Trent looked at Samantha again, but felt his anger on the rise. “And then the celebrity killers began their killing,” he snarled, “here in America. And it never stopped. Every time another spectacular murder took place, the Japanese media sensationalized it, and the people were horrified. Soon, Americans in Japan were scrutinized, like they were a part of it. Like they were connected to it somehow. I was ashamed to be an American.”
“But they knew you had nothing to do with it,” Samantha reasoned. “Didn’t they?”
“You don’t know the Japanese. They can be very... Well, let’s just say they can be very elitist. I thought I had overcome their prejudice long before. You said I was well respected in Japan. You’ve got to understand that in Japan, respect isn’t easily achieved. They live in an idyllic society, and the constant brutality being reported in the States was beyond their comprehension. Add to that the rampant corruption that resulted in murderers walking free each and every time. They became fearful of anything American. Even me. As if I might lose control and kill one of them like some kind of lunatic.
“Then one day I fought my best fight in the circuit. They called it The Green Eyed Tiger versus The Chinese Dragon. I had him beaten, or so I thought, but he tricked me by playing possum. When I released him from a Tatsumaki Shime, he reversed the move and took me down. I might have lost then, but I broke free, too. When I managed to reapply the hold, this time I didn’t let up. He almost died. After that, no one would fight me. To them, I was just another murdering American. My time in the circuit was finished.”
“What about the Chinese Dragon?”
“Actually, he wanted to fight me again. It never happened, but the people loved him for it, and they started calling him The Chinese Dragon Who Fears No Man. He’s the only one who never believed I tried to kill him.”
“Then what happened?”
“Shoji found out, that’s what. He never followed the underground circuit, because he disapproved of the Budo arts being used in competition. He believed it was a frivolous application of my skill.”
“What about Yoshiko? She still loved you.”
“I had to come home. I had to take care of this. The law wasn’t going to settle with these murderers, and I made it my business to see to it that someone did. Yoshiko would have understood.”
“Would she, Trent? Are you sure about that?”
Trent lowered his gaze and crumpled his brow. He really wasn’t sure at all. “Well, you understand, don’t you?”
Samantha closed her eyes and responded, “Trent, I know the world has its problems, it always will. Justice will find its way again. We have to believe it.”
“Samantha, it doesn’t matter what we believe. The world believes America is the land of murder and the home of corruption. I know. I saw it in their eyes. I felt it in their hearts.”
“So who cares what they believe? We know the truth.”
“The truth?” Trent’s voice seethed. “The truth is the courts have become a farce. Innocent women and children are butchered. The press turns it around. They tell us to feel sorry for the killers who go free to live their lives as if nothing ever happened.
“Meanwhile, their victims rot in graves forever. That’s the only eternity they’ll ever get. It’s not right. But I can make it right, and I won’t rest until every walking murderer gets what’s coming to him.”
“I understand,” Samantha said. “But is it only the murderers you live for? Killing the killers?” Her voice was breaking. “Do you plan on killing forever?”
“Forever?” Trent scoffed. “Not if it means shooting up drugs like everyone else seems to be doing.”
Samantha narrowed her eyes, and her expression turned smug. She asked, “Then who’s going to kill the killers after you’re gone?”
Trent had no answer.
“You see,” Samantha continued, with her tears flowing freely and her words mixed with sobs. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll kill the killers now, but one day you’ll die, and the killers will keep on killing. Nothing will change. It will be as if you never existed.”
Unable to escape Samantha’s logic, Trent saw fit to concede the point. “All right then. And if I did live forever?”
A fleeting smile traced Samantha’s mouth, and she trained her eyes onto Trent’s. After several moments, and with the conviction of a solemn vow, she replied, “Then I’ll wait for you, forever.”
