Death Before Dishonor Page 41

  It seemed like forever before a tactical team of six stormed the front door. They led with a flashbang that half-tumbled and half-rolled down the hallway toward the atrium doorway. Yuri, still pressed against the wall, swatted it with his sword like a hockey puck back down the hallway and caught the team as they were breaching. Their panicked screams were shrill when the canister exploded in brief thunder, brief sunlight, and translucent smoke.

  Yuri was out of cover and into the hallway with the katana leveled. He impaled the first officer and hacked the next with the ninjatō, bulldozing them back into their comrades with his shoulder. The third officer attempted to raise his carbine, but Yuri slashed the weapon’s sling, forcing the officer off target, the bullets going into the floor. Yuri unzipped the man’s face with another slash before sending the fourth officer into the wall with a bone-crushing elbow. The fifth officer struck Yuri in the cheek with the butt of his weapon, staggering Yuri enough that the fifth and sixth officers could rush him. Yuri had awareness enough to recover and shoot the gap, cutting an angle and getting both arms around the fifth officer’s hips, taking him to the ground. The sixth officer leaped on Yuri’s back and locked both arms around his neck. Yuri struggled backward to shake him, but the man’s grip bracketed as he tried to squeeze Yuri into unconsciousness. Yuri bucked wildly, and the sixth officer hung on desperately. The fifth officer, back on his feet, cracked Yuri in the cheek with his weapon. Yuri didn’t go down; the hit only galvanized him. Yuri struck back, planting his heel in the man’s chest, toppling him over a fallen comrade.

  Yuri yanked and maneuvered inside the sixth officer’s hold, repeatedly slamming the man’s back in the wall. The officer’s lock wasn’t fully settled, but he wouldn’t let go. Yuri managed to position himself just right and climbed the wall with his feet, flipping over the officer’s shoulders—the tables had turned. Yuri drilled the officer in the kidneys with his knee until the man’s legs buckled. Then Yuri obliterated the officer’s head with the most devastating roundhouse he could muster, knocking the man’s still-buckled helmet clean off.

  BAM! BAM!

  A volcano erupted in Yuri’s side, and he collapsed face first into a wall. His breath left a spray paint mark of red on the cream-colored stucco, and his ears gonged like church bells.

  “Fuck you, Kintake,” Yuri aspirated into the wall.

  He could feel a mob of police filling the hallway. He just needed to get to his sword and cut down as many as he could.

  “Get that bastard, Terry,” Yuri said, the whisper becoming a growl. He launched himself from the wall to his ninjatō as if he had never been shot. Yuri lunged below waist level and slashed a vicious sweep, slicing deeply into an officer’s thigh at a terrible angle. The officer shrieked and hit the ground, but not before Yuri was on another, burying his sword to the hilt in the man’s gut.

  BAM! BAM!

  Yuri slumped against a wall and slid to the ground, smearing a portion of the wall with blood. Yuri lay on the ground amidst a field of injured and dead, the side of his face pressed into the floor, blood dripping in a pool around him.

  The policed leaped on him like wolves to restrain him.

  The room was spinning, and the edges of his vision were darkening. His body felt cold against the hot, Middle Eastern floor. Yuri, though, was somewhere else, sometime else. A final whisper left his lips, “Veronica.”

  ***

  Terry hurtled through the back door, slamming thunderously against the stucco wall. He skidded to a halt in the loading area of the lonely commercial strip and scanned it. Then he beamed out to the street and looked both ways frantically. To his left, around the corner were the police—and failure. To his right, the vast expanse of the lower Dubai urban sprawl crawled towards its skyscrapers and a vast desert brownness turned gray with the setting sun. The sidewalks and street weren’t busily flowing.

  Terry’s eyes darted as he looked for a clue as to which direction Kintake had made his escape. He was bleeding; he’d leave a trail. That was when Terry’s eyes spotted a trail of crimson that led diagonally across the street. He sprinted after it, angling down a dusty cream-walled alley between an aging food market and a row of janky-looking tailors. The blood trail led to the right, down a three-way between the buildings. Terry raced down, keeping up his speed.

