The police were called, but due to Minister Ouyang’s exalted position, what inquiry had been anticipated quickly dissolved, much to the disgust of the Kunlun Mountain Fist elders. Theirs was not a world normally constrained by the necessities of political corruption, and while they were not unaware of Ouyang’s place in the Middle Kingdom they never for a moment believed it would impact them.
Now that it had, they were in something of an uproar. Blood spilled in anger within the precincts of their martial arts monastery was unthinkable. There was even some thought of burning down the entire complex and moving elsewhere. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, but the knowledge that they were not immune from the evils of the real world forever changed their view of both their art and the candidates who came seeking to share their knowledge.
Shen, the head wushun master, was designated as the one to represent the complex in confronting the murderer before he left the training ground where the crime had been committed.
“Ouyang,” he said, addressing the Minister in deliberately demeaning fashion, “please do not take off your gi. The bloodstains are your responsibility. You must wear it out of the complex.”
“I understand, Master Shen.”
“I don’t believe you do. What you have done here today is unforgivable.”
“It was a tragic error. I was not in my right-mind.”
“Tragic it was, Ouyang, but we cannot countenance it as an error. The taking of a human life is never an error.”
“But isn’t that what we’re training for?”
Shen looked at Ouyang as if he had never seen him before. “Our training is a pathway to another plane of existence, a higher plane, where—”
“That’s just plain bullshit.” Ouyang was fed up with these people. “You preach a higher plane of existence while teaching your students how to make war. You have taught me how to make war, Master Shen. You have done an admirable job, and I’m grateful. But now it is time for me to leave this isolated hothouse, to apply what you have taught me to the real world.”
Felipe Matamoros used a carousel of private airstrips on the outskirts of Mexico City to fly in and out of the Distrito Federal. His plane was fueled and waiting for him on the northwest outskirts of the city, where buildings were still few and low.
He arrived with six of his hardened gunmen, nerves still stretched taut as a drawn bow. The mescal was finally starting to kick in, making the world look brighter and slightly surreal, like a candyland of sorts.
The brutish men stood guard, assault rifles at the ready, while he entered the plane and spoke to the pilot, giving him their destination and the route least likely to be observed by radar. In any case, the pilot always flew low enough to keep out of range of the normal elevations regularly monitored by the police.
He turned to the window when he heard several bursts of machine-gun fire, but could not see who his men were firing at. Pulling an assault rifle off the rack on the cockpit wall, he stepped into the cabin. In a half crouch, he was heading toward the door when the entire tail section of the plane exploded into a fireball inferno.
Matamoros, hurled onto his back, was fortunate to be lying in the aisle as pieces of the fuselage and tail flew by over his head. As soon as he was able, he scrambled to his feet. Incredibly, the forward door and gangway were still intact. Hurling himself out of the plane, he scrambled down the gangway.
Four of his six men were dead, caught in the conflagration. The other two, seeing him, clustered around him, facing outward. He saw Jason Bourne emerging from behind a stucco building and cursed under his breath. Bourne was holding something at waist level.
Matamoros started to fire and his men followed suit. Then something inexplicable happened. A jet of superheated flame shot out toward him. His men screamed as their clothes caught fire. The stench of burning flesh was enough to make anyone gag, but Matamoros ignored it.
Stepping between his two writhing, shrieking men, he kept his assault rifle aimed at the hated figure behind the horizontal column of flame, squeezing the trigger, the bullets spewing out at a horrific rate. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you!” But the thick tongue of fire kept advancing, and he left it a moment too late.
The flames reached him, covered him, and began to devour him with an unnatural greed. He tried to scream, but the fire rushed down his throat. Everything turned bright purple. Then something popped inside his head, and all was fire, smoke, and the char of scorched bone.