by Mike Leon
“Why? They didn’t want to rape you?”
“No. They wanted to make sure I stayed a virgin.”
“Why?”
“For my husband.”
“So he could rape you?”
“Yes- What? No,” Shelly stammers. In a perfect world, the answer would be a simple no, but the world is not perfect. Conversations like this one are why she has always dreaded children.
“They did it so I wouldn’t be promiscuous,” Shelly says. She’s trying. She’s really trying.
“What’s that?”
“A girl who has sex with a lot of men is promiscuous.”
He nods like he understands.
“Those mercenaries were going to make you promiscuous.”
“No. That’s not even close.”
“But there were a lot of them, and they were gonna fuck you.”
“I didn’t want them to fuck me,” she spits back, disgusted.
And then Sid Hansen narrows his eyes at her. She can tell his gears are grinding hard on this. He scratches his chin and then, finally, he looks at her through the corners of his eyes as if the logical conclusion came to him so suddenly he did not have time to turn his head.
“You mean to tell me some girls want to get fucked sometimes?” he says.
“Yes,” she answers, a little annoyed. This is like talking to a brick wall, and the more she does it the more disturbing she finds the adolescent super killer.
“Huh,” Sid ponders. “That might be nice, I guess.”
Afraid of where the conversation might lead, she changes the subject.
“Do you have a plan to get out of here? Out of Afghanistan.”
Sid nods. He motions for her to follow.
She follows him down another tunnel, this one narrower than the last. The light from the fire becomes dimmer as they continue until they are bathed in darkness and Shelly can see nothing. After what she judges to be a hundred feet it begins to widen and she can make out a faint light ahead. They pass a place where water trickles down a cave wall, and just after that, the walls jut out into a much large chamber that opens to the outside.
What she sees there makes her laugh. She can’t make up her mind whether the Hansen brothers are crazy or just stupid.
BOOMERANG
The sun is setting when Victor Hansen finishes swinging an infant against the wall of a building. He does not care which building. It is made of concrete and that is all the detail which concerns him. It took him three hours jogging to reach the nearest town that would have a concrete building. There, he tried houses until he found one with a baby and stole it – killing everyone he encountered in each residence of course. Bits of the baby’s brains stick to the concrete and have the appearance of grey scrambled egg. This makes him feel better. He drops the tiny carcass in the street and turns away, finally satisfied. Now, to find some poor wench to victimize before he returns to the cave…
Again, he hears the giant boomerang before he sees it. Only a second later, it crashes through the wall of splattered infant brains and Victor leaps away to avoid it. Concrete blocks and broken rubble bits fall to the ground behind him. He stands to watch the boomerang arc wide around the whole town and make its way back to its owner. But ahead of Abo, the werewolf is already charging him.
It comes at him headlong, snarling and huge. The beast is easily twice his size and Victor is not small. It carries no guns this time. No. This time it is angry. This time it wants revenge. That means getting hands on.
Victor draws the .45 automatic that he brought with him and shoots the werewolf in the face three times. Blood gushes from the bullet wounds in its head, but it keeps coming. He shoots it three times in the chest. This also does nothing. Victor wishes he had picked up a bigger gun before storming out of the cave in anger. Also, he wishes he hadn’t missed werewolf on the killing things test; the written test of supernatural creature weak points his father made him take.
The werewolf barrels onto him and Victor draws his big curvy knife. He stabs it twice as he dives between its legs and then he whips around to slice its hamstring. The monster manages to turn and grab him by the face to pick him up with one hand, but Victor cuts the tendons in its forearm and the hand goes limp and releases him.
Victor backs away from the crippled monster as he shoots it in both knees to keep it from going much of anywhere. Is it a wooden stake that kills these things? Maybe salt? He could cut off its head. That will kill anything. No. Not cockroaches. He wishes he had taken that test more seriously…
The boomerang comes back at him again from behind and Victor vaults over it. The spinning blade of metal death continues on to cut the werewolf clean in half at the waist. It also takes a hand from the monster. Then it turns and whirls back toward its master. Abo catches it in his outstretched hand.
