Ivory Nation, Andy Maslen [e manga reader .txt] 📗

Eli was already moving slowly but purposefully towards the four guards. ‘The advice is, go to the market. Down the supply chain. Vientiane. Laos. That’s where you can pick it up wholesale and still make some profit.’

‘Thanks,’ Stella said, getting to her feet. ‘We’ll try that.’

‘Wait!’ Joshua said, raising his voice. ‘You haven’t heard my proposal yet.’

Eli could see two machetes glinting in the light from the guttering candles and two AKs held level across their owners’ flat stomachs. Shit! Hadn’t Stella worked it out? They were in trouble. Big trouble.

‘No need,’ Stella said, backing up. ‘Ivory’s the only proposal I’m interested in, and you can’t deliver that.’

Joshua shook his head. The smile had gone, replaced with a predatory expression. A narrow-eyed stare that said, ‘I’m coming for you’.

‘I think, seeing as I have been so generous with my market intelligence, you two ladies should show your gratitude. I was thinking you could entertain me and my boys here for an hour or two.’

‘Get fucked,’ Stella said, turning and heading for the door.

‘I intend to,’ he said, the wolfish leer widening. ‘What do you say, boys? Shall we teach these little white pussies how G-City boys make love?’

‘Come on, Eli, we’re leaving,’ Stella said in a low, tight voice as stoned leers turned into looks of animal lust.

‘No. You are not,’ Joshua said, holding up a finger.

One of the guards with an AK slid round the periphery of the room and barred Eli and Stella’s route to the door.

Everything happened fast.

33

Eli backed up towards the guard at the door.

Without turning her head she bent, twisted, then reared up at him and straight-armed him under the point of his chin. A classic Krav Maga move. People never expect to be hit by someone facing away.

As he went down, she chopped him hard across the side of the neck, crushing the nerves running beside the thick ropy blood vessels and paralysing him. She pulled her right foot back and kicked him so hard in the side of the head that she felt the jolt as an electric current running from her foot to her hip.

Stella had leaped into the centre of the room, then taken one of the machete guys before he’d had a chance to lever his lanky frame out of the sofa.

Her booted right foot lashed out and hit him in the face, snapping his nose with a sound like bubble wrap. Beside him, Second Machete was swinging his foot-long blade at Stella’s leg.

Which was no longer there.

Instead, his vicious blow embedded six inches of the blade’s edge into his friend’s thigh, severing half a dozen blood vessels which spouted blood up to the ceiling.

Over the screams of pain, Stella jumped up onto the sofa and with a yell of pure warrior spirit stamped down on Second Machete’s groin.

Joshua was out of his seat and reaching into his waistband.

If he’d been dealing with an ivory smuggler and her hired help, he might have got the chance to put a round or two into one of them.

So it was his poor fortune to be facing Eli Schochat and Stella Cole.

His gun arm came up, fingers wrapped round the grip of an ageing Browning Hi-Power. Aiming for the back of Stella’s head.

‘Stel, down!’ Eli screamed.

She kicked Joshua’s wrist so that the shot spanged off a ceiling light. Ricocheting, the bullet smashed the window and passed, harmlessly, into the night.

Also unfortunately for Joshua, Eli was now the proud owner of the door-guy’s AK-47.

She struck him across the forehead with the muzzle, tearing a huge flap of skin free that flopped down like a veil, blinding him. She cut off his scream with a monstrous blow to the stomach with the rifle butt, dropping him in a crumpled heap of bloody white silk.

A burst of automatic gunfire deafened her. She spun round. The last remaining guard had jumped onto the sofa and sprayed a three-second burst at Stella. She’d rolled for cover behind Joshua’s desk, and although the rounds smashed into the heavy wooden top, none penetrated.

Eli grabbed a fallen machete and flung it at his head.

The blade whickered through the air and hit his left temple, slicing off his ear and a sizeable portion of his scalp. It clattered onto the desktop and skidded off the far side.

With a howl, he whipped round, blood spraying outwards in a spiral. He jammed his finger down on the AK’s trigger. The magazine was empty in seconds.

Several rounds found the two men on the sofa. Second Machete lost half his face in an explosion of pink mist. First machete took one in the throat and one in the chest. He died drowning in his own blood, which frothed from his grimacing mouth.

Then the shooter’s eyes rolled up in their sockets.

He toppled sideways, head lolling from a gaping wound as Stella smashed a machete into the side of his neck. The blade jammed between two cervical vertebrae. She stood back as he fell, taking the blade with him.

The gun smoke had thickened the atmosphere to a thick blue fog. Eli’s ears were ringing as she turned a full circle, AK cocked and ready at her hip. Her nose was prickling and itching at the sharp smell of burnt propellant and hot brass, and the coppery tang of blood.

Out of the five men who’d been preparing to gang-rape them, three were dead, one was out cold and one, their leader, was slumped against a chair, cradling his face with both palms and struggling to replace his floppy brow in its rightful place beneath his hairline.

His suit jacket was scarlet from lapels to waist. The front of his trousers looked as though he were auditioning for a punk band, streaks and spatters of red forming criss-crossing streaks across the shimmering white fabric.

Eli strode over to him and lifted his chin with the AK’s muzzle. His eyes were wide, and although he held onto his forehead with one hand, he raised the other in supplication.

‘Please. Don’t