Time of Attack (31 page)

Q
uinn and Ayako shoved their way through two more sets of uniformed Yanagi security before making it back to the exit.

Already straddling her bike, the woman began to shoot as they ran for the Blackbird. They were only twenty yards apart. She’d been half again that far away when she shot the Pakistani in Vegas. This time, with the possibility of Quinn shooting back, her shots went wide.

Quinn jumped aboard the waiting bike and hit the start button. “Get on!” he yelled at Ayako.

She stood frozen, a few paces ahead of the Blackbird’s front wheel, staring at the shooter as if in a trance.

He gunned the throttle, scooting the bike up adjacent to Ayako, bumping her with his elbow to get her attention.

“I said get on!” he barked, passing the pistol back behind him. “I can’t ride and shoot at the same time.”

She snapped out of the trance as pistol rounds zinged past their heads and slapped the concrete pillar behind them. A window shattered in the convenience store across the street. Passersby screamed and ran for cover.

Facing the silver Hayabusa, Quinn rolled on the throttle as soon as he felt Ayako take the H&K and jump aboard behind him. Tugging upward on the handlebars, he brought the bike into a low wheelie to put as much of it as possible between them and oncoming gunfire.

The woman kept shooting as the Blackbird sped past. Thankfully, she was unable to hit anything vital on the rapidly approaching target. They were thirty meters down the road when Quinn heard the Hayabusa roar to life behind him. The last thing he wanted was for this woman to be on his tail.

He slowed just enough to keep from pitching them both off the bike in a high-side crash, locking up the Honda’s rear brake so it lost traction. Looking back over his shoulder, he leaned, dumping the clutch and pouring on the throttle to turn the bike into a smooth 180 in a near perfect foot-down drift. He and his brother both had the scars to prove they’d practiced such moves hundreds of times in the high school parking lot growing up.

Smoke poured from the Hayabusa’s rear tire as it grabbed for traction on the chilly pavement. Firing the pistol left-handed, she was unable to shift gears. The bike screamed to redline, still in second as she sped by against traffic. Cabs and delivery vans peeled off in either direction to avoid the oncoming motorcycle. Horns blared. A black sedan careened into a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of spray into the winter air.

Quinn slowed again, drifting the back tire through another 180-degree turn. Ayako craned her head around to keep her eye on the fleeing Suzuki. Centrifugal force threw her sideways on the tiny passenger seat. Flailing, she clutched at Quinn’s jacket in mid-lean. The rear tire bucked as it caught traction. Quinn poured on more throttle, breaking the tire loose and narrowly avoiding a wreck.

“Sorry,” Ayako screamed over the sound of wind and whining gears—so Japanese to apologize in the middle of a bike chase and shoot-out.

Thankfully, the Hayabusa took care of splitting the lion’s share of oncoming traffic, so Quinn could just keep the Blackbird pointing down the centerline. Ten seconds after turning around, he passed a blue Nissan with the slender antennas of an undercover police car. The American riding in the passenger seat caught his eye, head snapping around as they shot by.

Quinn could hardly believe it. August Bowen had come all the way to Japan to find him. The thought of a deputy U.S. Marshal always getting his man sounded all well and good—until you happened to be that man.

A near miss with two uniformed high school girls on bicycles pushed thoughts of manhunters and felony arrest out of Quinn’s mind. There was nothing he could do about it now. This woman had shot Kim and tried to kill his little girl. She would not get away again.

Bitter cold wind whipped at Quinn’s face as he dipped in and out of traffic. Blocky buildings rose up on either side of the street, making it seem as though they were riding through a canyon of concrete and glass. White lines, metal poles, and slippery steel manhole covers flew by in a deadly blur. Both he and Ayako had dropped their helmets when the chase began. She rode with her body tucked in tight against his back, pressed against his leather jacket. Leaning forward over the handlebars of the bike, Quinn had no such protection.

There was always the chance that he’d spill, and offer up his brains to the asphalt gods—but the main problem with riding at such speeds with no helmet or goggles was the inability to see. An amazing amount of debris floated in the city air. Bits of trash, flecks of dust, gravel thrown up by passing trucks—all scoured his face like a sandblaster, putting grit in his teeth and threatening to blind him. Squinting through it, he took the Blackbird to its limits. He waited to shift until the tach touched redline, and let off the gas only when absolutely necessary to keep from crashing the bike or running off the road.

Hayabusa
was the Japanese word for peregrine falcon. Capable of speeds over two hundred miles an hour, one of this sleek raptor’s favorite meals happened to be blackbirds. Suzuki had purpose-built the Hayabusa to chase down and eat Honda’s sport bike. There was no question that the Busa was a faster motorcycle. But city streets didn’t give the woman space to really open it up, and Quinn stayed tucked in behind her as if tied on with a cable, rarely falling back more than fifty meters.

