Black_Tide (24 page)

Matt watched the larger man writhe on the steel floor. "Fight's over. You'd better hurry."

Sakura drifted the rear end, downshifting and punching the gas just before they hit the intersection. Their lumbering vehicle skidded through the turn, tires throwing gravel as the back end fishtailed around. The 5-liter V8 roared, throwing Matt back against the seat again.

In the far distance, Kamen's bright yellow Corvette disappeared around the mountain curve.

"This is bullshit," Keene said, his face a jaundiced green-yellow.

"Oh?" Matt asked.

"If they made us at the fight then there's no way they don't know we're following them, and this shitbox can't hold a candle to a Camry much less that Z06, especially on these roads."

Matt's opinion of Keene ticked up just a hair. "Right."

"So they want us to follow them, which means it's a trap." Keene lifted his sunglasses to look Matt in the eyes.

"Right."

"And you're following them anyway."

They blew past a man leading a burro down the side of the road, the wind from the vehicle ripping his hat from his head. Sakura jammed the car into high gear and the four-speed whined in protest. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. "You want out? Jump."

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it's a trap."

Matt responded by patting his AA-12 combat shotgun. "It is, but not their trap. Four miles up ahead the Brazilian military has a checkpoint, and they're on the lookout for that little hot rod."

Keene grunted. "So you're flushing them out."

Matt shrugged. "If they're unarmed, we have a nice chat and take them into custody. If they're packing illegal hardware, the Federales do it for us."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Policia Militar. The Federales are Mexican."

Keene pulled out his phone. "Let me call for backup. The CIA—"

Matt cut him off with an upraised hand. "The Shop has already been informed and are embedded with the PM. Just sit back and let Sakura play sheepdog."

Keene looked from his phone to the road to Matt, sighed, and put it away. "Woof."

A half-mile later the road broke into a small village, a collection of a dozen concrete homes around a central square. The hand-pump well combined with the rectangular, two-story buildings to give the area a depressed Eastern Bloc feel. Chickens scattered as they approached, and a young boy led goats down an alley between two buildings and out of sight.

On the far side of the square, the Corvette sat sideways in the road, blocking passage with the help of a pair of Korean War-era Jeeps. A bodyguard stood behind each Jeep, using the engine block as cover, pistols drawn and resting on the hoods. Armed men lurked on the balconies on either side of the street.

A man by the jeep pulled up a long tube and pointed it at the car.

"Plan?" Sakura asked without taking her foot off the gas.

"Follow the goat," Matt said, grabbing the door handle.

"Oh, shit!" Keene hunkered down as far as he could manage.

Sakura whipped the wheel counter-clockwise, throwing Matt against the passenger-side door. They disappeared behind the building as the RPG streaked toward them. The explosion obliterated the far wall of the alley as the car slid sideways into the narrow space, blasting them with deafening noise and heat and chunks of plaster.

Matt popped the handle and used his momentum to carry himself around the door, and pushed into a hand-stand before launching himself upward onto the top of the car. They crunched sideways into the wall at speed, slamming the door and destroying the side-view mirror in a spray of concrete dust.

Matt hit the wall feet first, already at a run that carried him straight up the side of the building. He grabbed a window sill one-handed and launched himself inside, training the AA-12 through a girl's faded pink bedroom before blasting through the door to the upstairs hall.

A woman screamed. Sharp pops from the men's pistols met the characteristic chatter of Sakura's REC-7. Matt leapt over a charging Doberman onto the front balcony and shoulder-blocked a gunman over the railing. The man cried out in startled terror and landed with a wet thud on the dusty street.

Matt slammed the door then opened fire, sending a pair of fin-stabilized fragmentation grenades into the man one house over. He stumbled backward and looked down in stunned confusion, then his chest exploded in a steaming red mess that sent gobbets of flesh raining down to the street.

Whispers rejoiced at Matt's bloody brains splattered against the wall, so he took the warning and dropped to the floor. Puffs of concrete erupted from the wall above his head. Prone, he ignored the rifleman shooting at him from across the street, found his range and fired another grenade, this one triggered to explode upward.

