by Isaac Hooke
"Stand here." He pointed beside the weapons cache.
Jade obeyed.
Ethan retrieved a confiscated P250 from the floor. "You know how to use one of these?"
She nodded slowly.
He handed the pistol to her. "If anybody moves, kill them."
"What are you doing?" Bretta hissed. "We can't trust her."
Jade stared at the pistol for several moments; she abruptly spun around and unloaded two rounds into Lo Leung.
The stout man sputtered, coughing blood, then collapsed like a deadweight.
Jade glanced at Ethan and said, casually, "He moved."
"She'll do," Ethan told Bretta. He stepped over Jade's spent shell casings and shoved Chen. "Take us to your office."
Chen parted the beaded curtains, revealing a flight of stairs. "This way."
The stairway was cramped, dimly lit by a lone bulb in the ceiling. At the top, Chen parted another beaded curtain and entered an office.
"No sudden movements," Ethan warned him.
The office was half as big as the poker room downstairs. There was a desk with two guest chairs in front. It contained papers stacked in neat rows beside a portrait of a woman and two children: Chen's wife and children most likely. Beside the desk were filing cabinets.
The walls were adorned with different tapestries representing the twelve animals from the Chinese zodiac: Dragon, Rabbit, Tiger and so forth. The animals were usually depicted in a fighting pose. The rabbit, for example, had huge incisors and claws, and was ripping open the neck of a rat it had subdued.
Ethan glanced at Chen, who stood near the desk. "The info on Al Sifr?"
Chen pointed at one of the cabinets.
Bretta positioned herself so that she could cover both the door and Chen at the same time.
Ethan approached the indicated filing cabinet.
"Third drawer," Chen said. "Fifth divider. Should be red."
Ethan opened the drawer. He located the fifth divider. Red. A lone folder was wedged between it and the next divider.
Ethan placed the MP5 atop the cabinet and retrieved the folder. He opened it to reveal a lone sheet of paper, along with several blown-up photographs.
"You have to be kidding me," Ethan said, glancing at Chen. "This is all you have?"
Chen smiled. "I'm sorry, yes."
Ethan studied the sheet. On it were a bunch of addresses. "What am I looking at?"
"That is where I send Al Sifr's diamonds," Chen said.
Most of the addresses belonged to ports spread across France and Italy, with a few rural locations in Switzerland. Among them he recognized the Marseilles shipping address used by the Bergerac vineyard he'd already helped eradicate. Sam was going to be busy sending out takedown teams over the next few days.
"Your phone," Ethan told Bretta; Lo Leung's minions had confiscated his own back in the heroin den.
She tossed him her smartphone. "The PIN is 9403."
Ethan unlocked the phone and photographed the document. He took snapshots of the other material in the folder, too: surveillance photos of Al Sifr and presumably his accomplices, engaged in various sexual acts with prostitutes. Chen had the pictures commissioned for leverage purposes, probably.
When he had captured all the data, he launched Bretta's secure messenger app. Cellphone reception was weak, but he had enough of a signal to send the documents digitally to Sam.
He glanced at the first page one last time and spotted an aberration in the list: a bank address and vault number in Switzerland.
"This one." Ethan walked over to Chen and pointed out the address. "What is it?"
"That's where I send diamonds when I want to make a purchase of weapons or women. It's a vault in Switzerland. The diamonds are placed inside, I notify a contact via an encrypted computer program, and a few days later a driver pulls up to my nightclub with the requested goods."
"Encrypted computer program," Ethan said. Probably I2P Messenger. "I was told your triad only keeps paper records."
Chen gestured toward the filing cabinets. "As you can see, that is true. The computer program is only for certain clients. Like Al Sifr."
"Where's the computer you use for this?"
"In the hands of a trusted assistant," Chen said. "I can summon him for you, and he will be here in the morning."
"Give me his details instead," Ethan said.
"It is stored on my phone," Chen said.
