Death in the Kingdom (31 page)

I peaked around the doorframe. Back on the street the silver Yank tank had stopped and the man with the AK47 was still shooting at the stalled Mercedes. Either the gunman wasn't a great shot or just didn't care. People desperately trying to get out of the way were going down. Two other shooters were now out of the silver car, Mr M16 being one of them. The other gunman had a Mac 10. Both weapons were firing as the men advancing into Patpong 2. The rounds from their weapons were chewing chunks out of the rear of the Mercedes and anyone and anything that got in the way.

I crouched low in the doorway, pressing hard against the doorframe. I could have gone deeper into the bar but it was filled with frightened people, a mix of locals and tourists. I wanted to see what was going down because staying alive might mean making a split-second decision. A grenade lobbed into a bar would take away a lot of the options—especially if I was hiding down at the back.

A large European woman with a shock of red hair and a pale face was at my side, her eyes wider than any saucers I had seen. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,' she repeated over and over to herself, her hands latched onto my shoulder. What a grip she had! I looked back at the advancing gunmen, but couldn't see Casey or his girl amongst the living, dead or dying.

The near rear door of the Mercedes opened and a man flung himself out. His timing was bad because the Mac 10 had just opened up again. The guy getting out of the car took a hunched step and spun to the ground. At about the same time, the front passenger door of the Merc opened and a huge man with a round moon face and a big handgun got out and crouched behind the open rear door. The gun—I figured it was a Desert Eagle or similar—started booming and Mr M16 suddenly bit the dust. The guy with the Mac, however, had taken cover behind a stall and was walking, crouched down, towards the Merc. Mr AK was coming in fast from further across the street where he had more cover. The guy with the M16, unfortunately, was still alive. He had crawled behind a stall, dragging the rifle with him.

I cursed that I wasn't tooled up. I'd left my weapons back at the apartment.

Being armed in the Kingdom was frowned upon unless absolutely necessary. This was a necessary moment, but it wasn't my fight. Not unless I made it mine, or these clowns did. That was the thing about being a pro. You weren't supposed to get involved in other people's business, which was a laugh because for the last few years, I'd done nothing else.

The man who'd scrambled out of the back seat of the Mercedes was crawling away from the car, moving in my direction. That was good, or that was bad. If he made it into the bar then it would definitely become my fight. I'd be fighting to keep myself alive when the others came for him. I could see plainly enough by the way the guy was moving that he had taken a hit. His right arm was hanging limply as he moved. The injured man was an older guy, Chinese, I figured. He was dressed in an expensive-looking dark-blue suit that shimmered silver in the street and bar lights. Not a good suit to wear in a firefight.

The old guy had crawled to a place where he could hunch behind the remains of a clothing stall. It wasn't much cover but it was all there was. This had a kind of irony to it. There he was, kneeling in his million-baht suit, surrounded by dozens of cheap T-shirts with fake brand names splashed across them.

The old guy looked up and our eyes met. I could see no fear there. It was a look that simply appraised what he was seeing. He turned his head away and peered back at the advancing gunmen. There was no doubt whatsoever that the guys heading our way were out to kill him. This wasn't a case of grab and run. The old man's goon, the one with the big boomer of a handgun, had been forced around the front of the Merc, cut off from his charge by the advancing duo. Despite what happens in the movies, guys with semi-automatic weapons going up against guys with handguns have a huge advantage and it sure as hell was apparent right then.

I felt the injured man's gaze fall on me again, and our eyes locked. It was then that I recognised the man hunched behind the clothing stall. The smooth, round Chinese–Thai face was suddenly all too familiar. This was Tuk Tuk Song, the boss of Thailand's largest Mafia outfit. Way back then we ran continuous intel on who was doing what to whom and who did or didn't know about it. Tuk Tuk Song was the man doing most of the doing and he knew all about everything in this part of the world. He was ‘the man'.

My problem right at that minute in time was that the man looked like he was planning on coming in my bar and bringing his own personal gunfight right along with him. So I was going to be in the game whether I liked it or not. There was another thought percolating in my head: if our side were in Tuk Tuk Song's good books, we could gain some big time favours.

