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Zhang Daiyu used the sudden violence to turn on the startled assassin and wrestle him for possession of his weapon.
I yelled, “Zhang Daiyu!”
She glanced back and understood my intent instantly. She let go of the man and stepped back.
He realized he was exposed and tried to bring his gun round to shoot me, but I already had him in my sights and squeezed the trigger, unleashing a short burst that caught him in the chest.
He staggered back, dropped his gun, clutched at his heart, and fell to his knees. An instant later, he collapsed face-forward and there was a sickening crack as his skull hit the concrete base outside the container.
I rounded on Liu Bao, who was fighting the pain to try and pull himself toward his weapon. He stopped and raised his hands.
Zhang Daiyu grabbed the assassin’s gun, ran over to Shang Li, and removed his gag.
“Jack, Zhang Daiyu,” he croaked. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
His voice was dry and rough like sandpaper. I dreaded to think how he’d been treated by these people.
Their cruelty only fueled my anger.
“Why did you target us?” I asked Liu, closing on him. He forced himself to his knees, and I raised my gun and pointed the barrel directly at his head. “Answer me!”
He glanced at his dead henchmen and fear filled his eyes.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Don’t kill me and I will tell you everything.”
CHAPTER 72
“YOUR LIFE ISN’T in my hands,” I replied. I looked pointedly at Shang Li, who took what were likely to have been his first steps in days. It was his team who’d been killed, and he’d been the one taken hostage.
“I couldn’t save them,” Li said, tears glistening in his eyes. “Kha Delun, Ling Kang, and Jiang Jinhai. Those were their names. They were my friends. And you killed them.” He grimaced as though fighting an inner demon, then wheeled round suddenly and punched Liu in the face.
The gangster reeled backward and almost lost consciousness. He cracked a bloody smile as he regained his senses.
“Their deaths were necessary. As necessary as breathing. I ordered them gone with a single breath.”
Li seethed in the face of these cruel taunts.
“Will you do what’s necessary?” Liu asked. “Will you breathe?”
I saw the conflict on my friend’s face. He wanted vengeance so desperately, but he was fundamentally a good man. In the end his anger subsided and he sighed in resignation.
“I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m not a killer.”
Shang Li was a good, moral man. One of the many reasons I had chosen him to be my business partner in Private Beijing.
“Use him. Get what you need from him,” said Li, heading for the world beyond the container.
“Looks like we have a deal,” I told Liu Bao, who wiped his bloody mouth. “Your life for what you know.” He struggled painfully to stand on his wounded leg, but I gestured with the gun. “Stay down.”
He nodded slowly, eyes full of hatred, but he knew it was over for him.
“Start talking,” I said, as Zhang Daiyu came to stand beside me. I glanced out of the doorway at Li, who was squatting on his haunches, head in his hands. “We should call his wife,” I said to Zhang Daiyu.
She shook her head, glancing at the traumatized man. “Not yet.”
She turned to Liu then and said something to him in the most derisive, hostile tone I’d ever heard from her.
He grunted and turned to me as he said, “I am a member of the Three Dragons. It is a network that reaches from the street to the government. People like me, people in government, politicians, news media. Those with power. True power for change.”
