The fourth watcher

Rafferty can almost hear Chu thinking. “It sounds like he doesn’t trust you.”

“Probably afraid I take after him.”

“Why so early?”

“My guess would be he thinks it’ll be easier to tell whether anyone’s with me.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’m not crazy about it either.”

“Get him to change it.”

“You think I didn’t try that already?”

Chu says, “This feels wrong.” Rafferty can hear people in the background and the clatter of dishes and silverware. Chu is in a restaurant.

“Where are you eating?”

“McDonald’s,” Chu says.

“You’re a regular Yank.”

“They’re all over China. I got used to the food.”

“Quarter Pounder or what?”

“Big Mac and fries. Is this an attempt at friendly conversation?”

“We’re stuck with each other,” Rafferty says. “No sense in wasting testosterone. At least not until it’s time for us to kill each other.”

“I suppose not,” Chu says. Then he says, “Actually, since we’re being candid, I hate McDonald’s. Everything tastes like it’s fried in whale fat.”

“Then why are you there?”

“Takeout. Your little girl was hungry.”

Rafferty’s heart seems to have leaped intact into his throat, where it’s hanging on for dear life. He attempts to clear it away. When he’s sure of his voice, he asks, “What did she want?”

“Chicken McNuggets and a large order of fries. And one of those chemical milk shakes.”

“What flavor?”

“Is this a quiz? Strawberry.”

“Pink,” Rafferty says. He hears the word as though from a great distance, and Arthit turns at the rasp in his voice.

Chu says, “Excuse me?”

“My girl,” Rafferty says. “She likes pink.”

“She’s braver than she should be,” Chu says. “They both are. Don’t take this as a threat, please. I would hate to have to hurt them.”

“We’ve covered this before.”

“Just reminding you. It’s in your hands. I’ll expect to hear from you at five.” The line goes dead. Rafferty lets the phone fall into his lap. He exhales so hard that the entire windshield fogs.

“Anything new?” Arthit says.

“Same old stuff. Death threats and a strawberry shake.” He picks up the cracked phone and closes it, opens it, and closes it again. “I can’t actually see anything. This is like putting together a puzzle without a picture on it. All we can do is grab as many pieces as we can get our mitts on.”

Arthit puts a hand on the handle of his door. “So shall we grab another piece?”

“We shall,” Rafferty says. He pops his own door and slides out into warm rain. Arthit is already halfway to the second car, taking long strides and waving the two cops out. At the edge of his vision, Rafferty sees Ming Li and Leung fall into step with him. The two cops meet them beside their car. The plainclothes officer from the tuk-tuk comes up behind them.

“Front and back,” Arthit says, raising his voice over the sound of the rain. “Fast. In and straight up the stairs. Exactly”-he flips the watch around-“one minute from now. Nobody stays in sight of that window for more than a second or two.” To the plainclothes cop from the tuk-tuk, he says, “You get the door for us and stay there. Everybody got it?”

The cops nod. One of the two from the car is young enough to give Rafferty a twinge of paternal worry-wide, anxious eyes and not a line on his face. The other has skin like an old saddle and a burning cigarette cupped against the rain. His nameplate says kosit. He looks as anxious as someone waiting for a bus.

“Don’t take him down unless your life depends on it,” Arthit says. He checks the watch again. “Forty seconds. Go.”

Kosit and the young cop take off at a run and slant to the right of the building; they’re going to hit the rear entrance and remain on the first floor in case the Korean makes it down the stairs. Arthit slips his gun free, looks from Ming Li to Leung, and slaps Rafferty lightly on the shoulder, saying, “Now.”

The four of them round the corner, running full out, and the plainclothes cop angles across the street in front of them to get the door open. Arthit pauses midstreet for a second, the others stumbling to a halt behind him as a car slashes through the standing water on the road, and then he’s running again, up the steps and through the door, with the others a step behind.

The hallway is dirty and short. A single, cobwebbed forty-watt bulb dangles by a frayed wire at the foot of the stairs, swaying back and forth in the wind coming through the door. The stairs aren’t carpeted, and Rafferty thinks, Noise. Arthit waves them to a halt as the back door opens and the other two cops come in, dripping. The swinging light makes their shadows ripple as though they’re underwater. Arthit gestures for the older one to take a position at the front door, beside the cop who let them in. His eyes meet Rafferty’s, and he jerks his head in the direction of the back door.

Rafferty shakes his head.

Arthit studies him for a moment, reading his resolve, and then points his index finger at Ming Li and flicks it toward the door. Ming Li does something that might be the first stage of a pout but cancels it and goes dutifully down the hall, the little gun dainty in her hand. The young cop looks at her, looks again, and gives her a nervous smile.

Arthit holds up three fingers, twice for emphasis, then folds them again. He raises his hand to show one, then two, and on three, he, Rafferty, and Leung charge up the stairs. At the top they turn right and sprint to the last door on the right. In unison, Arthit and Leung lift their right legs, and Arthit whispers, “Look away.” Then the two of them snap their legs forward and kick the door in. Arthit throws something inside and leaps back.

There is a blinding flash of light and a whump, and Rafferty sees a blur of movement inside, the big man throwing himself toward the window. The flash from the concussion grenade reveals nothing but the size of the room and the presence of the man, frozen by the flash in front of a cheap blue couch. Rafferty has no time to register anything else, other than the sweet, strident smell of cheap cologne, before Leung launches himself through the air and hits the man at the back of his knees. The Korean goes down so heavily the floor shakes, kicks back at Leung, and rolls away, coming partway up with something shiny in his hand, and time seems to slow as Rafferty sees the man-probably half blind from the flash of the grenade-bring the hand around toward Arthit, silhouetted clearly in the doorway, and then the world erupts in a roar that should have blown the windows out.

But Leung has lashed out with a leg, knocking the big man’s gun up, and the lighting fixture in the center of the ceiling explodes, throwing the room into darkness except for the rectangle of gray that defines the window and a yellowish fall of light through the door. A chair or something slams to the floor, and Rafferty sees movement as someone rises from the tangled knot that was Leung and the Korean, and the standing man-too big to be Leung- bends at the waist and charges, taking Rafferty up and into the air with a low shoulder to the gut. Rafferty has just enough time to slam his gun against the side of the man’s head before he’s tossed to the floor, thrown as easily as a feather pillow, and the man is most of the way to the open door when Arthit blocks it with his body, lowers the barrel of his gun, and fires twice at the man’s legs. The Korean stumbles and lists to the left, but he keeps coming, and another shot bursts against Rafferty’s eardrums, and suddenly Arthit is no longer standing in the doorway, and the man is almost through it, one hand clasping his left thigh. He grabs the doorframe and starts to pull himself through, and then there is something small and white in front of him. He does a surprised stutter-step, and Ming Li brings up the little gun and shoots him from a distance of three feet.

The Korean drops to one knee. Instantly Leung is on him, raking his eyes with clawed fingers, and as the man