The samurai would live once again.
“Oh my God, Steve, what are we going to do?” asked Maggie in an emotionally devastated voice. Hendrick just shook his head helplessly.
“Steve, we’re just about out of gas,” said Maggie as she glanced at the fuel gauge.
“That’s the least of our worries at the moment,” mumbled Hendrick.
“We’ll drop like a rock,” replied Maggie.
“You didn’t expect to live through this, did you?” asked Hendrick. Maggie gave him a long, desperate look. Her mouth went suddenly dry.
The radio suddenly came alive with a voice in Japanese and had Maggie nearly two feet above the seat in excitement. “It’s the Japanese Air Force! They have two fighter planes closing in!” She picked up the microphone and quickly told them where they were and described Konaka’s helicopter. “Somebody in the Naicho must have convinced them.”
Hendrick looked around and spotted two blurs in the distance off to his right.
“They’re arming missiles!” said Maggie as she heard the pilots talking to each other. Hendrick held his breath.
“They have a tone!” she said, referring to the noise in the pilot’s earphones when the fire control system in their fighter planes locked on to the target.
Hendrick saw a burst of flame from the undercarriage of one of the fighters and a missile fly away toward Konaka’s helicopter.
“Missile launch!” shouted the helicopter pilot as a tone from his missile-warning receiver came through his earphones.
Konaka ran up to him. “Where? Who?” The pilot glanced over his shoulder and shook his anguished face in desperation. The copilot put his face into his hands.
“The flares worked once before. Why not now?” demanded Konaka.
The copilot pointed to the electronic countermeasures receiver in the control panel in front of them. “It’s a radar controlled missile this time! We have no radar decoys!”
Konaka realized the hopelessness of his situation instantly. They had only seconds to live. He turned to Namiki. “Drop the bomb! Now!” Namiki’s eyes went wide open in shock.
Konaka turned back around and was suddenly calm. He wouldn’t live to see the destruction of the hated society, but he knew that he could not be stopped now. It took only a second for the bomb to be dropped, and he could see Namiki throwing the switch in his peripheral vision. Konaka closed his eyes, forcing his body to relax for the final burst of pain then death.
He swiftly drew the wakizashi from its sheath and held the blade poised in front of his abdomen. Konaka jammed the sword into his stomach with all his strength in the traditional method of hara-kiri. He gasped as pain shot through his body, taking his breath away. He fell to the deck twitching in agony. With his last reserves of strength he shoved the sword sideways putting a nine-inch gash in his flesh.
I was at Kagoshima, Kumamoto, and Shiroyama. I was there when the samurai fought their last battle. I was there.
He hoped his great-grandfather was watching.
Hendrick picked up the binoculars again and focused on Konaka’s helicopter. The aircraft turned quickly and began to flee before the fighter aircraft, pumping out waves of flares from its countermeasures canister. Hendrick saw the shackles pull back, allowing the atomic bomb to be released from the rack. A split second later, the radar guided anti-aircraft missile slammed into the fuselage of Konaka’s helicopter turning it into a ball of flame. Hendrick’s eyes flicked down to the bomb, hoping that it also would be destroyed by the missile. He gasped with dismay as he saw the bomb fly out of the smoke and fall away intact. The added drag components deployed, and the bomb nosed its way downward toward Tokyo.
Maggie, who was about to cheer with relief, stopped short after seeing the dark object separate from the ball of smoke and debris, which used to be Konaka’s helicopter and fall with terrifying suddenness.
“Nothing to do now, but run!” she shouted and shoved the stick over to make a sharp U-turn.
Hendrick’s eyes ran panic-stricken over the inside of their helicopter until they came to rest on a control panel, which had been recently added to the copilot’s console.
The idea hit him like a lighting bolt. “Maggie! Turn around!”
“Are you nuts?” she screamed at him.
“Quick! Dive after the bomb!” he yelled back.
