Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  They gained the top of the stairs.

  “To the left,” said Keiko.

  The light of a cloudy gray dawn filtered through windows on one side of the corridor. They trotted a short distance. A cluster of the Baron’s private security force appeared at the far end of the hall. Ballard motioned his group to fall quickly back.

  Shouts from the far end of the corridor gave way to the sounds of rifle shots.

  Mischkie cried, “Ooooof!” horribly as a bullet caught him in the chest and tumbled him off his feet.

  Ballard pumped off round after round at falling and scattering bodies while they continued to fire.

  Hanklin grabbed up the rifle Mischkie had dropped. Bullets snapped through the air. The world exploded.

  The far end of the corridor where the enemy first appeared blew apart amid an eruption of brick and mortar and shattering glass and shrapnel that sent reality reeling.

  When Keiko’s senses cleared, and that took several unsettling moments, the far end of the hallway was a dust-shrouded rubble, and from that billowing haze came the moans of the seriously injured.

  She fought to fully regain her senses. What happened? her mind cried.

  Sounds of combat drifted in from beyond the shattered windows of the corridor, more explosions like this one, light artillery scoring hits somewhere inside the castle walls.

  Mischkie lay sprawled flat on his back, legs together, arms outflung like a man crucified, his eyes closed and his mouth open. A red pool was spreading quickly across the tiles beneath him.

  Hanklin knelt to press his ear to Mischkie’s chest. When he pulled back, he wore a grimace, and some of Mischkie’s blood was smeared across his right cheek. He did not wipe it away.

  “Damn, damn, damn, city boy,” he rasped at the dead man and, to Ballard, “Damn.”

  Ballard forced himself to look away. A warrior lived, fought, and died, witnessing, perpetrating, suffering the horrors of war. And if he were lucky when his turn came, he went out as Mischkie had, quick, final, before he knew what had happened.

  Ballard grabbed Hanklin’s arm.

  “Come on, Tex, there’s nothing we can do for Wil.”

  “Damn, Sarge.” Hanklin rose to join Ballard and Keiko. “That leaves just me and you from the team.”

  “That leaves the mission. We’ve got to make it to that airfield. We’ve got to stop Baron Tamura.”

  Errant rounds from outside blew the remaining glass from one of the windows, causing them to duck instinctively. “That might take some doing,” Hanklin said.

  “The secret passage,” said Keiko. “I was taking you there, but I know another way. We can go back the way we came, around the outside behind this wing, along the back. The fighting is in front. We must get to the cellar.”

  “Let’s do it then.” Ballard looked down at the body on the floor, stifling the sorrow he knew he could not afford, not now. “So long, Wil.”

  They moved out. The sounds of combat from outside intensified.

  At precisely 7:30 A.M. four black limousines appeared, traveling at high speed past the leveled dock area of Yokohama, to draw up at the foot of the boarding ramp of the U.S. Destroyer Lansdowne, docked in the heart of the gutted seaport. Eleven diplomats and soldiers, the Japanese delegation to the Missouri, emerged from the cars.

  The leaders of the delegation, Shigemitsu and General Umezu, had ridden from Tokyo in the lead car. Like his staff, Shigemitsu wore a tall silk hat, ascot, and cutaway. He walked with a limp, his frail form on a walking stick. He had been crippled years ago by a terrorist bomb in Shanghai. Umezu, the chief of the imperial general staff, moved like a robot, his eyes blank, unseeing, the chest of his uniform covered with ribbons, hung in gold braid.

  Without fanfare, without words, the delegation boarded the Lansdowne for the sixteen-mile run out to the Missouri.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Captain Inoguchi peered through binoculars at the castle below. He had positioned his pieces of light field artillery side by side on a ridge overlooking the castle. Behind these were parked the personnel carriers recently vacated by his detachment of infantry which could be seen storming the castle below. Well-placed shells had reduced to ruin the stone archway of the main gate.

  Inoguchi’s men entered the castle grounds, spewing rifle fire ahead of them.

