by Jeremy Brown
Anaconda Choke
Round 3 in the Woodshed Wallace Series
Jeremy Brown
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Also by Jeremy Brown
About the Author
Published 2016 by Jeremy Brown
Copyright © 2015 by Jeremy Brown
Cover design by Michael Nagin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN
978-0-9983933-4-6eBook
978-0-9983933-5-3Paperback
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Second Edition
Created with Vellum
For Ellen.
1
I know how to say go fuck yourself in Portuguese.
What you do is have four guys in cutoff fatigue pants and dirty T-shirts stand outside the Arcoverde Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy in Rio de Janeiro and block the entrance when me and Marcela and Gil and Jairo pull up.
The four guys watch while we pull our training gear out of the van.
Jairo says, “Don’t look at them.”
Marcela takes my hand and gives me the look: Don’t be stupid. She’s used to giving it.
When we try to go through the door the men don’t move.
Jairo barks something at them in Portuguese.
One of the guys opens a duffel bag hanging over his shoulder and shows us the military-grade assault rifle with the grenade launcher mounted under the barrel.
He looks at me and smiles and they stroll away.
Go fuck yourself.
My trainer Gil Hobbes and I had flown coach from Vegas to Rio. This was on a Wednesday. We landed at the Galeão International Airport and hunched over to look out the porthole at Banzai Eddie’s private Warrior Inc. jet sitting at the APO. That was a go fuck yourself as well, but I already knew how an American said it.
We were in Brazil for the first international Warrior event, my third fight under Eddie’s thumb and Jairo Arcoverde’s professional mixed martial arts debut. I’d warned him Eddie was a snake. Jairo’s response: “Snake tastes good, you cook it right.”
The fights were a distant second on my list of reasons for going to Rio. I’d talked to Marcela nearly every day since she’d left Vegas but hadn’t seen her or touched her cheek or smelled her hair.
Over half a year.
I scanned the crowd at the arrivals gate, looking for Jairo’s shiny brown head among the colorful hats. At six foot four, he was easy to find. He grinned and leaned down to talk to someone. The people between us saw me coming and got out of the way.
There she was.
Marcela.
She shot the gap and ran toward me, her black hair trailing.
“Brace yourself,” Gil said.
I set my feet. Marcela was five foot three and had to carry loose change to break 105 pounds; I’m a foot taller and walk around at 240. I took three steps back when she hit me full speed, jumped and wrapped her arms around my neck and legs around my waist, and locked her ankles. Like all the Arcoverdes she had a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I couldn’t have peeled her off if I tried.
I did not try.
I squeezed and smelled and kissed her. She was warm.
“Hi, Woody.”
“Hi.”
“Welcome to Brazil.”
“It’s the best place I’ve ever been.”
“You’re still in the airport.”
“Right.”
She laughed and gave me a light smack, buried her face in my neck.
Gil and Jairo might have hugged, shaken hands, set something on fire, and danced around it. I couldn’t say. At some point they got tired of waiting and wrapped their arms around us, a group hug that turned into an intervention.
Jairo plucked Marcela off. She dropped down and ran her hands over my face, the new scars and some of the old ones. I looked into her tan eyes, touched the tiny bump on the bridge of her nose.
She frowned. “What did you do, stick your head in a cannon and shoot it?”
“How else could I get my hair to look this good?”
She looked skeptical of my head in general.
As we walked she welded herself to my right side. If I’d worn baggier pants I could have put her in my pocket. We collected our luggage and made our way outside.
Gil stopped on the curb, closed his eyes and breathed it all in. He’d moved to Rio when he was eighteen, stayed for nine years while he studied under Jairo’s father Antonio Arcoverde and earned his own black belt. He was almost forty now.
“How does it feel?” Jairo asked.
Gil smiled. “Man, it feels exactly the same. Nothing’s changed.”
Jairo and Marcela shared a look.
If I had figured out what that look meant right away, I would have piled all of us onto a plane and flown it out myself. Screw the landing part—it still would have been safer.
2
The Galeão airport was on an island in Guanabara Bay. Jairo drove the Academia de Arcoverde van with Gil in the passenger seat and the windows down. Marcela and I took up half of the middle seat, her head against my shoulder while she named some of the birds flying over the water and sitting at the tops of trees. She said something in Portuguese to Jairo, who shrugged and switched lanes.
“I told him to go this way so you can see where the hospital is.”
I shrugged too. It was a good idea.
Marcela said, “And I want to show you something else.”
We rode south on a raised highway through the center of the city, above the flat roofs of one-story buildings, past windows of taller concrete buildings. There was some impressive graffiti on display. So far it wasn’t much different than Vegas, just wetter.
Gil turned in his seat and pointed ahead, grinning. Green mountains humped over the horizon. All right, that was different—the mountains outside Vegas are brown.
Gil said to Jairo, “You’re looking solid. You ready for Preston?”
