The Last Assassin

by Barry Eisler

  One of the sumos had a phone to his ear but I couldn't hear him over the steady downpour. The other guy was looking at a small LCD monitor, and I realized they were using their own GPS equipment to link up with the boat that was bringing in their shipment. A black cargo bag was on the ground between them, presumably payment for the drugs.

  I took off the goggles for a moment and let my eyes adjust. I wanted an idea of how well anyone could see unaided in the darkness. Not well at all, I was pleased to note. There was some ambient light from distant streetlights and the moon behind the rain clouds — enough for the Chinese and sumos to make the exchange, I thought, but not enough to make out individual faces. As long as we took care not to silhouette ourselves against the reflected light from the town we wouldn't be seen until it was too late.

  I put the goggles back on. A moment later there was a flash from somewhere on the water. The sumo with the phone took out a flashlight and blinked back. I signaled to Dox and he nodded, then moved off to settle into sniping position.

  There was another series of flashes from sea, closer this time, and responses from the sumo. After a few minutes I heard the thrum of an engine through the steady beat of the rain, and then an inflatable catamaran came cutting through the waves.

  My heart started hammering. Here we go, I thought.

  I took out the cell phone and called Dox. The screens on both our units were taped to prevent light from giving us away. 'You in position?' I whispered.

  'Roger that. I'm fifty yards behind you, prone on higher ground. Perfect position and a clear field of fire.'

  'You see the boat?'

  'I see it. Looks like two… no, wait, make that three Chinamen on board.'

  'All right. Wait until they're off the boat, or as many of them as look like they're going to get off, then drop the sumos. I'll take it from there.'

  'Roger that.'

  I clicked off and put the phone away.

  The boat came closer. As it reached the shoreline, I could make out individual faces. No one was sporting any night-vision equipment. Apparently, they didn't think they'd need it.

  One of the Chinese cut the engine and raised it out of the water. Another jumped into the surf and waded in, pulling the boat behind him by a rope. When the boat was grounded, the other two Chinese got out, too. Each of them carried a large waterproof duffel bag. They went back to the boat twice more. When they were done, there were six duffels lined up next to the boat.

  The Chinese who had jumped out first gestured to the sumos. The other two stood off to the side, watching the sumos warily. One of the giant men picked up the cargo bag and came closer, his buddy following from behind, no doubt to provide cover if something went wrong. As indeed it soon would.

  I eased out from behind the Cadillac and moved silently toward the water.

  The Chinese unzipped one of the bags, presumably to show the lead sumo the product inside.

  I reached the surf ten meters down from them and went in up to my knees. The water was cold but I barely felt it. I started moving in from their flank, crouching low, the HK out at chin level in a two-handed grip. I moved deliberately, trading speed for stealth, wanting to get as close as possible. If I failed to drop them all instantly, whoever I missed might return fire on whatever muzzle flash escaped my suppressor, and I was less than enthusiastic about the prospect of panicked triad members spraying bullets in my uncovered general direction from a stone's throw away.

  There was a soft crack from somewhere behind us. The rear sumo cried out and slapped a hand to his neck with a loud thwack.

  Everyone froze and looked at him.

  I crept in closer. Four meters now.

  If the lead sumo hadn't turned, too, I expected the Chinese would have dropped him then and there. But his hands were out and he seemed as surprised as they were.

  The rear sumo took an unsteady step forward. The lead Chinese yelled something, a warning, presumably, and backed away.

  Three meters.

  The lead sumo started to turn back to the Chinese, his hand going to his jacket.

  There was another soft crack. Instead of reaching into his jacket, the sumo cried out and grabbed his neck.

  The C02 cartridges produced no muzzle flash. And in the dark and rain, it was impossible to tell where the sounds of fire had come from, or even what they were.

  The sumos were both staggering now. The Chinese were all watching with the internationally approved expression for What the fuck? frozen on their faces.

  The first sumo sank to his knees. The other stumbled into him and tripped. The Chinese scattered, and the falling sumo landed on his partner like a tree felled by a logger. The ground shook with the impact, and, as one, the Chinese cried out and pulled out machine pistols. They pointed them first at the sumo pile, then, their higher brains perhaps getting a word in edgewise, started looking around wildly, their eyes wide in the dark.

