The Golden Kill

by Marc Olden

  “Yeah, yeah, oh, Christ!”

  “Guards inside—how many?”

  “Eight, with me.” Now the cool rain felt good, but the pain in his back just wouldn’t go away.

  “Where?”

  “Two upstairs …” Riggins coughed. A thin stream of blood trickled down his mouth, mingling with the rain. “In the truck …” He coughed again. More blood. “Two there. Three more downstairs.”

  Arching his back, Riggins then fell back against the wet roof. His head moved from side to side as though saying no to the pain. But the pain gripped his body, refusing to let go.

  Swiftly, leaning closer to the guard, Sand crossed his own wrists, inserting both hands deep around Riggins’ neck, cross-choking him into unconsciousness.

  Then, easily picking up the unconscious guard, he carried him over to the now, thoroughly soaked black tarpaulin and placed him under it next to Dave’s dead body. Turning, he moved quickly back over the wet roof toward the trapdoor.

  Henry Rankin was a fat ex-cop with a square red face, who had found out a long time ago that if you’re legally entitled to carry a gun, people sometimes come to you with business offers, most of which aren’t legitimate. The part about not being legitimate never bothered Rankin.

  If the dough’s O.K., so is everything else. That was his motto. He had gotten caught with sticky fingers on somebody else’s money over in a small Maryland town, where he had been second in command on a six-man police force. He was lucky. They let him resign with half-pension, but at forty-eight and with an alcoholic wife to keep supplied, two hundred and fifty dollars a month just couldn’t cut it.

  So he worked when he could at whatever he could. Tonight was one of those gun jobs. He’d done six of them in the past year, no questions asked, payment in cash. Tonight there was a thousand, plus a shot at a bonus if he was the one who drilled the jig.

  Up on the catwalk was where he wanted to be. High ground was best. Just make sure the rifle was sighted in on the door, and make sure he didn’t get shot by that long-haired psycho freak kid Terry. Terry had been booted out of Nam for being too tough on Cong prisoners, which as far as Rankin was concerned was no crime. Still, people had strange ideas these days, and you never knew what they were thinking.

  Terry was supposed to be good with a gun, which is why he was on this hit. Dave and that other guy, Riggins—they looked like they’d been around awhile. But Terry, now—him you had to watch.

  So Henry Rankin himself had positioned Terry, so that when they both started shooting at the door or near the truck, they wouldn’t end up shooting each other’s cubes off.

  Both were prone, flat on their stomachs, eyes on the door, rifles between chest and floor, flashlight near the left hand. There was no electricity in these abandoned hangars, so a man brought his own.

  One thousand dollars. May would drink that up faster than a dog lifting his leg in front of a hydrant. May. She was all he had. Drunk out of her mind, but still, she was all there was. Killing a black man was nothing, compared to keeping May alive any way possible. Any way at all.

  His shoulders were stiff and aching. Waiting was a young man’s game, like Terry’s. He’d probably lain in mud, bugs, and shit over in Vietnam. Probably liked it, too. He looked like the type.

  Rankin stared through the darkness at the open door, watching the raindrops touch the puddles, then disappear. He blinked his eyes, rubbing his itching nose with his knuckles. His crotch itched, too. Dirty as hell up here. Dusty, with rusty pieces of iron, cardboard boxes, empty wooden crates.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to pull the stiffness out. Beyond the open hangar door he could see a stretch of empty wet concrete and four trucks parked to the left.

  He stopped rubbing his neck. Did he hear a small sound, or did he imagine it? Pushing the rifle to his right, he started to turn when a powerful arm slipped around his throat and the hard bone of a forearm pulled back into his larynx. For just a fraction of a second, his brain flashed the message that he was imagining this pain, but just as swiftly, a new message came to him with harsh reality.

  Knees of steel pressed him down on the dusty catwalk while the forearm pulled his neck backward. The darkness around him turned into another darkness, with flashes of green and red running through it as he vainly struggled to breathe.

  His eyes bulged, and veins leaped from his neck. Then he made a small sound, as the second heated darkness squeezed his brain and he disappeared into it.

