Miami Run

by David Robbins

Blade didn’t respond.

  “Come with me,” Orm declared, walking to the east with his hands behind his back.

  Blade hesitated.

  “No tricks. I promise you,” Orm said.

  What was the Master up to? Blade, suspicious yet curious, moved to the Master’s left.

  Orm resumed walking, scrutinizing the trees surrounding the clearing.

  “It is quite lovely here.”

  “What are you trying to pull?” Blade demanded. “Why are you being so courteous?”

  “What did you expect? Slavering monsters?”

  “I don’t know what I expected,” Blade admitted.

  “I repeat. You can not judge us by human standards,” Orm said. “To you, we are physically repulsive. Am I right?”

  Blade nodded.

  “Yet we have hearts and minds, just like you,” Orm said. “We can love and hate, just like you.”

  “What do you know about love?” Blade asked scornfully.

  “I love my wife and children,” Orm declared.

  “But you don’t love humans.”

  “True,” Orm confessed.

  “Is that the reason you set up the Dragons? Is that why you use drugs to control the human populace? Because you hate us?”

  Orm studied the Warrior for a moment. “I will tell you something no other human knows, because the knowledge will go with you to your grave.

  I established the Dragons to protect my family.”

  “What?”

  “I am serious,” Orm insisted. “There is a natural animosity between humans and mutants. When my children were much younger, there was a great danger of being hunted down by your kind. Although I built a hideaway in the depths of the Everglades, I knew it was only a matter of time before we were discovered. I needed a power base, some way of ensuring my family would be protected. The drug war in Miami provided the ideal setting. I offered my services to one of the drug lords, assassinating his rivals. Such a task was easy. Our night vision and strength far surpasses the average human.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Once all the opposition was eliminated, I disposed of my so-called employer.”

  “No one else in his organization objected?”

  “Why should they?” Orm responded. “I promised each of them wealth and power beyond their fondest dreams, and I delivered on that promise.

  They were eating out of my hand.”

  “So your… children… didn’t help you take over the Dragons?” Blade inquired.

  “No. They were too young at the time. Why?”

  Blade glanced back at the six other Masters. “I’d heard all of you were involved.”

  “There are a number of popular rumors concerning us,” Orm acknowledged. “Some we’ve deliberately fostered.”

  “You have?”

  “Of course. Our principal means of maintaining control over the humans are psychological, not physical.”

  “What about the drugs?” Blade noted.

  “The drugs are part of the overall picture. By legalizing drug use, we’ve promoted addiction. An addicted population is a dependent population.

  The people now rely on the Dragons for drugs. They’re dependent on us.

  We are indispensable.”

  “You have it all figured out,” Blade remarked.

  Orm halted. “It hasn’t been easy. Solidifying our links with the Colombian Cartel, minting our own money, picking sycophants as Directors.”

  Blade looked the mutant in the eyes. “Why do you want to destroy the Family?”

  “So that’s it!” Orm exclaimed, smiling broadly, exposing his sharp teeth. “The reason you came to Florida! You heard about our plans! How?”

  “Forget how,” Blade declared. “Why?”

  “Because your Family poses a threat to our operation,” Orm answered.

  “Paolucci said the same thing,” Blade noted. “And it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Would it make sense to you if you learned the Dragons are planning to expand their market into the Civilized Zone?”

  The Warrior’s shock was obvious.

  “That’s correct,” Orm said, grinning wickedly. “We have made arrangements with a high-ranking official in the Civilized Zone, one of your allies in the Freedom Federation, to begin distributing drugs covertly. Drugs are illegal there, of course, but that won’t stop us.”

  “You’re going to introduce drugs to the Civilized Zone!” Blade declared in consternation.

  “Eventually, we’ll introduce drugs, as you put it, into each Federation faction. We’ll corner the market. Your accursed Family, though, stands in our way. You’re too idealistic, too damn spiritual. We could never foster drug dependence in the Home. And if we can’t turn you, then we must destroy you. We’re assembling a mercenary unit to pay your Home a little visit.”