  The command post and the motor pool had taken several direct artillery hits. Vehicles were overturned, some used for cover by the defending force. Fallen bodies were scattered everywhere and fires burned, while black smoke snaked lazily toward the low, steely cloud ceiling.

  The fighting below was fierce, though little more than flat traces of rifle fire traveled up to the ridge.

  Inoguchi lowered his binoculars. He rejoined Major Okada, who stood in the rear of an open armored car, next to the machine gun mounted in the back. Okada also viewed the carnage below through binoculars.

  They were alone on the high ground except for the artillerymen several meters away on the crest of the ridge.

  “I’m losing men down there, Major,” Inoguchi snapped. “Where is General Nagano? Something is wrong here.”

  Okada lowered his binoculars.

  “I told you, Captain, he has been delayed. Do you question my authority?”

  “I did not at first. I should have. I do now.” Inoguchi turned to observe the fighting further. “It is too late now but when this is over, Major, I will see to it that a full investigation—”

  “It is over for you, Captain,” Okada said from behind him.

  Inoguchi turned, curious, and was startled into an involuntary back step when he found himself looking into the elongated barrel of the .50-caliber machine gun.

  “General Nagano is dead,” Inoguchi quietly spoke the realization. “Why are you doing this, Major?”

  Okada’s gold tooth glinted. His bald head looked pale in the dawn’s light.

  “Not that it need concern you, Captain, but I wish to have Baron Tamura’s force eliminated for reasons of my own. This seemed to me the most efficient method of doing so. Farewell, Captain.”

  The knowledge of imminent death which had drawn Inoguchi’s facial muscles taut gave way to surprise at something he saw behind Okada.

  “No, wait!” he blurted. “Behind you—”

  Okada laughed. He triggered an extended burst of machine gun fire that blew Inoguchi apart, lifting the infantry officer off the ground, spilling him into a slide backwards across the dirt.

  The men manning the artillery whirled about, but by this time Okada had already quit the machine gun, diving for the seat behind the steering wheel, when he sensed movement downrange; what Inoguchi had tried to warn him about.

  Three figures rushed up from behind the vehicle and in that one instant the Kempeitai officer recognized Ballard from the meeting in MacArthur’s suite in Yokohama. Okada twisted to hurl himself back for the machine gun but he never made it. He heard them open fire, and his world ended in a white flash.

  Ballard climbed behind the steering wheel. He pushed Okada’s body roughly to the ground. Keiko jumped into the seat beside him. Hanklin took over the machine gun.

  “Mighty obliging of these rascals to bump each other off and save us the trouble.”

  The artillerymen on the ridge started running toward them. Hanklin hammered off a dozen or so rounds in their direction, causing much scrambling for cover.

  Ballard fired the vehicle to life.

  “It is time,” Hayashi said.

  For the first time in weeks, a new day had dawned cool and comfortable. The rituals had been observed: the last rites for the dead, customarily administered before the final takeoff of suicide pilots, were intoned, the patriotic songs sung, the saki imbibed.

  The pilots again stood at rigid attention, listening to Baron Tamura.

  “I repeat, your minds must center on the word, attack!” The Baron addressed them in a sharp tone of command. “Fly low and their radar will not detect you. They patrol the skies, but no matt
er what happens, keep your planes separate, well-distanced from each other, so that you come in on the Missouri from different angles of attack. I know that you can and will do it. You are five minutes flying time from your target. When your approach is detected, they will strike at you with everything they have from the sea and the air, but even if one of you is downed, they will not have time to react against the three of you.

  “Allow no obstacle to stop you from carrying out your mission. You will plunge directly into the Missouri. This will be the legacy of Bushido. Your sacred ancestors cry out for justice, and you are the instruments of that justice. Know this when you command your planes into that last power dive at the true enemies of Japan. Banzai!”

  The lifted arms and the chanting of Banzai! echoed back at him from them. The pilots spun on their heels, running toward their planes.

  Hayashi crossed to the main door of the hangar. He switched off the lights and slid open the door.

