Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

      The Chinese man made a little “O” of surprise, and the American dove over a table of orchids.

      Bobby just went on shooting. Three into Qiu, two down the path, one where the American had disappeared, one into Qiu again, and the slide locked open because the clip was empty.

      

      Jerry heard the first shot and had a dizzy moment when he thought he had pulled his own trigger, and then he recognized the smaller, sharper report of a handgun. Shot after shot. Jesus! Then the Orchid House erupted in shooting, at least three guns on the north, west, and northeast. Glass began to break overhead and shower down.

      It was a bust.

      He rolled the gun in the mat and threw junk over it and swung himself off the platform.

      

      Alan landed on his maimed hand and fire raced up his arm, but he rolled clear of a tangle of flowers and raced down the maze. The bastard had a gun, had fired at him. But how could he have missed?

      Alan could hear at least three guns firing then, not all together, but two of them were close. He pressed past a tool shed and grabbed a pair of wicked-looking scissors from a table. Any port in a storm. Another shot was fired, so close that he saw the muzzle flash through the flowers and realized that he was separated by only a screen of plants from the main trail. He couldn’t tell whether the shot had been fired at him or not, but he flung himself around the next corner.

      Bobby Li heard the shots as if through deep water, as if they were fired by somebody else. The young Chinese was down, lying on the trail, and Bobby headed for the west exit. He thought he was safe unless Andy had actually seen him fire the gun. If he hadn’t, Bobby could blame the shooting on the American. He could say that the American had shot Qiu.

      But suddenly there was more shooting, all around him. Qiu’s team were now shooting at Andy’s team, and he was in the middle.

      

      Alan moved through the maze of trails, unable to consider anything beyond his next cover. His hand pulsed with pain as he stumbled through a display, knocking plants in all directions. He threw himself behind a collection of tools and handcarts right at the edge of the greenhouse wall, determined to get his bearings before panic and paranoia eliminated his ability to think. He lay panting, trying to be silent. There was another shot. Were they shooting at him? He couldn’t seem to see the moment of the meeting, as if he had a spot of amnesia around the first shot.

      Something had gone horribly wrong. But the man in the windbreaker had known the signal. And then the shots—now it was coming back—and a man behind him going down, and the guy in the windbreaker still shooting. At Alan, yes, he thought so, yes. But not really aiming. Looking—crazy. He lay still, his lungs going as hard as if he had run five miles, and tried to imagine where the shooters were, and what they were after. They had to be shooting at each other. There was no cover. The plants offered concealment, but in the whole building there wasn’t anything that would even deflect a small-caliber pistol bullet. Only the screen of the plants separated the trails. Alan thought there were at least four shooters, spread across the hall. Somewhere, one of them fired and a bullet hit the glass above him, and the whole pane crazed, lines of cracks spreading out to the frames.

      Part of him wanted to stay and solve the puzzle, but that last bullet made up his mind. Time to go. And he realized that he was thinking again, not simply reacting.

      He reached across, tore at a wheelbarrow with his good hand and tipped it, with its load of tools, squarely across the path. Then he pushed with his bandaged hand against the shattered pane of glass until pieces began to break out of the frames, and in a moment he had cleared it, although his hand was screaming and there was blood on his arm. There was another shot from twenty meters off, hidden several folds in the trail away. A potted plant burst, spraying him with loam and plant matter.

      He rolled through the hole he had made and remembered to hold his maimed hand close with the other as he went. His shirt tore and a pain cut like fire across his back as he scraped through the frame. He fell much farther than he had expected and landed hard on his back, the wind knocked clean out of him. So many things hurt that his hand had to struggle to be heard. He rolled on to his knees and pushed himself to his feet, already plotting his path to the parking lot.

      The shooting had stopped, and he had to consider that he had been the target, and he had to wonder if there were more of them outside, on the trails and in the parking lot. He balanced waiting in hiding, perhaps in the foundations of the Orchid House, against a run for the parking lot, if he could even run. Despite the pain, the desire for movement won. He’d be damned if he’d wait for them like a cornered rat. He might surprise them. He moved cautiously around the base of the Orchid House wall and then crossed the open ground to the first of the high-peaked roofs of the traditional buildings he had seen. He surprised the schoolgirls there, and his torn shirt and blood and the wildness of his expression shocked them. He took them as a sign he was safe for a moment and he ran along the gravel path, heedless of the looks that other visitors gave him until he made it to the parking lot without another shot being fired.

      The cabdriver didn’t want him, but Alan shoved cash into his hands and made noises until the cab was moving. He had good instincts, but, because he lacked training and was preoccupied with his injuries, he didn’t see a car follow him out of the lot.

      

      Bobby Li held out all the rest of his American bills as he and Ho collided. Ho grabbed the money and tossed the camera. He was fast for a big man, gone while Bobby was retrieving the camera. Men were pouring out of the Orchid House like ants; a woman was screaming somewhere near the food concession. Small, hollow-cheeked Indonesian men were turned, eyes wide, toward the Orchid House.

      He had to get rid of the gun. He had to get out of Jakarta. He had to change his life.

      But he hadn’t betrayed Andy or George Shreed with the truth.

      

      Jerry held his ground until the building was clear. He should have left as soon as he saw the Chinese. He should have shown Bobby Li exactly where to stand. He should have had a better escape route. As it was, he was one step ahead of the Jakarta police. His mind reground the facts on and on, and he blamed himself, and he needed a drink. They all went together.

       7

      Washington.

      Dukas got the call on his cell phone from the NCIS duty officer when he had been asleep at his desk and was dreaming of a house and a dog and was happy, perhaps because he didn’t own a house or a dog and these two seemed particularly congenial.

      “You have a secure call.”

      “Oh, shit.”

      Oh, shit. He knew only one person who might want to call him at the office at eleven at night, and there wasn’t supposed to be any reason for him to call.

      “What’s the number?” he said to the duty officer.

      “US embassy. Naval attaché.”

      Oh, double-shit.

      “Dukas, NCIS, I have a message to call you.” There was the usual confusion, nobody at the other end ever having heard of him, and then they found the person who had asked him to call, a lieutenant-commander who asked him to wait, and then Alan came on the line.

      “Hey, Mike. You secure?”

      “Can’t you tell by the sound? You sound as if you got your head in a fifty-five-gallon drum. What’s up?”

      “Somebody started shooting.”

      Dukas felt his heart squeeze. “Oh, Christ, Al—”

      “I left the mark, no sweat, and then I went to the meeting we said was going to be a piece of cake, and all hell broke loose.” He told it quickly to Dukas, what he knew of