DELILAH, ” I whispered.
She answered instantly. “I’m here.”
“Manny’s done. But there’s a bodyguard standing outside the bathroom. I can’t get past him. In another couple of minutes, he’s going to come in and check on Manny. There’s also someone using one of the stalls and I need to buy another couple minutes so he can finish and get the hell out.”
“Tell me what to do,” she said.
“Dox, do you still have that syringe we took off Winters?”
“Got it right here, partner,” he said.
“Give it to Delilah. Delilah, you won’t have any trouble getting close to the guard. Make it look like you’re about to head into the wrong restroom. Then flirt with him, distract him until the guy in the stall leaves. When he does, you nail the guard with the syringe.”
“What’s in it?” she asked.
“Dox, give her the syringe. I’ll explain on the way.”
“Already did, partner. She’s getting up now.”
“It’s a knockout cocktail. All you have to do is palm it and slap him with it. It works like a snakebite.”
“That’s ‘all’ I have to do? Don’t I have to hit a vein or an artery?”
“If we want the drug to work fast, you do.”
“Veins and arteries tend to be pretty small moving targets.”
“Look, just flirt with the guy, okay? Get him so his back is facing the bathroom door. I’ll hit him in the head with whatever I can find in here. But he’s a gorilla, I don’t know if a shot to the head will be enough. Although it should stun him for long enough for you to slap the syringe down on his carotid. If you miss, I’ll figure something else out.”
“All right.”
“He’s probably armed, a shoulder or hip carry. Whatever else happens, we have to disarm him. That’s our best chance with the other two.”
“Okay.”
I clicked on the Surefire and looked around the closet. None of the tools I saw would be helpful. No hammer, no wrench. For a second, I thought of the knife, then rejected it because of the mess it would make. All right, I would have to use my hands. I started to put the Surefire back in my pocket, then looked at it. Shit, I had almost overlooked something so obvious. I had been thinking of it only as a flashlight, when in fact, gripped tightly in my fist with the hard edge slightly protruding, it would make a serviceable yarawa stick.
I heard the toilet flush, and a moment later the Chinese man emerged from the stall.
I heard Delilah say, “Here we go.” Then, in a tipsy, slightly flirtatious tone, “Excuse me, isn’t that the ladies’ room?”
Her lapel mike picked up the guard saying, “No, miss, this is the men’s room.” She must have been standing close.
“Oh my God, I would have felt so silly if I’d walked in there! You don’t know where the ladies’ room is, do you?”
“I think it’s just around the corner.”
The Chinese guy walked over to the sinks and started examining the various choices among the soaps and lotions.
Can you just wash your hands and get the fuck out? I thought. Better yet, don’t wash them at all. I promise not to tell anyone.
Delilah said, “Are you the doorman or something?”
The man chuckled. Good, she was reeling him in. “No, I’m just waiting for someone.”
The Chinese guy selected one of the soaps and began thoroughly washing his hands. He was taking so long that I was half-tempted to pop out of the closet, break his neck, and drag him inside.
He turned off the sink, picked up one of the towels, and began leisurely drying his hands.
“Oh, you’re here with someone, then,” Delilah said. “Too bad.”
The guard said, “Too bad?”
“Well,” she said, “my date is being a jerk, and . . .” She laughed. “I’m sorry, I think I’ve had too much to drink. I’m not usually like this.”
The guard said, “No, that’s all right. I don’t mind at all.”
The Chinese guy kept rubbing away with the towel.
Come on, buddy, there can’t be a single fucking water molecule left on you. . . .
Finally he tossed the towel into the basket under the sink.
If you comb your hair now, I thought, or examine your teeth, or adjust your tie, I will kill you.
But the man decided not to engage in any of these fatal activities. He simply walked out the door.
Delilah said, “You’re so nice. I’m sorry I was so forward just now.”
The guard said, “I’m used to forward women. I like them.”
“Really?” she asked. “Where are you from?”
“I need his back to me,” I said, emerging from the closet and heading toward the door. “Now.”
The guard said, “I’m Filipino.”
“It is,” Delilah said, without changing her tone at all.
