Reckoning (19 page)

TWENTY

The knife flashed in and out, and Gage felt the edge rip through his upper arm. Then the blade razored across his forearm, drawing another deep wound, and Gage lashed out with the stiletto, missed, kicked, and swept the Japanese off balance.

Ignoring his numb, bleeding left arm, Gage circled to the left, cutting off three angles of attack that the Japanese might use.

A master
knife fighter’s mind reacts in combat much like a computer, instantly factoring complicated circles and angles of movement, immediately altering a counter with each tactic of the opponent to formulate another complex series of movements, set-ting the mind for an attack that remains five to six strokes in advance of where the bodies are poised at that moment to constantly prepare a counterattack to match the most minute shift or change of his opponent's status.

Mind speed is essential because once an opponent initiates a movement it is mentally impossible to devise a reaction if the general pattern of counterattack has not already been preselected.

Change is constant, the lower mind instinctively designing responsive reactions while high reason searches for angles that will penetrate an opponent's defensive shield. Both opponents attempt to test speed, probe defensive skills, design attacks and counters, and psychologically intimidate the enemy while simultaneously dancing back and forth at a distance outside their opponent's arm reach—the kill zone.

Unless a dramatic decision is made to bridge the gap, both men attempt to stay outside the
kill zone but close enough to close the distance with a quick leap, slipping their opponent's guard to strike a blow. The greatest danger comes in closing the gap, and the danger stays high for every second fighters remain within the kill zone because physical, responsive reflex is always slower than the initiation of an opponent's movement.

It is commonly accepted that anyone, no matter how skilled or quick, can be hit at close range. And if an opponent is holding a
knife, even one blow is sufficient for defeat. So the ability to bridge the gap, strike and separate successfully without suffering severe damage, is a highly valued area of expertise with knife fighters.

In the end, an opponent need not even strike an enemy's vital organs to finish the conflict. More often, an encounter between master
knife fighters ends with one opponent going into shock from moderate blood loss sustained through venous cuts—a result most easily accomplished by striking a deep wound upon an enemy's arm, just deep enough to reach major veins. Once the bleeding begins, shock is no more than six minutes away and will itself terminate the encounter. Then for opponents satisfied only to end the combat in death, shock will incapacitate so that an easily executed killing blow to the neck or chest can be delivered.

Forearms are frequent targets, easier than the chest or neck, and are focused upon. Also, arms and wrists are much more easily reached without entering the
kill zone or exposing a vital body part to attack. And once an opponent's wrist is deeply cut he can no longer hold a knife, becoming virtually helpless. In knife fighting this tactic is called "defanging the snake."

Without fangs, a snake is easy prey.

A wash of fatigue came over Gage, a quickening blood loss, thinning the adrenaline rush that was only barely keeping him above shock. He felt the pain, exhausted breath blasting hot from his chest, and struggled to hold it together. His peripheral vision was gone, tunnel vision all that remained. Over the Japanese's shoulder he glimpsed the two men running towards him, faces panicked, weapons visible.

Ten seconds out.

Move!

...
He's too close to escape ... Injure him and then break ... Take a bullet in the back but don't—

Screaming, the Japanese leaped.

No time!

Sweeping the blade inside, the Japanese closed and Gage quick-stepped to the left, reached across with his left hand to try a trap of the man's right forearm and swept his dagger, still held in his right hand, across the Japanese's wrist. But the Japanese saw, changed the movement, pulling back the direction of his forearm.

An incredible explosive twist and the Japanese whirled, spinning his body to sweep the blade in a tight half-circle with all his weight behind it.

A wild turn down and away saved Gage's throat, the blade seeming to slice across his back.

Then Gage threw himself wildly back, off balance, trying to gain distance, but the Japanese was lightning, leaping on top of him, bearing Gage to the ground, roaring, laughing, an unstoppable force conquering him, and Gage saw white fear because this was it and saw Sarah because he had failed...

"Sato!" a tall man screamed, collided against them, throwing the Japanese to the side.

Gage crashed awkwardly to the sidewalk, blade still in his hand. But he couldn't rise, blood loss increasing fast, pale shock descending hard. Blackness fading in from the edges.

