Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  The deserted farmhouse was set far back from the road and any other houses. A sentry was posted outside the front door. Inside, General Nagano sat tied to a wooden chair left behind by former tenants.

  He had been stripped to the waist. Cigarette burns marked his torso. The fingers of his left hand were broken.

  Abiko held the forged orders on the table. Nagano, nearly unconscious from agony, leaned over to weakly affix his signature at the bottom of the orders.

  The Kempeitai officer’s breathing was fast and filled the room. The major’s slender, almost feminine body seemed nearly to tremble with some strange excitement beneath his uniform. Abiko had done the torturing while Major Okada made the demands.

  Nagano completed affixing his signature. The pen dropped from his fingers to roll across the table and fall to the floor with a small sound lost beneath his ragged gasping and Abiko’s breathy sounds.

  “There, you devils, I have done your bidding.”

  Nagano sank back against the chair. “Now, please, Okada … kill me. The dishonor … the pain …”

  Okada, standing next to the chair, bent forward from the waist to speak close to the bound man’s ear.

  “I do not believe you know nothing of Baron Tamura’s plans. I want to know, General, what you know. You knew about the ninja.” The flicker of candlelight reflecting from Major Okada’s spectacles made Nagano think of some supernatural evil.

  “Yes, I knew of the ninja but that was all, I swear.”

  “Let me do more things to him,” Abiko implored. “I can make him talk.”

  “No more,” Nagano pleaded weakly. His chin dropped against his chest. “I have told you everything.”

  Okada straightened.

  “I believe you.”

  He moved to stand in front of Nagano. He unholstered his sidearm, held it out straight before him, and pulled the trigger. The bound man and the chair flew over violently.

  Okada holstered the pistol, not sparing a glance at what remained of Nagano nor at the pool of blood spreading on the floor beneath the bound body like an oil slick in the faint flicker of candlelight.

  Okada snatched up the signed orders. He scanned them.

  “An infantry detachment with artillery, under my command. Excellent. We will strike Castle Tamura at once. I know the exact placement of the defense force from my visits there. We will be heroes, Major Abiko, for putting down the insurrection to be led by Baron Tamura, and the Baron will cease to be a danger to us.” He waved the orders in the air. “All very official, with General Nagano’s own signature.” He glanced at Nagano’s corpse with obvious distaste. “This will remain an unsolved homicide.”

  Abiko’s breathing began returning to normal.

  “You have seen to every contingency, Major Okada. What shall we do next?”

  “You will return to the ministry. You will monitor all developments regarding General Kurita and his coup.”

  “And you, Major?”

  “I intend to hand deliver these orders to Eastern Army Headquarters. I will lead the column to the castle, to carry out General Nagano’s orders. We shall strike the castle in force and cut off all communications. We shall overcome the Baron’s defenses at any cost. My assault force will slaughter anyone they find.”

  “Including the Baron’s niece?”

  “No, not Keiko,” Okada said. He thought of what he had done to the prostitute at the House of One Thousand Joys and felt a strange heat rising within him. “I will order them to bring Keiko to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  She knelt beside Ballard and observed his fitful sleep. His head moved from side to side, and the words he spoke in his dreams were unintelligible to her. He lay stretched out on the hay and blankets along the wall near the corner he had chosen as his own, opposite the one she’d claimed.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her, kneeling there beside him, studying him. Remaining on his back, he lifted his wrist and looked at his watch.

  “Does it matter what time it is?” she asked.

  “It matters. When we make our play at busting out of here, we want it to be an hour or so before dawn. That’s when any position is most vulnerable. Sentries get careless when they’re tired, and they start to think about their shift almost being over. That’s when we try something.”

  “What will you try?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “Still working on it.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Long enough to know they were dreams that troubled you.”

  He propped himself onto one side, supporting his weight on an elbow.

  “Dreams of the past,” he said.

  “You must try to dream of tomorrow, and of the day after that.”

  “Now we’re talking dreams.” Ballard made a sound that could have been a small laugh, but there was no humor in it.

  “Where I’ve been these last few years, you try to forget there’s a tomorrow because all tomorrow means is more of the same with no end in sight.” He stretched out again, curving one arm to pillow his head, returning his gaze to the ceiling as if extremely uncomfortable speaking these thoughts. “I’m starting to think that running into you was a good thing for me, Keiko.”

  “I hope it was.”

  “For a while today I saw the world through someone else’s eyes, your eyes, and for the first time in a long time, kid, I saw hope and I saw promise, and those are some things I haven’t seen in a real long time. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. Something crazy gets hold of me when I look at you.”

  She laid her hand on his. Her touch was warm.

  “I have … similar feelings for you,” she said hesitantly. “It is not easy to understand. I want you to hold me, John. Will you do that?”

  That caught him off guard. He raised an eyebrow, studying her intently, not knowing what to think, uncomfortable.

  “I surprise myself,” she added quickly. “But I have never been this close to death before. It causes one to act … differently, does it not?”

  “You could say that.”

