The Ninja's Oath, page 24
Next, I took down the fabric painting, used the end of the fabric to grip the nail, and began the arduous task of loosening it from the wood. “Jeez. Someone hammered this in well.”
“Why do you want it?”
“You’ll see.” I doubled the fabric under my sore fingers and pulled out the nail as straight as I could. Using it to rip the fabric into three long strips, I knotted them together at one end and handed it to Suyin. “Hold this for me, okay?” Then I braided the fabric into a slender rope.
Armed with a foot-long club, a short length of braided rope, and a two-inch nail, I curled sideways on the futon with my back to the door.
I smiled encouragingly at Suyin. “Have you performed in any plays?”
“Never.”
“Well, now’s your chance.”
I rushed through what I needed just as the bolt slid outside the door. The first guard entered and ordered us to the back of the room while the second guard brought in our food.
Suyin leapt to her feet, babbled in Mandarin, and pointed at me.
“Is she sick?” the first guard asked in English.
Suyin continued in Mandarin and raised her voice in distress.
As the first guard dealt with her, the second guard set the food tray on the broken table. When he stooped to catch it as it slid onto the floor, I rolled onto my knees and cracked my club against his skull.
The first guard yelled and swung his baton at my head. I rose to one foot and struck the inside of his arm. His baton flew out of his hand. He grabbed onto mine and tried to disarm my club. Rather than fixate on the weapon, I let it go and rose with a rising shin to his groin. Before he could recover and club my head, I grabbed the nail from my pocket, swiped it across the side of his neck, and sliced into his external jugular vein.
Blood spewed.
Suyin covered her mouth to stifle a scream.
I kicked the guard into the wall, picked up the quilt, and pressed it onto his neck. “Keep up the pressure. Don’t move and you’ll survive. Follow us, yell, or fight, and you’ll die. Understand?”
He pressed the quilt against his neck and glared.
“I’ll take that as a yes. The rest is on you.”
Suyin whimpered.
I checked the unconscious guard who I had cracked in the head. A grapefruit-size lump was rising above his temple around a nasty, bleeding gash. The fluid leaking from his nose did not bode well for a full recovery. These gangsters should have copied my ninja abductors and locked me in an empty cell.
I tied his wrists and ankles behind his back with the braid. “He’s alive, Suyin. Pull yourself together and pick up that baton. One way or another, we are getting out of this place.”
Fifty-Two
Ren steadied himself with a cane as he ambled up Main Street, shoulders rolled forward, bony spine stooped as if from a lifetime of hard labor. His travel pouch dangled from the waist of his baggy blue-gray pants and faded blue shirt. The split-toes of his rubber-soled tabi shoes stabilized his feet.
Mama-sans in the doorways nodded but didn’t beckon him toward their hentai as they did for the early-bird customers—Japanese men out of their teens and up to middle-age. A few foreigners ambled through the neighborhood, taking in the sights. The younger men and bolder tourists would come out in the evening when the tell-tale paper lamps would be lit and more of the ladies were on display. Aside from the occasional nod of a mama-san, no one looked twice at an old neighborhood man.
Tran, on the other hand, drew lots of attention as he sauntered down the road toward Ren in his black designer jacket and pants, flared in all the right places to conceal handguns and knives, and a fitted charcoal tee that displayed his well-muscled chest. With his glorious hair bound in a ponytail and his chiseled face neatly groomed, he could have stepped from the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Although not Japanese, the young ladies inside the storefronts waved enthusiastically from their cushioned platforms, adjusting their poses to best display their skimpy or cutesy attire, while their mama-sans beckoned Tran inside for delicious tea and cakes. The rectangular canvas pack he wore slung on his back didn’t alarm them in the least.
Chang ambled on his own, dressed in a multi-pocketed travel jacket and pants, another tourist to be ignored.
Ren progressed slowly, giving Tran enough time to be admitted into the hentai, over-pay his waitress, and stage his sniper rifle in her room. When Ren saw Tran’s signal from the second-story window, he began his approach toward the Kufuku-kai’s lair.
