Bamboo Bloodbath and Ninja's Revenge

  Next time he would move immediately when the Hyena spoke. He did not need another such reminder, for he realized that the Hyena would not pull him out a second time. Instant obedience. As his body came loose, an alarm bell clanged in the house. The Hyena looked about, showing alarm for the first time Danny had seen. "Something on the wall," he barked.

  "Probably a heron banging the wire, sir," the man holding the rope said.

  The Hyena caught him across the cheek with a backhand slap, knocking him to the ground. "Then kill that heron!"

  The man licked blood off his lip, dropped the rope, and followed the Hyena toward the house. Danny was left to flounder in the quicksand, his feet still tied and mired.

  Suddenly he realized the scale of values the Hyena had. Danny could die here while they checked out a routine impingement of the perimeter-by a bird! That was all the beast man cared. And he had been ready to give his allegiance to the Hyena!

  He struggled valiantly. He had been almost out when the alarm rang. If he could just haul himself the rest of the way out of the muck, then get the rope off his feet...

  Then he would be loose, outside, with no guard, and the Hyena's attention distracted. His sister might have gone over to the enemy—but he hadn't!

  Mustapha and Ilunga stood looking at me, disapproving black statues, listening to that ominous bell. I felt like the ass I was. "Maybe they'll think it was a bird," Mustapha said after an interminable moment. "Let's hide."

  We hauled our equipment hastily into a clump of bushes, and began setting up for action. We had C-3 plastic explosive that Ilunga knew how to use; we planned to blow up the estate's generator and sever the incoming power lines in a commando raid similar to the Hyena's own efforts against rich men. But we knew it would not be easy, for our enemy was more expert at this sort of thing than we were. We had assorted hand weapons, not firearms—none of us felt at ease with guns when it came to the crunch, for silence was essential—and these would very quickly be put to the test.

  Three men came out, carrying rifles. We waited in a clump of bamboo, which is damned uncomfortable stuff, I discovered too late. There were all sorts of scratchy little branches that were too springy to bend permanently aside, and too tough to rip off, and that also had jackets of fine nettles. But we were stuck with it. "There are seven regulars," Ilunga said. "Six men and a woman, all black. Not all of them fight. Plus the hyenas, both of them." These three were not the Hyena's best troops (those had no doubt been sent on the smuggling mission), for they marched right into the brush, rifles pointed ahead. Obviously they considered this a routine false alarm, and were humoring their master by combing the area quickly and carelessly.

  We struck silently, together. Ilunga confronted her man, holding a silk handkerchief with a lead ball tied to one end. Before the man could fire, she flung the weighted end around his neck and tightened the silk into a garrote. He was eliminated silently. The ancient Thugs of India, in their practice of Thuggee, had used a similar method in their ritual killings in honor of their goddess Kali, the same goddess who had dominated the Kill-13 Demon cult. Ilunga's old ways still showed.

  "The hyena!" Mustapha exclaimed.

  Startled in the act of rising for the attack, I looked across, and saw a fourth man running toward us with the huge, vicious animal. I also got hung up on a strong, claw-twigged bamboo shoot that ruined my lunge.

  No point in silence now; we would be lucky to get out of this intact! It is bad business changing strategy in the midst of a surprise attack, but we did it. I tackled two men—mine and Mustapha's—while Mustapha dived for the fourth man. We had to down them all before the animal struck.

  I had a manriki gusari, a thirty-inch length of chain with weighted ends. "KIAIII!" I screamed, swinging that chain. It ensnared the rifle of the first one and yanked it out of his grip. I swung again, and the rifle, still caught, hit the second man across the face.

  That softened them up. I did an okuri ashi barai foot-sweep on the first man, tapping him on the head with the free end of my chain as he fell. The second man, though blinded by the blow of the swinging rifle, managed to fire a burst into the air. Ilunga, finished with her assignment, tackled him from behind and lifted him in a sukui-nage scoop-throw: one hand grabbed his crotch, the other his shoulders. She pulled with the first and pushed with the second, scooping him into the air and hurling him against a tree. He dropped from the trunk, unconscious.

