His fingers ran over the body of the bike.
Yep, no doubt about it, there were chambers there, cavities under the casings. But how did you get them open?
Below them, the hitman curved through the hall. The luminous eye darted between constructions and containers, slid along walkways and balconies. Only now did Jericho notice that their pursuer was creeping towards a tunnel-shaped hatch that opened up to the rear of the arched ceiling. Rails led from it to the inside of the hall. The blond guy stopped his bike and glanced in. He seemed uncertain whether to go inside before scouring the entire hall, then he turned back and climbed higher.
He was coming right towards them.
Jericho thought frantically. In a few seconds the killer would find them in their hiding-place. Like a man possessed, he searched the casings and the instrument panel for a way of opening the weapon compartments. The hissing got closer. He felt Yoyo’s breath on the back of his neck, craned his head and ventured to look. The blond guy was two-thirds of the way up the hall.
Less than a metre, and he would see them.
But he got no higher.
Instead, his gaze wandered downwards and fixed on the mouths of the converters, that were turned towards him, lips rounded as if to suck him in, and Jericho realised what he was thinking. The bike stood motionless above one of the gaping maws. There was inky blackness within the steel cooking pot, no way of telling if anyone was hiding inside. The blond guy reached into a compartment on his bike, pulled something long from it and threw it down, then accelerated and got out of the danger zone.
A second went by.
Another, and another.
Then came the inferno.
The grenade went off with a deafening boom. A column of fire shot several metres out of the converter as the pressure of the explosion burst from the opening, bathed the hall in glowing red light, whirled smoke in all directions. Jericho grimaced, so painful was the echo in his ears.
* * *
The rumble of the explosion spread, escaped through the light-slit in the roof of the converter hall, its panes of glass shattered long since, vibrated the air molecules above and spread through the sky.
Xin heard the explosion two hundred metres higher up.
Something had gone up. Where exactly he couldn’t have said, but he was sure that there had been a bang in one of the halls lined up to the west of the blast furnace.
Daxiong, on the other hand, had no doubt that the explosion originated in the converter hall.
He pulled the motorbike round, spraying up gravel, and at the same moment Xin plunged down from the sky like a hawk.
* * *
‘Get a move on, damn you!’
Lau Ye was really furious. He was hopping from one leg to the other in Xiao-Tong’s shed, watching his friends slowly putting on their shirts and trousers, as if the process of getting dressed contained incalculable risks. Ma Mak revealed the stoicism of a zombie, not embarrassed in the slightest that little Ye had found her and Xiao-Tong naked, in a position that left no doubt about the activity they had been engaged in when they fell asleep. Xiao-Tong blinked hard, trying to banish tiny living creatures from the corners of his eyes.
‘Come on, now!’ Ye clenched his fists, headed nowhere. ‘I promised Daxiong that we’d hurry.’
A duet of grunting was heard, but at least the two of them managed to come shuffling after him. Outside, in the early sunlight, they contorted like vampires.
‘I need a cup of tea,’ murmured Mak.
‘I need a fuck,’ grinned Xiao-Tong and grabbed her backside. She shook him off and struggled onto her motorbike.
‘You’ve lost it.’
‘You’ve both lost it,’ said Ye, and gave Xiao-Tong a shove that managed to get the guy to swing one leg over the saddle. They didn’t have far to go. A few blocks up the street was Wong’s World, and behind it, in the early morning mist, stood the silhouette of the blast furnace. Xiao-Tong pointed feebly at the market.
‘First couldn’t we at least go an’—’
‘No,’ said Ye. ‘Pull yourselves together. Party over.’
That sounded good and very grown up, he thought. Could have come from Daxiong, and it seemed at least to make a big impression on Xiao-Tong and Mak. Abandoning all resistance, they left their bikes where they were, and followed him up the street. The closer they drew to the blast furnace, the tighter the feeling in Ye’s guts became, and a terrible fear took hold of him.
Daxiong had said something about corpses.
