Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [38]
Lee pressed against the wall at the entrance to the Japanese surrender room and passed the beam of his flashlight down the long room. He had never been in there before. The figures standing and seated seemed so lifelike. The muzzle of Lee’s gun jerked from one side to another.
Lee took a deep breath to try and steady himself. The sounds of the alarms and his adrenaline overload had left his nerves raw. He moved the flashlight beam to his right. There were more figures. A tall one in white stood leaning over a table. The muzzle of the gun jerked. Lee almost fired but he restrained himself, and the cone of light moved on. There was a figure seated at the head of the table immediately to his front right. This motionless figure was dressed in black, just another dummy. Lee stepped further into the room, his searching beam moving on again probing.
He crouched, stabbing his light under the long tables. Again he started on his left before he brought the light back to the right. He was searching for a crouching man hidden behind the seated figures. Had the man he was seeking already left the room through the exit door?
Lee’s light probed further. He was half-turned now as the light moved down the room, probing the shadows under the table. Then the beam touched the feet of the seated figure at the head of the table and it stopped. Instead of plain shoes or military boots, this figure was wearing Nike sneakers. New-looking sneakers!
Black! There were uniforms of all colours on the dummies in this place, but no other one was wearing black. The man he had followed into this place had been wearing black!
Chow Lee’s gun pointed away from the light beam. He tried to swivel on his knees, turning to bring the gun in line, but he was too slow. There were two flashes. He felt both of the bullets that killed him.
My two shots hit the man with the flashlight in the chest. The flashlight spun to the floor. I saw the shocked expression on the gunman’s face as the light beam hit him and rolled away.
I stood and stepped over the railing. There was no way I was going to waste a second and check whether Mr Smoker was dead. I didn’t care. The fact he was not shooting in my direction was all that mattered.
My head was splitting from the sound of the alarms. I needed to get the hell out of there and into the water just as fast as I could. The two guys coming in through the outer door, however, seemed to have other ideas.
13
“What is happening? Have they got him?”
“I can’t tell, Mr Lu,” the man on the radio responded. “They are not talking to me.”
“Call them!”
“Yes, Mr Lu.” The operator opened a channel and a ragged burst of gunfire filled the room through the radio’s small speaker. The gunfire gave way to the wailing of the siren. There was no more gunfire, nothing other than the screaming alarm. The operator called out names, but he received no reply. “They are not answering, Mr Lu.”
“Send the others.”
“They are already on their way.”
Thomas Lu sank heavily down onto a chair. It was supposed to have been so simple.
“What’s happening?”
The thing about gunfights, particularly in the dark, is that they generally involve a lot of chaos, and this is exactly what happened at this moment in time.
The two men came in through the double door shoulder to shoulder. Big mistake! They were silhouetted against the glare of the Singapore night sky, while I was in the almost total darkness of a windowless room.
I was lying flat on the floor and the beam of the flashlight one of the newcomers was waving about passed by above me. There was a shout and shots, but they were not fired at me. The light was focussed on the surrender tableaux away to my left. The realism of the wax figure sitting with his head turned in the direction of the intruders had startled the newcomers. The unfortunate dummy now had no head.
This momentary distraction allowed me to get away five rounds in rapid succession. It wasn’t fancy, but at a range of less than ten feet it was very