NEVER SAY DIE: Mark Cole Takes On the Yakuza in His Most Thrilling Adventure Yet!

by J. T. Brannan

  He knew the camera would fail to pick him up, aimed as it was towards the main bulk of the hallway and not the ceiling. After all, who would attack from the ceiling?

  Going high was another way of camouflage from any guards who happened to pass by, too; for most people scanned ahead, and rarely checked above or below their own eye line. He couldn’t remain hidden forever, of course; but he was sure to see – or sense – any guards long before they saw him, and he would immediately become motionless, his body contracting into a less human form. And with his lightly colored uniform, it was entirely possible that they would never see him, even if anybody did come down the corridor. But his earlier surveillance indicated that they would not, and anyway, the further he got through the house, the less he had to worry about an early discovery.

  He eventually came to the end of the corridor, which branched off to the left and right. He paused, listened and waited motionless as he assessed the scene beyond him.

  There was nobody to the right, but to the left – not in that hall directly, but further, around the next corner – he could hear a man walking, slowing, whispering. He heard the exchange of words, knew it was a roving guard speaking to the two men outside Yamamoto’s room. They probably didn’t dare utter anything above a whisper, right outside the door of their sleeping boss. If they woke him, it might mean the gift of a finger, for one or all of them.

  He waited patiently, as he been trained to do, and eventually the man carried on along his way, walking down the corridor to the turn-off to the section in which Kenzo waited.

  Would the man turn right down this corridor, or would he carry straight on? Kenzo listened more intently. Typically, and according to past routine, the guard would pass straight on, but anything was possible. If the guard turned the corner, would he see the man clinging to the ceiling above him? Kenzo reflexively pulled himself into the shadows, his body altering its form already.

  But still he listened, and eventually he relaxed. The footsteps were even, the weight distributed equally on both feet; if the man was intending to turn, he would already have subconsciously been leaning to the right, with more weight going onto that foot. The difference in sound would have been impossible to detect for most people, but to Kenzo it would have been clear. But there was no difference, and moments later Kenzo was proven right when he saw the man stroll down the corridor without even a glance towards the turn-off.

  He knew now was a good time to act; the two guards outside the room would have been relaxed by the sight of another guard, and they would have had their confidence in the compound’s continued security subtly boosted.

  He waited a few moments longer until the third guard had turned down another corridor, and then went into action, climbing across the ceiling faster now, out and around to the left, down a shorter corridor which turned right and then jinked again to the left.

  At the last turn he paused and waited; around this corner was Yamamoto’s room, and the two armed men who guarded the door. They were quiet, professional – undoubtedly the best of the bodyguards available from within the vast Yamaguchi-gumi network. Hard, trained men with a history of violence.

  He checked along the corner wall, saw the CCTV camera pointing down the hallway towards Yamamoto’s door. He knew there would be another at the other end; knew also that its focus would be the further side of the corridor, which meant he only had to worry about this one for now.

  He withdrew a blowpipe from his robes, dug the claws of one hand in deeper to the ceiling as he controlled the pipe with the other, putting it to his lips, aiming and blowing.

  A black pellet shot across the space, hitting the camera screen and immediately opening and expanding across the small glass. Viscous ink, it covered up the image while not dripping to the floor.

  But Kenzo knew that the movement might have caught the attention of the two men, that they might now be turning towards the far corner of the corridor around which he was hiding.

  And then Kenzo moved.

  It was time for action.

  Further into the compound, in a separate building near the parking lot, Suzuki Enamoto sipped his tea as he sat watching the feeds from the compound’s twenty-eight security cameras. Damn. He put the tea down in disgust; it was cold, and there nothing he hated more than cold tea.

  Many of his friends drank coffee like Westerners; just one more affectation, along with the dark suits and the American cars, which his gangster brethren indulged in. But Suzuki refused to follow them, and still regarded tea as the ultimate among drinks. And now his damn cup was cold.

  He blamed it on the flickering images in front of him; twenty-eight cameras, and none of them showing anything except the passage of guards, and the regular comings and goings from the compound’s many buildings – theirs was a twenty-four hour a day business, after all.

  But such monotony often made him drift off; not quite asleep, but into a sort of stupor, during which he was unaware of the passage of time.

  He shouted to his partner, who was in the restroom. ‘Hey! You working tonight or what?’ How long had the kid been in there? Long enough for the tea to go cold, anyway.

  ‘It’s that damn kimchi,’ the strained voice came back. ‘Fucking Koreans!’

  Suzuki smiled; his partner complained about the Korean dish of hot, spicy fermented vegetables regularly, but couldn’t get enough of them. Suzuki thought one day he might learn his lesson, but he never seemed to.

  Sighing, Suzuki got up and moved to the kettle at the back of the security room. Refilling his teacup, he turned back to his chair and planted himself back down.

  He hadn’t been away for long, but gave the screens in front of him a thorough check anyway; you never knew what might happen.

  His eyes roved the twenty-eight images, and seconds later he noticed it; first subconsciously, a picture that stood out not for movement, but for something else.

  It was blank.

