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.”
Nick stepped closer to the sprawled out punk.
“So, I figure,” he said, stepping forward again as the Butcher tried to crawl back, “that if you’re going to go carrying a sword around stabbing people, you need to figure out how it feels. Seems only fair.”
And with that, Nick Woods swung the sword horizontally toward the Butcher’s head. The man had wiped the foam from his eyes and could half see, so he raised both forearms to stop the sword, just as Nick hoped.
Nick stopped the strike before it sliced into the man’s forearms and switched his grip, inverting the blade so that it pointed down.
And before the Butcher could place his hands on the ground to slide or reposition his legs, Nick thrust the sword down into the quad of the cartel leader’s good leg. The blade drove straight through the thick muscle and slammed the concrete floor hard enough to chip out chunks.
“Oh, damn, that’s got to hurt,” Nick said.
The Butcher wasn’t even screaming. His eyes were bugged out and he was hyperventilating, his hands holding the blade’s handle to keep it from swinging side-to-side. Complete shock was setting in.
Blood spilled from below the cut, but not nearly as quickly as might be expected. Nick was glad he had missed the femoral artery. He had hoped not to hit it.
“I wouldn’t pull that blade out,” Nick said. “That’s when the bleeding will really start.”
Nick stepped back and pulled out his cellphone. He turned on the video camera and filmed the helpless, weeping man.
The blood, the foam, the look of sheer horror was a stark contrast to the man who usually looked brave and daring in the videos he emailed into the news stations. Nick stopped recording him and texted the video to President Rivera. He hoped the President would have someone upload it online anonymously, but that wasn’t up to Nick to decide.
He confirmed the text had sent and put a hand up on his bleeding scalp. The thing was pouring blood out pretty fast and he felt a bit weak. He dialed the President's number and waited for him to answer.
Walking past the upturned chair, he stopped and righted it on its legs. He sat heavily and when Rivera answered, he said, “Your Christmas came early. The Butcher has been butchered.”
Nick looked at the man, holding the sword blade with the utmost of care. The Butcher was afraid to move and afraid not to, given the blood draining out of his leg. Shock was creeping up on him and death approached with increasing haste. Nick had seen it in war and battle too many times to count. The Butcher wasn’t dead yet, but he would be before help could arrive.
“Now, get some men here. We’ve got a mess to clean up. I need someone to get me out of here without being arrested, we need to grab all video footage and have it seized for national security reasons, and you probably need to get Marcus, my No. 2 man free. I’d imagine he’s probably in cuffs outside the airport.”
Nick hung up before President Rivera could answer and he sunk back in the chair, relieved but exhausted. The fight with the Butcher, the lack of sleep from the night prior, the emotions from the battle in Neza-Chalco-Itza, the stack of fresh memories from seeing and hearing the wounded and dead men from S3.
He pulled his sniper T-shirt off and placed it against his head, keeping firm pressure against the deep cut. He lowered his head and tried to keep from passing out, and noticed the SS (Scout Sniper) symbol burned into his chest and the HOG tooth, or Hunter Of Gunman, 7.62 round hanging around his neck.
He said a silent prayer of thanks to all the Marine instructors who had trained and beaten him into the person he had become. Thanks, guys, he thought. You came through again.
Epilogue
In the days that followed the Butcher’s horrendous death, the Red Sleeve Cartel hunted down the remnants of the Godesto Cartel, leaving it as nothing but a footnote of Mexican history. Those who were lucky enough to survive, switched sides.
President Roberto Rivera rode a wave of public support. Suddenly, the public nor the Congress cared that he had intervened to send Mexican SWAT members to rescue billionaire Juan Soto. President Rivera was now firmly seen as the cartel fighter, and his legacy and popularity had been secured.
The men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter packed up and convoyed back to America, some of their wounded left behind until a private medical plane could be dispatched from America. Dwayne Marcus handled the logistics and temporarily took command while S3’s leader healed and rested.
Nick Woods stayed behind. He remained by Isabella’s side as she recovered and helped her recuperate. But with the lack of tension in a non-warlike environment, the passion between them sputtered out. They had little in common and no future together.
Nick eventually drifted north, afraid to confront the isolation he now faced. He was two million dollars richer for completing the mis
sion, but what was money to a penny-saving, country boy?
At least Marcus had handled the disbandment of S3. Saying goodbye to Isabella had been tough. Saying goodbye to his men a final time would have been too much for Nick.
He had been told by Mr. Smith to call him if and when he decided to cross back into America. Mr. Smith would handle the details of that, but Nick took his time wandering north.
He dreaded facing his new reality, which was really just his old reality following Anne’s death.
But after two nights getting hammered in rundown bars full of tourists, it was time. He dialed Mr. Smith’s number.
“I’m ready to head back,” Nick said. “I guess this is where it ends.”
“Or, it’s where it begins,” Mr. Smith said. “The administration is impressed with your results. Seems they have some more work in a place you know well.”
“Montana?” Nick asked. “Or, Tennessee?”
“Neither,” Mr. Smith said. “Try Afghanistan.”
Nick tried to follow.
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying the entire unit of S3 has not been disbanded. Marcus is running it until you decide whether you’ll return or not.”
Nick tried to process the words. It seemed too good to be true. Frankly, he couldn’t believe it. It was like a gift from above.
Mr. Smith interrupted his thoughts.
“Too bad it didn’t work out with Isabella,” Mr. Smith said. “Well, maybe not. You have men who need your leadership, who’d follow you to the ends of the earth, and you have a country that further requires your service.”
“Let me think on it,” Nick said, and hung the phone up.
He wrestled with the dead he’d seen from S3 after the night in Neza-Chalco-Itza, but he couldn’t deny that he had a gift for war. Or perhaps it was a curse. But he was good at it. And in a sick way, it was all he enjoyed. It was what he lived for.
Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 35