The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “Ignazio Andizzi is out. So is your captain. Disarm your gun, Lorenzo, and we can work this out on the ground. None of these people have to get hurt for this.”

  Lorenzo immediately sighted the galley, looking for any sign of the two of them. He tried to glimpse over the aisle at where his two teammates lay prone, but he couldn’t see, and wouldn’t allow himself to shift his focus completely. He curled his lip in grand disdain. His prominent chin raised high.

  “Disarm my gun?” he asked, in thick English. “There is no disarm here. Once it start, it must finish!” he bellowed.

  “Put your gun down, Lorenzo!” Ian screamed.

  “Why don’t you come take it, quick guy? Hey captain, why you no send your quick shot back here to take? Or you come?” Lorenzo sounded haughty, but his eyes were wide in his half-moon face, and he kept shifting his sight from one end of the galley to the other, waiting for the Irish to pop out from behind the wall.

  “Ian, you agree I am a more accurate shot then you,” Pyper whispered, a definite statement and not a question.

  Ian paused. He looked over his shoulder and back down the aisle with the drink cart. Two passengers were cautiously peering down at the jumble of bodies behind it. They looked perplexed.

  “Ian...”

  “Yes. I suppose. If I had a gun to my head.”

  “Then I need you to run down the aisle towards him,” she said.

  “What? I just got here! You want me to run back down?”

  “Get on his side of the galley. Wait for my signal.”

  “Wait just a minute here—”

  “Get ready to run.” She inched herself down the wall, millimeters from the open aisle.

  “Pyper—”

  “Go!”

  Ian stepped out, propelled as much by Pyper’s voice as by duty. It was the least he could do. He saw Lorenzo seeing him. He saw the proud rage in Lorenzo’s face as he swung his aim towards him. Ian closed his eyes as he barreled down upon the man. He dropped his shoulder, ready to ram. He heard a single crack.

  Ian tripped up and fell to the floor on all fours, scrambling for purchase. Already in a falling tumble, he met Lorenzo at the knees.

  Pyper had stepped out immediately after Ian, sighted, and fired once across the airplane right into Lorenzo’s sternum while he was adjusting his aim to Ian. He let out a tremendous huff sound, bounced his back off of the seat behind him, and then fell forward over Ian. There was a wave of screaming from front to back, like the cabin was on a rollercoaster. The passengers near him scrambled and pushed to avoid touching him as he lay draped over Ian.

  Ian was still frozen, not breathing, not blinking. His heart hammered. Lorenzo’s weight had him pinned to the floor. For the second time in as many minutes he waited for the pain to hit, for the terrible numbness to spread. But it never came.

  Pyper dropped her gun to her side and took a measured breath. She walked around the galley and down to Ian and helped him to his feet. Lorenzo settled on his stomach, breathing softly in measured time.

  “This wasn’t good, Ian,” Pyper said quietly, looking around the cabin. Not one head could be seen over any headrest. If it weren’t for the crying, the occasional stifled screams, and the sickly sweet stench of vomit, one could almost believe the airplane was empty.

  “I know. I know,” Ian said, wiping his face and body, as if surprised to find it in one piece.

  “But what’s done is done, and Green still stands.”

  But not all of them. Kayla MacQuillan was still slumped into the aisle where she had been shot.

  “Let’s get Kayla, and get off this damn airplane,” Pyper said.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Round Two

  GREER FACED THE CAMERAS with more apprehension than he had fourteen days ago. Then, he had simply announced the round one draw and the beginning of the Tournament. Now, everything was imploding.

  He whisked his large hand over his gleaming head and brushed off the front of his suit coat. He unbuttoned one button further down on his deep blue shirt, decided against it, and re-buttoned. Just like he did two weeks ago, he would be speaking from his office. There was no in-house audience, only a battery of cold camera lenses. He watched as Bernard fiddled about with last minute alignment issues, assuring that each camera had a live feed and was focused on the desk. He went over his talking points in his mind once again.

  White was out, Silver was out, Gold was out, Red was out.

  Teams Green, Grey, Black, and Blue all managed to battle through to the second round—at extraordinary expense. Greer licked his teeth. This would not be easy. He had to speak to the extreme nature of this past round. He had to say something. In every case victory came at the cost of the unknowing public. By train and by plane, in homes and in clubs, no holds had been barred. But did he have any right to be surprised at this violent turn? This was a violent business, and if he looked back honestly at the progression of things, the trend would have been obvious. Hell, his own team stepped up the physicality of the rounds themselves when Johnnie Northern brained Alex Auldborne in the last Tournament. What did he expect? Did he think the English would take that one on the chin?

  And the wagers were changing. Just as the players seemed increasingly willing to go to extreme measures to win, so did the anonymous bettors seem increasingly willing to wager the outrageous. As the most recent contract between Blue and Red had proven, things were getting political. Blue won that fight, and so the Americans would be staying at their bases in Yokohama and Okinawa. Greer felt a great deal of pride in this: the first wager of its kind, and his team won. But redress was inevitable—if not now, then in the near future.

