by John Donohue
“Hey, pretty clever, Dr. Burke. You’re not so innocent after all… What’s next?”
“You take the package and walk away. You never bother me again and I forget we ever met.” I knew that I was going to have to kill him, but part of me still hoped I could get him to just walk away.
“Ay, Dio. If only it were that simple. For me, you see, there’s more at stake…” He gestured at his men. “They follow me because I am a man who achieves what he sets out to do.”
“You got the book…” I started, but he grunted in derision.
“Dr. Burke, I sent men to get the book back and punish the one who took it. Only one of my goals has been achieved. So, bro, I’m afraid that I’ve really got to finish what I started.”
One of the gang members near a Hummer started to sidle away into the brush, perhaps hoping to be able to flank me. The echoing crack of the rifle came at the same time that the round punched into the hood of the vehicle near him. The man froze in his tracks.
El Carnicero nodded. “So. You know what they call this in the movies, Burke?” I noticed that the title was gone. He was getting angry, getting ready.
“A Mexican standoff,” I said. “Seems appropriate.”
“I have more guns than you,” he told me.
“My shooter is under orders to kill you first,” I told him.
Even through the rifle’s scope, the intensity of the situation was clear to Steve Hasegawa. His voice buzzed in my earpiece. Got you covered, Burke. He’s in my sights. The green laser dot was on El Carnicero.
“Take the packet and walk away,” I urged the gang leader. “You get what you want, I drop out of sight and never bother you again.” I gestured at his men. “They’ll buy that.”
But I could tell from the tension in his frame that El Carnicero was not going to take the deal and that I was going to have to follow through with what I had come to do. The anger started to leak out of him, like fluid seeping through cracks in a surface, straining his ability to control it.
The snakes wiggled. He smiled. “Man, you still do not get this…”
Hasegawa’s voice. Movement on the perimeter, Burke.
“I don’t need to understand,” I told El Carnicero.
Burke! I got a string of men coming through the brush to the south.
“I just want to walk away,” I assured him. But by then we both knew that I was lying.
“You’re not walking anywhere, Burke.”
Pull out of there, Burke. Hostiles in sight. I’ll meet you… Then the transmission was cut off.
I whirled to look behind me up the hill toward Steve’s position and El Carnicero lunged at me.
I felt a momentary jolt of fear, and then a perverse relief as experience took over. After all, Yamashita had been launching attacks at me for more than fifteen years. But a real fight is different from the dojo. There’s a certain crazy intensity at the core of someone who’s really trying to kill you. I stayed low, minimizing the target for El Carnicero, letting him enter into my space and turning him slightly so his energy blew past me. I needed the momentary break in the action so I could spot the knife—a butcher’s weapon of choice.
I hate fighting with knives. They can punch into you or slice you up. If they’re configured right they can cut you on the thrust or on the backhand withdrawal. It’s hard to walk away unscathed. There’s an old exercise that’s used in karate dojo to show just how lethal a knife fight is. The attacker takes a red Magic Marker and uses it instead of the weapon. The defender’s job is to disarm the assailant without having the white surface of the gi marred by the red marker. Invariably, even in a successful disarming technique, the defender’s sleeves and even his torso is slashed with crimson ink that shows where the cuts would have been.
El Carnicero was quick; he arrested his momentum and managed to slam into me. We sprawled in the dirt. The blade. Watch the blade. This is where it got tricky. When you were in close and couldn’t immobilize the knife. Finish this quick. Otherwise, he’d slip the thing in me and it would be all over.
I could hear voices that were raised in alarm all around me, but they were distant, unimportant things. I was collapsing into a dense, frantic organism totally focused on one thing and one thing only. The knife.
The boot slammed into me from behind, knocking me breathless. The only reason I survived was because someone else had kicked El Carnicero in the head, stunning him. We were dragged apart. I stood bent over, lungs frozen in momentary nerve paralysis. Then they gave a painful heave and I started breathing again.
