Executioner 053 - The Invisible Assassins

by Pendleton, Don

  Bolan turned to see yet another horseman, this one in bamboo armor, come storming down toward them. The rider was skillfully guiding his black mount along the safest path.

  "Get going!" Bolan ordered Sandy as he took aim.

  His second shot hit the rider squarely between the eyes. The impact sent his broad-brimmed war helmet flying, as an invisible force plucked the man from the saddle and tossed him back over the horse's rump.

  Another rider had already reached the forest fringe.

  Bolan turned and ran after the woman. In the distance he could see the wooden walkway that led back to the car park.

  The bushes behind them trembled and tore as the mounted sentry came after them.

  "No, not there!" Bolan shouted, reaching forward to snatch Sandy's arm to guide her to the left. "The ground's not safe."

  The rider was picking his way behind them, and he was gaining.

  Bolan turned to face the oncoming warrior. The man reined in and watched as the big American brought his gun to bear.

  Click.

  The horseman grinned at the sound. He lowered his lance into the kill position.

  The sixteen-round machine pistol was not empty and Bolan knew it. He also knew the response that the faked sound of an empty gun would spark in the horseman.

  He stood fast, his plan of action progressing smoothly. "Keep moving, Sandy," he shouted. "Don't stop. You've got to get back to Ryan."

  But Sandy could not move. She was rooted to the spot, riveted by the sight of John Phoenix standing very still, very straight, waiting for the rider's spear-point.

  The man jammed his knees into the sides of his horse; the animal responded by picking up speed, moving in fast for the kill. Bolan's muscles tensed. He was ready. The timer in his head kept pace with the animal.

  When the horseman was only yards away from the Executioner, Bolan faked a quick, low move to the left. The horseman reacted by targeting the lance low and to the side. Then Bolan sprang up high.

  He felt the rounded edge of the lance sweep his rock-hard stomach as he leaped over it and grabbed the spike of death about halfway up its shaft. Landing with all his weight on it, he drove the tip of the lance into the turf. The rider was hoisted off his horse like a pole-vaulter. Bolan was left standing upright, his feet apart, with the vertical lance quivering against the side of his face.

  The animal, freed from delivering death, took off into the woods. The rider lay stunned on the ground where he had fallen.

  The big guy stood over the helpless man. Bolan still held his lance. Now the instrument of death was in American hands.

  Looking down at the fancily decorated creep cowering under him, Bolan felt the urge to take the long lance and drive it deep into the hood's heart. But the mob soldier was defenseless. Bolan knelt, and with a quick chop of his hand, knocked the guy into a dark void.

  Sandy, seeing Bolan defeat the guard, jumped into action. At last she was running for the walkway. Bolan was racing up behind her.

  At the same moment they both saw four black-clad thugs angling in fast from the right. The men were sweeping around in a line that would cut the foreigners' escape route. Bolan knew they would never reach the car.

  "Head for the road!" Bolan detonated. It was the only chance they had left. What had started as a silent probe was ending in a rout.

  The greenery thinned out into a carefully trimmed arrangement of decorative bushes. A sloping lawn led up to the stand of pine trees that marked the highway.

  Sandy prayed for traffic, another tourist bus maybe, anyone who would stop to help.

  The road was directly ahead of them at the top of the rise. A car came around the bend and screeched to a halt. A man jumped out from the passenger seat and stood framed between the trees.

  It was Commander Nakada.

  He pulled out his gun.

  Bolan looked up. The barrel was aimed right at him. Nakada fired. The bullet cleared Bolan's shoulder by inches. It raised a fountain of dirt at the bottom of the gradient, which at least slowed down the closest of the pursuers.

  Nakada took a bead on the second ninja. Now it was clear he was shooting in order to save John Phoenix and the woman. Nakada pulled the trigger again. But again the shot was wide.

  Bolan looped an arm under Sandy's shoulder and pulled her up the last few yards of the low hill that led to the road. The policeman fired a third shot, which sent the four hunters scattering for cover.

  Bolan yanked open the rear door of Nakada's car. "Jump in!" Nakada fired one last round and dived into the passenger seat.

