Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Before Mitch could answer, the sound became loud enough for them all to recognize it.

A chopper, incoming.

Chapter 20

Outside, crouched among the rocks, Mitch spotted the helicopter through binoculars, coming in soft about a hundred yards from the pagoda, the blades on powerful Ribinsk turboshafts spinning a silver halo above the craft.

“It’s a Kamov,” she said. “The kind the Russians nicknamed the Orca. Jesus, there could be twenty guys in there.”

Gabriel grabbed Qi’s upper arm. “Could you have been tagged somehow? Followed?”

Surprise and incomprehension sparked within her dark gaze. “No, I…”

Then brutal logic slapped her. “The Glock,” she said with disgust.

“What Glock?” said Mitch.

Qi snorted, angry at her own lack of vigilance. “Why would he have a Glock? Ivory prefers fully automatic pistols—that is why he has that Russian monstrosity. He would not have a Glock around unless it was disposable.” She drove a fist into her own hand. “Damn it. He handed it to me. He knew I’d take it. Stupid! ”

“He misdirected you,” said Gabriel. “Could have happened to any of us.”

“He gave me the chance to shoot him with it!”

“Well, obviously he was confident you wouldn’t take him up on it.” The location of the leaning pagoda had just ceased to be a bargaining chip. They had been made, blown, outfoxed.

“Load everything,” said Qi. She was obviously envisioning some kind of glorious standoff that would get them all killed.

“Wait,” said Gabriel. “Let’s see if they’re soldiers, Red Police guys or Cheung’s men.”

“I see the bald guy from the casino,” said Mitch, still glassing the slope, where the men from the chopper were now climbing, hunched over in a protective crouch.

“That is Dinanath,” said Qi. “Number Two, after Ivory.” She ducked into her armory and came up with a Nightforce-sighted LMT rifle, already zeroing in.

“Wait!” said Gabriel. “No shooting! We can still—”

Qi fired without hesitation just as Gabriel shot out a hand, bumping her aim off true. The 5.56 round spanged off a tree branch, severing it two feet from Dinanath’s head.

Cheung’s crew answered.

The rocks all around began to flint and chip with bullet hits, half of them silenced. The other half of the shooters didn’t care if they were heard, time-delay gunshots bouncing around the hillside and trapping them in a weird Doppler cone of weapons fire. Mitch, gunless, had hit the dirt, and Gabriel was trying not to get nailed by flying frags of rock.

He took the binoculars from Mitch, peered through them. At least eighteen men were coming at them up a hillside with excellent cover.

Qi could pick some of them off one by one, pacing her fire, but there were too many. She could never bag them all.

Gabriel held her in abeyance until the first salvo wrapped.

“Don’t,” he cautioned her. “We have something they want. We still have the upper hand. Cheung’s not even with them. Let me handle them.”

Disappointment flashed in Qi’s eyes.

“There will be no more shooting, Mr. Hunt,” came Dinanath’s voice over a bullhorn. “We have your brother Michael. You will cease fire and stand down now.”

“Both of you, go now,” Gabriel said to Qi and Mitch.

“What are you going to do?” said Qi, still bitter at being cheated of deaths she felt were owed her.

“They want the Killers of Men, let’s give ’em what they want,” Gabriel said. “If they have Michael we have to dispense with all this pawn-pushing and get right to the royalty.”

“Chess,” Mitch said in response to Qi’s blank expression.

“You have a plan?” said Qi.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel said. “Just worry about getting away. If either of you stay, you’ll just wind up in cages. At best—that’s if they don’t just kill you on the spot. Go. Now. Take the back path down the hill.”

Both women were staring at him stubbornly. What the hell did he have to do, point a gun at them?

“We can set up in the shrine rooms,” said Qi. “Each of us with a rifle, and kill them as they—”

Gabriel overrode her. “No. Don’t you see? That won’t save Michael—and it won’t kill Cheung. Please: go.”

Bad trouble would have them crosshaired in moments. A tidal wave of downside was coursing up the hill toward them.

“Get out of here,” Gabriel said. “Seriously. Leave them to me.”

“You’re giving up,” Mitch said vacantly. She winced at a sudden spike of pain in her forehead. The last dose of the drug he’d given her had obviously almost worn off. It was why she was as lucid as she was—but it also meant she was just minutes away from suffering serious withdrawal.

He held her face and snapped his fingers to focus her. “I’m going to surrender to them, yes—but no way am I giving up. You have to trust me. I haven’t lost my mind. I do have a plan. But if you two don’t get out of sight, pronto, none of it’ll work—understand?”

“No,” she said—but Qi took her by the arm and began pulling Mitch away.

Mitch wrested free and grabbed Gabriel’s jacket, turning him around, holding his torso between her hands, staring directly into his eyes.

“You be careful, goddamn it, or I’ll come back and kick your ass,” she said. “Lucy’d never forgive me if I got you killed.”

He nodded and she let go. Qi led her back into the pagoda, toward the rear archway.

“Dinanath!” Gabriel shouted. “Hold your fire! I’m coming down!”

Gabriel left the Colt behind one of the stone lions as he walked into the open, hands raised, to meet his captors.

“I think you are lying,” said Dinanath as he circled Gabriel…

…who was lying on the ground of the shrine room, trussed up with rope. Before they’d tied him up, Cheung’s thugs had gotten in some good punches, but when Gabriel hadn’t either resisted or spilled any useful information, their hearts went out of the procedure rather quickly.

Gabriel quickly used his tongue to take inventory of his teeth. One wobbler; all still present in his mouth. His right eye was threatening to swell shut and his internals felt kicked down a stairwell—but this was all (he reminded himself) a necessary part of the plan.

“Don’t believe me then,” Gabriel said, his voice a little slurred. “Ignore what I say. That’s your privilege. But if it later turns out I was telling the truth, Cheung will have your liver and heart for breakfast.”

Dinanath wished Ivory were here to offer counsel. Hell, he wished Ivory were still in Cheung’s favor at all, rather than precariously teetering on the edge of a particularly fatal variety of disfavor. Perhaps victory today would enable Ivory to return from disgrace—he had, after all, provided the tin can for the dog’s tail and thus allowed them to discover the location of Qingzhao’s hideout. Perhaps Dinanath himself would be able to offer testimony that would restore Cheung’s faith in Ivory, whom he counted as a good colleague, if not a friend.

But that would be sometime down the line, at best; in the meantime, Dinanath was on his own and had to figure out what to do about this American and his claims.

“Put it another way,” said Gabriel. “All you have to do is check it out. I’ll show you myself.”

“A trap,” said Dinanath. “You would lead us into an ambush.”

“Why? So I can knock off or incapacitate a few of your men? When Cheung still has my brother? That would be crazy. I’m offering a trade because I have something Cheung wants and he has something I want.”

The other men on Dinanath’s squad were starting to debate among themselves. Gabriel had uttered the magic words, in English and Chinese both: Favored Son , Kangxi Shih-k’ai , Killers of Men. Looking from man to man around him, he knew each of them had to be weighing how he might put the knowledge Gabriel was offering to use to advance his position with Cheung—maybe even to claim the ten million dollar reward, if they could turn up the big guy’s bones.