by Rob Jones
Hawke sighed. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
Lexi casually brushed Chan’s paperwork on the floor and sat on the desk. “Many people say he made his first fortune in the human slave trade as a trafficker and used that money to invest in real estate before the economic explosion here in the last few years. Among those who know the real man and not merely the public persona he has a reputation for extreme violence and close ties to the Triads.”
“And now you understand my reluctance to give you his name,” Johnny Chan said, a look of vindication on his face. “I don't know what Sheng wants with the portrait but there’s word on the streets – rumors in the wind. Something very big and very dangerous is going to happen, and soon too. A man like Sheng doesn’t play games. He wants everything, and he’s already halfway there.”
“Yeah, you can shut up now,” Scarlet said, taping his mouth back up once again.
“This isn’t good news, guys,” Lexi said. “If Sheng really is behind the disappearance of the portrait and the murder of Hoffmann, then it must be him behind the theft of the Tesla device from the American transport vessel, and worse than that, Lea’s disappearance.”
Hawke sighed. “This sounds like bad news on a great many levels…”
“I’ll say. Does this mean I don’t get to shoot his balls?” Scarlet said, jabbing the Colt into Chan’s crotch a second time. Chan moaned beneath the duct tape. Hawke wasn’t sure if she was feigning the disappointment he heard in her voice or not.
“Afraid so. Cairo – you need to get in touch with Richard and give him an update. I’m going to speak with Nightingale and see if the Americans know anything about this.”
Scarlet contacted Sir Richard Eden. Hawke left Lexi in charge of Chan while he called Manhattan.
A second later Nightingale answered the phone.
“N, hi. Joe.”
“Well if it isn’t Joe Hawke,” she said. “Not heard from you for a while.” She sounded happy.
“What can I say? I’m a busy man.”
“And here I was thinking that you liked me. You know you asked me on a dinner date when you were flying into Athens. What happened to that?”
“Must have been the altitude,” he said. “And as I recall, you still haven’t even told me your real name.”
She laughed, but now there was a sadness to it. “I think you and I must have the world’s most dysfunctional relationship.”
“We’re in a relationship?”
“You know what I mean, Joe.” He heard her sigh. “So I guess you’re not calling to ask me on a dinner date this time?”
“Sorry, N, but no. I’m just wondering what you can get me on a guy called Sheng Fang. He has something to do with a case we’re on, only this time Lea is missing. He’s supposed to be a real...”
“A real bad guy, I know. And you’re talking about Lea Donovan, right?”
“Yes. Listen, you’ve heard of Sheng?”
“Sure. We’re not all as ignorant as you, Joe.”
“Touché, but I would prefer the word Anglo centric next time.”
“Hmm, if you say so. Sorry about Lea by the way. ”
‘Thanks, but we need information more than sympathy, N.”
“I know...”
He heard her firing up her computer and after a few seconds of key-tapping she came back to the phone. “Sheng’s a big player in the telecom sector in China – we’re talking twenty-five billion dollars here, and that’s just the legit end of things. Various covert agencies are pretty sure he still has a few fingers in the human-trafficking pie as well, and how much he makes from that we just don't know. His wealth makes your man Zaugg look like some kind of welfare bum. He has his own private island, and rumor has it that’s where he kills his enemies and holds his slaves.”
“He sounds like he has reach. Am I right?”
“You most certainly are. Sheng has so many politicians on strings he treats the National People’s Congress like a puppet show. Upsetting him is like upsetting China itself. You need to tread carefully here, Joe.”
“I will.”
“I mean, try not to be yourself at any point and you might just get away with it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re welcome. What’s your interest in this guy, anyway?”
“We think he’s behind the murder of a theological scholar in France and the theft of a portrait in Hong Kong. Oh, and the Tesla machine that you guys were playing with on an atoll in the Pacific.”
“The what?”
