If he approached from behind and to the right, the biomechanics would be awkward for them. The distance was farther than ideal, but manageable. The problem was, the other team would see him coming. If they got off a warning, it could be bad.
But he saw no other options. He didn’t even consider leaving. He didn’t want the talker and the wingman to be killed. He wanted to know what they knew. Who was behind this whole thing. Why they had set him up.
Most of all, whether Evie and Dash were in danger.
The thought terrified him. He judged his current odds of success at about sixty-forty. And while he could accept those odds for himself, if he died, who would protect Evie and Dash?
His heart pounding uncharacteristically hard, he opened the Espada, manually depressing the folding mechanism to mute the click he knew the blade would otherwise make. He couldn’t be sure how loud the sound would be, or how far it would carry.
He felt the blade lock into place. He took a deep breath, stood, and charged from behind the corner.
Fifty feet. He raced over the wet grass, knowing there was a chance they might hear or even feel his footfalls. But he couldn’t afford stealth. Speed was everything. Speed and violence of action.
Thirty feet. Someone on the opposite team saw him and began frantically waving his arms.
Twenty feet. The three team members stopped. Checked their flanks.
Ten feet. The man farthest to the right started turning clockwise. He must have sensed Manus’s footfalls because his right shoulder began to come up, his head turtling in—
Five feet. Manus brought back the Espada like a tennis player about to hit a blistering forehand. The man kept turning, turning, his face rotating toward Manus now, his gun swinging into view—
Manus whipped in the Espada. The man’s throat and the lower part of his face were protected by his shoulder, but it didn’t matter, the blade blasted into the bridge of his nose, cut through his eyes, and sheared halfway through his skull. The man’s body convulsed and Manus yanked the blade free.
The man was falling but there was no time to wait; Manus shoved him to the right as the next man kept turning, turning, his gun coming around—
Manus brought down the Espada like a hatchet, aiming for the man’s wrist but connecting halfway up the forearm. The blade sliced through tendon, muscle, and bone. The man shrieked loudly enough for Manus to hear, and the gun, the man’s hand and wrist still attached to it, dropped to the wet grass.
The woman, the jogger, had turned her head all the way toward him. Her eyes were desperate, shocked, afraid. It meant nothing to Manus. All he cared about was the gun, and the woman had now brought it nearly all the way around—
Manus shoved the second man aside and leaped forward, to the left of the gun, smashing into the woman’s right shoulder, jamming her arm into her body, catching the nape of her neck to keep her from being thrown back by the impact. She struggled to bring the gun around and Manus launched the Espada from hip level as though he was throwing an uppercut, arcing it up under her arm and spearing it up behind her chin and into her brain. The force of the blow lifted her off the ground and for an instant her body twitched as Manus held it aloft. Then he jerked the knife the other way, and she collapsed backward, limbs twitching, insensate.
The second man was on his knees, blood spurting from the stump of his right arm, pawing for the gun with his remaining hand. Manus strode over, raised the Espada overhead like an ice pick, and plunged the point down through the back of the man’s head. The man’s face slammed into the sodden grass like a cannonball, muddy water spraying up around it. Manus jerked the blade free. The man listed left and folded to his side.
Something buzzed past Manus. He realized it was a round. An instant later there was the crack of a gunshot, loud enough for him to faintly hear. Another. A third.
The other team was shooting at him. And where he stood, there was no cover.