Riding the Snake (1998) (31 page)

"There's the tunnel," Chauncy said. "Just like Miss Pullinger said."

"Bloody fucking marvelous," Julian grinned.

They all moved to the cart and got in, with Julian behind the wheel. "Okay," he said, patting his machine gun, "from now on if we have to use these things, we've blown it. . . . We fire as a last resort." He started looking for the key to turn on the cart. He found it under the seat.

"If these guys were delivering money from the nightclubs in Hong Kong, maybe there's going to be somebody at the other end to receive the bags," Tanisha reasoned.

"Good thinking," Julian said. "Somebody go get the money bags out of the trunk of that car so we'll have something to distract them with."

Chauncy and Wheeler turned and moved quickly back up the stairs, into the garage, to get the money from the trunk of the gangsters' car.

While they were gone, Julian looked at Tanisha. "Is Mr. Cassidy up to this?" he asked, concerned. "He really froze back there."

"He went up against L
. A
. Tong members in his brother's house in Bel Air, and got two out of three. He'll be fine," she said, hoping she was right.

They whipped along the narrow hand-dug tunnel in the dark, the single finger of light from the golf cart poking the blackness, their red robes billowing in the cold underground air. It was a surprisingly short journey. They pulled up at another staircase a few minutes later.

There was a lone man lying on a cot in the darkness. He rubbed his eyes and started to rise. Chauncy spoke to him in Chinese and started to hand him one of the sacks of money. As he reached for it, Wheeler got out of the other side of the cart and clubbed him into unconsciousness with the Browning.

"That's a good lad," Julian said, beginning to feel a little better about Wheeler.

They tied the man up and moved up the staircase, still lugging the heavy bags of money. At the top of the stairs was a small room and a door. They opened the door slowly and found themselves peering out into a beautiful central park lit by moonlight. They could smell the sweet cherry blossoms on the night wind. Somebody outside near the door spoke to them in Chinese. "It's us," Chauncy replied in Cantonese. "Here, give us a hand." Then he handed a bag of money through the opening. An unseen man reached for the canvas bag, and before he could control it, Chauncy dropped the bag and pushed hard on the door, smashing it against the man, knocking him down. Wheeler, Tanisha, and Julian all exploded through the door, into the park.

There were three men there, waiting for the money. All of them were now busy clawing under their red Temple robes for handguns. This time, Wheeler didn't hesitate. He kicked his man in the nuts and brought the Browning down in a chopping motion as he'd been taught to do long ago, in Special Forces. All three gangsters were disposed of quickly, without a shot fired.

They dragged them back into the tunnel, cuffed and gagged them, then looked at each other as they caught their breath. They still had the two heavy bags of money before them.

"Okay," Julian said, "we don't know how much time we're going to get, so from now on, we move fast, take advantage of everything." He looked at the strained faces of Wheeler, Tanisha, and Chauncy. "Ready?" he asked.

They all nodded.

They went back up and stepped out into the beautiful central park, pausing for a minute to get their bearings. Across the open field was the Triad Temple, known as the City of Willows. They started to move cautiously across the wet grass, their heads down, their monk's hoods up to disguise them. Because his Cantonese was flawless, Chauncy was in the lead in case they needed him to talk. Wheeler brought up the rear, his shoulder blades tingling as if any moment they would be separated by a bullet.

They reached the Red Flower Pavilion without incident. An old man was standing there; he reached out for the bags of money. Chauncy handed him both bags, then Julian stepped forward, pulled his rifle from under his robe, and hit the old man, up from under, with the butt of his gun. The man went down like chopped wheat and immediately started snoring at their feet.

"Can't be this effin' easy," Julian muttered as they moved into the Pavilion, past pedestals that held golden art. Snakes and carved dragons watched with cold ruby eyes as they passed.

They opened the inner door of the Red Flower Pavilion and looked in at the magnificent altar.

