Bubs pulled the grenade launcher out of the duffel bag, reluctantly pushing away all of the intricate plans he'd devised to murder his asinine teammate. He hefted it up with both hands, grunting from the weight. He'd forgotten how awkward it would be, having only used one once, during Army training back in China, and he struggled to hold it and keep his balance in the speeding van without gripping the rail. He preferred smaller, more intimate weapons usually. But if he needed to kill someone today, this thing would work just as well as a knife. He moved to the back and leaned against the left rear door, crouching so he could brace the launcher on his knee. The van had no back windows, so he'd have to open the door to see what he was dealing with, which would expose him to gunfire. The whole idea was dangerous, but he had to grudgingly admit that Crash was right. If they couldn't lose their pursuers, they'd be captured or killed, and - worst of all - end up as failures. He wasn't going to let that happen, no matter how much he wanted to finish this mission by launching one of these grenades at the driver's seat.

  "Drive straight!" he yelled angrily. "I'm not falling out because of you."

  "You got it!" Crash sounded excited, which annoyed Bubs even further. How that idiot could be so exuberant right now was beyond Bubs’ comprehension, but he chalked it up to morons being morons. The team had been betrayed, but all this simpleton cared about was getting his thrills. "I'll even slow down so more catch up and get caught in the blast," Crash said and Bubs frowned. A better man wouldn’t even be in this position in the first place, he thought, and that irked him even more than Crash’s drug-hazed wit.

  The van slowed noticeably, and Bubs felt confident enough to pull the latch on the right door. It flew open, and he leaned over to see a black SUV close on their tail, a black sedan following the SUV, and a small army of police cars trailing behind, veering left and right around stopped cars. Bubs sneered through his mask at the SUV's driver, a man wearing a dark suit and black sunglasses, and hoisted the launcher up, aiming at the front window. He could see the agents in the front seat reacting in surprise, and the driver slammed on the brakes but it was too late. Bubs fired a round and ducked back behind the door. A second later he heard the explosion and felt a small tremor shake the back of the van.

  "Fuck yeah!" Crash yelled from up front. Bubs ignored him and glanced back outside where he saw the SUV, partially obscured by a cloud of smoke, a high-pitched grinding noise emanating from under the hood. The windshield was cracked, and the front of the vehicle was badly mangled, but apparently still drivable, because it veered left and right as the driver tried to regain control and get out of the way.

  The police cars in the back started falling behind now, not willing to risk getting blown to pieces, but the black sedan zipped around the flagging SUV and stayed close. One of the agents in the back seat leaned out of his window and aimed his M16 at them. Bubs ducked out of the way and flinched at the sound of bullets bouncing off the armor plating. Several found their way through the open door, however, and stuck in the interior of the left wall.

  "Shit!" Crash yelled, hunching over in his chair as loud popping echoed throughout the van. "Man, say something when that's gonna happen!"

  Bubs waited for his moment, then leaned back out and fired another round. He ducked back again, waited for the explosion, and then peeked out to see the sedan swerving out of the way of a smoking hole in the road. He'd missed, but the Scimitar agents were finally getting dodgy about sticking so close, and they backed away too, giving the van plenty of space. Bubs used the reprieve to stick his head out and check the sky, and that's when he saw the black helicopter directly above them.

  "The cars are backing off, and now the helicopter is here."

  For the first time since Crash tore out of the hotel loading bay, barreling a path through a parking lot of police and Scimitar vehicles, Bubs felt a sense of normalcy return. They'd planned for a potential police response to their actions, but not an army of Scimitar agents catching them on their way out of the hotel, so much of what happened after that moment had been improvised. Bubs didn't handle improvisation well, but now things were getting back on track and their plan was once again viable. As long as the vehicles chasing gave them some space, they could get away from this. Even the helicopter wasn't a problem. In fact, it was a boon. With the helicopter above, Scimitar and the police would be content to stay back and track them from the sky, expecting them to make a run for it. But the helicopter was useless when its target was obscured by downtown buildings. "We should have a clear path to the parking garage now."

  “Roger that, mi compadre." Crash floored it, and Bubs fell back against the door, groaning. He set the grenade launcher down and reached over to the open door, closing it as fast as he could. Just as he did, he fell against the side wall as Crash took a hard turn, then another, and another. Bubs wanted to shout at him for that, but he knew what Crash was doing. He was trying to limit visibility between the van and the pursuing cars, giving them more room - and more time, once they reached the parking garage, where the next step of their plan would take place. And once they escaped with their prisoner, he would be free to take his revenge on the so-called teammate who had sold them out in the first place.

  The only question was how painful that revenge would be.

  10 days ago…

  Yuling “Bubs” Gao scowled at the desolate Arizona countryside as it rolled by outside the window of his car. He sat stiffly in the back seat of the black Town Car he’d rented to get from Phoenix to Tucson, wearing a tailored dark blue suit and small sunglasses. He had short, straight black hair and as always, he was immaculately groomed. He rarely smiled. It just wasn't in his personality. But he'd had a perpetual frown on his face for days now, ever since getting kicked out of his homeland and being forced to come back here. He hated this country. He hated the terrain; he hated the people; he even hated their movies. Not for ideological reasons, although that played a small part. No, he hated plenty of things in this world. Most people were wired to be helpful, or trusting or even friendly. But not Bubs. He was wired to despise anything that wasn't actively helping him achieve his goals or making him look good in the eyes of his peers.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Driving, for example.