It skimmed over the dead man on the adjacent balcony to the next, passing between metal railings straight between a gunman's knees. Without waiting for the explosion he sprang up and leapt across, following the grenade to draw fire away from Sakura and the car.

*   *   *

Sakura dropped behind the car as bullets punctured the engine block. By the sound, the shooters held low-caliber hunting rifles—what Matt would call a varmint gun—which plinked as they hit the metal, and at least one medium weapon, maybe a 7.26 mm with two hundred grains behind it. She looked under the car but saw no feet, so she flashed her hand up and whipped it back down just as another barrage pinned her in place.

A quick scan of the alley revealed little of use—a rat skeleton, a rotted-out plastic garbage barrel, and the shattered remains of the side-view mirror. She snatched a piece of broken mirror and pulled it to her chest. Readying the REC-7 with her right hand, she raised the mirror in her left.

All three balconies across the street had men on them, at least four armed combatants. Keene huddled in the back seat, covering his head with his hands. The glass shattered in her hand. She whirled left and fired a burst around the side of the car before ducking back.

"Keene! Now!"

He didn't move, didn't open the door, nothing.

She swore, rolled to the wall, and popped up again. The shooters reacted, but she shot first. One man stumbled back, his weapon tumbling to the street. Sakura streaked left with her finger on the trigger. As bullets sprayed their position the gunmen ducked for cover, so she backpedaled down the alley and ducked behind the building.

Slamming another magazine home, she ran to the back door and yanked it open even as an unarmed man burst through, wide eyes white behind dark skin. She struck him in the throat hard enough to stun, stepped forward and hooked her leg behind his, using her body to knock him to the floor as she moved past. A woman huddled in the corner of the kitchen with two small children, their heads pulled against her bosom.

She glanced out the window without disturbing the curtain. A man shrieked in the street, clutching a leg that had twisted sideways on impact. His rifle lay forgotten behind him. The men across the way continued to shoot at the Caprice. Sakura raised the REC-7, gauged the height, and then fired three quick bursts, rotating between them to change targets. The first and last hit home, the targets twitching and dropping out of sight, but the middle gunman kept firing.

Cursing her frail, inadequate form, she turned back to the man on the middle balcony just as he opened fire. She grunted at the impact below her right breast and stumbled to one knee, falling to the right as another round thudded into the wall. Each gasp of breath brought fresh waves of agony.

She touched the point of impact and her hand came away wet with blood. The piezoelectric gel in her vest softened as the kinetic energy from the impact dispersed, so she tore at her shirt to survey the damage. The bullet had scattered between two ceramic plates and punctured the carbon nanofiber backing, the lead mangled to an unrecognizable form. She plucked out the mangled slug with numb fingers, coughed, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Bright red blood smeared across her index finger.

She reached for her fallen rifle but her right arm wouldn't obey.

"I'm hit." It came out a gasp.

"Bad?" Matt asked.

"Yes."

A wall hanging shattered behind her, followed by the report of the rifle. She struggled to breathe through the white-hot agony, coughed and spat blood onto the worn, beige carpet.

Matt's shotgun boomed, and the rifle didn't fire again.

Her pain faded, and though she fought the dullness with all her will it closed in around her. A girl stepped around the corner, with dark brown hair in a bowl cut and a cute blue
doresu
, and around her the world blazed white.

Sakura knew her, and knew the impossibility of it. Still she asked, "Kazuko?"

Her daughter bowed and replied in Japanese. "Yes, Mother. The
daitengu
came for me with your face and emerald wings, but I am my mother's daughter and saw through its tricks. It could not take me."

"How can you be here, my Kazuko?"

"I am not there, but you come too close to where I am. I can feel your love and shame as physical things, Mother, so strong, too strong. There is much yet for you to do. Open your eyes, Mother. Open your eyes and fight."

Tears streamed down her cheek. "But my Kazuko, I have always fought for you. Why do I fight now?"

Kazuko closed her eyes and bowed. "You fight because it is who you are, Mother. You fight because some cannot. Now get up."

