"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."
Walter Anderson.
Over at the exchange scene, everyone seemed momentarily stunned. Except Gaara. He was yelling at the bodyguard in Arabic, cursing him from the sound of his tone and the spit flying from his mouth. The bodyguard was yelling back, gesturing with the guns, pointing them from man to man. Nobody else was moving, nobody else was talking.
Not so with myself. "I want to find out what's going on, so I'm going to listen in. But if Gaara shows his head, make sure you drop him. No more chances."
"Roger that. One dead redhead comin' right up."
I focused on Orochimaru. He was actually adjusting the tie around his neck. Totally unconcerned at the guns being waved around by a seemingly desperate madman. He checked the time on his watch. "Mr. Gaara, can you tell me what he is saying, please," he said in words that were smooth and calm. "I'm afraid I don't speak Arabic."
"Yes, what in fuck is going on here!" one of the Red Ties added loudly. Orochimaru raised a hand slowly, palm facing the man, gesturing politely for a moment of silence so he could do the talking.
"Take out your guns!" the bodyguard was shouting. "Slowly! Put them on the ground and kick them away! Slowly, slowly, or I will start shooting!"
Gaara never took his eyes off the man. His lips had pulled back from his teeth, and his body was coiled like a circus lion wanting to pounce on its tamer. It was quite obvious that only the guns prevented him from doing so.
"Mr. Gaara, please. I need to know what he said."
Snarling, the weapons dealer responded. "He says that he is stealing the shipment, Orochimaru-san. To which I answer to him like so:" Then he let out another abusive stream of Arabic.
"Guns on ground!" the bodyguard yelled back. "This is last warning!"
The men did as he said. All six of them removed a pistol from a waistband or a shoulder holster and slowly placed them on the ground, sliding them forward across asphalt with toes. Apparently everyone had enough experience with guns to know that kicking them away could set off a round, killing any one of them. Or striking the contents inside the truck, which were probably fragile and unstable enough to blow up not just them, but myself as well. Orochimaru removed a twin set of his own pistols and set them to either side of his feet. Gaara did not remove anything, but the bodyguard seemed untroubled by that. Apparently Gaara wasn't in the habit of packing firearms. After all, that was why he had hired men to protect him.
"Now hands in the air! Hands up!"
Everyone complied.
I wondered how far he was going to take the situation. The psychology of a criminal who suddenly realizes he has total, absolute control over another human life is rarely stable. His ambitions grow, his original aim can change from simple to multiple objectives. A nervous armed robber, upon seeing his victims cowering before him like servants before an emperor, realizes that not only can he rob these people, he can do anything to them. What starts as a simple armed purse snatch often escalates into sadism, often rape. So if this went on for another minute or so, I could imagine the bodyguard thinking that it would be best not to leave witnesses, or anyone present who might bear a grudge.
I watched through the binoculars, amazed. With just a little luck, this really could go perfectly. The bodyguard executes everyone, and Naruto drops him as he reaches for the money. Or they all start shooting at each other, and I take out the "survivors".
But even as I imagined it, I knew there was something wrong. The bodyguard wasn't doing anything productive. He held everyone at bay using the guns, but he wasn't killing anyone, and he wasn't going for the money. He was putting himself into an unnecessary stalemate. There could only be one reason, and even as I figured out what it could be, the answer arrived in the form of a new complication: a silver Toyota Camry, approaching the gate, bright headlights cutting through the darkness like twin blades of the sun.
Fuck. He's got friends coming to pick him up and take off with the cash and the weapons.
Orochimaru was watching closely, body language betraying no undue worry, yet eyes studying both the bodyguard and the arriving Toyota. It was obvious what he was thinking, because I was thinking it as well: the traitor couldn't start shooting now because it was six against one. He couldn't shoot all of them before someone tackled him and got the guns. But once the car arrived, carrying at most five other armed henchmen, then everyone being held at gunpoint right now would be dead.
Orochimaru gestured at one of the Red Ties. "Alexei, please pick up the money bag. I'm afraid I don't care for it falling into unfamiliar hands."
