The Detachment

turn into me and go for my eyes with his left hand. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, slamming my elbow into his face on the way, snaked my right arm under his shoulder, secured my own left wrist, extended my body across his chest, and broke his elbow with ude-garami . He shrieked and tried to buck me loose. I scrambled back, reared up, and blasted a palm heel into his nose. The back of his head bounced into the pavement and I hit him again the same way. He rolled away from me, trying to get up, and I launched myself onto his back, throwing my left arm around his neck, catching my right bicep, planting my right hand against the back of his head, and strangling him with classic hadaka-jime . He struggled and thrashed and I kept an eye on his remaining good arm, in case he tried to access a concealed weapon. The choke was deep, though, and his brain was getting no oxygen. In a few seconds he was still and, a few more after that, gone.
    I released my grip and came shakily to my feet, my heart hammering. I wiped sweat from my eyes with my sleeve and looked around. There had been that single scream, but I saw no one, at least not yet. Not likely either of them was carrying identification, but I felt I could afford a moment to check.
    I knelt and pulled the guy I’d strangled onto his back. He rolled over with liquid ease, his broken arm flopping unnaturally to the pavement next to him. I patted his front pants pockets. A folding knife in the right. Something hard and rectangular in the left—a cell phone? I pulled it out and saw that it was a phone, as I’d hoped. But there was something else in the pocket. I reached back in and felt something metallic. I pulled whatever it was out and stared at it. It took me a moment to realize what I was holding: a small video camera.
    Oh, shit.
    A wire extended from the unit, disappearing beneath his clothes. I slipped my fingers between the buttons of his shirt and tore it open. The wire ran to one of the buttons. I leaned in—it wasn’t easy to see in the dim light—and looked more closely. Shit, it was no button at all, but a lens. And I was staring right into it.
    I tore the wire free and stuffed the camera and phone into my pockets, then scrambled over to where the other guy lay. He was similarly equipped. I pocketed the second phone and camera, too, then walked off, keeping to the quiet streets paralleling Yasukuni-dori. I would take the batteries out of the phones to make sure they were untraceable and examine the cameras when I was safely away from the bodies. If the two giants had been using the equipment only to monitor each other, I would be okay.
    But I had a feeling they weren’t just monitoring each other. And if I was right, I was in for another visit, and soon.

L arison stood just beyond the ambit of a streetlight, watching the silent images on the handheld video feed. One second, an empty street; the next, a crazy montage of kaleidoscopic images: limbs/grimaces/a car/a building/the sky flashing past. Darkness. Then the sky again, and glimpses of Rain, apparently going through Beckley’s pockets. Rain’s face in close-up, peering with dawning recognition directly into the button lens on Beckley’s cooling torso. A flash of static, then, finally, darkness.
    He heard rapid footfalls from the direction of the Jinbocho subway station and looked up to see Treven come tearing around the corner. Larison pocketed the video monitor and stepped into the street with his arms forward, palms out.
    “Stop,” he said. “It’s already over.”
    Treven slowed, his face registering confusion. Probably he’d been expecting Larison to be riding to the rescue, too, no matter how futile a rescue attempt would be at this point. Meaning he hadn’t absorbed what Larison had told him about the contractors not being part of the team.
    “Go!” Treven said, moving to go around. “Didn’t you see the video? Rain ambushed them!”
    Larison moved with him and shoved him back. Treven’s face darkened and he dropped his weight like a bull about to charge.
    Larison held up his hands again. “Don’t make a scene,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do. They’re already dead.”
    “We don’t know that. Rain’s gone, okay, but—”
    “They. Are. Dead.”
    Treven straightened and some of the tension went out of his body. “What about the cell phones?” he said. “The equipment. We need to retrieve it.”
    “Rain took it all.”
    “How the hell do