Rules of the Hunt (14 page)
"Hugo," he said, "are you sure you're ready for this?
You're still a very sick fellow."
Fitzduane looked at him long and hard, eyes blazing.
"Shane," he said deliberately, the words punched out,
"they nearly killed Boots.
I saw
the back of my son's head open up and his lifeblood pour out.
I thought he was dead.
Next time they could succeed.
Don't fuck with me.
You're my friend.
Help me.
These" — he paused now, shaking with emotion and weakness,
searching for the right word — "these vermin have to be found, fixed, and
destroyed.
And I will do it, with or
without your help."
"Found, fixed and destroyed."
The military phrase brought back a flood of memories to Kilmara.
Fitzduane as a young
lieutenant in the
His first recon mission.
The brutal firefight that
had followed.
Other
missions.
Other
demonstrations of his effectiveness at the skills of deadly force.
The man had a natural talent for combat.
But then, that was his heritage.
Kilmara picked his words to ease the tension.
"There were three men who attacked you," he said.
"Unfortunately, all were killed.
Their identification papers were all
false.
Their clothing had been recently
purchased and revealed nothing.
There
were no distinguishing marks."
Fitzduane still looked at him.
It
has been three weeks, the look implied.
"The one characteristic they all had in common was that they were
Asian, or at least looked Asian.
More
specifically, they looked Japanese," continued Kilmara.
"We put in an inquiry worldwide through
Interpol and specifically to
We trawled through other sources as we normally do when a terrorist
profile is involved.
And we phone our
friends and called in a few favors and otherwise did a little rousting along
the
"And?" said Fitzduane.
"The replies have been a little slow in coming.
Of course, Interpol is not renowned for its
reflexes and the Japanese are likely to chew things over before they
swallow.
Finally, it emerged that the
three were members of a right-wing extremist group that had supposedly been
broken up nearly three years back.
Our
three had been locked up on some technicality but were released about eight
months ago."
"The timing is about right," said Fitzduane.
The motive would have stemmed from his
encounter with Kadar, the Hangman.
If
this was a revenge mission, he would have expected it to happen earlier.
The designated hitters' being out of
circulation at the Japanese government's pleasure could explain the
timing.
"But why
Japanese?"
"The only thing," said
Kilmara,
"is that according to
"And why not?" said Fitzduane.
"They are supposed to be in the
said Kilmara cheerfully.
"That's
what the computer said.
But what do
computers know?
More to the point, there
is a slightly strange rhythm to the way some of the other sources have been
responding.
Silence,
then the absolute minimum, and then a veritable feast.
It's as if some people have figured out that
we might be able to make a contribution to their particular game.
As to
who
these
people are..."
He looked at Fitzduane with some concern.
The man was looking decidedly strange.
"Hugo," he inquired tactfully, "
are
you sure you want to get into this?"
"Aahh!" said Fitzduane, in what sounded like a long sigh of
understanding or acknowledgment.
"Adeline says that sometimes," said Kilmara cheerfully,
"and I'm never quite sure if it's good or bad.
It's a contextual noise."
"Aahh!" said Fitzduane again.
He was propped up by pillows in an uncomfortable-looking hospital
bed.
He had turned frighteningly
pale.
Now he leaned forward, as if
propelled from the back, and was violently sick.
Kilmara hit the emergency
button,
conscious that
even medical help would be delayed for precious seconds by the security he had
put in position.
To
die because of your own security, what an irony.
Hugo would certainly appreciate that.
He looked at his friend.
Fitzduane
had sunk back against his pillows.
He
was now more green than pale.
"Apologies," he muttered.
His eyes closed and he slid to one side, unconscious.
Some color came back into his cheeks.
The door burst open and white-clad bodies filled the room.
Fortunately, they seemed to know what they
were doing.
It's not nice being shot, thought Kilmara; it's not nice at all.
And it's about basic things we don't like to
think about — like the spilling of blood and the discharge of mucus, and
splintered bone and traumatized flesh and time and pain.
The room smelled of vomit and things medical.
But there wasn't the faintest trace of the
smell that accompanies the passing of a life, the reminder of each and every
human's mortality.
The air was clean of
the smell of fear.
Kilmara, sitting in the visitor's armchair, temporarily ignored by the
focused emergency team, felt immensely relieved.
He knew at that moment that Fitzduane was
really
going to make it.
Hope became certainty.
He felt curiously weak, as the reaction to
endless days of tension set in.
He
wanted to laugh or cry or shout out loud, or just lie down and sleep.
His face showed no change of expression.
An intern turned around to get something from a nurse and noticed
Kilmara.
