Chapter 12
"Okay, let's try again," Michelangelo said. "This time, remember- eyes glued to your leader like he's the swimsuit edition centerfold. If you miss the signals, you won't know your position, and if you don't know your position, your partner can't cover you. And be quick with those signals! You need to know them in every possible combination. You can't be like, flipping through the pocket ninja dictionary!"
At Doshida's initiative and expense, the training area had been transformed into a mock-up of a narrow city street, with walls, crates, a dumpster, even the shell of a car. Mike cut the lights and plunged it into darkness. This time, Ren was on point and after a moment he led the others forward. The objective was simple: get everyone to the designated home base at the other end of the street as quickly as possible, without a mutant turtle taking anyone out first.
For almost two months he'd been training Roku Squad, and if Michelangelo allowed himself a moment of self-aggrandizement (and he did), he'd say he was doing a pretty decent job of it. Early on, he'd told them, "I'm not a taskmaster, since all this is pretty much for your own benefit, so even though we'll work hard, we'll just be chill about it, okay?" but nevertheless he was gratified that Tami and Ren were fast learners and willing students, and Snake was at least the former if not the latter.
And they were actually improving. The three of them were almost to home base now, using the available cover well, and staying connected to their teammates. Still, Mike saw the opening he knew would come. He rushed through the darkness silently and swept Ren off his feet and into a submission hold before anyone could move. "Game's up," he said.
Ren cursed under his breath. Mike said, "You were doing good, but as soon as you saw the target you let yourself get too far ahead of your team." He released him and helped him back to his feet. "Snake, you were covering him, you can't let him take off without you like that."
Snake's nostrils flared. "You must get a kick out of making us look stupid."
A Raphael-inspired remark came to mind, but he set it aside and shrugged, smiling. "Just trying to be helpful. Take it up with your boss if you don't like it." He turned to the others. "This goes for all of you though. Don't assume, just because he's calling the play, that your leader needs any less cover than the rest of you. If anything, he needs more."
Tami's cell phone rang, and she answered it as Mike went to switch the lights back on. When he returned, she said, "We have our next assignment."
###
Set in the middle of a large wooded property enclosed by dense hedges and a high brick wall, the mansion was not visible from the gravel service road half a mile away. Michelangelo knew it was there though; Roku Squad had spent the last week studying its blueprints, a map of its grounds, and the details of its security system, all of which confirmed that this wasn't the sort of place an uninvited person could easily get in or out of. Assignment H054 was to do both.
"Every assignment has a code that begins with H, G or K," Tami had explained to him, "standing for Hunt, Gather or Kill."
"How about 'E' for Eat and 'D' for Do Dishes?"
"Very funny. 'Hunt' means its a covert op- sabotage, security, finding or obtaining an object or person, that sort of thing. 'Gather' means it's an espionage mission where information is the goal- getting it or planting it. And 'Kill'- well that's self-explanatory."
Mike had leaned over the large desk in their team room and picked up one of the enlarged satellite photos of the mansion grounds, pulled off the internet and marked up with a Sharpie pen. "So, who's Mr. Moneybags?"
"A big-time fight promoter who didn't do as he was told, and then tried to blackmail the wrong people."
"Those being?"
"The Yamaguchi-gumi," Ren had answered from the other room, where he had been swinging a hanbo in practice. "My uncle's crowd."
Yakuza. Fabulous. Sitting, now, in the back of a van emblazoned with a fake landscaping company logo and parked next to the neighboring estate's gardening shed, Michelangelo bit his thumb knuckle apprehensively as Simon's fingers flew over the keys of his computer. He turned to Tami, who was checking her utility belt carefully, her eyes, large, long-lashed, and coolly businesslike, the only part of her face visible behind her ninja mask. "You're sure he's not in there," Mike said.
"He's at a cage fight in Vegas. The yakuza don't want him dead, they just want him toeing the line." Her eyebrows rose in mild puzzlement. "Why do you care, anyways?"
"I told Doshida I didn't want to kill anyone."
