John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

Shaved head, blue eyes, Orientalized eye sockets: it was a face out of a comic strip: Kat Woman. Her complexion was gray. With emaciated hands like claws she scratched incessantly at different parts of her body. What Chan noticed most was her head; it was on a swivel, like a video camera on a random scan. In one instant she was looking up at him but seemed not to register anything. She was sweating.

“Johnny? I mean, fuck.” It was a New York accent, Bronx, but not like Moira’s. Clare spoke quickly, with condescension.

“I’m cookin’.”

“Yeah. Hurry up, why doncha?”

“You wanna do it?”

“I don’ cook. We went through that.”

“Right. Right. The Great Khan don’ cook.”

Johnny said something in Mandarin. There was a short laugh from another man.

“You boys thinkin’ of rebellin’ again? Wouldn’t try it. I’m your only way outa here-just remember that.”

“Right, Your Excellency, we remember.” There was a sound of giggles. Clare grimaced, then broke into a short grin.

“Fuck.” She shook her head. “You guys. I should have your balls cut off.”

Two Chinese men came out from under the container where Chan was standing. One was carrying a bottle cap, the other a syringe. One sat down by her side, the other in front of her. The one with the syringe held the needle in the bottle cap and pulled the plunger. In a sudden, practiced movement Clare picked up a rubber band, slipped it above her forearm and twisted it over on itself several times. With her other hand she took the syringe, found a vein after a lot of probing, pressed down on the plunger. Chan watched her body contort with the shudder; groans of joy dribbled from her mouth. She slipped into a fetal position on the ground.

“Oh, man , fuck.”

Chan waited while the two Chinese men also shot up. He knew he had about twenty minutes when they would be very high. After that they would be able to function with more normality.

Clare slowly propped herself back up against the steel wall. One of the men sat next to her, similarly held up. The other lay on the ground at their feet.

Clare spoke slowly. “Know what I just saw, except I didn’t really think about it till now? I just saw someone up on the roof.”

“Roof?” Johnny giggled. “Roof? Excellency, we ain’t got no roof.”

Clare broke into a grin, then a guffaw as the joke caught the other man as well.

“Yeah, well.” She scratched her shaved head, grinned. “I guess. This is good stuff.”

“Thanks to you, Excellency.”

“Uh, you can lose the ‘excellency.’ I wouldn’t mind, except you don’t mean it. You should be grateful. If it wasn’t for me, you’d both be dead. Fuck was that?”

Chan landed in an imperfect karate fall, rolled on the ground, knelt holding the machine pistol in front of him.

“Don’t move, police, you’re all under arrest.”

“Huh?”

Six pupils the size of pinheads tried to focus on him.

“Wow.” Clare scratched her arm, grinned. “Someone just fell from the sky.”

“Fuck.”

“Maybe he fell outa that chopper I can hear.”

“Oh, fuck ! Choppers! I’m outa here.” Clare tried to stand. She rose up against the wall of the container, slid back down again. “Shit. I’m so friggin’ stoned. Damn, I think they got us.”

“Don’t move,” Chan repeated. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Clare stared at him from under heavy lids. “He has one of those British accents.”

“I guess they all do round here.”

“Martian falls outa the sky, and fuck, he talks faggy English.”

Chan hoped they wouldn’t try to escape. How do you instill fear and respect in someone whose consciousness is floating in space? He knew he couldn’t shoot them either. He wasn’t the type to shoot sick dogs. He stood staring at them while they stared at the chopper that had reared up like a prehistoric beast apparently from nowhere. As far as the three addicts were concerned, it upstaged Chan and his gun, like a film with bigger technical effects. They were transfixed by it; their heads swiveled as it banked and hung, blowing up a small typhoon of dust at the other end of the compound.

“Man, I been dreaming about one of those coming to take us away,” Clare said, staring. “Ain’t much they can do us for ’cept possession.”

“Ain’t the cops we’re worried about, remember, Excellency?”

Clare scratched her head again. “Yeah. Shit.” She turned to Chan. “You got, like, witness protection over here? We got stuff we could sell, you know, make your hair stand on end. International implications definitely.”

Chan watched while two SAS officers slithered down a rope at amazing speed. They hit the compound, running.

“It’s okay,” Chan shouted, “I’ve got them covered. I’ve arrested them. They’re too stoned to move. They’re unarmed. I said I’ve arrested them. ” Perhaps it was the noise of the chopper. “They’re unarmed, it’s okay.” The two soldiers seemed not to hear him.

They took up positions at angles to the three junkies; each knelt on one knee, held his gun in both hands with arms straight. Chan dived to the ground and watched while bullets from the two machine pistols sawed first through the bodies of Clare and her friends, then through their heads.

Under the thunder of the chopper human mush the consistency of watermelon dripped from the container wall. It must have been all of twenty seconds since Clare was speaking.

“I had them covered, there was no danger, they were unarmed, we could have questioned them.” He was still saying it, jabbering almost, as they led him across the compound to where a rope was dangling from the chopper. Two more men came down the rope.

“All yours to clean up,” one of the gunmen said. The new arrivals nodded and walked briskly toward the corpses.

The gunmen found a harness, which they forced him into, and he was hoisted above the steel maze to the cabin of the chopper, where rough hands hauled him in with brutal efficiency. The other two came up the rope in the same way. A few minutes later the remaining two soldiers were also hoisted aboard, and the machine banked into a turn. One of the soldiers hung on to a steel upright to speak to the pilot.

“We’ll need bulldozers, heavy lifting gear-the containers are packed tight-oh, and something for a fire.”

The pilot flicked a switch; static crackled from a radio. “Operation Kidgloves here, are you reading?”

“Reading Kidgloves, over.”

“You have the coordinates. Send bulldozers, lifting gear to shift shipping containers-and something for a quick bonfire. Something that burns hot for total incineration. Over.”

“Will do. Over and out.”

Chan was made to sit at the rear, the two gunmen immediately in front of him. They had taken his gun. Three others sat on the other side; it was a big chopper. Below, they seemed to be following the ribbon of road that led back toward Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

Chan felt a gathering fury. When he’d finally caught up with Moira’s enigmatic daughter, during the few minutes that he’d watched and heard her speak, the mystery had fallen away, together with the fear and awe. He knew who she was; any city cop would have recognized her and her friends: They were the eternal fantasists, the ones who from an early age know that reality will be more than they can bear. They slip into crime out of weakness and despair and deserve to be treated like common criminals, not terrorists. Whatever the connection with the uranium, those three could have been no more than couriers, that much was clear.

The gunman in front spoke to his colleague opposite. “It was a hostage situation; we had no choice. A police officer was in mortal danger.”