Death and Dark Money

by Seeley James

  He shook his head, turning as white as his dad. “Airbnb. Is Jago the guy?”

  I nodded. “We need to leave.”

  With a tug on Brent’s arm, we headed for the main door. Carlos trotted ahead a few paces and checked the main entrance and walkway.

  He turned around, shook his head, and pointed behind us. “Ten or twelve coming.”

  “Do you have guns?” Brent asked.

  “Guns are illegal in Japan.” I grabbed the brochure out of Brent’s hands and memorized the building map.

  One other exit. After showing it to Brent and his boy, I bolted between the exhibits to the backside. They followed.

  The back door opened to a tranquil, ice-covered pond surrounded by trees with an asphalt path. We slipped and slid down the icy trail around the pond. A cast-iron fence with spikes on top hemmed us in. Beyond it was a rarely traveled road and a block fence, eight feet high.

  Fifty yards to our left a group of thugs appeared. We turned up the trail in the opposite direction to find another bunch of thugs.

  Brent Zola vaulted the spiked fence, his son followed. Carlos and I looked at each other. I could make it, but my shorter companion needed a boost. I looped my hands, tossed him up, and followed with a fair vault of my own.

  The Zola boys had disappeared behind a gate in the block fence across the maintenance road. We followed. A few strides later, we were in a graveyard. We entered through a service area and ran past a backhoe and stone-working tools. Flying onto the main drag between shrines, we realized how trapped we were. Six Japanese guys blocked our exit via the main gate, forty yards ahead.

  Carlos and I glanced at each other, telepathically communicating the required dialogue between manly men who face terrible odds: fuck it, let’s take these guys down.

  We charged, head on, only to see them pull chains from their coats.

  I hate chains.

  The first one nailed the back of my legs as I speared the guy with my head. While I shoved him back three feet, one of his buddies landed a chain diagonally across my back. A third guy took a whack at my shins. I fell to my knees, but managed to yank the weapon from my first assailant.

  Unlike fight scenes in movies, gangsters don’t wait around while you beat up their friends one at a time. They come at you in numbers. While I whipped the chain around one guy’s face, two more guys landed on my back. They were smaller than me by fifty pounds, but two of them cancelled my advantage.

  To my right, Carlos had disarmed a guy and swung his chain around his head so fast no one could get near. I backed my two guys into Carlos’s spinning chain.

  It turned out to be both a good thing and a bad thing. The velocity was enough to knock both of my guys unconscious, which was good. Wrecking Carlos’s defensive weapon was bad. Three guys jumped him, fists flying.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Definitely gunfire, but I didn’t feel any bullets pass through my body and the immediate threats were coming at me too fast to look around.

  The guy I disarmed came back at me with a bleeding right eye. I gave him a lashing from his blind side, spinning him into a stone monument. A bamboo stick landed on the back of my head, stunning me.

  For a horrible instant, I stood stock still, knowing I needed to move or the next blow would be lethal, but I my body refused to respond. I heard a whack.

  Carlos had whipped the guy who was about to crush my skull.

  There were two guys left in our immediate vicinity, but a small horde slipped between gravestones, heading our way. Brent Zola lay in a pool of blood, his son nowhere to be seen.

  I landed a blow to my attacker’s chin as his pal kicked me in my already-sore-as-hell ribs. Carlos brought a crowbar down on the second guy’s head. He was out.

  My guy was on his back but managed to kick me in the balls.

  That’s when the horde arrived.

  With a guy like Carlos on my six, I could take down four or five guys. Carlos was good for three himself. But the unlimited reinforcements overwhelmed us.

  The first of the new guys tried to nose my fist, which didn’t work out so well for him, but the guy right behind him hit me in the head with a baseball bat. Things were a little hazy after that.

  Dark shadows of men crowded out what little daylight made it through the clouds. Punches rained down on me from all sides. I fought and landed some kicks with no idea if they were effective. My knees went out and I fell. From then on it was all kicks to the ribs and head.

