Black Heart, page 49
He opened up after her flurry with a double-feint as if moving in on her offside. Confused, she turned slightly to meet him and he used one of the more lethal ate-waza, the percussions, switching from karate, which she was using too, to judo to further confound her.
She cried out as one side of her clavical cracked beneath the force of the strike. He wanted to let up there; he wanted to question her. But she would not allow that. She threw the syringe away from them in a clatter, attacking him with her good side and he was forced because of her strength, to abandon the osae-waza, the immobilization techniques he would have preferred to use.
She hissed at him, spitting like a cat, beginning to hurt him with a vicelike clamp and he had no choice, bringing the shortened blade of his fingertips blurring forward, striking her just beneath the sternum, forcing them in and up like a shot of steel.
Jade Princess' body arched back. Cords in her neck stood out like rope and her teeth clacked together threateningly. Then she slumped forward into his waiting arms.
Tracy took her to the bed, threw her onto it. He lifted the blanket over her. He slowed his breathing, wiped the sweat from his face. He felt hot and drained and his head throbbed fiercely.
He moved towards the door, grabbed himself abruptly °eneath his left armpit. His breath was a hot wheeze and he
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cursed himself silently. He had moved too suddenly, twisted without thinking, a perfectly natural movement ... for a healthy man. He was not. He would have to remember that. The doctor's words reverberated in his mind. Remember, there's still a lot of repair work got to do and only time will help ...
Tracy gritted his teeth, a grimace of a laugh. Well, yes, Doctor, perhaps just a bit of strenuous activity to keep my hand in.
He leaned against the door, sweating. Christ, but he hurt.
He opened the door. At least, he thought, the worst is over with.
Shadows in the corridor, moving, and he thought, Oh, God, there's more of them. He turned back into the room, his eyes alighting on the syringe Jade Princess had thrown down. It was one of the new disposable kind. Made of plastic. It hadn't shattered. And it was still full of death.
Tracy retrieved it. Not exactly the weapon he would choose in these circumstances but it would have to do.
In the corridor the night lights were on, cool and burning low. A buzzer set into the console at the nurses' station sounded as loud as a game of Pong. An insistent patient. Where were they?
He saw no one, marvelling at the job they had done in clearing the floor, but he felt their presence and then he was throwing himself face first to the cool polished floor, sliding obliquely from left to right, the hair along the top of his head ruffled as if by a gentle summer breeze. The sound of someone spitting, a second soft phuttl, an exclamatory admonition, and he had fetched up hard against the corridor wall, rolling away as soon as he had made contact, seeing a long funnel-shaped slice of painted plaster tear itself away just where his shoulder had been.
His head was pounding as he threw himself behind the door of a utility closet and he immediately began to work on himself. The headache was impairing his capability and he had to do something about it at once. He knew he could not successfully make the break in his present physical condition.
Using the thumb of his opposing hand, he dug into the fleshy
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rwedge of his hands where the base of the thumb met the first knuckle of the forefinger until he found the muscle there. He pressed hard, holding it for as long as he dared, then switched hands. It was one of the major acupuncture meridians, Large Intestine Four, and the pressure he was exerting there gave him immediate relief; the pounding receded to a dull ache.
Distance. That was his most lethal enemy now. When he was being fired upon, he had glimpsed two of them. But they had silenced weapons and it was to their advantage to keep well clear of him. He could only be effective in close quarters. He had to make them come to him. And he had to cut them in two.
He did not like it. He had not been in this kind of situation since the war. It had been what, thirteen years? But then again he had never stopped his classes and he was grateful for that.
He leaned backwards, kicked out the door with his straightened leg, raced out into the corridor. He was too late to hear the sound of the silenced weapon being fired but he saw the scarred crease in the gleaming light wood of the door, deeper at one end.
He headed in the opposite direction, towards the source of the bullet. He felt terribly vulnerable. They would, of course, have changed their positions while he had been temporarily holed up. Because of his last manoeuvre, he now knew where one of them was. But the second man's location was still a mystery. The short hairs at the back of Tracy's neck bristled and he tried not to think of the whistling death that might be at his back.
He caught a glimpse of the black top of a head, saw simultaneously, the gaping hole of the silencer-extended barrel pointed at him and, taking a long gliding stride forward, launched himself into the air. He leaped upwards over the second of the nurses' stations, skidding through papers, pencils, metal files, his right arm leading, knocking the gun from the surprised man's grasp. The man grunted, brought his knee up. It connected with Tracy's left side and Tracy felt all the strength going out of him. He gritted his teeth, determined not to groan, give up the secret of his disability. Advantages, Jinsoku had impressed upon him, are sometimes all that stand between you and defeat. Never give up anything.
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Tracy countered with a liver-strike that bent the man in two, his animal grunt giving Tracy some satisfaction. But he was no pushover and he recovered enough to lash out with the toe of his shoe. It caught Tracy on the tip of his right cheekbone, rocked his head so that he knew he had to end this quickly. Said, To hell with it, and jabbed the man in the thigh with the syringe.
