Lion

by Matt Rogers

  Samuel sighed and bowed his head. ‘Can you tell me who you are first? I don’t want to get myself killed for saying the wrong thing.’

  ‘I’m a guy with no affiliation to anyone. I couldn’t give a shit what you’ve done. I just want to know the truth, so I can piece all this together.’

  Samuel ran both hands through his curly hair, stressed to the eyeballs. ‘Okay, man. Okay. The triad are hanging threats over my head. I fucked up. I need to do whatever they say or I’m going to be in deep shit.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I work at Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts. As a baccarat dealer in one of the VIP rooms. I—’

  ‘Seems like this all revolves around Mountain Lion,’ Slater muttered. ‘I was just there.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Minding my own business until I got wrapped up in all this shit. Continue.’

  ‘Right, so, there’s a form of money laundering where two players work with each other to place bets on opposite sides of the table over and over again. Their collective total remains the same, but they’re technically “gambling” the money. You get me? They can use creative accounting to avoid taxes.’

  ‘I’m following,’ Slater said.

  ‘Well, there’s a small army of wealthy businessmen who use the tactic, but the owner of Mountain Lion takes a cut for allowing the service to take place on the premises.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘He’s very tight with money.’

  ‘The owner?’

  ‘Yeah. He doesn’t tolerate anyone trying to siphon money away from him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Peter Forrest.’

  ‘And I take it that’s exactly what you did? Siphoned money away from Peter Forrest?’

  ‘Me and my friend. We’re both baccarat dealers. We figured he couldn’t watch every VIP room at the same time. We could run the scam and take the casino’s cut for ourselves.’

  ‘How much money are we talking?’

  ‘The equivalent of two hundred thousand British pounds.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money for a service fee.’

  ‘They’re laundering tens of millions. It’s a drop in the bucket.’

  ‘And life-changing money for the two of you.’

  ‘Yeah. But Forrest found out, and he killed the other dealer. But he thinks the other guy was working as a one-man-show. He doesn’t know I’m involved.’

  Slater pieced it all together. ‘Which is what the triad are hanging over your head.’

  Samuel nodded. ‘They found out, somehow. They’ll tell Forrest I was involved if I don’t do their dirty work.’

  ‘This is their dirty work? Whatever the two of you are doing?’

  Samuel nodded again. ‘Man, I can’t tell you what they’re doing, though. Please don’t ask. I need this all to go ahead or they’ll kill me. Just let me do my thing and then I’ll be on my way. I need three codes.’

  Shien piped up, having previously stayed silent. ‘I know three codes!’

  Slater shot her a dark look, as if to say, Be quiet, and turned back to Samuel. ‘Do you know what the triad are doing?’

  ‘All I know is that they’re stealing a shitload of money.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re not going to tell me their entire plan. They just need me to initiate the transfer from this apartment. So there’s no paper trail back to them.’

  ‘That’s what I figured was going on,’ Slater said.

  A messy pile of thoughts fought for the upper hand in Slater’s head — Shien’s dad, Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts, Peter Forrest, Samuel Barnes, the triad, an exorbitant amount of money.

  ‘You said you’re doing it from this apartment?’ Slater said.

  ‘Yes,’ Samuel said. ‘I’ve got a laptop — and experience as a programmer. I know how to use the software they’re conducting the transfer with.’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll know when it goes through. I’m just the guy who executes it.’

  ‘I think you’re about to bankrupt Peter Forrest,’ Slater said. ‘I think this all comes back to him. The triad are sensing an opportunity and capitalising on it. You two are the middlemen.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Samuel said. ‘No way to tell for sure, man. But if I don’t go through with it, I’m a dead man walking. Please — let me do this transfer. It doesn’t affect you either way.’

  ‘How many triad guys have you been in contact with?’

  ‘It’s a three-man team. I think they’re working alone.’

  ‘Did one of them have a jewelled earring?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I killed him this morning. Around seven.’

