Rules of the Hunt (77 page)
She was running out of time.
She
searched the bank of ornamental plants.
No room to hide even a midget here.
She swept on past another
ishi-doro
to a decorative pond which was positioned to the side of the house fairly close
to the surrounding wall.
A stone bridge
led to a miniature island which actually touched the perimeter wall.
"A way-out thought," she said.
"Could they have tunneled under the wall?"
"Supposedly not," said Fitzduane.
"There are sensors against that
possibility and the police have the outside walls under observation."
Chifune did a quick sweep along the back of the house past an inscribed
Garden Tablet and then moved on to a boulder garden.
Still no sign of anything
except
what was supposed to be there.
Something niggled at her.
The circling airship had now moved on so that she could see not only
Hodama's residence, but also the adjoining house and gardens.
This was an area of luxury residences.
The neighboring house also had a pond and it
was on the other side of the wall from
Hodama's
Neither
actually touched the wall, but
the congruence looked more than coincidence.
Suppose they shared the same water?
A culvert between them or maybe just a grating.
Sensors in the water with
goldfish and turtles paddling about the irises?
Unlikely!
"The pond," she said urgently, her binoculars now focused on
the black surface of the water.
"Hugo, LOOK AT THE POND!"
Fitzduane had been concentrating on Fumio Namaka and the approaching
figure of Katsuda, but at Chifune's shout he looked quickly at the black
water.
Something was decidedly odd about
it.
As he watched, it began to undulate, as if it was coming to a boil or was
haven to a mass of writhing snakes.
Suddenly, he understood at least part of what was happening.
And he had an uneasy feeling that this was
only the beginning.
"Hold your fire, people," he said.
"But stand by on my mark."
This was a scene that had to be played out.
Chifune returned to her .300
Fitzduane focused on Namaka and Katsuda and the summer house with its
broad-eaved thatched roof.
Katsuda,
unaware of the airship on high and assuming support from Schwanberg, knew
better than to go inside.
His guardians
had to be able to see him.
It was going to start happening any second now.
"Fitzduane-
san
," the
Spider's voice sounded in Fitzduane's headphones urgently.
"Something we did not expect in central
I have received reports of two Huey
helicopters without lights approaching low and at speed.
No flight plan has been filed and they are
headed precisely in your direction.
ETA
within two minutes, perhaps sooner."
Civilian helicopter overflight was supposed to be banned in central
Akasaka, where not only did Hodama have his exclusive residence but so did the
Emperor of Japan.
Clearly, the imminent
arrivals were no respecters of the rules.
A neat operation looked like it was turning very messy; or maybe a great
deal worse.
Their invisible airship suddenly felt like the very large target it was.
25
July 12
Fumio Namaka watched the
gaijin
walk toward him.
In the glare of the perimeter floodlights and from a distance, he looked
somehow smaller and slighter than when they had met in the Namaka Tower, but
doubtless that was an illusion.
The
Irishman was wearing a dark suit, and that tended to reduce the impression of
size.
Or perhaps it was natural to
imagine a much-hated enemy as larger than he really was.
The steel-gray hair and features were unmistakable.
As he looked at Fitzduane, Fumio almost
regretted the imminent arrival of the Yaibo helicopters.
His anticipation of this man's death was
fulfillment in itself.
The actual
execution would be almost an anticlimax.
"Namaka-
san
," said
the
gaijin
.
He had stopped about ten yards away.
"It is good to see you," he
said.
"It is a long-deferred pleasure."
Fumio started.
The voice was
different, and the
gaijin
was
speaking in Japanese!
He did not know
what, but something was definitely amiss.
He looked around uncertainly.
Where before the garden had been empty, now heavily armed masked
figures in black rubber suits and hoods were emerging from the pond like some nightmare
of hell.
Within seconds, he was surrounded, his arms and legs pinioned, and he was
rammed against one of the summer-house uprights.
He felt cold steel against his wrists, and he
realized that he had been handcuffed in place.
He could hear the distant
whump-whump-whump
of helicopters.
It was not too
late.
There was still time.
The
gaijin
approached, put his
face close to Fumio's, and as Fumio watched helplessly, the
gaijin
put his hand up and tore his own
flesh from his skull.
Fumio gagged as gobbets of flesh and tissue and hair were torn away.
And then came the sudden realization as the
deformed face underneath appeared.
His
bowels turned to liquid and he could smell his own reeking fear.
"Katsuda," he whispered.
The hideous head nodded.
Pieces of artificial flesh still adhered to it, and the effect was to
give a leprous, rotting look to Katsuda's features.
It looked as if the real flesh was also peeling away.
The man seemed to be decaying in front of
him.
"Your executioner," said Katsuda.
Fumio smelled the liquid before it was poured on him, and instantly he
knew how he was going to die.
The noise of the helicopters was now overwhelming, and a split second
later two black shapes appeared overhead and black ropes snaked down from one.
Katsuda stood well back and a frogman handed him a short cylinder.
A moment later, it burst into brilliant pink
light.
