Chapter 1 Part 2

A Test Of Australian Character – A Test Of Time
Chapter 1B by Tobias Nixon

No sooner had Davis Lockyer returned to the grass and his corporate buddies than the police descended on him. Inspector Ian Kramer was authoritarian and controlled in what he said,

“Mr Lockyer?”

“Yes”

“I understand you were present when the helicopter crashed into the side of the building.”

“Yes”

“Crashed into the conference room that you were sitting in?”

“Yes”

“Was there anyone else there with you?”

“No”

“Well that is fortunate, but I’m slightly confused, were you sitting near the door, however did you escape?”

“I was positioned near the door, by chance I caught a glimpse of something coming towards the window, then instinct just took over Detective.”

“hmmm, you are a very lucky young man, just one last question.”

“Sure”

“We see your firm has declared dealings with the Black Skulls”

“Yes, they have investment needs like everyone else Detective. We provide excellent returns on our investment products. Are you interested?” 

Kramer laughed at him,

“Not on my salary mate, but listen I don’t recommend Techred, Coutil and Banks do business with that scum.”

“Why ever not? They are the same as all our other premium customers. They pay up front and have money to invest. We have done extensive due diligence as you would expect when dealing with a bikie gang with links to organised crime, and have never found any reason to believe the equity they bring to the party is problematic.”

“Like I said Mr Lockyer, I don’t recommend it.”

Detective Kramer left with a slightly worried look on his face. He didn’t move far. Back to Davis he crunched over to a cluster fuck of senior police who were “assessing” the devastation that had erupted in one of the busiest blocks of the central business district. 

Most were senior officers, however one plainclothes guy caught his eye. The man was casually dressed, his clothes were hard to distinguish. Come to think of it, his face his body language he was almost blending into the scene before Davis’s eyes. He had a cat like grace and seemed to at once be both standing at the shoulder of Kramer, then in the next blink of the eye, be standing at the same shoulder of Kramer’s commanding officer.

Just as Davis was looking away he felt a draw in his eye, and looked back catching the shadowy figure looking directly at him. The man smiled at him. Not in a particularly menacing way but not in a way that could be in any way considered friendly either. Like an; “I see you fucker, and I know who, what, you are.”

The company secretary had worked tirelessly for the last twenty minutes to gather everybody around her boss the CEO Michael Douglas Weyman. He now held court, and Davis moved over to stand at the edge of the assembly.

“Guys! I’m proud of you. Today was an extremely difficult day for us. Thanks to some fast thinking and a bit of luck, everyone will be ok. I can’t ask you to go back in there..”

chuckles and outright laughter are quickly replaced by more silence.

“The company has an offsite recovery site so our server infrastructure is intact and failed over the moment the techies cut the switch. You have all been given RSA tokens, so please head home now and as of tomorrow continue your work from home. Please speak to your managers before you leave. Thanks team!”

Time to bail, Davis said goodbye to his team and started walking back towards Wynyard with Ronnie. The distance and the walking seemed to help him think. He had made lots of money on the thinking man’s walk through Martin Place. It had overtaken the hot shower in the morning as the biggest gold mine of new ideas.

“I don’t know about you Davis, but I don’t really want to go home right now..”

Said Ronnie, the long haired brunette was tilting her head at him, letting the rays of sun glint magically from her long shiny locks.

“There’s something special about you Ronnie”

 Davis started,

 “But I don’t really feel like an all night bender, off my chops crawling along Oxford Street at four in the morning.”

He smiled realising how lame he probably sounded to this hungry hot young lady.

“Not at all Davis, I didn’t mean that...” She stopped talking and stepped in closer towards him.

“I’m..” he waited patiently, picked up her right hand and held it.

“I’m a bit scared tbh, nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” [pause]

“Can you come over for a bit?” Davis just nodded, it had never been this easy before, especially not with someone as drop dead gorgeous as Ronnie. Girls – what a fucken ongoing mystery he thought.

They swung by the DJs food mall on Pitt street picking up an impressive array of things for dinner, and a bottle of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc. The trip back to Ronnie place was uneventful, but Davis could feel his nervousness increasing. His heart beat raced. He’d never really thought of trying to actually follow through with the constant flirting which they enjoyed each day. Now she was asking him to deliver. His skin raced with a feeling of static electricity. His spine tingled.

