He hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind out of him. Worse, he lost his bow. From the burning bushes he could see that he was near the edge of the pond. Twenty paces away, Nobuo was lying in the mud, breathing, but knocked unconscious, his helmet visibly dented by the demon’s incredible trap.
The oni was coming. It had completely given up on stealth, and its heavy footfalls could be heard crashing against the rocks, getting closer and closer. He had no weapons. Nobuo’s swords were too far away. His only hope was to hide and perhaps surprise it… He was an excellent fighter with just his hands, but his opponents weren’t usually as big as a horse.
Gasping for breath, Hiroto crawled into the reeds. As he tried desperately to fill his lungs with air, he found himself wishing he had a hollow reed to breathe through. Now that would have been handy for hiding. As the demon got closer, he held his breath and sunk beneath the muck.
He was trying so very hard not to move to avoid ripples, not even daring to exhale because it would make bubbles. Even with his eyes open he could see nothing through the thick silt, but he felt the water vibrate as the demon stomped right past him. Either it hadn’t seen him, or it was going to finish off Nobuo first instead.
Hiroto’s hand bumped into something. Wooden, but sanded smooth. His fingers drifted along it until it was touching the first embedded metal spike… Hachiman had smiled upon him once again.
As he slowly, painfully, silently lifted himself from the murk, he saw that the oni was looming over Nobuo. Arrow shafts were embedded across its body, each wound leaking green. The oni may have been an unnatural being, but its emotions were as clear as any performer telling a story with only a dance. The oni was furious. Nobuo wasn’t the warrior who had filled its body with painful arrows! It lifted its arm blades to kill him anyway.
Hiroto had been trying to rise as quietly as possible, but something gave him away; maybe it was the pond water dripping from the spikes of Nobuo’s war club, or the sucking sound of his body leaving the mud, but regardless, the oni heard. It spun about, braids whipping, drawing itself up, so that it towered overhead.
He never understood why it didn’t strike him down in that moment, but the oni paused, just for a heartbeat, confused, as if Hiroto were the invisible one.
Hiroto smashed it with the tetsubo.
He’d been aiming for its metal head, but its sudden movement caused him to strike it in the shoulder instead. Glowing blood flew as flesh was pulverized.
The solid blow would have shattered human bones. The oni lurched to the side, but stayed upright. With a roar he hit it with another overhand strike. The pressure caused blood to squirt from the various arrow holes. Then Hiroto swung the heavy weapon in an arc, striking the oni’s extended leg. Something snapped deep within and it went to its knees.
Except kneeling, it was still as tall as Hiroto. The twin blades lashed out. He blocked it with the tetsubo but the demon metal cut right through the wood as if it wasn’t there and still retained the power to slice cleanly through his face.
It was the worst pain he had ever experienced, worst he had ever imagined. He fell. The blow had rattled his brain. The world was spinning. All Hiroto could do was hold on. But something else was wrong. Desperate, sick, he reached up, felt along the two burning cuts to the empty socket where his left eye had once been, and screamed.
Through his remaining eye, he watched the oni try to stand, but its broken leg buckled. In his life he had seen thousands of things die. Something about the way the oni was moving told him that it was done for. Hiroto would perish, smug in the knowledge that his killer would follow soon after. The oni began crawling toward him. Hiroto tried to stand, but his body would not cooperate, all he could do was scoot backwards.
“Hunter!” Nobuo had woken up. He was too far to get there in time, but he threw something.
It was a good thing Nobuo’s sword was still sheathed, because it landed right in Hiroto’s lap.
The oni was bearing down on him. It pulled back its fist, blades aimed at his heart. Hiroto drew and slashed in one smooth movement.
The katana went through half the demon’s chest. Green blood flew across the forest in a long arc. The two of them remained there a moment, mangled face to metal face. The demon twitched. The twin blades slowly dropped. He twisted the blade free, and Three Sparks, the Oni of Aokigahara, was no more.
