Free Avenger by Chris Allen

He didn’t want to make the call but felt he had no choice.
    “Kowloon West District,” the call was answered in Cantonese.
    “Put me through to Assistant Commissioner Kwong,” he replied. “This is Inspector Lam from the OCTD.” He took a deep breath as he waited to be connected.
    “Lam?”
    “Sir, I’m sorry to trouble you,” he began. He didn’t know how much he could say on an open line.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m in Mong Kok. I’ve just had a meeting with an informant at the markets. I’m concerned that my operation has been compromised—”
    The squeal of tires diverted him from his conversation back to the street. His head turned in the direction of the car but his reaction was too slow and as the car’s wheels locked into a sudden skid, Lam saw rather than felt it hit him. The impact had been perfectly calculated to stun and injure rather than to kill, and Lam was thrown to the ground. His left side took the brunt of the impact with the pavement, followed by his head. Dazed and bleeding, he rolled painfully onto his back, his legs still beneath the car. His cell phone clattered against the iron shutter of a store front.
    Two men in identical black suits worn with white shirts and black ties, appeared above him. A gun was drawn and pointed at his head.

CHAPTER 13
    Following a different route from the one she had used on her way to meet Lam, Elizabeth Reigns worked her way through the crowded streets and alleyways of Mong Kok. Careful to discourage unwanted company, she followed the usual counter-surveillance drills back to the factory, all the while outwardly maintaining the persona of Mei-Zhen Tan. Adhering to the tradecraft fundamentals that Intrepid’s Tom Rodgers and his assistant Sophie Tavernier had taken her through back in England was instinctive to Reigns now. After six weeks in-country and over a month of that working within the illegal factory as Mei-Zhen, tradecraft had become her default, her lifeline. Such was her mindset that recollections of her training sessions with Rodgers and Tavernier down in The Pit, Intrepid’s secret close-quarters combat training center, deep beneath the streets of Westminster, now seemed no more than an obscure dream to her. She was no longer a candidate under assessment; she had risen to the status of agent-nominee, and success on this, her first operation, would see conferred on her that greatest of honors: becoming an agent of Intrepid. Of course, no one outside the agency could ever know that.
    Elizabeth Reigns could scarcely believe how much her life had changed since that chance meeting with General Davenport during her presentation to the Protection Project expert panel a little over a year ago. Now here she was, on the other side of the world, where lessons learned in training were essential to her survival. She was neck deep in the cold reality of an agent’s life.
    Ten minutes after leaving Lam at the market, Reigns turned down the narrow lane, tightly packed with crates and trash, that led to the rear entrance to the factory. The familiar stench of rotting vegetables and fish hit her, catching at the back of her throat. She fought the impulse to gag, took a final look into the street and, satisfied, stepped up to the door. From the outside it looked like so many others in the vicinity, wooden and painted no particular color, only this door was reinforced with steel and had a viewing portal. She tapped twice, knowing her identity was being verified by CCTV at three different angles. After a few seconds of waiting for her image to be confirmed and checks to ensure that she was alone, the slide was pulled back with a metallic clang and a pair of shaded brown eyes – belonging to an armed guard – conducted the primitive but nonetheless effective final step in the access-control process. Then the portal closed and the door creaked open just enough for her to enter.
    Inside, the entrance hall was no more than four feet square. It was whitewashed, grubby,