The burning flare arced through the air toward the screaming, struggling
Fumio.
*
*
*
*
*
A distinctive black shape blocked out Fitzduane's vision and then settled
in the front garden, and once again he could see Fumio Namaka and Katsuda.
Fitzduane had lost a few seconds and was not quite sure what was going
on.
He had seen the eruption of frogmen
and Fumio being seized, but then had lost continuity.
As Fumio and Katsuda reemerged, he saw a flash of a pink flare and then
Fumio erupted into flame.
He, the summer
house, and the ground around him must have been saturated in something like
high-octane gas or charcoal lighter fuel, because the explosion of flame was
startlingly violent.
A searing white
flame shot into the sky, and within split seconds the thatch had caught and was
burning with extraordinary ferocity.
"Al, take Katsuda now," said Fitzduane deliberately.
"Chifune, focus on the frogmen.
Fire at will."
Katsuda spread his arms and, fists clenched, shouted up into the sky to
celebrate his triumph."
Now he was THE
kuromaku
.
Lonsdale took first pressure on the Barrett trigger.
Katsuda already filled the reticule of his
telescopic sight.
"
Banzai!
Banzai!
Banzai!
"
Katsuda shouted, oblivious to the gun battle that had
erupted between his frogmen and Fumio's terrorists, who had arrived too late to
save their master.
Lonsdale gently squeezed the trigger.
The .50 round, developed originally in World War I to destroy tanks,
caught Katsuda in the upper torso and exploded, blowing his heart, rib cage,
lungs, and spine into bloody fragments and the rest of his body into the flames
where Fumio Namaka's body spat and flared in the vicious heat.
The two enemies burned together.
The first Huey landed in the largest clear space available, the front
garden between the well and the blazing summer house.
The Huey had a nearly fifty-foot rotor diameter and the second helicopter
made no attempt to touch down.
Instead,
it hovered about twenty feet up.
Four figures rappelled down ropes, and other terrorists remained in the
cabin, shooting at targets of opportunity.
Chifune was firing rapidly.
Three frogmen had dropped in as many seconds, but then the survivors
headed for cover and her rate of fire slowed as she sought out targets.
One frogman hunkered behind a man-height stone lantern carved from
volcanic rock, but the .300 Magnum round cut effortlessly through it and
through the man hiding on the other side.
A second man had made it to the pool and was
under
six inches of water when the round seared through the back of his skull.
In Chifune's opinion, the effectiveness of the airship operation was
severely hindered by the agreed-upon restrictions of firepower, but the rules
of the hunt were quite specific.
They
were over a densely populated city.
Automatic-weapons fire, whether machine gun or grenade launcher, was
out.
The Spider had been adamant.
It was a minor miracle the Barrett had not
been prohibited, too.
The .50 round
could penetrate brick, stone, or plate steel and had been known to cut through
six wooden houses.
A loose round could
take out a complete sushi bar counter and give a whole new meaning to the term ‘friendly
fire.’
Fitzduane assessed the situation below.
It was getting time to hand over to the Spider and his people.
The airship had limited objectives.
It was a superb observation platform and had
given them the crucial element of surprise, but now it was only a matter of
time before someone looked up.
That
would not have mattered before the helicopters arrived on the scene, but now
the situation could get unhealthy.
The airship could do just over seventy miles an hour if wind conditions
were favorable.
The Huey was rated at
around a hundred and thirty.
True, the
rates of climb under power were around the same, with the airship, ironically,
having a slight edge, but when it came to maneuverability, there was no
comparison.
The Huey won hands
down.
The issue of which aircraft
presented the better target scarcely bore contemplation.
It was nearly time to bug out.
"Spider-
san
" said
Fitzduane.
His mind was on protocol.
The Deputy Superintendent-General and his attendant staff looked at the
loudspeaker in his mobile command vehicle in a state of shock.
"
Gaijin
" he muttered
under his breath.
"What do foreign
barbarians know about good
manners!
"
His staff looked at each other with smiles of
relief.
The Spider had just defused a
potentially serious case of loss of face.
Honor was restored.
The Spider keyed the microphone.
"Fitzduane-
san
," he
said in acknowledgment.
"We're going to try and take out the helicopter on the ground,"
said Fitzduane, "and then we're getting the hell out of here.
Engaging the second Huey is too dangerous
unless you want central
I just hope the other side
feels the same way."
"Affirmative," said the Spider.
"We'll move in thirty seconds."
He gave the orders, and the inner ring of armed
riot police spearheaded by armored cars roared toward the Hodama residence.
"Al, go for the engine and fuel tanks of the grounded Huey,"
said Fitzduane.
"Chifune, try for
the pilot.
I don't want that bird
flying."
Lonsdale knew that the .50 could pierce the Huey with ease, but it was
another matter of hitting a vital spot.
He focused on the turbine engine under the rotor and methodically fired
five rounds.
He was certain he had hit,
but the explosive armor-piercing ammunition seemed to have no effect.
With horror, he saw the helicopter begin to
lift off, and fired until his magazine was empty.