A small group of men was gathered at the far end of the loft. There were five of them. Another pair sat at a table nearby. They seemed to be poring over some papers.
A boy with another Uzi, jet-black crew cut and a black hollow ear stud — at least an inch wide — appeared at their side. He patted them down one more time before ushering them forward.
One of the men at the table looked up. “Xin Liu,” he said. He was clearly not happy to see her.
“Chen Yuan,” she replied.
When they were halfway across the loft, Lulu tagged Decker’s sleeve. “You hold the tail. I’ll fuck this cat,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Wait here,” she hissed, moving off.
Decker held back. He watched with trepidation as Lulu crossed the open space to the table. He felt helpless.
Decker noted the five young gang-bangers at the head of the loft, gauging each for his unique threat level by the cut of his build, muscle tone, mass and the tilt of his posture.
He took in the guard by the door, the boy with the Uzi.
He noticed a fire escape outside one of the windows, the fact that seven of the fluorescent light bulbs were burned out, the irrefutable knowledge that only one of the men at the far end of the room was a notable threat.
The man at the table, the one whom Lulu had addressed as Chen Yuan.
He wasn’t a particularly big man. Indeed, he seemed somewhat smaller and slighter than most of the gang members present. And older too, by several years — being in his late twenties, early thirties. His shaved head was scarred in innumerable places, and he had the tattoo of a spider running from the base of his chin down his neck and his chest. His face was unmarked. A large diamond stud gleamed in one earlobe. He smiled again as Lulu approached and Decker noticed his front teeth were covered in gold.
He was not very big but he was the only one in the room who seemed to be completely unconcerned about his mortality. And, worse, his nonchalance was mixed with a numbing contempt for the living. Killing me would be like crushing a bug, Decker thought. Like a mosquito too loud in the ear.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face around here, Xin Liu,” Yuan said in Mandarin. He was wearing a black T-shirt with thin shoulder straps that failed to cover the imbroglio of tattoos peacocking his chest: hand guns and flowers; dragons and tigers; theatre masks and Mandarin glyphs. “You think you can come back here whenever you feel like it?”
“Need a strap, yo,” she said, looking out of the windows. “Where else am I goin’?” It had started to snow. Huge flakes whistled by on the opposite side of the glass. Dancing, whirling, they fell out of sight, down, down, down to the street. “Nine millimeter Beretta. Forty-four Magnum. Glock 20, too, if you have one. I got paper.”
Yuan leaned forward. He perched his chin on his wrists, examining her. “Going hunting?”
“Don’t worry. No one you know,” Lulu said, focusing back on his face. She took a step forward.
One of the five men beside him slipped a hand in his jacket.
Yuan extended his wrist as though in a benediction. He smiled like a shark, his eyes crinkled shut, epicanthic, as if covered by membranes.
Decker found himself taking another step forward.
“Where you goin’?” said the boy by the door. He lifted the tip of his gun.
Decker took a step back.
“Why’d you bring this Gwai Lo around here anyway?” Yuan said, pointing at Decker.
“Just carrying my cash, Chen. Like a caddie.”
Yuan laughed, a bright flash of Hyperion gold. He waved a hand and one of the five gang-bangers beside him dashed off to some cases at the rear of the loft. Moments later, he returned carrying firearms.
Lulu moved forward to inspect them. As she did so, both Yuan and the man next to him tensed up for a moment, shifting further back from the table. They clearly had a healthy respect for Lulu’s Kung Fu. Perhaps they’d been victims of it at some point in the past.
That’s when Decker got nervous. Once again, he took a step forward. But, this time, toward the windows.
“I’m sorry,” said Yuan as Lulu picked up the Glock.
When she heard this, she froze. Then, slowly, she turned and aimed the gun at Yuan’s face. “Sorry?”
Decker scanned the room. All eight of the men in the room were armed. And they were all aiming their weapons at Lulu.
She lowered her weapon, shook her head. “You were always a good businessman. Why, Chen?”
“Don’t take it personally. I always liked you,” he answered. “But my Uncle, Wen Chu.” Yuan shrugged. “INS issues. They cut me a deal.”
The door to the stairwell swung open and four men burst in. They wore dark blue windbreakers with the letters FBI in bright yellow stenciled on the front and the rear. Lulu put the Glock back on the table and made her way over to Decker. The first two FBI agents approached them, hand-cuffs in the air.
“John Decker. You are under arrest,” one of them said. “Please turn around.”
“Xin Liu—” started the other.
“Go fuck yourself,” Lulu said.
“
” Decker added, and as everyone gawked at the flawless cut of his accent, he struck.
His right leg swept out in a roundhouse, catching the FBI agent with the hand-cuffs right in the knee. There was a loud crack and the agent went down, screaming.
Meanwhile, Lulu issued a snap kick to the groin of the other FBI agent. He grabbed his private parts and she kicked him again, right under the chin. The agent flipped backwards. But, before he had even hit the floor, she was running on top of his chest and his face, flinging herself into the air, then straightening, her leg stiff and her foot catching the boy with the Uzi square in the throat. There was a sickening pop and he flopped to the floor. Lulu picked up the Uzi, turned and faced the men at the rear of the loft.
The men shot their guns simultaneously, in one vicious crescendo.
It was a miracle Decker wasn’t cut down where he stood… except that he wasn’t standing. Not any longer. He had flung himself to the floor as soon as Lulu had pulled the bolt back on the Uzi.
The air above his head blistered with heat.
Lulu let off a round in response. She fired and kept firing as she dropped to her knees.
All five gang-bangers were struck, shredded, sheared like sheep. Wedges of bone, beads of blood and torn flesh flew off in live shrapnel.
Decker rolled on the floor, looked about. The two agents still squirmed near the entrance. The boy at the door gasped and coughed, slowly faded away. And the other two agents, the ones who had come in from behind — what of them?
For an instant, Decker saw Lulu flying over his head. Without even seeing it, he heard what transpired.
There was a loud thwack as one of Lulu’s feet bore down upon somebody’s cheek. There was the sound of two fists jabbing precisely into two open and vulnerable pressure points. There was a pop as two palms came down on two ears simultaneously, creating a thunderclap of pressure in someone’s aural canals. Then, another whack as another foot struck solar plexus, then a chin, eye socket, neck, and neck once again. All this in sound, until he heard two separate thumps, and the two remaining FBI agents fell to the ground.
Decker looked up. Lulu stood over the agents, dragon-stanced, arms out and ready. “Come on,” she exhorted. She grabbed Decker by the hand, yanked him to his feet and dragged him behind her toward the windows. Moments later, they were shimmying out onto the fire escape.