“We’ll get killed!” she shouted, then without knowing why, but driven by the intense look on Hendrick’s face, she turned the helicopter around and shoved the stick forward, sending the helicopter into a shrieking dive. She gave him a devastating look. He pointed to the console. Her eyes flickered with recognition.
“Will it work?” asked Maggie at the top of her lungs as she glanced again at the controls in front of Hendrick.
“Probably not,” replied Hendrick. It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. He flipped up the arming switch, causing a light to come on. Next to the light was the word Charging.
“How long does it take to charge?” asked Maggie.
“Don’t know,” answered Hendrick.
Maggie spotted the bomb as a dark spot hovering over the abstract shapes of one of the most populous cities on earth. She knew that the bomb was falling very fast even though by any bombing standards this particular bomb was dropping relatively slowly.
“What’s our altitude?” asked Hendrick, his eyes riveted to the second light on the console with the word Armed next to it. That light was still dark. The EMP weapon charged a large bank of capacitors. When it was fired, it used the energy in the capacitors to transmit an electromagnetic pulse of enormous energy.
“Seven thousand feet,” she replied with a glance at the altimeter.
Sweat began to pop out on Hendrick’s forehead. “At three thousand three hundred she goes.”
“Don’t remind me,” Maggie said through gritted teeth. The bomb had gotten seemingly bigger, but not by much.
A drop of sweat ran down Hendrick’s nose.
“How close do we have to get to the bomb?” asked Maggie in a tremulous voice.
“A hundred feet,” replied Hendrick, visualizing how high the helicopter was above the Akita Maru when Konaka fired the EMP weapon. He glanced at the altimeter.
“Five thousand feet and we’re at least a thousand feet away from the bomb,” said Maggie. “We’re not going to make it!”
“When this EMP weapon is charged, you have to pull up and fly level so that the antenna on the undercarriage is pointed toward the bomb,” said Hendrick. Namiki had told them that the bombs had new radar altimeters installed to act as fuzes. A radar needed an antenna. The electromagnetic pulse weapon would send its high-energy pulse into the radar’s antenna and blow out the radar receiver. At least that’s the way I hope it’ll work, thought Hendrick frantically.
Maggie nodded then stared at the altimeter. “Steve! The bomb is near thirty seven hundred feet! We have only a few seconds!”
Hendrick flipped up the red cage around the firing switch and held his thumb poised over the button. Sweat ran down his forehead until it was held up momentarily by his eyebrow. A large drop suddenly burst loose and ran into his eye, causing a stinging sensation. He jammed his eyes shut in reaction then opened them quickly.
The armed light was on.
“Pull up!” he shouted to Maggie. She yanked back on the stick with all her strength.
Hendrick’s thumb slammed down on the firing button. He held his thumb down and looked up at Maggie.
Their eyes met, their thoughts frozen into emotion. Hendrick reached over and touched Maggie’s arm. She slid her left hand over his and squeezed it gently with no panic.
“Maggie, I -” he began, then fell silent.
She shook her head and closed her eyes.
Below them, the atomic bomb fell inexorably toward Tokyo.
EPILOGUE
Mission Accomplished
TOKYO
The residents of Tokyo went about their daily routines with little awareness of the battle in t
he skies above their city. The first detonation produced a flash and a low rumble of noise on the horizon. Most residents of Tokyo, being inside their offices at the time, didn’t see it.
They only knew for certain that something was wrong when many of them found that their radios, TVs, and cellular phones suddenly failed to work. A large number of cars quickly died, their electronic ignitions blown out by the electromagnetic pulse fired by Hendrick. The area affected was directly below where the bomb fell, having received the strongest electromagnetic field from the EMP weapon.
The meeting of the eight heads of state in the Economic Summit, now called the G8, was interrupted for a moment as the attendees heard the rumble from the first atomic bomb blast in the distance. Aides rushed to discover the source of the noise. Before they could return, the EMP from Hendrick caused the lights to flicker out, only coming back on as backup generators in the Diet Building filled the lack of electricity. They had all instinctively looked out the windows, and many of them noticed the dark form of the bomb, which had been released at the wrong point by Namiki, bury itself into the bed of the Soto-Bori Moat which lies northwest of the Imperial Palace. The bomb’s impact sent a huge plume of water skyward.
