She would have known better than that.
The second guard was talking as they climbed. “You making big mistake, believe me. This not going well for you.”
“I’m touched by your concern,” Bolan replied, and jabbed him with the Steyr’s flash suppressor, instantly rewarded with a curse.
They reached the second floor, turned right and ran into another guard. He saw what was happening and tried to reach his shoulder-holstered weapon, but he never made it. Bolan fired a 5.56 mm NATO round into the first hood’s back, piercing his torso and erupting from his chest to slam the second shooter backward, blowing scarlet bubbles from a throat wound.
Leaving them to thrash and die without him, Bolan stepped across their bodies, tried the knob and felt it turn. He shouldered through the doorway, following the echo of his shot muffled by flesh, and caught three men around a desk, just turning from a city map of Tokyo.
None of them was Tadashi Jo.
“Your boss around?” Bolan asked.
The tallest of them, to his left, said, “Who the fu—?” before a round from Bolan’s AUG cut off the question. Now the other two stood frozen, gaping at him, hands frozen en route toward hidden weapons.
“Is your boss around?” he asked again.
They blinked at him like fish for a second, then scrambled for their hardware.
“Never mind,” he said, and killed them where they stood. A plan was only useful if you had the choice of scrubbing it when it went south. He’d have to seek Tadashi Jo somewhere else, instead of wasting time with Yakuza muscle determined not to answer, even if it killed them.
He started back downstairs, thinking the hostess hadn’t phoned a warning to the office gang. And that meant—
Halfway down the stairs, he heard the startled cries of café diners, nothing like amusement in their voices now. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Bolan spotted half a dozen Yakuza gunners with pistols out, wearing their shades despite the hour, ready to receive him. There were more outside, preventing any new arrivals from entering until their work was done inside.
“Hey, boys, you’re late,” he told the firing squad.
And the Executioner ripped them with a 5.56 mm buzz saw, firing from the hip.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two of the gunners went down immediately, likely dead before their bodies hit the floor. The others scattered, flipping tables in a quest for cover, while the costumed diners screamed and shouted. Most of them were dropping, too, some clutching cell phones, texting furiously. One of them, dressed up in a karate gi with bandages disguising half his face, went for the nearest gunner with what appeared to be a pair of plastic nunchucks. For his trouble, he received a bullet in the face at point-blank range.
Bolan returned the favor, taking out the killer with a clean shot through his temple from a range of twenty feet. A short hop landed Bolan at the bottom of the staircase, crouching, shouldering the AUG and tracking targets as they scrambled. At the same time, from the sidewalk, the remaining goons were barging in, more pistols drawn, one of them hauling out a Micro-Uzi from an armpit holster.
Bolan took the Uzi man down first, two NATO rounds drilling his chest, punching him backward, out the way he’d come into the Blushing Maid. His two companions broke in opposite directions, one ducking behind a cigarette machine, the other diving for the cover of a table someone else had overturned.
The diver almost made it, but he wasn’t fast enough. A foot or so before he would have been concealed, Bolan reached out to tag him with a 3-round burst that flipped him through a clumsy somersault, landing face-up and blowing wet red bubbles from his lips.
That still left four, and some of them were firing at him now, though not effectively. Their shots went high and wide, thrown out in hopes of getting lucky when they should have aimed. He spotted one, hunkered behind a small square table, and the NATO rounds cut through its plastic top as if it had been made of cardboard, instantly raising a dying scream.
Three left, and every second Bolan spent disposing of them brought police or more Yakuza that much closer. He was fifteen feet from freedom, but to cross that open ground he’d have to lay down cover fire, and that meant jeopardizing innocents whose cries and sobbing made the Blushing Maid sound like the viewing chamber at a mortuary.
Plan B had been to exit through the café’s kitchen, out the back door and along an alley lined with garbage bins. To reach the kitchen, Bolan had to travel forty feet, already littered and obstructed with the dead and wounded, toppled furniture, discarded costumes. Could he make it, while the three surviving hardmen were still disoriented?
There was only one way to find out.