Ethan retrieved Chen's phone from his pocket and had the man point out the Chinese characters of the appropriate name on his contact list. Ethan took a photo of the man's details with Bretta's smartphone and forwarded it to Sam along with a short note explaining what it was. He also instructed Sam to pay particular attention to the bank address on the earlier list he'd sent. When finished, he tossed Bretta her phone.
Ethan found an empty suitcase leaning against one of the cabinets. He stuffed the folder inside, and then decided to gather as many other folders as he could. He'd grab one, flip through it, and toss it into the suitcase if it looked promising. Although unrelated to the current mission, he hoped at least some of the folders might yield actionable intelligence. The documents were stored in the HQ of a mob boss, after all.
Chen remained standing near his desk the whole time. Ethan glanced at him occasionally; the man pretended to view the different animal tapestries nearby.
"What did you just do?" Bretta abruptly said when Ethan wasn't watching. The anger was obvious in her voice. She closed on Chen.
The triad boss shrugged. "Nothing."
"What happened?" Ethan said.
"While pretending to look at his ugly tapestries, he leaned against the desk and touched something underneath." Bretta groped under the desk with one hand while keeping her Px4 aimed at Chen, who had backed away.
Ethan grabbed the MP5 from the top of the cabinet and went to Bretta. He knelt: almost immediately, he spotted a small button underneath the desk's overhang.
"There's some kind of panic button." Ethan stood up and shoved the barrel of the MP5 under Chen's chin. "Tell us what you did."
"I summoned a few police friends," Chen admitted.
"How many is a few?"
"A Blue Beret platoon."
The Blue Berets were the Police Tactical Units of the Hong Kong Police Force. The nickname referred to the blue berets the PTU members wore as part of their patrol uniforms. A platoon was thirty-two elite officers.
"Shit." Ethan glanced at Bretta. "I think it's time we made our exit. Grab the suitcase, would you?"
He covered Chen while Bretta retrieved the document-laden suitcase.
When she returned to his side, Ethan stashed both MP5s under the desk—he'd need something more low-profile if he wanted to get out of there alive.
He plucked the P250 from his waistband holster, rammed the pistol into Chen's ribcage, and led him down the stairs. The corridor was so tight that he was basically flush against the man the whole time. Bretta followed just behind.
In the poker room, Jade was precisely where he'd left her, pistol still aimed at the unarmed henchmen lining the wall.
Ethan realized almost immediately that something was wrong.
"One of the henchmen is missing," Ethan said.
Jade smiled. "Very observant."
She calmly turned her P250 on him.
30
Ethan noticed that the confiscated pistols were no longer on the floor behind Jade, either.
The henchmen promptly lifted their shirts and produced said pistols from inside-the-waistband holsters.
"What did they promise you?" Ethan asked Jade, keeping his own P250 stabbed into Chen's ribcage.
"Everything," Jade said.
"Shoot her," Chen said simply.
His minions didn't comprehend what he was asking at first. Neither did Ethan.
"Shoot Jade!" Chen repeated.
"No!" Ethan said.
The henchmen obeyed, unleashing a flurry of gunfire at Jade.
Ethan dragged Chen in front of Bretta
and maneuvered behind him so that the crime boss served as a human shield for the both of them. Then he opened fire on the henchmen, most of whom still had their attention on Jade. He concentrated on those targets located to his front and right. Judging from the pistol reports he heard behind him, Bretta took the remaining targets on his left.
Some of the men returned fire. Ethan was aware of two rounds striking the carbon nanotube lining of his suit jacket—even though the bullets lost much of their kinetic energy after passing through Chen, the impact areas would probably bruise later, judging from the sting. Mostly he was concerned for Bretta, who had no ballistic protection at all.
He moved his aim from target to target, shooting away. In three seconds, between them Ethan and Bretta had all the henchmen sprawled dead or dying on the floor.
"You okay?" Ethan asked Bretta through the ringing in his ears.
"Fine."
Ethan threw away the dead sack of the crime boss and hurried toward the door to the heroin den. He engaged the deadbolt, which had been opened. He crossed the room and shut the bolt on the eastern door as well.
