The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [67]
“Yes.” Li Lan took the pistol, unscrewed the silencer and dropped it to the floor, then stuck the pistol in the front of her jeans, under the jersey. “Can you walk down the stairs?”
“If you’re absolutely sure I can’t just lie here and take a nap.”
“Where we are going you can rest.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see Kuan Yin.”
“Naturally.”
Elevators may have been traps, but the stairs were murder. Each step drove a jolt of pain through Neal’s ribs and up into his head. He was beginning to wish Li Lan had let Chin shoot him.
When they reached the door to the lobby he said, “You’d better let me go first. Chin may have friends down here.”
He didn’t. He was so fucking arrogant he had come alone. Neal signaled his new friends and he, Li, and Pendleton strolled right out the front door onto the street.
Chin’s crew stood across the street, leaning against a parked car.
“Hi!” Neal shouted as he waved. “Boy, I’ll bet you never thought you’d see me again, huh?”
The three thugs straightened up and started for him, spreading out as they did. Neal walked slowly toward them as Lan and Pendleton moved sideways behind Neal’s screen, getting ready to run up Waterloo to Nathan.
“Yeah, I beat the crap out of those guys back on the Peak! Thanks for leaving us back there, by the way! Now don’t come any closer! The lady has a gun! Show the boys the gun, Lan!”
Li Lan showed the gun.
A boy inside the parked car stuck the barrel of an M-16 out the window.
Li grabbed Pendleton’s hand and ran. The sniper in the car couldn’t sweep fire without hitting his own guys, and was about to pop off a single round into Neal’s chest when the car took off after the runners. The car doors swung open and the other punks scrambled into it as it headed up Waterloo Road. Neal ran after them and saw Li lead Pendleton into an alley. The car screeched to a stop, and three of the hunters got out. The car went on to circle the block, probably to cut off the other end of the alley. They were setting up a classic block-and-sweep operation wherein the three “sweepers” would drive their quarry into the “block”—in this case bursts of fire from an M-16. Li and Pendleton were trapped.
Neal flattened himself against the wall of the building. He looked up and saw a fire escape. Jesus loves me, he thought, this I know…. Hong Kong or no Hong Kong, a city is a city, and nobody does a city better than your friend Neal Carey.
Pulling himself up onto the fire escape, he climbed to the roof of the building, then crawled to the edge and peered down through seven stories of darkness into the alley. He could just make out Li and Pendleton, who were working their way along the near wall, trying to make it out to the other side. Shit, didn’t they realize they were caught in a trap? He could also see the three hunters spread out across the alley, moving steadily and confidently.
Well, maybe he could worry them a little bit.
It took him maybe thirty seconds to find something. A concrete block had been set near the door of the stairway, probably to prop it open in the heat of the day. He carried it to the edge of the roof, tiptoeing along until he was even with the line of sweepers. He hefted the block up to his waist and flung it over the side.
It missed the end sweeper by a good foot, but the sound was like an explosion, and fragments of concrete flew everywhere. The three men dropped to the ground. One of them held a hand over his eye and screamed.
Lan and Pendleton stopped and looked up.
“Don’t go out the alley!” Neal yelled.
They squatted behind some garbage cans and froze.
Ah, rooftops, Neal thought. Tar Beach. The last refuge and repository of the cityscape. The final storage place. He found a cardboard carton overflowing with beer and wine bottles, evidence of some husband’s secret tippling. He carried it over to the edge of the roof and looked down to see the two unwounded sweepers get up carefully and slowly begin moving up the alley.