And while the bodyguard was busy trying to process that non sequitur, I stepped out of the bathroom behind him and nailed him in the base of the skull with a hammer-fist, one end of the Surefire leading the way. He grunted and his body shivered, but he didn’t go down. Damn, this guy had a hell of a thick skull. I went to hit him again, but Delilah had already moved in, slapping him with the syringe on the side of the neck, over the carotid. He grunted again and started groping for something under his jacket. I caught his arm to stop him. He tried to turn toward me. Delilah reached in and smoothly retrieved what he had been going for—a Kimber Pro CDP II in a hip holster carry.
The guy managed to turn all the way around and face me. He reached out as though to grapple with me, but then his feet went out from under him, from the blow or the injection I wasn’t sure. He crashed into me and I caught him under the arms and around the back. I stumbled backward through the bathroom door, grunting with the effort. The guy must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Delilah followed us through, closing the door behind us. I saw her eject the Kimber’s magazine, check its load, and pop it back in. She pulled back the slide a half inch, nodded as though she liked what she saw, and let the slide go.
“Brace the door,” I said, straining to support the dead weight in my arms. “Don’t want anyone coming in.”
She pressed her right toes against the door, her heel wedged to the floor, and took a long step back with her other leg. I dragged the guard into the closet and dumped him on top of his erstwhile client. I stepped over them both and closed the door behind me.
Someone tried the bathroom door. When it didn’t open, the person knocked. Delilah kept her foot in place and said, “We’re cleaning in here, sorry. Please use the restroom on thirteen.”
Cleaning, I thought. That’s one way to put it.
The knocking stopped.
I walked over and said, “Give me the gun.”
She shook her head. “Just go. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Come on, this isn’t what you do.”
“It’s what I have to do.”
“Let me finish what I started. With a gun, I can take care of them both.”
I thought that was what she would want to hear, but she shook her head again.
“Look,” I said, “where are you going to hide that cannon with what you’re wearing? It’s bigger than your purse.”
She took a deep breath and said, “You fulfilled your contract with Manny. You’ll be paid. Now just go.”
“Will you give me the fucking gun? I don’t know how much time we have.”
She looked at me, and for a second I thought I’d convinced her. But then she opened the door and walked out into the corridor to the stairway. I went out after her. She held the gun low along her right leg.
I heard Dox in my ear. “What’s the status there, ladies and gentlemen, your conversation is making me nervous.”
“I’ll handle the rest, Dox,” Delilah said, still heading for the stairs. “You should just go. Now would be a good opportunity.”
“Come on, Delilah,” he said, “we’re not just going to leave you. You can rely on my partner. I’ve seen his shooting, believe me, he hits things and they don’t get back up.”
We stopped on the landing between the stairs up to the fifteenth floor and down to the thirteenth. From here, we could only go up to fifteen, down to thirteen, or back along the corridor to the restrooms. For a moment, I thought of just grabbing her and trying to take the gun. But she was keeping her gun side away from me—keeping it away deliberately. I doubted I could disarm her without either harming her or getting shot myself. Neither was an attractive alternative.
I took her by the arm and started to say, “Damn it, Delilah . . .”
There was a sound at the top of the stairs above us. We both looked. It was Hilger and Al-Jib, descending toward us. Hilger was holding a gun in a two-handed grip, close to his body and pointing at the floor. He looked at me and I saw hard recognition in his eyes.
Shit. They must have gotten suspicious about Manny taking so long, and emerged to investigate.
“Step out of the way, John,” Hilger said. “We just want to leave. There’s no need for anyone to get killed here.”
Delilah was holding the Kimber, but it was clear to me that Hilger had the advantage. His weapon was more at the ready, for one thing. He had the high ground, for another. Also, presumably the gun he was holding was familiar to him, was presumably the very gun he trained with, whereas Delilah was relying on someone else’s weapon, a four-inch-barrel .45 that was probably too big for her. Delilah must have recognized all this, too, or she would already have tried for a shot.
But then why hadn’t Hilger already dropped us? I’d seen his combat shooting skills in front of Kwai Chung and knew he was formidable. And then I realized: He’s known here. This is part of his cover. He doesn’t want to shoot.