Reaching his heart, just as Susie had done, and Yoshiko before her, Trent was a believer. But not in a miracle drug. He was a believer in love. Although Susie’s murder hurt immeasurably, he didn’t want to let this moment pass without making it count. Twice before he couldn’t respond to those exact words, so this time he would while he still had the chance. “Well, I can’t say I’ll live forever, but I’m alive right now, and as long as I am, I’ll be loving you, Samantha Jones, Police Detective.”
“Just as I’ll be loving you, Trent Smith, Killer of Killers.”
Trent wanted the moment to last forever, but he was a realist. He knew the chance of a normal life with the goddess across the table was next to nothing. He wouldn’t stray from his agenda, and he was grateful Samantha understood that. She was a policewoman, after all. Having an ally in law enforcement would be a valuable asset. He dared to hope it was a good omen.
A black limousine pulling up to the curb diminished that hope. And more so when three men wearing black suits and ties emerged. After they stepped onto the sidewalk, the limo drove away. The taste in Trent’s mouth soured because all three were super heavyweights. Also, they were dark-haired and olive-skinned, much like the two men he dispatched the day before at Susie’s place. Trent wondered if they were relatives of those men or more Soriah Specials sent by the white-haired billionaire. It could be they were both. “I don’t believe this,” he said.
The largest of the black-suited giants led the others into the restaurant’s patio. He reached into his coat and bared a handgun. The men behind him did the same. Most of the diners seemed oblivious to the incursion, and those who saw them seemed frozen in shock. Finally, a woman screamed, and a man pointed while shouting, “Those big guys, they have guns!”
Shrieking people ducked under tables, and others backed away.
Thinking quickly, Trent snared the hard plastic surface from his tabletop, dashing his breakfast aside, and flung it like a giant discus with all of his might. The circular surface slammed into the lead man’s midsection just as he fired the first shot. Seeing him floored and his partners assisting him, Trent spared a glance to Samantha. She was clutching her stomach with both of her hands. “I’m all right,” she said. “Don’t let them hurt anyone.”
Trent turned back to the gunmen, screening out the crying and frenzied crowd. The two men who were still standing stopped assisting their fallen comrade and commenced shooting. By this time, Trent had lifted the small table by its center support and shielded himself while rushing toward them. The men stood their ground, squeezing off round after round, even as the table’s metal surface deflected every shot. Charging past shouting patrons, Trent rammed the table into both shooters, knocking them back and over the waist-high wall. He dropped the table on top of them.
Some pedestrians ran away, but most of them didn’t seem to recognize the imminent danger they encountered. Apparently, they preferred to remain and watch. “What’s the matter with you people?” Trent hollered. “Get out of here!” But his warning was useless as the onlookers seemed more entertained than fearful of the perilous circumstances. Before Trent could utter another warning, one of them yelled, “Look out, that one’s gettin’ up!”
Inside the wall, the lead man was struggling to his feet, and he again raised his pistol. This time, Trent was within striking distance. Bullets fired into the air as Trent swung the man’s arm over his head, twisting it with both hands. In the same motion, he turned his back against the shooter’s chest, forcing the gun-hand downward. Additional shots embedded the pavement until the brute stopped shooting and
wrapped his free arm around Trent’s neck. In response, Trent jammed his elbow into the man’s solar plexus, ousting the wind from his lungs and the pistol from his hand. Trent kicked the pistol away and then flipped the hulking body with a textbook Seoi Nage, but the clutching giant brought Trent down with him.
Trent committed to the fall and landed on top as they crashed at the base of the wall. He spun over the man’s barrel chest and shot his fingers through the corners of his jaw. The double strike pinched the dual transverse cervical nerves, sending the man into a brief paralysis.
Meanwhile, the two men outside the wall had recovered and threw the cumbersome table out of their way. They stepped up to the wall, held their pistols over it, and began firing indiscriminately. People ran helter-skelter, screaming throughout the patio, trying to avoid being hit. Flat against the bricks, Trent’s blood boiled, knowing someone could be killed by their reckless shooting. It seemed as though the gunmen didn’t even realize he was directly beneath them.
