To his credit, Fitzpatrick fought back hard. He hammered away with his fists and his knees, trying to get off low-line kicks that would have shattered Lyons’s knees or ankles had any of the strikes connected. Lyons hammered away with strikes of his own. He had more training than Fitzpatrick. He had more experience than Fitzpatrick. He had dealt out more pain in the course of his career than Fitzpatrick could even dream about.
But he wanted to make sure Fitzpatrick felt this defeat. The bastard had it coming.
Lyons stood toe-to-toe with the big Blackstar commander. He started throwing shovel hooks, chipping away with tight arcs that landed with the force of jackhammers. Several times, the body blows rocked Fitzpatrick, driving him back, making him retreat.
The concept was called dominating space. All proper combative systems were forward systems. The fighter who won was the fighter who gained and kept the initiative. To do that against an aggressive enemy like Fitzpatrick, you had to put him back on his heels, make him feel as if he was trying and failing to recover. You had to come at him and overwhelm him, make him feel like a rag doll in a pit bull’s mouth. He had to feel shaken, worried, slammed this way and that, and just when he tried to recover you had to be a step ahead of him and hit him some more.
At close range now, Lyons changed his tactics. He started throwing elbow strikes and edge-of-hand blows. The elbow and the edge of the hand were two of the body’s natural weapons. Strikes such as this enabled a man to hit and hit hard, trusting his body to do the work. Lyons started hacking away at Fitzpatrick as if he were trying to sculpt a new human being from the clay of the old one. He just hammered and battered Fitzpatrick with every bit of his strength until crimson flowed freely.
Fitzpatrick spit blood. He was huffing and puffing now, completely out of breath, gassed out and almost unable to lift his arms.
“That’s the problem with you arrogant pricks,” Lyons said. “All mouth, no brains.” He punched Fitzpatrick in the ribs, throwing his strikes at forty-five-degree angles, coming in from the sides to do maximum destruction. He was rewarded by the sound of ribs cracking. Fitzpatrick moaned again, struggling to breathe. Lyons’s strikes had crushed his nose. Blood bubbled and flowed down his face and into his mouth. He coughed and wheezed, holding his ribs.
“What’s the matter, Jay-to-your-friends?” Lyons said. Schwarz and Blancanales were simply watching now, making sure Lyons would not be interrupted in his work by the approach of some hidden Blackstar goon. As for Fitzpatrick, he might have weapons hidden on him. A miserable jerk like that was always willing to switch to an unfair fight if he couldn’t win a fair one. Lyons kept a close eye on his prey as a result. He was not going to be tricked. They had all had enough of being tricked for one mission.
“Nobody is better,” Fitzpatrick blubbered. “Nobody beats me.”
Lyons punched him in the face.
He heard the nose break a second time, and this time Lyons pressed his advantage. He hammered away at Fitzpatrick’s skull, using his fists to break the man’s cheekbones. He thought he heard an orbital bone go, too, but that didn’t matter. You weren’t supposed to target a man’s head for a closed-fist punch because of the danger of striking teeth or the top of the skull. Fitzpatrick was too far gone to avail himself of any tricks, though. Lyons could see the fog in the man’s eyes, could see it in the way Fitzpatrick swayed and tried to keep his feet. He was nearly done.
But Carl Lyons wasn’t.
“I made you a promise,” Lyons said. “I wonder if you remember what that was.”
Something about being challenged gave Fitzpatrick new energy. He dropped to one knee, but when he brought his hand up, there was an out-the-front switchblade in his right hand. The blade snapped open.
“Scared, hero?” Fitzpatrick said. “Well, you should be. Because I’m going to carve you like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
Lyons punched him in the face again. Fitzpatrick swore, but he did not drop his knife. He poked at his flattened, misshaped nose with his free hand while swinging the knife in tight circles in front of his body.
