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

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘Doesn’t the Japanese press pick up on some of these things?’ Cole asked, knowing the answer already.

  Kadena laughed heartily, puffed on a cigarette and finished his glass. Cole topped it up as the policeman replied. ‘The Japanese press? Don’t make me laugh. They don’t dare print anything that could get them into trouble, it’s probably the most conservative ‘free’ press in the entire world. Sometimes – when something’s happened that really can’t be ignored – they do some useful work, but before long it’s all forgotten. ‘Investigative’ journalism, such as what you do for the Post, does not really have the same presence here in Japan as it does elsewhere.

  ‘Which is why,’ Kadena said clearly, prodding his cigarette toward Cole, ‘I am talking to you. Stories in the foreign press often get big play here, it’s as if the Japanese media are afraid to publish real news, but if someone else has done it first, then they’re okay with it, they’re not going to offend anyone or get into trouble, because that information is already out there in the public eye. So the way I see it is, I help you get your story, our own media pick up on it, and finally some pressure is applied to crack down on some of our more troublesome groups. I help you, you help me, neh?’

  Cole smiled and nodded his head. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, ready to try and get the information he really needed. ‘And if I’m going to make it a human interest piece, I’ll need the person that links the yakuza to America. I need to speak to Aoki Michiko. Have you managed to find her yet?’

  For the first time in a while, Kadena was silent. He slumped back onto the sofa, one hand reflexively touching a tassel of the Mexican rug, stroking it between thumb and forefinger as he thought. His cigarette hovered midway to his mouth, and his gaze was somewhere in the middle distance. Cole merely took his glass and sipped as he waited.

  Eventually, the man spoke, though not with the same enthusiasm as he’d managed to generate before.

  ‘Look, the thing is, we still don’t know exactly where she is.’

  ‘You have no idea at all?’ Cole asked, trying to keep his cool.

  Kadena smiled uneasily. ‘Two of our guys from CIB, they were supposed to meet her off the flight. But she never came through, they lost her at the airport.’

  ‘She escaped?’ Cole asked for clarification. Why would she do such a thing?

  ‘I wouldn’t say ‘escaped’ necessarily,’ Kadena said. ‘When we checked airport surveillance footage, we saw her leaving with three men, just before our officers got there. Possibly under duress.’

  Cole’s blood ran cold. ‘She was kidnapped?’

  Kadena pursed his lips. ‘It is a possibility,’ he said. ‘A very strong possibility, given her apparent importance to certain people.’

  ‘Her importance?’ Cole asked in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whether or not your theory about the girl is true,’ Kadena said, ‘we have our own reasons to be interested in her. ‘Aoki’ is only one of her family names. The other is ‘Yamaguchi’.’

  ‘As in the Yamaguchi-gumi?’

  ‘Yes, in an interesting way,’ Kadena explained. ‘The Yamaguchi-gumi was formed by Yamaguchi Harukichi, over a hundred years ago, back in nineteen-fifteen. Originally just a casual, pre-war labor union for dockworkers in Kobe, it grew in power and influence over the years. First, Harukichi handed the reins over to his son Noboro, who ruled as kumicho for more than two decades until nineteen-forty-six; then Noboro was succeeded by his protégé, Taoka Kazuo – the man who really pushed the organization forward. And from then on, there has never been a true-blood Yamaguchi running the organization.

  ‘But get this – the family line didn’t die out, and years later it emerged in Tokyo when Yamaguchi Chomo took control of the Omoto-gumi, which is – strangely – actually a part of the Yamaguchi-gumi. And so we have a situation where a real Yamaguchi only runs one of the sub-families, while the overall Yamaguchi-gumi – named after one of Chomo’s ancestors – is run by Yamamoto Tsuji. Well, until recently, anyway.’

  ‘Until recently?’ Cole prodded.

  Kadena looked sheepish. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘we’re trying to keep a lid on this for the time being, we want to manage how it gets out, given what else has happened today. You must promise not to report this back to your superiors.’

