Hunter's Games (16 page)

“What the fuck’s going on?” he asks.

“We got Triad storming the place, spreading out across every floor! They’re shooting everyone they see!”

“Fuck!” He looks back at me. “Well, haven’t you picked the worst fucking time to buy a gun?” he says.

“What’s going on here, Jo-Jo? If there’s trouble, I’d like my guns right now,” I say.

“You just wait here, and don’t fucking move.” He turns to the guys left in the room. ‘You three—you’re with me. I want to know what these ignorant Triad fucks are thinking, attacking me in my house!”

He storms out of the room, followed by the men. I’m left standing on my own, with only three half-naked women who are high, and a doorman who appears unarmed for company.

Perfect.

I look at the laptop, then at the man behind me by the door.

“Hey, I might just take off,” I say. “I think maybe this is a bad time…”

The guy produces a gun from his back and aims it at me.

Oh look, a Desert Eagle…

“The Boss told you to stay put, so you’re not going anywhere,” he says.

I take a step toward him, trying to tempt him closer to me. Seeing me move, he walks toward me and steps a couple of feet in front of me, placing the barrel of his gun against my forehead.

“I said, don’t fucking move,” he says.

I quickly look him up and down. He’s average height and build, no obvious physical limitations. Confident with the gun, but probably not used to thinking for himself, given his job is guarding a door.

I lean my upper body back as I quickly swipe my right hand across to the left, knocking his gun away from me. Unprepared for the attack, he stands frozen and wide-eyed, making my job a whole lot easier. I go to grab his throat, but jab my hand into his larynx instead of gripping it. He drops the gun and holds his throat with both hands as he coughs violently. With my right leg, I kick him hard in the balls. He sinks to his knees, moving one hand to cradle the injured area, but still coughing. I swing my right elbow across, catching him on the side of his head with the thick bone at the top of my forearm. He crashes to the floor unconscious.

Without a second’s hesitation, I move over to the table and take my shoe off, retrieving the USB drive from the heel. I plug it into Turner’s laptop and open up the file directory. I need to copy the Red Dragon’s FBI file onto his computer, so it looks like he’s had it the whole time, feeding the lie I told Jak Soo Yung about Turner being an informant.

I copy the information across and begin searching through his files. I need to find some records of his transactions. He must keep them, so he can track his finances. I click through folder after folder, but come up with nothing.

Dammit…

What would Josh do?

Who am I kidding? I have no idea what Josh would do right now—he’s so much smarter than I am.

Okay, think… would Turner keep those kinds of files on this physical laptop?

Probably not. It’s not very secure.

So where else would he keep them?

You can store things remotely or wirelessly or whatever, right?

I click on the ‘My Computer’ icon on his desktop.

There’s an external server listed here…

I click that.

A file directory opens with folders named by date…

This might be it!

I start clicking into folders going back a week. Turner said Pellaggio came by the other day…

I open a folder dated four days ago.

There’s one document in there, so I click on that.

It looks like a shopping list. I quickly scan through it.

Yes!

There’s the Remington—this must be it.

There’s an address on here too—they must’ve delivered it.

Wait a minute… is this entire list what Pellaggio ordered? It must be…

Holy shit—there’s a
lot
of hardware on here…

I hear movement out in the hall. I quickly copy the file onto the USB drive. It only takes a few seconds. I unplug the drive and put it back in my heel, then close the various windows down on the laptop.

I put my shoe back on and walk over to the unconscious doorman. I take his gun and check the magazine’s full.

Not sure how I’m going to get out of here…

Turner appears in the doorway, looking very pissed off. He’s not holding a gun anymore. He only has one of his men with him. They walk inside, quickly staring at the guy on the floor and back at me, holding the gun. I smile at him, but before anyone can say anything, the doorway fills as five men pile in behind Turner.

They’re Chinese, and three of them are wearing the same black suits and blood-red shirts as the guys in the hospital yesterday. One of them is the old guy, still wearing the same dirty white vest and short brown trousers

Does he ever change his clothes?

The last guy walks in slowly, purposefully. He’s wearing a light gray suit and looks a bit older, maybe closer to my age. He’s bald and has very smooth, unblemished skin. He’s wearing a black shirt with the collar open.

Jak Soo Yung, I’m guessing.

They all walk in and fan out, seemingly ignoring me completely. Turner and his man stand in the middle of the room between the sofa and the kitchenette. The three guys in blood-red shirts form a loose line in front of them, with their backs to me. The old guy narrows his eyes and frowns, glaring at me angrily as he walks past everyone, sitting down in the armchair over by the TV. The last guy stops in front of me. He’s holding a gun in his right hand. It’s a Browning Hi-Power and is solid gold.

Very nice!

“Adrian Hell?” he asks. His voice is low and deliberate.

I lower my gun a little. “Yeah, who’s asking?” I say.

“We are Red Dragon.”

“So you’re Jak Soo Yung?”

He nods.

I look over at Turner, who looks furious and frightened at the same time. He’s glaring at me.

“I can’t believe you’re Adrian Hell!” he snarls through gritted teeth.

I smile and shrug. “My reputation clearly precedes me. I’m sorry, Jo-Jo. All this is kinda my fault. You see, I told Mr. Yung here your secret—that you’re really an undercover Fed. That’s why he’s so pissed off.”

His mouth opens and his eyes widen, shocked and appalled at the insinuation.

“What? No I’m not!” he protests. He looks at Soo Yung, fear flickering into his eyes.

“Jak, I’m not a cop—you know me!” he pleads. “We’ve done business together for years.”

Soo Yung looks at me as he adjusts his grip on his Browning. He raises an eyebrow.

