Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Leaving Gabriel swinging in darkness, nine feet below the vent, with his arms coiled around Cheung’s collar. It was the stiff, reinforced collar that saved Cheung’s life, since had the chain of the manacles been around his bare throat, he’d have been hanged for sure.

They heard the lights smash against the rocks below; two, maybe three entire seconds after they had dropped.

Gabriel could hardly even see the man below him desperately trying to fight gravity. His arms reached down into an absolute absence of light.

In credit to his nerve, Cheung did not holler or panic. He did not kick his legs. He hung on with grim determination and focused hatred, trying to crawl up Gabriel’s arms. Choice was out of the question. Gabriel could not drop or hold, and all Cheung could do was try to maintain his grip against the beckoning fall as they pendulumed in a slow, lazy arc in the damp darkness. Every movement weighed Cheung’s collar more heavily against the cuff chain…which burden threatened to unsocket Gabriel’s already fatigued arms.

Disturbed bats were beginning to flit around them.

Daredevils, safe crackers, heart surgeons and crazy psychiatrists call it “supertime”—the moment that elongates under stress. It seemed that they dangled on the tether for an hour, when in fact it was mere seconds.

Every dram of oxygen was vital to both men; for Gabriel, head-down, to keep the blood vessels in his face from exploding, and for Cheung, lathered with terror-sweat, choking on his own knuckles while trying to hang onto the cuff chain that was cinching his hard collar into the flesh of his throat.

“Where…” Gabriel managed to choke out, “is…Michael?”

The body below him twisted in his grasp, but didn’t reply.

“ Where? I’ll…save your…life if you…tell me.”

Cheung barked out a laugh.

Then, chinning himself with an iron grip on Gabriel’s forearms, Cheung lifted his throat out of the constricting embrace of the chain. “I’ll order him killed,” he spat in a single breath, his face inches from Gabriel’s, “while you hang here for eternity.” Then with a monumental effort he shifted one of his hands to grip Gabriel’s belt. He began hauling himself upward along Gabriel’s body with a fierce, almost incomprehensible strength.

“He’s in the Peace Hotel,” Cheung taunted. “Eighth floor, west side, last room. And what good does this knowledge do you Mr. Hunt? What can you do with it now?”

“This,” Gabriel said, and bending one knee, kicked Cheung hard in the face.

For a moment, Gabriel continued to feel Cheung’s weight pulling him down like a lead apron; then just the scrabbling of the man’s fingertips against his chest; then nothing, a burden lifted, and seconds later he heard a wet crunch followed by a long, keening wail. All was darkness—but in his mind’s eye he saw Cheung far below, impaled on one of Kangxi Shih-k’ai’s spikes, the previously impaled skeleton crushed to dust beneath him by the impact of his fall. Here was a Killer of Men indeed to add to the ancient warlord’s collection.

Gabriel felt no satisfaction or fulfillment—merely relief that he could draw air again. His vision was spotting and his sense of direction was shot. He tried to pull himself up by the rope, but made little progress; he had no more strength in his arms.

The bats continued flitting around him; he could not have said for how long.

The next thing Gabriel knew, he was being pulled out of the hole on the line that had nearly garroted him at the waist.

Strong hands brushed debris away. Sat him down. Gave him a blessed sip of water.

“You have shown Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung the Killers of Men?” said Ivory.

“Yes,” said Gabriel, finding his voice.

“Then your business here is concluded?”

“You mean, in China?”

“No. This mountaintop.”

“For now,” said Gabriel.

“You must permit me to give you a lift back to the city.”

A moan drifted up from the funnel vent, amplified by the cave acoustics, muffled by the mountain.

“Did you hear that?” said Gabriel.

Ivory nodded. “The history of the Killers of Men is well known. This entire area is full of ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts speak to those who will listen. Come.”

Gabriel and Ivory picked their way carefully down the mountain.

Behind them, the moaning from the cave became louder, more insistent, interspersed by hysterical laughter, and finally devolving into a long, drawn-out scream. But there was no one there to hear it.

Chapter 29

The jazz band at the Peace Hotel was actually quite good. All the musicians looked to be over sixty, and the saxophonist seemed to be channeling Coleman Hawkins directly when he blazed out the solo to “Body and Soul.”

Gabriel caught Ivory tapping his foot more than once to the music.

“I still don’t understand how I could have been duped so thoroughly,” complained Michael Hunt. “It never occurred to me I was a captive. I just assumed, you know—gunfire in the street, my floor on lockdown, no cell phone service…”

“You blamed China,” Mitch said. “I made the same mistake, I suppose. In my own way.”

The barman in the lounge had talked Gabriel into sampling a drink that was essentially vodka on the rocks with most of a lemon squeezed into it. Gabriel considered the beverage moodily. It was good but somehow the celebratory atmosphere seemed askew.

“It turns out the coordinates in our parents’ notes were about five miles off,” said Michael. “They were amazingly close to discovering the Killers of Men.”

“The official discovery now must be handled with utmost delicacy,” said Ivory. “I agree with your brother, Gabriel—he should finish the lecture series as planned and in that context he can provide a clue that our own scholars may follow to deduce the location. Let it be done that way. Credit will accrue to our cultural historians and you will not be blamed for the damage discovered at the site.”

“And what of Cheung?” said Gabriel. “Or should I say Dragunov.”

“That was also not his real name,” said Ivory. “It is just the identity he used in the Soviet Union. I believe he was born in Ukraine, and from what few facts I learned over the years, it is entirely possible that his birth mother really was Chinese.” His voice had a tinge of sadness to it. “We met in the midst of a gun battle, you know. It was a long time ago. He was a bad man even then—a drug smuggler. But not yet an insane one.”

Mitch shifted uncomfortably at the mere mention of drugs. She wasn’t drinking, just nursing a tall glass of seltzer. The purge program for xipaxidine worked on her by Pan Xiao, the monk-who-was-not-a-monk, had been effective but fluidly gruesome, and her insides were still fragile.

“What about the big payoff?” she said quietly. “The gold statue, or the treasure, or whatever it was that was supposed to be there?”

Gabriel and Michael looked at each other with an air of conspiracy.

“What?”

“We went back,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low. “After putting in a call to the Foundation and having a truckload of gels and gems and lenses overnighted. We tried them all in the statue’s eyes, various combinations. Eventually got an arrangement that mimicked the jewels and allowed the ideograms to converge on the far wall.”

“And what did they say?”

“It took a while to translate and some of it is still obscure,” Michael said, “but—”

“But it boiled down to ‘Dig here,’” Gabriel interrupted. “Kangxi Shih-k’ai’s burial place is behind about a foot of rock directly across from the idol—the idol’s looking right at him.”

“The ideograms describe his tomb,” Michael said. “His body was apparently installed inside a hollow jade carving of a warrior. It is described as weighing five hundred pounds.”