Hunt Among the Killers of Men (5 page)

Gabriel Hunt picked up a little snow globe from the floor. Something belonging to Valerie. Little Statue of Liberty, swirling fake snow. Big heart, for NYC.

Lucy cleared her throat. “Will you do it?” she asked.

“Like I’ve ever been able to say no to you,” Gabriel said.

It was the first time Mitch had worn a dress in over six years, and the last time had been at a funeral. She felt askew in her rakish feminine attire, but it was necessary if she wanted to blend.

Zongchang Ltd. had tentacles all over urban Shanghai, and the destination to which her cabbie took her turned out to be a casino.

A floating casino.

A floating casino housed inside a converted aircraft carrier anchored in the harbor. The word “Zongchang” was painted on its side in four-foot-high red characters, English and Chinese both.

Inside a buoy-marked perimeter, scuba-capable security staff patrolled from one-man speed skiffs featuring gun mounts.

Loudspeakers advised potential trespassers to stay clear of the boat zone.

At the dock, more security men assisted patrons onto custom mini-ferries that ran to and from the ship’s ornate gangplank. The security men were dressed in nononsense, upscale eveningwear, rather like Mitch was.

Except Mitch was not toting a visible MAC-10 with
a huge, priapic SIONICS suppressor stretching the barrel.

The carrier shell had been hollowed out and structurally reinforced to provide for broad, windowed views of the shimmering Bund, with outdoor restaurants on the flight deck. Inside, French staircases curved from level to level. Some bled off toward premium members-only gambling areas.

The main casino floor was anything but Vegas, favoring baccarat and
chemin de fer
, though tables for blackjack, roulette and Texas Hold ’Em were also in view.

At the armored cash windows, the currency of many different countries was being exchanged for the casino’s special chips.

Mitch passed through another body scanner at the entry. There was no way she could have come in armed. She thought:
Play it as cool as dry ice. You’re not Michelle Quantrill. You’re Valerie. You’re not dead. You’re seeking your employer. You’re a guest. Simple. Just ask. Don’t panic.

A tray of drinks was being offered to her before she’d even found her focus on the gambling floor. Mitch hesitated. Chose a martini.

“I’m looking for Mr. Cheung,” she said, but the server had already departed.

She tried again with a passing security man who apparently “did not have the English.” He arched an eyebrow at her and strode away.

Insane bass-heavy house/trance music thundered at her as she crossed an opaque dance floor of solid glass.

Mitch didn’t know it yet, but she had already been made.

Qingzhao Wai Chiu took note of the blonde woman crossing the dance floor. Another lost, clueless American. Another despised tourist.

Qingzhao looked quite different from her previous public appearance, when an aerodynamic suit with a concealed mini-chute had permitted her to disappear into the blackness of the Huangpu River…instead of hitting flat water from a 300-meter drop, which would have been like landing on stone.

Tonight she was dressed to kill, literally and figuratively. New wig of cascading black curls. Tinted designer glasses. She had applied makeup so as to cause light to change the planes of her face. Enough exposure of thigh and décolletage to ensure she could steer men. The prostitutes in the casino were tawdry and obvious. Qingzhao prided herself as a chameleon.

She, too, had entered unarmed.

She, too, sought the man known as Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung.

Qingzhao found herself a likely security man. A bald East Indian, supersized, muscle packed atop more muscle.

“Ladies’ toilet?” she said in a high, squeaky voice.

The idol-huge man rolled his eyes, then jerked a thumb. “That way, gorgeous.”

Qingzhao giggled, as though from too much champagne. In her real life, she almost never laughed anymore.

The East Indian would not do. She needed somebody more reckless, younger, a hotshot on staff here.

“Don’t mind Dinanath,” said a voice behind her. “He’s never polite.”

She turned. Bingo. This guy was like a horny raptor with the eyes of a pit viper. He could be steered.

“You’re
funny
,” she said vacantly. “Listen…I need to find the toilet. I might need a little help getting there without becoming embarrassed.”

He offered his arm. “Certainly. My name is Romero.”

Qingzhao and Romero navigated across the dance floor, Qingzhao keeping her pace just halting enough to be convincing. By the time they reached the nearest restroom, Romero had already brushed her breasts twice and her ass once, strictly to guide her.

“Wait here, okay?” She gave him a little wave and tottered inside.

What she had been doing while in transit was noting the locations of the security cameras in the non-gambling zones. While there was a spy-eye (much more discreet) in the powder room, there were none in the individual toilets, which were set up in Western-style stalls.

