Rules of the Hunt (76 page)
Still, Kei's death had to be avenged.
It was the overarching imperative and had to be accomplished whatever
the price.
And in a fundamental way, the
ultimate price had already been paid.
From the moment Fumio had seen his brother's bullet-ridden corpse in the
chill surroundings of the mortuary, and the last vestige of hope that somehow
he had been misinformed had vanished, Fumio had died inside.
He no longer had a life.
He only
had obligations.
"
Sensei
, it is time,"
said his driver.
"Very well," said Fumio.
The limousine slid forward out of the private parking space and turned
into the street.
Since timing was critical,
they had waited in a safe house only three minutes from the Hodama
residence.
Within five minutes, ten at
most, this accursed
gaijin
Fitzduane,
this murderer of his beloved Kei, would be dead.
Deep inside, Fumio knew that even this vengeance would make no real
difference, and inside he despaired.
Whatever he did or tried to do, his splendid big brother was no more.
His mind went back to the ruins of postwar
joyful days when all they had was each other and every day was a new
adventure.
He was smiling to himself
when they arrived at Hodama's gates.
*
*
*
*
*
All inside the airship were now linked with head-mounted headsets
equipped with miniature boom microphones.
The airship was, in fact, quiet enough for normal voice communication,
but the use of an intercom meant that you did not have to move your head and
look at your audience to be heard with perfect clarity.
Such a detail was important.
The
watchers were focused with total intensity on the scene below.
They knew that whatever was going to happen
was likely to be unexpected, sudden, and lethal, and they would have to react
immediately.
A tenth of a second could
make the difference between living and dying.
They were dealing with some very dangerous people.
Fitzduane was acting as a spotter and fire commander.
He was observing the scene below through
gyroscopically stabilized, twenty-power, range-finding field glasses.
The diagonal to the garden below as they circled was almost exactly five
hundred yards, and this range appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of his
vision, together with other targeting details.
The picture quality was outstanding.
In visual terms, he was a mere twenty-five yards away.
There were night-vision options, but he did not
need them.
Within its fifteen-foot-high
walls, as agreed, the Hodama gardens were brightly illuminated.
The benefit of this level of brightness was
not just that everything in the garden could be clearly seen, but also that
looking up meant looking into glare.
The
airship could not be detected.
The gondola was now in darkness.
This was something of a relief to Fitzduane, since the slaughter
surrounding him could no longer be seen.
His own hands and clothing were covered in blood, and though the observation
windows were open he could still detect the acrid smell.
A split-second picture of Mike Bergin's body
flashed before him, and he thrust it from his mind.
That was then and this was now.
Focus, focus, focus on the scene below.
Fortunately, the copilot was turning out to be damn good.
After the initial shock of seeing his
superior's face half blown away and deposited on the Plexiglas, Inspector-
san
had rallied and now was flying
superbly.
There was the occasional very
slight vibration in height and distance due to variations in the night breeze,
but mostly the airship held its circular course as if tied to the Hodama garden
by some invisible line.
Thrust vectoring
of its two duct-mounted propellers, the ability to swivel the complete drive
units in flight, was supposed to give an unusual degree of control — and it
showed.
Fitzduane was also linked to the Spider on ground control.
Now he watched Fumio drive into the Hodama
grounds, leave his limousine, and take up position as arranged.
Fitzduane took care making his identification.
Bearing in mind what he had planned, he was
acutely conscious that Fumio could attempt a switch.
His instinct told him it was unlikely.
Fumio would want to be there personally to
see his brother's killer destroyed.
Still, it was best to be certain.
Fitzduane examined Fumio's distinctive crippled walk, his build, and his
features with great care and quickly switched to infrared mode to detect any
mask or similar anomaly.
There was
little doubt.
"Fumio has entered and is in position," said Fitzduane on the
open net.
"No surprises so
far."
The Spider's people were watching all approaches, leaving Fitzduane and
his team to concentrate on the garden.
"Katsuda's limousine should arrive in about thirty seconds,"
said the Spider.
"Any sign of a backup for either of them?" said Fitzduane.
Surely there would be car- or vanloads of reinforcements ready to rush
in.
Both men were always heavily guarded
and were devious in the extreme.
He
found it hard to believe that neither of them would be planning anything.
It would be downright unnatural.
And yet the Spider's men, who had the area
saturated, had reported nothing so far.
Very weird.
Where were Yaibo?
What was Katsuda
really up to?
Probably Schwanberg had
known, but he was not going to tell anyone anything now.
"Still nothing," said the Spider.
He, too, was unsettled.
*
*
*
*
*
Katsuda's truly repulsive appearance severely limited his public
appearances.
He lived in the seclusion of his own world, in the darkness and shadows
of his own creations.
This behavior
limited neither his work nor his ambition, but regularly he felt a need for
release.
Apart from his women and the
ambivalence he felt toward them because of his burn-distorted features, his
relaxation and his window to the outside world were the movies.