  Blade raised his hands to his forehead. “I’d like to know how you found out?” Orm mentioned.

  The Warrior appeared to be in a daze.

  “Oh, well. I guess it’s not important. I’ll track down the leak,” Orm vowed. “Only the Directors and a few of the Dealers know about our plan to send a demolition unit to the Home. If one of them was indiscreet, I’ll find out.”

  Blade gazed at the ground with a blank expression.

  “Don’t take the news so hard,” Orm said. “It’s nothing personal.

  Business is business, and the Dragons have an opportunity to expand our trade in a big way.” He turned and started back.

  The Warrior walked alongside the mutant.

  “I’m impressed that you got this far,” Orm commented. “Once, a few years ago, a disgruntled member of the Colombian Cartel hired a professional assassin to terminate us. We caught him, of course. The assassin was a mutant! Can you imagine that? We cut out his tongue, but allowed him to live.” He paused. “You will not be so fortunate. I thought it would be poetic justice to use your own knives to skin you. We relish the taste of human flesh, all except for the skin. It leaves a bitter, salty aftertaste.”

  Blade was scarcely listening, his mind in turmoil. All the pieces of the puzzle now fit, and a rage was simmering inside him, a fury born of his experiences in Miami. He remembered the boy of six or seven who had begged for coins to buy drugs for his dad, and the 15-year-old girl who hustled men to support her habit, and then he thought of all the thousands of innocent children in the Civilized Zone and the other Federation factions, children whose lives would be forever warped by having the drug life-style forced on them by peer pressure or the manipulation of conniving adults. All because the Dragons wanted to expand their drug market! With each stride he took his rage grew. He glanced down at the handcuffs, at the links connecting the metal bracelets.

  “—ceremony was my idea,” Orm was boasting. “Humans are easily swayed by elaborate ceremonies. The sacrifices are an excuse for us to indulge ourselves.”

  Blade looked up. They were 12 feet from the waiting Masters and Directors. Seven of the former and thirteen of the latter. Twenty, all told.

  Not the best of odds, but he didn’t care anymore. He felt like molten lava was circulating in his veins.

  “Ahh. Here we are,” Orm remarked as they reached the assembled group. He extended his right arm. “The knives, Director One.”

  Arlo Paolucci began to lift his right hand.

  And Blade made his move. His massive arms bunched, his muscles rippling and bulging, as he exerted all of his prodigious strength, his forearms straining outward. For an average man the cuffs would have held; for the herculean Warrior the links were as putty. In the space of a heartbeat they parted with a loud snap, and before the stupefied Masters and Directors could intervene, the Warrior yanked his Bowies from Paolucci and whirled toward Orm.

  The mutant leader was reaching for the giant. “Get—” he began.

  Blade swept the Bowies under Orm’s arms and buried them to their hilts in the mutant leader’s chest, his shoulder muscles coiling like steel springs as he lifted t
he Master on the Bowie blades, surging Orm up and over his head. For a second he stood there, grand and terrible in the sunlight, the mutant upraised and thrashing and screeching.

  Snarling and hissing, the other Masters closed in.

  The Warrior whirled and flung Orm into the charging Masters, bowling four of them over. But the remaining two, one of whom was Radnor, pounced. Blade felt their bony fingers close on his forearms, one on each side. He dropped to his left knee and wrenched his left arm downward, propelling the mutant holding him to the ground to crash onto its face.

  Even as he completed the move, he started another. There was no time for needless thought, and there would be no rhyme or reason to this battle. He had to rely on his reflexes, on his honed instincts, and keep moving-moving-moving. If he slowed for an instant, he was dead.

  Consequently, as the one mutant was crashing onto the hard ground, Blade was already in motion to the right, angling his left knee in a savage arc, ramming the kneecap into Radnor’s groin.

