White Ghost (34 page)

Ah Ming broke from the car he was hiding behind and cut in between two Dumpsters angled against a redbrick wall fifteen yards down and across the alley. He was protected on either side
now, but he would have to take out either Gage or the gunman if he wanted to get away.

“You've got yourself boxed in,” Gage called to him.

“Just until I catch my breath,
gwai lo
.”

“Who is that guy?”

“I don't know.”

“Maybe somebody should've told you the container was coming to East Wind instead of Sunny Glory.”

“How the fuck did you know?”

“Just a guess. And I can guess at a few other things.”

“Then who are they? And how did they know the container was coming to me?”

“That I don't know. Surrender to me and we can figure it out together.”

Two shots cracked. One slug thudded against a doorjamb behind Ah Ming, the other pinged a Dumpster.

Gage fired toward where he last saw the gunman and then heard himself say to Ah Ming, “I need to keep you alive.”

The words surprised him.

“What for?”

Gage wasn't sure, but said, “It would take too long to explain. Who do you think that guy is?”

“I don't know.”

“He seems to want you dead.”

“He wouldn't be the first.”

“Whoever he is, he's got to be connected . . . somebody big enough to move that much dope.”

“How do you know any of this,
gwai lo
?”

Gage left the question hanging, then closed in.

“I was in Thailand when the heroin went north through China.”

Silence.

“I was in Nantong when Lew and Wu traded the chips for the heroin.”

Silence.

“I gave the chips to the Chinese.”

Silence.

“I followed the heroin from China to Taiwan to Oakland.”

Silence.

“I have Lew locked up in China.”

Silence.

“I have the Taiwanese guy you sent to kill Lew locked up, too.”

Silence.

“You want more?”

“No, but you couldn't do it alone. Who betrayed me? Lew?”

“Only after you tried to kill him.”

“You're lying.”

Ah Ming laughed with a bravado that revealed his uncertainty.

“Have any enemies in Thailand?”

“Some.”

“Maybe somebody with a long memory.”

Ah Ming fell silent. Finally, he said, “Shit. It's Eight Iron. Eight Iron is behind these people. I should have killed him fifteen years ago.”

“I don't think it's Eight Iron. Eight Iron is making yaba and he had no way to follow the heroin. He tried, but we blocked his people at Kunming.”

Gage heard a scraping noise coming from the east, in the area where Gage last spotted the gunman.

“You better keep an eye out for that guy. He wants you bad.”

“He can't show himself without running into a cross fire, that is, if you really want to keep me alive.”

Gage heard Ah Ming remove the clip from his gun, checking to see how many bullets he had left, and then the racking of his jamming it back in.

“Tell me about Eight Iron. What did he get out of helping you? Money?”

“Just revenge.”

“There had to be more. He's a greedy man.”

Gage kneeled and looked under the van and between the wheels of the cars parked down the street. He could just make out the gunman's pant cuff next to a car tire thirty yards away. He fired a shot that ricocheted off the pavement and into the tire. The cuff disappeared. The tire flattened.

“Kunming?” Ah Ming asked.

“Yeah, Kunming.”

“I know what Eight Iron was after. It was the
ma huang,
the ephedrine.”

Ephedrine? “What ephedrine?”

Ah Ming laughed. “So you don't know everything, white ghost. Think. How did we get the heroin? You didn't figure that out, did you? You didn't even see it. And Lew, the little snake, didn't tell you. Now look where we are.”

Gage's mind worked back upstream.

“You mean you traded the chips for ephedrine and the ephedrine for the heroin?”

That was the novel financing the Wa were worried about. It was mostly a barter deal. There was money involved, but it crossed no borders and left no trail.

“Close enough. Then Eight Iron stole the ephedrine coming down from Kunming in payment for the heroin. He needed it to make yaba.”

“And somehow Eight Iron arranged to blame you.”

“That's right. Eight Iron tricked you and blamed me.”

“And these guys are stealing back the heroin they sold you, because they believe you stole their ephedrine.”

Gage knew right then it had to be. Only the source of the heroin would know it had gone to Nantong and, more important, would know who'd come to pick it up. Then it was just a matter of busting heads in China to find out where it was shipped in the United States, then busting a few more in the States to take it back.

Now he understood why Eight Iron was so eager to join Gage's team, and why he gave them Kasa. But there was no reason to hold Kasa hostage. Eight Iron never wanted the heroin. He wanted the ephedrine. No—Eight Iron wanted more than just the ephedrine. He wanted Ah Ming dead, and he didn't care who died with him.

The gunman took a shot at Gage. The slug clipped the rear corner of the van, then cut into Gage's left shoulder. He stared at spreading blood. Only now fatigue seemed to be his friend, for it neutralized the shock.

Dr. Stern's words came back to him:
Watch out for excessive bleeding.

Gage jammed his gun into the holster and pressed his hand over the wound. He could feel the lead lodged under his skin. Then the pain hit him. Gage gritted his teeth and pressed harder and rocked back and forth until the sharpness was dulled by his body's defenses and the coagulating blood began to seal the wound.

