I tried laying down a stall. “Renna knows about you.”
DeMonde nodded in sudden understanding. “He
does
know something, doesn’t he? He was looking at me strangely tonight. But I heard he’s dying. Either way, he’ll never
prove
anything.”
Jenny squirmed out of my arms. In an instant she wriggled from my grasp and took up a position standing at my side. DeMonde froze. Didn’t shoot. Before he could respond, I stepped in front of her, shielding her and bringing me half a pace closer. I remained parental. Passive. Nonthreatening.
DeMonde shifted sideways, his gun barrel tracking Jenny’s small frame as he tried to reclaim his bead on her. It was an amateur’s reaction. I sluiced forward. Too late did his gun arm swing back toward me, and when his wrist banged against my ribs, I pinned the arm under mine, then pivoted away and to his rear, skewing the barrel away from Jenny and at the same time forcing the elbow against the joint and snapping it. DeMonde howled, stumbling past me with a broken, rubbery appendage. I rammed the elbow of my free arm into the back of his neck. Bone cracked, his neck snapped, and my wife’s killer crumpled to the ground.
Dead.
Just like that.
A pinch of pain and his ordeal was over. It hardly seemed a fair trade for the suffering Jenny and I had endured in the months after Mieko’s death. Hardly fair at all.
But, fair or not, it was finished.
Finally.
CHAPTER 79
I
T
was only a matter of minutes now.
Noda and Luke had been tracking Ogi for a good quarter of an hour and gaining ground on the unsuspecting Soga patriarch. Earlier, they had missed him by seconds. Having rigged a timer to the explosives that destroyed the boats, the pair was ninety seconds short of the main house when the explosion occurred. From thirty yards back, they saw the Soga commander exit the building at a fast clip under the guidance of a younger fighter. They noted his footprints, watched two other Soga men dash in and out of the manor, then slipped into the house themselves, hoping to find Brodie or his daughter.
They searched every room but came up empty-handed. Back outside, they picked up Ogi’s distinctive tread, lost it, roamed the grounds, and eventually spotted his tracks again, which led them to Brodie and Narazaki. Ogi had lingered in the bushes near Brodie before moving away, probably vacating his position when he heard them approach. Which suggested Soga’s number one was lurking nearby.
So the two had set out after the top prize. Their confidence grew with each passing minute. For some unfathomable reason, Ogi had not left the grounds, and that was about to prove detrimental to his health. In anticipation of a confrontation, both men drew their weapons.
Then the trail vanished.
Disappeared without explanation or a hint of how the feat was accomplished.
Both men froze. A quick exchange of hand signals followed, then Noda headed west into the brush and circled north. Luke turned east
and then south. Weapons out, safeties off, they moved through the surrounding woods in concentric circles with consummate expertise, first five yards out, then ten, then fifteen. Then they called it off. They could find no new trail.
“Foxy bugger,” Luck said. “No trace whatsoever.”
Noda nodded unhappily.
Luke said, “Probably circling back. Going after Brodie.”
“No other reason.”
Luke cursed softly, his words indistinct. “He must have heard us and knew one or both of us would come after him, so he set the trail and drew us off.”
“Worked, too. We’re too far away.”
“I got my cell but . . .”
Noda nodded, lips tight, saying nothing. They had found Brodie’s phone abandoned on the nightstand of his hotel room.
Luke said, “He’s taken us out of the game. How good’s your boy?”
Noda’s reply was grim. “Good, but not this good.”
CHAPTER 80
S
CANNING
the trees for my daughter, I spied her cowering behind a large pine. As I moved toward her, I heard the faint hissing sound of metal over cloth behind me.
Ogi!
At my back, unleashing the garrote.
Too close for me to turn and attack.
Just in time I flattened my palms against my forehead, drawing in my elbows and shielding my face and neck with my arms. A split second later a wire looped over my head from behind, seeking the tenderness of my neck but finding the sinew of my forearms instead.
My defensive move kept the garrote from my neck but didn’t stop it from slicing through the flesh of my arms. Howling in pain, I backpedaled and slammed Ogi into the nearest tree. A couple of his ribs popped and a hot saliva-laced cry burst from his lips, but Ogi clung to the wire tenaciously and it cut deeper. Cold steel razors cleaved raw nerves. My screams rose to the treetops. Unconsciousness flickered before my eyes.
