Tengu Read Online Free Page B

“This is perhaps one of the hardest things to gauge.” He held up a thick hand and balled it into a fist. “When to give,” he opened the fingers of his hand toward me, “and when to withhold,” the fist formed again.
    “How do you know when the time is right?” I asked my teacher.
    He smiled. “Sometimes, you sense it. Or see it in a student’s movements.” He looked at me for affirmation. I nodded. We had both experienced this with trainees. Then Yamashita smiled. “Other times, you guess.”
    “Do you think he was ready for that lesson?”
    “Time will answer that question,” he said. Then he grew solemn. “Time . . . ” he said, and appeared ready to go on, but the phone interrupted him. I got up and went to answer it.
    “Hello?”
    “You makee lice?” a screechy voice demanded.
    “What!” I said, momentarily flustered. Yamashita looked up inquiringly at the tone of my voice.
    “Yeah,” the voice continued, “I’m interested in kung-fu lessons.” Then the evil cackling started.
    “You idiot,” I told my brother Micky.
    The voice on the phone became normal, more recognizable. “Yeah, well, I tried your apartment and got no answer. I figured you’d be there.”
    “What’s up?”
    “You comin’ tomorrow?” Micky asked. It was his wife Deirdre’s birthday and the entire family would descend on his house like a cloud of Mayo locust.
    “Wouldn’t miss it,” I told him. “Why?”
    “No reason,” he told me pleasantly. Which was a lie. Micky was a cop and when he asked questions, it was for a reason. His conversation had all the subtlety of a chain saw. I promised I’d be there and we hung up.
    “Your brother the detective?” Yamashita said. His eyes glittered in the lamplight. I nodded. “He wishes to see you,” he stated in reply. It was not a question. He sat there quietly, watching me.
    I lingered over the last of the coffee, but Yamashita never picked up the thread of the conversation that had been interrupted by Micky’s call. I knew my teacher well enough to know that it wasn’t that he had forgotten, rather that he did not wish to pursue it right now. My sensei doles out knowledge on a timetable known only to himself. I had learned to accept it. I finished my drink and then I said goodnight. None the wiser about what was disturbing him, I returned home tired, but uneasy. Off in the distance, muted thunder rolled across the heavens and the air pulsed with an energy that, although unseen, made the skin along my shoulders and neck tingle in trepidation.

3
HARD END
    First Sergeant Warren Cooke had been thinking that he wished he had more tape. This was the middle of his third tour with the Special Forces and in his experience it was the little things that tripped you up. Careful preparation could mean the difference between bringing your people home safe or in pieces.
    He knew deep down that the team he had been training was almost ready to go operational. Almost. And that nagged at him. When the orders came down to get the team saddled up, he was surprised, but obeyed. He was, after all, a soldier. But he still worried.
    He had taped his equipment down and secured his pants legs and sleeves so that there would be as little noise as possible when he moved through the underbrush. In an operation of this type, noise was your enemy. Battle rattle was as dangerous as any bad guy. He had been checking his people out as well. They had tried to emulate his actions, but needed a bit more practice. He wished he had more tape.
    His A-Team had been working with the Filipino Special Forces for months now. It was the sort of training assignment that was nothing new for Special Forces troopers, but the rules of engagement in a post-9/11 world had made the work more interesting. Typically, you worked with the locals on things that were second nature in the Special Forces: stealth and fire discipline, careful planning, and cold precise execution in even the hottest of free-fire zones.