Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 02]

by Fire in a Faraway Place (epub)

  THE REMAINING SPARROWS REACHED TOKYO TWO HOURS LATER,

  dodging utility wires along the way.

  “Is that the Imperial Palace?” Corporal Markus Alariesto asked from the rear seat of the lead aircraft. Alariesto had spent eight years in Thomas’s reconnaissance platoon. Although his mind registered how impossible it was to see the tiny, partially translucent plane, he still felt naked under the glare of the city’s lights as they passed the recently restored Tokyo Tower.

  His pilot, Kokovtsov, nodded and continued to fly in the direction of the USS Building. The rumble of the traffic and the subway trains overwhelmed the quiet hum of his engine and its efficient scimitar-shaped prop.

  Lieutenant Thomas was flying right behind Kokovtsov in a second Sparrow. The best shot in Vereshchagin’s battalion, Thomas was also one of its best pilots. Orienting on the Imperial Palace complex and the tall, triangular National Police Headquarters with its queer little turret, Thomas found the broad Sakurada-dori crowded with pedestrians and flew parallel to it. Guiding on the green of Hibaya Park to his right and the Imperial Diet Building on his left, he found the cross-street that was the Kasumigaseki, the heart of official Tokyo, and drifted toward his target, with the third and fourth Sparrows following him.

  The massive bulk of Tokyo’s Central Station loomed to the northeast, only partly concealed by the tall buildings in between. As Thomas watched, a tilt-rotor took off from one of the heliports at the far end.

  Slowing his craft and turning into the wind over the Ministry of International Trade and Industry building, Thomas angled the flaps and the blades of the propeller so that the little plane actually hovered a few centimeters above the roof of the thirty-story building. In the rear of the aircraft, Superior Private “Abdullah” Salchow carefully opened the panel between his legs and lowered his rucksack and the cylinder strapped to it onto the roof, then he gingerly lowered his body after it.

  As Salchow shifted his weight from the plane to the building, Thomas skillfully adjusted to keep the aircraft almost completely motionless. When Salchow let go and crouched down, Thomas lifted up and away along the Kasumigaseki in the direction of the New Akasaki Prince.

  Across the street, a similar operation was taking place on the saddle between the two built-up ends of the sleek new Finance Ministry. A few moments later, the fourth Sparrow deposited a recon team member on the roof of the Education Ministry a few blocks away.

  On MITI’s roof, Salchow laid down a sensor net and carefully studied his readings for alarms. Finding none, he identified the piping for the overpressure air system that protected the building against chemical and biological attack. Delicately, he carved himself an access hole with his diamond-tipped cutting bar and lowered himself into the building, pulling the bulky gas cylinder behind him.

  Working in almost complete darkness with the aid of his night-vision glasses, Salchow patched the hole he had made in the roof. Then he cut open one of the ventilation pipes, inserted the cylinder, set the timer on it, and resealed the cut he had made.

  Finding a small equipment closet, he pried it open and made himself comfortable for the night, jamming the lock shut so that no one could enter.

  A kilometer and a half farther northeast, hard by Tokyo Station, Kokovtsov deposited Alariesto on the sloping granite top of the USS Building. There, Alariesto encountered difficulty. The roof itself was impenetrable to the tools he carried, and a door built into the side of the roof was securely locked and thoroughly wired to sound an alarm. The nearest windows were ten meters down. Alariesto let a coil of thin composite rope fixed to his belt trickle through his fingers and shuddered at the thought of trying to dangle himself off the roof and cut his way in.

  He spoke into his wrist mount. “Recon point two. Break. Alariesto here. Coconut, I got problems. Get ready to pick me up if something goes wrong.”

  “Okay. Kokovtsov out.”

  Bending, Alariesto sent a short pulse of energy into the door frame to try to neutralize the alarm. Then he carefully began cutting around the frame. Suddenly, the sensors he had laid began lighting.

  “Recon point two. Break. Coconut, I’ve got to abort. Pick me up.”

  “Okay. Kokovtsov out.”

  Alariesto carefully folded his sensors and staffed them into his belt. While he had no doubt that he could kill every guard in the building, a few missing guards would arouse a certain amount of suspicion in the morning.