Shouting above him, a chorus of shouts with the Japanese advancing and one of the men standing over Gage, shouting back at... Sato... with an authoritative, British accent.

"Schnell!" Gage heard a voice above him.

A foot pinned Gage's wrist, twisted the knife from his grip. Gage's eyes flickered open, focused, saw the one who had spoken— a German, blond, the muscular kind that the Polizei preferred for riot control; strong, fast, a manhandler.

"Let's get out of here!" the German shouted, panting, face in sweat. "Get the backpack!"

Gage heard a car slide to the curb beside him.

Something cold was being wrapped around his wrists. With an effort Gage lifted his head, glared down. Standard handcuffs, police issue. His hands were cuffed in front of his body. Dazed, he rolled his head to the side, saw a beige Cavalier. Then he was lifted, carried quickly, and thrown haphazardly into the backseat. Through a thick overlaying of fatigue and shadowy, glossy blankets of abysmal pain Gage heard a quick debate, a somehow familiar man in the passenger's seat arguing fiercely for more restraints, the driver shouting: "No need, he's hurt too badly."

Then the car roared away from the curb, driving quickly through the night.

Orienting slowly, Gage identified a sound, a siren, and in a minute saw flashing red and blue lights pass the car, headed in the other direction, the direction they had just left. He remembered the chaos, the confusion.

Ten minutes, the car driving steadily. Gage felt the blood loss taking him. He fought it, concentrated, slowing his breath,
attempting to reduce the level of oxygen in his system, still the shock as best he could. He closed his eyes, tried to rest, saw black holes zooming away from his vision, the sides spinning in spotted pale-black circles. The car rocked back and forth on the uneven road.

Vomit erupted into his mouth, hot with bile. Grimacing, Gage clenched his teeth, refusing to release, held it, concentrating. He swallowed. It returned, hot and hating. Grimly he held his mouth closed, lips tight, swallowed again.

Breathe hard. Tired.

Not yet.

“How badly do you want to live?”

Barto had left him, but there was Sarah... Malachi...

Discreetly, Gage tried to slide his wrists out of the cuffs, tried to pull steadily, drawing the steel over the hands. He would peel off his flesh if necessary, anything, just to get free. The steel bit into his hands, sharp, pain, too much pain. Gage pulled harder, the pain too much, sharp shooting pain breaking his concentration, his strength, his will.

He let go.

This is too much. Too much. Can't take it.

Gage relaxed, breathless, faint.

There's got to be a better way.

Seatbelts
!

Yes!

He had learned the technique somewhere he couldn't
remember.

It didn't matter.

Gage felt for the metal tongue of the seatbelt beneath him. Choosing not to reach, he attempted to identify it by body pressure. If he could just get his hands on the chrome metal locking plate, with its square hole cut into the quarter-inch steel, he could snap one of the tiny steel pins that attached the handcuff chain to the wristlocks. It would snap at the wrist with only 20 pounds of vertical pressure.

Then Gage felt it, directly beneath him, the cold steel plate of the seatbelt lock pressed against his T-shirt. He rested a moment, calculating.

Once he got his hands on it, it would take at least ten seconds of twisting at the pin before it snapped, provided he had that much strength remaining. But if the guy in the passenger seat saw him move, identified what he was doing, he was dead. A bullet in his head.

Exhausted, not knowing what to do, Gage closed his eyes and rested.

After a minute he felt unconsciousness claiming him. He shook his head, opening his eyes to fight it off. He focused on the man in the passenger seat. The tanned face looked left, stared down at him. Gage wondered what kind of pathetic sight he was lying there, bloodied and beaten, waiting for death. The man appeared worried, and Gage recognized the face – a face from his past.

Someone he had known.
But the name wouldn't come to him.

Only pain, the cold of shock.

Gage counted the seconds, breathing steadily, still staring at the man's head. He rested, allowing his physical conditioning to assert itself, letting his body adjust to the overwhelming pain, the wounds, the rapidly increasing blood loss that would soon throw him into unconsciousness. In a few minutes, he knew from experience, he would be out. But before that, if he rested, he could gain one last surge of energy, even if it was from will alone.

