He caught both men in the chest and landed, grabbing the first man’s rifle from his hands as he fell back, spinning the gun around into the right position and firing off three-round bursts around the room while using Wu as a barricade.
Four armed guards were down before Zhou grabbed the barrel of the weapon and wrenched it out of Cole’s hands, but — the purpose of his mission still uppermost in his mind — he used the distraction to launch himself for another attempt at Wu, his hand firing out towards the fallen general, the man’s neck wide open.
But he was too slow, or Zhou was too fast; for before his hand could connect with the general’s neck, the butt end of the rifle came crashing down, batting Cole’s arm out of the way. Cole tried to move, but couldn’t make it in time — the Shaolin monk’s foot came at him so fast he never had a chance, the kick landing heavy in his gut, propelling him backwards towards the balcony.
Zhou grabbed the fallen general, pulling him across the room, towards the door at the other side, in the opposite direction to Cole.
Cole knew from Zhou’s face that the man wanted desperately to kill him, but — to his credit — he knew his job was to protect the general. ‘Kill him!’ Zhou called over his shoulder in Mandarin as he led the general from the room at top speed. ‘Now!’
Cole didn’t have to see the two remaining men of the Hong Kong Special Operations Unit to know that — with a free target now Wu was safe — their guns would be tracking his way. He also knew that more security from the balcony would undoubtedly be making its way inside the pavilion at any second.
And so Cole did the only thing he could possibly do at that moment, and sprinted as fast as he could towards the exterior balcony and the generals beyond.
Again, the SOU soldiers became unable to fire, professional enough to realize that their shots might well penetrate the pavilion wall and kill the other high-ranking members of the military government who sat beyond.
It took Cole only seconds to reach the pavilion entrance, but the door was already opening as he arrived, more security guards entering to see what the noise was, to answer the calls of their colleagues inside. And Cole knew that it was only the start; within the next minute, every member of the onsite security force would be after him.
The men entering the pavilion were too slow to react to the charging form of Cole, and he knocked them aside before they could shoot, blasting outside onto the balcony, leaping over Wu’s golden throne to looks of absolute bewilderment from the generals and their guards, and carrying on forwards to the balcony’s railings.
He vaulted them in one smooth action, barely noticing how dark it was now, the sun obscured by storm clouds, and landed on the lower roof of the corridor below, soaking wet in the torrential summer downpour; but rather than stop to assess his position, he carried on, using his momentum, compressing his legs into a deep squat before exploding forwards in a flying leap.
Cole heard gasps of surprise, screams from the far side of the lake, shots fired at him as he jumped, his body sailing across the concrete dock steps below him, heading for the waters of Beihai Lake.
And then he hit the water in a perfect dive, hands leading the way, body slipping underneath the lake.
Even underwater, he could hear the sounds of gunfire as the soldiers opened up from the balcony, peppering the lake on full-auto.
His legs pumped, taking him deeper and deeper, bullets passing by his body in slow motion, stopped from achieving killing velocity by the density of the water around him.
His legs pumped harder, his heart beating fast as he swam further and further into the lake, looking up towards the surface, looking for what he needed.
He spotted it soon after, having known in which direction to head from his brief glance from the roof of the lower corridor, and started to swim upwards, angling his body toward the boat whose hull was casting the shadow above him.
He burst out of the water, up into the thundering rain, reaching up to grab the rear of the wooden racing craft, pulling himself clear of the water.
In the same action, he reached out and grabbed the life jacket of the steersman, pulling him off his seat and into the lake, Cole taking his place at the back of the boat.
The steersman, also known as the sweep, sat at the very back of the boat, opposite the drummer at the stern who kept the rhythm for the two dozen paddlers who sat down the length of the boat. His job was to steer the dragon boat by using the sweep oar, rigged to the left-hand side of the craft’s rear.
‘Paddle!’ yelled Cole when the race team stopped moving, fear and confusion in their eyes. ‘Paddle!’ he yelled again, this time in Mandarin. ‘I have a gun!’
However untrue, his last comment did the job, and suddenly galvanized the crew into action. The drummer started beating faster, and the oarsmen responded by pulling harder. Soon the dragon boat was going at quite a speed, and Cole used the sweep oar to direct the craft away from the Jade Flower Islet, heading northeast across the stormy surface of Beihai Lake.
General Wu pulled free from Zhou’s grasp, unable to believe what had happened.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded, surrounded now by an entire entourage of soldiers. ‘What was he doing?’
‘Death touch,’ Zhou responded. ‘If he had touched your arm again, you would have been killed.’ The look in Zhou’s eyes left Wu in no doubt that he was serious.
‘Death touch?’ Wu said in disbelief. ‘But what manner of man was this?’
‘An assassin, General. A very highly skilled one.’
An assassin? Wu could scarcely believe it. And yet when Zhou had interrupted, the man had fought back like a caged tiger.
‘Sent by who?’ he asked, mostly to himself.
Zhou shrugged, and Wu realized that his bodyguard neither knew nor cared; it was irrelevant to the present circumstances.
‘Well, we’ll know when we check his body,’ Wu said, striding back towards the pavilion. But then he saw the soldiers’ hands going to their ear, listening to the messages coming in through their earpieces.
Zhou had no earpiece, despite being in charge of security; he despised technology, and let those under his command worry about such things. Wu never mentioned it; Zhou was good at his job without the need of such things, so why interfere? And he had proven it again today; all the technology in the world hadn’t helped identify Dietrich Hoffmeyer for what he was, or helped to stop him. Zhou Shihuang had done it with his bare hands.
‘What is it?’ Zhou asked Major Wang Lijun, his chief aide, who looked like he didn’t want to give an answer.
‘Our men failed to kill him in the pavilion,’ Wang said.
Wu’s eyes opened wide. ‘What? So where is he now?’
‘He jumped from the balcony into Beihai Lake, he’s now on a dragon boat heading away from the island.’
Wu and Zhou were already running for the pavilion, bursting through the door, through the gilt-edged room and out the other side onto the rain-soaked balcony, straining their eyes to see the escaped assassin.
The soldiers were firing out across the lake, but Wu could see they were wasting their time; wherever he was, he was too far gone to hit now, and visibility in the storm was nearly zero.
‘There!’ one of the generals said to Wu, pointing out across the dark waters. He followed the man’s outstretched finger and located the escaping dragon boat, amazed at how far it had gone.
‘Give the order for the rooftop sharpshooters,’ Wu heard Zhou informing Wang. ‘Make sure that man is dead.’