  Getting off, however, was a problem in itself. Landing and taking off a small fixed-wing aircraft from a sloping roof of a building is normally not considered an insurable risk, and it wasn’t something they had planned on trying.

  “Hope the wind holds,” Kokovtsov said to himself as he pointed his Sparrow’s nose into the wind. He adjusted his flaps and altered the angle on his propeller, gently settling on to the roof a few meters away from Alariesto.

  Adjusting the rucksack and gas cylinder on his back, Alariesto gripped the ridge of the roof with the climbing spikes on his hands and crawled to Kokovtsov. As he opened the entry panel to the rear seat from underneath, a sudden breeze stirred the plane, and Kokovtsov fought to keep it in place.

  Alariesto cautiously climbed inside, telling Kokovtsov what he was doing so that Kokovtsov could adjust to the changing weight. The plane sank gradually until Kokovtsov’s left wheel was touching. Then Alariesto shut the panel behind him, and

  Kokovtsov changed the angle on his flaps and lifted, almost flying backward for a second before drifting off into the night.

  Several moments later, the building’s guards poked their heads out to check the roof. With his partner to hold his feet, the taller of the two cautiously crawled out to look. As he crawled back inside, his partner laughed and said, “Night birds.” Hovering a few blocks away, Alariesto called Coldewe. “Assault point one. Break. Alariesto here. Captain Hans, I aborted the USS Building. The place is wired and tough to break in. Request permission to refuel and try again. Over.” “Coldewe here. You trip the alarm, Marcus?”

  “Yes, sir. But they checked it out, and even if I trip another alarm, the guards will think that it’s a bad circuit.” “Kokovtsov, what do you say?”

  Kokovtsov was listening in. “Wind’s beginning to die down. If I have to pull him off again, it’ll be a problem.”

  “We’re also starting to run short on time before daylight. Request denied, Marcus. Come on in. We’ll let Raul take it out in ‘Speedy.’ Coldewe out.”

  The last of the four Sparrows heading for New Akasaki Prince Hotel, Koskela touched down lightly on the dance floor and coasted to a stop near the bar where Coldewe had his communications equipment unobtrusively set up. Soe was already helping the other pilots to refuel their planes from the bladders and drape them in lightweight tarpaulins.

  “We’re rooming in 3440 and 3442 on the top floor,” Coldewe told them. “So go inside and sack out. Marcus, you’re going to help Soe out tomorrow, so I’ll let him brief you.”

  Before going to sleep, Coldewe and Soe carefully hung out “Do Not Disturb” signs inscribed in seven languages.

  Shoto Ward, Tokyo

  DEKE DE KANTZOW’S TEAM, RIDING ONE OF THE TWO EIGHT-

  passenger minivans, had two night missions in Shoto, an exclusive section of Tokyo filled with old and very stately homes. At 3:30, he halted at 1-23-15 Shoto, and his engineer, Ketlinsky, slipped out the back.

  Staring at the huge house for a moment, Ketlinsky rubbed his nose in silent reflection. Then he temporarily disabled the house’s motion sensors and disappeared into the shrubbery near the front door. De Kantzow circled around to pick him up a few minutes later as he was stepping back to critically appraise his handiwork.

  At 4:00, de Kantzow stopped his minivan in front of an even larger home at 1-16-32 Shoto where he and five men dressed as blacklegs slipped out and stealthily invaded the residence. Disabling four security systems and immobilizing two guards, they found their quarry asleep in bed with his mistress.

  Private Dirkie R
ousseaux shone a light in the man’s face and poked the barrel of his submachine gun against his chest. Completely hidden by his face shield and uniform, Dirkie said in crisp and flawless Japanese, “I am Major Yosuhiro of the Imperial Security Police. Sato Shoji, you are under arrest for imperiling Imperial Security.”

  “What?" Shoji, the sole proprietor of Japan’s largest venture-capital firm, attempted to crawl away from the barrel of the weapon that was imprinting a round circle in his skin. The girl beside him whimpered and buried herself under the bed linens.

  As one might expect under the circumstances, Rousseaux had to repeat this comment twice before he was sure Shoji understood.

  “Your company is intentionally lending millions to certain speculators with evil designs to manipulate the stock markets. Do you deny this?” Rousseaux hissed. “For the sake of enriching yourself and corrupt friends, you are destroying the Imperial way!”