G
age's cell rang. It was Casey.

“Buddy said you went running after Ah Ming. We heard some shots. You okay?”

“Yeah. I'm two blocks south of East Wind. In an alley. You still in the warehouse?”

“Everything's secure. We burst in on some guys who came to rip off the dope. All but one gave up pretty easy. Where's Ah Ming?”

“Near me, but trapped.”

“I just sent some SFPD backup that way.”

“Call them off. There's no way they'll understand what's happening here.”

Casey switched to his radio and ordered the officers to take positions at the ends of the alley, then returned to his cell. He called ICE to send over their drone.

“Tell me what is going on.”

“I'm near the west end. Some Chinese guy is way east of me on the other side of Ah Ming. He's committed to killing Ah Ming, otherwise he would have bailed already.”

“Must be with the Big Circle guys who came to rip off the dope.”

“How do you know they're Big Circle?”

“Buddy came down and looked them over. He recognized the dead one. Some asshole named Red Fire. His fire is out now. How close are you to Ah Ming?”

“He's across the alley, down about fifteen yards. He's hidden between some Dumpsters and the back wall of an auto repair shop.”

“I'll send over some snipers and take him out. And the BC, too.”

“Hold off. There's no way out of here. We need to take them alive.”

Gage had said it again, surprising himself, shocked that he'd used the word “need.”

He heard a shot and a ricochet off a Dumpster, followed by the opening of a car door. In the silence that followed, he could make out the crunching noise of rolling tires, a car being pushed forward. He glanced around the van and saw it, a small Honda creeping down the alley toward both him and Ah Ming.

Ah Ming fired at the car. Glass shattered. The gunman yelped and swore. The car stopped rolling.

“I think Ah Ming may have hit the BC,” Gage told Casey.

Gage looked under the cars again. The gunman lay on the pavement. He rolled to his side and curled up, holding his upper chest.

“Make sure your people have gotten into position at the east end of the alley so Ah Ming can't get out that way. And tell them to keep their fingers off their triggers. I don't want them trying to take him out and shooting me instead.”

Casey gave the command, then said to Gage, “I'm sending others to the rooftops on the north side of the alley. I can't take a
chance of Ah Ming getting out of there and taking a hostage or killing some innocent person.”

“But let me try to talk to him.”

“Okay, but the first time he points his gun at anybody, he's dead. And you tell him that. Dead. Dead. Dead.”

G
age disconnected the call with Casey.

Everything was starting to have a sense of inevitability about it. Everybody was going to do what they were going to do. The gunman, Ah Ming, and himself. They all knew it. And that understanding brought a reflective silence into the alley.

Gage rose from his knees and propped himself on the edge of the panel van's step-up bumper.

Why am I trying to save this guy?

The question evoked an image of him standing in front of the Buddhist temple in Bangkok.

Karma. That's what they call it, that's what they claim it is. Karma.

Some necessary link, some rational connection, between how we live and how we die. Between who we are and what we deserve.

Ah Ming is death. Isn't that what Ah Ming deserves?

But cancer is death, too. Does that mean it's what I deserve?

Did the question even make sense?

Gage then began to think about the gunman and Ah Ming,
not only as men who placed no value on life, but as bodies, two healthy bodies their owners had put at risk.

Karma, explain this one.

H
IDDEN BETWEEN
D
UMPSTERS,
Ah Ming pressed his back against the sooty wall of the auto repair shop. The odors not only of recent garbage, but the residue of years of compacted refuse caking the walls of the Dumpsters, filled his nose. He could see the knees of his suit shining from the oil and grease coating the pavement under him. But what plagued him now wasn't disgust at the filth in which he might die, it was the thought that the white ghost across the alley had found him out. He felt exposed, like his clothing had been ripped from his body, like a night hunter wrenched from the darkness, dragged aboveground and into the midday sun.

And he felt shaken for the very first time.

Life had always been simply a matter of living, then not living. It had never entered his imagination that he would spend the last of it in a six-by-eight-foot cell or die like a trapped rat in a grimy alleyway.

However it was supposed to end, it wasn't supposed to end like this.

M
otion caught Ah Ming's eye. He looked up and spotted agents positioning themselves on the rooftops of the buildings in front of him, three stories above the alley.

“So,
gwai lo,
is this what you had in mind?”

“They aren't going to shoot unless you raise that gun.”

“What about you?”

“That's not what I came for, but it's up to you.”

“So we have a little more time.”

“We have a little more time.”

“Then tell me. Why are you here?”

“Peter Sheridan.”

“Peter Sheridan? That name doesn't mean anything to me.”

“How about Ah Pang? You remember Ah Pang. The kid who got killed at the chip robbery in San Jose. Thomas Sheridan is his father.”

“A weakling.”

“Maybe he just learned his limits. You're the guy squeezed like a rat behind a greasy Dumpster. Not him.”

“You have nothing to connect me with the robbery.”

“Ah Tien.”

“You're lying. I know he didn't talk.”

