Nigel Findley

by Out Of Nippon

  With almost unnatural speed, the ninja spun aside, dodging off the soldier’s line of fire. Instead of slamming full into his chest, the bullet merely plucked at the shoulder of his black garb. In the same movement, the ninja drew his katana from the sheath on his back and leaped forward.

  Muir was trying to jack another round into the rifle, but he didn’t have time. The katana flashed toward his neck. At the last instant, Muir brought his rifle up, parrying the sword with the gun’s barrel. Steel clashed against steel. Muir countered instantly, quick as a cat, thrusting the lethal bayonet toward his opponent’s belly.

  Even quicker, the ninja threw himself aside, the bayonet missing his flesh by inches. The long sword whistled as he wheeled it around his head, directing another cut at the soldier. Again, Muir barely blocked the blow — the razor -sharp blade chunking deep into the rifle’s wooden stock.

  “Run, Miss Carlson,” the soldier yelled.

  It was an echo from her memories, from her nightmares. For a few racing heartbeats she stood frozen.

  The sword Was still imbedded in the rifle butt. Muir twisted hard, trying to break the blade, or at least disarm his enemy. But somehow the ninja managed to free his weapon. Before he could dance back out of range, however, the soldier brought the bayonet around, slashing it into a black-clad thigh. The ninja gasped with pain.

  As if the sound had been a magical spell, Nikki found herself able to move again. But what should she do? Run? That was the logical move, but it would be too much like a replay of the events in Shinjuku. She couldn’t leave someone else to his death, defending her at the cost of his own life. She pulled her pistol, snapped off the safety, and stepped off the path into the underbrush. She levelled the gun, squeezing the trigger to turn on the sighting laser.

  It wasn’t easy to get a shot. Ninja and soldier were moving too fast, as if in some lethal dance. Cut and parry, thrust and counter, riposte and block. A lightning-fast slash had got through Muir’s guard. He’d managed to duck — otherwise the flashing blade would have cloven his head in two like a melon — but he was bleeding from a scalp cut, blood masking the left side of his face. The red aiming dot drifted over the two figures as Nikki waited for a clean opening.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Muir again brought his rifle up to parry a cut, but at the last moment the ninja flexed his wrists, deflecting the angle of the blade’s travel. Instead of striking the poised rifle, it slashed into Muir’s forearm, cutting cleanly through bone and muscle. The young soldier howled, staring in horror at the stump of his arm, gouting jets of bright blood. Then the ninja’s return cut took his head from his shoulders. The decapitated body crumpled …

  Which gave Nikki the opening she needed — but at such cost. The laser spot steadied on the ninja’s chest. She pulled the trigger.

  The ninja must have seen the laser out of the corner of his eye, understood what it meant. Just as Nikki squeezed the trigger and the small gun boomed, he tried to spin aside again.

  Not fast enough. The gun kicked in Nikki’s hand, harder than she’d expected. The report was deafening. But the shot went true.

  Or almost true. The ninja’s movement was enough to take him partially off-line, enough so that Nikki shot didn’t slam into his heart. Instead, the flechettes — dozens of tiny metal slivers — tore into his right shoulder. In horror, Nikki saw the shoulder seem to explode into a cloud of blood and tissue. Agony wrenched a guttural cry from the man’s throat. The katana fell from suddenly nerveless fingers, and he lurched backward from the impact of the round.

  But somehow he managed to lash his left arm around. Something flew from his hand, something that flashed metal-bright in the sunlight. Nikki threw herself aside — just in time — as a sharp-bladed throwing-star parted the air next to her ear and thudded into the bole of a tree behind her. She squawked in horror turned and ran.

  He should be dead! The thought pounded in her head as she fled through the jungle. I shot him in the chest, he should be dead.

  But only once, another part of her brain pointed out. What was it Dei had said? If you have to shoot someone or something, keep firing. Keep firing until your gun is empty, or until your opponent goes down and doesn’t get up again.

  She heard movement in the undergrowth behind her. Running footsteps.

  No!! she screamed silently. He can’t be after me, he can’t!