  “But, the prime minister himself—” Shoji tried to say.

  “The prime minister is of oo importance. This is an Imperial Security matter,” Rousseaux said harshly, seconded by the uniformed men silently surrounding him. He gestured. “You must atone for your economic crimes. You must disappear.”

  De Kantzow, whose Japanese was minimal and overwhelmingly scatological, hesitated an instant before responding to his cue. He hauled up Shoji’s mistress and roughly wrapped her in a blanket.

  “Yoroshiku onegai itashimasu, ” Shoji gasped, an expression that defies precise translation, but that can be approximated as, “I ask you to look favorably upon me.”

  “Silence!” Rousseaux ranted.

  Playing his part in the game, Section Sergeant Kaarlo Kivela, standing behind Rousseaux, said forcefully, “Wait. Let him speak.”

  “I am loyal. No one is more loyal than I,” Shoji wheezed as Rousseaux’s submachine gun poked him painfully in the belly.

  “Maaa ...” Kivela temporized, sucking in air.

  “Honored sir, he must pay,” Rousseaux said forcefully.

  Kivela said, “I have made a decision. Sato Shoji, if you are indeed loyal, you will be given an opportunity to repair the damage you have caused. If you obey instructions, none of this will ever have happened.”

  “Honored sir, I protest,” Rousseaux said, pantomiming outrage.

  “My decision is made,” Kivela said with finality.

  “What must I do?” Shoji sobbed with relief.

  “Call your office immediately,” Kivela said, reaching for a telephone. “Leave instructions to call in loans you have made and to immediately sell off your stock holdings—all of them—as soon as the market opens. This will slow the manipulation of shares that you have helped initiate. If your employees obey, you will be released, and your arrest will never have occurred. You will even make a substantial profit. Make sure that you will not be disobeyed.”

  “Naruhodo, so desu ne?” Shoji said, meaning, “Naturally, why didn’t I think of that?” He proceeded to do even better, leaving instructions with his answering service and calling his two principal subordinates to tell them to obey his instructions to the letter. As he was allowed to explain to them, it was an Imperial Security matter.

  There were, of course, major holes in Rousseaux’s story that Shoji would have noticed if he hadn’t been sitting naked on the edge of his bed at four in the morning with several guns in his face. While the show was playing itself out, one by one, de Kantzow’s soldiers stealthily made their way out to use the toilet.

  As soon as Shoji was finished, he and his mistress were injected and left to sleep for the next twelve hours.

  As the minivan pulled away, Filthy DeKe turned to Dirkie Rousseaux. “Frosting good, college boy. Frosting good. You too, Kivela.”

  Dirkie Rousseaux was another veteran of the Boris Godunov cast, chosen more for his acting ability than his singing. As a Boer militiaman during the Afrikaner rebellion, Rousseaux had been captured, and Raul Sanmartin had pulled much the same stunt on him.

  Meanwhile, the governor of Tokyo, who lived six blocks away, blissfully slept through it all.

  Ginza Ward, Tokyo

  IN THE OTHER VAN, LIEUTENANT DANNY MEAGHER’S TEAM HAD A

  more prosaic task, which was to drive around the city dropping paper bags in trash cans and other likely spots. Each bag held a flash grenade and a smoke grenade attached to a timer, as well as a longish string of fireworks to simulate small-arms fire. Meagher’s driver, Prigal, eventually found himself between the Ginza and the Port of Tokyo and stopped the van between two establishments whose massive neon signs read “Castle of Love” and “Romance Motel.”

  “Did you spot a dumpster?” Meagher asked him. “I’d really like to stuff one in a dumpster, for the reverberative effect you understand.” The other five people in the back of the van were sleeping soundly.

  “Ah, sir. Uh. Ah, I think we’re lost.”

  Meagher pulled open the privacy screen. “I can’t say this looks like the garment district.”

  Prigal began consulting the vehicle’s computerized navigation system.

  “Well, we need to kill some time, and no one would think twice about seeing a van here at this hour of the morning. Check the map, lock your doors, and get some sleep.” Meagher tapped Yelenov awake. “Your watch, Mother Elena. Wake us up a few minutes before seven.”

