The Red Pole of Macau

( 26 )

Ava sat at the hotel room window, looking out over Macau. The sun had set an hour before, but she could hardly tell night from day as the neon signs and klieg lights of the hotels and casinos flooded every square inch of the territory. She could see all the way to Taipa, to the Cotai Strip, to the City of Dreams, its pod-like shopping complex glowing like a spaceship. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d walked through its doors with Michael and Simon to meet Kao Lok and Wu. Now she’d be walking through another door to meet them again. Strangely, she had only the vaguest memory of their faces. Lok’s teeth were all that came sharply to mind when she thought about him. With Wu, it was the mole with its curly hairs.

May had called her when she checked into the hotel. Ava begged off dinner, explaining, as she had to Sonny, her need to be alone.

When she first got back to the room, she had sat at the small desk with her notebook open. She drew a diagram of the road, the courtyard, the gate, and then retraced the lines Song had marked in the sand. She had to make a decision, and the problem was that each of the options available to her carried its own set of risks. How to weigh them?

She started off by listing them and ended up with a multitude more, almost equally divided between the two. She thought of her breezy presentation to the men that morning, of her confidence about smashing through the gate. The one thing she had to have was certainty, she thought, certainty that the truck would bring down the gate and penetrate the courtyard.

Making a diagonal run from the side road to the gate would give them maximum power and speed and would be the most time-efficient. And Ava was worried about time. Every second after the moment when Lok, Wu, and their men knew they were under attack was crucial. Every second Ava and the guys were outside the house gave those inside more opportunity to arm themselves and organize resistance.

But what if the truck hit the wall, as Song had projected, and flipped over? What if it blocked the gate, made it impassable for their SUVs — hell, made it impassable for them even on foot?

So, option two: Song takes his time, a couple of minutes, and lines up the truck properly to ram the centre of the gate. If the gate collapses when he hits it, there isn’t any barrier for the cars and they’re at the door within seconds.

Song had estimated he’d get up to sixty kilometres an hour and that velocity would be enough to get through the gate. But he hadn’t been sure, and neither had Geng. What if he couldn’t get up to sixty? What if he did and it wasn’t enough to do the job?

And then there was the noise issue. Just how loud was the truck going to be? While Song was moving it back and forth to get into position, would the people inside the house hear him? If they did, it would be a disaster. By the time they got into the house they’d run smack into seven or eight guns aimed at the door.

She’d called downstairs to the restaurant and ordered a plate of pad Thai and a bottle of sparkling water. She ate at the desk, her eyes flitting over the diagram, her lists, her comments. When she was done, she had moved to the window and had been there since, thinking and debating. There was nothing satisfying about coming to a decision between two evils.

It was nine o’clock when she finally stirred. She wasn’t tired but she knew she should try to sleep. She showered and changed into panties and a T-shirt. Then she emptied the rest of her bag and laid out on the sofa the clothes she’d be putting on in the morning. There was an alarm in the room. She set it for four thirty and then called downstairs for a wake-up call for the same time, though she knew she probably wouldn’t need either.

Ava had left her computer at the Mandarin, and her cellphone had been off since she’d got on the hydrofoil in Hong Kong. She turned it on and listened to messages from Uncle and Amanda. He was once more wishing her luck. She had arrived in Sha Tin and was walking to Jessie’s. They would both have to wait to hear from her.

She crawled into bed and pulled the covers right up to her chin. I won’t sleep, she thought, but she began to perform a bak mai kata, a standard series of exercises, in her mind. She did it in slow motion, trying to picture every little detail. She wasn’t halfway through before she drifted off.

Ava dreamt, as she often did, about her father. This was different, though, from the usual theme of missed airplanes, hotel rooms that couldn’t be located, cab drivers who never took her where she wanted to go. Her father was in a restaurant, sitting at a table with two strangers. He ignored her when she walked in. One of the men was holding a gun under the table against her father’s leg while the other was insulting him. Ava asked him to stop, and the man spat at her and cursed her. The gun went off; her father collapsed to the floor, holding his leg. Ava pulled a knife from her bag and was about to attack when her alarm went off and the phone rang. What a way to start the day, she thought.

She made an instant coffee and drank it so quickly it scalded her mouth. She made another and carried it to the bathroom. She washed, brushed her teeth, fastened her hair with the lucky ivory chignon pin, and put on her gold crucifix and Cartier Tank Française watch.

She dressed slowly, making sure there were no wrinkles in her socks and that her black T-shirt was tucked tightly into her black training pants. She tied her runners with a double knot. Then she turned towards the bed and eased onto her knees. With her hands pressed together in front of her face, she began to pray.

She prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and asked him to help her get through the day. She prayed for the safety of her men, that she would find Simon alive and well, and that no unnecessary harm would come to Lok’s men or his servants.

It was ten to five when she walked into the lobby. Everyone was already there. Carlo and Andy and their men were outside smoking; Sonny and May were standing together just inside the door. Ava gave a little wave and then went to the front desk. She checked out, signed all of the bills, and handed the girl her valet ticket.

“How did you sleep?” May asked when Ava joined them.

“Surprisingly well.”

“I don’t think I slept for more than half an hour at a time.”