  Mustapha, meanwhile, had donned brass knuckles. He stood up to the fourth man—and hesitated. "Oh, no!" he cried.

  I realized the hyena was too close. "I'll take him!" I cried, launching myself at the fourth man. I got him in a stranglehold, my forearm across his chest and pressing down firmly. Then I discovered Mustapha's actual problem.

  This was no man. It was an unarmed woman. Full busted.

  I had no choice; I couldn't trust her. "Sorry, honey," I said, and tightened my strangle. She passed out painlessly. I held it long enough to be certain she would not recover too soon, then let her drop. She would be okay later.

  The great spotted shape of the hyena leaped on Mustapha, who was trying to snag it with a length of rope. The impact bowled him over. His rope went wide. The awful teeth closed on his left arm, crunching the bone. But as he fell on his back, Mustapha cocked his right fist and let fly with the most devastating haymaker of his career. It struck the hyena's skull and crushed it in, killing the animal instantly. But Mustapha himself was out of action with a badly mangled and bleeding arm.

  Now we moved toward the house, leaving Mustapha with the guards' guns to cover our rear as well as he could. "I want to go in after my brother," Ilunga said.

  "The Hyena knows we're here now," I reminded her. "First thing he'll do is get Danny and use him for a hostage."

  "That's why I have to go after him," she said. "Now."

  I didn't like it. In his own house, the Hyena would be virtually invincible. We had to make him come out. But I knew how she felt about Danny. "Well, I'd better prepare the way," I said. "My arrows will be a pretty good distraction."

  Few people appreciate the variety and deadliness of bows and arrows. Because a weapon is ancient does not mean it is ineffective; quite the contrary. Some bows are wood, others bamboo, metal, or combinations of these things together with bone, horn, leather, or plastic. Some are asymmetrical. The medieval Japanese archers used to shoot one thousand arrows a day for training, and some bows were so inflexible that they took as many as five men to pull the string back. What cannons they must have been! The arrows were even more varied. There is a horrible "bowel raker" designed to be shot into the midsection of the enemy soldier, and a "willow leaf," double-edged.

  But my arrows were simple and deadly, if cumbersome. Ilunga had molded C-3 plastic explosive around the shafts, and taped common nails onto the plastic. The resultant shrapnel would be worse than a conventional grenade. They were set with five-second fuses, and each weighed over a pound, so I had to be mighty sure of my technique. If I failed to get one off in time after lighting the fuse...

  But first I had to light that fuse. I couldn't afford to pause each time to strike a match.

  I knew what to do. I needed a permanent light, something that would keep burning for fifteen minutes or so. I brought out Fidel's cigar.

  Only one problem. I don't smoke.

  Ilunga saw me hesitating. "For God's sake, honky—light it!" she snapped. "That's the finest Havana you'll ever taste."

  I lit it. It went out.

  "Not that way!" she said, exasperated. "Draw on it."

  I put the phallic monster in my mouth and sucked as the flame touched the end. Foul smoke poured into my lungs. I stifled a coughing fit. God, what torture! How could Fidel stand it? If this were the finest cigar, I'd hate ever to have to try a cheap one!

  A machine gun opened up on the roof of the house. We dived for better cover.

  "I'm going on in!" Ilunga said. "You stay here and smoke your cigar!" She crawled rapidly away through the brush, t
aking two swords with her.

  I stayed. I puffed, this time managing to keep most of the pestilential vapor out of my innocent lungs. If this were my main pleasure, I'd be a revolutionary too! I touched the glowing end to the fuse and waited until it lighted. I fitted the arrow, aimed, and let go.

  I had been too hasty, and the shaft fell short. It bounced on the ground before the house, then exploded, doing no real damage. I had fouled up because I had been afraid the thing would explode in my face; I would do better next time.

  The machine gun clattered into life again. Quickly I took another arrow and another puff—and choked again. My eyes went teary. But I got the arrow lit, aimed, and let fly. This time it struck the side of the house, dropped—and went off, blasting out a section of the wall. Ilunga had done a good job on these missiles; the Hyena had been a good instructor.

