Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Chapter 26

Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung was laughing. He loved the theatrical. Exaggerated gestures. Glandular suspense. Cheap thrills.

He and Mitch were pointing guns at each other. Ivory was pointing a gun at the back of Mitch’s head. And Gabriel Hunt was pointing a gun at Ivory.

Alliances were more fluid than they seemed.

“Laugh at me, you bastard, and I’ll blow your tongue through the back of your head,” said Mitch, holding steady with the Chinese carbine. She could do it, too, with this gun—maybe twice before gravity dropped the man. Upon entering the Temple Room, Mitch’s first sight was Sister Menga raising a hand against her. The seer’s ornate fingernails caught the light and suggested a weapon. Mitch was aboil with endorphins and the drug coursing through her, and her body reacted without the time-delay of premeditation. She had automatically put Sister Menga down because her eyes had seen a threat. Her eyes had lied. But so what?

In response to Sister Menga’s moist demise, Cheung had whipped out a Czech CZ-52 pistol, two pounds of gorgeously machined steel filling his enormous hands.

Their stand-off was about five seconds old when Gabriel and Ivory brought up the rear.

Ivory put his pistol, still set on three-shot-burst, within four feet of the curve of Mitch’s occipital.

Gabriel’s hands familiarized themselves with Dagoberto Ayala’s M4, which he’d scooped up on the run from the Junfa Hall. Cocked, locked, ready to rock. He did not think Ivory would actually shoot Mitch, but he had to draw on somebody, and Cheung was already staring down the bore of Mitch’s rifle. Tension ran molten-hot through the room, thickening the air. Hell, sheer trigger reflex would kill them all if somebody sneezed.

That was when that son of a bitch Cheung started laughing.

“You impress me,” Cheung told her. “You have accomplished the unthinkable. You got under Ivory’s skin. You have truly earned my awe.”

“Mitch,” Gabriel said softly. “Don’t take him. Not yet. He’s got my brother.”

“He already got my sister.”

“I could use someone like you,” Cheung told Mitch, “as my new head of security.” His gaze indicted Ivory, but Ivory did not waver.

“Lower the weapon, Jin Huáng,” Ivory said. It was not a request.

Gabriel saw Mitch almost comply.

“No.” She refocused on Cheung. “Valerie Quantrill.”

“Who?” said Cheung.

“My sister. You should think more about the people you murder.”

“And how many have you murdered?” said Cheung, almost avuncular. “Killed in the name of your just cause? You should thank me. I determine what people like you become.”

“Don’t listen, Mitch,” said Gabriel.

“You may avenge your sister’s death,” said Cheung, “but it will cost you your own life.”

Cheung smiled like a cobra and lowered his own weapon.

Gabriel’s hand touched Ivory’s back, but he spoke to both Ivory and Mitch: “I need him alive.”

Tears were rolling from Mitch’s eyes but she fought to preserve her zeroed aim.

“Cheung—let them out of the building and I will take you to the Killers of Men. I alone know the burial secrets of the Favored Son. The men you sent to the site have fallen to those secrets. I will guide you and you may do with me what you will…but you will guarantee the release of my brother.”

“That, I believe, was our agreement,” said Cheung.

Ivory put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder, turned her slowly. “Please,” he said. His eyes were entreating. He backed her toward the glass doors, her gun gone wayward.

“I can’t just leave—” she began.

“You must,” said Ivory. “Trust me.”

Gabriel let his muzzle drift in their direction. “Get her out of here or I’ll shoot you both myself,” he said, not taking his eyes off Cheung.

Mitch was still trying to process what had gone wrong, and the drug inside her was not helping. Soon enough the spikes, the flares, the knifing headaches would resume, and Gabriel knew that Ivory knew that, too.

“It seems that our moment is over before it has properly begun,” said Cheung as he watched them exit. “Too bad. For just a second, there…” He sighed. “It would have been magnificent.”

“We’ll never make it out of the building alive,” said Ivory as they hustled past the bloody remains in the hallway.

“What?” said Mitch. “I thought Cheung—”

“Cheung has a casket already carved,” Ivory said, overriding her. “I saw it in the Temple Room. It is for one of us. Or all three of us. How did you get into the building?”

Mitch recapped. While admirable, her ingress route would not serve their escape.

“I watched Cheung shoot down Mads Hellweg,” said Ivory. “It was one of the most decisive, cold-blooded things I have yet seen. And Cheung did not particularly care about Hellweg. He will have something much worse planned for us.”

“We can always hit them frontally,” said Mitch, rechecking the loads in her purloined M4. “Go out the front door.”

“Not and survive—there are still too many of them.”

“Then let’s go up. Helipad’s on the roof, right?”

“Yes…” Ivory’s eyes showed doubt.

