by Gabriel Hunt
The gun settled comfortably into her grasp. With the helmet and weapon, she could pass for another uniformed solider, if no one looked too closely in the midst of all the commotion.
And while Gabriel and Ivory were still occupied with Qi’s few remaining molecules and the contentions of General Zhang, Mitch made straight for the Peace Hotel.
“Zhang and the Tong leaders will expect treachery,” murmured Sister Menga, not looking up from her steaming chalice of entrails.
“We shall be allies,” said Cheung, making the knot in his necktie hard as a walnut. He was clad in his conventional businesswear, augmented by the sort of veneered body armor Ivory had favored.
“You are children in a nursery, squabbling over toys,” said Sister Menga. Each of her pronunciations seemed to issue from the haze of incense smoke just before her. “You carve coffins and hope events turn in your favor. You are losing your grasp, but not the strength of your grip.”
“And you are starting to sound like a fortune cookie,” said Cheung. “Why not feel my skull and tell me the future? I might as well burn Hell Money or seek the favor of paper gods.” He spun on his adviser. “Ivory is lost to me. Guanxi is lost. That is what it takes to achieve what I want, and I do not shrink from it.”
One of the Tosa dogs rose from Sister Menga’s nest and padded out into the Junfa Hall. The other followed soon after. Since Dinanath was gone and Shukuma was occupied, stewardship of the dogs would currently be the purview of a man named Yu Peng, who had come to be in Cheung’s service from the Gedar Township of the area formerly called the Tibet Autonomous Region after the devastating earthquake there in 2006. Another Ivory recruit.
Cheung wondered how many of Ivory’s recruits might turn, how many remain loyal.
The dogs’ barking echoed through the museum ambience of the hall. They, too, were impatient for action.
Yu Peng would calm them down.
The other man in the hall was a Brazilian, newly hired by Cheung to salvage his skills from a murder rap in Sao Paulo. His name was…was…
Cheung hated the imprecision in his own mind. Romero? Chino? No, they were dead. Ayala, that was it. Dagoberto Ayala.
The Russian soul of Anatoly Dragunov, smoldering inside the shell of the persona he presented as Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung, resented his inability to enforce brutal fixes to essential, simple problems. In Shanghai the protocols were about ritual first, then political gain. This was frustrating. He understood peace through dominance and reflected that his plays were all logical and effective. Pawn for pawn, he reigned among ruthless men. Gabriel Hunt had come to China for a reason, and that reason had nothing to do with Valerie Quantrill’s unfortunate but necessary murder, or with her deranged militant sister. All these events were threads of a tapestry of challenges and rebuttals which Sister Menga had foretold in her cloaked fashion, but which Cheung had also seen in terms of his own destiny. Gabriel Hunt was here because now was the time for Cheung to discover the Killers of Men. Gabriel Hunt’s brother was here because a bargaining chip was needed in reserve. If this revelation required the betrayal of Ivory—Cheung’s Immortal—then so be it. He had sacrificed his Number Ones before and would probably be required to do so again. Right now, he had no one in mind to sacrifice. While he had carved another little casket, he remained uncertain to whom it should be assigned.
According to a transmission from one of Zhang’s lieutenants, the wrecked helicopter in the middle of Zhongshan Road contained none of the nearly twenty men sent with Dinanath to investigate the homing beacon with which the Nameless One, Qingzhao, had been kindly belled by Ivory. This spoke as evidence in Ivory’s favor. Yet Qingzhao had no pilot skills. There was a fatal gap in information and hence, treachery was afoot everywhere today.
The soldier had reported back—not Shukuma. Another failure.
Dinanath had not reported back from the leaning pagoda.
His men, his men—were they all cowards or corpses?
Cheung was going to have to demonstrate once again that his leadership was unequalled. True generals, true leaders were unafraid to walk point.
The radiant sense of confidence with which he stood and strode forth was obliterated by the abrupt sound of a single gunshot, a hollow bang largely absorbed by all the fabric hanging in Cheung’s Temple Room. Cheung’s flesh contracted in a full-body flinch.