  And then, of course, was the matter of discussing the second round match ups. Any combination of the four remaining teams seemed explosive, but Greer had to admit that certain combinations were more explosive than others.

  Bernard signaled for Greer. He nodded, cleared his throat, and settled himself below the big board. He set his hands on his desk to keep them from fidgeting. Bernard began a soft countdown that went silent at three, two, one...

  He was on.

  He paused to allow for any delay, and then spoke.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to round two of the Tournament. I am Greer Nichols.

  “Before the board matches the remaining teams, I should voice some collective concerns with regards to the... inordinate collateral damage accrued this round as compared to... really to any other round in our history.”

  He paused and looked down briefly at his hands. The silence of the gleaming lenses of the cameras was deafening.

  “The complete freedom of every team member has always been a top priority in this organization. The dream was to create a competition that had at its core total and absolute freedom. All we asked was that teams make a real effort to minimize civilian contact. We assumed that teams would abide by this, out of respect for human dignity. If we can take one thing away from this round, it is that we should no longer assume anything in this organization, ever.

  “And now we have a problem. Victory at what expense? Is any price too high? We can levy fines against teams that lose control, but we’re kidding ourselves if we think money, any amount of money, will be an effective deterrent for much longer. We need something else, something more, to make teams accountable.

  “It’s time to look at the teams you are supporting. They have evolved into something different. Something other than the men and women that they were when you contracted them or first followed their progress. Some for better, others, perhaps, for worse. I can’t tell you what they fight for, what drives them and what controls them. Only you can.”

  Greer took a slow breath.

  “The high visibility of these past four engagements is a turning point. We’d be fools not to acknowledge this, and we are not fools. The Tournament is changing. By now, many of you may be aware of a man named Frank Youngsmith, and of a report he has circulated on the nature of this business, for reasons of
his own. His is the greatest single example, but for some time now awareness has grown on all fronts. Gunfights on airplanes, inside crowded nightclubs, and across busy city blocks do nothing to help this, and yet to tell our teams to stand down would fly in the face of our defining manifesto: Competition without limits. We’re getting a taste of that in the truest form, and it would appear that we might not be ready for it.

  “You need to look no further than the very nature of the wagers we are making to see firsthand how far this organization has come. When we started, betting billions was unthinkable. Now it is routine. Using engagements to settle long-standing business debts, determine contract awards, or to settle personal vendettas was unheard of. Now it happens regularly. And most recently, we have government contracts wagered on teams’ performances. More will come.

  “So how do we approach this new era? Should we play catch up? Work our people to the bone to stem what little they can of the flow of information to the world? Deny everything? Lay low for a period of time and hope that when we resurface all will be forgotten?”

  Greer shook his head.

  “Or,” he said, gazing directly into the camera in front of him, “should we redirect this growing global interest, and go out and meet the world?”

  He imagined the scoffs at this, in the various private estates, offices, and boardrooms worldwide. He hoped only that enough of those watching would pause and reflect. He was confident that those who did would see that obscurity was no longer a long term option. Meeting this head-on was the only way they would survive. Thankfully, all was quiet in the broadcast room. Cameras couldn’t rabble or scoff.

  “It is the belief of the Team Blue Administration, myself included, that we can no longer conceal the nature of the Tournament. Not anymore. However, we believe that we can control how people become aware of it. As you know, control of information is the key to winning, both on and off the field. Our players have their great battles, and now we have our own.”

  Greer stood to his full height and stepped aside. He popped his shoulders back slightly and brought his attention to the board above him.

  “And now,” he said, “it is time to announce the second draw.”

  The board clattered and the letters fell into place. Greer blinked several times. He cleared his throat.

  “The Russians of Team Black will fight the Irish of Team Green. The Americans of Team Blue will fight the English of Team Grey. As this conference comes to a close, betting will officially open. I ask all of you to carefully consider what I’ve said and determine where your own administration stands. The longer we wait to make a collective decision, the worse our position becomes.

  “Best of luck to all the remaining teams,” concluded Greer, and as he nodded one last time the live feed shut off with a barely audible click, and all of the lenses once more went dead.

  Chapter Forty

  THE TWO HIX BROTHERS were well known about Shelby County, in Memphis, Tennessee. Tall blond boys, each attractive in his own way, they shaped trends at Shelby’s East High. They walked with a rare confidence that refused to even brook the notion of the insecurities that plagued almost everyone else in high school. They had broad shoulders, smooth skin, and seemed to come into puberty with a proportioned, pre-developed physique that most men approach in their twenties. People watched what they wore, how they acted, and where they stood, and then, when people weren’t around, they would wear, act, and stand in the same manner and think hard about how they could adopt these traits without looking too derivative.

  The boys were polite, and never went out of their way to abuse their social status, nor did they speak of their popularity, although they tacitly acknowledged it. If anything, they could be accused of being slightly aloof, but only because far more people knew of them than they actually knew themselves. There simply wasn’t enough of them to go around.