  Sirens cracked through the city noise around us. Our attackers fled like cockroaches from a can of WD40 behind a lighter.

  Snow began to fall. I lay on my back, assessing the damage. Pushing up to my elbows, I searched for Carlos and noticed I was using one eye because the other one was swollen shut. My new best friend lay motionless a few feet away, bleeding from a gash in his forehead. At least he was breathing.

  Footsteps approached from my left, where a lone figure in a dark overcoat approached at a confident pace. He stopped a few feet away, his figure backlit by some lights on a nearby building. He looked vaguely familiar, too tall to be Jago but someone I’d known in the past. He stared at me for a moment, contempt in his posture, then tossed a revolver on my chest, and walked away.

  While serving under Pershing in 1916, George S. Patton, the flashy American General and hero of WWII, carried a single Colt SSA .45 ivory-handled revolver. During a gunfight with Julio Cárdenas, Pancho Villa’s second-in-command, Patton had to stop and reload three times before killing the man. He deemed the experience too close for comfort and took to carrying a pair of Smith & Wesson revolvers that became part of his legend.

  The still-smoking gun that now lay on my belly was a detailed replica of Patton’s first gun, the Colt SSA.

  I knew all this because the revolver was mine.

  The last time I’d seen it was at my house, the night David Gottleib was killed.

  Scary sparkles appeared in my peripheral vision and grew together in a patchwork of gloom. I sensed myself exhale everything in my lungs. Then it was total darkness.

  CHAPTER 24

  Pia opened the stairwell door enough to push the barrel of her weapon into the hallway and fired a three-round burst. She withdrew and slammed the metal fire door. Bullets pinged off it, leaving indentations.

  “Is there any way to lock this?” Pia looked at the expectant eyes of the staff quivering on the stairs.

  The butler shook his head, his face sagging.

  “Clear on this floor,” Tania said in her earbud. She was one landing up, out of visual range.

  Pia ushered the staff up the stairs, where Tania waved them toward the hallway. Tania covered the next flight of steps up the fire escape while Pia followed the staff into the empty corridor.

  “Line up, backs against the wall,” Pia said. “Put your hands out, so they can see you’re not hiding anything. We’re going to the helipad.”

  “What should we tell them?” the butler asked.

  “Tell them where we are. No need for anyone else to get hurt.”

  A maid stepped forward and spoke in broken English. “But they kill you.”

  “Wish them luck,” Pia smiled.

  She slid back into the fire escape in time to see two men looking up from the floor below. She fired off a burst, then pushed her barrel over the railing, aiming blindly straight down, and let off another. Ricochets zinged down the structure. Twenty-one rounds left in the magazine, plus two more mags of thirty each. Her suit jacket bulged with stolen ammo.

  She waited and listened. Above her, Tania opened the last door, top floor, and had a look. Below her, boots scuffled back to the landing.

  She fired off blindly again, and more ricochets pinged down fifty floors.

  “Clear up here,” Tania whispered in her comm link.

  Pia ran up the final two flights to join Tania in the plush hallway. Running to the balcony together, they considered the giant atrium below. Dubai Police were pouring in the front doors, herding guest
s and blowing whistles. Outside more Dubai police vehicles raced across the curved bridge leading to the hotel. Pia looked to Tania.

  “Textbook police work,” Tania said. “They’ll have everything under control in fifteen minutes. About ten minutes too late for us.”

  They ran for the exit, ripped open the door, and crossed the rooftop greeting area to the helipad’s stairs. The open flight would offer no protection. Pia faced the door while Tania ascended the first set. Two heads popped out and Pia brushed them back with a burst before joining Tania on the first landing.

  Tania fired at the next wave of attackers while Pia made the last ascent to the round steel disc cantilevered off the front of the hotel. She looked down over 650 feet, the billowing “sail” of the building nearly obscuring the man-made island on which the hotel stood. She looked toward the airport and saw nothing in the sky.

  She texted the pilot. “You are supposed to be here. Now would be a good time to pick us up.”

