“Any details?”
“A clear picture of numbers and letters on the side of the fuselage and the tail. I can also make out a small figure on the bow beneath the cockpit.”
“Describe it.”
“Not a perfect image, mind you, when you consider that we’re looking through four hundred meters of water. But I’d say it looks like a devil with a pitchfork.”
“Make out any wording?”
“Pretty vague,” answered Ingram. “The first word is covered by undersea growth.” He paused and gave the command to the computer for further enhancement. “The second word looks like ‘Demons.’ “
“A little off the beaten path for the Twentieth Air Force during the war,” said Meeker.
“Think there’s any importance attached to it?”
Meeker shook his head to himself as he turned into his driveway. “Probably just an aircraft that went missing after it flew off course and crashed like the Lady Be Good in the Sahara Desert. Better have it checked out, though, so any living relatives of the crew can be notified of their final resting place.”
Ingram set down the receiver and stared at the shattered picture of the old aircraft buried under the sea, and found himself wondering how it came to be there.
51
THERE HAD BEEN no need to tape their eyes open. Stacy, Mancuso, and Weatherhill had watched the viewing screen in horrified fascination just before the picture went black during Pitt’s fight with the robodog. Then sadness and shock flooded their emotions as Kamatori fiendishly aimed another camera at the blood-drenched ground.
The four of them sat chained to metal chairs grouped in a small semicircle around a huge high-resolution video screen set into the wall. The two robots Giordino called McGoon and McGurk stood guard with the latest in Japanese automatic rifles aimed at the back of their prisoners’ heads.
The unexpected defeat of their plans and total helplessness had stunned them worse than the virtual sentence of death. A hundred plans to salvage their predicament rushed through their minds. None had the slightest hope of getting off the ground. They were conscious now of little but approaching death.
Stacy turned and looked across at Giordino to see how he was taking the crushing blow of his friend’s loss. But his face was completely composed and thoughtful, with no trace of sorrow or rage. Giordino sat there in icy calm, his eyes curiously staring at the action on the screen as if it was an adventure serial at a Saturday matinee.
A short time later, Kamatori entered the room, sat down crosslegged on a mat, and poured a cup of saki. “I trust you watched the results of the hunt,” he said between sips. “Mr. Pitt did not play by the rules. He attacked the robot, altered its programming, and died through his own stupidity.”
“He would have died by your hand anyway!” spat Mancuso. “At least he cheated you of that piece of butchery.”
Kamatori’s lips curled downward briefly and then up in a sinister smile. “I assure you, there will be no repeat of your friend’s performance. A new robodog is presently being reprogrammed so that any unexpected damage to his system will not result in an attack on his quarry.”
“That’s a break,” grunted Giordino.
“You scumbag,” hissed Mancuso, red-faced and straining against his chains. “I’ve seen the brutalities men like you did to Allied prisoners of war. You delight in the torture of others, but can’t stand the thought of suffering yourself.”
Kamatori observed Mancuso with the same expression of haughty distaste he might have displayed at observing a rat baring its teeth from a sewer. “You shall be the last I run to ground, Mr. Mancuso. You will suffer at watching the agony of the others until your turn.”
“I volunteer to be next,” said Weatherhill calmly. His mind skipped over escape schemes and began concentrating on one act. He figured if he did nothing else, killing Kamatori would be worth dying for.
Kamatori slowly shook his head. “Miss Stacy Fox has that honor. A professional female operative will make an interesting challenge. Far better than Dirk Pitt, I hope’ He was a shocking disappointment.”
For the first time Weatherhill felt a trace of nausea run through him. He had never been afraid of death. Half his life had been spent on the brink between living or being killed. But sitting helplessly while a woman was brutally murdered, a woman he knew and respected, made him sick.
Stacy’s face was pale as Kamatori rose to his feet and ordered the robotic guards to release her chains, but she glared at him with icy contempt. The locks were opened by an electronic signal, and she was roughly pulled to her feet free of the chair.
Kamatori pointed toward the door that opened to the outside of the room. “Go,” he commanded in a sharp voice. “I will begin the pursuit in one hour.”