Hiroto was in terrible pain, but he laughed anyway. The summer of death was over. It had been a fine hunt.
* * *
As they limped out of the forest, they came upon Ashikaga Motokane, hiding inside the trunk of a hollow tree.
“You’re still alive! Is it done?” the official asked as he slowly climbed out.
Hiroto’s face was being held together with stitches and dried blood, and his newfound lack of depth perception was making him nauseous. He was not in the mood, so continued walking.
“Were you hiding in there all night?” Nobuo asked.
“Yes. And I was all alone! Because some bodyguard you are!”
Hiroto didn’t even look back when he heard Nobuo’s sword clear its sheath. There was a gurgle, and then the sound of a head bouncing down the rocks. The young samurai rejoined him a moment later, cleaning his katana on his filthy sleeve. “When we report to the shogun, it was a shame there were no other survivors.”
“Yes, a terrible shame.”
* * *
Nasu Hiroto knelt before the shogun. Their report had been delivered. The magnificent trophy he had presented to Minamoto Yoritomo was on the floor between them. Now they were alone. The shogun had dismissed everyone else from the room so that the two of them could speak privately.
“The eye patch suits you, Hiroto. What do you intend to do now?”
“If you aren’t going to execute me for deserting all those years ago, then I’m unsure.”
“When we last spoke, I came to understand something about you. Other samurai try their whole lives to make a mask that never shows fear, that declares they live for battle, hiding their true weakness beneath. For you, there is no mask. You only feel alive when you are hunting something capable of taking your life. Nothing else will do.”
Hiroto nodded. The shogun was truly a wise man.
“Your report has inspired me. I think it has given me the answer to a problem which I have struggled with for the last few years.” The shogun leaned forward and picked up the oni’s mask. “We could learn much from the Oni of Aokigahara. Invisible. Calculating. Hiding in plain sight, then attacking with ruthless efficiency, leaving his enemies filled with dread… The ultimate assassin.”
“To be stalked by such would bring nightmares to even the bravest samurai.”
“Indeed. What if I offered you the opportunity to never be bored again? A hunt which never ends?”
“I am intrigued.”
“The Shogunate has many enemies, dangerous men. Often politics make it so that I cannot deal with them directly. The oni has shown me the answer. I have need of invisible killers, inspired by this beast, who make its way theirs. Men who will engage in irregular warfare which most samurai would find distasteful.” The shogun stared into the blank eyes of the mask. “In short, I require men who can fight like demons.”
Hiroto was becoming excited. “Such an endeavor would have to be done with the utmost secrecy.”
“They would be the hidden men, shinobi-no-mono, emulating the Oni of Aokigahara to bring ruin upon the enemies of Nippon. Would you build this organization for me, Nasu Hiroto?”
“It would be an honor.”
The first ninja bowed to the first shogun.
THE PILOT
BY ANDREW MAYNE
She smiles over her shoulder at me as we head for the fence and the water just beyond. That was the smile that got me. Sure, watching her climb over the railing in those tight jean shorts didn’t hurt. But it was that mischievous smile that never let me go. It’s the last thing I think about before the blinding white light and the thought that this is how I�
��m going to die.
The next thing I’m aware of is a man in a commander’s uniform sitting by my bedside, sipping a cup of tea. Also that it’s really goddamn cold and I appear to be babbling on about how when I was eleven and accidentally glued my fingers to my model Spitfire I’d stayed up all night making.
The commander seems not very amused by my anecdote and the bald man next to him, wearing a thick gray coat and no military piping, has an even more frustrated look on his face.
“Captain Moore, the commander was asking about the radar on your plane. Do you know the estimated range?”
Ah, snap. Now I get it. It’s coming back to me. I was doing a flyover of some tiny speck in the East Siberian Sea because a satellite picked up an infrared flash and we got a weird seismic signal.
