48
“ESCAPE,” MUTTERED GIORDINO, pacing the small cottage under the watchful eye of McGoon, “escape” where? The best long distance swimmer in the world couldn’t make it across sixty kilometers of cold water swept by five-knot currents. And even then, Suma’s hoods would be waiting to gut you the minute you crawled onto a mainland beach.”
“So what’s the game plan?” asked Pitt between pushups on the floor.
“Stay alive as long as possible. What other options do we have?”
“Die like stouthearted men.”
Giordino raised an eyebrow and stared at Pitt suspiciously. “Yeah, sure, bare your chest, refuse the blindfold, and puff a cigarette as Kamatori raises his sword.”
“Why fight the inevitable.”
“Since when do you give up in the first inning?” Giordino said, beginning to wonder if his old friend had suffered a brain leak.
“We can try to hide somewhere on the island as long as we can, but it’s a hopeless cause. I suspect Kamatori will cheat and use robotic sensors to track us down.”
“What about Stacy? You can’t stand by and let that moonfaced scum murder her too.”
Pitt rose from the floor. “Without weapons, what do you expect? Flesh can’t win against mechanical cyborgs and an expert with a sword.”
“I expect you to show the guts you showed in a hundred other scrapes we’ve been through together.”
Pitt favored his right leg as he limped past McGoon and stood with his back to the robot. “Easy for you to say, pal. You’re in good physical shape. I wrenched my knee when I crash-landed into that fishpond and I can barely walk. I stand no chance at all of eluding Kamatori.”
Then Giordino saw the wily grin on Pitt’s face, and a dawning comprehension settled over him. Suddenly he felt a complete fool. Besides McGoon’s sensors, the room must have had a dozen listening devices and video cameras hidden in and around it. He figured Pitt’s drift and played along.
“Kamatori is too much a samurai to hunt an injured man. If there’s a morsel of sporting blood in him, he’d give himself a handicap.”
Pitt shook his head. “I’d settle for something to ease the pain.”
“McGoon,” Giordino hailed the sentry robot, “is there a doctor in the house?”
“That data is not programmed in my directive.”
“Then call up your remote boss and find out.”
“Please stand by.”
The robot went silent as its communications system sent out a request to its control center. The reply came back immediately. “There is a small staff in a clinic on the fourth level. Does Mr. Pitt require medical assistance?”
“Yes,” Pitt answered. “I’ll require an injection of a painkiller and a tight bandage if I’m to provide Mr. Kamatori with a challenging degree of competition.”
“You did not appear to limp a few hours ago,” McGoon flagged Pitt.
“My knee was numb,” Pitt lied. “But the pain and stiffness have increased to where I find it difficult to walk.” He took a few halting steps and tensed his face as though experiencing a mild case of agony.
As a machine that was completely adequate for the job, Murasaki, alias McGoon, duly relayed his visual observation of Pitt’s pathetic display to his directorate controller somewhere deep within the Dragon Center and received permission to escort his injured prisoner to the medical clinic. Another roboguard appeared to keep a video eye on Giordino, who promptly named the newcomer McGurk.
Playing his fake condition as though an Academy Award was in the offing, Pitt shuffled awkwardly through a labyrinth of corridors before being hustled into an elevator by McGoon.
The robot pressed a floor button with a metal finger, and the elevator began to quietly descend, although not as silently as the one in the Federal Headquarters Building.
Too bad the MAIT team didn’t have intelligence on an elevator that dropped from the island’s surface to the underground center, Pitt thought during the ride. Penetration from the resort might have been carried off with a higher chance of success. A few moments later the doors spread and McGoon prodded Pitt into a brightly lit passageway.
“The fourth door on your left. Take it and enter.”
The door, like every piece of flat surface in the underground facility, was painted white. A small red cross was the only indication of a medical center. There was no knob, only a button set in the frame. Pitt pushed it and the door noiselessly slid open. He limped inside. An attractive young lady in a nurse’s uniform looked up from a desk through serious brown eyes as he entered. She spoke to him in Japanese, and he shrugged dumbly.