The intern had been on duty for
some ridiculous length of time and was tired, unshaven, irritable, and short on
words.
"Out," he ordered.
"You there — get out of here."
"Get out of here,
General
,"
said Kilmara agreeably.
He exited.
Fitzduane was clearly
back in the ballgame, but it was going to take a little time before he became a
serious player.
But,
knowing his friend, not too long.
*
*
*
*
*
January 24
Wearing fatigues to avoid the distinctive smell of propellant clinging to
her street clothes, Chifune shot for forty-five minutes on the Koancho Number
Three internal range, working mostly under low-light conditions.
She fired at least a hundred rounds a day five days a week to keep her
edge.
The work demanded total concentration.
The scenarios she had selected to be projected on the target screen
covered hostage-taking and similar complex situations where, apart from shooting
accurately, only brief seconds — and sometimes even less — were allowed in
which to determine who were the targets and who were the victims.
The poor light made the work even harder, but
she was practicing this way because it was the nearest thing to the environment
where she was going next.
She practiced both with and without an optical sight.
The EPC subminiature optical sight, of
British design — the
allowed her to keep both eyes open, and replaced the conventional sight with a
prismatically induced red dot which automatically adjusted to the infrared
level of ambient light.
The sight was
passive — it did not project a line of red light like a laser sight — so it was
ideal for covert operation.
It was
proving to be particularly effective under low-light conditions.
The optics gathered the light like a pair of
high-quality binoculars, and where the large red dot was placed, so went the
rounds.
Using the EPC optical sight on her Beretta, Chifune found she could aim
and fire accurately — hitting a nine-inch plate at twenty meters — in one third
of a second.
The qualifying standard was
double that time.
Chifune Tanabu was an exceptional shooter.
*
*
*
*
*
Adachi was going through the standard checklists that were used for a
murder investigation and then updating his personal operational plan on his
word processor.
The investigation of the last few weeks seemed to indicate that Hodama
had met everyone and been everywhere.
And he had lived too damn long.
The classic routines of interviewing all friends and acquaintances and
cross-checking their
stories was
taking forever.
And as for trying to work out who had
a
motive
to kill him,
well, who didn't?
Hodama had schemed and
manipulated and bribed and double-crossed all his life.
His list of enemies must be endless.
Somewhere, Hodama must have records.
The house was clean and, more
important,
there
was no indication that any volume of papers had been removed.
There were no empty shelves or open filing
cabinets or safes with doors open.
No,
Adachi was of the opinion that he had kept his goodies elsewhere.
He was a devious, cautious son of a bitch,
and that would be in character.
Alternatively, the place had been sanitized by a true professional; and
that in itself was food for thought.
They had discovered the security video — the recorder had taped all the
comings and goings at Hodama's house — but could not read it.
Evidently, Hodama liked to keep a permanent
record of his visitors, but in such a way that it was secure.
The video recording was scrambled and needed
a decoder to work.
Right now, the
technical boys were trying to decode the thing.
It was bloody frustrating; they might have a complete recording of the
killers, but they could not view it.
But
why had the killers not removed the tapes?
Elsewhere, their preparation had been so meticulous.
Would they slip up on a visual record?
For some reasons of their own, did they
deliberately want to leave a record?
"Boss!" shouted Fujiwara.
Adachi looked up.
Inspector Fujiwara was waving his telephone handset around and
grinning.
"Progress.
We turned over the homes of all of Hodama's
people, and we've hit pay dirt at Morinaga's."
"Who the fuck is Morinaga?" said Adachi.
He was tired and felt drowned in paper.
Reports written on the heat-sensitive paper
used by the built-in printers of the little word processors used throughout
Japanese officialdom seemed to be curled up everywhere, interspersed with even
curlier faxes.
Adachi longed for good,
old-fashioned plain paper.
Apart from
being horrible to handle, heat-sensitive paper had an annoying habit of fading
when exposed to direct sunlight.
He
could just see the crucial report.
"And the murderer is..." fading as he looked.
"Harumi Morinaga was one of the Hodama bodyguards shot inside the
house," said Fujiwara.
"He
took a burst in the torso and a couple in the neck.
Kind of a slight physique
for his line of work.
Aged mid-twenties."
Adachi flipped through the file.
He knew most of the victims through the photos taken as they lay
dead.
They were the ones that left the
most vivid impressions.
Somehow, the
pictures collected afterward of a victim while still alive seemed to have an
air of unreality.
The real thing, the
most memorable image — the most recent picture — was that of the corpse.
He nodded at Fujiwara as he found the bloody
mess that had been Morinaga.