A Quiet Man (Victor Book 9)

by Tom Wood

  Except for one reason.

  They were no Sunday riders. No boardroom bikers. Their choppers were well maintained yet well used. They were not leisure vehicles but primary modes of transportation. Victor had never owned a motorcycle in the same way he had never owned a car. He had stolen plenty of both, although far more of the latter. Cars were more anonymous. A man sat in a parked car could be almost invisible. Not so easy perched on a motorcycle, although there could be other advantages for a man of his profession in terms of manoeuvrability, acceleration and the ability to go where a car could not.

  Still, Victor always preferred to avoid attention rather than to escape it.

  There was no escaping it here, however. The nine bikers were all looking his way because they were waiting for him. They were here for him. The choppers formed a rough semi-circle that blocked the exit to the highway and stretched the width of the lot.

  He had heard them arrive, of course. That was another downside to such vehicles: they were always loud. No chance of stealth. He had taken the time to finish his beer before stepping outside because he hadn’t wanted to insult the French barman by wasting his preferred brand.

  The leader of the bikers was obvious. In Victor’s experience, leaders were always obvious. Not always the biggest, not always the one in the centre, not always the one who stepped forward in front of the others, but they always spoke first. In a strict hierarchy, in a pack, the leader was the first to make his presence known.

  Victor’s gaze found the one who was gearing up to speak. He was the thinnest, the weakest, the eldest and the most revered. He had a tall, narrow frame and fine, long white hair that hung straight down over his ears and brushed his shoulders, while his pate was bald. The moon gave him a long shadow that stretched towards Victor.

  The shadows of the other eight did the same, creating a concave arrangement of jagged black knives all pointed his way.

  The bikers wore a lot of denim, a lot of leather. Some had long hair. Some had shaved heads. Others wore bandanas. More than half had beards. They were a range of ages but none were young. All were men, all fully grown. Most were carrying too much weight, but they were strong. Not even one of the nine looked as though they could fight beyond throwing a punch or headbutt, so he didn’t have to concern himself with kicks. He didn’t expect any advanced grappling techniques. If they were professionals he would have no chance. If they knew he was a professional himself then they would have weapons. They would be armed to the teeth.

  Silence is telling.

  Their silence told Victor they had no idea he was anything more than a man on a fishing trip. They were standing there and doing nothing but staring because at this point they were still under the impression they were the lions on this asphalt savannah and he was a wildebeest. They didn’t understand he was the lion and they were jackals. Dangerous in numbers, in their pack, but every second they stood there in silence gave him a second more to plan and mentally rehearse.

  Each second of silence increased his chances of walking away and increased the chances they would be carried.

  But nine was an impossible number.

  To have even the remotest chance he had to be fast. He had to be faster than they could register. Speed was not purely about reflexes, about fast-twitch muscle fibres. Speed could be manipulated. For a punch to land, the fist had to travel from its starting point to the target, A to B. If that distance could be reduced before the punch was thrown then it would land sooner, there would be less time for the target to react, to attempt to block or dodge or simply flinch. The bikers had their fists at their sides, near their hips. Victor held his hands in front of his abdomen, palm in palm. A relaxed pose, a thoughtful pose. Passive. Unthreatening. Yet his hands were much closer to their final destination. They had less distance to travel. They would be faster.

  For the same reason Victor had his right foot a little further back than his left, his torso rotated clockwise to compensate, to give the illusion he was standing square on and disguise the fact he was in a fighting stance. All he had to do was release the tension in the muscles on the left side of his back, and his right shoulder would fall back and he would be acting long before they could react. It would seem inhumanly fast, from zero to a hundred miles an hour, but the engine was already revving. He just needed to release the handbrake.

  There would be no pulling punches. Not against so many. Only devastating and debilitating strikes were to be employed. When he hit one, he had to hit him so hard he would not recover. Victor couldn’t afford to drop a biker only for him to stand back up a few seconds later and rejoin the fray. Perhaps by then outside of Victor’s peripheral vision, unaccounted for and able to attack him from behind when his focus was on another. He couldn’t concern himself with accidentally killing someone, with the potential fallout and police involvement.

  Kicks only at the beginning, when they were still surprised and before they had a chance to time his movements. Likewise, grappling would wait until the end, when there were fewer enemies. If he took hold of one, he left himself vulnerable to everyone else. He couldn’t rely purely on elbows; they were his preferred strike but he needed a punch’s range. He couldn’t waste precious split-seconds closing that extra step. Damaged knuckles were therefore inevitable. Better than losing, better than ending up with broken ribs and bruised vertebrae, missing teeth and a shattered orbital bone or a subdural haematoma.

  Nine was an impossible number, but nine was also too many. Even in a tight circle perfectly coordinated in their timing, it was too many. More than double the number who could realistically attack him simultaneously, and none looked as if they had spent a considerable amount of effort training to coordinate their movements. In the same way one of them spoke first, one of them would make the first move, the first attack.

