by K. T. Tomb
“Oh, I do see, sir. You’re saying that if Mr. Kang decided to end it all tonight, we could tell the Chinese the sad news and no information that would be bad for business would be heard by anybody, right?”
Eze chuckled, sounding more like a truck engine firing up than a man, such was the reverberation caused by his barrel chest.
“Eze, of course I didn’t say anything like that. I take it there are gentlemen in your care downstairs that would be happy to help us out in exchange for a pardon from the crimes that brought them here?”
Manny shivered. He didn’t really understand what he had heard, but it amounted to conspiracy to murder that was for sure. All that stuff about Columbians and Chinese and business? What business could a British Governor be involved in that would lead him to order a man’s death? Manny didn’t even want to know. He slipped away from the window, and that happened to be just as the room next door emptied of its occupants and the Governor walked right past him, flanked by his guards. Eze had apparently gone the other way, towards, what Manny now knew, was the cells.
The Governor looked at Manny, and he felt scrutinized like a bug on a slide, as the rotund British man’s eyes flickered over his features, taking in his bruised face and ridiculous hair. Manny felt sure that this was a person who never forgot a face. As the men marched out the front door, a constable came down the hall, and took Manny to speak to the Sergeant.
He was processed much faster than the Germans, who were no longer there. They must have left while he’d had his head out of the window. He must have looked just as insane as he had in the bar, evidently trying to escape out of a tiny window instead of the wide-open front door. Within a few minutes, he was being led down the stairs toward the cells. As they started to go down the worn stone steps, they had to stop and go back as Eze came up. He was so wide that there was no way another person could pass him. His face was impassive, as if he hadn’t just given instructions for a man to be killed that day. At the second attempt, Manny was led to the basement cell. It was dark and cool, away from the still blazing late afternoon sun. Practically the entire room was one communal cell, bars running for a full thirty feet from one wall to the other, and in the gloom Manny could see the back wall thirty feet away, making the room one big square, but far too low-ceilinged to form a cube. Dark shapes congregated to the left, there could have been anything from five to fifteen men there, such was the poor lighting offered in this ancient dungeon. At the center of the far wall was a single toilet, and to the right there was another dark figure standing on its own. The Sergeant opened the iron-barred gate, and Manny stepped through, to spend what he hoped would be his one and only night in a Montserrat prison.
Chapter Seven
When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Manny could make out seven men in the cell. Six of them stood together on one side while the other who stood across the room from them was badly beaten, but still recognizable as the Chinese man who had been in the SUV when it arrived in Salem earlier that day. His nose had been broken, and there was matted blood in his hair. One ear had been twisted as if with pliers and, either as a result of or in addition to the broken nose, one eye was quite blackened. The Chinese man didn’t look at him once. He paid full attention to the other prisoners. The other prisoners, however, were very interested in Manny. No sooner had the sergeant left the cell and closed the door behind him, than the prisoners moved in like a pod of killer whales, and Manny was the baby seal. Manny put up his hands in a placating gesture, but before he could speak, the air was forced from his body by a rock solid gut punch. He didn’t even see it coming. This guy was fast.
“Uttt…..”
The urge to vomit was nearly too much for Manny to contend with. He sank to his knees. If he could breathe maybe he could talk his way out of the predicament, but his lungs burned and it was all he could do to not fall to the floor.
“Boy, we got business here tonight, bad business, but with you here, that means a witness, and we can’t be having that now, can we?”
The man who had hit him leered out of the gloom. His face was a mass of scarring around the mouth, and wild, bloodshot eyes. The guy was definitely on some chemical enhancement, judging by how hard he hit. He gave Manny a two fisted club over the back of the head and stars burst everywhere. It looked like a constellation had fallen into the cell and was burning his retinas away. Manny screwed his eyes up and prepared for the next blow, which came as a volley of kicks from all sides as he crumpled into a fetal position, trying desperately to protect his head and ribs. He was going to die here,for nothing. No treasure would come his way. Grampy had gotten him killed, in the most ignominious circumstances. These men would snap his neck, and his family would only know that he had been killed in a prison fight after racially abusing tourists and getting arrested. The shame of those thoughts were as unbearable as the pain.
