by Chris Lowry
He pulled her over to the window.
Across the street they could see into another third floor apartment.
The tall man strutted around inside, naked. The young girl is curled up in a ball on the floor.
Brill scooped up the rifle and set it to his shoulder.
“I’m not judging you,” he said as he drew in breath and sighted. “I don’t have the right.”
He tightened his finger.
“I’m relieved actually. Because now we can share.”
He squeezed off a round. The shot cracked out and the man in the apartment collapsed. Maddie peeked over his shoulder.
“You missed,” she observed. “He’s still alive.”
“The girl’s mother is his sister. This has been going on for three years. She wanted him paralyzed, not dead.”
Maddie nodded as the young girl’s scream sounded through the shattered glass.
“You know about me. I know about you,” she said.
She grabbed his lapel and pulled him in close until their lips were lightly touching.
“What a pair we make,” he sighed and leaned into a kiss.
“I’m trying to forget you,” she said.
“Is it working?”
He pressed his lips into hers. She opened her mouth and kissed him back. It might have gone on forever, tiptoeing into interesting places but sirens interrupted them.
He opened his eyes to find her staring at him.
She pulled away, holding his lip between her teeth.
“Does it hurt?” she muttered.
He shook his head and smiled as well as he could.
“It will.”
She bit down hard. He jerked his head back, blood spattered her cheek.
“Damn it Maddie,” he grunted.
She shot him with the pistol from her purse. Two quick shots into the chest.
He fell back onto the floor of the empty apartment. Blood leaked onto the hardwood from under him.
“I loved you, you know.”
The sirens stopped right under the open dormer window. Maddie glanced out, and hurried out of the apartment to find the back stairs.
Outside, she rounded the corner almost a block away and watched.
The confused policemen rushed around from the dead body in the alley, to the tall man’s apartment. Another set skid to a stop and rushed into the building she had just left. She knew they would find a third body inside.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Maddie set her empty coffee cup down and motioned to the waitress for another. They waited until she had brought a second round for each of them.
“Two slugs point blank,” she said to Foster. “How did he do it?”
He shrugged and sipped with one hand. The other he kept on his waist, fingers touching his holster.
“How did he do it in Dublin? Rio? Algiers? Tokyo?”
“Is he a cat?” Wallace snorted.
“He would be through those nine by now,” said Foster. “He isn’t ready to die.”
“He doesn’t have a choice.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“You were very effective the first time,” Maddie took a sip.
“I was as effective as you were,” Wallace shifted. “I learn from my mistakes,”
“As do I,” she said. “Hence, you.”
“How did you know you had failed?” asked Foster.
She stared back at his cold calculating eyes.
“Word got around he was still operating.”
“Did you hear about Hong Kong?”
She shook her head.
“It was shortly after your encounter in Lucerne. He was contracted by one syndicate to hit another.”
“Mako?” she sucked in her breath.
Wallace sat up in the chair.
“I heard of him.”
“His bodyguard.”
“Made Bruce Lee look like a Girl Scout,” sniffed Wallace. “No offense.”
Maddie ignored him.
“That was him.”
“I wondered what made him so angry,” Foster sighed.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Hong Kong doesn’t really have a night. The sun sights and the sky grows dark, but the glow of a million neon lights push back the darkness and wash the cityscape in rainbow colored kaleidoscope. There are no stars in Hong Kong, unless you count the movie and pop variety.
Giant buildings scrape the sky, monuments to money and achievement. Their windows glow and sparkle at night, some as the tapestry for video commercials that blare over the roar of motors and honking horns.
A long black Mercedes pulled into a circular drive at one of the high rise buildings. It stopped twenty feet from the glass doorways at the end of a set of marble steps. Fountains and topiary lined the walkway.
A whipcord thin muscle man stepped out of the front passenger side and scanned the grounds. He looked like a predator, eyes roaming over the concourse, to the street and back. His working name was Ching, though it was not the name he was born with. It was given to him by his employer, Mako, one of the most dangerous gang leaders in Southeast Asia.
Satisfied, he knocks on the rear window.
A tiny gnome of a man exits the back door. He’s dressed in an expensive suit that hangs off his narrow frame, his wizened features hosting a scowl. Mako glanced at Ching, who nodded.
Two more bodyguards exit the car and surround the small man. They marched toward the glass doors.
Ching grabbed Mako and pulled him behind a marble column. Six maintenance workers cleaning the windows jerked Uzi’s out of their buckets and sprayed the walkway.
The two bodyguards jerked and twitched as bullets stitched patterns across their bodies and chipped up pieces of the walkway.
Ching leaned around the column, cracked off two shots and dropped two assassins.
The remaining four rushed them, using cover fire to keep Ching and Mako huddled behind the pole.
