by Mike Leon
Sid chooses to fire more conservatively than the others because he brought a more practical rifle and because his father taught him to be accurate. He kills one guard with a shot to the head, but he cannot compete with the firepower of the others, especially after the rest of the team catches up and begins unloading their fully automatic weapons at the facility. At one point, Abo throws his humongous boomerang and Sid watches as it cleaves a sentry in half and then continues all the way through one of the water treatment silos. A flood of muddy brown water spills out like a tidal wave and washes another sentry out from behind another silo. Victor quickly mows him down with the SAW. Sid swears he can hear the werewolf laughing over all the gunfire. This isn’t a battle – it’s a massacre.
When the shooting finally stops, the facility is falling apart. Water springs and squirts from all of the silos and washes gallons of blood along with it down into the sands below. The knife guy is dead. He caught a bullet in the chest when he ran up ahead of the team and tried to throw a knife at a guard.
Ashley walks out ahead of them to survey the damage. He offers hardly a cursory glance at any of the wrecked bodies before them. Then he turns around and shrugs.
“Guess he wasn’t here,” he says. Then he throws back his head and laughs. “Let’s get on with it.”
“We’re gonna need a new knife guy,” John says.
“What else is new?”
Safari dashes forward and throws three large satchel charges into the leaking mess. Then he rejoins the team.
“How’s it feel to kick ass with Kill Team Three, son?” Ashley asks him as he lights his next cigar with a matchstick.
In truth, Sid isn’t sure. These men do not act like true warriors – not the way his father taught him. They are careless and wasteful. They make a mockery of their work. One of them appears to be a mythological creature. He doesn’t know what to think.
“Optimal,” he says, just a little shell-shocked.
As they are all walking away from the facility, Safari detonates the charges. Not one of them turns to look at the explosion. For six, it is simply because of apathy. For one, it is because of other worries on his mind.
ZEN WISDOM
FOR THE WALKING DEAD
Not long ago, blood stained the floor of the tea house where Yoshida Tanaka sits now. Not long before that, his katana was wet with it. The blood belonged to Ryunosuke Masashige. Masashige was a master of the naginata, a polearm consisting of a long rod topped by a curved sword blade, and an enemy of the Tanaka clan. Tanaka slew him with a clean strike that gracefully cleft him in twain just below the shoulders as he as twirled his naginata low to the floor. His arms fell by themselves, still gripping the polearm, as the upper half of him slowly toppled. Tanaka hadn’t seen a man fall apart like that since his father was alive. It is much different when the killing hands are his hands.
He does not feel remorse for this killing. No. This was a clean kill, and honorable. Masashige had challenged the Tanaka clan in front of other rivals, thinking them weak. Yoshida came forward to meet him for the honor of the entire clan and for himself. He slew a great warrior today in honorable combat in front of many witnesses. Now no one will call him weak.
So now he sits on the floor drinking tea. He wears a black kimono with his daisho belted to his side. Once a symbol of the samurai class, it is much more to Tanaka. They are the tools of vengeance.
His uncle Tetsuo enters the house wearing a white business suit. His black hair is slicked back with grease and his eyes hide behind dark sunglasses. He does not look like Yoshida or his father, but in these last ten years he has been more of a father to the ninja than his real one ever had been.
“They tell me you killed him with a masterful stroke,” his uncle says as he sits down next to the black clad Tanaka, a perfect contrast.
“His death was a vision, but the art of it does not interest me much,” Yoshida tells the old man. “You know what does interest me.”
And his uncle does. For a decade now, the older Tanaka has trained Yoshida in the ways of his clan. He taught him to fight with a sword, to blend into the shadows, to cloud the minds of men with illusions, and to do other things – things thought impossible by the common man. For that same length of time, Yoshida has waited for any clue that might lead him to his revenge. There have been none.
“I have something that may interest you,” his uncle says in careful response, as if he only speaks out of obligation. He stops.
“Do you?” Yoshida goads politely.
“It is a story I heard yesterday,” his uncle continues quietly. “From a Chinese agent I know well. His name is Wong.”
Yoshida only listens, waiting for his uncle to continue.
“Long ago, during the cold war between the Russians and the Americans, Wong worked closely with some members of the Russian KGB. He knew a spy there named Marina Golikova. A highly trained KGB operative, she was quite skilled and very well favored by her superiors. They selected her for a very dangerous mission posing as a secretary inside the American Central Intelligence Agency. For years, she remained undetected inside the agency, sending secret information back to the Soviets. No one suspected a thing. She even married an American agent. And that would prove to be her downfall. You see, this agent, he was very well known for his patriotism, and also his ruthlessness. Years into their marriage, he discovered her deception and he became like a madman. He fell upon her with his fists in their home and beat her until she was dead. Then he cut off her head and sent it to the KGB in a box. When her superior opened the box and took out her head, it exploded and killed him. Her body was found skewered and cooked over an open flame. They say he made the children...”
“They had children?”
“Yes. Two boys. He made them eat the meat.”
“That is… terribly unfortunate.”
“It is said that during the struggle, Marina Golikova cut off her husband’s left ear with a belt sander.”
