Riding the Snake (1998)

by Stephen Cannell

  They reached the Red Flower Pavilion without incident. An old man was standing there; he reached out for the bags of money. Chauncy handed him both bags, then Julian stepped forward, pulled his rifle from under his robe, and hit the old man, up from under, with the butt of his gun. The man went down like chopped wheat and immediately started snoring at their feet.

  "Can't be this effin' easy," Julian muttered as they moved into the Pavilion, past pedestals that held golden art. Snakes and carved dragons watched with cold ruby eyes as they passed.

  They opened the inner door of the Red Flower Pavilion and looked in at the magnificent altar.

  "All of the Triad secrets are supposed to be stored in the altar safe," Chauncy explained. "It's a sacred place. Only the sacred elders can open it. If Willy has a secret document here, that's where it will be."

  They backed away from the east gate and headed across the huge hall. Then they moved up to the altar to the very spot where, two days before, Johnny Kwong had died.

  The prostitutes were nude dancers from a Triad club in Mong Kok, and they arrived in a van at two A. M. They sat in the back, rubbed their sore calves, and wondered how quickly they could bring the gangsters off and get home to bed.

  The driver of the van banged his hand on the garage door. When he couldn't get an answer, he took out a key and walked around to the narrow wood staircase and climbed the half-flight up to the main door of the flat. Once inside, it was just minutes before he reached the garage and found the four gangsters tied to the support posts and one dead on the garage floor. He untied the man nearest him, removed the gag, and listened in dismay as the man began to babble out the story of the assault. Within minutes, he had untied the others, and they discovered that the electric cart was gone. They started looking around for one of their flip-phones so they could call the Temple in the park and warn them. They found their four shorted-out cellphones under water in the kitchen sink, where Tanisha had left them.

  They turned and rushed back down into the basement to the tunnel. Stumbling in the blackness, they ran toward the City of Willows.

  Julian found the safe directly behind the altar, mounted in the stone floor. He took an electronic safe-cracking tool out of his backpack and hooked the electrodes to the safe dial. He turned it on and watched the small LED screen in his hand as the unit electronically scanned the safe dial, looking for the hollow tumblers. The LED screen locked first on the number 25, then the number 42, and finally a third number, 19. When all three were locked in, a small bell tone confirmed the combination. Then Julian reached out and spun the dial to 25-42-19 and opened the safe. It was then that they heard the first shouts in Chinese, coming from the park outside.

  Wheeler was guarding the east gate of the Red Flower Pavilion. He saw several men in red robes running across the moonlit park, looking up at the Temple roof, and screaming their warning to the Red-Pole vanguards up there.

  "We've got a situation here," Wheeler called back to Julian, who was just reaching into the safe, removing its contents.

  "Goddamn to bloody hell and hereafter," Julian mumbled as he threw the stacks of banded money and jewels aside, looking for the Agreement. "Chauncy, get your arse over here and help me read this shit," he yelled.

  They could now hear people coming down a staircase from the roof above. Wheeler turned and fired his B. A. R. in that general direction. A stream of bullets chipped and whined against the staircase and Temple walls. They heard somebody scream and a lone body rolled down the staircase, sprawling dead on the Temple floor. Tanisha was now kneeling and firing out of the north gate, into the park. She watched as Triad gangsters dropped on their faces and rolled in panic to escape her fire.

  Fu Hai had been awakened in the middle of the night by gunfire. Unsure of what was happening, he was pulled up off his mat with the other initiates and told by the Red-Pole vanguard that bandits were in the Red Flower Pavilion trying to steal from the Triad. It was very dark. He could hear automatic gunfire marked by flashes of muzzle fire in the park. A Russian AK-47 was thrust into his hand. He didn't know how to use it, but the vanguard pulled the slide, cocking the weapon for him. The vanguard told Fu Hai to just aim and pull the trigger. He was ordered to run across the grass toward the Red Flower Pavilion, get inside, and kill the bandits. Without even thinking, he started running with the other initiates toward the Temple. A Black woman was shooting at him from the door of the Pavilion with an automatic weapon. He felt a rush of air from one of her bullets as it zipped past his ear. The initiates from his class continued on, screaming for courage, charging through the park toward the Pavilion.