  The driver gunned the car, and it took off in a cloud of grit.

  "We have to get into Shoki Castle," grunted Bolan, catching his breath.

  Nakada looked back at them and nodded. "That's exactly where we're going."

  20

  "YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HIM," Sandy was effusing at Nakada. "He got five or six of them! It was unbelievable. . . "

  Bolan and Nakada locked grim glances. The commander still had not holstered his weapon.

  Bolan squeezed Sandy's hand, both to silence her and to give her what little encouragement he could. "Yes, it was unbelievable. Too unbelievable. They were just herding us into a trap," he said.

  Nakada turned and smiled wryly. "A trap indeed." He was pointing his Nambu 9mm handgun, unmistakable with its Browning-style frame, directly at Bolan. "And now perhaps you will hand me your gun."

  The woman at the wheel glanced around briefly with a sly sneer. Bolan recognized her. He had driven down this road with her before.

  "She's a lousy driver," Bolan warned Nakada as he handed over the 93-R.

  "And you are a survivor, Colonel Phoenix," said the police commander.

  Sandy said nothing. She was still struggling to comprehend what was happening.

  "You wished to see Shoki Castle, and so you shall," said Nakada. "But you will enter it as—what should we call you?—`guests' rather than intruders."

  "Release my friend here, King. She's got nothing to do with all this."

  "On the contrary, Colonel, this woman has displayed an annoying curiosity about our affairs."

  Sandy felt the reassuring grip of John Phoenix's hand on her own. She closed her eyes. She prayed that when she opened them this whole nightmare would be gone.

  Bolan stared out the window.

  This time the driver did not take the sea route detour. She turned smoothly into the castle's main entrance. A surly guard in a black Windbreaker came out of the gatehouse to inspect them. And he was being double-checked by the television camera swivelling on its mount, concealed on the overhanging branch of a chestnut tree.

  The heavy wooden gateway shut behind them. They were truly prisoners now. Sandy had set out to study the past, and now she was trapped by it.

  The graveled approach road wound through tranquil gardens. A slender woman in an apricot silk kimono was sitting on a stone bench beneath a paper parasol. Discreetly hovering in the background were her bodyguards. They, like all the late Tanaga's pals, were dressed in black—black combat suits.

  The tree-lined avenue opened onto a broader approach area, and Bolan could see the fortress in all its grandeur.

  Shoki Castle was out of an Oriental fairy tale.

  It had been painstakingly restored. The playful decorative woodwork around the upper balconies contrasted with the splendid stone walls that held a promise of the mysterious and the forbidden. Two sentries in full regalia stood rigidly on either side of

  the main entrance. No other vehicles were in sight.

  The woman at the wheel turned sharp left between two tall hedges and down a flagstoned ramp into a small underground garage. This parking area was so carefully concealed that Bolan had the impression the noble house could not confront the mechanical reality of the twentieth century. They had entered another era.

  The prisoners were taken through a steel doorway and pushed along a stone passage lighted only by flickering lanterns.

  "The Lord of Sho
ki Castle not only reveres the past," intoned Nakada as he prodded Bolan ahead of him down the dim corridor, "but he has preserved it."

  They turned a corner and descended a steep flight of steps. Their footfalls echoed dully off the walls as if mocking the hopelessness of the Americans' situation. In front of them stood a stoutly barred gate.

  A jailer came to meet them.

  "STONE WALLS do not a prison make . . .Sandy muttered the line almost to herself.

  Maybe not, thought Bolan, but if so, this toad-hole was a damn good imitation. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  The room was a plain-walled box, about twenty feet long by twelve feet wide. Bolan noted the thick iron grille that covered a ventilation duct high up on one wall. There was only one door and that was locked tight behind them.

  In a moment they saw that three other prisoners occupied the cell.

  One of the other prisoners got to her feet to welcome the new arrivals.

  "Hello, Suki," Bolan said. She reached out with her hand, but the big man gave her a brief hug instead. "Sandy, I'd like you to meet Setsuko Seki."

