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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Smoked out
>>Above KahukuTets Nakajima was on the verge of panic. The law was looking for two of his members and two of the huntees. And it was time to go, 10 minutes ago already.
All of the other members of the hunt club left immediately after the aborted hunt, but he and the staff were still here. The one they called the Undertaker was still loading bodies of the hunted into the disposal truck, which had earlier served as their jail. When that was done, Nakajima would send him and the truck on their way too. The real problem was that two of the huntees were still at large and he'd lost their GPS positionings. But he had Tex and the Chef on their trail.
Nakajima's radio chirped. "Got a problem," Tex said. "They got the Chef. If he ain't dead, he'll bleed to death."
"Who's they?!"
"The two girls, I guess. I heard a rifle and a pistol. Somebody up there is a pretty good shot. Hey, stay on the line. We lobbed a smoke can at 'em and they should be moving any second."
Above the silence from the phone, Nakajima heard the pounding of his heart.
In the swirling smoke, Shauny Nakamura, Imelda the Manila street kid and their new friend Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka held their breath, squeezed their eyes tight. The senator, being a man who'd never met a substance he wouldn't smoke if it gave him a little buzz, his lungs gave out first. Squinting, coughing, he saw sunlight through the smoke and crawled that way. Imelda, who grew up undernourished in the soot and smoke of Manila, was right behind.
A shot rang out from below, then a second. Both missed, but the second hit the rock behind them, ricocheted and grazed Imelda's forearm. She screamed.
Shauny, fit as she was, could have held her breath a lot longer, until the smoke cleared, but she ran to Imelda, exposing herself, and pulled the girl to safety behind the rock. The senator dove behind her.
"What the hell is happening?!" Nakajima barked into his hands-free microphone.
"Wounded the kid, saw the woman, and there's a guy with them!"
"Who?!"
"No idea. Hang on, there's a little breeze, the smoke is starting to clear. I'm gonna fire another can up there."
Shauny, Imelda and the senator were already coughing when the second whistling canister exploded.
"You go to that side of the rock," Shauny gasped to the senator, taking Imelda by the hand, "we'll go the other." Doubled over coughing, they ran from behind the protective cover of the rock outcropping, waiting for gunfire from below. They heard shots, but they came from above.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com