Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men (2 page)

The third Japanese youth in the courtyard cautiously approached the back-room window. He heard the snorting crashes of the two other automatics from inside, so he didn’t want to get caught by one of the errant missiles. All he could see from his vantage point was broken furniture, still crimson-coated bodies and scurrying yellow ones. In the three seconds since the Japanese pair first broke in, seven men were killed.

To Jay Kuong Chien, the slaughter seemed to be in slow motion. To his own surprise, he reacted to the horror with calm. All his being was focused on a means of escape. Any means of escape. His friends in the room, the associates he had dined with, the acquaintances he waved to on the street, all the gamblers suddenly became meaningless pieces of meat that he had to use to stay alive.

Jay saw the gambling table, shaking from the tearing force of the bullets and the falling weight of the corpses. He saw the men blindly charging the door and the window. He saw the Japanese cutting them down; all without getting back to his feet. He quickly judged the situation and acted immediately. He tumbled beneath the table, between the quaking wooden legs, toward the window. He kicked the table over toward the door as two more Chinese gamblers tried to climb through the broken glass pane.

The large table blocked the Japanese pair’s view for a second. The Chinese duo blocked the third attacker’s view. Jay leaped up after the gamblers, pushing them over the still-bleeding body of the glass-killed man and into the courtyard. He used them as shields to get close to the Uzi user. The third Japanese saw the danger Jay posed and tried to shoot him, but the other Chinese always seemed to be in the way. Both men died screaming as Jay dived forward.

His martial-art skill took over. The Uzi was pointed at Jay’s chest for a second, then it was pumping its lead to the sky as Jay pushed it up and to the side with a karate block. The next second his stiffened fingers dove into the Uzi user’s throat. The third Japanese choked and stumbled back, tears blinding his vision. Jay followed through with a vicious kick to the Japanese’s midsection with the side of his foot. The Uzi user doubled over as Jay built up all his stamina and power into a punch that slammed into the side of the gunman’s head.

The third Japanese crumbled to the side, falling on top of his sub-machine gun. Jay quickly reached down to the unconscious body to retrieve the weapon. Just as his hands touched flesh, he became aware of the two other gunmen inside. He saw the man with the MAC 11 aim at him and the VZ holder push the gun up, reprimanding him in Japanese. Jay immediately took advantage of the situation.

Reasoning that the VZ man didn’t want to hit the Uzi user, Jay flipped himself behind the third Japanese and dragged him upright. Using the man as a shield, the one surviving Chinese backed toward the courtyard mouth. He reached forward to pluck the Uzi out of the unconscious man’s slack fingers, but the weapon slipped out of the Japanese’s grasp before he could get to it. The solid thunk of it hitting the ground was the only sound now besides the sliding grate of the third Japanese’s heels.

The VZ holder was sharp. As soon as the Uzi fell useless, he barked an order at his fellow. The man with the MAC nodded and ran out of sight, back through the store. Jay knew their plan instantly. It was the only practical plan of attack. The VZ man would follow him out the window while the MAC man would bottle him in the alleyway between the street and the courtyard. It was the old “suicide squeeze”—Jay couldn’t use the third Japanese as a shield in both directions at once.

Speed was his only hope now. Speed and the luck that had been pacing him so far. He hurled the third Japanese forward as he dove for the mouth of the courtyard. As he somersaulted and rolled around the corner, he heard the Uzi user fall heavily—then the night was ripped open by renewed gunfire. He felt a sudden breeze by his ear and a small tug at his pant’s leg before the wall behind him was dotted by little dust founts which were accompanied by the sound of whining ricochets.

It was darker in the thin alleyway, the bright illumination of the street’s hanging lanterns and pagoda-topped lights were blocked by the buildings’ walls. The walls served as a muffler for the gun noises as well. Between them and the usual din on the Chinatown streets, Jay doubted that anyone would pay any particular notice to the weapons’ reports. And those that recognized the sounds would keep far away. Anyone who lived in Chinatown was used to the noise bullets made.

Jay rolled to his feet and ran as fast as he could toward the street. It beckoned to him at the end of the alley, all soft crimson light shot through with gold trimming. The moonlight and municipal lighting was diffused by the painted, gleaming doorways, the clean, steam-dripping shop windows, and the millions of lacquered souvenirs on sale everywhere. Jay headed for the soft, fuzzy glow at the end of the alley, hoping he could disappear into the tourist crowd before the Japanese gunmen could get a bead on him.