  Yelenov stretched and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked out and saw the neon signs. “Prigal got us here?”

  “He got lost.”

  “All of Tokyo to get lost in, and he ends up in the brothel district. It must be instinct.”

  “God’s ways are mysterious,” Meagher said, making himself comfortable. “It occurs to me that He has a rare sense of humor.”

  Central Tokyo

  IN THE BOWELS OF THE DAIKICHI SANWA BANK BUILDING, TIMO

  Haerkoennen gave up at 4:40. “I can’t get in without the access code,” he said, disconnecting his laptop from the terminal on the bank’s eleventh-floor stock-trading desk.

  “Are you sure?” Redzup asked.

  “I was sure fifteen minutes ago. Considering how many trillion yen this bank controls, I’m not particularly surprised that they want to keep people out of their data bases.”

  Redzup shrugged. “All right. Let’s go back up and tell Coidewe it’s time to go to plan B.”

  Coidewe wasn’t surprised. At 5:00, after the other teams reported their progress, he pulsed another coded signal to Vereshchagin far out in space. He repeated the signal at irregular intervals until he got an acknowledgment around 5:13.

  At 6:00, Aksu called room service and ordered four “Europe” breakfasts which everyone in the two rooms shared. “There is no need to advertise that we have more people here than that,” he explained.

  Alariesto studied a “Europe” bowl of oatmeal that had come up with a fried egg on top. He broke out a ration pack. “Europe has sure changed.”

  At 6:30, Aksu put on his impeccably tailored gray suit, stuck a briefcase under his arm, and prepared to catch the underground from the New Akasaki Prince to Tokyo Central Station.

  “Look both ways when you cross the streets,” Coidewe cautioned him. “The drivers here are crazy, which I can vouch for since some of them are ours.”

  Arriving at Central Station, Aksu presented his carefully forged internal passport and purchased a ticket at the heliport counter for the 9:16 flight to Narita International Airport. After buying his ticket, he spent a few minutes observing the heliport’s boarding procedures and checking the inserts in his nostrils, then killed time eating noodles and looking through the shops.

  At 6:47, Mizoguchi and Soe left to meet Mizoguchi’s media acquaintances in the lobby. The first one arrived almost immediately, and he and Mizoguchi spent a few minutes chatting amiably. The second reporter appeared at two minutes after the hour with two other newsmen in tow, one of them from the prestigious Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s leading newspaper.

  After introductions and a brief conversation, the Asahi man said with charm
ing candor, “Mizoguchi-san, you indicated that this was a very important story which would embarrass certain persons. I hope that you are correct.”

  Mizoguchi bowed low. “I think you will be agreeably surprised. Please come with me.” They took the elevator up to room 3440, where Mizoguchi knocked twice and entered.

  Armed and dressed in uniform, Coidewe and Alariesto were waiting to greet them. “Welcome. I am Captain Hans Coidewe, from Tubingen, commanding C Company, l/35th Rifle Battalion, formerly the l/35th Imperial Rifle Battalion. Do all of you speak English?”

  • “Yes,” Mizoguchi said hastily, remembering Coldewe’s command of Japanese.

  The four of them looked at one another uncertainly. “English is fine,” one of them said timidly at length. “Mizoguchi-san said that there was a newsworthy story here that we should cover. Are you his contact?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Coldewe said ingratiatingly. “What is this story?” the Asahi man asked.

  “Japan was last invaded in a.d. 1274. Well, we’re doing it again. It’s not exactly third-page news, so we thought that people might want to know.”

  “Invading?” One reporter dropped his recorder.

  “Yes. I am part of an expeditionary force—Mizo, you might want to translate this part to make sure they get it right—from the planet Suid-Afrika, which recently made itself independent of the Imperial Government. We are sincerely annoyed with a company called United Steel-Standard, and with its friends and associates.”

  Coldewe looked at his wrist mount. “In another two hours, we can let you begin broadcasting, so please allow me to fill you in on the background.”

  He added, misstating the truth only a little, “Our expeditionary force consists of forty-seven individuals, which is a fact your readers might find interesting.”

  Earth orbit

  FAR OVERHEAD, THE FRIGATE HENDRIK PIENAAR BEGAN ITS AP-

  proach to Yamato Station broadcasting distress signals.