by Mike Leon
“But he is in trouble.”
“He’s always in trouble. He’s walking trouble.”
“This is different. I was brought here by powerful forces...”
“You were brought here by Graveyard operators because I want answers about what happened in Afghanistan. I still don’t have any.”
“I told you. That monster murdered my wife and child. He killed my father as well.”
“Ashley killed Katsuhiro Tanaka? How?”
“In a most cowardly way – with bombs triggered from afar.”
“When was this? Why?”
“A decade has passed. And yet I remember it as though it happened only minutes ago.”
The ninja tells his tale. He tells how the man with one ear broke into his dormitory while his wife was making noodles. Tied her up. Waited for Yoshida to come home. Beat him senseless with his fists. Marjorie was a Hell of a boxer once. He tells how he woke up with a note for his father pinned to his chest, and how the old ninja arrived on the first flight from the East. Ashley lured them to an empty show house. He talks about the things he saw in that house and then Walter knows the story is true. Only Ashley would barbecue a god damned baby, that son of a bitch. He tells how the one-eared man only wanted the answer to one question, but his father refused to answer.
Who were you working for when you broke into the vault?
The words hit Walter like a claw hammer. Then it all adds up. Someone infiltrated the vault at the top of the Graveyard building not long before Tanaka’s family was killed. It was the only time any intruder has ever made it in and out of the building alive.
The intruder made his way to the top floor, dicing three guards with a weapon believed to be a very high-end Japanese sword. Upon reaching the top floor vault, the intruder knocked the thirty-six inch thick, steel-reinforced, concrete vault door from its hinges by means still unknown to investigators. He proceeded into the vault, where he opened drawer number two-forty-six and no others. He knew exactly what he was looking for.
Jokingly referred to as character shields by the nerds in the research department, the ballistic deflector units recovered at the Coyame crash site utilize advanced computer systems to detect incoming high speed projectiles and then nudge said projectiles out of collision trajectory using some form of electromagnetic force. They are smaller than a thumb nail and can be implanted under the skin and powered by body heat. The effect is subtle, yet striking. Bullets always miss anyone with a character shield.
The recovery team found eight of the devices at the crash site, five on bodies and three on hostile survivors. After twenty years of testing to make sure there were no harmful side-effects, all of the inner circle members adopted the use of the character shields. Nothing could prove more useful for preventing assassination attempts. The other two remained in storage until they were stolen.
It was Walter Stedman who gave Ashley the orders to find those responsible – at any cost necessary.
He couldn’t have known the bastard would do the things he did. Ashley had a reputation for his ruthlessness, but murdering babies crosses a god damned line. That sick fuck. That sick fuck. Walter didn’t know. Ashley never checked in. Never told him anything. He just came back a few weeks later and told Walter he hit a dead end. Walter couldn’t have known. It wasn’t his fault…
No. Walter stops thinking that. He can’t lie to himself. He is not that kind of man. He knows the things he does and he accepts responsibility for them. It was his fault, and just like all the other collateral damage he ever caused, there is nothing left to do but drink over it.
Walter reaches for his Vodka.
“You seek to escape your demons with the drink,” Tanaka says. “But a devil resides within the bottle.”
“That’s just beautiful, Tanaka. Confucius?” Walter asks.
“No.”
“Well, some demons not even a devil can chase away.”
Walter knocks back the bottle of vodka.
“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about… things that are past, it is needless to blame,” says the ninja. “That is Confucius.”
Walter wonders if the ninja would feel the same way if he knew who gave that order.
And then Walter is startled by the shrill sound of the building alarm. It is a quick repeating mechanical noise that echoes through the whole building. It is not the fire alarm. No. This alarm is different. This alarm sounds off when the guards in the lobby hit the dreaded button.
Walter’s radio sits on a flimsy little table next to the chair he was sleeping in. He picks it up and mashes down the talk button.
“This is Stedman. What the fuck is happening?”
