Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (5 page)

It was crowded out there, too. They
made their way to a bench on the far side where they could be alone. A large
guy with a short stubble on his face and a leather jacket asked her if she had
any matches. “No,” she said, sizing him up. He seemed too old for this music,
but not exactly an adult, at least not her father’s age. He didn’t quite fit
in. Maybe he worked at the armory. His hands looked strong. His eyes were
bright, but unsympathetic, as if he meant to be intrusive. As they sat down,
the same guy called out to Danny to watch himself. Just then, three men jumped
him from out of the shadows and began to work him over. As she turned to look,
the guy in the jacket grabbed Emily from behind and tried to pull her around
the corner to the loading dock. She saw Danny punch one of the men in the cheek
and shove another back into the wall. But they were too big for him, and they
seemed to know how to handle themselves in a scrap. They had been hit before.
Danny was in over his head.

Emily’s assailant was much larger
than her, by at least six inches and seventy pounds. He held her in a bear hug
from behind and tried to keep her feet off the ground as he carried her away.
She wondered what he had prepared for her around the corner. His hands and arms
were strong, much stronger than hers. She was oddly calm. As he took an
uncertain step backwards she shifted her shoulders ever so slightly. He tried
to adjust his balance, but in the process he let her touch the pavement. Just
then, she pushed off the ground hard, and he reacted instinctively to oppose
her effort, to keep her down. He shifted his balance and leaned over her. She
slid her fingers inside his right hand, grabbed across his palm and thumb, and
twisted all the joints of his right arm out and away from his body. He found
himself running as fast as he could face first into the side of the building.
The pain in his arm was excruciating. Hitting the wall was almost preferable to
trying to resist her.

He yowled in pain, his face
bloodied, his nose bent grotesquely to one side. Enraged and not a little
disoriented, he lunged at her. Strangely, she seemed not to resist. He had her
in his grasp for an instant before he felt her hand behind his elbow, swinging
him around. He crashed into one of the other men, heads colliding like
pumpkins. They lay in a heap for a moment, stunned, blood oozing out of their
faces, watching as she turned to the other two men. One of them seemed to know
karate. He swung a roundhouse kick at her head. She leaned back and out of the
way. As he pulled his foot back and down, she hooked his ankle with her left
foot and pulled him towards her. Her behavior was uncanny. She hadn’t run away,
or even retreated from him. As he fell forward, he spread his arms in a vain
attempt to regain his balance. But she pulled his foot even further forward,
forcing him into a perfect hurdler’s split. He felt his hip grind as he went
down. The pain was almost unbearable. She punched him in the throat, sharply,
as he fell. He gasped for breath. The thought occurred to her that she might
have crushed his windpipe. “This isn’t the dojo,” she told herself.

The last man grabbed her pony tail
from behind. He hoped to control her as he grabbed her with his other arm. He
expected her to pull away, so he could yank her head back. To his surprise, she
spun into him, wrapping her right arm over his elbow and under. She forced his
elbow up at the same time as she forced his shoulder down. He could feel the
enormous pressure on the back of his elbow. There didn’t seem to be any
coherent way to move his body to extricate himself from her grip. Of course,
this thought barely had time to register. He wasn’t even able to struggle with
her. She was so close to his chest he couldn’t even grab her. She drove the
heel of her left palm under his chin with a quick, sharp blow. He felt his
teeth crack through his tongue just as his elbow snapped. He crumpled to the
ground in tears, his mind awhirl. What had just happened? He was unable to
focus on anything outside of his own pain. Where was she?

She turned to the first two men,
still feeling the rush of ferocity she had just unleashed. The one with the
broken face, groggy but barely conscious, moved to pick himself up. Then he saw
her eyes and shuddered. He felt a tingling numbness radiate from his head. He
was sweating profusely and began to feel dizzy. She turned to Danny. They had
worked him over a bit, but he wasn’t seriously hurt. They hadn’t had much time,
and had not hit him in the face. At least he would be spared a lot of questions
at home. She helped him up and led him back to his truck. They left before the
police got there.

On the way home, she reassured
Danny about what happened. Just some thugs looking for trouble. No deeper
meaning in it. He had been brave. Fortunately for him, he had not seen just how
thoroughly she had rescued him. But she had other things to think about, things
that were more important than massaging his ego. Who were those guys? And what
did they want? Was it just a random attack, or had they been marking them all
evening? Perhaps even longer?

These were troubling questions. But
an even more troubling thought kept nudging its way into her consciousness. Had
she reacted too fiercely? She was not concerned for those men. They had meant
to do much worse to her. Exactly what they had in mind, she didn’t know. But
she had felt the malevolence in them. They were completely devoid of any human
sentiment towards her. But she wondered if she had overcommitted herself? She
remembered feeling the thrill of her own ferocity. Had she been able to control
it? She vanquished her assailants. But had she lost sight of herself in the
process?

This was the first time she had
ever been in a real fight. Not sparring. Not a schoolyard scuffle. Those men
meant to harm her, perhaps even kill her. She had defeated them. Perhaps even
killed one of them. Maimed another. This is what it means to be in a fight. If
your opponent puts your life on the line, he can’t avoid putting his own life
on the line, too. If she had ever harbored any doubts about her ability to
defend herself, to keep her wits about her and to generate enough sheer
aggression to prevail, those had been effectively dispelled. But was that
enough? What had this victory really cost her? Was this the meaning of all of
her training? Or was it a distortion, a distraction from more important truths?

She saw Danny in school the
following Monday. He seemed embarrassed, uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to
say to her. He had half expected to see a police report about it, maybe even
have to answer some questions himself. But he heard nothing all weekend. He
wondered if his mother had treated those guys at the ER. But the rest of the weekend
had been uneventful. He was at a loss for words.