So my choices were that I could either meet Tuk Tuk in the doorway and shoulder him back out to his fate, or I could help him to safety. Logic was screaming for me to take the former option. However, being in credit with Tuk Tuk Song was potentially a major plus. I knew that one day that could give me an edge in the deadly game of snakes and ladders we all played.

The decision had made itself. My hat was in the ring.

The butt of a handgun was showing under Tuk Tuk's left shoulder. Probably because he was right-handed and that particular appendage was out of play, he hadn't drawn the weapon, not yet. Maybe he couldn't shoot left-handed. Either way, if he came in the bar I'd take the gun and use it. Then we, all of us, might have a chance of staying alive.

I pried the red-haired woman's fingers off my shoulder, gave her a smile that was meant to be reassuring or something, and gathered myself for whatever was coming next. I could see that Tuk Tuk was getting ready to move. He'd gathered his feet under himself and was in a clumsy sprinter's crouch. Then he was moving in our direction, but moving far too slowly. The big Desert Eagle was booming away like a damned machine gun as his goon tried to give him cover.

The Thai hood with the M16 raised himself to his knees, rifle at his shoulder. He fired maybe twice before ducking back for cover. Tuk Tuk Song, however, had been hit again, this time in the thigh. He hit the deck in front of me. It was now or never!

I rolled over the doorsill across the pavement and down the curb to where the Mafia boss lay. There was no time for niceties. I simply grabbed Tuk Tuk by the lapels, bunched the material of his jacket under his arms and kicked up and backwards. I got over the first high step then dug my heels in and kicked away again to get across the pavement and over the doorsill. It worked, and I hurled both of us backwards into the bar. The doorway where our silhouettes had been framed just a fraction of a second before was scorched by the whining passage of a swarm of angry, copper-jacketed hornets. Somewhere deep in the bar glass shattered and there was more screaming and squealing. Damn Madonna was still maintaining she was a virgin, and the red-haired woman was frozen, crouched by the door talking to her god.

‘Back door,' Tuk Tuk grunted as we lay amidst a tangle of limbs on the floor. The Mafia boss's face was close to mine. I could smell fish and whisky on his breath.

‘Yeah,' I replied. If I got him away from the firefight with no more bullet holes in him, he would owe me big time. I rolled to my feet and pulled the revolver from the shoulder holster under his arm. He didn't protest and I didn't have time to compliment him on his choice of weapons. The stainless Smith & Wesson Model 66 was one of my favourites.

I pushed the revolver down the front of my belt where I could get at it quickly if I needed to. A hurried glance out through the door told me the big guy in front of the Mercedes was still trying to keep the man with the AK busy. It was a hard ask! Away to the right and I could see Mr Mac 10 coming our way. ‘Time to go,' I said, reaching down to grab Tuk Tuk by the shoulders. I could tell it hurt from the hiss of breath, but the Thai Mafia boss knew as well as I that a little pain was much preferable to death.

I hoisted Tuk Tuk over my shoulders, his legs hanging down in front of me, my left forearm barred across the back of his thighs. He was a solid unit and I was going to be running hard. ‘Back door,' I yelled in Thai as I headed deeper into the bar. A terrified little dancer wearing not much more than a grimace and a G-string scrambled from behind the edge of the bar and led the way into the bowels of the club.

The door was open. The couple of thugs who would normally have been stationed there to stop unwarranted entry or exit had vamoosed stage left. My little nymph had decided that, near naked or not, flight was a far better option to staying in the bar. She ran ahead down the dark, stinking alleyway while I followed, trying to maintain my footing. Tuk Tuk weighed a ton. Behind us the firefight continued, gunshots echoing down the concrete canyons of downtown Bangkok.

I was gasping for breath and my legs were just about turning to jelly when we finally emerged from the dank, foul gloom of the alleyway. We were on the edge of a loading dock. There were crates of produce and pallets of tins stacked about. I figured it was the loading bay of a hotel. There was a van backed up to the dock with its rear doors open. I could see long canvas bags stacked inside. I guessed it was linen or something similar. Whatever, I staggered into the back of the van and swung Tuk Tuk off my shoulders, lowering him more or less gently onto a pile of the canvas sacks. ‘Stay here,' I said, turning to leave and almost falling over the bar girl who was right behind me.

