Angel Eyes (51 page)

"What the hell happened to you?" Russell said, taking her roughly bandaged hands in his.

"I tried to fly," she said, trying to laugh it off, "but I didn't quite make it." She was thinking of her numbed middle finger, the knife thrust into the Akita's belly, her hand slipping in the blood, riding up the tiny hilt of the shuriken onto its blade.

"Fukuda's down here," he said. "I saw her riding that thing you were on."

"I know where she's headed," Tori said, leading him into the tunnels. '"This is approximately where she left me the last time."

"The subway tracks?" Russell looked around. "But these tunnels are obviously long-abandoned." At that moment they heard a rumble, felt the vibrations coming up through their feet. Russell looked down. "Underneath us?"

Tori nodded.

"This is madness," he said.

"I warned you. I told you to stay behind."

"But this is personal. It has nothing to do with what we're supposed to be invest-"

"It has everything to do with it!" Tori snapped. "As long as Fukuda knows I'm in Tokyo, she'll give me no rest. Do you seriously believe she'd allow us to continue with our investigation? '' Her eyes were almost black, as if they had absorbed the darkness of the tunnels through which she and Russell now crept. "One thing you can be sure of, one of us is going to die here. Karma."

"Fuck karma," Russell said hotly. "That nonsense is only in your mind."

"You think so? I told you you wouldn't survive here without an open mind. I meant it."

"I could knock you out, put you over my shoulder, and carry you out of here," he said.

"Then do it, hotshot."

"Think, Tori. You're reacting emotionally, and Fukuda is counting on that."

"Don't get in my way, Russ. I won't back off."

Russell stood very still. He was livid with rage, but he also recognized that most of his anger was displaced fear. He was so frightened for her that he did not know what to say or do. One thing you can be sure of, one of us is going to die here.

Finally, he nodded. "Karma. " And he thought. If your final meeting with Fukuda is meant to be, Tori, then my presence here now is part of it. My karma and yours, bound together. When this is over, who will tell them apart?

They pressed on and, almost immediately, came upon a poorly shored-up section of the ground. Here wooden boards had been hastily placed over a length of track bed that had fallen through to the next level.

Russell got down on his knees, peered through a gap in the boards. "Christ, it's a long way down."

"That's where she is," Tori said.

He looked up at her, the determined expression on her face, nodded. "I'll go first."

He pushed the boards apart, produced the garrote wire and jammed one of the wooden ends into the gap between the boards where it narrowed to a crevice. He unspooled the wire into the abyss, lowered himself until his shoes hit the other wooden end. Using it as a foothold, he slithered down until he was hanging at the end of the wire.

Tori lowered herself after him and, locking her legs around him, moved slowly down his length. She climbed down his body, dropped, finally, off his ankles onto the track bed of the subway system. From somewhere beyond a connecting wall she heard and felt the passage of a train.

She reached up, said, "Now!" and softened his fall as his bulk hurtled down at her.

"Which way?" Russell said.

"Fukuda will tell us; the more she shows me her strategy, the more I learn about her.''

Russell said, "I'm beginning to like this concept of karma less and less."

Tori gave him a thin smile. "Wrong approach. You can't like or dislike karma. You accept it."

"That seems to be something of a paradox," Russell said thoughtfully. "Is this acceptance supremely pragmatic or supremely delusory?"

"Russ, remember our talk about the merging of myth and reality?"

"Yes, but how does that apply here?"

"When you can tell me," Tori said, "then you will understand."

"Is that a Zen riddle?"

"You mean a koan? Tori laughed despite herself, "In a sense, I guess it is."

A rumbling filled the tunnel.

"This track?" Russell asked.

"Next one over."

He relaxed somewhat. "It's only a matter of time before a train comes through this tunnel.''

"We'll let Fukuda worry about timetables and schedules," Tori said as they moved off down the tunnel. "She's so good at it."

Privately, Russell thought this was a mistake. He could not understand why Tori was refusing to take the initiative. He had been taught to attack whenever possible. Why was Tori allowing Fukuda to dictate the pace of the encounter? All this esoteric talk of strategy made little sense to him. I've got to find a way to end this, quickly and finally, he thought.

Ahead of them, they saw a light.