  He lost track of the others, but somehow made it to the side of the building. He opened a side door and ran into the Red Flower Pavilion. ... He dove to avoid being hit, then slid on his stomach on the polished wooden floor.

  Chauncy was pawing through the large safe, glancing at the documents. Some were real estate leases or Triad business agreements which extorted payments from restaurants or shops in Hong Kong.

  Gunfire erupted all around him as he kneeled below the stone altar, sweat pouring into his eyes, stinging them. He couldn't read with his eyes smarting, so he gathered up everything that looked possible and stuffed it all into his robe pockets. Then he stood and wiped his eyes, just in time to see several armed gangsters moving into the back of the Red Flower Pavilion from the west gate. They were all carrying automatic weapons. He flipped on his laser sight and fired at them. Several went down, wounded. The others fired back; bullets ricocheted off the stone altar, screaming and whining away into the night, before shattering unseen wood and glass.

  Fu Hai fired his weapon without aiming. He did not want to kill anybody. A round-faced White man with a handlebar mustache, who he thought he remembered from the gunfight in front of the shoemaker's shop, returned his fire. Automatic bullets thunked into the wood bench he was hiding behind. He felt a blow to his side as a round knocked him backwards. He started bleeding but felt no pain. When his clip was empty, he grabbed another weapon from a fallen comrade.

  "We're outta here!" Julian yelled. "Gotta find a back door."

  They all started to fall back toward the south wall, firing as they did, dropping spent clips and slamming in new ones, using the heavy wooden benches for cover.

  The Temple was now filling with Triad members. They made low, suicidal charges through the east and north doors, sliding on their stomachs, their weapons held before them, firing streams of hollow-point death at the escaping foursome.

  Tanisha arrived at the south gate first. The door was locked, so she fired a burst of bullets from her Russian assault rifle. The wood frame and the door disintegrated, coming off its hinges. They ran through the shattered opening into a small adjoining Temple library. They could see the park out the window, just beyond.

  "Stay with the exit plan!" Julian shouted, and they started for the door on the far side of the library. Then, almost by accident, as Wheeler's eyes swept the crowded bookshelves, he spotted something familiar. He jerked his gaze back, even as gunfire splintered the threshold behind him. On the library shelf were twelve leather-bound, gold-stamped volumes: The History of California, by Father John Stoddard. The same collection he had given Prescott, one volume at a time, every Christmas.

  "Son of a bitch!" Wheeler said, as more gunfire erupted, tearing the walls of the library.

  "Let's get bloody scarce!" Julian shouted.

  They opened the library door to the park and began their own suicidal run across the grass, toward the back wall of the low buildings on the south side of the Walled City. The vanguards on the roof were armed with tracer rounds. They opened fire. Mud divots and flying sod exploded around them as white-hot tracers shattered into the ground at their feet. The sound was deafening, like fifty jackhammers all starting at once.

  "Over here!" Chauncy yelled, taking the lead.

  They zigzagged across the park, switching directions as more tracers streaked above and around them.

  With
anger and adrenaline fueling his pursuit, Fu Hai chased the enemies out of the Temple library and into the park, running on ever weakening legs. Finally, he fell from loss of blood, his cheek hitting the cool wet grass. Before he lost consciousness, he remembered the sweet smell of cherry blossoms in his nose.

  They got to a small wooden door that led down some stairs into a small flat. As Chauncy worked to pull the locked door open, Wheeler, Tanisha, and Julian turned and laid down some cover fire, aimed at the Temple roof. The Triad gangsters up there were forced to duck down behind the parapets, while the three of them emptied their weapons. Then the Triad roof guards reappeared, their assault rifles armed with fresh clips.

  Floodlights on the Temple roof clicked on and quickly found the four of them against the south building wall, pinning them in blinding light.

