by Jon Land
Patty gazed up at him, her eyes showing an uneasy mix of rage and frustration. “And one of them killed my father. Forced his car off the road and made it look like an accident. You are a monster, Mr. Takahashi. There could have been other means, other ways.”
“Which wouldn’t have worked any better than the ones I chose to employ did, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father isn’t dead, Miss Hunsecker.”
“What?”
Patty stared at Takahashi for what seemed like a very long time. She continued to stare at him even as he spoke again.
“General Berlin Hardesty was the first on our list, and several others followed almost immediately. But we underestimated the Children’s ability to mount a response. They let me think I was succeeding, while all the time I was playing into their hands. The contingency must have been set in place for sometime, a complex communications network made even more complicated by the fact that the very nature of their operation required that the Children not be in contact with one another. But they found a way to spread the word of warning. In the case of your father and many others, we killed doubles, replacements.”
“If my father’s alive, where is he?” Patty demanded. “Where can I find him?”
“Undoubtedly at one of the underground bunkers the Children of the Black Rain have constructed all across your country. But he is not the man you knew as your father, Miss Hunsecker. A child of the Black Rain has no love for anything but the ruthless movement that spawned him.”
“No more ruthless than a man who would send killers after me and my brothers.”
“You were stirring up trouble, casting attention on a pattern of killings we could not afford to have attention drawn to. Please try to understand.” Takahashi came closer to her. “Your father is one of them. Your father is part of a plan to destroy your country as you know it today.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said McCracken. “From the disciple I killed in Rio. Now I’d like to hear how.”
The slightest bit of color seemed to flush into Takahashi’s cheeks. “If it was black rain that forced us to remake our country, so it would be black rain that forces you to remake yours.”
“Nuclear weapons?”
“Nuclear power plants.”
Blaine went cold.
“A dozen or so of them sabotaged, forced into a complete meltdown,” Takahashi continued. “A dozen or more melt-downs, each three or four times the potency of Chernobyl.”
“My God,” Patty muttered.
Takahashi looked her way. “He was not there for us when the black rain fell in 1945, and He will not be there for you when it falls so very soon.”
“But it makes no sense,” she continued. “All these years my father and the others were laying the economic groundwork to take over the country only to destroy it?”
“I did not say destroy, Miss Hunsecker. I said destroy as it is known today. The power plants in question are concentrated within the heaviest areas of population. The metropolises of the East Coast, the larger cities of the Midwest, South, and California. Many will die, tens of millions, but far more will survive and be totally uprooted.”
“Half the population,” Blaine said, considering the potential targets. “Perhaps even more.”
“The survivors in the targeted zones will be forced from their homes, forced to resettle their lives away from the cities that will be no more than steel-and-glass graveyards for a thousand years.
“And, of course, those same steel-and-glass graveyards contain the lifeblood of American existence,” McCracken added. “Information, data. Government and business.”
“Exactly. The United States, especially, is held together by the glue of people pressing keys and switching relays, bringing you your television signals, radio broadcasts, and dial tones. Those major relays and stations happen to be centralized in the very centers that are most at risk. How will your government function? And what of your economic base? Everything will be frozen, suspended.”
“Except the people,” Patty said indignantly. “The ones who can get out will. Resettle, you called it.”
“Yes. Toward the areas of the nation unaffected by the radioactive clouds spreading on the wind. Those areas at present, of course, are the least populated.”
“The corn belt,” Blaine said, picking up Takahashi’s trend of thought. “Areas west of the Mississippi, the mountains and plains.”
Takashashi nodded. “A vast population shift will ensue. Millions flooding areas that lack the capacity to handle them. Goods and services will be at a premium, along with the very rudiments of life and the capacity to effectively distribute them. Necessities such as electricity, water, waste disposal, sewers, all forms of fuel will become woefully inadequate. The panic will continue, even escalate.” He turned his pink eyes toward Patty. “This is what the Children of the Black Rain have laid the groundwork for, Miss Hunsecker. They will emerge from the bunkers they have fled to, in total control of the goods and services so drastically needed, because that is what we arranged their placement for. They will have taken over.”
“They’ll still need the government to do that, Mr. Takahashi.”
“And they’ll have it.”
“You’re not going to tell me the president is one of them.”
“No—the vice president. The final element of the plan will be the assassination of the president before the nuclear plants are destroyed.”
“One of our six killers was dispatched to kill the vice president,” Takahashi continued. “He…failed.”
But McCracken’s mind was elsewhere as he tried to make sense of the pictures Takahashi was painting. The great cities of the United States reduced to skeletons. Massive ghost towns of steel and glass, the raw power of the world’s most advanced nation abandoned to the deadly rads. And in the safe zones the survivors living crowded and cluttered; many already dying, others wishing they were.
But that wasn’t all, was it? The Children of the Black Rain would emerge from the bunkers prepared to take over the nation they had effectively destroyed with a blueprint for remaking American society and the resources to bring it off. The men who had formulated the original plan nearly a half century before were long dead, their legacy perverted by a single rebel standing over the Children, controlling them. And that single member was about to preside over the nuclear devastation of the United States.
