The car hit a particularly nasty pothole and lurched, its shock absorbers bottoming out.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Johnny called out.
“Sorry, boss, I do the best I can,” the driver replied. “We’re almost there now.”
“Where? I can’t see a thing.”
“Pier Forty, just like you say.” The driver took a sharp right and braked. “This is it. Okay, you get out here. You want ride back to town, you pay me again.”
“No, if this is Pier Forty, it’s where I want to be.”
In the glare of the headlights Johnny could see that he wasn’t going to be alone on the pier. Men and women of all races and apparent professions were lounging around, standing talking in small groups, or pacing back and forth.
Johnny opened his door and stepped out. The humidity in the air hit him like he was stepping into a wet towel. He walked around to the back of the limo, where the driver was pulling his suitcases, matched black leather, out of the trunk and stacking them on the ground between slimy puddles. Johnny was just as glad that it was dark, so he couldn’t see too clearly what might be floating there.
The door of the limo slammed and the car pulled away, making another quick right up an alley and out of sight.
“Pier Forty, Hong Kong,” Johnny said. “What an armpit.”
He looked up and down the quay. Whatever else might’ve been there, a ship wasn’t. After a moment he walked over to a man who stood leaning against the wall of a warehouse, reading a newspaper by the light of a small caged bulb above the door.
“Say, buddy,” Johnny began as he approached the warehouse. “Do you know anything about the Dragon Wing…?”
Then he looked at the paper the man was reading. In the center of the front page was the same photo of him yelling at the cameramen that had been on the other tabloid back on the sound stage in Florida. Johnny’s Chinese wasn’t very good, but it was good enough for him to read the headline: JOHNNY CAGE FAKE.
“Dammit, do I have to see this crap everywhere I go?” he snarled and snatched the paper out of the man’s hands.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of an introduction,” the man said, still leaning against the wall.
“Give me a break! I’m Johnny Cage!”
“Don’t let ’em get to you,” the man said. “It’s just as much a lie in Chinese as it is English.”
“Sure,” Johnny said. He looked at the man for a moment. “Say,” he said at last. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you Art Lean? I saw you fight in London. You were great.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” the man replied, pushing away from the wall. “And I’ve seen a couple of your films. You can’t fake those moves.”
“Tell it to the press.”
“Don’t let it affect you, man,” Art said. “What people say about you doesn’t mean a thing. It’s who you are that really counts.”
“Yeah?” Johnny said. “Well, in my line of work, what people say about you makes all the difference in the world.”
He looked over at the pile of suitcases stacked where the limo driver had left them. “Any idea how I can get those aboard the ship when it gets here?”
“You’re on your own,” Art replied. He took the newspaper back from Johnny and went back to reading it.
Johnny looked around, and spotted a young man in a plain shirt and slacks toting a duffle bag on his shoulder. “Hey, pal! Could you put these things on board when the ship comes in?”
“You want me to carry your bags?” the young man asked. He looked puzzled.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I pay money.” He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket. “Money.”
He waved the cash under the young man’s nose, then pointed to himself. “I pay. You” – he pointed to the young man – “carry” – Johnny pointed to the suitcases – “those.”
“You know,” the young man said, “you shouldn’t wave money around like that down here, Pops.”
He leaned closer to Johnny. In a confidential tone he added, “It just isn’t safe.”
Flat against the roof of one the warehouses, two figures watched the scene as Johnny and the young man haggled. The figure on the left lowered his binoculars from his eyes.
“You sure about this, lieutenant?” Jax asked his companion. “Nothing says that creep in the club wasn’t lying his ass off. The story about a ‘tournament’ sounded fishy. Kano could be a thousand miles from here by now.”
“No, Jax. I know Kano,” Sonya Blade replied. She was still scanning the pier with her light-amplification binoculars. “He’s in his element here with all the other wharf rats.”