The people Steve Hasegawa had spotted now swarmed over and subdued the members of TM-7. They moved with smooth, brutal efficiency; Latinos in camouflage clothing wearing weapons, harnesses, and carrying machine pistols a lot like Daley’s. They weren’t dressed like gang members. They were young and fit and looked like soldiers.
A man pointed a stubby, black pistol at me. He had a broad, impassive face and a heavy Mexican accent. “What is your name?” he asked. He didn’t seem particularly interested in hearing the answer, but I told him anyway. Another man was rolling the stunned El Carnicero over, frisking him, and making sure he had no other weapons. The man with the pistol jerked his head. “And he?”
“He’s the one I told you about, Capitán,” Daley said, emerging from behind the adobe building. “El Carnicero.”
The broad-faced captain smiled. “Ah, bueno.” He looked at me. “He doesn’t like your friend much, Daley.” Then he reached behind him and pulled a thick manila envelope out of his waistband. It looked about the right size to hold a thick wad of money. He tossed it to Daley, who caught it with a grin.
Behind the Capitán, the men with the machine pistols were making gang members kneel in the dirt. Some of the TM-7 people tried to put up a fight. That’s when the pistols staring popping and the executions began. The sun was setting; the weapons flashed in the dimming light.
“OK, I delivered them to you,” Daley said. It was as if the shooting of young men not thirty feet from where we stood was taking place somewhere else; he was completely disinterested. “Now we boogie out of here. Me and Burke.”
The broad-faced man shook his head. “Lo siento, Daley. I am afraid he knows too much.”
Daley’s eyes narrowed. “The deal was that we both walk.”
“Deals change,” the Capitán sighed. “If I were you, I would go.” He began to raise his pistol toward me. As he did, Daley tossed a flash-bang grenade toward us. The man who was about to kill me glanced at the thing rolling toward us for a split second.
And at that exact moment, the scrub all around the perimeter rippled with noise and light and high velocity rounds began slicing through the air.
21 Scramble
Some kind of rocket or RPG arced in and blew up a Hummer. The detonation made us stagger; the Capitán was already squeezing the trigger of his gun and the shot went wild. Then I heard him grunt, twisting under the sudden force of multiple bullet wounds. I was already moving, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that El Carnicero was trying to scramble away from the killing zone as well. I stumbled backwards, momentarily incapable of doing anything but taking in the chaotic scene. The smoking Hummer listed, broken backed and pocked with bullet holes. There was someone inside, but he wasn’t moving. Xochi.
The Capitán’s men had been surprised, but they didn’t panic. They scuttled into positions, setting up a defensive perimeter with what cover they could get. They were well armed and began returning fire. The surviving gang members, on the other hand, were scrambling in every direction. The meeting place was being lashed with gunfire. The trucks were riddled with bullets, the dust jumped under their impact, and the occasional ricochet zinged through the air.
I finally tore myself away, lurched toward the adobe building and dove through an empty window. Daley was already on the floor there, his face smudged with dust and sweat. His washed out eyes glowed an eerie blue, as if excitement was providing some internal light. From outside, we heard
muted yells, shouted orders in Spanish, and the more piercing crack of weapons. Rounds punched in through the walls of the building, showering us with dust.
“We gotta move, Burke,” Daley grunted, jerking his head toward the rear doorway. “Get to the arroyo, follow it west; when it forks, take the north branch and hunker down in the rocks up there. You with me?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Let’s go!” He cocked his machine pistol, slid across the floor, and shot out the rear door. I hesitated for a moment, not sure that this was what I needed to do. Bullets began gouging larger and larger chunks out of the walls. Splinters of wood mixed in the air with the dust and dirt. I took a deep breath and followed Daley’s path out the back.
The arroyo was about five feet deep, a twisting gouge in the earth lined with spindly brush and studded with rocks. I glanced around. Twenty yards to my right, a few gang members were hunkered down in the depression, sticking pistols up and firing blindly in the directions where they thought targets might be. They were cursing and sweating, loading their pistols with frantic, jerky movements and simultaneously casting about for an escape route. The firefight whipped all along the clearing, with muzzle flashes and small explosions everywhere. I glanced along the arroyo bed to the west, but Daley was already out of sight.
