by Jon Land
Up ahead, a slightly open door grabbed her eye. Still, she heard and saw no one. Something was wrong. If the cell members were present, surely they would have already announced themselves.
Just outside the door, a flood of cold fear coursed through her. The door squeaked slowly open before her and Evira entered a room dominated by a long wood conference table surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. The next thing she saw was that the chairs were all occupied … by corpses, sitting there with the last bit of life frozen on their faces, many covered with blood.
Evira knew this was the cell that had been waiting to help her. But they hadn’t only been killed, their bodies had been arranged for effect.
For her.
Evira sensed what was coming next even before she heard the rumble of boots. What saved her was desperation and the good fortune to see an old Mauser pistol still holstered around the waist of one of the seated corpses. She lunged and grasped it in the same motion. It was in her hand even as she dove down and to the side. Her eyes caught a pair of doors bursting open at opposite sides of the room to allow a quartet of Hassani’s Revolutionary Guards to charge in with automatic rifles already blasting.
Fortunately, their fire was aimed high toward a figure they had every reason to believe would be standing. The bullets sizzled through the air, ricocheting off wood and walls and striking the already dead figures around the conference table.
Evira’s dive had given her the table for cover and she immediately shoved herself beneath it. The legs and thighs of the guardsmen were visible, worthy targets even if not likely to be fatal, and she fired the ancient Mauser at one figure and then the next. The guards collapsed before they could right their fire. Keeping low, Evira darted out from beneath the table and aimed her pistol at their writhing frames. Only a pair remained conscious, and these she killed quickly on her way toward the same door through which she had entered the room.
She bolted into the corridor and pulled the heavy door closed behind her. She pressed her shoulders tight against the wall and felt a shard of wood explode just over her right shoulder. Another Revolutionary Guardsman was charging from the end of the corridor opposite the door she had used to enter the building. She swung toward that door only to see it crash open and two more guards push through into the corridor. Both routes of exit were cut off for her.
Evira fired a pair of bullets in each direction, leaving her with a single shell in the Mauser and no spare clip. The three on-rushing guardsmen pinned themselves against the walls nearest them, which allowed her to charge across the corridor for another door that had caught her eye.
She saw it was locked and fired her final bullet into the latch. It gave enough for her forward charge to shatter it. The guardsmen picked up the chase again, firing a stream of bullets in her direction.
Evira found herself on a stairway bathed in coal black darkness broken only by the scant light provided by the open door behind her. She plunged down the steps blindly, hands feeling about the wall to keep her bearings. The bottom of the stairs came up fast and she nearly tripped over herself. Her stumble took her against an extension of the same wall and her head banged up against something metallic. Stunned, she maintained the presence of mind to realize it was a control box and quickly had it open.
Above her, the three guards were following in her wake. Her only chance was to distract them, and the control box held the means. Evira pried it open and slid the switches on the right side into the on position, and then did the same with the switches on the left. Immediately the overhead fluorescent lights struggled to catch and a whining whirl signalled that the processing machines were coming back to life. The whine gave way to an almost deafening screech. Everywhere on the floor before her huge machines performed their tasks with no materials to process, screeching as if to protest that fact. The resulting chaos was hers to take the best advantage of as she could. She rushed from the junction station to the largest machine she could find, intending to keep using it and the others for cover until she could find an alternate route out.
A bullet chimed above her head as she neared the huge machine that pressed unfinished plastic into the desired width. It was a gear-driven monstrosity with a tread that led to a pair of huge, narrowly spaced rubber rollers running in tandem toward each other to allow the plastic to slide through. Beyond this was a rolling machine that accepted the plastic sheeting and twisted it up into rolls ready for shipping. The other machines were almost as loud but not nearly as impressive, nor were they large enough to use for concealment.
The three guards fanned out, cutting off possible angles of escape. The strategy, she realized, meant she now had a single man to deal with three times instead of three men. Her new advantage was further helped by the noise that buried all possible communication among her pursuers. Evira couldn’t reach any of the possible exit routes yet, but with all the guards eliminated by the skills she would now be able to utilize, she would have her choice of doors.
Having crawled to the back edge of the rolling machine, Evira reached up for a rounded wooden shaft. Closer inspection revealed that it had a hook at the top for hoisting the rolled plastic up for stacking. The edge was not only sharpened, but also could be manipulated by a mechanism connected to it at the handle, much like a pincer apparatus. Apply pressure to a simple hand grip and the pincer-like hook snapped closed around the roll of plastic. Evira drew the instrument to her and edged on.
Ten feet away a Revolutionary Guardsman moved slowly forward in the aisle on the other side of the huge machines. If she was fortunate, he would not think to lean over and glance beneath the apparatus where he would certainly see her. Evira eased into a turn to start back toward the rolling machine again. She moved parallel to the guard, matching his pace as they approached each other. Her timing would have to be perfect. She had the pincer apparatus, yes, but the guard had something much more comforting—a machine gun. She must both disable him and get his gun.