He is answered by the screaming voice of Brett Hammett, one of the squad leaders for the building’s on-site security team. His words are punctuated by automatic weapons fire.
“We have an intruder in the floor one lobby! HE’S GOT AAAAAGGHHHH!!! AAAGGGGHHHHH!”
The rest is the sound of choking and coughing.
“Stay here,” Walter bids the ninja. He storms out of the room and into the hallway. He finds his gun, still on his hip, and he draws it as he moves for the stairs.
He is joined by two operators from the dorm rooms and the Ghoul, who was left stationed in the hallway. As they make their way down the stairs, they meet up with Ratzinger and a few guys from November team dressed in full combat gear for a field exercise. They have M4 carbines and body armor, so Walter has them move at the head of the group.
They gather at the bottom of the stairs, near a side door to the fire team’s staging area. Walter peeks through the little window in the stairwell door. The amber tint of the air on the other side is tell-tale of tear gas.
“Lobby’s flooded with CR,” he says. “There should be extra gas masks in there.” He motions to the staging area. The response team is always well stocked on gas masks. They have to be. Their number one focus at work is raiding and clearing a room that has been flooded with poison. Walter retrieves some masks for them while November holds at the door.
They exit the stairwell on the second floor and move forward carefully. Ratzinger is first to the edge of the railing that overlooks the lobby. He meets four men from the response team there, all of them looking down to the floor below with rifles and machine guns drawn.
“Where are the rest of them?” he says, as he looks over the rails. It is difficult to see through the hazy yellow cloud that fills the lobby. As Walter approaches, he can see someone down there near the metal detector at the front door. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. No weapons. No body armor. He has dark hair and he’s maybe just barely six foot tall. The response team is down there too, lined up like a firing squad, guns trained on the intruder, but none of them are shooting. He has a hostage.
“You’re looking at him,” answers Cody Lambert, one of the men who was already there. “He kicked Brett clear across the room and grabbed Jim Fogel when they tried to zip tie him. I’ve never seen anybody move like that.”
The intruder holds Jim Fogel as a human shield in front of him. His left arm is coiled around the operator’s neck like a python ready to crush the life out of him.
“He must have a mask,” Ratzinger says.
“I don’t think so,” answers one of his operators. “I don’t even see a gun.”
He didn’t even take Fogel’s gun, Walter realizes. The weapon lies on the tile, meters away from where he holds the disabled operator.
More operators arrive from the elevator. They set up heavy machine guns on the railing. The Arsonist appears geared for nuclear war. Deadeye shows up in his boxer shorts and holding a sawed-off shotgun. He chokes on gas until someone hands him a mask.
“Should we take him out?” Ratzinger says.
“Can you make the shot?” Walter asks. The question is for Deadeye, and he already knows the answer. The sniper could thread a needle with a nail gun at this distance.
“Hell yeah,” Deadeye answers. “I’ll need one of those rifl
es.”
“I’m here to see Walter Stedman,” calls the intruder.
“He keeps saying that,” Lambert says. “Won’t say anything else.”
“Maybe we should try to talk to him before we blast him to Hell,” says Walter.
Walter nods to the Arsonist.
“Go down there and see if you can settle this, Lonnie.”
“I might jus’ singe ’im, jus’ a li’l,” the Arsonist says.
“Whatever it takes, but I want him alive.”
“There’s half the fun out o’ it, right there.”
The Arsonist makes his way down the stairs leading into the lobby with his mask on and his flamethrower hot.
“‘Ands in the air!” he screams to the intruder.
“Are you Walter Stedman?” the intruder asks calmly.
“Hands behind your ’ead!”
“You are not Walter Stedman.”
“I’ll fuckin’ burn ya, I will!”
And then the intruder is on top of him. He covers twenty feet like a pouncing lion and he rips that flamethrower free from Lenny’s hands. He smacks the nasty firebug in the face and then winds up to kick him square in the testicles.
