25


Tokyo, Japan



July 12


Fumio Namaka watched the gaijin walk toward him.

In the glare of the perimeter floodlights and from a distance, he looked somehow smaller and slighter than when they had met in the Namaka Tower, but doubtless that was an illusion. The Irishman was wearing a dark suit, and that tended to reduce the impression of size. Or perhaps it was natural to imagine a much-hated enemy as larger than he really was.

The steel-gray hair and features were unmistakable. As he looked at Fitzduane, Fumio almost regretted the imminent arrival of the Yaibo helicopters. His anticipation of this man's death was fulfillment in itself. The actual execution would be almost an anticlimax.

"Namaka-san," said the gaijin. He had stopped about ten yards away. "It is good to see you," he said. "It is a long-deferred pleasure."

Fumio started. The voice was different, and the gaijin was speaking in Japanese! He did not know what, but something was definitely amiss.

He looked around uncertainly. Where before the garden had been empty, now heavily armed masked figures in black rubber suits and hoods were emerging from the pond like some nightmare of hell.

Within seconds, he was surrounded, his arms and legs pinioned, and he was rammed against one of the summer-house uprights. He felt cold steel against his wrists, and he realized that he had been handcuffed in place.

He could hear the distant whump-whump-whump of helicopters. It was not too late. There was still time.

The gaijin approached, put his face close to Fumio's, and as Fumio watched helplessly, the gaijin put his hand up and tore his own flesh from his skull.

Fumio gagged as gobbets of flesh and tissue and hair were torn away. And then came the sudden realization as the deformed face underneath appeared. His bowels turned to liquid and he could smell his own reeking fear.

"Katsuda," he whispered.

The hideous head nodded.

Pieces of artificial flesh still adhered to it, and the effect was to give a leprous, rotting look to Katsuda's features.

It looked as if the real flesh was also peeling away. The man seemed to be decaying in front of him.

"Your executioner," said Katsuda.

Fumio smelled the liquid before it was poured on him, and instantly he knew how he was going to die.

The noise of the helicopters was now overwhelming, and a split second later two black shapes appeared overhead and black ropes snaked down from one.

Katsuda stood well back and a frogman handed him a short cylinder. A moment later, it burst into brilliant pink light.

The burning flare arced through the air toward the screaming, struggling Fumio.


* * * * *


A distinctive black shape blocked out Fitzduane's vision and then settled in the front garden, and once again he could see Fumio Namaka and Katsuda.

Fitzduane had lost a few seconds and was not quite sure what was going on. He had seen the eruption of frogmen and Fumio being seized, but then had lost continuity.

As Fumio and Katsuda reemerged, he saw a flash of a pink flare and then Fumio erupted into flame. He, the summer house, and the ground around him must have been saturated in something like high-octane gas or charcoal lighter fuel, because the explosion of flame was startlingly violent. A searing white flame shot into the sky, and within split seconds the thatch had caught and was burning with extraordinary ferocity.

"Al, take Katsuda now," said Fitzduane deliberately. "Chifune, focus on the frogmen. Fire at will."

Katsuda spread his arms and, fists clenched, shouted up into the sky to celebrate his triumph."

Now he was THE kuromaku.

Lonsdale took first pressure on the Barrett trigger. Katsuda already filled the reticule of his telescopic sight.

"Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!" Katsuda shouted, oblivious to the gun battle that had erupted between his frogmen and Fumio's terrorists, who had arrived too late to save their master.

Lonsdale gently squeezed the trigger. The .50 round, developed originally in World War I to destroy tanks, caught Katsuda in the upper torso and exploded, blowing his heart, rib cage, lungs, and spine into bloody fragments and the rest of his body into the flames where Fumio Namaka's body spat and flared in the vicious heat.

The two enemies burned together.

The first Huey landed in the largest clear space available, the front garden between the well and the blazing summer house.

The Huey had a nearly fifty-foot rotor diameter and the second helicopter made no attempt to touch down. Instead, it hovered about twenty feet up.

Four figures rappelled down ropes, and other terrorists remained in the cabin, shooting at targets of opportunity.