  Silently, Sand moved back from Rankin’s unconscious body, and catlike, moved through the darkness, searching for the final gunman on the catwalk.

  Still wearing Dave’s poncho, the Black Samurai had come through the trapdoor, then sat silently in the darkness until his eyes had grown used to it. The discipline and hard training had perfected his senses, abilities, and reflexes to razor sharpness.

  Master Konuma had insisted on special training in darkness, a brutal ritual which culminated in one blindfolded Samurai standing in that darkened room swinging a sword with a forty-inch steel blade.

  The swordsman had his ears, his reflexes, and the blade. It was the master’s orders that one more Samurai had to enter that room and, barehanded, take the sword away from the blindfolded man.

  Only senior Samurai were allowed to try. Sand had done it several times, once getting cut across his bare chest, twice getting sliced across his back.

  But each time he entered that darkened room, Sand had taken the sword away from the blindfolded man.

  Now he was playing that same game again, with his life as the stake, but now the number of men facing him had increased.

  Terry picked his nose, then wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans. It wasn’t Nam, but what the hell, it was action, and that’s what he needed. Action. Lifting the rifle to his cheek, he closed his left eye, his right eye peering through the infrared sniperscope, watching the thin black crosshairs standing out against the light-red background.

  Damn! Just like the boondocks in Nam, man! The red sniperscope was a hell of a lot clearer than the naked eye in picking out anything in the darkness. Wow! Nice, real nice. He was staring through the scope at the white panel truck, his sights trained on the driver’s seat.

  Shit. Man, just let anybody try to climb into that truck, and his ass would be grass, and Terry was the lawnmower. No trouble wasting some dude so long as you had iron in your hand like this baby here.

  No way he could miss, no way.

  He was glad he had tied his blond hair in a pony tail and pushed it under a blue wool cap. This floor was filthier than a Saigon whorehouse, and besides, long hair kept getting in the way when he was lining up a shot.

  His finger lightly brushed the trigger, and under his breath he said, “Bam!” One dead nigger coming up.

  Pointing the rifle at the front door, he panned it from one end to the other, imagining his target standing there and going down, getting up and going down.

  That’s when he heard it.

  A small sound behind him.

  With reflexes still animal fresh from jungle combat, Terry turned to see a figure crouched near him, and without knowing exactly why, he yelled, “It’s him! Cal, he’s here!”

  His voice was high with tension, fear, and excitement, and it carried through, the huge empty hangar, its piercing sound slicing through the darkness.

  With that cry, the advantage of surprise died. The gunmen now knew the Black Samurai was in the hangar, and they would go about doing what they had been hired to do—get him.

  Chapter IX

  SAND SPRANG AT TERRY, his powerful body moving with incredible speed toward the blond gunman.

  Quickly Terry rolled to a sitting position, trying to bring the rifle around while scrambling to his feet. It was too much to do at once, and the Black Samurai was too fast.

  Out of the darkness, a swift side kick powered by a leg with the strength of a speeding truck smashed into Terry’s face, crushing his jaw and driving him backward.

&nbs
p; As the gunman fell back unconscious, flashlight beams shot up from the floor like tall yellow plants, slicing through the darkness, moving quickly to pick up Terry.

  Diving through the air, Sand landed on the floor beside the unconscious gunman. Below him, he heard footsteps and voices. Quickly rolling to his right side and using his legs, he shoved Terry’s body first to the edge, and then over it and down to the concrete floor below. The loud thump when the body hit the concrete echoed throughout the huge hangar. It landed only feet away from the small white truck.

  More shouting. Footsteps moving around quickly.

  The flashlights shifted from where Sand lay face-down on the wooden catwalk, their beams dropping down to the dusty oil-stained floor below him.

  A man shouted, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” The voice was high-pitched with fear and anxiety, but Sand recognized it. The voice belonged to Cal, the phony cop from New York, and thinking it was Sand, he shouted for his men to shoot Terry.