Al-Jib didn’t say anything. He looked scared. This was Hilger’s show.
“No problem,” I said, showing my hands. “Our business wasn’t with you. We’re finished.”
At a minimum, I had to get us onto level ground. Better yet, let them go down the stairs past us. Then the high ground would be ours. They’d be struggling to keep us covered and descend the stairs backward at the same time.
Hilger frowned. “Manny?”
“Manny’s done. You and I are quits.”
His eyes narrowed. “We’re not quits.”
Well, so much for lulling him.
Delilah said, “You can go. But not your friend.”
“Sorry, we’re both going to leave,” Hilger said. “Around you or through you, your choice.”
“I don’t have a problem with around,” I said, thinking, Goddamnit, Delilah, follow my lead.
I heard Dox in my ear. “I know what’s going on, folks, but I can’t help you while they’re above you on the stairs. You’ve got to let ’em down past fourteen.”
“Let’s just do as he says,” I said to Delilah, referring, of course, to Dox.
There was a long pause. I supposed she just instinctively didn’t want to take herself from between Al-Jib and an escape path.
But she was tactical, she must have understood the situation. Our position relative to Hilger and Al-Jib was untenable. It was as though she was just trying to delay things, slow Al-Jib down. But why would she . . .
A stair creaked on one of the risers below. I don’t know if it was intuition, or a sixth sense, or what, but I ducked. I heard the pfffft of a suppressed pistol and a round cracked into the wall behind me.
I sprang to my right, down the corridor toward the bathroom. As I did so I saw Gil, moving toward us from below, his gun out. I heard Delilah scream, “No!” A second later, gunfire erupted from the stairs above us.
I blasted open the bathroom door and stumbled inside. “Get out of the bar!” I said to Dox through the lapel mike. I ran for the closet, opened the door, and got inside. “Gil’s here. Delilah must have called him. They’re on the stairs. We’re blown. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Yeah, sounds like a shooting gallery out there,” he said. “The patrons here are all freaking out, can you hear them?”
I heard shouting and other sounds of panic in the background. Dox, characteristically, sounded almost soporifically calm. I pulled out the Surefire and twisted it on. The attaché was where I’d left it. I grabbed it and headed back to the freight elevator. I pressed the button on the wall and waited.
“If you can get to the closet where I was hiding,” I said, “there’s freight elevator access. Otherwise, your only way down is on thirteen.”
“Already thought of all that. But I can’t get to either with the OK Corral in between.”
Goddamn, he was cool under pressure. For a second I loved him for it.
“I know. But you can’t just stay in the bar, either. If Gil and Delilah drop Hilger and Al-Jib, they might come for you.”
“I don’t think Delilah . . .”
“Delilah called Gil, damn it. What do you think, she said, ‘Promise not to hurt them,’ and he said, ‘Sure, honey, whatever you say’?”
Come on, where the hell was the elevator. Delilah would know I would come this way. If Gil managed to drop Hilger and Al-Jib, this would be his next stop.
Dox said, “Okay, I hear what you’re saying. I’ll just find some more hospitable place to wait this out.”
“At some point, you’re going to get a crowd from the fifteenth-floor private dining rooms and the restaurant on fourteen stampeding for the exits,” I said. “Let them carry you with them.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I had in mind. What about you?”
“I’m waiting for the freight elevator right now. But once the doors close and it goes down, we’ll lose contact. The range of this gear is too short.”
“Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Go on, git. We’ll hook up at the bug-out point.”
The elevator arrived. I stepped inside and held the “door open” button. I glanced up—no dome camera. That was only for the passenger units.
“It’s here,” I said. “I can hold it for you.”
“Don’t be stupid, man. Just take it down, then send it back up when you get off. I don’t even know if I’m going out that way. I’ll probably just drift out with the crowd once Hilger and the rest have finished killing each other.”
I didn’t want to leave him, but what he said made sense. “Good luck,” I said, and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed and the elevator started down.
Damn it, I hated to let Hilger go. We’d been so close to having this whole thing wrapped up. I thought for a moment.
The dumpster opposite the entrance. If I hid behind it, and Hilger made it out, an opportunity might present itself. A long shot, true, but there wasn’t much downside.