"How cute." Snake clipped on his own utility belt and slipped an extra knife into his boot. "The big coach is a real softie. Wouldn't have guessed it from the stories that go around."
Mike ignored the comment. "How's it looking, Simon?"
A power cord snaked from Simon's computer and its various attached devices, under the closed door of the van and into the gardening shed. "Looking good," he said. "Just like I figured, the signals from the mansion's security system extend through the neighborhood power grid. Now once I crack the encryption... There, I'm in." He leaned back, swiveling his ball cap backwards with a flourish and raising his arms in triumph. "We're set to go."
After a few seconds of silence, Michelangelo realized they were all looking at him. He also realized that he'd been waiting, unconsciously and out of habit, to hear Leonardo's voice. "Err...let's go then," he said. "Just like we practiced, right?"
By the smirk on his face, Mike could tell that Snake was rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses as he pushed open the rear doors, letting in a gust of late winter air. He jumped out of the van, boots crunching slightly on gravel, and soon disappeared into the woods, heading, as they'd agreed, towards the front gate and the mansion's small detail of private security guards.
They waited for a minute, giving Snake a head start. Michelangelo felt itchy inside and out - from the snug thermal jacket, size XXL to fit over his shell, and from the off-ness of being on a ninja strike team that wasn't his own. Running with his brothers was like breathing, something that operated almost below consciousness. Being in this van with the glow of the computer screen and the two humans putting on their gear, felt, not bad exactly, but unnatural, like handling chopsticks with one's left hand. He pulled himself together. What would Leo do? Leo would be calm, focused and in control.
Michelangelo stepped silently out of the van, and paused, a tingle of suspicion pricking at the edge of his senses as he reached them into the surrounding darkness. Tami and Ren hopped out after him, and still on edge, Mike signaled for them to fan out to either side as the three of them approached the back of the estate. Simon would stay in the van, clearing a path for them through the security system and acting as communications hub. As they neared the wall, his voice came through the earpiece that Michelangelo had secured under his mask. "Snake's there. I've taken perimeter cameras down, motion detectors down. You've got five minutes."
Now, Mike signaled and the three ninjas rappelled up and over the brick wall, like invaders over a castle battlement, dropping down off the last few feet of their lines to land noiselessly on the other side.
They ran on light feet through more than an acre of woodland, until they came to a shallow ravine, on the other side of which wound a garden pathway that encircled a broad expanse of lawn surrounding the mansion itself, coming into view now as a ghostly white Greek-revival structure with soaring white columns extending around the side of the building like a contingent of sentinels. Mike adjusted his pace, consciously checking Ren and Tami's position as he judged how best to approach. They were still several yards away when a cacophony of loud barking went up. He caught Tami's look of alarm; they hadn't known about the dogs. "Get ready peeps, here we go," Mike shouted, as three massive Rottweilers burst into sight.
The dogs came straight at them, black, muscled beasts tearing across the green lawn, lips curled back, lines of grey-pink gums bulging over rows of teeth as stark white as the mansion itself. Michelangelo felt a flood of adrenalin carry him into a state of hyper-awareness and distorted time. A number of thoughts flashed through his head in a nanosecond. Fending off vicious attack dogs would be nothing like fighting a person. His brothers were not here; a couple of Rising Hand ninjas might be the only ones to witness him being torn apart by three sets of teeth. And although he doubted they felt the same obligation to him, he couldn't just let Ren and Tami fall under those frothing jaws.
The worst thing any of them could do was run away. Mike ran towards the lead dog, throwing his arm up in front of his face as it launched itself at him. The bared fangs went for Mike's forearm and he whipped it up over his head as he let himself fall backwards onto his shell, seeing the dog, jaws reaching, sail over him as he planted a solid overhead kick into the animal's underside. He had barely rolled to his feet and drawn his nunchuks before it was coming at him again, leaping up into the air, then suddenly crashing to the ground, collapsing with a short whine. A second dog took its place and Mike's nunchuku smacked it hard, across the muzzle and on top of the head. It shook itself, dazed, as the third dog leapt on him from behind, jaws scraping to find purchase on his shell, all eighty pounds of barreling canine slamming him to the ground. He tucked his head down, protecting his throat, reaching for the animal's neck and bracing himself to feel fangs tearing into flesh. Instead, he felt only dead weight. The dog had stopped moving.
