As he made it into the vehicle, he spun around to check his “six” while still crawling across his prostrate colleagues.
The back door to the club burst open and two men in black leather jackets stepped out. One wielded a black pistol and the other a 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip.
CPO Meyer dumped a half-magazine into each man, sending them and their weapons tumbling into the alley as the door closed again behind them.
“Go!” Meyer shouted, and the van accelerated up the alley to the east.
As soon as the van moved past him, Jack emerged from between the garbage cans and rushed toward the back door, desperate to check on Chavez. “Ding? Ding?” he said into his headset.
When he was still twenty-five feet from the door, a white SUV turned into the alley from the west on squealing tires. It raced closer, accelerated after the panel van holding Zha and the Americans.
Jack had no doubt this SUV would be full of 14K reinforcements. He made it to the shotgun lying by the dead Triad, picked it up off the ground, and then stepped into the center of the alleyway. He raised the weapon and fired a single shell into the street just in front of the approaching vehicle. Buckshot ricocheted off the asphalt and shredded both of the front tires, sending the SUV veering off to the left and crashing through the glass windows of an all-night market.
Jack heard a noise close on his right, turned, and saw Adam Yao running toward him. He continued on past Jack to the back door of Club Stylish. As he ran he said, “There will be more where they came from. We have to go through the club to get out of here. Throw down the gun and follow me. Keep that mask on!”
Jack did as he was told and followed Adam.
Yao opened the door and immediately saw blood streaked down the stairs. In Mandarin he shouted, “Is everybody okay?”
He made it just a few steps down before being confronted by a man pointing a pistol in his face. Instantly the gunman realized he was looking at two unarmed men in civilian dress, not geared-up shooters. “Where did they go?” he demanded.
Adam replied, “West. I think they are going to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel!”
The Triad lowered the weapon and ran past them up the stairs.
Down in the strip club, Adam and Jack were met by a scene of carnage. A total of sixteen bodies lay on the floor. Some moved in the throes of agony, and others lay still.
Seven 14K Triads lay dead or dying, with three more less gravely wounded. Six club patrons were dead or injured as well.
Adam and Jack found Chavez, who himself was heading toward the stairs up the hallway. When he saw them he held up a small handheld computer. Jack recognized it as belonging to Zha Shu Hai. Ding had picked it up off the ground where FastByte had been bound by the SEALs.
Ding slid it into the inside pocket of his sport coat.
Adam said, “We need to keep moving. Go out the front like everyone else.”
The CIA officer led the way, and Ding and Jack followed him.
Ryan could not believe the inside of the nightclub. Every table and every chair was flipped on its side or upside down, broken glass was everywhere, and blood seeping out of bodies or smeared on the tile floor shimmered in the spinning light from the disco ball that, somehow, managed to stay intact and operational.
The shrill wail of sirens got louder and louder out on Jaffe Road.
Yao said, “It’s going to fill up with police around here quickly. They always move in when the fighting is done over here in the Triad neighborhoods.”
As they headed up the stairs, Jack said, “Whoever those guys were, I can’t believe they pulled it off.”
Just then the sound of gunfire erupted once again. This time it came from the east.
Ding looked at Jack. Softly he said, “They haven’t pulled it off yet. Go back down and grab a gun off of one of those bodies.”
Jack nodded, turned, and rushed down the stairs.
Yao asked Chavez, “What are we going to do?”
“Whatever we can.”
Adam then said, “The van. My keys are in it, and it’s unlocked. Maybe Biery can pick it up.”
Chavez nodded and called Gavin, who was in a cab on the way to the scene. “I need you to get Adam’s maroon Mitsubishi Grandis out of the alley behind Club Stylish. When you get it, give me a call, I’m sure we’ll need a pickup.”
“Okay.”
FORTY-ONE
Meyer and his team of shot-up SEAL Team Six operators managed to make it six blocks before the 14K closed in on them.
From the moment the first gunshots rang out at the club on Jaffe Road five minutes earlier, all across Wan Chai mobile phones chirped and text messages were received. Word spread quickly to 14K gunmen that their turf was under some sort of attack, and they were all ordered to descend on the corner of Jaffe and Marsh, the location of Club Stylish.
Coordination between the various groups of 14K was a disjointed mess, especially so in those first minutes, but the sheer number of goons on foot, on motorcycles, in cars, and even in the MTR rushing to the area ensured that Meyer and his team would be outnumbered fifteen to one. The Triads did not know Zha had been kidnapped — in fact, only a small fraction of them would know who Zha was in the first place. All they knew was that there was a shoot-out at the club and a group of heavily armed
They had driven east up the alley until it ended at Canal Road, then took that south until they could go east again on Jaffe. As they passed shuttered businesses and high-rise office and apartment buildings, the driver of the van, Special Warfare Operator Terry Hawley, veered left and right to avoid slow-moving and oncoming traffic.
In the back of the van, Zha was facedown and still tied and hooded, the injured men were busy wrapping quick bandages around their gunshot wounds, and Meyer was in comms with the extraction team, telling them his element was minutes away.
But things went south as soon as Meyer finished the transmission. They rolled into the intersection of Jaffe and Percival, less than a half-mile from the shoot-out and into the ultra-ritzy Causeway Bay area, when an automatic rifle was fired by a plain-clothed man in the backseat of a Ford Mustang convertible. Special Warfare Operator Hawley was hit in both arms and the chest, and he slumped forward over the steering wheel.
The twelve-passenger van swerved in the rain, skidded perpendicular to the road, and then flipped onto its side, sliding thirty yards until it crashed into the front of a light bus, a sixteen-passenger vehicle used for public transportation.
Hawley was killed by rifle fire, and another special warfare operator broke his shoulder in the crash.
Meyer was dazed, and broken glass had cut his chin, cheeks, and lips, but he kicked open the back door of the van and rallied his men. The dead and the wounded were either carried or helped along, and the prisoner was held on to, and the men shuffled into an alleyway that led toward the water, some four hundred yards to the north.
They had not been out of the street for more than a few seconds when the first of dozens of police cars raced to the scene and began pulling bewildered Hong Kongers out of the public light bus.
Three hundred yards west of the crash, Chavez, Ryan, and Yao ran through the rain, pushing past late-night crowds and leaping out of the way of emergency vehicles of all types that either raced toward Club Stylish or headed toward the popping gunfire to the east.