At some point I must have got hit—which is really, really hard to do with an SR-71. Fact is, I think I may be the first. Well, crap. Although I don’t remember getting hit—there was some kind of bright light and all my instruments decided to take the night off. After that… I’m not sure when I ejected, but I’m pretty sure my bird was on a trajectory that would have taken her into the Laptev Sea—making her a bit hard for the Ruskies to salvage. I hope.
I can’t remember if I hit water or land, but from how sore everything feels, my money is on that I landed on the sharpest pile of rocks in all of Mother Russia.
The commander says something in Russian a little too quickly for me to understand. I know enough to get by and tell what their pilots are talking about when we pick up their chatter in the air—usually their fat wives in Minsk and their pretty girlfriends in Moscow—but not enough to make sense of rapid-fire conversation.
The bald man adjusts the IV drip and for the first time I notice the room around me. There’s some medical equipment and strange-looking Soviet machinery, but it doesn’t appear to be a hospital. The trusses and restraints remind me of the stuff in Grandpa’s barn where he’d castrate bulls. It’s all lit by gas lanterns—which just reminds me how weird Russia really is.
I glance at the IV and realize that the painkiller has been making me loopy and probably a bit talkative—which was the idea.
“The radar, Captain Moore, what is the operational range?” the bald man asks again. I realize that he’s been speaking in perfect American English—okay, not quite perfect; he’s got a bit of an East Coast affectation about it.
So this is the game: get old Billy here to start spilling his guts about the Blackbird. No, sir. Kelly Johnson himself would come out of retirement and take me to Grandpa’s barn and do worse to me than these commies if I revealed any of her secrets.
“Did I tell you about the time Julie Conner and I decided to go take a skinny-dip in the reservoir?” It’s my go-to happy thought and how I refuse to let them cage me in mentally.
The commander says something I’m pretty sure means, “Take away his painkillers and put him in a…” I think he meant “cell,” but the word sounded a lot like kennel.
* * *
Clang clang… clang
Two clangs, a pause, followed by another clang means the guard with the fur cap is coming, according to the code I’ve worked up with the Chinese pilot at the other end of the metal pipe running through my cell.
They brought him in a few hours after me. He must have been doing an overflight in a JZ-8 and suffered the same malfunction I did.
From the looks of the burned-out light bulbs and the fact that I haven’t seen a single working piece of electronics, I suspect that whatever took us down also affected the whole base—or “Agricultural Resource Institute” as it’s listed on the maps.
Ping, as I’ve come to think of him over the last two days, must have been more banged up than I was. Despite that, he put up a bit of a fight from the commotion I could hear down the hall when they put him into his cell.
From the sound of gunfire I heard go off, it looks like Ping may have gotten hold of an AK-47. But after the beating they gave him, he’d hadn’t made a whisper until I started banging my spoon on the metal pipe, seeing if anyone was at the other end.
I tried for a few hours with no response. Then sometime late at night—I think it was late at night—he responded. I don’t have a watch or a window to tell me when—not that one would help much this far above the Arctic Circle.
The first response was a clang like the one I’d made. I tried tapping out a little Morse code, but evidently they didn’t teach him that in flight school. So we had to get creative.
If you put your ear real close to the pipe you can hear all kinds of sounds: footsteps, squeaking doors, men arguing and even rats scurrying through the walls.
We settled on a very simple code. The first series of taps was an object like a door or a man. The next one was an action.
Two clangs was a man, probably Mr. Fur Cap. After the pause was an action. In this case one clang meant “walking” or “coming.”
A rat was four clangs. We figured that out after we recognized the squeaking sound. If we heard a rat scurrying along, that would be clang clang clang clang… clang.
Ping tried to simplify the system by speeding up the clang sounds indicating that a fast series was supposed to be multiplied by itself: clangclang was supposed to be four clangs and clangclang clang was five, clangclangclang was nine, but doing the math made my head hurt. It was enough to keep track of what each number represented.