“I’m in a generous mood,” Lyons said. “Now that I’ve put you in your place, I think I can afford to be generous. You put that knife down, get on your knees, put your hands behind your head and interlace your fingers. You do all that and let me strap your wrists together with one of my zip ties, and we’ll just take you in. I won’t actually beat you to death. Remember, Jason. Remember what I promised you when you were beating my men. When you were laughing at inflicting pain on someone who couldn’t stop you.”
“To hell with you,” Fitzpatrick raged through a mouthful of blood. “Who the hell do you think you are? I’m Jason Damned Fitzpatrick, you government monkey! I’m a rich man! I’ve finally made it in the world…and nobody is going to take that away from me!”
Using his anger to give him strength, Fitzpatrick lunged forward. He drove with the knife, trying to get it deep into Lyons’s guts, probably picturing what it would feel like to stick it in there and twist it around. He was neither as fast nor as strong as he thought he was. Lyons was able to avoid the attack easily.
The former cop put his hands down at his sides. A lot of people thought you were supposed to get your hands up in a knife fight. What they didn’t realize that there was no such thing as blocking a knife attack with your flesh without ending up bleeding all over the freaking place. He didn’t want to see his own arms carved down to the bone. So he concentrated on his footwork, keeping his boots moving, watching the imaginary “barrel” in front of Fitzpatrick’s body.
The knife in Jason Fitzpatrick’s hand described a curve at the length of the Blackstar commander’s arm. That was the barrel, the zone into which Lyons could not go if he wanted to stay alive. He danced aside, using male and female triangles—a footwork pattern that referred to forward and reverse steps at forty-five-degree angles. Fitzpatrick had never seen that before or, if he had, he hadn’t understood it.
“You know,” Lyons said, “there’s not a lot to be said for getting all your combat training through online videos.”
Fitzpatrick snarled. It was the reaction that Lyons wanted. He wanted to provoke the Blackstar man, keep him emotionally disrupted, prevent him from achieving the calm that Lyons himself possessed. When he progressed through rage to that icy center at his core, there was nothing he could not do, efficiently and methodically. Beating Jason Fitzpatrick to death with a kind of professional detachment… Well, that was actually pretty easy. He had plenty of practice in that department.
“Come on, Jay-to-your-friends,” Lyons said. “What’s the matter with you, Tinkerbell? You’re letting me down. You’re not the young, dumb, full-of-himself son of a whore that I thought you were. No, now you’re just dumb. You figure the beating I put on your nose is going to change your luck with the ladies? But what am I saying. Somebody like you is a date rapist waiting on his next shipment of horse tranquilizer.”
Fitzpatrick looked confused, so Lyons punched him in the eye. He did it again, and again, and again, battering away on Fitzpatrick’s left eye until the man was so swollen and bloody he couldn’t see through either side. When he went down, hitting the floor with a rib-cracking thud, Lyons put the boots to him. The Able Team leader’s combat boots left deep imprints as Lyons stomped the casually sadistic Fitzpatrick.
“This is the part I really like, Fitzpatrick,” Lyons said. “This is the part where you get payback for everything you’ve done to now. I’m sure your list of crimes goes back farther than anybody here realizes. I’m sure all your life you’ve been the sort of douche who sabotages his every effort to get ahead in life. Well, Jay-to-your-friends, I’m here to tell you that life as you know it is over. Your days of preying on others, of beating helpless prisoners, of arranging for murder and sending your goon squad all over the world to bolster illegal causes…all of that is over. It ends today. It ends now.”
“I’m…worth ten of you…” Fitzpatrick wheezed. He was unable to open his eyes. He had
rolled into a fetal position, clutching at his chest and abdomen, probably feeling the effects of multiple internal injuries. Left alone, he would die, and there was actually a chance that even with medical treatment, he might not survive the night. But guessing wasn’t good enough for Lyons. He was not willing to leave this man behind to his fate. He thought again of Schwarz and Blancanales, and of the feeling of helplessness while shackled and watching his teammates tortured.
Lyons stopped attacking his enemy. He knelt by Fitzpatrick’s bloody face. “Tell me where Rhemsen is,” he said. “Is he here? Is he in the building?”