  I put the infrared laser on the head of the man farthest from me. I saw the dot clearly in the night-vision goggles. Without the goggles, I knew, the dot was invisible. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and rolled my trigger finger in.

  Pffttt. The .45 round caught him in the side of the head and he flopped soundlessly forward onto the ground.

  Pffttt. The second guy went down the same way.

  The third guy looked at his fallen comrades. Then, possibly realizing what had happened, he started to wheel around toward me.

  Too late. I shot him in the head, too, and he collapsed beside the others.

  I scanned the beach. A few meters away the sumos were still piled one on top of the other, both facedown. I realized with a start that the guy on the bottom might be suffocating. His face was in the mud, and large as he was, that was a hell of a load bearing down on him from above. If he suffocated, this wasn't going to look the way we needed it to look. I signaled to Dox to come in, and started wading ashore.

  I walked up from behind and prodded them each with a wet boot. No response. Okay, they were out. I secured the HK in the holster and felt under their jackets. The lead guy had reached for something at one point, so I knew they were carrying. There it was, a pistol in his unending waistband. I pulled it out and flung it into the surf, then, in spite of all the folds of flesh, managed to repeat the operation for the other guy.

  I grabbed the top guy's wrist. I pulled hard but it was like trying to uproot a tree.

  Shit, the bottom guy was definitely eating mud. I pulled hard again. Again he didn't budge.

  A moment later, Dox reached my position. 'Nice shooting,' he said. 'One shot, one kill. Or in this case three shots, three kills.'

  'Give me a hand with this guy,' I said, still trying to pull the sumo by the wrist. 'I think he's smothering the one underneath him.'

  'Ah, shit.' Dox dropped the tranquilizer rifle and grabbed the sumo by the arm. We managed to pull him partly off his partner, but not enough. I squatted down and lifted the bottom guy's head off the ground. His eyes were shut and his face was covered with mud. I couldn't tell if he was breathing.

  'If that boy needs resuscitating, you can count me out,' Dox said from behind me.

  I put my ear near the sumo's mouth but couldn't hear anything. 'He's still getting crushed. We've got to move the one on top. Roll him or something.'

  'Shit, man, I'd rather try moving that Cadillac back there.'

  'I'm serious, goddamnit. We can't have one of these guys dead from suffocation. It won't fit.'

  Dox moved up alongside me and we both grabbed the back of the top guy's coat. The material was slippery with rain and mud and it was hard to get a solid grip. I thought, Worst case, if he's dead, we grab one of the machine pistols and shoot him. Then it'll look like he died in a gunfight with the Chinese and his partner got away with the money and drugs. Not as good as three dead triads and two missing yakuza, but not a total loss, either.

  I looked at Dox. 'One, two, three!'

  We pulled. The inert mass of the sumo pulled back. The inert mass won.r />
  'Now there's a quality garment for you,' Dox said. 'For a second there, about four hundred pounds were suspended by nothing but raincoat.'

  'Again. One, two…'

  With a berserker yell, the sumo rolled over and seized my wrist in one massive paw. Whether he'd been playing possum or had come to suddenly, I didn't know. I yelled, 'Fuck!' and tried to jerk away, but I might as well have been a child.

  Dox reacted instantly. He took a long step back and cleared leather. 'Don't shoot!' I yelled. 'Not with the same guns that did the Chinese!'

  The sumo's face was glistening with dripping mud and water. His eyes were wild, his teeth bared. He snarled and started reeling me in by the wrist.

  I dropped down on my ass and planted both boots against the side of his face. I strained backward, and the combined strength of my back and quadriceps broke his grip.

  I rolled away from him and came to my feet at the same instant he did. He bellowed something unintelligible and charged me. I dodged and yelled to Dox, Tranq gun!'

  The sumo charged again. This time I barely managed to slip by him. His speed and coordination were off because of the tranquilizer, but I didn't know how much longer that was going to last.

  The sumo stopped and faced me, his breath rumbling in and out of his chest. He was starting to think, I could tell. He was going to slow it down this time, and he wasn't going to miss.