The beating was only punctuated by the grunts of exertion from his attackers, until one of them screamed; not in anger, but in agony. Manny thought maybe one of them had broken a toe on his head, until a cacophony of yells and thudding blows erupted around him and this time, he was not the recipient. Manny chanced a quick glance up from the crook of his elbow, and saw the prisoners facing away from him now. The reason why was revealed in a blur of flying feet and palms, delivered with terrible speed by the diminutive, broken-nosed Chinese man.
One man dropped to one knee following a stinging blow to the throat, he puked on the floor, and tried to grab his enemy, but he was already gone, moving in a strange circular pattern, scissoring his legs and keeping the men he was attacking at a distance, preventing them from rushing at him for fear of being on the receiving end of another vicious blow. One man was already on the floor, face down with his head at an unnatural angle and blood was bubbling from his mouth. Gingerly, Manny raised himself to his feet, glad for the respite. The Chinese man parried a clumsy hook thrown high, grabbed the wrist that threw it and, pivoting sweetly, launched the owner of the arm through the air. The wrist remained in his hand, and as the much larger man landed, a sharp kick broke his arm at the elbow. A piercing scream left him, as did the sharp end of his shattered humerus with an accompanying gout of blood. The fight had been going on for mere seconds, and three men were already out for the count. Manny was unsure that he could have taken even one of them.
The Chinese man clearly had some serious skill, but in what? It was nothing that Manny had ever seen in any Bruce Lee or Jet Li movies, it was far too fluid. He seemed impossible for the slower, bigger men to land a punch on, and he was capitalizing on every mistake, every over-balanced move they made. Another man went down with a broken nose, followed by a strange double kick that connected once at the jaw, and then snapped the foot out again and back-heeled hard into the face. The remaining three opponents were warier now, and with more room to maneuver, the pace of the fight changed. Two guys kept the martial artist at a distance, while the one with the scarred mouth went at ripping the copper piping from the wall above the toilet. Water gushed as it broke, and armed with his makeshift spear, Scarface waded into battle swinging.
Mr. Kung-Fu was agile enough to dodge him, but Manny knew it was only a matter of time before he was cornered;once he was done, Manny’s goose would be cooked. He had to act, now, while they weren’t looking at him and were focused on his new ally. He waited, as the three prisoners, now emboldened with their new weapon, backed their adversary closer to the rear wall. Spraying water covered them all, and Manny took his shot. Charging, he aimed a flying drop kick at the scarred man which connected with the small of his back. Manny fell hard to the floor, banging his head hard on the stone surface. With one eye shut to blot out the returning supernova in his brain, Manny saw Scarface reel forwards, the brass spear pointed away from the Chinese man for a second and in that second, events took place so fast that Manny wasn’t sure if what he had seen was real. Scarface took a hard palm to the chest, throwing him back with a grunt of pain, and then his allies swooped in for the attack.
Bo
th of their punches were deflected high by quick motions that flowed as smoothly as a gentle stream around a boulder. Then a vicious head butt followed and, using the momentum of his forward-thrown head, the Chinese man snapped a rear-aimed kick out past the side of the other, hooked his heel around the back of his neck, pivoted and smashed him face first into the ground with his body weight. Scarface had barely recovered from the blow to his sternum when the rising Chinese man used his off-balance body to scoop him at the groin and under the armpit, and launch him face first into the toilet. The cheap porcelain shattered in a flurry of fragments and further flooding, and the room was quiet save for the sound of water and the cries of the few conscious injured.
Manny was helped up by the arm. He felt like he had been run over, twice, by his grandfathers’ old Jaguar town car. The Chinese man spoke in perfect English, which helped Manny realize he had lost the hearing in one ear for the moment.