“Hey, this is nothing to do with me,” I say. “Check out his computer if you don’t believe me.”

Soo Yung looks past everyone to the old man and nods. The old man stands and pushes past Turner, then his men, then me, and sits down at the table, spinning the laptop in front of him and tapping away on the keyboard.

He quickly finds the FBI file on Red Dragon. He shouts in Chinese—presumably cursing and looks at Soo Yung. He strides over and looks at the screen himself.

“What? What are you looking at?” asks Turner, panicking. He looks at me. “What the fuck have you done?”

“I think they’ve just found the FBI file you’ve been keeping on them on your computer,” I say.

“That’s ridiculous! I don’t have a—”

The old man interrupts him; he pushes past me and walks over to him, grabbing him by the back of the neck, and ushering him across the room to the table. He forces him into one of the chairs and moves the laptop in front of him, jabbing angrily at the screen.

“You undercover?” asks the old man.

Turner looks at the screen and his eyes go wide as he reads the file.

I smile to myself.

Gotcha.

“You sonofabitch!” he yells at me. “You did this!”

I shrug and look at Soo Yung. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I say. “But I’m not happy he’s giving your details to the FBI… he must be giving mine too.”

I level my Desert Eagle at him.

Doing this prompts everyone else to raise their guns too, causing a loud, metallic noise as multiple weapons simultaneously cock and take aim. Soo Yung levels his Browning at me. I look behind me and one of the three men in suits is aiming at Turner’s muscle. The other two have one gun on me, one on Turner.

“Well, this is exciting, isn’t it?” I say with a smile.

“You dead man,” Yung says to me.

“Oh, are we still not okay?” I ask. “That’s… disappointing.”

I move my gun and aim at Soo Yung.

“Here’s what I propose… I’m going to walk out of here and you have my word you’ll never see me again. You can feel free to dispose of Mr. Turner here and destroy the FBI file, so you guys are in the clear. Everybody wins. Sound good?”

He aims his gun at me.

“No. You dead man. Nobody disrespect the Red Dragon!”

I see Turner sitting at the table getting twitchy out of the corner of my eye. I think he’s getting ready to make a move… But what move can he make? He’s got one man with him, unarmed. He’s sitting down, unarmed. There are three Triad men with guns on the pair of them, and I’m in a standoff with the leader of the Triad. He’ll be dead before he takes a step.

I see his right arm moving slightly and his hand’s under the table.

That sneaky bastard’s got a gun under there, hasn’t he?

I turn and look at him, raising an eyebrow. He smiles back at me and confirms my suspicions.

Soo Yung is maybe four feet away from me. Arm’s length at a stretch. It’s the three guys behind me I’m worried about…

I glance at Turner again and he’s ready to make his move.

I’ve got to play this just right…

I lunge forward, dropping and driving my left shoulder into Soo Yung’s thighs. I aim blindly behind me with my right and fire off a couple of rounds at the men behind me—the blast of the Desert Eagle is deafening in the quiet apartment. I don’t see if I hit anyone.

As we hit the deck, Soo Yung grunts under my weight. A thunderous blast sounds behind me. I roll onto my back and look over to see Turner standing with a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun in his hand. Smoke is whispering out of the ends and the old man is on the floor—his head has pretty much evaporated and there’s a large pool of thick crimson all around him.

I take my aim at Turner just as he fires at the three men in the center of the room. His blast takes out two of the men at the same moment I fire, hitting him in the shoulder, and nearly severing his left arm. He flies backward to the floor and I scramble to my feet at the exact moment Soo Yung does.

Side by side with little room to maneuver, I drop my gun and grab him with both hands around the head, clasping them together and pulling him down toward me. I drive my right knee up to meet him and feel his jaw dislocate from the impact. I let go and he slumps to the floor, dropping his weapon.

I crouch to retrieve it as a bullet flies over my head. I spin around to see the remaining Triad member taking aim at me. I raise the Browning that Soo Yung dropped and fire three rounds, hitting the guy in the chest.

I stand for a moment, holding the gun ready while I let the scene settle. The echoes of the gunfire fade away and I hear a groaning off to my right. I look over and Turner is slumped against the wall, sitting upright on the floor holding his left shoulder.

“Well, that was fun,” I say to him.

He’s lost a lot of blood and is fighting to stay conscious.

“What the… fuck, man?” he manages to say. “Why did… you… do this?”

I walk over and squat down next to him, gesturing with the gun as I talk.

“Well, initially, this was about the Remington,” I explain. “The one you sold the other day? The guy who bought it used it to shoot a friend of mine and I want to find the sonofabitch.”

“That’s not… my fault…”

“I never said it was. But along the way, I managed to piss off these Red Dragon assholes. When I found out they do business with you as well, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

He smiles; his mouth is filled with blood. “You’ll never… get out of here… alive,” he says.

“Don’t you worry yourself about that—I’ll think of something.”

I place the barrel of the Browning Hi-Power against his left temple and rest my finger on the trigger. “Any last words?” I ask him.

He turns his head slightly and looks at me. “Fuck… you…”

I smile. “Original…”

I squeeze the trigger and blow the right side of his head clean off. He falls away from me, landing heavily on the floor among the parts of his head and brain that’s exploded across the floor.

I stand and walk over to Soo Yung, who’s out cold but not dead. I tap his foot with mine, but I get nothing.

I look around the apartment. The three half-naked women are still sitting on the sofa, very much alive, if only in the biological sense of the word. The one on the left is covered in the blood of… someone—I don’t know who. They’re giggling to themselves, seemingly unaware of what’s been happening around them.