Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (24 page)

The smile abruptly vanished from Kenoi’s face as he came in with a barrage of his incredibly powerful wide circular punches. But somehow, as clumsy as his blocks were, the sheer relaxing of Archer’s body nearly doubled his speed. For the first time he understood what Rockson had been trying to teach him. By unclenching the muscles of his arm and fist he could add tremendous speed and focus to his punches. He shot out his right fist, letting it just hang out in front of him like a slow flying bird—and lo and behold—it made contact with Kenoi’s chest, knocking the assassin back a good yard. A beaming smile crossed Archer’s face. There, now he was getting somewhere. But only for a second as Kenoi went into overdrive and unleashed a flurry of roundhouse punches that got through Archer’s blocks. Three of them slammed into the side of his head, almost dropping him. But he knew that if he went down, he wasn’t going to get up again. He couldn’t take many more—he’d have to take a chance, take a few of the strikes to get in one of his own.

The bear of a Freefighter retreated for the first time he had ever fought, remembering how Rockson and Chen had moved like waves of water against each other—the hard into the soft, the yin and the yang. Kenoi breathed out an explosive exhale and came in for the coup de grace, sensing Archer’s dizziness. Just a step further, the giant thought, just a step. As the assassin flew forward with another maelstrom of blinding punches, Archer also jumped forward meeting him in mid air. He took two of the blows on the side of his neck but not enough to stop him. He lowered his head and slammed the top of it into the Monkey stylist’s face. The nose crunched in like a piece of bloody cardboard as half the man’s teeth flew from his face, sprinkling onto the ground. Kenoi’s arms flew out wide as he stumbled backward half out on his feet. But Archer wasn’t going to allow him a second chance. He dove on top of the man, knocking him to the ground and with his immense weight pinning the assassin down slammed the top of his head again and again into the bloody face, goring at it like a maddened bull. He whipped his skull down over and over, not even knowing quite what he was doing. His hair and face covered with the assassin’s blood, Archer at last stopped and sat up on top of the body ready to strike again if the man made the slightest move. But there was no counter-attack. There was nothing. The face had been shattered down to red pulp, the tongue half bitten off by the slapping jaws of Kenoi, the nose gone, the eyes just bloody balls floating in a dark liquid.

Not knowing how the rest of his team was faring, Rockson rose from the lifeless body of his karate opponent and turned to face the smallest of his assassin attackers, an aged man almost frail-looking in a white silk robe. Rock’s body ached like the devil already—and God only knew how many more there were to go. A quick glance around the cavern showed him only men fighting fiercely with one another, bodies covered with blood. But in the dim flickering illumination from the string of bulbs along one wall it was impossible to see who was doing what to whom.

“Ted Rockson—I am the White Fan,” the elderly assassin said, addressing the Doomsday Warrior in polite almost conversational tones as he fanned himself with a white oriental fan with pictures of dragons and tigers in wild colors drawn on its surface. “I have no animosity toward you—you understand,” the killer went on. “I can see that you are a brave and accomplished fighter. But I have my duty to perform. So please prepare your thoughts for death. The others were tough—but I assure you that I am at an entirely different level.”

“Can’t we talk about all this?” Rock asked, his body begging him not to push it any further. “You seem like a civilized man, perhaps—”

“Save your breath—and your strength, Mr. Rockson. I cannot back down. Nor can you. Shall we proceed?” He walked toward the Doomsday Warrior with a simple slow gait, appearing to the untrained eye to be nothing more than an old and skinny man. But Rockson knew differently. The assassin moved with total relaxation, every muscle, every nerve in his body, moving together in perfect harmony. But it was the eyes that were the giveaway—pools of unfathomable green, absolute stillness, like the surface of the moon. Eyes that were a mirror—eyes of the True Master.

“Shit,” Rockson half muttered through a bloody lip. He just wasn’t in the mood for this. But death didn’t sent out calling cards R.S.V.P.—it had a habit of showing up on one’s doorstep unannounced, quickly bringing an end to the part of life. But he was in even less of a mood to die, so the Doomsday Warrior wearily lifted the bayonet blade and went into fighting stance, his legs half crouched for quick movement.