Chifune was firing rapidly.

Three frogmen had dropped in as many seconds, but then the survivors headed for cover and her rate of fire slowed as she sought out targets.

One frogman hunkered behind a man-height stone lantern carved from volcanic rock, but the .300 Magnum round cut effortlessly through it and through the man hiding on the other side.

A second man had made it to the pool and was under six inches of water when the round seared through the back of his skull.

In Chifune's opinion, the effectiveness of the airship operation was severely hindered by the agreed-upon restrictions of firepower, but the rules of the hunt were quite specific. They were over a densely populated city. Automatic-weapons fire, whether machine gun or grenade launcher, was out. The Spider had been adamant. It was a minor miracle the Barrett had not been prohibited, too. The .50 round could penetrate brick, stone, or plate steel and had been known to cut through six wooden houses. A loose round could take out a complete sushi bar counter and give a whole new meaning to the term ‘friendly fire.’

Fitzduane assessed the situation below. It was getting time to hand over to the Spider and his people. The airship had limited objectives. It was a superb observation platform and had given them the crucial element of surprise, but now it was only a matter of time before someone looked up. That would not have mattered before the helicopters arrived on the scene, but now the situation could get unhealthy.

The airship could do just over seventy miles an hour if wind conditions were favorable. The Huey was rated at around a hundred and thirty. True, the rates of climb under power were around the same, with the airship, ironically, having a slight edge, but when it came to maneuverability, there was no comparison. The Huey won hands down. The issue of which aircraft presented the better target scarcely bore contemplation. It was nearly time to bug out.

"Spider-san" said Fitzduane. His mind was on protocol.

The Deputy Superintendent-General and his attendant staff looked at the loudspeaker in his mobile command vehicle in a state of shock.

"Gaijin" he muttered under his breath. "What do foreign barbarians know about good manners!" His staff looked at each other with smiles of relief. The Spider had just defused a potentially serious case of loss of face. Honor was restored.

The Spider keyed the microphone. "Fitzduane-san," he said in acknowledgment.

"We're going to try and take out the helicopter on the ground," said Fitzduane, "and then we're getting the hell out of here. Engaging the second Huey is too dangerous unless you want central Tokyo shot up. I just hope the other side feels the same way."

"Affirmative," said the Spider. "We'll move in thirty seconds." He gave the orders, and the inner ring of armed riot police spearheaded by armored cars roared toward the Hodama residence.

"Al, go for the engine and fuel tanks of the grounded Huey," said Fitzduane. "Chifune, try for the pilot. I don't want that bird flying."

Lonsdale knew that the .50 could pierce the Huey with ease, but it was another matter of hitting a vital spot. He focused on the turbine engine under the rotor and methodically fired five rounds. He was certain he had hit, but the explosive armor-piercing ammunition seemed to have no effect. With horror, he saw the helicopter begin to lift off, and fired until his magazine was empty.

Beside him, Chifune rapid-fired an entire magazine of .300 Magnum at the pilot.

The Huey rose about fifteen feet, then half-rolled and smashed into the still-burning summer house. Seconds later, there was a series of explosions as the fuel tanks, ignited by the exploding .50 and the surrounding flames, blew up.

The leading police armored car smashed through into the locked double gates and rolled forward, its machine gun chattering.

More armored cars moved in and gave covering fire, while en entry team of kidotai in helmets and body armor moved in on foot.

The terrorists on the ground fought till they died.

Katsuda's surviving yakuza in their frogmen's suits raised their hands.


* * * * *


Reiko Oshima, the leader of Yaibo was in the copilot's seat of the airborne Huey when Lonsdale fired, and she saw the holes of the .50 as they punched through the engine compartment of the landed helicopter.

The significance of the direction of fire was immediately apparent.

"UP AND EVADE!" she creamed into her microphone. "UNLESS YOU WANT US ALL TO GET BARBECUED LIKE THAT OTHER IDIOT. GET THE FUCK UP. WE'RE TAKING FIRE FROM ABOVE."