May was wearing her black slacks and blouse from the day before. “You fit in quite nicely,” Ava said, pointing to the men, who were uniformly dressed in black. She hadn’t specified what they should wear; she imagined Carlo and Andy had made that decision. Sonny was wearing a dark blue mock-turtleneck shirt and black slacks. “We look like we’re going to a funeral.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” May said.

It took a full ten minutes to get the two SUVs and May’s rented Nissan to the front door. Ava put Carlo and his men in her car, leaving Sonny with Andy and his brother-in-law.

“We’re going to Fisherman’s Wharf. We’ll meet at Carlo’s cousin’s boat. May will get the truck and the driver, then off we go,” Ava said.

It was a relatively tight schedule, and Ava had planned it that way. There was nothing worse than waiting, and she didn’t want to give any of the men time to start thinking about what could go wrong. She’d done enough of that for all of them.

The wharf was a few minutes from the hotel, the boat moored near the entrance. Carlo directed her to it, and when she got near she saw a man sitting on a capstan.

“That’s him,” Carlo said.

The guns were stashed on the deck under a tarpaulin. Each man took his own, checking the firing action, the ammunition. Ava picked up her Kahr. It was an incredibly light gun, one of the most accurate she’d ever fired. “Put the ram in our car and distribute the handcuffs,” she told Carlo.

She heard the truck before she saw it: a low rumble, disquietingly powerful. Then it rolled into view, filling their line of vision. “F*ck me,” Andy’s brother-in-law said. “I’ve never seen a truck that size.”

Song looked down from the cab, his position so high that Ava couldn’t see his shoulders. She saw him stare at the guns and blink in surprise. They were well armed, she knew. Andy’s brother-in-law and one of Carlo’s men had Uzis. Carlo’s other guy wielded a Koch machine gun. Andy carried a Heckler. Sonny’s Cobray was a match for any of them. Only she and Carlo had pistols, but they were both semi-automatic and in tight quarters just as effective.

“Follow me,” she yelled at Song.

They clambered back into the cars. Getting their weapons into their hands had given the men a bit of a buzz.

“So where did you have dinner last night?” she asked Carlo as they pulled out of the wharf, Sonny behind her, May following him, the truck in the rear.

“We went into old Macau, to an animal restaurant.”

“What did you eat?”

“Bat and some raccoon,” he said, and turned to his friends. “What did you think of our meal last night?”

Ava smiled. It was her ploy to talk about anything other than the job, to calm the men’s nerves, distract them. Carlo had obviously picked up on it.

The men talked about the dinner and other memorable meals for the entire trip to Coloane. Ava was happy to listen to them.

It wasn’t quite six o’clock when they reached the highway that ran along the sea. Ava stopped short of the turnoff, parking on the shoulder. The others lined up behind her. She got out of the SUV and motioned for everyone else to do the same. Then she walked over to the seawall and sat down. They gathered around, waiting for Song to lower himself from the truck. “Don’t rush — we can’t afford to lose you,” she yelled at him.

When he joined them, she said, “This is Song, and you obviously know what he does. He came here with me yesterday and looked at the gate. He had some suggestions and I think I’m going to follow them, so we have some slight changes to our plans,” Ava said calmly. “Instead of making a direct diagonal run from the end of the side road to the gate, we’ve decided that Song will position the truck so that it can run straight through the gate. What that means for us is, instead of following him immediately across the courtyard, we’re going to hang back until he’s ready to charge. Then we’ll tuck in behind and follow him down and in. After that, we follow the plan as we discussed in Hong Kong.”

She didn’t ask if there were any questions and she wasn’t interested in any comments. “Okay, back to the vehicles, and everyone get their balaclavas on.”

Ava walked with Song back to the truck. “Maximum speed, right?” she said.

“My foot will be on the floor.”

“And don’t take all day to get into position. That truck is so damn loud.”

“I figure I’ll drive straight right from the roadway, make a hard left, go down about twenty metres to straighten up, and then back up and I’m ready to go. I thought about it all last night.”

“How did you know I’d make that choice?”

“It’s the right one.”

Ava said, “Then why did it take me so long to get to it?”

“You don’t drive trucks for a living.”

“Song, once you’re through the gate and we’re past you and in the courtyard, I want you to leave. Turn the truck around and head back to Macau.”

“No, I can’t. I’ll go back out to the highway and wait with Geng and Madam Wong.”

She watched him climb the stairs back up to the truck’s cab, and knew there was no point in arguing. He wouldn’t leave May alone.

May had stood off to the side while Ava was talking to the others. Now she drew near. “I guess I’ll go sit on the wall.”

Ava checked her watch. Five minutes to dawn. The sun was already starting to tease its way above the horizon. She looked out to sea and then stepped back, startled, as a brilliant streak of green shot across the point where water met sky. “Good God, did you see that?”

“A green flash!” May said. “I’ve read about them, and I have a friend who lives in Borneo who goes down to the beach every night at sunset to try to see one. They are rare, really rare. That has to be a good omen, Ava.”

Ava felt the opposite, and she didn’t know why. “I’m going to have my cellphone on, May, but don’t call me unless it really is necessary. And don’t time us. I have no idea how long this will take. When it’s done, it’s done.”

“Good luck,” May said.