Dying Breath (Cobra Book 2)

by Blake Banner

  In the dim light I saw the guy I’d kicked trying to hop one-legged toward the wall, keening with pain as he went. And the guy who’d charged me standing over me, leering. Like the others, he was big, barrel-chested, almost bald, with powerful arms and legs. I tried to raise my hand to shoot him, and realized too late my hand was empty. He said something in Mandarin I did not understand, but I knew it was bad. He was going to hurt me, and he was going to enjoy it.

  He reached down with his left hand and, instead of grabbing the scruff of my neck, like his pal had done, he clutched my throat, lifted me to my knees and began to squeeze. I could feel the blood pressure rising in my head and my lungs were suddenly screaming for air. His leer turned to a broad grin as I felt my tongue swell and my eyes start to pop. I was seconds from death and I knew it. His eyes said he knew it too.

  I read somewhere once that if you focus on somebody’s hands when they are strangling you, you will die. In a millisecond I realized that both my hands were clenched around his wrist, and they were doing sweet FA there. With milliseconds to go, I dug the nails of my left hand deep into his wrist. His face twisted with the pain, no longer grinning but determined not to let go. That was enough, because he was focusing on my nails and the blood seeping from them, and he didn’t notice my right hand drop to my boot.

  The hard, cold handle of the Fairbairn and Sykes touched my fingers, and, in what should have been my dying breath, I rammed the razor-sharp blade up, deep into his armpit and dragged the blade down along his arm, severing his brachial artery and the cephalic vein. He didn’t scream. He gasped with shock. And instantly a powerful jet of blood sprayed across the room, spattering the glass wall with black blood. His hand released my neck and I struggled to my feet, wheezing painfully and noisily as air ripped at my bruised throat. He staggered away, gripping at his arm with his right hand, but the damage I’d done was catastrophic and after a couple of steps he keeled over and hit the floor with a massive thud.

  I ignored him. Still wheezing painfully, I made for the guy with the broken knee. He was standing in the shaft of light from the open bedroom door and I could see terror, bright and wet in his weeping eyes.

  I stood in front of him, let him see the rage and pain in my eyes, and looked down, first at his broken knee, then at his good one. He shook his head and muttered something I didn’t get. I said:

  “Do you speak English?”

  He was sweating hard and I knew he was in serious pain. “Rittoo,” he said.

  “I will let you live, you understand? I will let you live, and get a doctor. OK?”

  He nodded very slowly and very cautiously. “OK…”

  “But you, tell me, where is the safe?” I made the shape of the safe with my hands, and mimicked turning the knobs for the combination. “Safe, where?”

  He looked like he was going to cry. My eyes told him what was coming next and he held up a hand and shook his head. Then he pointed to the wardrobe. I went and grabbed a chair, dragged it over, frisked him, pulled his Glock from under his arm and sat him down.

  “Where is the girl?”

  “Lock in room.”

  It made some kind of crazy sense. That was why they hadn’t come in shooting, so as not to hurt her. But they couldn’t let her run either, because Heilong Li would lose face.

  I nodded and went and pulled open the wardrobe. The safe was there, in the wall. I looked at him. “Combination. Number. Pin.”

  His shoulders shook, his face crumpled and he started to weep. Through his sobs he said, “Two three, zero one, two zero, two three.”

  I punched the numbers into the screen and the door clunked and swung open. There was a stash of cash, I figured about fifty grand. Spoils. I put it in my canvas bag. There was also a notebook and a USB drive. I bagged them too. Then I stood, picked up his Glock and handed it to him. He stared at me a moment, and there was something like gratitude in his eyes.

  He took the gun, cocked it and aimed at my head. I shot him between the eyes.

  Chapter Six

  I stood a moment, uncertain. I’d expected hotel security to have busted in by now. But there was no sign of them. I figured maybe Heilong Li felt if anybody came after him and broke in, he’d prefer to deal with them himself, on his own terms, rather than have the local authority step in. Having the local authorities involved could have two serious downsides. First would be the publicity he and the Chinese government might be exposed to; and second was the fact that whoever broke in, might actually be working for the local authorities. So he beefed up his private muscle and dealt with security himself.

