Johnny reached the center of the space. Whoever was financing this operation had to be big. There were enough chemicals here to supply the Colombian cartels for a year.
A sound, something metallic tapping on one of the drums, came from behind him.
Johnny turned. A man, big, wearing a neatly-tailored suit – probably an Armani, Johnny thought – emerged from between two rows of palletized chemical drums.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the man said. “Now you’ve seen too much for us to let you leave.”
“Us?”
“Us,” said another voice. A new man, just as big and just as ugly as the first, emerged from the opposite direction. Then, silent as ghosts, two more appeared from between the crates and barrels, surrounding Johnny in an open square. The latest two were carrying automatic rifles – Stoners.
It could’ve been worse, Johnny thought. At least he wasn’t dragging along some broad whose bra size was bigger than her IQ, to slow him down and get in the way. He’d been in that kind of situation too many times in the course of his career.
The men with the rifles put them down, leaning them against the nearest piles of supplies. All four began to close in on him.
Johnny just smiled, a tight-lipped smile without any real mirth behind it.
With one hand he pulled off his dark glasses. He looked from one of the plug-uglies to the next, looking deep into each one’s eyes. They were lots closer now.
“Okay,” Johnny said. “Let’s dance.”
As if on cue the four rushed at Johnny from all sides. Johnny dropped and rolled, flinging his dark glasses in the face of the nearest goon, making the man flinch away.
The goon shouted, surprised, but Johnny was already behind him. A karate punch to the back of the skull told the man where Johnny had gone, and then they went at it.
“Just like practice,” Johnny muttered, dropping to one knee to let a kick fly over his head, then grabbing the leg and pulling, making the thug hit the concrete floor flat on his back. The man rolled to his feet.
Then Johnny was rolling himself, dodging the rain of fists and feet that was flying at him from all directions. He spun one goon into the path of another’s sidekick, watching as the man groaned, clutching his belly, and sank to the floor.
“One down, three to go.”
Johnny took the second man’s arm as an open-hand blow whistled at him, and stepped inside of it. One, two, three elbow strikes to the man’s ribs, and Johnny let him drop, to sink down and join his companion. Johnny finished him with a vicious kick to the jaw. The man twitched and lay still.
“Two down.”
One of the remaining men was scrambling for an automatic rifle.
“No you don’t,” Johnny said. “Don’t you know little boys shouldn’t play with guns?”
He launched himself into a whirling front flip, springing forward and making it impossible for the man to aim. His hand grabbed the barrel of the weapon near the muzzle, while his foot leapt out in a powerful kick that knocked the man’s grip away.
Johnny still held the rifle. He used its butt to smash into the third man’s face. He, too, sank to the floor. Johnny dropped the rifle with a clatter.
“Three down,” he muttered.
The first man he had struck was approaching, hands in front in the classic open position, ready to grasp, strike, or block. Johnny let him come, holding his ground, trying to look more tired than he felt. Let him get close, Johnny through. Then I can finish this and go home.
With a terrifying cry, the man launched himself at Johnny, covering the last few steps with a high leap. His hands came together on thin air. Johnny dropped to his knees, his hand smashing forward to take the fourth goon in the crotch.
For a moment the two men froze, staring at each other. The goon look confused.
“This is where you fall down,” he said.
A look of relief came over the man’s face, and he flew backward, away from Johnny’s blow, to land curled in a ball. Pain lined his face as he lay on the floor near his three companions.
Johnny stood and strode away from his fallen opponents. Throwing his hands in the air, he yelled, “Where do you get these guys?”
“Cut!” yelled the director.
The four goons stood up, brushed each other off, and ambled away in search of coffee. The director, a young man with a beard and a ponytail, came down into the set.
“Sorry, Johnny,” he said. “I promise, the next take will work fine.”
Johnny only scowled at him. “And the press says I don’t know how to do this stuff.”
The director looked around. “All right, everybody!” he yelled. “Reset! We do it again in fifteen minutes!”