  Within two blocks, Terry found himself in a souk, swimming with residents and shoppers dressed in veils and thobes as well as Western wear. His speed slowed with the increase in volume, but his conviction didn’t. His eyes made a parallelogram, darting side to side, down at the sporadic drops of blood, and then downrange. He knew Kintake couldn’t be far; Kintake was injured, and outrunning Terry on foot was out of the question. Then the trail went cold.

  Terry pushed a little further into the souk, investigating patrons’ clothes for blood spatter from Kintake pushing by. Terry also looked for rogue drips near doorways of shops in which Kintake could be hiding. Nothing. Nor did anyone seem alarmed.

  Terry pushed back toward the trail’s end, anxiety beginning to strangle his stomach. A vision shot through his mind of Yuri looking Terry in the face with an expression that said, “Don’t let me down. Get that bastard,” before Yuri darted out the door with a sword in both hands to greet the police.

  The trail couldn’t have just ended. Kintake was bleeding profusely, so someone had to have seen him. And if the blood trail stopped, that meant Kintake had to have stopped the bleeding, which also meant that someone had to have seen him. Terry didn’t have much time to deliberate; the police were going to expand their perimeter very soon looking for him. Anxiety was holding hands with desperation, and Terry decided to start shaking down the vendors and patrons.

  Terry approached a media vendor in a hijab and said harshly in his crude Arabic, “Have you seen a bleeding Asian man come through here?”

  She gave Terry a sheepish look, and the patrons to either side of him stirred.

  “I know someone here as seen him. He has a bleeding wound on his face.” Terry traced a line on his face with his finger.

  The vendor’s expression was still sheepish but suddenly morphed into one of alarm. Terry whipped around just in time to get an arm up to protect his neck from being impaled with a screwdriver by a woman in a black niqab; it dug a crevasse in his forearm instead. Terry clasped his arm and growled. The patrons in the thoroughfare peeled away from the assailant and Terry.

  She came again, and Terry darted backward, the screwdriver just missing his face. The woman didn’t let up, stabbing at him again. Terry bounded sideways, out of her reach, and then leaped onto a vendor’s table to escape the next attack. Then the woman turned and ran—limped quickly, really.

  Terry, crouched in a three-point stance, noticed that she was wearing the same shoes beneath her abaya that Kintake had been wearing. And for a second there, Terry had thought the old shinobi had enlisted a bodyguard. The man was old, but he was still full of tricks. Terry gave chase, ignoring the bystanders that had watched the violence. He kept his eyes on Kintake, who was moving as fast as an injured man aged sixty years could.

  Kintake hobbled across a tight thoroughfare lined with two- and three-story buildings and packed densely with slow-moving traffic. A driver barked hotly at him when he darted in front, forcing the driver to stop short. Kintake didn’t even look back.

  Terry was two rungs below a sprint, zig-zagging through indignant patrons; they were getting more numerous now. He looked like a football player dodging tackles as he swam over them, side-stepped, and spun. Once he reached the same thoroughfare, he leaped over, getting both feet above the hood of the same car that had almost hit Kintake and slid across it on his rear, landing in full stride. He saw Kintake make a right past an incense stand just fifty feet away.

  Terry slowed to make the turn and then accelerated again towards Kintake, who was straight ahead and going through a gate with windows just above and to either side. Kintake checked for Terry over his shoulder and then pulled the gate shut, barring it
with its lock and jetting deeper into the covered hall to look for an exit on the opposite side. Terry didn’t slow. He assessed the size of the window and determined that he could get through if he went feet first and sideways. He just needed to get up to it.

  In a seamless display, Terry bounded up a dumpster and vaulted up the wall, getting ahold of the trimming above the window’s frame with both hands, tucking his legs, and sling-shotting them through the orifice like a snake slithering through a crack after its prey. He dropped down and rolled to disperse the impact, found his feet, and accelerated after Kintake again.

  Kintake reached the opposite gate that led out to the main road and mass transit rail just on the other side. He went into the gate with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge. Then he pulled it—nothing. It was locked.

  End of the line.

  Kintake ducked and cut an angle as Terry’s foot crashed into the gate where Kintake’s head had been. Kintake hobbled backward with his guard up, the screwdriver in his left hand. He shot a glance over his shoulder back down the way he had entered—it was behind him now.

  “Don’t run, sensei. Don’t make me have to stab an old man in the back.”