He avoided mentioning that to Xiao-Tong and Mak. Not now. For the time being he was just glad to have managed to wake them up at all.
* * *
Jericho held his breath.
The blond guy had steered the airbike over the second converter, bringing himself a good bit closer to them. Again he drew out a hand grenade, pulled the pin, slung it into the container and got out of range. There was a bang; the converter spat fire and smoke.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Yoyo whispered in his ear.
‘Then he’ll get us,’ Jericho whispered back. ‘We won’t get away from him another time.’
They couldn’t escape for ever. Eventually they would have to finish off the blond guy, particularly since Jericho had no doubt that they would have to deal with Zhao sooner or later. If that was the man’s name. One of the hitmen had called him Kenny.
Kenny Zhao Bide?
His gaze darted around. Right below them gaped the maw of the third converter, wide open as if the steel pot were waiting to be fed. A baby dinosaur, Jericho thought. That was what the pot looked like to him. Little birds crouched in the nest with their beaks wide open, greedily demanding worms and beetles, and what were birds if not miniaturised, feathered dinosaurs? This one was massive. With an appetite for something bigger. For human beings.
A moment later the blond guy’s bike approached and obstructed his view of the converter. The machine was hovering right above the smelting pot, so close that Jericho could have touched the killer’s head with his outstretched arm. A glance at the ceiling would have been enough for the blond guy to see them, but he seemed to have eyes only for the abyss where he assumed the fugitives were hiding.
He bent forward, reached into his arsenal of weapons and pulled out another hand grenade.
‘Hold on tight,’ Jericho said as quietly as possible. Yoyo pressed his upper arm to indicate that she had understood.
The blond guy pulled the pin from the grenade.
Jericho turned on the engine.
The airbike jumped forward and plunged down at the hitman. For a heartbeat Jericho saw him as if in a flash from a camera, his arm raised to throw the primed grenade, head thrown back, eyes wide with amazement, frozen.
Then they crashed straight into him.
Both turbines screamed to life. Jericho boosted thrust. He relentlessly smashed his opponent’s bike against the converter, wrenched the handlebars around and escaped back into the air. The blond guy’s machine plunged still further, somersaulted, crashed against the rim of the opening, was slung up in the air and clattered, dragging its rider with it, into the stygian abyss of the pot. A hollow clank and rattle followed them as they climbed. Desperately trying to get away from the hell that was about to break out, Jericho put his bike at top speed, sending prayers up to the hall ceiling.
Then came the explosion.
A demon rose from the depths of the cauldron, stretched roaring above it and fired out incandescent thermal waves. Its hot breath gripped Jericho and Yoyo and slung the bike through the air. They were dragged upwards, they turned and plunged. A quick sequence of explosions like booming cannons drowned out their cries as the blond guy’s whole arsenal went up, one piece after another. The volcano spat fire in all directions, set half the plant ablaze in an instant, while they hurtled spinning towards the ground and Jericho tugged wildly on the handlebars. The bike looped, scraped along a column and crash-landed onto a platform. Jericho was breathless. Yoyo screamed and almost b
roke his ribs for fear of being thrown off. Raising sparks, they dashed along the platform, straight towards a wall. He braked, went into reverse thrust. The machine careened violently, altered course and clanged against a balustrade, where it hung vertical for a moment as if he had suspended it neatly from a hook, then it gave a groan and tipped over.
Jericho fell on his back. Yoyo rolled over next to him and hauled herself up. Her left thigh didn’t look great, her trousers in shreds, the skin beneath it torn and bloody. Jericho crept on all fours to the balustrade, grasped the railings and got unsteadily to his feet. All around him everything was on fire. A smell of tar billowed to the ceiling and began to fog the hall.
They had to get out of there.
Yoyo bent double beside him and moaned with pain. He helped her up, as he stared into the thickening wall of smoke. What was that? Something was vaguely taking shape in the roiling clouds, they were brightening. At first he thought it might be another source of fire, but the light was white, spreading evenly, growing in intensity.