"All of the Triad secrets are supposed to be stored in the altar safe," Chauncy explained. "It's a sacred place. Only the sacred elders can open it. If Willy has a secret document here, that's where it will be."

They backed away from the east gate and headed across the huge hall. Then they moved up to the altar to the very spot where, two days before, Johnny Kwong had died.

The prostitutes were nude dancers from a Triad club in Mong Kok, and they arrived in a van at two A
. M
. They sat in the back, rubbed their sore calves, and wondered how quickly they could bring the gangsters off and get home to bed.

The driver of the van banged his hand on the garage door. When he couldn't get an answer, he took out a key and walked around to the narrow wood staircase and climbed the half-flight up to the main door of the flat. Once inside, it was just minutes before he reached the garage and found the four gangsters tied to the support posts and one dead on the garage floor. He untied the man nearest him, removed the gag, and listened in dismay as the man began to babble out the story of the assault. Within minutes, he had untied the others, and they discovered that the electric cart was gone. They started looking around for one of their flip-phones so they could call the Temple in the park and warn them. They found their four shorted-out cellphones under water in the kitchen sink, where Tanisha had left them.

They turned and rushed back down into the basement to the tunnel. Stumbling in the blackness, they ran toward the City of Willows.

Julian found the safe directly behind the altar, mounted in the stone floor. He took an electronic safe-cracking tool out of his backpack and hooked the electrodes to the safe dial. He turned it on and watched the small LED screen in his hand as the unit electronically scanned the safe dial, looking for the hollow tumblers. The LED screen locked first on the number 25, then the number 42, and finally a third number, 19. When all three were locked in, a small bell tone confirmed the combination. Then Julian reached out and spun the dial to 25-42-19 and opened the safe. It was then that they heard the first shouts in Chinese, coming from the park outside.

Wheeler was guarding the east gate of the Red Flower Pavilion. He saw several men in red robes running across the moonlit park, looking up at the Temple roof, and screaming their warning to the Red-Pole vanguards up there.

"We've got a situation here," Wheeler called back to Julian, who was just reaching into the safe, removing its contents.

"Goddamn to bloody hell and hereafter," Julian mumbled as he threw the stacks of banded money and jewels aside, looking for the Agreement. "Chauncy, get your arse over here and help me read this shit," he yelled.

They could now hear people coming down a staircase from the roof above. Wheeler turned and fired his B
. A. R
. in that general direction. A stream of bullets chipped and whined against the staircase and Temple walls. They heard somebody scream and a lone body rolled down the staircase, sprawling dead on the Temple floor. Tanisha was now kneeling and firing out of the north gate, into the park. She watched as Triad gangsters dropped on their faces and rolled in panic to escape her fire.

Fu Hai had been awakened in the middle of the night by gunfire. Unsure of what was happening, he was pulled up off his mat with the other initiates and told by the Red-Pole vanguard that bandits were in the Red Flower Pavilion trying to steal from the Triad. It was very dark. He could hear automatic gunfire marked by flashes of muzzle fire in the park. A Russian AK-47 was thrust into his hand. He didn't know how to use it, but the vanguard pulled the slide, cocking the weapon for him. The vanguard told Fu Hai to just aim and pull the trigger. He was ordered to run across the grass toward the Red Flower Pavilion, get inside, and kill the bandits. Without even thinking, he started running with the other initiates toward the Temple. A Black woman was shooting at him from the door of the Pavilion with an automatic weapon. He felt a rush of air from one of her bullets as it zipped past his ear. The initiates from his class continued on, screaming for courage, charging through the park toward the Pavilion.

He lost track of the others, but somehow made it to the side of the building. He opened a side door and ran into the Red Flower Pavilion. ... He dove to avoid being hit, then slid on his stomach on the polished wooden floor.

Chauncy was pawing through the large safe, glancing at the documents. Some were real estate leases or Triad business agreements which extorted payments from restaurants or shops in Hong Kong.