Sister Menga fell face-forward into her dish of guts, the coals from her brazier scattering to pit the fireproof carpeting with acrid contrails of smoke. The seer had failed to foresee the bullet that would pierce her skull right where her third eye ought to have been.
Foretell the future? The future was only told when you made it yourself, thought Cheung as he turned to face Michelle Quantrill one final time.
Chapter 25
The hairy eyeball. That is what the black-suited Cheung men were giving Gabriel. They had been vaguely alerted, but few specifics had trickled down the chain of command this far, to the ground-level enforcers. They were strictly guns, muscle, hired hands.
Further, they eyeballed every Zhang soldier who saw fit to trespass upon the Peace Hotel as though personally affronted their limited authority was being usurped by the emergency brewing out in the street.
They were tetchy and trigger-happy; itching for conflict.
“You are going to have to be my prisoner,” Ivory told Gabriel. He drew his trusty OTs-33, his thumb automatically switching the gun to three-shot-burst mode.
For him to grab Gabriel’s arm would be too aggressive, thus alerting the sentries. For them to casually stroll in without a declared hierarchy—Cheung operative plus prisoner—would be too casual. Ivory opted for polite formality: The captive or suspect proceeds one pace ahead, to the left. Normally this was a submissive, almost servile position for the man behind, but the guards would understand that Ivory was keeping a ready weapon trained on Gabriel’s kidneys. Under normal circumstances, a jacket would be draped over the weapon in deference to public view. These circumstances were not normal—weapons were abundant thanks to the panic from the chopper crash—hence Ivory’s gun would be visible, reinforcing the idea of a general alert. The guards would see the gun and the prisoner and never think this was any sort of deception. This was business, expediently out in the open, and so Ivory would be taken at face value since his disfavor in Cheung’s eyes was still not widely known.
The two men bracketing the brass doors to the Peace Hotel were named Bennings and Jintao. Acquisitions, Ivory knew, from a recent canvass of Cheung security candidates based on such employment advantages as blackmail leverage, capacity for violence and general criminal records.
“For Cheung,” Ivory said, indicating Gabriel. “Dinanath was sent to retrieve this top-priority guest. He failed and I have assumed personal responsibility for the delivery. Check with Constantine on the fifth floor if you must, but this is most urgent.”
Gabriel did his best to look captured and cowed.
Bennings, a rangy Australian, was the guy giving Gabriel the once-over, twice. “Does this have anything to do with that balls-up?” he said, pointing to the wreck of the helicopter and the attendant madness.
“With what?” Ivory said, not even looking back.
Gabriel had to admire the ice-cold resolve of this guy.
Jintao had removed his sunglasses, silently exposing his eyes to his superior, and Ivory gave the man his own stern gaze in response. Jintao averted his gaze first.
“Is there a problem?” said Ivory.
“No problem,” said Bennings, waving them inside.
They crossed the lobby in silence. The Old Jazz Bar of the Peace Hotel featured a large easeled placard that boasted Real Shanghai Style Jazz Nightly!
“I helped Jintao’s children get into their present school,” said Ivory finally, when they were out of earshot. “There are many like him in Cheung’s employ—decent men who do this work from fiscal necessity. It would have been a pity to kill him.”
“Would you have?”
; “If it had been necessary,” Ivory said. “I am glad it was not.”
Cheung’s floor was privately keyed, but Ivory still had the magnetic card that permitted direct elevator access.
“Wouldn’t Cheung have deactivated your card if he didn’t trust you?” said Gabriel once they had begun their ascent.
“Cheung does not wish to admit to himself the inevitability of my betrayal,” said Ivory. “I believe that he expects me to return, in fact, of my own accord.”
“So he left the door open for you,” Gabriel said. “He’s hoping you’ll come back.”
“I have come back, Mr. Hunt. And I have brought him the prize he seeks.”
Gabriel was contemplating Ivory’s gun, which had not lowered. “Please tell me…that I’m not worth a trap this elaborate.”
Ivory’s eyes indicated the ceiling, and the surveillance camera there.
“You are worth every effort, Mr. Hunt,” he said. “Maximum effort.”
The doors parted to admit them to the Junfa Hall.
