by Andrew Grant
“Plan two,” I whispered. The voice-activated headset sent my verbalised thought out to Sami.
“Say again.”
“Just talking to myself,” I replied. “Sami this is going to be fast and loud and dirty. Start back right now.”
“Roger.”
Sami was gone. I was alone and I was shit scared. This was not going to be pretty in anyone’s book. I was going to be killing some guys and they were going to be trying to kill me. Problem was this wasn’t the Thai or Cambodian jungle, this was Singapore. Guns and gun battles, especially those resulting in death, were not going to amuse the powers that be, and that most assuredly was a fact.
“Fuck it. Let’s do it!”
I get to my feet and started for The QuarterMaster Store. My jog became a sprint as I raced down the pathway behind the mortars and crossed the bridge, fishing the key to the door out of my pocket as I went. I could sense rather than see movement in the shadows on the hillside above me. I was tempted to hit the landing, go down the steps to the lower level, wait for this clown and take him out before I opened the door, but there would be others coming. Speed was my friend, my only fucking friend right at that moment.
There was a dim light on the landing, but I snapped on my headlamp as I reach the door. The key went in easily enough but it wouldn’t turn. I applied more pressure, praying that it wouldn’t break. Finally, the lock snapped back and I was in. I was moving as quickly as I could. The beam from my headlamp sliced through the pitch-blackness inside the windowless room. I ignored the alarm completely. It didn’t matter if it was activated. In fact that might work in my favour, I thought.
The beam from my lamp picked up the faces of the men sitting and standing around the table. This, the tableaux in the first room, unnerved me for a second. The face of the one seated figure was looking directly at me. In the light of day he was realistic enough but in the lamplight he looked as if he was about to ask me what the hell I was doing there.
I went through into the second room at a jog. The narrow beam of my headlamp cut a swathe through the blackness but it didn’t reach to the far end of this the longer room. The standing and seated figures down there faded into shadows. But I wasn’t looking for my target down there.
Numata was the first seated figure to my right. I stepped over the railing and the proximity alarm sounded. It was an annoyingly high-pitched buzzer, as these things tend to be. I reach across the table for Numata’s right sleeve and start groping for the digital recorder.
At first it seemed that the sleeve was empty and then, just as the main alarm started its banshee screaming, I found it. Small, metallic and worth billions of dollars. I pocketed the note taker and zipped my pocket closed as the beam from a flashlight flared back in the room beyond. The man on the hill was coming in after me. I figured he’d wait outside. Damn!
I debated sprinting to the exit door at the far end, but no time. Instead I killed my light. I was about to go around the table and crouch behind Numata’s figure when I had a brainstorm. The empty seat at the head of the table, it was right beside me. Head? I was wearing a hood. There was an Indian soldier wearing a beret standing behind the chair. I yanked the beret off his head and I fell into the chair, pulling the Browning from my shoulder holster as I did so. I pulled the headlamp off my head and let my communicator fall down my chest as I pulled the beret on. Hopefully, having my face blacked out I’d look like an African officer. Whatever, I needed to buy a moment of time.
I froze as the light came probing into the room. I was facing away from the doorway, which was slightly behind my left shoulder. The man with the flashlight was no doubt pressed against the side of the entrance. My survival in the first instance depended on whether he was on the left or right side.
The light beam started down the left wall and swept the long room moving left to right. He was against the near side and that meant he wouldn’t have the angle to see me unless he stepped right into the room. If he’d been on the other wall, he would have swept my side first.
The light just touched my shoulder and swept back the other way. I sensed Mr Smoker had moved into the room. Then I could see him out of the corner of my eye. The beam swung back. He was slightly in front of me now. My impression of a waxwork had worked, it seemed. The guy with the light was probably looking for a standing, crouching or prone figure, not one seated at the head of the table, obviously part of the display.
The alarm siren was shrieking and the buzzer too. It was nerve- shredding pandemonium in the surrender room and no doubt for a hundred metres in every direction outside. I figured the rangers and cops and everyone in Singapore would be heading this way soon to see what was going on. The guy with the light continued moving forward. The gun in his right hand reflected the light from the flashlight held in his left. He advanced further into the room, pushing the gun and light ahead of his body. Then he crouched and began sweeping the light under and behind the tables, trying to find a living being amongst the ghosts. I stayed motionless for the moment, but it was time to be going. I didn’t want to be there when another of Lu’s little helpers came in.
Chow Lee’s heart was pounding, his ears ringing from the screaming alarms. He was sweating, close to panic. The Fang Triad gang member was not comfortable using a gun. The automatic in his hand felt unnatural. He preferred a hatchet or a knife. However, the man he had tracked into this place had a gun. Where was he? Where was the shadow he was hunting?
Lee pressed against the wall at the entrance to the Japanese surrender room and passed the beam of his flashlight down the long room. He had never been in there before. The figures standing and seated seemed so lifelike. The muzzle of Lee’s gun jerked from one side to another.