"Don't!" the gunman yelled at the taller of the two Russians. "I'll shoot you!"
"No, you won't. You're not fast enough, and you're not going to risk it until that car arrives within the next fifteen seconds. Once you fire one shot, the rest of us will kill you. I'm sure Mr. Gaara is hoping for a chance." He turned an unblinking snake eye to his man. "Now, please get the bag so we may go. You know what awaits us if you don't."
The Russian nodded with fear, walked quickly and jerkily to the bag on the floor, and picked it up. His head promptly exploded.
The traitorous bodyguard hadn't pulled the trigger. Perhaps he had been willing to let the money go.
Too bad Naruto wasn't.
The bodyguard's mouth dropped open. And in that instant of surprise, Orochimaru dropped down to one knee, pulled a pistol free from an ankle holster, and shot the man square in the face. The other Red Tie grabbed the bag from the ground and started to make a run for the nearby cars, taking exactly two steps before Naruto quietly blew his head off.
Gaara dived to the ground, rolled, and sprang back up, launching himself at the side of the van and flying in through the open sliding door. I figured he was using the best cover from sniper fire available: out of sight from the gunman. But I was wrong. He wasn't hiding, or even evading.
Gaara was attacking.
The weapons dealer rummaged around, then climbed back out of the van carrying a long, smooth pipe on his shoulder the color of olive military uniforms. Holy shit, this guy's carrying bazookas in the back of his van! Not bothering with trying to find the location of the sniper that was invisibly killing everyone, Gaara aimed the business end of his weapon at the next most dangerous threat.
The Toyota had arrived at the gate.
Gaara dropped to one knee, aimed, flashed a grin that a dragon would have recognized, and swiftly blew the vehicle up. Shrapnel and flaming parts shot everywhere from the explosion, which was all very pretty, but I knew that the fool had just alerted every guard and cop in the country because of it. I ordered to Naruto, "He's stepped away from the van, take the shot!"
"Can't. He's keeping down, I don't have a shot." Amid the gunfire and explosions, his voice was almost supernaturally calm. Deep in sniping mode.
"All right then. Cover me." I doubted that anyone caught up in the adrenaline rush of the firefight would notice me, but I kept my body small and my head down as I shot across the road, inching closer to their position, my pistol drawn and ready. I crossed the street in a crouch and spied Gaara dropping the spent container on the ground, then ducking into the cover of nearby cargo containers, one hand clutching his face. Orochimaru was nowhere to be found. It was hard to tell who would be the most dangerous of the two.
The street was well lit, but the container area was dark by comparison, full of shadows. It didn't help that my eyes, without the help of the night vision from my binoculars, were having a hard time adjusting. Once I got to the containers I slowed down, moving cautiously, inching forward, my eyes scanning left and right, the gun tracking my vision. Scan and breathe. Front foot down. Slide forward, then pause. Check position. Again.
Gaara's eyes weren't any better than mine, but I knew the streetlights were backlighting me, exposing my position. I needed to move into the dark, where my ninja training would enpower me. I circled to my right--
A battering ram hit me in the left ribs.
There was an explosion of pain and I actually went flying backwards. I could clearly remember Sakura's voice: With his kicks he can break individual ribs, one at a time, one after another, in a row, until every rib has snapped and you pass out because it hurts too much to breathe.
Yeah. Or he could break all of them at once, from the feel of things.
My body did a judo ukemi breakfall by instinct, years of muscle memory taking over without any input from my conscious mind. The breakfall distributed impact and saved me from further damage. Lying on my back now, I tried to bring the gun up to where I thought he would be, but the bastard had already moved in. His foot blurred forward in some kind of fouette or spiral kick and the gun blew out of my hand. He actually kicked the gun out of my hand. I felt the shock up to my shoulder, but the shock to my system was probably more damaging.
This guy was a damn good fighter.
