“All right!”
That left two English in the house, plus his own striker. Diego wiped the dust from his gun with his left hand and spread it on the brim of his hat.
It was time to put an end to Alex Auldborne.
Chapter Thirty-Two
NIKKIE HIX DESPERATELY WANTED to stop in the stairwell, at least to try to catch her breath, but she knew that if you were shot in this game and could somehow still run, you ran. Once they were on ground level she insisted that she stand and run on her own while still able. She remembered now just how visceral the pain was, like her innards were jerked around with every hitched stride. At her side, Northern helped her steady herself and stood back to check her wound.
“If it’s just above the bicep, it’s probably a moderate diffusion. It’s not a quick killer, but it’s awfully close to the brachial artery. Once the spreading gets that far, you’re done. If you stay passive, I’d give an hour before you’re comatose.”
“And what if I can’t stay passive?” she replied, breathless. Max was already slamming down the stairs, nearly with them.
“With an elevated heart rate I’d give you thirty minutes. Maybe less.”
Max caught up and immediately reached out to Nikkie before stopping himself.
“Max, run ahead and clear a way to the cab. We’ll be right behind,” said Northern.
Max slowed down momentarily next to her, his eyes pleading with her, then he dashed off towards the doors and the awaiting line of pristine cabs.
Northern checked behind him as he trotted along with Hix, urging her as much as he dared. The lobby was in the process of a remarkably orderly evacuation. Several attendants were actually smiling as they directed bleary and sleepy guests towards one of the fire exits amidst a siren’s droning blare. The crowd gawked at Max Haulden as he shoved his way through in a sprint for the doors, creating a small wake for his teammates. For a moment it looked like others might run in a contagious panic, but the soothing, repetitive monotone of the desk help prevailed and the slow shuffle outdoors continued on, the crowd seething back together behind the crazy Americans’ exit.
Max had just grabbed the closest cab to hand, its doors already open, when they heard screaming from inside the hotel. Now people started to push their way out of the front doors. Something was coming up behind them. Hix grunted and ducked her way into the back seat where Max took hold of her for a moment and righted her, carefully steering clear of her wounded shoulder. There was a small tear in her shirt under which the skin was a mottled red. A thin line of dried blood tracked its way down to her elbow, and then stopped. The diode had broken the skin. He gingerly placed a hand on her knee and removed it just as quickly.
“I’ll be all right,” she said between gritted teeth. But like Northern, Max was just as familiar with the slow, numbing spread of a diode hit. She’d been shot too close to the heart. She didn’t have long.
Northern ran around to the passenger’s side and hopped in.
“Take us somewhere,” he said. “Anywhere.”
The cabbie looked at him, confused. Northern cursed under his breath and glanced at the crowded foyer. Someone was clearly shoving at the back of the mass exodus; people were bursting through the double doorway now, and not of their own accord. He snatched up a tourist map from a pocket in front of him. He pointed at random.
“Here! Take us here!”
“Ah! Akihabara,” the cabbie said, nodding. Moments later they were cruising towards the center of Tokyo.
————
His team could tell by his look that Obata was furious. Since he rarely spoke to begin with, Jinbo and Fuse could divine his mood only from his facial expressions. When he was angry his brow protruded and his round face tensed up, as if he was lifting a heavy weight.
He wasn’t as considerate to the mass of evacuating people as the Americans had been. Once he saw that Blue was outside he started shoving, cleaving through them like a knife. But Obata wasn’t a tall man, nor was his appearance all that imposing, and so people got angry. When a pair of young men shoved him back, Jinbo pulled out his massive revolver and then all hell broke loose. Obata hissed at him to holster it, but the damage was done: the herd had smelled the wolf. Those nearest him shoved violently away, eyes rolling like those of spooked horses. These people then ran into others, and so a wild ripple seemed to bounce against the doors and then return back on itself, creating a jam worse than before. By the time Obata fought his way outside there were already squads of police cars and fire trucks approaching, and a single cab speeding out of the parking lot, headed northeast into Tokyo proper.