  Tania joined her at the edge of the pad and assessed their situation. Below them on the hotel side, behind the greeting area, were massive walls hiding the air conditioning, elevator mechanicals, and other machinery. At the back, two giant supports carried the structural weight of the building. The mast rocketed into the sky above them. Beyond the supports, on the far side of the hotel and twenty feet below the roofline, the Skyview Bar’s wall of glass faced west over the Persian Gulf.

  The pilot texted back, “Police have cordoned off the building and airspace due to a shooting. I will be there when they give the all-clear.”

  Tania read over her shoulder. “We’re screwed.”

  A man stuck a gun out of the door and fired blindly. The bullets went high and several yards to their left. Tania fired back and blew off some fingers. The closing door cut off a high-pitched scream.

  Pia pointed to the outer wall of the hotel, a three-foot wide rim ran above the hotel fifteen feet below the edge of the helipad. “We jump to there, run to the other side, get behind the door and fire at them as they come out.”

  “Are you nuts? If we don’t stick the landing like a gymnast, we’re splat on the sidewalk.”

  They peered over the edge.

  Behind them, the door opened again. Two men ran out. Pia and Tania flipped over to full-auto and unloaded a magazine each.

  They hit one, badly denting his body armor, but the other dragged him back inside, behind the concrete walls.

  They switched magazines.

  “Guess we’re going to stick the landing,” Tania said.

  The helipad had no safety rails, relying instead on a wide net to catch anything that might leave the landing surface. Pia worked her way to the edge, flipped over, and landed like an Olympian.

  Tania watched the door glancing back at Pia. “If I fall, will you tell Mama I love her?”

  “You’ll be fine. It’s wider than it looks.”

  Tania stretched across the net, grabbed the side rail, and looked down. Pia looked down too. Wind whipped the Teflon-coated cloth that formed the famous sail. Cars the size of ants lay scattered about the entrance like toys.

  “Don’t look down.” Pia pointed to the narrow strip of wall at her feet. “Look right here.”

  Tania huffed and jumped.

  Three men flew out of the door, guns blazing at the top of the helipad.

  Pia returned fire, her casings glittering like a shower of gold in the afternoon sun.

  Tania landed, her arms windmilling, and continued forward over the edge.

  She reached the tipping point and kept going forward.

  Pia sensed the problem going on behind her. She fired off another burst with one hand, reached for Tania’s collar with the other, and pulled. Her skirt stopped her from kicking out a balancing leg that would bring them upright. Tania’s momentum was unabated. Pia’s MP5 sprayed bullets into the air as she leaned backward. A gust of wind slammed her and tried to push her to her death.

  She stole a glance over her shoulder and saw nothing between her and the ground hundreds of feet below. She tottered on her heels, straining her ankles and calves to stay upright. She bent her knees, lowering her center of gravity, giving her an extra split-second to find a way to stay alive. She refocused her efforts to bring their combined weight and momentum under control, tightened her grip, and used her core strength to pull them both back to the wall.

  Tania’s excitement at coming back carried over and nearly threw the two of them into the greeting area. They recovered, exposed and wobbling, before running along the top of the wall. They were outlined against the sky, like paper targets at the gun range.

  The men in black found them and fired on full-auto. Their arc of lead trailed the women by a foot.

  Pia and Tania scurried as fast as they could to the mechanical area, where a higher concrete wall would protect them. The bullets caught up with them, shredding the edge of the cement wall. Around the edifice, nestled among the giant, bellowing machines a level below them, they saw a door leading back inside to the service elevator. Just as they were about to jump down into the space, the door swung open and two men stepped out.

  When Pia and Tania, filled with a good measure of fear but better-trained than their counterparts, saw their assailants, they turned and fired first.

  Protected by helmets and body armor, the men staggered back a step, but raised their weapons.

  Tania nailed one guy in the face. The other dropped back inside.

  “I thought they were after Suliman,” Tania said.

  “Guess we became a target of opportunity.”

