Hunt Among the Killers of Men gh-5

by Gabriel Hunt

  Gabriel dropped the loose climbing gear back into the pile. Why hadn’t he thought to leave himself an extra gun here as well? He cinched the cuffs onto his wrists. Cheung checked them, tightened each to make sure Gabriel was secured. Then they went into the hole.

  With his hands locked together by four links of tempered steel, Gabriel was reduced to the motility of a snake, his own lamp blinding him as Cheung squirmed through close behind. The rock jags made even a lucky kick impossible.

  Several strands of climbing rope were threaded through the passage, like bright blood vessels.

  “What are these for?” demanded Cheung.

  “I was going to haul out some of the artifacts,” said Gabriel. “There wasn’t time.”

  “Yes—robbing the graves of other cultures is a pastime of yours, isn’t it? And what is that smell?”

  “There are bats in the cave.”

  “And my men?”

  “I doubt any survived.” Gabriel had to fold up, then extend himself to scoot along, clearing the way for Cheung to follow, never forgetting the pistol pointed at him from behind. The way widened slightly as they proceeded toward the wide end of the funnel. “Kangxi Shih-k’ai rigged the entryway with a series of traps. Once the idol locked shut, there was no way in or out.”

  “Except this way.”

  “Yes—see for yourself.”

  Gabriel expected Cheung’s lust to get the better of him as he approached his goal, and sure enough, Cheung was wriggling past him now like an eager child. But there was no room to move. No leeway for a blow or a chokehold. Gabriel felt the gun against him as Cheung passed.

  Cheung swept his light across the blunt heads of the Killers of Men far below, his heart pounding, his breath short with astonishment.

  “There must be…thousands of them,” he said in awe. Then he levered his fist right into Gabriel’s throat. “You didn’t say anything about there being a drop! You climbed out!”

  “I thought that was obvious,” Gabriel said, chocking his boots against the nearest outcrop of rock.

  “Damn you! It must be twenty meters to the floor!”

  “I know,” said Gabriel.

  In another two seconds, Cheung would be angrily backtracking to get all the mountaineering gear. Which made this the time to act. Gabriel lunged to his knees, swung his chained hands over Cheung’s head, pushed off like an Olympic swimmer, and launched them both into the black sky below.

  Together, Cheung and Gabriel fell from the ceiling of the cavern for half a heartbeat, plunging into the void. Their lights and Cheung’s gun toppled away.

  Then the carabiner locked around Gabriel’s belt cinched hard enough to compress several of Gabriel’s internal organs into a space rather too small to hold them all.

  He had clipped it on before cuffing his hands during his dalliance over the equipment. The lifeline ran anonymously among the other ropes depending down the funnel. Now it convulsed to guitar-string tightness against the anchor pitons in the rock outside, which groaned with the impact and load, but held.

  Leaving Gabriel swinging in darkness, nine feet below the vent, with his arms coiled around Cheung’s collar. It was the stiff, reinforced collar that saved Cheung’s life, since had the chain of the manacles been around his bare throat, he’d have been hanged for sure.

  They heard the lights smash against the rocks below; two, maybe three entire seconds after they had dropped.

  Gabriel could hardly even see the man below him desperately trying to fight gravity. His arms reached down into an absolute absence of light.

  In credit to his nerve, Cheung did not holler or panic. He did not kick his legs. He hung on with grim determination and focused hatred, trying to crawl up Gabriel’s arms. Choice was out of the question. Gabriel could not drop or hold, and all Cheung could do was try to maintain his grip against the beckoning fall as they pendulumed in a slow, lazy arc in the damp darkness. Every movement weighed Cheung’s collar more heavily against the cuff chain…which burden threatened to unsocket Gabriel’s already fatigued arms.

  Disturbed bats were beginning to flit around them.

  Daredevils, safe crackers, heart surgeons and crazy psychiatrists call it “supertime”—the moment that elongates under stress. It seemed that they dangled on the tether for an hour, when in fact it was mere seconds.

