Honorable Assassin (35 page)

“Tell me where he is, I’ll kill him.”

“Oh, no. I’m not gonna have two of you on
the run. I may be angry but I’m not stupid.”

“I tell you I’ll kill him. That means I will
kill him.” Terry spoke slowly pronouncing every word carefully.

“No you won’t. Not without the word.”

“You said you’d kill him if you could. I can
and will if you say.”

“Forget you. You go back to work and do what
you do. We’ll take care of Mr. Fuckall Henry Cuthbert.”

“Whatever you say.” Terry briefly considered
killing Jimmy on the spot. He would need to kill the security
guards if he did and that would be distasteful to him. Since it was
a legitimate warehouse, the security guards were underpaid wannabes
with a high school education and no prospects. He decided to work
it a different way.

Jimmy Cognac didn’t know what to say. He was
used to people groveling or lying or pleading. He was not used to a
man who calmly sat smoking a cigarette and discussing murder. It
was not that it was an unusual thing for him to have done, but
Terry said it so out of hand that he could have been discussing a
fish dinner. Frustrated, Jimmy dismissed Terry and went back to
brooding about his situation and how he should never have left
Brisbane.

It was plain why Cognac was so frustrated.
He was getting pressure from above to increase his control over his
given area, but events were against him. Henry was the branching
point and Jimmy was really nothing but a buffer between the real
power and the enforcers. So, Adam and Abel were untouchable and
Henry was unreachable. Jimmy Cognac was left to run an organization
he was completely unfamiliar with, staffed by people he had never
met. These people were taking advantage of the situation and not
supporting the structure. Some of the lower level were going rogue
and some were simply disappearing. This had been happening for some
time now, even before Henry left. A weakness was detected in
management, fueled by the unresolved attacks. Once Henry went on
the run, desertions escalated from fear and avarice. The skein was
unraveling exponentially faster.

As the authority and influence of the
primary network decreased, every other group in this eclectic
society began to take a bite of the pie. Nobody wanted war and
nobody was ready for it. Nobody with plans of staying in Sydney,
that is.

Gordon MacMaster had no plans for staying in
Sydney. He did not even stay the night on the rare moments he
stepped foot in the city. Gordon’s plans were of a different
nature.

Since infiltrating the Oriental underworld
was not an option; Gordon picked his target from their ranks. They
were as secretive as any crime syndicate, but it was not difficult
to determine who had been making money without a high-paying job.
The young men were very fond of souped-up Japanese cars and the
ones with the fastest and fanciest cars were also men without
legitimate employment. They held road racing events on back roads
outside the city, always changing the locations. The events were
never advertised and it was seldom announced before hand where they
would be racing. This kept the police in the dark and there were
seldom crowds of onlookers. If one wanted to participate, one
needed to follow the racers to their destination.

The car Gordon was driving was fast but by
no means in the same league as the street racers. He could follow
them but he could not race. The car had been stolen from a Russian
loan shark that night, while he was having dinner and drinks in an
exclusive club frequented by his associates.

The target was a Cambodian enforcer. He was
a flamboyant character with many friends and he had won the race
that night, taking home a substantial pile of cash. His name was
Chip Long Tim and he had many friends and admirers. The man was
very good with his hands and feet and was often used as muscle by
the Chinese.

Chip was a gambler and had headed toward the
casino with his winnings when he had an accident. His sporty little
import was no match for the Ford that hit him. It spun him around
and caused extensive damage to the rear end of his Mitsubishi. He
was forced to get out the passenger side since the driver’s door
would not open after the collision. The accident had not been his
fault, and with the typically brash attitude of youth, he was
determined to take some revenge on the man who had caused it. He
could not have known that he was attacking a former Scots Dragoon;
he only saw a large man he assumed would be slow and contrite. He
could not see his opponent’s face as the headlights of the Ford
were behind him.