“Maybe you should start to do some research into that, N. I have it on very good authority – a General McShain of the US Army, for one – that someone recently stole a highly classified earthquake machine from the US Navy and now a little bird, call it a nightingale if you like – is making me think the culprit is Sheng Fang.”
“I never heard of a project like that, Joe – honest. But then I’ve been out of the loop for a long time I guess.” He heard another sigh and then a few moments of silence.
“Are you all right, N?”
“Me? Sure – why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just that you sometimes tune out for second, if you know what I mean. What happened to you, N? Why did you leave the CIA?”
“Maybe another time, Joe. I’ll tell you over that dinner date we’re never going to have.”
And then she disconnected.
Hawke didn’t have time to think about her last sentence. A second after he hung up, Scarlet ended her call to Eden and began to brief everyone on what he had told her.
“He says if it’s Sheng Fang we need to make sure we look after ourselves. He says Sheng is known by various British intel agencies for his trafficking empire, but no one has ever been able to link it back to him.”
Hawke frowned. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to spin out of control?”
“He’s utterly ruthless, Joe,” Scarlet said. “Richard just told me that the last man who crossed Sheng was a Japanese Yakuza rival by the name of Fujimoto. Sheng had him kidnapped right out of the heart of Tokyo and – you’re not going to believe this – apparently they found his bloated corpse on a beach in Kyushu. His body was covered in a thousand cuts.”
“Death by a thousand cuts?” Hawke said, shocked. “That really happens?”
“Lingchi,” Lexi said coolly, as she spun Chan around in the chair with her foot for amusement. “Slow dicing. An ancient Chinese form of torturing someone to death. They sliced off tiny parts of your flesh in non-lethal cuts. They made sure not to let you bleed too much so you would live through it all. Often the victim would even live through amputations of whole limbs. It could last for days.”
“Sounds almost as bad as the X Factor,” Scarlet said.
“And worse than that,” Lexi said, “the Chinese believed that those killed by Lingchi would suffer through all eternity because they would not have their whole body after death. It’s how Sheng likes to kill people.”
“He sounds like he might benefit from some professional therapy,” Hawke said.
“He sounds like he might benefit from a hot bullet,” said Scarlet.
“That’s nothing,” Lexi said. “He’s renowned for the pleasure he derives from torturing those who cross him. His torturer is a man named Luk, a former Triad heavyweight from Hong Kong. Not a man to get on the wrong side of. He’s a confirmed psychopath and sociopath – born with no conscience. That’s why Sheng hired him. He will do things to people no one else would ever dream of doing – that no one else would even be able to do even if they wanted to. If he gets hold of any of us then this is what we should expect.”
“That’s me not sleeping tonight...” Scarlet said. “Anyway, Richard said that if Sheng is behind the disappearance of the Tesla device then the lives of millions could be at stake...”
“There’s a but coming, right?” Hawke said.
“But...” continued Scarlet, “he seemed more concerned about the missing portrait. We’re
all scrambling to find out what’s going on but clearly the reference to Lei Gong the Thunder God and the missing earthquake machine are linked. What’s bothering Richard is what killing Felix Hoffmann to get the portrait has to do with any of this.”
“Doesn’t he have any idea what’s going on?” Hawke asked.
Scarlet shook her head. “Not really. He thinks maybe Sheng is after more than just an earthquake machine though, but the rest is up to us to work out.”
Hawke cleared his throat. “Lexi – now we know this Sheng guy is involved you can bet your bottom dollar we’re not going to be alone in this mystery for long, especially since we seem to have held up his little art purchase. Go to the back of the house and keep an eye out in case we get the kind of company our man Chan here says we can expect.”
Lexi went to the back of the villa but returned less than two minutes later.
“I hate to tell you guys this,” Lexi said, “but I think we already have a problem.”
“What’s up?” Hawke asked.
“I don't know who they are but a couple of SUVs just pulled up in the lane at the back and unloaded a dozen guys armed to the teeth. They look like they could take out a small army base.”
“I knew this day would come!” Scarlet said, pulling Chan’s Type 93 assault rifle from his desk and loading it up. “Seek and ye shall find, Joe.”