“He’s…in his office…on the…top floor,” Fitzpatrick said, breathing with difficulty. “I have money. I can pay. Let me go. Get me a doctor.”
“You have nothing,” Lyons said, “because I’m about to take away everything you have. You can’t pay, because dead men don’t pay bills. I’m not letting you go. And I’ll be damned if I get the likes of you medical attention.”
Lyons stood at full height. He was taking a risk, he knew. If Fitzpatrick was shamming, then getting this close to him, indulging himself in a moment like this, could lead to losing the fight. All it would take would be one good move on Fitzpatrick’s part. Lyons only had to experience a moment’s inattention for everything to change.
But he put his boot on Fitzpatrick’s neck anyway.
“You son of a—” Fitzpatrick tried to say. Lyons applied pressure, cutting the Blackstar man off, choking him. When the Able Team leader let up a little Fitzpatrick once again tried to speak. “I was only following orders,” he rasped quietly.
Schwarz and Blancanales looked on, content to let Lyons have this moment. Lyons looked at them, nodded and turned back to regard Fitzpatrick.
“Out of chances,” Lyons said. “Out of excuses. Out of time.”
“Please,” Fitzpatrick begged. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“Yeah,” Lyons said. “You did.”
“Please—”
Lyons drove his boot down with all his weight behind it. Then he snapped his foot inward. The loud crack he heard next was Fitzpatrick’s neck breaking.
“Told you,” said Carl Lyons.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The grenade round from Gary Manning’s 40 mm launcher blew the hatch off its hinges. Using the round was a risk, but at this point in the operation, it was a risk McCarter was willing to take. Once the way was clear, and using the shockwave and surprise of the explosion to their advantage, Phoenix Force poured through the hatch and arrayed themselves in combat formation on the other side.
Although dazed, the reserve force of Blackstar security men whom Wijeya had held back tried to return fire. Phoenix Force cut them down, blazing away with deadly accuracy and in short, efficient bursts. The guards fell, lying in pools of their own blood, some of them discharging their weapons with their dying spasms. The battle was over before it could begin. And the only man left standing was Wijeya.
The pirate captain stepped forward. He looked utterly defeated. Perhaps it was dawning on him that everything he had attempted, everything he had hoped to accomplish, could only end in his capture. But just as the hopeless expression threatened to swamp him, he looked up, locked eyes with McCarter and smiled.
“You,” he said. “You are the one. The British. You need not speak for me to recognize you. I see it in your eyes. I see the spirit of the warrior in you.”
“I see a coward,” McCarter said. “A pathetic little coward, hiding under his bed. Well, Mommy and Daddy are home, little Wijeya, and it’s time to pay for the mess you’ve made.”
“You do me a disservice, speaking to me so,” Wijeya said.
“And you’ve killed a lot of good people,” McCarter said. “Not to mention this trash all around you. How many have died because you took money to play political games you didn’t understand? How many people have you murdered simply because a voice on the phone told you to do it? You make me sick, mate. And I think I’m going to enjoy putting you down like a dog.”
“I have removed my weapons,” Wijeya said. “I have only these.” He drew the pair of kerambits from his waistband. The curved blades made his hands look like velociraptor claws. He spun the blades by their finger rings, twirling them on his index fingers.
McCarter pointed his Hi-Power and thumbed back the hammer. “Say good-night to Mhusa when you see him,” he said.
“Come, British,” Wijeya said. “You wish to test me? You wish to show me what a bad man I am? Take one of my knives. Face me as a man. You have honor. I can see it. You have the countenance of a warrior, despite whatever disrespect you hurl at me. Come. Fight me. Show me the warrior in you.”
McCarter stood very still for a long moment. Finally he eased down the hammer of his pistol and put the weapon back in his waistband. He was wearing his Tavor on its sling. With a shrug of his shoulder, he dropped the weapon to the deck.
“David,” Manning said, “are you sure about this?”
“He’s got a point,” James said.
“Trust me, lads,” McCarter said. “Some things, I just have to do my way.”
