Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

“ Five hundred pounds of jade ?” Mitch said this a little too loudly and some heads turned their way.

Michael waited till the eavesdroppers had returned to enjoying the music. “Yes. And supposedly his body was completely outfitted in gold. Gold armor, gold clothing, gold weapons. Please don’t shout.”

Mitch restrained herself. “And this will all now be discovered by the Chinese government.”

“It is their treasure,” Michael said. “Their history.”

“And what of Cheung?” Gabriel asked again.

“He perished, sadly, in his sleep,” Ivory said. “It seems to have happened the night of the unfortunate helicopter crash in the street outside this hotel. It may have been a heart attack, perhaps brought on by the shock. He has already been cremated, in keeping with his instructions.”

“And who’s going to take his place on the Bund?” Gabriel said.

Ivory lowered his gaze in modesty. “There are enough of us. Enough loyalists to repair the New Bund without the incursion of gangsterism.”

“Will Zhang give you trouble?”

“General Zhang is content to run the People’s Police,” said Ivory.

“You won’t have an easy time of it,” said Gabriel. “Cheung left quite a mess behind him.”

Ivory nodded in agreement. “Yes, but…I have excellent advisors.”

When he said this, Mitch took Ivory’s hand.

“I’m staying,” she said.

Gabriel and Michael exchanged their second glance of the evening, less conspiratorial this time than incredulous.

“You’re staying?” Gabriel said.

“What have I got to return to? My sister was my only family. She’s dead. The Air Force doesn’t want me back. I have as much to offer here as anywhere.”

“What about—” He’d been about to mention Lucy’s name, but realized that doing so in front of Michael would be opening a can of worms; in front of Ivory, too.

But Mitch knew what he’d held back from saying. “I’ll see her again,” she said. “When the time is right.”

“Who?” Michael said. “That nurse from Khartoum?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “The nurse from Khartoum.”

The four of them drank their drinks, and the music played on.

“What about you, Gabriel?” Michael said finally. “Would you like to come with me on the lecture circuit or would you prefer to go home?”

Gabriel was sunk in thought. He’d spent the past day trying to make amends and lay ghosts. He’d sought out the little old lady in charge of the Su-Lin Gun Merchant shop and crossed her palm with enough money to fund her retirement in the country and out of the firearms trade. On her little translating screen she had typed: I THANK YOU AND TUAN THANKS YOUR GRACE.

It had made him feel better, briefly.

“What about me?” Gabriel repeated. “I was thinking I might take a trip someplace quiet.”

Which is how Gabriel Hunt found himself winging back to America all by his lonesome on the Hunt Foundation jet, his trusty Colt revolver never drawn nor used, his collection now enriched by the Colt .36 wheelgun from Su-Lin’s. He stared out the window and composed in his head the e-mail he’d send to his sister when he landed, the one in which he’d explain to Lucy what Mitch had decided to do and why. It wouldn’t make any sense to her if he started there, at the end of the story. He’d have to tell her the whole lengthy and unimaginable tall tale of what she had started.

If they’d been children still, she’d have sat at his side and soaked it in wide-eyed, believing every word. But childhood was far behind them, and now he imagined she’d parse every word cynically. Assuming the message even reached her—assuming she hadn’t skipped house arrest, fled to another country and abandoned her last anonymous e-mail address for a new one he didn’t know.

But he would try. She deserved to know the story.

There was just one part Gabriel would leave out; one memory that was his alone, not for sharing.

The taste of Qingzhao Wai Chiu’s lips on his own, during the only time they had ever kissed, there in the life-threatening panic of the Night Market, the two of them trapped in their own transient bubble of supertime, the scant seconds that became days where they were briefly in love. The taste and smell of mangoes and rare spice, of night-blooming jasmine.

Preview

And now—a sneak preview of the next Gabriel Hunt adventure:

HUNT THROUGH NAPOLEON’s WEB

Gabriel Hunt’s grip on his pickaxe was slipping.

He had been in worse scrapes before; it’s just that he didn’t particularly relish the thought of dying while caving for fun and practice. That would be an embarrassment. When it was truly his time to check out, Gabriel would much rather have his obituary say that he’d been eaten alive by an angry tiger or felled by gunshots from enemy assailants. Or old age. That wouldn’t be so bad.

But to fall into a gaping pit because he had slipped on bat guano? Preposterous!

Gabriel called down to his friend and caving partner, “How you hanging, Manny?”

Horizontal and belly-down, Manuel Rodriguez dangled in midair on the end of the static nylon rope, fifteen feet below Gabriel’s legs. His only hope for survival was Gabriel’s grip on the pickaxe.

“Is that a joke, amigo ?” Manny shouted. He was trying to keep the terror out of his voice but wasn’t doing a very good job.

It had happened quite innocently. Every two or three years, Gabriel made an excursion to one of various caves around the country so that he could hone his skills. His travels sometimes required that he perform a bit of spelunking—an outdated term, but Gabriel liked the sound of the word. It had a certain romance to it.

Dangling within an inch of one’s life over a dark abyss, though, didn’t have any romance to it at all.

Manny lived in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Besides the exceptional landmark that was open to the public to tour on a daily basis, there were several other caverns in the park that were available only to experienced cavers. All it took to access them were a small fee and a license. Gabriel had done it many times, very often with Manny, a fifty-eight-year-old former ranger at the park and an expert spelunker.

They had been in one of the more “challenging” (as Manny had described it) caves for a little more than three hours when Gabriel and Manny—secured to each other by a fifteen-foot-long buddy rope—sat down to rest on a ledge above a black pit that supposedly led to a chamber of noteworthy formations. The hole was ninety-six feet to the bottom. They had come equipped with all the right gear. They each wore the necessary helmets, grubby clothing, knee and elbow pads, sturdy boots. Both men carried plenty of light sources and extra batteries, as well as water, snacks, trash bags, empty bottles in which to urinate, and a first-aid kit. For the vertical descent, Manny had brought along an assortment of tools such as carabiners, rope, waist and chest harnesses, Petzl stops, rappel racks, handled ascenders, pitons, chocks, hammers, and a couple of pickaxes. The goal, however, was to accomplish the journey without damaging the cave at all. Hammering pitons into the rock face was to be avoided if possible. It was best to use noninvasive tools such as Spring-Loaded Camming Devices that wedged into already-existing cracks or in between stone protrusions. “Leave nothing but footprints” was the motto amongst serious cavers.

Gabriel had finished eating a power bar, coiled a long section of rope around his shoulder and back, and stood on the ledge to locate a convenient spot to install a chock or SLCD for what was called an SRT—Single Rope Technique—descent into the hole. The plan was that Manny would follow him, staying tethered to him throughout the excursion. But when Gabriel had stooped to examine a possible position, his boot slipped on something wet and slick. He slammed hard into the ledge, facedown, and continued to slide across the slimy ridge until his body was falling through space. He must have plummeted twenty feet or so before he realized that he had pulled Manny off the ledge as well. Another dozen feet shot past before Gabriel swung the pickaxe that was, miraculously, still in his right hand. He chopped the rock face in front of him as hard as he could—and broke his fall. Hanging on to the axe’s handle was another thing altogether. It had a ridged rubber grip and a lip at the bottom against which the side of his right hand collided painfully—but it was enough to enable him to hold on. He gripped the axe handle as tightly as he could with both hands, but already he could feel the strain in his fingers and arms. Making matters worse, his palms were moist from the sudden shock. And when Manny reached the end of the tether with a violent jerk, Gabriel really did damn near lose his grasp.