  But now the gunman on the roof, keen-eyed, had my range. Steadily the bullets came nearer, covering the brush in a scientific saturation pattern. I tried to set up a third arrow, but got another lungful of smoke and felt nauseous. How could anyone enjoy this horror of a cigar? The name Havana would be a bad taste in my mouth for a decade! My face must be turning green already, and I still had half a dozen arrows to go.

  Ilunga had an easy task: all she had to do was brave the house I was trying to ignite!

  Ilunga carried Sifu Tuh's two kung fu swords. She entered the house by a rear window, heedless of any alarm wires; the alarm was already clanging, after all, and no one had thought to turn it off. Where would Danny be? Tied in a cell, she hoped. That would mean he had not enlisted with the Hyena.

  A man leaped at her. She knew him: one of the house guards, the Hyena's loyal minion, and a bastard in his own right. She slashed open his belly with the broadsword. His intestines burst out as he collapsed.

  Something stung her on the shoulder. She whirled. There was the Hyena, grinning. The loyal minion had distracted her, and now the Hyena's curare dart was in her flesh. Again.

  She collapsed, feeling nothing but fury. When would she ever learn!

  "This will be a genuine pleasure," the Hyena said. He turned her face up and waved his needle-nails before her face, so that she could see what he was about to do. "So you turned traitor after all, black mama!" The nails dropped toward her eyes, and she could not even blink.

  A tremendous explosion rocked the house. "There're more of them!" the Hyena cried angrily. "I'll get back to you, sweetie, never fear!" He ran to the door, as the smell of smoke came. The house was burning.

  She would die, either way. If the beast-man did not return to torture her to death, the fire would consume her. She couldn't even cry for help. Danny, too, would die. And what chance would Striker have against those darts?

  She could have been such a good karate instructor...

  Then the house exploded, and not from my arrow. Someone had set off a substantial charge. The lights went out and the alarm clangor ceased. So did the machine gun.

  The power was off, the electronic defenses null. What a break! Ilunga must have done it, somehow.

  A black man charged around the house. I fitted another arrow, unlit, and aimed it at him. Even a dead arrow could do a lot of damage. But something made me pause. He was coated with mud. I had never seen him before, I was sure, yet he seemed familiar. For some reason I thought of Strate, the drug rehabilitation program. There was also something funny about his hand, as though it had too many fingers.

  He saw me. "Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm Danny! I found his dynamite, and some grenades, and I lobbed a grenade into the works and—"

  And the grenade set off a sympathetic explosion that practically tore the house apart, set it afire, and put the generator out of commission. Our inside agent had come through after all.

  I studied him. So this was Danny. All right and unbrainwashed. "Where's your sister?" I called.

  He stopped. "She don't matter."

  "Doesn't matter!" I exclaimed. "She—"

  "She went over to the Hyena. If I see her, I'll kill her!" Sheer braggadocio. But that wasn't what concerned me. "She came back to save you. She collaborated only to save your life!"

  "Nice try, honky," he said. He turned away, toward the huge picture window, miraculously intact after the explosion. "But I saw—" He stopped, as though something significant had happened. "That's one-way glass!"

  "Sure," I agreed. "Lots of people use it. Now get out of sight before the Hyena—"

  "Sis—she couldn't see me!" he said, staring into his reflection in the dark glass. "She never saw me!"

  "Well, she went in looking for you," I said. "She never knew you were here until Fidel told us. Now—"

  "She never knew..." he repeated. Then he actually took a handful of his mud-caked hair and tried to tear it out with a single violent jerk. "How could I have doubted her!"

  I realized that the brainwashing had affected his mind, even though it evidently had not broken his will. "Mustapha is back that way," I said, gesturing. "Go stay with him, until I find out what's happened to Ilunga."

  "No," he said. "I want the Hyena. He left me in quicksand, he deceived me, he tortured me."

  So that accounted for his condition. Quicksand! "All right," I said. "Ilunga went in that house. Where would she be, if the Hyena got her? They must have been fighting when you got at that generator."

  "Dead," he said. "That beast can fight."

  "I mean the man—Hyena. We killed the beast."

