Gehret recovered from his amazement and raised his Uzi, his finger on the trigger.
With startling swiftness, the man in black stepped behind the trunk and was screened from view.
“Damn!” declared the first man.
“He must be crazy!” said the second.
Gehret motioned with his left arm. “Take him from both sides,” he commanded.
Moving with practiced precision, the three mercenaries closed on the tree, their weapons at the ready.
Gehret fixed his gaze on that tree. The nearest brush was five yards from the trunk! The guy had trapped himself! There was no way the man in black could reach the brush without being cut down. Gehret smiled in expectation.
One of the other mercenaries was moving cautiously to the right, the second to the left.
Sergeant Gehret halted a yard from the three-foot-wide trunk and crouched. He glanced at his men and nodded, and all three hurled themselves forward. Gehret rounded the trunk on the left and swiveled, prepared to blast away.
But there was no one to blast.
The Warrior was gone.
“Where’d he go?” asked the private on the right.
“I don’t know!” Gehret snapped. “Fan out. Find the bastard!” He watched them enter the undergrowth, his brow knit in puzzlement. No one could up and vanish. No one ordinary, that is. But Gehret had lived as a professional mercenary for two decades. Before being hired by the Dragons, he’d worked for seven years in the Far East. In Japan he’d encountered certain men capable of astounding feats, men known as Ninja. Oddly enough, the Oriental in black reminded him of those Ninja.
In the brief glimpse he’d had, he’d recognized the same aura of supreme confidence in the man in black as he recollected observing in the Ninja.
Was it possible? he started to think, when a strangled gurgle sounded from the vegetation to his left.
“Anders?” Gehret said softly but urgently.
There was no response.
“Anders?”
Still no answer.
Gehret took a stride toward the undergrowth, looking to the right as he did so. “Wilson!” he hissed.
“Yeah, Sarge?” came a reply from the other side of a dense thicket.
“Get back here! On the double!”
“On my way.”
Gehret heard the muffled footfalls as Wilson started to obey, and an instant later there was a loud crash. Then silence.
“Wilson?”
Wilson did not reply.
Discarding prudence, concerned for his men, Gehret plunged into the woods, weaving to minimize the target he posed, skirting the dense thicket. The morning light cast the vegetation in a deep green tint. His combat boots bumped an object in his path and he looked down, a chill washing over him.
Private Wilson was on his back, his mouth open, his tongue protruding out the left corner. His head was almost severed from his shoulders; only a few inches of flesh and the spinal column had not been sliced clean through.
Sergeant Gehret licked his lips. He’d seen this kind of handiwork before, and a word flashed into his mind unbidden, a word with supremely lethal connotations: katana.
The Oriental had a katana.
Gehret scanned the vegetation. He vaguely remembered seeing something long and thin slanted under the Warrior’s belt. The katana? He wanted to kick himself for underestimating the man in black. Now his men were dead, and El Gato would have his hide! He decided to head to the west and locate Corporate Stanz, and he took several steps. As he did, the short hairs on the nape of his neck tingled.
No!
Sergeant Gehret whirled, his Uzi tucked against his right side.
The Warrior was a foot away in the Kokutsu-tachi, the back stance. His M-16 was still over his left shoulder, and his katana was angled over his left hip. As the mercenary turned, the Warrior slid in close, his left hand in the Nukite, the piercing hand, position, his right in the Shotei. A slash to his left hand deflected the Uzi barrel aside. He uttered a sharp kiai and drove his right hand in a palm heel thrust into the mercenary’s side, hemorrhaging the spleen underneath. Another Shotei blow to the sergeant’s chin snapped the soldier’s head back.
Gehret saw pinwheeling lights explode before his eyes. Dazed, he tried to stagger backwards, to clear his head. But the Warrior wouldn’t let him.
The man in black rammed his right elbow into the mercenary’s jaw.
Gehret felt his teeth crunch together. His world spun and danced and he sagged forward.
The Warrior yanked the Uzi free and tossed it aside. He stood above the mercenary as Gehret landed on his knees, struggling to focus.
This couldn’t be happening!
Gehret felt steely fingers lock on his throat. He gasped and grabbed the arm holding him.
“You have captured my friends,” the man in black stated harshly. “Now you are going to tell me everything there is to know about Happy Acres.”
To emphasize his point, he raised his right arm aloft, his fingers taut, ready to use a Crane strike to the eyes.
Gehret blinked and gulped.
Chapter Fourteen
Dear Spirit!
His shoulder hurt like the dickens!
Hickok kept his eyes closed, listening to the conversation between the doctor and the nurse.
“Will you operate?” the nurse asked.
The doctor had removed the backpack, then used a scalpel to cut a line in the gunman’s buckskin shirt from the right shoulder to the neck. He’d peeled the strong, pliable leather down to expose the wound. Now, as he probed at the hole with his instruments, he voiced a contemplative, “Hmmmmm.”
What the blazes did that mean? Hickok resisted an urge to cry out as the doctor’s probe hit a sensitive spot. He didn’t want the physician to know he was awake and he had been the whole time.
So far his plan had worked to perfection.
Sort of.
When those coyotes had popped up from behind the blasted hedge, springing their ambush, he’d believed he and Blade were going to cash in their chips. But when the men hadn’t fired, in that split second when he’d realized they were about to be taken prisoner instead of perforated with dozens of rounds, he’d attempted to get through the doorway, hoping the varmints would hesitate just long enough.
Wouldn’t you know it.
The dipsticks hadn’t.
The shot had knocked him for a loop. Surprisingly, the pain had been slight at first, then grew progressively worse. He’d retained consciousness all the while the two guards were lugging him to the infirmary and making snide comments about his level of intelligence.
What did those cow patties know?
“Most remarkable,” the doctor remarked.
“What is?” the nurse prompted.
“The wound isn’t life threatening,” the doctor said. “The bullet missed the clavicle, the subclavian artery, and the subclavian vein. Except for damange to the trapezius muscle—and the entry and exit holes, of course—this man is fine. Remarkable,” he repeated.
“What should I tell the two outside?”
“Tell them we’ll need to clean and bandage the shoulder,” the doctor directed. “It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”
Hickok heard the nurse walk off.
This was his chance.
He opened his lids a fraction and studied his surroundings. The doctor was a man of 30 or so, attired in a white smock and gray trousers. As Hickok watched, the physician walked to a cabinet and opened the glass door. Medical instruments were everywhere, and the ten-by-twelve-foot room was spotlessly clean. A door was visible six feet from the foot of the metal table Hickok was on. Through the doorway he could see a smaller room, and on the far side was another door, this one to the outside. The nurse, an attractive redhead, was framed in the doorway. Beyond her were two men in camouflage uniforms, the same pair, evidently, who had carried him to the infirmary.