Kage (34 page)

vehicles and faded away into the building. Part of me wanted

to listen for the telltale bang of the back door as he hightailed it

into the gulley and away, but I forced myself to face what was

coming.

A real fight, a fight to the death, is called
shinken shobu.

There are no rules, just stratagems. You study your opponent,

scanning for danger, probing for weaknesses. You know your

own faults well enough. Or you should if you pick up a
shinken,

a live sword.

The man who was coming was ruthless. I had thwarted

him and he would be angry. He wasn’t mentally stable to begin

with; being called the Butcher was a tribute to a savage anger

and the inability to control it. I could use that.

What did he know of me? Little enough. I was some sort of

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Kage

scholar who’d stumbled on a manuscript that was valuable for

reasons I didn’t realize at first. I was also some sort of martial

artist, but he was a man who lived in a bloody world. I could

imagine his dismissive idea of martial artists—delusional peo-

ple in exotic pajamas pretending to be warriors. He knew that

I had somehow survived the killers he had sent to Brooklyn,

but probably believed that it was an accident, a fluke. Now I

was on his turf and he would be eager to end this and prove his

worth to his gang.

He would think I was naïve. That I would want to make a

deal for my life. He’d let me try. He’d play with me for a time.

But then he’d take the manuscript and, no matter what deal I’d

offer, he’d kill me.

Or he’d try.

There were ten of them, arms and necks dark with the wind-

ing stain of tattoos. A few cradled shotguns; many had large,

nickel-plated pistols stuck conspicuously in the waistbands of

baggy pants. El Carnicero approached me empty-handed. He

had thick black hair that was slicked back from a high, narrow

forehead. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.

His face was lean, and when he smiled you could see the play

of muscle and tendon along his jaw line.

“Dr. Burke,” he said, with a sarcastic emphasis on the title.

He glanced toward the building on his right and made a quick

gesture with his head. Two of his men peeled off and checked

it. They came out and reported.

“
No hay nadie, jefe
,” one said.

I felt a brief surge of betrayal and remembered Daley’s own

description of himself: an entrepreneur. The fact that he was

gone spoke volumes about his assessment of the situation: there

was no profit to be made here.

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John Donohue

“You came alone, as promised,” el Carnicero said, incredu-

lous. His speech had only the slightest trace of an accent. “Man,

you are always a surprise…” He leaned back and said loudly.

“He came alone!” His men laughed. The snakes writhed just

under skin as he smiled once more. He looked at me, raising his

chin up to one side as if critically appraising an object. “Hey,

you’re not quite what I expected.”

The story of my life.
But Yamashita has taught me that there

are advantages to being more than you seem. To keeping your

true nature in the shadows.

“That’s what
Los Gemenos
thought,” I said.

His chin came down and he faced me directly. The set-

ting sun flashed on the surface of his sunglasses. He raised his

arms to indicate the men standing behind them. They formed

a rough arc, their backs to the vehicles. “
Mira
. I’m not stupid,

bro. I’ve got backup.”

“I told you to come alone.” I tried to sound angry.

“Oh,
si
… but I have been doing this too long, man. And

rules are meant for games.” He turned slightly to his men. “And

we’re not playing fucking games, eh?” A few of the gang mem-

bers laughed scornfully at me.

He sat down with a sigh of contentment in one of the

chairs. “Hey, think of it as a sign of respect, Dr. Burke. Maybe

I think enough of you to believe that you might be dangerous.”

I sat down as wel . The chairs were far enough from the metal

drum that we could see each other. I had measured the distances

careful y. It’s what al good swordsmen do. The ability to gauge

distance and use it to your advantage is a critical skil . Living or

dying can be measured in a matter of inches. El Carnicero had a

reputation as someone who liked to use a knife. I wanted him far

enough away from me to make a deadly lunge difficult.

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Kage

The dark sunglasses hid his eyes from me, but I could

imagine the small darting movements they would make as he

assessed the situation.

He leaned forward and placed a hand on the manuscript

in its package. Or he could have been shifting his body a few

inches closer in preparation for an attack. I felt the air crackle

with nuance and dangerous possibility.

“So,” he said, “this is the book with Westmann’s notes? The

lists of the trails?”

“Yes.”

He opened the package and leafed through the pages, his

lips pressed together as if doing something distasteful. “
Claro
,”

he said, “but let’s be sure, get another set of eyes on this…” He

leaned back and turned toward the Hummers.

“Xochi!”

A door opened and Xochi slid out of the vehicle. He looked

much as he had that day I met him on the trail: dressed in hik-

ing clothes, his long, dark hair in a loose ponytail, his eyes hid

by high-tech sunglasses. But his gait as he approached El Car-

nicero was hesitant, stiff. Xochi seemed fearful of being near

the man. But he came.

Xochi inspected the package, moving carefully through the

pages and examining in depth the section with the trail. He

avoided looking at me. When he was done, he glanced furtively

at me, then nodded to his master and murmured something.

“
Todas las paginas?”

“
Si
,” Xochi answered, “
todas
.” He backed away from the

two of us like someone desperate to escape a booby trap, but

fearful that his haste might detonate it.

“This book is mine,” El Carnicero said, sitting back com-

fortably in his chair.

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John Donohue

“I am willing to return it to you,” I said.

Again, the unsettling smile. “Hey, nice. But you know, in

my world, you don’t get things like this without a price tag.”

“Consider it a gift,” I said.

