Ninja Assault

by Don Pendleton

  For weaponry, he’d brought along the Colt M4A1 with the under-barrel M320 launcher stripped away, backed by the Glock, now fitted with a SilencerCo Osprey suppressor that tamed the gun’s bark to a wheeze. For truly silent work, he had a Mark I trench knife, cast bronze knuckle-duster handle, with a satin-finish double-edged blade honed to a razor’s edge. Whether stabbing, slashing or clubbing a target, it got the job done. As a replacement for the M320, Bolan carried half a dozen M67 fragmentation grenades and two AN-M8 smoke canisters, in case he needed cover in the house or during his retreat.

  From where he’d parked, the hike was uphill all the way. Bolan took his time, letting the Yakuzas get settled in and find their comfort zone, start to believe that they were free and clear from all the havoc they had left behind in Vegas. Shinoda wouldn’t get much sleep this night, unless he was a cooler customer than Bolan thought, but his security detachment might believe they were untouchable out here, the molten lava sprawl of neon on the Strip and Glitter Gulch invisible despite their altitude, screened by tall trees.

  There was no danger of civilian casualties on the mountain. Bolan knew the nearest town—also Mount Charleston—was located in a nearby valley, where its 350-odd souls, mostly Vegas commuters, were well insulated from racket, pollution and crime. They might hear distant echoes once the party started, might or might not make a call to Metro, but as far as guiding officers directly to the scene, they wouldn’t have much luck.

  Response time out from headquarters was forty minutes, average. A rover in the area might cut that time by half but still would need to search the mountain, listening and watching, to pinpoint the source of shots. Metro’s air support consisted of seven choppers, different makes, and one Cessna Skylane search plane. The pilots were on call around the clock but still took time to scramble and respond, longer to mount effective searches. Time enough for Bolan to complete his mission on the mountain, if he managed to avoid a major snag.

  Like getting killed.

  * * *

  SHINODA COULD NOT remember when he’d eaten better food or packed as much away. He knew that it was partly nervous eating, trying to distract himself from his oppressive troubles, simultaneously fueling up for battle, if it came to that. He could relax here, in his mountain lair, surrounded by his men—but only to a point. Solving the mess in Vegas was his top priority.

  And in the process, he might save himself.

  The second lobster tail had vanished, and he nearly took the chef up on his offer of another, smaller steak, but exercised a bit of self-control. He pushed his chair back, despite the fact that Yoshinoro obviously wasn’t finished eating, stood and began to pace the dining room.

  The cabin was a good size, sixteen hundred square feet with a second floor, but it was feeling claustrophobic now. Shinoda began to second-guess himself, wondering if he should have stayed in Vegas, either at his home or at Night Moves, to meet the threat head-on.

  And then, what? Die like his manager heishi, who had been cut down without a chance to fight?

  Logic would be irrelevant, if Kazuo Takumi put a hostile twist on Shinoda’s moves. Depending on the point of view, his tactics could be seen as wise or cowardly, a brilliant bit of strategy or hiding from a fight he might have won, if he’d remained to lead his troops.

  “We’re going back,” he blurted, almost surprised to hear the thought spoken aloud.

  “What, now?” asked Shiroo, with his mouth half-full of lobster.

  “Now. This minute. Tell the men.”

  Shiroo knew better than to argue. Rising from the table, dabbing with a napkin at his lips, he left to spread the word.

  Running had been a momentary lapse. There was no reason why Kazuo Takumi should be told of it at all. Shinoda would personally take control of a relentless search throughout Las Vegas, peering under every manhole cover, into every sewer drain, if that was what it took to find his enemy.

  He had eyes on the street, though they were sometimes blurry ones: users and dealers, thieves who sold their swag to Shinoda’s fences, call girls and their lowly sisters of the street, cab drivers who conveyed sheep to the fleecing of their choice and kept their ears open along the way.

  Someone knew something. It was guaranteed.

  The kyodai retrieved his jacket, slipped it on, then patted the pistol holstered on his belt for reassurance. He had never killed a man with this specific weapon, but had practiced with it at Boom Town until he’d mastered it and shot tight groups consistently at twenty yards. What more could be expected of a man in his position?