In frenzied desperation, I smashed the back of my head into Ogi’s face. Once, twice, three times I hit him with a reverse head butt until his nose caved and his jawbone cracked. Only then did the tough old warrior’s hold break and the wire grow slack.
Ogi wheezed in pain, his hoarse breath hot and heavy at my ear. Without turning, I rammed the Soga boss against the trunk a second time, then brought my elbows down and peppered his torso with alternating blows from both sides, the killing wire swinging wildly from a gash in my arm.
Another rib snapped and Ogi slumped to the ground. I stepped away. The Soga leader tried to rise but couldn’t. His eyes closed and he was still. No matter how well trained, a man in his seventh decade wasn’t going to recover from a beating like that without assistance.
I was numb all over. Blood streamed down my forearms. The shock to my nervous system from the garrote had sent my body into a stall; it was shutting down. Shafts of pain shot through me. Jagged bolts of white light flashed across the undersides of my eyelids. I fought to stay conscious. I bit down on my tongue to keep from blacking out. The induced pain brought a jittery rush of adrenaline. I grew dizzy with the injection, but the immediate danger of passing out receded.
Gritting my teeth, I extricated the garrote from a bleeding flap of flesh and flung it into the darkness.
Only one or two people at the top know the whole operation.
To live, Jenny and I needed Ogi to die. The Soga leader lay immobile at my feet. His breathing was feeble. Hara’s prophetic words came back to me:
Invariably I get what I want.
A part of me wanted Ogi tried for his crimes. Paraded in public so his string of victims could get some satisfaction. Another part of me wanted him permanently removed from our lives.
And the sooner the better.
I dug the Soga hood from my pocket and tied it around the cut on one arm, the Soga shirt around the gash on the other. Ogi should have been miles away by now, but pride and revenge had drawn him back.
From behind me Jenny called faintly, “Daddy?”
I looked over my shoulder. Tentatively, Jenny inched forward from her hiding place among the trees. Terror spilled from her eyes. I smiled reassuringly and she ran to me, her arms spreading. I turned and swept her up in a hug, and as a wave of parental relief swept over me, I felt a cold blade snake into my back the way a copperhead slides into an empty sleeping bag. Jolts of white-hot pain spread through my middle regions.
How was it possible? I’d only taken my eyes off the battered Soga chief for a second.
I staggered sideways, shoving Jenny ahead of me—back into the trees—and opening as much distance as I could between Ogi and myself.
The next moment, my legs rebelled and I collapsed to the forest floor, falling forward, conscious of the rod of steel in my back.
I glanced backward. The Soga leader was on his knees, grinning, his jaw hanging at an odd angle. While stabbing me with one hand, he’d extracted Renna’s gun from the small of my back with the other. He’d only feigned defeat, dragging himself forward on his knees once my back was turned.
Now, with the piece aimed at my prone figure, Ogi hauled himself to his feet. When had he moved? I hadn’t heard a thing. It was inhuman. The man had a fractured jaw and three broken ribs. Then I recalled Ogi’s proclamation:
This is what Soga does. What we train for our whole lives. What our ancestors have done for three centuries.
With his nose bludgeoned and his jaw disfigured, he looked more demon than human. His eyes flickered in pain, yet they stayed focused on me.
It was then that I noticed the greasy blue streaks running across his palm.
Poison. From the knife in my back.
Ogi would have built up an immunity, but what did it mean for me? I tried to think. The blade of the knife that had felled Renna had been treated but not the handle.
Not both.
The pattern repeated itself with the knives flung at us when the Soga trainees came through the ceiling of the inn. Handle dirty, blade clean on one. The opposite on the other. For some reason, it was Soga’s practice to treat one surface or the other. I suppose it gave them options. The handle of Ogi’s knife was treated, which meant the blade should be free of poison. But was it?
As Ogi limped toward me, I clawed desperately at the ground, drawing myself forward. Ogi advanced. I thrust with my toes, my progress measured in inches.
