“What now?” Kowalski asked, having to yell somewhat.
“We need a fast way out of here,” Gray said, heading down the alley toward the crowds around the lake. “But it’ll be hard to hail a cab, and it’s not like we can blend into the crowd.”
“I can,” Seichan said.
She closed her ripped blouse by crossing one side over the other like a sarong and tucking the ends into her jeans to hold everything in place.
“You stay here,” she ordered. “Stick to the shadows until I return.”
2:28 A.M.
Gray kept to the mouth of the alley, his eyes never leaving the festival crowd. Kowalski hung back deeper in the alley, making sure no one snuck up behind them.
A moment ago, he had traded weapons with Kowalski. The big man’s long duster made it easier to hide the length of the AK-47 rifle. Gray kept the pistol at his thigh, turning his body to keep it out of direct sight.
Sirens grew louder and louder.
To his right, the grounds around the neighboring lake were still packed with revelers, but to his left, the throngs on the streets were already beginning to stream away, heading to bed or into one of the many casinos or bars.
As he stared down the street, the flow of pedestrians began to scatter, like startled pigeons.
The sharper timbre of a two-stroke engine cut through the cacophony of music and voices. A motorcycle burst into view, carrying a familiar rider. Seichan artlessly plowed through the straggling crowd, trusting them to jump out of her way.
As the people cleared, Gray saw it wasn’t a cycle but more of a rickshaw. The front end was a motorbike, the back end a small-wheeled buggy. Such vehicles were called trishaws. He had seen them whizzing about the streets on their way here. In Macau, a city with one of the densest populations, trishaws were much more practical than cars.
But maybe not when one was being hunted by warring Triads.
Seichan skidded to a stop next to them. “Get in! Stay low!”
With no choice, Gray and Kowalski climbed into the buggy in back. Gray felt exposed in the open like this, especially as one of the rare white faces amid a sea of Asian countenances.
Kowalski tried to sink into the depths of his long coat, clearly mindful of his conspicuous bulk. “This is a bad idea.”
Once they were seated, Seichan sped the vehicle around and headed away from Casino Lisboa, skirting the edge of Nam Van Lake.
“It’s the best I could commandeer,” she yelled back to them. “Roads are blocked all over the city. No way I could get something larger through in time.”
She continued around the lake.
Gray realized they were heading away from the Macau ferry terminal.
“Where are you going?”
“Over the causeway.” She pointed across to the neighboring island of Taipa. A brightly lit bridge crossed to it from here. “A smaller ferry terminal lies on that side, not far from the Venetian hotel. It’s less likely anyone will be looking for us over there. I learned the last boat of the night leaves in twenty minutes.”
And we need to be on it.
With targets painted on their backs, Macau had become too hot.
Gray hunkered low in the buggy seat as Seichan hit the main drag and raced toward the causeway. She wound in and out of traffic, even flying through slower-moving bicycles and pedestrians when necessary.
As they hit the bridge, it was a straight three-kilometer shot to the other island. Congestion bottlenecked on the bridge, but it barely slowed Seichan. They whisked along at a heady pace, weaving and dodging their way across. To either side, the moonlit waters of the Pearl River Delta glowed with thousands upon thousands of floating lanterns, spreading far out to sea, mirroring the stars in the sky.
Ahead, Taipa Island blazed with neon, a cheap spectacle to the quieter beauty found here.
In less than ten minutes, they had cleared the causeway and turned for the narrow streets that fronted the Taipa ferry terminal.
Before they had gone twenty yards, the massive grill of a Cadillac Escalade careened out of an alley to the right and T-boned their trishaw, sending it spinning and slamming it hard into a waist-high beach wall.
Gray got tossed, flying, tangled with Kowalski.
They hit the rocky sand and rolled. Gray managed to keep hold of his pistol as he came to a skidding stop. Still on his back, he swung the weapon up toward the road, where the Cadillac sat askew, blocking traffic.
Men—a mix of Chinese and Portuguese—burst out of its doors, but they kept low, the wall blocking a clear shot. They swarmed to the left as a group.
Only then did Gray realize Seichan wasn’t there.
With his heart pounding in his throat, he rolled to his knees for a better vantage and began firing. He struck one assailant in the arm; the next three shots went wide. Then he saw Seichan hauled up among them. She was dragged toward the Cadillac, dazed, her face half covered in blood.
Cursing, Gray lowered his pistol, fearful of shooting into the cluster of men who held Seichan.
The enemy was not so reticent.
Sand blasted around Gray’s knees.
Steps away, Kowalski finally freed his AK-47. Holding it with one arm, he strafed the wall, driving back the pair of shooters. His other arm pointed toward the shelter of the causeway.
They were open targets on the beach.
With no other choice, they sprinted for its shelter. Gray fired a few potshots back toward the Cadillac. A tall, bearded man stood beside the SUV, unfazed by the rounds ricocheting off its bulletproof windows. The figure scooped Seichan’s limp form from the men and rolled her into the back.
Doors slammed, and with a squeal of tires, the Cadillac careened away. A few gunmen remained, shooting toward them, but Gray reached the causeway and ducked under the bridge, Kowalski at his heels.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Kowalski said.
“Keep moving.”
Ducking his head, Gray passed beneath the causeway. He needed to shake the gunmen left behind. Reaching the far side, he crossed back to the beach wall next to the bridge and clambered over it. The snarl of traffic was slowly clearing.
Taking advantage of the bedlam of honking horns and bumper-to-bumper vehicles, Gray kept low and maneuvered across the street. To his left, a gunman searched the beach. Another one hopped over the wall to get an angle of fire under the bridge.
Gray rushed across the road and into the densely packed maze of streets and alleyways. Kowalski followed, huffing heavily next to him.
“Seichan?” Kowalski asked.
“They didn’t immediately shoot her,” he answered.
Thank God for that.
They continued for another quarter mile, mostly paralleling the beachfront, heading away from the causeway. The streets were still crowded, but not as thickly as earlier in the night. Still, in a sea of Asian faces, the two Americans stuck out too prominently. It would not be hard for the hunters to track them.