Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

It took a long, bad, wretched day.

Interlude Four

KICKAPOO CAVERN STATE PARK

ONE WEEK AGO

THE HUNTER SLAMMED INTO THE soldier, drove him back, smashed him down to the ground.

He did not pause to pick up his knives or guns. He did not need them. The hunter had killed many men and many things with his hands; he was a superbly skilled fighter. Deadly, fast, and brutally efficient. His father had taught him jujutsu as soon as he could walk; his mother taught him karate and aikido. He’d studied those and other fighting arts in gyms and dojos around the world. Those skills had been sharpened like a sword in special forces, and honed further by having to use them in combat on every continent, even in the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

The hunter had never lost a fight. Never. Not outside of a dojo or training hall. Never when his life depended on it.

Until that day.

In his woods.

With an injured and possibly dying old man.

His lunge bowled the soldier over and drove him hard into the dirt, but the big soldier did not fall the way he should have. He wasn’t crushed into helplessness.

No.

Instead the soldier seemed to absorb the attack, yielding to the sudden mass, turning with it as he fell, sloughing off the foot-pounds of impact by turning like an axle. The hunter was whipped around and it was he who hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs with a great whoosh. It was a movement so precise, so sophisticated that it appeared simple. And it was fast. God almighty, the soldier moved with shocking, blurring speed.

Then the soldier was atop him, parrying the hunter’s strikes, and then delivering counterstrikes, hitting the hunter in the biceps, the inside of the deltoids, the centers of each pectoral, the nerve clusters beside his nose. Fast, fast, fast. The soldier used precise one-knuckle punches, hitting for effect rather than trying to merely smash. A series of small explosions seemed to detonate inside the hunter’s body and he felt his arms go dead, his chest turn to fire, his shoulder sag.

Then suddenly the soldier was behind him, kneeling as he swiftly pulled the hunter into an awkward sitting position, limp arms hanging as a thick arm wrapped around his throat in a kata gatame judo choke that was so beautifully executed that the hunter could not break it. He fought to breathe, but there was no air left except what was trapped in his lungs. He knew three different counters to this move, but the strikes to his pressure points had robbed him of the strength and coordination necessary to use any of them. He was caught. Trapped.

Helpless.

The world spun toward blackness as the choke hold blocked air and blood to his brain. The hunter knew that this hold compressed both carotid arteries. He would be totally unconscious in eight seconds.

After four seconds the soldier bent close, his lips brushing the hunter’s ear, and spoke two words. Two impossible words.

“Sam,” cried the soldier. “Stop.”

Sam.

The hunter had not heard his own name spoken in over a decade. No one in this part of the country knew it. He had almost forgotten that was his name. Like so many things, “names” seemed to have lost their importance.

And yet . . .

“Sam, please,” begged the soldier.

The hunter raised one hand, weak and clumsy as it was, and tapped the forearm of the choking arm. Tapped to admit defeat.

Tapped to signal release.

Sam.

Dear God.

The soldier eased the pressure. Very slowly, with great care, with suspicion and an implied threat of punishment for a trick. “Easy, Sam . . . ease it down,” he murmured. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s all going to be okay.”

And then the soldier released the hold and fell back, covering his battered face with both hands. The hunter—Sam—turned painfully and got to his knees, then fell back hard on his butt and sat staring at the old soldier. The soldier lay there, totally vulnerable. Sam rubbed his aching throat and stared. Their legs were still touching; they were still within range of a lethal kick. Neither took that a

dvantage.