Decker took it and the two men shook hands. “So why are you asking about my plane?”
“So it is your plane then?” Selena said.
Decker gave a sarcastic look. “You catch on real good, don’t you?”
“Yes, about that,” Selena said. “I was wondering when your next flight was.”
“I only fly cargo,” he said loudly. “No self-loading freight, at all.”
“Self-loading freight?” Selena said, turning to Riley. “Whatever does he mean?”
“He means no passengers, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s right,” Ying said. “He only flies cargo, and when he does he smashes it all up! Look at my lucky cats!”
Selena glanced at the broken pieces of ceramic in the box on the quay. “Oh…”
Decker gave a polite smile. “So if you’ll move along, Peter and I have some business to discuss.”
“No business discussions with you, Mitch,” Ying said, waving a fly from his face. “You give me a full refund or I go to the authorities.”
“I thought we agreed these were faulty ceramics.”
Selena cleared her throat and stepped closer. “The thing is, Mr Decker — was it?”
He nodded. “Friends call me Mitch. I already said that.”
She peered over his shoulder at the men hanging around the cutter. “Yes, right… well the thing is, I think we may need to get out of China in a bit of a hurry.”
“Listen, I already told you… wait a minute — you’re on the run or something?”
“Not exactly,” Selena said. “The truth is that…” She stopped suddenly and looked once again at the men who were hanging around the cutter down at the end of the docks. They had started to walk away from the boat. “Oh dear,” she said.
“Damn it all!” Riley said. “They’ve seen us and they’re coming this way.”
The woman looked at the approaching men and turned an anxious face to Decker. “I don’t suppose on this one occasion you could fly people as well as broken ceramic cats? I’ll self-load!”
Decker sighed. “Not in any way.”
Riley stepped up. He was a few inches shorter than Decker but still a pretty solid proposal if things got ugly. “The thing is we’re in a bit of a tight situation here, mate. Those guys down there hanging around my boat are under the impression we might have something that belongs to their boss and they’re serious about getting it back.”
Decker followed the progress of the men on the dockside for a second. The sun pierced the thick tropical cloud for a few seconds and he felt the temperature rise immediately in response. “And what would that be?”
“Just a silly old telephone,” Selena said. “Nothing at all really.”
“And does under the impression mean you have this phone or not?”
“It does,” she said proudly.
“Which you stole?”
“Thieves as well as cat smashers,” Ying said with a sigh. “What is happening to Hong Kong?”
“We did take it, yes,” Selena said, anxiously glancing at the men now only a few hundred yards away.
“You stole it.”
Riley stepped in to defend the Englishwoman. “You don’t understand. They stole something from us and we had a bit of a bust-up. That was when I took the phone so we could identify them.”
“And what did they steal from you?”
“Just a silly old journal, which I would like back,” Selena Moore said.
“So why not go and ask them?” Decker said.
“Because those men over there do not have the journal, Mr Decker.”
“Journal’s long gone, mate. That’s what the phone’s for — the contact numbers and addresses.”
“Yes, and the men over there want to kill us.” She looked up at the American pilot and locked her eyes on his. “So will you help us or not?”
“No.”
Riley wiped the sweat from around his squinting eyes. “If those guys catch up with us we’re diced and sliced and sprinkled in their boss’s coy pond, mate.”
“It’s still a no.”
“Have you no heart, Mr Decker?” Selena said.
“Not for thieves.”
Riley sighed. “I already told you they stole from us first… we’ve got to split, Lena.”
“I’ll give you ten thousand dollars,” the woman said suddenly.
Decker had already returned to Ying but now his eyes flicked over to the Englishwoman. “No.”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Geez, Louise!” Riley said. “I’m not selling my boat.”
Decker shook his head. “And it’s still a no.”
Before any of them spoke another word, an enormous explosion filled the air at the end of the docks and sent dozens of black kites flying into the sky to escape the fireball.
“Holy crap!” Riley said. “They just blew my boat to shit!”
“And now they’re running this way!” Selena said.
Ying leaned forward and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the muggy sunlight. “Are they carrying guns?”
Selena turned to Decker and opened her eyes wide. “Twenty-five thousand dollars, final offer.”
A suspicious smirk slowly appeared on Decker’s face. “You’ve got a deal. Get in!”
Selena and Riley didn’t need an embossed invitation, and disappeared inside the aircraft in a heartbeat.
“Looks like we’re going to have to finish this discussion another time, Peter,” Decker said. He walked under the wing of the enormous flying boat and climbed into the door at the back of the plane.
“There is no discussion. You smashed my cats. I want my money back.”
“Maybe over some eel claypot rice down at Sun’s?”
“You’d better not come back to Hong Kong, Mitch!”
Decker closed the door and secured the lock. He walked past his two visitors on the way to the cockpit. The woman looked horrified.
“What’s the problem now?” he asked.
“There’s nowhere to sit!”
“It’s a goddamn cargo plane,” he said. “You sit up front with me.”
They strapped into the seats up in the cockpit and Decker started to go through the takeoff checklist. Outside on the docks he heard the men shouting and then a few isolated gunshots followed by the distinctive sound of a bullet ricocheting off metal. “Wait a goddam minute!” he boomed, leaning out his window. “Was that my plane they just hit?”
The men on the docks were much closer now, and two of them were holding pistols. They each aimed at him and fired more shots. He saw Peter Ying was running away into a side street behind the docks.
As a second bullet whistled past his head he felt someone grab his shoulder and pull him back inside the cockpit. He turned to see Riley Carr looking down at him.
“Not a good idea mate, these bastards mean business.”
“They shot my plane!”
“And they’re getting closer by the second,” Riley said, looking out of the small window on the portside just behind the pilot’s seat.
“Mr Decker,” Selena said, her Oxford accent cutting through the humidity like a solid silver entrée knife, “Perhaps it’s time we took off?”
Another bullet pinged off the fuselage outside the cockpit. “Damn it!” Decker took off his hat and tossed it over his shoulder as he fired up the first engine. It spluttered to life, belching a thick cloud of gray smoke out of its exhaust outlets, and they all felt the bass vibrations moving through the old plane. “Tell me,” he said as he fired up the second engine. “Why are these men trying to kill you again — something about a journal?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Selena said. “Please just get this thing airborne!”