“Sure, but first take photos of the portrait and email them to Ryan right away!”
“Got it.”
Hawke flicked his eyes over Chan’s mini arsenal and selected a shotgun. Lexi opted for the Browning Hi-Power. “Looks like the war is about to begin...if only we knew who we were fighting.”
“Who cares?” said Scarlet. “Let’s just blast their bollocks off so we can get back and have a drink, that way we can...uh-oh.”
Hawke saw the look on Scarlet’s face. “What’s up, Cairo?”
“You’re not going believe this, Joe, but now I know why Chan was so reluctant to talk about how much he was getting paid to knock off the portrait in Hong Kong.”
“How?”
“Because another SUV has just pulled up out the front and the men who are getting out of it are holding Lea.”
“What?” Hawke could hardly believe what he was hearing. He raced forward to the window and saw she was speaking the truth. There, in the street outside Chan’s luxury villa was Lea, sandwiched in between two of Sheng’s goons.
“Looks like he was giving Lea to Chan as payment for stealing the portrait.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hawke said.
“I told you,” Lexi said almost in a whisper. “Human trafficking – it’s what Sheng does. This is how he pays people, with slaves.”
Not on my fucking watch, Hawke thought and pulled a gun from the desk.
CHAPTER TEN
Seconds later, Henshang Road became a war zone. The men assaulting Chan’s villa from the front took up what Hawke assessed as fairly professional positions in the street and front garden so he quickly had everyone take up the best defensive positions he could arrange with so little time.
Without waiting for an invitation, the men unleashed a terrific full-frontal attack on the property. Bullets piled into the stucco and blasted chunks of plaster from the walls onto Chan’s Astroturf. As they fired, groups of two or three men advanced on the house while their colleagues covered them.
“Cover the back, Cairo!” Hawke shouted.
Scarlet took off down to the back of the villa while Hawke and Lexi fired back at the men in the street, pinning a few of them down in an isolated location behind a magnolia tree. The men with Lea dragged her away to the side of the property. Now they heard Scarlet firing at the back of the house.
“Great,” Lexi said. “Looks like we’ve got the bastards on both sides.”
Outside, one of the men primed a grenade and hurled it at the villa’s large double doors.
“This just keeps getting better, Joe! They’ll be inside in seconds.”
The grenade detonated and blasted hand-size fragments of Chan’s oak-paneled door into the hall with savage velocity.
Then Scarlet returned from the back of the house. “As much as it pains me to say it, Joe,” she said, “I think we have to admit defeat on this one. There’s half the PLA out the back. They’re over the back fence and advancing either side of the pool. No way can I hold them off with this thing.” She held the Type 93 in the air. “I know I’m pretty bloody amazing but no one’s that good.”
“What I love about you is your humility, Scarlet,” Lexi said.
Scarlet smirked. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” said Lexi. “You have so much to be humble about, after all.”
Hawke rolled his eyes. “Can we just stop the cat-fighting, please? It feels like Charlie’s Angels in here and meanwhile Lea’s down there in the middle of a bloody war zone.”
Now the men were in the house. They could hear them systematically destroying every room, spraying bullets and lobbing grenades as they cleared the building room by room.
“Something tells me these guys are pretty serious about this portrait,’ Lexi said.
“This girl is a genius,” said Scarlet.
“Can it, Ice Queen,” Lexi said.
Scarlet glared at her. “What did you say?”
“Oh, that has to hurt, right?” said Lexi, reloading her Browning. She turned to Scarlet. “I mean with you loving yourself so much and everything.”
“Look, in a minute it’s going to be me shooting you, never mind that lot downstairs!” Hawke said. “We have to focus.”
“I’m always focused, darling,” Scarlet said. “Didn’t the Val Doonicans train you to be focused in stressful situations? Shame...”