Thirty seconds later, the doors opened on the lobby level. The security guard I had seen earlier was right in front of them. He had a gun drawn, a .38 Special, and was holding it too far in front of his body. He barely glanced at me as he charged inside.
He yelled something at me in Chinese—“Get out,” probably. Before he even had a chance to think about what was happening, I dropped the attaché, grabbed the outstretched gun in both hands, pivoted, and twisted it away from him. He cried out in shock and fear. Then he backed up against the elevator wall and started yelling in Chinese again. This time I assumed it was something like “Oh, shit!” or perhaps the time-honored “Don’t shoot!”
I picked up the attaché, stepped out of the elevator, and glanced around. All clear. I reached inside and pressed the button for thirteen. The doors closed, and the bug-eyed guard disappeared behind them, getting him out of my hair and preventing him from seeing what I was going to do next. Hopefully Dox already would be waiting for the guy when he arrived on thirteen. He could just haul him out and ride the elevator straight back down.
I walked across the street to the dumpster and examined my options. Good cover and concealment from both sides. But it was a little far from the elevator bank for my tastes. If Hilger hit the ground running and went immediately left or right from the elevators, I might lose him. If I could find the right spot, better to be waiting right there as he emerged.
I walked back over. The guard’s desk. That would do. I started to duck down behind it.
The stairwell door blew open to my left, ricocheting off the wall. Al-Jib dashed out. I brought the gun up and tried to track him, but he had already gone around the corner.
The door blew open again. I spun back toward it. This time it was Delilah. She stuck her head out and checked left and right, the Kimber in a two-handed grip just below her chin. She saw me and said, “Where did he go? Which way?”
“Where’s Hilger?” I said.
“Upstairs! Goddamn you, where is Al-Jib!”
I cocked my head to the left. She took off without another word.
I turned and took two steps toward the guard’s desk. I stopped. I took one more step. Then I said, “Fuck!” I turned and ran after Delilah, heaving the attaché in the direction of the dumpster en route.
I saw her head into Statue Square park and sprinted after her. She raced past one of the fountains inside, the couples sitting around it turning their heads to watch as she blew by them. I sprinted after her, dodging pedestrians. We crossed the square, then weaved through the thick traffic on Chater Road. I could see Al-Jib, about fifteen meters ahead of Delilah. He was running flat out but she was gaining. Damn, she was fast.
He bolted across Connaught without slowing at all. A taxi screeched to a halt in front of him, the driver laying on the horn. Al-Jib knocked down a pedestrian but kept going. Someone yelled something. The cab started to move forward again and then Delilah cut in front of it. The driver laid on the horn again. I flew past him a few paces behind Delilah.
Al-Jib raced up Edinburgh, toward the Star Ferry. If his timing was bad, he was about to meet a dead end, in the form of the southern end of Victoria Harbor. If his timing was good, though, he might just catch a departing ferry. The Star Ferry route between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui has been a major commuting line between Hong Kong and Kowloon for over a century, and the enormous, two-deck, open-air pedestrian ferries, some seemingly as old as the inception of the service, depart every seven minutes, each usually jammed with hundreds of passengers.
Al-Jib ran into the ferry terminal. Delilah followed him. I got inside a few seconds later and looked around. There were crowds of people and for a second I looked around wildly, not seeing her. Then I spotted a disturbance in the crowd on one of the stairwells—there she was, heading up the stairs. A woman was getting up from the floor and was yelling. Delilah must have lost Al-Jib for a moment, then figured out he had knocked over the woman tearing up the stairs. I followed, just a few lengths behind now. A crowd of passengers was heading down the stairs to our left. Shit, a ferry had come in a minute or two earlier—that meant it would already be leaving. We got to the concourse level and I saw Al-Jib, far ahead now. He seemed to recognize his desperate opportunity. He sprinted faster, vaulting over the turnstiles to the departure pier. He knocked a table over as he leaped and coins spilled to the concrete floor. The attendant bellowed something in Chinese.
