Satori - Don Winslow [129]
Nicholai waited and timed the guards’ orbits until he learned that there was a thirty-second gap at the kitchen door.
Nicholai closed his eyes and ordered his mind to allow him five minutes of rest. Aware that he was fatigued from the battle on the street and his flight to Cholon, he knew that he had to marshal his energies — the next burst would have to be quick and certain.
When he woke up, the cook had finished his smoke and was back in the kitchen.
Nicholai pulled himself up on his forearms and waited for the next guard to come. The sentry came by the kitchen door and then —
— stopped, as the cook came out and handed him what appeared to be a chunk of fish. The guard slung his rifle over his shoulder, thanked the cook, and stood and ate.
Damn the man, Nicholai thought.
He dropped back down and waited.
The guard ate quickly, but it threw the rotation off, and it took another half hour before the guards’ circuits were back in order. Then Nicholai waited for a sentry to pass by the kitchen, sprang up, and rushed for the door.
The cook, stirring his soup, was unaware, and Nicholai hit him with a fist to the back of the neck, then caught him before he could fall forward on the stove, dragged him into a corner, and then gently set him down.
It would have been easier to kill him, but the man was an innocent, and Nicholai knew that Bay Vien would not easily forgive the killing of one of his people.
Nicholai stood behind the door that opened into the house and shouted, in Chinese, “Cho, you lazy, useless thing! The soup is ready!”
The young waiter scurried through the door, straight into Nicholai’s shuto strike, and dropped in a heap.
Nicholai pressed himself against the wall until the next sentry passed outside, then found a slightly longer waiter’s jacket on a hook in the pantry, put the waiter’s round black cap on his head, put two bowls of the soup on a tray, and headed upstairs.
The guard at the bottom of the stairway nodded brusquely, then blinked when he noticed the waiter’s strange height.
It was too late.
Nicholai’s leopard paw strike, the fingers folded but not closed into a fist. His second knuckles struck the guard straight in the nose — hard enough to drive the bone into the brain but not forceful enough to kill. Nicholai caught him in one arm and guided him to the floor so the gun wouldn’t clatter. Unburdening him of the.45, he slipped the pistol inside his sleeve and walked up the stairs.
His proximity sense told him there was another guard outside Bay Vien’s door.
Indeed, the guard heard his footsteps and called, “Cho?”
“I have Master’s dinner.”
“About time.”
As Nicholai feared, the door was at the end of the hallway, which would give the guard ample time to discern that it wasn’t Cho. Cursing his large Western frame, he tucked his chin into his chest, hoping to buy a crucial moment.
Looking back up, Nicholai took the spoon off the tray and threw it like a ninja star just as the guard was raising his pistol. The spinning spoon caught the guard in the eye and drove his head back.
His shot fired high.
Nicholai sprang forward, grabbed his gun wrist, and pushed it up. As soon as he felt the guard pull back down, he went with his flow and pulled with him, sweeping the arm in a full circle backward until he heard the shoulder pop. Then he reversed the flow, swept the guard’s foot, took him to the ground, and struck him in the throat.
He stepped over the prone guard, pulled his pistol, and kicked the unlocked door open.
130
BAY SAT UP IN BED, a pistol of his own pointed straight at Nicholai’s chest. A beautiful Asian woman pulled the sheet over herself.
“My friends generally just ring the doorbell,” Bay said.
“I didn’t know if I was still your friend.”
“You know,” Bay said, “with one shout from me, my guards will come and they will throw