  Then there would be eight.

  That would have an effect: a shock factor that might paralyse the others into inaction because events were not transpiring as expected. They would have a mental narrative already in place proved wrong from the outset. Victor’s gaze passed over the bikers. He saw no nervousness. He detected no hesitation. These were tough men. Violent men.

  Any such paralysis would be fleeting.

  Which meant Victor needed to act first. He couldn’t wait for that first man. Victor had to be that man instead. He had to ensure the shock of seeing one of their own go down so fast was multiplied by the surprise of witnessing a lone man throwing himself against impossible odds.

  Back to eight.

  No, seven, Victor saw. The leader had his arms folded across his chest. His eight men had their arms at their sides or slightly raised, hands clenched or fingers flexing in anticipation. The white-haired man’s arms were not crossed in a defensive gesture but a relaxed one. He was not a leader in the purest sense. He would not lead his men into battle, he would send them.

  Seven was a lot better than nine, yet still too many. However, it would not remain seven for long because Victor had learned never to let an advantage go to waste. He would fully exploit the surprise of that first attack and the shock of the first man going down to launch himself at another. The next closest.

  Then, six.

  Tough men who were not afraid of violence would be ready by then, they would be reacting, but would still be lacking coordination. They still wouldn’t have their timings synced. So it was back to one original opening – one of them attacking first.

  Which meant it would then be five.

  By that point Victor’s back would be exposed. Keeping all threats in his vision was an impossibility with so many opponents. Trying to do so would only slow him down and make him defensive instead of aggressive. That would give them the initiative and it would be over soon after that point.

  He had to accept a punch to the kidneys or to the back of the head or a chokehold snapped around his neck. In return, though, it would then be four.

  Four men down, a fifty per cent reduction in numbers, would break the morale of any fightin
g force and would make any half-competent leader signal a retreat. Yet speed of action was as important as violence of action. If Victor had not reduced the eight threats to four in as many seconds then morale would never become a factor. He would be on the asphalt, kicked to a pulp. That essential speed would mean there would be no time for them to think, no time to doubt, no time for a retreat to be recognised as the right decision.

  A good punch to the kidneys would hurt and would stagger him. He might be urinating blood afterwards but it was not going to take him out. He would still be able to fight. None of the remaining four would go down as fast as the previous four by this point. Victor knew he would take some further hits in the following seconds, but it was doable. He could make it work. It would be painful, it would be brutal, and yet after he took the punch to the kidneys the four would join their friends on the ground.

  If it was a chokehold instead, it was a problem. He wasn’t concerned with the hold itself. They were harder to apply than most people realised and if it was not applied perfectly then Victor had enough tricks to ensure there would be little danger of losing consciousness. The problem was until he escaped the hold, he couldn’t deal with the other three bikers. They could hit him while he was immobile or grab his arms so he couldn’t actually fight the chokehold. At that point his chances of remaining conscious would be negligible.

  A punch to the back of the head, the brainstem, would put him in real trouble. Maybe still on his feet but he would be disorientated, fighting drunk. He would have no speed to drop anyone before they could stop him, no awareness to block and slip the following attacks. They could hit him at will. He might put another one down but he would go down too. Then the kicks to the ribs, the face, would begin.

  Before that point, however, he had to deal with the first four. He pictured opening with a stomp kick to fold the first biker in two, driving his heel into the man’s abdomen so hard he would likely defecate himself; launching an elbow at the next in line, to the temple given that that guy was a lot shorter than Victor; then, as the biker sank into unconsciousness, a roundhouse kick to the outside of the next closest knee, folding the joint inward with such explosiveness the biker was bound to pass out from the pain alone before he collapsed; pivoting thirty degrees to punch the fourth with a body shot to lower the guard he would be rising by that point before sending a second punch to the face to put him down, crushing the nose instead of aiming for the jaw because Victor needed to spare his knuckles for as long as possible. Maybe one of those first four might require a heel stomp to finish them off before Victor readied himself for the others.

  Four seconds. Four down. Four left.

  He could predict a lot, he could anticipate most eventualities, but he didn’t know what would happen next: the punch to the kidneys, the chokehold or the strike to the brainstem. Two meant defeat, meant pain and injury and potential death. Either through bleeding on the brain or later. Weeks or months or years from now, when the beating Victor took here meant he would not be fast enough or strong enough to survive the next professional who tracked him down for one of the prices on his head.

  Which were no kind of odds. Worse than flipping a coin. The best course of action was to retreat back into the bar, to the safety of witnesses and a barman who would no doubt call the police at the first sign of trouble.

  The concave arrangement of black knives quivered, restless.

  The silence, so loud and telling, was coming to an end.

  No further time left to plan, to predict.

  The white-haired leader spoke first. ‘I’ve been waiting for this all day long.’

