I turned back to the man whose nose cartilage and sinus cavity had just been shattered and watched him struggle to stand upright again. He looked at me with blood streaming from his nose and tears from his eyes. With a vicious animal-like sound, he lunged forward, bringing his right arm around as if to land a haymaker on my jaw. He still had some fight left in him, though it wouldn’t last. I brought my right arm up to the inside of his wrist and swung my left arm across his elbow. The effect of this was to trap his elbow and snap it backward at the joint, causing him to howl in pain. As he stood there looking at me, with his arm distended and immobile, I put my right leg behind his, brought the palm of my right hand up under his chin, and snapped his head backward as I swept his legs out from under him. He went down hard to the floor, unconscious.
I turned to his buddy who was picking himself up off the floor. He only had one good leg left but he apparently wasn’t done yet. As he limped toward me, I swung my right leg up in a circular motion and connected my foot to the side of his head, causing him to pirouette around like a drunken sailor and fall to the ground with what I was sure was a major concussion. He lay face down on the old floor, breathing but not moving.
I just stood there for a few more seconds with my knees unlocked and ready to move, to ensure the threat was gone. Finally assured that neither man posed any further problems to me, I stood up, relaxed my fists, and took a deep breath. I looked over at the waitress and the cook, who were both staring at me. This hadn’t turned out the way they’d expected.
I looked around the place at the carnage I’d just created, got out two twenties, and put them on the table. I went over to the other table where the two men had been, grabbed a few peanuts and threw them into my mouth. I picked up one of their beers, took a swig out of it, and then went back to the asshole that grabbed the waitress by the wrist and pour the rest over him. It would have been the final insult to the two, had they been in any condition to watch me do it to them.
The whole thing lasted less than a minute. I decided it was best to leave before the waitress had too much time to notice any particulars about me. Attention was not what I wanted. So I casually walked over to the door, opened it, went back outside, and took a deep breath of cold, bracing night air. My heart was still racing, but it’d slow down in a minute. The deep breathing would help that.
I found my car where I’d left it, climbed in and started it up. As I was backing out of the parking space, I noticed a truck had arrived that wasn’t there earlier. A man was standing by it, casually, as if waiting for someone. Even in the low light, I caught a glimpse of him. He appeared to be looking at me in more than a passing way. Not wishing to pursue it at the moment, I just kept moving.
CHAPTER 9
Jansen watched Nick drive away. A part of him wanted Nick to stop and come over to him, but Nick didn’t stop. When he was gone, Jansen went inside The Tavern. He saw his two men, knocked out on the floor, lying in a small pool of blood and beer. If they hadn’t already looked like they needed a hospital, he would have finished the job Nick had started.
Jansen almost smiled. They were supposed to take Nick down a peg and hurt him. Rough him up a bit. The idea was to get him second-guessing himself. Jansen really didn’t think it was going to work, but that’s what his contact at Waxman Industries wanted him to do. Cause some self-doubt and hesitation in the guy. As he looked at the two men on the floor, he shook his head, sure that Nick was not experiencing any self-doubt right now. The two capable fighters now lay crumpled and damaged as if attacked by an overwhelming, superior force… not one man.
He had no choice but to get them out of The Tavern and into his truck before anyone showed up to question what had happened. He picked them up one at a time, put each in turn over his shoulder in a fireman carry, and lugged them outside. He was cursing under his breath as he loaded them into the bed of the truck where they lay in a heap.
He knew the men weren’t going to like being beaten like that, but he really didn’t care. This outcome was unsatisfactory and he intended to let the two men know it, though it would be too little, too late. Their careers with Waxman Industries are over. Neither man would be whole again, mentally or physically.
Jansen knew the two men assumed it would be no contest. He would like to have seen how Nick did it, but he needed to keep a low profile for the time being, which is why he was outside The Tavern when the fight went down. Like most men in his profession, he was confident of his own abilities and yearned on some level to test them against an equally qualified opponent. It was this ego that made him want to go up against Nick and prove to himself and to Nick who the better man was. He wanted to fight him and put this issue to bed right now. But the people paying him didn’t ask him to kill Nick, just send him a message. He’d sent Nick a message, all right. It just wasn’t the one he’d intended.
CHAPTER 10
Back in my motel room, I took the plastic ice bucket left on the chest of drawers and filled it with ice from the machine in the alcove near the stairs. I needed to ice my right hand for a few minutes as I contemplated what had just happened. Hitting a person in the head with my bare fist usually resulted in some swelling and bruising. In the movies, nobody ever seems to bleed or develop a bruise. Out here in the real world, pain, bruising, and swelling are very real. If you’re good, you learn to appreciate it and not fear it. It lets you know you are still alive. You don’t let it slow you down or stop you. But I also learned to take care of myself as time permitted. It wasn’t out of fear or self-pity. It was just the smart thing to do.
As I was icing my hand, I replayed what just happened in the bar. I wanted to attribute it to a couple of local guys who’d had too much to drink and not enough to do. However, judging by their builds and the way they moved to attack me, it wasn’t a stretch to assume it was a deliberate act on their part. I also concluded they’d had some training in their background, military or otherwise. This, of course, changed the dynamics of things. What the hell were two guys like that doing out here? They weren’t just upset about the peanuts. In retrospect, they appeared to be waiting for me. How did they know I’d be there, and why would they care? I had to assume that if they knew I was going to be at The Tavern, they probably knew where my motel room was too. I pulled my hand out of the ice bucket, deciding it was time to move to my backup location.
It didn’t take me more than three minutes to pack up my things and vacate the room. I left the room key on the chest of drawers. When the room was cleaned the next day, the maid would find it and the motel would send a bill to the name on the credit card I’d given them.
I opened the door to the hallway and waited inside my room for a minute with my hand on the gun in my waistband. Hearing and seeing no one directly outside my room, I peeked around the corner and looked down the hall each way. Seeing no one, I picked up my bag and moved toward the stairwell, down the stairs and out into the parking lot through a back door.
I assumed my car was burned and whoever might be watching me knew that I was driving that car. I walked out of the parking lot and down a side street, knowing it was hard to be completely inconspicuous with so few people out at that time of night, but I had no choice. Three blocks down, I found and unlocked another rental car I had set up for just this purpose. I got in and drove away quickly.