Cogar's Despair (Cogar Adventure Series) Page 12

  Though I knew it would hurt, I stood waveringly and wrapped my arms around her slender middle.

  "You got away," I said quietly. "I was so worried about you." I felt as though I could fall into a deep, relieved sleep right there—head buried against her neck.

  Jessica didn't smile, but said something loudly. It came through only as muted noise, as though she had said it from the other side of a concrete wall. I smiled and tried to kiss her.

  "Where is Harold?" She repeated urgently as my lips left hers.

  "Harry? He's not here?"

  My shouts were excessively loud, I could tell, but I still couldn't hear myself. Jessica shook her head exaggeratedly.

  No.

  Nodding, I pulled her close, stroked her hair and whispered, "Don’t follow me." I spun around and, grabbing the belt of a confused policeman, wrestled his pistol from its holster.

  "Grant, stop!"

  Ignoring Jessica and the shouts of the policemen, I limped toward the side of the warehouse. I knew where he was.

  Without any sense of the building's layout beyond the little bit I'd seen during my imprisonment, I was certain that blindly rushing through the front doors would do little more than provide my former captors with extra target practice. So, as much as it pained me to do it, I retraced my steps to the little window I had first climbed through on the night of my capture. Gingerly sliding to the floor, I limped over the broken glass and tried to ignore the overturned chair where I had been fastened for the last 24 hours. Somehow, even being in the fresh air for a few short minutes had amplified the stench of this room to an almost insufferable degree. It was all I could do to suppress the urge to gag as I stepped over the familiar bodies in the doorway and ran up the stairs leading to William's office.

  Warily stepping through a narrow doorway leading to the warehouse's ground floor, I stopped and knelt, wrapping my nose with the crook of my arm and closing my eyes.

  The place looked like a warzone: The blood-emptied bodies of a dozen of William's men lay motionless and scattered across the concrete, crumpled atop overturned tables and sprawled out before shattered windows—their faces ashen and empty.

  No matter how hardened a veteran soldier or war correspondent claims to be, if they have an ounce of humanity left in them, seeing once-cognizant human beings reduced to inanimate carcasses is sickening. It makes no difference how many times you've witnessed fresh corpses pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, or the bodies of soldiers too young to legally drink a beer tossed into firewood-like piles by your enemy, it always strikes deep. It reaches into your chest and grabs you in a carnal, violent, disturbing way.

  Above me, the scattered mix of sharp rifle cracks and the pop pop pop of handgun fire confirmed that the remaining gunmen had barricaded themselves in, the police raid evolving into a shootout that was far from over. I roused myself, staring at the ceiling and breathing deeply through my mouth as I reminded myself that these bodies belonged to drug-peddling gangsters—men who would gladly have killed me had they been given the opportunity. And the ones still fighting it out above me would try to kill me. I needed to make peace with that.

  Quickly.

  My friend's life depended on my ability to steel my will, to do whatever became necessary.

  Even if it meant adding to this pile of bodies.

  Staying low and avoiding windows where possible—I didn't need the good guys shooting at me too—I stumbled up a wide concrete stairwell. Even through the steady pulse of adrenaline coursing through my body, I was beginning to feel a growing ache from my fractured shins and charbroiled feet. It wouldn't be long, and I'd be completely incapacitated by the pain. I had to move swiftly. Peeking through a finger-wide crack in the building's concrete wall, I could see the police ducking into cover; dirt flicking into the air before them as poorly aimed bullets thudded into the earth from above. I was on my own.

  As I stepped onto the stairway's landing, a gunman in the midst of changing out his AK-74's magazine confronted me. Though surprised, the man continued to reload his weapon as he stared at the pistol in my hand.

  "Drop the gun."

  He ignored my demand, his eyes meeting mine.

  "Drop it," I repeated, thumbing the hammer back.