Behind him, Bretta roamed the floor and deposited final headshots in those men warranting them. She left Jade alone. When finished, Bretta stashed the Px4 in her purse—the pistol was probably out of ammo—and grabbed a P250 from one of the dead.
Ethan went to Jade. The poor girl lay motionless in a pool of her own blood. He started to kneel beside her but Bretta's urgent voice drew his attention. "Ethan."
He glanced at her. She was standing beside the series of monitors that provided surveillance of the club. He approached and saw Hong Kong PTU members on the screens, rushing inside, dressed in full tactical body armor. Some of the officers had already reached the heroin den below. They waved Remington 870 shotguns about, sending the white-robed girls and some of the less intoxicated clients running from the den.
"Damn it," Ethan said. Jade had probably allowed someone to call the police the instant he and Bretta had left the poker room, minutes before Chen Tang had pressed his own panic button.
"We're trapped," Bretta said. "How good is Sam at getting people out of Chinese prisons?"
"She's not," Ethan said. "Gotta be another way out. The eastern door—"
"Leads to the VIP area," Bretta interrupted. "We can't go that way, either. Look" She pointed at another screen. PTU officers were rushing that area, too.
"There's no other way out of this room," Bretta said. She had her phone in hand. Secure texting for help. Too bad the closest support team was thousands of kilometers away.
"Should we call Paul?" Bretta asked abruptly.
"Go ahead," Ethan told her. "But I don't think the chauffeur can help us."
She selected his name from her contact list and held the phone to her ear. "He's not answering."
"Figures," Ethan said.
Motion drew his gaze to Jade. She was struggling to raise her head. She looked at him pleadingly from the floor. A tear rolled down the side of her face.
Ethan holstered his handgun and hurried to her. He knelt in the pool of blood that had formed around her body and resisted the urge to lift her in his arms, knowing it would only cause her pain. Her entire torso was shot up. There was nothing he could do for her.
Her lips were moving. He leaned closer.
"Behind the tiger," she whispered.
"What?"
Her eyes glazed and she stared lifelessly at the ceiling.
Behind the tiger.
Ethan recalled the tapestries in Chen's office. Could it be...?
"Bretta." Ethan stood, nearly slipping on Jade's blood. "Let's go."
He passed through the beaded curtain and into the stairwell.
"Where are we going?" Bretta said from behind him.
"Apparently our friend Jade was quite familiar with the office of the crime boss." He felt a jab of pity at the sad life she had endured, and the even sadder way it had ended.
He reached the office and surveyed the Chinese tapestries with their various animal images hanging from the walls. There, a tiger pinning a bloody zebra to the ground.
He moved the fabric aside. Sure enough, a hidden door awaited.
Ethan exchanged a glance with Bretta, then turned the recessed handle and opened the sliding door. A cool draft swept over his body.
Crouching, Ethan entered the tight wooden passageway. Bretta followed, shutting the door behind her and plunging the corridor into darkness.
"Got a light?" Ethan said.
"Don't smoke," Bretta responded. Despite her playful words, her voice sounded tense.
The passage lit up as she activated her cellphone's flashlight mode. She passed him the device.
Ethan checked the power level. Only thirty-five percent. Quite low, especially considering how quickly the flash bulb could drain a battery.
Though Ethan's own smartphone had been confiscated, he still had Chen's. Wanting to have a backup light at the ready, he retrieved the crimelord's phone from his jacket, only to discover that it had taken a bullet during the firefight. Useless. He returned it to his pocket in the off-chance the analysts might still be able to retrieve data from it.
Ethan directed the narrow cone of light ahead of him and proceeded onward. The tight confines forced Bretta to follow him in single file.
The wooden passageway ended in stairs leading down into darkness.
"Maybe we should wait it out," Bretta said, sounding anxious.
"What if the police ransack the office?" Ethan argued. "And tear down all the tapestries? We keep going."
The stairwell proved even tighter. Ethan had to crouch low, and the wooden walls scraped his shoulders on either side. The actual steps protruded by only a couple of inches from the risers, forming very thin foot supports, and there were no handrails to hang onto—though the walls pressing into his lateral deltoids were handrails enough, he supposed.
