Don Pendleton - Cold Snap

There was a grunting curse and Hawkins could only make it out to be an Oriental dialect. It didn’t matter what the source of the epithet was; he saw the unmistakable motions of someone raising a pistol to shoot. Hawkins clicked his flashlight on and in an instant this man, armed with what looked like a SIG-Sauer P-228, winced and half turned away from the brilliant glare of the light. The man must have had his finger on the trigger as the crack of a 9 mm round added an extra bit of flash to the darkened room.

This bastard was armed and intended to kill. With a flick of his wrist, Hawkins lunged. The broad point of his dagger hit the man just off center of his nose. The crackle of face bones and the sudden surge of paralysis striking the gunman informed the Texan his aim was true. Six inches of steel embedded into the killer’s brain. Unfortunately the blow was so powerful it lodged the knife there, ripping it from Hawkins’s grasp.

Behind the dying man, Manning grabbed one of the other two in a head-scissoring arm lock. The smaller Asian gurgled, sputtering, attracting the attention of the center man, who suddenly realized he was not beset on both sides by relative giants.

Hawkins didn’t go for the Karambit on its thong around his neck. There was a good chance these killers might have good intel on what was going on, on why it had been so vital to murder an American English teacher. Rather, he punched forward with the end of his flashlight. The Surefire model that Hawkins carried had a crown around its lens, a high-impact aluminum ring that not only could be used for protecting the lens of the flash, but also could be used as an impact weapon. The crown design, with semicircular scallops taken out of the perimeter, had been designed to snag skin rather than slip off, as well as to increase the force of the punch.

Hawkins slammed it at the corner of the man’s jaw, spiking into the juncture of nerves and blood vessels running through the neck to feed the man’s brain. With a single blow, the Texan laid him out.

In the meantime Manning had taken his opponent in a sleeper hold. Deprived of fresh blood and oxygen to the brain, his man had also passed out.

It was all over and done, but time was no longer on Phoenix Force’s side. The first of the men had fired a gunshot. If the bursting of Veronica Moone’s front door hadn’t inspired this neighborhood to call the police, that act of violence would.

“My knife is stuck in his face,” Hawkins told Manning. The Phoenix veteran nodded and applied his strength and leverage to the task of retrieving the weapon as the Texan turned to the Korean girl.

“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

“It’s okay,” Hawkins replied with a soothing drawl. “I don’t want to see you hurt, either. Are you all right?”

“They killed Ronnie,” the woman said. She was numbed.

Hawkins rested an arm around her shoulders. “We need to go. Can you come with us?”

She nodded.

“You speak Korean?” Hawkins asked. It wasn’t a foolish question. There was a population of Koreans who lived in Japan as a minority, but some of them might not have kept true with their ethnic origins. Back in Texas, Hawkins had met enough Hispanics who denied their cultural heritage, preferring to live within the flow of Texan ethnicity. They were third-and fourth-generation Americans.

“Yes,” she answered. “They gave me a gun...”

“I know,” Hawkins said, helping her to her feet.

“Hey,” Manning whispered. Hawkins turned and found his knife being handed to him, handle first, the blade wiped clean. “Their car is outside.”

“Enough room for us?” Hawkins asked, sheathing his knife.

“Just four,” Manning responded.

“Take her. I’ll catch up on foot,” Hawkins replied. He turned to the Korean girl. “Follow this man. We both want to protect you.”

She looked doubtful at first, but when Manning threw one of the goons over his left shoulder, then picked up the other unconscious man as if he were a duffel bag, she nodded.

“Don’t dawdle,” Manning suggested to his younger partner.

Hawkins shrugged. “Just enough to throw them off your trail.”

Manning nodded, knowing what his friend intended.

With that, Manning and the girl were out the front door. They piled into a minivan, emphasis on “miniature.”

All need for stealth past, Hawkins turned on the lights and examined the small home, now the worse for a second corpse. He couldn’t help but think that he’d failed Veronica Moone, but was also aware the young woman would have secured information somewhere. He mentally went over all the trade craft he’d learned and developed since becoming an operative for Stony Man Farm. The CIA NOC would have had to secure what notes she’d assembled in a place that would not be obvious, even to trained intelligence agents, but could be accessed quickly in the event of an emergency or a swift exit.

When the Koreans came to kill her, one of her first thoughts would have been about the information she’d stored away. He examined the room once again and then looked at the dead woman’s posture on the floor. She’d been dragged into the kitchen by the garrote that had crushed her windpipe. One of her shoes was in the living room, on a small rug. Hawkins thought that maybe she’d hidden her info somewhere in the relatively Spartan living area, but immediately dismissed that. She had been moving away from the kitchenette. Hawkins turned and scanned the shelves.

Two bags of rice caught his attention. One was open, partially used. The other didn’t look as if it had been opened, but the sack holding the rice had been taut, pillowlike. Hawkins went for the more stuffed bag and saw that its top flap had been secured by a swatch of duct tape.

“If your cell phone ever gets wet, put it in a container of rice to dry it out,” Hawkins murmured aloud. Considering Japan was a nation that had experienced its fair share of traumatic tidal waves, it would also prove a smart place of storage for small electronics that could hold data... He tore open the bag and sifted through. After a few moments he felt something inside. It was a PDA. Just to make certain, he rummaged through the rice some more and came away with four thumb drives.

Hawkins pocketed the items, then frisked the corpse of the murderous Korean who’d nearly shot him. There were no pieces of identification on the man, not even clothing tags. There were, however, two spare magazines for the Norinco copy of the SIG-Sauer P-228. He pocketed them, picked up the pistol and depressed the decocker, lowering the hammer and returning initial trigger pull to a drop-safe, flinch-resistant twelve pounds of weight. He pocketed the pistol and noticed the flicker of red-and-blue flashes through the open door.

The time to leave was now and he opened the back door into the alley. Hawkins’s sudden arrival startled two cats in flagrante delicto and the animals leaped away from each other, yowling in protest. It almost would have been funny, but the feline racket and their flight sent garbage can lids toppling with a gonging clatter. The police out front would no doubt have heard the noise.

Hawkins produced the NP-228 and fired two shots into the kitchen floor through the doorway. That racket would most assuredly have drawn attention, but it would also freeze the Japanese policemen where they stood. Once again, the Texan’s familiarity with police procedure, most specifically Japanese procedure, meant that he would not have to worry about inciting an international incident. The cops out front would be loath to open fire immediately, for fear of harming a possible hostage or out of concern that bullets would cut through one building and harm someone in a nearby structure.

With that lead going for him, Hawkins made the pistol safe and took off down an alley between two houses. Vaulting short fences was little effort for him, and he wove through the neighborhood as fast as he dared without attracting further attention to himself. It took him twenty minutes before he allowed himself on the main street, circling back to where he and Manning had parked their rental vehicle. The wisdom that kept them from parking too near to where they were going had served them well. The car was undisturbed, even though it was likely a half dozen police cars had driven past it.