by Gabriel Hunt
“She was my sister.”
Cheung seemed truly at sea. Mitch wondered if he was going to toy with her, string her out, maximize the pain. But what he said was infinitely colder. He again turned to Ivory and said, “What does she want? Money? Then pay her some money.”
“I don’t want your money,” Mitch said through clenched teeth.
He looked at Mitch as though truly seeing her for the first time. “You want an apology?” He shrugged. “Very well—you have my apologies for your loss.”
Mitch said, “That’s not all. You know that’s not all.”
Cheung had already turned to resume other business, but allowed himself a parting shot: “That’s all you get, my dear.”
Mitch’s thumb snapped the martini glass she was holding at its stem. With the base held against her palm, she shucked Dinanath’s light grasp and lunged at Cheung’s face, putting her shoulder into the thrust.
Ivory was there instantly, his hand arresting her wrist in a vise-grip, as though he had snatched a fly in midair. The jagged stem of the glass hovered inches from his own eyes. He had stepped in to shield Cheung with unnatural speed. Stoically, he nerve-pinched the glass from Mitch’s hand.
Cheung was grinning—not smiling. The expression was vulpine. “See if you can find another Dumpster,” he said to Dinanath. “And don’t alarm the dakuan.” Cheung needed the high-rollers to remain unagitated.
The backwash of adrenaline in Qingzhao’s system was nauseating.
In a vital confluence of dozens of moving people and wavering vantage points, she’d briefly had the perfect shot at Cheung’s head—maybe time to get two or three rounds in before general panic ruined the target. And that American bitch had spoiled everything!
Now this…this amateur was being escorted to the security nest.
But wait: after a beat, she saw Cheung and his head of security (that son of a bitch, Ivory) headed the same way.
She still might have a chance.
Qingzhao moved across the grand hall as quickly as she could, blending.
“This is really good for headaches,” said the Chinese security man, who wore Buddy Holly glasses and a goatee, and was apparently named Chino. He was referring to a leather glove on his right hand. The glove had rivets across the knuckles. He punched Mitch a second time in the side of the head. “Got one, yet?”
His first punishing blow had been dealt to the left side of her head, so it was only fair that he rock her back the way she came. For balance.
Mitch lolled in the chair, half-conscious.
Chino automatically became less cocky when Cheung and Ivory entered the security room. Zero kept to his monitors.
“Oh, don’t do it here,” Cheung said, piqued.
Before further debate could ensue there came a businesslike rap on the door. Chino yanked it open, prepared to repel all invaders. “What!” he said, full up with brine.
Qingzhao shot him in the head.
Mitch tried to scoot her chair out of the way of Chino’s falling corpse and wound up dumping herself backward on the floor. One chair arm cracked violently loose and the bindings securing her fell slack. She freed herself as quickly as she could.
More gunfire. She saw Ivory tackle Cheung and both men disappeared through the slanted observation window in a hailstorm of glass.
Zero huddled in a quivering ball beneath the console where his monitors were disintegrating from bullet hits as Qingzhao tried to track Cheung.
No go.
Qingzhao was holding her hand out to Mitch.
“Come on. We’ve got to go now.”
The moment Chino answered the door was the same moment that Gabriel Hunt, freshly arrived from America, entered the Zongchang casino ship for the first and only time in his life.
Chapter 5
Gabriel Hunt’s first view of the Zongchang was impressive—the ship was one of the four Kiev class warships built for the Soviet Navy in the mid-1970s and decommissioned in 1995. One was sold to the Indian Navy for modernization; one was scrapped and the other two were sold to China as “recreational pieces.” The nonmilitary paint job incorporated a lot of dead black and silver, in sweeping lines that reminded Gabriel of formula race cars back in the hero days, before all the advertising sponsorships.
He wondered if any of the ship’s firepower was still functional.
Gabriel had just gotten his first taste of the vast main gambling floor when two men came exploding through a slanted, one-way observation window at the far end.
Flashes of gunfire, from within the chamber.
