Executioner 053 - The Invisible Assassins

by Pendleton, Don

  "I've got my sources," she said with a theatrically mysterious air. "I have quite a few friends over here. In fact, I deliberately led one guy on to get the information I wanted. That's one of the reasons I left Japan for a while. Just to cool things off."

  Sandy felt a little better for having confessed, though she did not want this man to get the impression she was someone who used people.

  "How many of these 'friends' know you're back?"

  "Just Jimmy. He's the guy who lent me his car. I've been trying to get settled in again. Haven't had time to contact anyone else."

  "I think you should stick close to home for a while, Sandy," Bolan warned her. "Lie low. Things are going to get pretty ugly out there. Now give me an envelope and some notepaper."

  "Sure."

  Her briefcase was bulging with a student's supplies.

  Bolan wrote out a covering letter, then paper-clipped it to the torn-out photograph and slipped it into the envelope. He really did not want to involve her further, but she was already in it up to her neck.

  "Would you take this to the American Embassy first thing today, please? Give it to Paul Ryan. Personally, you understand."

  "Will there be a reply?"

  "No, not immediately." For the transmission to reach Brognola and for him to send back the appropriate information might take an hour, might take more. "Then I want you to return here and stay in. Wait for me. I'll be back later."

  Sandy bit her lip. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. But it was more important to observe the rules.

  "When I get back, we'll talk."

  "Take care, John," she said, reaching out to touch his hand.

  Bolan quickly squeezed her hand in parting. Now it was time to monitor progress on a gang war. He would wait for Commander Nakada to connect with him back at his quarters. Things would be hopping this day.

  "You too, scholar girl." He smiled at the blond young American in the Japanese nightgown. "Don't get carried away with any more of this research, okay? It's a real world out there, and it bites with razor teeth. Our enemies are surrounding us, and they will draw blood like airborne piranha."

  The girl shivered involuntarily, then stole a look into the cold eyes of this hard man and, connecting with his gaze, held it with her green eyes.

  "I know that," she said. "You must come back." "Bet on it," Bolan said and turned toward the door.

  THE DOORMAN could not restrain a short gasp of surprise and respect, when the monstrous limousine stopped to pick Bolan up. The doorman touched two fingers to his forehead in salute as he opened the rear door for their American guest. He had not realized they had such an important man staying at the hotel.

  "Commander Nakada said you would like to be taken along the Umishi coastline," said the driver.

  "Yes, if that's possible."

  The woman behind the wheel nodded. She did not turn to give him Suki's smile. Bolan guessed she was another upwardly mobile female in Nakada's department.

  Most of the taxis steered clear of the long, heavy car as it surged easily through the morning traffic. A couple of them raced alongside to see if they could recognize who was in the back. No one could see clearly through the smoked glass, but they tooted anyway, assuming that the passenger must be a visiting movie star.

  Bolan was grateful that the driver did not want to talk. He let her concentrate on the road as he sank back into the softly padded pearl gray upholstery. It really was a very comfortable ride. Only thoughts of last night's bloody events unsettled the sensation of ease.

  Kuma had not looked like the sort who would scare that quickly, and yet something had driven the yakuza boss to mutilate himself horribly rather than risk Bolan's questioning. Fanatical loyalty or abject fear? Bolan was too deep into the ties between a top gangster and the large chemical company to back off now.

  The ties were like links in a chain. At one end were the bugs of World War II, the invisible assassins bred at Yamazaki's Unit 639; and at the other was Shinoda and the needed bacteria for his revolutionary biochip. Bolan would sniff out the man in the middle.

  The Executioner rested, conserving his strength for the struggle ahead.

  "That's one of the superexpresses, sir."

  Bolan glanced out the window to see the sleek, aerodynamically designed "bullet" train. The limousine must have been cruising at eighty or faster, but the train was steadily overtaking them. The track banked away from the road, and Bolan lost sight of the railed projectile behind a swiftly looming hill.

