America Tycoon: The Wolf of Showbiz

"What's that noise?"

Hearing the initial gunshots, Cartier's leading man in the area, Blanco, didn't pay attention and asked his assistant in the car, "I remember there's no gunfight in the script, right?"

The assistant shook his head vigorously. They were shooting an advertisement, how could there possibly be a gunfight scene?

Then the gunfire sounded again, and Blanco felt something was wrong. He pulled open the car door, stepped out, and shouted, "Where's the shooting? Where's the shooting?"

Right there, diagonally opposite him, a burly man with a neck tattoo opened a long carrying bag and took out a black long gun.

The most common AR rifle in America!

Blanco was French, and without the slightest hesitation, he instantly used his ancestral skill, pulling out a white handkerchief from his pocket and waving it as he ran towards the back of the car.

The tattooed man didn't bother with Blanco; he picked up the gun, adjusted the earpiece in his ear, and started running.

From the earpiece came the roar of the boss, Victor, "Plan one has failed, switch to the second one now!"

The first plan was to capture alive, the second was naturally to kill on the spot.

Boris had privately promised the four of them that if the first plan failed, if they managed to kill Martin Davis, he would give an additional three million US dollars.

That amount of money was worth risking their lives for.

The tattooed man took cover beside the advertisement board of a bus stop where people were scattering in panic.

......

"Leo, Jack!" Martin held his guns in both hands, crouched down, and shouted at the same time, "Go back, hide, hurry and hide, their target is me, stay away from me! Further away!"

Bruce didn't care about those two, he grabbed Martin and ran towards the Ford.

That car offered the nearest cover.

No one knew if there were any Russians around.

Nicholson, worldly-wise as he was, had already reacted, realizing that he and Leonardo, by following Martin, would only slow him down, so he turned around and ran towards the trailer.

Leonardo hurriedly followed. His 11-second hundred-meter dash time wasn't for nothing; he overtook Nicholson after just five or six meters.

But he didn't abandon his old pal, just like Martin had told them to get away quickly when danger approached.

Leonardo reached out to grab Nicholson's hand, dragging him forward as they ran.

The two ran hand in hand, wandering the world.

Gunshots rang out without warning again.

Bang bang bang—

Amidst the sound of automatic rifle fire, leaves in the roadside green belt flew chaotically, branches snapped one after another.

The gunman didn't care about Leonardo or Nicholson; his target was Martin.

Martin dove to the side of the car, crouching behind the car tires.

Bruce reached into the car and pulled out the AR rifle to give to Martin, yelling, "Go to the front of the car, just like your regular training!"

No sooner had he spoken than with a cacophony of gunshots, the front windshield of the Ford shattered, and the hood was riddled with more than a dozen bullet holes.

Martin secured his handgun, picked up the rifle, caught a magazine thrown by Old Cloth, stuffed it in his pocket and shouted, "Old Cloth, it's the goddamn Russians, they're here for revenge!"

Bruce opened the car door, found another AR, lifted it and fired several shots towards the front.

He said, "Damn it, don't die! I don't want to attend your funeral!"

Martin nodded, "We've got to live! We're going to bloody live!"

It's either you die or I live!

Leonardo's 11-second hundred-meter wasn't for show; in just a short moment, dragging Nicholson along, he had reached the trailer.

Nicholson felt his blood pressure skyrocketing, his heart about to jump out of his mouth, but without catching his breath, he pulled out his phone and dialed 911, shouting, "Santa Monica Old Pier, we are being attacked by armed gangsters, do you hear the gunfire? I'm Jack Nicholson, and here's Martin Davis and Leonardo, the guy from Titanic! Plus a bunch of billionaires..."

Before he could finish the call, he couldn't catch his breath and sat down on the ground with a thud.

Leonardo, who often exercised and was in good shape, also pulled out his phone and started dialing, but not 911. He called a familiar deputy chief, "Me and Martin are under attack by a dozen armed thugs at Santa Monica Old Pier..."

By the time Nicholson had caught his breath, he looked around, saw that the dock management building was quite tall, and pulled Leonardo along, "Up there, quick, it's high and has a clear view!"

The two ran towards it again.

......

Meanwhile, outbursts of screaming erupted, and even the slowest tourists, movie fans, and reporters all realized that this was not a film shooting, but an actual gun battle!

There were too many people and too much chaos; those Russians, mingled among the crowd, were impossible to identify, making a sudden attack very troublesome.

Martin couldn't possibly lift his gun and shoot all these people, he could only shout, "Get out! Everyone, get out! Don't stay here!"

Even at such a moment, the nature of a born actor remained, "They're targeting me, you get out, it's dangerous to stay here! Run!"

The crowd dispersed like a wave, the movie fans listened to Martin, and as Americans accustomed to shooting incidents, they didn't panic as much and sought safe places to hide first.

Some reporters ran, but some didn't.

There were even a few reporters who hoisted their cameras and tried to run towards Martin.

But the gunfire that blared made them hit the ground.

At this moment, these few thought of a reporter named Helen.

A little field reporter from Warner Television Network, because she had filmed the Burbank Middle School incident, filmed Martin, and became an overnight sensation.

