He could hear angry voices downstairs as he moved toward the elevator. The man guarding it rose to meet him, and Bolan decided that the subtle approach wouldn't work anymore. Instead, he charged the man and slammed him hard into the wall behind.
The guard grunted loudly, and Bolan heard the air wheeze out of him. He slid to the ground, gagging, and was going into his jacket when the Executioner kicked out. Bolan's booted toe connected with the man's jaw in a loud cracking sound.
The man keeled over, unconscious, and Bolan pulled the Colt Python out of the guard's leather shoulder holster and ejected the clip.
The Executioner pushed the button, and the elevator doors slid open. He walked inside and smiled back at the customers who stared at him in wide-eyed wonder. He pressed the fourth-floor button and began flicking slugs out of the Colt's clip to clatter to the floor at his feet.
The Executioner was all movement when the doors slid open on four. Tightening his right hand around the empty clip, he walked quickly into the noise.
He was in a serious gambling establishment, where dark-suited men lorded over green-felt tables. The smell of hashish was thick like a cheap perfume. Two men moved up on him immediately.
"You can't..." the first one said, but Bolan silenced him with a hard right that moved his nose across his face and lifted him up off the ground, blood spurting from the busted cartilage.
The other didn't waste words. The bouncer grabbed and squeezed Bolan in a bear hug from behind. The Executioner loosened his muscles, giving the man his way, then tensed and threw his head backward, hard into the man's face.
The man yelled and released Bolan, who turned and shoved the off-balance thug back into the elevator, doubling him over with a knee to the groin and finishing the job with a right-fisted haymaker. The goon went down like wet cement, and Bolan pushed the button to send him back downstairs.
People were yelling and grabbing their own and everybody else's winnings off the tables. Confusion filled the crowded room, and that's what Bolan had hoped for. He moved into the crowd, searching for Prine. A hand flashed out for him, but he grabbed it and pulled, doubling it over his upraised knee until he heard the elbow joint snap. And then Bolan heard muffled screaming.
He moved toward the sound, finding a hallway with a series of numbered doors. Private rooms. They did it all here. In a genteel society like Japan's, the vipers would still have their way. They'd act sophisticated but still dirty the word "human" with their slime.
He threw off his robe, revealing a black kevlar shirt and combat harness, and filled his hand with Big Thunder. The men on the other side of that door wore the proud uniform of the United States Air Force. He respected the uniform and wanted to respect the men who wore it, but Bolan knew that creeps come in all shapes and sizes... and uniforms.
He kicked out at the door, the flimsy wood tearing at the hinges, and as Mack Bolan entered, the Bushido code flashed through mind.
He took in the situation with a glance. A large bed filled the center of the room. A Japanese teenager lay naked, spread-eagled upon it. Her face and body were cut and bleeding. Two of the APs held her down while Prine knelt between her legs, working at the belt of his pants. The other two airmen were knocking a second girl around, ripping her clothes off. A Japanese man stood off to the side with a large plastic bag full of white powder. It looked as if these girls had been kidnapped off the street and sold for pleasure to Prine and his buddies, and the payoff had been cocaine. Bolan knew that the ultimate fate of the girls would likely be slashed throats in a Ginza back alley.
Animals. Rabid animals.
Bolan had scoped the action the second he had jumped through the door. In the next second the animals reacted.
The Japanese showed his weapon first, and Bolan diced him twice in the chest, the AutoMag's .44 mm payload resounding in the closed-in room, sending the kidnapper into a whirling dance that dropped him onto the bed.
One of the APs holding Prine's girl was just clearing leather with his .45 when Big Thunder coughed in his face. His left eye became a blood-spewing fountain as he careened backward, crashing through the window to fall to the pavement below.
They were all on him then, charging, one of them pushing the half-clothed teenager in front of him. Bolan moved instinctively, but he didn't want to hit the girls or Prine, not until he got what he wanted. He dove forward and rolled, taking the legs out from under one of them, then burying the AutoMag in the man's gut and pulling the trigger. Viscera exploded — the man was a human piñata.
