Hearing the grunt of surprise as the steel door flew back and whacked into flesh, Mac thumped open the door with his left shoulder and burst into a small room, gun held in two hands. The thug lying on the floor was groggy and his forehead was split from the blow, but he had managed to pull a handgun from his waistband. Throwing himself to his side, Mac shot the thug in the face and then throat before rolling once and springing into a crouch as he looked around for Red Shirt.
Blood poured across the lino and Mac panted like an animal, tasting the gunpowder residue in his throat. Rising slowly, nightclub music pounding in the background, Mac realised there was a glass panel along the wall he had rolled into. Behind the glass was another room from which two men stared back at him: Jim Quirk, seated in front of a computer terminal, and Red Shirt, who placed a handgun against Quirk’s head.
Red Shirt smiled, his tanned face crinkling with mirth, eyes black like a shark’s. Mac moved to the door of the glass-sided room and kicked it open, keeping his weapon trained on Red Shirt.
‘You’re on private property, sir,’ said the man, screwing his handgun into Quirk’s head as he got a handful of the Aussie’s hair.
‘The only private property is the bloke sitting in front of you,’ said Mac. ‘Let him go and we all walk away.’
‘Ah, another Aussie,’ said the hostage-taker, manoeuvring himself behind Quirk, who was stiff with anxiety. ‘But you’ve come far enough, my friend.’
The sound of the gun’s hammer being cocked was obvious in the confined space but Mac kept his stolen gun trained on the man’s forehead. ‘I don’t care what this is about, but it can end in two ways.’
‘Two?’ said the gunman, eyeing the computer screen, which had become very active, lines of numbers and letters seeming to spill down the page.
‘In one, you live,’ said Mac, aware that Quirk had now closed his eyes. ‘In the other, I kill you.’
Red Shirt stayed cool. Reaching over Quirk’s shoulder, he hit a button on the computer, which then seemed to die. His hand moved lower, to a series of ports, and as he tried to pull a chip from one of the holes, the memory card fell from his fingers and bounced on the floor.
Raising the gun in a threat at Mac, Red Shirt turned slightly and tapped a code into a keypad on the wall and pulled at another security door.
‘Okay, Mr Aussie,’ said the gunman in the red shirt. ‘We do it the first way — we all walk away?’
‘Let’s see you,’ said Mac, the SIG lined up perfectly between button-like eyes.
It happened in slow motion, like Mac was in a dream. The man in the red shirt pulled the door back, slipped a leg through it, and then simply lifted his gun and shot Jim Quirk in the right temple.
Leaping back as viscera flew, Mac recovered his shooter’s stance but Red Shirt was out the door, the security bolts locking as it settled back into place.
‘You’ll keep, you bastard,’ said Mac, grabbing the memory card and moving to the immovable security door as Jim Quirk’s body collapsed on the floor. ‘You’ll bloody keep!’
Chapter 16
Covering the hallway in what felt like three strides, Mac burst through the door into the mezzanine area.
The stunned thug was sitting up, resting back on his arms, and Mac kicked him in the jaw as he ran for the stairs, bounding down them into a sea of faces looking up, confused about the gunfire.
Mac crossed the club floor and ran headlong into the Filipino bouncer, who shouldered him into a wall in the entrance hall. Presenting the SIG, Mac shrugged: the doorman smiled and stood back. A girl waiting at the door rope started screaming as Mac emerged into the heat of the evening.
Tranh revved the bike directly beneath the marquee bulbs and Mac leapt onto the back, telling Tranh to circle behind the club.
Accelerating, they took the first left and motored through a darker side street, the motorbike seeming very loud among the smaller scooters and cyclos.
‘There,’ said Mac, pointing to a service alley at the club’s rear. Dropping a gear, Tranh leaned the bike over and plunged between two oncoming cars into the inky blackness of the laneway, the headlight barely penetrating the obstacle course of old fruit boxes, dumpsters and rotting garbage.
‘Slow it, mate,’ said Mac into Tranh’s ear as they neared the fenced compound behind the Mekong Saloon. Moving into the spill of the floodlights, Mac saw the open gate in the fence and three men standing on the concrete parking area. The European among them pointed at Mac, holding his jaw as he did so. Beside him, a solid Chinese man in a blue Mambo T-shirt reached for the small of his back.
‘Go!’ said Mac, and the motorbike surged down the alley. ‘Kill the lights.’
Plunging them into blackness, Tranh kept the bike in second as slugs slammed into a dumpster and bounced off the bricks.
Two red tail-lights flashed at the end of the alley as a vehicle braked. Next thing they were accelerating right, revealing a dark SUV shape.
‘That’s the one,’ yelled Tranh as he wound the power on, almost making Mac fall off the back of the bike as it picked up.
Hitting the headlights again, they narrowly missed a cat and ploughed through a puddle of sewage as they reached the end of the alley. Putting his left arm around Tranh’s waist, Mac leaned into the turn as they inserted themselves into Cholon’s traffic and leapt like a salmon into a Saturday night in Chinatown.
‘That them?’ yelled Mac, pointing the SIG at a dark green LandCruiser Prado two cars in front of them in the inside lane.
‘That’s them,’ yelled Tranh, finding fourth and swerving in front of a van as he kept the momentum building straight down the double yellows, South-East Asia’s ‘third lane’.
Worrying about how many shooters might be in the LandCruiser, Mac motioned for Tranh to get alongside the vehicle. Moving over a lane, they got behind a small car which was going too slow. Stepping down a gear, Tranh swerved into the inside lane and poured on the power, accelerating past the small car and swerving in front of it, allowing them to ease adjacent to the LandCruiser.
Keeping the SIG behind his back, Mac waited until the bike was alongside the 4x4 before slowly turning to look at the driver. Through the open window Mac saw a Mediterranean heavy — Italian or Croatian — with a mo and earring.
Thinking they might have the wrong vehicle, Mac looked away momentarily and then looked back. The driver’s lips had been moving, meaning someone was in there with him. The driver sneaked a quick look at the motorbike and then the passenger was leaning forwards and Mac was suddenly locking gazes with those dark eyes.
‘Fuck,’ said Mac, as Red Shirt’s handgun came up in front of the driver’s face and the bike surged ahead with such a blast that Mac’s knees lifted up under Tranh’s armpits.
‘Sorry, boss,’ said Tranh, who’d obviously seen the gun too.
The tail-light of the car in front of them exploded with a burst of red plastic and someone on the footpath screamed as Tranh screwed on the revs. It was almost nine o’clock and Cholon’s entertainment district was just getting busy.
Now they were in front of the LandCruiser and another shot sounded as the bike careened down the crowded boulevard, its big engine thumping. Mac tightened his left arm around Tranh as they swerved out of their pursuers’ headlights and into the third lane. The back-lit speedometer read ninety-five kph and Mac looked over his shoulder, saw the LandCruiser falling back in the traffic.
Ahead, a major set of lights had turned red and Mac realised they must be travelling eastbound, about to cross the major intersection which signalled the end of Cholon.
‘Duck down there,’ said Mac, pointing to the right side of the intersection.