He paused at the first closed establishment and pretended to knock on the door. He did the same at the next hentai. When he came to the Kufuku-kai’s building, he knocked on the wood with the brass butt of his cord-wrapped handle. The French sliders on either side were shut. Through the glass, Ren could see flat hardwood where the display platforms had been. When no one answered, he rapped three more times on the door and moved back so he could be seen.
After a third set of knocks, an annoyed young man answered the door. “What do you want?” he said in Japanese.
Ren bowed and took a plastic tube from his belly pack. “I have special spices that strengthen the libido.”
The young man crossed his muscular arms and displayed a tattooed jackal’s head with its jaws ready to bite. “Do I look like I need help from an old man like you?”
Ren chuckled as he uncapped the tube and peeled off the tape on the bottom. “These spices are potent.” He held it up, blocking the blow hole with his thumb. “Even one sniff will increase your strength, not only for romance but for fighting as well.”
“Who’s at the door?” another man yelled.
The young man looked over his shoulder. “An old peddler.”
When he looked back, Ren blew the mixture of cayenne and cigarette ash into his eyes. The young man cursed. When the other man came to check, Ren flung a second tube of metsubushi powder at him and leaned against the door’s frame. Both men fell with shots to center mass, wheezing as their lungs collapsed and their hearts failed. As promised, Ren didn’t hear the shots.
He entered the building and dragged the younger man to the left of the doorway, out of sight. Chang followed inside and dragged the older man to the right. Neither gangster was armed. Neither would live.
A folding screen shielded the rest of the ground floor from street view, which explained why the gang hadn’t replaced the glass in the French sliding doors. It also meant that Tran would only see people who came around the screen or down the stairs on either side of the six-foot-deep entryway.
Ren crossed the open doorway to the right. When a new man came around the screen, he thrust the handle of his cane into the pocket of the man’s throat and stepped in with a lateral strike to his head. A pane in the French window crumbled as the man stumbled in front of the slider. A second later, the gangster fell with a shot to his chest.
When Ren saw that the wooden lattice had kept the other panes intact, he slid open the doors. Chang did the same with the other set of sliders, then spun as two gangsters rounded his side of the standing privacy screen. Before Ren could help, two gangsters rounded his side as well.
Three dead bodies, an old triad enforcer, an older ninja, and four young Kufuku-kai gangsters crammed into the six-foot-wide channel between three open doors and a folding screen. It could have been a dicey situation if not for Tran’s deadly aim.
Ren widened his grip on the cane so he could strike and deflect more easily in the confined space. His loose grip allowed the cane to slide through his hands for a Tsuki to a throat and a Suso Haneage upward strike to a groin or chin. When he had immobilized his first attacker, he mule kicked him into Tran’s line of sight and trusted that a subsonic bullet would put the man down.
When the next attacker swiped at Ren’s belly with a knife, he shifted just out of reach, followed the man’s arm with his cane, guiding it farther than he expected, then snapped the tip of the cane back with a powerful push-pull strike. The brass point struck into the fragile pterion, where the four cranial bones met. The impact was hard enough to rupture the meningeal artery and possibly cause brain damage or death.
Chang gutted another man in the stomach and kicked him to the floor.
Six bodies now clogged the entry channel behind the folding privacy screen.
The mama-san across the road shut her doors. No one passed on the street. If Ren and Chang didn’t breach the building soon, the gang would attack in force and shove them outside.
“This way,” Chang said, and bolted up the left-hand stairs.
Bodies fell behind Ren like shooting gallery targets as he ran across the open doors. From the steep, open staircase, he saw four more men racing around a long dining table out of the kitchen in the back.
He paused long enough to unsheathe one of the bo-shuriken, cupped the dart vertically in his palm, and secured it lightly with his thumb. He chambered it alongside his ear and let the iron slide through his grip as it launched, aiming for center mass as Tran had done with his rifle. The shuriken veered high and lodged in the gangster’s throat.