“No! No’ the!” is all the Arsonist can get out before the intruder kicks him in the nuts so hard the force lifts him up off his feet. Then he does it again. “AAGH! BULLOCKS!”
The Arsonist growls and crumples to the floor. And just like that, the intruder has a new human shield.
“I must speak directly with Walter Stedman,” the intruder shouts up to them.
Walter glances at Deadeye and then shrugs.
“Fuck it. I’m going down there,” Walter says. “Someone vent this god damn gas.”
Ratzinger radios to control and gives the order. Walter is halfway down the stairs when the vents kick in and begin thinning the gas in the room. He keeps his gun in hand even though he knows it won’t do him much good.
“I’m Walter Stedman,” he says. “Who are you and what are you doing in my building?”
“How do I know you’re Walter Stedman?”
“Because I said so. Who the hell are you?”
The intruder looks up at Walter. His abyssal black eyes give away nothing – no feeling and no tears. It will be hours before the vents have cleared the air to a breathable level, and this frightening man does not seem to care at all. His nose isn’t even running.
“Take off the mask,” the dark-eyed menace says. “Show me your face.”
“Fuck that. The room is full of CR gas. How are you still standing?”
“My father made us drink tear gas straight from the canister.”
Walter narrows his eyes through the haze. He takes a moment to study the features of the intruder. He knows those features. It is a face he has not seen in ten years.
“Sid?”
POW
“The little one said its first word last night,” Ivan says. “Sid, what do you say? Tell Uncle Walter.”
The baby, standing on a bear skin rug and wearing only a diaper, looks up at them coldly. His black hair is thin and messy. In his tiny hands is an HK USP Compact .45, which he cannot lift above his waist, let alone fire.
“Kill,” the baby says.
“You hear that?” Ivan asks.
“Charming,” Walter Stedman answers.
“You should see the other one. He is…aggressive. Can shoot long guns as long as they are mounted. Hits everything. I taught him boxing.”
“And you show them movies?”
“Movies of executions during feeding time. Sometimes live executions – when we have someone to kill.”
“Van, when I agreed to ship you guys from Guantanamo, that wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Not that. You got to admit this is pretty hefty shit, even for you.”
“This shit is necessity. Must be done.”
“You’re treating these kids like some kind of fucked up Pavlov’s dogs experiment.”
“Skinner’s rats.”
“What?”
“Skinner’s rats. Pavlov, he is known for the respondent conditioning. This is a operant conditioning. Different.”
“Whatever, Van. You’re teaching babies to kill people. It can’t possibly end well.”
“You worry too much, Walter. I was four years old when I kill a man with a stick.”
“Where did you get these kids anyway?”
“None of your business.”
Blood Drinker punches Ivan across the face.
“Where is the girl?!” he screams. He is dressed in pin striped pants and a white sleeveless shirt. His Nazi jacket hangs draped over a simple wooden chair. His nubby, little, pointed teeth are right in Ivan’s face.
Ivan dangles upside down from the ceiling of this dark room. He does not know this place or how he got here. They took his weapons and his clothes. Now he is cold and naked in this cell with high ceilings. Long chains and shackles are attached to his feet. His hands are chained behind his back. Smart thing they did, or he would have strangled this scum days ago and fled.
“Why do you care?” Ivan says. “Cat is already out of the bag, as they say.”
“You never FUCKING MIND WHY I CARE!”
Kill Team One bashes his knuckles across the jaw of a living god. They may say Mahdi is holy and undefeatable, but the kill team’s fists don’t know the difference. Blood streams down the Imam’s smooth black beard.
The two of them are divided like the yin-yang – with the kill team dressed in gear black as night, and the Mahdi shining white like a blinding ray of sun. Their weapons have been long discarded, the kill team’s guns empty, his knives lost or broken, and Zulfiqar, sword of evil’s bane, disarmed and sent flying to the sands beneath them.