  I tried to hide the fact that I didn't want to shoot him, but my eyes betrayed me. The gunman locked me in his stare as he let the rifle's spent magazine clatter to the concrete floor, confidently withdrawing a fresh one from the canvas pouch at his belt. This much was abundantly clear: If I didn't act immediately, he would.

  Clenching my jaw resolutely, I squeezed the pistol's trigger. But instead of the snapping recoil I'd expected, I was greeted with a dull click. In my hurry to save my friend, I hadn't even bothered to check the cop's gun for a live round in the chamber.

  Snickering through a toothless grin, the gunman deliberately jammed the magazine into its well and released the rifle's bolt—a flicker of brass passing into the weapon's chamber.

  Do something. Now.

  Wrapping a hand around my handgun's slide and frame, I flung it as hard as I could in my adversary's direction, hoping for a momentary distraction and an opportunity to dash back down the stairs to find cover and a new weapon. Instead, the base of the grip struck the thug's forehead squarely, dropping him to the floor, unconscious. For a moment, I stared at him dumbly—in disbelief at my good fortune. The resulting cloud of dust kicked up by my fallen enemy's body made me sneeze—jarring me back to responsiveness. I recovered my pistol, racked the slide, and tucked it in my belt. Lifting the cataleptic criminal's rifle from the floor, I proceeded toward William's office, and, I hoped, Harold.

  During my time as captive in the basement, I had assumed that William and his crew had kept that room sickeningly filthy as a means to amplify their prisoners' torturous experience. So I was a little surprised to find that the entire warehouse—every square foot of it, it seemed—was littered with garbage and broken glass. It reminded me of a turn-of-the-century lunatic asylum: dark and decrepit, undoubtedly witness to unspeakable horrors. It confounded me how anyone could stand to work or sleep in a place like this of his own free will.

  I stopped at a corner in the hallway as two men argued in Shanghainese, clearly dismayed by the sudden arrival of the police. I dared a glance and found two of William's guards, armed with rifles and bandoliers of grenades, standing outside his door. Rolling back around the corner, I quietly checked the action on my rifle to ensure I had a loaded weapon this time, and with a deep breath, I prepared to rush them.

  But as I went to take my first step, I banged my already-bruised shin so hard I nearly fell. The offending obstacle, a propane tank shoddily connected to a single burner ripped from a barbecue grill, rocked gently from the impact.

  Chewing my lip in agony as I waited for the pain to subside, silently cursing with such originality and color that I surprised even myself, I was suddenly struck with a plan. Unscrewing the hose from the tank, I grabbed a firm hold of the canister's handle, stepped into the hallway, and hurled it at the unsuspecting guards.

  Bewildered, the two men watched the tank roll to a stop as it reached a divot in the floor. Then they laughed at me.

  Leaning out from cover, I took careful aim at the tank and pulled the trigger, expecting a fiery blast to erupt from it and scatter my enemies like plastic soldiers before a firecracker. Instead, a white cloud of propane hissed harmlessly from the bullet hole as the two guards shouldered their weapons—their bullets chiseling away pieces of concrete from my hiding place behind the wall.

  As I sat there, making myself as small as I could, it occurred to me that the special operative training I had gained by watching dozens of Jean Claude Van Damme films hadn't been as practical as I'd initially thought. Another thing those films had failed to convey: the sheer terror brought on by focused gunfire. I had been on battlefields before and had been nearly shot more times than I care to admit, but it had always been in the presence of others—the enemy had been sh
ooting at us, not me. And during that time, my personal rule had always been to run away from gunfire—never toward it. It was taking more discipline than I thought I had to keep from tossing my guns to the floor and heading for the nearest exit.

  Sensing my attackers advancing on my position, I dropped my rifle and withdrew the pistol from my belt. I shoved it around the wall and began firing blindly—the .45 caliber jumping erratically in my hand like a frightened rabbit.