  "Shoot the floods!" Julian screamed, slamming in a fresh clip. Just as he turned to fire at the roof lights, he was doubled over by a burning tracer. The hot round knocked him off his feet. He stumbled backwards into the wall, grabbed his abdomen just below the vest line, and went down hard. His legs splayed out in front of him, and blood started oozing through his fingers. "Bloody fucking damn!" he groaned.

  Tanisha fired at the roof, getting two of the three floodlights, just as Chauncy got the locked door open and jumped down into the small opening. "I'm in, let's go!" he yelled. Tanisha jumped down.

  Now only Wheeler was in the park with Julian. He turned to grab the Englishman while bullets sparked the wall all around him. Miraculously, Wheeler wasn't hit. The huge distance he was from the Temple roof helped throw off the gangsters' aim. He felt one round tug at his sleeve, a reluctant warning.

  "I'm a goner," Julian croaked. "Get out of here."

  "You're through giving orders," Wheeler said and struggled to pull the overweight detective up over his shoulder. Then he jumped down into the room, pulling the wooden door shut over him. Julian was heavy, and Wheeler's wounded leg almost buckled. His senses were immediately greeted by the worst stench he had ever encountered. It was pitch black. He felt Tanisha's hand on his sleeve. He couldn't see her; his eyes had not adjusted to the dark.

  "This way," she said, and with Julian in a fireman's carry over his shoulder, Wheeler stumbled blindly after Tanisha, down the stairs of the darkened house.

  They found Chauncy waiting for them in a doorway that led out into a blackened alleyway.

  "Follow me," he said.

  "What about the night goggles?" Tanisha asked. "I can't see anything, and this stink is about to make me puke."

  "Breathe through your mouth," Chauncy said. He looked over at Wheeler. "We've got to leave him. He'll slow us down."

  "Not leaving him," Wheeler said stubbornly. "I'm not losing another one." But he wondered how long he could carry the overweight detective. Wheeler could feel Julian's blood running down the back of his own neck, down his rib cage, into his underwear. He tried to blot the feeling from his mind, and the unsettling stench from his nostrils.

  Tanisha and Chauncy put on their night-vision goggles. Then Tanisha reached into Wheeler's backpack and pulled his goggles out, adjusted the focus, and put the heavy contraption on his head. Reaching around to the top, she flipped on the power. Immediately, in green hue, Wheeler could see a small alley out the apartment doorway. It was only about two feet wide and twisted away in the darkness. Then he saw the glint of half-a-dozen rodent eyes looking at them from the garbage-strewn alleyway.

  They heard a door open behind them in the park, then footsteps coming down the stairs, and the sound of Chinese voices.

  "Let's get out of here," Wheeler said. He turned, and with his right hand still on the trigger, let a stream of lead fly in the direction of the voices. No one cried out in pain as his bullets crashed into the walls.

  Chauncy led the way. He had been born in the ghetto and, as a child, had memorized every inch. But that gave them no advantage, because he shared that same history with the men pursuing them. The foursome moved along, picking their way over piles of garbage and human excrement. It seeped into their shoes and clung to their pant legs. Then they heard a burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets chipped the walls, sparking light all around them.

  Tanisha grunted in pain but said nothing.

  "You okay?" Wheeler asked, still struggling with the almost-dead weight of Julian Winslow.

  "Fine," she hissed.

  They moved along the narrow alley path, turning right, then left. The Walled City's corridors were an ungodly maze of dead ends and blind switch-backs. Only once did Chauncy turn the wrong way. "Gotta go back," he said, and they headed back up the alley toward the pursuing Triad assassins. Chauncy and Tanisha took the point, and with the advantage of the night-vision goggles, they laid down a withering fire, hitting three of the Red-Pole vanguards and forcing the Triad gangsters to back up fast to find cover. Chauncy finally found the right path and they followed him into an intersecting alley.

