Matt Hilton - Dead_s men dust

I saw Rink set his glass down on the bar and turn to leave.

The three SAS guys got up.

I didn't owe Rink anything, but for some reason I got up, too. There was a hush in the bar. The silence that preceded violence. Rink veered toward the side exit and the three SAS guys moved to follow him. No one tried to intervene. No one wanted to be pulled in as a witness.

The three men followed Rink into the backyard. Barrels were stacked against one wall, metal trash cans against the other. At the far end, a metal gate stood open and Rink walked toward it.

"Hey, slanteyes," one of the SAS guys shouted at Rink's back. "Where the hell do you think you're running off to?"

Rink didn't answer.

The three of them laughed and started after him. Rink closed the gate. He turned around.

I saw the three SAS guys falter in their stride.

Behind them, I closed the door of the pub, placed my hip against it.

One of them turned and looked at me.

"Got nothin' to do with you, pal," he said.

"Three to one," I pointed out. "I think it does."

I noticed Rink looking my way.

"I can handle it," he said.

"I'm just watching your back, buddy."

Rink nodded his thanks. Then he turned back to the SAS guys. "So who's first?" "To hell with that!" one of them snapped. The SAS guys weren't slouches. No Special Forces soldiers are.

The one who'd spoken to me hung back while the other two moved in on Rink.

The?rst one to reach him caught Rink's front kick on his chin. He fell in a heap at the feet of his friend. The second one wouldn't be taken so easily. He feigned a punch but then turned and shot a sidekick at Rink's knee. Rink wobbled and I saw pain on his face. The man stepped in and drilled a punch into Rink's stomach. Rink folded at the waist as his hands sought the source of his pain. The SAS man stepped in, ready to?nish it.

But Rink wasn't?nished. He was play-acting. Even as the man threw his punch, Rink rammed his elbow upward and drove the point into the man's throat.

At the same time, the third one stooped and grabbed at an empty bottle lying on one of the trash cans.

I didn't stop to think.

I leaped after him.

The man spun, swiped at my head with the bottle. I was expecting that, so I was already ducking. My shoulder caught him in his chest and I continued to drive him backward, rushing him at speed across the yard. As we collided with the barrels, the bottle fell out of his hand and shattered on the?oor. The SAS man struck at me, catching me on my left cheek. I gave him one right back and he staggered away from me.

He ended up in front of Rink. Rink grabbed him, spun him around, then head-butted him in the face. The man dropped to his knees, but he wasn't as unconscious as I'd have liked. I stepped in to put the boot in his ribs.

Rink lifted a hand.

"He's done," he said. "It's over with, okay?"

Looking down at the SAS man, I saw him blinking up at me with dazed eyes.

Rink was right then.

And he was now.

"Sorry, Rink. All those years of competition; of course you could restrain your killer instinct. It's me who couldn't do it. I haven't had the etiquette ingrained in me the way you have."

"You know your problem, Hunter? You're too cool about it all. You get off on the violence."

"I thought you knew me better than that, Rink."

"Aw, lighten up, will ya? Here, drink some more beer." He underhanded me a bottle.

Despite what had just been said, my aptitude for hurting others has always been channeled, a skill forged for a strict purpose and with strict delivery in mind. The alcohol-or perhaps it was the jet lag- made me maudlin. "You remember our training, Rink? I don't know about you, but it was about the hardest thing I ever did."

"Sure was. An' that's counting the?fty-man challenge I had to complete to get my Kyokushin black belt."

Unlike that of regular soldiers, our training had been not only in weaponry and technology, but in the use of the body to achieve desired results. Back in 1940, Captain William Ewart Fairbairn had revolutionized the unarmed tactics of the British military. He was al leged to have had six hundred and sixty-six brutal encounters that he survived by using his knowledge of hand-to-hand combat. Basically, he was no slouch when it came to a?st?ght, the ideal inspiration for headstrong guys like us.

Over the intervening years, other warriors had added to the roster of Fairbairn's skills, and through intense training, their legacies were passed down to us. In effect, you could say we were the direct descendants of those masters of empty-handed combat. I can't claim six hundred and sixty-six encounters, but I'm well into triple?gures. My generally unmarked face was testament to my skills, as much as Rink's black belts were to his.

"See, it's not just about?nishing your man," Rink said, with a nod toward the screen. "It's about doing it in style. Has to have entertainment value or the promoters won't be able to put asses on seats. What you do, Hunter, well, it just ain't pretty to watch."

"Aren't you afraid you'll lose your edge?" I asked. I was being serious. Rink looked pensive for a moment. Then he hit me with his enigmatic look, all hooded eyes and downturned mouth. "Hunter," he said slowly, "we ain't in the military no more. We don't have a license to kill. Hasn't that sunk in yet?"

It didn't take much ruminating over.

"Yeah," I?nally said.

But it was a sore point.

Only eight miles from Los Angeles international Airport and thirteen miles from downtown L.A., Santa Monica was pretty much Tubal Cain's most favorite place on the western coast. He'd visited there many times before but never grew tired of it. How could you be bored with its striking contemporary style and architecture or its shameless attempt at snaring a buck from the tourist market? Santa Monica had been a playground of chic Victorians. Then in the early 1900s it blossomed again with movie-star glamour. As early as the 1920s, stars such as Will Rogers, Greta Garbo, and Marion Davies had built mansions there. During the 1980s it boomed again after a multimillion-dollar restoration transformed the city. Many people thronged to take up residence there, but many of them were transients with no roots to speak of. It was the perfect hunting ground for one who preyed primarily on strangers who wouldn't be missed. Cain was hunting one of those transients now. A certain thief of a certain knife dear to him. Traversing Lincoln Boulevard in his Bundyesque VW, he grinned at the characters he saw swarming the sidewalks. Here were wannabe actors, wannabe directors, wannabe rock stars. You name it, they were there. Then there were the others. They were there to gawk in wonder at all the other wannabes, to rub shoulders with the wannabe rich and famous. To be sure, no one truly rich and famous would wander along those sidewalks for fear of being torn to pieces by starstruck souvenir hunters. Yet Cain could see a half dozen Michael Jackson look-alikes, a handful of Marilyn Monroes. Who would know if the star was real or not?

The world was twisted full tilt in this wondrous place. But that was what Cain loved so much. It was an escape from humdrum reality, a dimension to which one of his kind belonged. He knew that he didn't exist in the everyday world that most others belonged to. As a sociopath, he understood that what he was doing wasn't acceptable in ordinary society. But as a psychopath, he didn't care. Here in this modern-day Babel he could thrive and grow, easy in the knowledge that he was surrounded by a myriad of like minds.

Cain liked to speak to his dead victims. They tended not to butt in. For the same reason, he was equally happy conversing with himself. He could be as verbose as he wished. "Rule two, thief: The easiest place to hide is in full sight. Here, I'm a sardine in a massive shoal of sardines. I'm indiscernible from the thousands of others, and unlikely to be picked out when there are so many to choose from." Not that he particularly liked the sardine metaphor, but he had to admit that it served his purpose. He tended to think of himself more as a shark or a sword?sh, lurking within the shoal, ready to spring forth from concealment to show his ripping teeth or?ashing blade.