Dying for Revenge (46 page)

I waited.

Trade winds blew like a storm was coming; waves crashed to the shore the same way.

Lizards moved over rocks, darting into hiding places. Mosquitoes buzzed by my head.

I listened.

Peace lived inside silence.

So did terror.

Thoughts of the kid and Catherine clung to me, that note the ultimate horror.

There was no answer on their phone. The cameras were dark, all twelve of them.

X. Y. Z.

Had to remain focused. Had to get through this moment in order to deal with the next.

Despite all that had happened, those letters clung to my mind.

They had to be okay. Nothing could happen to them.

If something did happen to them I would disintegrate where I stood.

Images of them dead came to me. I rubbed my eyes, shook those thoughts away.

I focused. I listened. I waited.

We’d be safe here. We’d have to leave before sunrise. Get to St. John’s. Find clothing. Get in contact with Konstantin, find a safe house, doctor my wounds, and get off the island.

Alvin White could be watching over the kid and Catherine by then.

Needed to try to reach him again. Needed to dig in my pocket and take out my iPhone.

That was what I was thinking when I heard grunts and yells coming from the compound.

Silence had been shattered.

I took off running, angry because I had been looking out at the sea, anticipating my enemy.

But my enemy was there, had probably crossed the waters when we were in the kitchen.

Their second attack was under way.

The back doors flew open so hard the heavy wood almost left the hinges.

I saw one coming after me. He came out of the kitchen at top speed, his hat leaving his head.

 

He charged at me like an attack dog.

Without hesitating, I pulled out a knife I had taken from the kitchen and charged at him, dropped my backpack from my wounded shoulder and moved toward my aggressor. What I saw when he was right up on me startled me. His face was melting. Hawks had gotten to him. His hands were trying to pull away what Hawks had thrown in his face, the soup made of broken glass, poisonous fruit, boiling water, and Susie’s Hot Sauce. And honey. He wasn’t running at me. He was fleeing, trying to get away from the woman who had flipped the script on his attack. He ran toward me pulling goo from his face, but boiled honey took away the skin, made skin peel away like the jacket on an overcooked potato. The hot sauce had soaked into his raw wounds, exacerbating the pain. Whatever damage the honey didn’t do, the hot sauce and shards of glass picked up the slack. He ran blind, tried to run faster than the speed of his agony, that goo seeping inside his mouth. When he tried to scream, it scorched and peeled his tongue the same way his flesh had been scorched and peeled, silenced his muffled yell.

The big man’s frantic run ended when his panic took him into the deep end of the infinity pool, water splashing high and wide as the sting from the chlorine added torment to his open wounds. Unless he could drink a lot of water, that pool would be his final resting place.

I had to get inside, had to get to Hawks.

But I looked up and there he was, blocking my path.

The man with the red hair. A knife in his hand.

 

He came at me hard and fast, with fury and a vengeance.

In the blink of an eye Konstantin’s teaching played in my mind.

The man with the red hair tried to stab me at short range and I twisted, tried a scissor strike, used my footwork to get out of the way, barely made it out of stabbing range. I tried to slap his wrists and force him to drop his weapon. The scissor strike didn’t work. He danced, bobbed, and weaved, feinted like he was about to charge at me in order to throw me off, became Muhammad Ali with a blade, floated like a butterfly, keeping me on the defensive until the business end of his knife could become a killer bee.

I couldn’t run. Never turn your back on a knife.

The best I could do was control how I got cut. Or where I would be stabbed.

I tried to get in a better position but the agile son of a bitch moved around me like he was at a motherfucking bullfight, made it hard for me to figure out his style, his feints swift and unbalancing, his movements making me think he had learned to knife-fight in the favelas above Rio de Janeiro.

He danced.

I danced.

He tried to throw sand in my face, blind me before he charged, or get me to blind myself to his charge by raising my arm. It worked, but when he bolted at me like he was an American football player, the sand wasn’t like Astroturf and he lost his footing, my own footing not good enough to take advantage of the moment. My breathing accelerated. My heartbeat did the same. If he hadn’t slipped, if the ground hadn’t been in my favor, I would’ve been writhing in the sand, a knife in my gut or chest, staring up at the constellations as I created a sea of blood.

He moved with arrogance and patience.

I moved like Death was near and time wasn’t on my side.

The crashing was the final music one of us would hear, a beautiful death knell.

He came at me, stuck his hand out, and I brought up the steak knife I had, a blade he hadn’t seen, caught him off guard, made contact with his right forearm, opened his skin up, tried to cut him down to the bone. He backed away, shocked by my speed, shocked to see I had a weapon, stunned by the pain.

I nodded at the red-haired son of a bitch.

That slowed him down but didn’t stop him.

He danced a brand-new dance, one with less arrogance and swagger.

Blood dripped down his knife hand, moistened his palm, and compromised the grip he had on his blade. His deep frown told me he wasn’t used to being the one on the business end of a sharp blade.

Again he stabbed at me, threw a series of jabs with his knife leading the way. I stumbled; the sand caused my foot to slide. I tried to recover my balance. The pain in my left arm forced me to use my right hand to get back on my feet. And when I did, I lost my grip on my blade, lost it in the sand. He saw that I was at a disadvantage and seized the moment, came at me like he was ready to put this contract to bed, sand flying with his every step.

He lunged at my heart.

I stepped to the outside of the blade, moved outside the line of fire, grabbed his bloodied wrist with my left hand, my weak hand, and threw a blow to his face with my right fist. I didn’t have the pivot I needed, didn’t have the footing I desired to throw a knockout blow, but I connected with his chin just the same. Made him stumble in the sand. I went with him as he stumbled, threw blow after blow. He wouldn’t let go of his blade. I twisted and kicked him in his gut. Not a deep kick, but I hit my target.