  ‘They roped me into all of this about five a.m. when I finished my shift. One of them must have gone to check on you two afterwards.’

  ‘You sure they don’t have help?’

  Samuel shook his head. ‘They seemed paranoid. Like a rogue unit. Like they were trying to do all this in secrecy and get away with it and carry on with their lives.’

  Slater shifted uncomfortably, heating up in the cramped apartment. At the same time, a cold shiver ran down the back of his neck. His hairs stood on end.

  He motioned to the open doorway leading out into the corridor. ‘I just killed three guys out there. Who the hell are they?’

  Samuel paused, deep in thought, then his eyes widened. ‘Forrest’s men?’

  ‘I fucking hope not,’ Slater said. ‘That means he found us. He’ll have an unlimited supply of hired guns.’

  ‘Wait, so—’

  Samuel paused mid-sentence, his eyes darting to the open laptop resting on the kitchenette. Beads of sweat had broken out across his forehead as he mentally rolled through a list of consequences if he were caught red-handed with the information capable of stripping money out of Peter Forrest’s accounts.

  Slater made to respond when discordant shouts cut through the corridor outside.

  He wheeled on the spot, close to hyperventilating.

  There were multiple voices, all male, all eliciting what sounded like battlecries. From the way their voices rang into the apartment, Slater had to guess there were close to five or six men bundling into the tight space.

  They had seen their dead comrades.

  ‘More of Forrest’s men,’ he muttered.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the blood drain from Samuel’s face.

  ‘Stay with the girl,’ Slater said.

  He sprinted for the doorway.

  All-out offence was the only way he could feasibly see himself standing a chance against such an overwhelming number of hostiles.

  18

  In Hollywood films, when frantic, close-quarters combat occurs, time slows down as the hero makes split-second decisions that eventually save his life.

  Slater had always found that reality worked quite the opposite.

  His brain flooded with cortisol — an acute sensation that heightened his reflexes and set his conscious thought into overdrive. But the ability to react faster didn’t slow down his thoughts. He sunk into a state of total focus and simply let his limbs follow his brain’s commands.

  He glimpsed the congestion in the corridor outside — there were men in suits everywhere, all in the process of studying the three corpses on the floor between them. Slater realised he had a couple of seconds to act and — still sprinting full-pelt — reached down and heaved the entire front door off the ground.

  It was heavy, but Slater tapped into decades of powerlifting training and the added benefit of an adrenalin spike to hurl the entire wooden plank into a vertical position and charge straight out into the hallway, carrying the door in front of him while gripping the Beretta awkwardly between two fingers.

  There were two men directly opposite the doorway to apartment number 516.

  Slater had no clear view of them, because his vision had been obscured by the door, but he remembered their last position and s
printed straight at it.

  He felt the other side of the wooden plank slam into the two bodies, bundling them into the opposite wall through a mixture of momentum and sheer weight. Crushing them against the damp plaster opposite would impede them for a couple of seconds — anything to buy him more time.

  Slater had made sure to bounce off the door with his right shoulder when it crushed into the two men, which thrust him awkwardly back into the centre of the corridor. Refusing to hesitate, he raised the Beretta and blasted four shots into the crowd of men milling around the bodies — screams rose and bodies ducked for any kind of cover they could find.

  Enemy weapons raised in his direction, but Slater didn’t even give them a fraction of a second to squeeze off return fire.

  He finished unloading his volley of shots and — still moving — hurled himself back into the open doorway, out of sight.

  As soon as he ducked back inside the apartment he flattened himself to the floor and twisted to aim through the space he’d just disappeared from. Gunfire cracked from semiautomatic pistols but Slater was no longer there. Across the hallway, he watched the two men he’d crushed with the door manage to hurl it off themselves. They were rattled, thrown off, reaching for their weapons but slow to react due to getting bundled so effortlessly into the disgusting plaster.

