Four to One

Jake had read enough about the movement, though, to have come across rumors that within the groups—terrorist cells, if somebody wanted to call them what they really were—individuals had been planted by the liberal billionaires who funded such madness. Men and women with military, paramilitary, and mercenary backgrounds who had done things that would make the kids cry and wet themselves just to think about. They were there to keep the useful idiots in line, to make sure they showed up where they were supposed to and rioted right on cue, and also to take care of any actual dirty business that came up.

Like getting rid of a former army Ranger who, for some reason, they considered more of a threat than he really was. Hell, Jake thought, all he wanted was to be left alone. If they would do that, he would be alternately disgusted and amused by the kids’ antics but would largely ignore them, as long as they ignored him.

But that wasn’t to be. These guys were actual threats, and the odds were four to one. Jake was willing to bet they were armed, probably with pipes. Maybe they wouldn’t kill him, but they would beat him damn close to the point of death.

[...]

The men behind him closed in first. Jake had to turn to meet their attack, which cost him a fraction of a second.

But he was fast enough to overcome that and darted aside from the pipe that streaked down toward his head with deadly force. It almost got his shoulder, which could have been disastrous, but it barely missed and raked down the outside of his upper right arm instead.
The hooded men hadn’t been lurking here in the shadows, waiting for him, just so they could beat him up. They meant to kill him. Just because he hadn’t eagerly swallowed and regurgitated their line of political bull. “Wrongthink” was a capital offense in their minds.
Well, despite his promise to Frank McRainey, Jake was in no mood right now to pull any punches himself.

The man who had just tried to crack his skull open was off balance because the blow had missed. As he stumbled forward a little, Jake kicked him in the right kneecap and heard the bone pop. The man screeched in pain under the hood. Jake gave him a hard, two-handed shove in the chest that sent him flying back into his partner.

In a continuation of the same move, Jake launched himself off the sidewalk, hit the grass, somersaulted over, and came up on his feet again. That took him out of easy reach of the two who had been in front of him, including the spokesman for the attackers.

They were still close, though, and they came at him fast, veering apart to come at him from different angles. Jake could tell by the way they moved that they’d had some training, maybe military, maybe police academy. Or else their group, funded by liberal money, had paid somebody with experience to teach them a few things.

Jake went down again, used a leg sweep to take one man’s legs out from under him, and rolled to avoid the pipe wielded by the other one. He came up, blocked an attempted backhand with his right forearm, and hammered his left fist into the hooded face.

The guy’s head rocked back. Jake stepped in, slid his right arm under the man’s right arm, got his left hand on the elbow, and broke it with a hard, pinching twist. The man said, “Ahhh!” and dropped the pipe. It thudded to the ground at Jake’s feet.

He dived again and snatched up the fallen pipe as he rolled over. He brought it up just in time to block another swipe. The pipes clanged together loudly. Would that be enough to make somebody call the campus cops and report it? Jake didn’t know, and he didn’t want to wind up in McRainey’s office yet again tonight, so he figured it would be best to wrap this up quickly.

The two men he still faced might have something to say about that, however. Broken Kneecap and Broken Elbow were out of the fight, but their comrades swarmed Jake as he scrambled to his feet, slashing with the pipes they held. He was forced to give ground, as for a moment it was all he could do to block the blows aimed at him. The pipes rang together like an anvil chorus.

One of the blows got through and slammed against Jake’s side. Pain exploded through him. He didn’t think it broke a rib, but it hurt like hell, that was for sure, and made him stumble. Both attackers surged forward to seize this momentary advantage.

Jake’s back bumped against something, stopping him. One of the trees in Nafziger Plaza, he realized. In a way, he was grateful for that. It protected his back, so one of the hooded men couldn’t circle and try to come at him from that direction.

And it meant that this was where he would make his stand. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace.

“Come on, you sons of bitches,” he said.

They redoubled their attack, but that frenzied effort proved to be a mistake. As much as anything else, they got in each other’s way, and during the split second when they were trying to recover from that awkwardness, Jake sensed as much as saw an opening and lashed out with the pipe in his hand.

It landed on a man’s right shoulder and brought a cry of pain. Jake flicked the pipe up and to the right in a short, sharp backhand that traveled only a few inches but packed enough force to break the man’s jaw. Jake heard bone crunch under the impact. It was a satisfying sound.

As the injured man sagged, Jake kicked his feet out from under him. The man toppled over into his companion, just as Jake intended. That man shoved Broken Jaw away and started to retreat. In fact, the sudden prospect of an even fight didn’t seem to appeal to him at all.

He turned and ran.