  But he was, she knew. Somehow the wounded ninja had found the strength to pursue her, despite the horrible wound in his shoulder. Sobbing in terror, she forced herself to run on.

  The crashing in the bushes behind her was getting closer. Even wounded, he could run faster than she could. She desperately wanted to turn, to shoot him again, to empty the clip of flechette rounds into him. But, judging from the sound, if she stopped — even if she slowed down—he’d be on her before she could do anything. And will shooting him again do any good anyway? the thought yammered in her brain. One shot would have killed any normal man.

  Where the hell was she? Which direction was she running? Unlike the first time, her panic hadn’t obliterated her sense of direction. She knew she was running toward the clearing where Hollingforth and the others had their camp. She couldn’t be more than a few dozen yards away. If she could keep ahead of the ninja for just a few more seconds … She ignored the pounding in her chest, forced herself to run harder.

  Without warning she burst into the clearing. The sudden sunlight, no longer attenuated by the foliage, dazzled her. Peter and a couple of the others were there, she saw. But they were too far away to help her. She knew the ninja was right behind her, ready to slice

  her in two. Nobody could save her.

  Nobody but me. The thought was sharp and clear. She turned, still running, brought her pistol up. Her momentum carried her over backward, but as she fell she saw the laser dot on the ninja’s stomach, less than two yards away. The katana, held in only one hand now, was raised for the killing stroke. She pulled the trigger, saw the flechettes shred the ninja’s abdomen.

  Simultaneously a rifle boomed behind her. With a solid whock noise, the ninja’s head burst like a watermelon struck by a sledgehammer. She crashed to the ground, the air driven from her lungs by the impact, while the headless body crumpled bonelessly a couple of feet away. The katana blade flashed in the sunlight as it fell.

  Temporarily winded, she rolled over, looked back at the others. Hollingforth and Black were standing stock-still, their mouths open in surprise and horror. As she watched, MacHeath lowered his rifle from his shoulder. His expression was calm, controlled — professional.

  Suddenly overcome with reaction to the terror and the flight, Nikki wretched uncontrollably. She felt a calming hand on her shoulder, but couldn’t look up — couldn’t move at all—until the spasms in her belly had stopped. Finally she was able to climb to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, then wiping off the dark bile on her shorts.

  Hollingforth and MacHeath were beside her, concern on their faces. It was Peter whose hand was still resting, comfortingly, on her shoulder. Black stood a few paces away. He was as horrified by events as the others were, she could tell.

  It was Peter who spoke first, his voice hushed with shock. “Miss Carlson — Nikki — what happened?”

  She took a deep breath to clear her mind. MacHeath handed her a water bottle. She took a mouthful, swished it around in her mouth to clear away the taste of vomit, then spat it on the ground. Another mouthful. This time she swallowed. Then she handed the bottle back to the sergeant with a smile of thanks.

  “What happened?” Peter asked again.

  Briefly Nikki described what had happened — her meeting with Muir, the appearance of the black-clad swordsman, the fight in the jungle.

  MacHeath’s face clouded as she described the death of the young soldier. “Muir was good with the bayonet, he was,” he pronounced sadly, “one of the best I ever trained. He would have made a fine sergeant someday.” He smiled down at Nikki, his expression suddenly father
ly. “You handled yourself well, Miss Carlson. Excellently well. Your shot would have put paid to him without my interference. I should have conserved my ammunition.”

  The sergeant stepped forward and prodded the bloody figure with his toe. “And just what is this… this gentleman anyway?”

  “A ninja,” Nikki said shortly. “A trained killer.”

  MacHeath raised his eyebrows. “A ninja? That’s Nipponese, isn’t it?” He bent down and picked up the blood-wet katana, carefully tested its edge. “Bloody fine piece of steel,” he said admiringly. “And he knew how to use it, I warrant?”

  Nikki nodded.

  “But what the bloody hell is he doing here?” Hollingforth almost exploded. “And why was he chasing you?”

  “To kill me,” Nikki said tiredly.

  “But why?”

