And then it was gone again.
He drifted back slowly, through a multitude of subsidiary shocks, and as he reassembled the scattered portions of his mind, his first conscious thought was that he wasn't going to let himself be put under the machine again — no matter what it took.
Mett was staring at him from his chair, anger replacing the good humor he had shown earlier. "Now tell me who else knows about our operation and what plans you've made."
Bolan tried to speak, but his voice was drained and powerless, a whisper the best he could manage.
Mett moved closer, and Bolan tried his bonds. They were looser, but he had no power to do anything.
"Tell me," Mett growled, leaning closer.
Bolan saw his shot and acted.
He lowered his head and came forward, chair and all. He hit Mett nose high. Numb himself, he felt nothing, but he heard both the man's nose crack loudly and Mett's muffled yell as he fell backward.
Bolan, trussed to the chair, had no balance. He fell forward, angling himself toward Mett's head as the man rolled on the floor.
Bolan twisted at the last moment, falling backward over Mett. He hit man and floor at the same time, his already creaky chair collapsing on impact. Mett groaned loudly.
Bolan rolled, kicking free of his ropes. Mett was struggling to rise. The Executioner, weak and dizzy, threw himself over Mett, going for the man's shoulder holster and coming away with an Uzi pistol.
He jammed it in Mett's throat and lay atop him, breathing heavily, trying to keep from passing out.
Sonnojoi stood all around, their shotguns pointing at him. Bolan knew he had only one card to lay on the table.
'This man has led you away from the Bushido code," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "You have dishonored yourselves and Hashi-san by your actions here today."
He looked down at Mett. The man's face was bruised and bloody, his eyes dead things through which nothing good could ever be seen. He stared at Bolan with an empty, useless soul.
Bolan pulled the trigger under the man's chin, the pop muffled in the folds of flesh around his neck. Mett jerked once, blood gushing from his mouth and ears, then fell back, his eyes looking just the same as they had when he'd been alive.
Bolan rose shakily, nearly falling twice. The Sonnojoi still faced him, their weapons ready. The Executioner turned a circle, staggering.
"It was right that he should die," Bolan said to the warriors.
There was deadly silence for nearly a minute, then one by one, two dozen Sonnojoi turned their shotguns toward themselves and pulled the triggers. Twenty-four men, bound by an honor they didn't really understand — an honor established by forty-seven ronin— took their own lives in the warehouse rather than face the humiliation they had brought upon the name of Inazo Hashimoto.
Bolan made an effort to leave, but his body wouldn't listen. He sat, for just a minute, next to the body of Dr. Mett. And then he slept.
14
Mika Ichiro stepped precariously over the knees of one of the members of the Special Services squad as she tried to bring tea to the men jammed into her small home. Both she and Kendo were proud of their house. It was the result of many years of savings from the meager policeman's salary Kendo received, in addition to the money she made teaching the art of origami to primary-school students.
All the furniture and every bit of floor space in the living room and dining room were filled with men dressed in dark olive drab with blackened faces. Their weapons rested upon their knees or in hip holsters. Mika was afraid of guns, but she was a cop's wife and accepted all that it meant with dignity and quiet reticence. Her husband was there with her, and that was all that mattered.
Lieutenant Kendo Ichiro turned on the motor of the slide projector as soon as Mika had served tea. It was just getting dark outside. They didn't have much time.
"Would you please turn off the house lights?" he asked his wife as she moved through the group of men, back to the kitchen.
"Hai," she said, lowering her head in the customary subservient manner.
When the lights went out, Ichiro turned on the projector bulb, and an unfocused picture blurred his white wall. Before he adjusted the focus, he addressed the men seated before him.
"There is a reason why we are meeting here in my home, in secrecy," he said. "All your careers will be put in jeopardy by what you are taking part in. I am about to tell you about a mission in which we will be acting illegally, without sanction from anyone higher than me. The mission will be dangerous, and I can't guarantee what will happen to you after it is over — if you survive. Anyone who wants to may leave now. No one will think the worse of you. I ask only that you say nothing about it until tomorrow, at which time all truth will be known."