“You can do it by yourself,” Johnny said. He stalked off past a row of stage lights. “I’m not running the scene again.”
“Johnny, come on,” the director said, hurrying after his departing star. “It’s the last shot of the picture.”
“Make it up from outtakes,” Johnny snarled. “I’m out of here.”
Johnny left the set and walked over to his chair in the actor’s area. What he saw didn’t make him feel any better. Someone else was already sitting in the chair that had his name written across the back. What was worse, the someone was holding a tabloid newspaper in front of his face – a newspaper whose front-page headline read JOHNNY CAGE A FAKE! The picture under the headline showed Johnny, his face contorted with rage, yelling at some of the photographers who followed him everywhere.
“Hey, you!” Johnny said. “Hey, that’s my chair!”
The man lowered his newspaper. And in an instant, Johnny’s rage changed to awe. The man sitting in his chair was Bill Boyd, the greatest Occidental karate master.
Master Boyd had found Johnny Cage, a poor kid running wild in the streets of Brooklyn, and had transformed him. The old man had taught Johnny about tradition. About discipline. About respect for himself and others. All of the young men whom Johnny had run with before he met Boyd were dead now; dead, or in jail, or in the gutter strung out on drugs. Only Johnny, the movie star, remained.
Cage stopped, drew himself in, and made a low bow of respect. “Master,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t… I owe you a debt that can never be repaid.”
Master Boyd gestured at the newspaper. “I see the press is still giving you a hard time.”
“They think I’m a big fake,” Johnny said. “These pudgy, out-of-shape men who write film reviews think that they can judge what’s real and what isn’t.”
“A fake?” Boyd said. “I know that you’re not.”
“Sensei, you were my idol growing up. It means a lot, you saying that.”
“Johnny, you’re one of the best martial artists in the world. And I know a way you can prove it.”
“Prove it? How?” Johnny was puzzled now, as puzzled as he had been angry the moment before.
“A tournament. The tournament. Held once a generation.”
“I can’t fight in tournaments,” Johnny said. “The producers’ insurance companies won’t allow it. They say, ‘Suppose he broke his jaw, he couldn’t go on camera, and we’ll lose our investment.’ My not being able to fight in competition is what gives me my lousy reputation.” He gestured in disgust at the newspaper Boyd held.
“You can fight in this one,” Boyd said. He reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a small scroll with ebony handles.
Johnny took the scroll and unrolled it. The paper felt old, old yet strangely flexible beneath his fingers. To his dismay, the scroll was written in Chinese characters. In their midst was a dramatic icon, a dragon’s head in a circle.
“I gotta brush up on my Chinese,” Johnny said after studying the writing for a moment.
“It is unlikely that you could read it anyway,” Boyd said. “The dialect is quite old. It speaks of the most ancient and most honorable tournament in the world, held on an island in the South China Sea.”
Johnny rolled the scroll up again. “I’ve never heard o
f that tournament,” he said.
“Not surprising,” Boyd replied. “All of the participants are sworn to secrecy.”
“How can a secret tournament get me better press?” Johnny asked.
“The best fighters in the world are invited,” Boyd said, shifting slightly forward in Johnny’s chair, as if to give more emphasis to his words. “If you win the tournament, you’ll win their respect. They’ll tell the entire world that you’re the real goods.”
Something didn’t seem right to Johnny. Had Master Boyd really cared that much about reputation back in the old days, when he was teaching honesty and self-respect to a punk kid from the streets? Johnny paused. “I’m… I’m supposed to be prepping for my next film as soon as this one wraps tonight,” he began. “I just don’t see…”
Boyd looked deep into Johnny’s eyes. “I see,” he said. He reached out for the scroll. “You’ve changed, Johnny. If your name isn’t as important to you as your box-office receipts, then there’s nothing more to say.”
Johnny felt a sudden flush of humiliation. “No!” he said, pulling the scroll away from his sensei. “I mean, I’m honored. I’ll work around it somehow. I’ll fight in the tournament.”
Master Boyd favored Johnny with one of his rare smiles. “I’ve got a lot of faith in you,” he said.
