The Seventh Samurai

by Doug Walker

  "That's it," Watanabe questioned.

  "Yes, repeat it. I am in pain."

  Watanabe repeated the entire sequence with instructions.

  "That is correct," Kyoko croaked. "Give me your knife."

  "I can't let you kill yourself, Suzuki-san. I'll tow you ashore. I tell you, I see a light."

  "Watanabe, I will not kill myself with the knife. It will not touch my body."

  Her words were spoken with such agony that Watanabe unsnapped the knife sheath, pulled the sharp blade and passed it to her chill-numbed hands. Although Watanabe could not see exactly what she was doing, he could tell by the sounds. She punctured her life vest, her buoyancy compensator, and immediately slid beneath the dark waters without another sound.

  Watanabe hesitated but a second, then struck out for shore, for the light he had seen over the chop of the Strait. Three minutes passed, then five. He didn't seem to be making any progress. His arms were like lead. He paused to jettison his air cylinder, regulator, compass, watch. He swam a few more yards, then ditched the partly inflated life vest and the top of his wet suit. He was tiring, but now he slipped through the water more easily. At times he would stop and wait until a swell carried him upward to take another fix on the light. He was closer. He was gaining.

  Watanabe rolled sluggishly in the water, no longer feeling the cold. His legs were iron. He let them drop for a moment until his foot knocked into something hard and sharp. Pain. It dawned on him. He was on a rock.

  The light was still some distance away when he crawled and scrambled onto the rocky shore.

  CHAPTER 52: The Firings

  Lieutenant Cheddar had just brought coffee to Nana Liberman in the flag command aboard the cruiser. She and Digger had been permitted to hold down a pair of corner chairs during the long night. For all the tedious vigil, Nana and Digger looked fairly chipper. Cheddar was dragging. He had had too much coffee. The seasickness of the day before had taken its toll, and to add to his cheer, a few minutes before the admiral had told him that his eyes looked like two piss holes in the snow,

  With dawn near, the tempo of the chase picked up. They were converging on an unidentified noise and the decision had been made to silence it, whatever it was.

  The dull hum of activity in flag command was shattered when a chief shouted, "The LA sub has just fired its first torpedo." Five seconds later, "There goes its second."

  The room fell into almost total silence, then the chief shouted, "Holy shit! They've fired a missile."

  "Who has?" the admiral demanded.

  "Wherever the noise was coming from. They've fired a missile." He paused a second, then said, "It's out of the water, headed straight up."

  "Gimme the headset," Blades said, taking earphones and mike from an ensign. Reports coming over the headset were a composite from the sub, other fleet vessels and aircraft in the area. Blades had no additional orders to issue; everyone knew exactly what to do. Knock out the missile. Depth charge the launching site. The sub was to get clear.

  Blades said slowly, so all could hear, "The LA sub's torpedoes seem to have scored a direct hit on whatever it is. A torpedo is in the water, a helicopter torpedo, and moving toward the other noise source."

  He waited, counting the seconds. "Now another missile's been fired, this one from the second noise source." Only the two missiles, he thought. Not a gang firing. They would have a good chance of getting them both.

  But strange, those noises, so obvious. Was it a trap? "The second noise source has also been hit. We'll move in to depth charge. And I think we'll get both missiles." A faint cheer went up in flag command.

  "Don't be overconfident," the admiral warned, then issued orders to all ships not actually involved in the action to stay on total alert.

  "Do you think there'll be more missiles, Sir," Cheddar asked.

  "Could be. This whole thing with the odd noises and the two missiles might be an elaborate decoy. These people haven't made any mistakes. Then there's the real threat of radiation." The admiral held up a hand for silence. "I'm happy to tell you that both missiles have been destroyed. They reached a height of four, or five miles, then boom."

  "That's great news, Sir," Cheddar said. "But if they were decoys, maybe they self-destructed."

  "I'm painfully aware of that, Cheddar. But the fact is, so far two missiles have been launched, two have been destroyed." Once again he issued orders for all sea, ground and air units to remain on alert for more missiles."

  CHAPTER 53: The Farmhouse

  Watanabe was totally miserable. If the water had been bone chilling and treacherous, the pitfalls of land held their own special punishment. Sharp rocks and stubble tore at his bare feet. There were fences to climb and mud-slimy ditches to negotiate. Stumbling, recovering, falling, picking himself up and going forward. He made for a light high on a pole at the rear of a farmhouse.

