Killer of Killers (30 page)

Trent popped up and grabbed the guns, one in
each hand. The shooters tried to pull them back but couldn’t free
them from his iron grip. They tried again, but Trent had braced his
lower body against the wall, and his grip held fast. Then, with a
tremendous effort, accompanied by an involuntary roar, he twisted
each of his hands up and outward, forcing his foes to release the
weapons lest their wrists snap.

Simultaneously disarmed, the two men stepped
back in astonishment. Trent used the moment to improve the odds.
With eyes fixed on the dual behemoths, he stepped on the neck of
the man at his feet and pushed the lateral edge of his shoe deep
into his fleshy throat. The move crushed the man’s trachea but also
severed the mylohyoid nerve, which caused his heavy legs to kick
above the bricks in an involuntary reflex.

Seeing this, the other men glared at Trent
who scowled with a malice he had never known. He changed his scowl
to a smile, but Trent didn’t mean it to be pleasant. It was time to
kill, and nothing on earth was going to stop him. The massed
spectators circling the fight stayed silent. Trent wished they
would leave, because what he had in mind wasn’t going to be
pretty.

Holding the pistols, one in each hand, Trent
pumped them over his head, startling the suited bruisers backward.
Then he lowered his arms and flung the guns high into the sky. They
soared with the clouds and vanished over the restaurant’s roof to
his back.

As one, the crowd erupted into cheers. They
had become an audience, and clearly they were rooting for Trent.
The voice from before shouted, “That’s one down, mofos, who’s
next?”

The black-garbed duo looked at each other and
uttered words in a foreign language. They reached into their coats
and pulled out glossy black objects. In a microsecond, chrome
blades appeared.

Trent leaped over the wall and landed
perilously within reach of their steel. Before they could strike,
he performed a sudden back flip, each foot contacting a blade,
knocking both knives into the air. In mid-flip, he launched himself
with his arms from the top of the wall and back into the patio. The
stilettos returned to the earth, and Trent caught them by the
handles, one in each of his hands.

The acrobatic stunt seemed too much for the
crowd. People hooted and hollered as if believing movie cameras
were hidden amongst them.

While the burly men stared in disbelief,
Trent held both knives by the blades in a single hand and hurled
them together between their surprised heads. An impact sounded, and
they turned around. Trent had put both of their knives into the
center of the ‘O’ on the STOP sign across the street.

A third time the audience raved in a
collective and voluminous applause. People pointed and gawked,
pumping fists in the air and slapping high fives. Others produced
cell phones and iPods to record the brazen event.

The suited giants turned once more to Trent,
and again they spoke their foreign tongue. As though deciding their
combined strength was enough to overwhelm him, they stepped up and
lunged over the wall.

Trent snared the collar of the man to his
right and drove his head into the pavement. But the other landed on
top of Trent and began scoring powerful punches. Trent deflected
ensuing blows with an arm sweep and heaved the puncher from his
chest with a mighty thrust. Before the man’s momentum ceased, Trent
was upright. He tossed a glance to the one whose head he bashed
and, satisfied by his sluggish movement, focused on the other who
was staggering to his feet. Just as he turned around, Trent
launched his own flurry of blows, sending him backpedalling in a
flimsy effort to defend himself.

Trent was relentless. He put his full weight
into every punch—right, left, right, left—a non-stop barrage. Each
blow landed on either side of the man’s face, causing his swarthy
head to swivel—right, left, right, left—while his thick arms
flopped and flailed. Trent’s combination of speed and power, along
with the sheer number of strikes, kept his foe off-balance and
dazzled the audience. They cheered and whistled as if perceiving
him the underdog, defying the odds and representing them all.

But Trent no longer heeded the audience. He
had attained a zone in which he’d never been. His state of mind had
transcended the fighting ring of his past. A battlefield was the
only place for him now. While his unyielding volley kept the brute
at bay, he sensed the other one rise. Trent knew he had to put this
one down. He performed a classic three sixty-jump kick, pelting the
giant off of his feet and onto his back amidst the busted platters
and overturned chairs. Then, from a running start, he delivered a
crowd pleaser by leaping high into the air, aiming three concurrent
strikes.