  "That train will arrive in Umishi at least twenty minutes before we get there," the driver informed him.

  Much of the uneven land, on either side of the road was terraced into tiers of rice fields. This was picture-postcard Japan. Then the soil dried out, became sandier, and the cultivated lots gave way to pine woods. Bolan saw a sign in three languages pointing the way to a hot-springs area.

  It was another five minutes before he caught his first glimpse of the sea. The beaches were few and short and steep, and cliffs predominated, dropping sheer into the foaming swell. Out at sea the waves were choppy, indicating fierce undertows.

  A few lonely boats braved the blue gray water.

  "Pearl divers," explained the driver, not shifting her attention from the upcoming bends hugging the twisted contours of the coastal cliffs. Bolan was more interested in the tall towers he had caught sight of between the dark evergreens to the right.

  "What's that place?"

  "Shoki Castle. It was a castle, but now it's a kind of recreational center, an executive retreat owned by one of our major companies."

  They sped past the high gates. There was no mistaking the logo on the sign outside, warning off uninvited visitors.

  "Would that be the Red Sun Corporation?"

  "Yes, sir. The Yamazakis have always treated their employees as one large family."

  Bolan looked the other way at the sea pounding the base of the cliff below them.

  "Wasn't it along this stretch of coast that Professor Naramoto disappeared?"

  "I'm.. . I'm not completely sure of the exact location. Perhaps it was. I didn't work on that case." Bolan lighted a cigarette to divert her attention from his look into the driving mirror. She was watching him, too, evidently interested in his reaction. "Commander Nakada insisted that I demonstrate the major features of the car for you."

  Bolan let her change the subject—he had something else on his mind.

  She reached out with her left hand and touched a switch in the control panel. A shatterproof glass partition slid into place between them.

  "That seals off the passenger compartment." Her voice sounded tinny through the small interconnecting speaker. She pushed another button. "And that electronically locks the rear doors."

  Bolan was trying to place those eyes in the mirror. "Nothing could get in to reach you, sir." Pretty—in an unmemorable sort of way.

  That's what he thought the first time he saw her. She was the woman in the photographs.

  But how ... ?

  She turned slightly and glanced back over her shoulder. Her lips moved and the disembodied voice announced, "And it is impossible for you to get out."

  She touched the brakes, and the car slowed as it approached the crest of the rise ahead. "We trust you'll enjoy the rest of the ride, Colonel Phoenix. Now I must leave you.. . . "

  The woman opened the door and with practiced ease leaped out onto the grass verge.

  Bolan smashed his fist against the glass.

  It was useless.

  The driver's door slowly swung shut as the car began to pick up speed. The road dropped for about two hundred yards, then turned sharply to the right. But there was no one at the wheel to handle the bend.

  Bolan could see the cliff edge rushing toward him.

  There was absolutely nothing he could do.

  The heavy car hit the graveled shoulder, flattened the tussocks of salt grass and plunged over the cliff.

  14

  THE SLEEK
AUTOMOBILE knifed through the water and submerged almost immediately, the weight of its thick, reinforced body armor dragging the vehicle toward the bottom.

  Bolan collapsed in a heap against the solid glass partition, the breath knocked out of him, but his limpness an advantage in absorbing the impact.

  The attack-proof compartment was sinking into an eerie gloom. A seething, silvery cloud of bubbles swirled past the windows.

  Inside it was as silent as a tomb.

  The resistance of the water slowed the car as it continued to drop nose first. Then the heavy automotive coffin bumped to a halt, wedged at a sloping angle with its front end trapped between two rocks. The engine had coughed its demise, but the ignition was still on, the dash lit by a solitary light.

  Bruised and shaken, Bolan took his bearings. He was standing on the tilted shatter-resistant shield. The rear window was just above his head.

  The final impact had not been enough even to bend the specially reinforced frame.

  The doors held firm.

  No water leaked into the interior.

