Rules of the Hunt (74 page)
Palmer joined in the laughter as he drove the short remaining distance to
the airship.
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Two hours later, after a host of checklists — most relating to the
mission — the airship was released from its tethering mast and the mission team
were airborne.
Below, the Spider and Yoshokawa waved and then were quickly lost in the
darkness as the airship climbed to 1,500 feet.
Fitzduane stared out one of the windows at the panorama below and ran
through the operation plan one more time, trying to consolidate his overall
mental model of what had to be done.
Checklists were necessary and all very well, but the endless items
covered tended to buzz around distractingly
in
your
mind and then weigh you down with
detail.
Fitzduane now sought a clear
overview.
He was keenly aware that,
prepare as you might, the operation was highly unlikely to go according to
plan.
His opponents were clever and
devious people who would have their own agendas.
He had to try to prepare for the unexpected.
He smiled to himself.
Another way
of looking at it was to anticipate the unknown, and that was a decided
contradiction in terms.
Well, all you
could do was
give
it your best shot and then make sure
that you acted with reasonable grace under pressure.
And the last element was luck.
Summarized — and there were a few interesting moves to add to the scenario
— the basic plan was simple.
Fumio
Namaka had been enticed out of his normal heavy security to meet Fitzduane in
the seclusion of the walled gardens surrounding Hodama's villa.
The villa would be searched by two
representatives of both parties to ensure there were no hidden surprises, and
then the two principals and one driver each would be allowed in.
Then the conference would commence.
It would be held in the open garden under
floodlights, so that everyone could see everyone else and to minimize the
chance of eavesdropping.
If it rained,
there was the adequate protection of the open-sided summer house.
Fitzduane had been far from sure that Fumio would agree to an open-air
meeting, but logic was on his side.
It
did make sense to have all involved in plain sight, and Fumio Namaka was known
to be paranoid about being bugged.
As an
additional concession, Fitzduane had agreed that Fumio could enter the villa
grounds first, immediately after the initial search, so that there would be no
opportunity for any ambush to be set up.
The first twist in the plan was that it would not be Fitzduane in the
second limo.
But from then on, it was up
to the players on the ground, with just a little help from on high.
The requirement of having a tactical edge, if at all possible, had been
drummed into Fitzduane when serving under Kilmara in the
There he had found he had a natural talent
for thinking this way, and its application had been accelerated by being
repeatedly shot at.
In modern
high-technology combat, so much of death was random, but it still made a
difference to have an edge.
Fitzduane had been taken aback by the Tokyo MPD airship when he had first
seen it floating past his bedroom window at the
for granted.
And it was this fact that
all
idea of using it.
Vast though it was, it was such a regular feature of the
it
was, for all practical purposes, invisible.
A further curious but helpful fact about the airship was that it was very
hard to judge its proximity.
Most people
knew the approximate size of a helicopter or aircraft and cold make a rough
guess at range, but the airship was seldom seen by people on the ground, so
range estimation in its case was problematic in the extreme.
If you do not know the size of something, it
is virtually impossible to estimate distance unless there is a familiar object
at the same distance.
What this boiled down to was that you could use the airship as a
monitoring platform for activities on the ground below without attracting any
undue attention.
An extension of that
premise was that you could shoot from it, too.
Of course, the other side could shoot back, but at least there was the
consoling fact that a modern airship could not do a
Hindenburg
.
Early aircraft
got their lift from ultravolatile hydrogen, which was a fair definition of an
accident waiting to happen.
Today's
birds had switched to the much more expensive but more stable helium.
You could fire an incendiary round into
helium and no reaction would occur.
The stability of helium was the good news.
The bad news, if hostiles started shooting at
you, was that an airship of the
Then, having found the overall target, a
hostile would not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that the vulnerable
humans were likely to be in the gondola below.
And better yet, flying slowly.
Maximum speed was only just over seventy-five miles an hour.
In reality, if shooting did start, their
initial projection through speed would be considerably less.
They would be optimized for monitoring, which
would mean hovering or traveling at a purely nominal rate, and the airship's
acceleration left a great deal to be desired.
The thing was supposed to float serenely.
It was not designed to hot-rod.
Fitzduane played out various scenes in his mind.
Some of the possibilities were distinctly unpalatable.
The thought of an air-to-ground running gunfight over densely populated
central
It was for that reason
that he had agreed with the Spider that only aimed rifle fire would be used
within the urban confines and even then be confined to targets within the
grounds of Hodama's house.
It had been a
reasonable request, but it would have been nice to know that the opposition was
going to follow the same restrictive rules.
Frankly, he did not think they would, so invisibility and surprise were
his best weapons.