“How do I, uh, get to…?”
“There will a ship, the Dragon Wing, at Pier Forty in Hong Kong tomorrow night. Be on it.”
Johnny looked down at the scroll in his hand, in wonder at what he had just done, what he had just agreed to do.
He looked up again a fraction of a second later, but Master Boyd was nowhere to be seen.
“Sensei?” Johnny said.
From somewhere far away, a pair of eyes – deep eyes, with flames burning at their bottoms – watched Johnny as he searched for his master.
CHAPTER TWO
Liu Kang stirred restlessly in his bed. His head was pounding, and the sheets were holding him back as he thrashed. He was dreaming, and he knew that he was dreaming, but he couldn’t wake up.
Liu was a slender, muscular Asian man in his mid-twenties. His cheerful smile and playful sense of humor made him a lot of friends, both male and female. He’d had no trouble adjusting to life in the United States after coming there five years before.
Right now, however, it was difficult to tell you how handsome he was: his teeth were tightly gritted, his lips drawn back. The cords of his neck stood out as he strained. His hands were clenched into claws.
“No, no,” he moaned, his head twisting on the pillow. “No…”
Out of the darkness, in his dreams, he saw eyes. Burning eyes, Coming closer and closer. Eyes, and hands. Bony hands with nails like talons, reaching for him. A howling sound like a rising wind, like a thousand souls in pain, filled his ears. He tossed in his bed trying to get away, but the nightmare continued. His head pounded in a steady rhythm.
The pounding in his head grew louder. It began to penetrate his sleep-fogged mind that, however ethereal the eyes, hands, and howls were, the pounding was real. Someone was knocking on the door of his apartment, loud enough to wake the dead.
“All right, all right,” Liu said, his eyes sliding open. “I’m coming.”
He swung his legs to the floor. It took a moment before he was ready to stand, grab a robe, and struggle toward the door. And all the while the pounding went on.
He twisted back the dead bolt on the door, then swung it open a crack.
A man in a blue-gray uniform stood in the hall, holding a clipboard in his hand.
“Telegram for Mr. Liu Kang,” the man said. “Are you Mr. Kang?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s me.”
“Sign here, please, sir.”
Liu scrawled something on the line the man was pointing to, and took the flimsy envelope from the messenger.
“Thanks,” Liu said, and turned back into his apartment, closing the door behind him with his shoulders. He walked into the kitchen nook and turned on the electric burner under the tea kettle. As long as he was awake anyway, he might as well stay up. He was in no hurry to get back to the dreams he’d just been having anyway.
The sun was rising in San Francisco, filling the apartment with ruddy light. Liu dragged one of his two chairs up to the kitchen table and sat. He looked at the telegram for a moment. Then he slit the top edge of the envelope with his thumbnail. The sheet of flimsy paper inside fell to the table. Liu picked it up and read it.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
He wadded the telegram in his hand and dropped it to the table top. “Oh, crap,” he said again.
He shook his head as if to clear it, then stood. With a sudden burst of energy he strode into his bedroom and dressed, pulling on a blue chambray work shirt, jeans, boots, and a leather jacket. Liu scooped up his wallet from the top of the bedside table and his passport from the drawer beneath.
Back in the kitchen he picked up the phone. He dialed a number and spoke.
“Hello, Sarah? Tell Mr. Fitch I won’t be in to work today. No, I don’t know when I’ll be back. Something’s come up.”
He hung up and dialed again. “I’d like a reservation on the next flight for Hong Kong… Yeah, I’m paying by credit card… Yeah, yeah… in the name of Liu Kang. Thanks.”
The tea kettle began to whistle. Liu reached over and turned off the heat. His call to the airline finished, he walked out the door and locked it behind him. He left behind an unmade bed and, lying on the table, a crumbled telegram:
LIU KANG. BROTHER DEAD. RETURN HOME. GRANDFATHER.
“Black Hawk, this is Cardinal. How copy, over.”
