A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  He made his way along a narrow corridor. Surely someone must have heard the gunshots? Silence prevailed. There was no questioning shout. No sounding of an alarm. Nothing.

  A figure appeared out of nowhere. He came round the corner and walked straight into Harry who dropped him to the floor. One short punch to the face, then another for good measure. Silence. Well, a slight expelling of air from burst lips and crunched nose. Then silence.

  All the old skills. The ice thawed, exposing them to daylight like smooth boulders revealed by glacial retreat. Surging through and around them, the old martial spirit that had once invigorated them. Sure, several times over the past week he had been called upon to look after himself, but this felt like something new. Rather, something old. Prehistoric almost.

  All the old skills.

  Thirty Nine

  Harry knew this couldn’t go on. Bluffing his way past one man, then dodging bullets and knocking the next two men senseless. His run of luck couldn’t possibly last.

  It didn’t.

  There was a shout. Again. Followed by a bullet that missed. Again. The difference this time was that Harry had a gun of his own in his fist. Instinct kicked in. The safety was off and there was a round in the chamber. Before he could stop good old Mr Muscle Memory, he spun to face the new threat, dropping to one knee and bringing his weapon into a two-handed aim. Fifteen yards away the silhouette of the firer filled the fat iron sight on the end of Harry’s pistol. It was too easy. Bloody easy. Just like a pop-up target on the range.

  Pop, pop. A textbook double tap. Three rounds left in the mag. This time Harry knew the drill. It had triggered itself.

  Shit, bugger, fuck! I’ve killed a man.

  Adrenalin held the full smack of realisation at bay as further drills activated Harry’s limbs while his rational mind raced to catch up. Another, older part of his mind fought down the thinking part, backing it into a corner. It had a job to do first.

  Harry jogged to the body and checked the vital signs. As he had known. Dead. His aim had been too good, his instinct for survival faultless. And this was the result. A dead man killed by Harry in the house of one of the most powerful men in China.

  He took the man’s gun, a Type 77 like his own, and dropped out the mag, slipping it in his pocket. This was now going to be a long fight. Well … he hoped it would be. Of course there was also a chance it would be over in the next few seconds if there were other guards in the house and if Harry’s skills ran dry.

  The thinking part of his mind then caught up. Well fucking done.

  Shut it. Harry didn’t have time for soul-searching. First he had to ensure his soul remained partnered with his body. Later on he might have the luxury of checking it over for vital signs of its own.

  There were shouts in other parts of the house. Still no major alarm. Harry reckoned he had been right. Most of the guards and staff had left with Ryder Chau. So where was Lisa?

  One way to find out. “Lisa!”

  Harry listened. No reply. Well it had been worth a try.

  He started to move through the villa corridor by corridor, room by room, clearing the ground floor first. His head was a raging torrent. Muscle Memory had his limbs in its grasp, but his brain was still out of shape. Thoughts niggled continuously.

  Niggled? No. Raged. He cursed himself for coming back, for breaking in, for … what? Shooting a man who had tried to kill him? There was the old dilemma back again. The morality of killing. Kill or be killed. All very well, but what if you deliberately put yourself out there to be killed? What then? Somewhat detracts from the innocence of the ‘self-defence’ defence.

  Anyway it was done now. And Harry had a pretty shrewd idea that this was only the beginning. Lisa had summoned him back. Sure, he could have gone with the expulsion, allowing it to take its course. But in the past week Lisa had come to mean something to him. With his exit door wide open at the airport, he had found it barred with … what?

  He had arrived at the vestibule from a new angle. On the other side was the double front door he had used for entry a lifetime ago. He headed for the staircase and was halfway across when two men appeared, one from the double doors themselves, the other at the top of the stairs. Both with guns.

  Bloody hell. Two rounds into Door Man. Spin, steady, fire. The last round in the mag dead centre into Stair Man who slithered to the ground and tumbled gracelessly down the steps. The movement of the limbs and trunk was like a giant sack loosely filled with spuds. This was turning into a Close Quarter Battle killing house.