“Sorry,” he said. “I only speak English.”
Without another word she stood and walked across a room with six empty beds and disappeared into an office. A few seconds later a young smiling Japanese man wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater under the standard white coat with a stethoscope hanging from his neck approached with the nurse at his heels.
“Mr. Pitt, Mr. Dirk Pitt?” he inquired in West Coast American.
“Yes.”
“I was informed you were coming. Josh Nogami. This is a real honor. I’ve been a fan of yours since you raised the Titanic. As a matter of fact, I took up scuba diving because of you.”
“My pleasure,” Pitt said almost bashfully. “You don’t sound like a local boy.”
“Born and raised in San Francisco under the shadow of the Bay Bridge. Where are you from?”
“I grew up in Newport Beach, California.”
“No kidding. I served my internship at St. Paul’s Hospital in Santa Ana. I used to surf at Newport every chance I got.”
“You’re a long way from your practice.”
“So are you, Mr. Pitt.”
“Did Suma make an offer you couldn’t refuse?”
The smile went cool. “I’m also an admirer of Mr. Suma. I joined his employ four years ago without being bought.”
“You believe in what he’s doing?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Pardon me for suggesting that you’re misguided.”
“Not misguided, Mr. Pitt. Japanese. I’m Japanese and believe in the advancement of our intellectual and aesthetic culture over the contaminated society America has become.”
Pitt was in no mood for another debate on lifestyle philosophies. He pointed to his knee. “I’m going to be needing this tomorrow. I must have twisted it. Can you deaden the pain enough so I can use it?”
“Please roll up your pant leg.”
Pitt did so and made the required grimaces and quick expulsions of breath to simulate hurt as the doctor felt about the knee.
“Doesn’t appear swollen or bruised. No indication of a torn ligament.”
“Hurts like hell, though. I can’t bend it.”
“Did you injure it when you crashed into Mr. Suma’s retreat?”
“News travels fast here.”
“The robots have a grapevine that would make San Quentin prison inmates proud. After I heard of your arrival, I went up and viewed the remains of your airplane. Mr. Suma wasn’t happy that you killed over four hundred thousand yen worth of his prized carp.”
“Then you know I’m the opening act for the massacre tomorrow,” said Pitt.
The smile left Nogami’s face and his eyes went dark. “I want you to know, though I may follow Mr. Suma’s commands, I don’t favor Kamatori’s murderous hunting games.”
“Any advice for a condemned man?”
Nogami motioned around the room. “The walls have more eyes and ears than a theater audience. If I dared cheer for your side, I’d be forced to join you out on the field. No thanks, Mr. Pitt. I’m greatly saddened by your predicament, but you have nobody to blame but yourself for dipping your oars in dangerous waters.”
“But you will see what you can do for my knee.”
“As a doctor I’ll do my best to ease your pain. I’m also under orders by Kamatori to see that you’re fit for the chase tomorrow.”
Pitt had carefully watched as the nurse went back and forth into a small supply room for the tape and pills. “Do you mind if I borrow one of your empty beds and relax for a while. Those Japanese sleeping mats aren’t built for these bones.”
“Okay by me. I’ll notify your guard robot that I’m keeping you under observation for an hour or two.” Nogami looked at him steadily. “Don’t even think of trying to escape. There are no windows or rear exits in here, and the robots would be all over your ass before you took two steps toward the elevator.”
“Not to worry,” Pitt said with a friendly smile. “I fully intend to save my strength for tomorrow’s fun.”
Nogami nodded. “Take the first bed. It has the softest mattress. I use it myself. The one Western vice I refuse to give up. I can’t stand those damn tatami mats either.”
“The bathroom?”
“Through the supply room to your left.”
Pitt shook the doctor’s hand. “I’m grateful to you, Dr. Nogami. A pity we see things through a different lens.”