"Train?"

Tori shook her head. She had one foot on the rail, and there was no vibration. "Fukuda," she said. They had, at last, come to the killing ground.

"Sit tight," Russell said, so unexpectedly that when he pressed Tori back against the damp tunnel wall, she made no resistance.

Russell, keeping to the shadows, gun drawn, ran quickly and silently down the extreme edge of the tunnel toward the light.

Russ, you idiot! Tori thought, heading after him. I thought I'd persuaded you to give up being my protector. Didn't you promise that you weren't going to go off half-cocked again?

Tori heard the crack and, almost simultaneously, Russell's sharply indrawn breath. As she came up to where he had been, she saw the cleverly disguised hole beside the track bed; he had fallen into it, had stumbled to his right onto the tracks, catching his right ankle between two rails where they branched into an adjacent tunnel.

"Don't touch him!" a voice cried, and Tori stopped on her way to try to free Russell. She stared at Fukuda, who was standing not fifty yards down the track, her hand on a chrome lever.

"This is the manual override to the automatic switching," Fukuda said. "If you don't do as I say, I'll put this lever and crush his ankle."

"Tell her to shove it," Russell said, frantically searching for his pistol, which he had dropped when the ground had given way beneath him. He cursed his stupidity, thought of what his impetuosity had caused. He sat up, tried to free his ankle. Christ, but it hurt!

Tori said, "What do you want?"

"You know the answer to that." Fukuda's hand was curled menacingly around the lever. "I want you to die." She beckoned with her free hand. "This way."

Tori moved toward her.

''That's enough!'' Fukuda commanded.

Yes, Tori thought, she's still afraid of me. She doesn't want me too close. A useful bit of information. She had a few weapons at her disposal, but she suspected now that they would not be enough.

Her right hand was at her side; surreptitiously, she flexed the fingers. The middle three were completely numb. She still had some feeling in her thumb, but her little finger was a mass of tingles.

Tori thought, Dear God, she's already won.

"One doesn't often get a second chance in this life.'' Fukuda cocked her head as she stared, black-eyed, at Tori. "I can't tell you what a wonderful feeling it is to see you down here again. I knew you'd get past the shuriken and the dog, but how you outmaneuvered me in the elevator shaft and on the moving carpark, I'll never know." She laughed. "But, you see, it doesn't matter, because here you are, and here you'll the. In just the way I want you to."

She's gloating, Tori thought. She's human, after all. Tori began to breathe again. There was no point in formulating a strategy; the place, the time, the circumstances had dictated what she must do, in any case. Karma. And, as she launched herself toward Fukuda, she found herself wondering if Russell would at last understand the nature of acceptance.

She saw Fukuda's eyes open wide in shock, saw the tension come into her left hand where it grasped the manual override, saw the lever begin its descent, the squeal of the rail behind her a harbinger of the pain Russell would suffer.

Then Tori was on Fukuda, her left hand, the fingers stiffened like a bar of steel, chopping down in a percussive atemi, breaking Fukuda's hold on the override. Tori and Fukuda crashed as one onto the tracks.

Tori had several advantages beside surprise: Fukuda would be reluctant to let go of the lever, since it was her primary hold on her. That meant she was stationary and essentially one-handed. Fukuda was also afraid of her, which would slow her response time to any sudden attack. And her aversion to frontal assaults made her hesitate a fraction more before reacting. Just time enough for Tori, with the help of her artificial hip, to reach her.

Fukuda's wrists were crisscrossed against Tori's throat in the cloudmaker. Her own pulse beat wildly in Tori's ears, and Tori fought for breath. She used her knee against Fukuda's thigh, bending it outward, then drawing up her foot, stamping down.

Fukuda grimaced as the tendons connecting her thigh to her pelvis strained, then, as Tori delivered another foot atemi, they snapped. But she did not release her grip. Rather, ignoring the attack, she pressed Tori back against the rails, pressing down on her windpipe.

Tori struggled for air. Her entire right hand was numb, the wrist feeling like it had bloated to three times its size. Pain was lancing up her arm.

She kicked again, felt and heard the bone pop, dislocating out of its socket in Fukuda's hip. Fukuda began yo-ibuki, the aggressive hard breathing from deep in her throat in order to block the excruciating pain.