And a split-second glimpse of the only person in this place that Gabriel might recognize—Mitch Quantrill, dolled up as her own sister. Blood on her face.
Gabriel moved as the main floor erupted into chaos.
A Frenchman in the poker pit stood up and stopped a stray round, his busted flush flying into the air like cast-off flower petals. Half the clientele hit the deck while the other half was galvanized into directionless flight. Gabriel shoved one runner aside in time to save his life. The man cursed him in Arabic. The casino’s black-suited security men had unlimbered a frightening variety of snubbed full-autos and were handing their disorganization back to the crowd in the form of scattered bullet-sprays at anything and everything that might be an antagonist. Gabriel knew that, in a firefight, those little earphone-buds only worked in the movies, so if the shooters were trying to communicate or coordinate, right now they couldn’t hear a damned thing.
The racket was incredible inside what was still essentially a huge metal room. Flat-nosed slugs chuddered up a balustrade and destroyed a fake Grecian urn next to Gabriel’s head.
The two acrobats who had made their grand entrance by defenestrating from the security portal were still trying to find their wits and their feet. One man was yelling and pointing. The other was trying to shield his boss.
Forgoing the increasing availability of weapons as a good contingent of assorted bodyguards and security men inadvertently shot each other, Gabriel bypassed his instinctual craving for a firearm (if anything, he would have wanted his Colt, but he’d left that stashed back on the Foundation jet) and made for the vacant security window. Mitch was up there. Alive, dead or compromised—he had no way of knowing except through immediate action.
Slugs tore across the baize at his heels as he hit a chemin de fer table at full tilt and vaulted toward the gaping eye of the blown observation port. Its rubberized mount was fanged with shards of glass but Gabriel managed to pull himself up and over.
He found himself in the security nest with a couple of dead guys and one gibbering employee still stashed beneath the console. Equipment was sparking and blowing out all around him as incoming fire destroyed costly electronics the way rock breaks scissors.
Outside the nest door was a secondary corridor more in keeping with the ship’s utilitarian naval origins—a lot of cast iron and shatterproof lights.
Thirty yards ahead, Qingzhao and Mitch encountered two security men rushing toward the danger zone. Qingzhao flat-handed one in the face, pile-driving his palate back toward his spine. He collided with his buddy, whose legs Mitch took away in a fast and clumsy sweep-kick. It was enough. The man bonked rivets and decking with his head all the way down. Qingzhao quickly disarmed them and handed off the extra firearm to Mitch.
They had no time for a huddle. No time to exchange numbers. No time to recognize each other as anything but an ally.
“Where to?” said Mitch.
“Out,” said Qingzhao.
They untethered a blistering spray of bullets back the way they had come, just as Gabriel Hunt ran into their field of fire.
Gabriel flattened out in a home-run slide. An inch higher, a split second sooner, and he would have caught a bullet in his left nostril.
The women were firing at the gunmen who had crowded into the passage in Gabriel’s wake. Men who were shooting back just as ferociously as the women tried to flee.
Hornet swarms of lead exchanged pos
ition above Gabriel as he pulled himself into an opening in the wall—steam piping, cold now, unused in the new incarnation of the aircraft carrier. There would come an eyeblink instant when all shooters had to reload, and that was what Gabriel was waiting for.
The volley ebbed and Gabriel mad-dashed for the next hatchway, knowing from seafaring experience how to grab the upper ledge and swing through without giving himself a skull fracture.
Mitch had spotted him during the exchange. She had even uttered his name—“Gabriel?“—but this had gone unheard in the cannonade. She hesitated. Qingzhao had to drag her along with a snort of frustration.
Her yanked arm erupted with sudden pain and Mitch looked down to see a bullet hole in her left shoulder. Dammit, she’d been hit! Stupid!
They were trying to figure out which way to abandon ship when Gabriel came soaring at them from the hatchway in a flying tackle. Expertly catching both women by the neck in the crooks of his arms, Gabriel used his momentum to take them over the observation deck edge and tumbling down into the drink.
The water was clammy and stale.