Not only did she win the Pulitzer, but she also got her own hot show, "The Helen Show," becoming a peer of Ellen Degeneres.

Isn't it true that fortune and fate are often fought for with one's life at stake?

They lay on the ground, but lifted the camera desperately, some journalists filming the Ford cargo van, others filming the other side of the vehicle, trying to capture the armed gunmen.

Some quick-witted journalists hurriedly took a longer route, attempting to move around to a position where they could film Martin's situation from behind the vehicle.

Not far from them, Boris's bodyguards blended in with some tourists.

When the gunfire rang out and Martin roared, the tourists scattered, leaving him alone near the barrier.

Because he was mixed in with the tourists, preparing for a surprise attack, the bodyguard didn't carry a long gun.

He glanced toward the vehicle and saw Martin's moving silhouette, then immediately pulled out his pistol.

Almost simultaneously, Martin also spotted this lone tourist, with the stock of his AR pressing against his shoulder.

Bang bang bang—

The sound of gunfire erupted as bullets flew out of both the bodyguard's pistol and Martin's rifle.

From a distance of nearly thirty meters, the pistol bullets hit the vehicle near Martin.

The rifle bullets that Martin fired hit the opposing person's chest and abdomen five times in a row, without a single miss.

At such a distance, the rifle's power was unstoppable, and the bodyguard ended up slumped lifelessly on the ground.

After firing, Martin quickly took cover behind the car's engine, crouching against the tire and tensing his body.

Amidst the dense gunfire, the front of the car where he had just stood and the ground around it were hit by no fewer than a dozen bullets.

Bullets ricocheted wildly for a moment.

Martin was lucky; none of the ricochets hit him.

But the sound of gunfire also scared away the passersby, revealing the silhouettes of four gunmen.

One of them shouted in awkward English, "Martin Davis, it's do or die today!"

Martin didn't make the foolish move of responding. Instead, he quietly extended the barrel of his gun in the direction of the voice and pulled the trigger.

Several shots rang out, and the voice on the other side stopped.

Then an even more intense barrage of gunfire started, and Martin retracted back again.

He noticed a few journalists about fifty meters away setting up their cameras, aiming in his direction to film.

Martin gestured toward them, trying to inquire about the situation with the criminals.

They might not have understood or simply didn't care; they were solely focused on filming and completely ignoring him.

At the small building of the Wharf Management, Leonardo and Nicholson climbed to the second-floor rooftop, overlooking the entire waterfront area.

Four men in black clothes were approaching the Ford vehicle using a covering maneuver in pairs.

If they managed to get close, Martin and Bruce were sure to be pinned between attacks from the front and the back.

Nicholson knew the situation was urgent. He said to Leonardo, "I need to warn Martin, you get back a bit, don't show your head."

Once he finished speaking, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Martin, watch out! They are using covering maneuvers to attack, there's one on your left and one on your right, less than fifty meters away!"

Nicholson was an accomplished actor, and over a career spanning decades, he had learned many odd things for his performances, including a bit of tactical lingo.

He saw the four armed criminals and shouted as loudly as he could, "You've got one at 10 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, and 3 o'clock, the nearest is only forty meters away."

Leonardo cursed, "The damn LAPD, why haven't they arrived yet."

In the distance, Boris, whose English was not fluent but understandable, heard someone alerting Martin and yelled in Russian, "Kirilenko, Sergey, cover! Nicholas, follow me up."

Missing this chance might mean never avenging his son and grandson.

Boris, now over sixty, was determined.

Two AR guns fired rapidly, suppressing Martin and Bruce.

Boris and Nicholas flanked from both sides, like pincers of a crab, ready to crush their enemy.

Martin, hearing the warning from above, estimated the approximate positions and knew that if things continued this way, they might face an even more difficult situation before LAPD arrived.

Or they might be finished before LAPD could arrive at all!

Martin shouted, "Old Cloth, cover me!"

Bruce was lying on the ground and slightly extended his hand in the direction of the gunshots, squeezing the trigger of his AR.

The hot brass casings ejected one by one.

Martin had faced a similar scenario at Burbank Middle School and knew that to survive, they couldn't rely on LAPD; they had to fight desperately.

He eyed the cover in front of him and, taking advantage of a momentary suppression of the gunfire by Old Cloth, dashed forth crouched low, like he practiced for "John Wick" shoots, and leaped behind the concrete base of a billboard.

After changing position, Martin spotted his target.

He lifted his AR rifle, and, as he had been trained for over five years, his sight instantaneously locked onto one of the gunmen. He squeezed the trigger.

Bang bang bang!

Sergey, whose attention had been drawn by Bruce, was hiding behind a bus stop, shooting cover for Boris.

The bullets came from a side angle, hitting the advertisement on the bus stop, the metal post, and Sergey, who was hiding behind the billboard.

Martin emptied the magazine in one breath, with four of the bullets hitting their mark.

Sergey didn't even make a sound before he lay on the ground.

Martin, agile as a monkey, ran out again and took cover behind the front of a vendor's cart.

Amidst strange yells and intense gunfire, Martin felt the cart shake violently.

No one knew how many bullets had hit the two vehicles, but a chunk of hamburger flew off and smacked right onto Martin's head.