Betrayal

Chapter 17

A crashing sound reverberated through the empty building from below as the gunmen leapt across the chasm and landed on the glass. Jet and Rob took care to climb the stairs to the roof as silently as possible, hoping that their pursuers would think they had made the predictable choice and had gone down to the ground level.

The door to the roof was old and rusting from years of exposure to the salt air and the elements. Jet listened, finger held to her lips, for sounds from two stories below and was rewarded by a door opening and then footsteps moving stealthily down the concrete stairs. When they had faded, she shouldered the roof door open.

The rusty hinges springing wide sounded like a grenade detonating to her ear.

A door slammed beneath them, and the clump of boots ascended steadily from below.

She reached into her purse and withdrew the phone she’d gotten from Edgar and keyed the sequence that would convert it into a gun.

“Go see if there’s a fire escape or a building we can jump to,” she whispered. “I have three shots in this thing, and it should stall them when I start shooting. But that will only last so long. If we don’t get off this roof, we’re dead.”

He took off across the roof as she held the door ajar. Three yards of range wasn’t ideal, but maybe she wouldn’t need that much.

She sensed rather than heard the lead man, and a second after his gun barrel came into view, she depressed the fire button, and the little phoned popped like a small pistol, the shell bouncing to the side through a sliding port. She heard a grunt of surprised pain and then gunfire filled the stairwell. Jet threw the door shut, allowing the fire to ricochet back on the shooters. Hopefully at least one stray would hit them, further adding to the sense that she was shooting back. She knew from experience that things could get weird fast in a firefight, and perceptions could play tricks on you. That was her only bet at this point.

“Over here!” Rob called. “There’s a building next to us we can get to. It’s a story lower, but I think we can make it.”

Jet leapt to her feet and ran to him, took one glance over the side, and then backed up and tore off at full speed in the direction of the edge.

Jet seemed to hang suspended in the air for a few seconds, then she hit the roof of the next building, rolled to absorb the impact, and sprang to her feet.

“Come on. Do it!” she yelled at him, and a moment later, Rob sailed into space, tucking and rolling in the same manner when he landed. The shooting from the stairwell had stopped, so Jet guessed that the gunmen had either figured out that she was no longer there, or had sprayed so many slugs into the space that the ricochets had laid waste to them and they were lying wounded or dead on the stairs.

“Look. There’s a fire escape,” Jet said, moving to a ladder that extended from the building’s edge below. “It looks solid. I’m going down.”

She swung her leg over and dropped below the roofline. Rob trotted to the edge and followed her, but just as his head was dipping out of sight, he saw two men with rifles on the roof of the other building.

“Slide down. Fast as you can. They’re on the roof. It will only be a few seconds before they’re here shooting down at us.”

Jet was still two stories above the street and, after weighing her options, kicked in the window of a second-story office and climbed in.

“We can make it to the street once they follow us inside,” she said as he hung on the ladder outside the window.

“No. Let’s split up. That will make them do the same thing, or it will allow one of us to get away clean.”

“No-”

But by the time she had shaken her head, he was gone.

Jet heard his soles drop to the ground a few moments later and then the sound of running. She didn’t wait to see if he would make it. Since he had made the decision to go his separate way, she owed it to both of them to do whatever it took to escape.

Then the shooting started.

She froze, then made an instantaneous decision. If the gunmen split up, that meant only one would come after her. And there were few fights she couldn’t win one-on-one. Even if both of them came, if she could pick her environment, they were as good as dead.

The ladder creaked as the two men lowered themselves, weapons hanging over their shoulders. One man’s leg was bleeding from where a stray round had hit him, but he was still pushing himself even as crimson drops leached from the wound and fell to the sidewalk below. The lower man made a hand signal as he reached the broken window and then unstrapped his rifle, leading with it as he strained with his leg for the ledge. He winced with effort as he pulled himself into the darkened room, peering around warily.

His partner followed him in, and they exchanged a glance in the gloom, both men straining for the slightest sound in spite of their ears ringing from the gunfire. A ricochet had killed their companion in the stairwell so they were being especially cautious, their mission having been a disaster so far.