Then he would make his move. As soon as the car merged onto the interstate, speed at fifty, sixty. He would strike the passenger, hard, and throw the handcuffs around the neck of the driver, crash them all. A high speed accident. More than likely, they would all die. Especially him, as wounded as he was. But there was a thin chance that an accident would provide an opportunity for escape. Even if it didn't, he would rather die fighting than to surrender to this.

Frantic screams.

A rending storm of fire and sparks collided against the driver's side of the Cavalier, and Gage's head smashed with numbing force against the door. Then in a deafening concussion the car was lifted off two wheels, settled down, crashing.

Gage rolled wildly, concealing his movement within the chaos, and the seatbelt lock was in his hand.

Collision.

Grinding metal and a strained engine roar. The Cavalier was locked side to side with another vehicle speeding recklessly along a ramp and then, earsplitting machine gun fire as the driver cut loose with a weapon, the vehicles separating.

Rolling with the explosive rocking of the vehicle, Gage slammed the steel plate of the seatbelt over the handcuff pin and twisted, pushing violently against the steel pin with all his waning strength.

Thunder collided against the Cavalier again, driving them in a tangled, screaming, grinding mass off the highway. Gage braced himself against the seat in white flashing gunfire as glass exploded across the interior.

* * *

TWENTY-ONE

Shadows.

White light.

Darkness, light, floating.

Crossing, rolling over him, beneath him.

Nothing else.

Gage rolled his head, opened his eyes, watching, separated from himself. A bearded man, hands clutching the steering wheel.

Lights.

You're alive! Think!

Gage focused, blinking. He was in the backseat of the car. He looked around. No, not that car. Another car. Head aching, he moved, tried to lift himself.

Ah, pain! So sharp, so much of it.

Sharp, slicing pain.

Fight it! Don't give up! Overcome!

Groaning, tearing open thinly clotted wounds with the effort, Gage rose to an elbow, focusing with a dead gaze at the man, the driver.

Barto.

Barto turned at Gage's movement, looked over his shoulder.

"I got ya, pal," he said, focusing again on the highway. "It was close, but I got ya." He seemed nervous, exhausted. "The cabin or a hospital?"

Gage took a deep breath. "The cabin."

Slowly, face twisted with the effort, Gage slid painfully into an upright position, leaning against the door. He looked at his wrists. Blackened in blood. Stickish.

The handcuff pin had been snapped. Too exhausted to feel any relief, he leaned his head back. He had done it. In the chaos and the confusion and the pain, he had done it.

Barto shook his head.

"I thought you'd say that. But you need a doctor, Gage. One of the other two guys didn't even make it. Head on into an
embankment. The guy in the passenger seat must have jumped. I didn't see him. You wouldn't have lived either if you hadn't been in the back-seat. I'm sorry, but I had to try something. I figured we could all die together if it didn't work. I pulled out of it at the last second. The car's busted up but it'll get us back. I've got the map. We're taking the back roads. We've got two more hours left to go."

Gage nodded. "Where's my bag?" he mumbled. Dry blood was caked on his lips. Then Gage realized that he couldn't see out of his left eye, felt softly with his fingers to find crusted blood, a contusion, the eye swollen shut.

"Here." Barto dropped the bag over the seat.

Gage took the bag, blood everywhere. He had trouble holding it, his grip weak, unfeeling.

Tired, now. The worst part over. Time to relax, tend to wounds. He foraged blindly, removed the cellophane pack, took out two solid blue pills, both of them high-strength, prescription painkillers, swallowed them.

"You really need a hospital, man," said Barto, his voice strained.

Gage laughed brutally, leaned his head back against the seat again. "Keep the speed slow," he mumbled. "Be careful ... We can't risk getting stopped. Just get me home. Sarah knows how to fix me."

Barto made an indefinite sound, twisted his head nervously. Gage closed his eyes, sensing blood and death, such cold, timeless death, holding him, clutching him with white grinning fingers. Gage struggled, roused his will to resist, but its claim could not be denied.

It whispered to him. "
I will be cheated no more
..."

Fighting it, sensing his heart tiring, slowing, Gage reached for the adrenaline injection in the medical kit, anything to fight off unconsciousness. But even as his hand touched the canvas back-pack he felt the blackness. Pitching forward, he fell tunelessly into dreams of infinite darkness.

"
How badly do you want to live
?"