Gunners were already shooting at them from the upper deck—automatic swath-fire that sent bullets down into the dark water like deadly snail darters.
Qingzhao had kicked off her heels and was already stroking for the surface, swimming toward one of the patrol boats. Gabriel saw her since she was three feet away. But when they had splashed down, he’d lost his grip on Mitch and had no idea where she was. He tried to see her through the murky water, tried to reach for her, but it was hopeless.
Current was pulling them, still submerged.
“Help!” A voice that blurred as Gabriel surfaced and water decanted from his ears.
It was Qingzhao, ploshing about to attract the attention of one of the security men on a skiff. His face was split in a grin of rough good fortune; here was an enticing female delivered unto him by the sea!
When Qingzhao got a grip on his extended hand, she swung her gun out of the water and shot him.
Modern technology had some advantages, Gabriel conceded. Wet guns could still fire. Modern cartridges had to be submerged for some time to become useless. Otherwise, nobody could ever have a shootout in the rain.
Qingzhao used her leverage to tumble the perforated guard into the water. She quickly took control of the boat, as though this had been her exit strategy all along.
There was still no sign of Mitch, and other boat sentries were catching up in a big hurry.
Gabriel felt a sting at his temple as a bullet passed within millimeters. Enough.
He swung one arm over the side of the skiff and pulled himself in just as Qingzhao floored it. Gabriel was hurled indecorously back against a padded vinyl seat as Qingzhao throttled the boat up full.
“Sit down,” she barked over the howl of the engine.
With at least three speed-skiffs behind them, they were ramrodding into a tighter section of the waterway, dodging sampans and houseboats. Qingzhao could not bank fast enough to avoid hitting a hua-tzu—one of the smaller, narrower, canoe-like boats used by fishermen. The steel-reinforced ramming prow of the skiff cut the hua-tzu in half as Gabriel saw the occupant jack-in-the-box himself skyward in panic.
Their pursuers chopped through in their wake, destroying what was left.
Gabriel felt the sea air cool the sweat on his forehead. The skiff was headed at high speed directly for an elaborate floating restaurant in the middle of the harbor. It was the size of a city block, lit up like a Christmas tree with strung lights, and completely encased in a service latticework of bamboo.
Diners inside enjoying the splendid view of the river were no doubt dismayed by the sudden sight of a speedboat rocketing toward them with no possibility of detour, followed by a contingent of similar boats firing lots and lots of bullets in the direction of the windows.
Qingzhao banked the craft hard, attempting a bootlegger’s reverse, but the skiff crashed gratingly into the bamboo superstructure and got hung up with its prow sticking through a shattered window.
Gabriel had a flashpop-image of Qingzhao jamming an extra magazine from the skiff pilot’s pistol into her décolletage. Then she was diving into the eatery, the patrons and staff of which had taken some small notice of their cacophonous arrival. Gabriel plunged in after her.
Cheung’s men were already coming in the shoreline entrance.
As Gabriel pounded through the swinging double doors of the kitchen, he saw Qingzhao jam the extra magazine of bullets into a flaming brazier.
An instant later, the bullets began exploding. Cheung’s men collided with each other in their haste to find sparse cover and evade what they thought was ambush fire.
Gabriel pushed his way through hanging skinned fowl and fish dangling from cleaning hooks. The cooks were all yelling and taking cover. Steps ahead of him, Qingzhao appropriated a gigantic silver meat cleaver from a bracket on the wall.
Cheung’s men would be gathering outside the kitchen door about now, massing an assault.
Gabriel and Qingzhao went out the back, shot glances in every direction. At the southern end of the floating restaurant was a loading spur as crowded as a parking lot with assorted boats that arrived hourly to meet the needs of a business that advertised fresh-fresh-fresh. Gabriel took Qingzhao’s arm, careful to avoid getting within striking distance of that cleaver, and aimed her in the direction of one particular vessel that had what seemed, from this distance, to be an empty hold. She searched his face for an instant, apparently didn’t find whatever signs of incipient betrayal she was looking for, and followed his lead.
