The Last Assassin

He stood for a moment, looking left and right, and I realized that in the dark and perhaps still groggy from the drug, he had momentarily lost track of me. I looked over and saw the yellow tail of the dart Dox had fired sticking out of the mud. I started inching toward it.

Dox groaned and the sumo spun toward the sound. I grabbed the dart and came to my feet.

Dox groaned again. The sumo grunted angrily and started stalking toward him. I saw that he was only a few feet away. I charged in, praying he was so focused on finding Dox that he wouldn't hear me.

At the last second he did, but it was too late. He started to turn and I leaped onto his back with hadakajime again – the critical difference being that, this time, instead of bracing one hand against the back of his head, I stabbed him in the side of the neck with the dart. The charge went off with a pop and a flash. He howled and started trying to spin me off again. But this time even as he got started he was already sinking to one knee, then the other. I realized the tranquilizer was working, and eased off slightly on his neck.

He dropped onto all fours. I dismounted warily and stepped away.

Then he straightened and started to come up again. I thought, You can't be fucking serious. I drew the HK and aimed.

The sumo wobbled, then fell on his side and lay still.

I ran over to Dox. The night-vision goggles had been knocked clean off his face by the force of the impact. 'You all right?' I asked, squatting down next to him.

'Goddamn,' he grunted, rolling from side to side. 'Goddamn.' He let out a marvelously inventive string of expletives.

'Well, you're moving,' I said. 'Can't be that bad.'

He sat up with a loud groan. 'Son of a bitch knocked the wind out of me. Thank God there was nothing behind me but air or I'd be a goddamned pancake right now. Hoo-ah, it's good to be alive.'

I helped him to his feet. We found the goggles and he pulled them on. The sumo was out cold.

'Yeah, I'm glad he didn't just suffocate before,' Dox said, rubbing his ribs. 'That would have been a tragedy.'

'I thought you were a sniper! For Christ's sake, you shot one of them in the stomach, the other in the mud!'

'Hey, big talker, when was the last time you tried to drop four hundred pounds of pissed-off primate doing the forty-yard dash with you in the way?'

'About ten fucking seconds ago!'

'Yeah, well, if you hadn't been so busy dancing, you might have noticed I barely had time to bring the damn rifle up, let alone aim it!'

We stared at each other angrily. Then Dox snorted. I did, too, and then we were laughing so hard that for a few seconds we couldn't speak. That's just the way it is. When the danger's past, hilarity likes to fill the void.

'Tell me one thing,' Dox said, moving the goggles so he could wipe his eyes. 'I couldn't be sure without the goggles on, but did I see you jump onto that man-mountain's back or what?'

I was still laughing. 'Yeah, I did. I just…'

He started slapping his thigh. 'Goddamnit, partner, that was no shit, straight up, the stupidest thing I've ever seen a man do in my life. I mean, if that boy had figured out all he had to do was flop down on his back, I'd be scraping you up with a spatula right now.'

'I guess I shouldn't have tried to choke him.'

'Yeah, no shit you shouldn't have tried to choke him. You should have just climbed up his body and levered him over by the head. A little guy did it to me once, and I'm lucky I'm here to tell you about it.'

We laughed more. When it subsided, Dox said, 'Thank you, man. I won't forget it.'

'Forget it? I'm worried you're going to keep reminding me of it.'

'Oh, you can count on that.'

'All right, come on, before they wake up again.'

'Partner, if they show any signs of wakefulness whatsoever, I'm going to empty my HK into both of them, reload, and do it again.'

'I know. So let's just finish up and get out of here. Can you carry those bags?'

'Yeah, I'm just sore. I don't think anything's busted.'

While Dox loaded the bags into the van, I retrieved the transmitter from under the Cadillac. Then I went back to the Chinese. They were all lying facedown. I turned them over on their backs and shot them each in the torso. I wanted it to look as though the sumos had ambushed them and then finished them off with the head shots I had started with,

I went back to the sumos. I could see they were breathing. With some trepidation I placed the HK in each one's hand and fired a few shots into the water. I was probably being more thorough than necessary, but I wanted gunshot residue on their hands. They still had the tranquilizer darts stuck in their necks and belly. I pulled them out and pocketed them.

Dox was already waiting in the van with the engine running. I got in and we left.

While I drove, Dox checked the cargo bag. 'Damn, partner, I ain't gonna count it now, but there is a whole lot of cash here.'

'Good,' I said, smiling. I wanted him to get a big payday out of this. He deserved it.

We found a deserted stretch of coast, parked, and waded in. We started emptying the duffels into the water and in no time were standing amid a small sandbar made of hundreds of thousands of pills. We kicked them around under the surf to make sure the salt water had plenty of access to dissolve them. 'Going to be some mighty jumpy fish in here,' Dox observed when we were done.

We drove back to the inn. I didn't want to stay, but if I left in the middle of the night it would have looked suspicious.

I parked in the same spot I'd been in before and shut off the engine. We stowed the goggles and the tranquilizer rifle, but kept the HKs close at hand.

'You think those boys will come back here?' Dox asked.

I considered. 'They might stop by, just to pick up their stuff and begin their new lives as fugitives. But they've got no way of connecting anything to us. They couldn't have made out our faces in the dark, and anyway, they never saw me inside the inn.'

We were quiet for a moment. Dox said, 'Engine's still warm, though. Ticking a little, you hear it?'

I nodded. 'That's a good point. All right, let's give it a little while to cool down. Better to know if they come back and notice.'

He patted the HK. 'And to be awake and armed.'

We sat quietly in the dark for about an hour. I was tired, and I knew Dox was, too. After the adrenaline rush of combat, there's a powerful parasympathetic backlash, and the body craves rest so badly that you can fall into a kind of stupor. That's why Napoleon knew the best time to counterattack was immediately after the battle, when the other side was still drugged with victory.

Gradually the engine's ticking slowed, then stopped. The little wisps of steam that had been coming off the hood disappeared.

'All right, I better get in,' I said. 'The staff will be up soon, and I don't want to be seen. Sorry you've got to spend

another night in the van.'

He patted the cargo bag and grinned. 'I'd say it's worth it.' Yeah, so far it had been. But it wasn't over yet.

19

Delilah sipped a cappuccino at Chez Prune on the Canal Saint-Martin, one of her favorite cafes in Paris. Ordinarily, a solitary hour here people-watching or with a book or just looking out on the water relaxed her body and emptied her mind, but today the effect was lacking.

The few days she'd spent in Manhattan after seeing Midori had been much the same. She'd visited the Neue Galerie and the galleries in Chelsea and shopped in the boutiques in the meat-packing district and run for miles in Central Park, but none of it had been any good. She was glad to finally abandon it and just come home, and now here she was and this didn't feel right, either.