Not much has apparently changed down at the waterfront. The Orthos have organized their defense in the lobby of the Spectrum 2000: furniture has been overturned, barricades set up. Inside the hotel itself, Hiro presumes furious activity is going on.
It’s still not clear whom the Orthos are defending themselves against. Making his way through the waterfront area, Hiro doesn’t see much: just more Chinese Refus in baggy clothes. It’s just that some of them look a lot more alert than others. They have a whole different affect. Most of the Chinese have their eyes on the mud in front of their feet, and their minds on something else. But some of them are just strolling up and down the street, looking all around, alertly, and most of these people happen to be young men wearing bulky jackets. And haircuts that are from a whole other stylistic universe than what the others are sporting. There is evidence of styling gel.
The entrance to the rich people’s pier is sandbagged, barbwired, and guarded. Hiro approaches slowly, his hands in plain sight, and shows his pass to the head guard, who is the only white person Hiro has seen in Port Sherman.
And that gets him onto the pier. Just like that. Like the Hong Kong franchulate, it’s empty, quiet, and doesn’t stink. It bobs up and down gently on the tide, in a way that Hiro finds relaxing. It’s really just a train of rafts, plank platforms built over floating hunks of styrofoam, and if it weren’t guarded it would probably end up getting dragged out and lashed onto the Raft.
Unlike a normal marina, it’s not quiet and isolated. Usually, people moor their boats, lock them up, and leave. Here, at least one person is hanging out on each boat, drinking coffee, keeping their weapons in plain sight, watching Hiro very intently as he strolls up the pier. Every few seconds, the pier thunders with footsteps, and one or two Russians run past Hiro, making for the Kodiak Queen. They are all young men, all sailor/soldier types, and they’re diving onto the Kodiak Queen as if it’s the last boat out of Hell, being shouted at by officers, running to their stations, frantically attending to their sailor chores.
Things are a lot calmer on the Kowloon. It’s guarded too, but most of the people appear to be waiters and stewards, wearing snappy uniforms with brass buttons and white gloves. Uniforms that are intended to be used indoors, in pleasant, climate-controlled dining rooms. A few crew members are visible from place to place, their black hair slicked back, clad in dark windbreakers to protect them from the cold and spray. Hiro can only see one man on the Kowloon who appears to be a passenger: a tall slender Caucasian in a dark suit, strolling around chatting into a portable telephone. Probably some Industry jerk who wants to go out for a day cruise, look at the Refus on the Raft while he’s sitting in a dining room having a gourmet dinner.
Hiro’s about halfway down the pier when all hell breaks loose on shore, in front of the Spectrum 2000. It starts with a long series of heavy machine-gun bursts that don’t appear to do much damage, but do clear the street pretty fast. Ninety-nine percent of the Refus just evaporate. The others, the young men Hiro noticed, pull interesting high-tech weapons out of their jackets and disappear into doorways and buildings. Hiro picks up the pace a little, starts walking backward down the pier, trying to get some of the larger vessels in between him and the action so he doesn’t get hit by a stray burst.
A fresh breeze comes off the water and down the pier. Passing by the Kowloon, it picks up the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing, and Hiro can’t help but meditate on the fact that his last meal was half of a cheap beer in a Kelley’s Tap in a Snooze ’n’ Cruise.
The scene in front of the Spectrum 2000 has devolved into a generalized roar of unbelievably loud white noise as all the people inside and outside of the hotel fire their weapons back and forth across the street.
Something touches his shoulder. Hiro turns to brush it away, sees that he’s looking down at a short Chinese waitress who has come down the pier from the Kowloon. Having gotten his attention, she puts her hands back where they were originally, to wit, plastered over her ears.
“You Hiro Protagonist?” she mouths, basically inaudible over the ridiculous noise of the firefight.
Hiro nods. She nods back, steps away from him, jerks her head toward the Kowloon. With her hands plastered over her ears this way, it looks like some kind of a folkdance move.
Hiro follows her down the pier. Maybe they’re going to let him charter the Kowloon after all. She ushers him onto the aluminum gangplank.
As he’s walking across it, he looks up to one of the higher decks, where a couple of the crew members are hanging out in their dark windbreakers. One of them is leaning against a railing, watching the firefight through binoculars. Another one, an older one, approaches him, leans over to examine his back, slaps him a couple of times between the shoulder blades.
The guy drops his binoculars to see who’s pounding him on the back. His eyes are not Chinese. The older guy says something to him, gestures at his throat. He’s not Chinese, either.
The binocular guy nods, reaches up with one hand and presses a lapel switch. The next time he turns around, a word is written across his back in neon green electropigment: MAFIA.
The older guy turns away; his windbreaker says the same thing.
Hiro turns around in the middle of the gangplank. There are twenty crew members in plain sight all around him. Suddenly, their black windbreakers all say, MAFIA. Suddenly, they are all armed.
Chapter Fourty-Five