Sakura's eyes snapped open just as the frying pan came down. She reached up, grabbed the descending wrist and jerked. As her attacker stumbled, off-balance, Sakura leapt to the balls of her feet, taking cover behind the concrete wall, and threw. The pan rebounded off the now-fleeing woman's head with a dull thud, and she dropped to her face.

Frowning, Sakura rubbed the wound, sore but manageable under the bulletproof vest.

A mystery for another time.

The door burst open. She pulled her strike but Matt whirled and caught her hand anyway. She sneered, furious that after all her training he could beat her speed.

"I thought you were shot."

She shrugged. "I was. Now I'm not. Status?"

"Guards are dead or run off. The police came up their six and they scattered into the jungle. Kamen's unconscious. You?"

She shrugged again. "Well enough. Keene?"

"Fine. Shook up. A bullet grazed his shoulder, but fine."

*   *   *

"Yes?" The voice on the other end of the line rasped, a rumble both too deep and too ragged for a human throat.

"You son of a bitch," Karthik said. He grabbed his hair with one hand, pulled, let it go, grabbed it again. "You told me augmentation failed when Jade died."

"It has, except for his. You knew he was dangerous. I warned you to be careful."

"We were careful. Nine men are dead because you didn't spill. What the fuck do you think you're—"

"Don't presume to question me. He'll come for you, him and that sycophant Yakuza bitch, and you need to be gone before he does. Kill the baby and send me the video."

Sweat broke out on Karthik's forehead, sweat that had nothing to do with the mountain air. Words wouldn't come. He swallowed, breathed in, and tried again. "I—we can't."

"It's too late for can't. Tell her to obey me. Her ego is too tied to our approval for her to disobey on something this hot."

"No, that's not it. We tried to kill him and can't. Every time we go to do the deed we . . . just can't. I don't have an explanation, you know? It's like some Golden Child shit or whatever." Karthik looked down at the toddler, blissfully unaware of anything in his drugged sleep. An intense feeling of paternal love squeezed his heart the moment he reached for the pillow, as happened to anyone who tried to harm Adam Rowley.

"That doesn't make sense. Put Libby on the phone."

"Yo, you can't use her name on an open line—"

"PUT HER ON THE GODDAMNED PHONE."

"I can't,
Murdock
. They took her."

"No."

"The fuck yes they did. They took her, and killed Steve and Jeff and their whole motherfucking crew. They set an ambush and Rowley tore them a new asshole. You should have told us the guy was augged, man. This whole shit's falling apart."

"I did tell you. You chose not to believe. Now close your mouth and open your ears, and I'll tell you how to get her back."

Karthik listened. When he hung up, he turned to Mark, a racist redneck shithead he could barely trust with his wallet much less his life, yet somehow the most trustworthy of his surviving companions in Brazil. Mark looked at him with wide, rheumy eyes, both hands thrust into the pockets of his overalls, fondling with all their arthritic might.

"Mark, we got to skip town, now. Grab the kid, I'll call the chopper."

Mark grinned, exposing toothless gums. "The Master approves?"

Karthik rolled his eyes. "This ain't a cult, moron. He ain't your master, just my boss. And you work for me, so hop fucking to."

*   *   *

Jason sat in the tiny motel lobby, reading an exegesis on his tablet, which in turn rested on the owner's black and white cat, its grotesquely fat, furry body stretched out in his lap. Between the cat and the blazing fireplace he drowned in his own sweat, and wished he owned something more comfortable than a black clerical shirt and collar. The snow had melted to residual piles of slush in the darkness outside, and at two a.m. the world lay quiet.

He couldn't sleep without drowning in violence and blood, and his haunted dreams had started creeping into his waking thoughts.

Eyes closed, he prayed, for peace and protection and healing, for himself and the love of his life, but as the firelight cast shadows through his eyelids he saw only the ground smoldering beneath a forest of cruel thorns, blood, and dark worms writhing through a protective ring of icy feathers, melting under the black sun.

*   *   *

Matt frowned at Sakura.

She sat on the bed in her bra and combat pants, admiring the fading bruise under her breast without the slightest sign of modesty. The bruise on her face had faded to a jaundiced yellow, far faster than it should have.