Everyone fell on him, a writhing mass of Air Force blue and screaming girls. Big Thunder was kicked from Bolan's hand as he tried to scramble out from under the biting, kicking pile.
He got partway free, when a .45 exploded beside his head, sending mattress stuffing throughout the room like snow. He snared the hand, turning it as the gun fired again, one of the animals screaming from within the pile.
The naked girl broke free and staggered to her feet, and Bolan kicked loose. He jumped up, shoving the girl toward the doorway and freedom as Prine pulled him back to the floor. Bolan came down on the man's chest, planting an elbow hard in his mouth, cracking his teeth in a bloody froth.
Another man was up, stumbling away, blood oozing thickly from his right thigh where a close-range blast from a service revolver had entered. He fell to the floor, screaming, grabbing his leg.
The remaining unscathed airman kicked Bolan hard in the back. The man jumped Bolan then, beating him with heavy fists. A blow to the back of the neck shot fire through Bolan's brain. With an effort he twisted hard, throwing the man off before falling on top of him.
The AP had a snarling, ugly face. Bolan punched him again and again until the AP's eyes were glassy, and then he got up slowly, dragging the man to his feet. He ran the man toward the smashed-out glass panel and pushed him in to the night.
He turned. Prine was trying to rise from the wood floor. He held his hand to his mouth as he coughed up blood. Bolan saw Big Thunder and grabbed for it, staggering back to the AP who had tried to kill him the night before.
The front of the man's uniform was soaked with blood. Bolan grabbed him, popping buttons, and pulled him to a kneeling position, jamming the gun into his throat, which made the man gag more. The other girl was rising tentatively from the floor. Bolan looked at her. "Get the hell out of here!" he growled and turned back to Prine. "We're going to talk now."
"Go to hell," the man rasped, and when Bolan kicked him hard in the stomach, the man rolled into a fetal position on the ground.
Bolan pulled Prine back to his knees. "You're dead where you kneel," the Executioner said. "And don't think I don't mean it."
The man looked into his eyes and saw blue steel. He nodded slightly, his mouth a twisted mess. "What.?.." he asked weakly.
"Why were you at the pachinko parlor?"
The man's eyes drifted. Bolan shook him back. "To make sure no Americans got out," he mumbled.
"Why?"
"P-part of the deal with our c-coke connection."
"Why?" he yelled.
He shook his head. "I don't know."
Bolan shook him hard. "Why?" he yelled.
"I swear to God, I don't know. We had to do it to get the coke."
"How much coke?"
"Tons... for distribution all over America... more than anybody's ever seen."
"Has it gone out yet?"
"No, man. N-no."
"Is this Operation Snowflake?"
"How did you... Yeah, that's it."
"Where is it? Right now, where is it?"
The man's lips quivered, and Bolan could see him still looking for a way out. The Executioner jammed the gun harder into his windpipe.
"Chikatetsu," Prine said, choking, spitting up. "Chikatetsu."
Bolan looked at him in disbelief. Chikatetsu was the Japanese word for underground, the term applied to the Tokyo subway system. That didn't make any sense, it...
He heard the gun being primed and rolle
d away instinctively, coming up to see Junko standing in the doorway with a MAC-10 in her hand. The wounded airman on the other side of the room had pulled a .45 and was swinging it away from Bolan toward Junko.
In a flash she opened up on full auto, cutting the man practically in half, his lungs exploding in fury from his chest cavity.
"Junko!" Bolan called as she swung the SMG across the room toward Prine, who was pulling his own .45 from its holster. "No!"
She fired as he cleared leather, drawing a line that bisected the AP from groin to head. His brains blew out the top of his head to splatter the walls. His body, dead already, remained kneeling for several seconds, then pitched forward with a loud splat onto the floor. The .45 was still locked tightly in his hand.
Bolan and the woman looked at one another, a slight smile turning up the corners of her lips.
"I thought I told you to go home," he said.
"And I thought I told you to be careful," she replied and pulled the clip from the automatic, rooting through her sequined handbag for another.