Hawke ignored the traditional SAS slur against the SBS and tried to clear his head for a second. “Clearly whoever is behind the murder of Hoffmann and the theft of the Tesla device is also behind this,” he held up the portrait of Xi Shi, the First Beauty. “My money’s on this Sheng character, and it’s pretty obvious he’s found out we’re onto him and he’s not happy about it.”
“If it really is Sheng then we’ve got a real war ahead of us!” Lexi said, her words laced with a lethal mix of fear and anger.
“If it’s war he wants then war he gets,” Scarlet said. “Eden was very clear about stopping Sheng with whatever it takes. We have carte blanche.”
“Why don’t we just start with getting out of here?” Lexi said.
Scarlet raised her voice over the sound of the gunfire. “For once I agree with you!”
The sound of men screaming and whooping with joy as they trashed the villa below resounded up the sweeping marble staircase. More shots were fired and more wanton destruction meted out by Sheng’s army of thugs.
Hawke ordered Lexi to retreat with the portrait while he and Scarlet covered her from their position at the top of the stairs. There was a French window in Chan’s bedroom which opened onto a broad balcony, flanked either side by two mature magnolias. It was at the rear of the house, which was now clear as the men who had stormed the villa from that direction were now inside attacking the new position defended by Hawke and Scarlet.
Hawke took a deep breath and focused his mind. It seemed his life was on a permanent full-speed setting and there was no escaping the fact. Now, only they had the portrait and only they knew about Hoffmann and the missing Tesla device developed by the US Navy. This meant only they could stop Sheng and whatever deranged plans he had for the world. Now was no time to get killed.
He and Scarlet poured a savage rain of fire onto the men at the bottom of the stairs as Lexi sprinted for safety, but they were gaining ground. There were just too many of them to fight in such an enclosed space.
“Update?!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Scarlet craned her neck and watched Lexi slip through the window, the portrait safely in her grasp. “She’s out, Joe.”
“Then it's time for you to go too,” he shoute
d. Bullets traced past his head and ripped through a massive abstract oil painting Chan had had hoisted onto the wall at the top of the stairs.
“And leave you here alone?” Scarlet picked off two of the men with startling casualness and watched them tumble down the stairs and collapse in a heap on the polished hall floor.
“Yes, and now, Cairo! I can look after myself.”
Downstairs one of the men Scarlet had just shot was screaming in pain.
“Damn!” she said. “Thought I’d finished them both off.”
One of the man’s compatriots fired a short burst of automatic rifle fire into his chest and ended the moaning.
“Can’t say their hearts aren’t in it,” Scarlet said. “And it's time for us both to go, Joe – now!”
Hawke flicked his head to the open window in Chan’s bedroom and made a quick calculation. “All right – let’s get out of here,” he said. “You take the tree on the left and I’ll take the one on the right. In three, two, one...”
They deserted their position and sprinted to the large bay window in the master bedroom. As they climbed into the canopies of the magnolias they heard the sound of Sheng’s men racing up the stairs and blasting everything in sight.
“Race you to the bottom!” cried Scarlet.
“You’re actually enjoying this, Cairo. You’re certifiable.”
Hawke hit the fake lawn with a gentle thud a second before Scarlet Sloane, which caused her more irritation than the sight of Sheng’s men appearing on the balcony and raking them with more machine gun fire. The bullets tore through the magnolia canopies and peppered the Astroturf all around them.
“Over there!” Hawke shouted. “It’s Lea!”
He directed Scarlet’s attention to the far side of the lawn where Lea was taking cover behind a long hedge. She was holding a gun taken from one of the men who had been holding her before the shooting started, but who was now lying dead on the floor.
“And look there - looks like Lexi’s arranged some transportation for us.”
They gave Lea the signal to retreat back to the SUV, and they sprinted across the lawn using Chan’s mature gardens as cover for most of the way before running through the main gates and climbing into one of the SUVs Sheng’s men had arrived in – it was a brand new Jaguar F-Pace. The driver was lying unconscious on the road beside the vehicle, and Scarlet used him as a step to help herself into the car.