by Mike Leon
“Oh yeah? Then who did it?”
Walter dreads telling Reynolds he was right, because Reynolds is a douchebag, but he’s going to hear about it anyway.
“It looks like it might have been Kill Team One.”
“Oh. What’s that? Say it again?”
Walter doesn’t say it again.
“Man, Walter. Hate to say I told you so, buddy. So now what? You gonna sit around with your dick in your hands wondering if you got the right guy while he kills Elkan and Vicky and does who knows what else?”
“I’m going to do my job.”
“Do your job? You fucking send in the troops! Call the Marines, the Air Force, drop cluster bombs, poison gas, napalm. I want a fucking mushroom cloud over that motherfucker! Do you hear me? A mushroom cloud!”
GOD OF WAR
Victor Hansen glares down at the face of a cowering Afghani as he stomps down on the terrified bastard’s chest with his dusty brown boot. He squeezes the trigger of his Sig P220 and feels the recoil in his right hand as a .45 ACP cartridge empties its charge. The steel slide kicks the hammer back to the ready position and then rocks forward again on the heels of a ball of steaming hot lead that rockets forward into the forehead of his enemy. Blood jets upward and splashes his boot and the bottom of his pale green duster. He loves it.
He is the greatest warrior the world has ever known. Each bullet he fires chips at the granite that is his masterpiece. Each body he leaves behind is a small monument to his fury.
Annoyingly so, his brother does not seem to feel the same way.
“That one didn’t have a weapon,” Sid says, standing beside him holding an FN-P90 in a ready position. He wears a tight black t-shirt and cargo pants that he scrounged from the camp.
“Too bad,” Victor answers. Sid fights well but does not have the heart of a true warrior, not like Victor. He doesn’t thirst for blood. He doesn’t feel the fury. He never did.
As children, Kill Team One made them fight each other with knives, usually wooden, but sometimes real. A knife fight is like a whirling tornado to all but the quickest humans. Hands slap. Steel blades swish the air. Only a master of the art can even come close to following the movements. In the early days it was an endurance contest more than anything else. Whoever could bleed the most and still hang on to the blade would win. Victor always won. The dozens of scars on his hands are still there to prove it.
In the weeks since Sid arrived, Kill Team Three has been out on fourteen separate search and destroy missions. All of them were launched with the goal of finding the Imam. All of them ended in the glorious slaughter of a many pathetic ragheads, with no Imam to be found. Each time, Sid seemed reluctant, often shooting only when a civilian attempted to fight back. The others did not notice or did not care, but Victor did. He took offense even. Empathy is for the weak. A warrior has no empathy.
Victor doesn’t really understand the why of his mission here. He knows the rags killed a bunch of Americans on 9/11. That’s why Ashley and most of the others hate them. Victor was just a baby then and doesn’t remember that. He hates the rags simply because he was told to.
And he certainly does hate them. He hates their stupid beards. He hates their little head scarves. He hates the way they kneel and sing all fucking day. He hates the way they cover their women so he can’t tell which ones are worth keeping alive to fuck, and which he can kill right off. He hates them. He hates them and he wants to kill them all.
To his left and a few meters ahead of him, a group of raghead fighters appear around the corner of a pieced-together hut constructed with everything from refrigerator doors to rummaged drywall. There are two, both wearing dirty common rags patched together in a jumble of tan shades and holding battered AK-47s, a gun that is absolutely ubiquitous in this part of the world. It is not uncommon to see young children walking around with them. Victor has killed quite a few like that.
Before either of them can raise their rifles, Sid has shot them both through the eyes. His mastery of the P90 is so great that he actually left the gun switched to full auto and fired both shots with a single trigger pull, acquiring his second target during the recoil from the first shot. Victor notices this, and despite how much he resents the little shit, he can’t help but be impressed.
“Nice trick,” he says.
“I can only do it within fifteen feet…” Sid replies modestly.
