Rules of The Hunt f-2

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  Katsuda smiled to himself in the darkness. Schwanberg's devious mind was not hard to read. He was already thinking of appropriate action. Perhaps the time had come for the renegade to have an accident. Have a crash, indeed, or fall from a height. The man's plan had interesting implications.

  "Your proposal has great merit, Schwanberg-san," he said. "Let us now talk about the details."

  "Fucking A," said Schwanberg, and as he leaned forward over the blueprint of Hodama's premises, his feet crunched on the shattered pieces of the ornaments.

  Katsuda hissed.

  Schwanberg, as normal for him where human sensitivities were involved, noticed nothing.

  * * * * *

  Bergin had gone to some lengths to arrive at Fitzduane's room in the Fairmont undetected.

  The blond wig and moustache made him look ten years younger, and he was wearing an expensive double-breasted business suit and Guccis, but his principal coup de théâtre was the platinum-and-gold Rolex inset with diamonds and the matching identity bracelet on the other wrist.

  The combination was so ostentatious you scarcely noticed the wearer. Bergin's shirt cuffs were tailored short to optimize the impact.

  Fitzduane eyed his visitor.

  "Mike," he said dryly, "clothes really do make the man. You are unrecognizable. You look like you run a small Southern bank and wash drug money for the Medellín cartel. You're probably on your third wife and she'd thirty years younger than you are. Alternatively, you produce pornographic movies."

  Begin spread his hands in a mock gesture of modesty and his wrists glinted in the light. Fitzduane poured him a drink and the two men sat in armchairs on either side of a low table. The blinds were drawn and the room had been electronically swept.

  "Everything ready, Hugo?" said Bergin.

  "Pretty much," said Fitzduane. "The hunt is going to take place as scheduled, with a full attendance as planned. It's now a matter of finalizing the rules. I don't want the CIA too unhappy. Kilmara and I work with you people too often for that to be neighborly."

  Bergin took off his blond wig and scratched his head. "Horrible things," he said.

  "Lice love them," said Fitzduane helpfully.

  "Which brings us back to Schwanberg," said Bergin. He drank some wine and then looked directly at Fitzduane. "We've been finalizing his case. It's a rough estimate, but it looks like he and his cronies have lifted, one way or another, the best part of a hundred and twenty million dollars."

  "And who says the U.S. can't succeed in the Japanese market?" said Fitzduane. "So now you're going to arrest him and bring him to trial."

  Bergin looked pained. "Really, Hugo," he said. "You can't be serious."

  Fitzduane smiled grimly. "Schwanberg had Adachi killed," he said. "That is not something I am likely to forgive or forget. But how it's done is the issue. He's your operative."

  "The director feels it would be more appropriate if it's handled in-house," said Bergin. "Caught in the cross-fire, killed in the line of duty, something of that nature. So I'd like to hitch a ride and take care of matters personally. I'm rather fond of balloons, you know."

  Fitzduane looked at his friend thoughtfully. "You know, Mike, I never saw you as a practitioner of extreme prejudice."

  "That was the general idea, Hugo," said Bergin with a regretful smile, "and mostly I'm not. But every so often there is a requirement and, really, Schwanberg has been running around long enough."

  "Too long," said Fitzduane quietly. "Not a personal criticism, Mike. More a truth we share. Isn't that so?"

  Bergin nodded his agreement. He felt uncomfortable, perhaps even ashamed. The simple truth was that Schwanberg had been under suspicion for some time and only the reflex bureaucratic desire to prevent scandal had prevented action. And meanwhile people had died.

  Cover-ups were not confined to Watergate. In the real world of big government and big business, they were the norm. Exposure was the exception. The price was just a cost of doing business.

  Fitzduane emptied the bottle into their glasses. "Drink up and listen, Mike. If you're going to be flying with us, there a few extra angles you should know. Preparation for the unexpected. What the training manuals call ‘making an appreciation of the situation.’"