  To kill me. The words echoed in her brain. To kill me. She’d seen a ninja twice: once here, and once in Shinjuku. In Tokyo, she hadn’t known where the killer had come from, or whether he was after her or Toshikazu. Here, though? There was no doubt. She had to be the target.

  Did that mean she’d been the real target the first time as well?

  And where had this ninja come from? Ninjas were Japanese — “Nipponese,” as MacHeath had said. The only Japanese in the area were at the outpost. But Eichiro didn’t bring ninjas with him …

  But of course he did. She remembered the dark-clad figures standing in the shadows the night she’d seen the first science expedition returning to the outpost from the jungle. She remembered the way they’d just faded into the darkness when they were dismissed, almost as if they’d never really existed. What could they have been other than ninjas?

  So Nagara had sent ninjas after her, not once but twice. Why?

  Her mind went back to the first time, that night near the Kirin yaki bar. What could have motivated an attempt on her life? What had been happening at Nagara then?

  It was easy enough to remember. The raid by the “wreckers,” the suspicion of inside help. Eichiro had been in serious trouble, she recalled, the security precautions he’d been in charge of had failed completely. The only way he could get off the hook, if only to some degree, was by proving the raiders had inside help. (Nikki remembered Toshikazu had figured that one out.) Okay, so that explained the attempt at framing her

  — the bogus computer file, and the kangaroo court in Eichiro’s office. But what good would killing her do?

  Unless the plan was to have me killed, then concoct more evidence when I wasn’t around to refute it. That made a ghastly kind of sense. But then why didn’t he finish the job? Why had the ninja not come after her once he’d killed Toshikazu? Taking the present ninja —the one who lay dead at her feet — as a sample, the man in Tokyo should have had little trouble running her down. So why?

  Maybe because Toshikazu’s death would do the job, she realized. Evidence could be faked up incriminating Toshikazu as the traitor as easily as to frame her. Maybe the ninja’s orders were to eliminate one of them. Either one would do — although Nikki figured she was still the target of choice because, as a gaijin, she’d be easier for people to distrust.

  Again, that hung together. But the question remained: why, then, didn’t Eichiro follow through with his plan and implicate Toshikazu?

  Or maybe he did. From out of nowhere, she remembered a conversation between two technicians she’d overheard in the elevator right after Toshikazu’s funeral. The grapevine had claimed that the traitor—the Nagara employee who’d helped the “wreckers” — had been captured, but shot while attempting to escape. Nobody knew who the traitor was … nobody outside the executive offices, at least. Wasn’t it possible that Eichiro had put together false evidence incriminating Toshikazu — who was now dead — and shown it to Kubota and the other senior executives? With Toshikazu himself not able to defend his name, and nobody else in the organization aware of who the “traitor” was, there’d be no-one to refute Eichiro’s claims.

  Maybe that was why Eichiro had come out of everything so well — relatively speaking, of course. He’d had to scramble to make up for the loss of the original Special Projects lab — hence the Inderagiri Research Facility — but at least he hadn’t been fired in shame, which would be the usual penalty for a screw-up the magnitude of the “wreckers’” raid.

  Quickly she ran it all through one last time in her mind. Yes, that tied up all loose ends. Of course there was no proof, but this would never be discussed in a court of law, she knew that.

  Suddenly she felt cold, a combination of rage and fear welling up inside her. Up to that moment, her review of the facts had been entirely intellectual—like a kind of logic puzzle. But now the emotional reality of her conclusions struck home. Eichiro killed Toshikazu, she told herself. He killed my friend, and he tried to kill me. She balled her fists, feeling her knuckles like knobs of hard ivory under the skin.

  Abruptly she realized the two men were staring at her quizzically. In the back of her mind was the knowledge that Hollingforth had asked her a question, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, “what was that again?”

  “I asked ‘why,’” Hollingforth repeated. “Why did the ninja want to kill you, and who sent him?”

  “My employer sent him,” she said, surprised at the lack of emotion in her tone. “Agatamori Eichiro. He wants to see me dead.”

  “Another Nipponese?” MacHeath queried. Nikki answered with a nod.

