Gabriel overrode him. “You don’t have to. The women are on their own now—they can fend for themselves. And if you return with me to the city and present me to Cheung, I can get my brother back. You were supposed to find this place for Cheung—well, you’ve found it. By bringing me back to Cheung you will have discharged your duty. Cheung has already offered amnesty if I can reveal the Killers of Men to him; the women go free, my brother and I return to America.”
“If you believe Cheung’s word.”
“I don’t, not for a second. But look at what he wants versus what he’s got. We have leverage. Frankly, it’s what happens to you I’m not so sure of.”
“I have earned no mercy in this, no special consideration.”
“Except from me,” said Gabriel. “I’ll help you—if you let me get out of this pot.”
He watched this handsome, conflicted Asian work the variables out in his mind. For whatever it was worth. Ivory had still not pulled the trigger on Gabriel.
Yet.
They could see the Oriental Pearl TV Tower coming up fast on the horizon, aglitter with nightlight.
“Spot it for me,” said Mitch, meaning the landing platform cantilevered onto the backside of the Peace Hotel. It would be one of the neon-lit vertebrae of the Bund. “I can bank up and over.”
“There,” said Qi.
The concrete platform was a typical helicopter bull’s-eye, outlined by blue landing lights. Tiny now, far below them as the chopper found its mark.
“Son of a…bitch,” Mitch grunted as though she’d just taken a bullet.
“What is it?” Qi shouted. In the bounce from the console telltales it was clear that Mitch was drenched in sweat. She was vising the bridge of her nose brutally and drawing air in fast, hyperventilating gasps.
“Goddamn it,” she groaned. “Not now, not now.”
The Kamov jolted drunkenly to port as Mitch tried to correct. Tears blurred her eyes to double-vision.
With a low animal noise, Mitch unwillingly let go of the stick to grab her head. The running sounds, the rotors, were jabbing into the soft tissue of her brain.
The chopper briefly lost float and gyro’ed around like a runaway carousel, slamming Qi into the port door.
Mitch grabbed Qi’s hands and posted them on the stick in front of her. “Hold this steady!” she said through gritted teeth. “I can hold the pedals. We’ve got to try to—”
They were already dropping like a stone. Qi saw the control dials ratchet alarmingly.
They struggled and together managed to get the copter almost level when a cramp tore through Mitch. It felt as though all her internal organs were being carelessly rearranged by a meatball medic using a rusty saw.
Qi saw the Peace Hotel landing platform whisk past on her left, at a sickening angle. They missed it by fifty yards.
“Hold the stick!” Mitch screamed, her eyes clamping shut. “We’re going…going to have to set it down in the street.”
It was academic. They were heading for the street anyway, their drop rate making lift unrecoverable.
In the street were thousands of cars, pedestrians, pedicabs, bicycles—all frantically trying to clear a path for what was sure to be a fiery crash.
The Kamov’s powerhouses were redlining and worse, starting to hitch and skip.
Mitch fought the craft level and for a precarious moment it seemed like a hard but manageable job of ditching. Then the landing skids rammed like javelins through the front and back windows of a justabandoned car and tore free, putting the Kamov into a forward roll with no landing gear.
The spinning blades were now front-most, scything like a gigantic lawn mower, snapping off and flip-flopping free as they chewed into pavement, automobiles and screaming people. Cars swerved and collided in the vain hope of not smashing into the upside-down juggernaut now sliding at speed through the congested street.
Despite their harnesses, Mitch and Qi were tumbled and battered like dice in a cage. As the cabin compressed and imploded, jagged Plexi showered in on them. The composite armor was good, but not up to the challenge of keeping cabin-forward from crumpling. Sparks rained and scratched spot-welded highlights on their retinas as their safe cocoon clenched into a trash-compacted death trap.
Then the least lucky motorist of all plowed into the chopper from behind.
Chapter 23
Shukuma strode forward with her hands clasped behind her. She was not used to addressing Cheung as his direct subordinate. That was for Ivory, or Dinanath, neither of whom was here. Romero and Chino were dead. Tuan and Mads Hellweg had been eliminated.
Cheung was in his Temple Room, carving another little casket. Sister Menga was in her incense-clouded corner between the two Tosa guard dogs, who were sleeping at her feet like puppies. Her eyes were rolled back into her head, showing only whites to the world of mortals.
“Victory over an enemy,” Sister Menga mumbled. “The exposure of traitors. All as prophesized.”
“You said that before,” countered Cheung. She had said it in regard to Tuan. “Are you certain your bones and animal guts are not giving you recycled information?”
“More than one victory,” Sister Menga intoned, her silver eyes coming down to meet Cheung’s. “More than one traitor.”
“And Longwei Sze Xie is lost to me?” Cheung said. “No. He would go neutral, not virulent. Besides, I would miss him.”
The tall black bodyguard knew that, other than Sister Menga’s, Cheung rarely accepted counsel from females—more traditional Chinese horse manure, she thought. If the boys on the team could not handle everything falling to pieces, she could prove herself here and now. The lessons of the tenure of the Nameless One were lost on her. Venerable laws, likewise—she thought herself above their teaching, and in doing so made the error that always brings disaster to the prideful.
“The helicopter has returned,” she told Cheung. “It is in the middle of the street below, burning.”
“Then Dinanath failed,” said Cheung. “Let General Zhang handle the rabble.”
Shukuma dared to add, “You seem unconcerned.”
“The Killers of Men are within my grasp. The disparate threads are all finally twining together. Binding, as Sister Menga foretold, into the pattern of the future.”
“And the men that went to the pagoda with Dinanath?”
“Expendable,” Cheung said. “Shukuma, you are my new Immortal. You shall assume Ivory’s station from this moment forward. If you see the American woman, the Nameless One, Ivory, Dinanath or anyone else other than Mr. Gabriel Hunt, you are to retire them immediately and report to me. If there is fire and chaos in the streets, one or more of them will be coming.”
“What about Michael Hunt?” she said.
“Keep him under guard until my dealings with his brother are concluded. Then you may kill all of them.”
“You can depend on me, sir,” Shukuma said, happy with her promotion.
The paws of the sleeping Tosa dogs twitched, as though they were dreaming at the feet of Cheung’s sorceress. Dreaming of prey, thought Shukuma—human or animal, it didn’t matter, we all dream of our prey.
And the first place to check for her prey would be that helicopter in the street outside.
Gabriel conducted Ivory down the mountain, and Ivory chauffeured Gabriel into the city. Neither man spoke very much during the trip. Until Gabriel finally said:
“Tell me about the drug.”
Ivory inhaled deeply. Gabriel thought the man was preparing to sink into one of his stony silences as though the topic at hand was moot, beneath notice, or beyond discussion. But he surprised Gabriel with his specificity.
“The drug is a hydrochloride distillate of xipaxidine,” he said, pronouncing it knowledgeably: zi-PAX-eh-deen. “It is a true synthetic, refined using the Sturges Method. Do you know it?”