  Cole nodded his head. ‘You have my word.’

  Kadena shrugged. ‘It’ll probably be all over the news before long anyway though. Last night, Yamamoto was assassinated in his home compound.’

  ‘Assassinated?’

  ‘Yes, several guards killed, the kumicho decapitated in his bedroom, in front of a mistress. A lone assassin it seems, and nobody seems to know for sure how he got in or out.’

  ‘One man got into the Yamaguchi compound, killed several guards and chopped off the boss’s head?’ Cole asked in amazement. ‘You said ‘he’. How do you know it was a he?’

  ‘The mistress,’ Kadena said. ‘The man let her live. I say a man, but apparently she described him as a demon. Said he was a ninja.’ Kadena said this last with a slight laugh, as if to prove what he thought about such superstitious nonsense.

  But what if the girl was right? Cole had thought ninja – real ones, at least – had died out well before the twentieth century; and it had certainly been hundreds of years since their heyday. And yet he knew that elements of ninjutsu – the art of the ninja – had been taught to special agents at the Nakano Spy School during the war years and – given his own experience of secretive, elite groups – he had to accept that anything was possible. An assassination such as that described certainly fell within the remit of such specialists.

  ‘Wasn’t the bag thrown into the Kantei earlier today rumored to have a head in it?’ Cole asked suddenly, remembering the words of the airport barista.

  Kadena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I just keep my ears open, you know. I can’t help it, it’s my job.’ He sipped his whisky, looked back at Kadena. ‘So is it true?’

  Kadena just looked back at him, nothing in his eyes. ‘I cannot comment on that particular situation,’ he said. ‘A matter of national security.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cole said, bowing his head. ‘I understand.’ But his mind was already working feverishly. If it was Yamamoto’s head that had been thrown at the prime minister, then why had it been done? As a warning? Was the prime minister next? Cole was aware of the rising nationalist sentiments running through the country, knew that many people wanted to see Toshikatsu removed for a more right-wing leader. But would they try and kill him?

  It might also suggest that Toshikatsu – Endo the golden boy – might not be so squeaky clean as he liked to appear. Had he had a relationship with Yamamoto? Cole thought back to what Kadena had said about every element of Japanese society being in bed with one another, and thought it might well be possible.

  The presence of the head might also indicate that Yamamoto’s assassin – a ninja? – was now in Tokyo.

  What should Cole do about that?

  But he quickly shut down that side of him, the element that – as commander of Force One – continually registered geopolitical events and questioned American security in light of them. Such wider considerations were unimportant for now; the purpose of his ‘vacation’ to Japan wasn’t to get involved in protecting the prime minister.

  It was to find his daughter.

  ‘You said Michiko is of importance to someone,’ Cole reminded Kadena, getting the conversation back on track.

  ‘Yes,’ Kadena replied, ‘that seems to be the case. But I must admit, I do not have all the details. All I know is that she is an extremely precious commodity to the Omoto-gumi, nothing more than that.’

  ‘Who does know?’ Cole pressed.

  Kadena took a long drag of his cigarette before he replied. ‘You remember I said I could introduce you to the man most directly involved in her case?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cole said. ‘Can I meet him?’

 
Kadena shook his head sadly. ‘I am so sorry. He has contacted me to say he can no longer meet you. After today’s incidents, he no longer has the time. With the death of Yamamoto, we’re gearing up for a gang war, and the man is second in command of the Organized Crime Control Bureau for the TMPD. He’ll be tied up for weeks to come.’

  Cole was nonplussed. His daughter was a member of a crime family? And someone of such importance that the second-in-command of Tokyo’s Organized Crime Control Bureau had been put onto her case? What the hell was she involved in?

  ‘Is there any way of getting to see this man?’ Cole asked. ‘Any way at all?’