  Nothing less than absolute success.

  He shouted through the cabin, seeking his second in command, interrupting him as he was asking questions via walkie-talkie, to a guard outside.

  “I’m ready,” Shinoda told him. Those who stayed behind to watch the place could clean up after he was gone.

  “I can’t reach Chu,” Shiroo replied.

  It took a moment, sorting through his mental photo gallery of underlings, to come up with a face. “The young one, with the Elvis sideburns?”

  “Yes. He should be answering.”

  “Leave him behind, if he breaks discipline. I’ll deal with him another—”

  The explosion took out both living room windows, spraying glass and splintered wood inside, its shock wave slamming Shinoda to the hardwood floor. A jolt of pain lanced through his hip, but he shook it off. He had no time for mere sensations now, as smoke swirled in the air around him, blurring his vision.

  Hell had found him on the mountain. It was bellowing his name outside.

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD CAUGHT the first Yakuza hardman smoking in the woods and slit his throat, easing the body down without a fuss and stamping out the cigarette. As he moved closer to the cabin, scanning with the goggles, he saw two men on the front porch, one armed with an AK-47 knockoff, while the other held a riot shotgun.

  He could likely snipe them from the tree line with his Glock, say thirty yards or so, but either one of them might fire as he was going down and give the game away. If there was going to be noise, Bolan decided, then he might as well be making it himself.

  He primed one of the baseball-size grenades and pitched it overhand, dropping it more or less between the lookouts on the porch, and six or seven feet in front of them. One noticed it, was trying to identify the object that had dropped from nowhere, maybe thinking it could be a pinecone, when the fuse ran down and smoky thunder swept the porch. Windows imploded, and a shrill voice somewhere in the cabin squealed, in either surprise or sudden pain.

  Bolan charged through the smoke and dust, his finger on the M4A1’s trigger, shouting out Jiro Shinoda’s name. Why not, when he had literally blasted stealth to smithereens? The Yakuzas wouldn’t mistake him for a member of their team, and anything that he could do to spook them, maybe spoil their hasty aim, worked out to his advantage. Some might even flee, if they thought their boss was the only target, but he wasn’t counting on it.

  Twenty men, at least. A slaughter, if he pulled it off; oblivion for Bolan if he failed.

  He reached the porch and stormed across it, found the door already hanging open, jarred loose by the blast of his grenade and scarred by shrapnel. Bolan crossed the threshold in a fighting crouch, the carbine’s muzzle leading, and immediately saw a face he recognized, despite its veil of blood.

  Sweeping the room for other enemies and finding none close by, he crossed to Yoshinoro Shiroo, kicked the armed but wounded Sumiyoshi-kai lieutenant over on his back and pressed the carbine’s muzzle to his bloody cheek.

  “One chance,” he said. “Where’s Jiro?”

  “Jibun de seikō iku, gaijin!”

  “Wrong answer,” Bolan announced, and blew the bloody face apart before the man could bring his weapon to bear.

  A babble of excited, angry voices was converging on him from the cabin’s two wings and the floor upstairs. No way to count them, sight unseen, but there were plenty to surround him if he didn’t stay in motion, doi
ng anything he could to throw them off and put them down. Jiro Shinoda was somewhere in the cabin still, unless he’d made it to a back door seconds after the grenade went off, and that was damned unlikely.

  More Yakuzas closed on the cabin from outside now, making it a perfect death trap.

  But for whom?

  * * *

  SHINODA HAD LEFT his second in command behind, wounded. There was no shame in that, per se. For all he knew, Shiroo was dead, his scalp wound gushing blood as if a faucet had been opened.

  Dead or merely stunned, he was no good to his boss now. Self-preservation was the kyodai’s imperative, and he was running out of time.

  The din of battle raged beneath his feet, sending vibrations through the floorboards. He had run upstairs, impulsively, and now cursed his own foolishness. Roaming along the second-story hallway, pistol in his hand, he shouted at the soldiers passing him, en route to join the fight downstairs. He wanted guns and bodies in between himself and whoever had come to kill him, somehow trailing him from Vegas to his eagle’s nest.