“Yes, you see I am the last of the real Masters,” the White Fan said, casually waving the fan in front of his face as if he were out on the veranda trying to create a cooling breeze. “The others—well—you shall see soon enough for yourself.” Seeing an opportunity as the assassin spoke, Rock lunged forward fast as a cobra, thrusting the long blade at the man’s stomach. But the fan simply dropped down in the most casual of motions and knocked his hand away.

“It is really quite pitiful, Mr. Rockson, for you see I can sense every motion you are going to make,” the aged, white-faced killer said, “and counter it.” Rock jumped to the side trying to flank the man. But even as he moved the White Fan spoke again.

“Now you are moving at a 45 degree angle to cut off my circular movement. Now you will thrust again.” And as Rockson shot out the blade in a sure death blow, the assassin once again merely batted it away as if hitting a fly. “You are fast—but not fast enough. I train with the wind, Rockson, with the animals of the field.” He was suddenly right up against the Doomsday Warrior, almost hugging his body, just inches away. The fan swung up suddenly folding closed and slammed Rockson in the face. It felt like a spear had ripped into him as a burning pain filled his skull.

“Like this and—” the White Fan said, dropping his fan to waist level and stabbing forward twice into Rockson’s stomach, “like this. There, you see how easy it all is.” Rock almost doubled over from the blow to his solar plexus, sucking in deep breaths. “Ah, sometimes I wish there was someone who could give me a real fight. It gets—boring.” The White Fan came at Rockson, spinning the now opened fan in front of him like a toreador’s cape, creating a dizzying blur of white. And again the Doomsday Warrior felt the seemingly harmless implement slam into him. Shots hit his face and throat and stomach in an unending barrage of blows sending Rock reeling backward as if he had been struck by a cannon shell. He fell down, landing on his back, not even able to soften the blow with his arms. He could feel his consciousness going out like a fading lightbulb. He had never felt so awkward, so humiliated. He couldn’t even touch the man. All his years of training, of fighting meant nil against one of the last living Masters. Rock tried to rise from a sitting position and found his body barely responding to his commands. Even flesh and muscle as toughened as Rockson’s had its limits. He wasn’t a superman—just a man—and a very mortal one at that.

The White Fan stood looking down at him from about 8 feet away in no apparent hurry to end it all. He smiled an almost pitying expression at the Doomsday Warrior.

“Have no shame, Mr. Rockson—none have ever beaten me. None ever will. At least die knowing that you have been destroyed by the best—the very best.” He started forward in that slow almost childlike gait toward Rockson, spreading the fan out and raising it for the slicing stroke that would cut through Rockson’s throat.

The Doomsday Warrior suddenly realized that his left hand was resting on something hard and glanced over—one of the spiked brass knuckles from the Goju Master. He slid his hand around the smooth grip and tightened his fingers around it. Though God knew what good it would do against a man whose defenses were totally impenetrable. As he backed off, Rockson felt a small button at the thumb of the knucks. The weapon obviously had another level of operation set into motion by pushing the almost invisible button. But whether it would blow him or the other guy away, Rockson had no way of testing. He had nothing to lose—that was for damned sure.

He whipped the hand up and around as the White Fan descended with his death blow, and pushed the button. Rock’s hand shook as if resting on a bazooka as all four of the three-inch long steel spikes shot out of the knuckles like bullets. They streaked through the air reaching the White Fan, who was only a foot away, in a thousandth of a second. All four steel shafts buried themselves deep in the assassin’s chest, inches apart, sinking in so only the last half inch of their bottoms poked out. The White Fan’s hand stopped in mid-air as if hitting a slab of steel and he looked quite surprised as four streams of blood began flowing messily down the front of his spotless white robe. Then he looked at Rockson again.

The White Fan’s legs suddenly turned to rubber and he staggered back, a tiny step at a time. The thinnest of smiles arched across his narrow mouth as if even in death he felt a perverse joy at having finally fought a worthy adversary. Then he crumpled to the ground, nothing more than another corpse which littered the cavern floor.

Rock rose to his feet, his face throbbing and beginning to swell up from the thunderous blows he had taken from the Master. His right knee seemed to have been hurt somewhere along the line and he limped slightly as he started toward the center of the cavern where the fighting was still going on.

