Chapter 39: Now Cracks a Noble Heart

There were three agents with me. From the top of the warehouse, we had clear line of sight for three miles east and south. The river was north of our position and, while we didn't have a completely clear line of sight intervening, we could see most of the dock itself and the water for a good five miles out. The west was blocked by other warehouses, but we had two-man units deployed on every other roof. With radar set up on the areas we were reasonably sure would not be at issue, I felt comfortable that we would be able to net all our participants when the time came.

The SWAT Team was waiting a quarter mile away. When the participants arrived, they would move in.

"Sir?" The headset flared to life. "We have a boat in the distance. ETA forty minutes. Over."

"Understood." I acknowledged. "Any sign of the money or the bait?"

"Bait's here, sir." Agent Howard on my left answered.

"Why wasn't I informed?" I snapped.

The three agents looked at each other. Then the only woman on the team, Rao, said 'ah'.

"The love birds. Sorry sir, habit. That blue mustang we were talking about - that's them."

I had thought the conversation was irrelevant gossip and chided them for it. "You didn't think it relevant to clarify?"

"No sir, sorry sir." She moved to the west side and pointed straight down. Carefully, I looked over.

There was a blue mustang convertible and two men passionately engaged.

"The bait." She said. "We call this 'lovers lane'; if they get to a drop early, they park back here and kill time. FBI wants the brunette; the local's have dibs on the blonde."

"I see. Are there any other code names I should be aware of?" I smiled slightly to show I wasn't too annoyed.

She smiled back. "If any come up, I'll let you know." We returned to our positions and I radioed Mokuba to update him.

There wasn't much to do at the moment. The group had already introduced themselves to me and we'd compared weapons and preferences. Everyone under my immediate command was a sharp shooter. Our basic assignment was to make sure no one left before the arrests were made. Until the rest of the actors arrived, we were simply to remain vigilant.

"You're a lot more serious than your brother, Mr. Kaiba." Rao sat next to me. "He's very impressed by you. When he talks about you, though, you seem so much older."

"I'm qualified for this assignment, if that's what you're worried about."

"Oh, that's not what I meant." She flipped her hair over her shoulder and I realized that she'd unbound it in the last few minutes. "I'm very impressed myself. You're very accomplished to be so young."

I flicked my eyes past the other two team-members. They seemed unusually attentive to their assigned posts. "Agent Rao -"

"Aileen." She supplied.

"Agent, how much about me did my brother tell you?"

"Quite a bit; I was on his security detail for a while."

I looked at her. I did have to admit that the most stunning women wound up on Mokuba's personal security team. Mine had always included stone-faced brutes. I sighed with a chuckle. "Did he happen to mention my long string of male lovers?"

She paused. "No, sir."

"Shouldn't we be on the lookout for the buyers?"

"Yes, sir." She moved back to her position and rebound her hair. After a minute, the other two began snickering. "Shut up, you idiots." She snapped without looking at them.

"Stay focused, gentlemen." I reminded them. "I give her points for trying. It's more nerve than you have, Underwood."

"Ouch." Rao snickered.

"Busted." Howard agreed.

Underwood didn't seem to respond. Instead, he grabbed his binoculars and looked into the distance. "Black caddy just turned onto 5th. Yeah, that's them." He grabbed his radio. "Money's in sight. Over."

"What's the status on that boat?"

"They're heading toward us. Should be docking in ten minutes. Six targets."

I glanced down the west side. The 'love birds' were finished and were straightening their clothes. I radioed in. "Command. This is New York. Shut the gates; I believe all of our guests have arrived. Over."

"Copy." Mokuba's voice came back. "Be careful, big bro."

I looked at my team. They were now all business. There was an occasional voice over the headset telling me where each player was as the boat docked and the drug runners arrived. Underwood watched the bait pair as they unloaded an impressive number of KaibaArms weaponry.

The bait was the first to arrive at the dock. The brunette was smoking and one of my teams was close enough for their argument about it to carry through the headsets.

"Look, you taste like a fucking ashtray." The blonde complained. "It's not sexy." They were speaking Japanese and his voice was strangely familiar. From the back, with his buzz-cut hair, he looked like my dreams of Joey.

"Je-sus! Give it a fucking break, will you? What are you, my wife? Quit nagging!" He tossed the lit cigarette to the side. "There's RastaMan. Be cool, this time, ok?"