The sun had dipped, and late afternoon had been replaced by the shadows of early evening. People walked quickly to their ride home. The streets were packed with fast paced salary men.

Two blocks from Ronnie’s place, and the two of them were keeping up good banter, enjoying the warmth and security of each other’s company. The late afternoon of the Emerald isle was always deliciously intoxicating to young couples. The warm air and seductive promise of the night gave purpose and intent to their journey. The sea of suits seemed to thin. The corner was still one hundred metres away, they were walking past the Queen Victoria Building where the crowds were a thick stream unending flow.

The lovey-dovey moment faded. Davis looked harder at the shadows running down each shop wall. Given the events of the day Davis felt justified in being jumpy. The slightest thing out of place and it was making him jump like a bitch in a dead end alley. Loosen up he told himself stop looking for shadows to jump at.

The shadows. The twenty metre stretch of crowd in front of them was covered in unnatural shadows. Davis skin was crawling badly now, years of hard training in Thailand starting in his late teens made what happened next, happen on a purely instinctive level. The shadows were men in dark suits that leaped forward impossibly fast. Davis used his free left hand to push Ronnie well behind him, forcing her back towards the crowd, and in one continuous motion completed a graceful spin move which started him running towards the oncoming ninjas.

There were five of them, each carrying short flat blades that looked like the thinner Chinese or Siamese weapon than the thicker better wrought Japanese version. It didn’t matter the results of being stuck by one were the same. Death cleared Davis’s mind of any thought, his mind was primed for attack. In this case how to survive the onslaught of a squad of death dealing ninjas. 

The first ninja warrior to his left slowed as he closed the final metre, rolling past and to the left of Davis so that he came up directly behind him. As the human shadow rose his blade cut smoothly in an arc through the air towards where he thought Davis’s throat should have been. Several seconds earlier the second ninja had also closed the distance. This shadow was then in the act of following up with a second blade directly to where Davis’s sternum should have been.

“In battle sped is of the greatest concern, it is the road to victory.” – Sun Tzu.

Davis was a student of the master. In a moment that seemed to speed up and slow down simultaneously, he had jumped and caught the overhanging roof awning outside the two dollar shop that was the stage for his impromptu street battle.

He dangled for less than a second, just long enough to let the first two get too close to each other, and then he dropped. His right hand came down in a powerful arc, letting the dynamic of falling turn his hand chop, which hit the first ninjas shoulder, into a force equal to over a quarter of a tonne. In an instant the ninja’s collar bone snapped, forcing him to crouch on the ground in agony. As his feet touched the ground he rounded and spun on his back leg bringing his left hand up and catching the short blade falling from the broken mans arm. This was instantly pivoted in the left wrist turning back towards the body of the second ninja, even as a third one glided in from the right making lightening quick short stabs straight at Davis’s midriff. Instead of pulling back he continued moving forward.

Slamming his blade into the blade of the second ninja, he pushed up violently in a brutal motion that forced the man’s arms into his head, a rough punching action that slammed the man’s own sword handle into his nose. He spun hard moving around to face his back. The fourth ninja moved in from the shadows raising a sickle looking weapon high and bringing it down towards Davis’s head, the third ninja moved off balance as his blade sailed harmlessly through the air where Davis had been standing. Davis pushed hard and slammed into the back of the second one, pushing him into the third. At the same time he threw a reverse leg kick pushing out hard and slamming the hardened heal of his foot with a sickening crunch into the balls of his enemy.

The guy crumbled with an audible curse “ta ma de” [Chinese:Fuck], so these guys weren’t true ninjas thought Davis, at least one of them was Chinese, probably all of them. That meant this was likely a gang sent from the mainland. No one that he had seen in the local fight scene had shown these kinds of skills, at least not five guys with this much talent. Lucky he thought that they weren’t really ninjas.