He rolled it carefully off of himself and stood. All three dogs lay motionless on the ground, jaws gaping, slender darts protruding from necks or shoulders.
"Are they-?" Mike asked anxiously.
"No. It'll wear off," Tami said, jogging up.
"That was insane!" Ren exclaimed. "You ran straight at them!"
"'Insane' would be the right word," Mike agreed weakly.
"Where are you guys?" Simon's voice came through their earpieces. "I've knocked out the house cameras and jammed the door and window alarms, so get a move on!"
They covered the rest of the lawn at a sprint, clambering over the low rock wall behind the house. Breaking the lock on the patio door across from the covered swimming pool led them into a personal gym where the hulking shapes of treadmills and weight machines cast odd-shaped shadows on the walls. They cut through the room, emerged into a marble-floored hallway and, following their memory of the blueprints, quickly located the stairs leading down into the basement. At the bottom of the steps was an opulent entertainment room and library, with a big screen television, mini-bar, sectional sofas and wall-to-ceiling bookshelves. They split up, pulling on shelves, until one of them swung aside for Tami, revealing the wall safe behind it.
"Have at it," Tami said, stepping aside.
Ren leaned in close and spun the combination lock with steady fingers, a look of intense concentration on his face. He's done this before, Mike noted. Long minutes passed before the teen delicately nudged the last number into place and pulled the steel door open, punching the air in victory. Tami held open a zippered nylon bag as Ren reached into the safe and pulled out a thick manila envelope, a small black notebook, and two USB sticks. He dropped them in, then looked longingly at what remained: two jewelry boxes and several stacks of bound hundred-dollar bills, but Tami said sharply, "We're here on an assignment, not a burglary." She slung the bag over her shoulder and shut the safe, pushing the bookshelf back into place.
The shriek of the triggered alarm was so sudden that for a full second none of them moved. Then Mike saw the heavy steel door dropping down over the entrance to the room, sealing them in, and with no time to think, he threw himself under it, bracing against the frame of the entryway. The door slammed into him, punching the breath from his body as the impact shot through shell, bone, spine and ribs, the sudden weight dropping him to elbows and knees.
"Shit!" he heard Ren, nearby, and Simon, through the earpiece, shout at the same time. Simon's voice continued in a frenetic jumble, "There's a secondary system that was just triggered- you guys need to get out now!"
"You heard him!" Mike yelled, his voice contorted with strain. His arms and legs were trembling under the weight of the door he was holding up with his shell. Elbow over elbow, on her belly, Tami crawled under the door through the space he'd created, and Ren followed right after her. Once they were through, Ren asked, "Now how do we get him out?" If Mike moved, the door would flatten him. He thought he could feel the bony plates of his carapace grinding and buckling, pulling his ribs apart, and imagined that having one's shell crushed must be the worst way for a turtle to go.
"Ain't this funny," Snake's voice came from somewhere near the top of the stairs. "Dammit Snake, give us a hand," Ren said, and a couple seconds later, Mike felt the weight of the door lift for a moment, just long enough for him to roll away from it before the three humans let it go and it thudded into the floor with resounding finality.
Mike got to his feet unsteadily, arms clutching his sides. "Let's move," he said.
"No need to hurry, coach," Snake called, as they raced out of the house. "There were only three guards." The mansion's long front driveway curved down a gradual slope to the iron gates, which hung open. Sprawled on the ground near the gates were the prone figures of three men. Snake's job had been to distract them; he'd done considerably more. They rushed past too quickly for Mike to tell if the guards were dead or unconscious.
