The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (13 page)

J
OHNNY GRIPPED THE
ends of his belt in each hand. He made circles with his wrists, gathered the leather around them, and pulled the belt tight.

The man with the knife assumed a fighting stance. Legs bent, left foot in front of the right. He held the knife in his fist, blade down. He moved his hands in a circular motion, bobbed and weaved on the balls of his feet. His movements were precise. His eyes shone with intensity and confidence. He was trained. Experienced. Ex-military, Johnny thought.

Johnny had grown up a street fighter in Newark. A street fighter always had a chance. Especially when there were no guns involved. And if the Russians had guns he’d already be dead. But they weren’t on home turf. And they hadn’t been in town long enough to get them.

The man threw a left jab. Johnny deflected it with his left arm. The man circled and jabbed two more times. Johnny pushed his arm aside.

The man lunged with the knife.

Johnny stepped back. The knife came up short of his heart. A stab of fear energized his countermove. He brought the belt under the man’s wrist. Pulled up. The man resisted but Johnny gritted his teeth and pulled harder. He told himself he was stronger than the other guy.
All those years in the gym.
When the man groaned and stood his ground, Johnny commanded himself to insist he was stronger—

The man’s knife hand rose. Johnny kicked him in the balls.

The man groaned and doubled over. They’d both been holding their breath. Johnny gasped for air as he reared his foot back and aimed at the man’s head.

The man blocked the kick with his free arm. Exploded to his feet. Pulled his knife hand back and grabbed the belt with his free hand, both with the same motion. Thrust the blade toward Johnny’s chest.

Johnny shifted to the right and pulled back.

The blade came straight at him. And then stopped. The man had run out of reach. Johnny swung his left forearm and deflected the man’s knife hand away. He kicked with his left foot. Connected with the man’s stomach. The man recoiled but regained his footing immediately.
The bastard simply would not go down.
Johnny prepared to deflect another thrust of the knife—

The second man barreled into Johnny. Tackled him to the ground. Johnny crashed to the asphalt. The fall knocked the wind out of him. Pain shot through the back of his head. He tried to move but the man was too heavy. For the first time, a touch of panic gripped him. He immediately told himself to relax, and that mere thought freed his mind. Johnny wrapped the belt around the man’s neck and pulled as hard as he could. The man thrust his fingers toward Johnny’s eyes.

Johnny smashed his forehead into the man’s nose. Pulled the noose tight, wrapped his legs around the man’s ankles, and rolled hard to the left.

Johnny’s torso flipped to the top. They reversed positions. A surge of hope. He was on top. He had the advantage— The first man. Where was the first man?

A sense of dread seized him. He knew he was about to be killed even before he felt the weight of the first man on his back, the fist crashing down the back of his neck. The force of the blow left him barely conscious. It twisted his neck to the right, just enough for him to see the knife being raised above his head.

At the same time, his hands went slack. The second man, beneath him, coughed and spit in his face. Johnny felt his airways constrained. He realized the second man was now choking him from below.

A kaleidoscope of memories flashed through his mind. They ended with Nadia, laughing at something he’d said, eyes sparkling and lips open. God how he loved those eyes. She was speaking but he couldn’t hear any words, all he knew was that she was happy and carefree, the way he longed for her to be.

Except she wasn’t happy or carefree. She was about to be killed, too.

A burst of adrenaline awakened him. He tried to breathe but couldn’t. A knife was about to plunge into his back. Nadia was going to die, too.

A split second left.

Do something.

CHAPTER 19

B
OBBY WATCHED THE
first man plunge the knife through Nakamura’s neck. He stuck it in one side, and a third of the blade came out the other. The killing mesmerized Bobby. It shouldn’t have. He’d killed two people himself, in self-defense, so he shouldn’t have been shocked. But he was. He’d never seen a knife thrust through a man’s throat. It was so grotesque he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His mind replayed the scene as the doctor’s body fell limp on the road—

Johnny was in trouble. He’d fought off his man but now the man with the knife was coming for him. And the man he’d fought off would soon recover. There would be two of them. Two on one.

Johnny had saved him from a life in prison.

Help him.

Bobby started toward the truck. Someone shoved him to the ground. He turned. It was Nadia. She picked up a boulder and raced to help Johnny—

A fourth man came flying from around the house. Clearly the athlete of the four. If you send a man to watch the back of the house, make sure he’s the one who can run, just in case he has to chase someone.

Bobby jumped to his feet. In the time it took him to rise, the fourth man blew past him. Nadia threw her boulder. It hit him in the chest and slowed him down but just for an instant. He raised his knife in the air.

Bobby raced toward her, knowing he was too late, fearing that he would only get himself killed, too, certain that he couldn’t live with himself unless he did everything possible to save her.

A whistling sound. Like a hockey puck flying past his left ear on open ice, only louder. A light gust of wind ruffled the hairs on the nape of his neck.

An object hit the fourth man in the neck. His head fell off his body. His legs collapsed beneath his headless torso. A black object fell to the ground beside the body. It looked like the wing from a toy airplane.