The man struggled, gasping, his eyes bulging out with fear. He grabbed at his leg instead of at Tracy. His chest heaved as if with laboured breathing. His skin went white.
His eyes, as round as they would ever get, stared up at Tracy. Clear bubbles of foam appeared at the corners of his working mouth, began to fleck his cheeks as if he were rabid.
Muscular crampings began soon afterwards. The man looked like a contortionist. He tried to speak but his throat, now a tightly banded shell of cartilage, merely convulsed.
Tracy turned away at last. This was, after all, the death that had been planned for him. He looked around, saw what they had done to the nurses. Three of them were bound hand and foot. That was good. It meant they were still alive. But they were unconscious and of no use to him.
He was breathing harder than he liked and he had used up his one weapon as well as much of his strength. Prana. He must regain his inner strength if he were to have a chance to survive this ordeal. The man's gun! Tracy turned, searching for it. He had knocked it away down the corridor and now he went after it, saw it finally perhaps a dozen feet away, part way around the curving of the corridor.
He crouched down, contemplated the weapon. It was tempting indeed, lying as it was so clear and in the open. And that was precisely what concerned Tracy now.
He took a chance, one he did not relish taking. But everything was a risk now with only fractions of a second to attempt to determine the odds. This was what he had been trained for, after all, and all his instincts cried out that the weapon was too good to be true. He backed away from it and, removing his shoes, ran crouched, down the corridor. He was in G wing, the casualty ward. Each floor of the hospital described an almost perfect rectangle with two branch hallways, one at either end, leading
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off into the smaller wings of the building that housed the special wards such as intensive care, cardiac and the burn centre.
Three-quarters of the way around, he slowed, placed his shoes back on his feet, crept forward, and at last found his instincts rewarded. For there in front of him was the second man, down On one knee behind a pillar, in the classic sharpshooter's position, his pistol aimed at the gleam of his fallen compatriot's weapon clearly in view on the floor. Had Tracy made a move towards it, he would have been dead now.
Tracy came forward. He cursed silently as the man spun. He was large and bulky, his girth belying his speed. He sighted, closing one eye.
Tracy was already committed, on his way, his leg kicking out, the impact of his steel-shod heel connecting with a satisfying crunch on the point of the man's fat chin.
His arms flew out at his sides as the momentum of Tracy's blow and following weight spun him backwards. He hit the outer wall, bounced back. The gun was still in his hand and he used it now as a club, bringing it down in a wicked blow onto the top of Tracy's right shoulder.
Tracy cried out, used his own toppling downward momenturn to sweep the fat man off his feet with a swift pull and twist of his forearm. It was Tracy's left arm however and the manoeuvre cost him in recovery time and energy.
The fat man was on him like a mongoose on a snake. He was very adept, using the bulk and momentum of his own weight to keep Tracy off-balance while he struck once, twice, a third time with blows to Tracy's liver and spleen.
Tracy was flat on his back. He lifted a knee but was blocked. The fat man bore down, raining blows as Tracy tried to cover up on his pain-filled left side. His heart was racing and the breath was leaving his lungs too quickly for enough oxygen to be absorbed. Much more of this, he knew, and he would be finished. He knew how he could defeat this man. Jinsoko had taught him that. You cannot defeat an opponent unless you first determine his style of hand-to-hand fighting. Once you begin to think like him, all the rest will follow. The key to this man was his enormous weight. He had learned to use it to his own advan-
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tage, therefore he relied on it. As a result, Tracy believed it could be used against him.
At the end of another flurry of blows he allowed his grunts of pain to louden he did not have to put on much of an act. His body slumped slightly a fraction was all his opponent would need. He raised up to finish Tracy off and Tracy gambled once again.
He used his left elbow, praying as he did so that the bone at the top of his shoulder would not be dislodged from its socket by the resulting impact, bringing it in and upwards in a percussive blow to the man's sternum. The solar plexus, as Tracy knew full well, was only vulnerable in an out-of-shape person. Professionals trained too well and too hard, building many protective layers of fibrous muscle that made the solar plexus impervious to any but the most massive of percussive blows.
But the sternum was another matter. It was relatively close to the surface of the body and no amount of conditioning could protect it because muscles just did not form in that area.
The outer point of his elbow smashed into the fat man and Tracy clamped his hands together, fingers laced, now bringing his own weight to bear, levering himself up while jamming his elbow downwards against the bone.
The fat man let out a scream and tumbled away from Tracy, on his hands and knees, away from the burning pain. He gasped and coughed and Tracy was on him.
The fat man's head was shaking, sweat dripping down from his forehead. Tracy crooked his arm, extending his body forward in a low crouch. He slipped his wrist behind the fat man's left calf and heaved mightily, sending him tumbling forward towards Tracy so that the back of his neck was extended and exposed.
And in that instant, Tracy clamped him with thumb and fingers of his right hand, pressing inward, gaining access to the fat man's sub-occipital nerves, which fed the head through the openings in the very top of the spine.
With a pincerlike motion, he jammed them against the intervening bone of the fat man's spine. The man's entire body jerked spasmodically and was still.