7
As Bolan stood looking across a sea of black hair, he understood why Junko had told him to wear white if he was taking the Fujikyu trip. The Shinjuku train was filled to overflowing with standing Japanese, head and shoulders smaller than Bolan and all wearing white for the climb up Mount Fuji. The climb is a metaphysical journey for the Japanese — Fujiyama's snowcapped peak is the home of their ancestral gods. And the climb itself is a Buddhist journey of self-discipline and physical purification.
The train rumbled toward Fujiyoshida Station, and the chatter around Bolan became more excited. The Executioner wouldn't be climbing all the way to the top of the long-silent volcano that he knew was the national symbol of Japan, but he welcomed some time in the clean morning air and the chance to reflect on the mysterious Dr. Norwood and Operation Snowflake.
Bolan felt the slowing of the old express train and bent with the other travelers to get a look out the train's windows at Fuji-san as they lumbered into the old wooden station. He hung back, waiting until the train had cleared before exiting himself. Bolan hated the Asian necessity for jamming as many people into as small a space as possible.
The air was crisp and still chilly as he made his way out of the station, following the crowd of climbers with their straw-covered shoes toward the Yoshida path, one of five hiking trails up the volcano. The sky was clear, crystalline blue, in stark contrast to the bright white of the snow-covered peak. To his left Lake Yamanaka, the largest of Fuji's numerous lakes, sat placidly. The whole atmosphere suggested peace and serenity.
The Executioner felt out of place.
He made the twenty-minute walk to Yoshida with a large group of climbers, most of whom intended to stay overnight and finish the climb before morning in order to see the sunrise at the summit — one of the most beautiful sights in the world. For not the first time in his life, Bolan felt the pull between duty and desire, but his own wants came second again. This was business; he'd given up pleasure years ago.
They reached the magnificent simplicity of the Fuji Sengen Shrine in short order, its sculpted wood rising from the shallows of Yamanaka. The climbers stopped here for a few minutes' rest before beginning the nine-hour ascent to the summit. Bolan went on. Time was of the essence.
A number of small chalets were set into the hillside several hundred yards from the shrine. Bolan moved toward them, hoping he'd find answers there. He knew that Fuji was an ancient Ainu word meaning fire, a not inappropriate hiding place for Dr. Norwood, a man who'd built his life around the modern fire of nuclear energy.
There were five houses within easy walking distance, and Bolan made a perfunctory stroll past each one. Children played beside one, and he ruled it out immediately. Of the other four, three were clearly inhabited. Only the fourth was closed tightly. It wasn't much, but it was the place to start.
He walked to the door of the wooden structure. It sat near the edge of an immense forest. Behind it the land rose sharply and climbed thirty-eight hundred meters to the summit of Fuji. The windows were shuttered tight.
He knocked lightly, then harder when no one answered the door. He reached into the pocket of his white jump suit and pulled out his picks, using one on the old lock. The door creaked open as he pushed it.
"Ohayo gozaimasu!" he called into the house, stepping onto the threshold. "Good morning!"
No response. He walked into the place, closing and locking the door behind him. It was warm in there, and the smell of rice and fish was strong in the air. "Hello!" he called again and moved carefully through the house, the 93-R never more than a second away from his hand.
A half-eaten plate of food sat on the kitchen table. Someone had left in a hurry. He moved to the kitchen window, and even though it was shuttered, the view through the slats commanded the entire shrine area and the ground between the two places. Bolan knew he'd been seen.
This time he took out the Beretta and searched the house carefully. A man, perhaps two men, lived there. Judging from the kind of books scattered around, the man was a scholar, and most probably a scientist. There was no doubt in Bolan's mind that it was Norwood, but where was he?
He went through the bedroom, finding a bag that still contained clothes — a man on the run. A futon with one pair of slippers next to it was set up on the floor. Next to the slippers Bolan saw something odd. A box of some kind, with an attached gauge.
He bent and picked up the gauge, recognizing it immediately as a Geiger counter. He flipped on the power and charge toggles, and the instrument sprang to life. The needle clicked wildly, fluctuating all over the dial.