Her binoculars picked up a heavily-muscled man, his head shaved bald, a giant snake tattooed around his left arm vanishing up beneath his short-sleeved shirt. She tracked him as he walked down the quay, stopping to exchange greetings with a woman dressed in a tight green jumpsuit. She had a double row of throwing knives hung like crossed bandoliers across her chest.
“I’ve never seen such a bunch of criminals and hardcases together in one place before,” Sonya said and resumed scanning the waterfront. “Sure as you’re alive, something big is happening down here.”
“Alive,” Jax said. “Just what I was thinking. Sure would be good if you stayed alive. People in my command get killed, I have to write up the reports. And you know how much I hate doing paperwork.”
“One day at a time,” Sonya said. “All I want is Kano.”
A cold, wet breeze came in off the water, stirring Sonya’s hair and making her shiver. Down on the pier, the wind stirred the dirt and scraps of paper into dust devils, miniature cyclones that danced evilly among the trash and puddles.
“What the hell is that?” Jax breathed beside her. Sonya followed his glance with her binoculars, and stared.
A fog was blowing in off the ocean – swirling between the pilings and bollards of the pier, wrapping itself around the moving figures of the people on the dock. The mist was thick and white, like a cotton blanket, but with an oddly luminous quality. Sonya imagined that it took the form of writhing human bodies, of open screaming mouths, of staring eyes. It had a smell, too – the smell of rot and corruption.
The wind rose and the fog streamed in from the sea faster and faster, like a white river. And in the midst of the fog came a ship.
In the magnification of her starlight binoculars, Sonya could make out the details of the ship’s construction. This wasn’t any ordinary craft. Built like a typical Chinese junk, it was far larger. Even from her location on the roof of the warehouse, she could hear the crack of the vessel’s rigging, the flapping of its sails.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing about the ship. The junk wasn’t showing any lights. The sails were tattered. Water was pouring from the deck as if the whole ship had just been raised intact from the bottom of the ocean. A tangled mass of seaweed covered the prow, and the hull planking was warped and encrusted with barnacles.
The ship made straight for the pier, even though no sailors were visible on deck, and came to an abrupt halt when it headed the landing.
“There’s a name,” Sonya said. “On the sternboard. I make it Dragon Wing”
“I don’t like this, lieutenant,” Jax said. “Not even one little bit. ‘And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: And they were judged every man according to their works…’”
A gangplank thrust across from the deck of the hull, hitting the pier with a dull thud.
Sonya’s hand reached out and squeezed Jax’s arm. “Look there,” she whispered. “About three o’clock. Who do you see?”
A motorcycle was moving down the pier at a walking pace, its engine growling deep and low. It stopped in the shadows beside a warehouse. A big man got off and began to walk toward the ship. He stopped and looked directly up to the place where Sonya and Jax lay concealed. His red, glowing eye shone through the fog.
“Kano!” Sonya said. “That’s him.”<
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She rose to her knees, pulled out her pistol, jacked a round into the chamber and reholstered it.
“I suppose that if I ordered you not to go down there I’d have to write you up on mutiny charges in the morning,” Jax said.
“Something like that, major.” Sonya moved in a crouch toward the iron ladder leading from the roof down to the street. “I’m bringing him in, dead or alive.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Jax said. “If Kano’s getting on that ship, then he’s already dead.”
The crime lord was halfway to the water’s edge, just as one of the many who were climbing the gangplank onto the Dragon Wing. Sonya paused at the top of the ladder, every muscle of her body taut with frustration.
“Major! He’s getting away!”
Jax made a decision. “Okay, lieutenant, you can try to arrest him. But if you aren’t back in twenty minutes, I’m coming in heavy.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sonya said. She swung one leg onto the latter.
“In the meantime,” Jax said, “try to use some discretion, okay? And if they want to make you pay a silver penny to get on board, don’t go!”
“Sure thing, sir.”
Sonya put her other foot on the rungs. Then she was gone, climbing down into the swirling mist.