Gabriel stepped out but was halted by Ivory, who merely said, “Hold.”
He pointed.
The two Tosa dogs were strewn all over the hallway in a welter of blood. Over there, between two of the warlord statues that lined the corridor, were the protruding feet of at least one deactivated sentry.
A single shot of rifle fire resounded so crisply through the hall that you could hear the ejected brass sing. Gabriel and Ivory hotfooted it to the alcove that lead to Cheung’s Temple Room.
Which is where they found Sister Menga with her brains painting the wall, and an insane-looking Mitch holding down on Cheung himself at point-blank range.
Getting past the door guards had been easy. All Mitch had to do was wait for a pair of Zhang soldiers to make for the Peace Hotel doors on some mission, perhaps to set up a triage center or summon medical backup. She blended through in their wake and made sure she was not noticed once she broke away from them. The soldiers were barely aware that they had even been tailed.
The captured helmet over her shaved head covered up a multitude of giveaways.
Getting to the top of the hotel had been tougher. Scaling the exterior wall was not an option. She might fall, be spotted or get shot. While she felt the drive and had the strength, more nimbleness than she possessed would be required for her to navigate slight brick interstices and dicey, crumbling handholds all the way up. One slip, one misplaced boot-tip, and her life and mission would end in a big wet splattered puddle. Like they’d told her in jump school, It ain’t the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop.
Qingzhao had warned her about guards and security elevators. Mitch was going to have to concoct a plan on the fly, and not hesitate lest she betray her own unauthorized presence. She quickly found the utility stairs and took them two at a time, as though she knew where she was going.
On the fourth floor she found a lone Cheung man patrolling the hallway. She hustled toward him with the urgent affect of a messenger, snapped a sharp salute, and hit him in the forehead with the butt of her borrowed carbine. The man’s eyes crossed as he fell. She stripped him of a Beretta nine and a fighting knife the length of a bayonet. In a jacket sheath she found a silencer for the handgun that was nearly a foot long. Serious business.
She jabbed the blade into the rubber seal of the nearby elevator and levered the doors about eighteen inches apart—far enough to see cables reeling past. The car squeaked to a stop at the floor below. It was near enough for her to snake into the shaft, spider downward, and put her boots on the roof as softly as a moth lighting on a lampshade.
Mitch flattened out. It would not do to get hamstrung in a big cog or fail to see the metal girder-brace at the top of the shaft if it happened to rush at her suddenly in the near-darkness here. There were no Western numerals spray-painted on the cement stanchions, only Chinese characters. But she knew where she needed to be: the top floor.
Eventually somebody would need to go all the way up.
She ejected the Beretta’s clip and verified the pistol was full up, with one in the pipe. She screwed on the hefty silencer and snugged the gun into her waistline, ruefully thinking it would take a week to draw out in combat. She slid the knife into her boot.
Her heartbeat was redlining. She could hear the thumps and clunks of the building’s own metabolism—it, too, had a heartbeat. A fine, clean sweat had broken all over Mitch’s body. She was an invading virus.
Another elevator car husked past on her left.
Then the car she was on was climbing, climbing.
At the apex of the shaft was a short service ladder, which led to a bolted vent. Mitch used the bayonet again. The vent led to a grate, and the grate emptied her into the Junfa Hall.
The Junfa Hall was crowded, but not with the living. Warlords lined the corridor of honor, stolid in their cast metal and forged expressions. Mitch peeked around a life-sized bronze of Zhang Zongchang, also remembered as Marshal Chang Tsung-ch’ang, who died in 1928. Perhaps Cheung had named his floating casino after this man.
Two Cheung men in the corridor, pacing like expectant fathers, sticking more or less to the row of statues, one on each side, their pace so metronomic that they always crossed in the center of the room. One Chinese, one western, Latin American, perhaps. The Chinese man looked like the boss hog, so Mitch took him first, at the end of his circuit.
When he turned, she yanked him backward by the strap on his shortie M4 rifle, chopped his throat to shut him up, and buried the bayonet in his solar plexus. Thrust, twist, withdraw. He fell into her grasp behind a Wu Dynasty bronze.
