Place is a mess, folks lying around with three of them bleeding through holes in their ripped open chest, punctured through the neck, one of them's missing half of his cheek with Har breathing loudly through the mask as his rifle's muzzle lowers below the horizontal..... through the mats, tacky velvet veils and sheets on high tables, black blazers over stools by the front counter, at the far end of the ground floor lobby there's a black panel, double swinging door with two wooden rim windows show the back of someone's neck pushing against it as it swings in ambiguous speed.
"12 o'clock, end of hall!" I shout while the grizzle fabric rubs my wet lips as I raise the rifle in its direction to fire by instincts. The bullet cracks a muzzle flash in dim lighting of this dump before the bullet drives through the door, the slit between doors swings backward as whoever's behind retreats or falls. And the rest of the fellas fix their aim at the spot a second later, the four of us move in collected steps through the lobby.
That first shot's recoil almost made me drop the damn piece of scrap as the handle's stained with blood on the boxing wrap.
But Igor's right. It is a better first impression.
A pair of eyes behind the iron sight, aligning the north wall. Walking past Har who quickly follows as Budimir steps across the sofa against the west wall while the mute strides past the guy on the wooden bed with an open chest, clearly his latest work. I couldn't smell the killing, but any who entered this place would be glad to have a mask on, even if it's a balaclava. The joint has two distinct sweet smells in the air, the burning of flower juices and the wormed.
I did opium before. But only when I'm bout to get cut or cocktail it with something else in the inhaler. Never smoked or grind them directly since I've heard stories about places like this, been to a few too way back only to find them a kick above an animal cesspool and a notch below a mass grave, some corpses don't shit themselves at least. And here, it had stained the place long enough for the feces to ferment on their pants, diapers, walls, sheets. Some of them don't even groan, most of them have more than a pipe in their life.
With the little time given, I take in the surroundings with a narrow view amongst everything. They're civilians, junkies in sheets or bare-chested lying motionless on beds, mats on the ground, leaning against the wall in deep slumber into somewhere far from this hell. The front counter on the left of the gate is the only place not covered in red, save for a few wooden boxes and a bronze miniature statue on the empty desk.
Igor wasn't joking. This place will go down within the first second, half of the ground floor is made of wood and silk. They stretch over the ceiling in a lighter shade than the sheets with occasional lanterns strung on the veil or by the chair.
No wonder they took so long. This is a place ripe for an ambush. From the entry's point, there's no way to distinguish the Qin's in a suit behind cover. And the illumination doesn't help, there's no central lighting at the front, the candles burn a bright red by waxy skins on the bones of the patrons, the lantern between veils of red and engraved beams on the ceiling holds the place above pitch black.
Feels like I’m back in Vieja Tortola.
My heart pumps but most noticeable is the itch of the mask while the cold sweat runs down my back. I cross a man in his 40s with arms thinner than a balcony pole. Stepping into a larger clearing in the middle of the lobby where the third Qin lies backward at an abnormal angle on the armchair as blood runs on both ends of his bore neck. The guy got his jacket on the handle, loose cigarettes all over the table like chips in a game. Budimir had made it to the north wall as he clung to the wall in slower steps, but those boots on him ain't cut for it. Squeaks came off the dented floor of seams seedy-filled under Har and Nikto's trot.
Each flinch of eyelids or a roll on their back by these junkies made my nerves strung, on multiple occasions, I almost paint one's brain for breathing too loud....and as if a taunt on my paranoia, out of nowhere.
Bang!
An explosion rocks our eardrum where we can't see it, like the vibration from the deep sea but more consistent as a hiss stays after the initial blast, along with the capricious sound of hitting a softball.....
The four of us on different corners of the room, all turn to the left in union despite the muffled sounds coming outside. Before any of us got a grip on the situation, a more distinguishable noise echoes across the door at the far end.
Plap, clack, plap, clack!
Hard leather soles pound the tiles. All of us double-timed with our weapons pointed straight. That ominous 'Xianren Wu Ru' red mark above the panel doors under insufficient illumination is where we regroup.
"What the fuck was that?" Har curses to himself as he takes position behind Budimir on the right, his pinkie keeps tabbing the forearm of the semi-carbine.
"Where's the man?" The tenth street shoots the question across the periphery of the double door like it's a radio dead zone. The muzzle stays at the door handle while he's talking.