  He sat up straighter in his chair, looking at the number to confirm it, even though he knew from its position exactly which camera it was.

  It was number twelve; the camera pointed towards the door of Yamamoto Tsuji, boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

  In an instant, he called for his partner to get his ass back into the security room, and reached out frantically for the radio.

  From his position on the ceiling, Kenzo peered around the corner and assessed the situation in the blink of an eye.

  Two men, short-barreled assault rifles in their hands, turning his way.

  In the next instant, Kenzo’s right hand whipped out once, twice.

  Two blackened, carbonized blades flew across the corridor – shaken, the pointed throwing star shuriken that were awesomely effective in the right hands.

  They wheeled through the air almost faster than the eye could see, the sharpened blades hitting both men in the center of the foreheads, between the eyes, their tips piercing the skull right through the brain beyond.

  The guards’ mental signal to fire their weapons was never received by their fingers, and as both men dropped helplessly to their knees, eyes wide in shock, Kenzo detached himself from the ceiling and dropped noiselessly to the hallway floor.

  He raced towards the guards, right arm going over his shoulder as he ran, so that by the time he reached them he was already drawing the sword which lay flat across his back, whipping it down and around to slice both men deeply across their torsos.

  Blood flew across the corridor, the bodies collapsing with a sigh of escaping air from the exposed internal organs.

  He paused and waited outside, absorbing the information from within the chamber beyond. He had been quiet, but he couldn’t be sure if Yamamoto would now be awake.

  Seconds later he had his answer, the soft noises of two people sleeping coming to him through the paper-thin walls.

  He slid the door open, moving quickly and silently into the dark room, eyes adjusting quickly to the interior gloom, light from the hallway now spilling into the bedchamber.
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br />   Like a wild animal, Yamamoto’s instincts recognized the change of illumination in his room, understood his security had been violated, and he was suddenly awake, pushing the girl to one side, reaching out for the handgun hidden next to the low futon bed.

  The girl stirred, but her instincts were slower; Kenzo had brought the sword down and severed Yamamoto’s arm at the elbow before her eyes had opened.

  Her eyes went wide with shock and she reared backwards, unable to speak, to shout, to scream, just filled with the indescribable horror of the apparition in front of her, blood dripping from its hungry blade.

  Yamamoto’s eyes, too, were wide with shock, but instinct still urged him to back up and he pulled his naked body away from Kenzo, blood from his severed arm pumping furiously across the futon.

  Kenzo stalked towards the Yamaguchi oyabun, sheathing the sword and pulling a thin chain from his waistband. He threw the chain towards the man in a rapid action and it wrapped itself around his neck, Kenzo pulling it taut and dragging him back towards him, the girl looking on in helpless terror.

  Yamamoto was on his knees, eyes misty as Kenzo withdrew two kama – razor-sharp farming sickles, used for centuries by the Japanese as weapons – and placed them crossways to the boss’s neck, one to each side.

  Yamamoto’s neck pulsed, as if he was about to say something, but it was too late – Kenzo ripped both arms outwards, the deadly sickle blades slicing through the man’s neck from both sides, decapitating him completely.

  Kenzo turned to the woman, who was still silent, still unable to move, and regarded her for a moment.

  He knew what he looked like; like a supernatural demon, a ferocious beast unleashed from Japan’s dark past.

  He moved towards her, let his aura surround her, threaten to attack her, and then pulled back and raced from the room.

  The message would be received, loud and clear.

  There was no answer; neither guard was responding to the radio. Suzuki had summoned help, but his hands reached out for the joystick control, wanting to see the corridor, see what was going on.

  He took control of camera eleven at the other end of the corridor and moved it, panning up and across to Yamamoto’s door.

  What he saw sickened him, the two guards dead, bodies cut wide open, blood pooling across the tatami, the door to Yamamoto’s room wide open.

  Then he saw two more guards race around the corner, the closest men summoned by Suzuki, and he watched their reaction to the horror in front of them – at first they recoiled with shock from the sheer gruesomeness of the scene, then they pulled their weapons up and moved inside.

  Seconds passed, then a full minute. What were they doing?

  His partner turned to him, disturbed. ‘Try them again!’ he said nervously, as they watched more guards arrive on the scene.

  Suzuki nodded his head and raised the radio to his lips. ‘What is happening?’ he demanded.

  Moments later the radio clicked through from the other end, and for a moment all Suzuki could hear was hysterical screaming in the background, a woman’s screams so terror-filled that they couldn’t possibly be real; Suzuki had never heard anything like it in his life.

  But then he heard the words of one of the guards, his voice shaken, choked with tears. ‘Yamamoto-sama is . . . dead,’ the voice said.

  ‘How?’ Suzuki asked, panic rising within him.

  ‘His head was cut off,’ the voice replied, as if still unable to comprehend it, the screaming still filling the background – hysterical, unstoppable.

  ‘Where are the killers?’ Suzuki demanded, waving his hand at his partner, making him monitor the screens, to pick up on anyone unfamiliar. Whoever had done this must still be within the compound.

  ‘There’s nobody else in the room,’ the voice came back. ‘Nobody . . .’

