Rogue Shot by Jack Mars

Author:Jack Mars [Mars, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

7:55 pm Hong Kong Time

Mong Kok neighborhood

Kowloon

City of Hong Kong

China

“This is it?” Troy said quietly.

They stood in a dark stairwell below an open door to the fifth floor. Zhao was above him on the landing between floors, but Troy could only see his outline, the dark suit a dark smudge against the surrounding darkness.

Very weak, almost nonexistent light came from the hallway above them, as if they were deep underwater and getting the last rays of sunlight before everything went completely dark. They had passed several figures huddled in rags on the stairway’s lower levels. This was like a stairway to hell, only it went up instead of down. These were the slums of Hong Kong.

“This is the address he gave,” Zhao whispered. “The signal confirms only that the ankle monitor is inside this building. Could be he cut it off.”

“And went back to the mountainside,” Troy said. “It was nicer there.”

Zhao laughed, a barely audible sound.

“Why would he even be here?” Troy said.

The man was an international drug trafficker and a supposed member of a terrorist organization with ties to the Taiwanese government. He'd been busted with 200,000 Euros in a couple of leather bags while trying to jump on a small private plane out of town. There were nicer accommodations in Hong Kong that the man could well afford.

“It’s a good place to hide,” Zhao said. “Triads control everything here.”

They had walked through the neighborhood to come to this dilapidated building. On the main boulevards of Mong Kok, bright neon signs with Chinese characters flickered and buzzed in competing colors, casting a trance-like glow over the crowds. Throngs of people moved quickly through the jammed streets, as if the city wasn’t in lockdown, and they brushed against and bumped into each other, as if personal space was not a thing.

At some point, Troy and Zhao had turned and passed down an alleyway, one leading to another, and then another, a warren of intersecting walkways, some so narrow there was barely room to pass through. In the alleyways, the lights from the boulevards seemed to dim, unable to penetrate the shadows that clung to the walls and pavement.

The buildings above were tall and crowded together, with laundry lines hanging between them. Even here in the backstreets, in what seemed like no man’s land, there were stores and hole-in-the-wall restaurants lit up by fluorescent lights, the neon signs outside advertising various wares and meals that Troy couldn’t begin to understand. The pavement was rough and uneven, with patches of trash and slippery fetid puddles everywhere.

The air was thick with the strong smells of fried food and cigarette smoke, mixed here and there with the overpowering stench of garbage from overflowing dumpsters and sewage bubbling up from beneath the ground.

People had turned and watched impassively as Troy and Zhao, in their business casual suits, stepped over the dirty standing water, while Zhao scanned the crumbling buildings for the address. There couldn’t be two more obvious cops in the world.

Troy wouldn’t

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