As he picked up speed, his heart sank. The odds were lousy. His sharp mind had already gauged the race between him and the MAC man, and even if he won, he lost. Jay was pretty sure he could make the sidewalk before the Japanese could block the alley, but the killer would be so close by then that Jay’s death was almost a sure thing. He could attack, but surprise was no longer on his side. As his martial-arts master was always wont to point out, “Karate, no matter how good, cannot fight a bullet.”

Jay’s mind accepted this as his peripheral vision picked out a boarded door to his right. The Chinese immediately stopped and kicked sideways from a standing position. The nailed boards cracked beneath his foot. Karate could fight wood. He kicked again, sending the rotting door bouncing inward just as the MAC man appeared in the alley mouth. Jay leaped into the adjacent building’s cellar just as the Japanese fired into the thin, dark pathway.

The 9mm bullets tore across the bricks like fingernails across a blackboard all around the doorway. Jay didn’t bother to take stock of their destruction. He was off and running again—desperately avoiding death from people he didn’t know, for reasons he didn’t want to guess.

The light from the street only sent a dim glow through the small dirty basement windows set near the ceiling line. Jay snaked his feet out as he had learned, letting his shins and thighs hit whatever his chest and face might if he had been running flat out. He found a stairway leading up on the opposite wall and took it three steps at a time. There was a locked door at the top. Taking no chances, Jay hit it with all his strength, ripping out the lock and part of the doorjamb on the other side. The door swung open and slammed against the wall with a loud crack.

Jay stood in the narrow, stuccoed hallway of an apartment house in front of a banistered stairway leading up. He looked to his left. The front door was spotlighted by a bright yellow bulb at the end of the hall. Beyond it was a foyer with mail slots set into the wall next to a button and intercom system. Beyond that was the front door, its glass covered by a gauzy curtain. Jay didn’t want to chance checking out what was behind that curtain. He knew that three men had attacked his uncle’s store and back-room gambling den. He didn’t know how many might be stationed as lookouts on the street. At least a half-dozen guys could be checking the surrounding houses at that very moment.

Jay looked to his left. At the opposite end of the hall was one apartment door, also illuminated by a yellow hall light. He heard some noise behind him. It was the sound at least four feet made. The MAC and VZ man must’ve gotten back together again. Jay had no time for subtlety. He raced to the apartment door and kicked it in.

Once his kicking foot got back to the ground, it was following his running foot. He kept moving, bashing back the door with his shoulder after it had bounced off the wall. He raced past a little bathroom on his right and a small kitchenette on his left to stumble across a little living room off an even smaller bedroom. He headed right for a window on the left side of the far wall.

On his way, he ran in between a young woman and her TV set. She was watching “Shogun Assassin” on the cable system. Up until Jay had burst in, she was laughing. As he sped past she was savagely digging through her purse. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her whip out a nickel-plated .25-caliber automatic and point it at him. It looked like a cigarette lighter his uncle had sold in his store, but he knew it could do permanent damage at this distance. Any hope he had for a clean getaway was ruined.

Jay dove headfirst through the window, his arms folded in front of his face. He spread his limbs as he cleared the spinning glass to see a wide alley between blocks yawning out beneath him, Seven feet below was a row of parked cars and four feet below that was the ground. Jay twisted in mid-air so he landed on the roof of an old Buick on his right shoulder. He rolled across the rear windshield and slid over the trunk until his feet touched earth. Even before all the window glass had smashed across the car, the Chinese was running again.

The movie watcher appeared in the ruined window behind him, cursing and firing her remaining bullets at his rapidly retreating figure. The .25 had little accuracy at that distance, and the girl was far from a crack shot. When the hammer hit the empty barrel, she threw the gun to the floor and shook her fist at Jay, who by then had just made it to the street.

It was all witnessed by the two Japanese in the hallway. As soon as they had gotten to the first floor, the MAC man had started toward the apartment. The VZ man stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“No outsiders,” he said in English. “No innocent bystanders.”

The MAC man looked back sharply, then he relaxed, the logic of his orders reaching him. “Next time maybe,” he shrugged.