  Harry reloaded. He angrily sent the empty mag scudding across the polished wooden floor. Bit his lip and cursed. Why did everyone have to carry a fucking gun?

  He hadn’t conducted a proper search of the ground floor but what the hell? Things were spiralling out of control. He smiled to himself. So what was new?

  He jogged up the stairs, checking Stair Man briefly on the way past. Dead. It was a great advert for Kevlar. But then they had thought themselves secure in their own stronghold so why would they have been wearing vests, even if they’d had them?

  Another corridor. More doors. Oh well. Harry marched ahead, flinging open door after door. Careless? You bet. He didn’t have time or the back-up for a textbook operation.

  Rooms blossomed before him. Bedrooms, studies, a library. He half expected a billiard room where Colonel Mustard had killed Dr Black with the lead fucking pipe.

  The next door he tried was locked. He stood back and went at it with the full force of a kick, the sole of his boot aimed immediately to the side of the lock. The wood split and the door juddered open. Across the floor stood Clive Miller. A look of horror was plastered across his face. Harry was about to step into the room but remembered The Golden Lotus.

  Muscle Memory launched him into a forward roll clear through the doorway. Two yards in, he recovered into a kneeling firing position, his gun directed back to the inside flanks of the doorway. No one. Best to be sure though. His pockets had emptied themselves in the course of his dive which under other circumstances would have been embarrassing. He stuffed the handful of loose items back in and stood to face Miller who stared round-eyed.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Miller gasped.

  “Where’s Lisa?”

  Miller frowned. Harry might have been speaking Russian.

  “The girl?”

  “She’s fine,” he fluffed. Harry looked at him closely. There was a scratch across his right cheek and one eyebrow was slightly swollen. In two strides he had Miller in his hands. He pulled his face close.

  “Where’s the girl? What have you done to her?”

  Miller struggled, trying to break free. Harry shook him. Then, on second thoughts, he held him at arm’s length with one hand and slapped him hard across the face with the other. God that felt good. He did it again.

  Miller started to sob. His body went limp and released from Harry’s grasp he sank to his knees. “Stop hitting me. That hurt.” Tears and snot ran down his face, two great red welts blossoming. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “She’s downstairs,” he snivelled.

  “Show me.” Harry hoisted him to his feet and shoved him towards the door. “How many men has Chau left here?”

  “I don’t know. Half a dozen? How the hell am I supposed to know? I don’t count them.” They reached the stairs and started down them. Miller gagged when he saw the body collapsed in a tangle near the bottom. “What the hell have you done?” he squealed. Oddly he seemed to strengthen. “Oh my god, you’ve done it now, Harry. You’ll bloody fry for this.”

  Harry felt an unpleasant chill run up his spine. Miller’s smug taunt chimed with his own fears that he had been trying to bury.

  Miller saw the other body on the far side of the vestibule. Uncannily he used the term that had popped into Harry’s mind already. “You’ve crossed a line now, old boy.” He almost sniggered. “Chau will have you shot for this.”

  “His men already tried that,” Harry replied, trying to pro
ject a nonchalance that he certainly wasn’t feeling.

  “And it will be perfectly legal. The embassy won’t be able to save you from this. You stupid, stupid man.” He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Harry felt it timely to remind him who was holding the gun. He jabbed him hard in the small of the back with the muzzle.

  But Miller’s confidence was recovering. He smelt Harry’s self-doubt. “Listen, Harry. I can help you. No one else can. I don’t know how you got away from the airport, but let me go and I’ll take you back there and put you on that plane.”

  “Shut up and take me to Lisa.”

  The mention of Lisa had a sobering effect on Miller. He gabbled. “Really, you should let me take you, Harry. Please. If the police catch you, you’ll end up kneeling in a field with a placard round your neck listing your crimes. You’ll be executed the Chinese way, by a single shot to the back of the head. In public.”

  “And if you don’t shut up and take me to Lisa without another word, I’ll sort you the British way. With the kicking of your miserable life.” He gave Miller another hard jab in the back.

