Jackpot

66

The crowd in the movie theater panicked and people were pushing toward the exits, but the security personnel was doing an admirable job of keeping everyone as calm and orderly as possible. Teddy decided to pursue Bingo rather than Li Feng, but he wasn’t going to be able to do much with a gun loaded with blanks. Bingo had been stunned briefly after the impact of his sword hitting the Kevlar vest on Sonny Ma, but he was getting back to his feet. Once again, Teddy found himself without a viable weapon when he needed one. He tossed the gun to the ground and looked to see if Dale Gai was able to help, but she was tending to Li Feng, who had been pushed off the stage during the commotion.

Bingo ran from the theater to the surrounding walkway where he ran smack into a crowd of screaming people. Teddy was right behind him and in one swift motion, pulled his sport coat off and slung it around Bingo, stopping his movement temporarily.

“It’s not too late to surrender,” Teddy said. “I can protect you if you turn on Arrow Donaldson.”

Bingo grunted and pulled his way out of Teddy’s improvised straitjacket. He brought the sword back up to Teddy’s face, but Bingo didn’t seem as comfortable with the sword as Teddy thought he was and used that to his advantage. Teddy went after Bingo barehanded and was able to survive longer than most would against someone like Bingo, but he wasn’t going to get far without a weapon.

Teddy struck Bingo in the throat with his hand and took advantage of Bingo’s loss of breath to knee him in the groin. The sword dropped to the ground and Teddy picked it up. He wasn’t comfortable with the weird weight, balance, and dull blade of the ornamental sword, either. Bingo scored a free shot to the side of Teddy’s head that disoriented him. While Teddy crumpled to the floor, Bingo made a run for it.

While Teddy recovered from the cheap hit from Bingo, he noticed the police were making their way up to the top level. Teddy didn’t have the time or the interest to deal with the police at that moment, so he slipped into the men’s room and stripped off the Russian hitman clothes and revealed tacky tourist clothes underneath. He hadn’t seen too many Russian tourists in Macau, but he’d seen enough to know he wouldn’t stick out in the crowds.

The crowds were thick and angry, and Teddy easily blended in as the police passed them by. When he was able to extract himself from the crowd, he looked down over the glass bridge and saw that Bingo had made it to the bottom of the Tower and was exiting the lower-level shopping center. If Teddy couldn’t catch up with him in the next several seconds, Bingo would likely disappear and Teddy’s best chance at getting justice for Peter and Ben would be gone.

At the end of the glass bridge, Teddy saw the bungee jumping station Dale had shown him. He didn’t have time to strap himself into the rig and then unstrap it when he got to the bottom, or wait for someone to unhook him if he didn’t quite make it to the bottom, so he looked to the line of tandem jumpers.

One instructor was already strapped into a harness and connected to the cord and the tandem jumper was almost finished getting strapped into her harness. Teddy put himself in the mind-set of stuntman Mark Weldon and pushed his way to the front of the line.

“I apologize terribly for what I’m about to do,” Teddy said, as he grabbed the instructor as tightly as he could and pushed them both off the jump deck.

Teddy pointed them as straight downward as possible so they had maximum speed. At the very bottom of the drop, just before they would snap and bounce back up toward the platform, Teddy spied the safety net he was aiming for and pushed himself off the plummeting jumper just as the cord snapped taut.

Teddy slammed into the edge of the safety net, taking the landing more roughly than he’d hoped. He could still run, though, and Bingo was just about to pass when Teddy hopped off the safety net and landed on top of him. Bingo fought back, but Teddy quickly regained the upper hand and wrapped Bingo in a wrestling hold one of the stunt coordinators on his last movie had taught him.

“Tell me Arrow Donaldson was behind those videos of Peter and Ben.”

Bingo struggled but didn’t say anything.

“Or was it Li Feng?”

Teddy tightened his grip on Bingo, crushing the man’s chest and putting immense pressure on his arms.

Bingo struggled to speak. “Li Feng would prostitute herself to your American friends, not ruin them. I put them in the video to make them pay. You American movie men think you can—”

Teddy was in no mood to listen to a long speech now that he had in his hands the main person responsible for setting up Peter and Ben. Teddy swung his feet out, caught Bingo’s legs at the knees, and dropped him to the ground.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Teddy said. “But I don’t want to kill you here on this hill unarmed unless I have to.”

Teddy let go of Bingo and took a step back.

Bingo went for Teddy’s throat.

“I will kill Li Feng, I will kill—”

Teddy sighed as he whipped his hand out and hit Bingo in the throat, then wrapped his arms around Bingo’s neck again and snapped it.