After Nogami returned to his office and the nurse sat back down at her desk with her back to him, Pitt hobbled to the bathroom, only he didn’t enter but merely opened and closed the door with the required sounds to allay any suspicions. The nurse was busy filling out papers at her desk and did not turn to observe his actions through the door of the supply room.
Then he quietly searched the drawers and shelves of medical supplies until he found a box of plastic bags attached to thin tubes with eighteen-gauge needles on their ends. The bags were marked CPDA-1 Red Blood Cells with anticoagulant solution. He removed one of the bags from the box and shoved it inside his shirt. It didn’t make even the slightest bulge.
A mobile X-ray unit stood in one corner of the room. He stared at it briefly, an idea forming in his mind. Using his fingernails, he worked free a plastic manufacturer’s nameplate and used it to unscrew the rear panel. He rapidly twisted off the connectors to a pair of six-volt dry-cell rechargeable batteries and removed one, slipping it down the front of his pants. Then he ripped out as much of the electrical wiring as he could without an excess of suspicious sound and wrapped it around his waist.
Finally he stepped softly into the bathroom, used it, and flushed the toilet. The nurse didn’t even look up as he settled onto the bed. In his office, Nogami seemed absorbed, talking in hushed tones on the phone.
Pitt stared at the blank ceiling, his mind at ease. It wasn’t exactly what Jordan and Kern would call an earth-shattering master plan, but it was all he had, and he intended to play it to the hilt.
49
MORO KAMATORI DIDN’T merely look evil, he was evil. The pupils of his eyes never changed from the violent black poisonous stare, and when the tight lips parted in a smile, which was seldom, they revealed a set of teeth laced with more gold than the Comstock Lode.
Even at that early hour—at five o’clock the sky was still dark—he had a fastidious arrogance about him. He was immaculately dressed in a hakama, baggy trousers that were almost a divided skirt, and an Edo-period kataginu, a brocaded silk style of sleeveless hunting jacket. He wore only sandals on his feet.
Pitt, on the other hand, looked like a refugee from a rag picker’s bin. He was clad only in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts cut off from the bottoms of his flying suit. His feet were clad in a pair of white sweat socks.
After being awakened and escorted to Kamatori’s personal study, he stood shivering in the unheated room, taking in every detail of the walls that were filled with antique weapons of every historic era from around the world. Suits of armor, European and Japanese, stood like soldiers at attention in the middle of the room. Pitt felt a wave of revulsion in his stomach at the trophies neatly spaced between hundreds of swords, spears, bows, and guns.
He counted thirty mounted heads of Kamatori’s hapless human victims staring sightlessly into space from unblinking glass eyes. Most were Asian, but four had Caucasian features. His blood iced as he recognized Jim Hanamura’s head.
“Come in, Mr. Pitt, and have a cup of coffee,” invited Kamatori, motioning Pitt to a vacant cushion beside a low table. “We’ll talk a few minutes before—”
“Where are the others?” Pitt interrupted.
Kamatori stared coldly. “They are seated in a small auditorium next door, where they will view the hunt on a video screen.”
“Like an audience watching a bad late-night movie.”
“Perhaps the last to run the hunt will profit by the mistakes of those who go before.”
“Or perhaps they’ll close their eyes and miss the show.”
Kamatori sat very still, the barest hint of a smile touching the corner of his taut lips. “This is not an experiment. The procedure has been refined through experience. The prey wait their turn tied to chairs, and if need be, with their eyes taped open. They have every opportunity to witness your demise.”
“I trust you’ll send my residuals from the reruns to my estate,” Pitt said, seemingly gazing at the heads adorning the walls, fighting to ignore the horrifying display while concentrating on a rack of swords.
“You put up a very good facade of courage,” Kamatori observed. “I’d have expected no less from a man of your reputation.”
“Who goes next?” Pitt asked abruptly.
The butcher shrugged. “Your friend Mr. Giordino, or maybe the female operative. Yes, I think hunting her down will raise the others to a furious pitch, inciting them to become more dangerous as prey.”