We went over the turnstiles after him. The pier was empty—the passengers had already boarded the ferry. A worker stood along the gunwale on the lower deck, using a pole to push the lumbering craft from the pier. Al-Jib sprinted straight toward the boat, leaped, and fell across the guardrail, nearly knocking the worker over in the process. Delilah followed two meters behind him. I saw her leap onto the guardrail and pull herself over. The worker shouted something but didn’t try to stop the boat. It kept moving forward. Its stern was about to pull clear of the end of the pier.
I shoved the .38 into the back of my pants and kept running. Come on, come on . . .
Even as I launched myself through the air, I saw that I wasn’t going to make it. I slammed into one of the old tires strung up just below the deck to cushion the boat while it was docking. The tire might have been adequate for watercraft, but seemed to offer considerably less padding for a human torso, and I had the wind partially knocked out of me. But I was able to haul myself up to the guardrail. I scrambled over it onto the deck and rolled to my feet.
Delilah and Al-Jib had disappeared into the mass of passengers, but there was a path of sorts, slightly less packed with people than the areas around it, that told me where to look. I pulled the pistol and set off into the crowd. I was glad there were no security people on board to complicate things. The Star Ferry is about as secure as a sidewalk.
But after just a few meters, the path I’d been following closed up. There were scores of people down here, maybe hundreds, and I couldn’t pick up any vibe in the crowd that might have indicated where Delilah and Al-Jib had headed. In less than seven minutes, we’d be landing in Kowloon. It would be hard to stop him from leaping onto the pier there as we were docking and taking off into the crowd. We had to contain him here.
I moved toward the stern, beyond the rows of wooden seats, but couldn’t see through the mass of people who hadn’t gotten seats and were standing. “Delilah?” I called out. “Delilah!”
“Here,” I heard her say, from somewhere in front of me. “I . . .”
Something cut her off. I heard the report of a big gun. There were screams. Suddenly the crowd was shoving back toward me. The people ahead were trying to get away from the shooting.
I pushed forward. All at once, the crowd was behind me like a receding tide. And then I saw.
Somehow Al-Jib had gotten behind Delilah and managed to wrest the Kimber from her. He was standing behind her, one arm around her neck, the other holding the barrel of the gun to her temple.
I stopped, pulled the .38, and pointed it at him with a two-handed grip. They were eight meters away. I was still winded from the chase, and the deck of the ferry was rolling with the harbor’s currents. And Al-Jib was holding her like a shield, with only part of his head exposed. I was too far to risk the shot.
“Drop the gun!” he screamed. “Drop it or by Allah I will put her brains on the floor!”
“Don’t,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Because then I’ll have to put your brains on the floor, too.”
“Drop it! Drop it!” he screamed again.
“Listen,” I said over the wind that was blowing across the deck. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t care. My business was with Manny, and that business is done. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to leave. But not if you harm the lady. Then I have to kill you, understand?”
He looked at me, his eyes desperate, but I could tell he was thinking. He couldn’t shoot Delilah. If he did, in the time it took him to bring the gun around to me I would turn him into hamburger.
“Let’s think this through,” I said. “Let’s find a way to all walk away from here. Why don’t you lower your gun a little. And then I’ll lower mine a little. And then we’ll go from there.”
He started to relax, just slightly. I thought, Okay.
“No!” Delilah shouted. “Shoot him!”
Goddamnit, I would if you would just work with me. . . .
Al-Jib’s grip around her neck tightened. “Drop the gun!” he screamed again.
Delilah was staring at me, her eyes full of rage. “Shoot him!” she rasped. “Goddamn you, shoot him!”
He was choking her, intentionally or unintentionally, I didn’t know. I realized I was losing control of the situation. He was so strung out he might pull the trigger without even meaning to. Or he might shoot just to shut her up. Or he might otherwise miscalculate.
“Drop the fucking gun!” he screamed again. “Or I swear . . .”
In one smooth motion, Delilah shrugged her head downward and slapped the gun up with her right hand. It discharged into the ceiling. I was so juiced with adrenaline it sounded like not more than a firecracker.
Al-Jib started to bring the gun back down. Delilah caught it in both hands. It discharged again.
I moved in. Delilah was between us, in front of his torso, and they were moving. I was still too far to risk the shot.
