The CRES code

Chapter Forty Three - The Mob Boss

     "Badger wants to see you."

     Machine had two men with him, Loach saw. Kidwell and Winton, his best killers. Or at least they had been before Loach had arrived. The two men were watching him with undisguised malice, Loach saw, which he expected and respected. One didn't go into this line of business to make friends. He saw something else, though. Something in the way they were standing. Poised like coiled springs, balanced lightly on the balls of their feet ready to pounce like striking cobras. It was in their eyes as well, the piercing intensity with which they were looking at him, and in their mouths, very slightly curled upwards as if trying to hide smiles. This was it, then. Machine had decided it was time for him to die.

     "In his office?" said Loach flatly.

     "No," replied Machine. "He's got another venture in the works, down in Redpool Street. He's thinking of putting you in charge, if you're up for it."

     "Sure," said Loach. "Let's go."

     Machine gestured for Loach to precede him out of the room.  Loach felt no fear in doing so, even though it presented his unprotected back to three merciless killers who had decided they were going to kill him. He knew they wouldn't do it there, in The Halls of Valhalla. Redpool street was where they would kill him, a place where an anonymous corpse could be dumped and left for the rats. What they absolutely would not do, though, was attract police attention to the club, and Loach wouldn't do that either, not when he was planning to make it his base of operations.

     There was a carriage waiting for them outside the entrance and the four men climbed in, Machine then signalling the driver to drive away with a rap on the ceiling. They rode in perfect silence, and Loach saw the other three growing more tense as they went, their levels of alertness climbing to its maximum. They could read expressions and body language as well as Loach could and they knew he'd figured it out. There would be no taking him by surprise.

     Loach had demonstrated his fighting ability many times and all three of the other men knew what it would take to take him down. There would be more men waiting for them in Redpool Street, therefore. Not as good; Machine, Kidwell and Winton were his best, but they would undoubtedly be armed with crossbows and they would shoot him down the moment he stepped out of the carriage. Even with his combat app, Loach knew there would be no surviving the ambush they had planned for him. His only chance was to kill these three men before they arrived.

     This realisation must have showed in his body language, though, because the other three men immediately came alive, moving simultaneously in the hope of catching him before he had a chance to react. Loach just barely had time to activate his combat app before all three men drew knives and lunged at him, Machine from the side, the others throwing themselves forward at him.

     The combat app threw his body forward to avoid Machine's knife, which nonetheless tore through his black jacket and white shirt and sliced through the skin beneath. His arms, meanwhile, threw themselves at the wrists of the two men facing him, grabbing them tightly and then twisting with such savage force that he almost destroyed his own wrists. The combat app had calculated the precise amount of force to use, though, and it was the wrists of the two assassins that snapped, causing them to emit gasps that were more from shock and surprise than pain.

     The combat app decided that it would take them two seconds to recover enough to launch another attack on him and so it gave its immediate priority to Machine. The head enforcer was already reversing the knife in his hand and was bringing it back to stab Loach's back and Loach's forward lunge had left him off balance. There was no way he could counter the attack. The combat app made him continue forward, therefore, twisting around so that he landed between Winton and Kidwell. Loach felt his hand reaching for his own knife, pulling it from the sheath on his belt and holding it out in front of him to deflect Machine's knife. The two blades met in a squeal of metal and a bright spark and then Loach's knife, driven by a precisely calculated maximum amount of muscle force that almost but not quite tore the tendons from his bones, pushed Machine's knife aside. The combat app then threw Loach's other hand forward as a tight fist, straight into Machine's face.