Ichiro waited. He looked down at Natsume, who sat on the floor beside him. The man smiled easily. No one got up to leave, and Ichiro breathed a sigh of relief.
He reached out and focused the picture on the wall. It was one of the pictures of the underground hangars that he had lifted from the history book that afternoon.
"Chikatetsu," he said, pointing to the picture. It showed Japanese Zeroes lined up in neat military rows. "I have reason to believe that a private army of Sonnojoi lives underground, here, in the old tunnels between Yokota and Tachikowa Air Bases. I believe they are responsible for a large cocaine trade, plus I believe they are the ones who kidnapped Dr. Lawrence Norwood and were responsible for his death. I also think that a man whose name you might be familiar with is the head of this organization — Inazo Hashimoto."
He heard the murmurs that ran through the room, but they died quickly. He threw another picture up on the wall, this one a blueprint of the underground complex.
"I believe a large cocaine shipment, bound for the United Sates, is going to change hands tonight. I intend to stop it. It is unlikely that I could get a warrant because of the political control exercised by Mr. Hashimoto, so I'm taking it upon myself to go in and stop the operation."
There was general agreement around the room.
He threw up another picture, this one showing a blueprint of the complex from ground level. "Here is a ground view of chikatetsu. The small notches you see at ground level were originally designed as air passages to the outside. Now look at this."
He put on another slide of the same thing, only this time there was a superimposition of buildings on the ground. "As you can see, five buildings were placed over the air passages, all of them owned by Hashimoto. Of the five, four of them are operating businesses. The fifth, though, here..." he pointed to the picture "...is an old storage warehouse. I believe that these air passages are used as entries to the underground. We're going to try the warehouse and see what we can find. Are there any questions?"
A voice came from the darkness. "There are twenty-five of us. How large is the force of the Sonnojoi?"
"I have no idea," Ichiro said, "no idea at all."
Bolan sat in the house of death, breathing in its smell, and collected his strength. Light was fading beyond the high warehouse windows. He'd been sleeping for several hours. He looked at his watch, but the face was charred and broken. Every muscle in his body was sore and aching as he turned to look at the body of Dr. Mett.
He reached over and looked at Mett's watch. Nearly seven. He had another hour, two at the most. He stood slowly, painfully, and looked around for his guns. Bolan saw the field telephone, and anger coursed through him. Bending, he grabbed the machine and threw it viciously at the cement floor. It shattered on impact. The feeling was better than the fix he got from ten cups of coffee. The torture box brought him back to reality. He had to hurry.
Mett's car, a Honda sedan, sat parked near the warehouse doors. Bolan hurried toward it. The keys were in the ignition, and his combat harness lay on the floorboards of the passenger's side.
Bolan slipped into the harness while trying to put things together in his mind. The deal was going down tonight. Hashi-san's steel mill was about five miles from Yokota, an
d he was halfway between the two places. The base was sealed, but the mill probably wasn't. He could be at the Asano Corporation in a few minutes. It seemed the logical place to start.
The Executioner kicked the accelerator and jammed the car into gear, backing out with a squeal of tires. The sky was clear, no sign of rain. He moved out into the twilight. It struck him as odd that so little development had gone on in an area so heavily populated.
Traffic was thick as rush-hour motorists made their way out to the suburbs from Tokyo proper. As he tried to maneuver his way through it, he thought about the two hydrogen bombs set to make their way to the United States. The logical choices to drop off the bombs would be Travis Air Base in California or Andrews on the East Coast. Both were near major population centers. If Hashi-san wanted to regain his family honor, he could do away with millions of innocent people in the first blast of Dr. Norwood's toys.