Lee took a deep breath to try and steady himself. The sounds of the alarms and his adrenaline overload had left his nerves raw. He moved the flashlight beam to his right. There were more figures. A tall one in white stood leaning over a table. The muzzle of the gun jerked. Lee almost fired but he restrained himself, and the cone of light moved on. There was a figure seated at the head of the table immediately to his front right. This motionless figure was dressed in black, just another dummy. Lee stepped further into the room, his searching beam moving on again probing.
He crouched, stabbing his light under the long tables. Again he started on his left before he brought the light back to the right. He was searching for a crouching man hidden behind the seated figures. Had the man he was seeking already left the room through the exit door?
Lee’s light probed further. He was half-turned now as the light moved down the room, probing the shadows under the table. Then the beam touched the feet of the seated figure at the head of the table and it stopped. Instead of plain shoes or military boots, this figure was wearing Nike sneakers. New-looking sneakers!
Black! There were uniforms of all colours on the dummies in this place, but no other one was wearing black. The man he had followed into this place had been wearing black!
Chow Lee’s gun pointed away from the light beam. He tried to swivel on his knees, turning to bring the gun in line, but he was too slow. There were two flashes. He felt both of the bullets that killed him.
My two shots hit the man with the flashlight in the chest. The flashlight spun to the floor. I saw the shocked expression on the gunman’s face as the light beam hit him and rolled away.
I stood and stepped over the railing. There was no way I was going to waste a second and check whether Mr Smoker was dead. I didn’t care. The fact he was not shooting in my direction was all that mattered.
My head was splitting from the sound of the alarms. I needed to get the hell out of there and into the water just as fast as I could. The two guys coming in through the outer door, however, seemed to have other ideas.
13
“What is happening? Have they got him?”
“I can’t tell, Mr Lu,” the man on the radio responded. “They are not talking to me.”
“Call them!”
�
�Yes, Mr Lu.” The operator opened a channel and a ragged burst of gunfire filled the room through the radio’s small speaker. The gunfire gave way to the wailing of the siren. There was no more gunfire, nothing other than the screaming alarm. The operator called out names, but he received no reply. “They are not answering, Mr Lu.”
“Send the others.”
“They are already on their way.”
Thomas Lu sank heavily down onto a chair. It was supposed to have been so simple.
“What’s happening?”
The thing about gunfights, particularly in the dark, is that they generally involve a lot of chaos, and this is exactly what happened at this moment in time.
The two men came in through the double door shoulder to shoulder. Big mistake! They were silhouetted against the glare of the Singapore night sky, while I was in the almost total darkness of a windowless room.
I was lying flat on the floor and the beam of the flashlight one of the newcomers was waving about passed by above me. There was a shout and shots, but they were not fired at me. The light was focussed on the surrender tableaux away to my left. The realism of the wax figure sitting with his head turned in the direction of the intruders had startled the newcomers. The unfortunate dummy now had no head.
This momentary distraction allowed me to get away five rounds in rapid succession. It wasn’t fancy, but at a range of less than ten feet it was very effective. I covered the man on the left and fired twice, then I swung the gun onto the other man, the one with the torch, and fired three more. The last round was unintentional, but things like that happen in combat, especially with an unfamiliar weapon.
The sound of my shots barely registered above that of the alarm. The newcomers were down. I then had seven rounds left in my automatic before the Browning became as useful as a doorstop.
Again I didn’t stop to check on the fallen men or grab another weapon. I vaulted them and hit the landing rolling, my gun looking for a target. There were none there. No more bad guys waited on the landing or the bridge. The sky was blazing with stars and the moon was like a giant icy spotlight vying with the lights of Singapore for attention.
“Oh great,” I muttered as I started down the wide stairs. Just when I needed the cover of maximum darkness, the universe took over. I just had to get across the terrace, down the ramp, past the toilets and the lower terrace, and into the water. Easy, huh?
“Are you okay? We heard the alarms and shots?”
“I’m okay. I have it. Going for the water now.”
“Negative, Daniel. There’s a Police Coast Guard boat heading straight for the fort. They’ll be there before we are. Go for your entry point.”
“Okay.” I started to run for the ridge, but Sami came back to me immediately.
“Abort that. There’s another launch coming in from the channel. We’re going to have to bug out. Can you make the sea beyond Siloso Beach and we’ll go round?”
“Roger that,” I replied. I had to get out of the fort. I started down the roadway, keeping close to the wall on the right, hugging the shadows.
The black outfit I was wearing and my blacked-out face were hopefully doing their job. I was just another shadow, albeit a fast moving one.
There were police sirens, a lot of them, and they were getting louder. Then below me, around the curve of the driveway, I could see figures coming up towards the fort. The moonlight was glinting off the guns they held ready in their hands. These most definitely were not the good guys. I was still in the shadows and I didn’t think they’d seen me. I knew they would in a few seconds unless I got the hell out of there. There was only one place to go: up!
I scrambled up the steep grassy bank to my right. It bordered the driveway for half its length. There was a narrow flat terrace on top with a wide drain running down the centre. I figured that I’d have at least some cover if I needed it. I was ten or fifteen feet above the road. There had been no shouts or shots, so I had to believe they hadn’t seen me.
