SILVER SHADOW #11
"Hong Kong Nights" (Part II)
By Aaron Baugh

-Hong Kong-

Jian held the slip of paper up to read it in the light of a nearby streetlamp.  A weak rain started as he rounded yet another corner, driven on by the words from the street vendors and apothecaries encountered in the run-down sections of the former British colony. "Seek Kwai Shen," they said.

For a man with a bullet in his shoulder and a bad attitude from not tracking the people trying to kill him, it held little hope.

Besides, now he was wet.

It was the home of a bookseller.  A second and third check of the slip of paper verified what he already knew the kanji matched.  He entered the store, relieved to be out of the constant mist and immediately enveloped by the combined effects of heat and the smell of paper mixed with incense.  The small bell chimed once.

Kwai Shen's place was stacked floor to ceiling with books.  Signs guided the customer to titles in both English and Mandarin.  Jian winced as his shoulder reminded him of the foreign object embedded within, and he stepped deeper into the store.

"May I help you?" asked the man who appeared from behind a bookcase, his head suggesting that his body was on a ladder at the bookcase's edge.  Brown eyes scanned Jian's body from behind wire-rimmed glasses, and the tweed jacket perfectly complemented his parted black hair.  Quite frankly, he was nothing like Jian expected.  Perhaps his touch with reality was weaker after dealing with the television types in Pacific City.  A prim thirty-something clashed with his mind's image of a doddering old man.

"Yes, you may," began Jian.  "I was guided here by the people of the Lan Lo district."

The man smiled.  "I am Kwai Shen.  They told you of me, yes?"

Jian nodded.

"And you have need of healing, I suppose?"

Again, Jian nodded.

"Then come in the back.  Follow me."

Jian did as he was told, and took a seat in a snug, cozy study while Shen opened a cabinet and began to mix something, its ingredients taken from crystal bottles that Shen's body hid from view.

"A potion?" inquired the erstwhile vigilante.

Shen scoffed.  "You've taken a blow to the head, I'd think.  It's brandy," he said as he offered a snifter to Jian.  "Expecting a magic potion?"

Color flared, then died in Jian's face, answering for him.  He breathed in the essence of the brandy, then drank deeply.

Immediately, he felt warmth suffuse his limbs, radiating outward from the pit of his stomach.

Shen watched him carefully.  "Tired?"

Jian nodded, licked his lips.  "Yes.  May I have another?" he asked, offering the nearly empty snifter.

"I don't see why not," Shen replied after pursing his lips and swirling his own snifter a few times.

His glass refilled, Jian took another draught, emptying the glass after another.  Eyelids heavy, he moved to place the snifter on the end table, slipped, dropped it, and caught it with his other hand in the same motion, all before Shen could even extend a hand in a futile effort to help.

Jian frowned, let the glass gently onto the carpet, then leaned back against the leather of Shen's couch. "I think there was something in that brandy," he said, his words slurring softly.

"You think correctly," said Shen, who placed his glass on the counter and moved closer, pulling Jian's jacket and shirt aside to peer at the bullet wound.

"Mmmm."  Jian sighed as the drugs took deeper hold.  "'s good stuff, though I don't really drink that much."  His words died as his head slumped to the side.

After a pair of experimental shakes, Shen was satisfied of Jian's slumber, and that's when he went to work.

* * *

Clean.  That's what he smelled.  The odor of astringent chemicals, the kind used to disinfect and wipe down the surfaces in a doctor's office.

He opened his eyes, felt the awareness returning to his limbs, and felt the thick gauze on his shoulder, which now ached considerably less.

In a small metal pan beside the table he lay upon was the offending chunk of lead, looking quite small for the amount of pain it had caused him.  Jian sat up and looked around.

Although the room was lit, it wasn't bright at all.  A round control by the room's only door held the dimmer, turned low to let him rest comfortably.  Standing, he breathed deeply and centered himself, then moved his shoulder experimentally, testing the boundaries of its movements and grimacing slightly at the protestation of the joint and muscle.