  Suzuki could sense there was something more, something the guard didn’t want to say. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Our . . . father’s head,’ the voice came back, broken. ‘It is gone.’

  Hours later, Suzuki sat in the security office, exhausted. He and six other men had scoured the CCTV images for any information, yet had found nothing.

  In the meantime, the entire guard force had been mobilized and had searched the entire compound – and they, too, had found nothing.

  ‘I cannot believe it,’ Watanabe Haruto said, shaking his head. ‘There must be something.’

  ‘If there is, we cannot find it,’ Suzuki said apologetically, wondering if even a finger would be penance enough for his failings tonight.

  Watanabe was about to respond, when the door to the security room opened, a guard stepping through holding a shaken, trembling and fearful woman by the arm. Suzuki recognized her at once – Tanaka Fumiko, the woman who had shared Yamamoto’s bed tonight. So far she had been of no use whatsoever, unable to stop screaming, or rocking hysterically forwards and backwards.

  Now she had stopped screaming, and was instead whispering the same word, over and over and over again as she rocked slowly back and forth.

  ‘What is she saying?’ Watanabe said impatiently, disgusted with the girl.

  Suzuki bent closer to her, listening to the word until he heard it and realization of what had happened here tonight finally dawned on him.

  He looked upwards at Watanabe, not knowing how he would respond to the news.

  ‘Ninja, she says,’ Suzuki informed the Yamaguchi wakagashira, shaking his head in wonder. ‘She says Yamamoto was killed by a ninja.’

  Kenzo Hiroshi leaned back against the cool glass of the train as it propelled him away from Kobe and on towards Tokyo.

  Escaping from the Yamaguchi compound had been child’s play, and – his weapons and equipment now concealed within a small backpack – he had enjoyed a leisurely stroll southwest towards downtown Kobe.

  He had enjoyed the feel of the cool night breeze on his skin, the sight of the moon and stars trying to break through the haze of the streetlights which surrounded him. Mission accomplished, he felt at one with the world, with the very cosmos.

  He had not been concerned with being followed; for a long time, they would believe he was still inside the compound. It would probably take them hours to decide that he must have already escaped, and by then, pursuit would be useless – he might have gone anywhere.

  His meandering walk through the neighborhoods lying northeast of central Kobe had been pleasant, easing away the tension of his nighttime activities. There had been very few people around, and he knew that the people that he did see would struggle to remember anything about him; it was in the way he held himself, the way he walked, the way he moved. Everything about him was designed – when necessary – to be entirely unmemorable.

  But – again, when necessary – his presence could become the very reverse of this, his appearance as the ghostly apparition of a medieval warrior designed to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy. It was one of the key reasons why his ninja unit had been raised in the first place, when every other attack force in the world was becoming more and more hi-tech. The masters of his art recognized the powerful nature of psychological warfare, and whereas the elite military units of the world would have taken the Yamaguchi compound with helicopter air support and an entire platoon of body-armored commandos with silenced automatic weapons, Kenzo’s own unit’s approach was entirely different. Stealth, distraction, misdirection – and close-up killing with the use of bladed weapons, whose use was far more terrifying on a deep, instinctual level than the use of firearms.

  And so Kenzo’s purpose was not solely to assassinate a target, but to create fear within entire organizations; like a ghost, he could appear at anytime, anywhere.

  Nobody would know who was next.

  But Kenzo knew, and his next mission was the very reason he was traveling to Tokyo.

  Because his next target was Toshikatsu Endo, prime minister of Japan.

  PART ONE

  1

  The girl sat alone in her chair, wonderin
g where her life had gone wrong, at what point it had all unraveled.

  But, she realized as she gazed sightlessly around the windowless room, perhaps her life had never been right in the first place. Perhaps her current life was simply a punishment for a previous life lived badly?

  And yet she did know when things had changed, the tipping point that had altered everything – it had been when she was just ten years old, the last time she had seen her mother.

  Aoki Michiko was seventeen now, and the family which had raised her since then was the same family which had been keeping her a prisoner since her forced return to Japan. She had something they wanted – something they’d identified in her from an early age – and had been furious when she’d escaped two years before. Now they had her back, their limitless cash cow, they were never going to let her out of their sight again.

  This room – a bed, a chair, a wardrobe and a television set – were all she would see outside of her working hours, possibly for the rest of her life; a life in ruins, destroyed by those around her, those who had claimed to have her best interests at heart.

  Some days, she thought hard about killing herself, committing seppuku in the female fashion, like lady samurai of old – a sharp knife into the neck, find the jugular vein and slice. She had even smuggled a knife up to her room for this very purpose, but had so far failed to use it.

  Because the fact remained that she had some unfinished business to attend to first, and she couldn’t leave this earth until she’d succeeded.

  If she could trace her unhappiness back to the last time she had seen her mother, then she could also trace the source of that event to one man – Mark Cole.

  Her father.

  After learning his identity and spending years tracking him, she had finally received her chance for revenge in Tucson, Arizona – but at the moment of truth, she had hesitated, and her father had instead shot her.