“We should get out of here,” Tenri Fuse whispered, uncomfortably close in the pressing crowd. Obata snapped around and glared at him.
“The police are many, and more come,” murmured Jinbo, resetting his boxy glasses upon his nose and dabbing gingerly at a streak of blood with the sleeve of his jacket. He’d taken the brunt of the door’s kickback. “What do we do?” he stammered.
Obata seethed, taking in deep breaths through his nose.
“If they take us to the police station, it will be a while before we’re cleared...” Fuse said, nervously smoothing his thin goatee.
“You think I don’t know that?” spat Obata as he grabbed both men and pulled them behind the topiary to the left of the door.
“Well if you talked to us—”
“Don’t ever take that tone with me! How many shots, Jinbo? How many shots did you fire?”
Jinbo stared at the ground and said nothing. His glasses slowly slid down his nose.
“Answer me.”
“I don’t know. Eight, maybe nine...”
“Liar. You lie. You know exactly how many.”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen! And not one of them hit anybody,” Obata said, shaking his head in disgust.
“And you,” he said, turning to Fuse, who shrank under his devastatingly even tone. “You actually had a shot. A clear line. All three of them like gaping carp and you hit the girl. The girl. Once. In the arm. She’s still walking, Fuse.”
Neither man spoke in their defense.
“We had them. You’ve both failed me.”
The men bored holes in the ground with their gaze.
“But all is not lost,” said Obata, looking into the distance in the direction the cabbie had taken. “The woman is wounded and the other two are attached to her. They cannot go far.”
————
In Akihabara, the teeming electronics district of Tokyo, block after block of shops too numerous to count flashed, buzzed, blared, and honked their gadgets and gizmos to thousands of passersby. People with megaphones stood at corners chirping away in persistent Japanese. Rows of the newest televisions flashed patterns that rivaled anything found on the Vegas Strip. Odd and inane promotional booths dotted the major thoroughfares, complete with men and women in an embarrassing array of costumes hocking sleek new products and metallic odds and ends. It was all too much for Nikkie Hix, who was getting dizzy with pain as they dashed about this mayhem with no clear direction.
“John, my shoulder is numb,” Hix said with a calm she didn’t feel.
“I know, we’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” Max said. “We’ve been outside too long. They’ll spot us a mile away.”
Northern turned about. Everywhere he looked there was a sea of black hair, broken only rarely by swells of tall white foreigners as evident as the frothy caps of waves. Max was right. They shouldn’t be outside. He grasped at the first relatively secluded place he saw: what looked to be some sort of check-in desk for something in the back corner of a side street.
“There. We’ll go in there,” Northern said, looking at Nikkie as she leaned heavily against a wall of digital screens nearby. Sweat darkened her blonde hair where it clung to brow. She looked up at him and smiled weakly. Max simply shook his head and said nothing, his silence somehow heavier than the ringing around them as they dashed for cove
r.
Chapter Thirty-Three
NIKKIE SAT DOWN HARD in a small, private room of what turned out to be a karaoke joint. Northern had thrown money at the hapless young man at the front desk and this is where they ended up. They sat down opposite, watching her. To their left was a large flat-screen television, and under that sat a stack of blinking boxes. On the screen a computer- generated Japanese woman was bowing and chirping out a greeting none of them could understand. Her high pitched voice came out of several speakers situated in the corners. On a table in the center of the room an ornamental basket contained two individually wrapped microphones. All around them the collective off-key crooning and screeching of parties of Japanese filtered through the walls and blended into a continuous and indecipherable, dog-kennel of a buzz. Occasionally, the sound would get louder as doors to other rooms were opened and closed.
“You can’t go back out there,” Max said, drumming nervously on the low table in front of him. “You’ve got to slow your breathing, calm your heart.”
Nikkie Hix laughed, and then sucked in a quick breath.
“I’ll be lucky to get off of this couch again.” She smiled weakly.
Max glared at Northern. “Now what? Looks like the dummy room plan didn’t quite work like we thought it would, did it John?”
