By the Sword

    Hank pressed his palms against the temples of his throbbing head.

    God damn!

    His sutured scalp would heal and the headache would eventually go away, but the humiliation… suckered like that… knocked clean out and lying in bed while the katana was stolen and poor Haber was murdered right there in Hank's bedroom.

    Shit! He was the leader here, yet he hadn't put up any sort of fight and had to be half carried down here to the basement all rubber-legged and bloody-headed in front of everyone.

    How would he ever live that down?

    "Hey, boss," a voice said as a hand holding a cell phone appeared a few inches from his nose. "Andy's on the phone for you."

    Andy…?

    Oh, right. He'd sent him out to check out that cockamamie call about Dawn and the sword being somewhere out on Staten Island. He took the phone.

    "This is Hank. Bullshit, right?"

    "Uh-uh. I'm ninety-nine percent sure we've got the real deal here."

    Hank straightened. "No kidding. What makes you think so?"

    "First off, the building's right where he said it would be. Second, it's walled in and there's some guy dressed like a samurai standing guard. I sneaked up and peeked at the building and could swear I heard a girl scream inside."

    Dawn… what were they doing to her?

    All right. Japanese guys after a Japanese sword. He didn't know why they wanted it, but he didn't have to. Maybe they considered it a sacred object or something. Didn't matter. It made some sort of sense.

    But Dawn? What the hell could they want with Dawn? And if they hurt that baby…

    "Good work, my man. You stay there but stay out of sight. We're on our way."

    He snapped the phone closed. Suddenly his head didn't hurt so bad. He'd just been handed a chance to redeem his cred with the Kickers—plus get back Dawn and the sword as well—and he wasn't about to waste it.

    He jerked to his feet and immediately regretted it. The room tilted and did a three-sixty. He steadied himself with a hand on a table. When everything stabilized, he looked around. Darryl and Menck sat on the far side of the table, still looking dazed. A half dozen others milled around.

    "Listen up, everyone. We've found them and we're going after them." A cheer went up. After it died, he added, "Call every Kicker you know and put out the word: Anyone with a car, and anyone who can beg, borrow, or steal one, get it down here. The Kickers are going to Staten Island to kick some Jap ass."

    More cheers, and then they got moving.

    Hank turned to Darryl and Menck. Under different circumstances he would have been screaming at them for being fuck-ups and letting some Japs get the drop on them. But since the same thing had happened to him, he held his tongue.

    "Listen, you guys probably should stay here. You're banged up already and things could get rough out there."

    Menck looked up at him. "You going?"

    Hank nodded. Of course he was going. He needed to be out with the troops on this one.

    Darryl said, "Then we're goin too."

    Not exactly what Hank had wanted to hear. He'd hoped they'd stay behind, nursing their wounds so he could be seen out there in the trenches ignoring his.

    "Yeah," Menck said. "I need to be busting some of the heads that busted mine."

    Busting heads… Hank couldn't argue with that. What he'd really like to do was bust into this place with an AK-47 and mow down every one of the bastards.

    But no… no guns. In the first place, Hank discouraged guns among the Kickers and had ba

    But he had a much more important reason for wanting them left home tonight.

    "All right, one more thing," he said to the ones still present. "Get the word out: no guns." Some disappointed groans and protests began. He raised a hand to cut them off. "I'm real serious about this. We don't know what kind of confusion we'll run into. We go in there with guns blazing, shooting up the place, we'll most likely kill as many of our own as the bastards we're shooting at. And worse, we've got no idea what the walls in that place are made of. If they're just drywall, a wild shot can kill someone two rooms away, and that someone might be Dawn." He smiled. "Or even worse, me." This got the laugh he'd hoped for. "So pass the word: no guns."

    "What if they've got guns?"

    "Both Darryl and Menck didn't see any. They had knives and nunchucks. If they had guns, they would have brought them. Look, they think they're ninjas or something. And ninjas don't use guns. For our own safety, we can't either. But put a bunch of knives, two-by-fours, chains, crowbars, baseball bats, maybe a few chainsaws into the hands of a bunch of pissed-off Kickers and these gooks won't know what hit them."

    A solid cheer this time.

    He clapped his hands. "Okay then. Let's start gathering some head-busting equipment."

    Hank would carry a crowbar, but he'd also take along the.38 Chief Special he kept hidden in his room. Just in case.

    And as for those Japs, the ones who survived tonight would curse the day they messed with Hank Thompson.

    Jack watched the last of the fleet of cars, vans, and pickups roar off for Staten Island. Three of the Kickers who'd piled in had bandaged heads—Hank was one of them. The rest of them looked like a crowd of movie extras on their way to Castle Frankenstein. All they needed were pitchforks and torches to complete the picture.

    When the street was quiet, he stepped from the shadows and hurried toward the Lodge building. He ran up the steps to find the front door open and a couple of Kickers hanging around inside. They gave him suspicious looks and stepped toward him as he entered.

    Before they could challenge him, Jack positioned his faux tattoo where they could see it and said, "Am I late?"

    The heavier of the two nodded. "Missed them. Just left."

    "I got a call and came as soon as I could. Damn." He looked around. "Nobody else heading out?"

    The guy shook his head. "Nope."

    "Shit." Jack loosed a disappointed sigh. "Well, anything I can do around here till they get back?"

    Now he was getting a different kind of look—incredulous. Jack guessed not too many of their peers volunteered.

    Finally the thin guy spoke. "You can go upstairs and help Ansari and Stayer clean up the mess in the boss's room."

    "Hank's room?" He assumed that was on one of the upper floors—just where he wanted to be. "What happened?"

    They glanced at each other. The heavy guy shrugged and said, "Someone got killed."

    Jack feigned shock. "No way! I heard something was stolen, but nobody said anything about—"

    "We're keeping it quiet for now. Look, you want to help those guys, be our guest. Don't think you'll get an argument from them. They're on the second floor."

    "Great."

    He headed up the granite steps but passed the second floor and continued to the third. He hurried from room to room—all unlocked, all empty.

    Well, he'd seen Dawn through a second-floor window. Maybe he'd find her there.

    On the second floor he did another room-to-room search until he came to one with two guys scrubbing a red stain off the floor.

    "Is there where Haber bought it?" he said, remembering the name and trying to sound more knowledgeable than he had downstairs.