Evira brought the pincer rod up close to her just as the guard reached the other side of the churning rolling machine. The moving tread slid in and between the powerful rollers, which ground in protest as rubber squeezed against rubber. Evira stayed low until the guard had just moved beyond her in the other aisle. Then she sprang.
The guard picked out her shape at the last instant, too late to stop her from jabbing the pincers against his throat and working the apparatus at the bottom of the shaft to perfection. The powerful tongs, sharp enough to grip tough plastic, dug part way into the flesh on the sides of his throat. His scream almost rose above the awful din of the machines, and he dropped his rifle as his hands flailed upward toward his punctured neck.
Before the guard knew what was happening, Evira jerked down on the pincers, and he found himself on the moving tread, only feet from the rollers. With the man’s head almost to the rollers, Evira leaned over to grab his rifle. She grasped the welcome steel only to find it attached to his shoulder by a strap. She tried to gain the leverage required to pull it free, but the motion exposed her to one of his fellows who had been attracted by the commotion.
His bullets grazed Evira’s side. Her own scream was lost in the final one gurgling from the guardsman as the bones of his face and neck were crushed in the rolling mechanism, jamming it. Evira wasn’t sure how bad her wound was, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop her from realizing she needed a weapon desperately.
Some thick shards of plastic lay on the floor beneath her, and she wedged them in her belt before lunging for the dead guardsman’s rifle, which was resting outside of the rolling machine. One of the remaining guardsmen was spewing fire from atop the pressing machine ten feet before her. The dead man’s gun was jammed in the pressing apparatus, but Evira was able to twist the barrel around and locate the trigger. A bullet grazed her collarbone, and she wailed in agony but managed to fire blindly forward. The guard’s hands clutched for his midsection and he keeled over to the floor.
Evira ducked low and slammed her shoulders agai
nst the rolling machine. There was no time to celebrate, not with the final guard still about. She started to edge forward, the pain in her side and collarbone rocking her, making her pay for every step.
The final guard materialized off her right flank. She registered that his leg was bloody and realized her single spray had wounded him. He fired a burst at her, but she had already lunged down and to the side, thinking she could perhaps reach the stairs ahead of him. But she stumbled over a crate and fell to even more pain and shock. The guardsman charged with his rifle aimed dead at her.
Evira remembered the thin shards of plastic she had wedged in her belt. Without thinking further, she drew one out and hurled it as he skidded to a halt to steady his aim. A scream curdled her ears and she saw that he was groping desperately for the shard of plastic that had lodged in his left eye.
Seizing the advantage, Evira regained her feet and rushed into him with a force that spun both of them around against the front of the pressing machine. The man forgot his pain long enough to grasp her at the shoulders and slam her backward against the steel. Her insides shook as he bent her over the tread. She saw the shard of plastic yanked from his dead eye was still in his hand. He swiped at her and narrowly missed her throat when Evira twisted. He swiped again and she deflected the blow with her functioning arm, sending further agony through her wounded side and collarbone.
The force of his momentum bent her further over the tread. Her feet lost touch with the floor, and the man’s eyes glistened as he pursued the most obvious strategy available to him. All he had to do was keep her going, and the pressing machine would swallow her up. He shoved harder and Evira felt her back and shoulders begin their slide to a bloody end.
Evira managed to grasp the safety rails that rose slightly over the tread and stop her progress. But by then the guard was standing over her, straddling the apparatus with a foot poised on each of the rails. He yanked a pistol from his belt and snarled, his own back less than a foot from the monstrous rollers that pressed plastic into programmed widths and sent it spewing out the other side.
Evira could see the trigger starting to give when a piece of corrugated piping from the ceiling directly above him gave way and smashed him hard in the chest. The angle of the blow forced him backward. He recovered his bearings, but not before the ever-churning rollers caught him by the holster and began to reel him in. The pistol jumped from his hands as his arms flailed to grasp something to pull him out, but there was nothing to find. His screams overwhelmed the factory’s sounds and Evira thought she heard bones crunching as the rest of his frame vanished into the mechanism.
All command of her senses and motor functions was lost as Evira sank dazedly to the floor. All she would remember later was the impossible sight of a small shape climbing down from the rafters, from the same area as the corrugated pipe that had miraculously smashed into the final guardsman. And then the shape was hovering over her, passing in and out of her blurred vision.
A boy! It was a boy!
“Don’t worry,” came his voice as he struggled for a grip on her. “I’ll get you out of here before more of them come.”
Chapter 10
“ARE YOU SURE THIS is the place?”
McCracken bolted upright abruptly at the driver’s question. He realized he must have been dozing the last stretch of the way from the airport and gazed at the computerized meter which listed the fee due in both yen and dollars in bright LED figures.
“Planning to retire early?” Blaine asked in English.
“This the place?” the driver responded, anxious to be gone.
Blaine gazed out the open window through the postdawn light, not sure of the answer himself. The address was thirty miles outside Tokyo in the Japanese countryside. A dirt road had taken them the final stretch of the way and at its end stood a bridge rising over a small rushing brook. They were in a placid forest, full of blooming flowers and trees, the only evidence of man being the perfect landscaping and a dark-stained wood building across the bridge. It was constructed against a sloping hillside, accessible only by a set of steep stone steps and rimmed everywhere by plush, full trees that swayed faintly in the breeze. Blaine looked back toward the driver, wondering in that instant whether Traymir had misled him, whether—
His thoughts veered suddenly. Just as suddenly, his hand swept for the door latch.