Of course, if the
action switched to over the sea, then the Spider's rules would not apply.
Then they could play hardball.
Al Lonsdale had been gazing out of one of the large observation windows
that lined both sides of the gondola and now turned and came over and sat by
Fitzduane.
When they had converted the
airship for the operation, they had left a walkway around the periphery of the
gondola and a row of seats in the center.
They would be airborne for four hours before the 2:00
A.M.
time of the meeting.
The airship could not suddenly appear.
It was unlikely that anyone would look u past
the glare of the floodlights when reconnoitering the meeting, but on the off
chance that they did, the ship had to be established as part of the
scenery.
The delay was a nuisance,
because waiting was the hardest part of any action, but it was
unavoidable.
The endurance of the
airship itself was not a problem.
At
slow speeds it used minimal fuel and could stay up for up to forty hours if
necessary.
"Hell of a
craft,
isn't she, Colonel?"
said Lonsdale, looking around the gondola with a proprietorial air.
"Frankly, I'm surprised they're not more
popular.
I mean, what a way to see the
country.
Smooth as silk."
Fitzduane was amused.
Since Al had
trained in the borrowed Airship Industries Skyship 600 — a model similar to the
one they were flying in now — the Delta marksman had become something of an
instant airship expert and advocate.
"Smooth as silk if the weather holds," said Fitzduane.
"Now, some serious wind could make you
reach for a long, paper bag — or so I hear."
Lonsdale grinned.
The Achilles'
heel of an airship was its behavior in high wind.
With all that surface area, an airship's gas-holding
envelope acted like a giant sail, and could pitch and roll just like a
boat.
On his first training flight,
Lonsdale had been airsick.
"Someone's been talking," said Lonsdale cheerfully.
"Anyway, that was a particularly shitty
day and my pilot wasn't as expert as these boys.
I don't think we're going to have any trouble
tonight."
He saw Fitzduane's
eyebrows rise, and hastily added, "Well, not from the weather,
anyway."
Fitzduane laughed.
Lonsdale was
right.
Fortunately, weather conditions were
ideal, and flying at night, unless you were flying directly over a factory or
similar heat source, eliminated interference from thermals.
The airship was powered by two Porsche
air-cooled gasoline engines driving twin-ducted variable-pitch propellers located
on either side of the rear of the gondola.
It seemed to float across the sky.
It was a remarkably pleasant way to travel.
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Schwanberg's good humor as he had boarded had faded and had been replaced
with a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach as the airship took off.
At first, he had put it down to a touch of airsickness.
Now, standing up in the front of the gondola
looking out one of the port observation windows, Schwanberg felt distinctly
uneasy again, and it was not physical.
He did not know what it was, but something just did not feel right.
And, over the years, if there was one thing
that he had learned to rely on, it was his instinct for self-preservation.
There was no question about it, something was
not kosher; but what?
He fingered the grip of his 9mm Browning automatic as it sat reassuringly
in his shoulder holster.
What the hell
had set him off?
Everything seemed
normal.
He had initially been thrown when he had arrived at Atsugi.
He and Chuck Palmer had expected to board with
everyone else after a final briefing session.
That would be normal procedure.
Instead, Fitzduane and his people were already installed on the airship
and there had been little discussion before the airship cast off and they rose
near-vertically into the sky.
Fuck, it
was almost as if this was entirely Fitzduane's operation, which was not the way
it was supposed to be.
The second disconcerting element was the presence of Al Lonsdale and that
Japanese bitch on board.
He had expected only Fitzduane and the pilots, and under those
circumstances an accident for the Irishman would have been easy to
arrange.
The pilots were shielded from
the main cabin and would see nothing.
Fitzduane would just have disappeared.
An accidental fall out of the door.
Something simple like that.
But instead, there were two unexpected and unwanted witnesses, and both
were loaded for bear.
The Delta man had
a .50-caliber Barrett with some high-tech telescopic sight, and the bitch had
some custom self-loading piece chambered, it looked like, for the .300
.
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For no reason that he could identify, Fitzduane was thinking about
Schwanberg.
He looked across at the
man.
He seemed as relaxed and unperturbed
as anyone could be under the very special pressures of an operation which was
going to result in the imminent death of a number of fellow human beings, but
Fitzduane could just feel the tension.
There was nothing to see, but to Fitzduane the signs were as evident as
if Schwanberg were radiating blue sparks.
Fitzduane's mind went back to the CIA chief's boarding of the
airship.
Had there been any sign of
suspicion then?
He thought not.
On the contrary, both Schwanberg and his
henchman, Palmer, had seemed in exceptionally good form.
They had been laughing at some private
joke.
There had not been the slightest
hint of suspicion.
Or had there?
