The Ninja's Oath, page 6
As we neared the house, a man built like a tank rose from a bench. His frame was so short and wide I had mistaken him for part of the porch. A leaner man advanced from the side, as pretty as a singer in a K-pop band.
Uncle and I dismounted from our bikes.
Tank questioned us in a dialect I didn’t recognize. When Uncle didn’t respond, he switched to strongly accented Mandarin. “This is private property. Go back the way you came.”
Uncle didn’t move. “We’re here to see the Chongming King.”
Tank chuckled, as if Uncle had told a marvelous joke. “A king? Why not an emperor? Turn around and get off our land.”
Uncle stepped forward. “Your boss, Edward Fu, would prefer that we stay. Tell him Red Pole Chang is waiting.”
Tank’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. He nodded to K-Pop. “Watch them.” Then he marched into the house. A few minutes later, he beckoned us inside.
Unlike Qiang’s spindly farmhouse, Edward Fu’s sprawling home radiated sophistication and wealth. Glass, laminate, and polished wood gleamed against walls painted crimson and cream.
Tank nodded toward a bench. “Leave your shoes at the door.”
He, on the other hand, kept his shoes on his feet.
As we walked through the house, I made note of the throw rugs and furniture I should avoid if we needed to flee and the statues and lamps I could wield if we were forced into a fight. A downward strike to the base of the neck with Edward Fu’s silver goddess, for example, would drop most men to the floor.
Most.
Probably not the linebacker guarding the doorway at the end of the hall.
Although too small for the NFL, he could have tucked Qiang’s granddaughter under one arm like a football and carried her for miles. The man would have seemed like a giant to little Yong.
Uncle marched forward and stopped inches from the man’s chest. The giant’s bulk looked flabby compared to Uncle’s sinewy physique.
A gravelly voice called from inside. “Let them pass.”
Edward Fu—sixties, with graying hair and oily skin—remained behind his desk. He focused on Uncle, but did not look at me. “Come in, Mr. Chang. Have a seat.”
As Uncle sat in the cushioned chair, I stood off his shoulder as I had done when we met with the Scorpion Triad’s leader in Hong Kong. Fu acknowledged this arrangement with a nod.
A man stepped out of the corner. A scar pulled the side of his mouth as Yong had described. The knife sheathed at his waist made me long for the karambit I had left in Los Angeles.
The crime boss leaned back in his chair. “What brings you to my home unannounced?”
“My brother, Chang Qiang.”
Fu examined Uncle’s face. “Not much family resemblance.”
“He’s led a harder life than me.”
“Ha. Don’t be humble. I remember you, Chang Lee. But harder is not the same as rougher. Is it?”
Uncle inclined his head.
Fu switched to English. “Are you here to pay your brother’s debt?”
The Scorpion triad leader had also conducted their meeting in English. Had Fu, like him, chosen a language his men wouldn’t understand? Or was he treating Uncle like a foreigner because he had moved away from Shanghai?
“That depends,” Uncle said. “How much does he owe?”
“Two hundred thousand yuan.”
“Hmm. That’s a lot of money.”
Fu shrugged. “About thirty-one thousand US. Not much in America, but two year’s profit for your brother in Chongming. He should have relocated to a non-rural apartment like his neighbors. Instead, he leased more land and followed the trends. Organic farming is costly. So is living on crop-growing land.”
Uncle nodded. “Qiang has always walked his own path. But his decisions affect more people than him. It would bother me greatly if his granddaughter was harmed.”
The crime boss tensed at the undefined threat. “Be careful, Chang Lee. You are not the Scorpion’s enforcer anymore.”
Uncle smiled. “And yet I found you.”
The guard with the scarred mouth shifted his stance.
I did the same.
Fu held out his hands to calm us both.
“Do I look like I’m hiding? Everyone knows where I live. But no one is stupid enough to threaten me in my home.” He leaned forward. “Unless you brought money, you and your girl should get on your bicycles and pedal back to Shanghai.”
