Rules of the Hunt (58 page)

Sergeant Oga blushed.
 
He did not
understand exactly what the
gaijin
was saying — especially the last part — but the sentiments were clear.
 
He explained briefly the gist of what
Fitzduane-
san
had said to the other
three detectives, and they all bowed in unison.

Fitzduane bowed back,
then
go on with the
briefing.
 
He had discovered that bowing
could go on almost indefinitely unless you had a breakaway technique — an
elevator arriving, or a cab you had to get into — anything to break the cycle.

"A Namaka limousine is coming at nine-thirty to take me to the
Namaka
Tower
,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"From there, I'm
driving with the brothers to their steel plant.
 
I'll be there most of the day."

"The Namakas do not make me feel comfortable, Fitzduane-
san
," said Oga.
 
"They are dangerous and devious
people."

"They are why I am here," said Fitzduane.

Sergeant Oga nodded.
 
"I don't
like it, Fitzduane-
san
," he
said.

"I'm trying to rattle their cage without being eaten," said
Fitzduane with a smile.
 
"Think of
yourself as a keeper."

Oga was not amused.
 
He knew
perfectly well the limitations of police protection under such
circumstances.
 
"Are you armed,
Fitzduane-
san
?" he said.
 
"And wearing your bullet-proof
vest?"

"You're like my mother when I was small, Sergeant-
san
," said Fitzduane, "but yes
to both."

"I would like to put two of my men in the Namaka limousine with you,
Fitzduane-
san
," said Oga.
 
"Following behind is not adequate, nor
is one escort car.
 
Strictly speaking, we
should have at least two."

Fitzduane laughed.
 
"Sergeant-
san
, I am neither the President of the
United States
nor an anti-mafia judge in
Italy
.
 
One car behind me with the four of you inside
as normal will be fine — unless, of course, you have fresh information?"

Oga shook his head.

"Look, Sergeant-
san
,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"We're trying to
strike a balance here between reasonable precautions and moving the Namakas
into play.
 
If I'm too crowded, there
will be no freedom to maneuver and then we will have accomplished nothing.
 
There has to be an element of calculated
risk.
 
It's a high-risk world out
there."

"
Hai
, Colonel-
san
," said Oga, his face
impassive.
 
Orders were orders.
 
Nonetheless, he had a bad feeling, and his
concern for the
gaijin
was not purely
professional.
 
But he would be relieved
when Fitzduane left Oga's jurisdiction alive and in one piece.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Chifune, sitting in the back of what looked like a standard Mitsubishi
delivery truck, but which was actually a Koancho high-tech surveillance
vehicle, watched the Namaka limousine pull up in front of the
Fairmont
and a white-gloved, uniformed driver
jump out and open the door.

Something about the action struck her,
then
she
realized that the man had left the front passenger seat on the left and not the
driver's seat on the right.
 
She turned
up the video camera's magnification.
 
The
limo had tinted windows, but the camera had been developed specifically to cope
with this kind of problem, and using the thermal mode, she could make out the
shape of the driver inside.
 
A driver and
a codriver, and there had been only one driver last time.
 
Interesting.

The limousine pulled away, drove down the narrow access road, and paused
by

Sergeant Oga felt easier when they left the dense city-center traffic and
moved onto the expressway.
 
Traffic
lights and intersections and two-way traffic offered too many opportunities for
a hit.
 
Cruising along the two-lane
expressway on the inside lane, with traffic going the same way and no
sidewalks, was considerably safer.

"There's a job for the traffic boys coming up," said the
detective, who was driving, glancing in his mirror.
 
Sergeant Oga, sitting in the passenger seat,
also had a mirror, but when he looked, the vehicle behind was so close he could
not make out any details except that it was a large truck and it was tailgating
them.

He began to turn for a closer look.
 
There was a roar, and the car shook in the wash, as an unmarked
high-sided Hino container truck painted a deep brown shot past, pulled in front
of the police car, and then proceeded to slow down.

"Stupid bastard," said the detective, braking to match the
vehicle's speed.
 
"Why don't you
take the prick's number and radio it to traffic?
 
That would be careless driving in a car.
 
It's positively lethal in a truck."

"Forget the truck," said Oga.
 
"Overtake it — we're losing the
gaijin
."

The driver began to pull out, just as a second Hino pounded up and
started to pass.
 
There was a shriek of
metal as the two vehicles touched briefly, and sparks flew, and then the driver
wrenched the wheel and pulled back into his lane.
 
The second Hino pulled ahead until it was
running parallel with the first truck.
 
The escort car was now completely blocked off from the limousine.

"Fuck!" said Sergeant Oga, who rarely swore.
 
He hit the concealed siren.
 
If the Hino blocking the overtaking lane did
not move, it was a hit for sure.
 
He made
a precautionary radio call to central control, read out the two Hino plate
numbers for a vehicle check, and kept the channel open, his thumb poised to
transmit further.

As soon as the siren sounded, the blocking Hino started to accelerate to
clear the lane.
 