He let go of her neck and used both hands to try to wrestle the gun away from her. It didn’t work. He looked up, saw me heading toward him, and realized he had lost.
He let go of the gun and started to turn to run. But the muzzle velocity of a bullet from a .38 is eight hundred and fifty feet per second. Since I was now less than twenty feet from him, the round I fired reached him in about one-fortieth of a second, give or take. Which turned out to be slightly faster than he could move out of the way. The bullet caught him in the face. He spun around from the impact and stumbled back toward the railing. I followed him, focusing on his torso, ready to finish him off.
I heard two more shots from alongside me. They caught Al-Jib in the side. In my peripheral vision I saw Delilah walk past me, holding the Kimber in a two-handed grip, as implacable as the angel of death.
Al-Jib tried to straighten. Delilah kept moving in. She shot him twice in the head. His hands flew up and he went over the railing, into the dark water below.
For a long second, I looked at her. I was still holding the gun in a combat grip.
She stood panting for a moment, returning my look, but not in a focused way. She lowered the Kimber.
I hesitated for a moment, grappling with the knowledge that she had called Gil. Then something in her eyes, her posture, made the decision for me. I lowered the .38 and stuck it in my waistband.
I looked toward the bow. The lights of Tsim Sha Tsui were less than a minute away.
A few wordless seconds passed. Then Delilah handed me the Kimber. “Here,” she said. “I’ve got no place to conceal this, like you said. And we might need it.”
I stuck the second gun in my waistband and looked at her, trying to find words.
She said, “I had to. For you, too.”
“What do you mean, for me?”
“One day, Al-Jib and his type will detonate a nuclear weapon inside a city. A half-million people are going to die. Innocent people—families, children, babies. When that happens, it won’t be because I could have stopped it but didn’t. And you couldn’t bear that burden any more than I could. I won’t let you.”
I realized there was a lot of shouting and commotion around the side of the boat where the passengers would be exiting any minute. While we were engaging Al-Jib, I’d been too focused to notice.
Delilah and I walked forward, into the crowd. The people closest to us recognized that we had been involved in what just happened, and gave us wide berth. The farther forward we moved into the crowd, though, the less we encountered that kind of courtesy. The people closer to the front hadn’t seen what happened. They didn’t know who we were and they didn’t care. They had heard shooting and a commotion, and just wanted to get the hell off the ferry as soon as it docked. We reached a point where the crowd was so dense that we were lost in it, just two more scared passengers. We couldn’t move farther forward. We simply had to wait, along with everyone else.
A few seconds later, we were docking. The moment the boat was in position, people started surging off it. There was a lot of shouting in Chinese and I wasn’t sure what was being said. I did know that we wanted to get out of there before anyone started pointing at us.
We headed out of the pier building, past the clock tower and the crowds shopping in the area. We cut through the underpass below Salisbury Road, then headed east to the impossibly dense and crowded shopping districts around Nathan. An Asian man and a gorgeous blonde—we would be easy to pick up from a description of what had happened on the ferry, and at the China Club just before that. But I didn’t want us to split up yet. I wanted to finish this.
We reached the southeast corner of Kowloon Park and went inside. The park, set on a sprawling knoll above the streets below, was dark and, at this hour, reasonably deserted. We walked past the skeletal aviary and the silhouetted Chinese-style gardens to the Sculpture Walk, where we sat on the steps of a small amphitheater beside one of the Walk’s silent statues. I took out the prepaid cell phone, turned it on, and called Dox on the throwaway he was carrying.
He picked up immediately. “Hey, partner, I hope that’s you.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the sound of his voice. “It’s me. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m here at the bug-out point. Where are you?”
“Kowloon.”
“Pardon me for asking, but isn’t that the wrong direction?”
“Unfortunately. Delilah and I chased Al-Jib onto the Star Ferry.”
“How’d that turn out?”
“With Al-Jib dead.”
“Well, that’s a happy outcome. Another victory for the good guys, and a blow to the forces of evil. What about Delilah?”
“She’s fine. She’s right here with me.”
“Ah-ha, so that’s why you hightailed it to Kowloon. You sure we have time for that sort of thing right now?”
