The Last Assassin

The third guy looked at his fallen comrades. Then, possibly realizing what had happened, he started to wheel around toward me.

Too late. I shot him in the head, too, and he collapsed beside the others.

I scanned the beach. A few meters away the sumos were still piled one on top of the other, both facedown. I realized with a start that the guy on the bottom might be suffocating. His face was in the mud, and large as he was, that was a hell of a load bearing down on him from above. If he suffocated, this wasn't going to look the way we needed it to look. I signaled to Dox to come in, and started wading ashore.

I walked up from behind and prodded them each with a wet boot. No response. Okay, they were out. I secured the HK in the holster and felt under their jackets. The lead guy had reached for something at one point, so I knew they were carrying. There it was, a pistol in his unending waistband. I pulled it out and flung it into the surf, then, in spite of all the folds of flesh, managed to repeat the operation for the other guy.

I grabbed the top guy's wrist. I pulled hard but it was like trying to uproot a tree.

Shit, the bottom guy was definitely eating mud. I pulled hard again. Again he didn't budge.

A moment later, Dox reached my position. 'Nice shooting,' he said. 'One shot, one kill. Or in this case three shots, three kills.'

'Give me a hand with this guy,' I said, still trying to pull the sumo by the wrist. 'I think he's smothering the one underneath him.'

'Ah, shit.' Dox dropped the tranquilizer rifle and grabbed the sumo by the arm. We managed to pull him partly off his partner, but not enough. I squatted down and lifted the bottom guy's head off the ground. His eyes were shut and his face was covered with mud. I couldn't tell if he was breathing.

'If that boy needs resuscitating, you can count me out,' Dox said from behind me.

I put my ear near the sumo's mouth but couldn't hear anything. 'He's still getting crushed. We've got to move the one on top. Roll him or something.'

'Shit, man, I'd rather try moving that Cadillac back there.'

'I'm serious, goddamnit. We can't have one of these guys dead from suffocation. It won't fit.'

Dox moved up alongside me and we both grabbed the back of the top guy's coat. The material was slippery with rain and mud and it was hard to get a solid grip. I thought, Worst case, if he's dead, we grab one of the machine pistols and shoot him. Then it'll look like he died in a gunfight with the Chinese and his partner got away with the money and drugs. Not as good as three dead triads and two missing yakuza, but not a total loss, either.

I looked at Dox. 'One, two, three!'

We pulled. The inert mass of the sumo pulled back. The inert mass won.

'Now there's a quality garment for you,' Dox said. 'For a second there, about four hundred pounds were suspended by nothing but raincoat.'

'Again. One, two…'

With a berserker yell, the sumo rolled over and seized my wrist in one massive paw. Whether he'd been playing possum or had come to suddenly, I didn't know. I yelled, 'Fuck!' and tried to jerk away, but I might as well have been a child.

Dox reacted instantly. He took a long step back and cleared leather. 'Don't shoot!' I yelled. 'Not with the same guns that did the Chinese!'

The sumo's face was glistening with dripping mud and water. His eyes were wild, his teeth bared. He snarled and started reeling me in by the wrist.

I dropped down on my ass and planted both boots against the side of his face. I strained backward, and the combined strength of my back and quadriceps broke his grip.

I rolled away from him and came to my feet at the same instant he did. He bellowed something unintelligible and charged me. I dodged and yelled to Dox, Tranq gun!'

The sumo charged again. This time I barely managed to slip by him. His speed and coordination were off because of the tranquilizer, but I didn't know how much longer that was going to last.

The sumo stopped and faced me, his breath rumbling in and out of his chest. He was starting to think, I could tell. He was going to slow it down this time, and he wasn't going to miss.

There was a soft crack off to the side. The sumo grabbed his stomach and grunted. Then he looked up at me, his eyes blazing.

'I told you, neck shots!' I yelled, and pulled out the HK.

'I'm doing the best I can here!' I heard Dox yell from somewhere on my right.

'Ugoku na! Samonaito utsuzo!' I yelled in Japanese. Don't move, or I'll shoot! I hoped the threat would give him pause. If I really had to shoot him, it would ruin everything. But if I didn't, he was going to break me like a matchstick.

Then I realized: the sumo had heard us speaking English, and now Japanese. That wasn't something I wanted remembered. But maybe I could obscure it.

'Wau ai ni!' I yelled at him, using pretty much the only Chinese I know. 'Wau ai ni! Ni ai wau ma?'

My shouting seemed only to make the sumo angrier. He dropped one hand to the ground like a linebacker in a three-point stance. His breathing was locomotive loud. I wondered for a crazy second, Maybe the guy speaks Chinese?

I feinted left, then right, thinking, Come on, come on, the shit is supposed to be fast-acting…