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Tracy, gasping, rocked back on his haunches. He pulled in oxygen like a drowning man, concerning now only with his own well-being. Nothing strenuous, the doctor had said. He wanted to laugh but found himself too exhausted.
He got up at last, walked away from the fat man's bulk, looking for the fire stairs. His left shoulder felt dowsed in fire. The concrete stairs were wide and open. The place seemed not to have been washed in decades.
At the landing he had to hold on tightly to the metal banister, red-painted like an arrow descending into hell, as vertigo hit him, this time harder than when he had first got out of bed. What I really need, he thought, is eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep. But there was much he still had to do before he could rest.
He glanced at his watch, surprised to find it only 8.25. It had been just seven minutes since he had moved out into the corridor. It seemed like seven days. He began to move cautiously down the staircase, mindful of all his aches and pains. And almost tripped over the two policemen, lying along the stairwell, trussed like birds ready for the oven.
Tracy bent down - too fast - and felt the vertigo return. His stomach seemed to rebel, rising up into his throat. He took three deep breaths as he examined the cops, touching the sides of their necks, the insides of their wrists. Alive but unconscious. He had wondered that the police, wanting to question him in connection with the explosion, had not seen fit to post guards near his room. Now he saw that they had ... and what had happened to them.
It was within his power to bring them around but he hesitated. He had to get to Mizo because only Mizo now knew the Why of all this. Jade Princess might have had the knowledge but she would never tell anyone now. So he had to have his mobility. The police, of course, would not understand that. He decided to leave them sleeping where they were. In a few hours, they would come to with only brief headaches and aches and pains.
Tracy climbed carefully over them. Down and down he went in the silence of the hospital staircase. On the last landing, he
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rested a moment, regaining his wind. Just ahead and below him he could see the long front hallway and beyond, the soft Hong Kong night. Somewhere people in fancy dress were undoubtedly stepping out of hired cars, laughing, ready for dinner, dancing and perhaps a stage show or two. Carefree and happy. A relaxed evening out on the town. Hong Kong was a city for tourists.
Tracy went down the stairs, froze immediately. Pain rushed into his lower back.
'Be a good fellow,' the deep voice said in lilting Cantonese, 'and take your hand out of your pocket.'
The muzzle of the snug-nosed .38 was ground into Tracy's coccyx. 'By all the gods stay like that,' the voice said, 'I want to remember you just the way you are before I kill you.'
'Ladies and gentlemen!...'
It was a night of rushing energy for Atherton Gottschalk. A night of great purpose.
'... Delegates to the Republican National Convention!...'
A night when he and everyone else packed into this great barn of an auditorium, millions watching on television, listening on radio felt the first culmination of the groundswell.
'... Please join me in welcoming ...'
He saw the Secret Service much in evidence, gathered around him, near him like a living network, speaking in low monosyllables into their tiny walkie-talkies, shifting the pattern minutely, glancing from face to face every ten seconds as they had been trained. His chest swelled with pride at the thought that he required them now.
'... the next President of the United States of America! ...' The roar that had begun a moment ago, swelled, shaking the auditorium until he felt surrounded by thunder.
'... Atherton Gottschalk!'
And, straightening his tie, filled with elation, he moved onto the centre of the stage, into the bright hot spotlight of the world where one hundred million eyes watched.
Atherton Gottschalk welcomed that scrutiny, knew the kind of physical appearance he gave. What the heartland had learned
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in the months of his campaign for the nomination, the big cities would soon acquiesce in. Macomber had been correct all along jn his assessment of the country's mood.
When he was President, Gottschalk thought now, he would see that Macomber was amply rewarded. What could he want? A military advisorship? An ambassadorial post? Appropriations for the weaponry Metronics, Inc. developed, certainly. Well, that would be easy. Gottschalk believed in every one of those weapons.
Atherton Gottschalk lifted up his arms in a great V of triumph, acknowledging the crowd's standing ovation. He turned from one television camera to another, smiling broadly, confidently. He radiated poise, control, enthusiasm and the power of, as he thought of it, the big mo. Momentum. One would never guess from the attitude he struck that
- as Macomber had told him were the elections to be held today, 25 August, Gottschalk would most likely lose. Because of the goddamned big cities, Gottschalk thought, smiling away.
He turned this way and that, marvelling at the unity of strength within the party. The goddamned holdout liberals who shied away from the aggressive stance that he knew with a deep and abiding certainty America must take in the world in order to survive the rest of the eighties intact.
Erosion of the democratic way of life was already on the rise throughout the world. Communist propaganda was taking an even more devastating toll now than it had in the sixties. The disinformation they were so cleverly providing their mouthpieces in the Third World was subtly undermining American prestige. It seemed incredible to Gottschalk that the Soviet propaganda was so successful that even ranking members of the current administration refused to believe in the USSR's creation of a unified network of terrorists.
Well, all that would change when he became President. As soon as he was installed in office, he would move to counter those threats. His smile widened now as he thought of 31 August and Macomber's plan. Because of that, there would be no opposition to him at all. By then America would have had its
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first taste of a terrorist assault on its home soil and it would mobilize.
