Rules of the Hunt (62 page)
"Slowly, around a thousand
B.C.
,
iron replaced bronze and the leaf shape became a little narrower and the short,
broad-bladed weapon carried by the Roman legionaries, the Spanish sword,
emerged.
This was about two feet long
and two inches wide, and it was state of the art at the time.
It was designed primarily for thrusting.
It was long enough to allow close-in work
when carrying a shield, but no so long it bent or got in the way of your
neighbor.
It was worn on the right side
for a quick draw unencumbered by the shield, and it was light, compact, and
deadly.
In contrast, the Gauls had long,
slashing swords.
Throughout the history
of sword fighting, there has been a debate about whether the sword is primarily
a thrusting or cutting weapon.
Well, the
Romans liked the point, and their empire lasted longer than most.
They had a saying:
Duas
uncias in puncta mortalis
est
, which is worth
remembering even today.
‘Two inches in
the right spot is fatal.’
The thrust, in
my opinion, expressed over two thousand years after the Romans came to the same
conclusion, is still the most deadly technique for a sword."
The
yakuza
sensei
was looking impatient.
The
gaijin
had backed away
slowly but continually, and he would soon be off the wooden floor and onto the
tatami
mats where visitors sat.
Still, he could not retreat much longer.
Two
yakuza
guards with slung Uzis and drawn katanas stood against the wall.
They would soon prod this cowardly foreigner
back into action.
There has been some mystery about what had happened during the abortive
hit on Yasukini-dori outside the
gaijin
's
fighting prowess.
It was now clear that
the
gaijin
had had nothing to do with
his escape.
The police must have
intervened unexpectedly and it was as simple as that.
"The Romans were primarily infantry," Fitzduane's father had
said.
"After they lost high ground,
cavalry in the form of Attila the Hun and the Goths, for example, became the
dominant arm for a while, and swords became longer and more used for
cutting.
You needed a long sword if you
were going to fight from a horse, and using the point if you are a horseman is
near impossible.
From a horse, you
slash.
The point only comes into play
with a spear or lance, and even then it is largely limited to one kill.
A pointed weapon sticks in its victim, and if
you are on a horse, either you let go or else you get thrown."
Kei Namaka stepped forward, his face red with anger.
"Fitzduane-
san
, what you are doing is not permissible.
You must not retreat over the
tatami
mats.
It is not proper.
Fighting must be confined to the wooden floor.
If you do not follow the rules, I shall order
my men to cut you down.
Frankly, you are
a great disappointment."
Fitzduane stopped retreating, as if unsure what to do next.
His shoulders were bent and he was carrying
his sword low.
There was a decided aura
of defeat about him.
He looked around,
and the two
yakuza
wall guards
brandished their weapons and made it clear that if he retreated any more, he
would be killed.
It was an imminent
threat.
The guards were only a couple of
paces behind him.
He was barely out of
sword range.
He remembered his father again.
"From the end of the
wide-bladed, and heavy — and used primarily for slashing.
This was the case whether horsemen or
infantry were involved.
Either way, a
long heavy weapon was favored.
Disciplined fighting in shielded, mutually protecting lines,
Roman-style, was no longer practiced, and a long heavy weapon was deemed
necessary to cut through armor and had the added advantage of keeping your
enemy a reasonable distance away.
"Armor," Fitzduane's father had continued, "became
somewhat redundant when guns were introduced in the fourteenth century, and
evolving technology, thanks in no small part to the Arabs, found a way of
making swords thinner and lighter.
And
so, in the sixteenth century, the rapier emerged.
It was a lighter, narrow, two-edge-bladed
weapon with a primary emphasis on killing with the point."
Fitzduane looked up, first at Hitai and then at Kei Namaka.
"Namaka-
san
," he said.
"What we are doing is insane.
All of this" — he made a gesture encompassing all in the
dojo
— "is unnecessary.
The result can only be death and
imprisonment.
Why?
Why?
It's pointless.
Even if you
succeed in killing me, there are others who know what I know."
Kei Namaka's initial anger turned to a black, sullen rage.
The
gaijin
's
behavior was no longer merely inappropriate.
It was embarrassing.
It was
causing him, the chairman of the Namaka Corporation, to lose face.
It was an unendurable humiliation.
He made a gesture of contempt.
"Kill the
gaijin
," he said in Japanese, "and
take
your time about it."
20
June 28
Because of its involvement in defense, Namaka Special Steels was a
restricted military area, so Chifune ordered the Koancho pilot to circle the
rooftop landing zone twice, while announcing that this was a special police
inspection through the loudspeaker.
Half a dozen armed uniformed guards could be seen on the roof and a small
control tower doubtless held more, so she did not want a hot landing if it
could possibly be avoided.
The helicopter was in Tokyo MPD livery, and police authority was
respected in
so she did not expect any serious difficulty in actually landing.