It was then that Tori understood that nothing short of death was going to get Fukuda to release her hold.

Blackness, an acute sense of dislocation, threatened to engulf Tori. She was insensate on a black wind, beginning to float away, and it was with a supreme effort that she drew her drifting mind back to her predicament. Hang on! she commanded herself. Hang on!

And then, against her back, she felt the vibration come into the tracks, and she knew with an acute sense of deja vu that a train was on its way.

Russell had screamed when he felt the increased pressure on his ankle bones. Oh, Christ, he thought. He was panting, and the sweat was rolling down his body. He heaved with renewed effort to free himself. In fact, he had made some progress when the squealing rail had caught him in its grip.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see his gun, glinting dully in the work lights of the tunnel. It was ten feet away, but in his position it might as well have been ten miles.

All right, he told himself as calmly as he could. Forget the fucking gun; how can I help Tori? He didn't know. He took out his knife, wedged the blade between the rail and his sock, tried to pry himself free. The blade bent, and when he felt the tension building in it, he gave up. There was no point in having it break off.

He could see Tori and Fukuda locked in what looked like a mortal embrace. He could discern no movement. It was as if their bodies had turned to stone and they were grappling with the force of their wills and their hara.

Then something made him look past the two antagonists. Light streaming, at first pale, but brightening rapidly until it was thick as lacquer, pushing back the darkness along the curving outer wall of the tunnel. The train was coming!

Mother of God, Russell thought. We are all going to be killed!

Myth and reality were blending. In Tori's oxygen-starved brain thoughts flashed like lightning in a darkling sky, random energy, losing direction. For greater and greater periods of time she had no memory of what had taken place. Surely her body, following the commands of her autonomous nervous system, was keeping on with staying alive, but that task was becoming more and more laborious. There seemed to be a better way, a sinking into a quieter time, a pool of silence where the seconds stopped their ceaseless ticking.

Wake up!

Tears of silence enveloping her, and the dark, comforting and warm, cradled her.

Darkness is death. . . .

So what?

"TORI!"

She awoke to see Fukuda's face, horrific with the effects of her efforts to kill her before the pain of Fukuda's dislocated bone rendered her unconscious.

Drifting away . . .

"TORI!"

Awake again, and thinking. Russell's shouting keeping her from going under. Something about Fukuda's face. What? So hard to think, like walking in quicksand, not worth the effort.

Slipping . . .

"TORI!"

Fukuda. What about her? That face so close to hers. Look! It was full of desperation. Fukuda was almost as near her end as she was.

Almost or more?

Up to me, Tori thought. She brought her knee up into the place where the bone was protruding from the inside of Fukuda's thigh, kicked as hard as she could.

Fukuda screamed and, for just an instant, relaxed her hold on Tori's windpipe. Tori already had her hands in position, inside and beneath Fukuda's cloudmaker, and now she used an aikido immobilization, blocking Fukuda's right arm with her left, then crossing her own right arm over, grabbing Fukuda's wrist.

The problem was immediate: she had no sensation in her right hand, so as quickly as she could, she jammed the heel of her left hand against Fukuda's elbow, rammed it upward until she heard the bone break.

Fukuda's jaws snapped shut and tears of pain squeezed out of her eyes. She tried to counterattack, slipping through Tori's guard with her good left hand, but Tori blocked her with a series of rapid-fire kites to her rib cage.

Tori sucked in air in deep bursts, put all her weight into a foot atemi against the right side of Fukuda's pelvis. Fukuda passed out.

Tori, almost spent, lowered her forehead against Fukuda's chest. Then she was up. The tunnel was brilliantly lit by the headlight of the train as it roared around the curve.

Tori ran to the manual override, but the automated switching was in progress, and the lever refused to budge. But she saw that it was no longer partway down. The switching had reset itself to the position it had been in before Fukuda had threatened Russell with moving it.

She ran to where Russell sat, grimacing in pain. She was so dizzy now, she could barely stand. He had managed at last to extricate his foot from the track, and they held on to each other as they limped to the nearest of the worker niches that lined the subway walls at regular intervals so that the maintenance men could get out of the way of trains.