He watched them to the point of obsession.
The movies were not inwardly disgusted by how
he looked.
They were pleasure, pure and
simple.
Film fulfilled his need for escape, stimulated his imagination, and
appealed to his sense of the dramatic.
Privately, Katsuda considered that if events had not taken the direction
they had, he would have made an outstanding actor.
He had a fine voice and projected it well,
and his movements were well-coordinated.
All that was missing were looks.
From the movies, Katsuda had followed the extraordinary developments of
special effects and, of even more interest, specialized makeup.
Sometimes, the results on the screen were so
good that it seemed to him he could apply them to his own situation and appear,
albeit for a limited time, normal.
He had cultivated one of the leading makeup artists in
the art.
The results were encouraging,
brilliant even, if he was seen from a short distance away, but in close-up the
artificiality was always detectable.
It
was a bitter disappointment, but he persevered.
One day, he thought, they would get it right, and it was undeniable that
makeup skills were steadily improving.
For the meeting with Fumio Namaka, such an artifice was arguably not
necessary, but it appealed to his sense of theater.
It would be an entirely appropriate way to lead into the final act of his
destruction of the Namaka clan; and the actual execution method he planned to
employ deserved such a buildup.
Decades
ago, Hodama and the Namaka brothers had eliminated Katsuda's family in a
locked, burning house.
Now the last of
the Namakas would also die in flames.
Katsuda was very aware that Fumio might have a few tricks up his sleeve,
so had devoted a great deal of time to taking precautions.
He had studied the plan of Hodama's residence
for several days and finally had come up with something that he was sure beyond
any doubt at all would guarantee surprise.
And, of course, his own preparations were in addition to the fire
support he would be getting from Schwanberg in the airship.
Nothing was certain, but as his limousine approached the gates of
Hodama's house, Katsuda was as sure as any reasonable man could be when making
a major movie that his preparations would ensure success.
*
*
*
*
*
"See anything?" said Fitzduane.
"Negative," said Chifune, what was all business when
operational.
"A lot of pebbles," said Lonsdale, who felt the mood could do
with some lightening.
Both Chifune and Lonsdale were professional and would report instantly
anything untoward, but Fitzduane was getting increasingly concerned and a
little strain was showing.
He could
still see nothing but Fumio standing beside the open-sided summer house where
they were to have the meeting and Katsuda being checked in and searched at the
gate.
Surely, he should have detected
something else by now.
He could not see
the pair of them meeting and just sticking out their tongues at each other.
He had two snipers, Lonsdale and Chifune, eyeballing the confrontation,
but their vision was severely restricted because their eyes were glued to their
telescopic sights.
That had been the
original plan and had made sense with Fitzduane and Mike Bergin and the pilot
monitoring the bigger picture, but it was somewhat problematical now they were
short two pairs of eyes.
It was time to make a change in the arrangements.
Lonsdale was targeted, but Chifune was not yet allocated, and right now
it was not much good having an extra sniper if she had nothing to shoot
at.
Also, in training he had noticed
that Chifune was about as fast as anyone at acquiring a target, so if she had
to return to her scope in a hurry, it should not cause any serious grief.
Chifune was not as good with the Barrett as
Al, but she was one hell of a combat shot p to about a kilometer.
For both of them, five hundred yards, with precision equipment, made for
virtually guaranteed single-shot kills.
The best of special-operations people were somewhat frightening.
"Chifune," said Fitzduane.
"Try binoculars.
We need a
second kibitzer.
I think I'm missing
something here."
"Affirmative," said Chifune, and put down her rifle.
Her binoculars gave her a much wider field to
examine, and the brilliantly lit triangle seen from above was easy to search.
She followed the driveway in and searched the open garden area to the
right.
There was a bench, some stone
pots containing dwarf plants, and a couple of stone lanterns strategically
placed on a bed of pebbles.
It was very
simple and beautiful, and the thought came to her that whatever villainy Hodama
had been up to, he had good taste.
The
entire garden was an exercise in simplicity.
Which meant there were very few places to hide in, and the house had
already been searched by representatives of both sides and sealed.
No, Fitzduane was right to worry.
Something they had not anticipated was going
to happen.
She swung her binoculars to the left of the driveway and began searching
the much larger area of garden there.
Her glasses rested on an ornate well with a small pagoda top, but she
was looking diagonally and could not see down it.
"The well," she said.
"It's a possibility.
It's
big enough."
"Maybe," said Fitzduane, "but it doesn't lead anywhere and
it was searched and sealed when they did the house."
"They're going to zap each other with telepathy," said
Lonsdale.
"Shut the fuck up, Al," said Fitzduane politely.
"Please," he added.
Chifune scanned to the open-sided summer house.
Still nothing, except Fumio Namaka standing
there and Katsuda, still about thirty yards away, walking toward him on the
irregular stone path that circumscribed the house.
By agreement, their respective drivers had
both stayed with the limousines.