He bolted, dropped and slid on the linoleum floor as pistols started tracking him, firing too late instead of leading him as they should have. The Sumiyoshi-kai were fighters, obviously, but they’d cut their teeth on drive-bys and back-alley executions, learning little about marksmanship while they were at it. If they couldn’t take a victim by surprise or while he was restrained, their aim went straight to hell.
A lucky break, but nothing Bolan could rely on in relatively cramped space. Stray rounds were as deadly as a sniper’s finest bull’s-eye, if they found their mark by accident. He had to keep the shooters hopping, take them out if possible, or at the very least confuse them until he’d reached the kitchen and slipped out.
Sliding, he squeezed off half a dozen shots at no one in particular, keeping the Steyr’s muzzle elevated to avoid the café’s cringing diners. Every shot elicited more screams from innocents, more rasping curses from the gunners as Bolan kept them under cover, likely also worrying about the cops by now.
He reached the kitchen door, rolled through it and ignored the cooks who cowered in the shadow of their grill and fry vats. Bolan hit the back door, ready for a Yakuza reception party, but the alleyway was clear. He turned right, sprinting toward the nearest cross street and toward the spot where he had left his Honda Stream. He had no doubt the Yakuza gunners would follow him, but it would be a game of catch-up now, and Bolan had a narrow lead.
* * *
LIEUTENANT KENICHI KAYO was psyched. Halfway back to headquarters, he’d turned, deciding that he needed more time with Tadashi Jo. The mobster would not tell him anything of value, naturally, but Kayo wanted to annoy the smug, arrogant bastard anyway, to let him know that some of Tokyo’s police regarded him as scum and were devoted to the task of putting him away.
What would the lieutenant gain from that? A sense of satisfaction—and, perhaps, a reprimand if he pushed hard enough to make Jo file a citizen’s complaint.
So be it. He’d decided it was worth the risk, and he was tired of watching the Yakuza run rampant in his city, flaunting its contempt for law and order.
Tadashi Jo would not be at home, so the lieutenant steered his unmarked Mazda RX-8 patrol car toward the Blushing Maid café. The Mazda had originally been a sports car, when it premiered in 2001, but Tokyo’s Metro Police liked its speed, its handling and its lines. The RX-8 had ceased production in 2011, but the cars remained in service while city hall dragged its feet on negotiations for new rolling stock. Kayo’s unmarked version fooled no one with any street sense whatsoever, but he still enjoyed driving the little sportster and would miss it when the Powers That Be replaced it with some other model.
There were risks involved in cornering Tadashi Jo on his home turf. Surrounded by his men, the weasel would be cockier than ever, and on edge about the loss of his compatriots. Still, even hard-core Yakuza thought twice about molesting the police, aware that any breach of etiquette might see them stripped of favors they had purchased.
Going in, Kayo knew that he would be outgunned. Most Yakuza were wise enough to leave their guns at home on normal nights, but this was not a normal situation. For self-defense, the lieutenant had his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 64 revolver, a small telescoping baton and his training in mixed martial arts.
Kayo was a decent shot, of course. Japanese police trained tho
roughly with firearms at the National Police Academy, spending sixty hours of practice compared to an average thirty hours for American cops. Unlike their Yankee counterparts, however, they never carried high-capacity semiauto pistols, had no shotguns in their cars and were required to leave their sidearms at headquarters while off duty. The flip side of those restrictions was intensive martial arts training—ninety hours each in judo and kendo stick-fighting—with many officers holding black belts.
A burst of clicks and static from the Mazda’s two-way radio demanded Kayo’s attention. The dispatcher came on air, directing units in Akihabara to the Blushing Maid café, where a shooting was in progress.
“Goddamn it!”
Even as he cursed, Kayo was accelerating, wondering if he had missed his chance to prod Tadashi Jo and make the mobster’s life a bit more difficult. For all he knew, that life had ended, and Kayo would be faced with yet another cleanup operation, asking questions which the Sumiyoshi-kai would never answer in a million years.
