Catastrophe
Inside the stalled Toyota sedan, I leaned back against the seat and checked the time on my phone.
Twenty minutes.
It had already been twenty minutes since Marcus went into that warehouse.
All he was supposed to do was hand something over, take the money, and walk away. There was no reason for it to take this long.
“Hmm…”
I shifted in my seat.
Every time I moved, the cheap synthetic leather gave off a faint rustle.
Maybe because it was the dead of night, even that little sound scratched at my nerves.
I turned to look out the window.
Yellow streetlights shimmered over the asphalt.
The alley lined with shuttered herbal medicine shops was silent. The presence I’d felt inside the van a moment ago was gone, but the presence on the second floor of the building remained.
Other than that, nothing seemed different.
Maybe the deal’s just dragging on.
Given how messy things were, they might have been renegotiating terms on the spot.
Still, knowing Marcus and how careful he was, I couldn’t imagine him dragging it out this long.
He knew better than anyone that the longer a deal went on, the more dangerous it became.
Then I heard it.
Clang, tsk.
A tiny sound brushed past my ear.
An ordinary person wouldn’t have heard it. Even if they had, they’d have shrugged it off as a rat knocking into a can.
But to me, it was crystal clear.
The sharp metallic crack of something hard striking metal.
And then the brief, rapid tear of compressed air.
Clang, tsk.
Clang—tsk.
Once wasn’t enough. It came again and again in short intervals.
A chill ran down my spine.
Gunfire.
A silencer. A very good one, too.
No matter how generously I tried to interpret it, that wasn’t the sound of a celebration after a successful deal.
Something had gone wrong.
Click.
Without hesitation, I opened the car door.
Marcus had told me to wait in the car until the deal was done.
But I wasn’t stupid enough to obey that instruction after hearing gunshots. If something had happened to my only partner in this strange land, then I wasn’t safe either. I had to move first.
“Hoo…”
I got out of the car and took a short breath of the dawn air.
Then I made my way carefully toward the herbal medicine warehouse where Marcus had disappeared.
***
In front of the warehouse, the signs of life that had been there just moments ago were gone without a trace.
In their place was something else.
The smell.
The pungent medicinal scent unique to Sheung Wan hung thick in the air—the earthy aroma of angelica root, astragalus, and dried herbs.
When I first caught it two days ago, I’d thought it familiar. But now, threaded through that smell were other things entirely.
First came the acrid stink of gunpowder.
Then the coppery smell of blood, pulsing through the humid air.
Damn it.
Marcus’s face flashed in my mind, the one that had said he’d be back in no time. My heart started to race.
I wanted to throw up the shutter and check inside right away.
But strangely enough, my mind felt colder with every step.
Don’t rush.
The more urgent the situation, the more calmly I had to observe and judge my surroundings.
Without slowing, I mapped out the warehouse in my head.
Information I’d gathered over the two days I’d spent here with Marcus unfolded before me.
Two entrances: the front shutter and a side door in the alley to the left.
There was an emergency stairway at the back of the building that led to the second floor, and beyond that, it connected to the upper road.
The front shutter was down. Forcing it open would make too much noise.
That leaves the left-side door.
I turned at once and slipped into the alley.
My feet were moving fast, but they made no sound at all.
I was using a walking technique that pressed my whole foot evenly to the ground, killing the noise naturally.
I kept my breathing low and long, while leaving my senses wide open.
My muscles stayed relaxed, but with just enough tension that I could move at any moment.
In the span of a few seconds, all of it happened naturally.
Fortunately, I was in decent shape today.
As soon as I entered the narrow alley, I pressed my back to the wall and moved along it.
It was to cut off any line of sight from above, just in case someone was looking down.
Separate from my pounding heart, my thoughts felt sharper and clearer by the second.
Soon I reached the side door.
Before I touched the handle, I stopped for a moment.
Instead of going straight in, I focused on the space beyond the door.
First, smell.
The scent of blood was stronger.
If it was this thick through a single door, then the inside must be bad.
But I couldn’t smell any human body odor or anything else.
Next, sound.
I heard no footsteps inside.
Just the faintest trace of breathing. But no movement.
At the very least, no one was lying in ambush right behind this door.
Nothing wrong.
I gripped the handle without hesitation.
Slowly, but with force, I turned it.
Click.
Fortunately, it wasn’t locked.
Darkness spilled through the opening seam of the door.
Holding even my breathing still, I pushed my body inside without a moment’s hesitation.
***
The inside was dark.
Only a few old fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling flickered, casting a pale, sickly glow.
I’d come in at the back corner of the warehouse, behind a set of shelves stacked with supplies.
I scanned the work clothes and tools hanging from the shelf, then picked up the first thing that felt usable.
It was a short sickle used for trimming herbs or cutting open sacks.
A kama.
It wasn’t a weapon I was used to, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t handle either.
The blade had a bit of rust on it, but the tip was still sharp enough. That would do.
I gripped the sickle in reverse and hid myself in the shelf’s shadow.
My gaze swept quickly across the center of the warehouse.
Dozens of sacks and boxes of herbs were piled up there, and in the middle of them sat a table.