  Hayashi returned to where the Baron continued to observe.

  “A most historic day, Baron Tamura I hope it shall not be our last.”

  “A samurai lives in such a way that he will always be prepared to die, Colonel Hayashi.”

  “And so I am, Baron. My only regret would be to die not knowing if my sister’s husband has betrayed us. This would bring much dishonor to me.”

  “General Nagano would not betray us, Colonel. My fear is that he has fallen into enemy hands.”

  “The Americans—?”

  “No, I mean our internal enemies. Major Okada and his assistant, Abiko; that faction. But I have already taken steps. These men will be dealt with.”

  The pilots and their wingmen were wheeling the first of the Zeros onto the tarmac.

  Major Abiko sat at his desk in the Kempeitai office in the War Ministry Building. Daylight coming through the windows did nothing to elevate the tomblike atmosphere of the Kempeitai offices. Abiko stared at his telephone, wishing he somehow had the power to make it ring, wishing he somehow had the power to control his own fate.

  He had taken some steps to that end. He had his own cache of files, pilfered from the filing cabinets he shared with Okada, which would do quite nicely when it came time to support himself financially after the war, regardless of what happened with Okada. He would live in style. A different boy every night. He stopped himself from thinking along those lines. The time would come …

  He did not trust Okada, but at this moment he would have given anything to hear his partner’s voice on the telephone, informing him that all had gone according to plan, that the Baron’s castle had been taken, that Baron Tamura was dead.

  The last call to come in had been the report of the collapse of General Kurita’s intended rebellion. That coup had failed to materialize. Kurita’s force had simply disappeared during the night, deserting their posts. Kurita had committed seppuku before a Shinto shrine in his home.

  Abiko experienced a strange prickling sensation at the nape of his neck. He started to turn in his chair.

  A length of rope slipped down around his throat from behind, and he felt the warm breath of his assailant at his ear as the assassin began strangling him with amazing force, crushing Abiko’s esophagus.

  Abiko’s hands frantically fought the ever-tightening rope biting into his flesh. He could not get his fingers under the rope. He kicked his chair away and tried to stand. His assailant kicked him in the knees from behind. Abiko went down, and the silent assassin went down with him. It felt to Abiko as if he were sightless and falling into a bottomless pit. Only one word—ninja!—seared itself into his fading consciousness before he died.

  Ballard kept the vehicle’s gas pedal to the floor, rocketing along, doing his best to avoid the deeper ruts and potholes in the road. They met no traffic along the way on this sleepy Sunday morning.

  When the outer reaches of the Tateyama Air Base came into view in the distance, Keiko raised an arm to indicate a dirt road that cut off, seemingly to nowhere, away from the road they were on. The dirt road led in the opposite direction of the air base.

  Ballard pumped the brakes for the first time since hijacking the armored vehicle. He steered off the road, following the narrow trail.

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “My uncle has influence at the base. It may be demobilized, but there will be men there who will obey him to the death. This trail leads along the perimeter, very close to the hangar where my uncle stores an antique plane for his private use. This will be the hangar they will use.”

  “Sounds like what we’re looking for.”

  Ballard drove over a rise after the road curved, and there was the air base stretched out below. The main road they had been on cut off into the distance past a concentration of barracks and administration buildings. Closer by, on this side of the network of runways, some hangars well separated from each other appeared unused, vacant, except for three idling Zeros in front of the nearest hangar.

  He saw the bombs mounted beneath the planes.

  “This is it.”

  The vehicle left the trail. A chain link fence stretched along the perimeter. The engine screamed as they plowed into and through the fence, never losing speed.

  He aimed down an incline, eating up the distance toward the hangar and the planes less than five hundred yards away. The men standing near the planes whirled, yelling to each other, pointing at the vehicle barreling down on them.

  “I’ll make a pass,” Ballard yelled over his shoulder at Hanklin. “Take out those pilots.”

  Hanklin braced himself for the wild ride with a bent-knee stance, turning the big Nambu machine gun around toward the front of the hangar where the pilots were scrambling onto the wings of their Zeros.