I stopped and knelt in cover at the edge of the jungle fringe. I needed to protect Stanley’s recorder if I had to hit the water again. I pulled off the backpack and put the device into the waterproof vinyl camera bag I’d earmarked for it. I zipped the bag into my pocket. It was possible I might have to ditch the backpack at some stage.
I stayed where I was and continued playing at being a shadow as the half dozen guys who were sprinting up the road pounded by below me.
The moment they were gone I started away again, keeping as low as I could, slipping into the straps of the backpack as I went. Ideally, I thought I should ditch it, but I wasn’t about to leave any evidence of my presence anywhere near Fort Siloso if I could help it.
I paused at the end of the terrace. There were lights at the hotel gate down and around the corner to my right and there were lights around the aquarium buildings and the concourse itself. There didn’t appear to be anyone playing sentry near the vehicle barrier or the fort ticket office, but who could tell. I had to take a chance. In the first instance, I didn’t want Lu’s men to get me and, in the second, I couldn’t let the police catch me in the fort.
I slithered down the grassy bank to the road and started towards the shelter of the aquarium complex. I figured I could move under cover as far as the covered bus shelter and then sprint across the concourse to the beach. There I’d swim out to the nearest island, go over that and drop into the water on the far side. I was not prepared to try and negotiate the nets strung between any of the four islands in the dark.
I made it across the road and had just stepped into the aquarium grounds when the first police car came howling around the corner beyond the bus shelter with its full sound and light show going. I threw myself flat behind some shrubs as the car swept on towards the vehicle barrier at the fort gate. Doubtless the driver hadn’t expected the barrier to be down because there was a screech of brakes. The car came to a tyre-smoking halt.
As the three or four police in the vehicle got out of the car and descended on the barrier, I crawled on hands and knees towards the cover of the aquarium buildings. A second police cruiser arrived in equally dramatic fashion. This one had a spotlight in operation and its powerful beam started sweeping the aquarium grounds. The white scythe came towards me and I was caught with no cover.
No cover, that is, unless you count a pool filled with bloody great turtles. There was no alternative, so I vaulted into the water as the white beam from the spotlight swept by above me. The sound of my clumsy entrance into the pool hopefully was drowned out by the sound of cars and sirens.
Now, I don’t know a hell of a lot about turtles, but from what I’d seen of these huge guys on my reconnaissance run, they had beak-like mouths. I was in water that was almost chest high. I felt a boulder move under my feet and something slammed into my hip. I needed to tuck myself away in cover with all my bits hugged in tight and hope that these big guys didn’t get hungry for human flesh or that the guy with the spotlight didn’t get creative.
At one end of the pool was a pedestrian bridge. I half-swam and half-waded to it and ducked under. The bridge was quite wide and that gave me the room to get well under and out of sight. Turtles were nudging me. One came right up to me and surfaced. We looked at each other eyeball to eyeball in the half-light before he turned and swam away. I’m not sure if these guys are nocturnal or not, or if my sudden entry into their world just woke them up. Whatever, they were agitated. So far, although I had been pushed and nudged, I hadn’t been bitten. Long may the status quo remain, I thought.
There was a mesh under the bridge that cut the turtle pool off from the neighbouring pool or, I guessed, the other half of the same pool. If I could make it into the second pool, I could maybe get beyond the aquarium complex and into the cover of the trees.
I tried the mesh but it was heavy gauge and I didn’t have the tools necessary to cut it, so option number one was not available. I decided that I just had to tough it out where I was for the moment and pray the police didn’t get
interested in the turtle pool.
There were more police vehicles arriving and, suddenly, one, and then two flashlights were playing on the water of the pool. Another joined it. I hunched low and turn my head away from the lights. Because I was deep under the bridge, I hoped that the light would bounce off the water surface and be reflected away and not penetrate the water. I could hear the cops talking. One suggested that no one in their right mind would be in the water with the turtles. Maybe he was right!
The cops’ discussion was suddenly interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Several weapons were in action back at the fort. There were shouts from the direction of the fort gate. The trio with the flashlights ran off. The turtle pool hopefully was now forgotten. This surely was my chance to get out of there.
I slipped out from under the bridge and gingerly levered myself out of the water. There were at least eight or nine police vehicles clustered on the roadway leading up to the fort. A senior officer was addressing a heavily armed squad. Other officers were under cover behind vehicles and stoneworks, pointing a variety of weapons up the fort driveway. Shots were still sounding from up above. A police helicopter was working a big light above the fort itself. Attention, it seemed, was all focused back up that way and that suited me just fine.
As I ran along the covered walkway to the bus pickup point, yet another police car came roaring down the road. I took cover behind a large standing refrigerator and waited while it passed. I could have done with some light refreshments, but the door on the drinks chiller was chained and padlocked shut. I moved on as the latest squad car screeched to a halt beside the others.
This was the moment! Keeping low, I sprinted across the broad concourse. There were no shouts or shots and I was down the wooden terraces onto the sand. Here I took shelter behind a bar kiosk while I got my bearings.
