Riding slowly in first gear, they moved with the pedestrians into the cross street, where they stopped and waited for the main boulevard traffic to go again.
‘You can leave if you want,’ said Mac, dismounting and checking the borrowed SIG. ‘But I’ll need the bike.’
‘I’m driving,’ said Tranh, no emotion.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, finding an empty clip and one round left in the spout.
‘You want to follow them?’ said Tranh, oblivious to their lack of firepower.
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Wait there.’
Pushing the SIG under his sweaty trop shirt, Mac walked to the corner. Peeking around the brick building, he saw the green LandCruiser in the middle lane of the boulevard.
‘They’re moving straight through,’ said Mac, breathless as he got back on the bike. ‘Let’s see where they’re going. I’m betting they’ll change that vehicle.’
After one more block in the mainstream traffic, the LandCruiser turned right and moved into the dark colonial streets that led to the river. Intermittently killing the headlight to disguise their whereabouts, and drawing on a local’s knowledge of which parallel streets would meet up, Tranh managed to stand off while also keeping contact with the 4x4.
Mac’s mind raced. Who were this crew? What was Quirk involved in? What was familiar about Red Shirt? What was it about that guy?
Stopping behind a parked minivan, Tranh killed the engine and they watched the LandCruiser pull into an old-fashioned parking garage.
‘Parking,’ said Tranh, pointing. ‘If they want new car, maybe from here.’
‘Are there any other exits?’ asked Mac, looking up the four levels of the building’s glass and concrete sides.
‘Don’t know,’ shrugged Tranh. ‘Usually come in, go out the same way.’
Lights shone through the frosted-wire glass on level two as a large engine revved.
Mac readied himself. ‘Think we’re in business, mate.’
Twenty seconds later a white Ford Explorer bounced out of the garage, turned away from Mac and Tranh’s position and accelerated, its V8 engine screaming in the quiet street.
‘Gotta be them,’ said Mac, making a mental note of the whereabouts of the garage.
Losing the Explorer as it disappeared down a secondary street, Tranh accelerated to the point where they’d last seen it. As they leaned into the corner to follow the Explorer, a set of full-beam headlights were switched on directly in their path, blinding them. As Tranh straightened to go around the obstacle, the driver’s door of the white vehicle flung open, knocking Tranh and Mac to the tarmac.
Bouncing on his right shoulder, feeling his shirt tear loose, Mac gained his feet as the bike slid along the street on its foot pegs.
Pulling the stolen SIG from the small of his back, Mac stood, his left knee almost giving way as he straightened.
The driver raised his handgun and Mac fired instinctively. The shot missed, but the driver reflexively looked away, allowing Mac to race in with a kick to the bloke’s groin, which the driver easily deflected and countered with an open-handed strike to Mac’s face.
Finding himself stunned and sitting on his arse, Mac looked up in time to see Tranh throw a perfectly balanced roundhouse kick to the driver’s gun hand, and as the weapon landed on the hood of the still-ticking SUV, Tranh threw a kick to the bloke’s kidneys followed by a brutal kick to the face off the same leg.
Looking for Red Shirt, Mac realised he’d been tricked. The driver was the only person in the Explorer.
Standing, Mac watched the driver launch a flying headbutt at Tranh, who ducked slightly and took the shot above his left ear. Limping over to the driver’s handgun, which had slid across the hood and landed in front of the Explorer, Mac picked it up and turned to use it as Tranh threw a fast elbow into the driver’s teeth and followed it with a whippy left hook.
‘Okay, that’s it, champ,’ said Mac, levelling the handgun at the driver as he fell to the asphalt.
‘No, this is it,’ came a voice, and Mac saw the gleam of those dark eyes in the back seat of the Explorer. Throwing himself to his right, Mac hit the road as the glass of the driver’s side rear window exploded.
‘Get the bike!’ said Mac as Tranh crouched in panic, wondering where the shot had come from.
Duck-walking across the street, Tranh picked up the fallen bike as Mac slowly stood, holding the pistol in a cup-and-saucer grip. He peered over the level of the shot-out window, but the back seat was empty, as was the load space in the rear. There was movement from the front and Mac swung the borrowed handgun and aimed past the windscreen pillars and front seats to where Red Shirt stood on the other side of the hood. They eyeballed one another as a siren sounded, the red lights of the Cong An flashing behind the grille of an approaching car, about a block away.
Tranh kicked the motorbike into life and revved it impatiently. Looking from Red Shirt to the Cong An and back again, Mac considered a shootout, but decided to live another day. Swapping a final look of mutual loathing with Quirk’s killer, Mac jogged for the bike. Hopping on, they blasted away, into the path of the approaching cop car.
Looking over his right shoulder as they swerved into an alley with no lights on, Mac saw the Explorer accelerating in the opposite direction, the rear tyre bouncing over the former driver’s head.
The last thing Mac saw before they plunged into the alley was the cop car flashing past. A totally focused face stared over the wheel of the white Camry: a focused female face.
Chapter 17
Tranh pulled over at the public park, beside where the canal cut westward from the Saigon River into the southern interior of the city.
‘How you shaping up, mate?’ said Mac, sitting at a park bench and checking his knee.
A freighter slid downriver, its lights making it look like a Christmas tree lying on its side. The humidity pressed in on them, crickets noisy in the night air.
‘Bleeding on my thigh,’ said Tranh, pulling back the torn flap of his wrecked chinos and exposing his grazed leg, the white pocket liner stuck to the drying blood.
‘That’s nasty. I’m going to need an ice bag,’ said Mac, only just managing to straighten his left knee to a full extension. ‘In a couple of hours I won’t be able to walk.’
Holding his leg, Mac felt a shape in one of the pockets. Pulling it out, he examined the memory card he’d retrieved at the Mekong Saloon — the card that had fallen off the computer table as the man in the red shirt had taken off. The card was a standard SD, but white. Trousering it again as Tranh lit a cigarette, Mac pulled the recovered handgun from his waistband. Unlike the flat, seven-shot SIG, this was a bulky fifteen-shot Ruger 9mm. It looked the same as the one Tranh had secured for him at the boat.
‘Rugers popular in Saigon?’ asked Mac, checking it for load and safety before placing it on the seat between them.
‘For Cong An and army,’ said Tranh. ‘So lots around — easy for fixing.’
Thinking it through, Mac decided he had to go on alone. If things got really bad, he had a consulate, he had a government and he had the financial capacity to buy his way out of Vietnam. Tranh lived here. And it wasn’t just the Cong An. Whoever’d executed Jim Quirk was serious. What he initially thought was familiar about Red Shirt was not his face, Mac had decided, but his style: the man was an intelligence professional and if Red Shirt continued the killing Mac didn’t want Tranh on his conscience.
Mac’s watch said it was 9.56 pm.
‘I’m going to cut you loose, mate,’ he said, watching the freighter. ‘You were just the driver and the cut-out, remember?’
Looking away, Tranh said nothing.
‘I mean it, Tranh — you’re proving too useful to me. I can’t draw you any further into this.’