  “That means they’re communicating with the head honcho.”

  Pia jumped down and went through the dead man’s pockets until she found his phone. The last number dialed was labeled LOCI. She started to dial it when the survivor stuck his rifle barrel out of the door and fired.

  Pia kicked the weapon, levering it against the door and pinning her opponent’s finger inside the trigger guard. He screamed in pain.

  She climbed the wall and followed Tania farther down, out of range. Across the mechanicals area, they saw three more men climbing to their level. In less than a minute, they would lose the high-ground advantage. They peppered the men with bullets. One fell back, the others ducked.

  Panting hard, they ran between the two giant supports that held up the building and stopped.

  Twenty feet below them was the roof of the Skyview Bar. More than six hundred feet below that, the cobalt Persian Gulf crashed into the hotel’s reef.

  The Burj al Arab was built on a man-made island. To secure the island and prevent erosion from the gulf’s light but relentless waves, jagged boulders, each the size of a car, formed a barrier. The serrated edges broke down the water’s energy and kept the hotel in place.

  Tania faced Pia. “You should’ve let me splat on the other side. I’d make a better-looking corpse on asphalt than those spikey rocks.”

  Pia ran a short distance and grabbed a coil of electrical cable. “You have the wrong attitude. Focus on winning.”

  “Will you stop the super-athlete-positive-mental-attitude bullshit? Not everything turns out fine just because you want it to.”

  “If you don’t focus on the goal, you’ll never hit it.”

  “What the hell? You think we’re going to rappel down the side with that?”

  “Got a better idea?”

  Two machine guns opened up, indiscriminately firing over their heads.

  “No, that was a good one.” Tania grabbed the electrical cable and looped it through a big metal ring jutting out of the cement. “If those things support window washers, they should hold us, right?”

  Pia crossed her fingers.

  More bullets raked the walls, coming nearer to them.

  Pia aimed but found no targets.

  Tania tossed the remaining cable over the roof of the Skyview Bar. She jumped down and walked backward, using the cable for support.

  Pia fired a few rounds over the heads of their foes
to keep them from peeking.

  Tania reached the edge of the roof. Below her, a six-hundred-foot drop to the barrier rocks. She pulled her rifle off her shoulder and held it one-handed. “I’m going over. I’ll shoot open the glass and try to land inside. If I make it, I’ll shake the line like this.” She gave the line a big shake, sending a sine wave up the line.

  “Will it hold you?” Pia asked.

  “Focus on winning.”

  Another round of gunfire sent Pia over the edge, onto the Skyview’s roof.

  Tania tied a slipknot in the end and slid it over her shoulders, then pulled it tight under her arms. With a last nod at Pia, she jumped off the roof.

  Pia heard raking gunfire and breaking glass. Civilians in the bar beneath her feet screamed in terror.

  A wave came up the line. Tania had made it.

  Or.

  The residual tension sent a phantom wave back up the line when Tania fell to her death.

  A man appeared above her. Pia fired half a mag at him. Several rounds deflected off his armor before he fell back.

  She walked down the curved roof in good-looking shoes with zero grip. The surface curved like a clamshell, growing steeper and narrower at the edge. When she reached her last step, she tried to loosen the slipknot. It was stuck.

  A helmeted assailant popped up over the wall and fired. Pia fired back.

  She wrapped the cable around her arm three times and held it as tight as possible.

  Three more men popped up. This time, two of them took aim while the third produced wire cutters.

  Pia flipped to full-auto and emptied her last mag.

  Holding the cable as tight as her fingers could squeeze, she ran down the sloping roof. She picked up speed, running as fast as her world-class legs could fly, and leaped into empty space as far as she could.

  For an instant, she saw only sky and the Persian Gulf’s infinite horizon. She willed herself not to look at the jagged rocks below her. For an infinitely short span of time, her momentum carried her into the empty air—weightless. The remaining slack pulled out of the cable, the line drew taut, and the jerk on her arm threatened to pull it from its socket.