A shot was fired at Ren from across the dining area where a man had squatted on the matching staircase to take aim. Before he could fire again, Chang knelt on the steps above Ren and shot the man in the head. With no railing or wall to stop him, the gunman fell off the steep staircase onto the hardwood floor.
The surprise attack had ended. Any Kufuku-kai they encountered would be armed and hungry to kill.
Fifty-Three
I led Suyin across the corridor to an empty room with a view. Narrow three-story buildings like ours pressed in from all sides. The utility wires draped over the single-lane road reminded me of Shanghai. Although I could have climbed down the building or up to the roof, Suyin would have needed a fire escape we didn’t have.
A gun fired inside our building.
I clamped a hand over Suyin’s mouth before she could scream.
We could hide in the bedroom until whatever was happening was done or use the commotion to escape. My choice was clear. Suyin didn’t agree.
I gripped her arms as she tried to breakaway. “We need to get out of this building while they’re distracted. Unless you can climb walls, we need to go down the stairs.”
She looked from the window to the door with equal concern.
I folded her hands tighter around the baton. “If someone gets past me, aim for their bones—head, hands, elbows, or knees.” When she nodded, I led her down the corridor to the left where a steep flight of steps shot down two levels to the ground floor.
Men raced into view.
I pushed her back and ran to the matching stairwell on the other side. Voices shouted in Japanese but, for the moment, our egress was clear.
“Leave a few steps between us so I can fight.”
She raised the baton to indicate she understood.
The stairs were steep, shallow, and open on one side, which meant anyone on the second level would be able to see our legs before we saw them. I lay on the landing and peeked over the edge.
Tattooed men in tank tops and shorts scrambled on the floor below us to find weapons between the lounging area near the windows and the pool table in back. The quicker ones had already engaged the infiltrators with pool cues and knives. I wasn’t surprised that Uncle had found me, but I was shocked to see Sensei fighting beside him instead of J Tran.
Armed only with a cane, my teacher struck vital points to shut down nerves, sight, and sound. He countered swinging pool cues with bone-cracking accuracy and returned knife attacks with organ-damaging thrusts. As one attacker fell, another took his place.
Sensei leapt back and drew a hidden sword from the cane-like sheath.
Although he and I had trained with live blades, I had never watched him in actual combat, nor had I seen him engage with anyone other than me. The poetry of it stole my breath.
He held off his attacker in Ichi no Kamae, then flipped his wrists with a quick slice to the man’s hands. When his attacker pulled back his knife, Sensei flowed through Gedan no Kamae with an upward sweeping cut that pulled through tendons and muscles to bone. The man screamed as his blood spurted from the axillary artery that used to feed his limb.
Leaving this man to his fate, Sensei flipped his wrists again, flicking drops of blood into the air, and swept back to his right with a lateral cut across the next attacker’s throat. It happened so quickly, as if he had felt rather than seen the danger and continued his motion to the blade’s natural conclusion.
Uncle stabbed and slashed.
Sensei pierced and sliced.
Like the strokes of his watercolor brush, my teacher used his straight ninja-to blade to paint an exquisite scene of pain, death, and surprise. I was so captivated by the beauty, I almost missed the two men below me opening a cabinet hidden beneath the stairs.
Fifty-Four
Movement on the stairs caught Ren’s eyes in time to see Lily-chan jump from the top of the ladder-like steps. She landed on the back of a bald-headed man like a cat. The fingers of one hand clawed over his head into his eyes and nostrils while her other hand reached around to dig her thumb and fingers into the pressure points of his throat. As her knees squeezed against his back, one leg snuck over the man’s right arm to lower the gun that had been pointed at Ren.
All of this happened in a single leap—a leap Ren had not taught her or ever executed himself.
Lily-chan pulled her leg to torque the man’s arm farther behind his back and leaned her weight to spiral him to the floor. The takedown pinned the man’s gun-arm beneath his weight and hers. As a second man retrieved a gun from the stairway cabinet to shoot, Lily-chan grabbed the fallen pistol and shot him in the face.
