Girl Takes Up Her Sword (16 page)

“They’re dead. Kim and his men. I killed them all.”

Connie looked up at her

“All of them?”

Emily nodded.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

“Kim’s still breathing,” Danny called out.

With one arm under her waist, the other behind her neck, and one loud groan, she managed to pull Connie up and help her into the next room. Ethan leaned against one wall grumbling, rubbing the back of his neck and head. Emily crouched down beside Kim to look in his eyes. He was fading fast, blood oozing from his neck and chest, bubbling from his mouth.

“Why didn’t you just shoot me?” she asked.

“Why didn’t you care?” he managed to gasp out.

“Jay, what did you do it for?” Connie demanded, sounding for all the world like a betrayed lover. He gathered himself to respond.

“The moment you told me who you were,” he said to Emily, “I knew I was a dead man. At least now my family might be safe.” He turned to Connie and smiled sadly. “Please, forgive me.” Then he was gone.

Emily looked at Connie. Each knew the other was again thinking only one word: Walker. Could he have been behind it all? Emily wanted to meditate on the significance of their surmise. But Connie called her back to more urgent business.

“We’ve got to clean this up. And you’ve got blood all over you, sweetheart. Wash up in the kitchen, but try not to touch anything. Ethan, pull one of the cars around to the side door. The keys must be in one of their pockets. We’ll load them into the trunk. What are we gonna do about all this blood?” she asked with a sigh. “You and Danny, take the other car and get out of here. Think you can find the Air Force base on a map?”

Emily nodded once more and picked up her sword to wipe the blood from the blade. Danny followed her into the kitchen and helped her wash flecks of blood from her face and hands.

“Crap, it’s all over Connie’s jacket. Probably in my hair, too.”

“I can’t believe you brought that thing,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to change the subject.

When she looked at him this time, it wasn’t a moral judgment she saw in his face. It was relief.

“What tipped you off about that guy,” he asked.

“Nothing. I had no idea. I only had the sword with me from earlier, you know, in case the gangsters made trouble. You didn’t think I’d take you there completely unarmed, did you.”

“No, I guess not,” he replied. “I’m just glad you had it with you now.”

“I’m not,” she said.

“No, Em. Ethan was right. Those guys weren’t gonna let us live. You had no choice.”

She said nothing, her face full of pain.

“What, did you really want him to kill you? That’s what he meant, isn’t it?”

“That’s not it at all. I meant I’m not glad I had to kill those guys. I hate it. I didn’t want to die, and I certainly didn’t want any of you to get hurt. But killing them like that, it’s disgusting. I don’t want to carry that around with me. It’s not just the memory of their faces. The whole scene, every move and every contingency, it all flashed through my mind beforehand. I saw myself doing it all in advance. It’s part of me now, inside me. It’s who I am. I don’t want to be that person.”

For just an instant, she considered telling him about the little voice that urged her to kill them all. But then she thought better of it. Perhaps that was a secret she would never share with anyone.

The flight to Osaka was bumpy, uncomfortable and uneventful. The airmen on the C-130 didn’t know what to make of their passengers. Obviously, someone with a lot of clout at Defense, and probably State, too, had pulled some serious strings to get a couple of kids on a military plane, and to get them a last minute landing slot at Kansai Airport.

Ethan and Connie eventually caught up with them, sitting by themselves in the quiet end of a nearly empty terminal, looking a little the worse for wear. On the flight home, Connie tried to console Emily. She just wanted to close her eyes, and lay her head in Connie’s lap. But what would her eyes show her if they closed? And Kim, what had he intended? He could have killed her easily. Why didn’t he? He understood her in that moment. She really didn’t care if he killed her right then.

Connie spun out a story of how Walker would have forced Kim’s betrayal by threatening to kill his family. In the end, Kim must have concluded he would be killed no matter what he did. But if he died trying to comply, maybe Walker would leave his family alone. It must have been an anxious calculation on his part.

And what had Walker actually wanted? There was no sign of him at the airport, or anywhere else along their trip. What if he never meant to grab her at all? Could the whole point have been to force her to kill Kim, to make her experience the same bloodlust he felt in his cavernous soul? Had he succeeded? Emily shivered at the thought.

Back to Top

Chapter
20

A Birthday Party

“I’m not cut out for this, Sensei.”

Sitting in the dojo was a relief, no one else there with them. The earlier part of the day in school had been a desultory affair. Danny seemed distant, perhaps only now feeling the full weight of the events he witnessed over the weekend. Billy and Wayne tried to snap him out of his funk at lunch, but it was beyond the efficacy of adolescent hi-jinks. Emily sat quietly at the other end of the table with her nose buried in a book.

“It was hard on you, Chi-chan?” Sensei asked.

“One minute they were there with us, and the next they were gone. I heard their breathing, felt their fears and even their hopes. And then I stripped their lives away.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. It’s like I feel the weight of their deaths, you know, as if it were a corporeal thing sitting on my chest. In Kamchatka, so many people died, but I didn’t kill them. I just watched their passing. But these men won’t pass away from me. I still see the look of surprise as they realize they’re no longer alive. I don’t want to carry them around with me anymore.”