Such idea thought bubbles were like a thin wisp of smoke, when the battle demanded his full attention, demanded he keep a clear head. He pivoted again on his back leg, adopting a low crouching stance, as he grabbed a handful of the fourth ninja’s hooded head and pulling him like a battering ram towards his buddies.

He knocked this one out by ramming him into the second one, who was now off balance. In a flurry of hand movements he threw 10 hard punches to his adversary’s solar plexus. Predictably the forearms protecting the head and neck dropped. 

Davis moved in very close, never slowing as in a smooth arc, he wrapped his thick right forearm around the back of the neck of the second ninja. The dark hood shook slightly, groggily, as Davis crashed it down into his sleeping buddy. Blood spilled from head wounds on both men. The ground had taken on a light hue of dark red. 

The third and fifth men circled him now, wearily, blades drawn out pointed in. The blades were dancing now.

They had seen how quickly Davis worked without a blade but by keeping distance and moving as a team it would or should be significantly harder for their adversary. The blades rose and dove cutting towards their intended victim. 

The victim bit back. Davis ducked then rose in a side lunge to the left, rolling even as he rose and launching from the roll straight into a tackle into the fifth’s left leg. The chop from the swinging sword arm came down off target pulled of course by the tackle in a much wider arc. It caught the other pseudo ninja in the upper right arm, burying deep.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” screamed the assailant.

Now only the fifth and final shadow man remained. Davis’ left leg shot out catching the guard of the blade, knocking it to the ground. Davis then started a feint, using a combo of two swift left jabs and a right cross to the man’s head, the arms of his opponent went straight up to protect himself. Davis was already shifting to his right, turning inwards away from the ninja. 

His next left hook quickly turned into a reverse left elbow to the stomach. The elbow made contact ripping up into the sternum forcing the arms down. Davis was already in another small arc pivoting one hundred and eighty degrees to bring a twelve to six right elbow sailing down from above. 

It cracked his opponent right on the crown of the head, forcing him to stumble backwards. Davis spun again this time three hundred and sixty degrees and followed up with a spinning heal kick that landed cleanly on the fifth’s head snapping it back in an audible thud. Knocked out before he even hit the ground.

Davis looked around surveying the carnage. He quickly removed one of the hoods. The Asiatic features were distinctive. As a long time resident of South East Asia, Davis knew his hunch about them being from a Chinese gang was correct. 

More worryingly this guy had a gang tattoo of a red teardrop under his right eye. Proof enough of involvement from mainland china. The Blue Tiger were in Australia. Shit had got very serious.

He moved back towards where he’d left Ronnie. She was standing at the front of a small crowd that were transfixed, forming an open ring of people stunned into silence by the intense one way nature of the fight. Clearly no one knew quite whether to cheer or run. 

Several were already on their mobiles to the police.  Most likely grainy footage would be on the nightly news or at least the local YouTube channels. It was time to move. He held her, whispering to her that they had to clear the scene in case more ninjas arrived. 

They shared a long undefined moment of tenderness, lost in a tight embrace of shared nervousness and fear. He could smell her fear.

Davis looked back around at the crowd. A white van with no number plates had pulled up next to the pavement,  the unconscious and the dead ninjas were already loaded into the van, the door slamming shut ripping out into the traffic narrowly missing oncoming traffic as it used the other lane to jump ahead.

Why Davis considered, did they not want their identities revealed? Why didn’t they want the authorities to know that the Blue Tiger was on a secret mission into the heart of Australia’s largest city? 

By rights the five mercenaries that had been sent would have been able to take down almost anyone. There masters would not make that mistake twice. Blue Tiger were drug traffickers, gun runners and slavers extraordinaire. He had to get out of here.

The timing was too much to be a coincidence, he thought as he pulled Ronnie quickly through the crowd. She was in shock, as many of the watchers in the crowd were. So much blood and violence was to the uninitiated almost inconceivable until you lived through it once or twice he reflected. 

As he marched on it was two blocks before the parting crowd started to recede again and the pair returned to a relative state of anonymity.  He reasoned even with the lack of hard evidence, some grainy iPhone footage would on the six o’clock news. 

Before long he was going to get more questions from Inspector Kramer, and he had fuck all by way of answers. Answers, he needed some.

