Strike (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 3)

by Aaron Leyshon

  Published by Rogue Kitten Media, LLC

  Copyright © 2020, by Aaron Leyshon. All rights reserved.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN : 978-0-6487753-5-5

  First published in Australia in 2020 by Rogue Kitten Media.

  Rogue Kitten Media LLC, 30 N Gould St, STE 4000, Sheridan, WY 82801

  Strike

  Aaron Leyshon

  Contents

  The Ray Hammer Thrillers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  If you liked this book, why not try…

  The Ray Hammer Thrillers

  Die A Little (Free Short)

  The Spill

  The Deal

  The Strike

  The Fight

  The Stain

  The Flame (Jan 2021)

  Receive your free copy of Die a Little by visiting: https://ray.aaronleyshon.com/die

  Chapter One

  Investigative journalist Ray Hammer watched as three heavy-set men knocked on the old woman’s door. He’d considered it himself, had even walked up to her once, and then put his head down and walked past. The air was thick, and a news report had said a typhoon was on its way to Guam.

  Hammer scratched his nose, lifted the field glasses to his eyes again. He couldn’t believe he’d agreed to do this, to come here. He was retired. He wasn’t meant to be on expeditions like this—not for the military, anyway. His editor was usually the only one who forced him to get out of the house and go seek out assignments.

  But, this was different. This wasn’t the kind of assignment with a news story at the end of it. Instead, here he was, staking out a tiny ramshackle house on a small island that just might become the center of a nuclear war.

  Okai Hatashi, the woman who lived in the house, alone now that her son and daughter had passed away, was one of the leaders of the Chamorro protest movement in Guam. She had reportedly walked back and forth from her house to Naval Base Guam every day for the last 15 years, and still nothing had changed.

  Still, she walked.

  But, these men at her door were not the kind of men who Hammer had seen arrive throughout the week to debate politics, discuss strategies, or talk about ways to get the Americans out of here. Nor were they the doe-eyed, gold-rimmed-glasses types that came from the Joint Region Marianas with a diplomatic mission, brokering peace, telling her it would all be okay, and then leaving after a cup of tea and some cake.

  Hammer touched the butt of the scoped Smith and Wesson model 629 slung from his hip. Confident in the knowledge that it was there and fired .44 magnums, he raised it in front of him and looked through the scope.

  These men were big bulky types who carried semiautomatics slung over their shoulders and wore romper-stomper boots ready to kick in doors and smash in faces. They knocked once more, and then one of them went around the back. There was a loud crash, a volley of gunfire, and the two men Hammer could still see—the men around the front—kicked in the door and let off a few rounds of sharp bright muzzle flashes.

  Hammer lit a cigarette, sucked in a few puffs, and hunkered down. Then he threw the barely smoked cigarette to the ground, stamped on it, and stepped quietly across the street and up to the front door. He drew his revolver and stood beside the door frame.

  He shouldn’t interfere. He knew that. Interference wasn’t his job, not yet.

  But, Okai Hatashi was inside and Hammer hadn’t had a chance to interview her yet. Besides, Whitcombe had provided her name. That should have been enough insurance.

  Hammer listened as the men crashed around the house, smashing things and firing short bursts of semiautomatic fire into the ramshackle structure. He wondered if it would fall down, the whole thing, on top of them… on top of him.

  Chapter Two

  Inside the house, Okai Hatashi tried to stifle a sneeze and held a hand tight to a bullet wound in her thigh. She was holed up inside her couch, in a hidey-hole she’d created years ago when they’d first come looking for her. But, now her skin was not the same as it once was. It was thinner, like onion skin, and had cracked under the bullet, and her bone had splintered.

  Still, she hadn’t yelped. She hadn’t made a sound, but the sneeze was tickling at her tongue and itching at the edge of her nose. She knew she had to hold it, maintain it, keep it in whatever happened, because even the slightest noise, the slightest sniffle, would end with her papery thin skin being torn up into confetti, and she didn’t want that. She had too much to live for.

  Some good news had recently landed on her lap, something that could change the whole face of her protest to get the American military out of Guam, something that could destabilize the entire world. The information she’d received had the potential to change the way she dealt with her enemy. And that meant it was valuable enough for someone to have her killed.

  Hatashi tried to move her free hand ever so slightly towards her face. She’d heard that if you put your finger under your tongue you could stop yourself sneezing. She managed to get her pinky into her mouth, past her thin, dry lips, which tasted of nicotine from her last hand-rolled cigarette and smelled vaguely of the chicken kelaguen she’d been preparing before the heavy-booted men turned up.

  Hatashi bit down on her finger. Her flesh was like tanned leather from the sun she’d been exposed to all her life.