The fishlike rump of an airbike pushed its way out of the smoke.
It was Zhao.
* * *
As he set his foot on the bottom step of the zigzag stairs, Ye tried to control the trembling of his knee. His glance wandered along the tower of scaffolding to the platform on which the control room rested. All of a sudden he was afraid of what he might see there, so frightened that his legs threatened to give way.
He looked around.
A battered old car, a Toyota, was parked crookedly just below the girderwork, and two motorbikes a little further along. That surprised him. Normally they rode the machines into the adjacent empty building before going up.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the bikes.
One of them was Tony’s. And the other? He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be Ziyi’s.
Tony – Ziyi—
What were they to expect up there?
Mak was trotting upstairs like a shadow in Xiao-Tong’s wake. Ye cleared his throat.
‘Wait, I’ve got to—’
‘Let’s not hang around,’ she growled. ‘You’ve got us out of bed now—’
‘Terrible time of day,’ Xiao-Tong complained.
‘—so you can bloody well come too.’
Ye wrung his hands. He didn’t know what to do. It was time to tell them Daxiong had mentioned corpses. That something terrible had happened in the control centre. But his tongue clung to his palate, his throat hurt as he swallowed. He opened his lips, and a croak issued from them.
‘I’m coming.’
* * *
Daxiong hadn’t come via the old rolling mill. There was a shortcut, at least he hoped it was still possible to get through it. Trains had once criss-crossed the grounds of the plant, shunting-engines with torpedo-shaped wagons that were filled with liquid pig iron after the blast furnace was tapped. From there they had driven their 1400-degree cargo to the converter hall, where the iron was poured into huge pans and from there into the steel smelting pots.
Daxiong followed the tracks. They led at least two kilometres across the open field and disappeared into a tunnel, more of a covered passageway, really, that opened right into the converter hall. Shots were ringing out from there now. He put his foot right down, caught his front wheel in one of the tracks, slipped. The motorbike threw him off. He skidded along on the seat of his trousers, dumbfounded by his own stupidity, jumped to his feet, cursed. He had got off lightly, but the accident had cost him time.
His eyes scoured the sky.
No trace of an airbike. He righted his toppled motorbike and tried to start it. After several attempts and encouraging words, the most frequent of which was Merde!, the machine finally sprang to life, and Daxiong plunged into the darkness of the passageway. What he saw was less than encouraging. A shunting-engine rested, broad and sedate, on one of the two parallel tracks; another was coupled to two torpedo cars. He wouldn’t be able to get by on either side, only the space between the trains was wide enough – but there was something blocking it.
He should have gone through the rolling mill!
Forced to stop, he got off his bike and walked over to the obstruction, which turned out to be a twisted metal frame. Bracing his three-hundredweight bulk against it, he tried to shift it from its position. Further ahead he could see the dim opening beyond which the hall lay. It couldn’t have been more than twenty metres away.
He had to get there.
At that moment there was a third explosion, a salvo this time, much louder than the others. The passageway lit up, something burning flew into it and crashed to the ground. Further explosions followed. As if possessed, Daxiong rattled at the metal frame until at last, with a great creak, it started to give. The thing wasn’t heavy, just hopelessly stuck. He tensed his muscles. All hell must have broken loose through there, flames were blazing. Daxiong panted, pulled and tugged, pushed and shoved, and all of a sudden the metal frame yielded and twisted a little to the side.
Still. Just enough of a gap for him to squeeze through.
* * *
Xin held a hand in front of his mouth and nose as he rode his airbike through the billows. Acrid smoke brought tears to his eyes. What in hell’s name had the blond guy been up to? Hopefully it had been worth it at least. Beyond the deep blackness he saw flames flickering. His right hand reached for the butt of the sub-machine-gun in its holster and let go of it again.
First he had to find a way out.