  As he neared the house a pair of dogs set up a great hue and cry. Watanabe paused for a moment and found a sturdy stick. He would fight them if he must. He stumbled on as the dogs raced to meet him. He sidestepped and almost fell, but managed to whack one of the animals solidly on the ear. Both dogs fled, one yelping with pain. Then he was in the farmyard and at the farm door, banging with the butt of his stick. "Police," he cried. "I am a policeman."

  The farmer and his wife, already alerted by the dogs, were behind the locked door. They were discussing whether to open the door or not when they heard the cry of "police."

  "How do we know you are a policeman," the farmer shouted through the door.

  "I have identification," Watanabe shouted. He had stuffed his wallet into the pants of the wet suit before he had left the tunnel. Now he fumbled for it.

  "Your accent is strange," the farmer shouted.

  "Osaka dialect," Watanabe replied. "I am an Osaka policeman. My business is urgent. Please open this door at once!"

  Compelled to be obedient to the law, the farmer opened the door. Both the man and the wife gawked at the muddy, bedraggled figure, clad in only a wet suit bottom. Watanabe held up his police force ID and said, "I must use the phone at once."

  "By all means," the farmer said. "It is on the small table in the hall. There are slippers here."

  Watanabe looked at the slippers, shook his head, then climbed the step into the hall, grabbed the telephone. The message was clear in his mind. Then to his utter shock he saw he was holding a dial phone. Only a pushbutton phone would work. But in this old farmhouse, isolated on the shore of the Tsugaru Strait, he should have known. The farmer and his wife had followed him up the single step into the hall. Watanabe turned to them, the instrument still in his hand and said to them in a heartsick voice, "I must have a pushbutton phone."

  For the first time, the farm wife spoke, "There is one in our daughter's room upstairs."

  Watanabe looked around, saw the stairs and bolted for them. The farmer and his wife did not follow. There was only one room upstairs. Watanabe found a wall switch and put on the light. A futon across the room moved and a teenage girl sat up in surprise. She was nude, at least above the waist. She quickly covered her upper body with a sheet.

  "I'm a policeman," Watanabe said hurriedly, "I must use the phone. The girl said nothing, but glanced at the phone, which was within arm's reach of her futon.

  Watanabe dropped to the floor at the edge of the futon and picked up the phone. There was a dial tone. The girl, now within inches of him, dropped the sheet from her breasts and looked him brazenly in the eye. Watanabe took a deep breath and punched the access number. The phone rang and the girl stirred. She put her arms behind her, bracing herself on the tatami. She was a pretty thing, Watanabe thought, maybe about sixteen. He was beginning to think he had the wrong number when he heard a click on the other end of the line.

  He managed to forget the girl completely as he pulled the message and Kyoko's instructions from his head. There was a clock in the room. He punched in the time, struggled momentarily for the date, then went on to the last two words. />
  Just as Kyoko had said, the line remained open and he heard the beginning of "Kimigayo," the Japanese national anthem. Kyoko said it would play for thirty seconds throughout the tunnel before the charges detonated and let in the sea.

  As he listened he remembered the words of the anthem that is in praise of the Emperor. It holds forth the hope that the Emperor's reign will last long enough for a small pebble to grow into a large moss-covered rock. Watanabe waited and he watched the seconds go by on the clock, then his eyes were drawn to the girl and the girl's breasts.

  The music continued, the familiar theme of his homeland. And he waited to destroy the empire beneath the sea. Suddenly the girl's breasts symbolized life to him. She was like a flower, waiting for a bee. The two of them, they could start the world again from scratch. He remembered one of the profoundest things an American president had ever said.

  In school, in the States, he had learned about the presidents. It had been one of those deep thinkers from Ohio. Not Grant, or McKinley. No, it was Harding. He had said, "Every woman deserves a pretty baby." Something like that, anyway. The beginning and the end of the president's thoughts on women's rights. But it was true. Watanabe realized it as the seconds ticked by and the enormity of what he was doing soaked in. He was not a mass murder, he told himself, but a large-scale executioner.

  He thought of the Japanese phrase that translates something like, "Your baby is hard to look at." It is quite polite and means, "Madame, you have an ugly baby." Difficult to look at, yet it is still your baby. Why did these thoughts race through his head at this time?

  There was a stirring in this girl who faced him bare breasted, the age-old stirring of new life, fresh life. This girl was eternity with her fresh skin and soft breasts. She probably thought she was boldly sharing a moment never dreamed of before, but she was acting out a role etched in stone at time's beginning.

  The music stopped. It stopped!

  Beneath the sea there would be explosions, rushing water, hundreds dying at this instant. Panic-stricken shrieks cut short by the rush of the sea. Japanese, mostly Japanese, but some Israelis. Mostly there by their own choice, but some prisoners, dying, dying under the sea. He could hear their shrieks all the better for the silence. Would he always hear them?