For really complicated objects that we couldn’t hear in the walls, Ping came through with another clever idea: a way to send pictures…
Ping started by making a series like clang clang clang clangclang clang clang… clang clangclang clangclang clangclang clangclang clangclang… and so on. It was so complicated I had to scratch them into the wall with my spoon just to keep track.
It took me an hour to realize he’d sent me a picture of a stick figure man, kind of like the ones on my nephew’s Atari. That clever Chinaman. If they ever give up that communist nonsense, watch out world.
Two days later we had a series of clangs for men, guns, doors, aircraft and even a map of the prison.
I started etching the words under my mat, so my jailers didn’t find what looked like an escape plan—which it wasn’t, because we were stuck on a tiny little rock covered with Russian special forces in the middle of the Siberian Sea.
This was just a way to entertain ourselves. And since Ping wasn’t much for personal questions or games, building the clang-language was all there was to do between interrogation sessions—which I was getting fewer of since Ping showed up.
Clang clang clang… clang, Ping tapped. That meant men were coming and one of us was going to get worked over by Commander Ratface—Ping’s name for the commander who first interrogated me.
I stared at my door, waiting to see if the boots stopped here or kept walking. I felt bad hoping that they were going to keep moving—because that meant they were going to pay a visit to Ping, and they always seemed to go a little rougher on him.
The key turned in the lock and the bald man, Jennings was his name, stood there with Ratface. Behind them was the short dark-haired sadist named Vostov they used to hold me down.
He walked into my cell, slipped an arm around my neck and put me in a chokehold. I didn’t resist. I knew the routine by now, and so far it wasn’t working out too well for either of us.
They’d ask me a question about my mission, I’d tell them about the color of Julie Conner’s panties the first time she let me catch a glimpse of them and Vostov would squeeze my neck until I passed out.
He’d tried pain points, but discovered since the bailout there wasn’t much more you could inflict on me.
In my five sessions over the last two days, I’ve managed to learn several things—probably more than they’ve learned from me.
These men are not expert torturers. This isn’t even a prison. They probably never expected to have an American pilot here.
Also, I’ve come to realize they appear to be totally cut off from their superiors. On
top of the storm that was raging across the region, the EMP that took out my radio also fried theirs.
“Captain Moore, why did your superiors send you to spy?”
“There were little blue flowers,” I reply. “Tiny ones. She was sixteen and all I could think to myself was, did her bra match as well? Was she even wearing one? Of course, I found out when we took that skinny-dip in the resa…”
Lights out.
When I come to I’m on the floor, looking up at Ratface. He’s got a pistol pointed at my balls and is yelling at Jennings to translate something. Of course, if he spoke slower, I could do it myself, but I haven’t let on that I speak any Ruskie.
“What do you know about the other airman?” asks Jennings.
“It was cold that day, but oh boy! It was even colder for Julie. I quickly forgot about those little blue flowers.”
Ratface gun-whips me and I see stars.
“Are you aware of any others like the airman?”
“Lots,” I reply, before reminding myself I need to be antagonizing them. “Lots of guys would have given anything to see Julie like I did that day. Man, oh man.”
Jennings squats down next to me and holds out a hand, motioning Ratface to wait before striking me again.
“I know you think you’re being clever, Captain Moore, but there’s much more at stake than your parochial little geopolitical posturing.”
“Did you defect because there was nobody left who wanted to listen to you?” I tilt my head toward Vostov, standing in the corner. “Comrade, could you choke me out again so I don’t have to listen to this traitorous piece of garbage?”
This gets a reaction from Ratface who yells at Jennings. Clearly the defector has some kind of authority, because he’s able to yell back at the Russian officer.
“Whose balls did you lick?” I say to Jennings.
“Amusing. My reasons for working with the Soviets are more complicated than politics. Suffice to say that I was interested in areas of scientific research that had fallen out of fashion in the West.
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