Just before contact, the sprawled titan
looked up in amazement, and Trent perceived the man’s resignation
to defeat. It didn’t save him. Trent’s left fist impacted the nasal
bone, his right fist crushed the man’s throat, and his knee
impacted the solar plexus, collapsing the omental bursa through the
splenic artery. The amazed expression became a gruesome mask of
death.

Trent sprang up and faced his final opponent.
The crowd again burst into an apex of applause. It reminded Trent
of his bouts in the Japanese underworld. The memories of sounds,
smells, and feelings he thought he would never relive came upon him
in a dazzling rush of sensations.

The remaining giant scanned the courtyard. He
viewed his lifeless ally at the base of bricks, and the other one
dead at Trent’s feet. Blood from a split forehead coursed down his
brow and dripped off the ridge of his chin.

From the crowd, the same voice hollered,
“That’s two down, mofo. And you’re next!”

The swarthy brute looked again to the bricks
and spotted his .45 caliber resting at its base. He started for it,
but he was a three hundred, sixty-pound sloth. Before he reached
it, Trent closed the distance between them with a dash across the
patio. A hard shoulder-tackle sent them toppling over the wall and
onto the sidewalk.

Grappling on the pavement, the black-haired
goliath managed to get his left hand on Trent’s throat, and
climbing to his knees, launched a blow with his right. Trent
parried the blow and speedily pulled the huge mitt from his neck,
twisting it to his left. He turned it hard to his right and then
back to his left, locking the man’s elbow to the sky.

The man screamed in pain, but Trent wasn’t
finished. He pummeled the joint with his strongest hammer strike. A
loud
crack
sounded over the patio and echoed down the
street. The man howled in agony and, seeing his arm bent in the
wrong direction, stopped resisting.

The crowd reacted to the ugly scene with a
chorus of “Ohs!” Many people turned their heads, appearing aghast
and unable to look at the broken appendage positioned so
unnaturally.

Trent was in no mood for mercy. Still
kneeling, he gripped the man’s lower face with both of his hands on
either side of the jaw. He pressed his fingers just under the ears,
with his thumbs pushed up and into the anterior belly of the
digastricus.
“Who sent you?”
he snarled.
“Who sent
you?”

The man wouldn’t or couldn’t answer as Trent
applied the grip steadily stronger until it penetrated the
mylohyoid muscle and severed the mandibular nerves. At the same
time, the pressure from Trent’s fingers broke the styloid process
bones, causing them to slice through the carotid arteries. The
resulting hemorrhage was instantly fatal, and the bruiser fell limp
to the street.

Trent stood up with adrenaline still pounding
his veins, after which the crowd exploded into its loudest ovation
yet. The voice from the audience shouted again, “And that’s
three!
Awesome, man, awesome. Blood shoulda said who
sent
him.”

Pivoting slowly, Trent took in the adulation
as people gathered around, patting him on the back, congratulating
his victory against three colossal villains. It occurred to him,
for only a moment, it used to be like this in Japan.

Then his state of mind abated, and reality
set in, forcing Trent to assess the situation. More people
approached, and many of them were taking pictures with their cell
phone cameras, as several others squirmed to pose next to him.

Remembering the reckless shooting, Trent
looked around. “Is anyone hurt?” No one seemed to have been hit.
“Samantha!” he shouted. He turned his head and shouted again,
“Samantha!”
Where did she go?

Trent broke away from his admirers and
returned to where his table had been. There was only debris and
broken furniture now. “Did anyone see where Samantha went?” The
elated crowd did not seem to understand his angst.
“Samantha!”
he shouted louder still.

The tall waiter called out from within the
building, “Over here.”

Trent whirled around and raced to the
entrance. “Where’s Samantha? Is she all right?” He noticed the
expression on the boy’s face, and his heart collapsed. “What’s the
matter?” he demanded. “Where’s Samantha?”

“We called nine-one-one,” the waiter told
him. “They should be here any minute.”

“Why? Where
is
she?”