“I’m sure we don’t. What happened with Hilger and Gil?”
“If you’re talking about the guy who was shooting at Hilger, he’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“Hilger shot him, and when Delilah went to help, old Ali just about fucking flew over them and headed down the stairs. After that, Gil was doing a damn fine job of returning Hilger’s fire upside down and on his back from the stairs, but eventually Hilger put another round in him and then imitated Ali’s levitation trick. He paused just long enough to turn and shoot the sumbitch point-blank in the head.”
“Goddamn, I wish we’d managed to get you a gun.”
“Yeah, I would have liked to shoot him, and the opportunity was there. I did manage to sling a chair at him from the landing as he made his getaway, at least. It knocked him down, but he kept going after that.”
“You and the chairs,” I said. “You ought to market it. ‘ Chair-fung-do.’ ”
He laughed. “Yeah, the odd piece of furniture can come in handy from time to time, I’ve discovered. Anyway, I couldn’t get to Hilger in time after he was down, seeing as he was armed and dangerous and I was only dangerous. These jobs can be awkward without a proper rifle at hand. I don’t know how you do it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Hilger’s known in the club. Hell, he had reservations there tonight. The police are going to pick him up for sure. And then we’ll see if we were right about him running his own operation.”
“Think the powers that be will disown him?”
I paused and considered. “I’m getting the feeling he has . . . enemies. People who might like to see that happen, yeah.”
“What gives you that feeling?”
“I’m not sure. I want to check something out, and then I’ll let you know.”
“All right. Finish your quickie, and let’s meet at the airport. The old City of Life just doesn’t feel as welcoming now as it did this morning.”
“Give me an hour.”
“Sure, take as much time as you need. I don’t see any reason to hurry. It’s not like half the Hong Kong police force would be looking for someone of your description or anything like that.”
“All right,” I said, “I see your point.” I told him where he could retrieve the bug-out kit I’d put in place. He said he would grab it and be on the way.
I clicked off and looked at Delilah.
“Gil’s dead,” I said. “Dox saw Hilger shoot him in the head, point-blank.”
She nodded, her jaw set, then said, “What else?”
I briefed her on the rest of what Dox had told me.
“I’m going to meet him at the airport now,” I said. “You coming?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t have my passport.”
I didn’t say anything. I was still pissed that she had called Gil. I was trying to let it go.
“Anyway,” she said, “I need to brief my people on what just happened here. There are going to be a lot of questions.”
“You going to be able to weather it?”
“I’m not sure. Al-Jib dead will certainly help. That is a major victory, major. If he’d gotten away, I don’t know what would have happened.”
She was talking unusually fast. I noticed that her hands were trembling.
“You okay?” I asked, looking at her.
She nodded. I saw her eyes were filling up.
“You never . . .” I started to say. I paused, then went on. “That was your first time, wasn’t it.”
She nodded again and her tears spilled over. She started to shake.
My anger dissipated. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. “You did the right thing,” I said. “Just like they trained you. You’ll be okay.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should be happy, I should be exulting that he’s dead. I mean, I was exulting, right after. But now . . .”
I kissed the top of her head. “Your mind knows what’s what. It’ll just take a little while for your gut to catch up. You’ll see.”
She wiped her face and looked at me. “I was so afraid he was going to get away. I wanted you to shoot him. When he had that gun to my head, I thought I was going to die and all I cared about was that you shoot him first, so I would know.”
I nodded. “When you’re certain you’re going to die, and you don’t, it stays with you for a long time after. Sometime I’ll have to tell you about what happened to me outside of Kwai Chung last year.”
“You never did tell me that whole story.”
“Well, are you going to give me the chance?”
She laughed a little and touched my cheek. “Let’s meet somewhere. I don’t want it to end like this. I want . . . I want that to look forward to.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got your number. And we’ve got the bulletin board.”
She smiled. “We’ll always have the bulletin board.”
I laughed. “Well, it’s not Paris, but we’ll figure something out.”
Her hand slipped around to the back of my neck and caressed me there, absently, gently. It felt good.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said. “I wanted to say that to you in Phuket, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell you . . . how much it means to me.”