It intrigued him. He sat up and leaned forward. “
Un reg-

alo
… this I understand.” He wagged a finger at me. “You are

a clever one, Dr. Burke. In my culture, gifts entail obligations,

no
?”I nodded my agreement.

The smile flattened out. The jaw line quivered. “And what

would be the obligation that comes with this gift?”

I felt the impulse to mimic his settling back into a relaxed

posture in the chair, to appear confident as we dickered. I didn’t

do it. The position would put me off balance and vulnerable

to attack. This is the draining aspect of the high-tension period

before a fight is joined; the thousand and one shifts of position

and balance and attention, the cascade of sensations that need

to be sorted and evaluated for threat.

“Simple,” I said. “Leave me alone. Leave those I love alone.”

“Simple?” he countered, “I don’t think so…”

“I don’t care about what you’re up to,” I broke in. “I live a

world away. Take the package. Walk away. I’ll do the same.”

He laughed then. “Oh, Dr. Burke, man, you don’t have the

fucking slightest idea about my world, do you?” He gestured

and one of his men started to come forward, drawing a pistol.

I held up my hand in the signal Steve and I had agreed on;

the green dot of a laser sight flicked on the book in front of us,

then onto El Carnicero’s chest, then onto the torso of the man

with the pistol.

“I understand your world better than you think,” I told

him.

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Kage

I wished I could see his eyes, notice whether they widened

with fear or tightened with anger. But I couldn’t. Was there a

slight hunching of the shoulder muscles? El Carnicero stood

and I did the same. I could almost sense him tensing for an

attack, noting the placement of obstacles, the length of my

arms, and just where he would stick the knife.

“Hey, pretty clever, Dr. Burke. You’re not so innocent after

all… What’s next?”

“You take the package and walk away. You never bother me

again and I forget we ever met.” I knew that I was going to have

to kill him, but part of me still hoped I could get him to just

walk away.

“
Ay, Dio.
If only it were that simple. For me, you see, there’s

more at stake…” He gestured at his men. “They follow me

because I am a man who achieves what he sets out to do.”

“You got the book…” I started, but he grunted in derision.

“Dr. Burke, I sent men to get the book back and punish the

one who took it. Only one of my goals has been achieved. So,

bro, I’m afraid that I’ve really got to finish what I started.”

One of the gang members near a Hummer started to sidle

away into the brush, perhaps hoping to be able to flank me.

The echoing crack of the rifle came at the same time that the

round punched into the hood of the vehicle near him. The man

froze in his tracks.

El Carnicero nodded. “So. You know what they call this in

the movies, Burke?” I noticed that the title was gone. He was

getting angry, getting ready.

“A Mexican standoff,” I said. “Seems appropriate.”

“I have more guns than you,” he told me.

“My shooter is under orders to kill you first,” I told him.

Even through the rifle’s scope, the intensity of the situation

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John Donohue

was clear to Steve Hasegawa. His voice buzzed in my earpiece.

Got you covered, Burke. He’s in my sights.
The green laser dot was

on El Carnicero.

“Take the packet and walk away,” I urged the gang leader.

“You get what you want, I drop out of sight and never bother

you again.” I gestured at his men. “They’ll buy that.”

But I could tell from the tension in his frame that El Car-

nicero was not going to take the deal and that I was going to

have to follow through with what I had come to do. The anger

started to leak out of him, like fluid seeping through cracks in

a surface, straining his ability to control it.

The snakes wiggled. He smiled. “Man, you still do not get

this…”

Hasegawa’s voice.
Movement on the perimeter, Burke.

“I don’t need to understand,” I told El Carnicero.

Burke! I got a string of men coming through the brush to the

south.

“I just want to walk away,” I assured him. But by then we

both knew that I was lying.

“You’re not walking anywhere, Burke.”

Pull out of there, Burke. Hostiles in sight. I’ll meet you…
Then

the transmission was cut off.

I whirled to look behind me up the hill toward Steve’s posi-

tion and El Carnicero lunged at me.

I felt a momentary jolt of fear, and then a perverse relief as

experience took over. After all, Yamashita had been launching

attacks at me for more than fifteen years. But a real fight is

different from the
dojo.
There’s a certain crazy intensity at the

core of someone who’s really trying to kill you. I stayed low,

minimizing the target for El Carnicero, letting him enter into

my space and turning him slightly so his energy blew past me.

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Kage

I needed the momentary break in the action so I could spot the

knife—a butcher’s weapon of choice.

I hate fighting with knives. They can punch into you or

slice you up. If they’re configured right they can cut you on the

thrust or on the backhand withdrawal. It’s hard to walk away

unscathed. There’s an old exercise that’s used in karate
dojo
to

show just how lethal a knife fight is. The attacker takes a red

Magic Marker and uses it instead of the weapon. The defend-

er’s job is to disarm the assailant without having the white sur-

face of the
gi
marred by the red marker. Invariably, even in a

successful disarming technique, the defender’s sleeves and even

his torso is slashed with crimson ink that shows where the cuts

would have been.

El Carnicero was quick; he arrested his momentum and

managed to slam into me. We sprawled in the dirt.
The blade.

Watch the blade.
This is where it got tricky. When you were in

close and couldn’t immobilize the knife.
Finish this quick.
Oth-

erwise, he’d slip the thing in me and it would be all over.

I could hear voices that were raised in alarm all around me,

but they were distant, unimportant things. I was collapsing

into a dense, frantic organism totally focused on one thing and

one thing only.
The knife.

The boot slammed into me from behind, knocking me