  If you've ever wondered about the etymology of the word 'luck', it undoubtedly has my name buried somewhere in its history, because just as I began firing, one of the thugs, without my knowledge, unclipped a grenade from his vest. Just as he pulled the pin, one of my carelessly aimed rounds ripped his pinky finger off. Crying out in pain and clutching at his wound, the guard let the grenade slip from his hand. Both men's assault rifles went quiet as they dove among the rubble and trash to recover the fallen explosive.

  My heart jumped in my chest as the blast flung pieces of concrete, flesh, and bone throughout the hallway, rattling the building and shaking plaster from the ceiling.

  25

  Showdown

  Blood has a distinctive scent, a singular presence. But, like describing color to a blind man, it's impossible to convey exactly what it smells like unless you've encountered it before. It resides somewhere between sweet and acrid, musty and rotten.

  As I approached the door leading into William's office, pink and red chunks of the guards' flesh fused to the wall, the smell nearly overwhelmed me. I pinched my eyes shut as the acidic burn of vomit climbed to the back of my throat. As I opened the door, which swung on one hinge and collapsed inward, a flood of cigarette smoke and spent gunpowder flooded into my lungs and subdued my riotous stomach.

  Inside the office, light poured through a broad window and illuminated the far wall. Had it not been for the violence taking place all around us, the sunshine and the comforting quiet of this room would have made it the perfect reprieve for a Sunday afternoon nap.

  But the bilious feeling I'd felt in the hallway quickly returned as I spotted Harold in a dark corner, hand on his abdomen, shirt and pants saturated with blood. It trickled through his fingers and dripped into the large pool in which he sat. His eyes were closed, his features pale and blue.

  "God dammit, Harry."

  Kneeling and touching two fingers to his neck, I struggled to find a pulse beneath my friend's skin. From beneath the desk in the room's center, William, suit crumpled and torn, jumped up and pointed his revolver at my back. Though both of his hands clenched the gun's grips, his silver crucifix, wound in its chain, hung from between his fingers.

  "You, drop the gun."

  The pistol slipped from my fingers and pattered to the floor. I only stared at my fallen companion—sorrow and rage scraping through my veins like battery acid. No matter how foolish he had been, Harry had still been my friend and, at his core, a good man. He deserved better than this.

  "This was your plan all along, wasn't it?" William ranted, sliding a hand through his short black hair. "I should have known you were an agent for the Shanghai police. They said they'd never even heard of you at the Chicago Herald. And I showed you my entire operation. I should have killed you both and thrown your bodies in the river!"

  "You think that's what this was?" I shouted back. "I wanted nothing to do with you or your filthy drug money. I came to get my friend back, you sonofabitch. But you killed him. If you had just let us go, you'd still be the king of this pathetic rat's nest."

  Staring blankly over my head, William, lip twitching, said quietly, "You mean, all of this was because of him? This lowbred piece of garbage?"

  The drug lord laughed, his eyes settling on the revolver in his hand, tracing an imaginary line to my chest.

  "When I first met you, you pretended to be a Marine. Remember Mr. Cogar? Well I'm going to give you a soldier's death."

  The muzzle flashed, and a screaming pain—like being stabbed with a screwdriver hooked to a car battery—tore through my shoulder. As I dropped to the floor clutching my wounded arm, I noticed that the puddle of blood in which Harold had been sitting was now empty. With the last of his energy, he had sprung to his feet and thrown himself into my attacker just as William pulled the trigger, the two crashing against the window. Weakened by blood-loss, Harold was quickly pushed to the floor, William finding little difficulty in defeating his attempt to fight back. But the distraction gave me the opportunity I needed to recover.

  Snatching my gun from the floor and raising myself to a knee, I held the pistol's front sight on William's chest. For a fraction of a second, a pure stillness, a calm serenity, washed over the room. We made eye contact, both our guns leveled at one another. Whether it was the burning wound in my shoulder or the desperation to save my friend, no sense of restraint or guilt entered my thoughts. I was prepared to kill this man. To take a life. To become one of the men I had made a living writing about.