Jake could have let him go, but that thought never occurred to him. He took off after the guy.

They had surrounded him like jackals eager to pull down a helpless victim and feast.

But not all “victims” were helpless. And they weren’t even victims.

They were hunters and killers.

The fleeing man hadn’t reached the sidewalk when Jake left his feet in a flying tackle from behind his quarry. He crashed into the man and brought him down. Both of them landed hard. The jolt sent fresh explosions of pain from Jake’s battered side through the rest of his body.

The man had tried to escape, but that didn’t mean all the fight had gone out of him. He brought an elbow back and around and slammed it against Jake’s jaw. That gave him enough wiggle room to squirm free.

When he had a little distance between them, he aimed a kick at Jake’s face. Jake saw it coming and grabbed the man’s foot, stopping the kick before it could land. He gave the foot a hard wrench that forced the man to roll over.

Jake tried to pounce on the man’s back. If he could get the guy in a sleeper hold, this fight would be over in a hurry. The man kept moving, though, and avoided Jake’s dive. This time the kick he pistoned out landed on Jake’s upper left arm and twisted him around. That arm went numb for a moment and hung uselessly from his shoulder, so he couldn’t use it to block the blow when the man clubbed both hands together and swung them with stunning force at Jake’s head.

The two-handed blow caught him above the left ear and stretched him out. It was a good thing his skull was so thick, he thought vaguely as he tried to recover. Before he could do so, the man landed on him and dug a knee into his belly. That didn’t do any damage to the slabs of muscle there, but it did force the air from Jake’s lungs and disorient him a little more.

He got his right hand up, planted it on the man’s face. The hand slid because of the hood. Jake dug his fingers into it and ripped upward. The hood came off.

The shadows in the plaza were so thick Jake still couldn’t see his enemy’s face, but he could feel the guy’s hot breath panting on him now. He threw the hood aside, grabbed the man’s hair at the back of his head, and jackknifed his body in the middle so he could head-butt the guy in the face. Cartilage crunched and blood spurted as the man’s nose flattened under the impact.

That stunned him enough for Jake to grab his shoulders and fling him aside. Both of Jake’s arms were working well enough now that he was able to grab the man’s right leg and lever it up until something gave with a sharp snap. The man let out a thin shriek of agony that Jake choked off with a hand around his throat.

Jake hovered over him and increased the pressure. The man was in too much pain from his broken or dislocated hip to fight back anymore, but the lack of air and the desperate need to breathe made him spasm ineffectively.

“I could kill you right now, you know that, don’t you?” Jake said in a hoarse half-whisper. “All it would take to crush your windpipe is a little more pressure. Then I could walk away and you’d lay there and suffocate, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do to stop it.”

Instead of doing that, Jake eased up a little. The man gasped in some air.

Then used it to rasp, “F-Fascist!”

Jake squeezed again.

“Are you really that stupid? You think a real fascist, a real Nazi, would let you live right now? I’ve been listening to you idiots for years now, yammering about how any politician you don’t like is literally Hitler. When all along it’s been your side that’s been acting like the brownshirts and going after anybody who doesn’t agree with you! Free speech! But only if it’s speech you approve of, speech that fits your precious narrative! Anything else gets shut down, with violence if need be. Hell, you like the violence. Makes you feel big and powerful. Punching Nazis feels great . . . only you’re the Nazis.” Jake lifted the guy’s head by the throat and banged it against the ground. “Are you listening to me? Damn it, you’ve got me so mad I’m the one who’s yammering now. So just listen to this: if the other side was as bad as you believe it is, if we wanted death camps, then by God, we’d have death camps by now. But we’re still willing to live and let live, if you’ll just let us. If you won’t . . . well, do you want a civil war? Because that’s how you get a civil war. And it won’t be nearly as much fun as you think it will be.”

The guy wasn’t struggling anymore. Jake didn’t know whether he’d heard all of that. He was a little disgusted with himself for running off at the mouth that way. But his side hurt, and he was frustrated and angered by the sheer stupidity and cognitive dissonance of almost everything he had seen and heard since coming to Kelton College.

Then he hoped he hadn’t killed the guy. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over it—the four hooded men had been trying to kill him, after all, and he felt justified in using deadly force against them in return. But if this one, or any of the others, were dead, it could sure as hell turn out to be a hassle.

He let go of the man’s neck and was relieved to hear the rough breaths in his throat. Jake stood up and looked around. The plaza remained dark and quiet. The fight hadn’t been loud enough to make anybody call the cops. That was good, because Jake didn’t think he could stomach another encounter with Cal Granderson tonight.

- Chapters 5 to 6