  The two women shook hands in the formal Western manner.

  "You were supposed to be ill," Sandy said.

  "Ill? I was drugged, then tossed in here. I work for my country's internal security service. We police the police, as it were." Suki held up her thumb and finger about an inch apart. "I was this close to building the case against Nakada," she said to Bolan, "but Nakada struck first." Suki shrugged. "Colonel, Sandy, this gentleman is Professor Naramoto, and this is his wife, Kiko."

  The lady got up and bowed. Her husband remained slumped against the wall, but even in the candlelight the streak of white hair clearly identified him as the missing scientist. Sandy sat down next to him and gently patted his hand.

  "I think his mind is going," Suki uttered under her breath.

  Bolan steered Suki to the far end of the cell so they could continue alone in low whispers. "What's going on here?" Bolan asked.

  "For months I was investigating possible charges against Kingoro Nakada. We knew about his connections with the Kuma-kumi, but the more I uncovered, the more it pointed to a deeper conspiracy—something that involved Red Sun."

  "How did they get their hooks into the King of the City?"

  "Nakada was one of them from the very start. He was groomed to attend the police academy and then work his way up from within. Powerful friends, inside and out, helped insure his rapid promotion."

  "He knew the professor was being kept here all the time."

  "Yes. As far as I can make out, the professor was working on a top-secret project. But perhaps you know more about that than I do, Colonel. The one time he spoke in here, he said, 'But I was working for them. I was working for the Americans.' Does that make sense to you?"

  Bolan shook his head.

  BOLAN WAS GIVEN the imperial treatment.

  Four guards.

  Two in front and two behind.

  His hands were bound together behind his back with wire.

  He felt very much a Very Important Prisoner. The terror goons were taking him up into the interior of the castle. Just Bolan, not the others. In the close confines of the corridors, even the silken rustle of the guards' traditional costumes and the soft-pad of their slippers seemed loud. Each man wore a long sword and a short sword tucked into his sash.

  Yamazaki certainly had retreated from modern civilization—and, mused Bolan, perhaps from his sanity—to have recreated this lost world of samurai, ninja , and almond-eyed courtesans.

  Someone was going to have to bring him back to reality.

  Bolan noticed that the back of each guard's sash was decorated with a chrysanthemum embroidered in gold thread. The master of Shoki Castle was ambitious indeed, for Bolan understood the symbol of that bloom to be reserved only for the Emperor himself.

  So the trip back to reality would be a long one. Which was fine by the Executioner. He could stay the course. . .

  They reached an underground T-junction. The passage to the left was barred by a thick steel door marked with a stencilled skull and crossbones. Bolan did not have to read Japanese to recognize Keep Out. The guard forced Bolan to the right.

  The area they had reached was better lit than the bowels of the castle. It appeared to be the guards' quarters. Humid air rushed into the corridor when a figure opened a door to the side. That must be the bathhouse. A bronzed retainer emerged, wearing nothing but a towel, and he lounged in the doorway to sneer at the rangy foreigner being led past. One of the guards stopped to share a joke with him.

  Bolan was taken up another broader flight of steps.

  All the way he had mentally mapped the layout of the castle.

  Now he was pushed through a curtained entrance and into the main hall.

  A large man, with a notched scar in his brow that pointed down to one milky eye, accepted delivery of the bound prisoner. The four guards fell to their knees and bowed toward the raised dais. Their foreheads touched the ground.

  Bolan looked at the slender, imposing figure sitting cross-legged before him on a plump cushion.

  Suddenly One Eye moved behind him and unleashed a savage blow to his kidneys. "Kneel before the Lord of the Red Sun!"

  21

  BOLAN STAGGERED FORWARD but kept on his feet. "I won't bow to any man," he said through gritted teeth. "Least of all to you, Yamazaki."

  The middle-aged man on the dais waved One Eye away. For now, the warlord would exact no punishment for such insolence. He had a special fate in mind for this remarkable American.

  Hideo Yamazaki had a triangular face and a neat black mustache, but it was his eyes and their glittering hardness that caught Bolan's attention.