  “Better step on it, Sarge.”

  Ballard was already stepping on it, but somehow he managed to goose a bit more speed out of the vehicle. They sped past the hangar. Soldiers fired off hurried rounds that came nowhere near them.

  “Keiko, stay down,” said Ballard.

  She obeyed.

  The .50-caliber opened up just behind them, one continuous, extended, murderous blast that did not wholly drown out Tex Hanklin’s hooting rebel yell. Figures dodged in every direction. Heavy fire raked the aircraft. Two of the planes gushed into flames. The third pilot was blown off the wing of his plane.

  Ballard completed the pass. They were taking more fire now, heavier than before. He steered wildly away.

  In his rear-view mirror he saw soldiers yanking back the camouflage netting from a machine gun placement.

  Baron Tamura struggled to his feet from (the ground) where he and Hayashi had thrown themselves when the machine-gunning vehicle stormed by. He looked around for Hayashi and found the fat man sprawled on his chest, unmoving. The Baron knelt and gingerly rolled Hayashi over.

  Much of Hayashi’s chest was dark red pulp encircling a gaping exit wound. A trickle of blood snaked from the corner of his mouth. His eyes fluttered.

  “Americans,” he said weakly. “How did they know …”

  “I must leave you, old friend,” the Baron said. “I must see if any of the planes can still fly.”

  “But, the pilots … I saw them fall …”

  “I will fly the mission. Goodbye, Colonel.”

  “Wait … Baron-san, please … my pistol …”

  Baron Tamura unholstered Hayashi’s pistol and placed it in the man’s open hand. Then he hurried away.

  Men were hosing down the ruins of the burning Zeros with extinguishers. Pungent smells of raw fuel and fresh blood hung over the scene of devastation and slaughter in front of the hangar.

  Baron Tamura ran to the remaining Zero. Bullet holes gaped in its fuselage. One cockpit window was broken.

  He clambered aboard the wing toward the cockpit with the agility of a man one-third his age.

  Chapter Thirty

  “We’ve got to go back.” Ballard lowered the binoculars. “There’s a pilot getting ready to take off.”

  The base was
responding. A horde of figures in the distance were charging toward them from the barracks, but they were a long way across the runway system yet, and there were no vehicles in sight.

  Hanklin saw this also through binoculars.

  “Goat piss. I took out every damn one of those fly boys, Sarge, but damned if you ain’t right.”

  Keiko picked up Ballard’s binoculars and focused on the remaining Zero in front of the hangar.

  “It is Baron Tamura.”

  “You can stay behind if you don’t want to be a part of this,” Ballard told her. “Just get out, quickly.”

  “I must go with you.”

  “Suit yourself. Take the wheel.”

  The Zero began moving forward on the tarmac.

  Keiko took over the steering as they shot forward. The vehicle’s growling engine noise filled their ears. Ballard picked up the rifle propped next to him.

  “Tex, try to keep that machine gunner pinned down on the approach! Swivel around and try to take out the plane when you can.”

  Ballard noticed Keiko’s fists tighten on the steering wheel at his words.

  The Zero had gained the runway, its engine whining up for the takeoff.

  Then they were speeding into range of a machine gun placement. It opened up on the vehicle bolting along on a course that would intercept the Zero now traveling down the runway at an ever increasing rate of speed.

  The bright red sun painted on the Zero’s fuselage made Ballard think of blood. Then he got busy triggering rounds at the gun placement, adding to Hanklin’s .50-caliber fire as they roared past.

  Some people were lifted off their feet by the incoming fire, but sandbags absorbed most of it and kept heads down. The heavy pounding of the Nambu tapered off.

  Hanklin swung his mounted machine gun around on the Zero and started pumping out bursts over the heads of Keiko and Ballard, who were showered with hot brass.

  Ballard paused just long enough to slip a fresh clip into his rifle, but in that time the machine gun opened up again from the placement and he heard the plunk! plunk! of the bullets on the armored chassis.