  ‘You have it the wrong way round,’ Victor said as he strode forward to throw himself on to the knives. ‘It’s me who’s been waiting for you.’

  THREE DAYS

  EARLIER

  FOUR

  He had a name, of course, although Michelle didn’t like to use it. Names were, ironically enough, so impersonal. You might be a Hannibal or an Alexander but your parents named you Chad. You should have been Cleopatra or Elizabeth but you’re called Tina. Not exactly fair, is it? She understood that injustice because she would have preferred something grander herself. Michelle was an okay name, she accepted, but she longed for something with more syllables, something more classical. When there was nothing to do at the motel she scribbled down ideas and imagined who she should be, who she would have preferred to be. How might things have turned out differently if she hadn’t grown up with people calling her Chelle? Could she have made a life for herself and Joshua better than this one? A rhetorical question because any life would be better than this one.

  ‘I was wondering if I could change rooms.’

  Not a common request but it happened from time to time. Usually because the dividing walls were so thin they could have had an eating disorder, and people didn’t always use motel rooms simply to sleep within. No one ever said that was the reason they wanted to switch rooms, naturally. People were too prudish when it came to such activities. Which had never made a whole lot of sense to Michelle given that everyone did it and the very survival of the species depended on it.

  If we were put on this earth to do anything at all, it was that.

  She said, ‘Let me check the ledger.’

  There was no need to check the ledger because Michelle always knew exactly how many rooms were occupied at any one time. It wasn’t a skill she was proud of, yet it was one that she’d acquired without trying. The motel was no Four Seasons, after all. There were only three dozen rooms available in total if she included the one currently being fumigated. Plus, it was the off-season. October through to April the motel was never more than half full.

  Ah, she was an optimist, she realised, and she never knew it until just now.

  ‘Let me see,’ she said as she turned pages. ‘I think I can help you out. Is there anything wrong with your current room I should be aware of?’

  She asked with a glimmer in her eye and a wry smile because maybe he was different. Perhaps he would surprise her with honesty and say, The couple next door sound like a pair of rutting elk.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he assured her, marking himself as boring as everyone else. ‘But I like to keep the window open at night for the air and the mosquitoes are eating me alive.’

  ‘They’ll have only just hatched,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can give you a room that is bug repellent, I’m sorry to tell you. We’re not that classy.’

  She said this with another half-smile so he knew she was just kidding. Had to have whatever fun you could to battle the boredom of the check-in desk.

  He nodded but did not smile in return. ‘I’m thinking a room further away from the lake might help.’

  ‘I can put you on the other side of the parking lot but then you’ll be next to the road.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m happy to take exhausts over bites.’

  ‘You sure? I might be able to dig out some net curtain and string it up across your window.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s a kind offer but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘I’ll take the room next to the road, please.’

  She shrugged too. Wouldn’t it just be easier to keep his window closed? But, ‘Your call.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She fetched him a key and laid it down on the counter. He slid it away with such smoothness, such silence, that she didn’t even notice him do so. She only noticed the key was no longer there.

  He said, ‘I’ll move my things and bring the old key back as soon as I’m done.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ she said as he left.

  He had a peculiar way of leaving the front desk office, she noticed. He backed away from the counter, only turning at the door. It was only a short distance, seven feet at most, but he did this when he arrived too and Michelle, who had become observant of every guest’s idiosyncrasies in a prolonged effort to make her job more interesting, had never seen anyone do thi
s before. Had she not become so observant and perceptive it would never have even registered.

  There was more than this, she’d also seen. When he walked to his room from the front desk he didn’t go straight across the lot like anyone else would do but walked the inner circumference of the U-shaped building. She figured he must be sensitive to sunlight. Maybe that was why his eyes were so dark. Almost black. Almost as if there was no separation between iris and cornea.

  He was from across the border like many of the guests that used the motel. Lake Huron was only a few hundred yards away, after all. America was walking distance, yet he was from Nevada. Las Vegas to be precise. That was why he was so tanned, she supposed. Although that didn’t fit with her theory about his sensitivity to light. So there must be another reason why he didn’t take the shortest distance to his room. Could be he was one of those people who wore those funny wrist watches and were obsessed with how many steps they tallied up in a day. Yes, that made more sense. He had that lean, athletic build. Broad back but narrow waist. A swimmer or a climber. Probably worked out as many times a week as Michelle had a slice of pie. She blamed Joshua for that. She had never been the same since he had come along to brighten up her days. It was like her body refused to accept she no longer needed to eat for two.

  Why did you never crave a salad?

  She watched him as he walked. In part because she had nothing else to do and in part because he wasn’t bad to look at. A little scruffy for her tastes. He could do with a shave and a better haircut. She preferred her men well groomed even though she somehow always ended up with the opposite. She didn’t like his faded jeans and frayed plaid shirt. She wondered what he looked like when he wasn’t on a fishing trip.

  She wondered if he’d ever even worn a suit in his life.