Rules of The Hunt f-2

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  Lonsdale grinned. The Achilles' heel of an airship was its behavior in high wind. With all that surface area, an airship's gas-holding envelope acted like a giant sail, and could pitch and roll just like a boat. On his first training flight, Lonsdale had been airsick.

  "Someone's been talking," said Lonsdale cheerfully. "Anyway, that was a particularly shitty day and my pilot wasn't as expert as these boys. I don't think we're going to have any trouble tonight." He saw Fitzduane's eyebrows rise, and hastily added, "Well, not from the weather, anyway."

  Fitzduane laughed. Lonsdale was right. Fortunately, weather conditions were ideal, and flying at night, unless you were flying directly over a factory or similar heat source, eliminated interference from thermals. The airship was powered by two Porsche air-cooled gasoline engines driving twin-ducted variable-pitch propellers located on either side of the rear of the gondola. It seemed to float across the sky.

  It was a remarkably pleasant way to travel.

  * * * * *

  Schwanberg's good humor as he had boarded had faded and had been replaced with a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach as the airship took off.

  At first, he had put it down to a touch of airsickness. Now, standing up in the front of the gondola looking out one of the port observation windows, Schwanberg felt distinctly uneasy again, and it was not physical. He did not know what it was, but something just did not feel right. And, over the years, if there was one thing that he had learned to rely on, it was his instinct for self-preservation. There was no question about it, something was not kosher; but what?

  He fingered the grip of his 9mm Browning automatic as it sat reassuringly in his shoulder holster. What the hell had set him off? Everything seemed normal.

  He had initially been thrown when he had arrived at Atsugi. He and Chuck Palmer had expected to board with everyone else after a final briefing session. That would be normal procedure. Instead, Fitzduane and his people were already installed on the airship and there had been little discussion before the airship cast off and they rose near-vertically into the sky. Fuck, it was almost as if this was entirely Fitzduane's operation, which was not the way it was supposed to be.

  The second disconcerting element was the presence of Al Lonsdale and that Japanese bitch on board.

  He had expected only Fitzduane and the pilots, and under those circumstances an accident for the Irishman would have been easy to arrange. The pilots were shielded from the main cabin and would see nothing. Fitzduane would just have disappeared. An accidental fall out of the door. Something simple like that.

  But instead, there were two unexpected and unwanted witnesses, and both were loaded for bear. The Delta man had a .50-caliber Barrett with some high-tech telescopic sight, and the bitch had some custom self-loading piece chambered, it looked like, for the .300 WinchesterMagnum.

  * * * * *

  For no reason that he could identify, Fitzduane was thinking about Schwanberg. He looked across at the man. He seemed as relaxed and unperturbed as anyone could be under the very special pressures of an operation which was going to result in the imminent death of a number of fellow human beings, but Fitzduane could just feel the tension. There was nothing to see, but to Fitzduane the signs were as evident as if Schwanberg were radiating blue sparks.

  Fitzduane's mind went back to the CIA chief's boarding of the airship. Had there been any sign of suspicion then? He thought not. On the contrary, both Schwanberg and his henchman, Palmer, had seemed in exceptionally good form. They had been laughing at some private joke. There had not been the slightest hint of suspicion. Or had there?

  He replayed the scene in his mind. There was something — an excess of joviality? — something. He was missing some element.

  He thought of Bergin. Could Schwanberg and Palmer possibly know? Surely not. There was not even a hint that they suspected their nemesis was at hand.

  And yet...

  * * * * *

  What the fuck is going on? thought Schwanberg.

  He turned toward Chuck Palmer. Palmer was looking contentedly out a window at the Tokyo lights below and seemed quite unaware that anything was amiss. Of course, Chuck would be content, since he was flying in a real airship for the first time and knew pretty much for certain that he was going to be able to kill a few people in the near future. Chuck was easy to please.

  Schwanberg tried to work out a few possibilities as to what might be going down, and then, as the options clicked into place, started to sweat. It suddenly dawned on him that what he had planned to do to Fitzduane, that fucking Irishman was intending to do to him. Suspicion became certainty.

  He leaned across and spoke into Chuck Palmer's ear. Palmer's back stiffened as Schwanberg spoke. If the boss had a funny feeling, there was no point in debating it. The man had a nose for trouble.

  Schwanberg felt easier now that Chuck was alerted. The next question was what to do about it. Frankly, backing up Katsuda was all very well, but the prime directive was personal survival.

  He looked at his watch. Shit! It was 01:38 A.M., only twenty-two minutes before the meet. They were going to have to act soon if they wanted to resolve this thing before the main action went down. After it, he had a feeling it would be too late. He had a disconcerting feeling he was being set up to die in the line of duty. He and Chuck would probably get Distinguished Intelligence Medals — posthumously — and maybe get bronze stars and their names on the memorial wall in Langley.

  Some motherfucking consolation when you were a heap of ashes sitting in someone filing cabinet because they had forgotten to sprinkle you in the Garden of Remembrance. Well, it would be how Schwanberg would arrange things if roles were reversed. Death in the line of duty was a nice touch. No trial. No scandal. The Agency really did not like scandal.