The lead man pointed to the doorway with two fingers. The other man nodded before stepping over the glass and inching cautiously towards it. Sirens keened in the far distance, and they knew that they were now on borrowed time. Even in Bangkok, the police would show up for a full-on gun battle.

Once through the door, there was almost no light, so they waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. A scraping came from further in the depths of the offices. The lead man pointed at the light switch. His partner shook his head. Light would make them sitting ducks. Right now they had the same darkness to contend with as their adversary.

They moved down the hall, pushing doors open with their gun barrels, ready for anything, and then the noise became clearer. Rhythmic. Like a machine of some sort.

From the next office down.

The lead man tapped his temple with his hand and pointed at the door. A bead of sweat rolled down his face and crept into his eye, causing him to blink the burn away. His partner stood by the side of the doorjamb and eased the knob to the right, then threw it open and rolled into the room.

An old copy machine was churning away, its internal scanning arm clattering each time it fulfilled its journey across the screen and hit the carriage-stop. The lead man followed his partner into the room, gun at the ready, but the machine was the only occupant.

The sirens grew louder. It wouldn’t be long.

Somehow their target had gotten away.

And now they were faced with an impossible choice. Keep searching the building and face certain arrest, or escape to fight another day but have to report back that they had failed in their mission.

The second gunman turned to look at his partner for guidance.

From downstairs, a door slammed, confirming their worst suspicions. They were now alone in the building, their quarry gone, leaving them to the police.

The lead man lifted a cell phone to his ear and murmured a few words into it, instructing the car to circle around and pick them up in the alley. Hopefully, they would be able to outrun the police. If not, they would have to fight it out. Capture was not an option.

They wound their way back to the fire escape and prepared to climb down the two stories to the street, shouldering their rifles, edging around the brittle glass shards on the linoleum floor.

The lead man’s eye disintegrated as the sharp crack of the.32 caliber round shattered the silence in the small room, and he dropped like a sack of wet mud, blood seeping down his face as he fell. His partner fumbled with his rifle and then gurgled as a stalk of bamboo plunged through his back, the sharp shaft exiting his chest. He looked down in puzzled surprise at the skewer that impaled him and managed a half turn of his head before his legs buckled and he sank to the floor.

Jet stood behind him, watching him shudder, and then reached down and lifted his rifle free. A Kalashnikov. She popped the magazine out and checked it — the weight told her it was half full. After slapping it back into the rifle, she pulled the strap onto her shoulder and looked out over the fire escape, where she had lain in wait after circling back around while the two men had been distracted by the Xerox machine.

Headlights illuminated the small alley as a car pulled to a stop a few feet past the fire escape. The driver’s gaze swept the dank service area in a panic — the police would be on top of them in only a few more moments. It would be a miracle if they were able to get out alive.

The roof collapsed on the driver, and the windshield shattered into a snowy starburst of safety glass as the lead man’s head struck it, seeming to stare sightlessly through one good eye at him before sliding off the roof and onto the hood. The driver screamed in shock, and then bullets tore the cabin apart, slugs ripping him to pieces as the deadly hail from above shredded the thin metal.

Jet watched as gas trickled from the car’s ruptured fuel tank before dropping to the ground next to it and jogging away from the clamor of the approaching police.

Two blocks from the scene of the gunfight, she slowed to a walk. The three squad cars that passed her didn’t give her a second glance. The officers were looking for armed hostiles, not a nice Thai woman walking home from a nearby nightspot.

She removed the battery from her cell phone and tossed the sim chip aside, having memorized the two numbers on it. However she had been tracked, she was now taking no chances. She had to assume the worst — that she was completely compromised. The question was how, and who had come after her.

A tuk tuk picked her up three minutes later. She dropped into the back with a sigh before giving the driver instructions to take her to the Nana mall. She would pick up some new clothes at the perennially open market stalls in the neighborhood, change in a bathroom, and then figure out whether her room was compromised. If so, she had a real problem. If not, she would be moving to a new hotel within minutes, and her whereabouts would become a mystery to everyone but her.