Northern narrowed his eyes to blue slits, but said nothing.
“Where were you Max?” Nikkie asked, her voice almost sad. She leaned back in her seat and looking up at the ceiling. “What took you so long? Jinbo must have shot at us at least ten times.”
Max went suddenly sallow at Hix’s cut. He swallowed several times and searched for a reply in the back of his throat, but Northern cut in and saved him.
“Nothing went quite as we had planned, but it’s in the past now. Time to move on,” he said, his voice flat. “We’re still three and three.”
“But she’s been shot, John—”
“And if you and I do our jobs quick enough she’ll still have enough in her to do hers, and then maybe we can get her to the nearest Tournament equipped hospital. But every second we waste is a second closer to her going under.”
In the ensuing silence Northern seemed to dare Max to speak. Max looked hard at the basket on the table before him.
“Nikkie, if you stay here you should be safe. We’ll go out and move away. Create some ruckus to draw them off. We’ll make them think Max and I split up. With a little luck, they’ll try to team up on one of us and the other can catch them off guard. If we need you to sweep in, we’ll call you.”
Nikkie nodded, propping her legs up on the couch. Max hunched and glanced at her.
“Max,” said Northern. “Are you with me?”
Max nodded, his eyes flicked to and from Hix. “Of course,” he said, but his voice sounded vacant.
“We need to get far enough away from her before we make any noise. We passed a train station on the way in. That’s where we’re headed.”
————
Red lingered outside of the hotel, lost for true direction as Obata stood away in silence, mulling his options. Fuse’s gaze snaked back and forth over the shivering crowd. Jinbo nursed the trickle of blood from his nose.
Suddenly the radio inside of an idle cab nearby cut midsong and warbled about a disturbance near Akihabara station. An explosion of some sort. Two large front windows blown totally out. Obata walked over to it.
“Take us there,” Obata said.
The cabbie hesitated.
“Did you hear him?” hissed Fuse, leaning his face nearly to the driver’s ear.
The cabbie nodded. They drove in silence. When Obata abruptly called a halt the cabbie braked immediately and propped open the rear doors, eager to get these three gone.
“There. Look. By the windows. That’s Max Haulden. He’s all alone,” Obata said, pointing. “So Northern is either an idiot, or this is a trap. And I don’t think he’s an idiot. One of us will approach. The other two will hold up here in case he tries some American underhanded trick.”
“I’ll go in,” Jinbo announced, eager to get back in to his captain’s good graces. “Max Haulden is my match-up. Striker to striker.”
“Then go,” Obata nodded, “and go quickly. He’s proficient. As soon as you get near him he’ll see you.”
Jinbo bowed awkwardly from a sitting position, pushed his glasses up his nose and brushed flakes of dried blood from his upper lip. He gripped his gun inside his coat and took off at an awkward half-run towards the station.
Jinbo got no more than ten steps towards the entrance before he saw Max move inside and onto the first platform. Jinbo hesitated. He glanced back at the cab where his team waited. Obata nodded. Jinbo continued inside the station, moving at a slower clip, gripping his largest gun tight.
All of the JR platforms were jammed, but only the first had a departure scheduled within the next several minutes. Platform five serviced an inbound local line, one frequented by college students, businessmen, and tourists. During the week it was impossible to distinguish the rush hour from any other hour. Every train was standing-room only; white gloved attendants physically pushed more people into the bulging train than was entirely safe, and then apologized profusely for doing so. Amon Jinbo ran face-first into this wall of humanity and saw Max Haulden in the middle of it. By the looks of it, Max was going to get on the train, and by the looks of it, Jinbo was not. He hunched and popped up his collar, sniffing a trickle of blood back into his nose. He tried to pry his way in between flashes of holes in the crowd in front, anything to keep a closer tab on the man, but he was shouldered back. He cursed and was cursed at in return.
“Where do you think you’re going boy? You wait like everyone else.”
“There’s an American,” Jinbo stammered, scratching his neck with his free hand. “A friend, he’s up there somewhere. I have to see him.”
