slapped his shoulder. He said, “You can make this easier on yourself.”

“I won’t betray my husband.”

“We are not asking you to. We want you to redeem him.”

“I don’t know how I could do that.”

“Go to him. Like he asked you to. We will arrange it.” He eyed the phone on the table.

When she returned her gaze to him, she saw a shadow cross the sliver of hallway light at her door.

“And how can I redeem him?”

“He has something he stole from us. He killed his mistress for it. Did you meet Chao? They were sleeping together.”

Lies. This was how MSS agents worked. Sow doubt. Sow confusion. Fake videos. Isolate their prey and then repeat until it was impossible to tell truth from fiction. Her husband would never betray her. She wanted to spit at his feet, but her mouth felt dry, like she’d swallowed a mouthful of hot stone sand from the Aksai Chin desert.

“What is it he stole?” Shi asked.

Something was happening to the agent. He was slurring his words and swaying in the chair. The muzzle of his pistol crossed her once, twice, and she wondered whether he would squeeze and shoot her by accident.

Between the buzzing in her ears from the rifle discharge, and his muttering, she could not understand what he said.

He stood, supporting himself on the back of the chair as if he would vomit, one finger on the trigger of his pistol which was pointed at her oven. She felt sick herself, and if he vomited, she would too.

An eyeball peeked through the crack in her door. Her daughter’s brown eyeball.

Jing watched the agent through the door crack. Shi wanted to shake her head, scream run, but the agent was looking at her with glassy eyes.

The agent shook. The pistol tumbled onto the chair, bounced, muzzle flipping over and threatening Shi, and then crashed to the floor without discharging.

The agent looked suddenly drunk, smoothing his uniform with exaggerated, slow blinking.

He said, “Blackbird,” and then as he collapsed on the floor like a sack of potatoes, Jing and Li rushed in. They were wearing green army uniforms. Li had a soldier’s assault rifle slung behind him.

“Mom, are you ok?” Jing wrapped her arms around Shi and squeezed. Shi squeezed tighter, burying herself in her daughter’s warm body. When did Jing grow taller than her? Waves washed over her, first relief that Jing was home, then love, then her brain reminded her they needed to go.

“I heard the gunfire and thought they killed you,” Jing said.

Shi shook her head, pulling away. “What happened? What did you do, child?”

Li was hiding something behind his back. He brought up what looked like a pistol, except it wasn’t one she had ever seen. It was gray, and long and thin, almost like a toy. He said, “Horse tranquilizer dart.”

Li’s mother was a veterinarian. Shi eyed the agent’s body on the floor. “How long will he be out?”

Li shrugged. “If he were a six-hundred kilogram horse, a few hours.”

Shi bent down. She poked him. The agent was still breathing. She shoved him to roll him over, but the agent didn’t move. “Li, help me roll him.”

“Leave him, Mom—”

“No, he fell on the pistol.”

Li set the dart gun on the table and kneeled to move the agent. They rolled him onto his back, exposing the pistol on the floor. Together, they searched his pockets, finding his wallet, his phone, and two spare magazines. She pressed the agent’s index finger to the phone to unlock it.

While they emptied the agent, Jing dumped clothes from her backpack on a seat in the living room. “I got you an Army uniform. Wear this.”

Where did her daughter steal PLA Army uniforms?

Jing read her face. “We don’t have time to argue, Mom. Just wear it.”

Jing threw the uniform across the room. Shi caught it, shaking her head. “You are your father’s daughter.”

Her bathroom was directly behind her kitchen. She paused at the door. It was crooked and had been shot off its hinges. She wondered what was wrong with her, that she found it funny. The door wasn’t her problem anymore.

After she changed, she yelled at the bathroom ceiling, “Li, where is your mother?”

“She went to the office to do paperwork and never came home. My fathers orders were strict. We go straight to the rendezvous, no matter what.”

Shi eyed herself in the bathroom mirror in the army uniform, tieing her hair in a bun and hiding it under her cap. In the stolen uniforms, they were all second class soldiers, low ranks, and could stay invisible unless a rogue corporal decided sacks of sand needed to be stacked. She adjusted the holster for her pistol and moved the spare magazines around her belt until they rode comfortably. One and a half kilograms of steel and lead felt heavy around her waist.

“Jing, the radio you gave me is under the pillow on the couch,” she said to herself in the mirror, adjusting her cap.

“Got it.”

As she stepped out of the bathroom, she said, “Li, we need to find your mother.”

“But my father’s orders?”

Shi looked at the agent sprawled on her bamboo floor, milk and pink liquid from the fridge pooling around him. He’d stopped breathing. The horse tranquilizer had killed him. She inhaled, thinking she should feel bad about it, but also thinking he was going to torture them, maybe rape her daughter while she watched, and if he wasn’t dead, she’d splatter his brains on her kitchen floor.

She shook her head. “My husband outranks your father, Li, and he always says leave no one behind.”

Blackbird, Chapter 9