A bright red concrete truck changed lanes without warning. The woman was able to steer out of it, leaning the Busa into a knee-dragging turn worthy of any racetrack as she followed the curve of Sumiyoshi Street through its arc in front of the main train station.

“She’s running toward the docks!” Ayako yelled in Quinn’s ear as he took the Blackbird into the same turn. Quinn gave her thigh a pat with his clutch hand, a warning to hang on as he leaned into the same corner. The fiberglass fairing groaned, scraping against the asphalt, but he rolled on speed smoothly, popping back up on the straightaway.

Ignoring every red light, the Hayabusa shot through the intersections as if she didn’t care if she lived or died. Quinn stayed close, but slowed enough to keep from being eaten by any oncoming trucks. Thankfully, most of the lights were green and in their favor.

The Busa took a hard left where the road T’d in front of the sweeping white architecture of the Fukuoka Sun Palace Hotel. The woman missed her lane, shooting again into oncoming traffic. So far, she’d not looked back once. If she knew Quinn was gaining on her, now less than fifteen meters behind, it did not change the way she rode.

Ayako squeezed so tightly Quinn thought she might crack one of his remaining good ribs.

Almost close enough to reach out and touch now, the silver Busa cut right. The red metal girders of the Hakata Port Tower rose up in the distance.

“There is nowhere else to go,” Ayako whispered in his ear. “She is trapped.” The words were torn away by speed and wind, but Quinn heard them—and they sounded a little sad.

“Get the pistol ready,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I am sorry, Quinn-san,” Ayako yelled. “I must have dropped it when we sped away so quickly.”

Quinn clenched his jaw. He’d been chasing an armed assassin for the last five minutes with little more than good intentions. A new plan began to take shape in his mind.

“I am truly sorry,” she yelled again, wanting to be sure he heard her over the wind and engine noise. “I do not know what happened—”

“Can’t be helped,” Quinn said as the end of the road loomed in front of them. “Be ready to hand me the sword.”

T
hough plenty fast, Detective Hase’s Nissan Skyline was no match for two of the fastest street motorcycles in the world. It wasn’t long before the bikes were nearly out of sight.

Bowen was astonished at the detective’s unflappable nature. He kept his hands on the wheel at ten and two o’clock, even during a pursuit, weaving in and out of traffic so hard the deputy had to brace himself to keep from falling over on top of him during the slide-over-baby turns.

Several times in the middle of a sharp corner, Bowen was certain they were both about to be killed by an oncoming truck or bus, only to remember at the last minute that Japanese people drove on the left side of the road.

Hase’s unmarked car had lights in the dash and the rear window. The siren blared, but few drivers recognized it as a police vehicle.

Police chatter in unintelligible Japanese poured out of the radio. Bowen hung on to the side handle with one hand while he banged on the dash with the other, urging him around a goggled old man in flip-flops putting down the middle of the road on a smoking scooter.

The ring of a phone over the radio speaker interrupted the chatter and the deputy’s rant.

Hase moved his hands long enough to tap the hands-free button on his steering wheel, then moved them back to ten and two, machinelike.

“
Hase desu
,” he answered with an abrupt grunt. His head swiveled right, then left before crossing an intersection choked with cars, piled in a hopelessly tangled wreck from avoiding the fleeing motorcycles.

“Hmm . . . Hmmm . . . Ehhh . . .” Hase said, in between what sounded to Bowen to be long strings of clicky, garbled nonsense.

Hase tapped the wheel again and ended the call. Eyes on the road, he translated for Bowen. The corners of his normally pensive mouth turned up in a tight smile.

“There is a police helicopter ahead. It looks like your fugitive will not be a fugitive for long. They are heading for the docks beside Hakata Tower. They have nowhere else to go.”

A
bus full of Korean tourists pulled out of the ferry terminal parking lot and directly into the Hayabusa’s path as the woman shot past the red steel latticework of the Hakata Port Tower. Fresh from the trip across the sea, the Koreans pressed animated faces against the window as the woman horsed the big bike to the right in an attempt to avoid a collision.

They were too close and the streets were too wet.

Rather than slam into the side of the bus, the woman laid down the bike, throwing herself into a low-side skid so that it slid in front of her. Metal groaned and ground against pavement, sending up a shower of sparks. The bus driver slammed on his brakes, throwing the faces in the windows forward in their seats. The woman skidded on her back, body tense to keep from tumbling until she bled off speed. Like Quinn, she’d dropped her helmet before the chase began, so she kept her neck up to protect her head.

Flat on her back, the woman was able to slide directly under the bus as her bike struck a tire and jumped through the air, slamming into the fender with a horrific, shattering crunch.