  “Terry, I refused to die a slave. I wasn’t going to be a slave to Ninpo, the Fujibayashi, nor the Shogun.”

  “You can’t be a slave to the dead.”

  Terry led with his feet, firing several shots at center mass. Kintake blocked and countered with repeat punches, landing two against Terry’s face, and then with the screwdriver. Terry slipped it and drilled Kintake in the ribs with a volley of punches before changing directions and slamming him in the jaw.

  Kintake spun and struck the outside of Terry with a double-shot, one to the lower leg and one to the thigh. Then he swapped sides, trying to catch Terry in the ribs. Terry collapsed his guard, drawing his knee and elbow together to absorb the impact. Kintake launched another flurry, this time with the screwdriver, catching Terry across the chest and ripping open his shirt, revealing the flak vest. Terry responded with another burst of punches and kicks, going first up the middle and then spinning circles as he looked for an opening in Kintake’s desperate parries.

  Becoming overwhelmed, Kintake snatched Terry’s shirt and pushed him back, dropping the screwdriver in the process. Terry reciprocated, meeting force with force. They pushed back and forth until Terry planted his knee against Kintake’s mangled nose, prompting a release. Kintake retreated, holding his face.

  Terry pressed the attack again, leading with his feet once more, repeatedly kicking, allowing his momentum to generate more power with each swing. Kintake ducked and dodged where he could, and rolled with the impact of the blows where he could not. Terry wheeled his heel around, missing Kintake’s head by a hair’s breadth, instead smashing through a clay pipe that climbed a wall. Terry lunged back in with a right and left, but Kintake slipped both and countered with a spinning elbow to the side of Terry’s head, immediately following with a spinning hook kick and a reciprocal set of punches that planted Terry against a wall, spitting blood from his mouth.

  The two men attacked at the same time, Terry kicking low and Kintake kicking high. Terry caught Kintake cleanly in the knee while Kintake caught Terry cleanly on the side of his head, knocking both men back again.

  They took a moment to regain posture and their faculties. Terry wiped blood from his nose and mouth and blinked his swelling eye. Kintake yanked off the niqab to reveal his mangled, swollen face, letting blood stream freely as he leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath.

  You go, Ter. I’ll hold here. Ninpo and all that jazz. Terry could see his brother’s face—the raw determination. Then he could see the anguished face of a teenage Yuri as he hobbled over forested mountains on a broken, mangled foot. Then he saw the face of Akiko and Saki. He saw his parents—the last smiles they’d ever give him. He saw Yuri as a child, screaming for his parents. He saw the expression on Kintake’s face as he abused them. He saw the expressionless face as he beat Yuri for Terry’s silence. He could see the ghastly faces of the Fujibayashi as they lay rotting in the snow. He saw Veronica’s terror as attackers stormed his house. He heard Yuri’s voice once more: I’m your family! I’m the only family you’ve ever had!

  No.

  Terry’s blood turned to fire.

  NO!

  He thrust himself off the wall, lunging with an airborne punch, slamming into Kintake’s guard. Terry fired in succession: high, low, high, low, spinning and changing directions, choosing different targets and purchasing whatever he could. Kintake ramped up his defense and used the length of the hall to retreat step by step, stopping most of what Terry dished out and allowing only a couple through. Terry grabbed hold of Kintake’s thobe to stop his continual retreat, but Kintake peeled out of it like a snake shedding his skin.

  Kintake was covered in a checkerboard of scars. And he had a faint shadow of a serpent tattoo over his heart—it looked as though Kintake had undergone procedures to have it removed.

  Terry came again. Kick followed punch, punch followed kick, and kick followed spin. Kintake painted shapes in the air with his arms and legs, redirecting attacks where he could and absorbing impacts with his elbows and legs where he couldn’t. Kintake was nothing if not resilient; his defense was solid. Tactics changed: Terry was going to punish Kintake’s guard until he couldn’t hold it up anymore.