Ching launched his pistol at one and jumped among them. He lashed out with hands, and feet and legs, moving almost too fast for the eye to follow. Bones crack, joints pop and men screamed.
He grabbed a dropped gun before it hit the ground and shot them with four fast clicks.
Ching grabbed Mako and rushed him into the building.
Across the street, Brill watched the entire exchange that took less than two minutes. He had provided the guns for the team of street thugs that lay dead in the walkway, had hired them for the job. The cost was cheap, labor being what it was in Southeast Asia, and it provided him with information. Now he knew just how good the bodyguard was, and if the men had succeeded, he would still get paid. The men who hired him only cared about the result of Mako being dead. They weren’t concerned with making it look like something it was not.
But the street gang failed. Now the bodyguard would be on high alert. Brill played out the scenarios in his head, what he would do, how he would react. He had been hired to protect clients before, but not often enough that his mindset was in defensive mode. He was made for offense, fast and dirty. It was his training from Africa.
No distinctive sirens added their wail to the noise from the neighborhood. The gang must have the cops in pocket here, which was no surprise. Bribery was a way of life in Hong Kong.
Brill padded across the walkway past the dead bodies and through the glass doors.
Mistake. The bodyguard should have locked the front doors behind him. In his haste to get Mako to safety he had overlooked a simple line of defense.
It meant he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was rattled, an added benefit of the street gang attack. Brill would bet he forgot a few other things as well.
He skipped the elevator and moved to the stairwell, jogged up the flights of stairs. It was fifty flights, so he took it slow but steady, eating up the steps with a methodical pace. The muscles in his chest ached after awhile, but he ignored the pain. They had been ripped by bullets not too long ago, but he was mending well.
He paused outside of the doorway on the fiftieth floor and listened. It was quiet. He cracked open the door and peeked through. The hallway was empty.
Brill sneaked down the corridor to a set of opaque glass doors set into a mahogany wall. Angry Chinese voices yelled on the other side.
He slid to one knee and extended his pistol, aimed at the door and waited.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“They’re here,” said Foster.
Maddie started and glanced around. Foster nodded toward a battered Jeep that rumbled past them at the edge of the ocean.
Wallace shifted out of his seat.
“Let’s get him.”
Maddie put her cup on the table.
“Tell me the rest of the story,” she said.
“We don’t need the story,” Wallace grumbled. He checked his pistol under the table, hidden from prying eyes.
“We need to get him while he doesn’t suspect.”
“He always suspects,” said Foster.
“This is his safe house,” Maddie argued. “He doesn’t suspect.”
Foster nodded to Wallace’s pistol.
“You’re not ready for him. Not with that.”
“Try me.”
“Finish the story,” Maddie said.
She wasn’t looking at Foster though. Her eyes were locked on Wallace. He could feel the weight of her stare and glanced up. They locked eyes for a moment, taking each other’s measure. He squinted and leaned back in his seat.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Brill waited, pistol extended. The voices inside the room still shouted.
A hand crashed through the door pane and showered him with glass. It grabbed the gun and jerked it away. Brill rolled backwards as Ching crashed through the rest of the doorway. He kicked. Brill blocked with his forearms. Ching chopped and smashed as two men fought in close quarters.
Brill jabbed, kneed. Ching blocked them and punched back.
Mako scurried past them and rushed for the elevator. He jammed the call button again and again with a short, thick thumb.
The bodyguard and the hit man fought harder in silence, but they were evenly matched. Each punch was dodged, each kick was parried.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Four hands reached out and jerked Mako inside the elevator. He yelped.
Ching glanced over at the sound.
Brill landed a punch. It slammed into his chin and knocked Ching out. Brill scooped up his gun and ran for the elevator. He pried the doors open.
The car was one floor down and falling. Brill leaped into the elevator shaft, firing through the roof as he descended.
He landed in a crouch and jerked the access panel open.
Mako cowered in one corner of the car, clutched a bleeding shoulder as he mewled in pain and terror. One of the kidnappers was dead, the other stretched for his gun.
Brill leaned in and aimed at the wounded man.
Ching slammed into his back and they tumbled through the roof and crashed to the floor.
The kidnapper touched his pistol with the tips of his fingers and tipped it into his hand. He gripped the butt and aimed at Mako.
Brill and Ching lash out at the same time. Ching breaks his arm in half, Brill snaps his neck. The pistol fell from lifeless fingers. The two men scrambled to their feet and faced off.
“I can pay more,” Mako stammered in broken English.
Brill ignores him. Ching lashes out, and they’re fighting again. Punches fall, blows rain down, but each is blocked, and countered and blocked again.
Ching feints, Brill kicks and something cracks.
The bodyguard folds backwards, his shin bone jutting from his leg. Ching fumbled for the gun. Brill kicked his arm, snapped it in half. Ching collapsed in the corner opposite Mako.