Startled both by Oshima's screaming and by the explosions in front of him from the other helicopter, the pilot was overheavy on the foot pedals and the Huey's tail wagged from side to side in what was known as the "Huey Shuffle."

He recovered and then banked the machine away from the combat and climbed at maximum revs for his life.

Beside him, Oshima scanned the sky for the source of fire. She was looking for a police or army helicopter, so she initially disregarded the airship. She could see nothing, and that was not believable, because an official helicopter would not leave the scene while all hell was breaking loose below.

She knew how official minds worked when airborne. They liked to buzz around and report things and follow procedure. If there was a police unit up there, any moment some uniformed idiot with a microphone was going to fly alongside and ask her to surrender and she was going to blow his interfering brains out and send his machine in flames down on top of the Ginza. That was the way these people thought and acted. She had been outmaneuvering them for years.

Could it be the airship? She had never remotely considered the airship in the past — it was just part of the sky over Tokyo, like clouds in the rainy season, and it had never entered her thinking one way or another — but now she focused on the huge floating structure as it receded into the distance.

It was inconceivable that the Tokyo cops would actually think of firing down into an area of the city which housed some of the most exclusive residences in Tokyo, but she had temporarily forgotten to factor in the gaijin Fitzduane. He had already demonstrated a flair for the daring and unorthodox. An aerial ambush from the airship would be exactly the kind of tactic he would employ.

A shiver of anticipation ran through her as she thought of the significance of the mayhem in Hodama's gardens.

The gaijin was still alive.

She had caught a brief glimpse of Namaka as they had flown in, but there had been no sign of Fitzduane.

He should have been there. He was the bait. But was it not more likely that, having baited the trap, he would withdraw and watch events play out from a safer location? The gaijin was daring and clearly did not lack courage, but he was no fool.

Suddenly, Fitzduane's plan became clear to her. He had used the strengths of his opponents against each other and he had been not only the bait but the catalyst of their destruction. Fumio Namaka, normally so farseeing and cautious, had been blinded by his obsession with the destruction of his brother's killer. Katsuda had been impelled by his desire for revenge against the Namakas and his ambition to become the new kuromaku. Who knew what other elements were involved? And worst of all, her own organization had committed its full strength out of obligation to the Namakas and had been caught in the trap.

The full realization of how they had all been outmaneuvered by this foreign barbarian filled her with gall. But if her analysis was correct, it also meant that Fitzduane was in the airship. He had achieved complete tactical surprise, like a hunter concealed on high in a tree hide, but his main defense had lain in remaining undetected. And clearly he had not fully considered the possibility of his prey being airborne too.

Oshima felt confidence in her judgment restored. It had been her idea to use the two stolen Japanese Defense Forces helicopters. Several Yaibo members had received helicopter training in Libya, ironically from North Vietnamese instructors using captured Hueys. For some time, she had seen the relevance of air power in terrorist operations and saw nor reason why the authorities should have a monopoly on air mobility and firepower.

The roles were now reversed. The hunter in his hide would now be the hunted. And the airship would be a hard target to miss.

This time Yaibo would have the high ground.

Oshima pointed toward the receding airship. It was already several miles away. They had lost time looking for a police helicopter, but they would soon make it up. The Huey, she knew, was much faster than that huge bag of gas.

"Pursue the airship," she said, "and maneuver so that we can attack from above. They won't be able to see us and they won't be able to shoot back. And hurry. I want that craft downed right over the city."

The propaganda significance of destroying such a large and visible symbol of authority over Japan's capital city would be immense.

The pilot increased power, and the Huey sped above the neon-lit city toward a target they could not miss.


* * * * *


"Fitzduane-san," said the Spider. "Radar confirmed by visual observation reports that our airship is being pursued by a helicopter." There was a pause. "Two helicopters were reported stolen by the JDF five days ago. We regret — but we have every reason to suspect terrorist action."

"Roger that," said Fitzduane, who was thinking.

The Spider's voice was urgent. "You may well be attacked, Fitzduane-san," he said, "but I would ask you to remember the rules of engagement. There must be NO civilian casualties. Whatever the provocation, you must not return fire over Tokyo. Evade and escape, Fitzduane-san, but do not open fire."