They marched on desperate now to get to a place of relative safety. His calm even pace and alert protective nature, seemed to feed into her growing sense of panic and need for control. 

She looked over at him every five or six paces trying to gauge his thoughts or just ground her thoughts? He could have calmed her but he didn’t even try.

“When times are easy be tough, when times get tricky it won’t be as rough” – Jo-Jo “Muay Thai” Pho,

His kickboxing instructor had often seemed to be far more of a master of the internal arts than just the external brutality for which he was renowned throughout Thailand for. If he let her ride it out now, her own mind would have significant mental defences should she have to go through it again, something he had no way of knowing. If he made her feel better she would be at best a liability, at worst a basket case for the rest of her life. He did however turn and smile at her.

“You really are as pretty as a rose, Ronnie, I don’t know why I never told you that before.”

She smiled exquisitely back at him, her lower lip trembling, but never took her eyes away from his. The moment seemed to slow, as her eyes searched his face looking for signs of weakness. Some common ground for her fear to feed on. 

There was nothing. Ironically this seemed to feed her hunger. She stared again, but he was striding ahead pulling her with him towards the entrance to her inner city apartment block.

“Ronnie, let’s get you home, I’ll make you dinner. Also I don’t think its safe tonight, do you mind if I sleep on the couch. We’ll go see the cop shop first thing in the morning.”, Davis had a voice that was at once casual, yet also very firm.

It said I am dependable, something he had found over time that women loved. It said I am a secure human being. 

It probably helped that he was also being sincere.

“Ok” –Ronnie.

They entered the lift. Her nerves were too much. She.. broke down crying pushing herself into him, and then it was on. The lift was a whirl of two bodies unleashing months of pent up passion. Davis felt her sweet lips and waited trying to savour the moment, praying the lift would rise even faster. He wanted so badly to fuck her brains out right now.

“Slowly Davis” Ronnie cooed, “I want you to hold me, all night. I want you zooo bad. I’m scared and I really don’t want to be alone.”

Lonely darkness descended on the city. Random lights filtered through the bedroom window as they lay in bed together naked. His chiselled stomach was pushed up flat against her tasty curves. His left hand loosely hanging on to her right breast. 

Her skin was so soft and peachy reflected Davis as he relaxed in post coital bliss. Her hands never stopped moving, strugglingly to cover every part of his ripped musculature. He could tell she still awake, all they could think of was more of the same. He stared at her, and felt a shiver of pleasure run down his spine. Her body was hot from sex; the temperature was rising.

Hours later, in the small hours past midnight, Davis lay awake by himself, the sleeping body of an angel beside him. The full moon was hanging low in the sky. He deliberately avoided looking at it, preferring to conserve as much of his natural night vision as possible. The one bedroom apartment was fifteen stories up, sitting just behind town hall, on Liverpool Street. 

His gaze fell to the bed sheets; the soft duvet was made with Egyptian cotton and duck down feathers. He imagined her curvaceous white body beneath the surface. He knew what he had to do now. He needed to form a circle, enter back into the dream world, speak with his father. 

But to do that, to be able to stay long enough and have the strength to hear his father’s words he would need help. He simply wasn’t developed enough to do it on his own. He needed to go and see the tribal elder.

As Davis ideally thought of the magical times of his childhood, spent following the tribe around central western N.S.W., memories of rites and rituals came back to him. The first time he had been taken into the dreaming. 

The visions that had resulted, and the endless conversations which his dad, Bear had said were all part of fine tuning his “receptivity” to the practise. Even now he could barely summon the dreaming on his own. Today in the office had been a strange fluke.

“The need comes with the moment, the moment is created from the person’s need.” –Cub.

Cub, his uncle the one who had saved him. Had it been him? Or was it just his imagination? Something had stopped a couple of hundred gallons of jet fuel from exploding in his face. Cub hadn’t done that though. He had seen him fighting with a fire elemental. 

The huge fiery being had looked alive with rage. Had wanted to kill him. Cub had calmly held it at bay. Stopped the fuel from igniting?  He only had questions and desperately needed to advance his understanding of these strange events.