“Thanks for the assistance there, I think they might have got me with that bit of metal if you hadn’t jumped in.”
Manny laughed.
“Dude, it’s no worry You saved my life, I was dead for sure.”
“Well, seven to one is not a fair fight. I don’t like that.”
“Yeah… not fair on anyone who fights you, anyway. Who are you? What the hell was all that ninja stuff? What are you doing here?”
Manny was coursing with adrenaline, and he knew he was jabbering.
“Well, you seem to be ok, judging by how much you talk. Call me Kang. That ‘ninja stuff’ is not ninja stuff. Ninjas are Japanese, I am Chinese. Do you know the difference?”
Well. Manny thought that was kind of a messed up thing to say, but seeing as the guy had just saved his life, he didn’t press it.
Kang continued, “That was a mix of styles, Baguazhang and a little Krav Maga. It’s quite effective against untrained attackers like these. I am here because the Governor invited me.”
Manny had somehow forgotten in the heat of the moment, or perhaps it was the beating of the moment, that he had overheard the conversation ordering Kang’s death not thirty minutes previously.
“Oh yeah, the Governor wants you dead, man. He set these guys up to kill you in exchange for being let out of here with no charge. Kind of a crappy thing to do, if you ask me” he said.
Kang shrugged again, noncommittally.
“Yes, I had suspected as much. It happens, in my business, when powerful men are afraid of losing what they have. By the way, did you realize that your hair is coming off?”
Dopily, Manny raised his hands to his head. The wig had slipped from where it had been glued, and was now attempting to escape via the back of his skull. He pulled the wig off his head. It had done what he needed it to. Naturally, he had anticipated being searched when he was booked into the prison, so Manny had hidden his bag with all of his possessions behind the Wide Awake Club prior to his arrest. The one thing he had to get into the jail was the treasure map, which in a stroke of inspiration he had decided to affix to the inside of the wig before he theatrically glued it in place. The map was still there, stained with sweat and a little blood now, but intact.
Kang turned to check his fallen enemies. Most of them were not moving, but the one with the shattered arm was whimpering and scotching across the floor to prop himself against the wall, eying Kang warily. Kang ignored him, and moved over to Scarface’s prone body, still face first in the hole left by the destruction of the prison toilet. Kang, with some difficulty now that his opponent was not supporting himself at all, heaved the body out of the way. Manny could see the ruin of his face as Kang flipped him over. He’d never seen a dead body, and now he was sure he was in a room with at least two, probably more. The nausea returned for entirely new reasons.
“Oh. That’s messed up, dude. I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“Ok, next time someone tries to kill you, I’ll let them.”
Kang was emotionless in his voice, he was clearly thinking about something else as he peered at the hole in the floor.
“Hey guy, check the pockets of this one here.”
Manny was affronted.
“My name is Manny. And hell no! I’m not going through a dead man’s pocket, what for?”
“He was smoking earlier, check his pockets, I need his lighter.”
Manny did as he was asked, bile rising in his gullet as he touched dead flesh. He turned up a tiny crack pipe, some rock cocaine, and a cheap lighter, which he tossed to Kang. Kang caught it nimbly out of the air, and bent down low, striking a flame on the second attempt.
“Manny, look at this.”
Manny bent down next to the strange Chinese man.
“What am I looking at? I can’t see anything.”
“What you are looking at, Kang said, “is the beautiful thing about modern toilets and ancient sewer systems. When the British owned Montserrat, they built sewers connecting their important buildings. Back then it was just a hole in the floor with a wooden bench built over it, but then when the flushing toilet was invented, everything above ground got smaller, but the hole is still the same size- it’s just covered up.”
Manny gave a little laugh.
“Man, why do you know so much about toilets? Are you a collector or something?”
Kang was impassive.
“Help me smash the floor here. We may not have much time before the police decide that I’m dead enough and come to check on me.”