How someone could smell so good after chasing a terrorist a quarter mile, almost dying in his grasp, and then killing him, was a mystery I knew I would always savor.
“Sounds like trusting you in Phuket wasn’t the brightest move I’ve ever made,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes fierce. “Yes, it was. And as for calling Gil tonight . . .”
I shook my head. “I understand why you did it.”
“I had to. I told him it was Al-Jib, not you, that you were helping us. But he didn’t believe me about you. And when I saw him take a shot at you . . .”
I realized I was touching her leg. I started to say, “I know, I heard you,” but she pulled me in and kissed me.
I stopped talking. The kiss went from zero to sixty in about two nanoseconds. Where we were sitting, it was very dark.
What the hell, it wasn’t like Dox had never kept me waiting.
I TOOK THE Airport Express train from Kowloon station and called Dox when I arrived. He was already there. We met on the departures level, in front of United Airlines. He was still in his suit, an attaché in each hand.
He grinned as I walked up to him. “I think this one’s yours,” he said, handing it to me. “Saw it next to a dumpster in front of the Bank of China building as I exited the premises. Unless you meant to throw it away . . .”
“No, I was just blowing the ballast to chase after Al-Jib. I’m glad to have it back. Traveling without luggage can be conspicuous.”
“And we all know how much you hate to be conspicuous,” he said, staring at my neck.
I said, “What?”
His grin achieved galactic proportions. “Partner, I believe that’s lipstick on your collar. You’ve been a bad boy. And here we are, in the middle of an operation and everything. Next thing I know, you’ll be leaving your cell phone on and trying to hump a katoey into submission and committing similar such indiscretions. If you keep this up, people are going to start suspecting you’re human, and the unpleasant burden of explaining otherwise will fall entirely to me.”
My hand wandered up to my collar. “I . . . I just . . .”
“You don’t have to explain. Combat will do that to a man, I know. Bet you didn’t even need the Viagra this time, either.”
“No, I just thought of Tiara.”
He laughed. “That’s good, you got me there, man! Damn, you’re always going to have that over me. Hey, you think the Israelites will pay us, after all this?”
“I’d say they’d better. And then some.”
“I’m sure Delilah will strenuously advocate our cause. She’s a nice lady.”
“I don’t know what her position is going to be now. They’re going to ask her a lot of questions.”
“Well, if things don’t work out for her with her people, as far as I’m concerned she’s always welcome to join our happy band of freelancers. Like I said, we’re the wave of the future. The nation-states of the world are just going to outsource all their defense needs so they can watch more television, you’ll see.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think Delilah would be comfortable as a freelancer. It’s not who she is.”
“Well, hopefully she won’t ever have to face that decision. It ain’t a happy moment in a soldier’s life, as you know.”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“Well? Where to, from here?”
“I’ve got some business in Tokyo. On the way over here, I made a reservation on an Asiana flight that goes through Seoul. It leaves at . . .” I looked at my watch. “Oh-dark-thirty. Two hours.”
“What about Rio? You still hanging your hat there?”
“Mostly. I’ll probably head back after Tokyo.”
“Maybe I’ll come visit you there. Them Brazilian girls . . . man, don’t even get me started.”
“I try not to.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, come on down,” I said. “It would be good to see you. We can go to another adult bar.”
He laughed again. “I’d like that. I really would.”
We were quiet for a moment. I said, “What about you? Where are you heading?”
“Gonna go visit my folks in the States, I think. It’s been a while and I miss them.”
I nodded, trying to imagine it. I lost my parents so many years earlier that the simple concept of visiting the folks, of visiting anyone, is almost alien. But maybe I could find a way.
I said, “They’ve got a good son.”
He beamed. “They do. And I’m lucky to have them, too.” He glanced at his watch. “Got a Cathay Pacific flight that leaves for L.A. at twenty-three thirty-five. So I’d better beat feet.”
I held out my hand.
He looked at me and said, “Son, just because I was recently nearly inducted as a new member of the Accidental Katoey Love Association doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to show your feelings for me.”
Oh God, I thought. But then there I was, hugging the big bastard in the middle of the airport.