I should have followed him. I didn’t know what was going on, who was out there in the bush shooting at the Capitán and his men, but I knew that if El Carnicero somehow got away, he’d blame me for this ambush and hunt me down later. I thought of Los Gemenos, of the toll already taken on Sarah, and I knew I couldn’t let it happen again. If El Carnicero was still alive, I had to get to him and make sure he didn’t escape.
It was a crazy idea; I was unarmed in the middle of a roiling gunfight between three armed groups. And perhaps I should have followed Daley’s lead and tried to escape myself. But you don’t think very clearly when bullet rounds are ripping the air all around you, when you can hear cries of pain and fear and anger even through the din of battle. You’re running on impulse and emotion, your mouth dry and your eyes wide. The brain is scanning the environment for danger, not mapping out possible actions three moves ahead.
At this point, it was all body think. I dragged myself over the lip of the arroyo and wormed my way across the hard ground and back into the killing zone. The few surviving TM-7 members had scattered. They were isolated and ineffective, and like the two in the arroyo, appeared to be focused mainly on escape. The Capitán’s men, on the other hand, had taken some casualties, but even with the loss of their leader they didn’t panic. They were putting out rounds, seeking targets, and calling to one another to coordinate fire and movement.
These were soldier’s skills. I realized with a chill that they were the Alphas. It all fit: their jumping the meeting with TM-7 and their animosity toward the gang, their interest in the manuscript with its cross border trails, and their paramilitary appearance. The hair on the nape of my neck rose. I was chilled with the awareness of just how dangerous a place I was in.
I inched my way along the base of one of the building’s walls, trying to get a glimpse of the last place where El Carnicero had lain. I tasted dirt and could smell the heat leaking from the rocks as the day waned and the air cooled. The light was fading and the air was filled with a blue mist, but I could see that El Carnicero was gone. Someone spotted my movement. I heard rounds impacting into the wall near me, and the little animal I had become scuttled behind the building and back into the arroyo and relative safety.
I looked to my right. The two TM-7 members down the gully were down, crumpled in the awkward stillness of the dead. And leaning over them was the lean form of El Carnicero, rifling the bodies in search of a weapon.
I went for him without thought or plan. My hands were extended with the urge to break him. I was panting with the effort of bringing all that I had to bear on the attack. The Japanese speak of kime, a type of integrated focus that yokes intent and capability, the will of the actor with bone and sinew and muscle memory. But don’t be fooled; it’s an elegant fiction, far removed from the reality of heat and impulse and blind fury of the battlefield.
There was no kime here, or at least not something most people would recognize as such—No elegance—No coordination—just a battered, dusty animal, eyes wild and bloodshot, with every part of his body on fire to do violence.
Even so, it was hard to get much velocity up. The arroyo’s floor was uneven and I was ducking the rounds that seemed to be angling in from all directions. But I dug in as hard as I could and set my legs pumping. I needed to get to him before he got a pistol in his hand and spotted me.
El Carnicero turned at the last moment before I got within striking distance. His eyes narrowed, the jaw line writhed, and he raised a pistol, racking the slide, aiming it at me and pulling the trigger, but the magazine was empty. He snarled in fury, but it was too late. I was on him.
There’s a trick to generating maximum force for a hit, to slam into another body at high speed: a coiling down of the muscles that pulls your body together into a solid mass before the last, sudden surge into the target. Most people make the mistake of anticipating the impact and unconsciously slowing down. But to really hit someone like this, you’ve got to tighten together and drive through.
I gave it my best, filling the strike with all the fury I felt for him and what he had done to me, but mostly for Sarah. I heard him grunt with the impact and he went down. But the footing was bad and I lost my balance as well, lurching to my knees a step beyond him on the arroyo floor.