  It would probably still be dry when they winched up the vehicle and hauled his corpse from it.

  Bolan assumed that was the plan. He wondered whose corpse they would substitute for the driver.

  Would Suki be found in there with him? She, probably drowned, he asphyxiated? All along he had sensed that Suki wanted to tell him something. Now, he realized, she had wanted to warn him.

  There was a small cut on his cheek. The skin had split when he had been slammed into the glass. The flesh already felt puffy. His knee ached from the twisted way he had been thrown around. But nothing was broken.

  The surrounding shroud of air bubbles was breaking up. Only scattered trails of escaping air ascended as Bolan began, inch by inch, to examine his underwater cell. Looking up through the rear window, he judged he was stuck perhaps forty feet below the surface, considering the time it had taken to hit bottom.

  A school of striped fish flitted past, found nothing to interest them, veered away in unison. The cloud of sand and debris was settling now. A cold twilight prevaded the sunken car.

  For a brief moment he thought it was a shark coming to investigate.. . . Pale, golden, the shape rippled toward him. He had not yet exhausted the air, he could not be seeing things—but here before him was a mermaid.

  The pearl diver was naked except for a pair of goggles. She was carrying a heavy steel crowbar of the kind used to pry tenacious oysters from their rock crevices. She wore no diving equipment.

  Bolan watched as the woman swam gracefully through the deep.

  She tapped the crowbar against the glass. Bolan signaled toward the unlocked driver's door, jabbing with his finger and making a levering motion.

  The unclad diver understood.

  She tried and tried again. The pointed flange could find no purchase against the front window.

  Bubbles of spent oxygen were leaking slowly from her nostrils. Bolan wondered how long she could possibly stay down here.

  She pushed the end of the crowbar into the edge of the door, close to the handle, and applied one final burst of pressure.

  Something gave. The metal buckled, and the door latch was giving.. . . The sea sprayed into the driver's compartment.

  Bolan saw jets of salt water spout into the front of the car.

  The diver banged the roof. Bolan watched her feet disappearing as she rose to the surface for a much-needed gulp of fresh air.

  A new cloud of bubbles erupted from the car as the sea rushed in through the slight gap she had forced open by the catch.

  Bolan watched... and waited.

  The water level rose.

  The multiple-control dash was swamped. Something zapped. The circuits shorted. The glass partition dropped a few inches, then stopped. The water could rise no farther because of the air trapped in the passenger section.

  Bolan pushed down hard against the top edge of the glass partition. It slid open a little more—not all the way, but enough for him to climb through to the front.

  The water was cold.

  He kicked hard, and the front door opened a little. Bolan took in a deep breath from the space that had been intended as his grave, ducked under and eased himself through the half-open door.

  The woman was coming down again to get him. Bolan entrusted himself to her guiding hands. When he looked up he saw the black cigar-shaped shadow of a boat above them. Even in his haste to escape from the steel box below, Bolan had the presence of mind to surface on the seaward side of the pearl-diver's boat, in case prying eyes were watching from the cliff top.

  A grinning boatman helped haul Bolan over the gunwale.

  The rescued warrior lay on a tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat, drinking in the sweet, cool air.

  "Thank you," he gasped, sitting up between a bucket of oysters and a wicker basket half filled with crabs.

  The woman swung herself up over the side of the wooden craft. Without a trace of self-consciousness at her nudity, she gave the American a sharp nod of her head. Bolan returned the bow.

  "Bad spot. Two crash." The boatman held up two fingers to emphasize his point. "Car sink . . . boat sink."

  "Where did boat sink?" Bolan asked forcefully. "You show me boat. Please."

  The man turned to consult the diver. She shrugged. They could show him.

  The man rope-started the ancient outboard, and they motored along under the cliffs, back in the direction of Shoki Castle. The men glanced up at the road. Bolan was watching for a sign of that treacherous driver; the boatman was checking the landmarks that would guide him to the earlier wreck.