Whether she would be able to get much further
than the roof was another question, but she would worry about that after they
had touched down.
Normally, her Koancho
credentials could get her into just about anywhere.
The security service was held in some awe.
The reaction from the guards was unexpected.
The helicopter was energetically waved away
and then a booming amplified voice from the ground announced:
“Warning.
This is a restricted area.
Do not
try to land or we will open fire.
I
repeat.
Do not try to land or we will
open fire.”
Chifune and Oga looked at each other in shock.
This was unprecedented.
"Extraordinary," muttered Oga.
What was nearly violence-free
when guards on a steel plant could threaten an official aircraft with lethal
force?
Respect for authority was going
to hell.
"Decidedly odd, Sergeant-
san
,"
said Chifune.
She ordered the pilot to
circle again, and perused the landing pad through a pair of pintle-mounted,
high-power, gyroscopically stabilized glasses.
Because of the vibration inherent in their design, helicopters were
terrible things to use binoculars from, but the gyro stabilization made all the
difference.
The picture was rock-steady
and, magnified fifteen times, the guards looked nearly close enough to touch.
She pushed the glasses on their mount over to Oga.
Koancho has all the latest surveillance toys,
he reflected, as he focused the instrument on a group of guards below.
Suddenly, the strange reaction of the guards
made sense.
"
Yakuza
," he said forcefully.
"I recognize some of the faces.
These cannot be proper Japanese Defense Agency-cleared guards.
These people are criminals.
What are they doing here?"
"I expect the Namakas know the answer to that," said Chifune
grimly.
She called up Koancho control, transmitted a picture of the faces below
in real time to the duty officer, and called for backup.
A voice in reply told her not to try to land
until reinforcements arrived.
She
started to argue,
then
noticed that a panel on top of
the control tower had opened and several guards carrying something had
emerged.
The video link with control was
still running.
There was a brief warning
cry from the horrified duty officer, and then a line of red tracer stabbed into
the sky toward them and the radio went dead.
A line of holes appeared in the cabin fuselage and Detective Sakado
spasmed in his seat belt, as two heavy .50-caliber rounds punched through his
side and blew the best part of one lung and half his rib cage out of the front
of his body.
The helicopter dropped like a stone and sideslipped over the roof, as the
pilot implemented immediate evasive action away from the line of tracer.
It was a reflex action and effective in that
it was unexpected, but it brought them closer to the control tower.
A second burst from the .50 punched through the airspace they had just left,
but then a third burst caught the tail rotor.
The helicopter started to spin on its own axis, but they were now so
close to the roof landing area that they hit almost immediately.
There was the sound of screaming metal as the skids dragged across the
metal grating of the landing area, showering sparks everywhere, and then the
rotors disintegrated as the wrecked machine came to a halt against the base of
the control tower.
The impact had been severe, but the short drop made it far from fatal,
and the slide across the pad had dissipated much of the energy.
Strapped in as they were, Chifune and the
surviving detectives were bruised and shaken but otherwise unharmed.
Immediately, they scrambled out of the cabin
door and took shelter at the base of the tower away from where the helicopter
had impacted.
The pilot tried to follow
them, but just as he was climbing out, the fuel tanks blew and engulfed the near
side of the control tower and much of the landing pad in burning fuel and
red-hot debris.
A guard staggered toward them.
A
long piece of rotor blade had hit him in the back as he ran away from the
crashing helicopter, and as they watched he pitched forward, thick blood
spewing from his mouth.
A figure peeled over the roof parapet of the control tower.
They were too close to the base of the tower
for the .50-caliber to be brought to bear on them, but the guard had a
submachine gun and was bringing it to the point of aim as Chifune fired.
The guard jerked and blood sprayed from him
as the burst cut him open, then he pitched over the parapet edge and crashed to
the ground beside them.
Chifune crawled toward the body.
They had to take out the heavy-machine-gun team on the control tower
roof, and she needed grenades.
Her
effort was in vain.
The guard had
none.
Her movement attracted the
attention of other guards firing from a doorway about fifty meters away.
Rounds cracked over her head and smashed into
the base of the tower behind her.
Sergeant Oga and Detective Renako mounted a furious hail of fire in
reply, and under its cover Chifune crawled back to where they were.
Effectively, they were pinned down in
a crossfire
between the guards on the control-tower roof and
the others around the door.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane held up his left hand, effectively stopping Hitai, in front of
him, and the two
yakuza
guards,
behind him, in their tracks.
The
gaijin
was responding at
last.
He was doing something other than
retreating.
This was good.
This was what Namaka-
san
wanted, and what he wanted, his men wanted.
"Namaka-
san
," said
Fitzduane, "I was thinking about the difference between Western swords and
those of
Is it not true that Japanese swords were
perfected around the eighth century and that a sword made a thousand years
later is more or less the same in appearance?"