Gordon Kent - Hostile Contact

What didn’t occur to him, nonetheless, was that it was his own signal, which he had used to draw Craik and Dukas to Jakarta, that might also have drawn the Chinese. It didn’t occur to him then, because, if it had, he would have had to consider that George Shreed had actually been a traitor.

Qiu entered on the second and hurried down the path, wondering where his team was, why none of them was supporting him. He stopped to photograph an orchid, allowing himself twenty seconds of the three minutes’ time he had scheduled for the approach to the site. The other man would be doing the same. He was suddenly scared. These tough CIA Americans were legendary—beautifully organized, skilled, always dangerous. Where was his team, now that he thought of it?

He looked around. Leaves and flowers were everywhere, like a nightmarish wallpaper; then, glimpsed through them, he saw faces, a hand, an ear. One of his own people? The other side’s? He moved more slowly.

Jerry saw somebody flash in and out of his chosen killing ground, and he hesitated. His crosshairs registered on the back of Craik’s neck and his finger took up the slack of the trigger, but he hadn’t decided.

Somebody seemed to step toward Craik—a dark shape, hanging back on the left side of the bench. Jerry saw black hair. Bobby.

Alan got to the edge of the clearing in the center of the maze. A man in a windbreaker was there just ahead of him, panting as if he had been running. He had The Economist. Alan shifted his own copy to make sure it would show.

The other man’s eyes were wide, almost crazed. His first meeting, Alan thought.

“You ever go AGIP party?” the man croaked at him. That was not quite the code. “AGIP Christmas party” was the code.

Oh, shit.

Bobby Li had reached the edge where panic becomes madness. Qiu was inside by now, and the American was standing across the space that Bobby knew was Andy’s window on the meeting. If Bobby took another step, he would be visible to Andy. Shoot, he thought. Shoot the American! His life, his family, his future hung on a gunshot. All because of—not because of Andy. Not because of George. Because of these two outsiders in this Orchid House in this foreign place—these interlopers, these meddlers, these oppressors—

“Did I see you at AGIP Christmas party?” he cried, realizing he had said the code words wrong.

The American across the open space looked relieved. He, too, was carrying The Economist. He gave the reply signal: “I was with a Dutch girl.”

Shoot! Bobby screamed inside his head. Did he say it aloud? No. And then he saw Qiu coming up behind the American. Bobby had the envelope full of newspaper in his hand and he stuck it out, shaking so hard the paper inside rustled and crackled. “Take it!” he cried. “Gift—for you—take it!”

The American put out a hand, but didn’t take it.

And Qiu, eyes horrified, backed against the wall of plants as if to sidle around the American, but what he was looking at was The Economist in Bobby Li’s left hand.

Bobby went over the edge.

It was Qiu. It was all Qiu’s fault.

Bobby flipped the safety on the Walther and began to shoot.

The Chinese man made a little “O” of surprise, and the American dove over a table of orchids.

Bobby just went on shooting. Three into Qiu, two down the path, one where the American had disappeared, one into Qiu again, and the slide locked open because the clip was empty.

Jerry heard the first shot and had a dizzy moment when he thought he had pulled his own trigger, and then he recognized the smaller, sharper report of a handgun. Shot after shot. Jesus! Then the Orchid House erupted in shooting, at least three guns on the north, west, and northeast. Glass began to break overhead and shower down.

It was a bust.

He rolled the gun in the mat and threw junk over it and swung himself off the platform.

Alan landed on his maimed hand and fire raced up his arm, but he rolled clear of a tangle of flowers and raced down the maze. The bastard had a gun, had fired at him. But how could he have missed?

Alan could hear at least three guns firing then, not all together, but two of them were close. He pressed past a tool shed and grabbed a pair of wicked-looking scissors from a table. Any port in a storm. Another shot was fired, so close that he saw the muzzle flash through the flowers and realized that he was separated by only a screen of plants from the main trail. He couldn’t tell whether the shot had been fired at him or not, but he flung himself around the next corner.

Bobby Li heard the shots as if through deep water, as if they were fired by somebody else. The young Chinese was down, lying on the trail, and Bobby headed for the west exit. He thought he was safe unless Andy had actually seen him fire the gun. If he hadn’t, Bobby could blame the shooting on the American. He could say that the American had shot Qiu.

But suddenly there was more shooting, all around him. Qiu’s team were now shooting at Andy’s team, and he was in the middle.

Alan moved through the maze of trails, unable to consider anything beyond his next cover. His hand pulsed with pain as he stumbled through a display, knocking plants in all directions. He threw himself behind a collection of tools and handcarts right at the edge of the greenhouse wall, determined to get his bearings before panic and paranoia eliminated his ability to think. He lay panting, trying to be silent. There was another shot. Were they shooting at him? He couldn’t seem to see the moment of the meeting, as if he had a spot of amnesia around the first shot.

Something had gone horribly wrong. But the man in the windbreaker had known the signal. And then the shots—now it was coming back—and a man behind him going down, and the guy in the windbreaker still shooting. At Alan, yes, he thought so, yes. But not really aiming. Looking—crazy. He lay still, his lungs going as hard as if he had run five miles, and tried to imagine where the shooters were, and what they were after. They had to be shooting at each other. There was no cover. The plants offered concealment, but in the whole building there wasn’t anything that would even deflect a small-caliber pistol bullet. Only the screen of the plants separated the trails. Alan thought there were at least four shooters, spread across the hall. Somewhere, one of them fired and a bullet hit the glass above him, and the whole pane crazed, lines of cracks spreading out to the frames.

Part of him wanted to stay and solve the puzzle, but that last bullet made up his mind. Time to go. And he realized that he was thinking again, not simply reacting.

He reached across, tore at a wheelbarrow with his good hand and tipped it, with its load of tools, squarely across the path. Then he pushed with his bandaged hand against the shattered pane of glass until pieces began to break out of the frames, and in a moment he had cleared it, although his hand was screaming and there was blood on his arm. There was another shot from twenty meters off, hidden several folds in the trail away. A potted plant burst, spraying him with loam and plant matter.

He rolled through the hole he had made and remembered to hold his maimed hand close with the other as he went. His shirt tore and a pain cut like fire across his back as he scraped through the frame. He fell much farther than he had expected and landed hard on his back, the wind knocked clean out of him. So many things hurt that his hand had to struggle to be heard. He rolled on to his knees and pushed himself to his feet, already plotting his path to the parking lot.

The shooting had stopped, and he had to consider that he had been the target, and he had to wonder if there were more of them outside, on the trails and in the parking lot. He balanced waiting in hiding, perhaps in the foundations of the Orchid House, against a run for the parking lot, if he could even run. Despite the pain, the desire for movement won. He’d be damned if he’d wait for them like a cornered rat. He might surprise them. He moved cautiously around the base of the Orchid House wall and then crossed the open ground to the first of the high-peaked roofs of the traditional buildings he had seen. He surprised the schoolgirls there, and his torn shirt and blood and the wildness of his expression shocked them. He took them as a sign he was safe for a moment and he ran along the gravel path, heedless of the looks that other visitors gave him until he made it to the parking lot without another shot being fired.