Gunfire erupted all around him as he kneeled below the stone altar, sweat pouring into his eyes, stinging them. He couldn't read with his eyes smarting, so he gathered up everything that looked possible and stuffed it all into his robe pockets. Then he stood and wiped his eyes, just in time to see several armed gangsters moving into the back of the Red Flower Pavilion from the west gate. They were all carrying automatic weapons. He flipped on his laser sight and fired at them. Several went down, wounded. The others fired back; bullets ricocheted off the stone altar, screaming and whining away into the night, before shattering unseen wood and glass.

Fu Hai fired his weapon without aiming. He did not want to kill anybody. A round-faced White man with a handlebar mustache, who he thought he remembered from the gunfight in front of the shoemaker's shop, returned his fire. Automatic bullets thunked into the wood bench he was hiding behind. He felt a blow to his side as a round knocked him backwards. He started bleeding but felt no pain. When his clip was empty, he grabbed another weapon from a fallen comrade.

"We're outta here!" Julian yelled. "Gotta find a back door."

They all started to fall back toward the south wall, firing as they did, dropping spent clips and slamming in new ones, using the heavy wooden benches for cover.

The Temple was now filling with Triad members. They made low, suicidal charges through the east and north doors, sliding on their stomachs, their weapons held before them, firing streams of hollow-point death at the escaping foursome.

Tanisha arrived at the south gate first. The door was locked, so she fired a burst of bullets from her Russian assault rifle. The wood frame and the door disintegrated, coming off its hinges. They ran through the shattered opening into a small adjoining Temple library. They could see the park out the window, just beyond.

"Stay with the exit plan!" Julian shouted, and they started for the door on the far side of the library. Then, almost by accident, as Wheeler's eyes swept the crowded bookshelves, he spotted something familiar. He jerked his gaze back, even as gunfire splintered the threshold behind him. On the library shelf were twelve leather-bound, gold-stamped volumes: The History of California, by Father John Stoddard. The same collection he had given Prescott, one volume at a time, every Christmas.

"Son of a bitch!" Wheeler said, as more gunfire erupted, tearing the walls of the library.

"Let's get bloody scarce!" Julian shouted.

They opened the library door to the park and began their own suicidal run across the grass, toward the back wall of the low buildings on the south side of the Walled City. The vanguards on the roof were armed with tracer rounds. They opened fire. Mud divots and flying sod exploded around them as white-hot tracers shattered into the ground at their feet. The sound was deafening, like fifty jackhammers all starting at once.

"Over here!" Chauncy yelled, taking the lead.

They zigzagged across the park, switching directions as more tracers streaked above and around them.

With anger and adrenaline fueling his pursuit, Fu Hai chased the enemies out of the Temple library and into the park, running on ever weakening legs. Finally, he fell from loss of blood, his cheek hitting the cool wet grass. Before he lost consciousness, he remembered the sweet smell of cherry blossoms in his nose.

They got to a small wooden door that led down some stairs into a small flat. As Chauncy worked to pull the locked door open, Wheeler, Tanisha, and Julian turned and laid down some cover fire, aimed at the Temple roof. The Triad gangsters up there were forced to duck down behind the parapets, while the three of them emptied their weapons. Then the Triad roof guards reappeared, their assault rifles armed with fresh clips.

Floodlights on the Temple roof clicked on and quickly found the four of them against the south building wall, pinning them in blinding light.

"Shoot the floods!" Julian screamed, slamming in a fresh clip. Just as he turned to fire at the roof lights, he was doubled over by a burning tracer. The hot round knocked him off his feet. He stumbled backwards into the wall, grabbed his abdomen just below the vest line, and went down hard. His legs splayed out in front of him, and blood started oozing through his fingers. "Bloody fucking damn!" he groaned.

Tanisha fired at the roof, getting two of the three floodlights, just as Chauncy got the locked door open and jumped down into the small opening. "I'm in, let's go!" he yelled. Tanisha jumped down.