The ridges and dips of the duvet were like a mini mountain range. It reminded Davis of his adventures in the Himalayas. Looking at a particular spike it reminded him of the ascent up the Eisner, or crossing one of the major ridgelines after base camp on the northern ascent of Everest. That light red line looked out of place though. A laser light coming from... Thoughts stopped, adrenaline pumped hard forcing his muscles to take on super human levels of strength. Rock hard arms wrapped around the sleeping form of Ronnie, and his body rolled out of the bed, letting his back take the impact as they tumbled onto the floor.

“What? What are you doing?”, like an angry bee, she was buzzing, yet confused.

No time to explain, only act. A hail of noise erupted inside the room. The bed where moments earlier they had been asleep was being ripped apart by a storm of bullets. The feathers exploded upwards from the doona. The room was quickly filled with duck feathers floating to the ground.

“Oh my god!, oh my gawdt‽‽” Ronnie shrieked with a wilders eyes.

Aside from this outburst she was shaking, her naked body was calm. Her large breasts rising and falling evenly. A sure sign she was coping with the pressure.

“Crawl to the door, Ronnie, Go!” so saying Davis let go of her and started crawling himself.

Who knew what else would be coming through that window. Clearly they had a night vision or a heat vision scope. The laser light from the sight was military. The bad guys were tooling up and coming in hot.

Outside the room they quickly found some clothes for Ronnie, then headed for the front door. Outside of the apartment, Davis quickly checked the elevator, it was heading up, still five floors away.

“Quick!”

He had a basic intuition it was them, and had no intention of hanging around with Ronnie in tow to find out.

“Fire stairs!”, Davis held Ronnie’s wrist and tugged her into motion.

They started to descend the stairs.

“De ja vue?”, Ronnie asked, but Davis silenced her.

“The stairwell echoes sound, shhh”, then he smiled at her.

At each level a digit was painted onto the back of the door leading out to that level of the apartment complex. They had just past “2” and were descending the last four flights of stairs. He was jumping down the stairs as fast as he could behind Ronnie, when he heard the number two door crack open.

“Keep going Ronnie! When you get to the bottom get straight out onto the street and head directly for the police station on George Street. Stand next to someone else at all times. Even though its late, try and find and stay with a crowd of people walking in the same direction. Nothing they have done to this point indicates they are willing to start indiscriminate killings.”

Davis wasn’t too sure about that, but he needed her to be strong. She seemed to vacillate between staying and going. Her eyes looked up into his imploring him.

“Go!”

Davis forced his voice up as high as he dared. “Go now!”

The light footsteps were descending in seconds his assailants would be upon him.

How had they found this place so quickly? He’d ensured they weren’t followed. Doubling back, taking false routes, changing appearance twice. That meant some form of high tech surveillance. Either long range scopes from building tops, or perhaps, illegal access to satellite imaging. Hmm what if it was worse? What if there was someone on the inside? Access to the police database? The level of organisation required was starting to really add up.

No more time to think, those light featherlike footsteps... Davis crouched waiting for his opponent in a small unseen area of the stairs just below the level one landing. Feather feet walked across the flat landing. Davis’s leg shot out hooking and tripping the lead right leg. Dressed all in black, just like the others. Another ninja? Blue Tiger!

His rage intensified, he would make these clowns pay. Davis retracted his leg forcing the ninja to trip forward, keeping a the other’s leg in a tight hold with his own. As he fell forward Davis brought both arms forward using his fists to bury a hail of punches into the upper body. Causing it to fall backwards in the opposite direction. The result was that the other man fell horizontally towards the ground. He brought his elbow down on the other man’s head and throat, knocking him unconscious and leaving a nasty headache for the morning when he awoke. When he awoke, well, the Blue tiger clan were not exactly known to be a forgiving bunch to those that failed on missions.

He heard a scream from below and immediately began running for the exit two flights of stairs below. Hurling himself down the stairs he leapt-ran each flight in two giant strides. His ankles compressed and groaned at the strain of hitting hard concrete. Davis reached the ground exit and immediately hurled an explosive front kick at the doors, which obeyed and exploded outwards with a groan of hinges partially ripping from their housings.

