by James Quinn
A day later, Jordie Penn was standing on their doorstep to confirm the details. They set about abandoning the lives they'd known over recent months and readied their false papers, money and whatever else they might need. The team headed East, drawn into the killing zone like a fly into a spider's trap. The question was, who the spider was and who was the fly? Now that they'd been given the green light, they were ready for whatever waited in Japan.
With the team on the move, the other important part was the transfer of their weapons for the operation. The guns would be coming in from Macau to Japan, via a former Borneo veteran by the name of Roper. Roper was larcenous and did a little gun-running on the side, usually small shipments, discreet stuff, deniable. Roper knew everyone and where to get hardware. But most importantly, he could get the weapons in and out of most countries in Asia. Boats, planes, even donkeys had been used in the past. Roper had been on standby for weeks, the shipment ready, only waiting for a 'delivery' address to complete the arrangement. Now that the operation was a 'go' Roper would be smuggling the kit into the country at this very minute. They were to be collected from the Port of Tokyo docks and shipped to a safe house by a contact of Hodges, a young man named Takai. Takai did jobs for Roper and could be trusted to ask no questions. He was as trustworthy as they could get at short notice and would be the team's driver, general factotum, interpreter and man on the ground while the shooting was going on.
“And it's enough is it?” asked Penn. They were sitting around the table in the Hong Kong safe house apartment, prior to Crane, Lang, Hodges and Miko leaving to fly into Japan. Penn had looked at the list; shotguns, sub-machine guns, explosives, timers and grenades, plus enough ammunition to light up the sky.
Crane and Lang nodded. “For the size of the target we're dealing with and the fact that they aren't expecting us at all, yeah, that will be more than enough.”
“What about you, Bill? The whizz-bangs enough?” Penn queried. Hodges looked up from his newspaper where he lounged on the sofa. “Oh, don't you worry your head, Mr. Penn, with all that I could flatten the Kremlin. So a little wooden hut out in the sticks is going to be no problem at all.”
Penn doubted the magnificent pagoda he'd spent the last few days researching could be classed as a 'little wooden hut', but he chose not to question his demolition man. Penn had read Hodge's file and knew the old timer was an expert in destroying all kinds of structures and people with explosive.
“What about Grant?” asked Lang. “What will he be using?”
“Ah, the Colonel has included a little something special for him in the inventory. Something Gorilla will appreciate, something from the old days,” said Penn enigmatically. “And what about you, Miss Arato? Are you still certain that we can't order you something more… modern?”
Miko smiled sweetly at him from her seat across the table. “Mr. Penn, believe me when I say that there is only one weapon for me. It is the right weapon; it is my weapon. It might be old, but it is deadly accurate.”
Chapter Two
The day after the final Sentinel meeting, Miko Arato hired a car and drove to visit her sole remaining relative in the entire world. She drove north west out of Tokyo, to Ishikawa Prefecture.
Farmer Hiro Arato had been out in the fields, tending to his crops of sweet potatoes, vegetables and dry rice in the spring months, when he'd seen the car approaching. He slowly walked up to the dirt track dissecting his fields, curious to see who'd driven all this way to see him on his farm. By the time the car reached the track, he could see the silhouette of the driver and he knew instantly who it was. It was the girl he'd helped raise; his niece, Miko. They embraced, as close family do, and Hiro Arato stood back to admire his beautiful niece. “You should have warned me that you were coming. You drove all this way?”
Miko nodded and gazed lovingly on her uncle. He looks tired, she thought. Old. Beaten. They walked inside together and sat in the kitchen of his small house overlooking the hectares of his farmland. It was his greatest achievement, working these fields. It was all he had left, except for this young woman who came to visit him only occasionally.
“You were always different, Miko, always headstrong. Wilful. You remind me very much of your mother. You have your mother's wildness and your father's western ways,” he said. He was speaking of her job as a foreign tour guide, her travel to parts of the world he knew he would never see, and her westernised ways and manners. “How is Europe, the tourists?”
