My breathing was short and sharp. Sweat soaked my armpits and ran down my forehead. My pulse throbbed in my temples. Every sense was heightened. A couple of mosquitoes hummed somewhere close. Being a federal agent, I'd removed plenty of weapons from the hands of unwilling servicemen over the years. Most of them had had a skinful at the time, or didn't know what they were doing, like Boris and his baseball bat back at Elmer's sporting goods store. Disarming Butler would be a completely different proposition. SAS guys knew how to use a knife. He proved me right by holding the blade so that the steel ran back down the inside of his wrist and forearm. There was no way either of us could get out of this without being cut. I just had to hope that, in my case at least, it wouldn't be anywhere vital. There was a good chance we'd end up killing each other — our own personal Mutually Assured Destruction. I swapped the dagger to my right hand and crouched, poised. Butler did the same.
Sean Boyle groaned. Rossi shifted her weight a couple of inches.
A dribble of sweat rolled down Butler's forehead, ran into another droplet, and gained speed. An instant later it hit another droplet, accelerated, and fell into his eye socket. He blinked. I thrust. Not a slash. No back swing. More of a jab. He caught it, steel on steel. Tang to tang. No advantage. We disengaged. Separated.
I feinted to the left. He covered the movement, exposing his front leg. I kicked him in the thigh with my right shin, driving it into him with all my body weight. It was a heavy hit, but Butler shrugged it off, merely hopping on his good leg a couple of times as we came apart. At least I'd let him know it wasn't just the knife he had to watch out for.
Butler switched his blade to his left hand, letting me know it wasn't just his right I had to watch out for. He swung the knife at my face. I felt the change in air pressure as the tip swept by an inch away from my eyeballs.
Butler suddenly leapt toward me and tried the same slash again. I moved into him this time, stepping inside his range, and smashed my forearm down on his arm as he brought it through. This inside move caught him by surprise. His neck was exposed to an elbow strike, but Butler was ready for it. He dropped to the floor before I could hit him and he rolled away, coming up in stance, perfectly balanced, ready to kill. We moved in toward each other, circling. I thrust with the Fairbairn-Sykes, hoping to open up his gut. Butler moved, and I missed. My momentum carried me forward, a little out of control, and I slipped on my own sweat. I fell forward. I tried to roll as Butler had, but slipped again. Butler was all over me like cheap aftershave. He stabbed his knife down toward the back of my head. I sensed this and moved. The point of his knife tip slammed into the floor beside my cheek and I felt a small concrete chip ping off my ear. I twisted away and came up on my knees before he could repeat the thrust. Butler saw his opportunity. He jumped forward and stood on the Fairbairn-Sykes, jamming it against the floor under his boot. I was vulnerable to a slash across the body, which would have opened me up like a ripped trash bag. I had no choice. I caught the blow with my arm. His blade buried itself deep in my deltoid, the muscle below the shoulder ball joint, almost cutting through to the bone. Oddly, I felt no pain. I watched it happen like it was someone else's arm. Butler ripped the knife out, cutting, tearing, and small hunks of muscle and skin clung to the knife's bloody serrations as he brought it away.
I fell back against the wall before he could bury the knife in my guts, the blood surging from the severed blood vessels in my arm. I had nowhere to go. Butler had my knife as well as his. He came toward me, grinning, waggling them — one in either hand as if to say, “Now, which one will I use to finish you off?”
I had no weapon, but I had a belt. The belt had a buckle on it. I struggled to my feet, unfastened it, and pulled it through the loops. A weight suddenly fell down through the inside of my pants and clattered onto the floor. I was so surprised I kicked it accidentally with my heel as I moved, and it flew across the floor. Goddamn it, the second .45 confiscated from the NK patrol, the one I'd jammed into the small of my back, held there by the belt. I'd completely forgotten about it. It spun into the pool of blood around Rossi. She suddenly lifted her head and picked it up. She had my full attention. Butler's, too. She thumbed off the safety. Aimed the gun. Bang! I opened my mouth. She shot Sean Boyle as he lay on the bed, clutching his stomach. The slug, a wad cutter, entered beneath his chin, smashing through his palate and turning the bone there into splinters that continued on through his brain, changing it to the consistency of mousse, and then blowing the top of his head clean off. Clumps of Boyle's brains spattered across Butler's face, momentaily blinding him.
I threw myself forward into Butler as he clawed the gray matter out of his eyes. My knee slammed into his ribcage and I felt it cave in like rotten wickerwork. We both fell backward and I came down on top of him, his Ka-Bar sliding away out of reach. He brought up his leg. That's when I saw the small-bore revolver in a holster strapped to his ankle. I reacted, kicking his leg away, but he was determined to get to his gun. Life. Or death. I went for his neck, wrapping my hands around it. His skin was slick with brains, which oozed between my fingers like gray mud as I squeezed. With the busted-up knuckles of my left hand, I couldn't get a grip. Strangling the guy wasn't an option so I used my elbow, mashing it into the side of his face, twisting his brain stem, giving him something to think about. Butler's head rolled about, but he was still conscious, still going for that goddamn gun.
I was exhausted. So was Butler. I kicked his leg away from his hand. I moved to hit him again. He moved his head to avoid my elbow, and that's when I saw Ruben's dagger — the Fairbairn-Sykes. It was under Butler, pressed between his body and the floor. I reached for the handle and pulled. It came away. The diversion gave Butler the chance to reach for his revolver.
I had no time to think about what I did next.
I slid the blade through his shirt, beneath his skin, between the bone fragments of his broken ribs. The cold steel blade sliced through small then large intestine. More pressure was needed to carve up through the tough muscle wall of his diaphragm. Butler gasped like he was wading into icy water. I heard the click as his thumb cocked back the hammer on his gun. I pushed up on the hilt, the blade's edge overcoming the resistance of muscle and tissue. Bom-bom-bom… I felt his pulse through the hilt when the tip of the dagger came to rest up against the wall of his throbbing heart. I was ready to call it quits. I didn't want Butler dead. I still had questions, and maybe this was the only guy left alive with the answers.
Butler's mouth was open, his eyes wide. I heard the gun he was holding clatter to the floor. I relaxed. Suddenly, I felt his hands on mine around the knife's handle, slick with blood, sweat, and brains. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. With a final burst of strength he drove the blade higher, deeper into himself. And then, transmitted through the steel, I felt his heart explode, impaled on the tip of Ruben Wright's Fairbairn-Sykes.
FIFTY-FIVE
When I got back home I spent a couple days relaxing in a hospital bed, if such a thing is possible, while various people in white coats sewed me up, stuck me with hypodermics, and generally poked and prodded me. I told them there was nothing wrong with me that a few days off and a few servings of Kim's bulgogi couldn't fix, and even managed to get a cute nurse to go pick me up some take out on my last night there.
Lying around with nothing to do except trouble the aforementioned nurse gave me time to put a few things together, and get some action happening on a few others. I needed to find out who Butler might have been referring to as “our mutual friend.”