He reached inside his jacket pocket. What he pulled out flashed in the glare of the streetlights and I instinctively thought razor, just as Sakura had told me. This was bad. When knives and blades are brought into a streetfight, the one without a blade was going to get cut. Every time. I brought my legs up to try to kick him away, and was surprised to see him take a step back. Why didn't he rush in to kill? But then I saw him wiping blood from his eyes and realized that his hesitation was driven more by necessity than by tactics. He must have caught a bit of shrapnel from the exploding car, unlucky enough to slice a gash above one eye. There's a lot of blood pressure in a person's head, so wounds there bleed a lot.
He swayed for a second, and in that second I rolled backward and sprang to my feet. I felt a hot ache in the ribs where he had kicked me and thought, if I get out of this alive, I WILL carry a blade, I don't care about all the good reasons not to. Two more steps backward to buy a little distance, and I glanced at the ground. Damn, couldn't find my gun. Too many shadows, and too much junk lying on the ground: cracked wooden pallets, car parts, twisted metal that was too hot to touch. Next to my right foot was a bent hubcap.
I swept it up, looking for a handhold that I could grip so I could use it as a shield, but no dice. Instead, I swung it like a Frisbee. It hissed through the air straight at Gaara's midsection. He jumped left and it sailed right past him. Dammit, even with a head injury the bastard was light on his feet, more like a dancer than a kickboxer. He started to move toward me and I snatched up the two closest weapons available to me: a fistful of gravel and a sizzling piece of shrapnel the size of my fist.
It burned unbelievably hot, and I swung both hands rapid-fire. The gravel went for his face and he managed to duck the worst of it. But the duck cost him maneuverability, and the shrapnel was heading straight for his head. He raised both hands to protect his face and the hot metal slammed into them. I saw the razor tumble out of his grip and felt a rush of satisfaction.
Gaara stood up and glanced at the blade, but I immediately took two steps forward. He looked up at me again, knowing that he wouldn't have enough time to recover the weapon from the floor, so we stood facing each other for a moment, both breathing hard. I took a deep inhale to steady my heart and lungs. He hitched his pants up slightly, creating a little more freedom of movement for his legs.
That's it, give me one of those fucking legs. I promise to give it back when I'm through breaking it.
Arrogance aside, I knew I had to be careful. His physical skills and endurance were obvious, but more than that I expected his tactics to be devious. Hardcore savatuers practice what's known as malice, otherwise known as dirty fighting, using improvised weapons, deception, anything to get the job done. It becomes a mindset and way of life for most. I'm familiar with it firsthand. I expected Gaara to be equally so.
I put my hands up in a boxer's stance. He did the same, hands held lower, his posture looser, moving fluidly, light on his feet. Of course I had no inclination to fight him using punches and kicks. That was his game, not mine. But if I offered him a familiar appearance--say, the kind of appearance that he was accustomed to facing in the gym or in the ring--his body might automatically respond to the recognizable stimuli. In which case he would begin to approach me as if I were another kickboxer, thereby, I hoped, creating an opportunity for me to close in and finish him off on the ground. He wouldn't be unacquainted with grappling: savatuers call their style of wrestling lutte, a derivative of Greco-Roman wrestling designed more to maim and disfigure than capture and restrain. But I had little doubt that, if I could get him to the ground, the advantage would be mine.
He chambered his right leg, feinted, then returned the foot to the ground. He repeated the maneuver. And again. The upraised leg started to return to the ground and I saw my opening. I shot forward like a greyhound at the racetrack, but his foot reversed course unbelievably fast and headed straight for the side of my neck. I covered up with my left elbow, and the toe of his shoe caught me between the biceps and triceps. I had the sudden feeling of getting hit with a mallet.
He retracted the foot, planted it on the ground, and I shot my own kick in, a basic front kick off the back leg aimed at his knee. He twisted clockwise off the line of attack and parried inward with his left hand. I reached out and managed to snag his left sleeve with my right hand and did a judo takedown. He landed on his back and I immediately dropped onto his solar plexus in the middle of his chest, my left knee leading the way. I could feel the hot exhalation as the wind was driven forcefully out of his lungs.
I kept his arm in my grip and performed a move I had practiced thousands of times. I was a jujigatame armlock, meant to take out his elbow. I pulled and twisted and levered his arm across the natural movement of the elbow joint.
