Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

“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.