The white van with green lettering sped into view, pulling up to them as they tore off of the property, Snake leading, Ren and Tami flanking, Mike bringing up the rear. As Snake yanked the rear doors open, Mike's gaze flicked over to the dark copse of trees to their left, certain, for a second, that he'd sensed...something. Breath? Movement? It was gone. He jumped into the van behind Tami and pulled the doors shut.
"Whooo-eee," Simon exclaimed, navigating the van back to the street and merging into regular traffic. "That was intense."
Tami pulled off her mask, tousling her blue hair and patting the black nylon bag next to her. "A couple tough spots, but nothing we couldn't handle." She looked over at Mike with an arched eyebrow. "So? What did you think?"
Michelangelo didn't rightly know what he felt: relief and exuberance, guilt and confusion, camaraderie and separateness, all at the same time. He said, honestly, "I think that was the work of a pretty damn good squad."
She grinned, then, and he found himself grinning back. Even Snake was caught up in the spirit. "Hel-lo, payday," he drawled, leaning back with his hands laced behind his neck.
"After we get back to HQ, we ought to celebrate," Simon called from the front. "My favorite bar, Chuck's, isn't far, just over on Seventh and-"
"But we can't take Mike in there," Ren interrupted.
It was still a little startling to hear them use his name. For the first several weeks, it had seemed as if they couldn't quite wrap their heads around the idea of referring to him by a human name, especially one as disarmingly everyman as 'Mike.' "That's okay," he said now, filling the awkward moment of silence, "You guys go. You deserve it. Really."
Tami said, "Let's get some take-out and beer and hang out in the team room." It was nice, seeing her face relaxed and without suspicion. "That way the whole squad can be there."
###
"Aggghh, nooooo...noooo, wipe out!" Michelangelo dropped to his knees and shook his fists at the screen as his race car careened out of control, off a bridge and into the water. He handed the controller to Ren with a mock-despondent sigh. "So, so close. I've never been beaten before." Well, to be fair, he'd never played anyone except this brothers before. "Beer will surely improve my driving," he jested as went to the back of the room and dug into the mini-fridge.
He leaned with his elbows resting on the back of the sofa, nursing a bottle, half-watching Ren and Simon's game. He knew he should have left by now, but he didn't relish the long, demoralizing journey home and the cool non-reception that would be waiting for him at the end of it. With each minute that passed, he relished it less and less.
Tami came through the door and he watched her cross the room, help herself to a slice of pizza and grab a drink from the fridge. She noticed his eyes on her and came over to join him behind the sofa.
"So," he said, "assignment H054 is all tied up?"
She nodded, swallowing a mouthful of food. "I passed the contents of the safe to Doshida-san five minutes ago. He congratulated us." She held up her bottle and he clinked it, made vaguely uneasy by her unabashed pride.
"What do you think it was? That we got out of the safe?"
"If I had to guess? Documents that implicate important people, like politicians or businessmen, people who secretly do big business with the criminal underworld." She shrugged. "But that's just a guess. It's none of our business."
Snake, standing by himself at the back of the room, set his empty drink down and pulled on his heavy leather jacket, heading for the door without so much as a word of parting. "Snake." Mike raised his bottle in the man's direction.
"Coach." The way he said the word, with the 'o' drawn out, always made it sound amply padded with condescension, the way a person might refer to the lowest class of airline service: "Oh, you're flying coach." He disappeared into the corridor.
Tami made a noise of irritation. "Don't mind him," she said.
"I don't."
"Good. 'Cause I think you're alright." She said this without looking at him, watching the racecars on the screen instead.
He studied her profile, surprised by how pleased he felt. "Thanks," he said sincerely. After a minute, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Depends on what it is."
"How did you become a ninja? You don't look very Japanese."
She turned towards him now, some of the suspicion back in her eyes, but after a long pause, she sighed and said, "My father was a half-Japanese Foot soldier. Oruku Saki allowed for such people at the lower ranks, but not the higher ones. So my dad never rose; he only ever made enough money for us to live on. He tried to hold down a day job, but the Foot frown on that kind of thing. After my mom left, he started training me." She shook her head scornfully. "Pointless, really. He knew I didn't have enough Japanese blood for the Foot to ever accept me."