The joint broke with a resounding crack.
He screamed and writhed under me, and in that moment I realized two things simultaneously. The first was that I might actually get out of this alive and well. But that first hope made me think of my second realization:
I had lost track of his other hand.
My stomach lurched with the knowledge. Then, as that same lurch rolled sickeningly through me, his right arm flashed into view, light glinting off of the surgically presice steel blade he was holding in it. A second razor.
Damn malice.
I clamped his arm and increased the pressure on his ruined elbow. He screamed again, but he was fighting a battle for his life now and wouldn't be stopped by mere agony. He slashed at my thigh with the razor, and the blade sliced deep into my quadriceps. There was no pain, really, adrenaline taking care of that for the moment, but a gout of blood sprayed from the wound. He slashed again. I tried to grab his hand, but missed, and this time he cut my wrist.
On the next grab I caught his.
Immediately I shifted my body position to where I could reach his head and blasted a hammerfist strike into his face, snapping my bodyweight forward and throwing all I had into the blow.
Once.
Twice.
Again and again.
I felt his body go limp and the razor dropped from his hand. There it was, on the ground next to his head. I grabbed it carefully and slid off of him. His face was a bloody mess and he was groaning, seemingly slipping into semiconsciousness. I knelt beside him and hooked the fingers of my free hand under his jawline. I hauled his head back and raised the razor.
A voice cried out sharply from behind me: "Stop!"
I froze, thinking, What the fuck?
I looked backed over my shoulder. Two serious-looking Arabs stared back at me, each with a pistol pointing at my face. "Stop!" one of them yelled at me. "Drop knife!"
I did as he ordered. Starting to stand, I could feel my right leg wobbling, then it went out on me and I collapsed. I could see why: I was dying. My thigh was gashed wide open and spurting blood. My wrist was doing the same. I was bleeding out from top to bottom.
I sank down to my knees and looked at them. "Why haven't you all been killed yet?" I had a feeling I knew why. My sniper partner had betrayed me, and was letting them kill me. Probably so he could sleep better at night. Or just saving ammunition for the rest of them.
They ignored me. Beside me, Gaara stirred, groaned, and sat up, the move unsteady, and then stumbled up onto his feet. I watched him, impassive. I was already kneeling, and now I placed my hands calmly across my bloody thighs, the fingers pressed lightly together and pointed inward at forty-five degrees. I drew my head and shoulders up into seiza, or natural posture. It was the formal postion of traditional Japanese culture, an intergral element of martial arts, of the tea ceremony, and--perhaps most of all--the dignified moments before ritual suicide.
Gaara secured his balance, cradling his broken arm, blood running down his face from the gash in his forehead and the broken nose from my hammerfists. His body convulsed, then he leaned forward and vomited. His men watched and said nothing. He spat a few times and wiped his face with his good hand. For a few seconds he stood leaning that way, catching his breath. Finally he straightened and said to me, his voice ragged, "How have you been tracking me?"
I ignored him. My luck had finally run out. I expected no help from Uzumaki. There was a bag with five million dollars in it. I couldn't expect him to just leave it be. I was alone now, fittingly enough, and I had no escape.
"I will ask you a final time." I could see that he had picked up his razor. "Then I will slice your face apart."
I looked out at the harbor and had the oddest sense that I was connected with it somehow. That my spirit was leaving my body and expanding outward. There was no surprise, but I was oddly amused by how unafraid I was. Death catches everyone, eventually, and I had never harbored any silly illusions about his ability to catch me. That Death had hesitated for so long to take me seemed more out of a desire to mock me than of any real inclination to wait. But he had tired of that game by now, I guess, and now he was moving in to take what we all owe.
Well, come and get me, I thought. Go ahead, take whats yours. Choke on it.
There was a strange sound, like the popping of a champagne cork. I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw a fine mist spraying out of one of the Arabs' heads. I probably should have been worried about that for some reason. But the event felt like it had little to do with me. The other Arab turned to watch his partner slide down to the ground like a suddenly liquefied pole. His mouth was a wide O of surprise, but only for a second. Then his own head was erupting as well.
