Unlike the regulars, he was too well known among the Chiu Chaos to walk brazenly aboard the produce boat. His face had been memorized by every one of Fong’s assassins and he knew it. It was the way they operated. Like the FBI. Ten Most Wanted.
Earp, however, strolled the deck in a cowboy hat, a tan safari jacket tied loosely at the waist by a cloth belt. He lit a cigar, stared down through the latticework hatch into the hold below, lie saw Billy Kot and two henchmen lounging in the booth, drinking. There was no sign of Fong.
Hatcher clung tenaciously to the side of the junk, his hand sliding quietly and expertly across its smooth teakwood hull. He felt a splinter, worked at it with his free hand, his sturdy fingers digging at the chink until he could get four fingertips into the slit. He pulled himself up slowly, let go with his other hand and groped for another slot.
On the deck of the junk, Earp thumped the watermelons, peeled back leaves of lettuce and smelled them, tried to look as if he knew what he was doing.
‘Okay?’ one of the Thai salesmen said.
‘Yeah, not bad,’ Earp answered. ‘How much for the lot?’ He swept his arm around the deck.
‘All of it?’ the astonished Thai answered.
‘Yeah. What’ve you got below, any more stuff?’
‘More of the same.’
‘I’ll just take a look.’
The Thai produce man, anxious to please Earp, led him toward the hatch that led below-decks. Two Chinese gunmen leaned against the railing, watching them casually.
Sy swung a snaketail boat alongside and started chattering with one of the off-loaders. Corkscrew, his shotgun tucked under his arm, pulled himself up on the lip of the boat and entered the hold. He saw Earp coming down the stairs.
Hatcher continued to inch his way up the side of the junk. Behind the guards he grasped the rail with one hand, then with the other, and then he peered over the side. He searched the people on deck for Potter but couldn’t see him. Then he saw a stooped old Chinese walk over to one of the guards.
‘A light, please?’ the old man asked.
‘No smoke.’
My God, it’s Potter, Hatcher realized.
Potter stood in front of the other guard, who took out a Bic lighter and held it for him. Potter reached under his robe and grasped the handle of a K-Bar knife. Slowly he slid it out, and as Hatcher vaulted over the railing and pulled back the guard’s head and slit his throat, Potter jammed the heavy assault knife, hilt deep, under the ribs of the second guard and up into his heart.
They both died without a sound.
Hatcher ran to the mainmast and quickly tied a rope around it, slipping one end through the ring in his belt.
Potter continued down the stairway toward the hold.
In the hatch a swaggering Earp walked over to the booth where Billy Kot and his two compatriots were sitting. Tollie Fong was nowhere to be seen.
‘The name’s Holliday, from Valdosta, Georgia, U.S. of A.,’ Earp bellowed. ‘I’m interested in buying up the rest of this cargo.’
‘The whole thing?’ Billy Kot asked with surprise.
‘That’s right. Allow me to give you my card.’
Earp stared into Billy Kot’s eyes arid, with a single, lightning move, reached under his jacket, hauled out his long-barreled .44, swung it out until it was six inches from Billy Kot’s heart and fired. The gun roared and the shot ripped into Billy Kot’s chest and exploded into his heart. He was lifted six inches off the floor and blown backward into the open hatch of the junk, where he landed spread-eagled on his back and slid to a stop.
Earp dived over the table and rolled away, he clawed loose one of the pipe bombs from his belt, lit it with his cigar and threw it over his shoulder toward the bulkhead.
On deck, Hatcher jumped up and, holding his legs together, came down feet first on the thin latticework hatch cover. It shattered and he dropped through. The floor below swept up toward him. The Aug spat quietly in his hand, cutting down the other two Chinese gangsters in the alcove as Hatcher hit the floor.
The main room of the junk disintegrated into chaos.
Earp’s bomb bounced with a ringing sound and exploded. Bits of wall and doors vanished in a white hot blast, and a shower of dust and bits of wood clattered into the room. Flames licked the bulkhead of the junk.
Fong crouched in one of three small cells in the fore section of the junk adjacent to the cubicles of the opium den. Sloan sat on the floor leaning against the bulkhead. Fong leaned over so his face was inches from Sloan’s. ‘I will enjoy killing you, Harry,’ he said softly.
Sloan laughed. It wasn’t big laugh, but it was sincere. ‘You’re stupid enough to do that,’ Sloan said.
‘I’m going to kill you a little bit at a time!’ Fong said, his voice rising with his anger.
‘Your smoke’s been doing that for a long time,’ Sloan said with a wave of his hand. He was staring at the floor, trying to get his bearings, trying to make his way through the hazy slow motion induced by drug and concussion.
‘I’ll wait until you come down,’ Fong said. ‘When it will hurt the most. I am going to kill you and every gwai-lo that Yankee bastard Hatcher knows. I will kill the world out from under him. Then he will come to me.’
‘I wouldn’t look forward to that if I were you,’ Sloan said.
A moment later, Earp’s bomb went off.
Fong was knocked to his knees as the junk shuddered from the explosion. He whirled toward the sounds of gunfire, and Sloan slammed his foot into his back, sending him sprawling out of the cell. The gunman spun around and fired a shot at Sloan. The bullet ripped into his side.
‘Ahh, damn!’ Sloan bellowed and rolled into a tight ball against the bulkhead.
The stoned opium heads in the house of Dreams, awakened from their dreams by the explosion and the gunfire that followed, swarmed from their cubicles and rushed toward the main hold. Screaming, bumping into each other, babbling, tumbling down the narrow passage, they choked it from wall to wall, their vacant eyes suddenly alive with fear. The door to the House of Dreams burst open. Earp, Potter and Corkscrew were raking the interior of the junk with shotgun and rifle fire. A bullet smashed into Corkscrew’s leg but he kept shooting. House of Dreams customers stumbled into gunfire, flames, smoke and destruction.
Faced with the insane nightmare, Fong forgot Sloan and dashed into the middle of the mad scramble, slashing his way with his gun through the crazed mob toward the exit. Then as he looked up he saw his deadliest enemy at the other end of the passageway. Hatcher, his eyes aglow with determination, was waiting for him at the exit to the main hatch.
Forgetting his own peril for the moment, Fong started firing at Hatcher. Hatcher ducked but did not back off. He charged into the screaming mob of Chinese, zigzagged directly toward Fong, his Aug chopping away at the wall as Fong ducked into the mass of fleeing men and then veered off into one of the opium cubicles.
A second bomb exploded, bursting another cache of produce to bits. The explosion sent Hatcher, Fong and the terrified dopers sprawling. More flames spewed from the side of the boat, and then from the center of the pile of shattered vegetables a geyser of white powder poured out. Tollie Fong’s precious cargo of China White showered from its ruptured hiding place as flames roared up the side of the junk.
Hatcher fell against the wall as the turmoil intensified. Fong jumped into one of the cubicles of the House of Dreams and crouched there, waiting him out.
Hatcher started down the passageway, hugging the wall, his gun ready.
Behind him, Potter searched the bulkhead, saw the telltale bulge of the two hundred-gallon gas tanks. He cut loose with the AK-47. The 9 mm. slugs thunked into the tanks, rent them, blew off the nozzles. Gasoline sprayed out into the hold, hit the flames started by the two bombs.