“You’ll wait like everyone else!”
“But—”
“But nothing. You wait!” said a drab older businessman, who promptly turned away and puffed his shoulders up haughtily. Those around him nodded in approval and glared at Jinbo, muttering half-heard insults.
Flashes and dings signaled the train’s impending arrival. People shuffled in anticipation. Max was well in front of where Jinbo stood, near the front ranks. Jinbo chanced a jump, trying to catch a glimpse. He couldn’t risk losing his man and disgracing himself further. He had to get on the train.
The businessman turned again to Jinbo.
“Why are you jumping? It won’t move us any faster.”
Jinbo’s face reddened. He scratched his neck again, and tightened his grip on the Colt .45 inside his jacket.
“It might not,” Jinbo stammered, “but this will.” He pulled out his gun and pointed it up and into the man’s face. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the train pulling in and slowing. He had perhaps fifteen seconds to break through five hundred people. Those who saw the gun just looked at it, wide-eyed. Nobody could move. A panicked run was not physically possible. There were several gasps, but oddly enough no one screamed. Perhaps they didn’t believe him.
Jinbo saw the train stop. The doors hissed open and people began squeezing their way out, single file, through tiny rivulets in the crowd.
“That’s not real,” the man said, narrowing his eyes.
“Get on the ground old man,” Jinbo ordered, his voice now as steady as stone.
He pointed the gun into the sky, fired once—and hell broke loose. The man did as he was told as did a hundred or so people directly around him. Somewhere, finally, someone screamed. Hundreds followed suit. The train platform sounded like a maddened concert.
Jinbo started to walk, stepping over people like puddles. Ahead of him, the white-gloved pushers were, incredibly, still at work, either oblivious to the gunshot amidst the normal platform racket, or extremely devoted to duty.
And then Jinbo saw him.
Max was already on the train, in a far corner by the window. He was speaking in
to an earpiece. Now Jinbo really had to get on the train.
He fired again, once, into the air. Another hundred hit the deck. More muffled screaming but mostly just confusion. He stepped forward. He was close. He fired once more, and as the attendant turned toward the noise he shoved his way forward and onto the train, two cars behind Max. He jammed his gun back in his jacket, to the mute horror of a few observant passengers nearby, just as the doors hissed closed behind him.
————
Back in the karaoke room Nikkie Hix was getting worse. There was a nauseating, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach and her arm was a painful, swollen numbness. She had horrible thoughts of going comatose here, in a claustrophobic little room, surrounded by Japanese screeching songs by Wham!. She told herself that she would not allow it. By God, if the train station was where her team was, the train station was where she was going to go.
Saying and doing were different things, however, and Nikkie feared she was going to puke everywhere. The telltale signs were there: gathering spit in her mouth, involuntary deep breaths soft on the exhale; both bad omens. She allowed herself a few more deep breaths, rocked to gather some momentum, and then grunted into a standing position.
The act was ludicrously draining. She’d seen flashes of purple after standing up too quickly before, but they had never lasted this long. She felt she might fall right down again, perhaps on to the table in front of her. She even rotated to protect her left arm in anticipation, but when she found herself still standing a full minute later, she knew that she could do it. She told herself that getting up was the worst part, and was halfway convinced. One thing was for sure: now or never.
She shambled outside and down the hall to the exit, ignoring the stringent calls of the Japanese man at the desk who wanted something that he wasn’t going to get from her. She pushed her damp hair behind her left ear and walked out into the late afternoon sun. It, too, seemed abnormally intense. She felt exposed, like an unearthed tree root flayed and damaged. With her good hand she flagged a cab and sat down hard in the back seat, her heart hammering like she’d just sprinted up a flight of stairs with a hangover. After several moments in which the driver glanced suspiciously back at her while she gathered her breath, she told him to take her to Akihabara station. By the grace of God he seemed to understand, or at least he started moving. She quietly reached for her gun inside of her jacket. Her curtain call was coming. It was time to flare out big.
The Tournament Trilogy Page 25