Tim Preston was from the States, a big farm boy with a few Warrior fights under his belt. In addition to ground-shaking, world-class wrestling, he had an overhand right that demolition companies in Vegas rented when he wasn’t fighting. It was cheaper than C-4 and did twice the damage.
Jairo snorted. “That guy, he’s going to have a bad time in Brazil, man.”
Jairo was thirty-one, two years older than me. I had almost thirty professional fights under my belt, couldn’t imagine starting out at his age. But he’d been grappling since birth, as comfortable with the mats and tournament lights as he was with blinking.
I’d sparred with him leading up to my first Warrior fight, getting ready for Junior Burbank.
We’d also tussled for a while in an illegal fighting pit, something I’d been doing since I got chucked into an empty swimming pool as a kid and had to scrap my way out. Jairo more than held his own.
Now he said, “I have concern for Woody though.”
He looked at me in the rearview. I waited for a wink, but he was serious.
I was going against a tall, lean Brazilian jiu jitsu specialist named Rafa de Jaguaribe. He went by the nickname “Aviso,” because he warned his opponents which submission he was going to do, counted down, and did exactly that.
He was undefeated, ten–zero, nine of them won by armbar. Of those nine arms, he’d broken seven. You could hear him in some of the footage, slipping and leaning away from punches, telling the guy, “I going to break you arm. You ready?”
Snap.
Asshole.
Aviso was also the name of his clothing line and cologne. He modeled for both of them, serious black-and-white shots that highlighted cheekbones sharp enough to cut through the knuckles of anyone bold enough to take a shot. After we got word who I was fighting, Roth, the crazy Australian fighter at our gym, slapped magazine photos of Aviso all over the place and ordered a jug of the cologne. Doused my headgear and gloves with the stuff, which, according to the bottle, smelled of sandalwood and confidence.
It was intoxicating.
For the next few weeks Roth walked around with the best-smelling black eyes in history.
In the van Gil said, “Why the concern?”
“Aviso is tough, man. He’s slick, hard to hit and grab.”
“You fought him?” I asked.
“No, just what I’ve seen and heard.”
“We heard he doesn’t like to get hit.”
“Well, he has the pretty face,” Jairo said. “He don’t want to mess it up.”
I smiled at the mirror. “Aviso’s going to have a bad time in Brazil too.”
“Shut up about your work and fighting,” Marcela told us. She tugged my arm. “Look, that’s the Feira de São Cristóvão.”
It was a huge open-air arena shaped like a Pringle chip.
“We can go there for dinner and dancing,” she said.
Now I was concerned.
We drove south and the dense city thinned out. Lush green filled the spaces between the buildings. I wondered if I’d ever seen so much of it in one place before. Marcela bounced.
I tilted my forehead to hers. “What?”
“It’s coming up, what I want to show you.”
We came out of a curve into a straight shot and she pulled me to the passenger window.
“There, look.”
Maybe a half mile to the right, past a bunch of trees, a narrow green hill rose above the landscape. On top was a huge statue of a guy spreading his arms, like he was taking it all in.
“Neat,” I said.
“Neat?”
“Who is it, some soccer player?”
Jairo and Gil kept quiet, but if they’d eavesdropped any harder the NSA would have hired them.
Marcela said, “Woody, that’s Christ the Redeemer. It’s Jesus.”
She crossed herself and kissed the golden cross hanging around her neck.
“Oh yeah, I see it now. How did they get him up there?”
“That doesn’t matter, just look at him.”
I stared until my neck hurt from cranking around, hoped it was long enough to make up for whatever I’d said wrong. When I sat back Marcela had her arms crossed and was looking out the far window.
Redeemer my ass.
3
We hit the coastline and cut west, drove along the waterfront with mountains and jungle on the right. I was starting to get what Gil and Marcela had run on and on about leading up to the trip. The smell of the ocean mixed with damp earth and something light and fruity. My lungs weren’t used to the heavy air, but they seemed to like it.
Compared to the Vegas landscape, some of the trees and plants looked like alien invaders. It was a whole new color palette, no buzzing neon or strobing billboards or puke stains.
“This is paradise,” I said.
Marcela punched me in the ribs. “What have I been telling you?”
I pulled her close. She put me in a brief wrist lock, then held my hand in both of hers like two birds carrying a buffalo between them. Her hands were strong, pulling and spreading mine while she examined the kettlebell calluses, busted knuckles, tooth and glass scars.
Look close enough, you get the whole story.
I told myself I wasn’t nervous about how closely the rest of the Arcoverde clan would look.
The year before, Jairo and his brothers Edson and Javier had come to Vegas to train at Gil’s gym. That was when I sparred with Jairo. Marcela had tagged along. We ignored each other at first, because I’m an idiot and she had good taste. Once we got past that, we fell fast.
Then I kind of got her kidnapped by a psychopath named Kendall Percy.
