02 Ruthless.com by Jerome Preisler

Author:Jerome Preisler [Preisler, Jerome]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was what might have been called a perfect equatorial night at Pontianak Harbor, the air warm and clean, countless stars filling the sky, the water stretching off from the rim of the shore lustrous with their reflected light. At the docks, a flotilla of commercial vessels sat anchored amid a silent thicket of cranes and hoists, the off-loaded ships resting buoyantly beside others stacked from stem to sternpost with freight containers, their prows pushed deep into the water under the weight of their transport.

Most nights there was something of a dozing serenity in the quiet before daylight, when the roar and yell of dockworkers, and the constant, rhythmic swinging of booms, would forcibly overpower the soft lap of the cunrent.

Most nights.

Tonight the loud rumble of a cargo truck had shaken the stillness, a muddy tarpaulin flapping over its rear as it rolled up to the transit sheds at the north end of the dock, swung onto the ramp outside their loading doors, and came heavily to a stop.

Moments later a pair of waiting men emerged from one of the darkened sheds and turned toward the big hauler. Looking out from behind its steering wheel, Xiang saw them enter the wide yellow fan of the headlights, their short, slicked-back hair and cherry-blossom arm tattoos marking them as yakuza, barely out of adolescence, yet old enough to have been recruited from the bosozoku motorcycle gangs that were the equivalent of training schools for the Japanese underworld.

Xiang nodded to Juara, who was riding shotgun. Then, leaving the headlights on, he cut the engine, stepped out of the cab, and rounded the front grille to approach the pair of yakuza.

Punks, he thought, regarding them with stony eyes. The smuggling and drug-trafficking alliances Japanese crime families had formed with the Southeast Asian syndicates had not only yielded lucrative results, but had put strutting small-timers like these to good use. The cleanup job they were doing was the sort nobody else would touch.

“You’re fucking late,” one of the toughs said in Bahasa. “We expected you here an hour ago.”

Xiang tipped his head backward slightly, saying nothing. The cargo truck’s passenger door flew open and Juara sprang out, an FN P-90 assault weapon in his hands, the tiny lens of a laser aiming system under its silenced barrel. Expressionless, he stood beside the hauler and pointed it in the general direction of the yakuza.

“Never mind that,” Xiang said. “I want you to tell me who sent you to meet us.”

The yakuza seemed momentarily confused. “Why? We look like IMB to you?”

“You look like sewer rats who are too stupid to know they’re about to get their heads blown out their asses,” he said, and motioned to Juara.

Juara angled the small, molded-plastic gun sharply upward to center a red dot of laser light upon the yakuza’s forehead.

“Tell me who sent you.” Xiang repeated. His eyes locked on the tough’s. “Now.”

The yakuza blinked, shrugged.

“We’re doing this for a man named Kinzo,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Taking a dead gaijin for a trip out to sea,” he said.

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