Red Tide, стр. 67

Donnelly pulled the door open. Cool air waited to greet her. The lighting was dim. Tables occupied the area in front of her. A bar ran down the righthand wall. People turned to look. Some stared. Others lost interest. Fanon. Where was Fanon? Was it some sort of trap?

Donnelly placed a hand on Kelsey’s back, as if to guide her, and she shook it off. Only a few of the empty tables had been bussed. Kelsey chose to sit with her back to the wall with a glowing “7” mounted on it. A position that would enable her to watch the front door.

So Donnelly sat with his back to the front door which gave him a view of the “7” and the exit located next to it. Between them they had both points of entry-egress covered.

Kelsey watched Chaney and Howe enter, look around, and take a table near the entrance. She eyed her watch. It was 8:03. Fanon was nowhere to be seen.

Kelsey scanned the room for security cameras but didn’t see any. Maybe that was one of the reasons why Fanon liked the place. There might be hidden cams of course. That was a chance she’d have to take.

A teenage waitress arrived. She was wearing too much makeup and not enough clothes. Her English was rough but serviceable. “What you want?”

Donnelly was the team’s beer snob. “Two beers. Myanmar Black Shield please.”

Like most females the girl had eyes only for Donnelly. “You bet. Any else?”

“Nope,” Pretty Boy said. “That will do it. But make them cold please. Real cold.”

“So, you’ve had Black Shield before?” Kelsey inquired.

“Never. But I did my research,” Donnelly said. “And according …”

“There he is,” Kelsey interrupted. “Coming in the front door. He has one, two, three, four, five people with him. Four men and a woman. I think she’s arm candy rather than a shooter. But hey, you never know.”

There was a stir as waiters hurried to bus a large table and Fanon sat down. A pair of reflective sunglasses were parked above the drug dealer’s forehead. His eyes scanned the room; they found Kelsey and stopped. Did Fanon know who she was? Or was he guessing?

Kelsey stood and made her way over. “Mr. Fanon? I’m the woman who left the message. Can we talk?”

Fanon looked her up and down as if inspecting a side of beef. He had an Australian accent. “Sure, sweet stuff. We can talk, and you can take a ride on my stiffy. Have a seat.”

Fanon’s girlfriend had to move in order for Kelsey to sit down, and was far from pleased. Kelsey had just settled into the empty chair, and was getting ready to make her pitch, when Smith spoke into her ear. “Six, repeat, six armed men just arrived. And they’re headed for the front door.”

“Get down!” Chaney ordered. “We’ll form on Donnelly and exit through the back.”

“Two men entering through the back,” Donnelly warned. “I see a gun!”

Then the shooting began. Fanon was the target. Kelsey scrabbled across the floor, as the gunmen entered from the street, and opened fire. Two of Fanon’s bodyguards and his girlfriend jerked spastically as bullets struck them.

Fanon was on his knees, returning fire with a pistol, as his surviving bodyguards did the same. Then Chaney joined the battle, along with Howe. And their fire sent the attackers diving for cover.

Kelsey had the baby Glock in her right hand, and was aiming at the men at the back of the room. They were firing at Chaney and Howe by then. But not for long as both Kelsey and Donnelly opened fire. The gunmen were caught by surprise.

Kelsey saw blood spray as her bullets tore through a man’s throat. He stumbled backwards, fell, and hit the floor hard. Thanks to Donnelly his buddy was down too. The body jerked as Pretty Boy shot him again.

The other battle was still underway. And as Kelsey turned in that direction, she saw bodies sprawled all about. Fanon was wounded, but on his feet and firing when a bullet struck his head. Gore flew and his body toppled.

Two of the invading gunmen were still vertical and one was armed with a machine pistol. The auto fire forced Chaney and Howe to duck as bullets tore splinters out of their table. That was when Smith entered the bar with the 12-gauge leveled in front of him. He fired one barrel, followed by the other, killing both men instantly.

Then, like a duck hunter in the field, Toolz broke the weapon open. Shook two empties onto the floor, and replaced them. “Anybody need a ride?”

***

The island of Samir, in the South China Sea

The PHM Arcus was roughly a hundred miles north of Samir Island, on foil, and making a good 47 knots. Ryson was on the bridge along with the boat’s skipper Charlie Moy, and the duty helmsman. That meant the boat was burning about one-thousand gallons of fuel per hour. And given the fourteen-thousand gallons of fuel left in the boat’s tanks it was necessary to be careful. The goal was to catch up with a radar blip generally referred to as “Asshole,” as in “Look at that asshole run.” And the distance was closing.

It was hard to know what kind of target they were onto, other than the fact that it was fast, which suggested a Chinese Type 22 missile boat. They were, according to data retrieved by the CIC, about 140 feet long—making them comparable to the Arcus in terms of size.

If the enemy vessel was a Type 22, it was similar in another way as well, because she was armed with eight anti-ship missiles. Three of which had already been fired at the Arcus over the last half hour, and lured away by the infrared decoys launched from the hydrofoil’s Mark 36 mortars.

The “Arc” could have answered with Harpoon missiles, and it might come to that, but Ryson had hopes of something else. He wanted to catch up with the Chinese boat