  What didn’t seem to have occurred to him was that somebody might break in, take on his four gorillas and actually beat them. That was what had happened, and it had left me with the question of what to do with May Ling, if that was who she was.

  I flipped on the light, stepped over the bodies and went to the bedside where I had seen the mirror and the silver box. I opened the lid and saw there were still a few grams of the white powder in it. I picked it up, with the mirror, and carried it out of the room.

  I was in a short passage. The first door on my right was a bathroom. Opposite it was a door with a key in the lock. I pulled the balaclava from my head and stuffed it in my back pocket. Then I unlocked the door and eased it open.

  She was still naked, sitting cross-legged on the bed, shivering and crying. She might have been pretty, even beautiful, but there was something jaded and joyless about her eyes. She was watching me with something between resentment and fear. I had the Maxim in my right hand, and the silver box in my left. I showed her the box and smiled like I was a nice person.

  “You speak English?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, then we can get along fine and understand each other. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to get you away from here, and I don’t want anybody ever to know you were here in the first place. So far, I figure we want the same thing, right?”

  She nodded. I went on. “When the cops get here, if they find you, even if you don’t get framed as an accessory or an accomplice, they are going to be all over you like a rash. And I am figuring maybe there are things you would rather they did not know about you. Am I wrong?”

  She shrugged. “No.”

  “Are you May Ling?”

  She thought about it, then shrugged again. “Yeah.”

  “So, you come with me, and I will introduce you to some people who will be very interested to know you, and will probably pay you lots of money to talk to them about Heilong Li. You get to take all his coke with you, and the cops need never know a thing. The alternative is I kill you in the next three seconds. One…”

  “No problem, I’ll go with you.”

  I smiled. I had no idea what I would have done if she’d let me count to three.

  She dragged on some jeans, a sweatshirt and some sneakers, found what looked like a kilo of coke from the lounge, and we stepped out into the corridor.

  There we pushed through the fire doors into the service stairwell again and ran down the sixteen flights to my floor. I peered into the dimly lit, carpeted corridor. It was empty, as you’d expect. At that time just about everybody was at dinner, and we made it to my room without being seen. I slipped the card in the door, the light went green and I pushed it open, then shoved May Ling inside and closed the door behind me.

  She turned to face me. Her face was tight and there was childlike fear in her eyes. “Are you going to be nice?”

  I gave a small nod. “I’ll be nice.” I pointed up at the ceiling. “But you just keep remembering that I just killed four very dangerous men upstairs. You know what that means?”

  She sat on the bed and nodded. “You’re four times more dangerous than they were.”

  “Good. So you stay put, you shut up, you do everything I tell you to do, and you don’t do anything I don’t tell you to do. We clear?”

  “Very.” She shook her head. “I am not dangerous at all. I’m a good secretary and a very good
lover. That’s why I’m here.”

  “That’ll do just fine. Now shut up.”

  “Can I have a snort?”

  I pulled my cell from my pocket and dialed. “No.”

  “Can I have a drink?”

  I jerked my head at the bar. “Yeah. Fix me a whisky while you’re at it.”

  The brigadier’s voice said, “Yes.”

  “We need to talk in person. I have May Ling here.”

  “You what?”

  “She’s willing to talk to you.”

  He was very quiet, then said, “What about the rest of it?”

  “A mixed bag. I don’t want to talk right now. The shit’s about to hit the fan and we need to disappear. You need to send in the cleaners and get me and May Ling the hell out of Dodge. And you need to do it now.”

  “Just answer yes or no.”

  “No.”

  “Shut up, Harry. Did you hit the main targets?”

  “No.”

  “Either of them?”

  “No.”

  “Well for God’s sake, what did you do?”