Uncle scraped his chair on the floor as he stood. “Remember what I said.”
Fu fluttered his fingers across his face. “Already forgotten like a passing flock of birds.”
Fourteen
“What the hell was that?” I said as we road down the lane.
“A shot across the bow.” Uncle chuckled. “Isn’t that what they say in the movies?”
“You’ve become too American for your own good.”
He inclined his head. “I believe Edward Fu would agree.”
“What now?”
“Another talk with my brother. This time, for the truth.”
“Will you pay his debt?”
“It’s more complicated than that. If Fu kidnapped Chyou and I pay to get her back, what will he do the next time Qiang is late on a payment? It might be smarter to rescue her on our own.”
We turned onto a dirt road and cut through an orchard. Although the peach trees were bare, the enveloping green bathed me in peace. A welcome break in a tense and hectic day. As the stress eased from Uncle’s shoulders, he slowed his pace to a leisurely ride, giving me the opportunity to voice a question I’d wanted to ask since Hong Kong.
“Does my father know you speak English this well?”
He snorted with amusement. “It’s not that complicated to talk about food.”
“You talk about more than that. You’ve been friends my whole life.”
“I work in his kitchen.”
“As his second in command.”
“In charge of noodles and duck.” He waved his hand in the air. “Okay, fine. I’m his head cook. Big deal. He has never fought at my side like you.”
I pedaled in silence as I considered the magnitude of his words.
Three weeks ago in Los Angeles, Uncle had treated me like an ungrateful child and launched cooking chopsticks at my face to keep me alert. Everything changed when we fought together in Hong Kong. What would our relationship be like when we return to my father’s kitchen in LA?
Uncle turned a corner into a new orchard, zigzagging our way back to his brother’s farm.
I inhaled the sweet scent of ripe tangerines. “I understand why your brother farms out here. Close to the city. Beautiful country. Sustainable living. It makes a lot of sense.”
“Ha. He moved to Chongming to preserve his hukuo benefits.”
“What are those?”
“Healthcare, housing, higher education. Government assistance is tied to residency. Urban hukuo is more valuable than rural. Shanghai has the best. If he had returned to the Anhui countryside where he had slaved as a teenager, married his sweetheart, and leased his own farm, he would have sacrificed the most valuable hukuo in China for a peasant’s status.”
I gestured to the trees. “It’s rural here.”
“But Qiang’s residency is connected to our childhood home. As long as he pays into the system, he benefits from an urban hukuo.”
“So, he married Jun in Anhui Province and brought her here to live?”
“No. He sent his sweetheart a farewell postcard and started a new life.”
“Ouch.”
Uncle shrugged. “Another brick of bitterness to add to the wall.”
We turned onto another dirt road, stepping our way through the orchards to the main road that would return us to Qiang. Lost in our thoughts and the tranquility of the country, we didn’t register the rumble of tires on earth until the electric motor scooters broke through the trees.
They cut us off from the front and the back, then circled around so we couldn’t escape. Scar Mouth and Giant remained on their bikes. Tank and K-Pop plus another two men advanced. Six against two, all of them armed with knives or batons. In different circumstances, we might have held the center and fought our ambushers back-to-back. Or we might have forced them into a line and taken them one by one. Instead, we leapt from our bicycles, rolled them into the men, and attacked.
As K-Pop floundered with my mountain bike, the new man with dead gray eyes swiped at me with a metal baton.
I rotated inside the arc, blocked his forearm, and chopped the side of his neck with an upturned Ura Shuto strike. Sliding my blocking arm to the outside of his, I snagged his elbow in a Musha Dori lock and dragged Dead Eyes backward with his baton arm bent by his ear. Brought lower than me with his body at a slant, I hammered his sternum with the full force of my weight. Air whooshed from his lungs, first from my fist and again when the ground struck his back.
One guy down. Another five to go.