  Yet the sneeze still tickled around the corners of her eyes.

  She could hear the men firing off indiscriminate bullets into things in her house.

  Another bullet ripped through her thigh.

  She was so close.

  Her eyes squeezed shut.

  Her head arched back involuntarily, and then craned forward with a loud Achoo!

  Chapter Three

  Adam Winters couldn’t believe his parents had made them come here. He hated Tokyo. Why’d they have to take him out of school, away from his friends, family, and everyone and everything that mattered to him?

  His parents were in the kitchen. His father, Seamus, slammed a plate down on the countertop. His mother tried in vain insert the earrings Adam bought her three years ago for her birthday with his pocket money. Hannah liked telling her friends her son used his own money to buy them for her and, “Didn’t they find them just hideous?”

  Sure, his parents said he could keep in touch with his friends over the Internet. He didn’t spend that much time outside anyway. Half of the days now, he didn’t even go to school. But, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to be near his friends, didn’t want
to be able to see his friends when he chose to, or go to the mall with them.

  Seamus yelled, “Adam, get out here!”

  Adam shrunk even further into his little den under the stairs. His fingers coursed across the keyboard.

  Now he was stuck here in this shithole, and his parents kept making him go out to, “Experience the culture.”

  What culture? Tokyo was just as consumerist as America. Everyone was out shopping for frivolous bits of plastic and a sense of satisfaction that wouldn’t come from whatever it was they decided to purchase.

  “The guests will be here soon,” Hannah called from the mirror.

  His parents were no better than anyone else. They’d bought into the whole lifestyle. The apartment they lived was virtually a palace, and by Tokyo standards, almost a whole village. There were nine rooms, five bathrooms, and two kitchens, all spread out over 12,000 square feet of prime real estate in Suginami, Tokyo.

  But, Adam Winters spent his time in the tiny dark room he’d set up below the stairs, like a technophile version of Harry Potter. His den had a gaming hub, a computer setup with three monitors, gaming keyboard, several towers, and cooling fans everywhere. But, most importantly, it was dark, and he could spend his time trying to break into various corporations’ servers. It was a hobby. A dangerous one. It made Adam feel alive. He’d even tried a government server once while he was still stateside, with no luck, but maybe the government servers in Japan wouldn’t be so secure.

  He didn’t know why he’d targeted the DEA back in America, but they’d found him quickly. They planted drugs, set him up, scared the shit out of him. They’d left him with a warning; “Try that bullshit again and you might just turn up missing.”

  That hadn’t stopped him hacking. In fact, it poured fuel on the fire. It gave Adam a motive, an enemy, someone to get back at. He just needed to work out how to make them pay for the threats, for the drugs planted in his schoolbag, for them encouraging his parents to move to Japan, offering his father a transfer and his mother the chance of a lifetime to seem cosmopolitan, cultured, well-traveled . . . Hannah saw culture as going to Disneyland for a round of carefully choreographed pre-organized fun, or to Harajuku to browse the trendy boutiques. All that shit was just for show; it did not make you a travel blogger, an influencer or even someone intellectual. Adam told his mother as much.

  But Hannah didn’t seem to care. She often invited all Seamus’s colleagues over for dinner, drinks, and wine. Adam just lurked in his cave and played games.

  Tonight, they were coming over again.

  How many parties did the woman need to throw before she was satisfied she’d been accepted into the Tokyo elite?

  “Get out here, now.” his father called.

  Adam ignored him.

  And then there was a knock on the door. Voices chattered calmly. Shoes slipped off and stacked up in the hallway.

  There was a tinkle as someone sat down to play the piano. They were good, but they protested that they weren’t—before launching into a complicated and show-offy jazz number that made their modesty a lie.

  Hannah laughed a fake tinkly laugh that he couldn’t stand.

  Seamus offered to get more drinks—playing bartender when everyone was perfectly capable of pouring themselves their own damn shot.

  Fake, fake, fake, the ‘rents and all their friends. Problem was, they didn’t even know it.

  Adam rammed his headphones down over his ears, opened the command window and started typing, hard.

  He checked out his favorite hacking forums.

  There was a new post, but this one was different from the others.

  It wasn’t just trolls or teenage boys jerking off in their bedrooms—not that he was one of those. Well, maybe sometimes. But, this post seemed almost official, although the handle, @info_finder_pi, was almost as bogus as the rest of the handles in the forum.

  It was the content of the post that caught his attention. They were looking for information into a woman in a US military base in Guam. There was a reward offered, 50,000 US dollars paid in Bitcoin—untraceable—the first 10,000 advanced for the smallest bit of information, just the proof that someone could get into the Anderson Air Base computer system, part of the Joint Region Marianas.

