The Last Assassin

the Chinese, his hand going to his jacket.
    There was another soft crack. Instead of reaching into his jacket, the sumo cried out and grabbed his neck.
    The C0 2 cartridges produced no muzzle flash. And in the dark and rain, it was impossible to tell where the sounds of fire had come from, or even what they were.
    The sumos were both staggering now. The Chinese were all watching with the internationally approved expression for
What the fuck?
frozen on their faces.
    The first sumo sank to his knees. The other stumbled into him and tripped. The Chinese scattered, and the falling sumo landed on his partner like a tree felled by a logger. The ground shook with the impact, and, as one, the Chinese cried out and pulled out machine pistols. They pointed them first at the sumo pile, then, their higher brains perhaps getting a word in edgewise, started looking around wildly, their eyes wide in the dark.
    I put the infrared laser on the head of the man farthest from me. I saw the dot clearly in the night-vision goggles. Without the goggles, I knew, the dot was invisible. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and rolled my trigger finger in.
    Pffttt.
The .45 round caught him in the side of the head and he flopped soundlessly forward onto the ground.
    Pffttt.
The second guy went down the same way.
    The third guy looked at his fallen comrades. Then, possibly realizing what had happened, he started to wheel around toward me.
    Too late. I shot him in the head, too, and he collapsed beside the others.
    I scanned the beach. A few meters away the sumos were still piled one on top of the other, both facedown. I realized with a start that the guy on the bottom might be suffocating. His face was in the mud, and large as he was, that was a hell of a load bearing down on him from above. If he suffocated, this wasn't going to look the way we needed it to look. I signaled to Dox to come in, and started wading ashore.
    I walked up from behind and prodded them each with a wet boot. No response. Okay, they were out. I secured the HK in the holster and felt under their jackets. The lead guy had reached for something at one point, so I knew they were carrying. There it was, a pistol in his unending waistband. I pulled it out and flung it into the surf, then, in spite of all the folds of flesh, managed to repeat the operation for the other guy.
    I grabbed the top guy's wrist. I pulled hard but it was like trying to uproot a tree.
    Shit, the bottom guy was definitely eating mud. I pulled hard again. Again he didn't budge.
    A moment later, Dox reached my position. 'Nice shooting,' he said. 'One shot, one kill. Or in this case three shots, three kills.'
    'Give me a hand with this guy,' I said, still trying to pull the sumo by the wrist. 'I think he's smothering the one underneath him.'
    'Ah, shit.' Dox dropped the tranquilizer rifle and grabbed the sumo by the arm. We managed to pull him partly off his partner, but not enough. I squatted down and lifted the bottom guy's head off the ground. His eyes were shut and his face was covered with mud. I couldn't tell if he was breathing.
    'If that boy needs resuscitating, you can count me out,' Dox said from behind me.
    I put my ear near the sumo's mouth but couldn't hear anything. 'He's still getting crushed. We've got to move the one on top. Roll him or something.'
    'Shit, man, I'd rather try moving that Cadillac back there.'
    'I'm serious, goddamnit. We can't have one of these guys dead from suffocation. It won't fit.'
    Dox moved up alongside me and we both grabbed the back of the top guy's coat. The material was slippery with rain and mud and it was hard to get a solid grip. I thought,
Worst case, if he's dead, we grab one of the machine pistols and shoot him. Then it'll look like he died in a gunfight with the Chinese and his partner got away with the money and drugs. Not as good as three dead triads and two missing yakuza, but not a total loss, either.
    I looked at Dox. 'One, two, three!'
    We pulled. The inert mass of the sumo pulled back. The inert mass won.
    'Now there's a quality garment for you,' Dox said. 'For a second there, about four hundred pounds were suspended by nothing but raincoat.'
    'Again. One, two…'
    With a berserker yell, the sumo rolled over and seized my wrist in one massive paw. Whether he'd been playing possum or had come to suddenly, I didn't know. I yelled, 'Fuck!' and tried to jerk away, but I might as well have been a child.
    Dox reacted instantly. He took a long step back and