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Way of the Sword
Way of the Sword
Way of the Sword
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Way of the Sword

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Sara Dunn is an Irish registered nurse working at a busy ICU in Portland, Oregon. When a German man is admitted to her unit after nearly dying on a transatlantic flight from Tokyo, doctors are confused and don't understand how to treat the man. Before he dies that evening, he tells Sara a sequence of numbers that mean nothing to her. Soon the FBI is questioning her about the murdered man, she's put on administrative leave, and her house is trashed. Coming to her rescue is her mysterious neighbor, Don, who says she can hide out with him at his house on the Oregon coast. She finds out Don is retired military and now makes high-priced Japanese swords. But even Don can't keep her entirely safe. Now he must travel to Japan to unravel a mystery, while he tries to stay one step ahead of the deadly Yakuza underground.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherSalvo Press
Release dateFeb 1, 2012
ISBN9781627934541
Way of the Sword
Author

Trevor Scott

Trevor Scott is the author of more than thirty mystery/thriller novels in the Jake Adams International Thriller Series, the Chad Hunter Series, and the Tony Caruso Mystery Series. He has a master's in creative writing from Northern Michigan University, and a bachelor's in writing from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He served in the U.S. Navy as an ordnance man on the flight deck of aircraft carriers, and as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

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    Way of the Sword - Trevor Scott

    Prologue

    The slight man, dressed in nice business clothes, shifted uncomfortably in his airline chair, wishing he had been able to buy the first class seat. But none had been available on the direct flight from Tokyo’s Narita International to Portland, Oregon. Something was wrong, he knew. For the first eight hours of the flight he had tried to sleep and ignored the disgusting airline meals. It was amazing they could even call that food.

    He unbuttoned the top button on his white shirt and loosened the tie around his neck, which felt like a noose. What was wrong with him? He never got sick. But now his body was flushing, his face perspiring, and his heart racing out of control. Something was wrong. Maybe he’d caught the flu around all those people in Japan.

    The pilot announced they would be landing in an hour and the man tried to find some comfort in this news. But he felt no relief. His throat seemed to be closing off, laboring each breath he took.

    A male flight attendant walked down the aisle toward him and his eyes showed concern when he saw him.

    Are you all right, sir? the man asked in English. Then he switched to German and asked him the same thing.

    The answer in either language was ‘No, he wasn’t all right.’ He was all wrong. He tried to speak the words, but nothing came out of his throat. Nothing but foamy spit.

    The world around him seemed to collapse as a large American woman screamed and others gasped. What did he look like to them? If he looked anything like he felt, he could understand their shock and horror.

    The next few minutes were a blur of activity as they pulled him out of his chair toward the back of the plane in the rear galley. His eyes shifted side to side as a man claiming to be a doctor kneeled over him, shining a pen light into his eyes and asking him questions. But he couldn’t answer. He understood the doctor’s English, but he couldn’t form words. He could barely breath through the spittle oozing out of his mouth. What was wrong with him? Floating above him like apparitions were people he had known in his past, and things he loved—apple strudel, a large stein of beer, and a thick bratwurst.

    And then a foul odor rose up to his nose. Someone needs to change the baby’s diaper, he thought. His last thought as he drifted off into darkness.

    1

    The man was dead and she knew it. She also knew that he knew it. After twelve years as an intensive care nurse, Sara could see it in his eyes. At first the eyes would shift unknowing about the room, wondering perhaps if this was what the end looked like. If there was a great light and an ascension up toward it, she couldn’t see that in the blankness. Then the eyes would glaze over as if blindness had overcome them, a film of moist gray obscuring what had once been a dark brown.

    She checked the monitor and didn’t like what she saw. Blood pressure and oxygen saturation down. Not a good sign. Worse yet, this mystery man’s affliction was equally mysterious. He’d been on a non-stop international flight from Tokyo to Portland, Oregon, when he collapsed on the decent into PDX. By the time the plane landed and the EMTs transported him to St. Francis Medical Center, he had nearly died and been revived three times. They could have brought the man to a hospital closer to the airport, but St. Francis had the only open emergency room, with all the other major hospitals in the Portland area on ambulance divert for lack of beds or nurses.

