[Redaction Chronicles 02.0] Sentinel Five

by James Quinn

  The moment Gorilla stepped outside his squalid room on the fifth floor and into the equally dilapidated hotel corridor, he knew something wasn't quite right. The corridor, no bastion of well-lit walkways at the best of times, was in complete darkness. He toyed for a moment with going back inside, but he knew it wasn't a realistic option for him… he'd always been the kind who goes forward into the darkness, come hell or high water. He began to slowly walk towards the end of the long corridor. He had a choice: straight ahead to the lift, or turn to the right and the stairwell. In the darkness, neither were perfect options, but his survival instinct told him that being trapped in a lift would mean death, whereas the stairwell would at least give him room to escape or manoeuvre.

  He'd almost made it to the lift and was about to reach for the door handle of the stairwell when a figure stepped casually out of a small alcove which held a long-dead potted plant. Gorilla could barely make out the man's features, except for the fact that he was Chinese, athletically built and dressed in a dark suit and shirt. At the same time, a similar figure emerged from the other side of the stairwell door and barked something at him in Chinese. Gorilla had no idea what the man said; in fact, he had no need to, because they were both speaking a language now that Gorilla was intimately familiar with – violence. The first Chinese leg breaker stepped forward and threw a powerful roundhouse kick straight into Gorilla's stomach, and from that moment on all the talking was done and combat had become the speech of the night.

  Such was the force of the kick, Gorilla doubled over as it impacted on his torso and no sooner had he crouched down than the other Chinese leaned in and with a ferocious yell, hit him hard on the side of the face. Gorilla experienced a flash of pain and then warm blood flowed from a cut above his eyebrow. His head was whirling, down was up and vice versa, then he felt his body being thrusted upwards and propped against the wall. Then came multiple blows to his stomach; snapping, punishing punches – not in a flurry, but in a controlled manner. He was fighting for breath and thought he would pass out at any minute.

  He turned his eye toward the Chinese man who'd kicked him initially and saw that he was slipping a heavy wooden knuckle duster onto his hand. Gorilla guessed that the two Chinese must belong to one of the many Gung-Fu street schools; they were certainly well trained and knew how to inflict pain professionally. What he knew for certain, was that if that knuckle-duster came into play and got to work on him, he would be pissing blood for months and might never walk again.

  The heavyset Chinese moved forward, rubbing the knuckleduster menacingly with his off hand while his partner held Gorilla in place against the wall. Knuckles craned his head forward and began to yell directly into Gorilla's face, almost as if he was psyching himself up for what was inevitably, at least in his mind, the end of the performance. Bad mistake sunshine, thought Gorilla. He might not have been a trained martial artist, but Gorilla Grant had earned his spurs in many a good street fight. It might not look pretty, but bloody hell, was it effective. Just a few more inches Knuckles, he thought as he slowed his breathing for what was about to come. A few more inches and… BANG! Gorilla thrust his head forward with full power and smashed it directly into the nose of Knuckles, who proceeded to fly backwards into the darkened corridor, blood covering his face. Like all good street fighters who'd been brought up the hard way, Gorilla knew that as soon as you deal with idiot number one, you have to deal with idiot number two. He turned into the other man, ducking his body down and delivered a devastating uppercut into the man's balls, heard his cry of pain and then he grabbed his ears, wrenching his head downwards before he brought his knee up into the man's face. He watched as the guy crumpled onto the floor. Not stopping his momentum, Gorilla went to work on the pair with a good old-fashioned football party; kicks to the heads, thighs and hands. His shoes took the brunt of the blows well, they weren't designed for the type of punishment Gorilla was dishing out to Knuckles and his friend, but that didn't stop him from putting force behind the kicks.

  The men were down, but not out. Gorilla turned and searched for an escape route; the street would be no good, there might be more waiting outside. So the best choice was up to the roof and then across the buildings until he could get to safety and gather his thoughts. He ran for the stairwell and pounded up the steps that would take him to the roof. Behind him, he could hear the pounding footsteps of the Chinese strong arms… and he knew there was only one more floor before he'd make it. He didn't look back, instead concentrating on powering his legs to take him forwards and upwards. He dismissed the sounds of running feet behind him, hoping that the access door at the top wasn't sealed, or he'd be at a dead-end.