The meeting continued after reports were received that a helicopter had crashed on a nearby deserted Tokyo street. No one was hurt, except of course the occupants of the helicopter who were all killed. Everyone assumed that the object they had seen fall into the moat was a piece of the helicopter. Word of the nuclear detonation off the east coast of Japan only reached the heads of state much later in the day. Each head of state, to their horror, would be individually briefed as to the real events that had taken place over their heads as they had discussed the fine points of the international economy.
TOKYO BAY
The water at the entrance to Tokyo Bay was choppy and cold as it lapped against the sides of the life raft, spraying droplets over them. The raft had inflated automatically when it hit the water, but the thin plastic to be used as cover for the survivors had been torn in the crash, leaving them largely exposed to the weather. Although the day was sunny, a chilling breeze constantly swept over the water driving away any warmth from the sun.
Steve Hendrick wrapped his arms around Maggie Ramsey and tried to stem her shudders from their recent swim in the cold water. She gratefully curled up against him trying to gain as much warmth from him as possible. He looked down at the top of her head, and the memory of the last time he had done so swirled through his mind. They had been in Loh’s house hundreds of miles away and in front of a cozy fire after escaping death on Tung-yin Tao. Now they had just escaped being vaporized by Konaka and his band of right wing lunatics.
He shook his head and his body shuddered more with that thought than with the cold. The bomb had not detonated. They had waited for the blazing instant of death, not really believing that Hendrick’s desperate last act of firing the EMP weapon would disable the bomb. But against all odds, it had worked, and Namiki, the terrorists’ nuclear expert, hadn’t thought to include a contact detonator in his sophisticated radar fuze.
Maggie had thrown the helicopter around to head back toward the sea, and Hendrick had caught a glimpse of the enormous splash as the bomb fell into the moat just north of the bridge leading into the Ichigaya section of Tokyo.
By that time, they were over Tokyo Bay and out of fuel. The helicopter’s engine suddenly stopped, and the aircraft fell like a stone. The water seemed like concrete as the helicopter slammed into the sea, disintegrating upon impact. Hendrick quickly got himself clear but had to work on the swiftly sinking wreckage to free Maggie who had the pilot’s console and surrounding fuselage wrapped around her. He succeeded in freeing her only after the aircraft had sunk fifty feet.
They both broke the surface at the same time, gasping for air and thanking God that they were still alive. There were no ships visible in any direction. Only the life raft, that was sitting calmly thirty feet away, was in view.
Hendrick took another look around, again seeing no ships.
“I can’t believe this,” he said in a frustrated voice. “I always thought Tokyo Bay was full of shipping.”
Maggie glanced at him and managed a smile. “They’ll come for us.”
The waters around them suddenly seemed to boil.
“What is it?” asked Maggie.
Hendrick shook his head in consternation. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a -” He stopped suddenly as the turbulence grew quickly in intensity. The roiling water threw their raft around like a leaf on a storm tossed sea.
The water parted, and a huge black object began to extend out of the bay. The monolith seemed to grow from the sea without end until it towered above them.
“ - submarine,” finished Hendrick as he gaped at the vessel’s superstructure. It looked familiar.
A minute later a face poked over the rail at the top of the sub’s sail.
“Kak pozhivaete, druzya!” said Golubev, his jowls pushed up into the widest smile Hendrick had ever seen on the old Russian’s face.
“What did he say?” asked Maggie with a relieved laugh.
“How is your life, friends?” translated Hendrick.
“Well, it certainly isn’t boring!” shouted Maggie.
They could see Ian Howard’s head poke over the railing next to Golubev.
“Did you see Bakhtin and Takahata?” asked Maggie anxiously.
“They’re below, getting their wounds looked at,” replied Howard.
Steve and Maggie let out sighs of relief.
“I might have known that you would get the best of this deal,” shouted Howard with an obvious nod at Maggie.