  Wheeler was now completely lost. He thought they were going back the way they came. Occasionally the pursuing gangsters would blind-fire in the dark, the whining tracers screaming over their heads or ricocheting off apartment walls. Then they were heading up a small flight of stairs. Wheeler's wounded leg buckled. He could go no farther and was forced to sit down in shit and garbage with Julian still over his shoulder. He turned, and through his night goggles he could see a few gangsters moving along at a trot twenty yards back, their weapons at port arms in front of them, appearing in his night visor like eerie green ghosts. Wheeler set Julian down, almost shrugging him off his shoulder. Then he found his Browning under his arm, hanging from his shoulder strap. He rotated it up, holding it underhanded. Without sighting, he let a blast go and watched in awe as several of the pursuing men were picked up by the powerful stream of lead and flung backward into the reeking, garbage-filled darkness. He heard them screaming in pain as their lives ended.

  "Bloody fucking marvelous," Julian whispered, surprising Wheeler with his consciousness. Then Wheeler heard Chauncy at his right elbow.

  "Come on. It's not much farther."

  "Gotta help me. Can't carry him," Wheeler said.

  With Chauncy now bearing half the weight, and with one of Julian's arms around each of their shoulders, they dragged him along, through the stench and darkness. It was a terrifying journey, almost as if they had been dropped onto an alien planet. Ungodly rats, the size of small cats, sat on piles of human waste hissing in the dark. Occasionally they would pass a flat that had a light burning, and the night-vision goggles, unable to handle the light, would white out, blinding them until they could tip them up. Once they were past the light source, they would pull them down again and continue on.

  It seemed like they were in the narrow, twisting alleyways forever. Then finally Chauncy turned and broke down a door with his shoulder and led them into a house. They dragged Julian up a short flight of stairs and into a small living room where a Chinese family slept.

  "I lived here once," Chauncy whispered as he moved through the flat, tripping over a sleeping man. They heard a child cry, and one of the sleeping men awoke and screamed at him. Then Chauncy was out a back door, and he led them into another narrow alley.

  Wheeler momentarily lost track of Tanisha. He was too busy dragging the fat detective, worrying about his footing, and trying not to throw up from the horrible smell.

  Finally, Chauncy opened a door and they moved through a low doorway. Like magic, they had stepped out of hell and were back on Tung Tsing Road. The street, the moonlight, and the cold air revived their tortured senses.

  They laid Julian down against the side of a building and looked into his face. He had almost bled out. His eyes were open, but he was a ghastly pale color. Blood was all over his shirt and Wheeler's back. Then Tanisha came through the door from the Walled City.

  "They're right behind us. I can hear them coming up the alley," she said as she shut the door.

  About two hundred yards away, they could see the rented Mercedes that
Chauncy had parked there yesterday for their escape. Chauncy took off, running toward it, and in a few seconds he had it going and was speeding back toward them. He pulled the car up just as the door behind them opened and a Chinese Triad member cautiously looked out. Wheeler was closest to the man and stepped up and hit him with his best husband-bashing left hook, knocking the man back into the ghetto. Then he threw the car door wide. Chauncy and Tanisha got Julian into the Mercedes. Wheeler dove in as Chauncy jumped behind the wheel and floored it. The car screeched away just as three more Triad gangsters ran out into the street, firing automatic weapons. Their gunfire starred the back fenders and shattered the taillights.

  The Mercedes sped away into the night.

  An hour later, they had returned to the dock and lowered an unconscious Julian aboard the Avon. It took two trips to get them all back to The Other Woman. Wheeler turned on the anchor winch and pulled the hook. Then he started the marine engine and powered the sailboat back out into Victoria Harbor.

  It was then that he noticed blood on Tanisha's shirt. "You're hit," he said. She didn't reply, but she looked pale.

  He pulled her shirt up and checked the wound. The bullet had caught her under the armpit right above the protective vest, cutting out a furrow of flesh between her rib bones. The bleeding had stopped, but some of her shirt was buried deep in the wound.

  "We gotta get you both to a hospital," he said.

  "Can't do it," Chauncy said, glancing at his watch and recalling the exit plan. "We're supposed to clear this harbor in half an hour." He was now watching Julian, who they had laid out on the sofa in the main salon. The English cop hadn't said anything in over fifteen minutes. But now his eyes opened and he looked at them through dull slits.