  The more Schwanberg thought about it, the more he was convinced he was on the button. Fuck logic! It felt right. Which raised two questions: why had they not acted already? And who was going to do the hit?

  The delay in making their move was easy to work out. They did not know what was going to go down at the meet and wanted all the firepower they could get. A reasonable decision, but a fatal one for them.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane tensed for a preemptive move against Schwanberg — and then relaxed. His instincts screamed danger, but his head argued with cold logic that the scenario should be played out. The first priority was what was taking place down below.

  Schwanberg would have to wait — and he was covered by an ace in the hole. A very experienced ace who knew exactly what he was doing.

  An ace who was not as young as he had been, whose reflexes were perhaps a little slow?

  Fitzduane suppressed his doubts. The situation was complex enough already without his taking any precipitative action.

  He would wait. He glanced across at Schwanberg and Palmer again. Nothing untoward.

  * * * * *

  AS to who was going to make the hit, Schwanberg started to give some serious thought to Bergin. He had dismissed the threat from that source before, but now it looked as if he had been wrong. This was the kind of thing the Agency liked to handle internally. Allowing outsiders to liquidate your personnel was not a good precedent. So maybe someone here worked for the Agency or... maybe he was anticipating a threat from the wrong quarter.

  Schwanberg took a fresh look at his surroundings. He had read a briefing document on the airship before deciding it was worth using, and now he tried to recall what he could from it. What he saw was now illuminated only by dim red light. They were on night-vision status. Shortly, the light would be extinguished altogether, as the focus of attention switched to the meeting below. If they were going to make a move, it would have to be very soon or they would not be able to see what they were doing.

  The gondola was, in effect, a long thin room that was suspended under the main balloon. At the front end were the two pilots, separated from the main cabin by only a three-quarter-height partition. Strictly speaking, he recalled, the airs
hip did not need two pilots, but there was some safety regulation which made belt and suspenders mandatory.

  In the middle was the main cabin. In passenger mode, it could seat up to twenty-four, but now there was only a short double-row of seats down the middle. Fitzduane was speaking into a microphone, and sitting beside him was the Delta sniper, busy checking his weapon. Farther back on the left, the Japanese bitch stood half leaning against the rear bulkhead. She appeared to be dozing. At any rate, her eyes seemed closed. Most probably she was into some meditation shit.

  Beyond the bulkhead, at the rear of the gondola, was a major thickness of soundproofing and the engines. Schwanberg again tried to recall the layout of the airship. Wait! He had forgotten the head on the left and a small galley space on the right.

  He had used the head, so there was nothing untoward there. He looked toward the galley space and it was not there — there was just a door — and suddenly their who fucking game plan became clear.

  "CHUCK!" he screamed, and drew his Browning and pumped seven rounds through the galley door.

  The door crashed open and Bergin stumbled out, blood spewing from a wound in his neck.

  There was a silenced automatic held high in his right hand, and Schwanberg watched as the barrel swung toward him and the black circle jumped twice, as two rounds were fired. They missed him, as he knew they would.

  Schwanberg felt a rush. Once more he had beaten them to it. The VC could not get him, nor could anyone else. He was whip-smart and fucking well invulnerable.

  He shot again three times and watched Bergin's skull come apart and his body slam back toward the galley door.

  Chifune dropped to the ground just as Chuck Palmer fired his pistol, and the round smashed through the gondola wall just above her. She was now hidden behind the center row of seats, and Palmer fired a burst of shots trying to guess her position.

  She had moved forward as he was shooting, and now raised herself on one knee and put two shots into Palmer's stomach.

  He folded in two, and she shot him again in the crown of his head. The bullets exited at the back of his neck.

  Schwanberg could not understand the terrible pain.

  He knew he had not been shot, but his vision was dimming and there was not strength in his limbs.

  He looked down, and the haft of a throwing knife was protruding from his chest.

  He saw Fitzduane's face, and then the pain was overwhelming as the blade was removed from his torso and plunged in once again under his rib cage and up into his heart.

  Fitzduane removed his knife from Schwanberg's body and saw with horror a double hole in the low screen immediately behind the pilot's chair.

  He leaped forward and ripped the screen aside.

  The copilot's face, frozen with shock and fear, looked up at him in desperation. The side of the screen in front of the pilot was black with blood.

  The digital chronometer on the instrument panel read 01:47 A.M.

  There were thirteen minutes to go before the meet.

  Fitzduane looked down at the police copilot. "We will proceed as planned, Inspector-san," he said grimly.

  He began to wipe the blood and brain matter from the windshield while the copilot went into a slow circuit around the Hodama residence far below.

  The parameters of the residence were defined by infrared strobe lights that were invisible at ground level and even from the air, unless seen through the appropriate goggles.

  The object was to keep the Hodama garden below at a constant diagonal from the airship. A predictable range made for more accurate shooting.

  Behind Fitzduane in the main cabin, Lonsdale and Chifune clipped up observation windows and readied their weapons.