Maggie smiled and then deliberately planted a lingering, lascivious kiss on Hendrick’s lips for their benefit. Howard and Golubev laughed and clapped.
An hour later, Maggie and Hendrick leaned on the railing that ran around the top of the superstructure of Golubev’s submarine. The old Russian busied himself with navigating his way through Tokyo Bay which had become crowded in the meantime. The sight of the old Russian submarine picking its way among the larger freighters and tankers amazed the ships’ crews who pointed, hollered, and waved. Hendrick and Maggie periodically waved back.
They had gotten dry clothes and had their wounds attended to, the worst of which was Maggie’s cut in her side from a bullet fired by one of Konaka’s men. They had various bumps and bruises, the pain from which was alleviated by painkillers.
Takahata had told them that he had contacted the naval arm of the Japanese Defense Force and told them about the attempt by Konaka to destroy Tokyo with an atomic bomb. They had contacted the air force to scramble fighters into the air which explained their sudden arrival in the vicinity of Konaka’s helicopter.
“All I wanted to do was pick up a little gold off the bottom of the sea, and maybe if I got lucky, find what obsessed my father so much sixty some years ago,” said Hendrick as he scanned the shore line of Japan, the mammoth city of Tokyo in the distance. “That’s all. Simple enough, right? And I get the Russian, Japanese, and British intelligence agencies, as well as the CIA, and a band of bloodthirsty pirates. Not to mention the Chinese Navy who nearly blew us to pieces in the Taiwan Strait. And to top it all off, a bunch of Japanese terrorists who want to nuke Tokyo.”
Maggie slid up his chest to put her face within an inch of his. He could feel her body through her thin jacket and felt her softness wear away at him. He leaned down and kissed her, first lightly, then with more passion. Finally they broke away, and he stared at her breathlessly.
“Is there a hotel room in this town where we can get away from everyone for a few hours?” he asked.
“We’ll find one,” Maggie replied with a clear invitation in her eyes. She suddenly grew serious. “I hope that I’m more than just a one night stand.”
Hendrick looked her in the eye. “You were never a one night stand.”
Maggie smiled and got tears in her eyes.
Konak
a’s face intruded into his consciousness as it had for the last five years. He knew he had an antidote in Maggie’s face just inches from his. Konaka, who had haunted him for years, now seemed distant, and he hoped the Japanese terrorist would get more so as time went on. Would direct revenge on Konaka have helped him get over Malik’s and his brother’s murder? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that Konaka’s death didn’t help him when he thought of his lost friend and brother. He still missed them terribly.
Steve knew he had one more job to do.
“I wonder if I could get the cylinder back from Bakhtin and Stalin’s letter from Takahata,” he mused. Maggie looked at him questioningly.
LITTLE FLOWER NURSING HOME
NEWTOWN SQUARE, PENNSYLVANIA
ONE WEEK LATER
Steve Hendrick strode down the corridor of the nursing home, carrying the Russian cylinder with Stalin’s letter to the government of Japan rolled up inside it. He had also inserted a neatly typed translation. Maggie hung at his side, filled with emotion at the thought of Steve finally completing his father’s six decade long mission.
They reached the door and stopped outside. Steve put his hand on the knob and hesitated, looking through the small window. Edward Hendrick was seated calmly in a chair, staring out the window. His head, so recently full of white hair, had grown bald with only a few strands crossing the top of his head in a haphazard manner. His body, so muscular when he was young, was now a wasted shell.
Steve turned the knob and pushed the door open with a slight squeal from the hinges. He half expected his father to turn around at the noise, but the old man didn’t move. Steve walked across the room and bent over him.
“Dad,” he murmured softly. The elder Hendrick blinked his eyes. “Dad, it’s Steve.”
Edward Hendrick turned his head slowly, his mouth slack, saliva dripping from his dead lips. He stared at Steve’s face, his eyes not seeing. His mouth worked slowly, agonizingly, the words forming via a torturous path through his cortex.
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