Having freed himself from my bike, K-Pop attacked with a round kick to my head. I ducked his foot and snatched the fallen man’s baton. As I rose, K-Pop continued his motion with a spinning heel kick to my face. With no time to think and only a second before impact, my body did what Sensei had trained me to do—I moved to a position of safety and struck his hamstring with the baton. The trigger point stunned his entire leg and stole the power from his kick. As the leg floundered, I swept the baton downward and broke his supporting knee. The young man crumpled to the ground like a string-less marionette.
Two down. Four to go.
As Uncle fought Tank and a guy with snakes inked up his arms, the Chongming King’s personal guards advanced toward me.
Giant had the muscle. Scar Mouth had a knife. I had a metal baton christened on K-Pop’s knee. Although two to one, I felt okay about the odds.
Until Giant unsheathed the freaking machete strapped to his back.
Scar Mouth laughed, his grin more hideous than before.
I fueled my resolve with Sensei’s words.
A weapon is only a tool, Lily-chan. It’s the person who wins the fight.
No way in hell would I let a machete-wielding thug or this nasty excuse of a human end my time on this Earth.
I jumped to the side as the machete breezed past my head and placed the smaller man between us as a shield—which would have worked nicely if Scar Mouth hadn’t slashed my arm with his knife along the way.
I ignored the cut and snapped the baton against his wrist as he came at me again. He retracted so fast it slid off his arm. Then he lunged and stabbed at my gut. The blade missed by a hair as I threw back my foot. I slammed the metal down on his arm, but the guy kept coming, shoving me backwards with every murderous attempt. It was only a matter of time before his blade struck home.
I needed to stop defending and attack.
The next time he thrust, I captured his wrist, slipped the baton under his elbow, and yanked his locked arm and knife hand against my chest and hip.
A knee to his inner thigh knocked back his legs.
A second knee to his groin stunned him with pain.
A forehead smash to his face rushed blood from his nose and blinded him with tears.
I had assaulted his base, mind, and sight with three quick strikes. Then I jolted his locked elbow and felt his knife slide down my leg. When I cracked the baton against the side of his head, Scar Mouth lost consciousness and collapsed on the ground.
My sigh of relief was cut short as the machete-wielding giant attacked. If I hadn’t inverted the baton and shifted slightly off line, he would have cleaved through my clavicle as easily as Uncle chopped duck.
Strength mattered. This man had considerably more of it than me.
I leaped back to disengage from the fight as another butchering strike sailed toward my neck. Without time to maneuver, I dropped to the ground, delivering a crippling shot to his knee with my baton as I rolled out of the way.
Yards down the road, Uncle fought unarmed against Snake’s knife and Tank’s metal pipe. Although the gangsters looked bloody and bruised, Uncle’s energy was fading. He’d last another minute at best.
With Giant temporarily disabled, I flew to Uncle’s aid with a double side kick aimed at Snake’s chest. As Snake stumbled off the road, I battered Tank’s wrists and knees with my baton, then tripped him backward into a ditch.
I hurried to Uncle and handed him the baton so he’d have a weapon in the fight. “You okay?”
“Yes.” He eyed the knife gash on my arm. “And you?”
“Hundred percent.”
The lies would have been easier to swallow if all six ambushers hadn’t regrouped to attack.
Fifteen
Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, I called upon Kuji energy to rekindle my fire and help even the score. Considered folk magic by some and superstition by others, the esoteric practice had deep spiritual and historical roots.
Sensei had introduced me to all nine mudra and mantra over the years. The ritualistic hand positions and phrases, which he had taught in Japanese, had accompanied lessons, meditations, and philosophical talks. I had learned to heal myself with Sha, raise my awareness with Jin, and direct my internal and external energy with Pyo. At this moment, I folded my fingers into the Kongorin seal of the thunderbolt mudra and recited the corresponding Rin mantra to channel my power and intent. Then I followed the mantra with a prayer of my own.
Fuel my humble heart. Strengthen my resolve.
