“What—?”
“Instead he sent his pet thug.”
I sat up, frowning, not understanding what was happening here. “Hey… Rude… what the hell—?”
And Rudy Sanchez swung his cane at my head.
CHAPTER FORTY
He swung hard and fast but it was the surprise that nearly got me killed.
“Rudy—no!”
I flung a hand up to save my face, but I was slow and the heavy lump of silver punched into my hand and slammed it back against my face. He growled like a dog and whipped the cane back and chopped down again. I bashed it aside and rolled away from him as he tried for a third hit. The cane chunked into the pillow hard enough to make the bed jump, but this time I was out of range, rolling off the far side, dropping down, trying to land on my feet, failing, falling hard. His shoes clacked on the linoleum as he raced around the end of the bed. I grabbed the corner of the wheeled bedside table and shoved it toward him, jolting him so that his next swing missed, too. But it was a near thing. The cane whistled down past my ear and thumped against the edge of the mattress.
“Rudy!” I yelled. “Stop it. What the fuck are you doing?”
Rudy laughed. A brutal, vicious laugh. It was his face, his voice, but that laugh did not belong to my friend. And it occurred to me that his accent was wrong. American without the cultured edge of the Mexico City in which he was raised.
“You’re a piece of shit, Ledger,” he said, spitting the words as he fought to push the cart out of the way so he could get to me.
I was so weak, so clumsy, that I couldn’t rise to fight him. My knees wouldn’t hold me and I collapsed down as I tried to rise, but I used the momentum of that to kick out and ram the table into his thighs. He staggered back and then grabbed at the lip of the table to wrench it out of his way.
Was this a nightmare? If so, then I was free to act, to fight, to destroy this distorted version of my best friend.
Or was it real and was Rudy the victim of some kind of psychic fracture? Had he been doped? And… how could I save myself without hurting him?
I yelled for help as loud as I could.
The table went crashing onto its side as Rudy forced himself past it to get to me. The cane rose again and this time I had nowhere else to go. There wasn’t enough clearance for me to roll under the cumbersome hospital bed. I was in a narrow chute formed by the bed and the wall, with the night table behind me and nothing to use as a shield.
“Fucking die!” bellowed Rudy as he brought the cane down again.
What choice did I have?
Really, what choice?
The heavy silver wolf flashed toward me, driven by Rudy’s strength and his rage. And I kicked him in his bad leg.
I kicked him hard.
There was a sound like a gunshot. Brittle, huge, terrible.
His leg buckled backward, folding in a sickening way. The cane cracked me on the bunched muscles of my shoulder. Rudy fell, his face twisted — not with the agony he had to feel, but with hate. Raw, unfiltered hate. He crashed against the window, striking the heavy glass with one elbow and the side of his head. I rose up to one knee and tore the cane out of his hand, flung it across the room, tried to catch him as he fell.
Rudy lunged forward and tried to bite me.
Bite. Me.
His teeth snapped shut an inch from my Adam’s apple as I reeled backward.
“Stop it,” I begged. He punched me in the chest, the ribs, the face. He grabbed my hair and tried to pull me toward his snapping white teeth.
I ducked forward, dropping my chin, and head-butted him, smashing his nose, hearing the cartilage snap, feeling blood burst against my skin. Rudy sagged backward and I whipped a flat palm across his jaw that snapped his head around. His eyes flared once as the extreme angle stretched his brain stem and short-circuited the electrical conduction from brain to body. It happens to boxers and martial artists. It happens with whiplash victims. It’s happened to me.
His body slumped immediately, sagging atop me in a boneless sprawl. I caught him, wrapped my arms around him, hugged him to me to prevent him from forcing this fight any further.
But he was done.
Out.
We lay there in a strange, bloody, awful embrace while I screamed for someone to come help us. I begged to wake up.
But I was already awake.
This was a nightmare but it was not a dream.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Rudy and I were players in a midnight circus. He was a trained tiger who’d slipped his leash. I was a clown. None of it was real, none of it was funny.
The nurses and orderlies came running. It was probably only seconds since the fight started, but it seemed like hours. They swarmed into the room, yelling, demanding answers as if I had any. They stabilized Rudy with a neck brace and four of them gingerly lifted him onto a gurney to wheel him down to emergency. I was helped up and back into bed, but then a hospital cop came in and stood there with one hand on his sidearm as a frightened intern tried to make sense of my story. Then the doctors came with harsher questions. Then more cops showed up.
I had no answers that made any sense and it was abundantly clear that no one believed a word I said. The cops wanted to put me in four-point restraints. I told them to contact someone at my office. They produced a set of handcuffs and decided that, at the very least, I should be cuffed to the bed rails. I made it clear that I would shove those cuffs up someone’s ass so far they’d chip molars on the way out. Two of the cops drew Tasers and it took the direct intervention of the hospital administrator to keep my room from turning into an MMA pay-per-view brawl.
Then Sam Imura arrived.
He is the sniper on Echo Team and one of my most reliable operators. Cool, calm, intelligent, and authoritative. He flashed impressive credentials that identified him as a special agent of the National Security Agency. He isn’t, but the DMS doesn’t have badges. We’re allowed to borrow what we need.
Sam is a hard guy to stare down. He looks every bit like one of his Samurai ancestors — and that’s no joke, the Imuras were Samurai going back nine hundred years. He had that flat stare that lets you know nothing about him except that he was in charge. Sam also brought two junior DMS security people with him and positioned them outside my door. Another two were sent down to the emergency room to keep an eye on Rudy.
When we were finally alone, Sam turned to me and his poker face dropped like a brick. “What,” he said, “in the hell happened?”
I told him.
He called it in to Mr. Church, explained it, then handed the phone to me. I went through it again. Church said next to nothing and I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. Rudy is, after all, Church’s son-in-law and the father of the big man’s only grandson. So, there’s that.
“Keep me posted,” said Church, and disconnected the call. I stared numbly at the phone, then handed it to Sam.
“That was helpful,” I said.
Sam pulled a chair close to the bed and sat there while we picked through it moment by moment. Even after careful, considered analysis it made no frigging sense. Then he left for almost an hour. When he came back he resumed his seat. His poker face was back in place.