C. C. Phillips
C. C. Phillips
International war broke out on American soil that night.
The new opium den was attacked and lit on fire. Three Chinese knights were shot; two died instantly, one was seriously wounded. Sifu's men killed one of the French Apaches and crippled another. The fire was extinguished before it burned out of control. Shortly after midnight, Preston Diamond heard an explosion and, from his bedroom window on the upper floor of Ulysses Grant's house, saw a ball of flames mushrooming skyward. It was in the direction of the Unzer's cottage. Strapping on his Colt, he padded down the stairs, out the main door and past two cigarette smoking soldiers staring toward the fire. He raced the several blocks to his home. Colonel Unzer's house was not on fire but the Chinese residence across the alley was a roaring inferno of exploded kindling. Later, Diamond learned that the older Chinese man, his wife, and one more of Chiang's warriors were killed in the blast.
After briefly watching the fire and the timely arrival of the fire crew, Preston thoroughly checked over the Colonel's house. It appeared to be unscathed so he trotted down the alley to inspect the stable. At first he was alarmed that the grays and Rascal were gone and then remembered having transferred them to the Grants' horse barn. He checked the building for fire or smoke lest a stray piece of flaming debris had landed on the roof or in the hay nearby.
As Diamond emerged into the alley, Sifu, standing in shadows a good distance back from the flames, stepped forward, touched Preston's arm, and led him away. Similar to the time they went to Kalmattii's Mercantile, Xi-Ping again weaved through the night blackened streets at a dogtrot heading downtown. In a dark but vaguely familiar alley, Chiang opened the door concealed inside the dragon mural and Preston followed him through to a candle lit room. It was the kitchen area where Diamond had first encountered the Chinese people. Three Shanghai fighters wearing swords and daggers stood side by side near the opposite wall. They bowed a silent acknowledgement. Several grief stricken older people shuffled around the room, their sandals whispering on the concrete floor. A pair of almond eyed children, a boy and girl sitting on a low wooden bench, squinted at Preston through the candle smoke. A faint scent of incense hung upon the air. No one spoke. Preston took up a position in front of the dragon door and maintained the silence.
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed; Diamond was beginning to wonder about the purpose of this silentious assembly when a door opened admitting two mud caked and grimy Chinese. In Mandarin, they spoke to Xi-Ping who turned and translated for Preston. “Tunnel under President Hotel, open,” he said. “We go now.” With a subtle wave to the trio of Shanghai soldiers, he stepped through the low doorway and into the tunnel he and Preston had used the first day Preston learned of the underground network. Diamond followed behind Sifu; he heard a faint rustle as the three Chinese filed in.
The passageway had not been shored up; damp earth clung to the walls; tools and baskets were removed. Small feet had tramped a solid path through the forty foot tunnel which ended at a short ladder positioned below a trap door in the ceiling. Chiang knocked lightly on the wooden cover and Preston heard a whispered shuffle of sandals above his head. The lid lifted silently to reveal a large pair of buckteeth in a round face. No words were spoken as the men climbed up and regrouped in the enormous cellar hole of Serge Ravenelle's hotel. The attendant flipped a crate upside down over the door and, when Sifu spoke to him, he pointed to a pile of sacking in a near corner. Preston guessed the man had been hiding under the burlap. The Chinese had not had time to make a concealed entrance.
Chiang explained his simple plan in both Mandarin and English: Hunt for Serge Ravenelle. Sound no alarms. Take no hostages. He pointed to Diamond's Colt. “No shoot first.” Preston interpreted this to mean “Don't announce your presence by opening up with the revolver unless Les Apaches have already started the shooting.” Preston knelt down and removed the throwing stars he had laced in his boots and stashed them in his shirt pocket.
Two sets of stairs, one at either end of the rectangular basement hole, led up to the ground floor. The Shanghai soldiers took the near flight, Sifu and Preston went to the far end and surfaced there. They followed along a dark hall that had several doors staggered along its length. Chiang paused at each and listened for sounds of habitation. Cooking odours lingered at an open but unlit room; Preston guessed it was the hotel kitchen. At the end of the passage, they came to a narrow shaft of light pouring through a slightly opened door. Sifu bent forward for a scan of the room beyond and Diamond did the same a foot or so above him. Several oil lamps sufficiently lit the room for Preston to recognize the decadent staircase: they were viewing the lobby of the Presidential Hotel. No one occupied the steps or landing above but a man dozed in a chair near the entrance doors. Low voices murmured somewhere nearby. Two signs hanging above a scarred and pitted oak counter read “GUEST REGISTRATION” and “NO VACANCY.” Ravenelle's hotel was not serving the general public.