  They did, their shotguns flaming and exploding in the darkness, echoing again and again throughout the huge hangar. The shells ripped Terry apart, his dead body bouncing up from the concrete floor and jerking around under the powerful shelling like a bloody rag doll on wires.

  Cal’s voice screeched over the shooting. “Kill that nigger! Kill him!”

  The back doors to the panel truck slammed open as the two shotgun-carrying guards inside leaped out at the sound of the shooting and Cal’s screaming.

  High above them and unnoticed, shotgun blasts covering any sound, the Black Samurai ran swiftly around the catwalk until he was behind the gunmen and looking down at their backs.

  All remaining five guards were now out in the open, their guns silent, the echo of the gunfire fading away, smoke rising from their heated shotguns. The harsh smell of cordite made two of the men cough.

  As they stood looking at the body now mostly in darkness, Sand opened the waterproof canvas bag he carried around his neck. Quickly he took out the rope, bending down and swiftly knotting it at the base of a rusted steel nail.

  Tossing the other end of the rope down into the darkness below, he eased himself over the side and began the dangerous downward journey to the floor below.

  If they turned and caught him dangling in midair, he was as dead as the man now lying below him in the darkness.

  Gripping the rope tightly with black-leather-gloved hands, he eased downward, holding his breath, his eyes on the backs of the five men below him.

  Cal was the leader, the man picked to head the killing detail, because he had seen the black man twice before. That was the reason Cal stood still, his heart pounding, his mouth dry.

  Two flashlights had been dropped on the dirty, oil-stained concrete floor. Their beams cut through the darkness, catching only the bloody jeans and tan work shoes of the dead man. Turning to Cal, the men waited for him to move or speak.

  Pressing his lips tightly together, Cal stared at the faded blue jeans and thighs now dark red with blood. That nigger had an effect on him like no other man, white, black, or in between. Something about him made Cal turn cold and shaky as hell.

  Clearing his throat, he said in a voice high with fear and nervousness, “Yeah, O.K., well, yeah, turn him over. What the hell you standing there for, turn him over, go on!”

  Laying his shotgun down, a short, fat guard in a red-and-black-checkered hunting jacket stepped forward in the darkness, and when he reached the body, stuck his foot under it, flipping it on his back.

  “Drag him out here, come on, goddamnit. That plane’s gonna take off soon!”

  Moving to the feet, the fat man gripped both heels, then dragged the body toward the other four.

  Peering from behind huge wooden packing cases, Sand watched them, his hands moving swiftly in the darkness.

  Opening the canvas sack hung around his neck, he pulled out the Colt .45 APC Commander, tucking it behind him in the small of his back. Next he clipped two smoke grenades to his belt. Then he pulled out the special gas mask he had requested from The Baron. The lenses made it special. They were infrared.

  He slipped the mask over his face, pulling the straps down behind his head, inhaling the sharp smell of rubber. Crouching, he adjusted the mask with one hand, while his other hand pulled the two flares from the dark-green canvas sack.

  In front of him, he heard Cal’s voice, “Flashlight! Somebody get me a goddamn flashlight!”

  As one of the guards turned and ran toward the packing case hiding Sand, the Black Samurai eased back away from the edge, his right hand behind him, fingers on the butt of the blue steel .45.

  Stopping, the guard bent over, picked up a flashlight, then ran back to Cal, now crouched beside the dead body.

  Without turning, Cal held his hand out for the flashlight.

  Behind the packing case, Sand touched the flame of a cigarette lighter to the fuse on both flares, now in his right hand. He had cut the fuses himself, timing them several times until he knew to the second how long it would be before they burned down.

  He counted to five, then stepped from behind the wooden packing case, his right arm pulled back as far as it could go.

  As he tossed the lighted flares through the darkness toward the five men, his left hand unclipped a smoke grenade from his belt.

  Then Cal’s voice screamed in the night. “It ain’t him! It ain’t him!”

  Hissing, both lighted flares exploded into blinding white flashes, simultaneously landing in the midst of the five men. They crouched, hands and arms in front of their eyes, desperately trying to shut out the sharp, eye-blinding effect of the brilliant flares. They were trapped by a thousand suns.

