Kage (36 page)

his way through his victims. He reared back to get more force

into one of his knee attacks, and I used the gap as well as his

momentum to turn him, pushing with the force of his windup.

It was enough to create the opening I sought, and I slipped

around behind his back.

I circled his waist with my legs and managed to get him in a

choke hold. It was a variant of
hadaka-jime
: nothing fancy, but

effective. You put your left forearm across the victim’s throat,

push the head forward with the right arm, and pull back with

the left. El Carnicero knew he was in trouble; he bucked and

slammed me into the arroyo floor, trying to break the hold.

I wasn’t letting go. He pounded me back onto the rocks and

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my breath left me, returning only in a feeble, ragged flow. He

sensed that he had hurt me, and writhed to escape the hold,

swinging back with furious elbow jabs. But he didn’t know

enough to drop his jaw down to blunt the choke. If I could

hold on long enough…

My ears were ringing and I was totally focused on the goal

of choking him to death. But, for a moment, the outside world

broke in and I sensed that the firefight above us was slackening.

Time was short.

I finally got it right. He arched his back in panic. I heard

the juttering breath just before he blacked out. His body went

limp.

Finish it.
I knew how: a slight readjustment of the arms to

align force on the vertebrae, set up the angles, then a quick,

hard jerk.

Yamashita would do it.
After all, he had shown me the

technique.

But I’m not Yamashita.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn’t do it, not like this. Not

with him unconscious and at my mercy.

I lay there for a minute, sensing new voices and sounds. The

shooting had grown sporadic. I needed to get my brain work-

ing again, get working on a plan.
What now?

Then someone tossed a flash-bang grenade in the ditch with

us and the world was filled with a roaring flash, a paralyzing

wave of light and noise designed to overload the neural circuits.

I was laying there stunned, mouth open, gaping at the dark-

ening sky, when a figure loomed over me. His skin was dark

and weathered, the corners of his eyes crinkled with lines from

years in the sun. He was wearing desert fatigues and pointing a

CAR-15 in my direction.

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He looked at the two of us. “You a bad guy or a good guy?”

he asked. His English had the unique inflection of a Native

American.

I had to swallow a few times. “Good guy,” I croaked.

He nodded, rolled El Carnicero off me and extended a

hand. Behind him, other men looking much like he did were

checking out the bodies of the gang members in the arroyo.

He hauled me to my feet. I was a bit shaky and my thighs

burned. I bent over, hands on my knees and gagged. I spit into

the dust. The man waited patiently until I had straightened

up. He gestured at the unconscious gang leader on the ground.

“Him?”

“Bad guy.”

He turned from me for a moment to scan the clearing. He

had a radio handset clipped to his harness and he spoke into it.

It gabbled back and he nodded.

“That your friend upslope with the sniper rifle?”

Steve.
I had completely forgotten him. I nodded.

“He’s OK,” he told me. “One of my men is bringing him

down.”

A lean, younger man walked toward us along the rim of the

arroyo. He was dressed in the same desert wear as the others,

but was no Indian. He stopped and looked down at us.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Burke,” I stammered.

He nodded as if mentally ticking a point off some list. Then

he grunted, shifting mental gears. “Jackson, can you have your

people work the perimeter in case some of these characters got

away into the bush? Use the night vision gear.”

The Indian named Jackson shrugged. “Won’t help much in

cutting sign. But it’s sandy enough here. Should be no problem.”

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“Night’s coming on. Watch for rattlers.”

Jackson bridled at that. “We know our job, and we know

our land.”

The man above us pursed his lips for a minute then nod-

ded. “Point taken,” he said, and then asked who was lying at

our feet. When I told him, he gave a low whistle.

“El Carnicero. The Butcher, huh? So how’d he end up like

this?”

“I choked him out,” I said.

“You tussled with this guy?” the man asked.

“He has it in for me,” I explained. It was simplistic and

lame, but only too true.

“Yeah, but you…” I was obviously not looking too impres-

sive. Then he continued. “Well, it’s a shame you didn’t kill him.

Guy like this has got a long rap sheet and plenty of wants and

warrants. He’ll do time, for sure, but it’s not gonna faze him,

ya know? He’ll run the gang from inside, recruit some new

members…” He snorted in amusement. “Get some new tats,

build on his legend.” He squinted down at me. “I wouldn’t

want to be someone he had it in for, though.” His voice had a

thoughtful tone.

A voice called and he turned toward the sound, waved, and

then looked down at us from his place on the lip of the arroyo.

“Jackson, why don’t you take Dr. Burke here over to the other

side of the clearing? We got a medic who can clean him up and

check for wounds.” I realized that blood was caking in my left

eye, pulling the lid down, and gluing it shut. “Then get your

men out along the perimeter to look for strays. We need to

police the area and arrange for a dust-off. We don’t want our

guest here wandering around—one more loose end, ya know?”

He winked at me as we climbed up and moved past him.

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Kage

“What about him?” Jackson said, gesturing at El Carnicero.

“I got it,” the young man said.

“What’s that mean? You want him secured or what?”

The lean face clouded. “Jackson, you people are here in a

support capacity. I’m calling the shots. Just get the men out

into the brush like I told you.”

I could sense the older man’s resentment swirl up for a

moment. The he took a breath, sighed, and shrugged his shoul-

ders. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you cleaned up.”

There were men in desert camo everywhere checking the

bodies that were humped in random spots around the clearing.