That is when something strange occurs. Victor’s radio crackles alive with the sound of the knife guy’s voice. Victor can’t remember his name. This is the third one since they landed in this hell hole.
“I got something weird over by this little mussallah. Th...” And then they hear a loud scream without the assistance of the radio.
“What’s a musallah?” Sid says.
“I have no idea,” Victor tells him. “It came from that way.”
Neither of them needs to say anything more to communicate the next step. Victor makes the first advance and Sid covers him from behind a beat up old truck. He takes cover behind a stone outcropping and Sid advances past him to a flipped fruit cart. In this way they make their way down the street until they reach their destination.
The musallah is really an old store front and has room only for thirty or forty people to fit comfortably. Victor steps out from behind a pickup truck packed with squawking chickens and sees something very strange in the sandy brown road. Holstering his pistol and raising a P90 from the concealment of his duster, he approaches a wide red splatter in the street.
He already knows what it is without any need to be this close. It is the demolished cadaver of the knife guy. He can tell from the stylized throwing knives scattered in the soupy mess of gore. However, there is something very strange here. At first glance it looked like the knife guy stepped on a mine or was blasted to bits by some other explosive, but Victor heard no explosion and he was just down the street. As he steps closer, he can see that the pieces of the knife guy are not burnt or shredded, but sliced and diced with laser precision. It looks like the knife guy was thrown head first into a spinning jet engine blade and chopped into two dozen near perfect discs of human chum. It happened so quickly that many of the discs stacked in a neat pile at the center of the mess with bands of sliced clothing wrapped around them like a tower of fillet mignon wrapped in bacon strips.
“Ashley is gonna be mad,” Sid says from behind the pickup truck.
“It’s just a knife guy,” Victor replies. “They’re a dime a dozen.”
“What do you think did this?”
Victor is fairly certain he knows, but the location doesn’t make any sense… unless they’ve come specifically looking for him and his team.
“I think a ninja master could do this.”
“Correct you are, young Graveyard soldier,” speaks the whispering shinobi.
Victor spins to look upon the black form of the ninja standing on top of the chicken cages in the back of the truck. His clothes are tight like a second skin and jet like the darkest ocean. Only his eyes are visible through the slit in his mask. In his right hand is a blood dripping sword that gleams in the bright desert sun. The ninja flicks the sword in a lightning fast motion and all of the blood flies from the blade to rain down on the caged chickens beneath him. The spotless blade is remarkable for its hand forged hamon – a pattern of discoloration that marks the change from softer, shock-absorbing steel that forms the spine of the blade to denser, hardened steel that forms the razor sharp cutting edge. Only a world-class artisan can forge a blade of this caliber. Victor knows he is dealing with a real ninja.
“I seek the man with one ear,” the ninja rasps. “Take me to him and I will spare your lives.”
Victor has killed many thousands of people and half as many animals. None stood a chance against him. He has never killed a ninja. This could be his first challenge yet.
“Take him!” the older Hansen shouts to his younger brother.
Both of them blast away at the ninja with the P90s. They hit nothing. The nin
ja is gone.
Then, like the wind, he strikes. From behind Sid, he swings his sword in a massive downward arc as if to slice the boy in half. Even with his nearly superhuman reflexes, Sid barely turns in time. He pushes his weapon up to block the strike, but the sword continues through the gun like it was made from gelatin. The point misses his face by so little that the flat side of the blade actually rubs against the side of Sid’s nose. Sid leaps backward and away from the ninja as Victor fires his P90 in full-auto rock and roll mode at the ninja, but again the ninja vanishes.
Victor tires of this already. He shrugs off the harness of his P90. This gun will do him little good. He draws a foot-long knife from a polycarbonate holster on his thigh. The blade is silver and wavy like a serpent. The handle is bone. Knives of this type were used for war by the people of early Indonesia because the wavy curves of the blade caused more extensive bleeding than straight bladed counterparts. Or that’s what some knife crazy soldier told Victor anyway. He decided to put the theory to the test. He likes to cause more extensive bleeding.
