Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (40 page)

“I’m no
martial artist,” the Butcher said. “I’ve just mastered their moves for times
like this.”

Nick
searched the hallway for anything. His mind raced through scenarios and
calculated angles, distances, and possibilities. He knew he had roughly four
feet to his rear that he could step back toward. On the wall just behind to the
Butcher hung a heavy, red fire extinguisher, and that would be nice, but how to
get eight feet forward against a man wielding a sword?

Nick
cursed himself for not even having his Benchmade tactical knife on him. What
kind of country boy travels without a knife, he wondered. With a knife, he
might have had a chance, but the fact this was going down in an airport that
had forced him to enter it without any kind of weapon had hurt his chances
considerably.

Shut up,
Nick, he thought. A three-inch blade only helps so much against a sword that
long. And you have your fingers. With a properly trained man, they’re blades.
And you have your boots. With a properly trained man, they’re hammers. You’re
going to get cut no matter what, but if you start thinking too much or having
regrets, you’re going to die right here in this dusty, dingy corridor.

“Come on,
you little shit,” Nick said. “You’ve talked enough. You’re the one holding the
sword. Why don’t you come poke me with it?”

“That
sounds dirty,” the Butcher said with a laugh.

“Probably
does to a man who’s had as many boyfriends as you.”

That had
enraged the Butcher and Nick saw the man’s jaw tighten and flinch before he
charged. He rushed in, the sword aimed right at Nick’s chest, and Nick made
himself wait. He knew moving too soon or reacting too early would allow the
Butcher to alter the swing.

And so he
held as the sword stabbed straight toward him. Nick was partly banking on the
fact that if the Butcher planned on torturing him slow as he had stated, then
driving a sword through his chest or stomach hardly allowed that to play out.
Sure enough, the Butcher lifted the blade and angled it back and right at the
last moment, before slashing it down in an angled cross slice.

Nick leapt
back, certain he had dodged the swift swing. But as the Butcher retreated
following the swing, his shoulder started burning and he looked down to see a
sharp cut and blood running down his arm. The moment he saw the cut, it burned
worse.

“Hurts,
doesn’t it?” the Butcher said, with a laugh.

“I’ve
been cut worse shaving, you little bastard. Now come get you some more.”

Nick
guessed he had maybe two feet behind him to work with after his first retreat.
The Butcher took the same stance as earlier: two-hand grip, sword held straight
forward. He still had his evil smile plastered on his face.

Again the
madman darted forward, the sword held straight forward, and again Nick held his
open hand stance, thankful to not have to worry about a straight in stab to the
body.

This time
the Butcher angled back over his left shoulder and swung it from left to right,
high to low. Same stroke, but opposite side.

Nick
tried to time the strike again, but this time ducked down placing his weight on
his left leg, while kicking out his right leg toward the Butcher’s knee. Again
he misjudged the little man’s speed and the sword struck the side of Nick’s
head above his ear, instead of the targeted shoulder.

Nick
didn’t feel the strike, his adrenaline pumping and his pain sensors completely
turned off. His life was on the line and his body didn’t need much convincing
from his brain to act and move with purpose and super-human speed and strength.
And while Nick had taken a bad cut to the side of his head, the heel of his
boot landed hard into the Butcher’s knee, driving him back. Nick had hoped to
hyperextend the little punk’s knee, but the nimble fighter had leaned and jumped
back to avoid that fate. But what mattered more than the knee getting blown out
was the jump back by the Butcher, so Nick completed his follow up move to the
kick, which was his plan all along. He pulled in his right leg, spun on his
left heel, and reached for the chair behind him.

The chair
had been facing legs forward, since that’s how Nick had placed it to keep the
door from opening, and Nick somehow -- likely thanks to adrenaline -- snatched
up the chair with speed and certainty as he spun around and raised himself back
up from the floor.

Now Nick
held the chair out in front of him in a guard position, with its four legs
aimed menacingly toward his opponent.