“Which nuclear plants?” McCracken asked finally.
“That I do not know. Most are centered along the East Coast, where the prevailing wind currents will blow the deadly clouds over the largest clusters of your country’s populace.” Takahashi paused. “But if you can uncover which ones, the operation can still be stopped.”
“How?”
“The Omicron legion. Everything depends on them successfully sabotaging the nuclear plants. You can stop them. You are the only man who can.”
McCracken looked up. “What makes you say that?”
“Because they fear you. You escaped them in the Amazon and killed one of their number in Rio. You are the one factor the Children’s plan did not account for. You are the one factor that can destroy it.”
Something flashed through Blaine’s mind. “Can you give me a list of the Children?”
“I’ve already had one prepared.”
“What about the locations of the bunkers where they’re hiding out?”
“Unfortunately, I cannot help you there.”
“But you know when this is all going to happen. I can tell that much.”
A thin smile crossed the albino’s milk-white lips and lingered there as he spoke. “When else, Mr. McCracken? December seventh, 1991. The fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.”
Chapter 29
MIRA’S EIGHTH VICTIM proved the easiest to reach of all. Newton Samuels regularly used an escort service, and it was an easy chore for her to replace the woman scheduled to accompany him tonight. As was the procedure, his limousine
swung by an assigned spot at the proper time, and Mira climbed into the back. The limousine pulled off instantly, not a word spoken by the driver. She checked herself in the built-in vanity mirror and then pulled the file from her handbag.
It looked like an ordinary nail file, even felt like one, albeit a bit heavier. The file was formed, though, of a high-grade carbon used in sharpening tools. While the limousine slid through the night, Mira busied herself honing her steel-tipped nails to a razor edge. The sight would have looked harmless had the driver been looking.
The car deposited her in front of the mansion, and another of Samuels’s servants led her up the steps and into the study. She counted at least a half-dozen guards present on the grounds now, including two at the front gate. Her options for escape after she dispatched Samuels would be curtailed.
“If you’ll be good enough to follow me, miss,” said the butler two minutes later. “Mr. Samuels would like to see you upstairs.”
The butler brought her to his door and knocked quietly. “You may enter,” he said, without waiting for a reply from within.
Mira did, and closed the door behind her. The room was dark, lit only by the thin spill of light coming from a partially open bathroom door.
“Come here,” Samuels called.
He was seated in a leather reading chair near the rear wall, reclining comfortably. Mira could see he had his tuxedo shirt and tie already on, but was naked from the waist down. She walked across the room and stood over him.
“Now,” he said. “Immediately.”
Mira dropped into a crouch and grasped him.
“Hurry,” he said, sighing.
He grew in her hand, and she lowered her mouth to him. It was going to be easier than she thought, the easiest yet. Her hands climbed past the studs, marking a neat line up his chest, the throat just inches away from her deadly nails. She had to make sure the initial slice was deep enough this time. She couldn’t afford him screaming or crying out before death took him.
The nails scraped against his collar. Mira prepared to flick them.
And realized he had gone limp in her mouth.
She was already into her motion by then and it was too late to correct it, even though she sensed something was terribly wrong. Before her deadly nails could find flesh, she felt her hand being snatched out of the air and twisted violently. She heard her wrist crack an instant before the explosion of pain rocked her. She fought through it and tried to pull away, lashing out with her other hand as she did. But the blow found only air as the figure whirled through the darkness.
What are you?
Mira asked that question in her mind in the instant before her hand was caught between desperate flailing motions. She felt a grasp of steel close on her fingers and wrench them savagely backward.
Crack!
Her scream from the resulting pain would have been even louder than the snap if her face hadn’t been shoved into the cushion of the chair. He had broken the fingers cleanly at the joints. They flapped helplessly, like the limbs of a puppet with no strings attached. The thing over her jammed downward with a thrust strong enough to split the chair, then forced her facedown into its innards. She knew she was dying now and just wanted it to come fast, wanted the pain to be gone.
Bartholomew kept her there a very long time. He liked to feel people die, especially the precise moment death claimed them. But he also enjoyed the moments that came after. He imagined life didn’t pour from them, it seeped, and he kept at it until he had swallowed in all there was to take.
It had been over much too fast this time.
Much too fast.
All things considered, the thing Berg liked most about America was french fries. He ate them by the dozens, liking best the fast-food variety the magazines said were loaded with fat and cholesterol. Berg wasn’t worried. He figured he’d never live long enough for cholesterol to kill him.
He’d purchased three extra-large servings at the McDonald’s across the street after sliding the bomb into place beneath the target’s car. It was parked in the lot of the plant the target owned and operated. Getting to the car posed only a minor difficulty. Berg had pretended to be doing some filler work on the asphalt parking lot to permit him access underneath its chassis.