“This will do fine,” he told the driver, and fumbled amidst his wad of cash for the amount rung up on the meter.
He stepped away from the car and the driver backed fast down the dirt road. Bujin did mean warrior and the man who had taken that name was obviously taking it to heart. The building before him, Blaine realized, was a martial arts training hall, or dojo. He knew it by feeling more than sight, and he felt immediately at home.
He had come to Japan after his tour in Israel was over with Vietnam still weighing heavily on his mind. The Cong had taught him much about what Johnny Wareagle still referred to as the hellfire, not the least of which was how inadequately prepared American soldiers were to go up against Oriental prowess and philosophy. It had been that lack of understanding, McCracken felt, that had cost the U.S. the war and plenty of men their lives. The true warrior learns from his enemies, and he came to Japan to sample a number of arts. Eventually he settled on a school of Dai-Ito Ryu Ju-Jitsu that included study of the wooden sword in addition to traditional self-defense forms. His sensei was named Yamagita Hiroshi, a descendant of a long line of actual samurai and top instructor for the Japanese police and military. Blaine trained day and night, working his mind as hard as his body, until he began to grasp what had made his foe in Vietnam so difficult. His goal was to make himself proficient in such skills, but what he learned, finally, was just how much he would never know. He had stayed in touch with Hiroshi for years afterward until the master fell into disfavor with the Japanese government and disappeared.
Blaine approached the wooden bridge slowly, making sure his hands were always in plain view. He stole one last glance at the cab before it passed out of sight, and turned back to find a dark figure facing him from the center of the bridge. The figure was dressed in the black robe and hakama traditional to the samurai warrior. Angled across his left hip was the handle of a razor-sharp long sword or katana, its black scabbard comfortably wedged through the belt tied within his robes. His right hand rested on the sword’s equally black handle.
There was a soft shuffling behind him and Blaine swung around to find another samurai, hands within easy reach of the sword stretching across his left hip. Before Blaine could move or speak, another two swordsmen closed in on him from either side. Facing modern day samurai presented him with a situation even he would never be able to talk himself out of under the circumstances. He was trespassing, an uninvited guest on another’s land, and that marked a violation of the sacred code of honor. His best chance of survival was to do precisely as he was instructed.
The samurai on the bridge beckoned him on and McCracken started forward with the other swordsmen maintaining a sword’s distance away. The bridge creaked as he moved across it with the lead samurai waiting on the other side ready to lead him up the stone steps. A single sliding door stood at the top, and the lead samurai opened it to reveal a small foyer with yet another set of doors just ahead, this time of the paper variety called shoji. His escort parted these doors gracefully as well, glad to see McCracken had knelt to remove his shoes. Bowing slightly, he bade Blaine to enter. Blaine returned the gesture and passed through, feeling more than hearing the shoji doors close behind him.
He found himself in a large room with a ceiling full of regularly placed skylights arranged three to a row. Through them the sight was breathtaking, the sky seeming a reach away from the trees scratching at the glass. But Blaine was concerned more with a figure kneeling before a wall highlighted by a hand-etched scroll bearing the Japanese calligraphy for Bujin. Within easy reach by the figure’s side rested a katana in its scabbard.
The kneeling figure seemed to read his
thoughts and turned an open hand behind him. McCracken followed the gesture toward another katana that had been placed in the corner of the straw tatami mat diagonally across from the kneeling figure’s position. Grasping the unspoken instruction, Blaine slid across the tatami and bowed toward kamiza, the seat of honor his host was facing. Then he eased himself on his knees toward the second sword. Honor was everything here. To disgrace himself in any way was to assure his own death. He had not been searched outside, partly because the samurai would have sensed he was weaponless and partly because his honor was not to be violated either. If he dared reach now for a weapon other than the long sword by his side, he’d be dead before he touched it. He had to play along in the hope the Bujin would at least give him a chance to explain himself under interrogation.
If that was not to be the case, the noble thing for the Bujin to do under the circumstances would be to offer Blaine a sword to fight with in combat against him. The Bujin would realize merely from the way Blaine moved that he had had some training. But since that training was pitifully inadequate next to that of such a master, Blaine would need to rely on subterfuge to survive. One opening and one quick lunge would be all it would take and likely all he could hope to get.
At last the Bujin’s body began to turn. Blaine tensed, thinking of his sword and how fast he could grab and draw it if it came to that.
But the Bujin was smiling. Then he was chuckling, soon laughing.
“You are too ugly a man to kill before breakfast, Fudo-san,” the black robed figure said as he slid himself forward across the tatami until the sun blazed on his face.
It was Yamagita Hiroshi.
“You’re the Bujin!” Blaine exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, Fudo-san,” Hiroshi returned in perfect English. “Strange our paths should cross this way.”