Free The Ascendant: A Thriller by Drew Chapman Page A

ass.”
    •  •  •
    After Garrett climbed over a wrought iron fence and then tiptoed across a carefully tended backyard garden, he jogged east on O Street, then turned south and walked until he found a cab. He didn’t know D.C., but told the driver—a Sikh with a beige turban—to take him to the nearest Greyhound station. The Sikh, Indian dance music blasting from his radio, got him there in ten minutes. At the station, Garrett bought a ticket for the next bus leaving D.C., which happened to be a 10:35 p.m. express to Greensboro, North Carolina. He made the bus two minutes before it left, found a pair of seats in the back all to himself, pulled the battery and memory card out of his cell phone, and then curled up to sleep until they reached the tobacco state. The last thought he had before he drifted off was a lingering image in his brain of Secretary of Defense Frye’s face as he told those military half-wits to go fuck themselves. God, he loved sticking it to people.
    Especially people who deserved it.

14
LUOXIATOU, CHINA, MARCH 26, 8:07 AM
    H u Mei stepped out of the deserted alley, past the slatted wooden gate and into the small, circular garden that lay tucked behind a cinder-block shack. She closed the gate to the alley and locked it from the inside with a sliding length of wood, finally pausing to catch her breath and let the late winter sun warm her face for a moment or two. She had been on the move for the past fourteen hours, walking through the night with just a pocketful of stale mantou buns and a plastic bottle of water to keep her going. It had been bitterly cold out—the temperature near freezing—but now the sun was up and its faint rays warmed her hands and face.
    Hu Mei rolled her stiff shoulders to get the blood flowing in her body. Around her, lining the hillside, were row upon row of concrete and cinder-block homes, each of them one room, the better ones with wood smoke curling up from their rudimentary chimneys, the less good with layers of plastic sheeting tacked inside their windows. It was a tough life here, in Luoxiatou, in central China. So many people had already left for better jobs in the coastal cities: the young people had cleared out; the able-bodied who were middle-aged worked in the mines; the old folks simply scratched out a living doing whatever they could.
    Hu Mei checked the scrap of paper the old man had given her in the last town. On it were directions, and a name, Bao. Bao was an old woman—so Mei had been told—but she was a sympathizer, and had promised to give Hu Mei ameal and a bed for a few hours. That’s all Mei needed. A few hours’ rest, some food, and the chance to meet another person who believed in her cause.
    Was this the place? Mei asked herself silently as she looked around the yard. If she made a mistake, she would be caught. And if she were caught, she would be jailed, beaten, and executed. Probably all within a few days.
    So a mistake was out of the question.
    But where was the old woman whose house this was? Why hadn’t she come out to meet her? Hu Mei’s heart raced. She forced herself to remain calm, but a prudent amount of anxiety would keep her alert. And alert meant free. Alert meant alive.
    Hu Mei could feel the authorities, like the Chinese winter, forcing themselves down upon her since the rebellion in Huaxi Township four months ago. Rebellion. That was what she was calling it. The government called it a criminal provocation. But that is what they called anything they did not like. And they did not like what had happened: the humiliation of two hundred of their officers; disarmed, forced to flee, eighty of them beaten, twenty-five badly enough to be sent to the district hospital. Word had spread through the valley like a brush fire, leaping from village to village. Word of mouth was still Hu Mei’s best ally. There had been postings on the Internet, but those were scrubbed by government censors almost as fast as they appeared. But the