The woman nodded, drawing the sword again. "There are others at the opposite end of the hall. My caltrops have discouraged them, but it won't be long before they attempt to pick their way through."
Bolan led the way into the room. Pausing at the door after Ransom entered, he took out his Ka-bar and jammed it into the doorjamb. It wouldn't hold long, but it would slow down the gunners once they reached the office.
Ransom knelt and flipped the body over. Saburo Hosaka's head rolled loosely back and forth, coming to a rest against the woman's leg.
Bolan watched a shudder course through her, remembering the way she'd struck out at him with the stiletto during their first meeting. He gazed around the inner sanctum, finding no answers to the questions that filled his head.
Ransom pushed herself up from the floor, still holding on to the sword. "Someone killed him," she said needlessly.
Glancing at her, Bolan saw indecision blacken her dark eyes.
"Who?" she demanded.
He shook his head. "I don't know. You got here the same time I did."
She shivered again, tightening her grip on the sword as she looked at the dead man. "Yemon was here?"
"He had to be," Bolan said. "He wasn't out there." A drumbeat of gunfire rumbled against the door. Bolan glanced at the woman. "Any ideas about how we get out of here?"
* * *
Yemon Hosaka stared at the Justice agent and the woman ninja through the one-way glass concealed by the aquarium. In the darkness of the hidden passageway, the lights and the fish seemed to be unreal, another world enclosed in a glass skin. He watched as the woman turned Saburo's body over, feeling the anger rise inside himself at his brother's stupidity. If the Justice agent hadn't chosen this time to attack the offices, there might not have been a way to explain this to his father. His plans, carefully nurtured and calculated for years, would have been for nothing.
He continued to watch, drawn by the woman's reactions to his brother's corpse. Something familiar pulled at his consciousness, giving him the feeling that he somehow knew her. He studied the brief slash of features presented through the hole cut in the mask.
Then memory rushed to fill the uncertainty in Yemon's mind. He remembered how Michi Ransom had acted earlier the previous evening at the banquet. He stared into the brown eyes and knew her for who she was.
Yemon gripped the Walther tighter in his fist. He had fed a new clip into the automatic before pressing the hidden button that opened the sliding door and gave access to the passageway. Taking his gaze from the woman, disdainful of the figure she cut in the black uniform and the way she held her sword, he focused on the man. He easily recognized him as the one who had tracked the assassins from the banquet room.
Recalling Saburo's words that someone was challenging the Yakuza for his brother's whereabouts, Yemon had no doubts that he was looking at the man who had done that. That he was obviously successful in his quest, that he was here now and had penetrated through the guards he, Saburo and the Yakuza had posted, marked him as a dangerous man.
Michi Ransom could be dismissed. She knew of the offices. Her grandfather had brought her here when she was a child. Uncertainty touched him as he wondered if she had been there for Saburo or for him. The Hosaka offices were home to him, not Saburo. The unexpected turn of his thoughts unsettled him.
He lifted the Walther and pointed it at the two warriors dressed in black. He squeezed on the trigger. The bullets would go through the aquarium, perhaps not as true as he wished, but maybe close enough. He focused on the big man's face, narrowing his eyes, staring at him down the length of the short barrel.
Then the indigo-blue Siamese fighting fish glided before him and broke the spell. Yemon released the trigger, released his pent-up breath. If the bullets didn't fly true enough, he could be risking everything. He pocketed the small automatic and smiled.
"Another time, then," he promised in a soft voice that wouldn't go beyond his ears. Turning, he made his way back through the passageway to the ladder that led to the building's roof.
* * *
Long splinters flew from the office door to bury themselves in the Persian rugs. Bullets continued to pelt the door, more of them penetrating.
Bolan checked the room quickly. Ransom left the corpse, still buried in whatever thoughts held her, but helped him in the search. "Yemon was here," he said as he glanced out the windows overlooking the street. "I saw him arrive."