“And the chopper is toast, so nobody will be in a big hurry to go to the helipad…right?”

“True.”

“So let’s hit it, partner. Before my damned headache comes back.”

He searched her expression for signs of xipaxidine fatigue. When she finally ran out of gas, she’d drop like a clipped puppet. And with no more drug to dose her with…

Together they found the access stairs that led from the Junfa Hall to the helipad. Four Cheung men were in charge of the perimeter.

“Do you know them?” Mitch said.

“I recruited two of them.” Ivory peered through mesh glass to enumerate his potential allies. He indicated a willow-tall fellow in wraparound tinted glasses that seemed to be in charge of the other three patrollers. “Parkman Ng. Kam Ng’s brother; took his brother’s place when Kam was killed in a yakuza counterattack two years ago. Very loyal. And Kong—” he pointed to a broad-shouldered, hairless man “—he might be sympathetic, too. The other two, I just know their names. Güyük and Breedlove. Breedlove is British.”

“So take the white guy and the short-round-fat guy first?” said Mitch.

Ivory stared at her, remembering that Americans were not famous for their tact. But he nodded.

They came through the push-barred door to the helipad brisk and businesslike, Ivory in the lead.

Guns came up to meet them. Mitch dropped to a solid kneeling position and did the smart thing—she patched the two men carrying rifles, which would be more accurate in a firefight. Breedlove the Brit folded and fell with multiple hits, followed by Güyük. By then, Parkman Ng had spun like a dancer and popped a wadcutter that sang past Ivory’s right ear. Return fire was instinctual, and Ivory’s weapon was on full-auto cycle. Red punctures jump-stitched up Parkman’s long torso and he collapsed onto his face. Mitch could see the unhappiness in Ivory’s eyes as his recruit fell.

Ivory raked the autofire toward the last man standing, the one he’d called Kong. But Mitch saw Ivory do an amazing thing—he pulled his weapon up out of the firing line while it was firing, before his finger left the trigger. The errant shots flocked away to make someone else’s life miserable.

Because though Kong had reacted professionally, cross-drawing and sighting, he had jerked his own pistol up into neutral when he recognized Ivory.

“Ivory!” Kong yelled. “Parkman said Cheung’s orders were to kill you. What’s going on?”

Ivory kept his weapon dead-on as he approached Kong.

“I cannot believe it,” Kong sputtered. “I will not believe it! Not of you. Many of us have heard the rumors, the news you were to become a Nameless One. I say that if Cheung decides you are a Nameless One, then I am a Nameless One as well.” He was as frantic as anyone might be, presented with the prospect of killing a friend. “Longwei, please, tell me, what is the truth?”

Kong actually placed his weapon on the deck, stepped away from it.

“For the things you have just said,” Ivory said softly, “for disloyalty to our master, the penalty is death. You understand that, Kwong Leung Kong Ngan?”

“Yes,” Kong said, lowering his gaze. “The penalty is death.”

“Under normal circumstances,” said Ivory, drawing even closer.

Fearing the most intimate of killings, Kong kept staring at the concrete and said, “What…?”

“Under Cheung’s rule the penalty is death,” said Ivory. “But Cheung’s covenant is false. Were I to kill anyone for such a violation, I should first kill myself. You understand the gravity of what I say.”

“I—I do?” stammered Kong. He regained some of his composure. “I mean, I do.” Leery of the American woman with the weapon in the background, he leaned closer to Cheung, as there were some things so toxic and important that women should never hear them. “We heard Dinanath was gone. That you were turned. All our information is unreliable. Tell me, please—what is happening?”

“The foundations of Cheung’s New Bund are collapsing as we speak,” said Ivory.

“Can it be?” Kong said. “At long last…”

“My friend,” said Ivory. “I need an Immortal, and you shall do quite nicely. You say there are others of like disposition.”

“Yes. Jintao. Yu Peng. Hsiang Yun-Fa.”

“Stop. Do not betray them until you see with your own eyes the evidence of my intent.” There was no use in telling Kong that Yu Peng was already dead. “But gather them close. If I survive, they will be needed. If I do not survive, you must—you must—go for yourselves, is that understood?”

Kong directed them to a secure ladder that put them onto a disused fire escape, then headed in the other direction to round up his men.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Mitch as they descended along a rear face of the building to street level.

“I have never done anything like that before,” said Ivory. “But I suspected that Kong might be with me in spirit. I gambled on that.”

“You should think about it, you know? Taking Cheung’s place. You could undo a lot of damage.”

Ivory pressed his lips together until they were white and bloodless. One never said such bald things out loud. Putting such words into the air was unwise.

Instead he said, “Hurry. Just because we regain the streets, it is no guarantee of our safety.”

“Where’re we going?” said Mitch.

“I have to take you to meet a monk.”