  He by-passed the fifth and final floor doorway and kept running; from the corner of his eye he could make out the dark suited figures of the two Chinese thugs on the level below him. A few more feet and he found himself on the top landing, a musty, dusty place filled with empty packing boxes. There it was, the door to the roof – wooden and cracked with peeling paint and a weak-looking handle. He took a step back, braced himself and kicked out at the lock, it wobbled but held. Another run and kick and… the door flew open, shattering the lock. His eyes, already accustomed to the darkness of the hallway were more than ready for the sultry night outside. He was just about to make his escape when the bodyweight of one of the Chinese hitters cannonballed into him, taking them both to the ground. Gorilla was fast getting back to his feet, but the Chinese was faster and launched a lightning-quick kick at Gorilla's head, which he absorbed at the last second by throwing up a guard and grabbing the man's striking leg simultaneously. Gorilla pulled the man towards him and shot out three jabs with his right hand in rapid succession, straight into his jaw. The Chinese was out cold, but Gorilla wasn't finished with him just yet.

  Gorilla was small, but he was strong. He lifted the man onto his shoulder in a fireman's lift and ran towards the edge of the rooftop, fifteen feet away. Sweat and blood was running down his face, and for a brief second, he thought his legs might simply give way underneath him. He made it though and he didn't even stop, he simply lifted and threw the Chinese man over the side of the building and watched as his body fell sixty feet into the darkness of the alley below. He heard the sickly crunch when the body landed. There was no need for a second look, thought Gorilla, the man was dead.

  It was the sound of feet from behind that alerted him. Gorilla turned, wiping the blood and sweat from his eyes. He saw Knuckles waiting by the roof access door, his fists up and ready in a fighting stance. Obviously wanting to try and finish what he'd failed to start, thought Gorilla. This time the Chinese leg breaker had two wooden knuckle dusters pushed onto his fists. They began to move counter-clockwise, circling each other, seeing who would make the first move, like boxers in a fighting ring. There was only one way to go and that was through the access door, anything else would be a sixty foot drop to the death. Gorilla's gaze fixated on the wooden knuckles. He knew he would last three seconds once they hit his face. If he'd been armed with a handgun, this would have been over a long time ago. But Masterman's rules had been strict – no firearms. When they want to let him in, they'd supply the shooters, he'd said.

  Gorilla could see the man edging ever nearer, a step at a time, his fists up and ready in a Wing Chun fighting pose, and while Gorilla didn't have a gun to finish Knuckles off, he did have something which had been with him for a very long time and was, in some ways, more deadly than a firearm. In the final second before Knuckles decided he was ready to attack and launched himself at the unarmed Caucasian , Gorilla did something he was very practised at. He reached into his jacket pocket and in one fluid motion – a flick of the wrist and nothing more really – a shard of razor sharp steel opened up and slashed twice at the Chinese leg breaker, just as he came into range. First to the left and then a sudden back cut to the right. Gorilla heard his wail of pain, before blood and viscous fluid sprayed in an arc of crimson and yellow.

  The Chinese staggered backwards, his fists clutching
at his eyes, screaming in pain. Gorilla stepped back, the cut-throat razor held at the ready in case a follow up strike was needed. But there was no necessity. Gorilla had cut across the man's eyes, popping both of his eyeballs and rendering him blind. Fight over.

  * * *

  Gorilla took the man to the ground and placed his knee down hard onto the back of his neck. Knuckle's face was a mask of blood and it was being pushed hard into the gravel on the rooftop. “English – you speak English, sunshine,” said Gorilla calmly. He was all business now. The man said something in Cantonese, something guttural. Gorilla guessed it wasn't complimentary. “Okay, here's what I'm going to do. In exactly one minute, I'm going to lean your arms against the lip of the roof and stomp down on your elbows, one at a time, and break them. It probably won't be a clean break, because I've never done anything like this before, but it will be a break. So on the off chance that you do understand me, you've got forty seconds left before I go to work on you.”