Ogi was five yards behind me and closing.
Dense foliage, from where Jenny probably watched, was three yards away and unreachable.
A burning sensation rippled through my flesh.
At two yards, Ogi said, “Give it up, Brodie. It’s over.”
I craned my neck to look. Ogi swayed unsteadily, his feet spread wide for balance, the gun pointed at my head. At that distance, an experienced
gunman couldn’t miss. Even a thoroughly pummeled one. I crawled forward another couple of inches. Ogi squeezed off a shot that kicked up dust a hair’s breadth from my right shoulder. I stopped my struggle and rolled onto my side and faced him.
Ogi grinned, savoring the moment. “Very slowly, very painfully, you’re going to die, Brodie.”
I was silent.
“There’s going to be more suffering than you could ever imagine.”
Still on my side, I scooted backward in small increments. Even a fractional gain could be valuable.
“I’m going fill you with holes one bullet at a time. Near the joints.”
I thought it a rock at first . . . but it was a handle . . .
Ogi’s misshapen jaw wrenched itself into a sneer. “Intense pain is nearest the joints. Did you know that?” The muzzle of his weapon rose. He aimed it gleefully at my left knee. “When the first bullet tears through you, you’ll—”
Reaching behind me, my fingers came up with Narazaki’s weapon, the gun knocked loose when Luke had shot him. While Ogi gloated, I brought the piece up over my hip and pulled the trigger. With the first shot, an invisible force shoved the Soga leader backward.
“Noooooo!” he wailed.
He swung his weapon around and I fired again. And again.
I kept shooting.
In my mind’s eye, I matched the rounds with the victims: one for Mieko, one for the Nakamuras. One for the linguist, one for Noda’s kin. One for Abers, one for Renna. One for all the victims I’d never met but knew were out there.
With each shot, the kickback electrified my body with a searing pain and I screamed as if I were reliving each victim’s tribulations.
But despite the pain, I fired.
Fired, then heard myself scream.
Ogi’s body jerked spasmodically with the impact of each bullet. The last discharge knocked the Soga chief off his feet. He fell back dead, Renna’s gun still clutched in his lifeless hand.
There would be no resurrection this time. I lay my head on the damp deadfall, my body a throbbing network of torment.
“Daddy?”
Hesitant footsteps signaled Jenny’s emergence from the foliage. Straining, I raised my head. She reached over my hip for the dagger. I brushed her hand away before she could grab it.
“Don’t touch the knife,” I whispered, a worrying numbness spreading through my lower extremities. “The handle is coated with poison, and right now the blade is keeping the blood
in.
What I need you to do is bring help.”
“I can’t leave you, Daddy. You’re hurting.”
“I need you to get help, Jen.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“It’s too dark.”
I winced. More obstacles. Would it never end? Jenny was afraid for me, afraid to venture out on her own, and afraid to face the darkness. All of her worst nightmares had coalesced in this moment.
My nerves shrieked in agony, and before I could stifle it a moan escaped my lips, escalating my daughter’s panic. Keeping my voice calm and soothing, I said, “You need to find a paramedic as fast as you can, Jen. For that, all you have to do is run to the road about two hundred yards to the right. Ask the first person you come across to call for medical help. Okay?”
“But—”
Sweat beaded my brow. “I need you to go now. It’s important.
They
are all gone. The only people left are our friends. Ask any one of them to—” I clamped my jaw shut against a sudden surge of pain.
Tears streamed down my daughter’s cheeks. She saw my suffering. She heard the tightness in my voice. And she was immobilized with fear.
“I can’t leave you, Daddy.
You’ll die.
”
I’ll die if you don’t leave me,
I wanted to shout, but couldn’t. Jenny was on the edge. Any further sign of weakness on my part would cause her to shut down. Then she would hover over me protectively, watching with eyes steeped in dread and self-doubt while my life drained away, her guilt over my death in turn crushing her fragile soul without mercy. If I couldn’t convince her to leave my side voluntarily, neither of us would survive.
Desperation clamored in my chest. I searched for something to ignite her confidence.
“Jen, do you love me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“If you love me, go for help. Forget everything else.”
“I love you but—”