The lieutenant was a block from the café when he saw gawkers milling on the sidewalk, peering through the windows at whatever lay within. They were not fleeing for their lives, which indicated that the shooting had subsided, but he planned to take no chances.
Slowly braking, he was startled when a car roared past in front of him, jumping the light at the next intersection. Seconds later, it was followed by another speeding vehicle, jammed full of young men whom Kayo recognized as standard-issue Yakuza muscle.
He reached out for his dashboard microphone, then hesitated. Backup was the way to go, of course, but sudden curiosity compelled him to ignore the rule book. Why? If questioned on it—which he likely would be, later—he could not have said. Something compelled him to give chase, see what was happening, try to identify the men involved.
And he could always call for backup later.
If he lived that long.
* * *
BOLAN SAW THE chase car’s headlights closing as he reached Kuramae-hashi Dori, charging into traffic without waiting for the light to change. Two eastbound drivers hit their brakes in time to keep from T-boning his Honda, one of them forgetting courtesy to give Bolan a sharp blast from his horn. Whether the snarl would slow his pursuers, Bolan couldn’t say, but he was leading for the moment, and he meant to take advantage of it.
Even now, in flight, he thought about the next stop on his hit parade, wondering where he’d find Tadashi Jo in Tokyo. Taking Kazuo Takumi’s second in command wasn’t obligatory, but he’d set the goal and hated to abandon it without another try, if he could pin the target down.
Meanwhile, he had to stay alive and ditch the hunters, or dispose of them. They’d made it through the intersection to Kuramae-hashi Dori, somehow, and were burning rubber to catch up with him. Headlights behind them showed him four or five heads in the black sedan—enough to do the job, if Bolan gave them any opening at all.
He didn’t plan on doing that, but every firefight was a gamble. Like in Vegas. Like Atlantic City. Some gamblers bet their paycheck, house or car. Mack Bolan played for higher stakes.
The were rolling east toward the Sumida River and another waterfront of sorts, not the dilapidated kind where Bolan tried to stage a fight if one was handy, but at least the hour should ensure that workmen had gone home. About a dozen bridges spanned the Sumida, but he didn’t want to take the chase on any one of them, where he would be confined and forced to fight amid congested traffic.
Better to find open ground, if there was any left in Tokyo, and do his killing there.
The spot he had in mind was a large parking lot behind a factory, screened off by trees from view of drivers on the five-lane highway leading to the nearest bridge. It wasn’t perfect, but it offered some degree of privacy and ought to be deserted now, unless there was an after-hours cleaning crew at work.
His exit lay four hundred yards ahead of Bolan, on his left, after he’d crossed the six-lane flow of Edo Dori with its traffic running north and south. The intersection there gave him trouble, red lights glaring at him overhead, but he blew past them, leaning on the Honda’s horn and trusting speed to get him through.
A pileup now, especially if he was trapped inside the car, meant death.
A green-and-yellow taxi grazed his rear bumper when he was almost clear. The scrape shuddered through Bolan, but he kept a firm grip on the Honda’s steering wheel and brought it back on course before he jumped the sidewalk on Kuramae-hashi Dori. Using that momentum, he veered across two lanes of traffic to his left—more squealing brakes—and set himself up for the left-hand exit drawing closer by the heartbeat.
Luck was with the hunters, too. The caught a green light at the intersection where he’d nearly met disaster, gaining ground and closing on his taillights. So far, they had not been close enough to take him out, but they were quickly narrowing his lead.
The exit, when he saw it, meant another dash across oncoming traffic, headlights lancing Bolan’s retinas. He couldn’t see the startled drivers, couldn’t hear their curses, but he hoped they had enough control of their respective vehicles to let a madman pass.
And if they stopped the shooters who were tailing him, Bolan could live with that.
He made the exit, dipped below the level flow of traffic, braking slightly as he rolled into the parking lot behind its screen of trees. Two semitrailers occupied the far end of the lot, and Bolan made for them, pulling around behind the second one and immediately switching off the Honda’s engine, scrambling for his weapons as he bailed out of the car.