Stacy took what she thought was her last look at the others. Mancuso seemed stricken, while Weatherhill stared back at her with great sorrow in his eyes. But it was Giordino who caused her to do a double take. He gave her a wink, a nod, and a smile.
“You’re wasting time,” Kamatori said coldly.
“No need to dash off,” came a voice from behind the two robotic guards.
Stacy turned, certain her eyes were deceiving her.
Dirk Pitt stood on the threshold, leaning negligently against the doorframe, gazing past her at Kamatori. Both his hands rested on the hilt of along saber whose tip stabbed the polished floor. His deep green eyes were set, an anticipatory grin was on his rugged face.
“Sorry I’m late, but I had to take a dog to obedience school.
52
NOBODY MOVED, NOBODY SPOKE. The robots stood motionless, waiting for a command from Kamatori, their data processors not fully programmed to react at Pitt’s sudden appearance. But the samurai was in the opening moments of shock at seeing Pitt standing there without a scratch on his body. His lips parted and his eyes spread, and then slowly the beginning of a forced smile twisted the lines on his curious face.
“You did not die,” he said as his mind pushed through the curtain of surprise and his face became a dark cloud. “You faked your death, and yet the blood—”
“I borrowed a few things from your hospital,” Pitt explained casually, “and performed a bloodletting on myself.”
“But you had nowhere to go but into the surf or onto the rocks below the cliff. And if you survived the fall and dropped into the water, you would have been swept away by the vicious undercurrents. You could not have survived.”
“I used the tree you saw floating in the surf to cushion my fall into the water. Then I floated with the current until it released me a few hundred meters from shore. After drifting a short distance, I caught the incoming tide and swam until I reached a small cove and climbed the palisades below the resort.”
The surprise in Kamatori’s eyes transformed to intense curiosity. “The security perimeter, how was it possible for you to slip through the robotic guards?”
“Speaking figuratively, I knocked them out.”
“No good.” Kamatori shook his head. “Their detection systems are flawless. They are not programmed to let an intruder pass.”
“Bet me.” Pitt lifted the saber, rammed its point into the wooden floor, and released his grip, leaving it quivering in the polished wood. He took the small object from under his arm that could now be seen as a sock with something wrapped inside it. He moved unobtrusively toward one of the robots from the rear. Before it could turn, he pressed the thing inside the sock against the plastic wall surrounding the computerized midsection. The roboguard immediately went rigid and immobile.
Realizing too late what Pitt was doing, Kamatori shouted, “Shoot him!”
But Pitt had ducked under the muzzle of the second robot’s automatic rifle and shoved the strange object against its processor. Like the first, it became inert.
“How did you do that?” Stacy gasped.
Pitt pulled the sock off a small six-volt dry cell from the portable X-ray machine and an iron pipe wrapped with two meters of copper wi
re. He held the package up for all to see.
“A magnet. It erased the programs from the disks inside the robots’ computer processors and fouled up their integrated circuits.”
“A temporary reprieve, nothing more,” commented Kamatori. ‘ ‘ I badly miscalculated your ingenuity, Mr. Pitt, but you have accomplished little but prolonging your life by a few more minutes.”
“At least we’re armed now,” said Weatherhill, nodding at the stationary guns held by the robots.
Despite the turn of events, Kamatori could not conceal the expression of triumph on his face. He was back in total control. Pitt’s near-miraculous resurrection had been for nothing. “The guns are tightly molded to the flexible arms of the robots. You cannot remove them with anything less than a cutting grinder. You are as helpless as before.”
“Then we’re in the same boat now that your bodyguards have been unplugged,” said Pitt, tossing the magnet to Stacy.
“I have my katana.” Kamatori’s hand raised and touched the hilt of his native Japanese ancestral sword that rested in the sheath that stuck out behind his back. The sixty-one-centimeter blade was forged from an elastic magnetic iron combined with a hard steel edge. “And I also carry a wakizashi.” He slipped a knife about twenty-four centimeters in length from a scabbard inside his sash, displaying its blade before resheathing it.