“I
figure,” Nick said, “that if you’re bringing toys to our little date, I’d bring
one, too.”

“You
think a chair will help you against this blade?” the Butcher asked, again
holding the sword aimed upward toward Nick in his guard position. “It’s a
thirty-thousand dollar sword. It will pierce that chair or cut through its
aluminum legs as if they are nothing.”

“Yeah,
well I was raised in an aluminum trailer, and in the South, we don’t mind cheap
homes or drinking from plastic cups. It doesn’t take much to keep us happy, so
this chair should work just fine.”

“We’ll
see about --”

But Nick
was sick of the talking and rushed forward, thrusting the chair forward and
twisting it at the same time. The chair’s legs turned from their horizontal
position to a diamond shape as they thrust forward as hard as Nick could push
and lunge.

The move
caught the Butcher by surprise and his brain struggled to change from finishing
a sentence to reacting to a multi-point attack rushing toward him. In the end,
his brain failed to deal with all the input and speed of the attack. He
basically tried to step back and block the thrust with his sword pushing out to
a horizontal blocking position.

But the
chair’s twisting legs deflected the sword and the upper leg and lower leg of
the diamond shape both drove into the Butcher. The upper leg’s point smashed
him in the mouth, while the lower leg missed his groin by about two inches,
driving in just above it. But both strikes seriously hurt and the Butcher
stepped further back after the blow, wiping blood from his mouth and using his
tongue to push lightly against his lower teeth. They wobbled loosely and he
felt the first touch of fear. The soft muscles around his groin didn’t exactly
feel right, either, and he wondered if the chair’s leg might have caused a
hernia or soft tissue damage to the inner working of his man parts.

“Hurts doesn’t
it?” Nick said with a laugh.

Nick knew
he didn’t look so great himself, and he could tell his head wound was bleeding
like crazy down his back. It was part of why he hated head wounds.

But he
had much larger problems than just a bleeding scalp. Without question, the
Butcher was a skilled fighter and he’d solve the problem presented by the chair
in no time. At that point, Nick would lose some fingers or maybe the little
shit would duck down and slice Nick across the lower legs. Or maybe he’d just
use brute force to cut the legs off the chair.

Nick
didn’t have time for these kinds of calculations. Some guys liked to study
martial arts and spar and consider strategy for literally hundreds of hours.
Not Nick though. He practiced just enough hand-to-hand to be good with hard
strikes, joint locks, and basic self-defense.

Rather
than kicks or strikes, Nick preferred to put down his enemies with a Kimber 1911
.45, or even better, stand off at a great distance, estimate the range to the
target, determine windage, and drop some fool from eight hundred yards with his
M-40 .308 sniper rifle.

So, Nick
wasn’t about to wait for the Butcher to calculate how he might get attacked,
and how to respond appropriately. Nick acted instead. He took a step forward,
reared the chair back, and threw it as hard as he could with both hands at the
Butcher. The Butcher tried to react, but he couldn’t possibly dodge the chair
at that distance. The chair hit the Butcher hard in his chest, knocking his
arms and sword back into him.

Nick
rushed forward behind the flying chair and grabbed the fire extinguisher off
the wall, and as the chair bounced to the floor and the Butcher’s eyes opened
in surprise and serious fear at his own miscalculation, Nick yanked the pin out
of the extinguisher and pulled the hose free from its holder.

Nick
sprinted forward and as the Butcher extended the sword to defend himself, Nick
sprayed a massive burst of chemical foam toward the Butcher’s face. The Butcher
released the sword with his left hand and tried to block the spray with his
outstretched palm, but he was too late.

Nick
didn’t let up, blanketing his face with chemicals. The Butcher turned away and
blindly swung the blade around behind him in the hopes of catching Nick by
surprise.

Nick
ducked the sword and advanced further forward, keeping the deluge of chemicals
flying into the back of the Butcher’s head. The man was screaming in pain and
Nick figured the stuff was hell on the eyes, mouth, and nose.