Gordon MacMaster was neither slow nor
apologetic. As Chip Long Tim ran toward him, the Scotsman’s huge
freckled fists, encased in brass knuckles, met him in mid stride.
Chip was not used to being hit. Most of his opponents were afraid
of him or too slow to initiate contact. There was no time to be
surprised, however. He had never seen brass knuckles used before,
they were too old-school for the modern times and Chip favored
oriental weapons or guns. The brass knuckles opened up his face and
split his skull. The Cambodian dropped like a slaughtered cow and
was relieved of his winnings.

MacMaster could not have cared less if the
man lived or died, as long as the correct evidence was left on the
scene. The car belonged to a Russian, the half-full bottle of Vodka
in the front seat was a Russian import and there was a pack of
Russian cigarettes on the dashboard. He left both cars there and
walked a quarter mile away to where there was another, less
identifiable, vehicle. His victim survived but he would never race
again. The encounter left him with an uncontrollable random tic
down the left side of his body. His face was scarred, but not
horribly so.

White men have forever been baffled by what
they first called inscrutable, yellow devils. The Oriental
religions and philosophies are often less violent and their gods
less terrible and vengeful than the European patriarch. This would
lead foreigners to believe that Easterners were pacifists, and
while some were, most were simply patient. They were willing to
learn and had already accepted that a certain amount of control
could be given up for a certain amount of time to increase the lot
of the whole. When aroused, the Oriental could be a terrible
adversary.

Among the Chinatown community in Sydney,
there was an eclectic mix of cultures and many of them looked down
on the others. The Vietnamese and Cambodians were separate from the
Thai and none of them identified with the Filipinos. The Chinese
and Japanese had a long-standing hatred of each other and the
Koreans stood separate from every one else. The assault on the
popular young Cambodian man was not enough in and of itself to
unite the cultures, but it was enough to ignite open discussion
about the Russians.

Terry Kingston was counseling Evan McCormick
on the proper moment to strike. He was learning a great deal about
strategy from his new Scots mentor and trying to put it in effect.
The city had grown naturally, without any real urban planning at
its inception so many of its boundaries were geographically
determined. This made it easy to turn one community against another
because they did not share an open and porous border.

It had taken a long time for Gordon to earn
Terry’s trust, though there had always been respect. Their
arrangement had almost dissolved when Terry had brought in the
outside elements but Gordon stuck with it for a while once Terry
outlined the plan. The Scot would have gone for a more direct
action, a targeted surgical strike rather than the chaos inducing
crossfire that the Aussie was generating, but he had to admit that
it would most probably be effective.

The second assault victim did not survive.
He was a loan shark in the heart of the growing Russian sector. He
was a particularly brutal man and this gained him fear and respect.
His attacker did not respect him. He was killed with a sai, the
edgeless dagger used in martial arts training. The weapon was left
in the Russian’s chest. There was no love lost when this man died
since he had few friends but there was a message read from the
choice of weapon. The Asians would not bow down to the Russians.
The second attack was not enough to ignite a war since much of the
community was relieved to be rid of the loan shark

The Russians in question were not all of
pure Soviet descent; many of them were Ukrainian, Slovakian, or
Romanian. Despite the long history of occupation and subjugation,
these ethnic groups clustered together in one area. Much of this
was due to the similarity of the languages.

It is physically impossible to tell a South
Eastern Russian from a North Eastern Chinaman. They share the same
genetic background and would have coexisted peacefully. The Western
Russians, on the other hand were much more aggressive in their
outlook. They had lived through the Soviet Union’s demise and now
they wanted to get some of what they had been denied.

Gordon MacMaster’s third attack took out one
of the main figures in the Oriental network, who, accompanied by
his bodyguard, was visiting one of his many lady friends. Both men
were shot as they approached the car. The street was busy but no
one else was shot and none of the witnesses saw who had shot them.
The police determined it was a sniper who hit them from three
blocks away and took them both out within seconds. On the roof the
shots had come from, was a pack of Russian cigarettes. There was no
doubt now, this was to mean war.