Pitt stepped back toward the doorway leading to Kamatori’s antique arsenal and yanked the sword from the floor. “Not exactly Excalibur maybe, but it beats swinging a pillow.”
The sword that Pitt had taken from a wall of Kamatori’s study was a nineteenth-century Italian dueling saber with a blade ninety centimeters from hilt to tip. It was heavier than the modern fencing saber Pitt had used during his days at the Air Force Academy and not as flexible, but in the hand of a skilled fencer it could be used with great effect.
Pitt had no illusions of what he was plunging into. He didn’t doubt for an instant that Kamatori was a practicing expert at the Japanese sword sport of kenjutsu, while he hadn’t swung a blade in a practice match for over two years. But if he could just stay alive while Stacy somehow freed Mancuso and Weatherhill, or distracted Kamatori so Pitt might gain an advantage, there was a slim chance they could still escape the island.
“You dare to challenge me with that?” Kamatori sneered.
“Why not?” Pitt shrugged. “In truth samurai warriors were little more than overblown toads. I figure you were bred from the same slime pond.”
Kamatori brushed off the insult. “So you’re to wear a halo and play Sir Galahad against my black knight.”
“Actually I had Errol Flynn against Basil Rathbone more in mind.”
Kamatori closed his eyes and in an unexpected movement sank to his knees and went into a meditating trance. He became immersed in the art of kiai, an inner force or power attributed with accomplishing miracles, especially among the samurai class. Mentally, long practice in uniting the soul and conscious mind and bringing them into a kind of divine realm supposedly raises the practitioner to a subconscious level that aids him in performing superhuman feats in the martial arts. Physically, it involved the art of deep and prolonged breathing, the reasoning being the man who has a full load of air in the lungs has it all over the opponent who has exhaled.
Pitt sensed a quick attack and flexed his legs and body in the on-guard position.
Nearly two full minutes passed, and then suddenly, with lightninglike speed, Kamatori leaped to his feet and pulled his katana from its scabbard with both hands in a long sweeping motion. But instead of losing a microsecond by lifting the blade over his head for a downward stroke, he continued the motion in an upward diagonal cut in an attempt to slash Pitt open from the hip to the shoulder.
Pitt anticipated the move and narrowly parried the wicked slice, then made a quick thrust, penetrating Kamatori’s thigh before jumping backward to avoid his opponent’s next savage attack.
The tactics of kenjutsu and Olympic saber were wildly different. It was as if a basketball player was pitted against a football halfback. Traditional fencing had linear movements with thrusting strokes, while kenjutsu had no limitations, the katana wielder wading in to cut down his opponent in a slashing assault. But they both relied on technique, speed, and the element of surprise.
Kamatori moved with catlike agility, knowing that one good cut against Pitt’s flesh would quickly end the contest. He moved rapidly from side to side, uttering guttural shouts to throw Pitt off balance. He rushed fiercely, his two-handed strokes beating aside Pitt’s thrusts with relative ease. The wound in his thigh went seemingly unnoticed and caused no obstacle to his nimble reactions.
Kamatori’s two-handed katana strokes cut the air slightly faster and carried more power than the saber in Pitt’s single hand. But in the hands of a skilled fencer, the old dueling blade could reverse angle a fraction more quickly. It was also nearly thirty centimeters longer, a benefit Pitt used to keep Kamatori’s slashing attack out of range of a mortal injury. The saber combined the point with the stroke, while the katana was all slash and cut.
Kamatori also had the advantage of experience and constant practice with his blade. Pitt was rusty, but he was ten years younger than the kenjutsu expert and, except for the loss of blood, was in top physical condition.
Stacy and the others were spellbound by the spectacular display of leaping, thrusting, and running attacks as the blades glinted like strobe lights and clattered as their edges struck. Occasionally Kamatori broke off the attack and retreated, altering his position to stay between Stacy, Mancuso, and Weatherhill to prevent her from freeing them, and to satisfy himself that she wasn’t attempting to attack him from the rear or flank. Then he shouted a guttural curse and resumed the slashing onslaught against the hated American.