"Yeah, Tani, I'm cool."

Tani.

How many men named 'Tani' were there? I snatched a pair of binoculars from someone, but the 'love birds' still had their backs to me. "The love birds, who are they?" I asked.

"The money is out of the car and on its way, sir." Someone said. "Four targets."

"All units: acquire targets." I ordered over the headset. "Rao, names, now!"

"I'm looking! Give me a second. Here - Diesel Hirutani and Kat Jounuchi."

I watched as the three groups converged. I still could not see the blonde man's face, but it could not be Joey, I told myself. There were billions of blondes in the world. Millions of them spoke Japanese. I was simply hypersensitive to the combination.

The criminals all seemed on edge, all looking over their shoulders as the goods switched hands. "Is the SWAT Team in place yet?" I asked over the headset. The blonde seemingly refused to look in my direction. "Stubborn damned mutt." I muttered.

"Ready and waiting, sir."

I wanted to see him first, but if I waited any longer, the criminals would have a better chance of escaping. I swore silently. "Move in." I ordered. "Take them down." I put one hand on my own rifle in case I needed it.

Ten seconds later chaos erupted. SWAT Team units poured in from all sides and a loud speaker started calling for everyone to drop their weapons and put their hands up. Someone opened fire and everyone went scrambling for cover.

And at that moment, the blonde turned and, somehow, looked directly at me.

"Joey!" I gasped. It was him. There was no mistake, no confusion. My Joey was in the center of a firefight.

How was he here? Why was he here? Why wasn't I informed of his involvement in this operation? Did Mokuba know and not tell me? My mind raced with questions as I watched Joey dive for cover and apparently argue with Hirutani. He didn't pull a gun. Was he even armed?

Then Hirutani pulled out two guns and shoved one into Joey's hands. I let out a sigh of relief as my love reluctantly cocked the semi-auto and peered around the crates behind which they had taken cover. He glanced back at his partner and took a step forward.

For no reason I could imagine, I suddenly found myself thinking of Pharaoh. Below me, Joey's body went suddenly stiff and time seemed to slow down for me. The world appeared to be going dark around me. I could still see, but dimly. I had this bizarre feeling that I should be somewhere else; that I was needed somewhere else. Joey fell forward as if he'd been shot and I felt an almost out of body experience. I felt like I was being pulled to Pharaoh.

As Joey fell in slow motion below me, Hirutani aimed his gun and fired. There was no sound around me - not the guns, not the headset, not my own cry as I watched the red blossom form on the back of Joey's shirt.

In my mind, Joey screamed. Pharaoh screamed. I screamed as I felt the burning entry in my/our shoulder, and the pain of the impact against my/our breastbone, and then the subsequent tearing of the bullet's fragments inside my/our chest.

Abruptly, reality snapped back into place and I could hear the SWAT Team calling in arrests and my team calling in all clears. Rao was next to me. I was crumpled in a heap, panting.

"Mr. Kaiba?"

I shoved her away and looked over the edge again. Joey lay on the ground, a pool of blood under him but none on his chest. Hollow points; they shatter on impact inside the body.

Hirutani was still there trading shots with the SWAT Team. A stray bullet whizzed past me. I picked up my rifle and took aim.

"Sir?" Rao sounded shocked. "We were ordered to stand down."

"Fed's need him alive, Sir." Howard added.

I put one bullet in Hirutani's wrist and he dropped his gun. I put two more in his abdomen. "He'll live." I spat. I pulled out my phone as I ran down the stairs. "I need a medical chopper at my location yesterday."

"Yes, sir!"

By the time I got to Joey's side, there was a field medic tending to him.

"Joey!" I stopped myself from shoving the man aside, but took my love's hand. "Joey, damn you, what are you doing here?" The medic had ripped open Joey's shirt; around his neck was a silk rope with the Tosa etching I had given him. With it, lay another charm - an alabaster scarab. Pharaoh once told me that scarabs were good luck charms. I desperately hoped he was right.

"Somebody get this guy out of my way!" The medic shouted.

"I'm his next of kin." I lied. "Status."

"He's been shot and he's losing blood." The man snapped. "I can't find the damn exit wound!"

"There isn't one. Hollow points." How I knew, he didn't ask and I could not have told him.