At this speed, the huge
vehicle's acceleration was not good, but still not much more than a minute had
passed before it pulled in ahead of the other truck and left the way clear for
Oga's vehicle to pass.

Siren still screaming, the detective driver dropped a gear and put his
foot on the floor and shot out into the passing lane.

Several hundred yards ahead was what looked like the
gaijin
's limousine, but it was too far away to read the plate.
 
The police car closed the distance rapidly
until the plate could be identified.
 
It
was the Namaka limo.

Oga realized that his heart was pounding and his body was flushed with
adrenaline.
 
He switched the siren off
and tried to calm himself down.

"I thought we were going to see some action," said the
driver.
 
"Looks
like we were flapping for nothing, Sergeant-
san
.
 
There is our target in absolutely pristine
condition.

There was a searing yellow silent flash and the
gaijin
's limousine and its contents exploded into jagged metal,
splinters of glass, burning upholstery, and severed limbs.

A split second later came the thunderous roar and blast of the explosion,
and the police car, already decelerating as the driver instinctively braked,
was hurled against the parapet.
 
It spun
several times laterally but did not overturn, and finally the much-dented
vehicle came to a halt of its own volition in the middle of the debris.

Sergeant Oga tried to get out, but the door pillar on his side had been
smashed in and neither door on his side would open.
 
The driver was unconscious, slumped in his
safety belt, blood dripping from a gash in his forehead where flying glass had
struck.
 
The two detectives in the back
were badly shaken but otherwise uninjured.
 
They got out of the one backseat door that would open, and Oga squeezed
between the front seats to the back and followed them.

Leaving the two detectives to look after the driver, he walked the short
distance to where the still-smoking remains of the Namaka limousine lay, and
looked inside.

He felt his mind separate as he looked.
 
The interior reeked of explosive residue and cooked flesh and was
plastered within the blackened bloody fragments of human remains, and he wanted
to be sick.
 
Another part of his mind,
that of the trained detective, noted that the bottom pan was still intact,
though bowed outward.
 
Clearly, the
device had been placed inside the car or was a projectile like a rocket which
had penetrated from the outside and then exploded.
 
There was no entry hole in the metal frame
that he could see, but it could easily have come through one of the windows.

Repulsive though the task was, he tried to work out how many bodies could
be made up from the pieces in the limousine, and whether he could recognize the
gaijin
.

After several minutes, he reeled away, nauseated, and with all hope
destroyed.
 
The
corpse
in the rear of the car was the right size, weight, and build
of
Fitzduane-
san
and was definitely
Caucasian.
 
The clothing, insofaras he
could tell, was Fitzduane's.
 
He could
just make out a watch similar to the military Rolex that Fitzduane normally
wore.

There was no doubt.
 
The
gaijin
was dead.
 
Deeply shocked and depressed, Sergeant Oga
went back to the battered unmarked police car and tried the radio.
 
To his surprise, it was still working.

He began to make his initial report.
 
When he finished, he found Tanabu-
san
examining the wreckage.
 
He was not
particularly surprised.
 
Koancho made
their own rules, and Chifune Tanabu certainly had her own agenda; and a
special, though discreetly displayed, interest, he had noticed, in the
gaijin
.

"Sergeant-
san
," said
Chifune, "did you see what happened?"

Oga noticed that she looked more puzzled than saddened, and he was
surprised.
 
Granted, Koancho agents were
a hardened lot, but he had expected a more human reaction in this particular
case.
 
He explained briefly.

Tanabu-
san
stood in thought for
about half a minute when he had finished.
 
Then she turned to him.
 
"Sergeant Oga-
san
, I
think we can help each other.
 
Come with
me."

19

Tokyo
,
Japan

June 28

There was the sound of a slap, then another.

A pause followed, and then another blow, and Fitzduane felt pain and
realized that he might be directly involved with what was happening.
 
He was not sure, though.
 
His head was muzzy and his eyes were closed,
and for a short while he thought he was back in the hospital in
Ireland
,
recovering from an anesthetic after a surgical procedure.
 
This business of being shot was a great deal
of work.
 
He wanted to go back to sleep.

There was yet another blow, this time even harder.
 
"Kathleen," he murmured in
protest.
 
Why were they hitting him?

He could hear people speaking but could not understand what they were
saying.
 
That was odd.
 
He felt suddenly cold and wet and started to
splutter.
 
There was water everywhere,
cascading into his mouth and nose, and it kept on coming.
 
It was like being under a waterfall and he
was drowning.
 
He could not breathe.

The waterfall stopped.
 
He opened
his eyes.
 
They would not focus properly,
but something wooden seemed to be suspended over him.
 
He could see the lines where the boards
joined, and he was reminded of a barrel — a rather small barrel.
 
What was a barrel doing up there?

The image above him came reluctantly into focus.
 
The next hard task was to link the sight with
his brain.
 
Suddenly, like a car that
will not start that is being pushed and is gathering momentum, he felt a sputtering
ignition.
 
His brain cells started to do
what they were designed to do, and almost immediately he wished they had
not.
 
They were coming up with the most
unpleasant findings.