Banzai Eddie Takanori, President of Warrior Inc., had been working hard to keep the Yakuza out of Vegas MMA. A corrupt organization called Shinto wanted to shove a small promotion into the scene so it could spread. Shinto was run by the Dojin-gumi, a family of Yakuza assassins. The head of the family was a scumbag named Omori.
It was looking hopeless for Eddie when an ex-operator in the British Special Air Service named Burch let him know about Vanessa Brandenberg. She was the daughter of Vegas real estate kingpin Tim Brandenberg, who had lost his daughter to Omori in a card game. Vanessa’s mother hired Burch to get her back, and Burch laid it out for Eddie:
He told him to set up a meet with Omori about getting into Vegas. While that went down Burch would kick doors in and find Vanessa, take her away from Omori. Omori would lose face and the Shinto promotion.
Worked like a charm. There was even a bonus—Omori committed seppuku, ritual suicide that ends in decapitation. His eldest son, a monster named Shuko, swung the blade.
The Yakuza came to Eddie for reimbursement, a little something for their trouble. He couldn’t pay it, or wouldn’t, so instead he gave them a fight.
And along with it, a fighter.
First Eddie found a buffer to wedge between himself and the Yakuza: Kendall Percy, a Vegas bookie who liked a dose of juice with his wagers. Kendall took on Eddie’s debt to the Yakuza with the promise he’d get his own payday, and Eddie found the closest thing he could to a fixed fight: heavyweight poster boy and destined champ Junior Burbank against the one guy who beat him years back, some scrub still floundering on gas money fight promotions.
Me.
Eddie snagged me and Gil in the net and hauled us into the hype. A short-notice fight against a top-three contender. Eddie knows how to talk to fighters, warriors who believe they can beat any man set before them. Check out the lumps of scar tissue around my eyes for proof—I actually thought I could take Burbank on.
Everybody else was too busy laughing, ready to get paid and laid.
But Kendall wanted more.
He thought it was smart to mess with my head before the fight, make sure I was exhausted, stressed, panicked, distracted. Easier to beat. So he kidnapped Marcela the night before the fight and told me if I didn’t win by knockout, she was dead.
I’m not the sit-around-and-worry type.
More like the run-around-hunting-with-a-chainsaw type.
Jairo and I spent the day trying to find Marcela. That’s how we ended up forced to fight each other to the death in a cesspool murder pit run by a gang lord named Tezo. Tezo tried to shoot and kill Jairo but hit him in the shoulder, which just made him angry. When we got out I spent a few minutes making Tezo’s head look like a Picasso. Found out Kendall told Tezo and the Yakuza to bet everything on Burbank—everybody knew I’d be lucky to survive the first round.
And Kendall was keeping Marcela no matter what.
It was time for Burbank. We hadn’t found Marcela, and Kendall was getting his wish. He sent me into the cage flailing and desperate. Funny thing happens when you back something
savage into a corner: it kicks Burbank in the face and knocks him out cold.
I knew the only way to keep Marcela alive was to make her a bargaining chip, Kendall’s life preserver. When I crushed Burbank, the Yakuza wanted Kendall’s soul. Kendall wanted to trade Marcela for Eddie, give them the man they wanted in the first place. I dragged Eddie to a doomsday compound in the Nevada desert built by a madman named Chops.
Kendall and his boys brought Marcela.
Burnt chunks of Kendall are still out there somewhere, spread across the sand by a landmine he ran over after Marcela broke the majority of his important bones.
That’s what the Arcoverdes knew. Riding up into the mountains outside of Rio, I wondered if there was a traditional Brazilian welcome for someone who’d got members of the family kidnapped and shot.
Fed to piranhas?
I was just glad they didn’t know what had happened after Marcela and the Arcoverde boys flew home.
After Kendall, Eddie owed me. I’d saved his life. He made up for it by showing up seven weeks later with Burch, the ex-SAS soldier, both of them on the run and demanding my help in return for a three-fight contract. For me, that contract was a winning Lotto ticket.
But now the Yakuza didn’t just want a piece of the Vegas action. They wanted Warrior. They slipped one of their fighters in under the radar—a catch wrestling terminator named Zombi—and Eddie wanted me to meet him in the cage and send him back to Japan with tail tucked.
That, or he was sacrificing me to the Yakuza gods.
And the Dojin-gumi, the sons of Omori, had gone rogue. They didn’t give a shit about the Yakuza mission statement and five-year plan. They wanted blood. I was in Eddie’s limo when one of the sons came through the moonroof and tried to strangle him. I held the guy down so Burch could subdue him. Burch stabbed him to death.
So there I was, accessory to murder. Eddie had me via extortion and blackmail. He deserved a Boss of the Year mug, right across the temple. I stayed in Eddie’s mansion with him and Burch and Vanessa Brandenberg. Tried to train for Zombi while the Dojin-gumi tried to kill all of us.