Pitt turned. “And if you cannot catch one of us?”
“The island is small. No one has eluded me for more than eight hours.”
“And you give no quarter.
“None,” said Kamatori, the evil smile widening. “This is not a child’s game of hide-and-seek with winners and losers. Your death will be quick and clean. That’s a promise.”
Pitt stared the samurai in the eye. “Not a game? Seems to me I’m to play Sanger Rainsford to your General Zaroff.”
Kamatori’s eyes squinted. “The names are not familiar to me.”
“You’ve never read The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell? It’s a classic story of a man who hunts his fellow man for sport.”
“I do not taint my mind by reading Western literature.”
“Glad to hear it,” Pitt said, mentally adding a slight edge to his chances of staying alive.
Kamatori pointed toward the door. “The time has come.”
Pitt held his mark. “You haven’t explained the ground rules.”
“There are no ground rules, Mr. Pitt. I generously give you an hour’s start. Then I begin to hunt you armed only with my sword, an ancestral weapon that has been in my family for several generations and has seen much enemy blood.”
“Your samurai ancestors must be real proud of a descendant who stains their honor by murdering unarmed and defenseless.”
Kamatori knew Pitt was deliberately provoking him, but he could not contain his growing rage with the American who showed no trace of fear. “There is the door,” he hissed. “I begin the pursuit in one hour.”
The act of uncaring indifference was shaken off the minute Pitt cleared the gate through the electrified fence. Ungoverned fury swept him as he ran past the line of trees surrounding the resort and into the shadows of the stark, barren rocks. He became a man outside himself, cold and cunning, his perceptions abnormally heightened, driven by one overpowering thought.
He had to save himself to save the others.
The gamble on running free in his stocking feet rather than the heavy boots he’d worn when flying off the deck of the Ralph R. Bennett was paying off. Thankfully the rocky ground was covered with several centimeters of damp soil eroded over the
centuries from the lava rock.
He ran with deadly purpose, spurred on by anger and fear he might fail. His plan was simple enough, ridiculously simple, though the chance of pulling the wool over Kamatori’s eyes seemed slightly less than impossible. But he was dead certain the ploy had not been tried by the other hunted men. The unexpected was on his side. The others had only tried to put as much distance between them and the resort as possible before frantically finding a hiding place to stall off discovery. Desperation breeds genius, but they had all failed, and with gruesome finality. Pitt was about to attempt a new wrinkle in the escape game that was just crazy enough to work.
He also had another advantage over those who had gone before. Thanks to Penner’s detailed model of the island, Pitt was familiar with the general landscape. He recalled in his mind the dimensions and heights with exacting clarity, knowing precisely where he had to go, and it was not toward the highest point on the island.
People who run in terror during a chase inexplicably head upward, up stairs in a building, up a tree to hide, up to the rocks crowning the summit of a hill. All dead ends with no possibility of successful escape.
Pitt branched off and descended toward the eastern shoreline, executing a meandering trail as if he was undecided which way to turn, occasionally doubling back to make his pursuer think he was wandering lost in circles. The uneven moonlike ground and the dim light hindered any sharp sense of direction, but the stars had yet to fade, and he could still read north from Polaris. He stopped for a few minutes, resting to conserve his strength, and took stock.
He realized that Kamatori, tracking his victims in sandals, could never have brought them to bay in only eight hours. An amateur woodsman, with a small amount of luck, should have avoided capture for one or two days, even if tracked by dogs… unless his trail was followed by someone with the advantage of electronic body sensors. There was no question in Pitt’s mind that he was being hunted by a robot festooned with sensors. He moved off again, still cold but feeling no strain or exhaustion.
The end of the hour found Pitt skirting the cliffs above the sea. The scattered trees and underbrush grew to the very edge of the palisades. He had slowed to an easy jog as he searched for a break in the surf-pounded rocks nearly twenty meters below. At last he came to a small clearing sheltered by large rocks. A small pine with several of its roots exposed by erosion hung precariously over the restless water far below.
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