  He hated driving because he wasn’t very good at it, and he didn’t do anything that could cause him to embarrass himself. Having grown up in rural China, he’d never had the opportunity to learn how to drive, and when he got older and moved up in the local Party structure, he’d always had people to do it for him. Everyone drove in the US, though, so he had to rely on rented drivers or cabs anytime he needed to get anywhere. That part wasn’t so bad. Having someone else drive made him feel important again, like his days back in the Fujian province. The main difference, though, was that in China he could order the drivers not to speak.

  “So what kind of business are you in?” his driver asked. Bubs gave him an annoyed look. He didn’t want to spend the next two hours chatting with some half-educated American who could barely afford his nightly six-pack of beer.

  “Imports.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you import? Stuff from China? Or Japan?”

  “China,” Bubs replied, curtly. He hated being mistaken as Japanese.

  “Like what?”

  Bubs gritted his teeth. He wanted to jab a pen into this man’s neck and watch the blood spray all over the dashboard, but that would be impractical. In fact, any kind of hostile response would cause problems. His job was to avoid being noticed. That meant playing nice with people he despised, and most of the time that included more than just the person driving this car. For the hundredth time, he wished he could meet someone and just pretend not to know English very well. But he was too proud of himself to do that. He could speak Mandarin, English, Russian, German and French, almost all impeccably, and he liked people to know that. Except during occasions like this.

  “I import rice.” That should be boring enough to stop this conversation dead in its tracks.

  “Rice, huh?” He chuckled. “Who knew they imported something like rice?” The driver was an older black man with a short scruffy beard that he scratched absentmindedly as he talked. He kept looking at Bubs through the rear-view mirror and smiling, which made Bubs uncomfortable. He didn’t like menial workers looking at him as an equal. “I thought they just grew it here.”

  “Mine grows in China,” Bubs replied slowly.

  “Is there something special about it? It's gotta be good stuff if you're going to all that trouble to import it.”

  Bubs arched an eyebrow. “Obviously.”

  “What’s the brand name?”

  Bubs resisted grabbing the pen in his jacket. Instead, he secretly reached into his pants pocket, trying to find his cell phone. “It’s called Siwei. It’s only available in specialty shops.”

  "Specialty rice…” The driver shook his head like he didn’t believe it. “People spend money on that stuff?"

  "Yes."

  The driver nodded. “So that’s why you’re going down to Tucson then? Selling rice?”

  “Yes.” He thumbed the volume control on the side of his phone and made it ring. Just the distraction he needed. “Excuse me,” he said, as he pulled it out. He pretended to push a button and started speaking in Mandarin. He didn't say anything in particular; only enough to make it look like someone was on the other end doing most of the talking. Every so often, however, he mixed in a few random threats for his driver – in Mandarin of course – just to make himself feel better. Things like “When we reach our destination, I will tie you down to the table and run a band saw through your genitals,” or “I will rip off your fingernails and make you bleed from every orifice of your body… and then I’ll do it again tomorrow.” All said with a personable, though fake, smile.

  He leaned back in his chair and settled in for the long drive, even more annoyed now than when he first got in the car. He was on his way to meet with his insufferable ‘team’ now that his insufferable team leader was out of prison. He hated being subservient to these people and pretending that he valued their opinions. He wasn’t a team player, he was a leader, and he was tired of pretending otherwise to keep suspicions about his ambition to a minimum. He’d been an important man once, with money, power, and respect. He’d had people jailed, tortured and killed on nothing more than whims, and a small army of people at his beck and call. But those days were gone. He was persona-non-grata in China, but at least over there they knew his name. Here in the U.S., he'd been relegated to working his way anonymously through this so-called Organization to regain respect, and even worse, he had to start over all the way at the bottom. He’d been doing this for well over three years now, and he still didn’t even have his own team. But he knew what to do about that. The only way up was either around or through Big Man; it was just a matter of figuring out which was easier.

  He’d spent the last nine months trying to go around, but that had been futile. With Big Man in jail, the rest of the team had been cut off from any communication with the Organization, or with the team’s handler, a British man known only as Gentry. Typically, all meetings with him were handled by Big Man, alone, but Bubs had been sure he could get a meeting with him while Big Man was locked up. The Organization still needed to get things done, didn't they? But every time he’d tried to get access to Gentry, he’d ended up stonewalled, and after a while, he just had to assume that no one spoke with him. That left him stuck in a holding pattern until Big Man got out of jail. So much for going around.

  His other option was to go through, and that meant finding a way to make Big Man look incapable of leading, which he’d almost succeeded at once before. He could do it again, too, but he’d need to be more careful this time, not to mention more successful. The easy way would be to fail their missions, but the Organization leaders could just as easily blame that on him, or other members of the team, like Crash. No, the only way to do this was to make Big Man look like the problem. Place the blame squarely on his shoulders, so they have no choice but to remove him. Then, simple seniority would put either himself, Crash or Sweets at the top. Crash was a lunatic, and Sweets was a fat little troll who still had the stink of his failed former team all over him. That left Bubs in a prime position to take over, which would be just another step in his long road back to respectability. All he had to do was wait for the right opportunity to present itself, all the while kissing the ass of Big Man and his cohorts to keep them from guessing his true motives.

  He saw his driver glancing back at him through the rearview mirror, obviously waiting for him to finish his call so he could start up some more inane conversation. There would be no more of that. Bubs wasn't happy, but he was content to stay on the phone for another hour or two. Just like he was content to be patient for a little while longer, before taking what was rightfully his.

  Respect.