“The job is fine, Uncle. Thank you,” she said politely.
“That is good, I am so—”
“I need the rifle, Uncle.”
There was that bluntness he hated. She was such a modern young woman or maybe, he was just an old relic who was too set in his ways. “What for, Miko? Why do you need the Arisaka?” he asked. She had not used the rifle for several months, not since her last visit, before she left for England to attend the funeral of the Englishman who'd been her father.
She put down her small cup of tea and looked him squarely in the eye. In truth, she needed the rifle because it was easier to use her favourite weapon, than to have Masterman and the team try to smuggle a 'clean' weapon into Japan. Besides, the weapon was almost an extension of her; she'd trained on it and knew it well. But she knew her uncle would require more information than that; he would need a reason to give it to her, not just an excuse. So, she played up to his sense of honour. “There is honour to be upheld. I'm hunting beasts and when one hunts a wild animal, it is best to have a trusty weapon.”
“Is this your dark quest, Miko? The quest for the man who killed your father?” he questioned sadly. Her long moment of silence confirmed it.
“Giri,” she finally said, firmly.
“Yes, your obligation; the vow you have made to honour your father and to avenge his death. I understand. But I offer you this warning, Miko, from one who is older and wiser. You should be wary of seeking out death. I have seen it close at hand; I have felt its taste. It always leaves a trace and it lingers on your spirit. No amount of washing can cleanse this.”
She stared at him, not revealing her thoughts in any way.
Hiro inhaled deeply before he continued. “Miko, you are the new generation, a generation of our people who should and must learn from the mistakes of our fathers. You cannot take on the burden of your father's death. He was a man of secrets. You should concern yourself with living, not taking revenge for a ghost.” He looked hard at her, this young woman who not so very long ago, he'd trained in the use of the rifle, when she had been just an adolescent. He'd spoken his mind and he could only hope that for one last time, she would listen to the wisdom of her uncle. He hoped to dissuade her from whatever she had decided to do.
She reached forward and in a very western way, kissed him lovingly on both cheeks, a favoured niece to her family patriarch. Then she looked once more into his eyes, held out her hands and spoke bluntly. “The rifle, Uncle. Give it to me.”
“And if I refuse?” he asked gruffly, but without much conviction. The conviction in her voice had shocked him and he suddenly felt every year of his age.
She smiled, the sweet smile which told him she could still twist him around her little finger. She'd always had that skill, as had her mother before her. He sighed heavily, resigned to defeat, and beckoned for her to follow him. She knew where he kept the rifle, where he'd always kept it. It had been locked in a crate in the cellar of the farmhouse, for as long as she could remember. She followed him down the musty and cracked steps. The cellar was much the same as had been the last time she'd been down here. Neat, compact, everything stored away in chests and boxes. Then she spied what she was after. The crate. The old man stepped past her, rummaged in his pocket for a set of keys and knelt to open up the old crate where he stored the rifle. It lay resplendent on a bed of cotton sheets. Locked away, forgotten about, like a photograph of a long dead lover. Still pristine, but discarded. Miko thought it looked both beautiful, and deadly.
The Type 97 rifle had on
ce been the favoured weapon of marksmen within the Japanese Imperial Army. Designed for snipers hidden in the reeds, bushes and forests, the weapon had taken the heads of many of the enemy, from long range shooting on the islands, to the close-quarter street fighting in Singapore itself. A member of the Arisaka family of weapons, the Type 97 rifle came with a fixed scope, which bizarrely enough couldn't be altered or tweaked. Hiro Arato had smuggled the weapon home when he returned to Japan for convalescence in the months before the Allied occupation. It had remained hidden, buried out in the forest, safe and protected from the elements and the searching eyes of the American and British soldiers hunting war criminals. More than two years passed before he'd summoned up the courage to go out into the forest and retrieve the rifle. He'd cleaned it, oiled it and test fired it in the fields surrounding his farm. At first, he'd struggled to hit his targets, but slowly, over the course of many months, the skills he'd learned during the war came flooding back; the field craft, the breathing, the control of the weapon and the feeling of power when the target was hit. He'd hunted with it over many years and bagged many trophies for his cooking pot. Then had come the arrival of the girl, and he'd taught her so well that she could now outshoot him easily.