  Slater let his breath out, went still, and fired another two rounds with the Beretta.

  Twin headshots.

  The two thugs went down in a tangle of limbs directly on top of the door.

  Slater heard grunts of confusion as the rest of the party tried to compose themselves. They’d been thrown into disarray by the sudden onslaught — some were injured by Slater’s bullets, some were dead, and all of them were likely wondering exactly what the hell they’d got themselves into.

  Behind Slater, back in the depths of the single-room apartment, Shien screamed.

  The high-pitched whine seized the attention of the men outside — they quietened, recognising the noise for what it was. Their target rested inside the apartment.

  They had come to collect Shien by any means necessary.

  Suddenly, Slater heard retreating footsteps. He tuned his ears to the sound — refusing to let his guard drop until he was certain they were safe — but his senses weren’t deceiving him. The rest of the hit team were retreating, accompanied by grunts of agony and the distinct limp of a couple of members. Slater had hit a handful of them in debilitating spots — legs, arms, stomachs. They were all heading fast for the distant stairwell.

  Regrouping.

  Several of their outfit were dead, and they hadn’t anticipated such carnage when they’d been sent to retrieve a young child. All the devastation had occurred in a narrow timeframe, and Forrest likely had no idea of Slater’s capabilities.

  The hallway emptied out. Just as quickly as the gunfight had initiated, it was over. His ears rang and his body ached from the exertion, but he was otherwise unharmed.

  He lay there, flat on his stomach, and felt the raging fire of adrenalin dissipate along with the threat.

  In that moment Slater realised the gravity of the situation — it hit him like a freight train.

  He couldn’t protect everyone. These attacks would continue, unceasing, until Forrest ran out of men or Slater succumbed to sheer overwhelming numbers. Eventually his ammunition would run out and he would be cornered in the stifling apartment complex. Shien would be recaptured and Slater would die knowing he had uniformly failed on his final task.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  He had no personal attachment to Samuel — he pitied the man’s predicament, but the obligation to help Shien vastly outweighed any kind of inclination to protect the baccarat dealer. If Slater stretched himself too thin over the coming hours, he would fail everything at once.

  He needed to focus on a sole purpose, or he’d lose his mind trying to juggle every problem in Macau all at once.

  With that knowledge in the back of his head, he picked himself up and stumbled back into the main section of the apartment. Samuel and Shien cowered in one corner, both of them visibly shaking. As Slater went through the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other he winced — sharp pain shot through the outside of his knee.

  That was the worst part of all-out combat — injuries poured on without any awareness. He’d probably twisted his knee as he powered across the corridor with the weight of a door on his body, but it hadn’t even registered until the combat had dissipated. If he hadn’t sprinted around on a bad leg for those vital seconds, he might have saved himself from serious injury.

  Now that he noticed the damage, his brain concentrated solely on it. Every tiny morsel of pain amplified, compounding in his mind, convincing him he might never walk again.

  He broke out in sweat, slid down the closest wall, and stared at Samuel across the room.

  ‘I’m hurt,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And it’s only going to get worse. I can’t do this forever.’

  Samuel stared at him, flabbergasted. ‘What do you mean? Man, you just saved … you just saved my life. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Now you’re on your own.’

  ‘W-what?’

  With great difficulty, Slater picked himself up and reached into his pocket. He withdrew a single casino chip from the depths and tossed it across the room. It landed at Samuel’s feet. The dealer stared down at the mauve-coloured chip, in shock.

  ‘That’s not real, is it?’

  ‘You’ll find out. Mountain Lion scans every chip of that magnitude when you cash out. But it’s legit.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because I’m leaving you here, and I’m taking your laptop — two things which I know you won’t be happy about.’

  Samuel glared up at him, reeling. ‘You can’t, man. They’ll kill me.’

  ‘So hide. You’re a hundred grand richer. Go cash in your profits and start a new life somewhere. There’s nothing else I can do for you.’