That forced him to drop his knife, a knife covered with his blood, and stagger away.

My blade was a few steps away.

Hawks was forever away from where I was.

Before I could get to my weapon he had charged me, grabbed me as he hit me hard, lifted me up, both of us airborne, crashing where the sea licked the sand. We hit the ground swinging, fighting, his right arm bleeding all over me, my left arm wounded, traded blow after blow after motherfucking blow as the sea crashed down on our fight. We battled in the waves, seawater burning my eyes, salty water burning my wounds, battled from the sea back to shore, the battle taking us away from the knives we’d had, moving us closer to a jetty made of huge rocks, our rage being upstaged by the roar of the sea.

He had a grip on my weakened shoulder, flipped me. From the ground I managed to gut-kick him. He staggered away. By the time he had found his footing, I was up on one knee.

We faced each other, my left arm numb with pain.

That was when I saw something in his eyes, something I didn’t expect to see.

In between a frown and a grimace, I offered him the same professional admiration. He had tenacity, if nothing else. Then the moment of praise was over and we were back at war. A war that would not end in a peace agreement because he was just a soldier, a soldier sent on someone else’s mission of hate, a man who was given a paycheck and sent to do someone else’s bidding. He was a good soldier, but in the end he was just a man following somebody else’s orders, not understanding that this fight was one that never should’ve happened, that I was no threat to the woman who had sent him.

This war was unnecessary. But this war was a war.

I wasn’t ready. But I had to fight for my life or get buried in the sand.

I went after him full tilt, turned the one attacking me into the one being attacked, his offense switching to defense when the prey became predator, my relentless strikes nonstop and ruthless.

There was no referee. No corner man to throw in the towel.

All about the last man standing. There was only one way for this battle to end.

The last man breathing would be the winner.

My fighting had no one style, but had all styles mixed in the blow: Brazilian jujitsu, tae kwon do, Israeli martial arts, boxing, fight skills accumulated traveling the world; I switched styles whenever he caught on, making it hard for him to defend himself, making it hard for him to counter a fighting style he didn’t know or wasn’t ready for. But he was good, kept me from getting a clear shot, kept me from disabling him, forced me to use more energy than I had to spare. I got in close, grabbed his head, tried to get a knee deep inside his groin, but he twisted, my knee not finding its target. We wrestled, grappled, went down into the sand. His hand dug into the sand. My eyes closed as he threw a fistful of it across my face. A blow followed, hit my chin, dazed me, but I didn’t stop fighting and threw blows to keep him away from me, had to fight him off me, hit him until I felt my hand going numb, until the wound in my left shoulder became crippling, until a sharp pain caused me to slow down. His foot found my inner thigh, an attempted groin shot that missed its bull’s-eye by at least four inches, its impact good enough to make me experience a brand-new misery, one that almost matched the one in my shoulder.

His knee found my ribs. I bent with the weight from the pain.

He tried to pull me down into the sand, yanked me like he wanted to shove me facedown, use those granules to fill my mouth and lungs and suffocate me, but I struggled, now on the defense, the last place I wanted to be. He managed to get his arm around my head, his grip powerful as he tried to claw out my eye sockets with his other hand, but I gave him blows that went deep into his ribs and lungs as I struggled and slipped away, his fingernails raking across my face, burning my skin with a new injury. I went after that redheaded son of a bitch, my foot finding the edges of his gut, not a solid kick, not as deep a kick as I had wanted it to be, but enough to make him lose his footing and stagger in the white sands.

He went down on one knee, then struggled back to his feet, didn’t come right at me. He was winded. Before he could regroup and chamber his blows, I was on him, in pain, grimacing, throwing punch after punch, each blow hurting me as much as it hurt him, didn’t want him to be able to catch half a breath. He was off balance, stunned, desperate, panting, trying to find his footing, the grimace on his face, the fear in his eyes, telling me he was weakening, the pain slowing him down.

That didn’t stop that motherfucker. The pain enhanced him if anything.

Just like that he came back at me, hooks and jabs so fast each blow was a blur.

He was a good fighter. Not intelligent, but strong and deadly. More Tyson than De La Hoya. But unlike Tyson, the fighter in front of me was a man who refused to quit no matter what.

The pains I felt were worse than death.

There was a pause. Like we were between rounds.

My chest ached. Needed to catch my breath. Didn’t have the luxury of time.

In my mind I was back in London. This was the battle I had been denied.

The face of the red-haired man vanished, became the face of a man with a broken nose.

I was getting my revenge against the man who had killed me.

I went after him again, each blow I delivered closer to demolishing him.

He tried to eclipse my ferociousness but stayed in close, my turn to gouge his motherfucking eyes. Struck with the palm of my hand, hit him hard enough to slam his head back, followed up with ax hand blows, and when he tried to come back at me I delivered a shin kick, articulated my hips the best I could, fought to overcome my own pain and aches to get the angle and power I needed to strike the nerve in his thigh. He did his best to slow my attack, but my aggressiveness couldn’t be overpowered.

Neither could his.

He had gotten his second wind; his speed and energy moved back into the red zone. He had me on the defensive; I tried to bob and weave, did my best to block an onslaught of blows, the sand not made for quick movements, making me feel stuck where I was; my foot slid when I tried to get firm footing, left me with the choice of going down or catching myself.

While I struggled for balance he put a blow in my wounded shoulder, a blow that made me want to collapse and howl out in pain. The blows kept landing on that one spot, on my weakness. He beat my bloodied shoulder until I went down on one knee, my other hand gripping the sand like I was trying to hold on to the earth. It was my turn to growl and throw sand. My turn to make him look away. And in that moment I staggered after him, my pain great, but not as great as my fury. With my good hand I threw a punch that pounded his face and bloodied his nose. He staggered away, blinded by my blow.