“Have you used it recently?” she asked.
He shook his head. Corporal Hiro Arato had sat in the hills, jungles, reeds and foxholes with the Arisaka during the war. If he never held it again it would be his pleasure. “It is no longer a thing I wish to hold. I have killed enough men with weapons of war. Instruments of death no longer interest me. I am a humble farmer. It is yours now. It has been for a very long time.”
She bowed in respect and gratitude. He was quietly pleased to see she could adapt to her heritage when she needed to, when it served her needs. Maybe all was not lost with her. But now after all these years of learning, studying and shooting she was here to take the rifle away. “Do you wish to practice?” he asked.
“Yes please, Uncle, for old times' sake.”
He frowned. “How much ammunition shall we take? There is not much left in the box.”
She held up her handbag and patted it. “I have brought my own.”
* * *
They reached the small hillock overlooking the farm. Her uncle had completed his usual trick of placing an old milk churn on a piece of wasteland. It was their old training routine. Uncle Hiro set up the target, walked the three hundred yards back and acted as her spotter as Miko began to zero in on the metal churn. It was something they'd done together since she was a child, on summer days, winter days, hunting with the rifle, practising lying up and sniping at makeshift targets. She'd started small; rabbits and vermin, before moving up to deer and boar.
Hiro had known within a few sessions that the girl had talent. It was unmistakable and also of concern to him. A child, a girl-child who was a half-breed gaijin which was even worse, because that kind of talent would attract attention. He would have to hide it, he knew, so it didn't become known among the other villagers. Over the years, the child had come shooting with him whenever she visited the old farm, until eventually, she'd become a young woman and started surpassing him with her skills. It had been inevitable. Hiro Arato had been a first rate soldier and sniper, out of the necessity of wartime combat. But his niece could easily out shoot him with his old rifle, she was a natural talent.
Miko settled herself down, the bag of rice she'd carried up onto the hill she used as a rest for the rifle, its weight forming a groove into the bag. She began to slow her breathing down, breathing in and out, slower each time until she could feel her heartbeat grow more relaxed. She gently moved her eye to the scope; she knew how it worked, had taken this shot hundreds of times before.
The metal of the churn appeared large through the scope, and she saw that it was already peppered and riddled with bullet wounds from years gone by. Miko knew that, because of the placement of the scope on the rifle, she would have to compensate, knowing it would pull to the right. She centred the rifle, breathed out slowly, nothing more than a whisper of air, and gently pulled the trigger. Miko heard the crack of the bullet as it left the weapon, felt the buck of the rifle as it pushed into her shoulder, instantly reacted to control it. Then the distant clang as the bullet 'zinged' off the metal of the churn. Even at this distance, through the scope Miko could see she was mere inches off the centre. But inches mattered. Every inch away from dead centre was classed as a miss. She pulled back the bolt and chambered another round. From the side, she heard Uncle Hiro, his old binoculars still fixed to his eyes, say, “Too far to the right, you need to move left.”
Miko nodded, settling herself back and breathed slowly and shallowly. She made the most imperceptible of movements with the rifle and fired. Again, she felt the buck of the weapon, heard the crack of the bullet. She heard Uncle Hiro snort with laughter. ”Hai, perfect. You have your zero!”
She fired again… and hit.
Again… and hit.
Three, four times. All hits. All kill shots.