  Miller led him to a door and opened it. There were stairs leading down to a basement. Darkness. He flicked a switch on the wall. Light. Harry shoved him down first. Miller stumbled, caught a handrail, and went down the bare concrete steps.

  “What the fuck have you done to her?” Harry snarled. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. He shivered though the air in the cellar was stuffy and dead. “If you’ve hurt her …”

  “She’s fine,” Miller gabbled. He didn’t sound convinced himself. There was a metal door with a key in it. Miller put his hand to it. “Look, Harry …”

  Harry stuffed the muzzle of the gun into the flesh under Miller’s chin, silencing him. Miller turned the key and opened the door. Inside was pitch dark. There was a tiny sound. A squeak like a mouse. While Harry’s mind froze, Muscle Memory acted. He snatched Miller, hugging his body close against him as a shield. With his left arm pinning his hostage in place, Harry stuffed the gun into the soft underside of Miller’s jaw, shifting his face behind Miller’s.

  A shot smacked out of the blackness. Miller screamed something. Harry pulled him aside. A second shot cracked, the noise amplified to deafening in the confined space. The wall at Harry’s back took the punch, shards of breeze-block spitting across the cellar.

  “Stop!” Miller screamed again, his pitch high and terrified. He repeated it in Chinese. Thin tendrils of gun-smoke wafted from the mouth of the dark room. Miller struggled in Harry’s grasp. Harry hugged him even closer.

  “Shall we go in?” he goaded, his lips close against Miller’s ear.

  “No!” Miller surrendered to the iron vice of Harry’s grip. He called out something in Chinese. Harry caught the words ‘light’ and ‘girl’ and …

  A strip light shuddered into life, its several opening blinks revealing the interior of the naked cell. Seated dead centre on a chair was Lisa. She was tied to it, her wrists invisible round the back, her ankles each taped to a chair leg. A strip of silver-coloured duct tape covered her mouth. She screwed her eyes shut against the light, but more against the expected slam of bullets into her body.

  Her face was bruised. Her eyes opened and squinted into the light beyond the open doorway where Harry stood, shielded by Miller.

  Crouching behind her chair, using her body for cover, were Gun Man and Sidekick. Gun Man’s pistol was aimed straight at Harry, the barrel still smoking. Sidekick was armed with a knife. The blade pressed gently against Lisa’s jugular.

  Forty

  “You are so fucking dead,” Harry hissed into Miller’s ear. His lips brushed the warm flesh of the lobe. “Dead,” he repeated, ensuring the word went all the way into Miller’s brain. Wherever that might be.

  Gun Man barked something at Harry. Impressively, Harry’s Mandarin extended to ‘drop the gun’, though not to the epithet that followed, presumably describing Harry himself.

  There was no question of obeying. He knew he’d be dead if he did. Either immediately or at some point later. And it would leave Lisa exactly where she was.

  “Miller, call off your dogs.”

  Miller snorted. “You’d best do as they say,” he replied.

  “Call. Them. Off.” There was a round in the chamber of his pistol. With his thumb he pulled back the hammer. In the silence of the stand-off, the sound of the metallic ratchet was magnified. Especially for Miller who felt the pressure of the muzzle increase against his throat. It pressed into his windpipe. He coughed.

  “They won’t obey me,” he said through another cough.

  “Then you’re fucked.” Harry pointed the pistol towards the ceiling and fired a single round. Beside Miller’s ear and in the confined space of the cellar, the gun might have been a howitzer. Harry felt Miller’s body convulse.

  “Drop your guns,” he shouted into the room before him. Three faces stared back at him. One terrified. Two vicious. The guards were like dogs refusing to be dragged off a kill. They might as well have snarled through bared teeth.

  “I told you,” Miller whimpered. “Please do as they say. Drop your gun. I’ll make sure you’re not harmed.”

  “Sure you will,” Harry said. His own head was ringing from the gunshot. His mind raced. What to do? What would Clint Eastwood do in a dusty Mexican street?

  Grow up, Harry.

