David Robbins - Miami Run

“What happened then?”

“Once all the opposition was eliminated, I disposed of my so-called employer.”

“No one else in his organization objected?”

“Why should they?” Orm responded. “I promised each of them wealth and power beyond their fondest dreams, and I delivered on that promise.

They were eating out of my hand.”

“So your… children… didn’t help you take over the Dragons?” Blade inquired.

“No. They were too young at the time. Why?”

Blade glanced back at the six other Masters. “I’d heard all of you were involved.”

“There are a number of popular rumors concerning us,” Orm acknowledged. “Some we’ve deliberately fostered.”

“You have?”

“Of course. Our principal means of maintaining control over the humans are psychological, not physical.”

“What about the drugs?” Blade noted.

“The drugs are part of the overall picture. By legalizing drug use, we’ve promoted addiction. An addicted population is a dependent population.

The people now rely on the Dragons for drugs. They’re dependent on us.

We are indispensable.”

“You have it all figured out,” Blade remarked.

Orm halted. “It hasn’t been easy. Solidifying our links with the Colombian Cartel, minting our own money, picking sycophants as Directors.”

Blade looked the mutant in the eyes. “Why do you want to destroy the Family?”

“So that’s it!” Orm exclaimed, smiling broadly, exposing his sharp teeth. “The reason you came to Florida! You heard about our plans! How?”

“Forget how,” Blade declared. “Why?”

“Because your Family poses a threat to our operation,” Orm answered.

“Paolucci said the same thing,” Blade noted. “And it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Would it make sense to you if you learned the Dragons are planning to expand their market into the Civilized Zone?”

The Warrior’s shock was obvious.

“That’s correct,” Orm said, grinning wickedly. “We have made arrangements with a high-ranking official in the Civilized Zone, one of your allies in the Freedom Federation, to begin distributing drugs covertly. Drugs are illegal there, of course, but that won’t stop us.”

“You’re going to introduce drugs to the Civilized Zone!” Blade declared in consternation.

“Eventually, we’ll introduce drugs, as you put it, into each Federation faction. We’ll corner the market. Your accursed Family, though, stands in our way. You’re too idealistic, too damn spiritual. We could never foster drug dependence in the Home. And if we can’t turn you, then we must destroy you. We’re assembling a mercenary unit to pay your Home a little visit.”

Blade raised his hands to his forehead. “I’d like to know how you found out?” Orm mentioned.

The Warrior appeared to be in a daze.

“Oh, well. I guess it’s not important. I’ll track down the leak,” Orm vowed. “Only the Directors and a few of the Dealers know about our plan to send a demolition unit to the Home. If one of them was indiscreet, I’ll find out.”

Blade gazed at the ground with a blank expression.

“Don’t take the news so hard,” Orm said. “It’s nothing personal.

Business is business, and the Dragons have an opportunity to expand our trade in a big way.” He turned and started back.

The Warrior walked alongside the mutant.

“I’m impressed that you got this far,” Orm commented. “Once, a few years ago, a disgruntled member of the Colombian Cartel hired a professional assassin to terminate us. We caught him, of course. The assassin was a mutant! Can you imagine that? We cut out his tongue, but allowed him to live.” He paused. “You will not be so fortunate. I thought it would be poetic justice to use your own knives to skin you. We relish the taste of human flesh, all except for the skin. It leaves a bitter, salty aftertaste.”

Blade was scarcely listening, his mind in turmoil. All the pieces of the puzzle now fit, and a rage was simmering inside him, a fury born of his experiences in Miami. He remembered the boy of six or seven who had begged for coins to buy drugs for his dad, and the 15-year-old girl who hustled men to support her habit, and then he thought of all the thousands of innocent children in the Civilized Zone and the other Federation factions, children whose lives would be forever warped by having the drug life-style forced on them by peer pressure or the manipulation of conniving adults. All because the Dragons wanted to expand their drug market! With each stride he took his rage grew. He glanced down at the handcuffs, at the links connecting the metal bracelets.

“—ceremony was my idea,” Orm was boasting. “Humans are easily swayed by elaborate ceremonies. The sacrifices are an excuse for us to indulge ourselves.”

Blade looked up. They were 12 feet from the waiting Masters and Directors. Seven of the former and thirteen of the latter. Twenty, all told.

Not the best of odds, but he didn’t care anymore. He felt like molten lava was circulating in his veins.

“Ahh. Here we are,” Orm remarked as they reached the assembled group. He extended his right arm. “The knives, Director One.”

Arlo Paolucci began to lift his right hand.

And Blade made his move. His massive arms bunched, his muscles rippling and bulging, as he exerted all of his prodigious strength, his forearms straining outward. For an average man the cuffs would have held; for the herculean Warrior the links were as putty. In the space of a heartbeat they parted with a loud snap, and before the stupefied Masters and Directors could intervene, the Warrior yanked his Bowies from Paolucci and whirled toward Orm.

The mutant leader was reaching for the giant. “Get—” he began.

Blade swept the Bowies under Orm’s arms and buried them to their hilts in the mutant leader’s chest, his shoulder muscles coiling like steel springs as he lifted the Master on the Bowie blades, surging Orm up and over his head. For a second he stood there, grand and terrible in the sunlight, the mutant upraised and thrashing and screeching.

Snarling and hissing, the other Masters closed in.

The Warrior whirled and flung Orm into the charging Masters, bowling four of them over. But the remaining two, one of whom was Radnor, pounced. Blade felt their bony fingers close on his forearms, one on each side. He dropped to his left knee and wrenched his left arm downward, propelling the mutant holding him to the ground to crash onto its face.

Even as he completed the move, he started another. There was no time for needless thought, and there would be no rhyme or reason to this battle. He had to rely on his reflexes, on his honed instincts, and keep moving-moving-moving. If he slowed for an instant, he was dead.

Consequently, as the one mutant was crashing onto the hard ground, Blade was already in motion to the right, angling his left knee in a savage arc, ramming the kneecap into Radnor’s groin.

Radnor gurgled and released his grip. The Directors swarmed in, their red robes swirling. Four of the thirteen produced knives, two drew pistols from hiding, and one stepped up to the giant with a sawed-off shotgun sliding out of his left sleeve.

Blade was a whirlwind. He took the fight to them, moving into their midst to limit their ability to employ their guns and knives for fear of hitting one another. His right Bowie took out the Director with the shotgun, the point slicing into the man’s right eye, causing the Director to scream, release the gun, and flounder backwards, blood pouring from the ruptured socket as the Bowie came free.

Another Director snapped off a shot from his pistol, but missed.

The Warrior pivoted, slashing and swiping, the keen edges of his Bowies cutting and ripping right and left. The two Directors with pistols were the next to fall, both with crimson crescents flowing from their severed throats. Blade pressed his attack with reckless abandon, parrying a knife strike, hacking off the fingers of a hand reaching for him, and ramming his left Bowie into the jugular of a Director clinging to his right shoulder.