  Shinoda wondered if he could safely bail out from an upstairs bedroom window, land without breaking his legs on impact and escape into the woods. The cars outside were useless to him, their ignition keys all hanging where he’d ordered, on a row of pegs downstairs beside the front door. Jumping was obviously better than the grim alternative, but what if there were other enemies outside, waiting to cut him down?

  Another blast rattled the cabin, raising dust devils around his feet. He heard more screams, more gunfire, and now imagined he smelled wood smoke. Was the cabin burning, or had shrapnel damage clogged the fireplace flue?

  To shoot it out was one thing, but to wait upstairs and burn alive…

  “Son of a bitch!” he snarled, and started looking for the nearest window he could find.

  * * *

  THE FIGHT DOWNSTAIRS was fierce, but took less time than Bolan had expected. It was fluid, constantly in motion from one smoky room into another, leaving dead Yakuza gunners in his wake. They came at him from all sides, shouting, often firing well before they had a target marked, and twice he saw their bullets cut down members of the home team, crying out what felt like bitter curses as they died from not-so-friendly fire. Bolan used up two 30-round magazines clearing the living room and what most people would have called a rec room, though it didn’t feature any games that he could see, short bursts dropping his adversaries as they came, spraying the log walls and the furniture with blood-spray patterns that would keep the CSI team busy for a week.

  Rushing the kitchen from the rec room, he had used his second frag grenade—more screams in there—then dropped a smoker in his wake before he moved on, leaving any hardmen behind him to come groping through the man-made fog. A fear of fire might set some of them running, but if they found Bolan in the haze, eyes blurred with tears, he didn’t mind that, either.

  Through the storm of slugs his enemies laid down, Bolan emerged unscathed except for one small cut below his left eye, caused by flying splinters from a wooden chair. Some of his luck was owed to hasty fire from gunmen in a hurry, shaken and confused by the abrupt invasion of their mountain sanctuary. Most of it was Bolan: his experience, agility and combat savvy—knowing when to drop and roll, upend a table as a momentary shield, or spring from cover to attack when his pursuers thought that he was finished.

  Killing was his business, and the trade was booming on Mount Charleston.

  And when the shooting stopped, he hadn’t seen Jiro Shinoda. Standing in a smoky hallway, wondering if echoes from the firefight had alerted any staffers at the mountain’s famous restaurant and lodge, he froze in place and listened to the house.

  Some damaged object toppled from a counter in the kitchen, finally surrendering to gravity, and shattered when it hit the floor. A couple of the dying gunners still moaned and muttered, maybe pleading with their fallen comrades for relief that only death would bring.

  And then, he heard a creaking floorboard overhead.

  Bolan retreated toward the stairs, wasting no time on stealth. He fed his carbine a fresh magazine, keeping a sharp eye on the second-story landing as he climbed. The corridor up there was empty, bedroom doors on each side of the hallway closed, except for one.

  Judging the cabin’s floor plan, Bolan thought the open room would have been more or less directly overhead when he’d first heard the noise downstairs. That didn’t mean his quarry would be in that room, of course. The open door could be a trap to lure Bolan, while an enemy emerged behind him for the kill shot.

  Bolan mulled it over while he drew a long, slow breath, then rolled the dice. He passed by five closed doors, drawn by more scuffling sounds beyond the open one. If Jiro Shinoda planned an ambush there, he’d obviously missed the memo on surprise.

  Edging around the doorjamb, Bolan saw the Yakuza boss of Las Vegas grappling with a window that refused to open. On a nightstand by the room’s large bed, the mobster had set a pistol just within his reach.

  “Looks like you’re stuck,” Bolan observed.

  Shinoda stiffened, then turned to meet him, glancing sideways at the gun, deciding not to try it. When he spoke, his voice seemed well under control.

  “Are you my death?”

  “Your executioner. I’m not in charge of what comes after, if there’s anything.”

  “Should I repent?” Shinoda inquired, mocking the word.

  “It wouldn’t help you.”

  “May I see your face?”

  “No time for introductions. Do you want that gun?”