  Every dram of oxygen was vital to both men; for Gabriel, head-down, to keep the blood vessels in his face from exploding, and for Cheung, lathered with terror-sweat, choking on his own knuckles while trying to hang onto the cuff chain that was cinching his hard collar into the flesh of his throat.

  “Where…” Gabriel managed to choke out, “is…Michael?”

  The body below him twisted in his grasp, but didn’t reply.

  “Where? I’ll…save your…life if you…tell me.”

  Cheung barked out a laugh.

  Then, chinning himself with an iron grip on Gabriel’s forearms, Cheung lifted his throat out of the constricting embrace of the chain. “I’ll order him killed,” he spat in a single breath, his face inches from Gabriel’s, “while you hang here for eternity.” Then with a monumental effort he shifted one of his hands to grip Gabriel’s belt. He began hauling himself upward along Gabriel’s body with a fierce, almost incomprehensible strength.

  “He’s in the Peace Hotel,” Cheung taunted. “Eighth floor, west side, last room. And what good does this knowledge do you Mr. Hunt? What can you do with it now?”

  “This,” Gabriel said, and bending one knee, kicked Cheung hard in the face.

  For a moment, Gabriel continued to feel Cheung’s weight pulling him down like a lead apron; then just the scrabbling of the man’s fingertips against his chest; then nothing, a burden lifted, and seconds later he heard a wet crunch followed by a long, keening wail. All was darkness—but in his mind’s eye he saw Cheung far below, impaled on one of Kangxi Shih-k’ai’s spikes, the previously impaled skeleton crushed to dust beneath him by the impact of his fall. Here was a Killer of Men indeed to add to the ancient warlord’s collection.

  Gabriel felt no satisfaction or fulfillment—merely relief that he could draw air again. His vision was spotting and his sense of direction was shot. He tried to pull himself up by the rope, but made little progress; he had no more strength in his arms.

  The bats continued flitting around him; he could not have said for how long.

  The next thing Gabriel knew, he was being pulled out of the hole on the line that had nearly garroted him at the waist.

  Strong hands brushed debris away. Sat him down. Gave him a blessed sip of water.

  “You have shown Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung the Killers of Men?” said Ivory.

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, finding his voice.

  “Then your business here is concluded?”

  “You mean, in China?”

  “No. This mountaintop.”

  “For now,” said Gabriel.

  “You must permit me to give you a lift back to the city.”

  A moan drifted up from the funnel vent, amplified by the cave acoustics, muffled by the mountain.

  “Did you hear that?” said Gabriel.

  Ivory nodded. “The history of the Killers of Men is well known. This entire area is full of ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts speak to those who will listen. Come.”

  Gabriel and Ivory picked their way carefully down the mountain.

  Behind them, the moaning from the cave became louder, more insistent, interspersed by hysterical laughter, and finally devolving into a long, drawn-out scream. But there was no one there to hear it.

  Chapter 29

  The jazz band at the Peace Hotel was actually quite good. All the musicians looked to be over sixty, and the saxophonist seemed to be channeling Coleman Hawkins directly when he blazed out the solo to “Body and Soul.”

  Gabriel caught Ivory tapping his foot more than once to the music.

  “I still don’t understand how I could have been duped so thoroughly,” complained Michael Hunt. �
��It never occurred to me I was a captive. I just assumed, you know—gunfire in the street, my floor on lockdown, no cell phone service…”

  “You blamed China,” Mitch said. “I made the same mistake, I suppose. In my own way.”

  The barman in the lounge had talked Gabriel into sampling a drink that was essentially vodka on the rocks with most of a lemon squeezed into it. Gabriel considered the beverage moodily. It was good but somehow the celebratory atmosphere seemed askew.

  “It turns out the coordinates in our parents’ notes were about five miles off,” said Michael. “They were amazingly close to discovering the Killers of Men.”

  “The official discovery now must be handled with utmost delicacy,” said Ivory. “I agree with your brother, Gabriel—he should finish the lecture series as planned and in that context he can provide a clue that our own scholars may follow to deduce the location. Let it be done that way. Credit will accrue to our cultural historians and you will not be blamed for the damage discovered at the site.”