He stands with his arms straight and his hands at his hips. His chest is puffed out like a gorilla and he roars at the sky, baring a killer’s teeth.
“Come get some,” he shouts as he searches all directions. This is a terrible idea.
A ninja, at least a real ninja, is something hardly ever seen outside of Japan and even there rarely. Victor has never seen one in person. Graveyard employs none, and he has been given to understand that they are utilized only by the mysterious cults that control East Asia. His old man had dealings with some in the 80s and is one of a few westerners who has any knowledge of them. Kill Team One described them as great warriors capable of strange magic and unbelievable feats of swordsmanship.
Victor does not care. He is angry and he has death in his eyes. Magic tricks and shiny swords are nothing to him. He is the God of War today and he will spill the blood of this enemy all across this dusty wasteland if he wishes.
The ninja tries to surprise him from the side, this time with a wide arcing lateral strike. Fighting a sword with a knife is a daunting task, but it is far from hopeless and in some ways the knife has an advantage. Swords are made from soft springy metals to absorb impacts without breaking, but a good knife is made from dense high carbon steel – comparatively brittle, but much harder than a sword. Additionally, a knife is more maneuverable in extreme close quarters, if one is quick enough to entangle themselves with the sword wielder. Victor knows these things. He is also fast like a demon.
He catches the sword on the flat of his knife, near the tip of the sword blade where it moves fastest in its arc. This is the worst place to catch a sword, as it hits hardest here. Samurai consider it to be the sweet spot for cutting. But Victor’s knife is a good knife and his grip is strong as iron. His gamble pays off. The knife holds, and the ninja is overcommitted to his swing. With his free hand, Victor grabs hold of the sword hilt and then grinds his knife down the sword edge, badly damaging it. As it reaches the end, he smashes the butt of the knife handle into the ninja’s face.
The ninja leaps away, leaving his sword in Victor’s hands and putting a good twenty feet between them. Victor snaps the sword over his knee and tosses it to the ground. The ninja tosses a trio of razor sharp shuriken, but Victor stands his ground. Without a flinch, he swats the middle shuriken from the air and allows the other two to whiz past his ears on either side. He glares at the ninja. He does not blink. He does not feel. He has nothing in his mind but hate, and it is so strong in that second that his gaze alone would have killed a lesser opponent.
The ninja flees in a puff of acrid black smoke.
Victor turns his attention to Sid, who remains where he stood when the ninja sliced his gun in half. He stares at Victor with uncertainty.
“Pick up the knife guy’s gear and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
ROOFTOP
Yoshida punches the rooftop in frustration. His knuckles begin to bleed seconds after they contact the stone. Somewhere in the streets below, the children that defeated him must be laughing. Children.
His ancient and priceless sword is broken. His skills were no match for a mere boy. He has no more clue to the identity of the one eared man than when he came here. His fury builds to a breaking point. The hot air burns at him. Sweat soaks through his clothes. His mask is choking him.
He tears off the mask and sucks in as much air as he can. It isn’t enough. He reaches into his shirt and grasps for a cheap flip phone he had tucked into a secret pocket. At first he can’t find it and he digs with growing desperation. When he finds it, he tears it free and flips it open. He searches through the phone’s simple menu for the music player. He finds it and mashes the enter key to open the list of files stored there. There is only one. He mashes the key again and holds the phone to his ear so he can hear it.
Mitsuko’s voice greets his ears. A wave of soothing comfort washes over him as she speaks in a silky whisper like she always did.
“Yoshida, what time will you be home? I will make noodles for you. What kind would you like?”
He hears the last part in his head again. What kind would you like? The complete lack of tension in her voice is what makes him like that particular part the best. What kind would you like? What kind would you like?
