men, but these men were clearly blind to their own emotions and without caution. Neither the threat of death nor serious pain seemed to have any impact on their will.
“What do you want with Anna?” Shohei asked the leader, whose nose was literally spouting blood.
“I want only to beat you,” the leader said.
Just then the man he had dispatched with a gut strike attacked with his fists. The first blow missed altogether, the second Shohei parried with his left hand, and before the next landed Shohei trapped the fist and delivered an elbow strike to the floating ribs. The wet grunt told Sam a rib had pierced a lung. Involuntarily the man’s head snapped down, following the pain, while Shohei twisted the wrist, bending him farther. In close, Shohei brought a knee slamming into his opponent’s face, then retracted the knee into a twisting back flip to move away from the charging leader.
Catching Shohei, the leader began punching fast powerful punches. Shohei stepped against the man to take away swinging distance, but took one punch to the jaw and two to the body. Shohei head-butted the man’s nose, then smashed upward with locked fists striking under his chin. Since he had nearly bitten his tongue in half, the leader’s mouth was filling with blood. Shohei put an elbow into the leader’s face on the way to kicking one of the others in the groin. Instantly Shohei came back for three successive punches to the leader’s already broken nose, staggering the man before he stepped back to watch.
Two assailants were unconscious or dead, two badly injured, and the leader teetering woozily.
“Perhaps we agree that you and your men need more practice before we do this?” Shohei said.
The leader shook his head. They were coming at Shohei again.
“You lack the discipline to fight me. You cannot win,” Shohei said, trying to enrage the leader.
His enemy with the bad knee was looking for a way to strike with his fists. Shohei saw an opening and kicked to the remaining good knee, knocking him down. He followed with an elbow to the ear. This time the man was rag- doll limp when he hit the deck. Over-protective of the collarbone that was by now twisted bone in flesh, the next man wasn’t thinking about his lower body. Shohei went for the knee. The man was quick and blocked the kick. Shohei feinted a fast punching motion at the man, then whirled and struck him down with a kick that snapped his head and turned his eyes vacant.
Whirling the opposite direction, Shohei kicked the leader square in the jaw but not before taking a powerful kick to the ribs.
Amazingly, the leader was still standing. Sam could not recall seeing a man hit repeatedly with that much force without definitive results. Four men were on the deck unconscious; only the leader remained. Normally a leader in this situation would give up, but this man would neither quit nor talk. Instead he studied Shohei, looking for some weakness.
Shohei could hang this man from the roof and get nothing more than Drop me.
Sam stepped out from inside the utility building. “Ah, sir, I hate to interrupt but Japan here is wreaking havoc on France. Surely you don’t want something more than your nose broken.”
“I want to continue,” the leader said.
Nineteen
Gaudet worked fast. Weissman had loaded the CD onto the computer and had been uploading it to a remote site. By shutting down the computer he halted the information transfer-whether in time or not, he couldn’t be sure. Nor could he know whether a trained scientist might have learned anything significant from the contents of the CD.
Other than killing the man, there was no immediately available cure for the fact that the good doctor would remember that he had been attacked. There were several ways to create an accidental death scenario, all made possible by the supplies in Gaudet’s briefcase. None would be foolproof, but each would create confusion and doubt. First he checked the wallet. No medical notice cards.
Opening Weissman’s shirt, he was delighted to find a surgical scar. Quickly he checked the lower leg and found two more telltale scars.
He punched a button on his cell. Trotsky answered.
“Screw-up. It’s not Carl Fielding, it’s John Weissman. But we’re in luck. He’s got bypass scars.”
“I’ll make the call. No problem.”
“It’ll look like a setup if you change the name.”
“Use another girl. Simone.”
Gaudet scribbled down the new number and hung up.
He went through Weissman’s briefcase and found a small, unopened bottle of nitroglycerin tablets. Lucky again. Gaudet had them in his briefcase for such eventualities, but it was much better if the victim actually carried them.
He took an envelope with one Viagra and put it in Weissman’s pocket. From his shirt pocket he removed two paper coasters, each with a number written on it. He used the coaster with an A in the corner. He slipped it into Weissman’s wallet. Slapping Weissman about the face, he went to work waking him.
“Come on, John. John. I’m a doctor,” he said in his accented French. The voice displayed the concerned warmth of a physician. As the professor began to regain consciousness, Gaudet popped a Viagra in his mouth.
“Chew and swallow, John. You’ve had a little heart problem-this pill will help. Chew and swallow.”
John made a halfhearted effort at chewing.
“Swallow, John.”
John swallowed. Then he chewed a little more.
“Keep chewing, John.”
Next Gaudet took a syringe containing a gel form of concentrated Viagra solution and put it directly into Gaudet’s nostrils.
He popped two nitroglycerin tablets under John’s tongue. “More pills, John. These will help.”
As he worked, the bug under May’s desk carried a new sound into his earpiece: heavy boots thumping the floor; grunts and words spoken in Spanish. Two men. They were right on time.
Gaudet had worked hard and carefully to set this up. These men believed they had been hired by a Lebanese businessman. It would not surprise anyone that Aziz might have Latins do his bidding. Samir Aziz would not send Arabs-it could take weeks to get them into the country using Middle Eastern passports. Samir would use people already here or hire Europeans or South Americans. It was such an ecumenical world these days, one never knew from which direction one’s enemy was coming.
Gaudet took the CD from the computer. Before leaving he wiped all the gel from inside Weissman’s nostrils.
When he closed the door Weissman was nearly dead. It was unfortunate that Anna had given the man the disk. She had killed this man. Gaudet shrugged. Soon he would kill her.
Sam watched the leader once again start to circle, two of his men on the ground, now groaning, struggling, rising to fight on. There was tension that felt like a quivering note on a steel guitar. And then, as if the place were growing too quiet for the stress, the access door to the roof slammed open.
Two quick shots and someone had put bullets through Grubb and Scott, their foreheads opening like exploding pomegranates. Sam stepped back to defend Anna. Two men dressed in black and masked rushed through the access door onto the roof with guns aimed at Shohei. Sam drew down on one of them and dropped the first gunman with a hit to the chest. Flak jacket, Sam thought. The sound of the strike indicated body armor.
The second man fired. A bullet sliced the air and slammed into Shohei’s upper torso. There was a contortion of his face, a snapping of his body, and a gush of air from Shohei’s lungs, as he crumpled around the wound. Sam shot even before he comprehended, parting the gunman’s head in a red spray.
Things happened in a blur, with the remaining gunman firing too fast from the ground, first at the wounded Shohei, then at Sam. Sam jumped back into the equipment room, thinking of Anna.
Now diving and rolling to escape his pursuers, Shohei left a thick blood trail. The leader and the two others went for Shohei with the energy that comes with a second chance, grabbing him and making such a tangle of flesh