"How long do we have before the Yaibo chopper gets within range?" said Fitzduane.

"Two to three minutes minimum," said the Spider. "Maybe longer. And they may never attack. But it is important you be warned."

"Out," said Fitzduane. The world now divided into his team and the rest, but there was one member he did not know too well. He went to sit beside the pilot. The inspector-san looked scarcely out of diapers, but most Japanese looked young for their age. In a few words, he told him the situation.

The pilot grimaced and turned to Fitzduane. "Colonel-san," he said. "I have been trained in all normal aspects of airship operation, but this ship is not a fighter." He paused for half a beat and then spoke again. "But I will do whatever can be done."

Fitzduane had initially thought the pilot looked about eight. He revised his opinion after sitting closer. Close up, the kid was undeniably over fifteen. To have achieved the rank of police inspector, he was clearly on the fast track.

"Inspector-san," he said. "Where did you go to university?"

"Todai," said the pilot proudly. All roads let to and from TokyoUniversity.

"Well, that's all right, then," said Fitzduane cheerfully.

The pilot turned and looked at this lunatic gaijin blankly.

"You move and shake when I tell you, Inspector-san," said Fitzduane. "It's kind of like lateral thinking, only different. No looping the loop of Immelman turns. Just a couple of sexy maneuvers at exactly the right time. Understand?"

The inspector-pilot-san still looked puzzled, until Fitzduane spoke for about twenty seconds. Then realization dawned and his face lit up. "Ah so!" he said with enthusiasm.

Fitzduane looked genuinely pleased. "I always wanted to hear someone say that," he said.


* * * * *


The Yaibo helicopter was a scant hundred yards away from the airship, but slightly above and behind.

The gondola was below and out of sight. They could see the airship and could get so close they could almost reach out and touch it, but the airship crew in the gondola below could not see them.

The enemy was blind.

"Open fire. Empty your magazines," said Oshima, and two AK-47s and five 9mm submachine guns crackled into action.

The Huey was flying with both doors open, but still the noise was deafening. Cartridge cases cascaded out of the automatic weapons, bounced off the cabin floor, and then slid into the neon-lit glow of the darkness to fall two thousand feet to the city below.

Three hundred full-metal-jacketed rounds penetrated the sausage-shaped balloon of the airship in under ten seconds.

Helium gas began to leak from the holes.


* * * * *


Turbines whining, a flight of JDF Super-Cobra gunships on full military power climbed into the night sky over Atsugi and headed toward the airship.

"ETA ten — one zero — minutes," said the Spider. There was no acknowledgment. "Gunships will rendezvous in ten — one zero — minutes," he repeated.

Static came back at him. In midcommunication, the airship had gone suddenly silent.


* * * * *


"Bloody hell," said Fitzduane, with some understandable irritation, as the radio in front of him shattered in a cloud of sparks.

The rounds, judging by the angle of entry, were coming from above and the rear. Before striking their communications, the fire must have punched through the double polyester coating of the envelope twice on its way in and out and then through the Kevlar-reinforced plastic of the gondola itself.

He had hoped that such a combination would have stopped the light automatic fire normally used by terrorists, but he was being disabused. He was learning more and more about airships and modern firepower in a hurry. Frankly, he did not object to the acquisition of this information as such — he rather liked airships — but the manner of learning left a great deal to be desired.

The back of his hand oozed blood from an encounter with a piece of razor-sharp plastic blasted out of the casing by the bullets, and he sucked the wound. A cut about an inch and a half long was revealed.

All in all, they were being very lucky. The terrorists had been shooting at them for well over a minute, he estimated but so far nothing too vital had been struck.

Yaibo was discovering the hard way that scoring hits on something as large as an airship was not the same as doing it damage. True, they were losing the gas that kept them up, but the bullet holes were so small in relation to the overall size of the envelope that it was going to take some time before all of the lift was affected. Fitzduane had heard that pilots in World War I had had much the same problem with German zeppelins before the incendiary had been invented. On the other hand zeppelins were allowed to shoot back.