Two raghead men step out of a nearby house to see the commotion. Victor sees them look at him, then the werewolf. They go back inside. Victor chuckles. When he is done here, he will go kill them.
“What the fuck?” someone shouts, angrily. It is a voice Victor recognizes.
He trains his gun on Ashley Marjorie as the kill team commander comes around the corner of a small house into his sight.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouts at Abo, a hundred yards away. Victor stands between them, but Ashley doesn’t seem to care that he is even here. “I thought you were an expert with that fucking thing and you’re chopping my people in half?!”
Ashley bends down to pick up the werewolf’s severed lower half. He hands it to the werewolf’s upper half, which has been slowly crawling away on its elbows. The beast nods and holds the cut off parts back in place, as if his flesh will knit itself whole again. Victor does not like that idea. He is already outnumbered.
“I know you’re pissed about Safari, but you can’t lose your shit like that anymore,” Ashley continues to scold the big black man.
Abo nods solemnly.
Victor takes the opportunity to shoot him in the face. The goliath aborigine drops dead.
For a moment, Ashley stands speechless. His face is awash with anger and frustration. He tries to say something, but the words are all coming at the same time. Finally, they erupt.
“A pistol? A fucking pistol? He was more than a football field from you and you have a pistol and one shot. One fucking shot! How? I can’t do that! I can’t do that from right here!”
Ashley pulls a small Glock pistol from the pocket of his hoodie and points it at Victor. He is hardly ten feet away. He squeezes the trigger. BAM! He misses. He squeezes it again. A bullet brushes by Victor’s ear. Again. BAM! BAM! He fires like a madman, straight at Victor’s chest, until the whole magazine is spent.
Victor glares back at the commander and grins. He reloads the automatic.
Ashley screams with rage and breaks the Glock in two. He throws the shattered pieces to the ground. “I will enjoy crushing your skull with my hands, you fucking piece of trash.”
Victor shoots him in the chest, but the bullets clank to a stop. He fires a shot straight between Ashley’s eyes and the man does not so much as blink. When he sees this, he does not hesitate to run. The werewolf can be hurt if not killed, but this is different. Ashley doesn’t even flinch when bullets slam into his chest and face. Victor learned his lesson about fighting invincible enemies back in Kandahar. He doesn’t intend to make that mistake again.
“What’s a matter? Running like a little faggot?” Ashley taunts. He approaches Victor calmly, seemingly in no hurry to catch up. “Yeah. You ain’t the only one with a few surprises up his sleeve.”
Ashley’s words have no effect on him. Victor is not afraid. He is never afraid. In place of the fear most people feel, Victor has only ever the urge to get a bigger gun. You can kill anything with a big enough gun, his father used to tell him. Only this time a big enough gun is nowhere near.
“We know about your cave,” Ashley says. “We followed that juicy little twat for ages. Figured she would find you even
tually. She sure did alright. Found you stuffing your dick in her didn’t she?”
It is possible there are rocket propelled grenades somewhere in this town. Fuck. It is highly likely. This far south, the militants are common and there is a good chance some raghead asshole has a stash of weapons behind a sheet in his hut. Still, he could search this town all day and not find them, and Victor doesn’t have all day. He has a bulletproof man on his ass.
“Did you cut her tits off like the rag bitch in the barracks?” Ashley continues. “That was a hoot, let me tell you.”
A bigger gun. Where can he get a bigger gun right this second? He could start smashing down doors, he thinks. He looks back to see that Ashley is still steadily approaching him. Victor continues running directly away. He picks up the pace a bit. Then he sees it. Not a bigger gun. A bigger weapon…
Victor stops at Abo’s corpse and hoists the giant boomerang off the ground. It weighs as much as he does, which makes him wonder how a man not much larger than him handled it so easily. He looks down at the aborigine’s corpse. He knows from working with him that Abo used the controls on his giant glove to manipulate the boomerang in flight. They sent a signal that helped the boomerang return to him, but they must also add some ability to lift the weapon. This is a strange device indeed.