The
Butcher stumbled and slid in the growing pool of foam. And as the trained
assassin and leader of the Godesto scrambled to stand, Nick changed grips and
grabbed the extinguisher around the top of the barrel. He swung the thing like
it was a thirty pound bat and walloped it into the back of the Butcher's head.

Bone
echoed (and possibly cracked) and the man screamed louder. The sword clanged to
the floor and as the Butcher reached for the back of his head, screaming still
louder, Nick stepped around him, switched his grip, and sprayed a quick burst
into the Butcher’s mouth.

Fighting
a blind man isn’t hard, Nick thought.

The
Butcher gagged and wretched, still blind and completely helpless. Nick grabbed
the top of the tube again and retracted it back like a batter in the box above
the plate. He then swung it down into the Butcher’s right knee.

A
horrendous, bone-crushing impact burst every bone and tendon in the Butcher’s
knee. The man dropped to the ground like he’d been shot, spinning in the foam
as he screamed and cried in pain. He held the knee in complete and utter shock
and terror.

“Going to
be hell walking any time soon,” Nick said without an ounce of emotion.

The
Butcher screamed and coughed and used his hands to feel the damage to his knee.
It was natural instinct and impossible not to do, even if you were blind,
barely able to breath, and in the fight of your life.

Nicked
watched the wounded man, amused, and then the Butcher somehow came to his wits
and searched along the foamy floor with his hands for his sword. He found it
and turned blindly toward the sound of Nick’s footsteps.

Nick
laughed at the swordsman sitting on his duff, holding a sword toward him as if
a blinded man could defend himself. Nick tiptoed two steps to his right and
suddenly hurled the extinguisher toward the Butcher’s face from roughly eight
feet away. The man never saw it coming and it cracked into his face, the bottom
of the steel cylinder punching into his face like a heavy torpedo.

“That was
stupid,” Nick said, “but I guess I don’t blame you.”

The
Butcher had dropped his sword again and held his face, but now the white foam
competed with loads of blood, and the blood was beginning to win.

Nick
picked up the sword and wiped his hands and the handle of it against his pants.
The foam burned his bare hands so he couldn’t imagine what it must be doing to
the man’s eyes, throat, and nose.

Wouldn’t
matter soon anyway, and Nick wasn’t one to dwell on topics like mercy and
forgiveness. That was God’s business and Nick wasn’t in God’s business. Or
maybe he was, but Nick didn’t dwell on such thoughts. If God wanted mercy to be
shown now, He’d have sent another man.

This evil
thing bleeding helplessly in the foam had played his hand from the day he had
gotten out of prison. Perhaps his earlier days of selling drugs and stealing
cars could be forgiven because of necessity, but the man had returned to the
drug trade after being handed a second chance. And he had done worse than just
returned with dealing just to make ends meet. Instead, he had wrought a reign
of terror, though Nick didn’t blame him for the revenge he brought against the
prisoners that had terrorized him. But it was the man’s reign of terror as the
No. 2 man in the Godesto Cartel that Nick couldn’t forgive him for.

The
Butcher had killed or terrorized countless individuals. The short little terror
had played his hand for years, but this time his cards had come up short.

Nick
tested the balance of the sword.

“Nice
sword,” he said.

“Please,”
the man muttered between screams. He was reaching out with his right hand in
mercy, and trying to wipe out his eyes with his left.

Nick
kicked the Butcher in the leg, but only with a light tap.

“Listen
up, hoss. Quit your screaming and belly aching. I need to give you a little
speech here.”

He
stepped toward the man, careful not to slip in the foam.

“You see,
in the Marine Corps, they teach you that if you’re going to carry or use
something, you need to do so responsibly. So, if you’re going to deploy tear
gas, you have to spend some time in a gas chamber finding out just how bad it
sucks. Same thing with tasers, and hell, if it didn’t cost so much to train new
Marines, they’d probably test rifles out on you, as well. My beloved Corps can
be a bit thick headed about things like that.”