  The woman was the first to signal that they had arrived. Yet she had not lifted her eyes from the surface of the water. Her gaze seemed to penetrate the depths.

  Bolan took off his shoes and jacket, seized a pair of goggles from the floor of the boat and followed her over the side.

  The cruiser was not in as deep water as the car was. The fiberglass hull was balanced on a rocky ledge less than thirty feet below the surface.

  It required a considerable effort to swim down against the strong current that must have pushed the boat onto its present precarious perch. Even now the stern was swaying gently, and Bolan guessed the next storm would push it off to sink in the deep, dark waters on the far side of the shelf.

  There were no bodies to be seen. The predators that haunted these shores would have taken care of their disposal. The pearl-diving nymph circled, coming back to tap Bolan's shoulder. She pointed to the aft section. There was a long hole torn in the hull, below what would have been the waterline.

  Bolan was almost at the limit of his lungs' endurance, but he swam closer to investigate.

  The shredded edges of the gash splintered outward. If the professor had hit a sharp rock, the fiberglass skin would have been rammed inward. So it was from a force of some kind, a bomb, inside the engine compartment. The boat must have sunk immediately.

  Bolan had seen enough. He signaled to the woman that he was going back up. He glanced toward the surface, saw the silhouette of the boat and slowly ascended.

  "I take you back to shore," said the man. "My village not far." He made a sweeping motion to show that they were heading for a harbor in the cove around the point.

  Bolan was slipping his shoes back on when he heard the heavy throb of a launch's powerful motor. He lay flat in the bottom of the boat and tugged the oil-stained tarpaulin over himself.

  He took a quick glimpse over the edge of the canvas sheet and saw a converted patrol boat, flying the Red Sun company ensign, knifing through the waves. The pearl gatherers' dinghy rocked in the wash of the larger vessel, which passed close enough to inspect them.

  The man at the tiller gave the uniformed sailors an amiably stupid grin, but as soon as they pulled away he spat over the side. The local fishing and pearl-diving folk were not part of the Red Sun's one big happy family.

  15

  THE PEARL DIVER had an older brother who was d
riving his fish truck to Tokyo. It was cramped in the small cab, and there was no escape from the briny stink of their cargo, but at least Bolan felt confident he would reach his destination in one piece.

  The driver did not speak any English, which gave Mack Bolan time to think. He was still not sure if the woman who had tried to kill him had infiltrated Nakada's security squad without its leader's knowledge, or whether she had switched with the substitute driver that morning. But given the evidence of Naramoto's sabotaged boat, which the police and frogmen together, under Nakada's direction, could not find, Bolan was beginning to suspect that Nakada himself had given the orders for his watery disposal.

  After a sign-language conversation including much patient repetition, Bolan got the truck driver to drop him off a block from Sandy's apartment. The man refused to accept any payment for the ride.

  Bolan checked both ways before entering a side door that served as a fire exit.

  "What happened to you?" Sandy asked as she unlocked the door. She was wrapped in the same thin robe she had worn that morning; tonight, blond ringlets clung to her neck. "You look a mess, John. . . "

  Bolan shrugged.

  "Run yourself a bath," she said. "I'll see if I can clean your clothes and press them a little."

  Bolan did not argue. Another bath in one day was better than none.

  "I've got some interesting news for you, John," she called out, as she plugged in the compact traveling iron she had bought on her previous stay in Japan. "Guess who Professor Naramoto really is!"

  "Tell me."

  "Saburo Naramoto was the youngest scientist to work in Manchuria during the war. Somehow he kept a low profile throughout the Occupation and Reconstruction period. But a friend told me that the respected Professor Naramoto began his career as Colonel Yamazaki's own protégé at the Unit 639 project."

  "I thought I told you to stay put," Bolan said. "You told me to stay in," protested Sandy. "You didn't say not to use the phone."

  "Lying low means just that," Bolan called out from the bathtub. "Did you manage to see Paul Ryan?"