The gunners stood down when Ivory cut through the destruction in the restaurant. He stopped and stood staring out at the water for a moment.
“Did you know who that was?” said Dinanath breathlessly, trundling up behind Ivory.
“My responsibility,” said Ivory, more to himself than to his coworker.
“Stop the traffic and search these boats.”
The junk was captained by an old-school river rat named Lao, whose grin revealed he had had all his teeth replaced with steel substitutes decades ago. He was the first to be allowed to leave the supply berth at the Floating Feast Superior Restaurant, since all he carried was a hold full of tuna that could not be delayed, for spoilage.
When he put a little distance between himself and the Floating Feast, he saw the tuna piled in his hold begin to move.
Gradually, as though surfacing through a muck of cloudy fish jelly, Gabriel and Qingzhao materialized amidst the odiferous cargo. They had jumped into the belly of the empty hold and Qingzhao had used the cleaver to cut the net holding the fish overhead, burying them summarily.
The smell was…memorable.
Lao extended a courtly hand to help Qingzhao up to the deck first. He jabbered at her in reedy, mutated Mandarin.
“What did he say?” said Gabriel.
“He thanks us for the marvelous new knife,” said Qingzhao, indicating the cleaver, which Lao was turning over in his hands like a rare jewel.
His smile matched the metal cutting edge.
Gabriel wanted to say something ironic, tough and competent. But he raised one hand to his temple instead, where the bullet had stung him earlier and where he now was suddenly conscious of wetness welling. Instead of fish oil or the dank, frigid bilge water of the hold, his fingertips were smeared, he saw, with blood. The last thing he thought before he lost consciousness was: Well, I guess the whole lecture thing is pretty much blown.
Chapter 6
When Gabriel opened his eyes, he was staring at a parked motorcycle.
Which was odd, because he seemed to be indoors.
A series of smells hit his nose—smoke, burning wood, incense, packed dirt, pine-scented air, charred paper, and beneath all that a subtle tang of gasoline, gun oil and engine lubricant.
Most enticing of all was the smell of coffee.
The bike appeared to be a vintage German BMW R-71 from 1938. Four-stroke, 750cc, with a sid
ecar, just like dozens seen in every World War II movie ever made. This one looked newer, and was more likely one of the painstaking Chinese rebuilds called Changjiangs, very popular with motorcycle clubs in this part of the world.
He heard light rain pattering down into what sounded like a Japanese water garden.
He tried to rise and found he was lying on a rawhewn wooden pallet and facing a huge rope candle on a rusted bronze stand. The candle was fashioned on the same principle as the gigantic coils of incense Gabriel had seen in assorted Eastern houses of worship. It could burn for hundreds of hours if fed through the windproof receiver judiciously.
Wick-smoke twisted ceilingward and the sudden light of the flame made his head throb. The chamber was roughly circular, the walls formed of ancient cut stone blocks.
There was a dressing on his head. He touched it gingerly. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, which was nice. He figured the bullet must’ve come closer than he’d realized, must have hit him a glancing blow, perhaps scoring a neat groove in his thick skull. He’d made it a while on adrenaline alone, but when that had run out…
He tried to stand up and experienced whirling vertigo. At first he thought it was from his injury but a moment later he realized that the floor of the room actually was slanted, and a moment after that he realized it was necessary to compensate for the incline of the building itself. The effect was disorienting, though he suddenly knew where he was: in one of the leaning pagodas outside Shanghai.
Through a small alcove he caught sight of the temple ruins outside.
He was halfway up a mountainside, inside snaggletoothed fortifications choked by wild foliage. The leaning pagoda jutted crookedly toward the stars, like Pisa.
Several centuries ago temples like this had served as waystations for travelers as well as locations for worship and ritual. They generally consisted of three sequential courtyards, each with its own shrine. He made his way through an overgrown courtyard to the nearest of the shrine rooms. It was so large Gabriel could see clusters of bird nests near the holes in the domed ceiling. It was mustier in here where the damp had gotten through to the limestone. Vines had claimed the walls.