  He ran through what was necessary, and as he spoke Bergin's eyes widened. Bergin wasn't altogether displeased. At his age he had not been sure they could do that anymore.

  24

  Tokyo, Japan

  July 12

  The entire perimeter was sealed off as they approached a side entrance of the military base at Atsugi.

  Security floodlights pierced the darkness.

  Located just outside Tokyo, Atsugi was the headquarters of the elite Airborne Brigade of the Japanese Defense Forces, and it was there they were to board the airship.

  With a pang, Fitzduane thought of Adachi, who had trained and operated from there. It was appropriate, he mused, that retribution against the policeman's killer should originate from that location as well. He felt a great sadness when he thought of Adachi, and there was that familiar twinge of guilt which so often seemed to accompany the death of a comrade: why him and not me? He pushed such thoughts to the back of his mind. Right now, there were more urgent issues to consider. What they were about to do was intricate and dangerous and would require all his concentration.

  The black Tokyo MPD limousine containing the police driver, the Spider, Yoshokawa, and Fitzduane was stopped at a striped pole barrier and they were asked to leave the car while each man's credentials were checked thoroughly.

  Beyond the token barrier of the striped pole, Fitzduane saw retractable spiked metal anti-ram barricades and two well-camouflaged interlaced machine-gun posts.

  The airborne troopers were taking security seriously. Other troops with blackened faces and in full battle order patrolled the perimeter and all key installations. Apart from being a military installation, Atsugi was also the training area for the kidotai, the antiterrorist riot police, and, as such, was a prime terrorist target.

  The white-helmeted gate guards waved them through and held salutes as they drove past. Five minutes later, they could see the black silhouette of the airship in the distance. It looked impossibly large in the darkness and brought to Fitzduane's mind the image of some vast, menacing space monster.

  "It's awesome," breathed Yoshokawa, as they emerged from the limousine. "And beautiful in a rather sinister way. But what a creation!"

  "It's quite small by traditional airship standards," said the Spider modestly. Actually, he was proud of the Tokyo MPD airship. "It's about seventy feet high, fifty feet in diameter, and two hundred feet long. That is big enough to hold just under a quarter of a million feet of gas."

  It's going to be like flying in a mobile city block, contemplated Fitzduane. He was used to smaller things buzzing around in the skies. On the other hand, he tried to have a reasonably open mind.

  Yoshokawa was lost in thought. The engineer and inventor in him was fascinated. "When I think of airships," he mused, "I always think of zeppelins and then the horrible crash of the Hindenburg. I saw it on an old newsreel when I was a boy. A truly dread-inspiring sight to see that large balloon burst into flames and incinerate all those people."

  "It did not do a lot for airship sales," said Fitzduane dryly. "And I would add, with respect, Yoshokawa-san, that such stories don't do a lot for me. In case you had forgotten, I'm going up in this particular one tonight."

  "Oh," said Yoshokawa. "Oh, dear!" He was quite disconcerted. Then he recovered somewhat and went into damage limitation. "But I was talking about the past, Fitzduane-san. Airships are much safer now."

  "Well, I should hope so, Yoshokawa-san," said Fitzduane with a straight face. "I have no desire to descend lightly toasted or maybe even resembling a well-done steak. I think you should know that."

  There was a strange noise from the Spider. Yoshokawa looked at Fitzduane, then at the Spider. Finally, the Spider could not contain himself any longer and a bel
ly laugh emerged.

  It was only the second time Fitzduane had heard the Spider laugh. The first time had been back in Ireland in his castle. It had been merely a matter of weeks, but it seemed a different age.

  * * * * *

  "Stop the car," said Schwanberg suddenly.

  They were through the Atsugi base perimeter, but there was still half a mile to go before the airship. "We're not there yet, Paul," said Palmer, who was driving.

  "STOP THE FUCKING CAR NOW, YOU ASSHOLE!" shouted Schwanberg.

  Startled, Palmer jammed his foot on the brakes and the medium-sized embassy Ford fishtailed to a halt. He waited in silence. Schwanberg had no manners at the best of times, but when he was in one of these moods all you could do was keep your head down.