As he neared the entrance to the Asano Corporation, a great many connections began to make sense. The cocaine was a front for the bombs. Of course Jamison didn't know he'd be toting nuclear death. Hank Jamison was just a cheap hood looking to get rich, his own kind of retaliation against the Air Force, which he blamed for his problems. Operation Snowflake was an elaborate scheme designed by Hashi-san to settle an oath he'd made in 1945 when he adopted the code of the Bushido. Human life, including the life of his daughter, meant nothing to the old man.
Bolan left the main drag, moving down the private road that led to the steel mill. The huge wrought-iron gates were closed and barred, although the parking lot within the structure was filled with cars. Above the entrance was the kanji script he had seen on the helicopter. A glowing red sun was painted between the characters.
He hit the horn, waiting to see what came to greet him. Nothing. He beeped again, but nothing happened. He climbed out of the car and moved to look through the slats of the gate. Moving back several paces, he got a running start and jumped, catching the bars and climbing the rest of the fifteen-foot height.
Bolan moved quickly through the parking lot that fronted railroad lines and a long row of towering blast furnaces where the pig iron was melted and transported in ladles to the hearth furnaces. He found a door leading right into the mill. A blast of heat greeted him as he entered. So far, he'd seen no one.
The Executioner picked up his pace, looking for Hashi-san's office. He ran down a short hallway that opened onto the main floor of the factory which was the size of two football fields. Conveyor belts ran the length of the building, along with overhead trams that carried the ladles to the now dormant hearth furnaces where the pig iron was superheated with steel and flux to make a ribbon of workable steel.
Everything was shut down, although it was still extremely hot. The whole plant was empty, and Bolan began to suspect that Hashi-san controlled every aspect of his warrior's lives as employer and benefactor. But where were they?
He moved quickly through the plant, coming out finally at an administrative section that was separated from the rest of the building by two sets of double doors. Bolan entered, walking past empty offices. The hallway finally ended at a door marked in English Mr. Hashimoto.
The door was locked. Bolan kicked it in and found himself in a receptionist's area. The door beyond that was marked Private. The Executioner entered.
He was standing in a large office that could have belonged to an ancient shogun. The low desk sat on the floor with a cushion behind it. In front of the desk were many cushions, for whomever had an audience with the great man. Instead of carpeting, a straw mat covered the floor. The walls were hung with swords and tapestry depictions of ancient ronin. Three-foot high incense sticks burned thickly on a portable Buddhist temple in the corner. It was a study in simple elegance, a traditional Japanese room. And it didn't help the Executioner one bit.
He wasn't sure what he'd been looking for, but it obviously wasn't here. He turned to leave, then thought of all the cars in the parking lot. Those people had to be somewhere. He thought about sumo wrestling and the Aussie's theory, then moved back through the office, going to the walls themselves.
He began pulling down tapestries to bare the walls, then stopped before a cloth painting depicting Asano himself, as a ghost, and the suicide of the forty-seven ronin. His hand was shaking as he reached out and pulled it from the wall. Behind it was an elevator door containing only one button — down. "Chikatetsu," Bolan whispered and reached for the button.
* * *
Hashi-san watched as the huge ball was lowered into the box marked Radar Bay by the small, one-man crane they used upstairs for loading pig iron. As soon as it was gently settled in its mooring, several of his men climbed up the box and began stuffing one-pound packages of cocaine around it. This was the bomb destined for Travis Air Base in California. This one would be for Hiroshima. It promised to kill a great many more people than that original bomb had. Payment, plus interest.
He was most satisfied. Honor would soon be partially served through the greed of the American airmen.
Junko sat beside him, in the driver's seat of the golf cart. She seemed deep in thought, unhappy somehow, although he couldn't understand what could possibly bother her at the hour of his greatest triumph. Around him stretched his kingdom, the chikatetsu, hewn from rock and earth by his ancestors, completed with steel and concrete by his warriors. Hundreds of his followers worked quickly, all wanting to take part in this final realization of a long-held dream. His men were devoted to him, as their fathers had been. He'd brought them into the factory at an early age, had taken care of them morally and financially, and they repaid him with undying devotion. He was their master, and they lived for his service.