“I am sorry, Master,” he bowed his head.
Brill knelt down and picked up the gun.
“Be quick,” Mako said.
It is a sign of respect to kill the bodyguard first in their circles. Brill nodded. He aimed at Ching and pulled the trigger, then moved the barrel to Mako and shot him.
The elevator stopped on the lobby floor.
The doors opened and a herd of policemen stood outside. They stared at the bloody carnage in the elevator car. A lone lieutenant, braver than the others stepped into the car and nudged the trapdoor up with the end of his nightstick. It’s locked.
None of the officers notice the stairwell door open or see Brill as he moved across the rear of the lobby and exited the back.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“I don’t believe it,” said Wallace.
Foster shrugged.
“It’s what he told me.”
“It took a squad to take out that bodyguard and Mako.”
“He always said he was lucky,” sighed Maddie.
“He’s a liar.”
“We’re all liars,” said Foster.
“Right. So you can’t trust what he says,” Wallace turned to Maddie. “Like when you shot him. He was wearing Kevlar under his shirt. Had to be.”
“I would have felt it.”
“Then something else. No one is that good.”
“He’s good. And lucky,” Foster said. “It’s a dangerous combination.”
“He’s still lying.”
“He doesn’t brag.”
“For someone who wants him dead, you’re very quick to come to his defense.”
Maddie studied him over the edge of her sunglasses.
“I don’t underestimate him.”
“You’re scared of him.”
Foster shoved back from the table making them both jump.
“It’s time to close the contract,” he said to Maddie. “How do you want to do this?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The mud splattered Jeep slid to a stop in front of a ramshackle cabin at the end of a short dirt road off the beach front strip. A narrow porch runs along the front, weathered boards painted gray by the sun and salt air. It was tiny. Two small bedrooms off a living room kitchen combo and one old bathroom.
But it was private and close to the sand.
“Are you sure this is it?” Ron called to Brill as he dozed in the back of the Jeep.
“He gave me this address,” said Dana.
Ron put a hand on Brill’s knee. He jumped with a start.
“It’s okay, we’re here,” she reassured him.
He glanced around at the surroundings, taking in the cabin, the empty street behind them, and the two women in the front.
“I’ll check it out,” he mumbled.
Ron pressed him back into the seat.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
She slid out of the Jeep and kept a pistol low against her leg.
“Key under the mat?” she joked.
He nodded.
“Really?”
“Mi casa, su casa,” he said. “Si.”
“Great,” she chuckled. “Cover me.”
Dana propped an assault rifle in her lap and winked.
Ron sneaked up to the door, stepped to one side and knocked. There was no answer. She lifted up the sand encrusted map and there it was, a key, just as he said. She unlocked the door and shoved it open, half expecting something or someone to jump out at them.
Nothing happened.
She moved into the house and after a moment reappeared. She shrugged at Dana.
“It’s safe,” she called.
Dana helped Brill out of the back of the Jeep.
“That’s why it’s called a safe house.”
Inside, Dana settled Brill into a chair next to the rock fireplace and began searching the kitchen. He leaned back into a comfortable ratty armchair and watched. Ron set her pistol down and examined his wounds.
“Move the Jeep around back,” he instructed her. “There’s a lean to carport. Under the eaves, there’s a coffee can. Bring it to me.”
Ron nodded and went outside. He listened as the Jeep started up and moved.
“There
’s nothing here,” Dana announced.
“Go two blocks to the market,” he said. “Get supplies.”
Dana reached into the pockets of her fatigues and turned them out. Both empty. She smiled at Brill as he gave her a pained grin back. Ron came back through the door with a rusted tin coffee can.
“Give it to Dana,” he instructed.
She tossed it to Dana. She pried off the lid and spilled a couple of wads of cash into her hand.
“Bring bandages,” he said.
“Anything else?”
“Beer. Cold.”
Ron plopped beside him and began peeling off his shirt.
“You must be feeling better if you can bitch about beer,” she said.
“Give me four of them and I won’t feel anything.”
“I’ll hurry,” said Dana as she rushed out of the door.
“What can I do?” Ron asked.
“Help me move this chair,” he whispered.
She struggled to move the armchair out on the back porch. It faced the ocean, the sounds of crashing waves soothing. The beach was deserted. The back porch was long and empty, covered from the sun by a section of angled tin roof. Brill settled in the chair under the shade and breathed in the salt air.
“You’re low key here.”
Ron studied his relaxed composure as she stood in the doorway.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re safe here.”
“Does it have a shower?”
“Last door on the right.”
“Do you want one?”
“Are you offering to share?”
“Just because you need the help.”
“I think I’ll sit here and soak up the sunset.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Nice place.”
“Gnarly.”
He listened as she started the shower.