    That was five hours ago, just as Sara was starting her third of four twelve-hour night shifts in a row. Midnight now, she guessed the man wouldn’t make it through the night. To die alone. . .she couldn’t imagine that. Luckily he was her only patient that night. She’d be there for him so he wouldn’t have to die alone. That is unless they could find a way to fix whatever had overtaken his body.

    She shuffled across the room and stood before the sink gazing at herself in the mirror, peering into the green surrounding the blackness of her own eyes, and the dark puffiness under each orb. If she didn’t start getting more sleep, she’d start looking a lot older than her thirty-four years. Most of her obsidian black hair was shoved up into a ball on the back of her head, with only a few curly wisps falling down along each ear, and her not wanting to touch herself with the nitril gloves, so she blew at the strands, a useless effort since she was wearing a mask. She stepped back toward the bedside to look at the man who had disturbed her from the moment she’d walked into the room to do her assessment after getting this assignment. The patient looked too much like her older brother Patrick. It was stupid, she knew, since her brother was across the Atlantic in Dublin, but the similarity was uncanny. The narrow nose. The strong chin. Everything but the hair. This man had nearly blond hair and her brother’s hair was as black as hers. But all the other features were similar enough to make her fight back tears during her first hour on shift, her mind transforming this patient into Patrick. Maybe she was feeling a little homesick.

    The door suddenly slid open. How’s our mystery man doing?

    Sara startled as she turned to the dampened voice coming through the door. It was Doctor Harold Mead, the tall, slim man with black hair nearly to his shoulders, and a narrow jaw with a grand canyon cleft. Not that she could see it through the N95 mask. Before entering the room the doctor had donned an isolation gown, gloved and masked.

    About the same, she said, her words muffled through her own mask, as she opened the patient’s electronic medical record on the rolling computer cart and swiveled it toward the doctor. Worse actually.

    Doctor Mead smiled at her behind the mask, the crow’s feet squinting his eyes. The eyes? Then he scanned through the chart on the computer touch screen.

    They’d had this conversation before. A couple of months after she’d started at St. Francis. Four months ago now. Sara guessed the good doctor tolerated or at least patronized her theory for two reasons. First, they were both Irish. She right off the plane from Dublin and he third generation. And second, she had an underlying feeling that he wanted to see her out of her scrubs. But he was terminally taken—married with two small children—and she would never have an affair with a married man. Especially a doctor.

    It’s true, Sara said, her accent flowing freely.

    The doctor closed the electronic chart, shuffled to the side of the bed, and picked up a pen light and shone it onto his gloved palm. He smiled and used the light to test the responsiveness of the patient’s pupils. First the left and then the right. Sluggish, Sara could see.

    They know anything more about this poor man? Sara asked.

    The doctor turned to her. Johann Schmidt from Berlin, Germany. Businessman of some sort. Homeland Security says he’s been traveling through much of Asia the past few weeks, with his last few days in Japan. He’s forty-five.

    What’s he dying from? My God. The man was only forty-five and appeared to be in perfect physical shape. With the exception of his complexion, the periods of sweats from fever, and the eyes. Always the eyes.

    You name it, Sara. His heart, his lungs, his kidneys. Damn near every organ in his body is shutting down on him. We’ve tried everything to bring down his fever and the antibiotics have barely touched it. As you know, that can take time. I don’t understand the rash. It’s more than just from the fever. The man needs fluids as fast as we can push it in. Seems to be sweating much of it off. We’ve ruled out swine flu and botulism toxin. Got a call in to CDC, but no word yet. He say anything?

    She shook her head. But with the titrating drip and the antibiotics, I’ve only left the room for wee moments. Just a cup of coffee and a bathroom break. Besides, as you know, it’s a pain to keep hopping in an out of this garb.