Wijeya smiled again. He took the knife from his left hand and placed it on the deck. Then he stepped back several paces. McCarter leaned down, picked it up and gave it an experimental twirl with his index finger. The Briton was not a complete stranger to the kerambit, but such a close-range blade had never been his preferred kit when conducting the kinds of missions that Phoenix Force did. Military ops required a bit more versatility, and that generally demanded a fixed blade of more conventional dimensions and blade style.
Still, he knew how deadly the Indonesian blade could be. The Indonesians taught martial arts like Silat, and Silat practitioners delighted in standing chest to chest with each other. A man like that could climb you like a circus monkey and stab you the whole way up and back. Wijeya obviously knew the methods. He began to run through a series of djuru, Indonesian patterns that combined several discrete movements into a fluid pattern of martial movements.
“Will you tell me the story of you and your men, British?” Wijeya asked. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Which government sent you?”
“That’s none of your concern,” McCarter said. “These are things you don’t need to worry about at all, friend. Where you’re going, there won’t be any need to trouble yourself over the exact why and how of what put you there.”
Wijeya slashed. He twirled his knife, obviously feeling the maneuver was impressive. “I will enjoy killing you, British,” he said. “When a warrior kills another warrior, the dead man’s spirit travels into the one who is still alive. The living man becomes stronger. This is why a warrior who has vanquished many is so powerful. His spirit is energized by the lives he takes.”
“You don’t believe that,” McCarter said.
“But that is where you are wrong, British,” Wijeya said. “You understand that I have education, yes? Such is the way of learning. We must all learn either from another or by experience. I choose to learn by experience. I fight to stay alive. I fight to put money in my pocket, too, but it is all survival. I need money. We all do. And if you believe you do not, you are a liar.”
“That’s pretty philosophical from somebody who captains a pirate ship.”
“I am not some dumb brute, not some thug,” Wijeya said.
“You take money to kill people,” McCarter countered. “That’s a thug in my book.”
“I do not understand why you keep insulting me,” Wijeya said. He was circling now. “We are not so different. We both will do whatever is required to reach our goals. I simply took a shorter path.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, mate,” McCarter said. “I wish I had a pound note for every one of you blackguards who thinks he’s the equal of the people hunting him. You’re not a warrior, Wijeya. You’re just a predator. Predators can be cunning, sure. They can also be intelligent. But they’re never more than predators. Never more than scum. Because when the willi
ngness to victimize others is rotting your soul, it touches everything you do and everything you are.”
“I hate you,” Wijeya said.
“Good,” McCarter said. “Feeling’s mutual, mate.”
Wijeya howled in anger. Redoubling the elaborate patterns his blade was describing in the air, Wijeya danced in, slashing, and McCarter was forced to duck away. Then the smaller man was pressing his advantage, slashing at the air, cutting where McCarter’s face and neck had been only fractions of a second before.
McCarter fought him off, at first with difficulty and then with increasing confidence. When he realized what was happening, he was actually kind of surprised. He wouldn’t have thought it likely, although, of course, it was probably. He was a highly trained special operations commando, but he always assumed, when he came up against a man who favored a specific weapon, that the man in question would have pretty well-developed skills. In this case, Wijeya favored a highly specialized blade with a long martial history behind it. It stood to reason that the pirate captain would be exceptionally deadly with it. And, in Wijeya’s defense, he was very good. There weren’t many men in the world who would consider dealing with an armed Captain Yanuar Wijeya a walk in the park.
As McCarter fought, however, as he moved in small circles with his borrowed knife, looking to see which pieces of Wijeya he could snip off, he realized something.
He was better.
He was also faster. Some things couldn’t be taught. Speed was a tricky one. You could learn to be smooth, and smooth had a confidence all its own. Smooth was fast and fast was smooth, or so the saying went. But if you rushed things you got nowhere.
Wijeya considered himself a warrior, but his skills were rudimentary at best. He was better at looking as though he could fight than he was at actually fighting.
McCarter scored a deep cut in Wijeya’s cheek, then another along the pirate captain’s forearm. Blood flowed freely.
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