CHAPTER FOUR
Johnny Cage heard the murmur like a rustle of leaves on the wind: “Dragon Wing, Dragon Wing, Dragon Wing!” repeated over and over in dozens of languages, rising from hundreds of throats, as the fog streamed over and around him, too thick to see anything. His own voice added to the swell of sound as he breathed, “The Dragon Wing!”
He turned to his pile of luggage, frowning. He managed to get a couple of his suitcases in hand a couple more clamped under his arms, the ones with the more important parts of his wardrobe and personal gear, but he had to leave two or three of his pieces of matched luggage behind. He wasn’t used to carrying his own gear anymore, not since he had been a young fighter heading to Hollywood with a knapsack on his back and big ideas in his head. He’d been lucky, he knew that, but he was talented, too.
Cage moved slowly along with the crowd to the landing where the gangplank lay on the pier, weighed down by his equipage. The gangplank was slippery underfoot. Once his hand brushed the manrope at its side and his skin crawled; the rope was wet and slimy to the touch.
The fog had concealed the true size of the vessel. It was huge. The crowd from the dock thinned out and dispersed aboard it, leaving Johnny alone as he struggled aft with his heavy cases. Mist swirled around him. He almost tripped over a young man unrolling a pad on the deck.
“Hey,” Johnny said, recognizing him. “You! I lost some of my luggage because of you.”
“My name isn’t ‘you,’” the young man said. “It’s Liu. And I’m not your porter or anyone else’s.”
“You know who I am?” Johnny demanded. “I’m–”
The breath was knocked out of him and he was sent sprawling on the slippery deck by a sudden blow from behind. He rolled to his feet and lunged up to catch the shoulder of the person who’d just smacked into him.
“You want to play rough, asshole?” he demanded as he spun her around.
He found himself staring down the barrel of a nine-millimeter pistol held in a two-handed combat grip by a young woman wearing a dark-blue uniform. Her lips were red and her hair was as yellow as gold. In the pale phosphorescent light her skin appeared dead white.
“No, not interested in playing,” she said. “Are you?”
“Oh,” Johnny said. The muzzle of the pistol looked like it was about a yard across. “No need for that. I’m Johnny Cage. You know, the movie star. And you are…?”
The woman ignored his introduction. “Have you seen a big man, one glowing red eye, come this way?”
She was pretty – or she would be if she’d just smile – but her question made no sense at all to Johnny.
“Who? No, I haven’t.”
The ship shuddered slightly under his feet, and the wind stirred his hair as it veered.
“Then get out of my way, asshole.” She lowered the pistol, still holding it in two hands, and walked off farther aft, moving gracefully.
“Who the hell was that?” Johnny asked, brushing muck from the deck off his tailored jacket the best he could.
“Looked like just another one of your star-struck fans to me,” Liu said, grinning.
Sonya Blade continued aft, stepping carefully. She was certain that Kano had headed this way, and she was going to find him. The dark opening of a companionway loomed out of the fog ahead. Nothing for it but to try. She went down the dark ladder one step at a time, making sure of her footing all the way.
A slight rolling of the deck told her that the ship was probably underway. Well, that wouldn’t stop her, not while there was still a mission to perform. At the foot of the ladder she came to a passageway, leading forward. She paused for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the deeper gloom. Pale green light illuminated it enough to make out the deck and the bulkheads on either side. Pistol held before her, she made her way carefully along the passageway. The passageway ended, opening out into a hold, its farther recesses lost in shadow. Sonya continued forward, her eyes scanning constantly.
The hold ended with a bulkhead running athwartship, its smooth surface broken only by a single wooden door. Sonya approached the door carefully. She had a dreadful feeling that she was being followed, that the creaking she heard wasn’t just the planks of the ship reacting to the forces of wind and water, but something sneaking up behind her. Just as she was about to spin around to see what might be there, the door opened before her, its hinges moving silently.
A man stepped out of the lighted doorway and into the hold. She brought up her pistol to bear on him. His face looked surprisingly young for the air of command he assumed. He wore the richly embroidered silk robes of a mandarin.