She told her father all about it
that same night. His eyes were alight, but he seemed otherwise very
self-controlled. He said little, listened carefully to her story. He asked if
she noticed anything familiar or recognizable about those men. “They were
trained,” she said. “They didn’t belong at the concert.”

“Did they seem like soldiers?”

“I don’t know, Dad. They were kinda
like the security guards around here,” she replied. “You know, trained but indifferent.
They didn’t care about us. They weren’t pissed at us or anything.”

“Was that kid any help to you?”

“Nah. Not really," she
snorted. “He probably won’t remember much of what happened either."

“That figures," he growled.

“He did okay, Dad. He was outnumbered
three to one,” she found herself saying in Danny’s defense, though she didn’t
quite know why she cared.

“Fine. But now you know what you
can expect from him,” he said as he stood up. “I’ve gotta talk this over with
Mr. Cardano.”

She was definitely not going to
tell Yuki about any of this, and she hoped her father wouldn’t either. But that
seemed unlikely. News like this just has a way of spreading throughout a
household. She shuddered to think what Yuki would say. In the end, Yuki said
nothing about it. Emily was sure she knew everything from the way she looked at
her the next morning. There was a cold, dark fury in the back of her eyes. “At
least she’s not pissed at me,” Emily thought, or rather hoped. But who was that
fury reserved for? Dad? Mr. Cardano? Danny?

This all happened in early
September, more than a month ago. Why was she thinking about it now? Danny
eventually came back to the dojo. He recovered his composure around her, talked
to her again. He was relieved she had said nothing about it to anyone. Nothing.
He had expected to be the butt of every joke around school. But no one knew
anything. He enjoyed watching her spar in class much more now. He didn’t mind
going up against her anymore, even though he still always lost. Now he just tried
to learn something from her. That was the only path he could see to regaining
his sense of dignity.

Around five am, just as she noticed
a slight glow in the eastern sky, she also sensed something was wrong at the
estate. She couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was, but something was
very wrong. She expected to see some movement, at least, at the guard posts.
But there was nothing. She also noticed smoke coming out of the central chimney
of the main house. There was no reason to have that fireplace going this early.

She half
expected to spy her father making his way down the stream bed. But there was no
sign of him either. If it had been him arriving in the family car a couple of
hours ago, he would have found his way at least that far by now. Where was he?
She felt very divided about what to do. Climbing down and scouting the estate
buildings might bring her right into his hands, and then he would gloat over it
for days. But something made her uncomfortable holding her position on the
rock. She packed up her equipment and decided to climb down now, while there
was still some darkness left to cover her movements.

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Chapter 5:
Getting out the Door

Cardano knew he had to hurry. The
people who were on the way would be in an ugly frame of mind by the time they
arrived. He needed to spirit everyone away before then, even the security
guards. They were just contract employees, but he couldn’t leave them behind to
be killed. He had already sent his wife and son away. He arranged their
disappearance as soon as he heard about the attack at the concert. They’d been
living in a small house on the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea for the last
few weeks. But he worked very hard to make it appear they were in New Zealand.
Every scrap of paper or digital information anywhere in the Border Control
systems of several countries indirectly implied this, though he had been
careful to make it look more obviously like he wanted the authorities to think
they were really in Valparaiso. He stationed a female operative in an apartment
in Auckland with a small boy “borrowed” from a local orphanage. She was under
instructions to flee to Adelaide at the first sign of trouble, deposit the boy
in a safe house there, and leave a trail that would dead end in Hong Kong.

It was a clever sleight of hand
that might distract his enemies for a little while. They would lose interest in
his family before long. But they would hound him and George as long as they
lived. The security guards would not be worth pursuing. They knew nothing. As
long as they were not on site when the tactical teams arrived they would be
safe enough. He gave them all cash bonuses, put them on a chartered bus for Las
Vegas, and hoped their discretion would protect them.

George was a different story. He
knew way too much. He knew as much as Cardano himself. There was no place he
could hide him for long. He had already successfully hidden him for sixteen
years as it was. Of course, Meacham knew he would keep George nearby. But as
long as he thought the Predator program was worthless, he had no interest in
either of them. They had all been safe as long as Meacham believed that. It was
clear he no longer believed it, for whatever reason. Cardano assumed he had
received intelligence about a Chinese program.

The fact George had not returned
yet worried him. He couldn’t leave before then, and Yuki absolutely refused to
leave without him. After all these years, he had never quite fathomed the
nature of their relationship. Were they secretly married? Just lovers? Friends?
They seemed to have some sort of spiritual bond. Protecting Yuki was the main
purpose of this evacuation. So it was deeply frustrating he did not understand
her motivations at this precise moment.

And what about the girl? He offered
to send her to Naxos with his family the moment George told him of the incident
at the concert. But George refused. “I have a plan, George. She’ll be safe. I
promise you.”

“No. I have to keep her with me,”
George said quietly. “It won’t be safe on Naxos. Not if she’s with them.”

What could he be thinking? Why is
she so important? He is willing to risk everything to keep her close. There is
certainly something special about her. Cardano could see she was pretty tough.
She had handled a team of mercenaries from the concert. And exactly how had she
managed that?! He remembered a birthday party when she was seven. He wanted to
surprise her, hoist her high above his head, tickle her mercilessly like a good
uncle. Somehow she squirmed her way out of his grip, fell to the ground. All
that was normal enough. She landed on her feet, thank God. But on the way down
she turned her face directly towards his. He could still remember the look in
her eyes, calm, collected. No sign of childish panic. She was certainly unusual.
He never bought that story about her being George’s niece. But then who is she?

“George! What do you think is going
to happen to her here?”

“She can handle herself,” he
muttered.