  There was a soft crack off to the side. The sumo grabbed his stomach and grunted. Then he looked up at me, his eyes blazing.

  'I told you, neck shots!' I yelled, and pulled out the HK.

  'I'm doing the best I can here!' I heard Dox yell from somewhere on my right.

  'Ugoku na! Samonaito utsuzo!' I yelled in Japanese. Don't move, or I'll shoot! I hoped the threat would give him pause. If I really had to shoot him, it would ruin everything. But if I didn't, he was going to break me like a matchstick.

  Then I realized: the sumo had heard us speaking English, and now Japanese. That wasn't something I wanted remembered. But maybe I could obscure it.

  'Wau ai ni!' I yelled at him, using pretty much the only Chinese I know. 'Wau ai ni! Ni ai wau ma?'

  My shouting seemed only to make the sumo angrier. He dropped one hand to the ground like a linebacker in a three-point stance. His breathing was locomotive loud. I wondered for a crazy second, Maybe the guy speaks Chinese?

  I feinted left, then right, thinking, Come on, come on, the shit is supposed to be fast-acting…

  The sumo tracked me with rage-filled eyes. Then he shook his head as though to clear it. I breathed silent words of gratitude.

  The sumo took an unsteady step toward me, then another. I circled toward the surf. There was less light in the sky over the water, and he would have a harder time silhouetting me there.

  He kept coming, but he was on autopilot now, his arms stretched out in front of him as though he was sleepwalking. I moved off to the side and watched him. He took two steps. Three. Another.

  Oh, shit, he was going to make it to the water.

  'Oi! Kochi da! Kochi da!' I yelled. Hey! Over here! Over here! Then some Chinese again, to obscure things: 'Wau ai ni! Wau ai ni!'

  He was at the edge of the water now. I yelled again.

  He started to turn toward me. I let out a sigh of relief.

  He tottered for a second, swaying first toward shore, then toward sea.

  Dox moved up next to me and shouldered the rifle. We watched in mute fascination.

  Shore, sea.

  I realized Dox and I were leaning backward as though to influence him with body English. Dox whispered, 'Come on, come on…'

  The sumo pitched forward and hit the surf with a crash that sent a geyser up around him. 'Shit, here we go again,' Dox said, and we charged in after him.

  For a guy who weighed just south of a quarter ton, the sumo floated pretty well. We got ahold of the lapels of his jacket and somehow managed to turn him on his back and drag him up onto the muddy beach far enough so that his face was out of the water.

  We moved a few feet away from him and stood sucking wind. After a moment, Dox laughed. 'Well, that was a mad minute if I ever had one,' he said.

  I laughed, too. Yeah, it had been a close one.

  'Hey, man,' he said, 'what the fuck were you yelling at him in Chinese?'

  'I don't want them telling anyone their attackers were using English and Japanese. If it gets back to Yamaoto, it sounds too much like me. I was trying to obscure things.'

  'Yeah, but "Wau ai ni"? "I love you"? You're telling that boy you love him, no wonder he tried to kill us!'

  We laughed again. 'It's the only Chinese I know,' I said.

  'Well, it is a useful phrase, in my experience. Sometime you'll have to tell me the story behind how you learned it.'

  'All right,' I said, still catching my breath. 'Let's…'

  The ground shook underneath us. I looked up and there was the second sumo, barreling down on us like a freight train along the surf.

  Dox swung the rifle off his shoulder. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  I yelled, 'For Christ's sake, neck shot!'

  Dox dropped to one knee and brought the rifle around. But there wasn't enough time. The sumo blasted into him like a cannonball and the dart went skidding along the mud without its small charge going off". Dox flew through the air and hit the ground hard. The sumo turned on him.

