Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 2

HANOI HEAT By Iain Purdie

I hate Vietnam. In fact I hate all of South East Asia, but I hate Vietnam more as that’s where I was stuck at this precise moment in time. It’s not the food or the language or the people – especially the women. There’s nothing wrong with the women and I’ve… sampled enough to be sure of this fact.

It’s the weather. The humidity is simply dreadful. It makes my hair a nightmare to maintain and it’s murder on clothing. A man likes to give a good impression and a lovely white suit is the perfect start. A white suit with sweat stains on it by lunchtime is anything but attractive and gives off entirely the wrong impression. It may be perfectly all right for people like the fat businessman currently digging into his second bowl of phở in the restaurant I was running past, but it just wasn’t good enough for me.

Ah, yes. Introductions.

My name is John Cord and Her Majesty’s government is very lucky to have me in their employ. My job title is the wonderfully simple and yet perfectly accurate “Special Agent”. Emphasis very much on the “special” as I’m sure those aforementioned Vietnamese lovelies would agree.

However, even I find it difficult to feel special whilst wearing a dreadfully sweaty light cotton suit. Also while running along a busy Hanoi street slightly after midday in near 100% humidity. This kind of thing they certainly do not train you for as part of the Ministry’s schooling. Seventy-two hours on the frozen hills of Scotland hunting and humiliating those amateurs in the SAS? No problem. But sadly no training in avoiding mopeds seemingly ridden by drivers utilising sonar while running pell-mell through what feels like a very warm swimming pool.

Oh, running. Yes.

This was an unusual situation. Often, my job entails locating someone regarded as a threat and convincing them – gently, with the lowest-velocity of bullets – that they would rather not cause problems for the United Kingdom and her friends and allies.

Instead I was currently tasked with locating an individual carrying knowledge which could help us in our fight against the, for want of a better phrase, “bad guys”. The problems I was having were twofold.

First of all, he didn’t want to be located. And once he realised he had been, he decided to make himself un-located as swiftly as possible.

Secondly, I wasn’t the only one who regarded the contents of his cranium as valuable. Representatives of the opposition were right behind me, very much intent on getting their filthy mittens on my quarry.

Sadly for them, one thing stood in their way.

Me.

So, running past a restaurant. Quarry ahead of me, but disappearing amongst the busy crowd. At least two men of Arabic descent following me at quite the pace. They obviously had less regard for their clothing as I for mine. They also had less regard for the populace, seeming quite happy to push and shove their way through the lunchtime throng.

I, on the other hand, had opted to sprint down the road and take my chances with the traffic. While this was working on the whole, every so often a moped would speed towards me against the flow of traffic. While miraculously missing every other vehicle, they always seemed to be making a bee-line for yours truly with every intent of coating my rapidly-browning finery in another layer of exhaust fumes.

Despite these problems, I was gaining slowly on the fleeing asset who was facing the same obstacles but with less training or physical fitness. Like our over-eager companions, he was from the Arabic region. While I wanted to find out what was in his head, they had orders to ensure that those particular secrets remained unuttered. Permanently, if necessary. I wasn’t their target – he was.

Dodging a taxi, which had decided that red lights were purely for Tet decoration, I sidestepped a group of tourists and made to swing my arm out and obtain a moped or scooter. Spying a likely candidate, I swivelled, extended my arm… and rapidly pulled it back in.

As much as my orders were to retrieve this intelligence no matter the cost, I simply was not going to knock a pretty young thing like this moped’s rider flat on her back. It’s just not the done thing.

Instead, I spied two young men pushing a bike up a small ramp onto the pavement. Or “parking area” as it is often referred to by the locals. The keys were still in the ignition and they hadn’t seen me, so I ran up behind them.

Tapping the boy on the left on one shoulder and his friend on the other, I diverted their attention from the bike. As they both turned away from it, I jumped into the saddle and pushed them hard in the back so they stumbled in opposite directions. A twist of the key and a stab of the ignition button and the engine roared into life.

No, it didn’t. It buzzed into live. And rattled a bit. But it was going. Before they could recover, I revved the engine and lifted the front wheel, using the ramp to help me. The bike span round with the front wheel at waist height as I pointed it in the correct direction, let gravity lower the handlebars and twisted my right wrist.

I set off at a surprisingly brisk pace, and decided to use the driving technique I had picked up in my various stays in the region. To whit: floor it and dodge the oncoming traffic because it may decide not to bother dodging you.

Risking a glance over my shoulder, I spotted my two rivals deciding to plagiarise my idea although they were somewhat less subtle about it. One man lay on the ground cradling his nose and another flat on his back having obviously been knocked off his mount.

