The Rising Sea

8

As the glass shattered, Kurt lunged forward, tackling Kenzo over the back of the heavy desk. From the corner of his eye he noticed Paul and Gamay diving for cover. He never saw Joe, who’d stepped in front of the bouncing projectile, caught it bare-handed like a second baseman and hurled it back in the direction it had come.

The grenade made a second hole in the glass and exploded on the far side. An incendiary device, it was powerful enough to kill anyone in close proximity but designed primarily to spread fire and jellified gasoline. It flared like the sun, shattering every window in the atrium and unleashing a rain of molten liquid and broken glass.

As the crystal tones of falling glass subsided, they heard the roar of motorboats on the lake. Almost immediately, sporadic gunshots were fired.

Kurt helped their host to a sitting position. “Your castle is under siege, Master Kenzo.”

“Why?” Kenzo blurted out. “By whom?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“My acolytes will defend us,” Kenzo said proudly.

The gunfire told Kurt they were going to face a stiff challenge. “Only if they’ve got something better than swords and catapults to fight with.”

“What about this?” Joe said, standing by the old Gatling gun. “Do you have ammunition for it?”

“A few boxes.”

Joe released the brake, put his shoulder into the frame and wheeled the old weapon toward the window.

“Anything else?” Kurt asked.

“We have a cannon in the tower.”

“That won’t be much use against speedboats,” Kurt said. Looking around, he spied a crossbow and a flight of iron-tipped darts sitting on a shelf. “Get Joe the ammunition,” he told Kenzo. “And keep your head down.”

Kurt went to the wall, switched off the lights and grabbed the crossbow from the shelf. By now, Paul and Gamay had reappeared. Paul had a spear in his hand. Gamay was holding a mace. There was something wrapped around the handle, but Kurt didn’t have time to ask.

“You two stay here,” he said. “If things get out of control, make your way to the garage, but don’t lower the drawbridge unless you have no other choice.”

“Where are you going?” Gamay asked.

Kurt slung the quiver of darts over his back. “To the tower,” he said. “Someone needs to take the high ground.”

As Kurt rushed out of the room, Kenzo arrived beside Joe with two boxes of ammunition. Taking cover as random potshots hit around them, Joe opened the boxes. He was happy to see that the shells were modern loads and not the same vintage as the gun.

“Where did you get these?”

“We had them made by an old gunsmith.”

“Let’s hope he does quality work.”

Joe emptied the box of shells into the hopper, grabbed the crank and angled the gun downward.

Turning the crank with a smooth motion, he got the barrels to rotate. The shells were drawn in and a half turn later began punching holes in the night. Joe turned the weapon slowly and smoothly, not wanting to use up too much ammunition too quickly.

“Lower,” Kenzo said.

Joe tilted the weapon down and fired again, as the entire room filled with a cloud of blue smoke.

Kurt was halfway across the parapet when the first stuttering shots from the Gatling gun sounded. Glancing back, he saw gun smoke billowing out of the window. Down below, a spread of bullets stitched a line in the water and across the bow of one of the speedboats.

The driver gunned the throttle, turned the wheel and sped off into the dark. At the same time, another boat moved forward, one gunman on the bow pouring suppressing fire into the atrium while a second man readied a grenade.

With sustained cover fire hitting the building, the Gatling gun went silent. Joe had been forced undercover, but Kurt had a shot. He rose up, aimed the crossbow over the wall and pulled the trigger.

The arms of the old weapon snapped forward and the bolt flew with surprising ease, but its feathers were warped from years of sitting around. It went off course, diving and turning like a badly thrown curveball. Instead of hitting the man in the chest, it plunged through his foot.

He cried out in pain and dropped the grenade. He stretched for it and shouted, but his foot was nailed to the fiberglass. His shouts were cut off as the boat erupted in flames.

Men in one of the other boats spotted Kurt and began firing his way. He dropped down behind the thick embattlements and listened as the shells pinged off the stone behind him.

“One down, three to go.”

Joe was on the floor, taking cover, when the explosion flared outside. He crawled to the window to get a look.

The speedboats were making high-speed runs now. Strafing the castle walls and peeling back.

He manned his gun and tried to hit them, but the old weapon was too heavy and too hard to maneuver to track the boats successfully. He fired, shouldered the gun into a new position and then fired again. Just as he reached for the second box of ammunition, the last speedboat raced out of view.

“Are they moving off?” Kenzo asked.

“Not off,” Joe said. “To the other side of the island.”

Almost immediately, the shooting began again. This time, from the far side of the castle.

“Now might be a good time to call the authorities?” Joe suggested.

“We don’t have phones.”

“Use the radio.”

Kenzo ran over to the old shortwave, tested the microphone and then switched to a channel used by Japan’s emergency services.

“This is Seven… Jay… Three… X-ray… X-ray… Zulu…” he began, using his officially licensed ham radio designation. “Request emergency police assistance. Armed men are attacking us. Repeat. Armed men are attacking us…”

They received no response. Nothing but static.

“The antenna,” Kenzo replied, pointing toward the shattered windows. “It’s out there.”

“Keep trying,” Joe said. “We can’t hold them off forever.”