  Shinoda considered it, then nodded, slowly reaching for the pistol, offering no threat to Bolan.

  “You’d allow me absolution through seppuku?”

  Bolan kept the carbine’s muzzle pinned to the man’s chest as he replied, “Your call.”

  “This is not proper form, of course, but I don’t have a tanto or a kaishakunin to attend me.”

  “If you miss, I’ve got it covered,” Bolan said.

  “In that case, with sincere regret for having failed my oyabun and ancestors, I leave this life.”

  Bolan was ready for a trick, but Shinoda wedged the weapon’s muzzle underneath his chin, and he was smiling when he pulled the trigger, spattering the stubborn bedroom window with his brains.

  Downstairs, Bolan dropped an incendiary stock dead center in the living room—a dying room, this night—and exited into the darkness, trailing smoke. Before he’d cleared a hundred yards, the place was burning, most of the ground floor engulfed in flames, a noon-bright beacon in the forest night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  From his penthouse, sixty floors above the traffic thronging Shin-Ohashi Don, Kazuo Takumi had a clear view of the famous Tsukiji Market, world’s largest wholesale fish and seafood market, but the smell could not assail his nostrils. It amused him sometimes, watching gaijin tourists flock and gawk at dead fish in the outer market, while the inner circles were reserved for buyers from the city’s countless restaurants and grocery stores.

  Takumi had chosen his flat in Tsukiji as the one least likely to be vulnerable in his time of tribulation. His ownership of the six-thousand-square-foot penthouse was a closely guarded secret, though he still might be betrayed, as oyabuns so often were, by traitors in the bosom of his family. To guard against that threat, he had six of his best soldiers in residence, with three more on rotating duty in the building’s lobby, covering approaches to the elevators and the service stairs.

  And after hearing from Las Vegas, hours earlier, he had recalled The Four.

  Kazuo had not recognized the name of the survivor from Nevada who had telephoned him, waiting while the call was shunted through relays to stymie traces, finally connecting with his oyabun. No one could memorize the names of twenty thousand little brothers and recall them instantly, on cue.

  Yuji Ota, calling from Nevada in the middle of his night, had told the story simply and succinctly, sparing him no details on the scrambled line. W
hile not personally present at the massacre—he’d been part of the team assigned to hunt Jiro Shinoda’s nemesis through every nook and cranny in Las Vegas—he had received details from a detective now in mourning for the loss of weekly payoffs from the Sumiyoshi-kai. Jiro was dead, along with twenty-seven of his men, at someplace called Mount Charleston, where he’d gone for reasons Ota could not properly explain. It pained Takumi to believe his kyodai had run away from battle, and he hoped that Jiro had not died a coward’s death.

  The long and short of it: his two main outposts in America now lay in ruins, with the twin spotlights of law enforcement and the rabid media focused on Yakuza activities in the United States. The family’s small colonies in Canada were safe, as far as he could tell—Canadians were much more civilized than Yanks, and far less prone to mayhem—but that situation, too, might change at any moment. More security would be required for operations in Vancouver and Toronto, while Takumi tried to learn exactly who in hell had fixed their sights on him.

  And to that end, he had recalled The Four.

  It posed no major difficulty, just a phone call to the pilot of his Bombardier Global 8000 over the Pacific, hurtling toward Los Angeles at fifty thousand feet, cruising at 640 miles per hour. It was no hardship to turn the jet, and no refueling should be necessary, since its range exceeded the planned trip’s distance by some thirty-six hundred miles. The Four would not be disappointed by their detour, could not be, since they were strangers to all normal human feelings except fealty to Kazuo Takumi himself.

  They made a perfect killing team, remorseless, expert, trained extensively in every aspect of their trade from martial arts to demolition. Ninjas of the old school in their mutual devotion to bushido and its rituals, The Four were also high-tech warriors when they had to be, well versed in cutting-edge techniques that Takumi grasped only in the broadest terms.

  He wondered whether they could save him from the danger that, he now felt certain, would be crossing the Pacific soon, to menace him at home. His trouble would not end losing Vegas and Atlantic City, or the prosecutions that might follow as his secrets were revealed there.