"Not something you want to fall down," Ethan commented.
"Not exactly," Bretta agreed.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw she had removed her high heels. Probably a good idea.
After descending roughly twenty feet, the stairs leveled out in a landing. Unfortunately, two paces later more thin steps presented themselves.
Bretta was breathing hard behind him.
"Don't tell me you're winded already?" Ethan joked, though to be honest he felt slightly out of breath himself. As he wasn't working all that hard, the only explanation was a drop in blood oxygen saturation. He hoped he was wrong. Suffocating to death in the escape tunnel of some Triad boss was not exactly how he wanted to go.
"I don't like enclosed spaces," Bretta said.
"You and me both," Ethan muttered. He checked the battery level on the phone. The bar had turned red. "That was quick."
"What?" Bretta asked
"Your phone is already at twenty percent."
"Then let's go, please," Bretta said.
Eventually the passage leveled out and the wooden walls ceded to gray rock. Condensation dripped from small bumps in the ceiling, matched by similar protrusions on the floor.
The corridor became even narrower as Ethan proceeded, becoming little more than a tight, slippery crevice, so compact that the only way to continue was by turning his head and sidestepping. He was forced to point his feet in opposite directions, as well as his hands. He felt like the Vitruvian Man in Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing.
Ethan's breath reflected from the rock in front of him, sounding loud in his ears. Jagged areas snagged his clothing at times, sometimes so thoroughly that he had to retreat and free the fabric by hand, while at other times his jacket or pants simply tore. Other protrusions scratched his face and chafed his hands. Ethan cursed Chen for being such a tiny man.
"If there is a hell," Bretta announced behind him. "I'm in it."
"Things could be worse," Ethan said.
Bretta's phone abruptly died, plunging them into darkness.
"Whoops," Ethan said.
&nbs
p; "You better be joking." Bretta sounded none too pleased.
"Sorry. Your phone actually died."
"Thank you," Bretta said. "Thank you very much."
Ethan kept going by touch alone. With his lead hand, he felt the walls on either side, looking for turns or branches. He always tested the ground with his front foot before placing the entirety of his weight, worried that he might fall into an unseen chasm.
About five minutes passed. His night vision would have kicked in by then, but there was absolutely no light to see by, none whatsoever.
His breathing sounded louder than ever, reflected from those walls. Listening to it, he realized there was something missing: he no longer heard Bretta's respirations behind him.
"You still with me, Bretta?"
He held his breath. Nothing.
"Bretta?"
No response.
"Shit."
31
Ethan couldn't turn around—the passage was far too tight. He simply retreated by moving sideways in the opposite direction.
He began to hear breathing behind him. It seemed several feet away. It wasn't normal breathing, either: Bretta was literally gasping for air.
"Bretta, what's wrong?"
She didn't answer.
He sidestepped further until the ragged respirations were right beside him.
"I'm here Bretta."
Only that terrified breathing came in return.
"Bretta."
Nothing.
"Samal," Ethan said. "Sergeant!"
Her Israeli army rank seemed to do it, because she finally answered:
"I can't see," she said between gasps. "I can't feel my fingers. Or toes!"
Ethan reached out—his fingers brushed skin. He explored further. It was one of her hands. She was still holding the suitcase. He relieved her of her burden, letting the suitcase drop to the ground with a loud thud. Then he held her palm in his own.
"We're going to get through this," he told her.
"But I can't see," she repeated.
"I can't either."
"No, my vision," she said between gasps. "It's crowded by pinpoints of light. I'm suffocating. There's not enough oxygen in here. And my fingers. My toes. I can't feel them."
"You're not suffocating," Ethan said. "You're hyperventilating. But if you keep it up, you're right, there definitely won't be enough oxygen. You have to calm down." He squeezed her hand tighter. "Bretta, relax. If you don't, you'll kill us both." He wasn't entirely certain about that—the oxygen levels seemed to have stabilized—but he hoped the guilt would help bring her to her senses.