The woman's reply was flat and noncommittal. "He will have a way out of here. He was trained by my grandfather." She ran her hands along the ornate shelving built above and below the aquarium. Fish darted inside it, reacting to the vibration of gunfire filling the room. Water jetted through a hole made in one of the aquarium's sides by a stray bullet and splashed onto the floor.
A glint of metal caught Bolan's eye as he moved into position beside Ransom. He knelt, picked the spent pistol magazine from the carpet and identified it as belonging to a .38.
The gunfire died away.
Abandoning the shelving, Ransom made her way to the wall opposite the windows, tapping it with the butt of her sword. Bolan looked at the desk drawer. He pulled it open and found a box of .38-caliber bullets tucked behind a rubber-banded group of pencils. The lock at the front of the drawer hadn't been broken. He filed the information away, dropped the magazine inside the drawer and joined Ransom.
"Here," the woman said at his approach. She tapped the wall again with the sword. The hollow cavity on the other side was evident. "There has to be a latch or a trigger somewhere." Her fingers flew along the wall.
Something crashed into the office door with impressive force. The woman looked at Bolan.
"Battering ram," he said tersely. He picked a spot on the door about five feet up, then fired the remaining rounds in the Desert Eagle. The banging died away, replaced at once by gunfire. He fed a new magazine into the .44. "Let me over there."
Ransom stepped aside. The battering started again. "They'll be through in a moment."
Bolan nodded. He raised a foot, aimed it to the right of the hollow's center and kicked. Plaster cracked, but the hidden door held. He kicked it again, feeling the shock go all the way up to his hip. The wound in his side ripped open, and he could feel blood seeping into the blacksuit. The third time his foot crashed through the door, tearing a large chunk from it. He reached inside, found the bolt that had been thrown from the other side to seal it off, pulled it back and pushed on into the cavity. Ransom immediately followed, pausing only long enough to slip the bolt back into place as a delaying tactic.
Soft light filtered through the aquarium waters, shot through with larger-than-life shadows that swam and darted, and made a long rectangle against the back wall. Bolan trailed his empty hand along the wall and found the ladder built into the duct work. The rung in his hand vibrated slightly, letting him know someone was still inside the tunnel. "Up here."
She nodded and sheathed the sword on her back. Leathering the .44, Bolan took the lead, pulling himself up into the darkness. The rungs continued to vibrate in his hands. He didn't doubt the double vibrations now coursing through the construction had alerted Yemon Hosaka that he was being followed. The tunnel corkscrewed as it went up, providing coverage from anyone trying to fire straight up into it. Sharp angles filled the sides that would turn back any bullets.
The guards were at the hidden door now. More shots followed, pierced by the strident ringing of a telephone. The door gave with a loud crack. The telephone went silent in midring.
Bolan threw himself up the rungs, striving to catch his quarry, taking them two at a time. His breath came in ragged gasps, echoed by the softer, quicker intakes of Ransom.
More vibrations joined the ones already going through the ladder. Sensing the woman stop, Bolan paused and looked down. If she was too tired to go on, he couldn't just leave her there.
Ransom dug a hand into a concealed pocket, then flung the contents down, following it immediately with another. Metal clanged against me
tal. Agonized screams erupted from below. "Caltrops," she said, pulling herself up again. "It should buy us some time."
The thought of what the razor-edged balls would do to anyone looking up caused Bolan to rethink his own position. Then he realized there was no real choice if he expected to gain something from the strike.
Someone fired up into the tunnel. The resulting ricochets started another series of screams and high-pitched invective. There were no further shots.
Long minutes passed, filled with nothing but the seemingly unending series of pushes, pulls and shoves. Liquid fire seemed to be packed into the joints of Bolan's arms and knees. Then the tunnel came to a dead end. He paused to take a penflash from his pocket. Flicking it on, he gave the opening a thorough search. He caught the trip wire the first time through, quickly tracing it to the small deposits of C-4 at the sides that would have ruptured the tunnel and killed whomever was attempting to raise the door. He disconnected the wires and threw the door back.