  May Ling stood close and handed me a glass with lots of whisky in it. I took it, set it down on the desk, put a finger on her chest and pushed her gently away. Into the phone I said: “That’s not a yes-no question. Quit wasting time. Send a car. I’ll settle the bill. The Oriental Suite is a mess and you need to insulate me, May Ling and yourself.”

  “Did you get anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. There will be a car there in fifteen minutes.”

  I hung up and started to strip. I pointed at the wardrobe. “Give me a suit. Get the case. Pack everything into it. When you’re done, get a towel and wipe down every damned surface in the bathroom and the bedroom. Do it now.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was dressed and I had double-checked all the surfaces where there might be prints. The two glasses were washed and polished and we were on our way down in the elevator to the lobby. May Ling was eyeing me sidelong with no expression but plenty of curiosity in her eyes.

  “Who are you?”

  “Nobody you want to know.”

  She turned to face me and there was defiance in her eyes. “How do you know that?”

  The elevator slowed to a halt. I gave her a humorless smile. “By the way you screamed. Come on, shift your ass.”

  As we walked toward the reception desk I was surprised to see the brigadier sitting in an easy chair, watching me. I steered May Ling toward him and he stood to greet us. He didn’t look very amused. I spoke before he could say anything. Smiling in a way I thought was urbane and debonair, I said, “Brigadier, what a pleasure to see you. May I introduce May Ling?”

  His smile was thin the way a black mamba is thin, and his eyes said he would shoot me later. He shook hands with May Ling, asked her how she did and turned back to me.

  “I believe there were some things you needed to explain to me…”

  “There are indeed. Thing is, we are in a bit of a hurry. I suggest you take May Ling somewhere…,” I fixed him with my eyes and gave the word just enough emphasis, “appropriate, and I will join you as soon as I have settled the bill.”

  He nodded once. He was mad. “You’ve been to my country house.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll be there.” His eyebrows rose slightly. “Have you got business to finish here before you join us?”

  I shook my head. “Not no way. I think things are going to get a bit busy around here, Brigadier, and we would be smart to get moving. I’ll see you there.” I went to move but paused. “You got your chauffeur?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Just as well, and by the way, in case anybody asks, May Ling and I were together all evening.” I smiled at her. “Right?”

  She winked and returned the smile. “You bet.”

  The brigadier offered her his arm. “Shall we go? And I should tell you…” He leaned into her, close and confidential, and murmured in her ear. “My friend here is old-fashioned about not hurting women. I have no such scruples. So you’d be well advised to behave.”

  They made their way to the main door and I went to the reception desk, where I settled my bill and asked for my car to be brought to the door. So far there was no sign that the bodies had been found or that the alarm had been raised.

  I paid the bill, then stepped out into the evening to wait for my car. Down the road I saw a dark Jeep pull away and head north. I knew the brigadier was as mad as a grizzly with a hornet up its ass, and I was also aware that I had screwed up. But hanging around to finish the job now was a bad idea, and would just lead to further screwups. We needed to step back and reassess the situation, and that was what I was going to tell him when we got to the HQ.

  The kid brought the Cobra round, I gave him twenty bucks, climbed in behind the wheel and took off after the brigadier.

  It was a forty-five-minute drive, north through the bright lights of Manhattan, over the Henry Hudson Bridge and deep into the growing dark of the suburbs and semi-countryside of Yonkers and Westchester. Eventually I came to the winding lanes and woodlands of Pleasantville, where I followed the searching, yellow funnels of my headlamps out of town and along Bedford Road, where trees and mailboxes sprang out of shadowy lawns, throwing black shadows leaping across the roads like inky daemons, until I found Apple Hill Lane and the big, iron gates of Cobra HQ.

  There, voice recognition and iris-scanning technology reassured security that it was, probably, me and the gate swung open to let me in. Ten minutes after that I was stepping across the checkerboard floor of the entrance hall toward the study-cum-library where the brigadier was waiting for me with May Ling. When I opened the heavy, walnut door and went in, I found they weren’t alone. Colonel Jane Harris was there too, in a dark blue suit, watching me from a burgundy chesterfield by the open fireplace. She had what looked like a gin and tonic in her hand, and the expression on her face said she’d like to skin me alive and roll me in coarse salt.