Quinn watched her pistol fall and saw it spinning like a top on the sidewalk. The slide was locked to the rear, empty. It would do him little good, but at least she wouldn’t have it to reload.

He goosed the gas to squirt the Blackbird up a delivery ramp at the end of the dockside storefront, working through a crowd of over a hundred junior high students in dark, conservative uniforms who appeared to be on a field trip to the port. When he finally made it around the bus, he saw the woman running toward a group of schoolgirls. She held a short blade of her own and hacked her way through the terrified children. Two girls, neither over twelve, fell before the flashing blade. The others scattered, screaming at the sight of so much blood.

Quinn longed for a gun. Ayako, who’d been looking over his shoulder, shrank at the sight of such cruelty, pressing her face to his back.

The woman kept moving toward the water, a curtain of black hair hanging down over her eyes, swishing back and forth in her frenzied hacking.

Quinn crouched low over the handlebars, urging the bike through the milling crowd on the broad promenade along the pier. His first thought was to run into the murderous woman, but he realized he’d likely kill more kids with the heavy bike than she would with the blade. Five meters away, he abandoned the Blackbird and jumped to the ground, taking the short sword with him. Ayako fell in behind, close, but giving him enough space to work.

First attack was a tricky thing. It was all too easy to give up too much strategy by showing your hand early in the game. If the woman knew how badly he was injured, she’d know exactly where to attack him. But the adrenaline of the chase smoothed the ache in his bones and masked the pain in his back.

He gave a vicious war cry as he crashed in, extending the short sword over his head. Unlike the longer
katana
, the
wakizashi
was generally a one-handed weapon. What it lost in power, it gained in maneuverability.

Quinn brought the blade down almost, but not quite on top of the woman’s head. She countered, blocking his sword and bringing her own in a tight arc, slicing the air where his arms would have been had he fully committed to the strike.

The fighters parted as if pushed away from each other by some unseen force, circled slowly, and then came together in a clash of blades, repeating the action over and over in an attempt to gain the upper hand.

At length, their blades locked at the guards at belt level between the two fighters. It was an odd thing, Quinn thought, to look into the face of this young woman who had come so close to killing his little girl, to smell the odor of peppermint on her breath, and to see the map of practice scars that nicked her face and hands. Had he not been locked in battle, it would have been easy to feel pity for this girl who was barely old enough to be called a woman. He’d often feel pity for those he’d killed—after the fact.

Locked together, each pushed against the other, standing their ground. The first to pull away would be exposed to a rapid and surely fatal cut.

Grunting, the woman gave a toss of her head to get the hair out of her eyes. “You are better than I expected you to be.”

“I watched a lot of
The Princess Bride.
” Quinn smiled.

“What?”

Never in his life had he wanted so badly to cut someone down. In order to do that, he had to stay alive. In an unspoken, mutually agreed momentary truce, the fighters pushed apart, circling again for another attack.

Feinting, the woman drew Quinn out to block a blow from his left, forcing him to twist toward his injured kidney. He blocked the attack but stumbled slightly, allowing her blade to slice through the shoulder of his leather jacket.

A smile perked the corners of the woman’s lips. She circled, moving easily like a shark at the scent of blood.

“You are hurt.” She tipped her head toward his waist.

Quinn brushed the words aside as he would a blade, changing the subject while he caught his breath. In truth, the intense pain brought on by that simple twisting movement had nearly taken him to his knees.

He kept the tip of his sword high. “You’ve been after me since Colorado.”

The woman’s lips pulled back into a scornful laugh. Black eyes glared. “I watched you long before that, Jericho Quinn.”

“Did your father send you after me . . .
Ran
?” He used her given name, the one Miyagi had told him. It sounded more like
Lon
when he said it in Japanese.

The girl laughed, wagging her head derisively in spite of the situation. “Ohhh, you think you know so much.”

“I know your mother is named Emiko.” He circled, letting the tip of his blade drop so it pointed at her cold heart.

She rolled her eyes, stomping forward in a flurry of cuts that opened a flap of thick leather along his arm.

She stepped back to survey the damage. “You know nothing.”

“If your father is so great and powerful, why does he send females to do his heavy work?” Quinn’s words dripped with scorn but dizziness tugged at his brain. At any moment he would stumble an inch in the wrong direction. When he did, she would cut him down without a second thought.

“Do not flatter yourself.” The woman eyed him as if she had already won. “You are a passable warrior, Jericho Quinn.” She feinted right, then left, drawing him out again before her blade flashed in a diagonal line across the front of his jacket. The blade cut all the way through, slicing leather, armor, and then skin. Quinn felt the acid burn as the razor edge scraped a rib, but the jacket took the worst of the attack and he was able to step offline, keeping his feet—for the moment.