  “And what of Cheung?” said Gabriel. “Or should I say Dragunov.”

  “That was also not his real name,” said Ivory. “It is just the identity he used in the Soviet Union. I believe he was born in Ukraine, and from what few facts I learned over the years, it is entirely possible that his birth mother really was Chinese.” His voice had a tinge of sadness to it. “We met in the midst of a gun battle, you know. It was a long time ago. He was a bad man even then—a drug smuggler. But not yet an insane one.”

  Mitch shifted uncomfortably at the mere mention of drugs. She wasn’t drinking, just nursing a tall glass of seltzer. The purge program for xipaxidine worked on her by Pan Xiao, the monk-who-was-not-a-monk, had been effective but fluidly gruesome, and her insides were still fragile.

  “What about the big payoff?” she said quietly. “The gold statue, or the treasure, or whatever it was that was supposed to be there?”

  Gabriel and Michael looked at each other with an air of conspiracy.

  “What?”

  “We went back,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low. “After putting in a call to the Foundation and having a truckload of gels and gems and lenses overnighted. We tried them all in the statue’s eyes, various combinations. Eventually got an arrangement that mimicked the jewels and allowed the ideograms to converge on the far wall.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “It took a while to translate and some of it is still obscure,” Michael said, “but—”

  “But it boiled down to ‘Dig here,’” Gabriel interrupted. “Kangxi Shih-k’ai’s burial place is behind about a foot of rock directly across from the idol—the idol’s looking right at him.”

  “The ideograms describe his tomb,” Michael said. “His body was apparently installed inside a hollow jade carving of a warrior. It is described as weighing five hundred pounds.”

  “Five hundred pounds of jade?” Mitch said this a little too loudly and some heads turned their way.

  Michael waited till the eavesdroppers had returned to enjoying the music. “Yes. And supposedly his body was completely outfitted in gold. Gold armor, gold clothing, gold weapons. Please don’t shout.”

  Mitch restrained herself. “And this will all now be discovered by the Chinese government.”

  “It is their treasure,” Michael said. “Their history.”

  “And what of Cheung?” Gabriel asked again.

  “He perished, sadly, in his sleep,” Ivory said. “It seems to have happened the night of the unfortunate helicopter crash in the street outside this hotel. It may have been a heart attack, perhaps brought on by the shock. He has already been cremated, in keeping with his instructions.”

  “And who’s going to take his place on the Bund?” Gabriel said.

  Ivory lowered his gaze in modesty. “There are enough of us. Enough loyalists to repair the New Bund without the incursion of gangsterism.”

  “Will Zhang give you trouble?”

  “General Zhang is content to run the People’s Police,” said Ivory.

  “You won’t have an easy time of it,” said Gabriel. “Cheung left quite a mess behind him.”

  Ivory nodded in agreement. “Yes, but…I have excellent advisors.”

  When he said this, Mitch took Ivory’s hand.

  “I’m staying,” she said.

  Gabriel and Michael exchanged their second glance of the evening, less conspiratorial this time than incredulous.

  “You’re staying?” Gabriel said.

  “What have I got to return to? My sister was my only family. She’s dead. The Air Force doesn’t want me back. I have as much to offer here as anywhere.”

  “What about—” He’d been about to mention Lucy’s name, but realized that doing so in front of Michael would be opening a can of worms; in front of Ivory, too.

  But Mitch knew what he’d held back from saying. “I’ll see her again,” she said. “When the time is right.”

  “Who?” Michael said. “That nurse from Khartoum?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. “The nurse from Khartoum.”

  The four of them drank their drinks, and the music played on.

  “What about you, Gabriel?” Michael said finally. “Would you like to come with me on the lecture circuit or would you prefer to go home?”

  Gabriel was sunk in thought. He’d spent the past day trying to make amends and lay ghosts. He’d sought out the little old lady in charge of the Su-Lin Gun Merchant shop and crossed her palm with enough money to fund her retirement in the country and out of the firearms trade. On her little translating screen she had typed: I THANK YOU AND TUAN THANKS YOUR GRACE.

  It had made him feel better, briefly.