Her last words were nearly drowned out by Simon and Ren's shouting as the game reached some critical moment. Mike nodded towards the engrossed video game players. "How about Ren? Did he come from a Foot family as well?"
Tami lowered her voice, so as not to be heard over the sound of cars tearing down imaginary tracks. "No, I'm guessing his dad was some deadbeat military serviceman. Ren's great-uncle is a local boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi in New York; he was the only one who'd take Ren's mother in. He tried to keep Ren out of trouble by training him alongside his own son- tall guy, on another squad here at Agete."
Mike nodded, thoughtful. He'd been raised a ninja; it had never been a choice. He'd rarely stopped to consider that for most humans, there were other paths, and the men he fought had stories and reasons for being what they were. He said to Tami, "But both of you somehow found your way to the Rising Hand, along with people like Simon, and Snake."
Tami nodded. "Saito is a visionary," she said with fervent conviction. 'Saito', he noted, not 'Doshida-san', as she'd always been careful to call him before. "You know, he's actually blue-blood Foot. The problem was that Oruku Saki didn't place much value on the Doshida family expertise with poisons; he only cared about swelling the ranks of his fighters."
Michelangelo suppressed a shudder. He knew that well enough.
"So Saito started finding other customers. At first, the Shredder overlooked it, but a Foot soldier's life and livelihood are owned by the Clan- you don't take your cut until those above you have had theirs, and you don't go outside the Clan without permission. So when the side business started doing too well, Saki ordered him to stop."
"He refused, obviously," Mike finished.
There was a knock on the door and Ren exclaimed, "Oh, crap, I'm late," as he grabbed his bag and jacket, throwing an apologetic wave to all of them. "Rematch, later," he promised, pointing at Mike as he rushed out. Mike caught a glimpse of the friend, Ren's second-cousin, waiting in the hall. Simon turned off the video game and said, "Well, I'm heading out too."
When Simon had gone, Tami dropped down onto the sofa with a tired, but satisfied, groan, looking up at Mike as if surprised to see him still here. "Thank you. For getting us out of there tonight." She hesitated. "It looked like... it hurt."
Mike finished his beer and set aside the bottle. Slowly, he lowered himself onto the other side of the sofa. He could read her expression as she looked at him, at his face, his shell, his skin, his fingers and his toes, and he knew she was thinking about how very strange he was. It wasn't a comfortable feeling, being on the receiving end of such naked scrutiny. "We do have feeling in our shells," he explained. "Not nearly as much, but there are nerves and blood in there."
Tentatively, skeptically, she put a hand on his shell. "So you can feel this."
"Sure. I can feel the pressure, I can tell there's five fingers. I can't really feel how warm or cold your hand is, but it you stabbed me in the shell it would hurt."
She pulled her hand away. "It must be lonely, being so very different."
Mike considered her words. "Maybe a little, but...not really. I do have brothers." And just like that, it hit him: how much he'd been delaying going home, not wanting to be reminded of the strain he'd created, but also because, as hard as it was to believe and admit, he'd been having too much fun, playing video games and having beer and pizza with humans, with Saito Doshida's people, while his family waited and worried. He stood up, sick with guilt. It would be nearly dawn by the time he got home. "I'd better go." To soften his abrupt leave-taking he added, "Takes a long time to hail a blind cabbie."
He was rewarded with snort of amusement and a half-smile. "Later, then."
As he left the team room, he paused halfway down the stairs. Snake was leaving Saito Doshida's office. He didn't see Michelangelo as he turned and strode in the opposite direction, a small silver metal box tucked under one arm. Mike waited until the man was out of sight before he continued down the steps, his mouth now forming a pensive line. After two months, Snake was still an enigma. And it wasn't just his disdainful aloofness, or his deliberately intimidating personal quirks that Mike didn't understand or care for.
He's hiding something. Something big. Michelangelo was sure of it.