In one place, which seemed to service a purely Chinese market, blood was pooling under the barstools of its patrons, who all turned on their perches to watch her run past. She had no idea where the blood was coming from, or whether it was human. Impassable to road traffic, the undrained passageway doglegged around to the right, between two saloons that appeared to loom over the laneway - this being due to the verandas on their upper floors cantilevering out to such an extent that only a few inches separated them, creating the effect of a tunnel. As narrow as the path was through here, at least it was clear.
She could see why now, even in the gloom. Brass shell cases gleamed in the mud, picking up the reflection of neon lights, and red candlelit lanterns from what she assumed was the door of a Chinese brothel. A man lay dead, face down in the filth. Dark arterial blood leaked from five or more bullet holes punched into his torso. The wound that had killed him, however, was almost certainly a shotgun blast that had carried away the better part of his head, spraying it over the fibrous cement panels of the saloon in front of which he’d died.
One of Shah’s men was waiting for her a short distance ahead, nodding when he saw her and gesturing for her to hurry up. He waited next to a solid steel door that opened onto a gloomy staircase. A short Chinese woman ranted at him in a language neither of them understood, undeterred by the presence of the man’s weapons. ‘They fucked off in here,’ he said.
Jules heard the cough and bark of back-and-forth gunfire from somewhere inside. She could also hear what sounded like the roar of a crowd. ‘What the hell is this place?’ she asked, as she flicked off the safety on her pistol.
‘Fight club,’ he said without further explanation. ‘Come on.’
They plunged into the darkness, past a drunk lying in his own vomit and shit. The stench of him was sick-making.
Shah’s man took the stairs, leading upwards, two or three steps at a time. Julianne’s body was seizing up, her muscles clenching and stiffening painfully after the shock of the crash. She had trouble even raising her head to follow his progress. Nonetheless, she charged after him without hesitation. For the first time in months she felt like she was finally ahead of the play. If they could just lay hands on these fuckers …
An automatic weapon coughed in the dark, and her escort lifted off his feet before crashing into the wall and sliding to the floor, leaving a dark organic smear behind. Another man stepped out of a doorway and jumped when he saw her.
Jules dived for cover, pumping rounds down the hallway while ducking through a door into a red-lit room full of candles.
The man roared in pain. ‘Bitch! I’m gonna fuck you up!’
American, she thought. Jules heard his footsteps. Scrambling back to the inside corner of the room, she waited for the asshole to step inside.
The muzzle of his weapon came through first as he charged in without sweeping the area. Jules took her time to line the front of her SIG Sauer up with the side of the bastard’s head and squeezed off a double tap that dropped him like a sack of shit.
She flinched and shuddered as blowback splattered her with skull chips and small gobs of grey matter. Biting down on her revulsion, she scrambled out past the body and checked on the man Shah had left behind to look after her, but his sightless eyes could see her no more. She swore, once, and picked up his G-36 to supplement her handgun.
The confidence she had felt rushing in behind him had evaporated entirely. She’d expected they would sweep in behind a trail of dead men left by Shah and Birendra and their comrades. Where had the guy she’d just killed come from? He was a white male, American. And that’s all she knew. He could have been one of Cesky’s men, a hitter who’d hidden himself to ambush stragglers like her, before doubling back to take Shah from behind. Or he could have been some unfortunate punter, or an employee of this ‘fight club’, who was simply defending his place of business from a pack of murderous buggers who had just invaded it.
Oh, bloody hell, she thought. Nothing’s ever simple, is it?
The deeper she pushed into the building, the louder the crowd noise from downstairs grew. She stepped over two more bodies as she worked her way around a corner, and another one on a stairway leading down to what she assumed was the second floor. This building really seemed to have no coherence or logic to its internal design. Corridors branched off to nowhere. Sometimes doors stood open or closed down these dead ends. Sometimes the hallways literally led nowhere, for no reason.
More gunfire.
More cheering and shouting and rumbling from beneath her.
She followed the gunfire as best she could through the poorly lit space.
The gunfire and the trail of dead.
Another two left turns and she found Birendra propped up against a wall nursing a leg wound. He was sweating and struggling to maintain his composure as he applied a pressure dressing. He started to reach for his gun, stopping himself when he recognised her. Relief flickered over his otherwise impassive features.
‘Ms Julianne,’ he said. ‘Mr Shah has him, one floor down. He wishes you to go on ahead. My wound is not serious. I can tend to it myself.’
Jules answered that with a very dubious look. ‘Jesus Christ, Birendra, at least let me patch you up. You can keep an eye on the corridor behind me. I’m afraid the chap you left to look after me won’t be joining us. Some little munter did for him down on the first floor. Popped out of a room at the top of the stairs and shot him.’
‘A stay-behind,’ grunted Birendra, as she tied off the tourniquet he had fashioned for himself.
‘I wouldn’t have a clue. But I killed him anyway. It seemed the decent thing to do.’
‘Yes,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Now you must go. We must finish this quickly before any others come … Down the hallway, first left, and take the stairs down. You will find Mr Shah through the second door on the right. Ignore the bodies.’
‘Thanks,’ she said giving his shoulder what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. He hefted his shotgun to point it down the hallway up which she had just come.
Somewhere below her, it sounded like hundreds of men were chanting along in animalistic ritual. The floorboards, possibly the framework of the entire building, was thumping in time to it, as though hundreds of feet were stamping out a beat together. The tempo picked up, building to a crescendo, before erupting into what sounded like applause and shouts of encouragement.
She hurried on, following Birendra’s directions. Another of Shah’s men stood guarding access to the next floor via the stairwell. He watched over three corpses that seemed to have been piled neatly on top of each other. She vaguely recognised him from her visit to the compound the other day. He nodded brusquely and jerked his head in the direction of the doorway a little further down the hall. Julianne safed her weapon, raising an eyebrow in question.
He nodded. It was safe.
‘It’s me, Shah,’ she called out softly as she tapped on the door, fearing to walk in unannounced.
‘Come in, Ms Julianne,’ Shah replied. ‘There’s somebody I would like you to meet.’
47
TEMPLE, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
It was a strange assignment, not difficult, but nerve-racking in its own way. Corporal Summers had taken a couple of semesters of high school drama, many years ago it felt like, in the lost time before the Wave. She had no illusions about her acting ability, but then General Musso and Colonel Murdoch assured her she wasn’t going after an Oscar.