In front of him a helicopter was hovering half a metre from the ground. The blades ripping through the air forcing the air back against his face, throwing up all the debris and loose dirt in the surrounding gardens. He pushed himself forward against the power of the wind. The chopper was a light grey colour with thick blue and red diagonal stripes. A modified, stripped back huey.

He peered into the guts of the door less cargo bay, seeing Ronnie trussed up, arms bound to legs like a pig. The modified nature of the chopper became more apparent. As he advanced, a ninja sitting behind a mounted 50 cal belt fed machine gun opened up.

Reflexes already on edge from a day’s fighting gave him a narrow edge. He drove his body to the left not even knowing what was there. He felt his body scraping against the hard concrete of the path, as he popped into a judo roll and came up behind a short brick wall. All around him the entire courtyard was being ripped to shreds by the untold power unleashed from a storm of .50 calibre bullets.

Davis waited, counting. At the precise time, remaining out of site behind the short wall, he rose, knowing as he did that the machine gunner would have to wait several seconds to allow the weapons barrel to cool sufficiently. This guy apparently had no idea or just didn’t care and continued firing. The weapons firing chamber made a chinking noise, at the same time that the red hot barrel stopped spitting instant death, and like a fat Cuban cigar smoked lazily.

Davis knew he had only moments, he sprinted down the path, the chopper was starting to pull off the ground, he could feel the backwash of air being fanned down from above. The chopper pilot had turned the aircraft away to the right so that the cabin crew could no longer see the path. The tail spun around, the blades narrowly missing Davis as he came forward beneath the rising chopper.

He jumped thick hands wrapping around the legs of the chopper. He threw his left arm over the top locking it in with the right hand. As he kicked his left leg up and over the bar he looked over his right shoulder and saw the ground falling away already one thousand metres distant. Over the engine noise he could hear the faint screams of Ronnie, but nothing else.

This was a Blue Tiger snatch squad, sent to retrieve a bargaining chip. Standard practise in Asia. Use your friends, your family, even your children as blackmail. They must have had extensive surveillance setup to get that far. These days if you wanted to track someone down double quick you needed access to an eye in the sky.

The latest satellites, launched since 2008 could use laser spectral analysis to pinpoint everything from the signature of any electronic modern consumable to the water density of every type of known organic on the planet. They could see under, over and through the sea, a fact that was still not widely known outside of the intelligence community. They could use heat and chemical sensors to detect movement in any direction, through buildings and even underground. In short staying undetected was next to impossible from one of these suckers. And it had been quick. Far too quick. The deal with the bikies had only been on the horizon three weeks ago. The bikies had only committed to terms and transfer protocols in the last week.

That meant that even with an inside rat and state of the art surveillance they had been in place for one to three days. Once again he wondered at the level of his own governments’ involvement. The mobsters didn’t have satellite time. Not even state sponsored ones. Especially not the state sponsored ones.

He knew there would have to have been at least one bad cookie in ASIO cookie jar. A greedy bureaucrat signing away US satellite time. He wondered if Uncle Sam would be pleased to know that its south pacific sheriff was proxying resources to Chinese mobsters. He filed it away for later, when not if there was one.

He had two options. Remain hidden until the destination, or enter the cargo bay and kill everyone but the pilot. The problem with hijacking a chopper which wasn’t a highlight of most Hollywood films was that even if you could fly a chopper yourself, most didn’t have an autopilot. By the time you removed the existing pilot from the seat the whole thing would most likely have pitched sideways and fallen out of the sky. Davis had an ace up his sleeve.

He twisted on the bar so that he was now draped over it, and brought his feet back towards his knees letting them rest on the choppers landing bar. He reached up with both hands and as the chopper rocked to its right, his side was jerked up. Like a panther he launched upwards, inwards towards the cargo bay, past the silent machine gun mount.

Four more ninjas were inside keeping Ronnie company. Arms folded, eyes ahead. His method was brutal but effective. Using aikido leg throws, he grabbed the smaller Asian men and hurled the first straight out of the chopper. Pivoting to the other side, he grabbed a ninja with each hand and pulled them to their feet. As he did he dropped all his weight forward and threw each arm out perpendicular in scything overhand elbows. Each clipped the inside temple of the two rising ninjas. Stunning and pushing their centres of balance dangerously towards the open sides of the cargo bay.