"Back in the alley," I knock the side of the magazine and by the hollowing sound, I'd say it still has 10 to 15 rounds in this thing. How about having a little faith in luck and call it 13?
"How do you want to do this?"
"You and Nikto take left, we'll go right and sweep the second floor as planned. Round up at the lobby." The lad's got his tension controlled quite well, but he's about as dim as this dump. If there's a VIP, he ought to be on the second floor, with a truckload of bodyguards around the stairs. Burning the place down would be the easiest way to get both.
"Budimir," I lower my voice and try my hardest to water down pragmatism to sincerity. "Вам не нужно....You don't need to bring some chink capo's head to be inducted. Living is enough guarantee." He says none, the barrel before his chest wavers not, those blue eyes looked brighter between ragged cloth of balaclava. I curl my brow and shrug.
I've seen the light in em before and ruefully, they tend to burn a blaze greater than everyone around.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Well then," I place a hand on the reticent lad to his brown glare. "Hey, kid! How many you got left in that thing?" Less than four shells. "Don't mind me taking the lead do you?" Budimir raises his shoulder in palpable motion, the mute says none but leans muzzle to the ceiling and hastily makes his way behind as I take position by the left door hinge. "Otherwise I'm feeling overpaid for charity work."
From here I can see between the casing of window, the hallway ahead is well illuminated unlike the abandoned outside. There's not a soul within the two-meter radius on the other side, nor leverage of surprise for us this time. They got the home advantage.
I get my back against the prickly white wall, the crude AKS-74 resonates ringtones on the wobbling dustcover but a single shot's good enough to rip through anything in a 1.5-meter width hallway.
A glance over the fellas, some determined, some aloof, some just nods. Budimir gives me an 'After you' with a halt of gun barrel. I swallow a breath and let it stay in, tune my watch to chronograph mode setting it at three minutes tight.
Should have brought the blasted inhaler. Cursing the millionth time over, I make do with the fading adrenaline as I push my left knee forward, sole flat, and crook it back kicking the swing door open.
***
Bright hall, ceiling lower than a fucking coffin. Black and white paintings along the white walls painted red from the waist down. The left door swings open as I dive into the next corridor, muzzle pointing to the right side of hallway and the stairs in the shadows.
Then the first shot was fired, from a conspicuous corner into an open area. The flash shines lighter than the rows of lamps hanging on the ceiling and low enough to wake the entire back of the opium den.
It missed but who can tell with all the adrenaline reawakening, it'd take a severe leg for me to feel pain, but I saw where it came from just fine.
A lift, a press, the whim pillar of wood where he extends the barrel from are a spreading mess, till the wooden shrapnels settle there's a clean hole marking where he was.
"Right corner, second room!" With my back pushing the swinging door open as a cover in this confined hallway. I peek through the shot-through hole I did while Budimir and Har pass behind. One's pistol up front, the other's carbine above Budimir's shoulder. Shouts rose again and Nikto silently moved behind me in a crouched motion under the window.
A nod from him and a look much older than his age is supposed to embody say it all. I lean my arm flat on the door while keeping the iron sight at the center of my vision as the edge of door turns over 45 degrees.
Four closed doors at the right side of the hallway come into view before I move up in haste, stepping into their field as the door stays in position with the mute's left palm holding it.
Firm steps across the wood-plated floor since speed is the only mobility we have. The rifle sitting closer to my face and the front sight centimeters before my right eye. I tensed every single nerve on me to high alert and soon, the welcoming amenity came.
From the second room to the right, someone's face pokes out an inch too far meeting a 7.62 right above where I aim as he dives back. Skipping four steps past the first door, a tilt of my head and Nikto get the idea. He approaches the door knob of the first room with caution, my aim still sets on the room where the figure appears. Almost simultaneously, both of us dive in.
The sound of shotgun slug pommeling in the next room transfix first before the dumb fuck on my end got spooked and blast his single barrel sawed off an inch too left, for a singular instant I could read all the horror setting into his eyes before a single round broke his upper face, the bullet didn't go through, blood mostly spills forward onto the sheets, brain matters came much later after I left the room, dripping down on the fucking pepperbox from Qin's factories. He was not wearing a suit.
