A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [82]
Stratton let his gun arm come down, slowly, with emphasis. He reversed his grip on the pistol. Holding it by the butt, he walked toward the Chinese.
“Vas is los?” Stratton demanded in his own officer’s voice.
The man with Bobby Ho barked something that brought the student and professor to life like wind-up dolls.
“Comrade Commissar Wu …” they began together.
“…instructs you to put down the gun and to raise your hands,” concluded the professor.
Stratton forced a rictus grin.
“English. Nein. Deutsch.” He tapped his chest. “Kamerad.”
After a cursory search, they tossed Stratton into one of the rooms on the stage. He was alone for twenty-seven minutes by his watch. An important eternity. He listened to them working on Bobby Ho. The shouts became one-sided, the screams dwindled to pathetic groans.
When they came for Stratton, they brought Bobby Ho unconscious. Stratton tried not to look at him.
There were still four of them. No one had left; so, without phones, they had made no attempt to spread the alarm. Stratton asked himself why. Were they swayed by the cover story? Or were they simply in a hurry, trying for good information before seeking help?
The commissar was a lean, gray-haired man in PLA green with red tabs and a four-pocket tunic reserved for officers. The other uniformed man, balding and pot-bellied, wore the blue and white of the police. Stratton marked him as a local.
The policeman did the heavy work. He jabbed Stratton in the belly with a truncheon. When Stratton involuntarily clammed forward, the policeman struck him on the head.
The professor screamed. “How many men in your unit? Where are they? What is your mission? Talk or die, imperialist running dog!”
“Deutsch.”
It lasted about ten minutes. The policeman enjoyed his work. An expert, a fat man with bad breath, who stung without maiming. Stratton rolled with the blows and calculated his chances. The student, nearest the door, held a Chinese carbine with familiarity. The professor was unarmed. The policeman had his club and a holstered pistol. The commissar held a heavy Chinese military pistol.
Stratton, fighting the pain, babbling in the few words of German he knew, realized that Captain Black was finished. Sooner or later they would alert the PLA garrison outside of town and that would be that.
Then the Chinese made their mistake.
From the night came the sound of small arms fire. Stratton heard the pop of Chinese weapons and the crack of AK-47s. The PLA already knew. The shooting flustered the Chinese. The commissar spoke in English for the first time.
“There is no time for this. Pick up your friend.”
Stratton stared dumbly. Only when they all began to shout and wave did he allow himself to understand.
He picked up Bobby Ho the way a mother bundles an injured child. Blood from Bobby’s mouth ran off the shoulder of Stratton’s jacket. There was a jagged hole where his teeth had been. Stratton held his head gently and pressed him close. Bobby Ho rasped a final sentence onto Stratton’s neck.
“It was the kid … sorry, Tom …”
Bobby Ho spun from Stratton’s arms and lunged for the student. The carbine, shockingly loud in the small room, cut him in half. Impelled by momentum that the bullets did not reverse, the corpse of Bobby Ho collided with his killer.
The commissar was too slow. A bullet from his pistol plucked at Stratton’s ribs. Stratton’s open palm drove the commissar’s nose into his brain.
Then Stratton had the pistol. He shot the policeman twice, and then the student as he writhed to free himself from Bobby Ho’s last embrace. The professor burst from the room, vaulted off the stage and darted among the chairs, a frenzied hurdler. Stratton shot him in the back.
Outside was a holocaust. Two trucks burned at the far end of the street, and along either side civilians spilled from single-story hutches whose thatched roofs burned with a hungry crackle. The PLA had arrived in force. Stratton counted