She backed up a half step, circling, preparing to strike again. “To you, the blade is only a pastime. The way of the sword has been my life.”

Badly wounded now, Quinn was vaguely aware of a flashing blur to his right. Knocked violently sideways, he heard Ayako’s anguished scream as she rushed past him, impaling her belly on the startled woman’s blade.

Ayako drove forward, grabbing the hilt with both hands and pushing the woman backward. Gasping, she whispered something that Quinn couldn’t make out before falling to the concrete, the stingray skin handle of the short sword sticking from her bleeding stomach.

The young woman’s face went pale at the sudden attack. Stunned by Ayako’s heroics, she backpedaled, scowling and cursing under her breath. Quinn raised his sword and advanced, but she turned and ran toward the pier to dive over the edge and disappear with a splash below.

Quinn fell to his knees beside a gasping Ayako. She lay on her side. Blood seeped through clenched fingers where they closed around the hilt. The blade had pierced her all the way through and the tip protruded out her back, tenting the cloth of her jacket.

“I am sorry, Quinn-san,” she whispered. A sheen of pink blood covered her teeth. Her lungs rattled with each labored breath.

“Shhh.” Quinn put a finger to her lips. “Listen,” he said. “Hear the sirens? Help is on the way.”

Tears pressed through the heavy makeup of Ayako’s clenched lashes. Wincing, she reached inside her shirt and retrieved the pink notebook. “Please,” she gasped, her voice barely audible. “Take . . . this.”

Her fingers left a red trail on the cover as she pressed it into his hand.

“I would have made a good wife,” she whispered.

“Yes, you would have,” Quinn said.

“I think this was my moment.” She coughed, beginning to shiver from shock and blood loss. She nodded toward the water. “Be careful of that one . . .” Ayako swallowed hard, gasping for air. “She is fierce, like her mother . .
.
”

Her face went slack and her hands fell away from her belly.

Police and medical support squealed onto the scene. Quinn returned Fujin to the scabbard and shoved it down the back of the collar of his jacket so it ran along his spine. There were already people tending to the wounded children, so Quinn got on the Blackbird and rode to the edge of the pier, scanning for any sign of the woman.

“Hey!” A voice called out in English behind him.

Quinn looked over his shoulder and felt his heart sink as he saw a familiar man approach.

“What brings you to Japan, Gus Bowen?”

“You know, looking for killers,” the deputy said, a raw edge to his voice. “Shit like that.” His hand was under his sport coat. If he had a gun, he didn’t show it.

“Maybe you came for a rematch on that fight.” Quinn turned, ignoring Bowen to keep his eyes on the line of squid boats that bobbed in the mist along the two sets of docks nearest the pier.

“No sport in that.” Bowen whistled. “You can barely stand up. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“I got things to do,” Quinn said.

“I saw what your friend did to save you.” Bowen’s voice was full of reverence. “Incredibly brave.”

Quinn shook his head, preferring not to discuss someone like Ayako Shimizu with anyone who didn’t know her.

“Come on, Jericho. You’re hurt. What do you say we let the Japanese deal with their own mess?”

“That’s the problem, Gus,” Quinn said. “This is my mess.”

Two piers over, the engine of a speedboat burbled to life. There had been an escape plan all along.

Bowen finally showed the pistol but he let it hang down by his side instead of aiming in. He stood, staring, mulling something over in his mind.

“Let’s go sort this all out,” he finally said, sounding flat and fatigued.

Quinn kept a hand on the throttle, ready to move. He’d seen Bowen shoot and didn’t want to try his hand at being a target. “Can you remember a telephone number?”

Bowen nodded, drilling holes with his eyes.

Quinn gave him Win Palmer’s personal line.

“Jericho.” Bowen frowned. “Don’t make me chase you. You know I will if I have to.”

“I’m not making you do anything.” Quinn revved the engine. “In fact, I’d just as soon you didn’t. Don’t forget that number.”

Quinn sped down the dock on the Blackbird, leaving Bowen, Hase, and the other responding law enforcement to take care of the wounded and terrified children.

August Bowen was about justice—not just the law. Had it been otherwise, he would have never let Quinn leave alive.

Sticky blood from the wound across his ribs matted his shirt to his chest. His head and back throbbed with a sickening ache that went well beyond his bones. But above all the cuts, breaks, and bruises, the deepest wound came from watching Ayako die.

Quinn poured on the gas, weaving in and out of traffic. With all the local authorities at the port, there was no one to try to stop him. He had no idea where he was going. It didn’t matter as long as it was far away. He’d never considered himself an emotional man. But now, physically broken and mentally exhausted to the point he could hardly keep the bike going in a straight line, he thought of what Ayako had done for him and sniffed back a tear. Never before had he felt so hopeless. Never had he been so close to giving up.

And then, he remembered her book.