Black Read Free

nowhere.
    Thomas Hunter was walking down the same dimly lit alley he always took on his way home after locking up the small Java Hut on Colfax and Ninth, when a smack! punctuated the hum of distant traffic. Red brick dribbled from a one-inch hole two feet away from his face. He stopped midstride.
    Smack!
    This time he saw the bullet plow into the brick. This time he felt a sting on his cheek as tiny bits of shattered brick burst from the impact. This time every muscle in his body ceased.
    Someone had just shot at him!
    Was shooting at him.
    Tom recoiled to a crouch and instinctively spread his arms. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off those two holes in the brick, dead ahead. They had to be some mistake. Figments of his overactive imagination. His aspirations to write novels had finally ruptured the line between fantasy and reality with these two empty eye sockets staring at him from the red brick.
    â€œThomas Hunter!”
    That wasn’t his imagination, was it? No, that was his name, and it was echoing down the alley. A third bullet crashed into the brick wall.
    He bolted to his left, still crouching. One long step, drop the right shoulder, roll. Again the air split above his head. This bullet clanged into a steel ladder and rang down the alley.
    Tom came to his feet and chased the sound in a full sprint, pushed by instinct as much as by terror. He’d been here before, in the back alleys of Manila. He’d been a teenager then, and the Filipino gangs were armed with knives and machetes rather than guns, but at the moment, tearing down the alley behind Ninth and Colfax, Tom’s mind wasn’t drawing any distinction.
    â€œYou’re a dead man!” the voice yelled.
    Now he knew who they were. They were from New York.
    This alley led to another thirty yards ahead, on his left. A mere shadow in the dim light, but he knew the cutaway.
    Two more bullets whipped by, one so close he could feel its wind on his left ear. Feet pounded the concrete behind him. Two, maybe three pairs.
    Tom dived into the shadow.
    â€œCut him off in the back. Radio.”
    Tom rolled to the balls of his feet then sprinted, mind spinning.
    Radio?
    The problem with adrenaline, Makatsu’s thin voice whispered, is that it makes your head weak . His karate instructor would point to his head and wink. You have plenty of muscle to fight, but no muscle to think.
    If they had radios and could cut off the street ahead, he would have a very serious problem.
    He looked frantically for cover. One access to the roof halfway down the alley. One large garbage bin too far away. Scattered boxes to his left. No real cover. He had to make his move before they entered the alley.
    Fingers of panic stabbed into his mind. Adrenaline dulls reason; panic kills it . Makatsu again. Tom had once been beaten to a pulp by a gang of Filipinos who’d taken a pledge to kill any Americano brat who entered their turf. They made the streets around the army base their turf. His instructor had scolded him, insisting that he was good enough to have escaped their attack that afternoon. His panic had cost him dearly. His brain had been turned to rice pudding, and he deserved the bruises that swelled his eyes shut.
    This time it was bullets, not feet and clubs, and bullets would leave more than bruises. Time was out.
    Short on ideas and long on desperation, Tom dived for the gutter. Rough concrete tore at his skin. He rolled quickly to his left, bumped into the brick wall, and lay facedown in the deep shadow.
    Feet pounded around the corner and ran straight toward him. One man. How they had found him in Denver, four years after the fact, he had no clue. But if they’d gone to this trouble, they wouldn’t just walk away.
    The
man ran on light feet, hardly winded. Tom’s nose was buried in the musty corner. Noisy blasts of air from his nostrils buffeted his face. He clamped down on his breathing; immediately his lungs began to burn.
    The slapping