Rifle barrel against the corner as I return to the hallway and the mute follows. A smell of powder and a sting sinks somewhere from my nostril to my left arm but I pay it no mind.
Two more rooms. I raise the barrel to kick a decorative table with a vase on top mostly cause it's a damn eyesore in this cramped space. The lamplight crosses my eyes as they swing indifferently to the violence beneath.
And both doors open at the same time.
"Move!" Nikto roars and I jump to the left with my shoulder leaning on the wall as the last shell in his pump penetrates both open doors, from my angle I could see explicitly how the black suit in the first one got his right shoulder punctuated just before his finger falls on the trigger of the automatic in his hand as he falls. The mute gets down barely in time a dotted line rips from the left wall to the ceiling until the Qin finally falls on the broken tiles of the vase and the gun hooked to his numb finger ran out of bullets.
I pull myself off the wall and run to the last room of this floor about the same time the big guy in a suit comes out with a ludicrously small Ruger in hand and I run right into his grip.
The man three notches taller than me throws his left palm over the rifle's front sight as he overpowers me in an instant but not before I pull the trigger. Must've flipped the firing mode in the commotion as three bullets came gushing through his bloody palm in succession.
Plak, plak, plank. His severed pinky falls in the next breath, and the one afterward was used screaming while I free my grip from the rifle as muscle memory serves its purpose.
My left-hand pulls out the Pardini in less than a second as I put two in his face before he could raise the pistol. The fucker's head swings back....as if hitting a speed bump at the back of his neck, it bounces back. The left cheek sinks into a layered hole in contrast to the bloody mess of the other one on his forehead, and they fall forward slothfully like a slide show. I take two steps back and watch him fall across the narrow hallway. His face smeared into the white part of the wall like a bridge across.
Bang!
I take a gander at Nikto, who had dropped the empty pump and now holding a .38 in hand, another hole on the buckshoted fellas's forehead, not much bigger than the rest. Upon my line of sight, he gives me a fretful shrug and a show of hand before sticking the gun back in his jacket pocket.
His humor got a weird timing.
I laugh bitterly and with all my might, kick the big guy's side of head as the blood mops the wall in an arc to the wooden floor. His body slants from the door to the left turn of the corner ahead.
A 'Shanshui' black and white painting swings left and right with drops of red on its edge.
The mute nonchalantly plows the Balck Ruger from the corpse as I take point by the corner in case of surprises. The sense of smell slowly retakes control as my breaths dilute the adrenaline, fresh kills, man, dogs even cats have a certain smell, an odor that loosely resembles sweat but in a corrosive nature.
Some find an impulsive repulse by it, some think it's pleasant enough to endure, some psychic notions it as soul leaving the body, suppose our soul must be truly vile to smell like this. I concern it as a stink, one that holds less impression than the ammonia and the sickening herbal breath outside.
A weight on my shoulder and I lean my ear to the back to be met with a stick of gun. Nikto had crawled the rifle out of the corpse too.
"The next shot will be crooked, some blood got in." I cough out a hum and take it by the slippery and warm barrel. The lad tries to pull the slide of Ruger to check the chamber but doesn't realize his hands are shaking either and instead, he racks the slide back completely and a loose cartridge jumps out. A red spread across the white of his eyes with a cursing.
"Hey," Switching between the turn of a corner and the lad a couple of times I squeeze the words out of my mouth. "Check for wounds, don't want you leaking out just now." I sounded damn crude but the tone got his eyes fixed again, he shakes his head firmly.
"I'm good." I hum a response. Flipping back to single fire, I lean the barrel on the corner wall, as the muzzle pokes out in the open, slowly turning into the opposing force of the wall.
20 degrees....40 degrees, the red and white wall runs along the corner into the connecting corridor.....45.....60 degrees, a smell of chemicals came to me as the most random and unwelcoming surprise in the world. What in the hell is it this time...... at 65 degrees a series of machine gun fire exploded veils of dust on the right wall half a meter away.
"Fuck!" I blurt out.
Telling my reflexes to piss off, I crouch down bringing the line of sight tilted upward, and press through the last lean under the bullets gushing over me into another the plank on the wall for the full view of the hallway. I rapid-fired three very off-target shots pushing the shooter back in wherever he mounted. From the view behind a notch and half a circle, I can only see the muzzle flash of my piece into another empty walk.