Odd, he'd never felt a wound hurt so much.  Days were when he'd dodge the bullet outright.  He still pondered this when Shen entered the room, tweed jacket discarded for a immaculately white starched oxford cloth shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

"Awake so soon?" commented the bookseller.  "There were enough herbs in the first drink to put a man out for a day.  I wouldn't have thought you'd take two."

"Strength of the earth, I guess," commented the martial artist.  "How long have I been asleep?"

"Just shy of seventeen hours.  The removal of that bullet was relatively simple, and the stitches are very clean.  I can't imagine the blunt trauma, though."

Jian pulled the gauze up, examining the straight, dark lines of the stitches, six in all.  "I thank you."

"Don't think anything of it," said Shen.  "I've aided Hong Kong for free for years."

"If there is anything I can do for you in return?" asked Jian.

"Well, I do like to hear the explanations behind my guest's visits.  Tell me your story, and we'll call it an even trade."

"Fair enough," said Jian, "but in a more comfortable location?"

* * *

Jian told Shen about himself, about how he'd idolized martial artists and studied everything he could learn from anyone who'd teach him, told him how he fell in with the Triad and the Tongs, and why he was back in Hong Kong to settle old scores.

He had, of course, left out Pacific City, left out Silver Shadow and Millennium Man, and hadn't mentioned his advanced abilities.

Shen was patient, and an eager listener, and in the end, he was able to direct him to a possible lead . . .a minor Triad underboss who lived on an anchored junk in Victoria Harbor.  Having lost the trail of the sniper after the ambush in the stairwell, it was as good of a tip as any.

As Jian stood to leave, hand on the door, Shen stopped him with a question.  "You never did give me your name, you know."

Jian nodded.  "I know.  I think you'd prefer it that way."  The bell jingled one final time as the door closed behind him.

* * *

No gray.  No white.  He hadn't bothered to bring one of his 'working' outfits, and Roger Greene's staff had been rendered useless by a single swipe of the Magistrate's sword.  He still had the stars, though, all manner of pointed, deadly shapes that had escaped notice in his checked luggage.

The black balaclava over his head and the tight-fitting black jumpsuit turned him into the archetypical sneaky ninja, a stereotype that he'd despised ever since his interest in martial arts peaked so many years ago.  Still, there was little one could do to argue against its effectiveness.  Simple is often the best.

Locating the ship that held his target proved to be >easier than he thought.  Chances are that the other harbor residents didn't guard their floating homes with elaborate security devices or uzi-wielding men designed to look threatening in matching black suits.

The latter of these proved to be the weakest of all the barriers on the junk, although it was the way of the Triad to trust in its sentinels of flesh and blood rather than electronic eyes and laserbeams.

Their mistake.

The first three guards fell overboard, their cries reduced to hisses through throats torn by sharp metallic shapes.  Crouching, Jian crawled up the rope attached to the starboard bow, and slipped the magazines from the two uzis that still remained on deck.

Footsteps at the middle of the ship drew his attention, and he easily found the shadows he needed to make his way in that direction.  This new guard stood in front of what appeared to be the only door into the boat's interior.

He had to go.

The shape Jian held was like an arrowhead, and he cradled it, bringing his arm up and ready.  Something stayed his hand, however.  Call it hubris, pride, overconfidence, or what have you, but he stepped out into the center of the deck and with a flick of his hand, the dark arrowhead thunked into the wood at the man's feet.

His reaction was swift.  The guard brought up the submachinegun and levered down on the trigger, spraying bullets out in a lethal arc from hip to shoulder.

Jian was no longer there in front of him, but was instead standing behind the guard, to his right.  One arm locked around the man's neck, while the other wrapped, vicelike, around the wrist and hand controlling the uzi.  Jian's fingers pressed on tendons in the wrist, and an uncontrollable burst sailed into the sky.  In a second and a half, the weapon had emptied itself, and Jian brought his head close to the guard's ear.

"Who's here, little flunky?" he asked.

Another man appeared in the door, shouted in Mandarin, then charged the pair on deck.  Jian swiveled as the second guard fired, letting the first take the bullets.  As he dropped the now-dead Triad man, he grabbed another star, did a forward roll, and threw all in one motion.  The triple bladed star took the shooter in his left eye, his corpse falling backward and sliding down the stairs.