Victor looks up to see Ashley’s smug expression turn back to shock as he begins to sprint forward. The kill team commander closes on him fast, much faster than any human can run. Victor will not have time to experiment with this strange thing. Oh well. He does not care for exotic weapons anyway. He revolves, slowly the first time around and then quickly the second, as if he is throwing shot put. The boomerang is too heavy to throw more than a few feet, but he hopes that whatever strange electronic sorcery made it work for Abo will take hold and make it take flight for him.
It leaves his hand before he intends, ripped from his grip by its own propulsion. Ashley yelps as the monstrous sliver of metal spins toward him. It spins slowly and its flight is clumsy, but it still finds Victor’s target. The boomerang smashes into Ashley’s chest and takes him with it as it crashes into the red dust behind him.
Victor approaches to see if his enemy has been killed. On closer inspection he sees that is not so. Ashley rests pinned against the ground – the boomerang’s tip embedded in his guts. He tries to stand, but the armored cyborg is like a cricket impaled with a safety pin, wobbling and stumbling to his feet with the giant throwing weapon jutting from his abdomen. He does manage to stand after some effort, only to find that the downward arcing boomerang drags the ground in front of him forcing him to walk in a limbo position. He falls on his back and grabs hold of the weapon to pull it from himself.
That is when Victor decides it best to leave.
DISHONOR
His bed feels like a stranger’s. All of Tanaka’s ancestral keep has felt alien since he returned to Japan. This is no longer the place where he grew up. It is something else. It is the scene of a crime. It is a palace of lies.
He pushes the sheets away to examine his leg. He stretches it toward the ceiling and brings his shin up close to his face for a look. Even in this state, the ninja is quite flexible. His leg is healing nicely. The flesh is still scarred, but the bones have set straight and soon he will be walking without even the crutch he has needed since it was first set. The Tanaka clan’s ninjas are masters of numerous killing arts, but for every secret death touch or ancient poison formula they have studied they seem to know two ways to mend damage just as grizzly. Still, it was a clean break and Yoshida was lucky. He has no doubt that the metal monster could have just as easily pulverized every bone in his leg with its crushing grasp. That would have crippled him for good. The thought of it is strangely calming. If he were a cripple then he might be able to resign himself to that fate and live out his days in peace. He could settle here in the keep and find a nice woman to have his children. She would be a simple woman, not worldly at all and easy to impress, perhaps a fisherman’s daughter. She would have long hair and big hips and she would give him three sons. Maybe in time he could forget about the family he had lost. Maybe the nightmare would go away. That would be good, he thinks. Then he dismisses it all as fast as he conjured it up. Yoshida Tanaka is not a cripple, and he rises to face the day.
He climbs out of bed and puts on his underwear and a silk bathrobe. He ties his hair back in a top knot and snatches up his crutch before he shuffles out of the room and down the hall to find his uncle. He has held his tongue this long, but it is now time for the confrontation he has been dreading.
He finds Tetsuo alone in the courtyard tending to the koi pond. The pond is twenty feet across and six feet down at its deepest, but it hardly occupies much of the colossal courtyard. Tetsuo stands by the side of the pond, carefully dispensing his special concoction of feed to the fish under the surface. This could be the task of some servant just as easily, but his uncle tends to the koi as a hobby to calm his nerves and is known for finishing fish that are quite perfect by all standards. The older man wears a pair of blue shorts and wooden sandals. His exposed chest is well-toned and speckled with greying hairs to match the ones in his beard. Yoshida wastes no time.
“You have kept secrets from me,” he charges loudly, as he enters the courtyard.
The old ninja looks up from his fish as a courtesy only. He is not surprised by this intrusion.
“I kept nothing from you,” Tetsuo says. “I warned you, but you did not listen.”