Hiro Arato looked over at his niece and saw the confidence and determination in the set of her face. She was ready. Whatever it was she was ready for, he did not know exactly, nor did he wish to. Tomorrow, she would return to the big city from where she had come. He just hoped he would one day be able to look into the face of his beloved niece again and see the fire of revenge in her eyes had been doused forever.
Chapter Three
TOKYO – MARCH 1968
Jack Grant had been in Tokyo for less than a day.
He'd been collected from the airport by a chauffeur and driven to the exclusive Hilton Hotel, where a suite had been booked for him. Once he'd checked in and inspected the room, he immediately went out onto the street and found a taxi. With a smattering of Japanese from a phrasebook he'd bought, he managed, in mangled Japanese, to ask the taxi driver to take him to another hotel. He would use the Hilton to check in for messages from Hokku's people, and the alternate hotel as his base to sleep and connect to Penn safely.
The new hotel belonged to a western chain, the Osaka. It was pleasant enough, serviceable, and not ostentatious. It catered for the ever-increasing western business market. Grant thought he would blend in perfectly here, among the senior executives from Germany, Brussels and Australia. His first task was to make phone contact with Penn and let him know he was in country and still in play. He called the Hong Kong contact number in his head, remembered from all those months ago. He heard the click from the other end of the line.
“2308. Hotel Osaka. Still active. I'm clear,” said Grant.
He heard Penn murmur back, “Phone back in one hour.” Then he heard the phone set back in its cradle.
So he walked, exploring the city streets. He mostly stuck to the shadows and the darkness, not wanting to attract unnecessary attention. To the average Japanese, he was sure that with his beard, his rolling swagger and his glare he would the very epitome of a European, a Gorilla, an animal, a brute, a killer – memorable. He also knew that despite its outwardly friendly atmosphere, there was a good chance that within the next few days, Tokyo could turn into a very dangerous place for him, hunted by both the police and the Raven's people. He didn't want to attract anyone's interest.
An hour later, he returned to the Osaka and used the booth in the hotel lobby to call the contact number. Penn must have been waiting, hovering over the telephone, because he picked up on the first ring. “How's the weather,” asked Penn.
“Bloody cold. Thought this was meant to be Asia?” growled Grant.
“There seems to be a winter storm heading your way, old boy, at least according to the weather reports,” said Penn.
“You don't say,” said Grant, aware of the double meaning. “We have any more intelligence about this pagoda?”
“Only that it's in the middle of the countryside, isolated and protected. Downside is that you may have a bit of a fight, a few guards to deal with.”
“And the upside?”
“They aren't expecting you,
so you can hit them while they're at their weakest and because of its isolated location, you can cause as much havoc as you like without attracting too much attention,” said Penn.
I wish it was that simple, thought Grant. “How's the team, they ready?”
“They're fine Jack, everything is in place. They're in country. They know what they have to do and they'll be close behind you all the way. Just be ready for them to scoop you up. They won't be far away.”
“Good,” said Grant. “The Raven's people haven't been in touch yet, probably keeping me warm ready for the big man's visitation. As soon as I know, you'll know. Okay?”
“Understood. Oh, and by the way, expect a visit from one of our representatives tonight. We'll get someone to make contact with you at the Osaka, just to brief you on any last minute details,” finished Penn, before ending the call.
So Grant had returned to his hotel and waited. He was expecting… someone. From the moment he'd switched hotels and given his new location to his contact number, he knew the promised contact would happen soon. His ghost family were forever watching from the side-lines.
He was unpacking when there was a knock on the door and a voice called “Room Service”. He hadn't expected it to be her. Although, on thinking about it, she was perfect for the role of a room service maid: she spoke fluent English, and was just as western in culture as she was Asian. She blended into a western hotel perfectly.
“Your order,” she announced. Miko was dressed in the standard uniform for hotel staff – blouse, short skirt, flat shoes, and name badge – and she was pushing a food trolley. The perfect cover. No one looks twice at a waitress doing a room service run.