Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

He felt the man collapse with a groan.

He snatched up the man’s sword, a good utilitarian cutter, and went to the wall. He was over it in a single bound, lay on the other side, breathing hard, waiting to see if anybody had followed him.

No.

He stood, naked but for the robe, and ran barefoot through the snow. He found a nearby house, broke a window, and entered. He raced upstairs to face a scared man and his wife in bed. “You stay there or I’ll kill you. Now, I need some clothes. And a cell phone.”

Nii got the door open and stepped into the white room. All was dark. To the left he recalled a light switch and, not thinking clearly, popped it. The room leapt to view, all its detail brilliantly exposed-the knotted bed, the television, the painted white window, all of it, white, white, white. But where was the child? A bolt of panic knocked through him, then fear: he could not fail. He ran to the bed, pulling it apart to find nothing, dropped low and looked under it, saw nothing. Then he thought to touch the sheets, found them warm.

She’s hiding, you fool! he thought.

He raced to the closet, pulled it open, finding nothing. That left only the bathroom. He ran to it, pulled the door. It was locked from within. That’s where she was!

“Little Girl, open the door! You will be in big trouble if you don’t open the door! Little Girl, do what I say, damn you.”

The door was silent and still.

Outside, the din of fighting rose to a still higher pitch, the grunts, the shouts, the cries of being struck, the thud of strikes. A part of Nii yearned to join the battle. But he had duty.

“Little Girl! Little Girl, I am getting mad!”

But the child said nothing.

“All right,” he said, “you’ll be sorry.”

With that, he drew back and with his katana began to cut at the door, which, being a cheap and typical modern product, quickly splintered under the assault. He watched it dissolve with three or four great whacks, and when a ragged gap had been cut through it large enough for his shoulder and arm, he reached in, found the lock, and popped it.

Then he heard someone shout, “Back off, fatso.”

He turned, furious, and found himself confronted by what appeared to be an actual Mutant Ninja Turtle. Donatello? Or maybe one of the others. Leo? Raph? That is to say, his antagonist was unusually tiny and thin, dressed all in black, and had a single eye protruding from a mask.

Suddenly the turtle reached up and flicked off its heavy eyepiece and as the thing flew away, it pulled the hair loose and the hair cascaded free, a dark torrent, long and beautiful, and Nii realized he was facing a woman.

“Bitch!” he screamed at her.

Susan leapt through the door; her night vision goggles captured exactly what lay before her. To the left were big rooms, and from them rose the racket of battle, a humming, throbbing fusion of grunts that men made involuntarily as they came together and tried to dominate each other. Before her on the right, a short stairway led up to a hallway, while below it, at this level, another stairway led to bedrooms and the like.

Down which hall? Certainly the top one; they wouldn’t put a prisoner, even a small child, at ground level. Up she went in one bound, Swagger just behind her. They were met at the top by three men, but they weren’t combatants. They were fleeing in panic, so Susan and her companion stepped aside as the three-cooks possibly, or accountants, hard to tell as they were in pajamas-raced outside to be secured by raiders.

But suddenly two men came at them from the left, and they were yakuza. Beside her, Swagger leapt forward, evading a cut, and clocked one with his elbow hard, sending that boy to the floor in a heap, and was then so close he had no room for swordplay and instead grappled, rolling against a wall, kneeing his opponent, slamming him several times hard against the wall.

“Go, go,” he shouted.

Susan peeled off from the struggle, kicked in the first door, found the room behind it empty, sped down the hall to another, kicked it, another empty one, then heard screams and shouts from ahead.

She raced to a room whose door was already open and from which bright light flowed like water. She ducked in and beheld a strange sight, amplified by the night vision goggles, though it was completely illuminated already. A large man was brutally cutting a closet or a bathroom door to ribbons in a frenzy, his blade splintering the thin wood. He was screaming, “Little Girl, come out. Little Girl, you must obey me or I will hurt you. Little Girl, you must cooperate or I will be very, very angry.”

Susan stepped in.

“Back off, fatso,” she commanded.

He turned to her, his face bunched into a sweaty rage.

He was large and green.

Then she realized she was still wearing her night vision goggles, and she tore them off, feeling a slight snare of pain as one of the straps caught in her hair.

Her womanhood seemed to enrage him even more.

“Bitch,” he screamed.

“Cow,” she replied.

Swagger found himself in a room with six men, evidently some kind of security guard for the upper floors. He flailed about, driving them back. Now they faced each other, one on six, in the relatively close confines of the small room.

Oh, shit, he thought, wondering if he had a chance against six.

Without willing it, he went into full aggression mode, going quickly to jodan-kamae, right side, and stepped forward, ready to issue from on high, feeling that pure force was the only solution to this tactical problem.

It was, but not in the way he imagined.

His war posture, the ferocity of his fighting spirit-“The moon in the cold stream like a mirror”-and his eagerness to cut people down immediately melted the will of his opponents. Six katana dropped quickly to the floor, and the men fell to their knees, wishing to offend him with their lives no more.

This was fine, it was even an ideal outcome, for at this point killing seemed pointless, but it left him with the problem of administering to six prisoners. He ran to them, reaching in his pocket for the yellow plastic zipcuffs and discovered-shit!-only four.

He worked around behind them until he ran out of zips. It was two-handed work and he had to wedge the Muramasa katana between his arm and body.

With each man, he shouted, “Kondo Isami?”

Each man looked at him with fear redoubled in his eyes and his face yet paler by degrees. If they knew Kondo, it was only by reputation.

Ach! The assault clock continued to grind on, the seconds falling away, as Bob struggled with these boys, of no consequence but still men who couldn’t simply be released. At any moment they could have turned on him, the six on one, and knocked him down and killed him. But there was no fight at all left in them, and after still more time, he had them all neutralized, four in the restraints, two tied in their own obis, not that such binding would hold but it was symbolic of surrender.

He pushed the first one out, pointed down the hall, and marched the small parade to the stairway, from which the front door was visible. Possibly, outside, the fighting had died down, as the din wasn’t so loud. He pointed again, watched them file out to their fates.

Suddenly he heard screams, male and female, signifying the coming together of two warriors at death-speed.

One voice was Susan’s.

Outside, suddenly, it was over.

The blades stilled, the grunts died, the spurts of harsh breath rising like steam, all finished. Only the snow continued its drift downward, settling in increasingly delicate piles on the brick courtyard.

Everywhere Fujikawa looked, the men had ceased to be opposed by the enemy. Some of the enemy were down with red smears across them or lay still in large puddles, where blood and snow had fused to slush. More, however, were on the ground, either tied or obligingly raising hands to be tied.