As if to prove the point, a grappling hook flew over the wall and lodged with a metallic clang.

Joe realigned the Gatling gun and waited. The hook shimmied back and forth and a man appeared at the top. He climbed over the wall and crouched as a second man arrived. Joe raised the barrels and pushed the crank forward. The handle moved half an inch and then jammed.

Back and forth didn’t free it, and Joe had no idea how to clear the old gun.

Out on the wall, two more attackers appeared. “Time to go,” Joe said. “We’re about to be flanked.”

Kurt crossed the dry moat and made it back to the main building, where he found a stairway. He rushed up three flights and came up on the third floor of the pagoda. As he stepped from the shadows, a sword flashed through the air toward his head. He ducked at the last second and the blade cut a chunk out of the wall behind him.

Surging toward the attacker and using the crossbow as a battering ram, he found himself colliding with Akiko. He tackled her to the ground.

“Mr. Austin,” she said.

“Careful where you swing that thing,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were one of them.”

He let her up and she stepped back, holding the sword tightly.

Kurt noticed she was now wearing a vest of loose metal plates held together by laced twine. “I see you’ve changed for the occasion.”

“I am the armorer,” she said. “I must protect Kenzo.”

She went to brush past, but Kurt grabbed her arm. “My friends are with Kenzo. They’ll protect him. Take me up to the tower; we need to take the high ground. From there, we can keep their men off the walls.”

“This way.”

She turned on her heels, pulled open a door and dashed up another flight of stairs. Kurt followed, surprised by how quickly she moved in the heavy vest.

They reached the top and broke out onto a platform that covered the highest level of the tower. The small antipersonnel cannon was there, along with bags of powder and a neatly packed pyramid of iron cannonballs. As much as Kurt wanted to fire it, the cannon was too bulky to be helpful. He ignored it and stepped to the rail with the crossbow in hand.

From this height, he could see most of the castle grounds below. The situation looked grim. “They’ve made it over the wall,” he said, noticing three groups of men moving about.

When one group appeared in the open, Kurt loosed a bolt at them, hitting the leader in the thigh. As the man fell, Kurt placed the crossbow on the ground to reload and Akiko stepped forward with a longbow in her hand.

She let the arrow fly and knocked a second man in a flash before adjusting her aim and firing again. Both shots hit their targets. One man fell where he stood, the other dropped his weapon and lumbered for cover as Akiko took aim once more.

The third arrow sung as she released it, but the target had ducked behind an out-jutting wall and the lethal projectile caromed harmlessly off the stone. Still, he was injured and that group of attackers would have no choice but to retreat.

“Save some of them for me,” Kurt joked.

She didn’t sense the humor. “Unfortunately, we have plenty of enemies left to fight.”

Seeming to prove the point, an assault rifle began hammering away, shells splintering the wood above them and pinging off the heavy iron bell.

Kurt and Akiko dropped to the ground and took cover in the center of the platform as additional gunfire came in from the other side.

“We’re caught in a cross fire,” Kurt said, as he crawled toward the rail and risked a look. “They’ve taken cover behind the wall. Might be time to break out that cannon after all.”

Before they could do more, a muffled explosion, followed by a whoosh of flames and smoke, rumbled on the far side.

“Molotov cocktail,” she said.

“Without oysters or caviar,” Kurt said, “just uncivilized.”

Down below, tongues of auburn flame licked at the edges of the pagoda and began snaking their way up toward its crown. The ancient wood was bone dry and lacquered in oil-based paint. Dark and noxious fumes billowed upward. The fire would soon follow.

“We need to get out of here,” Kurt said.

“You said we needed to take the high ground.”

“That was before the high ground became a barbeque.”

Kurt urged her forward and the two of them ran down the stairs only to find the door stuck. Kurt put a shoulder to it but it wouldn’t budge.

“There’s something up against it,” Akiko said, looking through a small window at the top.

Kurt stepped back, preparing to charge forward and hit it like a battering ram. But before he could move, a salvo of bullets punctured the wooden door from the other side.

Kurt plastered himself against the stairs and avoided being hit, but Akiko took two shots to the chest and fell backward.

Kurt rushed forward, shoved the crossbow through the small window at the top of the door and aimed it downward before pulling the trigger.

A shout of pain came from the other side of the door. It was followed by breaking glass and erupting flames of another Molotov cocktail. Flickering orange light visible through the window told him the room outside was on fire, all the beautiful tapestries and old furniture.

Staying low in case another wave of bullets came through, Kurt crawled to Akiko. She lay on her side, grabbing her midsection. She wasn’t bleeding and Kurt noticed a web of Kevlar beneath the ancient metal plating.

“I was wondering why you bothered to put that on,” he said. “Apparently, not all technology is bad.”

She forced a painful grin. “We have to get out. This won’t protect us from the smoke…”

“Can you stand?”

“I think so,” she said, getting to her feet and then doubling over almost as quickly.

She began to cough and Kurt could feel the irritation building in his own lungs. He needed to find another way out and he needed to find it fast. He glanced back up the stairs, took a deep breath and ran into the thickening smoke.