Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Mai Kitano faced the facility’s commander, disdain twisting her face.

“Those rags you wear,” he said, sadistic glee making him look like an evil circus clown. “They’re torn. Muddy. Maybe we should remove them for you.”

She and Smyth had been tied by the wrists to upended bedsteads, their hands twisted through broken, rusty springs and then secured to the iron side rails.

“You can try.”

The grinning base commander faltered and took a step back, reading the certainty in her eyes. A soldier stepped from behind, clearly not interpreting the situation, and strode forward. Mai instantly took the weight of her body on her wrists and kicked out with both feet. The first strike knocked the soldier to the left, straight into the hard, oncoming right.

The sound of his neck snapping silenced the room.

“No! No! Tie her feet.” The commander’s expression turned from uncertain to livid in a millisecond.

The other soldiers hesitated, not trusting their own skills. Mai smiled viciously.

“Fools!” The commander blustered, but didn’t repeat the order.

One of the soldiers leaned into him. “Should we shoot her?”

“Probably.” The commander let out a deep sigh that made his fat jowls wobble. “But not yet. Wait.” He stalked from the room, shouting at a subordinate to go and fetch him the sat phone.

Smyth regarded her with the utmost respect. “Even tied up.” He laughed. “Even tied up you’re lethal. Maggie, I gotta say — you’re my dream girl.”

Mai shook her head, unable to hide the smile. It soon evaporated though when the sound of Dai Hibiki’s groans filtered through the battle rage. The undercover Japanese agent had so far borne the brunt of the ill treatment. The Koreans had beaten him to the ground, then kicked and stomped on him until he stopped moving. Mai had heard more than one bone break in the onslaught. Her heart and mind wept, but her outward facade remained carved in stone.

“What is this place?” she asked, always digging. “What do you do here?”

The soldiers just stared at her. Then, from the corner of the room, came a clicking noise. A man, as thin, ugly and repugnant as a stick insect, rose, finely knobbed cane in hand. He didn’t stop moving until he could reach out and touch Mai, well within lethal range.

“You still want to know?” His voice cracked, old with pain, old with terrible experience. “Even now before all these weapons. You still want to know? That is why I love you, Miss Kitano. The legend of Shiranu is real! It is real!” He cackled on like a man driven insane. “That is why, even locked away here in this purgatory, I have tried to follow your every move, your every victory even before Tokyo Coscon.” He raised the tip of the cane and shoved it against what he could see of her flat stomach. “It would be a pleasure to die by your hands. Or feet. As you prefer.”

Mai looked momentarily at a loss. A weapon rattled and clicked. “Come away from her, Doctor.”

“Doctor? You run this place, bud?” Smyth rattled his bedstead. “C’mon. What can it hurt? You done life here, man, longer than any prison sentence. What gives?”

The doctor bowed his head. “At first, we outlined a proposal to propagate super assassins. Sleepers. It eventually became a leadership-run People’s Republic program.”

“Assassins?” Smyth almost laughed. “You kiddin’ me, doc?”

Mai watched the end of the cane being pressed into the flesh just below her navel. She let her gaze run along its length and then up until they met the doctor’s eyes. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes, Miss Kitano.”

“Then speak.”

It was one of the oddest situations imaginable. The captive promising death to the captor if they played nice and spilled the beans. Only Mai Kitano could conjure such extreme and fatal adoration. And the inept guards watched partly in fascination, and partly because they had no orders to the contrary.

“These assassins pass no blame on to Korea. It’s what’s known as a ‘sparkling blow’ against the West. Clean. Spotless. Death. It can be attributed to a chance act of ferocity, triggered by a single predetermined phrase.”

“So why use them now?”

The doctor nodded ever so slightly at Mai and dug the end of his cane into her stomach. His next words caused a furor.

“Officially, they are not yet in use. General Kwang Yong has commandeered the program for his own personal means and gains.”

Soldiers rushed forward, cackling. Mai raised both knees, swinging viciously under the doctor’s chin. His head snapped back hard, breaking the connection with his spine. The body slithered lifelessly between her legs and down to the floor. Once again, the soldiers backed off.

“If I could choose a way to die”—Smyth tested his bonds—“it’d be between your legs, Maggie.”

The lab door opened and the chubby-faced clown commander walked back in. “It’s done. The general will return and take care of this. What happened here?”

“The doctor.” One of the soldiers pointed at Mai in explanation.

“I have never known a prisoner like you before.” He drifted closer. “You give grown, armed men nightmares. Which clan are you from?”

Mai whispered a word in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear, but the commander’s frame visibly wavered. His entire body shook and he was an inch from having to pick himself up off the floor.

“Clear the room.” He hissed. “The general will have to take care of this.” Without ceremony, he forced a path through his men. “We wait. Now, we wait.”