  “At the hotel in Yokohama last night, and this afternoon in that village, you behaved and fought like a man wholly unafraid to die, as if you welcomed the opportunity to confront death.”

  He sat up, leaning against the wall.

  “You could say that, too.”

  “Earlier, you asked me to explain something I had said as we rode together this afternoon. May I ask the same of you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You said you had no one. Have you no one truly, or did you have someone and did you lose her? Is she still in your heart?”

  “I was married,” he said, “before the war.”

  He told her, succinctly, about being a policeman in America and of the criminals who killed his wife and of the vendetta that followed.

  “I regret everything that happened,” he concluded, “but I regret most that Carla and I were fighting the last time I saw her. We never even had the chance to say goodbye.”

  “And is that what you dream of?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “I know. I don’t know why. Will you hold me, John?”

  “I’ll hold you, Keiko. Come here.”

  He extended his right arm. She moved in against him. Her head nestled in the crook of his arm.

  An unbidden sigh of weariness escaped her. “I have had to be braver than I really am.”

  “You and the rest of the world,” he said with a sigh, a sigh that matched her own.

  “You must understand this about me, John. I am a daughter of Japan, and there is much that is sacred to me. Family. Chastity before marriage. I have been saving myself, you understand?”

  “Keiko—”

  “We may be dead within hours,” she said. “We must face that. Life is incomplete without experiencing some things. I know this is shameless of me, but I feel no shame.�
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  The face of a guard appeared in the barred window set in the door. The guard laughed shrilly.

  “The whore lays with the American!” he called to another sentry. The other pushed the first aside and snickered at Keiko.

  “Do not worry, little one. Our orders are to let no harm befall you. We will not interrupt your pleasure.”

  They both cackled some more.

  Keiko translated for Ballard what they had said.

  “Let us move,” she suggested, indicating a corner of the cell not visible from the barred window.

  “Let’s not,” said Ballard, not budging. “If they can see us, and there’s nothing to see, they’ll leave us alone.”

  “You think I am brazen.” She returned her head to the crook of his arm. “I was in love before the war with the son of one of my uncle’s business partners whom I met on holiday with my uncle. A gentle young man. He was strong in the good ways. We would meet often in the cafes when the boulevards of Tokyo were still beautiful. We spoke of history and philosophy, and we fell in love. He was accepted at the university in Tokyo. I remained true to him when I was in America.

  “When the militarists came to power, he was appointed to the air force. They changed him, the gentle boy I had known. He fell slave to their madness. Toward the end, he became a kamikaze pilot. I am a pilot. I can close my eyes and visualize him in the cockpit, rolling into his final dive. In his last letter to me, he wrote that he would die with a smile and with my name on his lips. The day after, he was gone.”

  The guard at the door gave a bored snort and disappeared from the barred window.

  “You see, John,” said Keiko, “I had a reason for asking if you had lost someone. We, neither of us, has recovered from the loss of one we loved. We are alone in this world. I think we have carried our burdens long enough, John, you and I. We must put behind us what is past. We can help each other.

  “You cannot go back and bring your Carla to life. It was not your fault your wife died; it was the gangster, Evelio, and his gang, and you took your vengeance on those responsible. And I will forever harbor one more reason to hate the militarists who have nearly destroyed my country and stolen from us a generation of young men and all they could have offered a world at peace, like the boy I loved.”

  “Keiko, what you want to happen between us can’t happen now. We’re in the eye of a storm.”

  “You are a man who knows the world, John. This attraction we feel … is it love?”

  “What I’ve been up to these last few years doesn’t exactly qualify me as much of an expert on anything except killing,” he told her soberly. “I hope there’ll be a time to find out about us, Keiko, but it’s going to have to be later.”

  She said, “I hope, with all my heart, that there will be ‘later.’ And you are right. We cannot understand our feelings at a time like this. Perhaps I feel … death seems to be everywhere, closing in.”

  “Don’t talk, Keiko,” he said. “This is a good time to rest up.” She felt his lips moving against her hair as he spoke. “We may need all of our strength very soon.”

  This made sense to her. He held her and she drifted off to sleep.

  Hanklin found Mischkie’s snoring particularly irritating. Hanklin had been trying to get his bulk into a comfortable position in his grimy corner of the cell, but every time he tried a new position, he discovered new aches he didn’t even know he had.

  “Hey, Wil, wake the fuck up.”

  Mischkie gurgled in mid-snore, stopped snoring, and looked groggily across at Hanklin.

  “Damn, Tex, what is it? I thought we were going to grab some shut-eye so we’re ready for the first break that comes our way.”

  They had made a thorough search of their cell and upon realizing that there was no way in hell they were going to bust out, Mischkie had suggested they rest.

  “Sleep!” Hanklin made a rude sound. “I know you can sleep anywhere, Mischkie, but this is ridiculous. At least the Sarge gets thrown in the clink with a pretty gal. I’ve got to listen to you snore! I’ll bet the Sarge is working on a way out of here. We ought to be doing the same.”

  He stopped talking when he realized Mischkie was snoring again.