Sitting on the ground, sweating under the scorching,
oppressive North Carolina sun, Gage said nothing. Around him, smothering and also drenched in sweat that rolled over their faces and arms, soaking their green T-shirts to their dirt-grimed bodies, no other member of the Delta Force qualifying team said a word, either. They were awed into silence by the frighteningly formidable, weathered image that stood before them.

Clad in dirty jungle fatigues, the man repeated the question. "How badly do you want to live?"

He sounded as if his throat were toughened leather, as toughened and leathery as his face. He was barely over 40 years old.

Well under six feet and lean, but
rounded with muscle like a lion, Sergeant Mac Haynes stood before them. Waiting. He was quiet, revealing nothing. His eyes were dark and narrow, black slits in his face. His hair was shaved on the sides, high and tight, a disciplined military sheen.

Trying to be inconspicuous, Gage lowered his head, grimacing in the heat.

It was the fifth day of intensive training in advanced Delta Force hand-to-hand combat. They were learning methods of silent sentry removal and covert entry, acquiring the skills needed to penetrate any security shield or leave a trail of dead soldiers across any nation or jungle in the world. It was a series of hard 20-hour days, of ceaseless fighting and more fighting, endless techniques, termination zones, methods for sanctioning human life. And beyond the dangers of practicing the training techniques without actually killing anyone, the ferocious Delta instructors made it even more hazardous by standing freely and relaxed one moment and in the next hurling a surprise attack that could render a man unconscious.

The perpetual attacks created a dramatically heightened atmosphere of danger where everyone walked, even to the mess hall, in a ceaseless status of Condition Red, prepared at any moment to evade a fist or kick. Eventually, after he had narrowly
anticipated and deflected a dozen brutal attacks that came out of nowhere, Gage began to catch himself reading even the shadows or rustling leaves, the wind, constantly aware of all the movement or non-movement in his immediate surroundings, his body always poised to evade, to attack or counterattack.

After a while, once he became comfortable with it, when it became so natural that it required little thought, he couldn't imagine what life was like before. It seemed all there was, all there had ever been, this world of combat.

The five-day course included a session ominously tagged "The Will to Survive." It was scheduled for the last day of the week-long course so that if anyone got seriously injured they could be rolled forward for the rest of Delta Qualifications after being released from the hospital.

Again, it came.

"How badly do you want to live?" Sergeant Mac muttered softly, with a thin smile, eyes twinkling in an evil glint. "We're going to find out, ladies. We're going to find out if you'll live or die when you get out there in that ol' mean jungle." He laughed. "We're going to find out about pain, ladies. We're going to eat it. We're going to drink it. We're going to love it." He leaned over them, hands hard as oak hanging at his sides.

"Do you love pain, ladies?"

A chorused "hoo-ah," boomed out.

Sergeant Mac smiled, an aspect infinitely more frightening than a man who screamed. Anyone could scream. Only the truly diabolical ones could smile at you as they pushed the mind and body past the point of human endurance
and into madness.

"Yes, you do," he continued. "'Cause you're all good boys. You love pain because you know the more you love it, the less it can hurt you. You know that if you love pain, then you won't be afraid of it. You can just keep goin'. On and on. 'Cause it's in the mind, boys. In the mind. You don't need no soft bed. You don't need no soft clothes. You don't need no food. Or water. Or friends. You don't need nuthin'. You can live naked in a swamp. You can live in a gator den. Like I do. You can eat rats and sleep in a
snake pit. But you don't need sleep. ‘Cause sleep is for them other people – them ones that don't love pain like we do. And you ain't like them. ‘Cause you’re all good boys. So today you're going to take pain, ladies. You’re gonna take pain ‘till you love pain."

He seemed to grow happy, smiling. "You're going to take it, and take it, and take it until you fall out on me. Until you know what you truly are, ladies. Until you're lying there in the dirt. Dirt up your nose and in your ears and in your mouth. Until pain is all you know, all you remember and all you want. Until pain is what your mamas fed ya. Until pain is what you was born for. Just pain, ladies, pain."

Silence.

Gage shifted slightly, casting a narrow glance at Sandman.

Wide-eyed, the big black man caught the look, his dark chiseled face frozen, his gaze wide and fixed.