“I’m sorry Chi-chan. It’s a terrible burden. But you had no choice. You couldn’t let them harm your friends.”

“No, but I could have just let them kill me. It would have been easy enough to force them to take my life.”

“That’s too morbid a thought for you to keep inside. Let it go, too.”

She didn’t tell him about the truly morbid moment of that day, when she stared down Kim’s gun, practically daring him to shoot her, longing for the bullet to crash through her face and end her misery. But he refused to do it. When he turned the gun toward Danny, it was as if he gave her permission to take his life. She could oblige where he had refused.

Connie had insisted their situations were not the same, but Emily wasn’t so sure. Kim was trapped, looking for a way out, trying to protect his family. Sacrificing himself was the only path open to him. To protect
her
friends, no self-sacrifice would suffice. She had to fight her way through. As persuasive as Connie’s reflection was, she still found herself dreaming of a different resolution, of oblivion.

“You seem to be avoiding something, Chi-chan.”

“Yeah, Anthony’s party. I’m just not in a festive mood. Is that okay?”

“A birthday might be good for your mood, and his—a celebration of life. Besides, you didn’t go halfway around the world to rescue him just to skip his birthday party.”

~~~~~~~

The only thing better than running through the woods with his uncle Theo would be if Emily could be there to run with them. Panting as he ran, ducking under low branches, scrambling up and down the uneven terrain, his uncle’s big hands snatching at his shirt. Just two more long strides and he could slide under that log and escape. Suddenly up in the air, he was caught, no escape. Now held high, bouncing back down the ravine to the reservoir, then airborne, arcing over and splashing down into the water. It was perhaps the last time he would be able to enjoy the staple pleasure of early childhood, being chased. At fourteen, he would have to put away such boyish things.

All the preparations were complete: rope swing over the water installed in a tall tree, paintball ordnance secreted around the yard, prizes hidden under the water—the party planner was a SEAL after all. Now all that remained was for actual party guests to arrive.

“She must really be something, from the way you talk. The last time I saw her, she was just a little kid, not even as big as you.”

“She’s a lot bigger now, uncle Theo.”

“I should hope so.”

Anthony couldn’t help gushing over Emily, how strong, fast, clever she is.

“I wish I could meet this wonder woman.”

“She’s supposed to be here by now,” he said, with growing impatience. “You’d love her. She’s just like you. She keeps everyone safe, even when it’s dangerous. She’s not afraid of anything.”

Theo sensed the change in his nephew’s voice, more serious, intense, but tinged with fear. His SEAL training made him sensitive to tiny inflections in the mood of others. Could she really be just like him?

“Has she been keeping you safe, Anthony?”

“She keeps all of us safe. When those people took me and Li Li to Kamchatka, Emily came for us. She fought the Colonel, and brought us all home.”

Once the boy started talking about it, Theo couldn’t let the matter drop. He teased the whole story out, with all its attendant horrors. And once he’d heard everything Anthony had to tell, he went in search of Andie to hear the rest. He found her in the kitchen of the main house with Jerry and Alex, getting the cake ready.

“Hey, Sis, what’s all this about Anthony being taken to Kamchatka?”

She was speechless. The others looked surprised.

“What are you talking about?” Jerry asked.

“They don’t know either? How could you not tell us? We could have helped. Did you even tell Dad?”

Andie started shaking, clearly struggling to hold back tears.

“I had to find out from Anthony. What exactly is going on with you? Your son is kidnapped and you don’t call us, and you send the babysitter to get him? Was that Michael’s idea?”

“What were you doing, interrogating my son on his birthday?”

“It just spilled out of him,” he said, now feeling just a little ashamed.

“Did it have something to do with Michael?” Alex asked.

“No, it wasn’t about Michael.”

“What’s Emily got to do with it? Anthony told me a fairy tale about how she rescued him.”

“It has everything to do with her, Theo. But I don’t think she’d want me to talk about it.”

“What the hell is going on here? Your son is kidnapped and you don’t confide in your own family. But you send the chauffeur’s daughter after him. Where’s Michael? Maybe he can explain it to me.”

“Okay, look. The car was ambushed on the way to school. They grabbed Anthony and shot Michael. They
killed
our driver.” Andie paused to catch her breath. Theo could see her agitation. “And then we… it’s like we went into siege mode. The house was like an armed camp. Ethan and Jesse worked out a plan with Emily and Li Li’s uncle. They went to get him, to make a trade, but it was just a trick. They killed Jesse. You met him, you know how sweet he was.”

Theo remembered Jesse well. Israeli special forces, they understood each other without words. He knew what it meant to lose a team member in the field. He felt this loss, too.

“They shot up Ethan and Jiang, too,” she continued. “And they took Emily. That was what they were after all along. Oh, Theo, it was horrible! We didn’t hear anything for days. I’d practically given up all hope. And then one morning, Connie called from a Coast Guard Cutter in the Bering Sea. She got him back, Emily, she did it.”

The brothers were struck dumb by Andie’s tale. Theo regretted making her relive the events. She sobbed quietly.

“Emily did it?” he asked, chewing over her words. “How does that even make sense? She’s just a kid.”

The whole story reminded him of George Kane, Emily’s uncle or father, or whatever he was to her. He’d been the chauffeur for all those years, but more than that. Theo spoke to him only once, several years ago, but he felt it then, that subtle, unmistakable hint of controlled violence he got from people in his line of work. Not a SEAL, probably too small to be a Ranger. Whatever he was, he’d obviously received extensive training. If his sister had said George rescued Anthony, now that would have made sense. But Emily?

He felt that same sense of loss when he learned of George’s death last year. Like the loss of a comrade, even a brother of sorts. When he came out of this little reverie, he saw her, framed by the doorway to the kitchen, taller than he expected. How long had she been standing there?

“I didn’t say anything,” Andie said.

Emily put her arms around her for a second, then kissed her forehead.

“It’s okay. Maybe it’s about time we come clean… about everything.”

“Everything?” Andie asked.

“Yeah. It came to me in Seoul, hiding only serves their interests, not ours. I want to go public. Let’s start with your brothers.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yeah,” she replied, after taking a deep breath. “Get Michael to show them the video. I’m gonna find Anthony. His friends are coming up the drive, and we’ve got some entertaining to do.”

“There’s a video?” Theo asked.

Emily touched his shoulder and nodded. If felt almost like the reassuring gesture of a big sister. Something else flashed through him, too, rippling down his spinal column and back up again, a frisson of... what exactly? Not quite pain, but sorrow, to be sure, not pleasure, but something close to it. He couldn’t quite read the expression in her eyes, and that was unusual in itself. He was trained to read people, and he was good at it. But she seemed practically impenetrable. He remembered that’s exactly how George struck him: inscrutable. Only she seemed darker and maybe even a little scary. Could she really have done what they were saying?