Wind whipped across the top of the building, part of it from the coming storm, part of it from the helicopter lifting off from the rooftop. Raising the heavy .44 into target acquisition, Bolan focused on the tail rotor, the weakest part of the craft, as he ran to the edge of the building. Then he thought of the streets below and the other buildings. He let the Desert Eagle fall to his side, watching helplessly as the helicopter heeled over and vanished into the night.
Chapter Twenty
Winterroad clawed his way up through the bed sheets and reached for the phone. "Yeah?" he grunted. He rolled onto his back, blinking bleary eyes at the bright early-afternoon sunshine colliding with the drawn shutters of his bedroom.
"It's me," Dale Corrigan said.
"Is this important?"
"If it wasn't, I wouldn't call."
"Give me a minute to get it together."
"Are you alone?"
Winterroad laughed bitterly. "You've been reading too many espionage thrillers, Dale. Either that or I'm the only spy who missed out on having a woman in every port."
"I'll call back in fifteen minutes. Don't go back to sleep." The phone clicked dead.
Winterroad stared at the receiver in his hand. A moment later it started to beep. He cradled it and forced himself up from the bed, moving into the small bathroom. As the shower water ran, he wondered where the days had gone when he could simply get up from five minutes of sleep and keep on moving at top speed.
Feeling refreshed, he stepped from the shower, dried and wrapped a towel around his waist. With an economy of motion learned from living on the go, he lathered his face with shaving cream while wiping at the steamed mirror with the other hand. After finishing the morning rituals, he dressed then sat on the bed, watching the clock tick down the last minute since Corrigan's call.
He considered the possible reasons for Corrigan's call. The scene in the office earlier that morning made him sure Corrigan wouldn't have gotten in contact unless it was damn important. The man would have let him sleep at least a few more hours before trying to mend any bridges of communication. And Winterroad felt sure that whatever mending needed to be done this time needed to be done by him, not Corrigan.
His thoughts turned to the meeting with Sacker, and he wondered if they had been spotted together. He quickly dismissed that theory on two counts. One, if they had been seen together, the Agency would have wasted no time in trying to apprehend Sacker. And two, if Corrigan had heard about such a meeting taking place, he'd have surrounded the apartment with agents rather than calling to confirm it.
The phone rang, and he picked it up before it had the chance to ring again.
"Are you awake now?" Corrigan asked.
"Yes." Winterroad massaged his eyes, feeling the familiar sharp ache of not enough sleep, thinking the eyes were the first part of the body to tell a man he was getting old. Eyes showed it and felt it.
"You know it's not my way to pussyfoot around things," Corrigan went on, "so I'll just come out and say it. Somebody killed Alan Tucker in Tokyo last night… this morning." The man sighed. "Shit. It was little more than an hour ago. These goddamn time zones still give me hell. I have to work through them on a globe to make any sense of it."
Winterroad felt the need for a cigarette and automatically patted his empty pockets. He'd put them down one day in 1972 and never picked them up again. The spot on his lung X rays had disappeared shortly after that.
"They want to send you in as his replacement," Corrigan said.
Winterroad stood, pacing back and forth in front of the bed, barefoot. His mind raced. "Who's they?"
"Nobody knows for sure. There was a Justice agent, Hal Brognola, on deck for the shooting."
"I know Brognola."
"Yeah, I remember now."
"Was anyone else there?"
"From the squads? No."
"Any chance that Tucker intercepted a bullet meant for Brognola?"
"Not from the report. You might check that out when you get over there. From what I read here, it was a straight hit on Tucker only, with no attempt made on Brognola at all."
"That doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense."
"That's what I said, too. Whatever the case is, you're up as his replacement, if you want it." Corrigan hesitated. "It'll mean something to the people upstairs."
"Screw the people upstairs. The last thing I want to hear right now is the promise of some kind of promotion by walking in over Tucker's dead body."