Pitt was holding his own, lunging when an opening presented itself, parrying the explosive power of Kamatori’s strokes, and evading the incredible ferocity of the attacks. He tried to work Stacy clear, but his opponent was too shrewd and shut down every opportunity. Though Stacy was an expert at judo, Kamatori would have cut her down before she came within two meters of him.
Pitt fought hard and silently, while Kamatori came on savagely, yelling with every stroke, slowly forcing Pitt to retreat across the room. The Japanese smiled faintly as a fierce swipe grazed Pitt’s extended sword arm and drew a thin line of blood.
The sheer force of Kamatori’s assault kept Pitt on the defensive warding off the chopping blows. Kamatori swept from side to side, attempting to fight in a circle.
Pitt easily saw through the ploy and steadily fell back a step at a time, then suddenly lunged, relying on his dexterous use of the point and controlled fencing style to keep alive and frustrate Kamatori’s timing.
One thrust caught Kamatori in the forearm but didn’t slow down the kenjutsu master for an instant. Lost in the kiai, striking when he thought Pitt exhaled his breath, he felt no pain, nor seemingly noticed when Pitt’s saber point pierced his flesh. He hurtled back and came inexorably after Pitt, swishing his kutana in a blur of whirling steel with short brutal back-and-forth strokes almost faster than the eye.
Pitt was tiring, his arm felt leaden, like a prizefighter’s after the fourteenth round of a toe-to-toe slugging match. His breath was coming faster now, and he could feel the increased pounding of his heart.
The ancient saber was showing signs of wear too. Its edge was no match for the fine steel of the Japanese katana. The tarnished old blade was deeply nicked in fifty places, and Pitt knew that one solid blow on the flat side could very well break it in two.
Kamatori amazingly showed no hint of weariness. His eyes seemed glazed with bloodlust, and the power behind his strokes was as strong now as at the beginning of the duel. It was only a matter of another minute or two before he would wear Pitt down and cut away his life with the proud sword of Japan.
Pitt leaped backward for a quick breather to take stock as Kamatori paused to catch Stacy’s movements out of the corner of his
eye. She stood suspiciously still with her hands behind her back. The Japanese sensed something and moved toward her, but Pitt advanced again, stretching forward on one knee with a rapid thrust that caught the katana and slid down the hilt, the saber’s tip just fanning the knuckles of Kamatori’s forward hand.
Pitt suddenly changed tactics and pressed forward, seeing an opportunity that he had missed. Unlike the shorter hilt of the old dueling saber, with its shell enclosing the hand, Kamatori’s katana had only a small round guard at the base of the longer hilt. Pitt began aiming his thrusts, using a wrist-snapping circular motion. Feinting toward his assailant’s midsection during a lunge, Pitt flicked the tip of the blade to the left and caught Kamatori’s hand during a vicious upswing, slicing fingers to the bone.
Incredibly, Kamatori simply cursed in Japanese and came on again, blood spraying whenever he whipped his sword. If he felt the cold grip of defeat in his gut, he didn’t show it. Immune to pain and injury by his immersion into his kiai, he resumed the attack like a madman.
Then his head snapped back and to one side as a steel object struck him in the right eye. With unerring aim, Stacy had thrown the lock that had fastened her chains. Pitt snatched the moment and lunged, ramming the point of his saber into his opponent’s rib cage and puncturing a lung.
Kamatori faltered momentarily and insanely continued to fight. He moved against Pitt, shouting with each stroke as blood began to foam from his mouth. But his speed and power were diminished, and Pitt had no problem fending off the weakened cuts.
Pitt’s next thrust laid open Kamatori’s right biceps. Only then did the highly burnished steel of the katana waver and droop.
Pitt stepped in and swung the saber as hard as his strength would allow, knocking the katana free of Kamatori’s hand. The blade clattered to the floor, and Stacy snapped it up.
He kept the saber pointed at Kamatori and stared at him. “You lose,” Pitt said with controlled courtesy.
It was not in Kamatori’s samurai bones to acknowledge surrender so long as he still stood on his feet. His face underwent a curious change. The mask of hatred and ferocity melted away and his eyes assumed an inward look.
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