The Eastern contingent did not come swarming
out of their neighborhood waving swords like some kind of kung fu
movie. They drove out in sleek, fast cars and carried
semi-automatic weapons. They hit the Russians quickly and with
precision, causing very little collateral damage. The Russians hit
them back in the middle of the night with gasoline bombs. The
Molotov cocktails burned homes and businesses indiscriminately. The
Sydney Fire Department lost two men that night and the constables
went to work in the morning. With or without reasonable
justification they rounded up every Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian
they could find that was not on his way to work. The Chinese took
the opportunity to rob and loot the stores operated by the
Russians. This cycle only lasted a couple of days since the pool of
recruits for each side was limited. In a couple of days, they
counted the dead and went into mourning. They had each suffered
badly and their operations were ripe for the picking.

Evan McCormick and his Dark Knights moved
in. There was some difficulty keeping the rowdy bikies focused on
the job at hand, but eventually the real leaders and organizers
proved themselves. Evan may not have been a great strategist, but
he was able to recognize genius in someone else’s strategy.

~~~

Chapter Fifteen: The Play

“Chief Inspector Slaughter, what have you
brought me on this bloody race war?”

“Superintendent Barlow, as near as I can
tell we have this Chip Long Tim, second generation Cambodian. He
was put in the hospital by Sergei Karskeroff. Karskeroff ran into
him on the road and then beat him unconscious with something,
probably brass knuckles. We have Karskeroff in custody but he
denies any knowledge of the incident. He claims he was in the
Beluga having dinner when his car was stolen. He did report it
stolen, but not until about half an hour after they found this Tim
character leaking his brains on the roadside. We should be able to
get a statement from him in a couple of days, but given his
condition it may not be reliable. He’s no longer in a coma but the
doctors are talking about brain damage.

“That was the first problem. It looks as
though Tim’s friends retaliated, killing one of the Russians with
one of those funny three pointed knives they use in the movies. He
had no wallet, neither did Tim. I think they were lifted but I
don’t think robbery was the primary motive.

“The Russians won’t talk to us any more than
the wogs. We spin our wheels trying to get anything out of
them.”

“So you have nothing?” Barlow looked like he
was about to rise from his chair like a dragon of old and smite the
Chief Inspector with liquid fire.

“Well, not exactly. The long range killing
of Kim Tang and his bodyguard was done with a .223. This was in
retaliation for their killing the Russian. We haven't gotten the
ballistics reports back yet but I’m willing to bet it’s the same
gun that killed the two wise guys on the docks a few weeks
back.”

“What evidence do you have?”

“Long range assassin’s shots. Amateurs don’t
even try shots like that. Both were done with the same caliber
weapon. Two men in each hit, two shots, two kills. Professional.
Small bore weapon, only professionals can even make the shot, one,
two. Dead before they hit the floor.”

“So he’s a Russian?” the Superintendent
asked, his eyes boring through his subordinate’s skull, trying to
draw out the knowledge.

“I don’t think so, sir. I think he is
someone playing both sides against the middle. The evidence was a
little too pat. An empty box of Russian cigarettes on the roof
where the sniper was indicates a sloppy amateur. This killer is no
amateur. The box was placed there for us to find; to point the
Chinamen in the wrong direction. It did, too.

“The Chinamen went on a rampage and killed a
half a dozen Russians that we know of. The Russians burned half of
Chinatown in revenge. Then the Dark Knights moved in and took over.
They restored order as if they were the fucking Gestapo.”

“The bikies? You’re shinin’ me on now.”

“No, sir. They came in as if they knew it
was going to happen and were just waiting for the lead to stop
flying so they could take over.”

“It’s a fuckin’ bikie then?” Barlow’s
expression was incredulous.

“That’s what it looks like but we don’t
really know what they’re up to. It looks like they set up both
sides and then rode in to take over. I can’t believe they got away
with it.”