  Radnor gurgled and released his grip. The Directors swarmed in, their red robes swirling. Four of the thirteen produced knives, two drew pistols from hiding, and one stepped up to the giant with a sawed-off shotgun sliding out of his left sleeve.

  Blade was a whirlwind. He took the fight to them, moving into their midst to limit their ability to employ their guns and knives for fear of hitting one another. His right Bowie took out the Director with the shotgun, the point slicing into the man’s right eye, causing the Director to scream, release the gun, and flounder backwards, blood pouring from the ruptured socket as the Bowie came free.

  Another Director snapped off a shot from his pistol, but missed.

  The Warrior pivoted, slashing and swiping, the keen edges of his Bowies cutting and ripping right and left. The two Directors with pistols were the next to fall, both with crimson crescents flowing from their severed throats. Blade pressed his attack with reckless abandon, parrying a knife strike, hacking off the fingers of a hand reaching for him, and ramming his left Bowie into the jugular of a Director clinging to his right shoulder.

  A stinging sensation lanced across the giant’s lower back.

  Blade spun to find a Director with a bloody knife, and he angled his right Bowie up and in, the blade penetrating the Director’s left cheek. The man stiffened and tottered backwards, blood spraying in all directions.

  Before Blade could press his advantage, a body alighted on his back and a thin, bony arm encircled his neck.

  A Master!

  Instantly, the Warrior doubled over, upending the mutant, toppling it in the grass at his feet. He saw the Master’s upturned, skeletal features, and he thrust downward with both Bowies, both blades spearing into the mutant’s neck.

  Something pierced his right shoulder, burning and racking him with pain.

  Blade straightened. A Director had stabbed him and was drawing the knife back for another try. But the Warrior was quicker, his right Bowie cleaving the Director’s face from eyebrows to chin with a mighty downswing.

  A growling Master tackled the giant from the left, bearing the Warrior down.

  Blade landed on his back and kicked, flinging the Master aside. He rolled to his right, and there was another Master diving straight for him.

  His left Bowie whipped around and met the mutant in midair, catching the creature high on the chest. It wailed and fell, and Blade pulled the knife out and heaved to his knees just in time to meet the rush of a Director with a survival knife. He ducked under the knife as it arched toward his face, and retaliated with his left Bowie, planting the big blade in the Director’s loins. The man gurgled and clutched at himself. The Warrior tugged the left Bowie out and rotated, always moving, always moving, and as fast as he was, he wasn’t fast enough, because a mutant leaped on his back and razor teeth tore into the right side of his neck. A clammy substance flowed over his shoulder as he drove the right Bowie back and in, and connected.

  There was a cry of anguish and the Master on his back fell away.

  To be replaced by a hurtling pair of Directors, one armed with a knife, coming directly at him.

  Blade engaged them in a frenzy, fighting on sheer impulse, his blood-soaked Bowies striking in reckless abandon, lashing every which way as quickly as enemies presented themselves. Crimson spurted over the combatants and the grass. He downed the Directors and another mutant, imbedded his left Bowie in the stomach of a third Director, and rotated to the right.

  And suddenly the Warrior was alone, standing amidst a heap of bodies, some motionless, others groaning and moaning and twitching. He blinked his eyes rapidly, wondering where his foes had gone, and he spotted several figures in red racing to the east. “You!” bellowed a voice to his left.

  Blade whirled, the Bowies held at waist level.

  “I want you!” It was Radnor, standing over the limp form of his father, saliva caking his lips and chin, his eyes blazing his hatred. “Try me, Warrior! Just me! Without your knives!”

  The Warrior spied a lone female Master sprinting to the north. He glanced down, astonished at the sight of Arlo Paolucci, dead, a foot away.

  The Director was lying on his left side, his forehead split open wide. When had he killed Paolucci?

  Radnor took a step forward. “Me, Warrior! Try me if you have the courage!”

  Blade returned Radnor’s glare, his rage rekindled by the repulsive Master. He tossed the Bowies to the ground.

  A vicious grin creased Radnor’s mouth. “Now you die!” he roared and charged.