“I see,” Yoshida says, attempting to keep his composure. He keeps himself seated, even though he wants to stand. He wants to run out that door this very second and hunt down this man. “And where is he now?”
“That is where the matter becomes… complicated. Wong has an old KGB friend named Fradkov. He has known this man well for many years. Fradkov says he saw that man three nights ago at an American encampment in Afghanistan. He was with men Fradkov believes are agents of Bochi.”
Uncle Tetsuo pauses with Bochi. He gives Yoshida a look like he expects him to be disturbed by that last part, but the younger Tanaka doesn’t know what he means.
“Agents of Bochi? What is that?”
“A black shadow of death,” Tetsuo responds. “They are mercenaries employed by the secret clans that control the west. In the 80s, your father had some dealings with them, but I know not much of that, only that they are a force of terror and destruction the likes of which has never been matched. They should best be avoided.”
“So you say.”
“So I say.”
“You cannot stand in my way.”
“I do not wish to. But I implore you. Do not follow this man into the desert.”
“Have you forgotten already? Have you forgotten what he did?”
“No, but I am not as hot blooded and my thoughts are clear. Surely you must recognize how unlikely this is. The man who killed Mitsuko and Shintaro has been vanished ten years now. He was a hired cutthroat. Such men seldom outlive their usefulness and this one was an old man even then. Surely he is dead and gone now.”
“Have you grown so cold with age that you no longer care?”
“No. I do care. I care too much to let you run to your death. This man you seek, if he is the man who did these things, and if he still lives, then he serves the most deadly forces in the west. To meet them with accusations is folly. To attack them means certain doom.”
“You did not see them. You did not see Mitsuko’s face as he… mutilated her. You did not have to watch little Shinta
ro’s skin begin to boil.”
Tetsuo did not see these things, but he grows quiet with the mention of them.
Yoshida stands after a few moments of waiting through his uncle’s silence. He makes for the door. He has already resolved to go find this man with one ear and kill him. Then he will kill his masters. Then he will kill their masters. He will not stop until every man responsible is dead and gone.
He stops when he feels his uncle’s hand on his shoulder. He turns around expecting a struggle from Tetsuo, attempting to stop him on his way out the door, but the expression on his uncle’s face is not that cold.
“Their sign is a fanged skull and bones,” the old ninja tells him. “You will know them by it.”
HIGH SOCIETY
The Rothschild estate is crawling with security when Walter pulls up. With all these details in one place, bodyguards are bouncing off each other like bumper cars. He expected that. He didn’t expect to see Victoria Russell standing outside.
She is leaning on the railing at the top of the wide stone steps to the tall and decorative double doors leading into Rothschild’s ballroom. She wears a green Vera Wang dress that matches her eyes and outlines her slender figure. She brushes a red highlighted lock of her dark hair seductively as she converses with a soldier holding a Steyr AUG. She’s always had a thing for soldiers – even the ones she owns.
“It’s awfully stuffy in there,” Vicky says as Walter approaches. “You’re going to hate it.”
“Are you all here?”
“All si-,” she stops herself. “No. Five of us.”
It sounds so strange not to refer to the six of them. There have been six as long as Walter has worked for the company.
“I hear you saw the body,” Vicky says, more of a question than a statement.
“Yeah. All of the bodies,” Walter reaffirms.
“Did it really look like something bit him in half?”
Walter nods. He hopes the casket will be open just so that no one here will have to ask him that question, but he knows that won’t be the case.
“What do you think could have done that?”
Walter frowns as he presents the same dry response he has given the last five people to ask. “Shark, killer whale, dinosaur,” he answers.
“You know, it’s so strange. I saw him only last week. He was talking about…”
“Talking about what?”
She looks at him for a moment, and then away. He can sense her backtracking already.
“Nothing. Just something very daft and silly. Shall we go inside?”
An operator pulls back the double doors and Walter follows her into the grey stone structure. The gauntlet of guards and pat-downs to get in is unreal. Walter waves most of them off, but the personal bodyguards aren’t under his command and most of them are overzealous dicks. It takes them a few minutes to work their way inside.
They enter the ballroom next to a mahogany table with lathed claw-foot legs. On top of that is a five foot tall ice sculpture of an owl perched on top of an open book.
Walter pans across the room and past a dozen familiar faces; the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Samsung Group, El Malo Grande (leader of the Global Crime League), a few key members of parliament, and one of the Rockefellers. There are only twenty or so guests by his count. Anyone he doesn’t recognize he assumes to be with security.
Eli Carrington’s casket is a silvery one with little flower details around the edges. The top half of the lid is open, to Walter’s surprise, but some blankets conceal the fact that the lower half of the body is not in there with him. Walter has no interest in joining the long line of people in formal wear waiting to hover over it. He knows he won’t be able to look without seeing anything more than the mess they found on the veranda that night.
They’re barely in the room for two seconds when they are accosted by Barack Obama. He’s always cordial to Walter, but that’s probably because somebody showed him that photo of Walter smacking George W in the face during that mess back in ’03. He brings it up every time Walter runs into him.