“About time they got these potholes fixed,” someone said to him right after he had slid back out. Berg smiled in the man’s direction, wondering if he had noticed anything. But the man sauntered off without another word, and Berg was safely off to stow his equipment in the trunk. Then he headed for his fries.
By the time his target emerged two hours later, Berg was ravenous again. He’d blow the sucker as soon as he was inside and then pick up another four orders before pulling off. Guy said good-bye to everyone he passed, by name, Berg could tell, smiling a lot. Berg had never liked killing nice people, but he didn’t get to choose very often. Arabs were the best to kill, and he’d done that plenty of times—they were seldom nice.
And they made lousy french fries.
Berg smiled at his own joke as he activated the detonator. He saw the target climb into his car and close the door behind him. Berg noticed a stray fry on the floor of his car and stuffed it into his mouth as he was pushing the button.
He was still chewing when the blast blew him into oblivion. He had no awareness of anything other than a sudden flash and maybe, just maybe, a realization that he had become the victim here; he hadn’t noticed the switch because he was out buying the damn french fries.
In fact, the bomb worked better than Berg had even hoped for. So well that it took fire and rescue authorities nearly thirty minutes to ascertain there had actually been someone inside his car.
Berg’s target was among the first on the scene to see if he could lend any assistance.
The thing was, Khan liked to kill. He wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened, but what little Chinese philosophy he knew attributed it to birth. He was Mongolian, actually, and by any standards a huge man. He had practiced his trade first as an enforcer on the docks of Shanghai and later as an assassin for the Tong. Knives, guns, hatchets—the weapon mattered not at all. Khan liked his sticks best. He loved his sticks.
The sensation of twirling the galvinized steel, making it whistle through the air en route to its target was the most fulfilling thing he could imagine. Yes, the sticks—combined with his incredible quickness—made for deadly effectiveness. He could follow a man without the man ever knowing. If he stopped to gaze back, Khan would be gone, the action undertaken in the same instant it took the target to swing round. He had shaved his head for as long as he could remember, because hair was something a foe could grasp if the kill had to be made in close. He allowed himself a thick Manchurian-style mustache—he wasn’t worried that anyone would grab that.
But tonight he had plenty more to worry about. The last two men on his kill list had disappeared before he could get to them. He had planned on going for a third today, only to find that he, too, had vanished. Khan did not know who to blame. Could the white-faced man have betrayed him somehow, sent others to do his job for him? Perhaps the brutality of his earlier kills had disturbed the whiteface.
He always stayed in rundown, seedy hotels when on the job, and cover was only part of the reason. Khan actually liked the feeling they brought with them, full of the mad, the failed, and the helpless. He fed off their thoughts and the stink of their souls. He could kill them all, not a single room spared, if he chose.
Not tonight, though. He was a half block from the shabby hotel where he was currently staying in downtown Chicago, on the outskirts of Wrigleyville, when he veered away. Something was wrong. Someone was watching for him. He could see nothing, and that bothered Khan. The enemy always, always, revealed itself somehow—if not by sight or sound, then at least by feeling.
Khan kept walking and jumped on the L the first chance he got. He rode it for over an hour, switching trains regularly. Then, judging he was safe, he jumped off and hailed a cab after a short walk. The meter had r
ung up close to thirty dollars before Khan was satisfied no one was following him. He got out and took to the alleys and back streets that had been his home since his early years in Shanghai. He could sleep without giving up his senses, use garbage for cover, if necessary.
Khan had embraced the thick darkness of a garbage-strewn alley when he realized someone was behind him. Certain he had not been followed, Khan assumed it was just some hopeless bum whose turf he had invaded. He would kill him fast and be done with it, then give himself up to the blessed night for refuge.
The sound of a misplaced step froze his thinking.
He wants me to know he’s back there.
Khan wasn’t sure where that thought originated because it made no sense. He dismissed it and ducked into hiding, melting into the scenery so he might see his adversary pass by.
No one passed. No one came. There was only the night before him.
Khan stayed as he was, rooted in place, one with the garbage cans about him. Someone was out there all right, someone who was very skilled in his own right, which was just fine.
Because Khan had his sticks.
He drew them fast and twirled them nimbly into gripping position. Held them low by the hips, ready to whisk in any direction in the shadow of an instant.
He was just turning to check behind him when the hand closed over his throat from the rear. The pressure against his windpipe would have snapped off his Adam’s apple if instinct hadn’t made him twist his head enough for his powerful neck muscles to save his life. Sucking in what breath he could, he spun away and lashed at his attacker with his sticks.
The blows struck nothing. The attacker was gone.
He came up behind me, and I never even heard him….
Khan swung around suddenly, and a savage kick pounded the back of his head from the direction he had been facing until a second before. The blow thrust him back against the garbage cans, and he whirled to be met with a blow that split two of his ribs on impact. Another blow was aimed for his face; Khan deflected it with one of his sticks and countered with a strike for his opponent’s solar plexus. It drew a grunt when it should have resulted in a kill! No man could still be standing, no man!