  Adam Winters could get out of here for fifty grand, and untraceable coin was even better.

  His parents would never find him, and if he could get into the system in Guam, then maybe he could set something up to give the DEA a run for their money.

  He opened the website of the US Joint Region Marianas in Guam.

  Chapter Four

  Ray Hammer stepped into the ramshackle house just as a pair of combat boots came down the stairs. He sidled across the room and positioned himself behind a coat rack. The man was carefree now, a big brute with sprigs of thick wiry hair coming out of his ears and his nose, but the top of his head was bald and bunched up in the way that a bulldog’s skin overlaps in flaps. The semiautomatic rifle now hung from his back as he turned to call up the stairs to his comrade. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Ray Hammer stepped forward.

  There was a loud sneeze and the man turned, and his comrade in faded battle dress uniform joined him on the stairs.

  They both looked directly at Hammer, who swiveled quickly, stepping off his left foot and then his right. He slammed his Smith and Wesson down on the bridge of the first guy’s nose. Blood trickled down the wiry hairs and dripped onto the ground as the man careened backwards, spun, and crashed into the stairs on top of his M-16.

  Ray closed and fired twice. Missed both times.

  The guy in BDUs was quick. He had his rifle to his shoulder and his finger squeezed the trigger.

  Hammer flattened himself against the wall, pulling in his gut—for what that was worth.

  Around the corner, the man at the top of the stairs did the same. Ray fired off another round, even though he knew he was at a disadvantage, since his opponent was elevated. None of the shots struck. Three left. Then he’d have to reload.

  The nose-hair guy, pressed his advantage home, peppering the wall in front of Ray with a volley of fire. Ray lost count. The wall splintered faster than he could edge his body farther behind it.

  The place was rickety, old, ramshackle, and rundown, just scrounged-up timber with paper-thin walls—glorified wallpaper, really— stretched painfully over the wooden frame. Bullets ripped through them as easily as if they had been shot from a BB gun, rather than a high-powered, military grade weapon. Hammer had no doubt that one of these bullets would soon do the same kind of damage to him.

  Hammer waited for a break in the merciless rat-tat-tat—maybe the guy had paused to scratch his nose or adjust his balls, maybe he was out, but Hammer wasn’t hanging around to find out—he dashed across the opening. Bullets singed his arm hairs, ricocheted off the floor and into the only piece of bulky furniture in the room, a large western-style couch. It was where the sneeze came from, the place every single person in that house knew Okai Hatashi was hiding.

  The nose-hair guy on the stairs groaned and rolled over. His nose now looked like he’d tried to stop a flyball with it. His buddy helped him up. They both had their rifles pointed at Hammer now, but he was halfway out the door.

  Hammer screamed for Hatashi to run. His knowledge of the Chamorro language was nonexistent, so English would have to do.

  But then, maybe she was already dead.

  Another guy in BDUs, the one who’d gone around the back, ran out of the building.

  Ray slinked off down the side and kept out of the sight in the short scrub.

  He lay low, barely breathed, and watched as the big brute looked around for him. This guy was a less hairy ape, but an ape nonetheless. He had a mercenary quality about him—not military exactly, but he had training in the security services at one time or another, that was for damn sure. He looked like the kind of guy who’d be equally at home in a suit and tie as he was in battle dress.

  Hammer could see the whole
building from his position. The man Ray thumped slunk out the back, the heavy weight of Okai Hatashi on his shoulders and his M-16 hung low.

  His friend moved back around the building and provided cover for him as he dragged the bleeding, screaming Hatashi into the back of a black Taurus and slammed the door shut. The nose-guy made a move to hop into the driver’s seat, but seemed to change his mind, he circumnavigated the hood and crawled into the passenger seat.

  Ray Hammer reloaded and moved forward, he considered taking the nose-guy by surprise, and tried to get there before the man in the BDUs. But said colleague was already positioned perfectly in between the car and Hammer, and his eyes were alert as he scanned the low scrub. He fixed on Hammer’s location.

  Whitcombe had told Ray not to screw this up, but as far as Hammer was concerned, screwing it up meant not using lethal force when required.

  He pulled the Smith and Wesson’s trigger.

  Chapter Five

  Adam Winters pressed himself up between a wall and a vending machine in Shinjuku Station. The commuting horde of Japan’s work-all-day and work-all-night labor force buzzed in and out of the different platforms, up and down the escalators, through the concourses, snaking and surging. People spoke into telephones, made deals, cancelled dinners, said sorry to their children, and contemplated suicide. But Adam wasn’t doing any of those things. He was watching, and waiting, for someone.