  Very few people knew they had a younger sister, and fewer still could name her. Nikkie Hix was a quiet girl, a lateblooming fifteen in a garden dominated by the brilliance of her seventeen and eighteen year old brothers. They had smiles that created a presence. Nikkie Hix was in her second year of braces, and her smile was metallic and awkward. Her brothers were tall and shaped like v-cut wedges of wood. Nikkie was short and shaped like a rectangle.

  Sometimes Nikkie thought that the world didn’t know what to do with a girl Hix. She swore she saw surprise whenever she introduced herself, like on the first day of class, for instance, as if there had been a mistake somewhere along the line in the Hix family tree. She sensed that even her parents seemed at an occasional loss with what to do with her. They’d had two boys in a row. They had the growing boy blueprint blazed in their minds. But a young girl? She’d followed her brothers in almost everything: sports, clothes, even their manner of speaking and walking, but she wasn’t one of them, and sometimes she felt it terribly. The formula didn’t work with her. Popular boys and popular girls weren’t cut from the same tree, even if they were of the same genes. Nikkie wasn’t exactly unpopular, but she seemed diminished in comparison, like a flashlight in broad daylight.

  The oddness of her braces hit her at the beginning of her sophomore year, when she looked around herself that first week in August and saw that almost everyone else had gotten theirs taken off, including her closest friend Brianne, who, one way or another, never seemed to let her forget it. The first thing Brianne did when she got her braces off was ask Nikkie to come over.

  “Look!” she said, licking her teeth. “Gone!”

  Nikkie never had reason to cover her mouth next to her best friend until then. And soon enough Brianne was getting boys to lick her teeth for her, very publicly, and very near wherever Nikkie was, it seemed. In the arms of a boy, she saw her childhood friend differently. In the way Brianne’s flowing black hair cascaded and bumped softly over the boy’s arm, she saw her own small, blonde ponytail, limp and boring. In the way his hands rested on Brianne’s curving hips, Nikkie saw how blocky her own still were. In the way each boy subtly pressed against Brianne’s perky chest, Nikkie saw her own smaller chest, and crossed her arms over herself. She became withdrawn, tired of waiting for beauty that was promised her, and angry that she wanted it. So she focused on tennis.

  She proved herself on the court where she couldn’t in the social scene. She was fast, and honed exceptional reflexes. On the weekends, while Brianne was out getting drunk growing a paunch, Nikkie was getting lean and strong. She enjoyed losing herself on the court and reveled in the confidence she had inside the paint. She liked the woman she became when she played tennis. If only the rest of the world played by the same rules.

  When she finally did get her braces off she was almost eighteen. They had been the scapegoat of all her social ills for so long that she had convinced herself that once they were removed, she would become a true Hix. She would become like her brothers. She would make a place for herself in school, no matter what. The eldest Hix brother had just graduated, and there was a spot to be filled. And yet, as she studied her smooth smile in the mirror, unhindered and bright, she couldn’t help but admit to herself that she felt no different.

  She missed both her junior prom and her senior prom. No one pushed her to go, and so she didn’t. Often she wished that even one of her brothers would come in and drag her out of her room, or off of the tennis court, and throw her into a situation she couldn’t walk out of without getting a date. She knew they could—they could do anything. But they never did, and she cried for it, but only when she was alone in her room or out on the tennis court and her tears could be disguised as sweat.

  She was still a virgin in all senses when she went to college, and while she never let on, it tore at her deeply. She was honest about it with her small circle of friends, but their quips made in jest jarred her. Just as she was angry at herself for wanting the type of oozing beauty her old friend Brianne had once possessed, she was now angry for wanting to lose her virginity. What was worse, with every quip and every sexual discussion, o
f which there were many, her inexperience was boosted that much higher on its pedestal. What was once a mere monkey on her back quickly became an elephant in the room of her mind; it stomped and blew and huffed over everything she did. Even tennis wasn’t the opiate it once was, despite its increased NCAA competitiveness.

  Her first true romance bloomed in the only place it could: on the court, where she couldn’t run from it. Occasionally the men’s team scrimmaged with the women’s team, and one boy in particular took a liking to her. He saw in her what she admired in herself: her core strength and her fierce competitiveness. He also saw what she couldn’t see in herself: her trim figure, her tan legs, her flat stomach. He lavished attention upon her, calling out to her by name across all of the courts in practice to compliment a shot, and often waiting after practice to walk with her the fifty feet back to the gymnasium and their locker rooms. During one such time, he asked her out.

  As she said yes, she knew she didn’t much like him. She liked that he liked her, but she felt no affection for him. She was ashamed that she saw him as nothing more than an opportunity to break the cycle she had foisted upon herself. She guessed he must find her attractive, or he wouldn’t have asked her out. She resolved to wait until the third date. They split a bottle of wine in his dorm room and ordered Chinese food and talked tennis. She stayed late, and in a lull in the conversation she moved over to him. He leaned in to kiss her, hitched up, and leaned in again. They wet each other’s lips and he moved his hands over her.

  She shivered involuntarily, stopping him.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, a little too quickly.

  Propped over her, he asked her again if she was ready, and again she said yes, and as he pushed his way inside of her she imagined herself standing before the mirror at her old room back home, smiling a smooth, white smile for the first time, but smiling only because it showed her teeth.