Once a situation was assessed, the course of action taken was never to be reversed unless there was literally no other choice. If one, for instance, ran oneself into a blind alley, one could turn and fight. If one, for another instance, found oneself suddenly outnumbered after beginning an attack on a single opponent, one could turn and run. Otherwise, one pressed the attack, always moving forward, always encroaching on the opponent’s space and freedom of movement, always striking, until the opponent, or oneself, was disabled. Or one ran as fast as one could, as far as one could, and did not stop until it was physically impossible to run any farther, or one was caught.
Park had discovered many things about himself in the studio. Not the least of which was that he didn’t mind being hit all that much. He didn’t enjoy it, but he was more than willing to accept a few blows if it allowed him to deliver at least one blow more than he received. He also discovered that he didn’t mind hitting other people. Again, he didn’t enjoy it, but in the context of training or actual combat, it didn’t bother him at all to find that he had hurt someone.
He was quite good at it, though his talent lay more in the purely martial side of the class than in the speed with which he made his decision to run or attack. Always, it seemed, there was a blip of hesitation before he took action. His attitude toward combat revealing his inner philosopher. Inquiry was not a light issue for Park, even when the answers had been reduced to fight or flight. Once decided, he would run until his lungs burst, or advance relentlessly on his opponent, but either course was often preceded by a sharp blow from the Hurtin’ Man’s stick.
Jumping down from the fence outside the golf course after he’d made the notes in his journal, he was only slightly surprised by the appearance of the men emerging from the shadows of the trees. It wasn’t the fact of armed men waiting for him that was the slight surprise, but the fact that he’d never seen them before. Three tan men in khaki pants and what he took for dark guayabera shirts. He’d have expected Hounds.
Faced with three well-armed men who carried themselves with the same air of prowess as Cager’s bodyguards, Park was able to choose his course of action before his feet had landed on the ground outside the fence. Action so suddenly committed to that he had cut between two of them and had a five-yard head start before they began pursuit.
None of which changed the fact that they were simply faster than he was. In fact, they caught up and overwhelmed him so quickly, he never had a chance to change his mode of action and begin an offensive. Instead he found himself rapidly disarmed, divested of all possessions upon his person, and tumbled into the backseat of an obligatorily black SUV, where he was comfortably ensconced in supple leather, offered a beverage, and driven, sans restraints, to the Afronzo family estate well inside the gates of Bel Air.
22
MY NATIONAL ID CARD WAS A MARVELOUSLY HACKED BIT OF the counterfeiter’s art that took full advantage of the many loopholes that popped up when Patriot II dictated. We all walk about with cards broadcasting our personal data hither and yon. With the software that had come included in the mind-numbing cost of the card, I could, as often as I liked, log on to my cardholder’s account, input my password, place my card on an RFID read/write/rewriter USBed to my computer, and have my card’s RFID chip updated with all the latest travel clearances. Guaranteed to be current within five hours of any changes to local, state, and federal security. On any given day I would make a point of updating my clearance before leaving the house, thus ensuring that I might pass easily through the most stringent checkpoints and roadblocks. Even in a rapidly evolving security environment such as the one emerging outside, it saved me no end of trouble. Unfortunately, the card did not create an identity from scratch when it was updated; it simply altered one’s clearance for sensitive and hazardous areas. Assuming that anyone was actively looking for the identity radioed from that tiny chip, it would appear on a number of data logs and registries every time it was scanned and cleared, leaving a trail of electronic bread crumbs to be followed wherever I should go.
In normal circumstances it would be an unthinkable breach of personal security to travel with that card after repulsing an attack. But it seemed that I had passed beyond the realm of normal circumstances, even for myself.
Having insinuated myself into a stream of events, I would have preferred to tack between obstacles until my goal was within range, only then snatching it from the current and veering unnoticed to a hidden tributary to observe until I was certain that I had left no trace. Clearly I had already failed. Speed was now more urgent than subtlety. Whatever cross-purposes the Afronzo family retainers might have to my own, they’d certainly be headed toward the same destination.
I’d bandaged my wounds, dressed, and taken from the dead a few items that I wished to add to the travel kit I always kept in my garage for an occasion such as this. I’d experienced them before. That I was being driven from my home so late in life seemed indisputable evidence that my life would soon be ending.
A conclusion that caused me some great confusion as it was difficult from my perspective in the moment to see how the shape of my life could resolve itself after being so thoroughly bent from the form I had crafted. It wasn’t that I doubted a violent end was my due, but something about the nature of the assault I had endured had knocked a great many elements out of balance. Not the least of which was the hard-earned harmony I’d built into my home. It was, there are no other words, a mess. And I had no time to put it into any kind of order. Let alone deal with the bloodstains.
Aging, wounded to an extent I’d not been in many years, my painstakingly crafted home in shambles, the world rising on a tide of its own madness and a plague of unrest, I found it impossible to envision the grace notes that would allow the composition of my life to be completed upon my death. Yet it could not help but be imminent.
But the world, as it often has for me, provided some slight evidence that there was a pattern to events. Revealed in the ringing of a phone. Or, rather, in the tune this particular phone played when it was called. “Welcome to My Nightmare.” A call that provided an improbably timed touchstone of purpose.
I did not keep Lady Chizu waiting any longer than the moments it took to find the phone in the knapsack where it had been stowed by my attackers.
“Yes?”
“I would like a progress report.”
I looked at the bodies strewn about.
“There have been complications.”
“Not insurmountable, I hope.”
I stepped to the glass wall that overlooked the basin, gazing at the view that had convinced me years before to embrace the instability of hillside living in Los Angeles.
“Not at all.”
“There is tension in your voice.”
I looked down at my legs. I’d put on black slacks against any seepage through my bandages.
“Yes, I’ve been wounded.”
There was a slight pause. I became aware of a rhythmic clicking that had accompanied our conversation to this point, as if Lady Chizu were repeatedly tapping the same key on one of her typewriters. The noise ceased in her own silence, started again as she spoke.
“Do you require assistance?”