  The girl still stared at him, then saw something in his eyes. She pulled the futon over her breasts, threw herself on her stomach. Buried her body in the heavy futon. He could see the rhythmic movement, the futon wracked with her sobs. She was sobbing, suddenly frightened, like a spooked fawn. He could rip away the futon, flip her on her back, force her legs apart. New life, while those under the sea were dying, battered by the water.

  I can live here, Watanabe thought. Farm this farm. She could help me in the fields, her baby strapped to her body, just as babies in Africa and America are close to their mother's bodies. He would work in the fields and at night drink beer and sake and swagger around the farmhouse shouting of his achievements, what he had done, what he intended to do, what he had not done and never would do. His hopes, his fears, his sorrows, while growing old, waiting for new life.

  Watanabe dropped the phone into the cradle, rose and walked to the stairs. At the last moment, he turned and said, "Thanks for letting me use your phone." The futon was still, the sobbing stopped.

  He had not played his assigned role. He had snuffed out life, but failed to plant new seed. An exhausted Watanabe flicked off the light and walked downstairs.

  CHAPTER 54: The Final Event

  In the tunnel, the technicians waiting to fire the missiles waited as they were being elevated into position, and heard the "Kimigayo" begin over the loud speakers. "I wonder why they are playing that," the man in charge said. "It wasn't supposed to play until after the firing."

  "The old man," one of his assistants replied, "the Seventh Samurai, he probably became impatient. He drinks too much."

  "Song or no song," an Israeli geek tossed in, "I know where three of the first group of missiles is headed. One each for Damascas, Cairo and Riyadh. They won't have Israel to kick around anymore."

  In his room, Akira Yoshimoto heard the patriotic song begin. He did not know, nor did he care, why it was playing. He had finished his final cup of sake, and in his mind he was back in the cave on Okinawa. Dawn had come and the frantic banzai attack had begun. But this time it was Yoshimoto, the Seventh Samurai, who led the attack into the enemy guns, sword flashing in the early morning light. To glory!

  ***

  At flag command on the cruiser there had been no reports of activity since the two missiles exploded. The launching sited had been thoroughly depth charged.

  The fading night was turning into one of grim monotony as periodic reports came in from land, sea and air positions.

  "Do you suppose we got 'em, Sir," Cheddar asked the admiral.

  Blades shrugged. He didn't think so. He felt like a victim, a fall guy, for some type of clever confidence game.

  A CPO who was monitoring the radio equipment called from across the room. "There's been some kind of major underwater explosion, Admiral. But no missiles. Just a series of rumbles, then silence."

  "Maybe it's an earthquake," Cheddar put in.

  ***

  Watanabe borrowed shirt, pants and straw sandals from the farmer.

  On the road he flagged down a truck full of Defense Force troopers and U.S. Navy Shore patrol. He explained that he must see whoever was in charge of the military operation right away. That he had vital information.

  They examined his police ID, chattered among themselves, then patched a message through to Admiral Blades.

  Blades told Nana, who was ecstatic to know Watanabe was alive.

  The admiral dispatched the cruiser's chopper to pick up the detective.

  Once Watanabe was aboard, the chopper took off in a circular pattern, then almost floated into the pleasant morning sky. The sun climbed higher and Watanabe could see the choppy waters of the Strait below, the sun glinting off first one surface, then another.

  The thought of Kyoko Suzuki, slashing her life vest, now dead somewhere in those waters, came to mind. He pushed it out. Then came a larger vision, a secret army of men entombed in a fortress beneath the Strait. How many, he couldn't guess. Would anyone ever go down and probe the watery passages? Search out the scope of the operation? Certainly there must be an attempt to recover the warheads. Or would the tomb be unheralded and ignored, left to be puzzled over by some future archeologist.

  Watanabe tried not to think of the magnitude of what he had done with his coded telephone message. Alone, battered and almost destroyed by the sea, he had pushed the buttons for the death knell of the Fuurin Kazan.

  The chopper approached the cruiser. Five white gulls wheeled over the sparkling sea to the north, as pretty as a picture.

  ###

  About the Author

  Doug Walker is an Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, journalism graduate. He served on metropolitan newspapers, mostly in Ohio, for twenty years, as political reporter, both local and statehouse, along with stints as city editor and Washington correspondent. Teaching English in Japan, China and Eastern Europe were retirement activities.

  His first novel was "Murder on the French Broad," available only in a print edition published in 2010.

  Now occupying an old house in Asheville, NC, with his wife, he enjoys reading, tennis, short walks, TV and writing.

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