  Kadena shook his head. ‘I am afraid not – he is already up to his eyeballs in briefings and investigations. I can’t even recommend you visit him at home, as his address is not officially listed due to the nature of his work.’

  ‘Is there anywhere else he goes, other than work and home?’

  Kadena thought for a while, then his eyes lit up. ‘The only thing he makes time for is exercise,’ he said. ‘Judo, you know it?’ Kadena looked at his watch. ‘Hey, if he’s finished up at the office, he may even be there now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Kodokan,’ Kadena answered. ‘The world headquarters of judo. Normally shuts up at about nine o’clock, but they open it for people like Jirai at all hours.’

  Cole stood up, wallet out to pay the bill.

  Kadena looked up at him, startled. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to pay a little visit to our friend Jirai,’ Cole replied. ‘At the Kodokan.’

  7

  ‘So how bad is this problem?’ Ellen Abrams, President of the United States of America, asked her chief military adviser.

  General Peter Olsen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a huge bear of a man who commanded respect through his sheer physical presence, as well as a combat history that those in the know were amazed by; he was a soldier’s soldier, and one of the only people in the world to know the full details of Force One. The other two people in Abrams’ small private study – the president and Catalina dos Santos, the Director of National Intelligence – made up the control group for Force One, the only people able to authorize the unit’s missions.

  But although they were the only people within the government to have full access, they weren’t the only people to know – or suspect – what was going on, which was why Olsen had called this emergency meeting.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Olsen said in his booming tones, ‘but Cooper is out of it for the time being, and Jones has had to step in and replace him. Just our luck that we need JSOC assets at exactly the same time.’

  Abrams nodded her head in thought and took a sip of her black coffee. No cream and sugar today; she needed to be sharp.

  Lieutenant General Miley Cooper was the Commander of America’s Joint Special Operations Command, with overall responsibility for US operations involving her Tier One combat forces – Navy SEALs, Air Force special tactics teams, and Delta Force. JSOC also controlled the logistics of putting these teams into action, primarily through stealthy submarine insertion, or else airborne insertion through the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, otherwise known as the Night Stalkers.

  Although Cooper wasn’t part of command and control for Force One – the unit was so far off the radar that he hadn’t even heard the name – he was nevertheless aware that there must be some sort of ultra-covert group operating behind the scenes; some of the units he did command often had staff mysteriously seconded, or else assets were called upon for unusual activities, outside the normal parameters of JSOC missions.

  But when Olsen made the request, Cooper granted it – such requests carried full presidential approval after all, and even if they didn’t, Cooper trusted Olsen’s judgment absolutely. If the chairman of the joint chiefs wanted something, there would be a damn good reason for it, and Cooper wasn’t going to say anything to anyone.

  The trouble was, Cooper had been injured yesterday on a routine training exercise; as commander, he believed in leading his troops from the front, and had participated in a nighttime parachute descent with Delta Force at Fort Bragg. There had evidently been a fault with his night-vision goggles and – under pitch black operational conditions – he had misjudged the landing zone by a couple of meters and ended up with three leg fractures and a cracked pelvis.

  The injuries weren’t life threatening, but would keep Cooper in the hospital for some time, and out of action for longer.

  As per emergency protocol, he had been replaced by his deputy commander, Air Force Colonel Manfred Jones.

  ‘What do we know about Jones?’ dos Santos asked Olsen.

  ‘He’s a careerist,’ Olsen said carefully. ‘Capable, but politically ambitious. A bit of an unusual appointment, to be honest – he’s only spent a little time on special operations during his career, and his JSOC selection came only with pressure from certain members of congress. Seems he’s friendly with some important characters on the hill, and they wanted one of their ‘own’ inside JSOC to keep an eye on its covert ops.’

  ‘Hell, that doesn’t sound good,’ Abrams sighed. ‘What does Miley say about him?’