“Isa will return,” Mahdi says, “and the unbelievers will fall dead at his very breath, which will stretch for as far as the eye can see.”
“We will see about that,” answers the kill team, before he smashes his fist into Mahdi’s guts. Mahdi is suddenly behind him, kicking him to the ground. Ivan rolls over to face his foe, but the demi-god is in no hurry.
“You are a mighty warrior, but no force of man can hope to defeat the will of Allah. It is my destiny to vanquish al-Dajjāl and with him all those who do not follow Islam.”
“Fuck you.”
Kill Team One is behind Mahdi already. He can play such tricks as well. Move like the wind. Strike like death. He attacks between the shoulder blades with an overhand straight punch as was taught to him by Katsuhiro Tanaka long ago. It is a strike meant to decimate his enemy’s body. He has punched a man’s heart out through his chest more than once with such a blow. But not this time. The Imam’s armor is dented, but it holds.
Mahdi turns and catches Kill Team One by the throat. He picks up the kill team with one hand. Ivan growls and digs into the gaps of Mahdi’s armor. His fingers find flesh and claw into the Imam’s bicep to produce a trickle of blood down the shimmering steel that dribbles into the sand.
Mahdi watches the blood unflinchingly and muses curiously.
“How is it you wound me, infidel? Is your hate so strong, your will so great, that you might stand in the face of one sent by God?”
“Your god is a lie.”
“My God is the only truth. You will kneel in praise of Allah and his prophets or you will perish.”
“Eat shit.”
Mahdi flings the kill team like a rag doll. He sails through the air out of control until he bashes into something rock hard and massive. He slumps to the ground and everything hurts. He feels like he has been pulverized between two boulders. He forces himself to turn his head and he sees something above him – huge and cylindrical. It is a cannon; the 120mm cannon of an M1 tank. He smashed into a tank. The cavalry has arrived.
He tries to stand, because even now, battered and broken, bloodied and torn, Kill Team One must fight. He fights for survival. He fights for vengeance. He fights becau
se he has never known anything else.
His leg crumples like an accordion underneath his weight. Shards of bone jut out from below his knee. He cannot stand. Still, he crawls toward his enemy. He looks into the eyes of Mahdi one more time from the column of tanks. The Imam furrows his brow in disgust and then turns his back on the cannons directed his way.
Blood Drinker slaps him. He hangs in the same room. Time has passed. Minutes. Hours. Days. He cannot be certain. The room is hot from the burning fire pit nearby. The flames flicker in hellish patterns on the concrete walls.
“What does Walter Stedman have? HOW MANY NAMES?!!!” he screams in Ivan’s face.
“No idea.”
“THE IRON!!!!” Blood Drinker shouts to his lackey, a small man in a black bowler hat.
The lackey removes an iron rod from the fire and extends it. The white-hot searing end presses against an old scar on Ivan’s shoulder. There is hardly any part of him that is not scar tissue these days. He does not scream. He laughs. He laughs in Blood Drinker’s face and spits.
Blood Drinker hits him again.
Something clangs to the ground around the corner. It is the sound of a hubcap falling from the wheel of a car onto the pavement. Ivan is certain of that. He does not know who is removing a hubcap, and that bothers him. Staying ahead of his enemies means not missing even the slightest details. Still, the distraction gives him the fraction of a second he needs to draw his Sig 9 on Walter Stedman.
“Who followed you here?” Ivan shouts.
“Drop it!” Walter screams.
“You drop it!” Kill Team One shouts back.
“I don’t want to kill you, Van!”
“Did you bring them with you, Walter? Whose side are you on?”
“What are you talking about?”
That is all Ivan needs. His skills with the pistol are almost like those of the Duke in his youth. He fires a single shot at Walter’s gun. The Graveyard commander is quick to the trigger in response, but the old 1911 is already broken into metal fragments. One of them is embedded in his hand. Another sticks in Walter’s shoulder. Ivan scoffs. It never is as clean as the old cowboy movies.