Fitzduane looked down. They were just crossing the coastline. TokyoBay lay straight ahead. Lots of nice water in case they had to touch down in a hurry, and better yet, no Tokyo citizenry.

"Any sign of the bat out of hell?" he said into his headset microphone. There was a fighting chance the intercom was still working, and he wanted to give the pilot-san some moral support while he could.

"He's still up top," said Lonsdale. There were more thuds on the top of the gondola roof, and dimples appeared in the ceiling. "The way I figure it, they're using a mixture of 9mm and AK-47, and only the AK stuff is getting through."

"Well, that's very interesting, Al," said Fitzduane dryly. "How about you, Chifune?"

"They're going to figure out soon they should be firing at the gondola, Hugo," said Chifune. "Or at least at the engines."

"We're entering a free-fire zone," said Fitzduane, then added a qualification. "Well, Al providing you point your elephant gun away from Tokyo, what is that thing's range?"

"Unaimed, about eight miles," said Lonsdale proudly.

Fitzduane winced, but said nothing. He had followed the Spider's rules, but now that they were over the sea it was going to be a matter of self-preservation. Time to play ball.

"DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!" he said to the pilot with absolute urgency. "MAX POWER! MAX ANGLE! POUR IT ON!"

The pilot thrust the control wheel forward and the airship headed toward the murky waters below. The lights of several ships could be seen. The crews were going to have some unexpected free entertainment. He just hoped they had enough sense to keep their heads down.

The terrorist helicopter suddenly appeared on their right, the side marked by Lonsdale, and started to slow down to match their speed and riddle the gondola at point-blank range. At first when the airship had dived, Oshima had thought the Yaibo fire had achieved a mortal hit, but then she had realized that either way it made sense to make sure. The airship was not going to crash into the city as she would have wished, but its destruction would still be a major victory.

There was a thundering series of explosions as Lonsdale rapid-fired a complete ten-round magazine from the Barrett at the terrorists crowding the open doors of the helicopter flying beside them. In turn, automatic fire smashed into the gondola.

The helicopter was only sixty yards away. Through his telescopic sight, Lonsdale saw the expressions on the faces of two of the terrorists as the huge 750-grain explosive bullets punched into them.

There were vivid flashes as the .50 shells ignited and holes appeared in the cabin and windows of the Huey, but still it flew on. The damn things had been shot down by the thousands in the Vietnam War, but this one and its crew were bloody tough.

A body fell from the helicopter and plummeted into the sea below.

A split second later, the Huey peeled away and vanished into the darkness. The encounter had taken just a few seconds.

Chifune had taken a 9mm round in her upper right arm just as she was turning to add her firepower to Lonsdale's, and the shock and impact made her stagger against the cabin wall, the .300 Magnum dropping for her hands.

Fitzduane turned ashen as he saw her, and for the briefest of moments he saw her and felt her naked in his arms as they had made love.

He leaped from his position beside the pilot and helped her to a seat. A brief examination revealed that the wound was not serious, and he quickly bound it, conscious that he was perhaps hurting her but there was no time. He kissed her on the forehead briefly and picked up her weapon and checked the magazine. Chifune smiled weakly at him. She was still in some shock.

The airship had now leveled off and was flying so low, they passed a huge oil tanker heading in the opposite direction toward Tokyo and found the gondola was actually lower than the bridge of the ship.

The watch crew stared openmouthed as the vast black shape appeared to head straight toward them, then flashed by their port side at a combined speed of around eighty miles an hour. As the watch commander remarked afterward, he had heard of the Flying Dutchman but this was ridiculous. For a few seconds, the scale of the airship made him think he was going to by rammed by some flying supertanker.

Fitzduane was now focusing on the left observation windows, while Lonsdale covered the right.

The helicopter had attacked them from above and the side. Both attacks had been of limited effectiveness, but he expected the next attack to be roughly level with the gondola and from the rear. That was the airship's most vulnerable remaining blind spot, in his opinion. The Huey could not get underneath them, because they were flying so low, and a head-on pass would not allow enough time to bring adequate power to bear.