  ‘You think I’ve got any chance cashing this in at Mountain Lion? They’ll round me up within seconds of walking through the door.’

  ‘It’s a big complex. Get in and out fast. You’ll be okay.’

  ‘I don’t know, man.’

  ‘Your call. Don’t cash it in, stay here, do whatever the hell you think’s best. But I can’t stay with you. I’ve got enough on my plate.’

  Before Samuel had the chance to respond, Slater limped across the room and snatched the chunky Dell laptop off the kitchen countertop — he slammed the screen closed and tucked it under the crook of his armpit. He motioned to Shien, who ran straight over to him, tearing herself free from Samuel’s grasp.

  He dropped the Beretta — it was nearly empty anyway — and took Shien by the hand. With a single nod of farewell to Samuel Barnes, Slater turned on his heel and hobbled awkwardly out of the apartment.

  Deep down, something told him he had just sentenced the young baccarat dealer to death.

  He hoped like all hell that Samuel had the initiative to figure things out for himself.

  ‘Lay low,’ Slater called as they walked out through the open doorway, stepping into a minefield of corpses in the hallway outside. ‘Good luck.’

  ’T-thank you?’ Samuel called.

  Slater fetched an identical Beretta M9 off one of the dead hostiles and ushered Shien down the length of the corridor.

  Keep moving, at all costs.

  19

  Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts was an impossibly large complex, with thousands of staff and tens of thousands of customers each and every day. The twin skyscrapers held enough resources to create what amounted to a miniature civilisation, a world in which high-net-worth gamblers and greedy tourists could get sucked into a hedonistic labyrinth for days and weeks on end.

  Time didn’t exist in casinos.

  Neither did laws.

  The two triad thugs sauntered through a dingy sub-level of the left-hand tower, taking their time so they c
ould talk before they reached their intended destination.

  They needed all the time they could get.

  ‘Any word from Jin?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘It’s been five hours.’

  ‘We need to operate under the assumption that he’s dead.’

  The first man bit his lip to suppress a wave of emotion — something that could readily get him killed in the world he lived in. ‘Ten years, Tak. Ten fucking years we’ve been in this business. The three of us grew up together. He can’t be dead. He can’t. He just went to check on the goddamn girl.’

  Tak — the older of the pair, with a decade more experience handling trials and tribulations — seized the other man’s wrist. ‘We’re in too deep. You can’t falter now — not at this hour. We can’t afford it. Antoine, look at me…’

  Antoine wasn’t the second man’s real name, but he had disposed of his birth name when he’d first dipped his toe in the business of the triads. It had been a transformational experience — he’d been forced to shed his old life like a snakeskin and leave the dirty slums of Singapore behind for a better existence.

  Antoine’s existence.

  ‘When is Forrest expecting us back?’ he said.

  ‘He wants this wrapped up in ten minutes. But I’m taking five more. This is our only chance to talk.’

  Antoine cocked his head. ‘We can talk above ground, surely.’

  ‘Forrest has surveillance fucking everywhere,’ Tak hissed. ‘No cameras or microphones down here. For obvious reasons.’

  ‘Why are we doing his dirty work?’

  ‘Because if shit hits the fan I don’t want him to suspect us.’

  ‘Why don’t we just kill him?’

  Tak furrowed his brow. ‘I thought you were smarter than that, my friend.’

  ‘It’s an option.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Do you know what a billion dollars can buy you? The allegiance of all organised crime in the country. That’s why we started working for him in the first place, you fool. We kill him and it’s a death sentence.’

  ‘We can go somewhere else if we get this money,’ Antoine said, persisting.

  Tak suddenly stopped in his tracks and seized Antoine by the throat. He slammed the young man against the closest wall and kept him pinned there, clenching his teeth and riding out a wave of fury. This section of Mountain Lion was shrouded in shadow, off-limits to all but a handful of staff, all of who were up to their necks in corruption. It seethed with debauchery and illegality.