Read Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) for Free Online Page A

us.”
    “Shhh!” Luka held his hand up.
    Adele’s laughter evaporated. The light on her face went hard, rage bright. A change so fast, so jarring, that Luka’s breath rattled his throat. “Don’t you
shhh
me—”
    “No,” he said, trying to keep his voice low as he reached for his Luger. “Listen.”
    Both Luka and Adele stared into the desert.
    All was dark. All was silent. The Mediterranean was gone, along with its
hush, hushing
waves. There was no
shift-slide
of sand that meant footsteps. Had Luka’s mind been playing tricks on him? He could’ve sworn he heard movement.…
    After several minutes Adele stated the obvious. “I don’t hear anything.”
    They were still shoulder to shoulder. An odd pairing, if anyone was eavesdropping. Luka moved away, even though he wanted to do anything but. (Amazing, how such a small point of contact could pin you so heavily. He really had to
pull
to get the brown jacket away from the black.)
    “Could be nothing,” he said. “I’ll take the first watch tonight.”
    Adele opened her mouth to respond when the desert screamed back. Luka leapt to his feet—pistol pointed forward. The darkness didn’t budge, but the yells kept coming from some distance on, in the direction of Yokuto’s or Katsuo’s camp.
    No gunshots. No death shrieks. Just Japanese.
    “Sounds like a sabotage gone south,” Adele said.
    “You understand Japanese?”
That
could be helpful when it came to eavesdropping on Katsuo at checkpoints.
    The fräulein shook her head. “Just the curse words. Whoever’s shouting is using a lot of them.”
    Curse words: the most essential part of any foreign language learning experience.
Now that she mentioned it, Luka could hear a few
kuso
s and
baka ka
s being tossed around. He wondered if Takeo’s knife had slipped. Could be that it wasn’t one of Katsuo’s cronies at all. Maybe Kobi Yokuto had an ally no one had accounted for and was trying to sabotage his way into first.…
    The shouts faded. The desert plunged back into silence.
    Luka and Adele stood apart. Listening.
    Swish, swish!
Darkness streaked in darkness, disappearing just as quickly as it came. Whoever initiated the attack had survived in enough shape to retreat, which was more than some racers from previous years could say (if the dead could talk). Luka kept his Luger high, in case the steps backtracked, but they didn’t. And they didn’t. And they didn’t.

    Katsuo and his Zündapp were still intact, as Luka was disgruntled to discover the next morning. They were better than intact. They were
fast
. Last night’s events had thrust a bunch of stinging nettles beneath Katsuo’s
Arsch
. His driving was daring, leaving no room for mistakes. It was an unprecedented pace. The Japanese victor was trying to shave off a half day of driving (and the night’s camp along with it), risking life and limb to reach Baghdad by nightfall. Luka strained to keep pace through the constant screen of dust.
    Kobi Yokuto—also intact—wove ahead of Luka, following Katsuo’s line of drive: in, out, around, about. Yokuto’s driving was jerky. There was a rage to his engines, one that built up and up as the afternoon pulled into the evening’s golden hours.
    Just as Baghdad’s lights began blinking to life on the horizon, Yokuto made his move for first. His scarlet taillight swung to the side; his motorcycle bellowed up the road—faster, faster, furious—until he was even with Katsuo. The victor matched the frenzy of Yokuto’s engines, refusing to let the other Japanese racer pass. Rpm for rpm. Grit for grit. Luka could keep up, but three years of racing this track warned him not to.
    Rash speed + rough road = road rash.
    Yokuto’s taillight snapped up, as if the night had swooped down and snatched the bike in its talons. Luka clenched his brakes, swerving to the left as Yokuto’s rear wheel arced impossibly high. The pothole kept the Zündapp as a prize, hurling its rider forward in a bomb cloud of