“He was afraid you'd kill him when he came back for his father's funeral so he left some shipping documents behind, a road map. When your people kidnapped him, they left his briefcase; and when they killed him, they left his address book: Sunny Glory, Lew, Efficiency Trading, Old Wu.”

“Fucking Vietnamese.”

Gage could see a spot of laser light bouncing around on the wall above Ah Ming's head, then another, and another.

Casey's voice emerged out of the silence. “This is the FBI. Throw down your weapon and step out.”

Silence.

“Throw down your weapon and step out.”

Silence.

Gage's cell phone rang.

“What's he been talking about?” Casey asked.

“Nothing. Just talk.”

“Will he let us come in to get the wounded BC? This'll look real bad in the press if we let him bleed out.”

“I don't think he'll let you. Life isn't something he seems to care about, and he sure as hell doesn't care about FBI public relations.”

Gage called out to Ah Ming, “The police want to come and carry out the Big Circle.”

“So what. It's his own fucking fault. He should've stayed out of my business.”

“His answer is no,” Gage told Casey. “Is Sylvia still in the warehouse?”

“No, some clerk collapsed and I let Sylvia take her to the hospital. I don't want to know what Sylvia was doing in there. In fact, I'm not even sure I saw her.”

From a distance, Gage heard the thumping, whirling sound
of helicopter blades approaching from the south. Soon it would be above them.

“Is that yours?” Gage asked Casey.

“It's NBC. We're bringing the drone over. Hold on, let me get rid of it.” Casey switched to his radio, leaving the cell line to Gage open.

“Control?”

“Check.”

“Call Channel 3. Get that copter out of here. There are armed men on the ground. It's putting everyone in danger. Tell them to move it or the pilot will be spending the next year in federal prison for obstruction.”

Gage heard the helicopter edging closer. It emerged high above the building behind Ah Ming, the afternoon sun glinting off its glass bubble and polishing its white body. It froze in position, then spun out of sight, later reappearing far to the west, steadying itself for a long live shot. It was far enough away that Gage couldn't hear the whirling blades, but he knew its camera was locked on the alley. It hung like a clock against a vast blue wall, marking time.

“Remain where you are.” Casey's voice boomed over the loudspeaker, blasting through Gage's cell phone. The words echoed and faded. A dominating and expectant silence returned to the alley.

Gage peeked around the corner. He couldn't see Ah Ming. “What's going on? Who are you yelling at?”

“It's the BC. He's trying to crawl toward Ah Ming. He's like a wounded, rabid dog. Some mother's son turned into an animal . . . what a waste.”

Both Ah Ming and Gage heard the clunking of the BC's gun butt on the pavement and the scraping of his shoes as he crawled toward Ah Ming.

“I'm gonna drop a stun grenade. That'll stop him.” Through the phone Gage heard the rip of a Velcro strap, then Casey: “Counting down . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.”

Gage dropped to his knees, shielding his head and covering his eyes and ears and pressing himself against the van. The explosion reverberated off the brick walls lining the alley. He felt the van rock back and forth, then shudder to a stop as dust, paper, and trash blew past.

The force of the stun grenade broke the gunman's will, but the billowing dust and debris gave Ah Ming a last chance to run.

He took it. And Gage knew why. The same inner will that had made him hard and tough in his teens, that made him a godfather in his thirties, that permitted him to kill without mercy, that allowed him to live radically alone, now drew him to his feet, lifted his gun hand toward the agents on the rooftop, pulled his finger hard on the trigger, then forced his legs into a sprint west down the alley amid bursting sniper fire.

Slugs that missed him or passed through his body bounced off the walls, skipped across the street, drilled into parked cars, even thudded into the van that gave Gage cover.

“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Casey yelled.

If the weapons followed Ah Ming any farther, the slugs would ricochet into Gage.

Gage caught sight of Ah Ming as he came parallel, his sprint devolving into a stagger, dragging his left leg behind him, his right arm limp. Bleeding from just below his shoulder. The right side of his suit jacket punctured in two places, shiny wet circles surrounding the holes. His gun was now in his left hand.

Gage couldn't tell whether Ah Ming even realized the shooting had stopped, so intense was his drive, so overwhelming was his will to stay on his feet, to keep moving. Gage drew his gun. He rose, his legs weak. He struggled to raise it, then braced himself against the back of the van, his shoulder throbbing.

Ah Ming turned toward him.

“Go down, just go down,” Gage said. “Please. Just . . . go . . . down.”

Gage could see in Ah Ming's eyes all the man's rage, fear, and ambition, now focused on Gage, his whole being reduced to one irrational thought: by killing Gage, the nightmare that had become his life would end and he could walk away.

Ah Ming raised his left arm and tried to steady the barrel in Gage's direction. Weakened by the slugs that had ripped through him, his arm shook, the gun wavered. Ah Ming willed his arm to fix on Gage. And it did.

Gage fired. The slug hit Ah Ming in the middle of his chest. His arm fell, but he didn't. He stared ahead, eyes glazed and unfocused. He didn't see Gage anymore. His eyes didn't register at all. Then his heart stopped, and his body surrendered.