  In front of him were two thin cushions. On one lay the silenced Beretta. From the other, Yamazaki picked up two short strips of film. "You have been searching for these negatives, I believe."

  "I've been looking for the reason that a man was killed for taking those photographs."

  "More than one man has been killed." The tone of the Japanese mob warlord's voice was gently chiding, but his eyes accused Bolan directly and fiercely. Then Yamazaki turned his head slightly to the side to look at Nakada, who was listening from the shadows.

  "The police have been such useful associates," Yamazaki hissed.

  Bolan glanced across at Nakada, intending to drive even the slightest wedge between him and his master.

  "But like all your associates," the nightscorcher said, "they are disposable."

  "I decide when a person has expended his usefulness," spat Yamazaki. He spoke English like a mean cop. To control the conversation, Yamazaki drew attention to the Beretta by bending over to examine it as if it were something from the future. Then he pushed the flat cushion away in disdain. A servant stepped forward with a white cloth to wipe off the slightest trace of gun oil from the daimyo's slender fingers. The mob overlord addressed One Eye abruptly. "Remove the weapon."

  The retainer bowed low as he retreated, bearing off the handgun.

  "Kuma . . . Zeko Tanaga . . . my magnificent horse-men . . . " recited Yamazaki. "You have been very busy, Colonel Phoenix."

  "And you're full of it, Yamazaki."

  "On the contrary, I remain undefiled by anything but the purest revenge." The steel in the Japanese gangster's voice was unmistakable. "Perhaps I am different from you, for I am devoted to revenge. And I have waited too long for it. I shall have my revenge, Colonel. Nobody—least of all you—will be able to stop me."

  "Revenge for your father—is that what you're after, revenge for the execution of Colonel Yamazaki?"

  "It is the vengeance of the Jonin," nodded the daimyo,"for the line continues."

  "The lie continues."

  Yamazaki signaled angrily for Bolan to hold his tongue.

  "How can you absolve your father?" persisted the big guy.

  "My father was banished, Colonel Phoenix, sent to the wilds of Manchuria." The Japanese capo's eye
s dimmed as he reflected on the injustice of the past. "But he continued with his work and developed the most potent bacteriological weapons ever devised."

  So Sandy was right.

  "Japan need never have surrendered. The Allied forces could have been destroyed, pushed back clear across the Pacific. My father was a genius, Colonel Phoenix."

  "You had no chance to know your father, Yamazaki. He was a war criminal."

  The feudal dreamer ignored Bolan's charge, just as he had ignored the facts all his life. Objective reality would not be allowed to intrude—especially now that he had all the power and the weapons to kill and torture and oppress innocent people, regardless of reality.

  "A genius, yes, but I have surpassed even his achievements. It has taken many years, but I have perfected a new gas gangrene strain, Anthrax-B and Diogene."

  "You perfected it? Or did Professor Naramoto?"

  "He was of great assistance to me," conceded Yamazaki. "It would be a pity if he should not see these long years of effort bear fruit."

  "And all this time you made him believe he was working for the U.S."

  "Perhaps that's what he wanted to believe, Colonel. In the years following the war he was grateful for the refuge offered him by the Red Sun Corporation.

  Fear is the surest jailer. When I became interested in continuing my father's work, it was not difficult to persuade the professor that he was secretly working for the Americans."

  Mack Bolan knew this kind of creature who sat before him. Animal Man. But this time there was a difference. The creatures of the Mob, or the terrorists who were so callously indifferent to the pain and misery that they inflicted, would always try to justify themselves, raving their rancid hatreds and twisted ambitions, but where they were crude and ranting, this man was composed, refined. That unpleasant difference only made Yamazaki all the more chilling.

  "Did you not pass yourself off to Commander Nakada as a security expert visiting Japan to inspect our latest techniques in that field? When in fact you intended to penetrate the secret of the Circle of the Red Sun?"

  "I was investigating the death of Kenji Shinoda."

  "Ah, yes. Shinoda. He was—I believe you have an expression—`a fly in the ointment'? Well, he was a troublesome fly that had to be squashed."