I made the most of the advantage I had and leaned forward watching the traffic part in front of me like a school of fish avoiding an obstacle.

Very quickly I caught up with the fleeing target. He was running the run of the obviously terrified, not knowing who was chasing him – only that it couldn’t be good news. He was lucky that I was the one who got to him first.

He wasn’t so lucky so as to remain unhurt, though. I throttled hard, hitting one of the pavement ramps at enough speed to get the clapped-out hairdryer I was riding to leave the ground momentarily. As it was about to touch down again, it sideswiped him and knocked him off his feet and into a display of mobile phone cases that one vendor had been urging a passing couple to peruse.

I leapt from the bike as the non-existent suspension caused its trajectory to become impossible to control and rolled to a halt as it crashed into a tree, which took up half the pavement.

My suit was now beyond repair. To say I was angry was an understatement. If the man who was now pushing himself to his knees hadn’t run like a scared rabbit when he’d seen me approach him a few minutes ago we would both have been on the way to a safe house by now. And I would not be looking at another visit to Savile Row when I got back to London.

This was the closest I had been to him and he looked every bit as shifty as his file had suggested when I’d read it on the flight over. Mas’ud Kassis was a fairly young man who’d escalated rather quickly through influential ranks courtesy of a rich and powerful family. The same money had bought him the best education available, and a natural gift for physics had led him into nuclear research.

Given that his home country of Iran was under intense international scrutiny when it came to anything nuclear, he had been hidden away to work on… well, that’s what we weren’t sure of. What we do know is it’s something that wouldn’t benefit anyone other than Iran.

A chance relationship with an American girl seemed to have opened his eyes to the potential for abuse of his work and he’d abandoned his work and family, escaping the country and going into hiding. Actually, the relationship had been anything other than “chance” – the CIA had arranged the whole thing – but it had had the intended effect, other than the fact that he was supposed to run to them. Not in some random direction that it took our combined efforts three weeks to pinpoint.

Before he could take off again, I grabbed him by the collar. “It’s alive with me,” I shouted in his face, “or take your chances with them – and I think they’d be quite happy to see your little secrets spread all over the ground.”

To his credit, he seemed to take this on board fairly quickly and nodded. Not too soon either as a couple of sharp cracks told me that the less friendly of his pursuers had managed to get close enough that they were no longer afraid of taking a few pot-shots.

A window to our left shattered and another bullet ploughed through the wooden door next to it with a hard thunk. The crowd hadn’t yet realised what was going on, but in a few seconds they would see the guns.

Now, where do you go when you’re in need of sanctuary on the street in the middle of one of the most tightly-packed capital cities in South East Asia?

Well, where else? A place of worship.

The nearest western church was a few blocks away, but Hanoi is full of hidden temples squirreled away up narrow alleyways and we were fortunate enough to be near one. An unobtrusive opening in the wall next to the shop we had ruined caught my eye and I pushed Mas’ud into it, shoving him again to ensure he appreciated the urgency of the situation when he hesitated.

After twenty metres, the claustrophobic passageway ended in a square courtyard. A path led round a small statue and up to the doors of a very well tended Buddhist temple.

Both on our feet now, we sprinted for the beckoning doors as screams began to be heard behind us. Our unwanted company had caught up and were obviously waving those firearms around.

We leapt over the threshold as another random bullet tore a chunk out of the frame over my head. Mas’ud whimpered and ducked. I grabbed him and flung him to the side before turning and pulling one door shut. As I did so, I saw the first of the other Iranians burst from the passageway. He raised his gun to fire and I fell to the floor.

Swivelling on my shoulder like a very poor break-dancer, I hooked the other door with my foot and yanked. I heard the gunshot as the two doors shut together and I looked around desperately for a way of bracing them.

Mas’ud was already looking for escape routes as I tilted a huge ceramic pot and attempted to roll it in front of the doors without having it fall right over. Just as I let it settle back down, the doors shuddered as one of the Iranian agents slammed against them. The doors opened a crack, but not enough for him to push a gun barrel through.

“We’ve got maybe a minute before they force the doors,” I told Mas’ud. “What do you see?”

“Nothing! It’s dark. No other doors. We’re trapped!”

I don’t believe in being trapped. There is always a way out, even if it’s a frontal assault on whatever is blocking you in a corner. I had one problem with that this time, though, and that was a lack of firearm.