  “What about me?” Gabriel repeated. “I was thinking I might take a trip someplace quiet.”

  Which is how Gabriel Hunt found himself winging back to America all by his lonesome on the Hunt Foundation jet, his trusty Colt revolver never drawn nor used, his collection now enriched by the Colt .36 wheelgun from Su-Lin’s. He stared out the window and composed in his head the e-mail he’d send to his sister when he landed, the one in which he’d explain to Lucy what Mitch had decided to do and why. It wouldn’t make any sense to her if he started there, at the end of the story. He’d have to tell her the whole lengthy and unimaginable tall tale of what she had started.

  If they’d been children still, she’d have sat at his side and soaked it in wide-eyed, believing every word. But childhood was far behind them, and now he imagined she’d parse every word cynically. Assuming the message even reached her—assuming she hadn’t skipped house arrest, fled to another country and abandoned her last anonymous e-mail address for a new one he didn’t know.

  But he would try. She deserved to know the story.

  There was just one part Gabriel would leave out; one memory that was his alone, not for sharing.

  The taste of Qingzhao Wai Chiu’s lips on his own, during the only time they had ever kissed, there in the life-threatening panic of the Night Market, the two of them trapped in their own transient bubble of supertime, the scant seconds that became days where they were briefly in love. The taste and smell of mangoes and rare spice, of night-blooming jasmine.

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  And now—a sneak preview of the next Gabriel Hunt adventure:

  HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON’s WEB

  Gabriel Hunt’s grip on his pickaxe was slipping.

  He had been in worse scrapes before; it’s just that he didn’t particularly relish the thought of dying while caving for fun and practice. That would be an embarrassment. When it was truly his time to check out, Gabriel would much rather have his obituary say that he’d been eaten alive by an angry tiger or felled by gunshots from enemy assailants. Or old age. That wouldn’t be so bad.

  But to fall into a gaping pit because he had slipped on bat guano? Preposterous!

  Gabriel called down to his friend and caving partner, “How you hanging, Manny?”

  Horizontal and belly-down, Manu
el Rodriguez dangled in midair on the end of the static nylon rope, fifteen feet below Gabriel’s legs. His only hope for survival was Gabriel’s grip on the pickaxe.

  “Is that a joke, amigo?” Manny shouted. He was trying to keep the terror out of his voice but wasn’t doing a very good job.

  It had happened quite innocently. Every two or three years, Gabriel made an excursion to one of various caves around the country so that he could hone his skills. His travels sometimes required that he perform a bit of spelunking—an outdated term, but Gabriel liked the sound of the word. It had a certain romance to it.

  Dangling within an inch of one’s life over a dark abyss, though, didn’t have any romance to it at all.

  Manny lived in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Besides the exceptional landmark that was open to the public to tour on a daily basis, there were several other caverns in the park that were available only to experienced cavers. All it took to access them were a small fee and a license. Gabriel had done it many times, very often with Manny, a fifty-eight-year-old former ranger at the park and an expert spelunker.

  They had been in one of the more “challenging” (as Manny had described it) caves for a little more than three hours when Gabriel and Manny—secured to each other by a fifteen-foot-long buddy rope—sat down to rest on a ledge above a black pit that supposedly led to a chamber of noteworthy formations. The hole was ninety-six feet to the bottom. They had come equipped with all the right gear. They each wore the necessary helmets, grubby clothing, knee and elbow pads, sturdy boots. Both men carried plenty of light sources and extra batteries, as well as water, snacks, trash bags, empty bottles in which to urinate, and a first-aid kit. For the vertical descent, Manny had brought along an assortment of tools such as carabiners, rope, waist and chest harnesses, Petzl stops, rappel racks, handled ascenders, pitons, chocks, hammers, and a couple of pickaxes. The goal, however, was to accomplish the journey without damaging the cave at all. Hammering pitons into the rock face was to be avoided if possible. It was best to use noninvasive tools such as Spring-Loaded Camming Devices that wedged into already-existing cracks or in between stone protrusions. “Leave nothing but footprints” was the motto amongst serious cavers.