  Knuckles thrashed about blindly on the floor, but Gorilla simply increased the pressure of his knee against the back of the man's neck. “Of course, you'll already be out of action for good, what with me cutting out your eyes, so broken arms won't get you back into the job market anytime soon, will they? Hey, what did you get paid for this? Twenty dollars? Forty? Doesn't seem like very much for being blinded and disabled. Twenty seconds left…”

  Knuckles was panicking now, but in among his shouts Gorilla was sure he heard the word “Okay!”

  “You sure you don't speak English? Oh well, never mind. We're out of time anyway,” Gorilla said as he dragged the Chinese man by his leg to the edge of the roof. “So, I'm going to brace your arm at an angle and then with just a little hop and CRACK! Hopefully, that will do it.” Gorilla placed the man face down and wrenched his hand onto the lip of the roof, holding it in place with his meaty fist so that the back of the Chinese man's elbow was facing upwards. It looked so vulnerable and brittle, thought Gorilla. It wouldn't take much…

  “No, no, no!”

  Gorilla didn't move, continuing to hold the sacrificial arm in position. Just because Knuckles actually did understand English, it didn't mean he was going to start revealing his life secrets.

  “I tell you! I tell you!” the man screamed, pleading with his tormentor.

  “Who's your boss?”

  “Arrgghh! We work for a guy, tough guy work. Collect protection money,” Knuckles said desperately, blood mingling with sweat on his face.

  “Well, I don't need protecting,” said Gorilla. “Who paid for this to be done? Tell me and I won't break your elbows.”

  “A Gwaih Lo, someone who did business with our boss. British…”

  “Did he have a name?”

  “I don't know… maybe…” Knuckles said, stalling for time.

  “We can start on the knees as well as the elbows,” Gorilla warned. “I mean; it's not like you can run away. Bloody hell, you'd probably just fall straight off the roof in a blind panic.” Gorilla chuckled at the prospect.

  “Janner, I think that was the name, Janner. That's the name the boss said. But we don't hear no more please… please…”

  Janner. That was the name Trench had been using in the nightclub. The little bastard. Question was, did Trench suspect him, had there been a leak, or was this a test? Was Trench just seeking confirmation that the Gorilla still had his old skills? Either way, Gorilla promised himself he would have a reckoning with Trench.

  “And you promise, you won't break my arms? My work, I need them for that!”

  “I promise.” Gorilla did what needed to be done and left Knuckles where he'd found him, by the door of the stairwell to the roof. Someone would hear his cries soon enough, and come to his aid. True to his word, Gorilla didn't break the man's arms. Instead, he'd found a length of discarded lead pipe and smashed all of the fingers on both Knuckles hands to a bloody pulp.

  Gorilla thought that was a poetic form of street justice.

  Chapter Nine

  Frank Trench lay back on the rumpled sheets of the king-sized bed in his tenth floor luxury suite at the Mandarin Oriental, and exhaled a sigh of pleasure and relaxation. The Mandarin was his favourite hotel whenever he stayed in Hong Kong, a luxury he could now afford.

  The young Chinese whore he'd paid for earlier had only recently scampered from the room, off to another client, maybe… or maybe, Trench thought, he'd worn her out for the night. Trench rated himself an excellent lover; well, maybe not a lover, but he considered himself great at sex. He turned his head to the right and looked out at the sparkling lights illuminating a dark Kowloon Bay. He was amazed by its beauty, it was almost hypnotic and he could feel the last of the stress and tension of the last few days easing. Sleep would inevitably take a hold of him soon.

  He'd checked with his people within the Karasu-Tengu clan about bringing Gorilla Grant on board. Had sold him up well; ex-intelligence officer, expert Redactor, noted gunman, left SIS under a cloud.