We had been informed that there was no way that Mas’ud’s home nation could have caught up with him as quickly as we did. To ensure we got him out of the country as quickly as possible, we needed the cooperation of the Vietnamese and they had been insistent that they didn’t want guns on their streets. What was the need, they argued, when I was there to collect an unarmed man?

Well, now I had a need but hindsight wasn’t going to help us.

Scanning the interior of the building I could see light filtering in from high up on the walls. Mas’ud was right, there were no other obvious doorways but that didn’t mean there were no exits.

A set of heavy drapes hung from a rail on the wall opposite the doorway. Above them was one of the features that permitted light to enter the chamber. A simple set of slats designed to illuminate but not allow rainwater to pour in during the wet season.

While the interior had been well kept, I was banking on the areas well out of reach being skipped as far as regular maintenance was concerned. I rushed over and pulled hard on the drapes. They seemed well enough attached so I put my full weight on them and started to climb.

They held and I pulled myself up, hand over hand until I was level with the vent.

Our luck was in. The paint had cracked and split a long time ago, and the water they were designed to protect against had soaked into the wood. They weren’t rotten, but they were definitely frail.

I thrust a flattened palm at one as if I was trying to break someone’s nose and the wood gave way with a satisfying crack. Yanking it out of the way I hammered down on the next, then the next. Within seconds I had a hole large enough for either of us to get through.

Glancing back at the doorway, I could see the urn I had moved starting to wobble alarmingly as the door was being shoved rhythmically. Half a minute at most and it would roll or topple.

I leapt down and helped Mas’ud climb up to the opening. He was halfway through when a loud crash told me that the main entrance had been breached. I dived behind a large Buddha statue and hid in the shadows.

Iranian 1 leapt into the room, looking around with his gun arm outstretched searching for a target. I flung a couple of coins from my pocket to the corner opposite me to distract him from the legs quickly vanishing through the vent above my head.

He fired in their direction, the echo from the gunshot deafening in the small, reverberant chamber. His companion stepped in behind them and they exchanged words I couldn’t hear. Number 1 pointed to the corner where he’d tried to assassinate 2500 đồng in coinage and started to creep forwards. Number 2, his gun also out in front of him, took a couple of steps to the side and also began to move in.

Fortunately for me they were moving in on exactly the wrong place. Mas’ud had vanished – I hoped not for good – and they were manoeuvring themselves into the far corner, with their backs to me.

There was still no way I could make it up those drapes and out of the window, though.

Then, luck gave me a helping hand that I just knew I would have to pay back one day. Two of Hanoi’s finest sprinted into the temple building doing their best impressions of officious amateurs who didn’t really have a clue what the actual situation was. Either nobody had warned them that guns were involved or they didn’t care.

They slid to a halt and dove to the side as the Iranians opened fire. One managed to find shelter, but his colleague was not so lucky – taking a round in the leg. It took him a second to realise that he’d been hit and he began to scream.

With their attention now on the front of the buildings, the hitmen didn’t see me making my way up the drapes and to the smashed vent. Not until the uninjured policeman pointed at me and started yelling, anyway. He’d obviously figured, correctly, that these two gun-wielding maniacs were more interested in their quarry than him.

I leapt from the drapes to the vent and scrabbled up as fast as I could, realising that I was placing myself in a very exposed position by doing so. On another day I’d have slid down and taken my chances hand-to-hand, but orders are orders and I couldn’t risk Mas’ud disappearing again.

I don’t know what training they give hired thugs in Iran, but I’d actually put my money on an Imperial Stormtrooper over them any day. Several shots went wide of the mark as I slid through the hole I’d made and into the hot, sweaty daylight.

Much to my surprise, Mas’ud was waiting for me. Well, he was waiting for someone anyway. He’d found a decent sized piece of timber and was holding it like a baseball bat, ready to brain anyone he didn’t like the look of who crawled through the hole. Looks like he had some fight in him after all.

He realised he was safe and lowered the improvised weapon. “Where now?” he asked.

I looked around. We were on a flat roof with a huge, shiny water tank to one side. Buildings surrounded us offering no way down to the ground. The only way was going to be up.

A balcony was just out of reach to our right, but was low enough that a jump from the water tank should get us onto it. I pointed. “Up there”.

The tank was against the wall, so I managed to clamber up and grab the rim on the tank’s top to pull me up in next to no time. The metal was hot, but not unduly so thanks to the shade offered by the surrounding buildings.

I leant down and offered Mas’ud my hand. There was just enough room for us both to stand on the top.

