The First End

by Victor Elmalih

  Chapter 16

  Bill pulled his head back down and sighed. The small red-headed thief sat next to him behind the wall, munching on some unpronounceable snack. The wily little man hadn’t tried to run off yet, much to the American’s surprise. His name, amusingly enough, was Mouse. The significance of that was undoubtedly lost on Gardner for Chinese tended to view things differently. For all he knew, ‘mouse’ was a profound compliment.

  Rubbing at his face and smearing the stuff he had used to darken his features—he really didn’t want to know what had gone into making the stuff—he hung his head between his hands and let out another sigh. The crisp night air felt good every time he took a breath, though the odors of the city were not that pleasant when the breeze shifted, bringing in the smell of some nearby slaughterhouses.

  Hu, dressed in black fatigues similarly to Bill, crouched on the other side of the thief. He too sat back down, and even in the darkness, the lawyer could see the man’s fear. “No good,” he muttered. “No good.”

  Bill quite agreed with that assessment. The rooftop they had found gave them a clear view of the warehouse Mouse claimed the prototype aircraft was being kept. Based on the amount of armed security that roamed the premises, Bill did not doubt the little man’s claim. Mouse, after he had found out how much money Bill was willing to pay, readily agreed to act as a guide. Much as Bill had expected, the underworld knew of the plane’s existence and where it was being kept. Bill figured that this knowledge was important to a thief, if nothing else to know where to stay away from.

  Mouse, however, seemed to be cursed with an overly curious mind. While that might seem wonderful in a child, it often got a thief killed. Curiosity and greed rarely mixed well. Nevertheless, Bill counted it fortuitous to have found Mouse. The wily thief knew exactly where to go to observe the warehouse without being detected. Without that advantage and this rooftop, Bill felt he would have been caught for certain.

  Security around the building would have done credit to Fort Knox. Armed guards, dogs, and a nifty surveillance system made trying to penetrate the perimeter a nightmare. And that was just the outer layer. No doubt inside the building would make the outside nightmare seem peaceful by comparison. “Maybe if I had two months to plan,” he said slowly. But even then, he doubted it. This job couldn’t be done by one man. He would need at least an assault team just to breach the perimeter. The fence that surrounded the warehouse compound looked deadly. Added to the razor wire both on top and at the base of the fence, Bill suspected the entire thing was electrified. Just touching the thing would be enough to incapacitate an adult man.

  Hu glanced over and shook his head. “No do this. We die if try.”

  “I know, I know,” Gardner responded holding up a hand. “I don’t know what General Hynes was thinking!” He looked down at the small device in his hand. Roughly rectangular, it was made out of a black metal with but a single LED light in the middle. It was showing a steady green, indicating that the tracking beacon he had stashed on the Chinese fighter plane was within a mile of his current location. Well, at least he knew where the plane was.

  Hu looked troubled. “You sent to die?”

  That set the lawyer back a bit. “You think I was meant to fail? Why?”

  Hu shrugged. “Job too hard. You only one man.”

  True, none of this made sense. Bill understood the need to keep the US government out of the equation, but what could a single man do. Surely Hynes would have known of the futility of this mission. What’s going on?

  “Air bomb?” Hu inquired.

  “Air bomb? Oh, you mean an airstrike?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have any means of calling one. I don’t think there is a US carrier within striking distance in any case. Maybe the US bases in Japan, but an air strike would be an overt use of force. They would risk a war.”

  “War no good,” Hu agreed.

  “Come,” Bill beckoned his companions. “We can’t do any good up here. Let’s go back to the motel.” He stuffed the night scope into his bag, shouldered the backpack of explosives and crawled away from the roof’s edge. Mouse moved lightly, filtering from shadow to shadow, hardly discernible in the darkness. Hu’s size allowed him some freedom of movement, but Bill felt like he was crawling like a bloated slug. “I’m too short for this crap, man,” he muttered.

  An old metal staircase led down to street level on the side away from the warehouse. He didn’t fear being heard from this distance for the warehouse was nearly three quarters of a mile from the building they now stood upon. They descended quickly into the gloom of an alley that stank of rotting food and other things impossible to imagine.

  Once on the ground, Mouse took three steps away from the stairs and froze. So quickly did he stop moving that Bill almost ran the little man over. He pulled up in time though and backed off a step. Something was wrong. He could see it in the way Mouse stood, his face tight, his nose lifted, and eyes half closed. Bill looked around, but the deep shadows of the alley made seeing anything impossible. He tried to listen, but he heard nothing.

  Suddenly, Mouse squeaked—a very mouse like sound—and started to run. Bill hesitated and that saved his life. A bullet struck the metal staircase near Bill’s head and ricocheted away, leaving a flash of sparks in its wake. A second later, the gun report blasted the silence all to pieces.

  Everything happened quickly. Hu yelped and darted after Mouse, the thief having dove into the shadows of the alley, disappearing so profoundly that it looked as if he had just vanished. Bill, however, dropped straight to the ground and rolled, knowing that the darkness could only serve him. He drew his own handgun, but he didn’t have to wait long. A man, wearing a long black overcoat, materialized out of the darkness, and unloaded round after round in Bill’s direction. The bullets whizzed and snapped around his head and body, ricocheting off of the brick walls of the building or the metal staircase. One bullet grazed his shoulder, leaving a bloody tear in his shirt.