~~~~~~~

“Who, or what, was that huge guy?” Theo demanded as soon as the video ended. “And where the hell was she, in prison?”

“That’s a long story,” Michael replied. “Are you sure she wants us to do this?”

Andie looked at him and nodded.

“Fine. I’ll give you the general sense of what happened. But there are a few details you’ll have to get directly from her.”

Theo grunted his approval.

“Okay. Some of this is gonna sound pretty unbelievable, but here goes. A North Korean Strike team grabbed Anthony to force her surrender to them.”

“What on earth could they have wanted with her?” Jerry asked.

“How’d they even know who she is?” Theo chimed in.

Michael held up his hand.

“In good time,” he said. “They were a fringe group that had broken with the KDSS and were hiding out in Kamchatka. They operated under the tacit protection of someone in the Russian Navy and, it appears, a rogue element at CIA. The Koreans, led by one General Park and his daughter, ran a bio-tech program that was developing genetic enhancements for battlefield deployment.”

“Genetic enhancements?” Alex asked.

“They were trying to clone zombie super-soldiers,” Theo guessed. “You know, human killing machines. You hear rumors about stuff like that, but it’s just a crazy dream… until enough intelligence idiots believe in it and it gets funded. Is that what that huge guy was? Did they actually manage to make one?”

Michael nodded.

“They wanted her to fight him, as a sort of test. That’s why they brought her there.”

So many questions swirled inside Theo’s head. Why her? How’d they find her? And most painful of all, how did his sister let her go? He clutched his head, as if he were in physical pain. She was good, that much was clear from the video. How’d she get to be that good?

“This is all too much,” he groaned.

“It looks like he failed the test,” Jerry said. “She was able to beat him, after all.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Theo said. “She got lucky. He was winning that fight. It was just a matter of time.”

Jerry flashed him an angry, sad look. Theo knew his big brother didn’t want to face it, but he’d been in too many fights not to know what losing looks like. The air hung heavy in the silence, as the rest of them considered what he’d said.

“Theo’s right,” Emily said. They all turned around to see her standing just inside the doorway. “I didn’t win. It was just luck. I should have died in that ring. And afterwards, if it weren’t for the clone, I surely would have.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s dead. He sacrificed himself to shield me from gunfire. If not for him, none of us would be here today.”

“What happened to the Parks and their cloning program?” Theo asked. “Are they still in Kamchatka?”

“They’re all dead. I burned their camp to the ground. There’s nothing left,” she said with a definitive air.

“
You
didn’t kill them, I hope.”

“No. The clone killed most of them. But you saw in the video, I slashed that one guy pretty bad, and when I threw that knife, it hit the General square in the chest.”

“And Colonel Park?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Did Anthony tell you about that?”

“Yup. He didn’t see it, did he?”

“No. He was very brave and hid the other children elsewhere in the compound while I dealt with her.”

“And that’s exactly why you can’t go public with this,” Andie interjected. “He doesn’t know what really happened. He’s woven some abstract tale of gallantry out of the bits and pieces he saw. That’s what he tells himself about how you rescued him. Please don’t make him confront the brutal reality of what you endured. I don’t think he could bear it. I don’t even know how I can.”

“She’s right,” Theo said. “It would crush him. You’re some sort of magical being in his eyes. That’s what’s allowing him to get over the horror of those events. Don’t take that from him, at least not yet.”