From this small standing start, I swung my arms and leapt up, grabbing the edge of the small balcony. It was surrounded by a metal fence and I used the posts to slowly pull myself up to the top railing and over onto the balcony proper. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried pulling yourself up metal tubes with sweaty hands, but it’s not easy.

Again, I leaned over and helped Mas’ud once he’d made the jump. As he landed on the balcony, the first of our tenacious gunmen appeared on the roof. I expected a shot, but it seemed his wild shooting had left him with an empty gun. His surprise at the dry click as he raised his arm and fired was matched by my relief.

Not one to look a gift horse in the unarmed mouth, I made the most of the extra time we’d been granted. The balcony we were on only had a louver door on it, and this was securely locked. A swift kick didn’t even make it rattle.

A few feet away was another balcony, this one with shuttered windows. If all else failed, they would be breakable. I climbed on to the rail and jumped over, easily covering the distance.

I turned and urged Mas’ud to jump. As he did so, the second gunman appeared and this time there was no click. An un-silenced crack was followed by a dull thud as the bullet smacked into the wall an inch ahead of Mas’ud’s face.

He jerked in reflex and closed his eyes. Not a good thing to do just as you’re leaping across a gap with a fifteen feet drop underneath you.

Mas’ud fell short, thumping into the rail with his chest. He scrabbled for a grip as I jumped on to him and gripped his shirt. Keeping him pressed to the railing so he wouldn’t slip further, I grabbed his belt and hauled him up to safety.

No second shot rang out and it seemed that both the men chasing us had expended all their bullets. Definitely amateurs. Maybe the Iranians hadn’t had the chance to send someone out and had had to make do with some “staff” who happened to be in the area at the time.

Lady Luck would catch up on me one day, I’m sure. Right now, I grabbed all that she was offering and tried the door handle.

Oh, boy. I did owe her a lot. The handle turned and the door opened, revealing a humble room. A couple of small tables and some sleeping mats rolled up in the corner made up the furniture, while a solitary picture of a Buddha hung on the wall with some incense smoking on a shelf under it.

The room was lit only by the light coming in from the open door – nobody was home.

Pushing Mas’ud in front of me, I glanced to the side and saw that the Iranians were mirroring our escape route.

Now I felt comfortable to make a stand. If these guys were as amateur as they seemed then the odds had just tilted very much in my favour. Plus, Mas’ud had shown that he knew where safety lay. I didn’t have to worry about him disappearing while I took care of business.

As I entered the room, I directed Mas’ud to a doorway opposite. “Get through there and wait. This should only take a minute”.

I turned my back on him and sidestepped to the shutters covering the window we had passed to get to the doorway. I unfastened the flimsy latch and paused.

There! The sound of the first Iranian landing on the rails as he jumped from the first balcony. A scratching and a huff of breath as he heaved himself over…

I leaned back and kicked the shutter with the flat of my foot. It swung out at a hell of a speed and I heard it hit him full on. If I’d timed it just right then he would have been on the railing when it made contact.

Just over a second later I heard a wet smack. That would have been his head hitting the roof below. I guess he wouldn’t be climbing the water tank again in a hurry.

I was just about to head back out and confront the second man when I heard a yell behind me. I span round and ran through the doorway where I had sent Mas’ud.

It turns out the apartment hadn’t been as empty as we’d thought. A very angry-looking Vietnamese man armed with one of the sharpest kitchen knives I’d ever seen had Mas’ud cornered. The local was yelling an awful lot of words that I didn’t understand – I speak four languages fluently, but none of them are of the tonal Asian variety. Over here I’m pretty much limited to “please”, “thank you” and a handful of foods. Our upset resident was certainly not bothered about being polite and his conversation wasn’t geared towards offering cuisine.

This time the đồng I threw were of the paper variety and his eyes widened. Forgetting the two strange men in his kitchen, he lowered the knife and started clawing the money from the floor. Hey, nobody who threw money in your face could be bad, right?

At this point, Lady Luck decided she’d had enough of me and I flew forward as the remaining thug kicked me hard in the spine.

Collapsing to my knees, I saw the Vietnamese man realise that he could always come back later for his free money, and that one kitchen knife wasn’t going to help him against three intruders. Besides, one of those intruders seemed about to deal with another of them for him. The clatter of the knife and the slap of sandals on the tiled floor were harsh on my ears as I gasped for breath.

A booted foot slammed into my ribs and I rolled over and slid a few feet. The wall stopped me going any further, but damage had already been done. Breathing now hurt and I was sure one of my ribs was broken.