  Shortly before dawn, against all regulations, Baron Tamura’s chauffeured limousine glided through the main gate of Tateyama Air Base. The sentries stationed at the gate did not stop it.

  The limousine continued across the base, passing lines of barracks, administration buildings, and hangars that sat ghostly silent, unpopulated in the wake of demobilization. The car crossed the fields and runways and reached the hangar where the Baron stored the Spad, his vintage biplane. The hangar sat removed from the rest of the base, near where the three Zeros had previously been camouflaged beneath the canopy of trees just beyond the perimeter. The shape of the biplane was barely discernible where it was parked beside the hangar.

  The area around the hangar was patrolled by roving teams of sentries as well as stationary guards at each entrance of the deserted-looking structure. There were no lights.

  Colonel Hayashi appeared from a side door to greet the Baron. The overweight man’s little eyes beamed with excitement.

  “Baron Tamura. All is in readiness.”

  “Show me.”

  As they stepped into the black interior of the hangar, Hayashi flicked the light switch on. The windows of the hangar had been hung with blackout curtains. The three Zeros sat in the center of the hangar, each with a 550-pound bomb mounted beneath the fuselage. Before them, three young men in full flight gear stood at severe attention, the ancient white scarf that is the badge of the samurai around their heads.

  Baron Tamura nodded his approval.

  “Very good. Very good.”

  Keiko emitted a bleat that was half frightened scream, half plea for help.

  There came a pounding of boots from outside the cell. The face of one of the guards filled the barred window.

  In the cell, Ballard put one of his arms around Keiko and shoved her against the wall of the cell opposite the door, grinding himself against her with the snarl of a raging bull, pawing with a free hand at her hips and thighs through her clothing. She wailed her pain and humiliation.

  Laughter came from the barred window.

  Keiko pushed away from the wall, furiously raking Ballard’s face, her fingernails clawing furrows across his left cheek like ripping talons. He snorted in pain. His grip loosened.

  She darted away with another cry for help to the sentries crowding each other in the window for a better view. She gained the wall beside the door, beyond the guards’ line of vision. Ballard flung himself at her.

  After a pause and a short discussion between the guards, a key clicked in the lock and the door eased inward. The barrel of a rifle preceded the first tentative sentry through the door.

  Ballard moved fast from where he crouched directly beside the door. He grabbed the rifle barrel and yanked with a strong, two-handed grip, trotting the sentry in, separating man from rifle with a vicious twist. He raised the rifle and smashed it forward. The butt plate caved in the back of the guard’s skull with a crack! Ballard pivoted before the dead man fell.

  The second sentry standing in the doorway wheeled about in a mad dash to get away. Ballard stepped forward and extended the rifle to catch this one between the ankles, tripping him. He flung himself upon the man’s back and brought the rifle around under his throat. Holding the rifle by stock and barrel, he wrenched sharply. The dry snap of the neck breaking popped flatly without an echo in the dungeon.

  The stink of death suddenly overpowered the other stenches there.

  Ballard went to the closest body and grabbed from its belt the old-fashioned key ring, which he tossed to Keiko. He picked up the second rifle and spare ammo clips from the bodies.

  “Let’s get our neighbors.”

  She averted her eyes from the corpses. Ballard stood watch while she unlocked the second door.

  Mischkie and Hanklin bounded out. Ballard t
ossed the spare rifle he carried at them. Mischkie grabbed it out of the air before Hanklin could.

  Hanklin was too happy to be free again to complain. “Kinda thought you’d get around to thinking up a plan to bust us out of here.”

  “We gave up on ideas,” said Mischkie. “How’d you manage it?”

  Ballard winked at Keiko.

  “It wouldn’t have worked for you lugs.” To Keiko he said, “Do you know a way out of here?”

  “I know of a secret passage. The soldiers will not know about it.”

  “Lead the way. And listen,” he told his men. “MacArthur gave us an ace up our sleeve to use as a last resort. If we get separated and can’t regroup and you somehow get your hands on a radio, our identification is Yankee Clipper. Our flyboys and the army have been ordered to give us full and immediate support if we make contact. Remember. Yankee Clipper.”

  They double-timed along the corridor to the nearest flight of stairs and started up.

  As they hurried along, Hanklin spotted the angry red scratch marks on Ballard’s face.

  “Hey, Sarge, what happened? You tussle with a mountain lion?”

  “Tell you about it when we get the hell out of here, Tex.”

  “I’m glad we’re getting out,” said Mischkie. “But where the hell are we going?”

  “If I’ve got this right, Baron Tamura is at that air field nearby with a bunch of kamikaze pilots and they’re getting ready to take off to try and blow the Missouri out of the water this morning during the surrender ceremony. Now let’s keep quiet.”

  This was no time for talk, but Ballard knew every mind among them was grappling with the unreality of what had become reality.

  Baron Tamura had hatched and was in the process of unleashing one final, sinister, far-reaching plot of unthinkable proportions, with millions of American and Japanese lives at stake if the plot succeeded and a madman’s dreams of prolonging this war were realized. And even if those long-range objectives were not realized, the life of every person aboard the Missouri was in imminent peril.