  The word had come down from Hokku, the Raven's second in command, to keep Gorilla under surveillance while the 'source' checked out his recent activities. Trench knew better than to question Hokku any further. This was sacred ground, things Trench rarely got to hear about: the clan's source, a person who was somewhere high up in British Intelligence. It was the holiest of holies. Whoever the source was, he'd been instrumental in setting up Trench for recruitment and delivering the rest of the old Redaction mob to be brutally murdered. Trench had only heard his codename in passing and even then, only by accident. Salamander: a poisonous, hidden creature who skates along silently beneath the surface. Who the source might actually be, Trench had brooded about many a time, but he was no closer to discovering the man or woman's identity. Less than five hours later he'd received a call from Hokku, to say that Jack Grant had been given an initial 'clean bill of health' from Salamander and the Raven had given permission to go ahead and recruit Gorilla. But Salamander would keep checking… just in case.

  Trench's mind turned to more recent events. It was a shame about Gorilla. When he hadn't made it to their rendezvous at the restaurant downstairs earlier, Trench had naturally assumed that the two leg breakers he'd sent had gotten a bit too 'handy' with their Gung-Fu, and paralysed Gorilla at the very least. Still, it was better that he found out now that Gorilla had lost his touch, rather than when he'd come under the clan's protection. It was fair enough to lose your touch, if you were a sportsman or an actor, but in their lethal profession, it was a death sentence. Never mind, Trench thought, he would send some flowers to the hospital tomorrow…

  Trench didn't know how long he'd been asleep when it happened. He would guess no more than thirty minutes. But sleep has a strange way of disorientating the unwary and Trench couldn't be sure of anything. When it did happen, it happened not gradually, but with rapid fire intensity. He was vaguely aware of the darkness of the hotel room, and caught some kind of physical movement from the corner of one barely-opened eye… and then he felt the weight of a body on top of him, kneeling on his chest. A strong hand covered half his face and he was aware of the sharp tang of steel at his throat, a gentle but lethal pressure resting near his artery. He risked opening the one eye further and aided by the ambient light from the city, he looked up into the bearded and furious face of Gorilla Grant.

  “We need to have a bit of a talk, Trench, and if I don't get the answers I want— Well, let's just say you'll be making a bit of a mess on this fancy bedcover,” Gorilla growled, a hiss of menace under his breath.

  Trench's heart pounded away double time as he snapped into full awareness. Christ, he could feel the pounding of his heart against Gorilla's knee and he panted, struggling to think straight through the panic which was swiftly overtaking his senses. “Jack, look… arghhh!”

  Gorilla had drawn the cut-throat razor an inch, only an inch, along the skin at Trench's neck, not deeply, but it was enough to let the prone man know Gorilla meant business. “Shut the fuck up Trench. Speak when you're spoken
to.”

  Trench nodded as best he could and made a determined effort to slow his breathing and calm himself. He'd badly underestimated the smaller man, something he was kicking himself over now. But he was canny enough to know that if he wanted to survive this encounter with the little assassin, he would have to play it completely straight from here on in. Gorilla had a way of sniffing out bullshit.

  “One question. Why?” asked Gorilla.

  “You daft or something, Jack? I had to know that you were on the level, not with SIS anymore,” replied Trench, some semblance of control returning to his voice.

  The anger in Gorilla's voice was evident. “I already told you that… they can go and fuck themselves after what happened in Rome! I don't work for those pricks. It's me, on my own.”

  “Plus…”

  “Plus what?”

  “Plus, I needed to see that you were still capable, that you hadn't lost either your nerve or your touch, for Christ's sake. My people take their killing very seriously and they don't like gunmen getting the jitters at the last minute when a trigger needs to be pulled,” said Trench reasonably.

  Gorilla leaned in towards Trench's ear. “And you thought by sending those two cretins after me, that was the best way to test me? For the record, Trench, one took a dive off the side of a tall building and is probably being eaten by some back alley rats as we speak, and the other has lost the sight in both eyes and won't be playing the piano anytime soon. The whole thing took about five minutes for me to sort out. So a test? No fucking way. It was an insult.”

  They seemed to have reached an impasse and Trench, knowing how to work a situation, decided to try his hand and go for broke. “So where do we go from here, Jack? As I see it, you can open up my veins and scoot back to your shitty little hotel and shitty little life scrabbling around looking for a job… or we can both sit down over a decent scotch and you can listen to my proposal.”