“Sonya Blade,” he said, his voice deep and steady. “It’s an honor finally to meet you. I am Shang Tsung.”
He bowed low before her, then rose again, never losing eye contact. His eyes were strange. They seemed to glow. To glow red, like Kano’s eye. Kano.
“You’re not who I’m looking for,” Sonya said. “I’m a federal officer under the United Nations’ command, in pursuit of a dangerous international criminal. I’ll have to ask you to step aside.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Shang said, his voice tinged with sadness.
“Yes you can,” Sonya replied. “I’ve got an arrest warrant for a drug and arms dealer named Kano, and if you give me any grief I’ll take you in, too, on a charge of aiding and abetting. He’s a murderer, and I want him.”
“Very impressive, my dear,” Shang said. “But this is my ship. If you want a tour you’ll have to ask me. Nicely.”
“Hey, don’t give the lady a hard time,” came a sudden voice from behind her. “She’s just doing her job.”
Sonya glanced back over her shoulder. It was the movie star, standing there with a dopey grin plastered all over his face, and the little Chinese guy behind him.
“When I want backup, I’ll radio for it,” she hissed. “Just what I needed. More civilians to get in the way. Now take a hike.”
She turned her head forward again, just in time. Two men dressed in black robes – one with a blue overmantle and one with yellow, both with full-head masks also in black – came sliding from the shadows that gathered where the subdued lighting of the hold didn’t extend. She recognized the garb: ninjas, the secret master assassins of feudal Japan. One of the ninjas stood in front of the little group, the other behind them.
“You got that radio handy?” Johnny whispered.
Sonya lifted her weapon and pointed it at the figure who stood before her. Deep blue light seemed to pulse around the ninja’s hands.
“Move aside,” she commanded.
By way of response, the ninja reached out, incredibly fast, and touched the muzzle of her pistol. Through her gloves S
onya could feel the gun freeze in her hands, the cold so deep that it was painful. Ice crystals glittered in the air around her weapon. Then the ninja took hold of the slide and twisted. The pistol snapped in his hand. The slide, the barrel, the receiver – everything forward of the trigger guard broke in a crystallized line.
Sonya threw the useless hunk of metal which remained to her at the ninja’s head and dropped back into a fighting crouch.
“Whew-ee!” the young Chinese man behind her said. “Trick or treat!”
Johnny Cage, meanwhile, had problems of his own. When one of the ninjas stepped behind the little group, Johnny had turned to face the yellow-mantled newcomer. This isn’t a stuntman, Johnny reminded himself. No need to pull the punches. Go as hard and fast as I can – I may not get a second chance.
To his surprise, though, the ninja didn’t attack. At least he didn’t attack with any of the classic combinations of hand, foot, and body which Johnny had studied and trained against. Instead, the ninja held up his right hand, palm out.
The skin on the ninja’s palm split open into a long, bloodless gash from top to bottom. And out of the unnatural wound a creature emerged. It began in the shape of a spike, then elongated, grew, and took on a sinuous life of its own. Then its jaws snapped open, revealing rows of pointed teeth, dripping with venom. A long, forked tongue flickered out and then slid back between its jaws.
The creature waved in the air like a cobra seeking its prey. Then it stiffened, locked on Johnny’s position, and began to advance toward him.
“Holy crap,” Johnny whispered in amazement. “Last time I fought something like this the special effects guys added it in postproduction!”
Liu still faced forward. He looked at the last man, the one who wore embroidered Chinese robes and who had called up the two ninjas out of the darkness. Liu recognized the man.
“You!” he exclaimed. The eyes were the same. They were the eyes from his dream. “Sorcerer, I know you!”
He lunged forward toward the older man.
In the blink of an eye Shang Tsung changed form, his body shifting into the appearance of a man in a samurai’s armor, sword raised over his head.
Mortal Kombat: The Movie Page 4