  Two men backed into each other, both falling down to the concrete floor. Still crouching, Cal spun around in a circle, shouting at the top of his voice, nothing from his mouth making any sense.

  Pulling the pin from the steel-gray smoke grenade, Sand counted to three, then rolled it along the floor, the grenade hissing and bouncing over the concrete beneath it.

  It exploded with a soft plop, the smoke rolling thick and white across the floor and up toward the ceiling.

  In seconds the smoke covered the five men, now coughing and stumbling in the smoke, the blinding whiteness, and the darkness. They wept and rubbed red, burning eyes.

  Crouching, Sand ran forward toward the small white truck, his legs pumping fast as he sped across the oil-stained floor.

  The smoke had begun to spread out to the truck and past it. Guards stumbled, fell, got to their hands and knees, and tried to stand. They coughed and shouted, and their eyes watered and burned as though someone were holding a match to each man’s eyelids.

  Moving swiftly into the smoke, Sand breathed evenly under the mask, his eyes gazing clearly through the dark-red-tinted lenses. Ahead of him, a man staggered sideways, both hands grasping his throat, his eyes shut tight against the painful blinding white glare of the flares.

  Without stopping, Sand tossed a rock-hard backfist into the man’s temple, dropping him to his knees. Hands clutched at the Black Samurai’s right sleeve, and he heard a man cough, his fingers digging hard into Sand’s biceps.

  Lifting his knee high, Sand drove the edge of his foot hard into the man’s instep, hearing the man cry out with sudden, unexpected pain.

  Sand kept moving toward the small white truck. Reaching it, he leaped inside, his quick eyes picking out the small white enamel freezer in a far corner. Bending low in the small truck, he ran to the back, opened the freezer, and jammed his hand into the chipped ice, gripping the ten-inch canister.

  Again, outside the truck, he stood looking at the men still coughing and blinded by the flares. Two men lay on the ground, one face-down, the other on his back, his legs jerking, as though he were having a bad dream.

  Jamming the canister into the canvas sack, Sand unclipped the last smoke grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and rolled it toward the men. Hissing, the grenade rolled until it touched the unconscious body of one of the guards. When it ge
ntly exploded, sending thick, white smoke mushrooming across the floor and toward the ceiling, Sand was standing near the front wheel of the small white truck, his Colt Commander in his hand.

  He pulled the trigger twice, each shot shattering a front tire, shredding the rubber and tearing a huge hole in each wheel. The blasts from the powerful handgun deafened his ears for seconds.

  Turning, he ran across the floor toward the open hangar door. His feet kicked up plumes of rainwater as he splashed through puddles, then out into the night toward the four parked trucks to his left.

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw the eye-blinding whiteness of the still-burning flares shining diamond bright through the thick white smoke.

  Stopping in front of the second truck from the end, he tucked the .45 in the small of his back, then gracefully pulled himself up onto the truck’s tailgate and climbed under its canvas.

  Gripping the canvas hard, he tore it loose, then dropped it down onto the wet ground below.

  Turning to face the back of the truck, he saw it. Just as he had instructed The Baron. A motorcycle, painted black, fully gassed, its front wheel pointing out toward the now opened back of the truck. He unhooked the tailgate, letting it drop, then set the long thick wooden plank in place.

  Reaching under the leather seat, he tore loose the taped keys, swiftly straddled the bike, and kicked the supporting stand free and clear. Inserting the key, he turned it sharply, his right foot coming down hard on the starter.

  The machine roared, the noise threatening to bend the walls of the truck. Gripping the handlebars, Sand pushed the machine into action, slowly rolling down the thick brown wooden plank.

  Reaching the concrete, he revved the machine, its roar coming back at him like some prehistoric animal, its powerful steel vibrating between his thighs.

  Wheeling to his left, he gathered speed and raced toward the small building where the Red Chinese journalist would go through a private customs clearance.

  He kept the gas mask on, using it in place of goggles. A quick glance at the luminous green dial of his wristwatch showed that he had thirteen minutes before the hit.