  "Cut the fucking lights, Chuck," said Schwanberg deliberately. "All of them."

  Palmer switched off the lights.

  The two men sat in darkness and stared out through the windshield of the car. The airship was ahead of them, silhouetted against the night sky. The airfield lights showed the ground crew moving about their business. They were dwarfed by the immense mass of the gas-filled envelope.

  Schwanberg removed his Browning, checked the clip by touch and feel, and slammed it home again with the palm of his hand. Humans were devious shitheads, but there were some things in life you could rely on. Put a couple of 9mm hollow-points in a target's kill-zone, and he, or she, ceased to present a problem. God knows, he'd proved it often enough. The back of the neck was best. The victim dropped as if poleaxed.

  "It's a hell of a plan, Paul," said Palmer quietly.

  Schwanberg turned toward him, his face suffused with rage. "That's the problem, you stupid fuck," he snarled. "It's a terrific plan, and that goddamned Irishman thought it up. So what else did he think up?"

  Palmer had seen Schwanberg have these feelings before. It was as if the man had an additional sense dedicated solely to his survival. They would embark on an operation and then for no reason that Palmer could ever figure out, Schwanberg would suddenly pause and think. Sometimes he would proceed as if nothing had happened. Other times, he would arbitrarily cancel the project. Again and again, he had been proved right. It was no small reason why he had been able to succeed as a player in this dangerous game for so long.

  "I don't think he has thought up the ending on this one," said Palmer reassuringly. The words just came to him. He was not particularly articulate, but he felt good about this mission and he had complete faith in Schwanberg's ability to pull something out of the hat if anything went wrong. And he wanted to fly in the airship. He had never been in one before.

  Schwanberg's mood suddenly switched. He had been worried, but now he felt confident again. Chuck was right. They were in control.

  "Let's go," he said. Palmer restarted the engine. Schwanberg was now laughing. "‘Hasn't thought up the ending on this one,’" he repeated. "Too goddamn right."

  Palmer joined in the laughter as he drove the short remaining distance to the airship.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, after a host of checklists — most relating to the mission — the airship was released from its tethering mast and the mission team were airborne.

  Below, the Spider and Yoshokawa waved and then were quickly lost in the darkness as the airship climbed to 1,500 feet.

  Fitzduane stared out one of the windows at the panorama below and ran through the operation plan one more time, trying to consolidate his overall mental model of what had to be done. Checklists were necessary and all very well, but the endless items covered tended to buzz around distractingly in your mind and then weigh you down with detail. Fitzduane now sought a clear overview. He was keenly aware that, prepare as you might, the operation was highly unlikely to go according to plan. His opponents were clever and devious people who would have their own agendas. He had to try to prepare for the unexpected.

  He smiled to himself. Another way of looking at it was to anticipate the unknown, and that was a decided contradiction in terms. Well, all you could do was give it your best shot and then make sure that you acted with reasonable grace under pressure. And the last element was luck.

  Summarized — and there were a few interesting moves to add to the scenario — the basic plan was simple. Fumio Namaka had been enticed out of his normal heavy security to meet Fitzduane in the seclusion of the walled gardens surrounding Hodama's villa. The villa would be searched by two representatives of both parties to ensure there were no hidden surprises, and then the two principals and one driver each would be allowed in. Then the conference would commence. It would be held in the open garden under floodlights, so that everyone could see everyone else and to minimize the chance of eavesdropping. If it rained, there was the adequate protection of the open-sided summer house.

  Fitzduane had been far from sure that Fumio would agree to an open-air meeting, but logic was on his side. It did make sense to have all involved in plain sight, and Fumio Namaka was known to be paranoid about being bugged. As an additional concession, Fitzduane had agreed that Fumio could enter the villa grounds first, immediately after the initial search, so that there would be no opportunity for any ambush to be set up.

  The first twist in the plan was that it would not be Fitzduane in the second limo. But from then on, it was up to the players on the ground, with just a little help from on high.