The roar of the chopper screamed. It began tilting more violently. The passenger had turned and was silently screaming at his pilot. The two stunned ninjas stooped low and began to rise, flailing their arms to stop from falling. Davis moved closer and then stepped between them, moving past and spinning one hundred and eighty degrees fast, so that he was behind them. He grabbed each from behind, with a fair grip of skin and black ninja cloth. Then he pushed.

“Fly”

Davis said, “if you can”.

With that they fell towards the ground. The remaining ninja was out of his seat, approaching warily. Without any warning, Davis used a sudden forward tilt of the chopper to lunge at his opponent.  This time putting a hand snake like, up, in, in there.

“Kai!”

Davis screamed an ancient war cry he had been taught using his voice. Time seemed to slow, for the ninja at least, even as Davis’s arm slid up and past his defensive pose. He struck with his fingers extended in a hard spear like posture. Aiming behind and just below the neck, inserting the index finger into the central nerve point at the top of the spine. It created a mild block, stunning there lower limbs. It was then a simple matter to kick away their legs. And push. Only Ronnie remained lying tied to a seat in the cargo bay.

Her hair was dishevelled. Her eyes had run, leaving thick trails of mascara running down the sides of her pretty face. Her head was tilted slightly to one side as she looked up at him with big dove like eyes. He gave her a quick thumbs up and leaving her to sit and watch, turned his attention to the cockpit. There was only a small sealed persplex window for observation. If he wanted to enter the cockpit, he was going to have to mount an assault from the outside of the chopper and somehow get either door open. This was easier said than done. Even if the doors were unlocked and nobody was holding them in the downwash from the blades acted as a drag holding the door in towards the frame.

It was time for his ace. He positioned himself in front of the small window and focused his mind. True concentration came from completely letting go of thoughts, letting them merge into a single powerful thought. His fist was tight, held next to his ribs. The thought released. Soon he would have this, soon he would unleash his surprise.

The arm sprung forward like a catapult. The fist hit the persplex completely shattering it. The chopper veered violently down and to the left as the pilot was distracted from the plastic shattering on top of him. His fist turned into a powerful grip which shifted to the right.

The passenger had recovered from his shock and was already turning and shifting to the left, bringing his gun up to shoot. Davis used his wrist to slip a lock around the hand holding the gun, forcing it to go off whilst it was still pointing at the pilot, who promptly fell over dead.

Davis’s world seemed to stop. Up until that point everything had seemed somehow sane, in a quirky kind of post modern James Bond kind of way. The ace was trumped. Open mirza.  So how exactly was this chopper going to land now anyway?

The control stick pushed forward, the chopper lurched forward. Time slowed down. Rain pellets pounded the windscreen. The passenger screamed an unholy high pitched jarring sound. Massive arms extended out and grabbed the pilot ramming him hard to the left and up against the pilot door. The passenger shifted over to his left, scooping up the control stick as he did so.

For a moment he seemed distracted from the previous minutes. His cold stare was held on the parabolic descent path that the front of the chopper was sliding down. The rain no longer struck the windscreen. In mere seconds the blades would lose their “grip” on the air. At that point time really slowed down. Davis’s own eyes were glued on the scene confronting him. He was looking at the ground rushing up. The blades were straining against the limits of their powers. The engine was emitting a loud thudding noise and a noticeable increase in thermal output.

The passenger’s hooded ninja suit seemed to billow as his upper body rippled with muscular power. Biceps squeezed and ripped massive rippling forearms yanked and pulled. It was immediately obvious that his actions were not those of a noob. Unseen beneath the cockpit his feet worked the pedals, shifting and guiding the arc from straight down to an equally violent arc towards the heavens.

The bird screamed as the motor hit max revs. Oil began to burn from excessive heat build-up. The passenger coolly glinted out at the world that was now passing on a steadily rising diagonal horizon. His head was hidden behind a full face ninja mask, so that only evil intent eyes looked out upon the world. Big black eyes with red irises gave the devil’s own cause for wickedness a good impression of walking the earth. Even as the chopper stopped its heaving, his subtle manipulations of the bird continued.