There was no practical defense against an attack from the rear. The airship's visibility was all on the sides and to the front. The rear of the gondola housed the engines, and they were enclosed in a windowless compartment. In some ways, Fitzduane was surprised that the terrorists had not attacked there immediately, but then they would not be so intimate with the airship's structure, and on-the-job training tended to be mostly trial and error. But he had an uncomfortable feeling that Yaibo was learning fast.

"Colonel-san," shouted the pilot. Fitzduane had taken off his headset to go to Chifune's aid, and now the pilot had twisted around in his seat and was shouting at him. All the observation windows were open to facilitate firing, and the roar of the engines at full speed filled the gondola.

Fitzduane made his way to the front and leaned over to hear the pilot.

"Fitzduane-san," said the pilot urgently. If we are to be successful with out maneuver, WE MUST LOSE WEIGHT."

There was the crack of the Barrett as Lonsdale leaned precariously out of the window and tried to fire to their rear. "Hugo, they're maneuvering behind us," he said. "Sling a harness around me and I'll try and have another go. I can do it."

Fitzduane considered for a moment and tried to imagine Al's line of fire shooting backwards. It could work for a shot or two, but all the Huey would have to do would be to maneuver slightly and it would be out of range again.

He looked hard at Lonsdale. They'd already discussed another option, but Al's harness idea had certainly been worth considering.

He discarded it. "We stick with Plan B," he said. "Pilot-san wants more lift, so when I give the word, we dump everything we can. The we should have an opportunity, and we'd better not miss."

Lonsdale grinned. "This is a very crazy tactic," he said, "but then you're a very crazy man."

Fitzduane smiled. "Let's go to it."

"Mike Bergin and the dead pilot too?" said Lonsdale.

Fitzduane hesitated for a moment, and then there was a banging sound from the rear as the attacking Huey fired at them. He knew the time had come to finish it, and noble gestures would be of scant worth if the terrorists had their way. On the other hand...

"Not unless we have to," he said. He turned to the pilot. "NOW!" he shouted.

The pilot switched both engines to vertical thrust and at the same time activated the control that dumped half a ton of water from the ballast tanks in the gondola.

Simultaneously, Fitzduane and Lonsdale pushed the bodies of Schwanberg and Chuck Palmer out the door. Other heavy items followed.

Modern airships flew ‘heavy.’ That meant they got around ninety percent of their lift from the helium contained in the envelope and the remaining lift from the aerodynamics of the envelope and the engines. That combination made the airship easier to control and to land without bleeding off expensive helium. The normal rate of climb was based on that heavy configuration.

The dumping of the ballast and the bodies changed the equation dramatically.

The airship, within a few seconds relieved of over 2,000 pounds of weight, was suddenly lighter than air. Further, the rotation of the two Porsche engines meant that thrust was now vertical and not forward.

The airship shot skyward and slowed. Within seconds it was above and behind and slightly to the right of the terrorist helicopter.

Fitzduane and Lonsdale, resting their weapons on the sills of the open observation windows, had near-perfect firing positions. Magnum and Barrett cracked simultaneously. Both men fired precision shots until their magazines were empty, then took fresh magazines from Chifune and reloaded.

The Yaibo helicopter had reacted with surprising speed, and was just attempting to climb and turn when the first rounds plowed into it.

The pilot's incomplete maneuver had actually placed it in an even more vulnerable position. The full diameter was exposed as it reared up, and through the circling blades the marksmen had a perfect view of the engine and where the fuel tanks were located.

A .50 Barrett round caught one of the rotor blades near the hub and shattered it, spinning the aircraft helplessly out of control. A fraction of a second later, one of the fuel tanks blew and ignited the others.

There were high explosives aboard. They were a Yaibo trademark. The puttylike blocks were stable against rifle fire, but the exploding rounds of the Barrett acted like detonators.

There was the searing white flame of a violent explosion, and the Huey blew apart a moment before it hit the water. The blast rocked the airship.

And then there was no trace that the helicopter had ever existed, except for a thin smear of bloodstained oil and floating fragments of human flesh.


Загрузка...