It was a surreal sight, both sad and funny. The girl was standing there in a tiny red G-string, teetering on her ridiculously high matching red shoes. Her arms were crossed over her tiny breasts, her hair was a mess and her huge eyes leaked mascara everywhere. With her painted lips quivering on the verge of tears, she looked like a ten-year-old child. Possibly she wasn't much older.

‘Here,' I said as I slipped off my jacket and draped it across her shoulders. ‘You stay here. Sit down!' I pushed her down beside Tuk Tuk and stepped out of the van. There were two or three frightened faces peering at us from the edges of the rolling door leading into the bowels of the hotel. I could still hear gunfire, but there were sirens in the distance. Definitely time to be long gone. I swung the van doors closed and barred them before dropping to the ground.

The keys were in the van's ignition. There were no protests from the driver, wherever he was, or the hotel staff. They'd obviously seen the gun in my belt.

I cranked the Hino into life and nosed out of the service alley into the traffic boiling down the street. Ten minutes later I pulled into a side street and stopped. I went around the back of the van and opened the rear doors.

Tuk Tuk used his mobile phone to call up his own people. Once they arrived and took charge of him, I grabbed a cab and took Rutana, the bar girl, to the hovel she shared with a bunch of other working girls. That accomplished I headed back to Lot Thirty-Four and the televised news of Bangkok's latest gangland battle.

Neither Casey, his date nor fifteen other people survived the battle of Patpong. In addition to the dead there had been more than sixty people, both tourists and locals, injured in the fracas.

So that was how I met Thailand's top mafiosi. We became sort-of friends, a situation that remained the status quo until I was forced to kill Arune and shoot the hell out of Choy, who incidentally had escaped the Patpong shoot-out without a scratch. And, oh yes, he succeeded in taking all three gunmen down before the cops spoilt the party.

31

It was dusk when we moored the black boat. Sami and I went to our respective ‘apartments in the mansion to clean up for dinner. Fresh underwear, a pair of dark slacks, a crisp white shirt and a pair of soft black leather slip-ons had been laid out for me while I was in the shower. How the other half wants me to live, I thought as I dressed for dinner. Sami was working me hard, if not too subtly, and I didn't really mind. Obviously my employment contract with Sir Bernard Turncoat was due to be terminated with utmost prejudice on my part. I left my room and headed for Sami's study.

Sami was sitting at his desk when I entered. A huge plasma television screen, which had until then been hidden, had appeared from behind panelling on one wall. The screen was live and the images it showed were of destruction—total, absolute destruction. I could see a river and alongside it a huge area of burned and blackened real estate.

‘Tuk Tuk's men have wiped out Chekhov's base at Ayutthaya,' Sami said as I perched on the edge of his desk. ‘I'm sure Chekhov thought his fortress was invincible and that was a big mistake.'

‘Looks like it was hit by heavy artillery.'

‘Close,' replied Sami. ‘Uncle Tuk came in over the top with half a dozen choppers with Napalm canisters and petrol drums. Chekhov hadn't figured that would happen in a city. Uncle had half a dozen boats on the canal with flame-throwers, RPGs and guys in trucks with machine guns. He wants Chekhov almost as badly as we do. However I think Uncle missed him.'

‘Why?' I asked, my heart doing a nasty flip in my chest. I wanted this to be over.

‘My intelligence tells me Chekhov went north just before the attack. Uncle waited too long,' Sami said with resignation and a trace of something else in his voice. ‘Maybe a mole amongst Uncle's people, maybe just bad luck,' Sami added and I suddenly realised he wasn't totally disappointed that Chekhov was still alive. I let that thought rest for a moment and focused back on the camera that was panning the scene from a chopper hovering several hundred feet above.

‘What the fuck are the authorities going to make of this?' I asked. A full-scale war in one of Bangkok's satellite towns wasn't going to go unnoticed. Sami just chuckled mirthlessly and punched up the sound as a talking head appeared over the scene. ‘…
in Ayutthaya. The factory was used to make paint, and the explosion from the chemicals reduced the main building and the surrounding warehouses to rubble. Authorities estimate that as many as eighty people may have died and many others were injured. In other news
…'