Davis was taken completely off guard by the choppers sudden wide arc to the left. He had been allowing the passenger time to right things and deliver his surprise. His flaw almost proved fatal. He felt rather than thought that he was in freefall. Unlike Ronnie he was not tied to the floor. The passenger improved the angle turning the entire cargo bay on its side, almost but not quite pushing the rotor blades beyond the vertical limit. Davis had hands. I mean when boxer talk about having hands, they mean fast fabulous hands that dance all day. Davis had hands that were faster. It was all that saved him.

In the moments preceding the freefall he had been standing about one third out from the middle of the cargo bay, closest to the broken cabin window. When he fell his left hand shot out and grabbed the upper rail that ran around the top of each side of the cargo bay. Using a rock climbers grip, he held grimly as his entire body weight time’s six gravities was pulled towards the ground. He knew the passenger could not hold his aerial manuvoure for more than two seconds. By the time the bird swung back into a true line with the ground, his left arm was numb from the strain.

He let it fall to his side. He only needed one good arm. His two feet fell like panther paws to the deck. They sprung him in a single smooth arc that landed right up next to the cabin window.

The passenger sensed and reacted as his senses warned him of impending disaster. Leaving his left arm to guide the bird, the ninja dextrously raised his right arm and twisted his wrist so that the curved dagger that suddenly appeared pointed backwards in a wicked arcing motion towards Davis’s shoulders.  The ace was already in play.

Davis didn’t even try to block the knife arm. Instead with complete reckless disregard for personal safety he spun one hundred and eighty degrees so that his right arm was closest to the passenger’s body. His right elbow shot out violently. It’s powerful tricep punching with the forward motion of a air fed jackhammer.

The tip punching the knife forearm, even as it in turned sliced a shoulder to shoulder blade crimson tide. A wide arc of flesh seemed to hand loosely. But that was because Davis had his good arm moving with incredible speed. With a single touch of his index finger, Davis drove into the T4 vertebrae at the base of the neck. Stopping as his nail was mere millimetres away from the spinal nerve. His ace was delivered.

He felt a rush of energy that seemed to mingle with the evil spirit. It didn’t matter he felt the warm rush that signalled his “energy” had taken subconscious decision making capacity away from his adversary. The passenger was also an adept an fought bitterly against the mental intrusion. But it was no good. The point of the physical contact, as Davis had been taught, was to attain an overwhelmingly initial advantage over the opponents mind, so that they could not defend.

It was said some ancient masters no longer needed even physical contact to incapacitate foes, before eventually giving up such techniques altogether. Davis had been gifted with relearning some of the first stages of this technique, the only ones that still existed. The passenger sat rigidly as Davis sat on his ear issuing instructions.

“Find a flat area of ground and descend.”

The passenger, face hidden from view, was sweating profusely. Veins popped out near his temples as he fought with every ounce of his being to break the psychic lock. It was no use it was all he could do just to stop himself from slavishly following the other’s instructions. His dark pool, the part he thought of as himself, was under attack. No it was worse, it was being hidden from him. All he could do was follow the immediate orders given to him, stay busy and wait.

The chopper landed in the green fields of Parramatta park. As if by design the exact moment of landing seemed overly rough, and as Davis looked, the passenger somehow, completely against his own understanding of human physiology managed to grab the pilot door, open it, ram the dead body and himself head first out of the door, and combat roll away into the park surrounds. Before Davis could pursue he quickly had to hit the kill switch on the chopper. The engine seemed sigh as parts cooled back to within standard operating tolerances.

He looked up but the passenger was gone. At least both he and Ronnie were safe. He looked around, and she was crying. The tears of a lady whose purpose was confused and set upon. He immediately went to her and wrapped his huge arms around her, pulling her tight.  They looked out of the cargo bay at a small pond. A gaggle of ducks sailed sedately on the ripples from the chopper’s down wash.

“Just hold me Davis”, she said.

“I will. For as long as you want me to.”

He replied.