Once inside a stall, she levered loose the stainless steel clip-lid of the toilet tank. The plunger works came loose easily enough. She bent the flimsy metal to form a spiked punch she could wrap around one fist.

Then she ventured a shy around-the-corner peek at Romero through the bathroom door. “Hey,” she said. “This thing doesn’t work.” He stepped toward her. She smiled, grabbed his belt buckle, and pulled him along.

The cameras would only see two hard partiers headed for a stall and perhaps a taste of inebriated hanky-panky.

Qingzhao made sure Romero kept his eyes on her smile and other assets as she boxed him into the stall and quickly punched a gushing hole into his neck. One more strategic punch and the man was soundlessly
down. She quickly stripped him of an automatic pistol and spare magazine, concealing the gun in the only place her show-offy dress would allow.

Done, armed, and not a drop of blood on her. So far so good.

Longwei Sze Xie had few peers or intimates, but nearly everybody called him “Ivory.” Even his employer, Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung, used this familiar form. Other times, when matters were more grave, Cheung called him “Long.” It had happened once or twice in nearly twenty years.

He was taking a break in the Zongchang’s security nest—surrounded by monitors and exchanging monotonous chitchat with a console monkey named Zero—when he saw the blonde American stride across the dance floor. The whites of his eyes went stark with surprise at such naked boldness. He snapped his fingers and Zero backed up the feed in order to print out a photo of the woman, after choosing the best vantage.

Ivory’s initial shock had come from seeing what he thought was a woman he knew to be dead, right there, seemingly alive, her body language practically broadcasting the rough retribution she sought for her own demise. Then his rational mind processed the image.
No, it’s not her. Close, but no.
He was already on the move.

Ivory had feared something like this. Had prepared for its eventuality.

Cheung was holding forth with some financiers in the craps alcove. This woman would spot him eventually, or locate him indirectly. Then nine kinds of hell would break out—if he didn’t get to her first.

He glided up behind her. Took a breath. Spoke calmly.

“Do you wish to enjoy Shanghai, Miss Quantrill?”

Mitch spun, slopping her untouched drink. Sandbagged. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Longwei Sze Xie,” said the handsome Asian. “Please call me Ivory.”

“Do you know Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung?”

Ivory was astonished at her directness. She was processing minor shock, he could tell, yet remained bullishly American.

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you could point him out to me?”

Ivory dipped into his vest pocket, his free hand cautioning her against rash action. He withdrew a packet of airline tickets. “First class back to New York City, with my compliments.”

Mitch eyed him suspiciously. “What’re
you
supposed to be?”

“I am the greatest friend you have in the world right now, Miss Quantrill.”

Past the woman’s shoulder, Ivory saw Dinanath, the big bald operative, signaling to him from across the gambling floor. Summoning him.

Ivory clenched his teeth as though mildly pained. “Come with me.”

Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung made a habit of keeping tabs on his Number One, Ivory, and when he spotted his head of security chatting up a strangely familiar blonde, he snapped his fingers and Dinanath jumped to.

It wasn’t quite an arrest, but had more insistence than a mere escort.

Cheung excused himself from the company of his
supporters after making sure they had drinks all around. Extra security, all first string except for Romero (who was MIA somewhere), formed an outer ring for privacy as Dinanath, Ivory and their visitor came over. She was not a beautiful woman, noted Cheung. More…handsome. But there was something compelling about her, something about the hardness in her eyes.

Mitch stared. It was not polite, but she couldn’t help herself. Cheung was burly, bristly. Nothing about him seemed Chinese except for the epicanthic folds of his eyelids, and she realized, with a jolt, that the man had probably had surgery to acquire the look. In any event, his eyes were bright blue.

“And, this is…?” said Cheung, not speaking to Mitch, but to Ivory.

“I’ve come about Valerie Quantrill,” said Mitch.

Dinanath was upending her small clutch purse on a vacant table, rummaging.

“Who is Valerie Quantrill?” said Cheung, again to Ivory.

“A woman you left dead in a Dumpster in New York,” said Mitch, reddening.

Upon hearing this, Dinanath turned to Cheung and shrugged.
It was all we could find. A garbage bin.
As if to say,
so what
?

Cheung looked around to his fellows as though he had missed something, like a punch line.
“And…?“

“And I want to know what you had to do with it,” said Mitch.

Cheung splayed his fingers across his mouth, pondering. “Hmm. All the way from the United States? Seems like a lot of trouble just to hurl an accusation. Why bother?”

“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.

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 position 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.