Corrigan fell silent.
"What else do you have on this?"
"Just scattered reports of some kind of activity in the ranks of suspected Yakuza. The Foreign Affairs people are trying to make it sound like some kind of intergang war, but I'm not buying it. This kind of activity starts, and somebody kills Tucker. They might not be related, but I'm definitely going to take it at more than face value."
Winterroad stopped pacing and pulled a battered suitcase from the closet. "Have you got a plane lined up for me?"
"It leaves within the hour."
"When and where?"
Corrigan gave him the information.
Winterroad wrote it down on a page in the telephone book lying beside the television, tore it out and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
"Take care of yourself over there," Corrigan said with real sentiment. "And give me a call as soon as you get settled."
Winterroad hung up, sat on the bed and stared at the phone in his lap. He wasn't surprised when it rang only moments later. Nor was he surprised to find the caller was Sacker.
* * *
Shrilling sirens filled the night air, reminding Bolan that the numbers had all but ran out on the mission. The helicopter containing Yemon Hosaka and at least some of the answers he'd come for had disappeared around a distant skyscraper. He ran to the fire escape door on the rooftop, smashed through the lock and went inside. Ransom stayed almost on top of his shadow.
"They're going to be all over the building looking for us," the woman said as they jogged down the hallway of the top floor.
"I know." People peered out of their apartments, dodging back inside when they saw the two warriors in black.
"Yemon killed Saburo," Ransom said as they swung around a corner.
"Yes." Bolan listened for sounds of pursuit. Their own footfalls were muffled by the carpet.
"Why?"
Bolan drew up short, fisting the Desert Eagle in both hands, surveying the lobby in front of the elevator. "It didn't appear to be self-defense," he said dryly. The elevator doors remained closed, but the light over the top of them clicked off the floors as it rose.
"Saburo knew something," Ransom said.
"I think so, too."
"And Yemon killed him because of it."
"From what I've heard, Yemon appears to be every inch his father's son."
"Maybe," Ransom replied cryptically.
Bolan glanced at the woman, wishing he had the time to question her. He moved to the fire escape, looked down and, finding no one, led the way in
side. They made it two floors down before an eruption of gunfire flamed from the metal stairs. Screams of people attempting to leave the building by the fire escape echoed in the narrow enclosure.
Not wanting to pull innocents into the firefight, Bolan slammed back through the door of the thirty-sixth floor. The small crowd of people filling the hallway shrieked and ran toward the other end of the building, vanishing around corners. Aware that the building was rapidly turning into a deadly little maze with no way out, he glanced at the elevator numbers. The flashing light had steadied at the thirty-fourth floor. He took another Ka-bar from its sheath on his right thigh, kneeled, and quickly cut two almost yard-wide squares from the carpet. Sheathing the knife, he yanked them up, giving one to Ransom.
She took it without question, covering their backs.
Bolan levered the elevator doors open and looked down. The elevator cage sat motionless below them. "They're trying to cut us off," he told her. "Come on." He leaned out into the opening and wrapped the section of carpet around one of the elevator's support cables, holding the doors open for the woman.
Ransom sheathed the sword and imitated him, gripping the carpet tightly in her hands, soft side outward. She swung out, clamping her feet to the thick cable as she slid down.
Bolan followed, tightening his grip on the hoist cable as he controlled his slide downward. The doors closed behind him, shutting out the light. The whir of machinery filled the shaft and overrode the swishing sound generated by the carpet. "Don't touch the cage," he said.
Angling her body, Ransom came to a stop at the side of the shaft. Bolan slid down and came to a rest on the other side. Unleathering the Desert Eagle, he released the cable and shifted his weight evenly across the cage. Using his Kabar, he pried the escape hatch from the elevator and thrust the .44 through immediately.
There was only one gunner in the cage. A 240-grain bullet punched him back against the wall of the elevator and knocked him away from the doors before he could bring his weapon up, allowing the doors to close. The elevator started down immediately.
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