As two of the 40 members attempting to qualify for Delta, they had volunteered for the course. Friends since they were together in the 10th Special Forces, they had long known about and dreaded this day, along with everyone else. But they also knew that it was a sacred rite of passage into the United States Army's most elite special warfare unit; an ordeal by fire where only the strongest survived for selection into Delta Force, permanently attached to Delta Command, Fort Bragg.

But first they had to survive.

They had to survive Sergeant Mac.

Sergeant Mac stepped forward, smiling. He glanced to the tree-line; the sun barely over the horizon was crimson, hazy. "Now this is what you're going to do, boys," he said. "You're going to put on these nasty ol' packs, here."

He
reached down to grab what Gage knew was a 50-pound pack and his fingers knotted around the material like talons, closing and holding effortlessly as he stood. As he continued to talk, Gage used the moment to also reach down, quickly retying his boots, adjusting them for the long, torturous run over North Carolina hills.

"Yes sir, you're going to put on these little ol' packs, and you're going to run to that hill way out yonder." He pointed down the road. "No, you can't see it. It's twenty-five miles away. But it was there yesterday. And it's there today. So we're going to run over there. And then we're going to run back. That's fifty miles. With a fifty-pound pack. And then, when we get back, I'm going to watch you do some PT. Until you die." He winked. "'Cause we ain't gonna burn daylight on this, boys. No
, sir. We'll still have too much pain still waitin’ for us when we get back."

Gage took a deep breath, preparing.

He was already sore and beaten from endless miles of running, training on the obstacle course, the constant punches and kicks. His body was a mass of contusions, the skin mottled from shallow internal bleeding where muscles had torn and blood vessels had burst beneath the brutal impact of fists, shins, or boots. But although the contusions were frighteningly colorful, black and yellow and red, they were rarely crippling. Only painful, as the instructors would repeat. And for those who had sustained massive bruising, like Gage suffered when he failed to anticipate a devastating punch by Sergeant Mac, painkillers were issued.

Gage had taken three codeine capsules before the day's
exercise, and for the moment they allowed him to move his tender, torn muscles without agony. Yet at this stage, with the pain he was in, it was tempting to quit, especially with what he was about to face. But he knew he would never quit. It wasn't in him. He tried not to think about how the codeine would wear off somewhere in the run, leaving him alone with the pain. And he knew they wouldn't be issuing any more. Today, they wanted to find out what he was made of

Frowning, he finished tying his boots.

"On your feet!"

Instantly 40 men in dirty green fatigues were on their feet.

Gage quickly hoisted his pack, tightening the belt strap to bear the greatest weight. He clicked the shoulder connecter last, allowing as little weight as possible on the shoulder straps, providing some relief for his chest. Then he picked up the M-16, holding port arms.

"
Double-time!" Sergeant Mac yelled out.

Two columns of heavily packed soldiers moved down the road, Gage and Sandman setting the quick pace, leading each line. Gage
knew that the run would cross a large, deforested section of the military reservation, acreage that swirled continuously with chalky red dust, each drifty gust of wind lifting a small cyclone of dirt that would eventually coat their faces with sunbaked clay, clogging their noses, mouths, and eyes.

A long dirt road, scorching under the summer sun, stretched out before them.

They ran.

Gage ignored the grimy sweat that dripped from his forehead, his chin, nose.

Sweat, sun, smothering heat.

Miles and miles and miles. Ten miles, fifteen
miles ...

Perspiration soaked Gage's fatigues to black, then red with the dust of each plodding step. But Gage wasn't thinking about it, about anything. Somewhere he began, as usual, to pass into the zone, somewhere in himself, forgetting everything else, just
running. He moved mechanically with the spell of mindless effort, of endurance. Nothing else there, thought gone, just running, the distance, road and dust. One step after another.

His eyes became fixed and his hands went rigid, melded to the stock of the M-16 with the
sap like resin he had sprayed on each palm. His numb feet shuffled, one step after another, another and another; dust swirling, step after step.

Miles and miles, heat and sun.

In the zone, mindless, a machine.

Then Sandman, laboring. "This is
... insane,” the big black man whispered, leaning forward against the heat. "People
die
doin' this!"