  As he went through the necessary actions, every fiber of Fitzduane's being screamed in pain and sadness at his friend's death and then focused totally on what had to be done. Grieving would wait. Mike Bergin, if anyone could, would understand.

  You shut out the sadness and you did what had to be done, and only afterwards did you weep. That was the way of it. There was no other.

  * * * * *

  The Spider waited in his command vehicle as the deadline approached, and although he had seen no official status, Yoshokawa waited with him.

  The meeting at the Hodama residence was the focal point for a vast police operation involving concentric rings of the top-secret Airborne special antiterrorist unit and armed riot police. In all, over eleven hundred men and a host of specialized equipment were deployed, and the hardest part of planning the operation had been devising ways of concealing the buildup. Fumio Namaka and his terrorists and Katsuda and his yakuza must be allowed into the trap before it was sprung, or the whole exercise was pointless.

  The downside of that vital qualification was that response time to Hodama's villa would not be as fast as the Spider would have preferred. However, he was reassured that whoever got into the residence would not get out, and he had the advantage of Fitzduane and his team visually monitoring the operation from on high.

  He had broached the question of downloading a video picture of the scene from the airship's observation cameras, but Fitzduane had looked straight at him and shaken his head. Silently, with only the slightest movement, the Spider had nodded his agreement.

  There were some things he, the Deputy Superintendent-General of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, should not be officially aware of.

  * * * * *

  Fumio Namaka sat in the back of his long, black armored limousine and rechecked his arrangements. What he had planned would, perhaps, not have been so unusual in a country such as the U.S., but in tightly controlled Tokyo, it was unorthodox in the extreme.

  He thought it possible that he would not need his full reinforcements. The irony was that the gaijin Fitzduane would quite likely be there as arranged, seriously thinking he could arrange a truce after all that had happened. Actually, a truce would make sense. This kind of endless war was a gross distraction from the more productive business of ever expanding the Namaka organization. Further, given that the feud with Katsuda was unresolved, it was not very wise to be fighting on two fronts.

  Still, Kei's death had to be avenged. It was the overarching imperative and had to be accomplished whatever the price. And in a fundamental way, the ultimate price had already been paid.

  From the moment Fumio had seen his brother's bullet-ridden corpse in the chill surroundings of the mortuary, and the last vestige of hope that somehow he had been misinformed had vanished, Fumio had died inside.

  He no longer had a life. He only had obligations.

  "Sensei, it is time," said his driver.

  "Very well," said Fumio. The limousine slid forward out of the private parking space and turned into the street. Since timing was critical, they had waited in a safe house only three minutes from the Hodama residence. Within five minutes, ten at most, this accursed gaijin Fitzduane, this murderer of his beloved Kei, would be dead.

  Deep inside, Fumio knew that even this vengeance would make no real difference, and inside he despaired. Whatever he did or tried to do, his splendid big brother was no more.

  His mind went back to the ruins of postwar Tokyo and those earlier poverty-stricken joyful days when all they had was each other and every day was a new adventure. He was smiling to himself when they arrived at Hodama's gates.

  * * * * *

  All inside the airship were now linked with head-mounted headsets equipped with miniature boom microphones. The airship was, in fact, quiet enough for normal voice communication, but the use of an intercom meant that you did not have to move your head and look at your audience to be heard with perfect clarity.

  Such a detail was important. The watchers were focused with total intensity on the scene below. They knew that whatever was going to happen was likely to be unexpected, sudden, and lethal, and they would have to react immediately. A tenth of a second could make the difference between living and dying. They were dealing with some very dangerous people.

&nb
sp; Fitzduane was acting as a spotter and fire commander. He was observing the scene below through gyroscopically stabilized, twenty-power, range-finding field glasses.

  The diagonal to the garden below as they circled was almost exactly five hundred yards, and this range appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of his vision, together with other targeting details. The picture quality was outstanding. In visual terms, he was a mere twenty-five yards away. There were night-vision options, but he did not need them. Within its fifteen-foot-high walls, as agreed, the Hodama gardens were brightly illuminated. The benefit of this level of brightness was not just that everything in the garden could be clearly seen, but also that looking up meant looking into glare. The airship could not be detected.

  The gondola was now in darkness. This was something of a relief to Fitzduane, since the slaughter surrounding him could no longer be seen. His own hands and clothing were covered in blood, and though the observation windows were open he could still detect the acrid smell. A split-second picture of Mike Bergin's body flashed before him, and he thrust it from his mind.

  That was then and this was now. Focus, focus, focus on the scene below.

  Fortunately, the copilot was turning out to be damn good. After the initial shock of seeing his superior's face half blown away and deposited on the Plexiglas, Inspector-san had rallied and now was flying superbly. There was the occasional very slight vibration in height and distance due to variations in the night breeze, but mostly the airship held its circular course as if tied to the Hodama garden by some invisible line. Thrust vectoring of its two duct-mounted propellers, the ability to swivel the complete drive units in flight, was supposed to give an unusual degree of control — and it showed.

  Fitzduane was also linked to the Spider on ground control. Now he watched Fumio drive into the Hodama grounds, leave his limousine, and take up position as arranged.