  But, rather than smoothly squeezing the trigger as I had been taught, I rammed my finger backward—a nervous reaction that any experienced marksman would have laughed at. The muzzle jumped and a fresh bullet hole appeared in the wallpaper above my target's left shoulder. It would have been just as effective if I had stuck the barrel of the gun in my own mouth. I'd missed, and as an uncomplicated result, this was how my life would end.

  It wasn't fear that drew a tear from the edge of my eye, but unreserved disappointment. I felt almost overcome by the childish reaction that justice was intended to prevail. This was all wrong: Harold and I were supposed to live. Karma and the forces that controlled the universe were supposed to guide us in bringing the bad guy down.

  Plop.

  I flinched as a spray of blood speckled my skin.

  The sound of the gunshot was almost imperceptible—too silent to be real. Then, much like the first drop of rain precedes a downpour, a sudden wave of popping, like the sound of a dozen eggs being dropped from the ceiling, filled the room. Looking up, I saw the window behind the drug lord littered with pockmarks, the glass perforated as the police opened fire from outside. The blood that covered me wasn't my own: One fortuitously aimed bullet had ripped through the back of William's skull. As his eyes went blank, his body convulsed in a final spasm—legs kicking him backward through the window and sending his corpse to the asphalt four stories below.

  26

  Like a Rock Star

  Light flowed through my hospital room's window shades, but I sat in the shadows. My eyes still ached from the flashbang grenade thrown by the police. One of the nurses had left the room in search of a pair of sunglasses for me while two others swabbed and stitched the wound in my shoulder. The bullet had carved out a chunk of flesh the diameter of a dime. They had bound my hand where Mongkut inserted the bamboo shoot and bandaged the wide, bruised slashes in my shins and the burns on my feet, too. I was a mess. But though everything hurt like hell, my injuries weren't life threatening. They'd leave some cool scars, but a few weeks of downtime and some prescription painkillers would have me back to my typically spry self, they assured. Harold hadn't faired as well, and I was eager for them to finish with me so I could check on how his surgery was progressing.

  "That was an incredible shot, Mr. Cogar."

  A young policeman stood by, taking my witness statement and occasionally interjecting with astonished compliments and excited questions—like a child listening to a war story.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "We opened fire from the ground when we saw the suspect in the window. But even with all of that fire, you're the one who hit him straight on. Blew him right out of the window. I know veteran soldiers who would never have made such a clean shot under such intense pressure," he said.

  "You're sure it was me who hit him? What does your forensics lab have to say about it?"

  "The suspect's body was damaged pretty badly, sir. A fall from that distance..." the policeman slapped an open hand loudly against his notepad and snickered. "There's not much
left for them to examine. Besides, we all saw it happen. Case closed on who ended him."

  Wincing as the nurse pulled the bandage tight, I nodded.

  "Sure. Well it was nothing. You would have done the same thing had you been up there."

  For all I knew, it could have been the young officer who had fired the shot that saved my life. But I was in no mood to fixate on the details: We had all escaped with our lives, and if it didn't bother anyone, I'd gladly add taking down the kingpin of a Chinese drug ring to my list of accomplishments.

  With my good arm, I waved to Jessica as she paced back and forth in front of the room. She smiled back, a phone pinched between her ear and shoulder as she scribbled furiously on a police clipboard.

  She had already negotiated with the Chinese our return to Seoul and was now delicately explaining the situation to the ambassador. It would be interesting to know how much of the truth she would actually reveal. Too much, and the relationship between father and son could be irreparably damaged. Too little, and Harold would be free to revert to his criminal ways without much more than a new scar. Assuming, of course, that he survived.

  "Am I free to go, officer?"

  "Of course," he said, offering a handshake. "Mr. Cogar, it's been a pleasure."

  Alone, I ventured into the hospital and began to pace slowly and deliberately between a soda machine and the intensive care unit's welcome desk, awaiting news on my friend. The characteristically sterile scent that seems to permeate everything in hospitals gave me a headache.