There were just two assassins left—one a young bull of a fighter holding a pair of steel-tipped nunchuks in each hand, spinning them in a blurring flash around in front of him. The other, an older Chinese, dressed entirely in black, who stood crouched in a strange scissor leg type motion, his body turned sharply at the waist, hands out front—a style that Rockson recognized as Pa Kua. The rest of the Freefighters were surrounding them as the two drew close together suddenly realizing that their “sure victory” over Ted Rockson had turned into a disaster of ultimate proportions.

The young bull, Duk Sung, a Korean, started at Rockson who was approaching, swinging the deadly nunchuks toward the Freefighter’s throat. But a whistling star-knife stopped him in his tracks as it arched into his throat, burying the 5-pointed blade a good four inches into the thick flesh. The Korean gagged as both of his sticks dropped from his suddenly paralyzed hands. Then he spat out a violent spray of blood that filled the air in front of him and fell straight over onto his face, nose just inches from Rockson’s foot.

“No sense in any more of us getting hurt,” Chen said, walking over, holding one of the star killers in his other hand. “You all right Rock?” the Oriental fighter asked, noticing blood splattered over Rock’s face and chest and the limp in his leg.

“I’m still here,” the Doomsday Warrior said tiredly. “That’s more than the guys I fought can say.” The two of them turned simultaneously toward the final remaining assassin who continued to circle in front of them, kicking one leg out at the knee, stepping forward, then placing the other in what looked like an awkward motion. But the off balance walk, Rockson knew, was part of perhaps the most efficient martial art ever devised. This fighter could well be the most dangerous of them all.

“There’s no need to fight me,” the man suddenly said in almost perfect English as he stopped his defensive posturings and rose to a normal standing position. “I am Yi—Master of the Scissor Kick and the Iron Fist Systems. We have lost—you have won. It is clear. To the victor goes life—to the vanquished, death. This is as it has always been and always shall be. I ask only that you permit me to die by my own hand—as a warrior so that I may join my ancestors and my Master.”

Rock and Chen looked at each other as Archer and the surviving technician stood behind them.

“What the hell,” Chen said, “if he wants to—let him.”

“I don’t feel like doing any more killing today,” Rockson said, putting a hand onto Chen’s shoulder for support as his knee filled with a shooting electric stab of pain. The Pa Kua Master immediately knelt and bowed to all four points of the compass. Then he took out a small but razor sharp blade and opening the top of his black jacket, pressed the knife right up to his flesh just two inches below his bellybutton. He pulled in as hard as he could and began slicing around in all directions. Suddenly his neck stiffened and his head arched up as his intestines slopped out onto the cave floor. His eyes nearly bursting in their sockets he fell forward into the bloody pool of his own guts.

“Well, I guess that’s just about—” Rock started to say but stopped in mid-sentence as he looked around. “Where’s Detroit?” His face grew pale at the thought that the black Freefighter might have bought it. They looked around frantically, searching through the bodies of the dead assassins.

“I’m over here,” a weak voice spoke out from the opposite end of the cavern. The Freefighters ran over and found him half-lying, half-sitting against a tree-sized stalagmite nearly three feet wide at the base.

“I got a little cut here,” the black warrior said with a grimace. In the flickering light of the bulbs yards away they suddenly saw that Detroit’s arm was gone, cut from the elbow down. “I wish they’d got the other one, cause this here’s my pitching arm.” He motioned with his eyes to the missing limb which lay covered in dust and blood near his feet.

“Pick him up,” Rock said to Archer who bent down and lifted the bulldog of a black Freefighter gently in his huge arms. The Doomsday Warrior reached down and picked up the hacked off limb, immediately cleaning it with water from a crevice stream a few feet away and then tied the open end closed with cord. He wrapped the arm in one of the silk jackets from a dead assassin. The team tore back to Century City, shooting down the tunnels they’d come through earlier, following Chen’s trail of nylon line, every man praying silently that Detroit would make it.

Behind them, the first of the rats, the large aggressive males, ventured forth from dank holes to sniff at the unmoving bodies that lay strewn around the cavern. They circled the corpses at first, for the lift scents were very strong. They had to be careful. But after several minutes, a foot-and-a-half long creature with curved ivory fangs inches long, rushed suddenly forward and sank its jaws into the face of the White Fan. It ripped out a bloody strip of the cheek and swallowed it down greedily. The others quickly joined it.