    You’ve kept him in airborne and droplet isolation?

    Surely did. Lab tech came in for two minutes.

    That it?

    Yes. She hesitated and continued, Of course you were here an hour after they brought him in from the ER. Other than that, not a soul has been in here.

    Good. We don’t know if there’s a contagion here, so we have to assume the worst.

    What about the people on the plane with him? she asked. And the EMTs? The ER folks. Transport?

    Doctor Mead shifted his eyes from Sara to the patient. Let’s prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Protect yourself, Sara.

    She hadn’t seen the good doctor so serious before. He was usually a wise-cracker. Terminally flirtatious also. A chill came over her now. Was she in danger?

    The doctor headed toward the door and stopped, turning back toward her. Don’t stay in here any longer than you have to.

    Right. That was her job. Be sure to close that door tightly, she instructed. It tends to stick.

    He left her there like that, unsure and alone. She went to the other side of the bed and glanced down at the man. With her gloved hand she took his hand in hers. It was limp, without any apparent life. What’s wrong with you? she whispered.

    For the next three hours his condition ebbed and flowed like an ocean breeze—one minute he looked like he might be getting better and the next he had nearly coded. At three a.m. she was sitting in a chair to the side of the patient’s bed, her mind drifting off, when she saw movement from the man. She hurried to the side of the bed and checked his vitals on the monitor. He was having a good moment.

    His head turned to the side, his glassy eyes seeming to penetrate through her. He wasn’t ventilated, but he had a facial mask attached to a continuous positive pressure machine. He grabbed the mask with his right hand, pulling it from his mouth. He was trying to say something.

    She leaned down and said, What do you want to say? She almost added her brother’s name. Not Patrick; Johann.

    He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. She put her ear close to his mouth and he started to whisper, his voice harsh and his English broken. He repeated the same thing over and over until he was sure she had heard him. Made her write down on a piece of paper, and told her not to share it with anyone. Memorize and destroy the paper. She repeated it aloud to him and then shoved the note into her scrubs pocket. He tried to smile and nod, a relieved breath of air escaping from his mouth.

    Moments later the patient’s condition spiraled downward, as if he’d accomplished his life’s goal and could now pass to the other side. And Sara was alone with him, her hand in his, until he started to writhe in pain and set the monitor beeping with rapid heart rate and then an abnormal heart rhythm.

    She slammed a hand on the code button and went into action, knowing it would be some time before the others arrived. Not knowing the contagion of the patient, or even if there was a contagion, the code team would all have to protect themselves with isolation gowns, gloves and masks. That would take time.

    Come on, Sara. You’ve done this far too many times to panic now. This isn’t your brother. It’s some man you don’t even know.

    The patient was in such pain his chest rose from the bed, his eyes nearly bulging from the sockets, and his face contorted. Come on team. Where the hell are you?

    Flat line.

    Sara was performing CPR when the door finally slammed open and Doctor Mead lead a group of four others in full isolation garb, like a scene from The X-Files with a crew coming in to view an alien.

    Seconds led to minutes and minutes to quarter of an hour. They all worked feverously to save the man following Advanced Cardiac Life Support guidelines, the doctor calling out orders, but the nurses already beating him to the next step. In the end, everything they tried failed. His fate, perhaps, had been predetermined before entering the hospital and before Sara had become his nurse in room 315. Yet, Sara backed away and sobbed as if the man who had died was her brother.

    Sara spent the rest of her shift preparing the body for the morgue and the eventual autopsy. Then she charted everything she’d done, trying her best to remember through the haze of confusion that always accompanied a code, including a review of EMR charting and finishing up the code sheet. Her fellow nurses would try to console her, not knowing that her true reason for grief had more to do with the resemblance of the man to her brother than to the death of a complete stranger.