"Where's Mett?" Junko asked. "The Americans will soon come to take their packages."
"We do not need him at this stage," Hashi-san said. "In fact, I've been thinking that with the addition of Mr. Bolan as our retainer, we may not need Dr. Mett at all anymore."
"I'm not so sure that he'll be interested in joining you, Father," she said, staring down at the steering wheel.
"Nonsense!" Hashi-san said, as always ignoring anything he didn't want to hear. "He is an honorable man and seeks the company of others as honorable as himself."
"It is his country you are preparing to attack."
"What's a country? Men serve other men. A country is just the ground men live upon. It means nothing to the warrior."
"But, Father..."
"Enough! I've spoken."
The fitting of the bomb had been completed in the first box. Next came the delicate part. The lid was lowered slowly to the box. A small line with an attached hook dangled from its center. As the top came down, the hook was attached to a small ring that protruded through the camouflage curtain of cocaine. Then the lid was nailed on and the cord tightened. When the box was opened, the cord would pull against the ring, setting off the synchronized charges within the bomb itself. The end result would be a glorious release of the energy within the plutonium atom, a power equal to the sun itself.
"Goodbye, California," Hashi-san said happily as the box was nailed tightly and loaded by forklift into the back of the waiting truck that Captain Jamison had left with them.
A telephone rang across the span of the empty hangar, and one of his men ran to get it. He approached Hashi-san hurriedly a minute later.
"My Hashi-san," he began, bowing low, "two visitors are within the underground and moving this way."
"Yes?" the man inquired.
"Your nephew, Commissioner Kawabata, is coming by cart right now on urgent business," the man said. "The other is Bolan-san. He entered at the mill and has been walking this way."
Junko looked up, her eyes hurt and fearful. "Bolan..." she began, but her father stopped her.
"Don't worry," he said. "I would have preferred to break the news of all this to Bolan-san in my own way, but since that is denied me, I'll talk to him now."
Junko looked at him, but the rock hardness of his eyes kept her from saying any more.<
br />
"Here comes your nephew now," the Sonnojoi said, and immediately they could hear the hum of his cart's electric motor.
Hashi-san looked toward the tunnel, watching the glowing eyes of the cart boring into him as it closed the distance between them. It was a peaceful, quiet world he had in chikatetsu, a world where the ancient and the modern could be contemplated at leisure.
The cart pulled up next to him, and he could tell immediately that his nephew was upset. He'd always been high-strung as a boy.
"Uncle," Kawabata said, bowing his head before Hashi-san.
"What is it, Shusaku?"
Kawabata looked up at the man, shaking his head. "Hashi-san, I fear that one of my detectives has discovered what goes on here," he said. "A man named Ichiro."
"Yes, I've heard of him."
"He's been tracking down the man they call the Executioner, the one I had released from jail for you." Kawabata looked behind him, as if fearful something would spring upon him from behind.
"I've been trying to keep watch on him. Uncle," the commissioner continued. "One of my men at his station house found history books on his desk, one of them opened to a section about chikatetsu. And now I can't find him anywhere. All the elite of Ichiro's Special Services unit are missing, too. I fear the lieutenant plans to raid this installation."
"Without a warrant?" Hashi-san asked, his eyes dancing.
"This is serious, Uncle," Kawabata said. "My name is on those prison transfer forms. If they connect me..."
"You always were a selfish boy," Hashi-san replied. "Who put you through school, selfish boy?"
"You, Uncle."
"Who found you a rich wife? Who handed you the position you now hold? Who covers up your disgusting sexual indiscretions?"
"You, Uncle, you."
"Well, now you will do something for me, Shusaku," the old man said. "I now seek repayment for all I've done in the past. If the security of chikatetsu is to be breached by your men, then certainly you will be able to send them away."
Code of Dishonor Page 15