like seaweed in the surf.
Then they surprised him. The man in the store stepped out and stood before him not six feet away, a trim, hard-bodied youth in black, wearing Adidas sneakers, his back pole- straight, legs slightly bent. O’Hara flashed a look back up the alley. The other two were frozen in place, statues of rock framed against the dim light at the mouth of the alley.
These are not street fighters, 0’ Hara thought. They have too much style. The one in front moved slightly; residual light etched the side of his face. His smile and his bow were as subtle as a memory, but he made the challenge. Traditionalists, thought O’Hara, probably Okinawan. They were working as a triad and he guessed that the man directly behind him, the man in the middle, would be the best, the one in front the fastest and the last man would be the backup, the toughest to take out. He instantly decided on his moves.
It was 0’ Hara’s turn to surprise them. He whirled on the ball of one foot and made three hop steps toward the two men behind him, heard his challenger accept the bait, and then O’Hara stopped and executed three basic higaru moves almost as one, focusing his first blow on the lead man’s stomach before he even turned. The moves were designed to confuse the man at his back, to make him think O’Hara was attacking the middle man, a fast left to right jag, a thrust forward, and then as the lead man rushed forward, O’Hara executed a perfect ushiro-geri, forward and down from the waist until his head almost touched the ground and lashing out with a vicious back kick, straight into the attacker’s gut. O’Hara’s foot shattered the hard muscles in the lead man’s stomach and thrust deep up into his diaphragm. Something inside of the man exploded, his face seemed to crumble and he flipped forward to ease the force of the kick, but it was too late — his reflexes were not working. He landed badly and flopped over on his back in time to take a second kick to the temple. He rolled away, unconscious. The moves were so fast that the other two hardly had time to react. O’Hara dove between them, rolled and landed on his feet and launched himself straight up, shattering the third man’s jaw with the top of his head. The surprised assailant soared backward through one of the empty shop windows in a shower of glass.
The man in the middle whirled and kicked, jumped sideways, crouched and struck, O’Hara was waiting. He parried the blow, caught the fighter’s wrist and twisted it out and down and thrust a knee into his side. The fighter rolled away from him, got his feet under him and charged again, this time throwing a uraken, a back fist strike at the jaw. It was perfectly executed, his fist moving in a rotary movement and arcing past O’Hara’s elbow and catching the American on the edge of the jaw. The blow knocked O’Hara sideways into the boarded-up front of another store. He shattered the boards, burst through them and felt a nail tear at the shoulder of his jacket as he fell into a dusty window display of tasteless, gaudy lingerie. He kept rolling, bending his back and flipping back on his feet as the middle man dove after him, pressing the attack. O’Hara met him and then rolled back again, using the attacker’s own momentum to throw him farther into the store. Flipping backward and landing on his knees on the middle man’s chest, he struck twice, the first a nukite, a spear hand thrust straight to the bridge of the nose, the second a crippling chop to the throat. The middle man gasped, tried to throw a nukite and missed. O’Hara’s third blow should have finished him, but the fighter was tough. He rolled, threw O’Hara off balance, then twirled violently the other way, and O’Hara was thrust off.
The backup man now appeared in the shattered storefront, his face slashed by broken glass, one arm sliced open and bleeding. O’Hara did not retreat. He leaped sideways, deep into the darkness of the store, out of sight of the two remaining men for an instant, then charged the backup man from the darkness, jogging to the right and left and twisting sideways and diving under the man’s outstretched arms, coming up with a palm-heel shot that demolished what was left of the man’s jaw, knocking him back into the alley. A second later he felt a knife foot shot to his kidney, a blow that sent pain streaking up his spine and cramping his shoulders. It knocked him forward, but again he did the unexpected. He took two quick steps and then thrust backward, twisting as he did and colliding with the middle man, dropping to his knees, grabbed two handfuls of sweater and flipped the man over his head through the shattered window. The middle man landed on top of his backup.
O’Hara ignored the pain in his side and attacked again, this time using his favourite move, one which combined the arcing swing of the side foot blow with the ball of foot, a move requiring total commitment, for he had to literally twist in midair, picking up momentum from the swing of his foot, then turning it so the ball of his foot landed up under the nose. It was a perfect strike and the middle man sighed as he whirled away and collapsed.
But the backup man was still not out. His arms whipped into a defensive position as he stood and then just as quickly he tried his own side kick to O’Hara’s ribs and followed with combinations, an elbow shot followed by a two- fingered thrust up under O’Hara’s chin that snapped his head back and missed his windpipe by a fraction of an inch. Backup’s mistake was overconfidence. As O’Hara’s head jerked backward, the backup stepped in and tried a back fist strike.
O’Hara landed flat on his feet, saw the peculiar auguring punch coming, moved backward with it, let it glance off his cheek, slashed down with his own arm and locked Backup’s elbow under his own. He spun him around, snapped a knee into the man’s groin, and as he arched forward, got his other hand under Backup’s chin and twisted. The elbow snapped and O’Hara let the arm go, completed the move by swinging Backup in a full circle, letting him loose and hitting him twice with two spear hand punches. Backup dropped in a heap at his feet.
O’Hara turned toward the other two. It was all over. He instantly shook out the aches, massaged the pain from his kidney as he ran out of the passage, leaving the three attackers behind, and continued his journey back to the hotel.
He entered the hotel and found a quiet place near a rock garden in the corner of the lobby. Focusing on the water, he went to the wall and, entranced, began playing back everything he knew so far. The chain was becoming clearer to him. Chameleon, Hooker, Danilov — they were the keys. And one other. Dragon’s Nest.
Everything led to Kyoto and beyond, to Tanabe. They were getting close, the attack proved that. He didn’t know how long his three assailants had been following him, but it was safe to assume that they knew about Eliza and the Magician. They were all in danger.
It was Eliza who broke his concentration. ‘What happened to you?’
She was standing over him, looking at the torn jacket, the two bruises that were beginning to appear under his jaw line.
We’re shaking them up, whoever “they” are,’ O’Hara said. ‘I just got jumped by three pros a few blocks from here. I don’t know how long they’ve been following me, but the message is perfectly clear. Somebody’s nervous.’
She was more concerned about O’Hara than about the implied danger to all of them. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I may have a sore throat for a couple of days, but other than that I’ll live. Have you heard from the Magician?’
No, but I have some interesting news,’ she said and recounted her conversation with Yerkes. ‘And there’s one other thing,’ she added.
‘What’s that?’