  The brigadier had been in the chair opposite hers, but now he stood and turned to face me. His face wasn’t a lot friendlier than the colonel’s.

  “Harry, you know Jane, of course. Come in, help yourself to a drink. Have you eaten?”

  “No.” I shook my head and stepped toward the bar. “Contrary to popular rumors, I have not been sitting on my ass blowing bubbles. I have been working. Pretty hard.” I poured myself a large Macallan and turned to face the chief. “May Ling can attest to that, she was part of the hard work I was doing. I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a couple of cheese and ham sandwiches. If you think I deserve them, of course.”

  I might have told him I’d had a fun day fishing. He remained expressionless and pulled an old-fashioned cord that was suspended from the ceiling, then returned to his chair. I sat on the sofa, next to May Ling, who’d been watching me with a small smile.

  “Nobody,” said the brigadier, “is accusing you of slacking on the job, Harry, but you must recognize that the results tonight are extremely disappointing, and I should like to know why. Though first…,” he gestured to May Ling, “I would like to know what you mean by exposing May Ling to our operation, and vice versa.”

  I reached across and handed him the canvas bag containing everything I had collected from Heilong Li’s suite, except the fifty grand which were acknowledged spoils of war.

  “In there you have Heilong Li’s notebook, his diary, his laptop and his USB drive.” I gestured to May Ling, “And right here you have his personal assistant’s personal assistant. Though—” I turned to look at her and gave my head a little twist. “If I am not very much mistaken, most of the assisting was done in the bedroom, and for Heilong Li. Is that right?”

  She nodded. “I was offered the job as a PA, but really I was Heilong Li’s live-in sex worker.”

  I turned back to Brigadier Buddy Byrd, carefully ignoring Colonel Harris. “I broke in, found May Ling asleep in the bed, she woke up and raised the alarm, I killed the four guys he had guarding
the suite, and my options were to either kill May Ling as well, or bring her in on the off chance that she might be able to provide us with valuable, firsthand information. Obviously I was not going to kill her. So I took what was to me the only viable option.”

  The colonel sighed loudly and spoke to the brigadier like I was not there.

  “Alex, he is a liability. I told you from the start he would be a liability and that is exactly what he has become.”

  Buddy regarded her a moment and turned back to me. “May Ling was present?”

  “Of course. She raised the alarm.”

  He turned to her. “What kind of information can you provide us with?”

  She thought about it for a moment, gazing at the logs burning in the fire.

  “Probably more than you’d expect. I was with them all the time when they were having their most intimate conversations. They thought I was just a dope and didn’t understand. But I figure, if we have a few conversations, and you give me the right kind of incentives, things I heard that don’t make a lot of sense to me, might make a lot of sense to you.”

  There was something of the smart aleck about the way she said it, and Colonel Harris gave a bark that might have been some kind of a laugh.

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  I studied her for a couple of seconds. “Colonel, you want to play a dirty game, but you want the players to play clean. If I know anything about prostitutes, and I do know something about prostitutes, Colonel, May Ling probably has useful information which she knows is useful, and a ton more she doesn’t know is useful. Get a couple of experts to debrief her and you’ll end up being grateful for my professional incompetence.”

  Her face flushed red to the roots of her platinum hair. “Mr. Bauer! You are…”

  I interrupted her: “In the real world, Colonel! You think May Ling is offended because I called her a prostitute?”

  I turned to May Ling and jerked my chin at her. She was watching the colonel and smiling. I started to ask but she interrupted, keeping her eyes on Harris. “I’m a high-class whore, Colonel Harris. It’s what I am, and I’m damned good at it. Satisfaction guaranteed. But I am not as stupid as you think I look. I have information I know you will find useful, but I am also sure, like Harry says, that I have information that I do not realize is useful. I don’t know who you are, or what you think useful information is. I don’t care either. But you are welcome to all the information I have. All I’m saying is, like everything else, it has a price. Your call.”