  Without thinking, I took two steps in and leaped onto the sumo's back. I slammed in hadakajime, the sleeper hold I'd employed thousands of times in my decades of judo at Tokyo's Kodokan. Properly placed, the strangle cuts off the flow of blood to the brain and induces unconsciousness in seconds. But proper placement against a guy whose neck could have stood in for a telephone pole wasn't really an option. I could tell the hold wasn't putting the sumo out. If anything, it was making him angrier. He snarled and reached back for me but I hunkered down away from his desperate grasp. Then he started spinning in circles, trying to fling me off. I hung on for dear life. He went faster and gave my arms a mighty northward shove. His neck and head were slippery with mud and I lost my grip and flew off him. I hit the ground and rolled away, primally terrified he was going to body slam me.

  He stood for a moment, looking left and right, and I realized that in the dark and perhaps still groggy from the drug, he had momentarily lost track of me. I looked over and saw the yellow tail of the dart Dox had fired sticking out of the mud. I started inching toward it.

  Dox groaned and the sumo spun toward the sound. I grabbed the dart and came to my feet.

  Dox groaned again. The sumo grunted angrily and started stalking toward him. I saw that he was only a few feet away. I charged in, praying he was so focused on finding Dox that he wouldn't hear me.

  At the last second he did, but it was too late. He started to turn and I leaped onto his back with hadakajime again — the critical difference being that, this time, instead of bracing one hand against the back of his head, I stabbed him in the side of the neck with the dart. The charge went off with a pop and a flash. He howled and started trying to spin me off again. But this time even as he got started he was already sinking to one knee, then the other. I realized the tranquilizer was working, and eased off slightly on his neck.

  He dropped onto all fours. I dismounted warily and stepped away.

  Then he straightened and started to come up again. I thought, You can't be fucking serious. I drew the HK and aimed.

  The sumo wobbled, then fell on his side and lay still.

  I ran over to Dox. The night-vision goggles had been knocked clean off his face by the force of the impact. 'You all right?' I asked, squatting down next to him.

  'Goddamn,' he grunted, rolling from side to side. 'Goddamn.' He let out a marvelously inventive string of expletives.

  'Well, you're moving,' I said. 'Can't be that bad.'

  He sat up with a loud groan. 'Son of a bitch knocked the wind out of me. Thank God there was nothing behind me but air or I'd be a goddamned pan
cake right now. Hoo-ah, it's good to be alive.'

  I helped him to his feet. We found the goggles and he pulled them on. The sumo was out cold.

  'Yeah, I'm glad he didn't just suffocate before,' Dox said, rubbing his ribs. 'That would have been a tragedy.'

  'I thought you were a sniper! For Christ's sake, you shot one of them in the stomach, the other in the mud!'

  'Hey, big talker, when was the last time you tried to drop four hundred pounds of pissed-off primate doing the forty-yard dash with you in the way?'

  'About ten fucking seconds ago!'

  'Yeah, well, if you hadn't been so busy dancing, you might have noticed I barely had time to bring the damn rifle up, let alone aim it!'

  We stared at each other angrily. Then Dox snorted. I did, too, and then we were laughing so hard that for a few seconds we couldn't speak. That's just the way it is. When the danger's past, hilarity likes to fill the void.

  'Tell me one thing,' Dox said, moving the goggles so he could wipe his eyes. 'I couldn't be sure without the goggles on, but did I see you jump onto that man-mountain's back or what?'

  I was still laughing. 'Yeah, I did. I just…'

  He started slapping his thigh. 'Goddamnit, partner, that was no shit, straight up, the stupidest thing I've ever seen a man do in my life. I mean, if that boy had figured out all he had to do was flop down on his back, I'd be scraping you up with a spatula right now.'

  'I guess I shouldn't have tried to choke him.'

  'Yeah, no shit you shouldn't have tried to choke him. You should have just climbed up his body and levered him over by the head. A little guy did it to me once, and I'm lucky I'm here to tell you about it.'

  We laughed more. When it subsided, Dox said, 'Thank you, man. I won't forget it.'

  'Forget it? I'm worried you're going to keep reminding me of it.'

  'Oh, you can count on that.'

  'All right, come on, before they wake up again.'

  'Partner, if they show any signs of wakefulness whatsoever, I'm going to empty my HK into both of them, reload, and do it again.'

  'I know. So let's just finish up and get out of here. Can you carry those bags?'

  'Yeah, I'm just sore. I don't think anything's busted.'