Even in his battered condition, Gaara could recognize what was happening, was somehow able to process it, and do the only thing he could: run. But something unseen quickly blew his right leg out from underneath him. He landed on his face, immediately pushed himself up with one arm, staggered for a second, then got one foot to limp forward. Something knocked him down again, causing a red mist to spray from his back. This time he didn't get up again. I could still hear his gasps.
All the commotion seemed trivial, silly. I wished everyone would stop and let me rest. In peace.
There were soft footfalls to my right. I sighed and looked over. It was Uzumaki. He had approached me and was moving swiftly towards us, the rifle shouldered and pointing downrange. Maybe he would recover the five million. If so, then he would have to make sure everyone was dead. First Gaara. Then me. Game over.
I looked out at the harbor again and felt myself dying. It was warm. The feeling was not at all unpleasant.
"You all right?" I heard him ask. I looked over at him again, but didn't answer. The question might have been cruel, given what he was about to do to me, yet somehow it struck me as almost funny. I looked at him and smiled a little.
"That mean yes?" he asked, raising the rifle to eye level. There was a soft thwack and a flash from the suppressor.
I looked over at Gaara. He was totally still and quiet. Naruto had put the last round into his head. He looked at me, and I could see concern in his face. Then he lowered the rifle. I was confused.
"Am I dead?"
"Well, you don't look so hot, but I'm pretty sure you ain't dead. I would say, though, that it's right around time for us to get our sweet asses out of here."
"What about...what about the money?" I couldn't understand what was happening.
"Well, it's a heartbreaker, sure, but I had to abandon it to come to your rescue. That Asian guy got to it first and he took off in his car. I meant to get here sooner, but there was a lot going down over on my side of the fence, and I had a fair amount of ground to cover. Plus, even though Lia's a sexy girl, she ain't exactly lightweight, even for musclemen like myself." Naruto stooped and got his head under my arm, then straightened. We started walking towards the white van with all the weapons in it.
"You just...let it go?"
"Sasuke, I don't give a damn about money when my partner's in trouble."
I was out for a long time after that. When I woke up, I was in a bed in a small, dingy little room. I looked around: Brown drapes from another millennium. An old television on a cheap dresser. A metal door with a peephole. It was, without a doubt, one of the ugliest motel rooms I had ever had the unfortunate luck to visit.
Naruto was in a chair next to the bed, facing the door, sitting with his head slumped forward and the rifle set across his lap.
I pulled back the blanket and looked at my thigh. It was heavily bandaged. Likewise for my wrist. They both hurt, and my ribs were the color of a coming thunderstorm, but none of it was terribly crippling. My head felt fuzzy, though, and I knew that they had given me plenty of painkillers.
"Hey," I said.
Naruto's eyes popped open and his head snapped up. "Well, all right," he said, flashing me his grin. "It's damn good to see you again, man, you had me worried there for a second."
"Where the hell are we?"
"A little Motel 6 kind of joint. I didn't want anyone bothering us while you were recuperating."
"Who bandaged me up?"
"Our good buddy Shika-boom-boom made a few phone calls and took care of everything. Got a local surgeon out here pretty quick. The doc sewed you up good, but by that point you had already lost a lot of blood. Luckily, I was on hand to lend you a quart or so of my own, so don't be surprised if your dick's grown to be about twice as big as you remember."
"Am I going to start looking at sheep differently, too?"
He grinned again. "You should only be so lucky. But one way or another, take comfort in the fact that you've got about a quart of Uzumaki sloshing around inside of you. There's guys who'd pay good money for all that crimson Viagra, and here you are getting it for free."
I nodded, taking it all in. "Thank you," I said, looking him in the eye.
He shook his head and raised a hand. "Forget about it. Like I said, you were good to me back home. I don't forget."
"Well, I reckon we're even, then."
His eyebrows shot north and his expression went awed. "Did you just say reckon? My God, son, it's working already!"
Next Chapter: Epilogue.