Kage (12 page)

dust and old baked-on mud splatters. So were the men stand-

ing around it, smoking. They were in work clothes, wearing

construction boots and frayed, sweat stained hats. Their skin

had been burned by desert labor and their brown eyes were

bloodshot from heat and sweat and work. These guys saw a

great deal of the outdoors. They probably preferred dark, cool

places. So if they were here, it was for a reason. And it wasn’t to

admire the sunset or take in the scenery. I also noticed that one

of them held a pair of binoculars and a small radio.

They were not happy to see me.

One pushed himself off the car, stuck his cigarette in his

mouth and regarded me through menacing eyes. He gave a curt

order to one of the others, the youngest in the bunch, who

circled me warily and then trotted up the trail to see who else

was coming.

The men silently spaced themselves in arc in front of me.

Three of them. Four counting the kid at my back. I didn’t see

any weapons, but I figured knives were probably a certainty. I,

on the other hand, was only armed with my trusty gold lami-

nated hotel card.

Trained guy that I am, I got that visceral jolt that was the

body’s deep knowledge:
you’re in deep trouble Burke.

When I first started training, I didn’t know how to interpret

the feeling. The clench in the gut, the elevated heart rate, and

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John Donohue

the cool tingling along the outer arms and neck. I thought it

was fear. But it’s merely the body’s quick read of the situation:

you’re going to need to do something violent soon, and you

better get ready because the outcome will be important.

“
Habla Ingles?”
I asked, exhausting the remains of four

years of high school Spanish. They smirked a little at that but

didn’t say a word. I watched the shift of their eyes. They were

waiting for word from their scout up the trail. No need to waste

words at this point.

One of the men in front of me reached into the jeep and

pulled out a roofer’s hammer. It had a longish handle and a

really nasty looking spike on one end. It was a weapon, but not

a gun, so part of me was relieved. Blunt trauma is part of my

world. Plus, now I knew who was probably going to take the

lead when things heated up.

The goal with multiple attackers is to keep them from get-

ting to you all at once: you shift around a bit in the hopes that

they’ll get in each other’s way. But it’s tricky. Above all, you

don’t want people getting behind you. Particularly when they’re

carrying a hammer.

I heard the scuffle of feet as the young guy came back.

“
No hay nadie
,” he said, puffing a little bit from running.

That was all they needed. The guy with the hammer came

in at me without any kind of indicator, no need for a windup

or a command from his pals. He wasn’t big, but he was stocky,

arms and chest thick with years of hard toil. His bones would

be dense, his muscles hard sheaths of fiber, his hands blunt and

strong.

He swung the hammer around, seeking to smash my head

with a powerful blow to the temple. His mouth was slightly

open with excitement and I caught a glimpse of big, stained

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Kage

teeth. I moved in toward him, bringing myself into the safer

zone that lay inside the arc of his attack. I could smell the

tobacco on his breath. Most people with weapons expect you

to back off when they attack. But Yamashita’s basic rule is to

never do what people expect, never be where they anticipate

you’ll be. He’s pounded it into my head over the years and it’s

a great strategy, providing you can read people correctly. Read

them right, and you’ve gained an advantage. Read them wrong

and you hope for another chance to get it right.

It’s not like the movies. You don’t meet an attacker and push

him away and then go on to the next guy in the circle. Because

if you do, the person you pushed away is going to come back

again. And, eventually, they’ll wear you down. It’s the basic

strategy of all pack hunters.

So I got my left sword-hand up to block the blow, redirected

his arm out and down and back up again. I spun him around in

a classic
shiho-nage
technique, controlling his arm and bending

it so his palm faced his rear and I was locking the arm up at

wrist, elbow, and shoulder. The body positioning is designed to

take someone right off their feet, and I could feel him start to

shift. In the practice hall, you line up the joints so as not to hurt

your partner. But now I swirled around that dusty place and

purposefully brought the arm out of alignment. I could smell

his body odor, and the dry dirt smell of the hillside. When

you’re really focused in the middle of a technique, sensations

get imprinted in the strangest ways. So you don’t remember

all the details of the things you do. But I remember how he

smelled.

And the sensation of tearing joints that vibrated up his

bones to where I held him. That and the sound of his shriek.

I dumped him down as hard as I could, although I didn’t

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John Donohue

have time to look for a really big rock for him to land on,

because I was spinning around to deal with the next guy. For-

tunately, it was the kid. The young have energy, but not much

wisdom.

I drove up from a crouch, pivoted toward this new threat,

and rammed a left into his solar plexus. I heard the wind go out

of him. I slapped him on the side of the head for further dis-

traction, and spun him around to get him between me and the

other two guys. The kid was barely standing, but the spin made

him fight against the loss of balance and his head came up a bit.

I formed a tense arc with the web portion of my hand between

the thumb and forefinger and popped him in the throat. Not

too hard. But he fell backward onto his rear, sitting down hard

enough to make his teeth snap together audibly. He started to

gag a bit.

I backed away, trying to get up the trail while watching the

last two men. We were all crouched with arms slightly extended,

animals waiting for the next snarling lunge of an attack. I could

hear the sound of my breath sawing in and out. My mouth was

dry and I could taste the alkaline dust that swirled around us.

From the rim of rocks toward the southwest, near the drop

off to the jumbled stretch of land that led to Mexico, I saw a

shape loom up out of the corner of my eye. The figure was

black against the red sky, and I was afraid to look too closely,

afraid to take my eyes off the men from the Jeep.