Using the metal pole, they battered at the tiles and thin concrete for a short while, and Manny was sure they would be overheard. As it turned out, Kang had been right about the sewer, and as soon as the hole was large enough, he quickly disappeared into the stinking darkness.
Manny couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but anything beat staying there with dead and mutilated men, waiting to be charged with their assault and murder. Tucking the treasure map into his pocket, he slipped feet first down the hole after Kang, and was gone.
Chapter Eight
Quincy was in a rage.
Not only had Kang not been killed, he had even escaped from a basement cell and left a heap of bodies in his wake. The sergeant had booked in a prisoner, the young man with the big hair, who had given him that obviously fake name of Michael Jordan. Could he have been a conspirator? Quincy had to know what they knew. His political allies in London were dead set to lose the next election, and with them gone Quincy’s decade long exploitation of Montserrat would surely come to an end, unless of course he could raise enough capital to keep the cocaine flowing from South America. His operation was simple, but ingenious. Everyone knew that smugglers would routinely traffic a few kilos of coke at a time through the Caribbean, but almost no one knew that it was much easier to smuggle cocaine if you used your diplomatic immunity to bypass customs. Quincy couldn’t figure out what Kang knew, but what he did know was this: Kang had left Panama three weeks ago, traveled over-land through Columbia and Venezuela, and left Caracas by boat, heading up the chain of Caribbean islands. From what his contact with the Columbian cartels had said, several meetings had taken place between a Chinese businessman and the banks the cartels used to launder the currency sent by Quincy, and many others. If the Chinese were taking interest in the flow of coke out of South America, there must be concerns in Beijing that their burgeoning middle class were getting their hands on the drug.
All the diplomatic immunity in the world would not help him if his involvement in the trade was exposed to London, and that would be even more irrelevant if Kang escaped and reported to Beijing that he had been tortured at the instruction of a British Colonial Governor. Death would come swiftly.
He had to move fast, and there was only one way to go. It took his men a good half an hour to consult the schematics for the building and realize the truth about the tunnel below the prison cell. A further half an hour passed before the flooring in the basement had been sufficiently sledge hammered through to reveal the route taken by the escaped captives, the original hole had been far too small f
or even the smallest of Quincy’s guards to follow. What was revealed was a deep tunnel that had originally not been a sewer at all, but an escape route. At some point in history , which Quincy put a mental bet on as being during the turbulent slave uprisings a couple of hundred years before, a tunnel had been dug beneath the building. It had probably been used by the important men of the East India Company to escape retribution. It was well known that the company was heavily involved in the slave trade, and the riotous chattels were not likely to be forgiving to the company responsible, in part, for their indentured servitude.
What no one could tell Quincy, was where this tunnel led. To the ocean? Inland? No one knew. It showed on none of the maps, which made logical sense as the builders of the tunnel would have had no motivation to leave a record of where their secret route went, or that it existed at all.
In short order, the five men, Eze included, that made up the Governor’s guard had armed themselves from the scant armory, and filled up backpacks with supplies, equipment and ammunition. Eze went into the black nothing first, his head mounted torch illuminating his progress as he descended. Quincy followed him, almost too fat to get down at all. With the giant Eze in front, nearly bent double, the progress through the passage was going to be slow and laborious. Quincy could only hope that they could catch up to the escapees on the other side. Two off-road vehicles and police motorbikes were on standby to roll out as soon as the exploratory team radioed back to them with their location. The tunnel stank, and had a steep decline to the east. Quincy, decked out with a head-torch like his men, examined the walls and low ceiling with the bright illumination. As Eze slowly moved ahead, Quincy stopped suddenly. The men behind him nearly knocked him flat, despite only moving at a slow pace. In the wall of the tunnel were gouged two words in barely visible trenches, nearly obscured with years of human effluent. The only reason they were visible at all was the height and angle of the words, and that they were clearly chiseled into a flagstone that had then been set into the earth walls. Quincy read it aloud, with wonder.