  “I’ll kill him,” Harry called in his best Mandarin, an accent his old tutor would have been proud of.

  “Go ahead,” came the reply. It was followed by a lot more, but all so foul that Harry quickly lost the thread. It had nothing to do with conversational Mandarin such as restaurants, menus, directions to tourist attractions, or discussions about this or that item of food. He sort of guessed at the content though.

  Harry took careful aim at the neon strip light and fired off a single round. The light exploded, plunging the room back into darkness. He threw Miller aside, stepped to the door and slammed it shut, locking it.

  Miller struggled to his feet. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Harry’s fist slammed into his face, dead centre. Miller went flying, hit the floor and stayed there. One groan, then a welcome silence.

  Okay, Harry. What the fuck now?

  With Lisa as their only bargaining chip, Harry reckoned Thug Men would do nothing more to harm her.

  There was a banging on the door. The handle savagely jerked up and down as they tested the lock. It was rock solid. Thug Men shouted all manner of threats at Harry. He ignored them.

  He looked around the cellar. It had been used for storage. Like any cellar it had accumulated all manner of stuff over the years – garden furniture, paint pots, all kinds of other pots and bottles. All kinds of other pots and bottles?

  Harry stooped to inspect one. His face spread with a grin. “Hello,” he said, inspecting the label. The large brown bottle had been imported from Malaysia. The label was in Bahasa Malay and English. Although he hadn’t seen it himself, Harry had suspected that a luxury villa like Chau’s wouldn’t be complete without a swimming pool. The large bottle of chlorine in his hand, and the several others alongside, confirmed it.

  He looked around a bit more and found a dustpan and brush. Perfect. He took the pan and propped it against the crack at the base of the metal door, supporting it on the brush until it acted like a shoot aimed straight at the space between floor and door. Holding the bottle as far from his face as he could, he turned the cap. It had been opened before and a thick crust of the chemical resisted. With a sharp twist it opened. The noxious fumes hit him like a slap. He jerked his head away and gulped a lungful of air.

  Carefully, he started to pour a thin stream of it onto the sloping surface of the dustpan, watching it run down the improvised chute and under the metal door.

  For a while all was quiet. Then a voice. Then two voices, debating. Then shouts. Finally a hammering on the inside of the door.

  Fists and feet slammed into the other side of the meta
l door. It barely shuddered on its iron hinges. Harry stopped pouring, screwed the cap back on and stood away from the door to wait.

  He had no idea how much chlorine would be needed to knock the guards unconscious, or even if it would do so. He only knew that chlorine gas could be deadly. That the liquid form turned into gas. That in the darkness of the room, the smell would terrify the occupants more than might be justified. For all Harry knew, the liquid wouldn’t do them any harm at all. But did they know that?

  All the while, he fought down the realisation that Lisa too would be terrified. With her mouth blocked with duct tape, if the chlorine was going to affect their breathing, she would be the first to suffer.

  He couldn’t think of anything else though. Somehow he had to reduce the guards’ will to fight. Terror was the best he could do. Given the fact that they didn’t give a toss about Miller or saving his wretched life.

  One of the guards shouted. Hard and clear. It sounded like an offer. Harry glanced at Miller, regretting punching him senseless. Even with his atrocious pronunciation, Miller’s Mandarin was better than Harry’s.

  A moment later he heard Lisa’s voice. She was close to the door. They’d either released her or moved her chair forward. Either way, her mouth was free.

  “Harry, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Tell them if they don’t let you go, I’ll set light to it.” Actually he had no idea whether chlorine liquid was flammable or not. However he hoped the guards didn’t know either.

  “You haven’t got a lighter.”

  Harry drew breath. “Lisa, please just tell them.”

  There was a pause while he assumed she was passing on his message. Then, “They say if they let me go you’ll shoot them.”

  “Have they hurt you?”

  A pause. “Harry, what’s your answer?”

  “Tell them I just want you back safe.”

  Another pause. “Really?”

  Fuck sake. “Really.”

  “Is that why you came back?”

  “Lisa!”