“What happened?” Jake repeated.
“I followed protocol,” he said. “Doubled back numerous times. Took all precautions. But someone caught up with me coming through Chinatown.”
Alexandra closed in, but she kept her distance to protect Jake’s backside. “Gunshot or knife?” she asked.
“Gunshot. Small caliber. I’ll be all right. It was an Asian man. He used a silencer.” His words were clipped and painful. He took off the satchel and handed it to Jake.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Jake said.
“No. You need to get going,” the Agency man said vehemently.
“We’re not going to leave you here alone,” Alexandra said.
“Who is she?”
Jake didn’t answer. “Who knew you were coming here?”
“Nobody. I got the call directly from Mister Jenkins.”
“And you told no one?” Jake asked.
He shook his head.
“Well someone found out.” Jake looked back at the trail of blood and knew that was trouble. Then he saw the Asian man appear from the side of a restaurant. “He followed your blood trail.”
The man instinctively turned to see who Jake was looking at.
Jake reached into the satchel and felt two guns, along with a number of extra magazines. Just as he pulled one gun from the satchel, the Asian man raised his gun and started shooting.
By the time Jake got his new Glock up to a firing position, two bullets had already struck his Agency contact, dropping him to the pavement.
Jake fired twice and the man vectored to his left behind a tree.
“Go,” the Agency man yelled.
Alexandra had found the other gun and then strapped the satchel over her shoulders. “We’ve gotta go, Jake. We’ve got more company.”
Jake hated to leave the Agency man bleeding on the sidewalk, but he had no choice. He now saw another man coming from behind Alexandra. Then a woman lurked in the darkness from the third angle, a gun at the side of her leg. They were not only outnumbered, but they were outflanked.
Just as the pursuers raised their guns, Jake grabbed Alexandra and rushed toward the railing. Knowing they had no other choice, the two of them grasped the railing and flung themselves over and into the river.
When Jake hit the water, he was sure to hold onto the gun with all his strength. Before rising to the surface, he could hear muffled gunshots. As he kicked and rose to the surface, Jake aimed toward the sidewalk, firing twice at the man at the rail. One of his bullets hit the guy, dropping him like a sack of rice.
The flow of the river pulled him downstream in a hurry. He swiveled around searching for Alexandra but couldn’t see her anywhere in the darkness. Within a minute he was downstream and out of range of those who had shot at him. But still there was no sign of Alexandra.
Jake tried his best to stay out near the middle of the river, not wanting to get caught up in anything along the edge of the high walls on each side.
He kept swiveling around, trying desperately to find Alexandra. But she was nowhere in sight.
Now he started to second-guess his partnership with her. He had put her life in danger. And now she might be lost.
9
As Jake simply floated down the Singapore River toward the Bay Marina, his mind drifted as boats cruised past him. At this time of night most of the boats were filled with commercial passengers drinking and partying late into the evening.
When the smaller motor boat slowly crept closer to him, his first thought was to go under water again and hide, like he had with the larger party boats. But something made him stay up in the water, his head bobbing about in the wake bouncing against the wall. A small light from a hand-held flashlight swept across the water and caught him in the eyes. He raised his right hand from the water and was about to shoot at the light.
“Jake,” echoed a woman’s voice. “It’s me, Jake.”
Alexandra.
The boat turned toward him and Alexandra reached out with a long stick, which Jake grasped with his free hand. In just seconds he climbed aboard the small motor boat and found a seat in the stern near the motor.
Once he was aboard, the man behind the wheel quickly picked up speed, heading toward the Bay Marina that eventually flowed into the ocean.
“Who’s our friend?” Jake asked Alexandra.
She took a seat next to Jake. “When we hit the water I swam under water downstream for quite a while. I heard shooting and thought you might have been hit. This guy was cruising upstream and almost ran me over. I said I’d give him a hundred bucks if he could find you. We turned around up by that brewery and slowly drifted down the river. It took us a while to catch up with you. Are you all right?”
“Yeah. And you?”
“Just wet. I even saved the gun and magazines. What about the guy who gave them to us?”
“I don’t know. He took a couple of rounds to his upper body. But they were twenty-two rounds. I’m hoping our shooting got the cops there quickly, along with an ambulance. He could make it. Where’s this guy bringing us?”
“Gardens by the Bay.”
“That’s just down from our hotel.”
“I know. We should be able to dry off a little before heading back to our room.”
That was a good plan. They didn’t want this guy telling the police or anyone else where he had dropped them off.
In just fifteen minutes, the boat pulled up to a secluded area of the large Gardens by the Bay park, where giant super trees that resembled mushrooms on steroids rose up anywhere from 80 to 160 feet, and were lit by various colored lights.
Jake gave the boat pilot a wet hundred dollar bill. The guy tried not to look at Jake with too much scrutiny. He simply nodded and turned the boat around before maxing out the motor and powering back toward the river.
The night air was still hot and muggy, like Miami on its hottest summer night.
“What’s going on, Jake?” Alexandra asked.
“More than we know,” he said. “Remington obviously has more friends than we first thought. He had the banker killed in Taipei. Had the man follow me in Hong Kong. And now has infiltrated the local Agency, killing or at least badly injuring our contact.”
“I don’t even know why we’re here in Singapore,” she said, obviously exasperated.
“The Agency froze one of Remington’s bank accounts here. Since the man had an account here, I thought he could be hanging out here also.”
The two of them wandered down the dimly-lit walkway in the direction of their hotel in the distance.
“And now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. For some reason he’s concerned about me on his trail.”
She stopped him by grasping his arm. “No kidding. You have a reputation of being a relentless bastard. But more than that, Remington knows he can’t just buy you off. He has to kill you.”
Jake smiled. “Well, I guess I have him right where I want him. I’m going to use his knowledge of me to get him to come to me.”
“How do you do that without getting yourself killed?” she wanted to know. “Or me killed.”
“Listen, I’m willing to work with you as a partner,” he said, “but maybe not on this case. I think you need to just hang out at the hotel for a few days, maybe go down to the casino, and then fly back to Germany.”
She punched him in the shoulder. “If you think you can get rid of me that easy.” Alexandra then went into a long rant in German, which sounded like she was either scolding a child or declaring her intention to conquer the world.
Luckily Jake understood every word. When she finally calmed down somewhat, Jake broke in. “Hey, it was just a suggestion. Don’t go all commissar on my ass.”