What do I do now? Peter hopped on his bike and drove off...fast, trying to leave the memory of Sergei, the vodka and those damn spiders far behind him. I came here for the ruby but all I'm going home with is a trail of dead bodies. Peter was more than a little disappointed in himself. At least none of the dead were the result of anything he'd done.

Should I go after the ruby? Certainly, that's what my boss would want, or at the very least try. On the other hand, the young Russian did save my life, he thought as he continued to contemplate his options.

Peter chose a different option. I'm going back home.

As Peter drove along the wide dirt road that headed back to the Mongolian border he couldn't stop feeling guilty that this would be the very first time he'd ever failed on a mission for his boss.

This wasn't all his fault, he realized. He wasn't given enough information. In reality, this should have been a two-person job; one person to do his job, the dirty work, and the other for backup, reconnaissance or simply to discuss various scenarios with. Indeed, missions never went as planned, and there are always unknown variables, but this was just way too much, he concluded.

Peter's stomach growled from hunger. He hadn't eaten a thing since he entered China early this morning. I suppose it's too much to ask for a good Chinese restaurant, he thought. He parked the bike on the side of the road, opened his nap sack and pulled out a protein bar. This will have to do. Unfortunately, Peter had no water.

As he rode off Peter spotted some men up the road standing by a broken-down truck. They were attempting to wave Peter down. Instead of stopping, Peter decided to speed up and pass them. He wasn't spending one more minute here than he had to.

* * * * *

Svetlana quickly pulled out her now free hands from behind her back and threw off the blindfold. With incredible speed and precision, she then struck the guard in the neck with her index finger, the razor tip slicing open his carotid artery. He looked into her eyes, terrified, as blood spewed in every direction. Within seconds he was dead.

Svetlana caught him before he fell to the ground, held him up in front of her and used his body as a shield from the barrage of bullets being shot at her by the two guards at the end of the truck. Svetlana calmly took the gun out of the dead man's holster and then fired off two shots. Both men slumped to the floor. Two more down, she thought while taking a momentary respite to wipe the blood off her face.

Svetlana recalled her years of training. Her mentor, whom she hadn't seen in years, had taught her that gender, size and strength were meaningless when opposed by someone with skill, precision  & speed. Make each movement as quick and as precise as possible. Allow your subconscious to control your body while not allowing fear to slow you down. She was grateful to her mentor's teaching and vowed to tell her as much when she returned home.

The noise from the gunshots caught the attention of the other guards waiting around outside. Svetlana wasn't going to wait until they approached her so she ran around the side of the truck to the front cabin and prayed that they'd left the keys in the ignition. They hadn't. What they did leave was a pistol strapped to the sun visor. She grabbed it and focused her concentration, ready to fire in any direction.

The first guard approached the passenger window. Only his arm was visible. "Get out of the truck and we won't kill you," the man said. Svetlana fired at the pillar between the front window and the back of the cabin. It was an old truck, with lots of rust, so it went right through the metal and killed the guard.

This time men approached her from both sides, pointing their guns directly at her. Dumb move, she thought. If they hadn't shot her already it meant they had a very slow, nervous trigger finger. Never think when you're in a gunfight, she recalled from her training. First, she shot the man closest to her on the driver's side. Pieces of his nose flew everywhere. And then without hesitation, she turned and shot the man on the passenger side, right between the eyes. Amateurs, she concluded.

How many guys were here? She was in the back, blindfolded the entire time. Except for Jing and the noises of the ground beneath the wheels, there seemed to be no one else with her. It took three men to get her into the truck. Those were the first three she'd killed. And now she'd shot three more. Svetlana waited, she looked in the side view mirrors. Nobody. She finally opened the door and stepped out, carefully. Two men stepped out from behind the truck and demanded she drop her gun. Svetlana fired.

Click...she fired again, another click. The gun had no more bullets. Then she heard two gunshots. Svetlana flinched. It wasn't the men in front of her. They were lying on the ground dead.

It was Jing!

"Even Xi-wang needs help sometimes," she said proudly.

Svetlana picked up two guns from the dead guards, ran to Jing and grabbed her hand. "Come on, let's go before more people show up."