And around it, shapes sprawled across the floor.
As I thought.
Blood.
The cement floor was soaked dark red.
Four men lay collapsed there.
From their clothes, they were the Yee Hing Tong men on the other side of the deal.
A teapot and ashtray still sat on the table, and one chair had been knocked over backward. They’d been ambushed in the middle of negotiations.
I examined the state of the men on the ground.
One shot to the body, one more to a vital point. Two rounds each, precise as clockwork. There was almost no sign they’d fought back.
Suppress with the first shot, finish with the second. It looked like it had all happened in one breath.
Judging from the direction the men had fallen, this hadn’t been Marcus’s doing.
Someone had burst in during the deal and, without hesitation, wiped out everyone in the room.
And they’d done it in the short time between when I’d left the car and gotten here.
Their target already got away.
They wouldn’t have left through the front, so the left-side door, maybe? Or the top of the building?
I remembered there was a path out the back that connected to the upper road.
It seemed we’d missed each other by a hair.
Lucky me.
I checked the footprints on the floor.
Combat boot treads. At least two people.
There was no wasted motion in their movements. They came in, shot, checked, and left.
An efficient route, calculated to the last step.
And the goods…
The bag that should have been on the table was gone.
And, naturally, so was the other side’s package. They’d taken everything with them.
So where’s Marcus?
His body wasn’t among the dead around the table.
I swept the floor. A trail of blood started near the table and stretched deep into the warehouse.
At the end of it was an old restroom door. The place where I’d felt a faint breath from the moment I arrived.
I followed the blood trail, killing my footsteps as I went.
I stopped in front of the restroom door.
Blood had pooled along the crack beneath it. And from inside, I could hear low breathing.
I tightened my grip on the sickle and, with my other hand, slowly pushed the door open.
Creeeak.
The rusted hinges screamed in protest.
Clack.
Metal scraped inside. The sound of a gun being cocked.
Instead of worrying me, the sound relieved me. It meant he still had enough strength left to pull a trigger.
“...Marcus. It’s me.”
I lowered my voice.
I could feel the taut tension behind the door unravel all at once.
“Haah…”
A long, ragged exhale.
I pushed the door open fully and stepped inside.
The restroom was cramped. Marcus was slumped in a corner beneath the sink.
He was a wreck.
His navy linen jacket was soaked through with blood, stripped of its original color, and a pool of blood spread across the floor.
Blood was running from his right shoulder, and the shirt over his chest had been dyed red as well.
He was holding a Glock in his blood-soaked left hand, aiming it at the door.
When he confirmed it was me, Marcus lowered the gun.
Only then did the arm that had been held so rigidly finally drop.
“Cough, cough…”
Every time he coughed, red foam sprayed from the corner of his mouth.
At a glance, he’d lost a lot of blood.
“Damn it… hold on, let me look.”
I dropped to one knee and checked his condition.
The shoulder wound was a through-and-through. The bullet had gone in under the collarbone and out the other side. Luckily, it seemed to have missed the subclavian artery.
He missed that, so he’s still alive.
For the chest, when I pulled back his shirt, I saw a bullet dent in the bulletproof vest under his jacket.
It hadn’t pierced through, but the impact looked like it had broken a few ribs.
As ugly as it sounded, he’d been lucky.
He wasn’t about to die on the spot.
Still, if I left the shoulder wound alone, the blood loss was getting dangerous.
“Marcus, are you okay?”
“Damn it… do I, cough, look okay to you?”
Marcus spat out a mouthful of blood and saliva.
His face had gone pale, sweat slicking his brow, but his eyes were still bright and alive.
He was still conscious. Good.
“I told you to stay in the car… why’d you come?”
Even while wincing in pain, he glared at me and snapped at me.
“You really don’t, cough, listen worth a damn.”
“At times like this, you can go ahead and say I did a good job.”
I gave a dry laugh and checked the wound on his shoulder.
First I needed to stop the bleeding. The lining of his jacket could be torn up and used as a pressure bandage.
I had a hundred questions—what had happened, who had stormed in—but now wasn’t the time.
We had to get out first.
“Let’s get you outside first. I’ll bandage you in the car…”
Before I could even finish, I heard it.
SCREEECH—!
The sharp screech of tires braking hard outside the warehouse.
Not one vehicle. At least three or four had pulled up at once.
Bang. Bang!
Car doors slammed. Feet pounded against asphalt. Then came the rough shouts in Cantonese.
Judging by the sound of it, there were more than ten people out there.
Marcus and I looked at each other at the same time.
My face stiffened. Marcus’s pupils shook.
These weren’t the men from earlier.
Professional assassins wouldn’t come back this loudly after finishing the job.
Only another kind of people would swarm in like this.
Triad members.
Probably the hardliners who had opposed the deal in the first place.
Outside, a violent pounding shook the shutter.
Someone was yelling at the top of their lungs in Cantonese. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tone was enough. They were furious. Very furious.
I slowly turned my head toward the outside of the warehouse and muttered under my breath, “...Looks like we’ve got more guests.”
Marcus’s face twisted.
His mouth moved soundlessly.
I didn’t need to read his lips to know it was a curse.