Brute Force by Marc Cameron

“Ehmet Feng is a vile human being. I felt certain your government would dispatch someone like you to hunt down a man like him.”
    “Well, I am glad they sent you, little brother,” Virk roared. He tried a smile but the swelling on his face was getting worse by the moment and he only managed a muffled wince through split lips.
    “The Fengs have family in Kashgar,” Quinn said, failing to mention that he was there without the backing of his government.
    “Of course.” Virk nodded, receiving a scolding cluck from Deuben as she pulled a suture tight. He closed his eyes and grimaced but kept going with his thought. “It stands to reason that they would come to roost among their Uyghur brethren.”
    “The Fengs are bad men,” Deuben said, her voice humming with tension. “And your country had the little shits safely ensconced in an American prison. Who had the bright idea to hand them over to Pakistan?”
    “Our very own President,” Thibodaux said, teetering a little from watching the operation. He’d been fine smashing the faces that needed smashing during the fight, and hadn’t flinched when Quinn had cut off Grigor’s ear—but seeing anyone other than the enemy in pain had a tendency to give the big Cajun a serious case of the wobbles.
    Quinn brought Virk and the doctor up to speed on the moles hiding within the highest levels of the US administration—including the President and VP. “It’s all connected to that orphanage you told us about in the Wakhan Corridor when Ronnie Garcia and I were here,” he said.
    “Scheisse,” Deuben cursed, as much about Virk’s battered face as the situation. Starting on a second wound, she pressed the Sikh’s beard to one side with her forearm as she closed a second gash, this one over the bridge of his nose. “Raising children up to hate America . . . That is actually pretty brilliant when you think of it. Though I suppose ISIS and others are doing the same thing now—just more overtly.”
    “You talk to a lot of working girls as part of your practice,” Quinn said. “Can you think of any who might be connected to the Fengs—or anyone who might be a fugitive?”
    “A fugitive around here?” Deuben chuckled. “We have no shortage of people wanted by the law in Western China. There have been killings in Kunming, bombings in Urumqi. . . . A local imam was recently hacked to death on the steps of Id Kah Mosque—for the offense of being too moderate. Things are worse than I’ve ever seen them—and that only gives the Chinese government all the more reason to march in lockstep over the old city and crush what is left of the culture.” She sighed. “It makes me . . . how do you say? Lebensmüde . . . fatigued. Soon there will be no more Western China—only China—one great block of concrete, each corner patrolled and kept in check by a gang of uniformed soldiers.”
    Virk looked at Quinn and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
    “ ‘Four things greater than all things are,’ ” the Sikh said, again using Kipling to make his point. “ ‘. . . Women and Horses and Power and War.’ ” He closed his eye as Deuben pierced the apple of his cheek, just above his beard, with her curved needle. “Our Gabrielle is no shrinking violet when it comes to espousing her passions.”
    “Violets know nothing but the heels of wicked men,” Deuben scoffed.
    Quinn had seen firsthand on his last visit how deeply entrenched the doctor was with the Uyghur cause. She generally sided with them over the ethnic Han Chinese, whom she saw as interlopers. She wanted no part in any violent cause or revolution, but if Western China had been a democracy, she’d surely have put out yard signs touting the benefits of a free and separate Uyghur state.
    “If anyone knows the whereabouts of the Feng brothers it would be Hajip,” Virk said.
    Thibodaux brightened at the sound of a name that would move them forward. “You think this Hajip guy will talk to us?”
    “He’ll try and kill