  Blade met Radnor halfway, their bodies colliding with a bone-jarring impact. Both kept their footing, Radnor delivering a brutal punch to the Warrior’s midsection. Blade doubled over, and Radnor locked his hands together and smashed the Warrior on the back of the head.

  Suddenly Blade was on his knees, reeling, pinwheels of light flickering before his eyes, his ears barely registering the brittle chatter of machine guns from the near distance. He looked up, squinting, as the mutant swung those cupped hands again, but this time Blade blocked the blow with his left arm and retaliated. His malletlike right fist thudded into the Master’s stomach once, twice, three times in all, and Radnor staggered backwards. Blade went after the mutant with his fists flying, landing one blow after another, his knuckles pounding Radnor’s face. He swung again and again and again, even after Radnor toppled backwards, refusing to relent, venting his fury on the mutant, straddling Radnor and pounding the Master repeatedly. A red haze enveloped him, and he kept swinging long after Radnor had ceased moving. He was still raining punches when strong hands grabbed his arms, and he surged erect, prepared to take on more adversaries. Dimly, he perceived a familiar voice.

  “—enough, pard! Enough! He’s dead! Snap out of it!”

  Blade shook his head, his eyes narrowing, puzzled. He looked to his right.

  “Are you okay?” Hickok asked, holding onto his friend’s right wrist. “It’s me! Nathan!” A machine gun was over his right shoulder.

  “Blade?” said someone to the giant’s left.

  Blade glanced around, inhaling deeply, his temples throbbing. “Hello, Rikki,” he said huskily.

  Rikki-Tikki-Tavi peered intently at his friend. “You’ve been cut. I must tend to your wounds.”

  “I’m fine,” Blade said. “Really.” He faced forward, surprised to see Cat eight feet away.

  El Gato gazed at the littered bodies, at the dead and the dying, at the pools of blood, the severed fingers, and the slashed throats. He stared at the gore-spattered Warrior, his eyes widening. And then he did a strange thing. He crossed himself for the first time in many, many years and uttered a phrase he hadn’t used in ages. “Madre de Dios!”

  Epilogue

  They stood at the rendezvous site, awaiting the arrival of the Hurricane.

  “—worked my way around to the south side of the compound,” Hickok was explaining. “I figured they wouldn’t be expectin’ me to pull a stunt like that.” He chuckled. “I almost bumped into three turkeys
on the west side of the estate. Anyway, to make this long story a mite shorter, I went lookin’ for Rikki and found him takin’ a mud bath.”

  Blade looked at the martial artist. “A mud bath?”

  “He exaggerates,” Rikki said.

  “Your clothes were dirty until you took a bath in that stream yesterday,” Blade remarked.

  “He went swimmin’ in quicksand,” Hickok disclosed.

  “That sounds like a stunt you’d pull,” Blade said to the gunman.

  “What’s that crack supposed to mean?” Hickok demanded.

  Rikki stared to the south, in the direction of Miami. “What will we do about the Dragons?”

  “With most of the Masters dead, the threat to the Family has been removed,” Blade said. “And without firm leadership, the Dealers will undoubtedly start fighting among themselves for control of the organization. I don’t see the Dragons as a danger any more.”

  “You still haven’t told me what that crack meant,” Hickok stated.

  Blade glanced at the gunfighter. “Which Warrior nearly ran over half the Family when he was learning to drive the SEAL?”

  “Me, but—”

  “And which Warrior,” Blade went on, “confided to me that he accidentally drove a tank into the moat at the Home?”

  “Me, but—”

  “I could go on and on,” Blade said, “but I rest my case.”

  Hickok looked from Blade to Rikki and back again. “Pitiful. Just pitiful.”

  “What is?” Rikki asked.

  “A couple of teensy-weensy boo-boos and you’re branded for life!”

  Copyright

  A LEISURE BOOK

  July 1989

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  276 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY

  Copyright© 1989 by David Robbins

  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 the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.