Killing Machine: The Duel Read online

The Duel

  A Killing Machine Short

  By Shaun Tennant

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  Copyright 2012 by Shaun Tennant

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Shaun Tennant 2012

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  Description: Theo Daniels used to be a government assassin. Then he was a good man. Now, after the murder of his mentor, his old habits are returning. In this story, Part 1 of the Killing Machine series, Daniels invades a clan of assassins, looking for revenge against the man who killed his mentor.

  Length: 4600 words, or roughly 16 paperback pages.

  From the outside, it looked like any ordinary mansion in the hills. Expensive cars, perfectly shaped hedges, three-car garage. Daniels knew better than to believe the appearance.

  This place was a workshop of death.

  The hedges and topiary sculptures served as training tools; the men who passed through this house used them to learn patience and to practice with various blades. The massive garage may have held a car, but only so it could be used to teach killers how to cut brake lines, plant car bombs, or otherwise sabotage a vehicle. The rest of the garage space would be filled with guns, crates of ammunition, and plastic explosives. The back yard, hidden from view by tall stone walls, was a training ground for professional killers.

  The armed guards who walked the perimeter weren’t mere security guards hired to protect a nervous millionaire. They were professional assassins, rotated into guard duty for one week each month as a part of their service to the clan. The other three weeks, if they weren’t on assignment, the assassins were inside honing their skills. Inside, the mansion’s twelve bedrooms had been converted into a series of training rooms to keep the killers in top form.

  A member of this clan had killed Theo Daniels’ partner. His mentor. They had left behind only blood, and a single throwing knife that was the first breadcrumb. In order to track the assassins back to their home, Daniels had followed their crimes across North America. Victims had been strangled, impaled, beaten to death, or had their necks broken. A CEO in Boston had been taken down at a gas station by a long-range rifle. A congressman from Delaware had a car accident in the days before a close vote. A millionaire’s wife choked to death before she could file divorce papers. These assassins used whatever means were necessary; or whatever their client requested. Daniels knew that what he had found was merely the tip of the iceberg. Most of their kills would look like accidents or natural deaths, and would never be traced. They were death for hire, and one of them had killed Daniels’ only friend.

  Daniels pulled a black mask over his head, and climbed the brick wall on the east side of the compound. They had killed a man who deserved to live, and by Daniels’ code, that meant they deserved to die.

  All of them.

  Dressed in black from head to toe, Daniels slipped a small nine millimeter handgun from a holster on his belt. It already had a silencer screwed to the tip. He saw the first of the guards approaching from behind the house, so Daniels ducked into a shadow along the wall, and lay down next to the hedges. The texture of the shrubbery hid Daniels’ shape as the guard approached, and the single shot he fired was in the guard’s forehead before the man knew that Daniels was there. The guard’s body landed near a large topiary elephant, and Daniels took a few moments to hide the corpse between the elephant’s leafy legs.

  Moving along the side of the house, Daniels ducked under windows and watched the motion of the oscillating security camera. Nobody saw him round to the back of the house, where he appeared behind another guard and shot him point-blank in the back of the head, targeting the brain stem for instant death. Two guards down; two guards remained.

  It wasn’t even midnight. Daniels could wait.

  The back yard was used for calisthenics and physical training. Wooden training dummies, bamboo kendo sticks, and a variety of archery targets were scattered around the yard. One target was freckled with a dozen shuriken—throwing stars. Daniels carefully removed them and slipped them into one of the pouches on his belt. He ran his thumb over the engraving on each shuriken, a Japanese symbol that had also been on the throwing knife that killed Charlie.

  A new guard came around from the west side of the house. Daniels didn’t want to fire a shot when he was so far from the house. If anyone inside the house was near a window, they might see the muzzle flash, and Daniels wasn’t ready for that kind of attention yet. Not until he was inside. He allowed the guard to pass him, then slipped out from behind the target to slit the guard’s throat, cutting deep enough to destroy the man’s voice box so he couldn’t make a sound.

  As the guard gasped, choking on blood, Daniels stole the keycard and radio from his belt, and let the guard fall. Unfortunately for Daniels, the fourth and final guard was already coming around the house. Daniels saw this final guard before the guard saw him, so Daniels had time to slip two of the throwing stars from his belt and whipped one of them at the guard. It stuck into the guard’s shoulder, and the as the guard recovered and reacted to the blow, Daniels broke into a sprint toward the man. The guard pulled out his pistol and Daniels threw the second shuriken, stabbing the guard in the back of his gun hand, making him let go of the pistol. Then he was on the guard, running at full speed. Daniels lowered his left shoulder for a hard impact, while his right drew his own silenced nine millimeter. He hit the guard in the belly, knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending both men to the ground. When the guard gasped for a breath, Daniels tucked the tip of the silencer between the man’s teeth and pulled the trigger.

  Using the third guard’s keycard, Daniels let himself in the mansion’s side door. This was a servant’s entrance, heading into the kitchen. There was a man here, cooking a midnight snack on the stove. As soon as he saw Daniels, dressed all in black and carrying a gun, the man shouted and picked up the pan from the stove. He threw the hot oil from the pan in Daniels’ direction, forcing the intruding Daniels to throw himself to the floor, limbo-ing under the airborne oil. The would-be-chef raised the pan over his head and stalked toward Daniels. Daniels fired one shot into the man’s left knee to stop his advance, followed by a second shot to the heart to drop him for good. The hot pan landed only inches from Daniels’ calf.

  As he scrambled to his feet, another of the house’s occupants rushed into the kitchen. This was a young short-haired man in a karate gi. Apparently, these guys trained late into the night. This guy had no idea what he was walking into. “Bennett, why you shouting—” he started to say, before he slipped a little on the oil, and just as his eyes saw his compatriot dead on the floor, Daniels emptied his magazine into the young man’s chest, turning the white gi bright red.

  The radio crackled to life. It was the voice Daniels wanted to hear. The man who had sent the assassin to kill Daniels’ partner. The man who ran this training centre, who had decided that Charlie’s life was worth a million dollars. Tsubasa Bai. The clan’s American leader.

  “Intruder in the kitchen. He is armed and lethal. Do not engage until you arm yourself. Whoever brings me his head will earn ten pounds of gold.”

  Now that Daniels knew Tsubasa was here, all that was left was to dispose of the other assassins and take his revenge. He looked around the kitchen, noting the security camera lens concealed inside a clock. He looked into the camera and set the empty pistol down, then pulled a cleaver from the knife block, and waved it at the camera. He pulled off his mask, but wasn’t sure if Tsubasa would know who he was.

  Tsubasa took the bait. The radio crackled to life. “Theo Daniels. Washed-out old CIA agent. Any one of you should be able to take him. His gun’s empty. Blades only.”

  Obviously, Tsubasa saw this as a chance to test his men, to see their skill with swords, knive
s, and throwing stars. That was their mistake, because if they had simply shot Daniels, they might have stood a chance.

  The kitchen was closed with a saloon-style door that opened both ways. Daniels stepped to the side of the doorway and kicked it open. As soon as there was an opening, three throwing stars flashed though. Once those had passed, Daniels slipped a small round object from one of his many pockets and tossed it through the swinging door. The flashbang grenade exploded, and Daniels rushed into the hallway. Two more men dressed in karate gis were right outside the kitchen, and both had been blinded by the flash. He took out the one blinded man by swinging the cleaver at his throat. Daniels would have done the same to the second man, but a third guard, armed with a Japanese katana sword, rushed around