“
Paratelos
!” a voice commanded. The two men still standing

looked at the man on the rocks. They paused momentarily. On

the ground, the man with the hammer was moaning, cradling

his arm, and trying to sit up. The kid had vomited all over

himself.

There was a flurry of excited discussion in Spanish. A lot

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Kage

of pointing at me and at the two men on the ground. I edged

slightly away and got a good look at the man on the rocks.

It was the desert guide who called himself Xochi. His stylish

shades were nowhere in evidence and his face was flushed with

anger. The horizon was brightly lit, but in the little dip on the

trail where we stood the light was beginning to fade.

Xochi hopped down from the rocks, light-footed and con-

fident, while the argument continued. He moved to my side.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

He looked at me, his eyes flat and disapproving. “You

should not be here,” Xochi said flatly.

I looked at him, surprised at his attitude. But he seemed to

be getting the boys with the hammer calmed down.
Drop it,

Burke. Leave it. Walk away.

“Consider me gone,” I told him.

“That would be wise,” he said. “Hurry. You are losing the

light. The desert at night is a dangerous place.” His tone of

voice was flat.

I backed my way up the slope, taking a last look. The bodies

sprawled in the dirt—the blood red sky. Shadows like wraiths,

growing and twisting as evening approached. And five men

watching me as I made my way out of the wasteland.

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6

Centering

“I miss you,” I told her. I was tucked away in my hotel

room, safe from men with hammers. I stared up at the textured

ceiling, dismissing the minor bruises from the fight, and con-

jured up an image of Sarah, all those miles away in New York.

“I miss you, too,” she said, and I imagined that I could

hear the slight smile over the phone line. “But I’m getting some

really focused training in with Yamashita now that you’re not

around to distract him.”

I snorted. “Yamashita doesn’t get distracted.”

“Oh yeah?” she countered. “Something was bothering him

tonight in the
dojo
.”

“Bad technique?” I teased.

“Be serious, Burke. It didn’t seem to be anything we did,

that I could see, but he’d occasionally stop and well, if it wasn’t

Yamashita, I’d say daydream.”

“A disturbance in the force…” I suggested, using my pat-

ented James Earl Jones voice. But I could hear her exasperation

even through the filtering of the electronics, and so quickly fol-

lowed with, “I know what you mean. I’ve seen the same thing.

Sometimes… I don’t know. I’ve come to accept that he’s some

sort of receptor and picks up on things we don’t even know are

around. It could have been almost anything.”

“Well whatever was happening,” she said, “By the end of

the night, he was really agitated.”

I did the mental arithmetic of the difference in time zones

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Kage

and got a cool tingly feeling, thinking about where I was

around that time and what was happening. The Western part

of me dismissed it as coincidence. But I’d been with my teacher

for too many years not to consider that, on some non-rational

level, he
perceived the world in ways that none of us could

imagine. But all I said to Sarah was “Huh.”

We talked some more, saying the kinds of things people say

when they’re apart and wish they weren’t. I gave Sarah a highly-

edited description of my day. I didn’t mention the fight.

I once asked my brother Micky how much detail he shared

with his wife Deirdre about his adventures as a cop. He squinted

at me. “Connor,” he said. “Life with me is not a laugh riot in

the first place, ya know? I try not to clutter our life up with

every bad thing that happens on the job. Ya put it in a box and

you don’t let the family peek inside unless it’s absolutely neces-

sary.” It seemed to me like good advice.

But, Sarah saw through my edits, much, I suspected,

as Deirdre sees through Micky’s. In their case I think it’s for

Micky’s peace of mind, not her’s, that Deirdre allows Micky his

silences. Sarah chose instead to softly edge into my deletions.

“What’s really happening Connor?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, still trying to protect her.

The silence on the other end of the line crackled with

tension.

“You don’t see it, do you?” she finally said.

“What?” I protested.

Sarah took a breath. “It’s like you’re being sucked in… into

this black hole of Yamashita’s life.”

“It’s my life too.”

“Do you think? I wonder.” Her words were cutting. “Some-

times I think you’re just following out of blind loyalty.”

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John Donohue

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Burke, loyalty doesn’t have to be blind. But if you can’t

see that, then your decisions will always be, oh I don’t know—

tainted. It’s dangerous to live blindly in his life. I respect

Yamashita and I don’t think he means to bring you into harm’s

way, but, there’s something about him—his life is shrouded in

violence.”

I felt defensive. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Yamashita’s not even here and he had nothing to do with my

coming out here.”

“Okay, Burke, have it your way. By the way,” she added,

her voice tight and raspy with irony, “Yamashita says he needs

you to do something.” She had me write down a name and a

telephone number.

“Hasegawa Sensei,” I noted. “Here in Tucson. I got it.

What’s the deal?” Trying for normalcy in my tone and not

really pulling it off.

“I’m just the messenger,” she said. Her voice was curt

and resentful. “Tell Burke he must call,” she said in her best

Yamashita style. “
Ima wa,” Now
.

“
Hai,
”
Yes,
I conceded with resignation to the presence of

my teacher, invisible but nonetheless real.

I rose at dawn and went out for a run. The sun had edged

up over the jagged hills that studded the horizon, but it was still

cool outdoors. Sprinklers hissed everywhere on the manicured