    At the end of her shift, she changed in the break room, found the note in her scrubs and absently put it into her jeans pants pocket. Then she slowly shuffled out the door. She had to walk four blocks to catch the MAX light rail. If she hurried she could still catch the seven-forty-five train. From there she would have a twenty-five minute ride to her stop in Beaverton, a western suburb of Portland.

    She held it together on the train, which wasn’t very full at that hour. Most commuters were heading in the other direction toward the city. She got off at her stop and walked two blocks to her condo unit, barely getting through the door before breaking down in tears. What was wrong with her? Patients died all the time. That’s why they came to the intensive care unit in the first place—they were really sick. She grasped a photo album from a bookshelf and settled down onto the sofa. Flipping through the pages, she stopped when she saw the photo of her brother Patrick drinking a beer in a Dublin pub. He always had that knowing smirk on his face, as if he held a secret and not another soul knew it. On the opposite page, Patrick stood on the precipice of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, the same look of assured understanding shifting his lips apart slightly, the ocean breeze blowing his long hair into his eyes. But he didn’t die, Sara. Nevertheless, she sobbed uncontrollably until her body shuddered into a full cry.

    The tall, stout man gazed up toward the second story condo unit the nurse had just entered. Removing a pack of Marlboros from the inside pocket of his leather jacket, he popped a cigarette into his mouth, flicked his lighter and lit it, taking in a deep breath of smoke, holding it, and then letting it out in a straight stream. The only damn thing he liked about America—cheap cigarettes. And cheap gas, but that didn’t matter, since you had to drive so slow anyway. And even these things had gotten much more expensive on this trip.

    He shook his head with disbelief. What kind of coincidence was this? The same damn condo complex. How was that possible? Well, he’d find out. Maybe she had something to do with Schmidt’s little plan. If so, he’d find that out also, and she’d give it to him one way or another. She’d give him every damn thing he asked for, and then some. He smiled thinking of that prospect. The nurse wasn’t half bad looking, with her black curly hair down now that she was out of the hospital. Her tight jeans. Even from a distance on the train he could see her green eyes, and postulated they had to be real and not tinted contacts.

    He cast his intense eyes across the green space to the other condo unit, also on the second floor, his wonder about to be satisfied.

    Retrieving a cell phone from another pocket, he hesitated thinking about these new numbers he had just learned an hour ago. He had wanted to simply put the numbers in memory, but that was poor tactics and he knew it. Then any asshole could find his cell and connect him with the others.

    Remembering the numbers, he punched them in and waited.

    English, he reminded himself when his associate answered on the other end. Yeah. Meet me at the condo. And bring Kinjou. He paused as a heavy woman in a sweat suit marched by with a weight in each hand, her eyes watching him curiously until he smiled at her. Christ, walk or run, nothing in-between. Once she was out of hearing range, he continued, No. Just the three of us. Kinjou can look while we do the work.

    He flipped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. Then he cast his gaze for a second on the nurse’s door, taking in another puff of smoke. He let out three rings of smoke and they drifted toward the woman’s condo. If she was part of this, he had a feeling she was out of her league. It was more likely that she just got caught up in this because of her job. But her living across the green space from Schmidt seemed like too much of a coincidence. He hated anything left to chance or folly. Life was a series of calculations and predictable reactions to actions. Nothing more; nothing less. Let the games begin.

    Turning and smiling, he stepped lightly along the sidewalk toward the other condo unit to meet his partners, flicking the still-lit cigarette into the wet grass.

    2

    Don Mori could hear the woman next door sobbing uncontrollably, as he moved gracefully through his morning Tai Chi routine, his tight sweaty T-shirt sticking to his muscles and his strong, bare feet stepping from one position to the next, his hands purposeful and precise—every movement honed through the centuries. As he moved gracefully around the room, his long dark hair flowed smoothly over his collar. He flicked the long strands away from his dark brown eyes as if that action was also a part of the Tai Chi movement. It was during this routine that he felt all Japanese instead of only half. In fact, he had rarely been considered Asian, but had been mistaken for many other nationalities over

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