Yoshida chose his next words carefully over the last several days locked in his chamber. He speaks them now with conviction and studies his uncle’s face.
“The man with one ear lives. I found him with the Americans.”
The look of surprise that Tetsuo shows him, even for just a second, is sharp enough to be damning. With that look, an ocean of regrets and sorrow floods into Yoshida’s mind. He does not want to believe it. He does not want to accept the words of that metal monster. And yet the truth is undeniable. A woman that was a lie. A lifetime that was a lie. The ocean turns from sad blue to blood red and he is filled with rage.
“You are surprised? Were you so certain he was dead?”
“No,” Tetsuo mutters. “I only guessed…”
“Guessed that he had died from poison perhaps?”
With that, Tetsuo’s expression melts into one of pure horror.
“Ten years, uncle,” Yoshida says. Enraged, he shouts at his elder. “For ten years I have spent every waking minute dedicated to my vengeance – vengeance for a lie!”
“No! It is not a lie!” Tetsuo pleads.
“Stop it! I know the truth now! I know about Mitsuko. I know she was just a pawn of my father. Tell me, was she his whore as well? Was my son one of his assassins too? Did you all laugh at me?” Yoshida creeps up on the old man, escalating aggressively.
“No!” Tetsuo shrieks, shaking his head in adamant denial.
“Did you? Did you laugh at me while my father’s whore had a knife to my throat for all those years? When was she to cut it? When I refused to give Shintaro up to the clan?”
“No! He told you to send her away, but you did not listen!” Uncle Tetsuo shrinks before him. Yoshida feels like a raging giant.
“It was a test? Of what? My weakness for whores? And how far did that bastard plan to take it? Would he have had her stab my son and gut herself on our bedroom floor to teach me a lesson? He would have. He was that wicked.”
“He was a good man!”
“He was a lying, devious bastard of a man who threw away the lives of his own family for this clan of assassins and cutthroats. If he still lived, I would see him burn.” Still he advances. He towers over his uncle. Nothing can stop him now. Nothing can quell his anger.
“The poisoned lady was mine! Your father knew nothing!”
Yoshida is thrown off balance by his uncle’s response, both figuratively and literally. He shifts his weight and narrowly avoids stumbling back into the koi pond.
“What?” Yoshid
a shrieks.
“I sent Mitsuko to you,” Tetsuo reiterates. The words confound Yoshida. He cannot begin to understand.
“Why?”
“It began for your protection,” Tetsuo admits, quietly, unable to look him in the eyes.
“It began with your trickery and that continues even now. You knew this and you still let me waste ten years hunting a dead man to avenge a whore?”
“What about your father? And your son? You seek vengeance for them as well.”
“Was he even my son? Or is that another lie?”
“He was your son. I told you, it began for your protection. It became something more. It is true that, at first, she seduced you. She was a master of such arts, as beautiful as she was deadly. She was not wholly ideal because her body was poison, but that was easily overcome with the antivenoms she put in your food.”
“She drugged my food?!” Yoshida belts out.
“She loved you,” Tetsuo answers just as viciously.
Yoshida is not a fool. It is said that the kunoichi of the secret clans utter so many lies that even their silent breaths are composed of fictitious air. They spin these lies as naturally as a spider spins silk and to believe them is to be trapped in the predator’s web. He remembers her voice, calm and hypnotic. It was a ruse; a trick. They trained her to do that to get close to men – to get close to him.
“She played me for a fool and so did you.”
“No. I commanded her to leave you when I realized she was no longer acting, but she stayed against my wishes. I would have had her killed if not for that baby. I could order the death of a kunoichi, but not of my own kin.”
Tetsuo’s story is enticing. Yoshida almost believes it. He wants to believe it, but his uncle’s lies are not spun as skillfully as Mitsuko’s, and Yoshida sees through them.
“There is a problem with your story.”
“It is the truth. I swear it.”
“Then why did you keep this from my father?”