Bobby glanced behind them to see where the object had come from, who had launched it, and how. He saw nothing and no one.

He pivoted toward the truck. The man with the knife was about to jump on top of Johnny.

Bobby exploded, summoning all the power in his hips to catapult himself forward. The man with the knife jumped on Johnny. Slammed his fist into Johnny’s neck. He raised his knife hand in the air—

Bobby was twenty strides away. He wouldn’t make it in time.

Another whistling sound. This time he heard it in his right ear. A black blur flew through the air. It twisted and turned and sailed across the lawn toward the man with the knife. It severed his arm and landed in the side of his head.

The severed arm and the knife in its grip fell to the ground. The man went limp on top of Johnny.

Bobby raced to Johnny. Bobby reared back and kicked the man in the head repeatedly until he lost consciousness. Then he hauled him off Johnny’s back. Up close he could see the object buried in his head. It was a boomerang, its wings sharpened to a razor’s edge.

Bobby pulled Johnny off the unconscious man beneath him. Johnny coughed and gagged.

“Are you okay?” Bobby said.

He stammered and nodded.

An engine rumbled to life. Exhaust billowed in their faces.

Nadia arrived breathless. “Shit.”

A whine was followed by a grinding noise. The truck slipped into gear. The engine wailed.

Two dead men. One unconscious. Johnny struggling to regain his breath.

The truck rolled forward. Genesis II was on board. Bobby had caught a glimpse of him from behind while the third man—the driver—pulled him off the street into the truck. There was nothing familiar about this Yoshi at all. He was just some Japanese kid, who quite possibly had the key to the formula that would change the world, and someday save it from the people who inhabited it.

Bobby watched the truck pull way. There was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing he could do to save Genesis II.

A face appeared in the window of the back door. It stayed there for one second, just long enough for the eyes to lock onto Bobby’s and for the image to register in his brain.

The truck gathered speed and started to pull away.

Bobby stood staring at the empty window trying to understand what he’d just seen. It made no sense, but one thing was certain.

He could not let that truck get away.

CHAPTER 20

L
UO STOOD NEAR
a house thirty meters away from the action. He’d thrown the boomerangs as soon as he’d rounded the corner and had seen what was happening. He was rushing to help the woman and the man overcome the other Russian men but the scene unfolding before him caused him to stop in his tracks.

The boy was chasing the truck.

What was he thinking? The truck was picking up steam but the vehicle’s engine didn’t have much torque. Just like the Japanese cars Luo had driven in Moscow. They were powered by smaller engines that took time to build speed from a standstill. This shortcoming was only magnified in a heavy truck.

The boy covered ten meters to the truck’s bumper in two heartbeats. A narrow metal frame protruded from the bottom of the truck. It was the length of the bumper. A tow-hitch was attached to it, the kind a utility truck might use to attach a generator for emergency repair.

Five strides away from the bumper and on the verge of collision, the boy didn’t slow down. Instead, much to Luo’s amazement, he accelerated as though he’d been catapulted from a slingshot. He slid under the truck and grasped the metal frame. Luo looked for his feet under the truck but couldn’t see them. That meant he’d either found a foothold or was using his stomach muscles to hold his legs in the air. The odds of finding a foothold so quickly seemed low, which suggested the kid was staying alive by performing a gymnastics maneuver. It was among the boldest and most athletic maneuvers Luo had ever witnessed. But no matter how strong he was, the kid would have to find a foothold soon. If he didn’t, he’d fall onto the road and have to pray one of the wheels didn’t roll over his legs.

The boy was the key to the treasure.

Luo sprinted around the back of the house to a parallel street.

He’d flown to Tokyo as soon as he’d finished talking to Denys Melnik. His hotel had arranged for a translator. The latter placed some phone calls to Tokyo hotels on his behalf and discovered that Nadia Tesla and Bobby Kungenook had reservations at the Century Southern Tower in Shibuya. Luo was not surprised. It was just a matter of time until they, too, discovered that answers awaited in Fukushima. Just like Luo, and the men who’d killed Ksenia Melnik. That’s what a treasure did. It lured people.

He’d followed Nadia and the boy on the train to Aizuwakamatsu. His Siberian facial features and Black Beret tradecraft had helped him blend in and avoid detection. He’d stolen a car from the parking lot beside the inn and caught up to the old man’s truck on the highway. When the Global Medical Corps van pulled into the gate to the Zone of Exclusion, Luo drove on. He passed a barricaded entrance via a side street and wove his way through a lightly wooded forest to get inside the Zone. Eventually he spotted the van half a kilometer away. By the time he’d circled to park on the side street, a second truck had arrived and the fight had begun.

Now he would need to do the same in reverse. Luo climbed behind the wheel of the car he’d stolen, shifted into drive, and took off. This time he would not be following civilians and medical personnel. This time he would be following the boy.

And this time he had no idea where he was going.

CHAPTER 21