The Butcher was tough, I’ll admit that. He was still clutching the pistol as he rolled upright. I spun toward him. His brown hands reached out for me, desperate claws. He slammed the weapon against the side of my head; pain and a ringing in the ears, a spreading warmth that felt like I was bleeding. He scrambled closer and dragged me up against one side of the arroyo wall. There was no attempt to hit me, he was simply driving with both hands to get me upright. I heard the crack of a high velocity round go by my head.
He’s propping me up. Hoping someone out there will take a shot at me.
And they did. I slammed down on his forearms and twisted away to get below the lip of the gully where the bullets couldn’t reach. He was on me in a flash.
We rolled and lurched around on the dry ground. Rocks dug into my back. I was reaching for the soft tissue of his face, hoping to get a strike in to the eyes. He grunted as he drove repeated knee blows at me, trying for the groin, but I deflected them. He ended up battering my thigh muscles instead. Rectus femoris. Vastus lateralis. It’s odd the things that shoot in disconnected bursts through your mind when you’re fighting for your life. I knew that these muscles were big and strong ones, but I also knew that they weren’t going to take this much pounding indefinitely.
We jerked and slammed each other, searching for a point of entry, a gap in defense—a place to land a killing blow. But grappling doesn’t work that way. It’s more cunning than brute force. It requires you to harness the fury into something that could be fluid and patient, but ultimately more deadly in its relentless search for an opening.
Maybe that’s what brought me back to myself—somewhat. I hadn’t completely slipped the reins of years of training. Something about the fight was familiar, and even in the heat of the struggle, I experienced a type of clarity and detachment, even as I tried every trick I knew.
A good, experienced ground fighter will keep tight contact with his opponent. The fight slips and morphs in a thousand subtle ways. You need the broad tactile input of contact to sense an opportunity, a shift in position or leverage that flashes the potential for a counter. But El Carnicero didn’t know that. He wasn’t a ground fighter, he was a butcher used to hacking his way through his victims. He reared back to get more force into one of his knee attacks, and I used the gap as well as his momentum to turn him, pushing with the force of his windup. It was enough to create the opening I sought, and I slipped around behind his back.
I circled his wais
t with my legs and managed to get him in a choke hold. It was a variant of hadaka-jime: nothing fancy, but effective. You put your left forearm across the victim’s throat, push the head forward with the right arm, and pull back with the left. El Carnicero knew he was in trouble; he bucked and slammed me into the arroyo floor, trying to break the hold.
I wasn’t letting go. He pounded me back onto the rocks and my breath left me, returning only in a feeble, ragged flow. He sensed that he had hurt me, and writhed to escape the hold, swinging back with furious elbow jabs. But he didn’t know enough to drop his jaw down to blunt the choke. If I could hold on long enough…
My ears were ringing and I was totally focused on the goal of choking him to death. But, for a moment, the outside world broke in and I sensed that the firefight above us was slackening. Time was short.
I finally got it right. He arched his back in panic. I heard the juttering breath just before he blacked out. His body went limp.
Finish it. I knew how: a slight readjustment of the arms to align force on the vertebrae, set up the angles, then a quick, hard jerk.
Yamashita would do it. After all, he had shown me the technique.
But I’m not Yamashita. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn’t do it, not like this. Not with him unconscious and at my mercy.
I lay there for a minute, sensing new voices and sounds. The shooting had grown sporadic. I needed to get my brain working again, get working on a plan. What now?
Then someone tossed a flash-bang grenade in the ditch with us and the world was filled with a roaring flash, a paralyzing wave of light and noise designed to overload the neural circuits.
I was laying there stunned, mouth open, gaping at the darkening sky, when a figure loomed over me. His skin was dark and weathered, the corners of his eyes crinkled with lines from years in the sun. He was wearing desert fatigues and pointing a CAR-15 in my direction.
He looked at the two of us. “You a bad guy or a good guy?” he asked. His English had the unique inflection of a Native American.