  Bill Gardner tried to return fire, but despite what the movies showed, it is not an easy thing to hit a moving target while trying to dodge bullets yourself. His shots went wide, splattering into concrete walls or chipping off chunks of nearby brick walls. Adrenalin finally overloaded fear, and he lurched to his feet just as the assassin bore down on him with an empty gun. Bill had a few more rounds left in his, but as he brought the gun up to bring it into line with the assassin, the Chinese man let loose with a kick that turned his wrist numb and sent the gun flying away into the darkness.

  Bill threw a punch of his own that the assassin easily dodged before unloading a series of punches that drove Bill straight back into the wall behind him. At least three of the strikes landed on the lawyer’s chest, causing him to lose his breath and sapping strength from his body at the same time. One caught him square in the mouth, snapping his head back into the wall. Pain and dizziness vied for his attention, and he nearly blacked out.

  If the assassin thought the American would collapse under the punishing blows, he was disappointed only by the fact that the wall kept the lawyer up right. Bill struggled to make the man out in the gloom, fighting away his dizziness and the blood that began to fill in his mouth. Instinctively he knew that if he didn’t react immediately, the man would kill him. But the Chinese man had Bill outmatched in pure skill. Bill had never seen someone so quick and deadly with his fists. It looked for all the world like one of those Kung Fu movies.

  Finally, the assassin came into focus as the man stalked up to finish Bill off. The man’s pock-marked face looked sadistic in the gloom, his leering grin frightening in the pure pleasure he took in the beating of his hapless victim. For one awful moment, Bill couldn’t react. His arms and body refused to cooperate, he couldn’t even lift his hands to defend himself. So he did the next best thing.

  He spat a mouthful of blood straight into the assassin’s eyes.

  The man screeched in surprise, and reacted by unlimbering a powerful, but partially blinded
punch to keep the big American away from him. Bill saw it coming straight at his face. He had no time to try to block or even dodge, so he jerked his head forward as hard as he could to take the punch square on his forehead.

  Fortunately, his forehead was stronger than his assailant’s hand. Bill heard bones snap as the smaller bones yielded to the harder, thicker one of Gardner’s head. The assassin screamed in pain this time. Bill’s eyes crossed from the blow and he almost fell. Shaking off the sensation he leapt forward, grabbed the assassin in a bear hug, twisted, and launched the smaller man into a wall head first.

  Although Bill’s head might be harder than the assassin’s fist, the cruel murderous discovered that his own head wasn’t nearly as hard as the brick wall of a large building. Head and wall collided with jarring impact. The assassin grunted once and then fell to the ground, either stunned or unconscious.

  Staggering over to the inert form, Bill reached down took hold of the man’s head and snapped his neck. He collapsed atop the body, his breathing coming raggedly, and his eyes going in and out of focus. He didn’t know how long he lay there, but he was finally roused by someone shaking his shoulder.

  “American? You okay?”

  Bill looked up, blinking. In the darkness he struggled to make out the face that looked down upon him. Finally he recognized Hu’s voice. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, his pounding head disagreeing sharply with his words. “Just give me a minute.”

  Hu crouched down. “We go now. Soldiers come.”

  Ah yes. No doubt the gun battle had alerted the soldiers. “Help me to my feet.”

  Hu did as requested, but held on tightly as Bill swooned, nearly collapsing again. His entire body hurt. His lips had been shredded against his own teeth, his chest felt like someone had done a Russian dance upon it, and his entire head pounded like some blasted rock concert.

  “Where is Mouse?”

  “Gone.”

  No surprises there. “Smart lad. We got to get out of here.”

  “American’s fight strangely,” Hu said as they limped towards the alley entrance. “I never see man use head like that.”

  Bill chuckled. “Trust me. It’s not something you want to do on a regular basis.”

  Suddenly the booted feet and clatter of equipment of approaching soldiers reached their ears. “Come!” Hu hissed. “We must flee! Hurry!”

  They weren’t going to make it, at least not in Bill’s condition. He needed at least one night to recuperate enough to be anywhere near effective. He might have even suffered a concussion from the blows to his head. Right then, he knew he wouldn’t escape.

  “Get out of here Hu,” he ordered, trying to dislodge himself from his companion. “I’m only going to slow you down.”

  “No! I no leave you.”

  “Do you want both of us to get caught? Get out of here!”

  Hu took a long look into the American’s eyes, and then turned them to the alley entrance, where the noise of the approaching soldiers echoed off the alley walls. He nodded once, then let go of Bill - who promptly staggered next to a wall for support. Hu ran back down the alley, abandoning the American to whatever fate was in store for him.

  Bill slumped against the wall, sliding down it to a sitting position. He half hoped the soldiers would miss him in the darkness and simply run by him. But that was his foggy mind at work, for no sooner did the soldiers rush into the alley then he was surrounded by three of them, each pointing a lethal looking automatic weapon in his face.

  A command in Chinese was issued and the soldiers stepped back a pace, but didn’t lower their rifles. A fourth man, this one wearing an officer’s uniform strode up and stood over the American.

  “Bill Gardner,” the man said affably. “You still live.”

  “You know my name?” Bill asked in confusion.

  “Of course, Mr. Gardner. We met very recently at a military exhibition in the Middle East. You seemed quite curious about my plane.” He smiled sadistically. “I’ve been tracking your movements since you came across the Vietnamese border, but let me tell that with a guy like you, it wasn’t an easy task. You have managed to escape us quite often.”

  Bill felt his heart sink.

  “My name,” the man went on, “is Wong Lee, and you are my prisoner.” He grinned evilly. “Which is an improvement, Mr. Gardner. I intended to kill you, but now that I have you, I think there are some questions you can answer for me.” His grin grew even larger. “I’ll kill you after.”