I unfolded my mudra, sliced the air with two fingers in nine decisive Kuji-kiri cuts, and recited the nine syllables that would call the warrior deities to assemble with me and fight.
Meanwhile, the Chongming gang fanned in front of us and to the sides. All had sustained injuries. Each was more cautious than before.
I lowered my hands and stepped away from Uncle, giving us room to maneuver and defend. Regardless of the odds, we had to succeed. Too many people depended on us in Shanghai and Los Angeles for us to fail.
“This is friendship,” Uncle said, then braced himself to fight.
Before the Chongming gang could launch a unified attack, a sleek electric motorcycle raced through the trees. Silent as a ninja, the rider jumped his bike onto the road and plowed into the biggest target of the group.
Giant buckled.
The machete flew from his hand.
Men scattered.
The rider swerved as the blade flipped, end over end, then snatched the handle as it fell.
“Who’s that?” I yelled.
“Who cares?” Uncle answered, and ran into the fray.
The dark angel had bought us another chance to win.
As our unknown friend scattered the gang, the man with snake tattoos ran toward me. I had knocked him away from Uncle with a rib-breaking kick. Now, I stopped him with a perfectly-structured forearm to his chest. He rammed into the obstacle like a train into a piling, doubling the impact, and slamming himself to the ground. Before I could finish him off, our dark angel drove onto his chest.
As Snake struggled to breathe beneath the front tire of the bike, the rider flipped up his visor and focused his cruel, dark eyes on me. Only a moment passed before he snapped it back down. Long enough to send a chill down my spine.
Our dark angel was the assassin J Tran.
He rode over Snake, skidded in the dirt, and charged at the gang. Instead of attacking or disarming their weapons, he veered toward their motorcycles parked along the road. He circled the machete like a polo player and slashed open their tires.
Taking advantage of the distraction, I descended on K-Pop, who, despite his broken knee, was still determined to fight. With a hobbled gait, he swiped at me with a knife. On his second attempt, I intercepted his hand with a trapping crescent kick and drove it and the knife into the ground. I picked up the blade, crushed his metacarpal bones with my heel, then kicked him into Tank.
I yelled in Mandarin for them to go and nodded at Snake, moaning in the dirt, Tran’s tire mark over his chest. “Take him with you. And don’t bother us again.”
Dead Eyes and Tank grabbed K-Pop under the arms. Giant yanked Snake off the ground. Scar Mouth waited on the road as his gang left their slashed motor scooters and limped into the trees. “Mr. Fu will hear about this. You have made a great enemy this day.”
“You came after us,” Uncle said. “This aggression, I will not forgive.”
The man’s scarred mouth pulled into an ugly grin. “Until we meet again, Red Pole Chang.”
My battle tension eased as the gang hobbled out of sight. “That went well.”
Uncle scoffed. “Only thanks to our new friend.”
Tran took off his helmet and released waves of dark hair. His half Vietnamese and half whatever dark ethnicity he had gained from his G.I. Joe father had synergized into a stunningly exotic man with chiseled features, intense black eyes, and peaked brows that made him appear both sinister and amused. A black muscle tee, pants, jacket, and boots completed the look as he straddled the ninja-style motor scooter. I choked out a laugh. Even in farm country, J Tran exuded the coolest of cools.
He smirked at me and winked. “Hello, K.”
“What are you doing here, J?”
“You know him?” Uncle asked.
“Yep.”
“You trust him?”
“Nope.”
Tran laughed as he planted his helmet on the tank of his bike, kicked a leg over the back, and glided toward us with panther-like grace. He stopped a sword’s distance away and, as always, stood perfectly still.
“Why are you here, Tran?”
He glanced at my bleeding arm. “Joining the fun.”
“I don’t mean in this orchard. Why are you in Shanghai? And for that matter, why were you in Hong Kong? Have you been following me? Did you even leave Los Angeles when you said you would?”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because you’re a very bad man.”
His chuckle rumbled places in my body I did not want to feel.