Trent popped up and grabbed the guns, one in each hand. The shooters tried to pull them back but couldn’t free them from his iron grip. They tried again, but Trent had braced his lower body against the wall, and his grip held fast. Then, with a tremendous effort, accompanied by an involuntary roar, he twisted each of his hands up and outward, forcing his foes to release the weapons lest their wrists snap.
Simultaneously disarmed, the two men stepped back in astonishment. Trent used the moment to improve the odds. With eyes fixed on the dual behemoths, he stepped on the neck of the man at his feet and pushed the lateral edge of his shoe deep into his fleshy throat. The move crushed the man’s trachea but also severed the mylohyoid nerve, which caused his heavy legs to kick above the bricks in an involuntary reflex.
Seeing this, the other men glared at Trent who scowled with a malice he had never known. He changed his scowl to a smile, but Trent didn’t mean it to be pleasant. It was time to kill, and nothing on earth was going to stop him. The massed spectators circling the fight stayed silent. Trent wished they would leave, because what he had in mind wasn’t going to be pretty.
Holding the pistols, one in each hand, Trent pumped them over his head, startling the suited bruisers backward. Then he lowered his arms and flung the guns high into the sky. They soared with the clouds and vanished over the restaurant’s roof to his back.
As one, the crowd erupted into cheers. They had become an audience, and clearly they were rooting for Trent. The voice from before shouted, “That’s one down, mofos, who’s next?”
The black-garbed duo looked at each other and uttered words in a foreign language. They reached into their coats and pulled out glossy black objects. In a microsecond, chrome blades appeared.
Trent leaped over the wall and landed perilously within reach of their steel. Before they could strike, he performed a sudden back flip, each foot contacting a blade, knocking both knives into the air. In mid-flip, he launched himself with his arms from the top of the wall and back into the patio. The stilettos returned to the earth, and Trent caught them by the handles, one in each of his hands.
The acrobatic stunt seemed too much for the crowd. People hooted and hollered as if believing movie cameras were hidden amongst them.
While the burly men stared in disbelief, Trent held both knives by the blades in a single hand and hurled them together between their surprised heads. An impact sounded, and they turned around. Trent had put both of their knives into the center of the ‘O’ on the STOP sign across the street.
A third time the audience raved in a collective and voluminous applause. People pointed and gawked, pumping fists in the air and slapping high fives. Others produced cell phones and iPods to record the brazen event.
The suited giants turned once more to Trent, and again they spoke their foreign tongue. As though deciding their combined strength was enough to overwhelm him, they stepped up and lunged over the wall.
Trent snared the collar of the man to his right and drove his head into the pavement. But the other landed on top of Trent and began scoring powerful punches. Trent deflected ensuing blows with an arm sweep and heaved the puncher from his chest with a mighty thrust. Before the man’s momentum ceased, Trent was upright. He tossed a glance to the one whose head he bashed and, satisfied by his sluggish movement, focused on the other who was staggering to his feet. Just as he turned around, Trent launched his own flurry of blows, sending him backpedalling in a flimsy effort to defend himself.
Trent was relentless. He put his full weight into every punch—right, left, right, left—a non-stop barrage. Each blow landed on either side of the man’s face, causing his swarthy head to swivel—right, left, right, left—while his thick arms flopped and flailed. Trent’s combination of speed and power, along with the sheer number of strikes, kept his foe off-balance and dazzled the audience. They cheered and whistled as if perceiving him the underdog, defying the odds and representing them all.
But Trent no longer heeded the audience. He had attained a zone in which he’d never been. His state of mind had transcended the fighting ring of his past. A battlefield was the only place for him now. While his unyielding volley kept the brute at bay, he sensed the other one rise. Trent knew he had to put this one down. He performed a classic three sixty-jump kick, pelting the giant off of his feet and onto his back amidst the busted platters and overturned chairs. Then, from a running start, he delivered a crowd pleaser by leaping high into the air, aiming three concurrent strikes.