“Hey, Walter. You just missed Dubya,” Obama says. He smiles. “This time.”
Walter fakes a chuckle. The President needs better writers.
He manages to feign his way through a minute of small talk about golf clubs and LeBron James while Obama maneuvers himself into asking Vicky for something – probably money. Walter doesn’t actively participate in any of the politicking. He doesn’t even vote anymore since he learned the whole thing is rigged anyway. The President is, for all intents and purposes, a carefully selected sock puppet for his employers.
Walter politely excuses himself and then makes his way to the other side of the room and the lavish table of hors d’oeuvres that no one seems to be eating. He stops and wonders why, as he looks over the selection of meat topped bread slices.
“I see you’re ogling the delicacies,” someone says over his shoulder. It’s Elkan Rothschild – the man who owns this mansion. “You really should try some. It’s roast panda.”
Elkan is a tall man with sharp features and dark hair. He wears a black tux that Walter can’t identify, but knows is ridiculously expensive. He’ll probably wear it this once, and then throw it in the trash just because he can. This thing with the panda is par for the course with Rothschild. He wallows in excess every minute of every day.
“That sounds…” Walter struggles to come up with the word. He actually can’t make up his mind. On one hand, it’s just so wrong, but on the other, he’d really like to try panda. There won’t ever be another chance. “Interesting.”
He picks up a piece and tries it. Calling it gamey would be an understatement. It tastes like the worst steak Walter has ever had, and then some. He conceals his distaste well.
“Not bad,” Walter says.
“You’re patronizing me, Mr. Stedman,” Elkan says. “It’s absolutely unpalatable. You’re the first guest to choke the whole thing down without dry heaving.”
“Well, nobody else here did two tours in Southeast Asia.”
“That,” Elkan says, actually scanning the room to make sure, “they did not.”
“You got quite a soiree going,” Walter says.
“I do. It’s a shame the circumstance is so glum.”
“I haven’t seen the others yet.”
“They’ve confined themselves to my study. The politicians can be so crass at a time like this. Follow me.”
Rothschild rescues Victoria from a conversation about the debt ceiling with two senators and the three of them are off to his study down the hall.
Elkan’s study is an Art Deco labyrinth. It isn’t a single small room. It is a mass of aisles and cages containing rare tomes and artifacts displayed in big bulletproof glass cases. Walter can’t tell how far it goes on. It could be the whole east wing of the mansion from where he stands.
Just inside the study, Anton Reynolds is sitting on an oak reading table with his feet on that table’s matching chair. He is a tanned man, in his forties, short and dark. He is balding on the top of his head. He wears a black pinstriped suit.
A few feet away, Henry Krupp is drinking red wine from an unusually large piece of stemware. He is a tall, gangly old man with a bald head and a bit of a horse face. He has large hands with eerily long fingers which he tends to carry in front of him as he walks – like some sort of prowling creature. For years, Walter has privately referred to him as Nosferatu. The movie scared Walter as a boy.
The last of them is Eric Du Pont, a sharp contrast to the decrepit Krupp. His features are chiseled and so is his frame. His hair cut cost him the average fry cook’s entire paycheck. The guy used to model for Calvin Klein when he was in high school, which was only eight or nine years ago. Eric is technically not the head of the Du Pont family, as his father is still alive but in a vegetative state after suffering a massive stroke when Eric was twenty.
“There’s the man of the hour,” says Reynolds. “We’ve got lots of questions for yo
u, buddy.”
“What chopped him in half?” Eric Du Pont asks.
“Oy vey, Du Pont,” Reynolds says. “We’ve been over this.”
Walter is glad Reynolds inserted himself there. He’s done with that question.
“Here’s what I want to know,” Reynolds says. “What are you doing to insure what happened to Eli doesn’t happen to the rest of us?”
“You’ve all been assigned extra security while we figure out what this is,” Walter says. “Except for Mr. Krupp, who insisted on only his own people.”
“I trust no one but my own men aboard the Condor,” Krupp says. He’s referring to his supersonic jet fortress, a vehicle which is almost perpetually in flight around the globe and serves as Krupp’s place of residence.
“That’s real comforting, Stedman,” Anton says. “Eli’s guards did him a lot of good.”
“I have full confidence in my operators, Mr. Reynolds,” Walter says.
“Could it have been Bilderberg?” Elkan asks.
“I don’t think so. They would have been more precise; used a bomb or sent a tactical team. We didn’t find any bullets or casings there except our own.”
“You’re telling me they didn’t even bring a gun?” Elkan says.
Walter shakes his head. “If he did, he didn’t use it.”
“What makes you think one person did this?”
“Something the girl said.”
“I thought the young lady was found in a stupor.”
“Yeah, but she said one thing. She kept whispering ‘the bad man’ over and over.”
Victoria Russell, noticeably silent for the whole discussion, expresses a quickly fleeting look of dismay. “What do you think that means, Walter?” she says.
“I’m not sure,” he responds.
“Sounds pretty clear cut to me,” Anton says. “Who’s on our radar that could pull a job like that?”
