RainStorm

beneath him. Thinking his biggest problem right then
    was finding a way to avoid having me spot him for what he was.
    Thinking wrong.
    I kept my head down as I approached him, acting distracted, oblivious
    to his existence. I'd been moving quickly and did nothing now
    to alter my pace. My heart was still hammering and I felt a fresh
    adrenaline dump moving in like rolling thunder.
    When I was about a meter away from him and beyond the range
    of his peripheral vision, I took a deep step in, dropped into a squat
    just behind him, and wrapped my arms tourniquet-tight around his
    legs just above the knees. I felt his body go rigid, heard him suck in
    a breath. In my adrenalized, slow-motion vision, I logged every detail:
    the height of the guardrail; rust marks on the metal; chewing
    gum ground black into the cement tiles from which his feet were
    about to fatally separate.
    I exploded up and out and launched him into the air over the
    railing. His arms flailed and he shrieked as he went airborne, a high,
    atavistic sound of sheer animal panic, and I felt a spasm of terror rip
    through his body as I let him go. The cigarette tumbled out of his
    mouth. His limbs swam crazily, uselessly, against the air around
    him. Then he was gone, below my field of vision. The shriek continued,
    cut off a second later by the sound of a resounding, dull
    thud twenty feet below. Tires screeched. Another thud. Crunching
    sounds. More screeching tires. Then silence.
    I continued on my way to the New Yaohan department store.
    As the causeway curved right, the accident scene became visible.
    Traffic was stopped, and a number of people were clustered around
    something on the ground. Really, they ought to make those
    guardrails higher. It's dangerous.
    Two people, Chinese civilians, were heading toward me. Shit. I
    averted my eyes and changed my posture, dropping my shoulders,
    adopting a more rolling gait, giving them a persona to remember,
    a persona that wasn't mine. I felt them looking at me closely as I
    passed. They might have seen what had happened; if they had, they
    would be in mild denial about it and trying to come up with some
    other explanation for the evidence of their senses, what the psychologists
    call "cognitive dissonance" and "reality testing."
    I briefly considered heading straight back to the terminal and returning
    to Hong Kong. Two bodies, two potential witnesses. . . the
    police might not be happy. But I decided to take the chance. The
    bodies were of foreigners, and so unlikely to produce undue domestic
    alarm. And Macau was no stranger to gangland killings, killings
    that the authorities had worked hard to downplay lest they inhibit
    the lucrative gambling tourism trade. If they could quickly rule
    these deaths "accidental" or otherwise act to minimize fallout, I expected
    they would.
    I kept walking. From here I could take a variety of routes, and
    if anyone else was following me they'd have to be set up close by. I
    saw no one. I'd still watch my back, make the appropriate evasive
    moves to be certain, but, for a few precious minutes, I was reasonably
    sure that I wasn't being followed. If there was anyone left that
    I might ambush, they would likely be at the hotel.
    Keeping my head down and my pace brisk but not attention-getting,
    I cut through the New Yaohan, moved down the causeway
    to the street, and walked the ten minutes to the Mandarin Oriental.
    As I reached the back entrance, the cell phone buzzed. I looked
    at the display, and saw one of the numbers I had seen in the phone's
    call log. Shit, five down, but someone was still left, checking in,
    wanting an update, or instructions, or just the sound of a familiar
    voice in an unfamiliar country.
    I went inside. If they had someone else in position it would be
    here, the other place where they could reasonably expect to pick
    me up. Maybe another Arabic guy, sitting in the spacious lobby,
    calling from a cell phone, waiting for a friend to show up.
    I used the back entrance, checking the hot spots along the way.
    So far, so good.
    I walked in through the cafe entrance. Because I hadn't seen
    anyone in back, I knew they weren't covering the entrances. That
    meant the next choke point would be the elevators. And there was
    only one spot where you could wait without drawing attention and
    watch the elevators: at the end of the cafe closest to the lobby. As I
    moved inside, that was the first spot I checked.
    Delilah was sitting there, wearing a black skirt and