  Terry shifted directions by bounding off the wall, and he drove his knee into Kintake. Kintake absorbed it with his arms, going into the opposite wall for support. Terry snapped three kicks at him—low, middle, high—then switched legs and repeated—low, middle, high. Kintake mirrored him with his guard, so Terry feinted right and hooked left, crunch, planting a grueling punch against the bone of Kintake’s forearm. Kintake cut an angle and zipped out into the open, shaking the pain from his arm. Terry, taking a page out of his brother’s playbook, didn’t let up. He closed the distance and launched more attacks at Kintake’s arms and legs, mauling them with bone-crunching intensity. Kintake tried to hold his guard, but the pain was too great, and he had to retreat. He backed away, continuing to block and parry until he saw an opening. Kintake timed Terry and slipped his injured leg through Terry’s defense, planting his shin against Terry’s injured ribs. Terry immediately recoiled, allowing Kintake the advantage for the first time.

  Kintake went on the offense, hurling every variation of hand strike that he could muster. Terry kept his parries tight, zoning out Kintake’s punches, knife hands, and elbows. Kintake tried to bait Terry into spacing out his guard with feints, but Terry wasn’t going to be fooled. Every shot Kintake made for Terry’s ribs, he defended jealously.

  Despite sensing Terry’s vulnerability, Kintake picked his shots carefully, not wanting to overcommit against his larger, stronger, and younger opponent. He kept working the sides of Terry’s knees and kept working at trying to get through Terry’s guard, slowly backing Terry up until Kintake was in range of the screwdriver again.

  The pain in Terry’s side was stabbing, and it made swinging agonizing—he just needed another moment to get it together. He kept his guard tight and worked angles around Kintake to continue to zone out Kintake’s strikes. The shots to the outside of his knees didn’t hurt too badly, but they were beginning to add up, surely in the way the repeated attacks Terry had brutalized Kintake’s guard had added up. Terry just needed another moment, just one more. That’s when he realized Kintake’s play.

  Kintake lunged for the screwdriver, and Terry responded with a roundhouse aimed for Kintake’s face. Kintake tucked and rolled, barely escaping as Terry’s leg howled past his head. Kintake scooped the tool up and turned, only to catch a gutful of a retaliatory sidekick that sent Kintake sprawling on his back.

  The pain suddenly muted, and Terry was alive again and on top of Kintake, attempting to wrest control of the screwdriver. Terry pinned Kintake’s weapon arm down with one hand and bludgeoned him with the other, using his arm as if it were a club. Kintake fought back with his
free arm and bucked his body and legs, trying to erase any leverage Terry was gaining.

  In a lightning-strike movement, Terry wrapped himself around the shoulder of Kintake’s weapon arm and leveraged his weight against the joint. Kintake groaned and grimaced as Terry applied more and more pressure to it. Kintake squeezed the muscles to keep the joint from separating. Terry jerked, attempting to compel Kintake to let go of the screwdriver. Kintake wouldn’t—he couldn’t. There was only one way out of this hold, though.

  Kintake jerked hard—pop—the shoulder painfully came out of its socket. Kintake, grinding his teeth, now unconstrained by the joint, rolled over and pounded his free fist against Terry’s undefended face. Terry released him, rolled backward, and hopped to his feet. Kintake tried to stand, but he was just too injured to do it fast enough to defend against Terry’s next chain of attacks.

  Terry laid into Kintake with utter malice, driving him onto his back and beating him until Terry’s knuckles were covered in Kintake’s blood. Terry mounted Kintake and grabbed his throat in both hands. Terry looked Kintake in his haggard, swollen eyes—into his blackened soul—and then started to squeeze, not all at once either, but slowly.

  Kintake reared, trying desperately to dismount Terry, but Terry’s weight was settled in, and he was in complete control. Kintake battered Terry with his unseparated arm. After a few hits, though, Terry slammed a fist into that shoulder’s stab wound. Then Terry resumed his grasp on Kintake’s throat.

  Terry stared his former mentor in the face. Beneath the blood and the torn and lacerated flesh was a man he’d once looked up to—he’d once idolized. The man had been his father figure, had taught him to fight and to kill in the name of honor, had given him a path and a higher calling, had given him life when all seemed lost, had given him a family when his family had been taken from him, and had given him purpose. And all of that was a lie.

  Terry was going to make it right as he looked his former mentor in the eye while he choked the life out of him. He was going to do it for all the lies and the lives that had been destroyed because of them. He was going to make right everything that had gone wrong. He was going to find retribution for the path he had been set on. And he was going to finish what his brother started many years ago.