“She came in while you were fighting,” the
boy explained. “She was shot. I helped her into our break
room.”

Trent rushed inside. Samantha was lying on a
cot with makeshift bandages pressed on top of her abdomen. Two
waitresses attended her. As he neared, they backed away and joined
their co-workers wedged in the doorway.

Samantha opened her eyes and smiled. She
asked, “Did you get them?”

“Yeah, I got them.”

“I wanted to help you, but I got shot.”
Samantha’s voice barely exceeded a whisper. “I made it into the
restaurant, and he helped me.” She cast her gaze at the waiter in
the doorway. “His name is David. He’s really nice.”

Trent wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt, but
he knew a bullet to the belly could be fatal. He turned to the
workers. “When is the ambulance getting here? What’s taking them so
long?”

David replied, “They should be here any
minute. It’s what they said.”

Trent turned back to Samantha. “Don’t worry.
You’ll be all right.”

“I don’t think so, Trent. I’m scared.” Her
breathing became shallow.

“No, hang on. You’ll pull through this. Hang
on.” It crossed Trent’s mind how he saved Shalom’s bodyguard, but
this bullet penetrated the abdominal cavity. He could only hope and
pray the ambulance would arrive in time. His hopes sank when the
waitresses at the door let their tears fall. Tears were falling
from David’s eyes, also—even more than from the women. “Samantha,
listen to me, you’ve got to hang on. The medics will be here any
minute.”

The smile returned to Samantha’s face. “You
know how I didn’t want to grow old? Looks like I’ll get my
wish.”

“Don’t talk like that. You’ll grow old. We’ll
grow old together.”

“Promise me you
won’t
grow old,
Trent.” Samantha’s voice was fading. “Promise me...” Then her
eyelids sealed.

“
No!”
Trent shouted. “Don’t die.
Please, Samantha, don’t die!” His eyes welled and his tears
spilled. “Samantha, please... Please, don’t die. Please...” Choked
by his tears, Trent’s voice trailed away. He put his head against
Samantha’s shoulder and left it there until his tears were no
more.

When he raised his head again, Trent knew
better than to speak another word. For him, reality suspended—until
someone from outside the room shouted, “Hey, the cops are
here!”

Trent looked at Samantha and kissed her on
the cheek. He took both of her hands and placed them together on
top of her stomach. He noticed her purse on the floor next to the
cot and snapped it open. From its interior, he extracted her cell
phone and her police wallet, but then he saw the black Eternity
case. On an impulse, he took it, also, and put the items into his
pockets. When Trent faced the weeping servers in the doorway, he
saw scores of people crowded behind them. They were silent, but
many contributed tears of their own.

Trent approached David but couldn’t bring
himself to say anything. Seeing the paper rose pinned to the boy’s
vest, he reached out and pulled it free. He returned to Samantha
and propped it in her hands. Then he walked through the doorway.
Though packed shoulder to shoulder, the observers parted in unison,
forming a path to the exit in the restaurant’s rear.

Trent recalled the crowd that parted before
him in Japan. He recalled the hatred and disapproval. He remembered
the sneers and the insults directed at him and his country. But the
diverse group before him expressed something different. It was
something he could appreciate. It was genuine love from complete
strangers. This was the way it used to be. Trent’s heart swelled.
By God,
he was proud to be an American
.

Trent turned to his left, and there, hanging
on the wall—Old Glory. He straightened his back, put his hand over
his chest, and fixed his gaze on the red, white, and blue.
Subsequently, those around him looked at the object of his
attention. They too stood straight and put their hands over their
chests.

Trent hadn’t sung a song in all the years he
lived in Japan, but now the words and the melody flowed from his
soul. “O, oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light...”

One by one, line by line, another man or
woman joined in until the entire crowd sang along with every ounce
of passion demonstrated by Trent.

“What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight’s
last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the
perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly
streaming.”

Policemen came to the door, but the sardined
singers allowed no room for even one of them to squeeze through.
None dared force their way in. The officers stood straight and
waited out the balance of the anthem. Some even removed their hats
and accompanied. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in
air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still
there.”