Voices crackled over radios. A medic had set up near the adobe

building and was swabbing a wound on a man who leaned,

grimacing, against the wall.

But my thoughts were still in the arroyo. “What’s going

on?” I hissed to Jackson.

Jackson held my upper arm and propelled me forward. His

grip was gentle, but it was firm. “Not your worry. Not mine

either.”

“Whattaya mean? The Butcher— we’ve got to make sure

that he doesn’t get away.” I turned, arching my neck to try to

see what was happening. But Jackson prevented me from get-

ting a good look.

“You just keep moving, mister,” he advised. “Nothing you

want to see back there.” His voice sounded sad and resigned,

but calm.

The desert was hushed with the arrival of twilight, a quiet

pause before the true dark arrived. It was a false tranquility; in

the desert, darkness and danger were linked together. Night-

time was when the predators ruled.

The sound of the muffled shot from the arroyo, the metallic

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clink of an automatic pistol’s slide was unmistakable. After a

few seconds, the lean man strode past us, holstering his pistol

and giving orders. The man named Jackson set his face like

stone and propelled me away.

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22

Departures

The hangar was a vast cavern. Helicopters slumbered in the

shadows like immense prehistoric insects. They had dumped us

here after the dust off. Steve Hasegawa and I sat in a small, par-

titioned office with metal chairs and too much paperwork on

the desk. There was a small lamp that gave little real light but

seemed to feed the shadows. We slumped in the chairs while

Jackson’s men and the other team bustled around in the dim

hangar.

“Well,” Steve told me quietly, “that was something.”

“You ever see anything like it?”

He thought for a moment, reliving memories. “Not

stateside.”

“Me neither. Who are these guys?”

Steve got up and peered out a window into the hangar

proper, cautiously moving the blinds with his fingers to spy on

the goings on.

“The guys who picked me up on the hill are part of some

all-Indian team of trackers—Jackson’s team. They work for the

Border Patrol on smuggling interdiction.”

“What about the other guys?”

He sat back down, closing his eyes, and rubbing his face with

both hands. “I don’t know who they are. But I know the type.

Jackson’s guys are trackers. These other people are hunters.”

“What’s the difference?” I said.

He took his hands away from his face and looked at me

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like I was a simpleton. “Trackers follow things. Hunters follow

things to kill them.”

In the stillness of that room, I could once again hear the

muffled report of the shot and the clank of the pistol receiver as

the lean man had finished El Carnicero in that arroyo.

We both sat in silence for a time.

“Did you ever actually get a shot off with that rifle?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“Are you sorry you didn’t?”

“Me? No. I figured I was there for insurance…”

I nodded. “That part at least worked out. When you lit

them up with the laser, it gave me a little more time to negoti-

ate. I was worried that they were going to dispense with all

small talk and just shoot me.”

“As it turns out, there was lots of shooting anyway, Burke.”

I said nothing, and Steve continued. “Those Indians snuck

up on me pretty good, I gotta give ‘em that.”

“The red man is notoriously stealthy,” I said. For a moment,

I got a mental image of my brother Micky and Art. It was the

kind of comment either one might make. I wondered what

it would be like with them when I returned. I hadn’t actually

pulled the trigger on the weapon that killed El Carnicero, but

we were all complicit.

Steve broke in on my thoughts. “I think the politically cor-

rect phrase is Native American. They got the drop on me good

and ghosted me down the hill just as hell broke loose.”

The door opened and the lean man with the pistol entered.

He grimaced at the cluttered desk and slapped a new folder on

the pile of papers that was already there. He leaned one hip

against the desktop, crossed his arms, and stared at us.

“Gentlemen,” he said without preamble, “you managed,

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Kage

through ways that we need not detail, to get yourself into the

middle of a classified operation that was targeting some high-

profile border smugglers. How you are still alive is anyone’s

guess, and your good fortune.”

“I can explain,” I began.

The man shook his head. “Dr. Burke, when I said that we

need not go into any detail on your involvement, I mean that

we don’t need to go into any detail.” The words were spat out

with emphasis. “Am I clear? It is buried so deep that, officially,

it doesn’t even exist.”

He addressed Steve Hasegawa. “I ran a check on you. You

were in the 75th. You know the drill.”

Steve nodded. His voice sounded tired. “We were never

there.”

“What about Daley?” I asked. I had glimpsed him in the

gloom of the site of the desert shoot-out, so I knew he had sur-

vived. But he hadn’t been in the chopper with us.

“Dr. Burke,” the lean man said, “Daley is another detail we

don’t need to discuss. His involvement is completely off the

record.”

I looked from one man to the other. “So,” I said cautiously,

“we’re off the hook?”

The lean man removed some documents from his folder.

“The Patriot Act outlines any number of situations where citi-

zens are compelled, under force of law, to maintain absolute

silence about anything they may or may not have seen in the

course of classified security operations, foreign…” he paused

for emphasis, “… or domestic.

“I’ll need each of you to sign this acknowledgment form,

binding you not to reveal any of the events you witnessed, under

pain of prosecution.” He clicked a pen. We signed. When it was

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over he looked us up and down.

“Hasegawa, there’s a ride waiting to take you home. Burke,

you’re going to be escorted to the civilian side of the airport

and put on the next available flight to New York.” He put this

folder under his arm, gave us one last look, and disappeared

into the hangar.