“Roger, Cardinal, copy all, over.”
“Roger, Black Hawk. We have the target in sight. Send blocking groups to cover all exits.”
“Roger, out.”
“So much for the easy part,” Sonya Blade muttered.
The lieutenant was standing at the edge of an open square across from the Techno Club, a nightspot in an upper-class Hong Kong neighborhood. She wore a dark blue uniform and a radio headset, with canteens and ammo pouches hanging from her web gear. On the other side of the square, garish neon lights outlined the doors of the Techno Club. The club’s entire front was a huge video wall, where an Asian woman in traditional garb looked directly out across the square.
“Welcome to Hong Kong,” the woman on the video said, her voice blasting above the clatter of taxis and buses. “Welcome to Hong Kong, home of fine food and ancient traditions, where you will always receive a happy welcome. Welcome to Hong Kong…”
Sonya looked down at her watch.
“Party time,” she said, and walked across the square as inconspicuously as possible for a blonde American woman carrying a riot gun at high port.
Sonya stopped directly beneath the video wall.
“…Home of fine food and ancient traditions…”
the twenty foot tall woman’s head boomed above her. Another shadow joined Sonya. Jax.
“Is the perimeter secure?” Sonya asked as he approached.
“Locked down tight,” Jax replied. “I just got done inspecting it myself. Trust me.”
“I only trust one person on this planet, and you’re talking with her.” She keyed her headset mike. “Sixty seconds to target. I say again, sixty seconds to target. Stand by.”
“You’re really going into a civilian nightclub?” Jax asked.
“I really am,” Sonya said. “I want Kano.”
“Okay, lieutenant,” Jax said. “I’ll back you on this play. But you’d better be right. Here are the rules of engagement: Use only the minimum amount of force required to complete the mission. No civilian casualties.”
Sonya checked her watch, the sweep-second hand moving toward twelve. “Roger that, minimum force. Okay, coming up on time.”
She keyed the mike again. “This is it. Go, go, go.”
Sonya swung into the doorway, slamming the door open. With Jax behind her she stormed down a narrow corridor. Three mo
re Special Forces troopers detached from the shadows and followed the two officers in.
The corridor opened up into a room lit with dim red lights. A band on a moving platform swung high above the packed dance floor. Lights strobed and lasers traced designs on the walls and ceiling.
A solid Asian man in a black tuxedo appeared before them. He held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Sorry, folks,” he said. “Private club. Can’t come in without an invitation.”
“Here’s my invitation,” Sonya said, and swung the butt of her riot gun into his jaw, punching her right hand out straight from the shoulder. She didn’t slow as she stepped over his unconscious form and into the room.
“Sucker didn’t look like a civilian anyway,” Jax said, as he too stepped over the bouncer’s body.
The Techno Club was packed wall-to-wall with young people of all ages and races. The music was deafening. Visibility of more than a few yards was obscured by haze from an artificial smoke generator up on the stage.
“What are you going to do if there are bad guys in the crowd?” Jax asked. The major had to shout in order to make himself heard over the noise.
“Handle it,” Sonya replied.
“Handle it, the lady says,” Jax muttered, as two unsmiling men dressed in dark suits converged on him from out of the fog smoke. They didn’t look like dancers. One of them started reaching inside his jacket where a shoulder holster might be. Jax reached out, grabbed the two of them by the backs of their heads and cracked their skulls together.
“Spread out,” Sonya called over her wireless headset mike as the two men fell to the floor behind her. “Find Kano.”
Behind her Jax pointed to right and left, directing the troopers with hand signals. Sonya plunged ahead into the crowd. A man put his hand on her wrist. She broke the hand for him and continued forward, looking sharply to right and left. The crowd filled in behind her as she made her way across the dance floor.
In a soundproof office, behind a glass window overlooking the dance floor, a man stood facing outward. The room was lit only by the reflected glow from the main part of the club. His massive shoulders spoke of the power in his body.
“She’s here, Shang Tsung,” he said.
Mortal Kombat: The Movie Page 2