* * *
KENICHI KAYO KNEW he was in trouble as he chased the two cars toward the river. Cursing his foolishness, Kayo almost grabbed the dashboard-mounted microphone, but stopped himself a second time. He’d traveled more than half a mile by then. His violation of procedure was already serious enough for a demotion. If he struck another vehicle, it meant the end of his career. If he struck a pedestrian, he could be sent to prison.
He should stop now, let them go, Kayo thought. No one knew he was in the area or would expect him to be near the Blushing Maid, much less in hot pursuit of fleeing fugitives. He could abort the chase, go back to headquarters and clock out for the night.
But if he did, Kayo would not sleep. He’d lie awake, fuming over the gunmen who’d escaped from him. And if they went on to kill someone else this night, those deaths would be on his account. His soul was bruised and stained enough already, without adding insult to the injury.
Crossing Edo Dori, the lieutenant thought he was about to watch a massacre on wheels. The lead car made it, barely, with a kiss in parting from a taxi, then the lights changed and the second car in line breezed through as if the thugs inside it had been blessed by Fate. Kayo took his chances, hands white-knuckled on the Mazda’s wheel, no flashing lights or whooping siren to assist him in pursuit.
“I am such an idiot!” he muttered, and knew that every word was true. Even if he survived the chase and managed to arrest two carloads of Yakuza, well armed and belligerent, how was he going to explain the one-man exercise in foolishness?
He’d worry about it if he lived, he thought, just as he saw the two cars veering across lanes of traffic, seeming to be angling for an exit on the left. Kenichi followed, one more risky move in the fast lane toward professional suicide. He reached down with his right hand, verified the Smith & Wesson’s presence on his belt unnecessarily.
Six shots, against how many guns?
Kayo carried two speed loaders, eighteen rounds in all, and wondered if he would have time to use them when the shooting started. That it would start, he had no doubt whatsoever. Ambulances had been summoned to the Blushing Maid. So had the medical examiner, which meant at least one death. Why would the gunmen willingly surrender, when conviction on a murder charge might send them to the gallows in the Tokyo Detention House?
What did another trifling murder mean, when they were fitted for the noose?
Kayo was rehearsing lessons from his early firearms training as
he swerved to make the left-hand exit. Line up front and rear sights on the target’s center mass. Don’t jerk the trigger; squeeze it. Beat the recoil with a firm two-handed grip.
All fine in theory, but he’d never fired the .38 except in practice, never tried to wound or kill a man. Tonight would be his first time, if it occurred.
And Kayo was not sure that he was up to it.
* * *
BOLAN KNELT IN the shadow of a semitrailer with the Steyr at his shoulder, peering through the telescopic sight with its simple black ring reticle and range finder designed so that a target completely filled the eyepiece at three hundred meters. Call it half that distance to the entrance of the spacious parking lot, where he was focused on the Yakuza chase car.
His first shot drilled the black sedan’s windshield, where Bolan hoped the driver’s face would be. The glare of headlights ruled out a precision shot, but it was close enough. One round, and Bolan saw the car swerve sharply to his right, the driver’s left, and speed on toward collision with the nearest elevated curb. One of its front tires climbed the pavement and the car hung there, its engine growling as if anxious to resume the chase.
He fired a round into its right-front fender, angling for the engine block, rewarded with a screech of grinding metal as his NATO slug smashed something critical. The engine stuttered, spluttered, died. No more pursuit for this machine.
The Yakuza hardmen were bailing out now, on the far side of the black sedan. A dome light showed him three men in the backseat, staying low and scrambling one behind the other to get clear. There was some kind of scuffle in the front, the shotgun rider grappling with the driver, maybe shifting his deadweight to clear a path, maybe exacerbated by the driver’s safety belt.
Bolan resolved it with a double tap through safety glass, the right-front window raining pebbles while the shotgun rider lurched and slumped against his dance partner. Two dead, maybe two wounded. Bolan couldn’t tell from where he was, and had three more to think about before he checked the two stuck in the car.
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