  “But why?” There was real anguish in Peter Hollingforth’s voice.

  He probably can’t understand how anyone can betray any kind of trust, Nikki told herself. She started to answer, but MacHeath spoke first. His voice was quiet, but seemed as impossible to ignore as a rifle-shot. “You know aye too much,” he suggested, “isn’t that it, ma’am?”

  She looked at him. Perceptive man, she thought, more perceptive than he looks.

  Because that was what it had to be, of course. She’d stirred up Eichiro’s pet scientist by asking him questions and by showing up, by accident, at the wrong place. She’d seen the late-night expedition returning; Eichiro didn’t know the details of that, but Nikki was convinced he’d known she was lying when she said she’d seen nothing else out of the ordinary. And then she’d kept copies of the serum analyses on her personal computer — Nikki knew that Eichiro, or his security drones, had found them. Finally, she’d tricked a gullible security guard at the gate, and vanished into the jungle.

  Where did Eichiro think she’d be going with what she knew? She couldn’t even guess. But, judging from her limited experience with corporate Japan, his first conclusion would be that she was selling out to some enemy of Nagara. She snorted. You think I know a lot more than I actually do, she thought. 1 haven’t got the first clue what’s really going on at the outpost.

  She realized that MacHeath was still waiting for an answer to his question. “Yes, Sergeant MacHeath,” she told him, “I know too much. I know too much to live,” she added bitterly, “and I don’t know anything at all.”

  si-

  There was no way she could return to the outpost, that was for sure. Nikki lay on her back in the camp clearing, staring up at the infinity of sky above her, as it faded to the royal blue of early evening.

  At first she’d wondered just how Eichiro was planning to cover up her murder—or her disappearance— if the ninja had managed to succeed. It didn’t take her long to figure it out, though. All he’d have to do would be leak the word that — despite her lucky escape the last time — Carrson-san had wandered off into the jungle. The obvious conclusion would be that, this time, Carrson-san hadn’t been so lucky … particularly if a security sweep happened upon bloodstained scraps of her clothing, looking like they’d been shredded by fangs or claws. Oh yes, it would be entirely too easy for Eichiro to cover up her elimination.

  Just like he covered up Toshikazu’s. She ground her teeth in anger. He’d done it differently, but he’d got away scott-free with that murde
r too.

  Eichiro killed my friend, she told herself again, and he tried to kill me. His decision to come down here had led indirectly to O’Neil’s death — so doesn’t that mean Eichiro killed him too? And then, of course, there was Private Muir, the soldier who’d lost his life trying to protect Nikki. Eichiro had a lot to answer for. And he’s going to answer for it, she swore to herself, every last bit of it.

  But how? There was nothing she could do directly. She couldn’t burst into the camp, charge into his office and empty her pistol into his chest. Even if it was physically possible, there was no way she could bring herself to do it. That’d make me no better than him, she recognized.

  Still, she wanted to hurt him — hurt him badly. She had no legal recourse, she knew — even though seeing him humiliated in court would be apt punishment. She had no proof—no proof whatsoever — that he’d done anything illegal. So what did that leave?

  Over to her right she could hear the sounds of MacHeath and the two surviving soldiers preparing supper. Hollingforth and Black were in quiet conversation, discussing how they could use Nikki’s information — that the weretiger had apparently been spotted by the outpost’s security — to their advantage.

  How woidd Peter handle this? she asked herself. How would he see Eichiro punished?

  She chuckled to herself as the obvious answer came to mind. He’d challenge Eichiro to a duel, that’s what he’d do, she reflected. Pistols at dawn, and that kind of thing.

  And Eichiro would just whistle up a ninja to cut Peter in two. Her smile faded. No, she considered, Peter wasn’t the duelling type. He’d just decide Eichiro was a “merchant,” a “shopkeeper,” and write him off. She closed her eyes, tried to shut out the disturbing thoughts.

  Then, suddenly, her eyes snapped open again. Eichiro’s a merchant. The thought reverberated around her brain. And how do you hurt a merchant?

  A grim smile spread over her face. She’d have to

  give this serious thought.

  *