Mas’ud had started towards the door, but the other Iranian had blocked his escape. Words were exchanged in Arabic, and I could tell that the hunter was very much teasing the hunted. Without understanding the exact phrasing, the fact that Mas’ud was visibly starting to shake and look sick told me that he was being told in no uncertain terms what was to happen to him.

I breathed slowly and prodded my ribs. Sharp pain engulfed me, but I gritted my teeth. I could handle it, but only just. I certainly wasn’t going to go five rounds with anyone stronger than a newborn in this condition.

Mas’ud had backed up into a corner, shaking his head. He looked lost. Distraught, even. What had the other man said?

With an almost audible snap, Mas’ud’s expression turned from one of horror to one of anger. His moans turned to growls. His teeth bared, he leapt at the other man. A move that seemed to surprise the hitman as much as it did me.

You can train a fighter or a soldier. But to prepare them for undisciplined, violent, primitive rage is one of the hardest tasks. There’s no pattern to attacks, no technique that can be countered. It’s simply a matter of defence and damage limitation until the attacker runs out of energy. Violent assaults like this are usually adrenaline-fuelled and short-lived.

Mas’ud, though, seemed unstoppable. The wide-eyed, fleeing scientist of a few minutes ago was a screaming, enraged beast.

His hands clawed at the other man’s face. I saw blood being drawn before the surprised gunman got his hands up in defence. Mas’ud kicked him repeatedly in the shins while battering the back of his now-bowed head with fists and elbows.

Few strikes made contact, but they were so numerous and fierce that those which did staggered the other man. Every time he attempted to lift his head to see where the next attack would come from, he took a blow and had to duck again.

Finally, a lifted knee slammed into his temple and forced him almost upright. His hands dropped in surprise. Mas’ud leapt and slammed his forehead into the man’s face. Probably more by luck than judgement he scored a direct hit on the bridge of the nose.

The gunman collapsed backwards, his eyes rolling around in his head and a scream about to form on his lips. Mas’ud didn’t give him the chance to expel it. He leapt on the other Iranian’s chest, pinning his arms to the floor. It looked like two children fighting in a playground, one about to warn the other what would happen to him if he didn’t return a toy.

And then the blows rained down again. Punch after punch smashed cheekbones and teeth. The blood flowing belonged to both men as cuts and welts opened on Mas’ud’s hands, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He grabbed the man’s hair and slammed the back of his head violently off the tiled floor. Once. Twice. With the third contact, there was blood flowing through the grout.

Realising the man wasn’t going to fight back any more, Mas’ud stood. His battered opponent lay on the ground. I could hear him breath. It sounded like he was trying to suck air through a jelly. His eyes were closed and the tissue around them already starting to swell.

Mas’ud stepped back and looked down at the man. Then he spat on him.

Then he raised his foot high in the air and brought his heel down with unerring accuracy on the man’s throat.

Cartilage was ground to fragments as he twisted his foot back and forth.

The man’s hands instinctively clawed at the foot, but Mas’ud simply leaned his weight down harder. The gunman’s eyes flew open but he made no noise. He couldn’t. There was simply no way for air to pass into or out of his lungs any more.

Mas’ud stood and watched as his former pursuer suffocated. The struggling became weaker and weaker until the man’s eyes rolled up in his head showing only the whites. With one last lurch, he lay still.

Mas’ud turned to me and I confess I involuntarily jerked backwards. He raised a hand. “No, you are safe. I am sorry. This man…”

His wild eyes closed as he hung his head. When he raised it again, tears were streaming from them and I was looking at a different man.

“He told me how they found me. My sister. I told her. She tried to hide it, but they knew I would tell her. I was stupid. I should never have run.”

I knew where this was going, and made to stand up, hoping at least to get him moving before he was overwhelmed again. But as he stooped down to help me to my feet, he continued.

“They cut her. They burned her. They raped her. And they killed her. All this after she had told them where to find me.

My friend, I know who did this. Every secret I have in my head is yours. I will help you if you will help me find these men and kill them.”

I didn’t think it beyond my authority to make that promise. Hell, if I had to I would take a sabbatical and do it on my own time.

Someone was going to get a very unexpected and terminal visit.

BIO:

Iain Purdie is a teacher by trade, working and living in Glasgow, Scotland. After his last story was published, he got married, became the father of a brand new baby girl and changed job. Once this story sees print, he would happily accept a Nissan GT-R appearing in the driveway, backstage passes for this year’s Download Festival or Newcastle United to win… well, anything. He would like to thank his wonderful wife Gillian for the baby and for believing in him more than he himself does at time. Also Sepultura, Sodom and Hypocrisy who he listened to while writing this short. Truly inspirational.