  "That's the one. Ilunga can fight too, but he cheats. He has curare darts."

  "Curare!"

  "Some kind of derivative. It paralyzes without knocking out. You can't get close to him, unless he wants you to."

  That was what Mustapha had said about this estate, too. But we were in. "Thanks. I'll watch it. Now, are there any booby-traps in the house?" Ilunga had told us what to watch out for; I was really testing Danny, just in case. If the Hyena had sent him out to divert me...

  "Not any more, since I blew the power. But he's got peepholes in every room, so he can see you."

  That checked. "Those are irrelevant, with all that smoke," I said.

  The house was burning briskly now. It is amazing how rapidly a fire can spread when given a fair start in dry weather. Suddenly the front door opened and the Hyena himself bounded out, unarmed. He wore nondescript work clothes and heavy paratrooper boots: obviously he had been caught off-guard. Our haste to reach him had paid off, but if he escaped now, there would be hell to pay.

  I threw aside my bow. "Hyena!" I bawled, striking a stance. There was no mistaking my meaning; this was our second meeting, where the unfinished business of the first meeting would be finished. I could have brought him down with an arrow, but even in a situation like this there is such a thing as fair play. By the same token, I doubted he would use his curare darts, if he had any with him; his pride in his personal prowess when challenged would not permit it.

  He saw me, and charged. I had been right. He was no coward, and this settlement was important to him.

  "You go in and drag out your sister before she burns to death!" I snapped at Danny. "I'll take care of the beast."

  Danny ran to the house, avoiding the Hyena. I didn't know whether Ilunga was alive or dead. But I would have no chance to search for her myself before I dealt with the Hyena.

  The Hyena tried a showy kung fu technique, a high jumpkick. Had those boots struck my face or chest I would have been in trouble. But I dodged it easily and countered with a powerful round kick to his back, in the kidney region. The blow was enough to send a normal man to the hospital.

  This was not a normal man. The Hyena fell down, but rolled forward and regained his feet, visibly shaken. Too visibly; he was a master of deceit, and I didn't trust it. He moved into me and gathered me in his arms, trying to crush me. His claws raked my back. He had terrible strength.

  I got my right hand up and hooked my thumb in the corner of his animal-mouth. I ripped outward—and his face tore right off his head, to dangle loose
ly, a horrible flap of skin. He screamed—no laugh this time!—and let go of me, covering his destroyed face with his hands.

  It was the mask, of course. I had unmasked him, but I could not recognize his true face through the wreckage. My thumb-hook method would have made him scream, all right, had I caught his real face, but apparently the mask was as important to him as his flesh. By tearing it off, I had unmanned him.

  He started kicking at me. His heavy boots slowed him somewhat, his aim was poor because of the flap of mask still hanging from his face, half blinding him. Also, much of his confidence was gone. I reached for the mask again, curious to know his real identity—and he caught me with a crippling kick to my middle thigh. It almost broke the bone, and the pain was incapacitating.

  As I staggered, he charged me again, head down. He butted me in the midriff, but I was already jumping back, alleviating the thrust of his heavy skull. I grabbed his hair and mask and turned his head violently to the side. Again his toughness saved him; my move could have snapped his neck. As it was, he sprawled on the ground and now his face was masked again, by dirt.

  Then I made another mistake. I thought he was through, so I did not move in immediately to finish him. That instant of respite was all he needed. He grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it in my face, one of the oldest tricks in the rough-and-tumble business. I was momentarily blinded. The Hyena swiped at me again; I sensed the movement; thanks to my Shaolin training, and jumped back. Still, his claws raked across my face.

  I reverted to the automatic combat of my long experience. I made a round kick to his face, and another to the side of his neck, bringing him down as my vision cleared. This time I didn't pause; I tried to finish him with a powerful elephant stomp with my heel, but he caught my descending foot and sent me sprawling to the ground, twisting my injured leg.

  I thought he was going to attack me again, and I scrambled aside. But now he wanted only to escape. He ran for the swamp. By the time my eyes cleared fully and I realized he was getting away, he had had a good head start.