Before leaving Svetlana looked around. She wanted to remember every building here. There were two small homes along the side of the dirt road and another building that looked a lot like a chicken coup. She took notice of two cars, both older Mercedes Benz 4-matic station wagons.

Where was everybody else? she wondered. There had to be more people. If this was a human smuggling operation where were the girls? Where were the rest of the people? They would have run out at the sound of all those gunshots, she assumed. So if no one else was here, who did the cars belong to? So many questions but no answers. Svetlana decided she'll be back after she's had time to regroup.

Even though she'd lost track of Peter, fate had brought her here for a purpose. But first, she needed to get Jing to safety.

Svetlana and Jing walked as far as the main road when it occurred to her that she had no method of transportation. On the other hand, there were two Mercedes, possibly in working order and the old truck. She grabbed Jing and headed back towards the houses, nearly certain that nobody was there. "We're stealing a car. I hope it doesn't go against any of your morals," Svetlana joked.

"We're too poor to have morals," Jing joked back.

Svetlana grabbed the butt of her gun and smashed the driver's side window. A blaring alarm went off. "Really? They put an alarm on this piece of garbage?"

Seconds later men came pouring out the front door of both houses.

"Come on. Get in!" Svetlana yelled to Jing. "Keep your head down. This isn't going to be easy."

Svetlana worked as quickly as she could to hot wire the car. It wasn't nearly as easy as they made it look in the movies.

First, you had to remove the plastic around the starter. Then you needed a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the bottom panel. After that, you had to cut the two wires that turn on all the electrical parts of the car, strip them and tie them together. Once that was done you stripped the two starter wires. Only then could you perform the magic they did in the movies, all the while hoping you didn't electrocute yourself unless, of course, you brought along a pair of rubber gloves.

At least this wasn't a modern car otherwise getting it to start would be nearly impossible without a fob. Unfortunately, Svetlana didn't have a Phillips head screwdriver, wire cutters or rubber gloves, and she didn't have any time.

The men ran towards the car. One of them stood in front of her banging his fists on the hood while the others yelled in Mandarin for them to unlock the car doors. All the while the alarm was still blaring.

Svetlana opened the glove compartment. The part that attached the sides of the glove compartment to the car was curved metal. She breathed a sigh of relief. If this was a newer car these parts would have been plastic. She banged the metal inward with the back of a gun, one side at a time until the glove box popped off. This took about ten seconds. Then Svetlana rammed one of the curved metal pieces into the ignition, the rest of the glove box still attached. Damn, she thought, the curve is preventing the metal from getting in deep enough. What she would have given for a flathead screwdriver right about now.

"Let's hope this works," she yelled to Jing.

"You're the only Xi-wang I need!" she replied.

Svetlana smiled as she took the back end of the gun and rammed it as hard as she could into the glove box. The curved metal went a little deeper into the starter. She awkwardly turned it.

The sound of the engine was a beautiful thing! It also turned off the alarm. The men outside stopped banging on the car. Instead, they took out their guns and started unloading clip after clip. Every side window was now nothing but tiny shards of glass, mostly inside the car. The back window was blown off. Svetlana spun the car around and raced off. Luckily enough none of the bullets had penetrated the body of the car. Unlike the truck, this Mercedes wasn't a rust bucket.

"Thank God this thing is well built," she told Jing.

Svetlana drove away as fast as she could. Moments later she noticed the other Mercedes following her and catching up. "Damn it!"

She reached an intersection but didn't slow down as she turned left onto another dirt road. A regular car would have spun out right now but not one. Four-wheel drive is a beautiful thing, she thought to herself. But unfortunately, the car chasing them was exactly the same, with one serious exception. It hadn't been shot up.

Before Svetlana knew it the other Mercedes was right next to her.

* * * * *

This bike may be old but it was crazy fast, and we'll maintained. The 250 CC engine was capable of speeds up to 175 kilometres per hour. Peter was going about 150 and loving it. He'd go even faster but he wasn't wearing a helmet and his face was getting splattered with bugs. They may be small but at that speed they can hurt like hell.

Peter kept heading north along the narrow dirt road. He slowed down to 140 kilometres per hour as he approached two older Mercedes driving side by side.

That's strange, he thought. One of them has no back window.