Just before contact, the sprawled titan looked up in amazement, and Trent perceived the man’s resignation to defeat. It didn’t save him. Trent’s left fist impacted the nasal bone, his right fist crushed the man’s throat, and his knee impacted the solar plexus, collapsing the omental bursa through the splenic artery. The amazed expression became a gruesome mask of death.
Trent sprang up and faced his final opponent. The crowd again burst into an apex of applause. It reminded Trent of his bouts in the Japanese underworld. The memories of sounds, smells, and feelings he thought he would never relive came upon him in a dazzling rush of sensations.
The remaining giant scanned the courtyard. He viewed his lifeless ally at the base of bricks, and the other one dead at Trent’s feet. Blood from a split forehead coursed down his brow and dripped off the ridge of his chin.
From the crowd, the same voice hollered, “That’s two down, mofo. And you’re next!”
The swarthy brute looked again to the bricks and spotted his .45 caliber resting at its base. He started for it, but he was a three hundred, sixty-pound sloth. Before he reached it, Trent closed the distance between them with a dash across the patio. A hard shoulder-tackle sent them toppling over the wall and onto the sidewalk.
Grappling on the pavement, the black-haired goliath managed to get his left hand on Trent’s throat, and climbing to his knees, launched a blow with his right. Trent parried the blow and speedily pulled the huge mitt from his neck, twisting it to his left. He turned it hard to his right and then back to his left, locking the man’s elbow to the sky.
The man screamed in pain, but Trent wasn’t finished. He pummeled the joint with his strongest hammer strike. A loud crack sounded over the patio and echoed down the street. The man howled in agony and, seeing his arm bent in the wrong direction, stopped resisting.
The crowd reacted to the ugly scene with a chorus of “Ohs!” Many people turned their heads, appearing aghast and unable to look at the broken appendage positioned so unnaturally.
Trent was in no mood for mercy. Still kneeling, he gripped the man’s lower face with both of his hands on either side of the jaw. He pressed his fingers just under the ears, with his thumbs pushed up and into the anterior belly of the digastricus. “Who sent you?” he snarled. “Who sent you?”
The man wouldn’t or couldn’t answer as Trent applied the grip steadily stronger until it penetrated the mylohyoid muscle and severed the mandibular nerves. At the same time, the pressure from Trent’s fingers broke the styloid process
bones, causing them to slice through the carotid arteries. The resulting hemorrhage was instantly fatal, and the bruiser fell limp to the street.
Trent stood up with adrenaline still pounding his veins, after which the crowd exploded into its loudest ovation yet. The voice from the audience shouted again, “And that’s three! Awesome, man, awesome. Blood shoulda said who sent him.”
Pivoting slowly, Trent took in the adulation as people gathered around, patting him on the back, congratulating his victory against three colossal villains. It occurred to him, for only a moment, it used to be like this in Japan.
Then his state of mind abated, and reality set in, forcing Trent to assess the situation. More people approached, and many of them were taking pictures with their cell phone cameras, as several others squirmed to pose next to him.
Remembering the reckless shooting, Trent looked around. “Is anyone hurt?” No one seemed to have been hit. “Samantha!” he shouted. He turned his head and shouted again, “Samantha!” Where did she go?
Trent broke away from his admirers and returned to where his table had been. There was only debris and broken furniture now. “Did anyone see where Samantha went?” The elated crowd did not seem to understand his angst. “Samantha!” he shouted louder still.
The tall waiter called out from within the building, “Over here.”
Trent whirled around and raced to the entrance. “Where’s Samantha? Is she all right?” He noticed the expression on the boy’s face, and his heart collapsed. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Where’s Samantha?”
“We called nine-one-one,” the waiter told him. “They should be here any minute.”
Killer of Killers Page 22