The medic stopped. "Fuck me." He sighed deeply. "I've got some morphine in the kit but that's about all I can do. We can put him on the first ambulance..." He stopped speaking as we both heard the helicopter arriving.

I started hearing chatter and realized that I was still wearing the headset. I couldn't manage to focus on what was being said although my team was frantic about an unknown person suddenly appearing.

"By Ra!" Pharaoh knelt down next to me. "Dragon!"

How Pharaoh got there - how he even knew how to find me - was lost on me.

He had called Joey 'Dragon' a thousand times in my dreams.

"You've been having an affair with him?" I asked, not really caring at the moment. Still holding Joey's hand.

It was cold.

Pharaoh didn't respond as he took Joey's other hand and began praying. "Anubis, please stay your hand!" Then, he began whispering in Coptic, leaning against Joey and weeping. I reached across Joey and put one arm around Pharaoh; there would be time for anger and accusations later. We waited for the medics with the stretcher. We rode in the helicopter with him.

The nearest trauma center was fifteen minutes away, the longest minutes of my life. They managed to stop the bleeding from the visible wounds in route. They treated the graze on my face; I hadn't noticed the injury and wouldn't have let them touch it if there was anything they could have done for Joey. Pharaoh wept inconsolably beside me. I held him as if it brought either of us any comfort.

"What have I done?" He asked occasionally. "Oh by Ra, what have I done?"

At the hospital, Joey's lung collapsed and the emergency medical team fought to re-inflate that before they could begin to look at the bullet wounds. Pharaoh and I were pushed aside until I demonstrated enough knowledge about Joey to fill out the necessary paperwork to admit him. I did so under his real name - Wheeler Joseph. The name he was born with.

The name he should die with.

While I was trying to stop shaking long enough to write legibly, an ambulance arrived with another trauma case. This one had several police officers with him and, to my surprise, several KaibaSecurity officers as well. One of them recognized me. "Boss." He bowed deeply.

"Who is that?" I hadn't heard that we had casualties on our side. Then again, I may not have been listening at the time.

"One of the men we arrested today, sir. The Americans want to save him so that that can put him in jail." The officer's expression eloquently told me what he thought of that.

I nodded and took a breath. "How many casualties did the operation sustain? I haven't heard yet."

"None for our unit, Sir. NYPD had six wounded - all SWAT Team - and the US Federal agents had none here, but I understand that things were worse in other cities. Of our twelve targets, eight sustained injuries. The worst two are here."

"Gunshot wounds, I presume."

He nodded. "One of the snipers got this one, sir. Two in the belly, one to his gun hand."

"I ... see." Hirutani. They should have let him rot where he fell. "And the other one?"

"I don't know. He was air lifted out first." Someone called the officer's name and I let him go back to his post.

Joey was still being considered one of the criminal targets. Once he was well, I would fix that. Once he was well, I would fix everything. I would take him home. I would show him how dear he was. How precious he was. I would give him anything he wanted. I would give him the world.

One of the doctors stopped to me. "Excuse me, you're with Joey Wheeler; does he have any other family or friends?"

"Many." I whispered.

"You may want to call them. If they can get here, soon, they may be able to see him."

My hand was shaking as I pulled out my phone. I had fifteen missed calls from Mokuba. The phone rang again as I was looking at it.

"Brother." I said.

"Oh thank God! Nii-sama, where are you?"

"Trauma center. I - I don't know which."

"Fuck!" he swore. "Are you - are you -?"

"It's not me." I couldn't hold back the tears any longer. "It's Joey."

"Who?"

"Wheeler Joey." I gasped. "He was there, brother, one of the love birds."

He said something to someone with him that I didn't catch. "Keep talking. I've got you on GPS. You're at Bellevue Trauma Center; that's the same place they take NYPD when they get shot in the line of duty. They know what they're doing there, ok? I'm on my way."

"He's dying, Baba."

"Not Wheeler, he's tougher than that. He'll be fine. You'll see. Seto, I've got to hang up for a sec. I'll call you right back, ok? Like two minutes."

I hung up. He had things to do.

I had things to do. I should call Kawai-san. Honda. Yugi. I couldn't make myself dial any of them. I turned off the phone.

Someone touched my arm. "Excuse me." The young woman's face was tear-streaked. "I know this is odd, but are you Japanese?"