The charged measuring rod was attached to the machine. He snapped it off and began taking readings. Bolan didn't know anything about radiation, but he knew a counter reading in the danger zone wasn't a good sign. The house was hot. It was hot as hell.
An involuntary chill ran up his spine, the fear of the unseen, and he bent to measure the dosage on the futon. The needle hit the upper end of the dial and stayed there as if it was glued. It wasn't the house that was hot. It was Norwood himself.
Bolan walked quickly through the place, taking readings. Every place where a person would spend any amount of time was hot; even the half-eaten food on the table was radioactive.
Bolan set the counter down and moved back through the place again, looking out the windows. Whoever had seen him — couldn't come down the mountain without Bolan seeing him. Norwood probably went farther up the slope or into the forest. If he had opted for the forest, he could stay hidden forever. But if he had climbed, Bolan would find him.
The long living room looked out onto the slope. The Executioner stationed himself there and peeked through the slats. If somebody was out there waiting, he'd show himself eventually.
Twenty minutes later he did. A hundred yards up the slope, hiding behind a small rise, Bolan spotted a man watching the house. He would poke his head up occasionally, then duck again. Bolan could simply wait him out, but he was betting on being in a lot better shape than a scientist who was suffering from radiation poisoning. Besides, Mack Bolan was not a man who waited around.
Bolan threw the door open and charged the slope, angling himself to make sure he got between Norwood and the forest. Everything else was in the open. He ran hard. The ground, soft from the rains, was slippery underfoot. Fifteen seconds after Bolan had exposed his position, Norwood was up and running.
The man had started running toward the forest, then stopped when he realized that Bolan could intercept him. He changed direction, losing valuable time, and hurried farther up the slope.
After that it was no contest. Within two minutes Bolan had caught him, grabbing the man and pulling him gently to the ground, both of them breathing hard.
"I'm not here to hurt you," Bolan said, looking at the man's frightened eyes. "I'm here to help."
Norwood was obviously sick. His skin was gray, his eyes sunken into dark pools. His hair was thin and what was left was almost
pure white. Bolan knew he was much younger than he looked.
"Like you helped Toshu?" he asked loudly, and Bolan noticed that a large number of blood vessels had broken in the man's eyes.
"If you had told us more, we could have offered you more help," Bolan said, then softened his approach. "If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done so already. Let's go back down to the house and talk."
Norwood looked at him for a moment, then sighed in resignation. "Not the house," he said. "It's dangerous there for you. This hasn't worked out well at all."
"How sick are you?"
"I'm dying... rapidly." Norwood sat up on the hillside, looking at the mud patches on his clothes. He seemed overwhelmed by his lot in life. "Everything got so out of control, so crazy, Mr... Mr.?.."
"Reeves," Bolan said. "What happened exactly?"
Bolan sat beside the man, staring down at the house two hundred yards below. There was some movement down there, but it could easily have been the occupants of the other houses.
The man ran his hands through his patchy, unkempt hair. "I... I'm not sure of anything," he said. "I'd worked for the government in fission development for nearly thirty years... and then something happened. I don't know, maybe it was the Chernobyl incident in Russia, but I suddenly felt that nuclear power was not in the best interests of the world. It's a matter of the idea of progress being inherently good. I'd always believed that technology was good, but then I began to think that we were simply advancing our own destruction. I..."
The man doubled over coughing loudly, blood coming up with the spit. Bolan reached out to help Norwood, but he pulled away. "Don't contaminate yourself," Norwood said.
"How did you come to Japan?" Bolan asked.
"I'd written a paper." Norwood wiped his mouth on his sleeve and laughed dryly. "A high-school thing to do, but I wanted everyone to know how I felt. It was published in several places and denounced nuclear energy. Then I got a phone call from a gentleman in Japan, who told me that many people here felt as I did, and he invited me to take part in a symposium concerning nuclear energy in Tokyo. I accepted."
Code of Dishonor Page 6