The smoke cleared, giving him a view of the hall. The whole place was in flames. Not a soul in sight, just a toppled airbike hanging from the balustrade of a gallery, dented and blackened. The windscreen was missing. Xin steered towards it, as a great roll of thunder set the hall trembling. Immediately behind him a column of fire shot into the air, the wave of pressure sending heavy vibrations through his bike. He climbed, then glimpsed a movement at the far end of the hall.
Something came roaring out of the wall. The motorbike rider. The bald giant.
Xin drew the gun from the holster.
A greasy black cloud billowed over and enveloped him, hot and suffocating. He held his breath, brought the bike further up, but the cloud wouldn’t let go of him. Of course it wouldn’t! Smoke drifted upwards. What sort of an idiot was he? Blinded and disorientated, he brought the bike back down again. He couldn’t even see the lights on the instrument panel now. He steered haphazardly to the right and collided with something, then dragged the handlebars around.
Further down. He had to get down there.
Small fires crackled around him, immersing his airbike in a flickering red glow. He thought he could hear voices coming from somewhere, headed straight ahead to avoid any further collisions, and managed to get out of the cloud. Between flickering flames and plumes of smoke he saw the motorbike.
Yoyo was sitting on its pillion.
Xin bellowed with fury. The motorbike disappeared into the wide, low passageway from which it had emerged. With hissing jets he shot after the two of them and followed them into the tunnel. The motorbike dashed between two trains. He tried to estimate the amount of room he had: airbikes were a bit broader than motorbikes, but if he was careful he would fit through.
When he was just about to shoot the girl in the back, he saw something blocking the way.
Iron bars. Bent, wedged.
Beside himself with fury, he was forced to look as Yoyo and the giant ducked their heads and managed by a hair to get under the twisted metal. He himself would have been skewered. Not a chance. His bike was too wide, too high. He pivoted the jets and braked, but his momentum carried him on towards the metal poles. For a moment Xin was filled with a paralysing sense of complete helplessness; he pulled the bike round sideways-on, scraping along against the trains, and metal crunched against metal as he managed to reduce his speed.
He held his breath.
The airbike stopped, just centimetres away from the metal frame.
Seething with rage, he stared through
it. Daylight entered at the end of the passageway. The motorbike engine seemed to give him an insolent growl as it disappeared from view. Close to losing his self-control, Xin wrenched the airbike round, flew back into the hall, plunged into the smoke, sped through the rolling mill and the warehouse and back outside. Above the slagheap, he turned in a great circle, grateful for the fresh air, opened the cover of the second weapon chamber and reached inside. When his hand came back out, it was holding something long and heavy. Then, at great speed, he bore down on the blast furnace.
* * *
Jericho spat and coughed. The smoke billowed into every corner. He wouldn’t survive another fight in this inferno. If he didn’t get out of here right away, it would all be too late. Another few minutes, and he might as well just settle down and fill his lungs with tar until they were the colour of liquorice.
He hoped devoutly that Yoyo had made it. Everything had happened at impossible speed. Their escape over the platform, Zhao’s bike. Then, all of a sudden, Daxiong. The hitman must have seen him, but something had kept him from reacting straight away, fire, perhaps, welling smoke. They had had time to get to Daxiong, who stopped his bike all of a sudden and paused with the engine running. There had been a flicker of puzzlement in the giant’s narrow eyes, as he wondered how he would get them both on his narrow pillion.
‘Go, Yoyo,’ Jericho had said.
‘I can’t—’
‘Go, damn it! No speeches, just fuck off! I’ll be fine.’
She had looked at him, soot-blackened, unkempt and plainly shocked, with a mixture of fury and defiance in her eyes. And all of a sudden he had seen that strange sadness in her, which he knew from Chen’s photographs. Then Yoyo had jumped on Daxiong’s pillion. At that moment Zhao had spotted them both.
Jericho clung to the hope that they’d got away from the hitman. Visibility was getting worse and worse. With his sleeve pressed to his mouth and nose, he edged his way up to the gallery and inspected the airbike. In poor shape, but the damage seemed to be mainly cosmetic in nature. Hoping the handlebars weren’t damaged, he bent down and hoisted the machine upright.