Jian charged down the gangway into a lushly carpeted hallway.  Obviously the Triad was doing pretty well. Stepping over the limp body of the last guard, he moved towards a door at the end of the hallway.  He placed a hand on the door, then leaned close enough to hear what was on the other side.

He smiled, then stepped back, and hammered the door with a spinning roundhouse kick that knocked it in off its hinges.

As he entered the room, he stepped over the motionless body of yet another guard, the door resting atop him, his face already growing dark with a massive bruise from the impact.  There were two more doors in the room, one that revealed the white tile of a bathroom, and the other across from Jian's original entry point.

There was a crash from behind that door, possibly a bar being put across it, or a bookshelf being used as a makeshift barricade.  Regardless, Jian moved to the door and began tapping lightly against its frame, moving out across the wall to the elegant cherry paneling that decorated it.

Hollow.

Grinning, Jian shook his head.  'Obviously not a defensive-minded person,' he thought to himself,speaking of the junk's resident.  Walls thinner than a door didn't make any sense at all.  Breaking through it, however, wouldn't be as simple as kicking in a door.

Lin Wei fumbled with the combination lock to the small escape door that he'd had installed precisely for this purpose.  Now, he cursed his choice.  A combination in an emergency?  What had he been thinking?  Perhaps he'd thought that a combination lock would be harder to pick, that since he hid profits he'd skimmed from the Triad in the walls of his escape route that he had
to protect them.  And by escaping he'd survive to spend them, but the damned lockno, the lock was fouling up all of his plans.

As he transposed the third and fourth numbers for what seemed to be the tenth time since the mysterious attack on his boat, he heard a crash from the wall behind him.  Jerking his head over his shoulder to look, he saw splintered wood and the front of a small bench that he remembered in the study.

The bench retracted and a shape dove through the small hole, tumbled forward elegantly, and sprang to its feet.

Wei's face lost all color.

"Lin Wei," said Jian, his face still covered by the balaclava mask, only his eyes visible.  "Underboss now, are we?  Seems only yesterday that you carried a hammer to break knuckles when debts weren't paid on time."

Wei stood, his forehead coated with droplets of sweat.  "Who are you?"

Jian paced in a half-circle, keeping his distance from >Wei and moving to a small collection of Buddhist statuettes, done in precious metals and semi-precious materials.  "Ah, how we forget."  He plucked a silver seated Buddha from its place on the low shelf and flung it towards Wei, a casual movement that didn't even require a turn of his head.

The tiny metal fat man thudded into the wood to the right of Wei's head, only its crossed legs visible.

"I'd thought my voice would be enough."  Jian threw another statuette, this one in jade.  This time it thudded into Wei's diaphragm and he fell to one knee, gasping for breath.

Jian crossed toWei, knelt beside him, and grabbed his hair, craning his head back to that they were eye-to-eye.

With his other hand, he whipped off the hood and was delighted at the change of Wei's expression.

"Kemo Nguyen is dead, Wei.  The Triad lost five pitiful enforcers tonight, and I'm not even winded yet."  Jian stood, forcing Wei to follow by the root of his hair.  "I need to know some things, and you'll tell me, or suffer."

Wei closed his eyes.  "You're supposed to be dead." His voice was steady, if weak.  Jian gave him at least an iota of credit for that.

"If I had a pound for every time--, well, you know the saying," said Jian with a smile.  He flung Wei back, letting go of his hair and letting the man bounce off the wall before connecting with a front kick that knocked him back again and pinned him against the wall this time.  Jian pivoted, so that the position was move comfortable to hold.

Crossing his arms, the martial artist flexed his heel and Wei grunted as pressure was placed on his xyphoid, the small bit of cartilage and bone right beneath the sternum.  The small bit that entered the heart if the correct amount of pressure was applied just right.

"We'll start simply," Jian began, his tone jaunty. "Tell me where Takeda is, and I won't break the hand you sign your checks with."