“Hey, Penga,” said the man from the opposite end of the corridor, realizing his partner had vanished. Yu Peng, when alive, had wrongly assumed that Dagoberto Ayala’s nickname for him was a friendly diminutive—like “Bobby” for “Robert”—but in truth, it was closer to a dirty pejorative. Ayala detested anybody higher than him on the command chain.
Ayala keyed open the bulletproof glass doors. If kept open, the doors allowed the Tosa dogs to run back and forth—endlessly—between the Junfa Hall and the Temple Room, as if the retarded mutts could not decide whose butt to sniff more, Cheung’s or Peng’s.
“Podido,” Ayala griped. “You go to the can, at least tell me—”
Mitch took him. Thrust, twist, withdraw.
But the Tosa dogs in the adjacent room had already whiffed Yu Peng’s freshly liberated blood, and came charging in like assault tanks. Mitch heard their claws scrabbling on the slate tile of the corridor and had no idea how to close the glass doors.
She caught the first headlong animal with her forearm, feeling the crushing jaws closing to snap her bones as she buried the bayonet to the hilt in the huge beast’s chest. It rolled—and her with it—but hung on. She put five shots from the silenced Beretta into the second one, which at least slowed it down, but also seemed to piss it off.
She jammed the pistol under the dog’s chin and blew the crown of its head off, swearing she could feel the slug pass right by her own arm. By then the other one had a grab on her leg at the bootline. She had to fire without hitting her foot, and abruptly realized there was blood everywhere. Her own, in part, plus a generous geyser from the first dog. Its demon pal finally relaxed its chomp after Mitch emptied her mag into it. She felt the teeth slowly withdraw from her leg as the bite went slack, but that caused even more blood to course out.
The xipaxidine would roadblock the pain, though only for a time. Her leg felt malfunctional but just now she could still stand on it.
Valerie would have been horrified. Her sister had transmogrified into a butchering monster who even killed animals. Poor doggies.
Yeah, thought Mitch, say that when you see your own limbs hanging out of their mouths, little sis.
Her vision zoned out for an instant, then snapped back into focus. The edges glistened now, as if she were seeing through a glaze of ice crystals.
She collected her rifle and moved for the glass doors, wondering h
ow many more mad dogs she would have to put down before she was done.
Chapter 26
Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung was laughing. He loved the theatrical. Exaggerated gestures. Glandular suspense. Cheap thrills.
He and Mitch were pointing guns at each other. Ivory was pointing a gun at the back of Mitch’s head. And Gabriel Hunt was pointing a gun at Ivory.
Alliances were more fluid than they seemed.
“Laugh at me, you bastard, and I’ll blow your tongue through the back of your head,” said Mitch, holding steady with the Chinese carbine. She could do it, too, with this gun—maybe twice before gravity dropped the man. Upon entering the Temple Room, Mitch’s first sight was Sister Menga raising a hand against her. The seer’s ornate fingernails caught the light and suggested a weapon. Mitch was aboil with endorphins and the drug coursing through her, and her body reacted without the time-delay of premeditation. She had automatically put Sister Menga down because her eyes had seen a threat. Her eyes had lied. But so what?
In response to Sister Menga’s moist demise, Cheung had whipped out a Czech CZ-52 pistol, two pounds of gorgeously machined steel filling his enormous hands.
Their stand-off was about five seconds old when Gabriel and Ivory brought up the rear.
Ivory put his pistol, still set on three-shot-burst, within four feet of the curve of Mitch’s occipital.
Gabriel’s hands familiarized themselves with Dagoberto Ayala’s M4, which he’d scooped up on the run from the Junfa Hall. Cocked, locked, ready to rock. He did not think Ivory would actually shoot Mitch, but he had to draw on somebody, and Cheung was already staring down the bore of Mitch’s rifle. Tension ran molten-hot through the room, thickening the air. Hell, sheer trigger reflex would kill them all if somebody sneezed.
That was when that son of a bitch Cheung started laughing.
“You impress me,” Cheung told her. “You have accomplished the unthinkable. You got under Ivory’s skin. You have truly earned my awe.”