The first Japanese nodded brusquely and slid the autopistol under his coat. The second killer followed suit with the MAC 11 and they casually went to the double front door. They opened and walked out both, finding a groggy Uzi user standing by the front porch—his weapon secured under his jacket as well. The Uzi man looked up to see the VZ man minutely shake his head once from side to side. Then they all moved off in the direction Jay had been running.

The Chinese didn’t try to figure it all out as he went as fast as he could down Washington Street. He didn’t have to. It was highly unlikely that the cops had sent an all Japanese unit to break up his uncle’s little gambling den—not with esoteric sub-machine guns blazing. It was done with all the style and bravado of a gangland hit, but Jay didn’t see why the Italians should hire Japanese for their dirty work. It was extremely probable that the Japanese were fending for themselves. For some reason, that thought was more frightening than the rest of the suppositions put together.

Jay took a fast right onto Grant Avenue, the “main street” of San Fran’s Chinatown. Like all the other ethnic areas of America, Chinatown had its own smell. But unlike all the Little Italies, its aroma was not immediately identifiable. In South Philly, North Boston, and Manhattan’s Soho, the air hung heavy with the unmistakable fume of tomato paste. But here, there wasn’t just one powerful scent; there was a mixture of heady, nose-tickling aromas which hung over the avenues like a cloud.

Jay ran, the sharp, cloying scent of monosodium glutimate rivaling the bland, floury aroma of cornstarch. He took in the sour smell of frying cabbage as well as the sweet tingle of succulent chicken chunks. An inch farther and there were fatty hunks of pork and duck fighting for attention over the aromatic attractions of shredded beef and sizzling fish. The scents were thick enough to caress his brain like perfumed fingers.

As Jay moved rapidly toward downtown, he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of the Japanese trio. For any Japanese at all, in fact. While they all might look alike to the round eye, the Orientals had an innate ability to tell each other apart with absolutely no trouble. At least Jay could. To him, a Japanese or Korean was as different from a Chinese as a Negro was to an Indian.

But instead of Japanese faces, Jay saw only Chinese and white tourists leering at the rows of ornate porcelain dragon, lion, and tiger sculptures that street venders hawked in addition to calendars, woks, and trinkets. The rainbow-colored hanging lanterns made the windows full of Buddha sculptures smile benignly on him with a glow. As he passed, the inanimate good-luck dieties seemed to look after him, offering soundless solace and grinning good wishes.

In addition to the sights and smells, Jay also was acutely aware of the sounds. If he heard a bolt being pulled back, he wouldn’t need to see the Japanese attacking. After all, it was the sound of the violently opened door in his uncle’s shop which saved him the first time. Even if his uncle had been in a rage, he wouldn’t have opened the portal like that. And no gambler ever burst in on a game. No Chinese gambler at any rate.

All he heard, however, was the din of Oriental voices. Even though Occidental tourists seemed to be everywhere, they didn’t seem to chat absently as much on Chinatown streets. It could be that they were in awe of the sights and smells. It could be that they were so intent on their business that there was no time for small talk. Or it could be that they were somehow aware of just how much they were outsiders here. They could be unconsciously aware of just how much they didn’t belong or fit in here. And they could subconsciously know that nothing they could do, short of plastic surgery to slant their eyes, skin grafting to color their skin and a complete reeducation to learn a Chinese language with no “American” accent, could make Chinatown accept them.

As Jay sped across Sacramento Street, he heard at least a half-dozen Chinese dialects, Cantonese being a major one. But no Japanese voices or faces. And no Czech, Israeli, or American guns pointed at him either. He slowed slightly as he neared the Chinatown movie theater. The recessed foyer was a perfect place to set an ambush. He’d have to walk right in front of it before he could see who might be lurking by the ticket booth.

Jay stepped off the curb and into the street, keeping a thick throng of ticket holders between him and the theater doors. A lot of Chinese were coming out from the seven o’clock show, but no murderous Japanese. These Orientals were all chattering happily in front of posters advertising the newest Jackie Chan picture. If only he could dispatch his foes as easily as that martial artist-movie star, Jay found himself thinking. Only this wasn’t Hong Kong during the Ming Dynasty and his enemies weren’t armed with mere swords. This was Chinatown, where deadly gang fights were a way of life.