Out of Diamond's line of sight, perhaps somewhere above, a door opened and closed. The hollow rhythm of quick footsteps echoed an eerie emptiness; a painted lady appeared at the top of the stair. She made her way to the bottom and paused beside the now alert doorman. She said something and made a gesture with her hands; lewd laughter reached Diamond's ears. The guard, an Apache, rose from his chair and unlocked the paned glass doors allowing the whore out into the night. The temporarily stalled conversation in another part of the lobby resumed. Apparently, the speakers could see out into the common area for they had paused during the exchange between the lady and the guard at the entrance.
The sentry had not yet resumed his seat when a second door opened and closed. No footfalls followed and the guard stared in the direction of the sound. Preston could almost hear his thinking as the man felt inside his coat for the reassurance that was stored there. With a glance in the direction of the talkers, he ambled toward the door. Unfortunately, Diamond and Sifu had a limited view which did not allow sufficient angle to see what door had opened. The guard stepped out of sight and Preston strained his hearing to discover what happened next: A faint cough; a dull thud; silence.
The muted conversation halted again and the tread of two pairs of feet could be heard striding across the lobby. Preston narrowly avoided a noggin knock to the chin as Xi-Ping straightened and stepped back. He eased the crack open wider and Diamond was able to see the backs of the two men who had been chatting; their guns were in their hands and they were headed in the direction the doorman had gone. The doorway where the guard must have entered was now visible. It was closed.
The pair were one step away from the door, one of them reaching for the knob, when Sifu moved backward and pushed his door shut with a solid thud. He paused a moment then opened it wide enough to look across the lobby. Preston, able to see out again, had to fill in the blank moment. The gunmen, gawping slack-jawed, were now turned toward him and Sifu. In that half-second of their paralysis, the door behind them opened wide and two of the Chinese knights, swords in hand, stepped forward to skewer the two Apaches. The third member grabbed the dead men by their collars and dragged them into the darkened hall behind him.
Sifu Chiang gripped a throwing knife in his teeth, palmed a second one, and stepped out into the lobby. After surveying the area, he motioned Preston to snuff the lights on the main floor. Diamond did as he was bid while Sifu had a whispered conference with the swordsmen. Preston joined them under the staircase. Xi-Ping thought that no more Apaches occupied the main level. He pointed to the ceiling. “We go there.”
Halfway up the stair, the landing light glistened on Chiang's balding head; Preston thought he should have borrowed a chapeau from one of the dead men. On the landing, at a ninety degree angle, two hallways split to right and left; directly opposite another flight led up to the third floor. Preston recalled that he and Xi-Ping had found the opium in the right branch, Room #24. It was along this arm that Sifu directed his search again. The passage had a single lamp burning at the far end and the landing light at the near end completed the illumination. The Chinese extinguished the lights. There were six rooms per side. Sifu spaced his fighters at intervals along the hall and had them, as silently as possible, test the locks on the doors. Those that weren't locked were searched. The left hand row had no occupancy, perhaps it was uncomfortably hot on that side during the Washington summer. All of the empty rooms had been left open and Chiang stood to one side while Preston quickly picked the simple skeleton locks of those that were locked. Three of the rooms on the right hand side were in use but vacant: possibly the recent occupants were stacked and stiffening in the narrow hall one floor below. At the second locked room, Diamond had just knelt to work the mechanism when the door swung open and a man, half asleep, tried to step out into the hall. He tripped over Preston but his outcry was stifled by a crushed larynx as Sifu aborted the fellow's visit to the washroom and put him back to sleep.
Though Preston Diamond and the Chinese contingent had worked quietly, the occupant of the second-last room had been alerted. The moment Preston poked his pick into the key hole, three rapid blasts coincided with a splintering of door frame and a spray of shattered lock fragments as a trio of randomly placed bullets ripped through the panel and slammed into the wall across the hall. Diamond felt the searing sting of wood splinters and metal slivers in his right cheek but the lethal slugs passed harmlessly over his head. He threw himself to one side, drew the Colt and pointed it into the room as the door, no longer secured by a latch, swung inward.
The hotel room was dark but Diamond made out the dim shape of a fellow, clad in white underwear, standing on the bed. Though he could not see it, Preston could feel the man's pistol sweeping the blackened doorway, seeking a target. The Colt barked once. An answering explosion and streak of orange flame erupted in front of the long-johns but it was a shot in the dark, without aim, fired from the nerveless twitching fingers of a dead man. Flimsy bedsprings protested as the Apache fell heavily onto the thin mattress.
Preston had subconsciously registered pandemonium breaking loose behind him. Now, he wriggled around on the floor and peered down the second hallway. Doors were bursting open, shouts filled the air. Sifu and the Shanghai knights were advancing toward the left branch. Overhead on the third floor, the sound of bare or stockinged feet running announced to Preston that more Apaches were billeted on that level. Someone who must have had extreme night vision opened fire down the hall and two of Sifu's soldiers spun round and sank to the floor. Diamond called, “Down the stair, Sifu, more men are up above!”