His student’s decisive precision froze Ren in his tracks. If not for Chang fighting by his side, a gangster would have stabbed him in the back.
“Stop gaping and fight,” Chang said, shaking Ren from his daze.
More Kufuku-kai gangsters were running up the stairs.
Lily-chan fired another shot.
Ren yearned to watch her in action, but he had troubles of his own.
He whirled his sword over his head, tucked his foot behind the other, and spiraled with a sweeping 360-degree lateral cut. Men yelped and backed away, some bleeding, others not. Before the knifeman in front of him resumed his attack, Ren opened his belly with an upward diagonal slice.
Across the room, Lily-chan attempted to fire, then hurled her empty gun at the gangster rushing her from around the couch. Pain and blood slowed the gangster for a moment, but he quickly recovered and continued his charge. Ren wanted to help her, but he couldn’t leave Chang, who was drowning in more adversaries than he could shoot.
Lily-chan can handle herself, but can we?
Ren focused his attention and summoned the knowledge from the Oku-hiden scroll. Instead of fighting, he gave way, becoming a ghost his opponents could see but not touch.
Although the nin in ninja meant stealth—drawing from the nin-sha Chinese pronunciation of the written characters or shinobi-no-mono in Japanese—the secrets Ren had learned from his teacher and through studying the Oku-hiden scroll elevated his stealth into a mastery of magic.
As men attacked, Ren didn’t conceal, evade, counter, or attack. He didn’t even fit into their space as he had taught Lily-chan to do. He offered no resistance at all. And yet the blood of his enemy flowed.
They tumbled into emptiness and slit their own throats. They eviscerated their bellies on his blade. They broke their bones from the weight of their own misalignment. Ren did nothing to steal their senses or restrict their mobility, yet they lost their ability to see, hear, or move. Ren exerted no will of his own. He simply—or not so simply—accepted their intention and allowed them to determine their own demise.
Chang expelled far more energy in his close-quarters fight, breaking cheeks and jaws with the pistol’s butt as often as he shot. Once emptied, with no time to load a new magazine, he exchanged the pistol for a knife and slashed, swiped, and kicked. Despite the injured and dead surrounding him, more Kufuku-kai gangsters flooded up the stairs.
Across the room, Lily-chan fought three attackers of her own, two unarmed and one with a knife. Above her, a Chinese woman cowered on the ladder-like stairs. Using Ren’s multiple-attacker fighting techniques, Lily-chan slipped in and out of the men. She caught a wrist, made use of a grab, positioned her feet, knees, and hips to tangle, off balance, and lock.
Ren could have watched her graceful efficiency for hours.
If only he had the time.
A bare-chested gangster retrieved pistols from the gun cabinet, tossed one to his comrade, and targeted Ren. As the man prepared to fire, Ren rolled out of the way, clearing the path for the bullet to hit the next man charging up the stairs.
The second gunman searched for a clear shot at Lily-chan, who had tangled her attackers into a Gordian knot of arm bars, spinal locks, and hyper-extended knees. Using the men as a shield, she peeled the knife from her captive’s loosened grip, stabbed one of the tangled men in the kidney, and opened the carotid artery in another man’s neck. As the men slumped to the floor, an opening appeared.
The gunman took aim.
Ren sent a bo-shuriken flying into his neck. Having provided a moment’s distraction for Lily-chan to use, Ren spun back toward the stairs.
Chang had wrapped his jacket around one arm as he defended against knives. His fitted vest was covered in blood. Although some of it had to be his own, the wounded enemy and corpses around him attested to his skill. At some point, Chang had acquired a machete. The former triad enforcer might have been chopping ducks in the Wong family’s restaurant for the last twenty-five years, but he had kept his killer instincts honed.
Chang dodged a knife thrust and swept the machete up through the knifeman’s jacket. As he yanked the blade out of the man’s arm, he shouted to Ren. “There are too many. We have to fall back. Have you spotted Suyin?”