He met Mitsuko back home in Japan, during the years when he defied his father’s wishes and went to school. They were both studying Biology and she had taken the library’s only copy of a book Yoshida needed for an exam the next day. He was aggravated because it meant he would have to ask for an extension from the instructor – a man who was not known for his patience. On his way from the library information desk, he spotted Mitsuko and her friend Akiko looking through the book at a study table near the door.
Brashly, for a Japanese man, he asked if they might share the book with him.
He remembers the quiet, but hardly shy, Mitsuko eyeing him as he took notes from the text. He remembers her taking a pink marker from her backpack and using it to write her name and phone number on another book he was looking at. As she was facing him, and so was the book, the phone number appeared upside down on the page. He thought that was cute.
He remembers how Akiko did not like him. She told Mitsuko to stay away from him, but Mitsuko was not that easily dissuaded. She was the type of girl who sees what she wants and goes and gets it. She loudly accused Akiko of being a jealous lesbian in the school cafeteria.
He remembers the sex. No. He tries to force that away. It cheapens her memory.
The baby came somewhat unexpectedly. They had argued about it much. Yoshida told her they had no money for a child, but Mitsuko insisted on keeping the baby. She wanted him to go to his family for money, but he refused to even tell them about the pregnancy. Mitsuko came from liberal parents who grew up going back and forth to the west. She did not understand how the Tanaka clan would look down on him for this oversight. Already, they disapproved of his choice to stray from the warrior path. Of course, Mitsuko knew not of this. She had only been told that his family was involved in dangerous dealings and all references to them were intentionally vague – another point of contention between them – but she knew they had money.
Finally, with no other options available, Yoshida did go to his father and ask for help. Katsuhiro Tanaka, surprisingly, did not admonish him. In fact, he offered his support whole-heartedly. Yoshida accepted, even in disgust. He knew his father only hoped that his grandson would carry on the family name and tradition where his own son had failed him.
It matters no longer. All of that is gone now. All of them are gone. He has nothing to remind him but this recording of Mitsuko’s voice. What kind would you like? It clears his mind, but it also drives him on.
He stares up at the sky and collects his thoughts. He has made progress, even if it was just a little. He has located agents of Bochi, which is more than he could have said yesterday. After witnessing their massacre of women and children here this day, he is even mor
e certain these are the men responsible for the death of his wife and child. Tetsuo’s warning was well stated. These are truly terrifying warriors, and he will need a better plan if he is to proceed.
The ninja will proceed.
BOMBSHELL
“Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light,” Morgan sings, screeching out the best David Hasselhoff impression he can muster. “Some people need to help somebody, when the edge of surrender’s in sight…”
“Shut up,” Shelly grumbles under her breath.
“Don’t you worry!” he continues, pointing at her and winking. “It’s gonna be alright.”
She throws one of the Graveyard infirmary’s ugly green pillows at him. It hits him in the face and he stops singing.
“I can’t help it. You’re a blond bombshell.”
She’s only been awake for seven hours, and Morgan is already making her life miserable. He noticed that her name, Baum Michelle, on her chart sounds like bombshell. Somehow, that evolved (devolved?) into Pam Anderson jokes, then just Baywatch in general. Morgan is a good man to have in a gun fight, but he has a terrible sense of humor.
“I hate it. And your singing makes me wish I died in that stairwell.” Her voice is the deep grumble of someone who has been sleeping for a long time.
“Harsh.”
“Spears should be here by now,” she says looking at the clock. “It’s not like him to be late.”
“You know, you should just go with it,” Morgan says. “You’re blond. You look great. You have a grenade launcher most of the time. It’s a good nickname.”
Like a savior from the heavens, Spears walks through the door holding a bottle of Dom Pérignon.
“I brought the bubbly,” Spears says, smiling wide. “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999.”
He sets the bottle down on the crummy nightstand next to her bed.
“What is it with you two and bad songs?” she says.