Chiang and the remaining fighter each grabbed a comrade and made for the darkened patch that marked the stairway. More lead was zipping and ricocheting down the hall; Preston saw the body of a wounded Chinese jerk from the impact as more slugs poured into him.
Near Diamond's elbow, the last door of the right hallway swung inward. A hand holding a gun appeared an instant before a head was poked cautiously round the door jamb. The shooter did not see Diamond on the floor at his feet and he calmly took aim at the retreating forms of Sifu and the Shanghai fighters. Preston twisted half a turn to snap a quick shot upwards. The bullet made an undignified entry in the man's groin and plowed its way through pelvis and several organs before coming to rest on the inside wall of the rib cage. The unfired pistol clattered to the floor near Diamond's leg and the dead man, tipping backward, disappeared into his room.
Someone (quite unwisely) fired a lantern at the far end of the left hall. Pale yellow light pushed the shadows forward between the rows of doors. Hoarse cries of anger and fear ordered the lamp extinguished but not before Preston chose two targets and fired two quick shots. One Apache spun and fell into his doorway, the second sprawled across the aisle.
The light went out.
Diamond felt for the dropped pistol, stuck it in his belt and slithered along the floor on his elbows past the opening to the left hallway and safely reached the top of the stair. Replacing the spent cartridges in his own gun, he called softly to Sifu, announcing his intentions to come down the steps. Les Apaches must have assumed the hall was now empty for another light flickered in the left branch and a lantern, hanging on a horizontal coat stand, was tentatively pushed out toward the landing.
Centre stage in the spotlight, Preston lay on the carpet as obvious as a raven on a snowdrift. A silent whisper passed over his head and one of Xi-Ping's throwing knives struck the kerosene lamp, shattering the globe and knocking the lantern from its temporary hanger. Coal oil seeped out on the threadbare rug and flames from the burning wick lapped up the fuel. Keeping the Colt trained on the hallway, Preston rolled away from the fire, felt his boots reach the stair, then pushed himself down and backward until he had sunk below the level of the landing. Sifu appeared beside him; together they backed down the staircase until near enough to the next level to jump. They leaped over the railing and disappeared into the opaqueness of the main floor.
Diamond risked a peek from his cover of darkness. Above, on the third floor and the second flight of stairs, as well as on the landing and down the left hallway, he could see or hear men running and shouting. Several alert Apaches fought the blaze with blankets but the dry painted wood and bed clothes were catching fire. Smoke billowed upward and soon both levels were bathed in a greasy, smothering glow. Preston might have emptied his guns into the French soldiers as they struggled to control the flames but he could not force himself to do so. He turned to Chiang who simply pointed to one of the dead Chinese and said, “We go now.”
Preston holstered his gun and, while Sifu kept watch on the action from the upper floor, grasped the dead man under the armpits and lugged him toward the doorway where the Chinese had left the three Apaches earlier. Though the third Shanghai fighter had suffered a bullet wound, he was not incapacitated and was able to drag the other dead comrade. In this hallway, the coal oil night lamps illuminated the way. They reached the basement step, then Sifu motioned his students to go back and make a check of each room along that hall. They did not expect to find any Apaches but Xi-Ping thought there could be hostages or Ravenelle's victims imprisoned here. Preston didn't bother picking locks; with powerful side kicks, he and the Shanghai fighter booted the doors open. At the lobby end of the aisle, Diamond peered through the partially opened door: the fire was out of control now and growing bigger with each gulping, fire-spewing breath. They found no bodies, living or dead, though one of the rooms had been used for some sort of interrogation centre: there were implements of torture; blood was splattered on the walls and a dark coagulated pool was on the floor. Sifu led the way to the basement. The Chinese passage guard grew wide eyed when he saw the bullet riddled bodies of the two dead soldiers but he was able to help pass the dead men through the trap door into the tunnel and then climbed down to join the others.
Diamond was the last to go into the hole but first he went back up the basement step for one more look. Flames were now galloping down the hall he had just evacuated. Dense smoke and searing heat clung to the ceiling but a thermo inversion kept the lower third clear. At the opposite end, the dead Frenchmen were engulfed. The fire was now a roaring, red-hot tornado twisting through hell. Beams from the upper floors were creaking and crashing. For a moment Preston thought he heard cries of someone trapped. He listened closely. No, he couldn't hear anything but the fury of the fire. He hoped the men above would escape. Inevitably, they would burn in Hell, but live cremation is a terrible way to get there.
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