David Dun - Overfall

The man circled Shohei.

The leader muttered something and his men began to circle as well.

Shohei launched himself at the man that seemed most eager, his flying body shaped like a wedge with his left foot leading. Shohei knew to use power on a big target. Sam heard the clavicle bone shatter. As the man went down, Shohei passed over him, raking his face with a trailing foot.

The man floundered on the ground, as if for a moment he had awakened in a bad dream, then put the good arm down and jumped up. Without waiting, Shohei feigned an attack on a second man, but whirled, kicking the knee of a third man, dislocating it with the hard snap of dry wood.

The man held the pain with a tight jaw while his dark determined eyes followed Shohei, then uttered a scream while he quite deliberately snapped the knee back into place. This man had no fear.

The other two men charged with fists cocked. They came with watchful speed like experienced street fighters, but Shohei spun away, dodging their blows and breaking out of the circle. Now he used the wall of the storage room to limit their angles of attack. The leader launched a roundhouse kick, missing Shohei’s head by inches. Before he had the striking foot down, Shohei did a judo sweep to the leader’s pivot leg, upending him and dumping him with the hollow slap of flesh on concrete.

Shohei kicked another man in the solar plexus, the breath erupting from the man’s lungs. He ended the motion by putting his elbow hard into the nose of the leader, who by now was springing to his feet.

Although there were many of them, they were fumbling for the available space, fighting apart rather than together.

Blood streamed from the leader’s nose. Apparently the popped-knee man was moving and, judging from the determined line of his thin-lipped mouth, ready to fight again. Even the fighter with the crumpled clavicle was ready.

Too late Shohei realized the man who had been by the door was charging. The attacker used his shoulder to drive Shohei toward the building’s edge. The man was a bull in body and mind, pushing him effortlessly backward, even lifting him completely off the ground. Normally a fighter would use the edge of a rooftop to his advantage by playing on the knowledge that his assailant would not want to fall with him and causing the opponent to disengage. Sam could see that Shohei’s instincts were telling him otherwise; the man seemed ready to risk pushing him off the building to their mutual deaths. Shohei slammed a palm down onto the man’s nose as they moved closer to the edge, but nothing slowed the bull. The second time he was able to rotate his palm striking upward with vicious force. It was a blow that could kill.

There was a near scream, the man stumbled. They were ten feet from the edge. Shohei moved his right arm overhead in a vertical arc, and Sam knew he would land the elbow squarely on the bull’s seventh cervical vertebra. It was one of the hardest blows Sam had witnessed in combat. Then in a blurring flurry Shohei struck inward to the bull’s throat, crushing the larynx. When the bull hit the ground he didn’t move.

The bull’s attack had moved Shohei away from the others, spreading them out. Their comrade’s death appeared to have no effect on the remaining men. Shohei seemed indecisive. Like Shohei, Sam had fought many 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.

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.