  The requirement of having a tactical edge, if at all possible, had been drummed into Fitzduane when serving under Kilmara in the Congo. There he had found he had a natural talent for thinking this way, and its application had been accelerated by being repeatedly shot at. In modern high-technology combat, so much of death was random, but it still made a difference to have an edge.

  Fitzduane had been taken aback by the Tokyo MPD airship when he had first seen it floating past his bedroom window at the Fairmont, but he had very quickly taken it for granted. And it was this fact that all Tokyo residents seemed to regard the craft in the same way that had given him the idea of using it.

  Vast though it was, it was such a regular feature of the Tokyoskyline, it was, for all practical purposes, invisible.

  A further curious but helpful fact about the airship was that it was very hard to judge its proximity. Most people knew the approximate size of a helicopter or aircraft and cold make a rough guess at range, but the airship was seldom seen by people on the ground, so range estimation in its case was problematic in the extreme. If you do not know the size of something, it is virtually impossible to estimate distance unless there is a familiar object at the same distance.

  What this boiled down to was that you could use the airship as a monitoring platform for activities on the ground below without attracting any undue attention. An extension of that premise was that you could shoot from it, too. Of course, the other side could shoot back, but at least there was the consoling fact that a modern airship could not do a Hindenburg. Early aircraft got their lift from ultravolatile hydrogen, which was a fair definition of an accident waiting to happen. Today's birds had switched to the much more expensive but more stable helium. You could fire an incendiary round into helium and no reaction would occur.

  The stability of helium was the good news. The bad news, if hostiles started shooting at you, was that an airship of the Tokyo model was an easy target to acquire and a hard target to miss. Then, having found the overall target, a hostile would not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that the vulnerable humans were likely to be in the gondola below. And better yet, flying slowly.

  Maximum speed was only just over seventy-five miles an hour. In reality, if shooting did start, their initial projection through speed would be considerably less. They would be optimized for monitoring, which would mean hovering or traveling at a purely nominal rate, and the airship's acceleration left a great deal to be desired. The thing was supposed to float serenely. It was not designed to hot-rod.

  Fitzduane played out various scenes in his mind.

  Some of the possibilities were d
istinctly unpalatable.

  The thought of an air-to-ground running gunfight over densely populated central Tokyo made him shudder. It was for that reason that he had agreed with the Spider that only aimed rifle fire would be used within the urban confines and even then be confined to targets within the grounds of Hodama's house. It had been a reasonable request, but it would have been nice to know that the opposition was going to follow the same restrictive rules. Frankly, he did not think they would, so invisibility and surprise were his best weapons. Of course, if the action switched to over the sea, then the Spider's rules would not apply. Then they could play hardball.

  Al Lonsdale had been gazing out of one of the large observation windows that lined both sides of the gondola and now turned and came over and sat by Fitzduane. When they had converted the airship for the operation, they had left a walkway around the periphery of the gondola and a row of seats in the center.

  They would be airborne for four hours before the 2:00 A.M. time of the meeting. The airship could not suddenly appear. It was unlikely that anyone would look u past the glare of the floodlights when reconnoitering the meeting, but on the off chance that they did, the ship had to be established as part of the scenery. The delay was a nuisance, because waiting was the hardest part of any action, but it was unavoidable. The endurance of the airship itself was not a problem. At slow speeds it used minimal fuel and could stay up for up to forty hours if necessary.

  "Hell of a craft, isn't she, Colonel?" said Lonsdale, looking around the gondola with a proprietorial air. "Frankly, I'm surprised they're not more popular. I mean, what a way to see the country. Smooth as silk."

  Fitzduane was amused. Since Al had trained in the borrowed Airship Industries Skyship 600 — a model similar to the one they were flying in now — the Delta marksman had become something of an instant airship expert and advocate.

  "Smooth as silk if the weather holds," said Fitzduane. "Now, some serious wind could make you reach for a long, paper bag — or so I hear."