  Olsen shrugged his big shoulders. ‘He says he’s efficient, capable, resourceful, a fantastic logistician and planner, someone who could organize just about anything; but he’s never really got his own hands dirty, doesn’t truly know what it takes to wage some of our operations. And the bottom line is, I guess, that Miley doesn’t really trust him. He was certainly careful to keep any JSOC contributions to Force One strictly out of Jones’s office. Miley was a bit spaced out on morphine when I spoke to him, but I think his final description of Jones was that he’s a ‘snake in the grass’.’

  ‘Well, that sounds even worse. So what’s happening now?’ Abrams asked.

  ‘Orders for a Night Stalker Black Hawk chopper infil for two Force One agents into Iran had already been given by Miley, and now Jones has picked up the ball on them, he wants to know what the hell is going on. He’s already talking about his friends on the Hill, from what I’ve heard. Seems likely that – if he doesn’t get his answers – he might just start looking into other orders, other missions. If he doesn’t like what he finds, we could be talking about big blowback – congressional hearings, the works. The media would have a field day with it. But,’ Olsen said, holding his big hands up, ‘it’s still early days yet. It’s only been a day or two and we don’t really know what he’ll do yet.’

  ‘We just wait and see?’ dos Santos said.

  ‘It’s a difficult situation,’ Olsen said sadly. ‘If he wasn’t so well connected, I could just move him sideways, put someone else in. But I think – especially now, after he’s seen the recent orders – that this would only make him more suspicious, and more likely to report to his friends. So for the time being, I think we should sit tight and keep an eye on him. There are a lot of others at JSOC willing to help us out.’

  Abrams nodded her head. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘we’ll monitor the situation. Even if he thinks something’s not right, there’s no record anywhere of Force One’s existence; we should be able to fend him off for now.’

  Olsen finished his coffee and looked back up at the president. ‘We should let Mark know. Where is he?’

  Abrams shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, to be honest. After the China thing, he’s got some time off. He’s on vacation somewhere, I think.’

  ‘We should get him back here,’ dos Santos said. ‘He should know about this.’

  Abrams nodded her agreement. ‘You’re right. We’ll call him in, get his input.’ She immediately picked up her telephone, dialed a number. ‘Bruce?’ she confirmed. Bruce Vinson was the Director of the Paradigm Group, and also acted as Cole’s chief-of-staff for Force One. With Cole gone, Vinson was in charge. ‘How are you? . . . Good, good. Listen, do you know where Mark is? We need him to come to the White House.’

  There was a pause as Vinson spoke, and Olsen and
dos Santos both noted the narrowing of Abrams’ eyes, the look of concern on her face. ‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You have no way of contacting him?’

  Vinson spoke again, and Abrams nodded her head. ‘Okay, okay. I understand. Can you come in this morning? We’ve just learned something which might have some bearing on Force One. Okay, yes. Ten o’clock is fine. See you then.’

  Abrams put the phone down, looked back at her colleagues. ‘Seems like our friend Mark Cole has gone AWOL,’ she said. ‘We have no way of knowing where he is.’

  ‘Damn,’ Olsen said. ‘Let’s just hope nothing happens then.’

  And on that somber note, the three of them just hung their heads and contemplated the future.

  8

  As Kadena had mentioned, the Kodokan was officially closed at this time of night; but a flash of the assistant inspector’s CIB badge gained them admittance. The attendant had sniffed the air and looked disapprovingly at the pair of them – obviously the smell of alcohol wasn’t as well disguised as they’d hoped – but there had always been a close relationship between the worlds of judo and law enforcement in Japan, and the attendant had obviously chosen to ignore his disapproval; after all, if not for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, judo may never have gained its global preeminence.

  Back in 1886, the Tokyo police – interested in the new fighting form developed by a genteel school teacher named Kano Jigoro which he called judo, the ‘gentle way’ – organized a contest between Kano’s Kodokan club and the leading jujutsu fighters of the day. Jujutsu had a long, historical pedigree which stemmed back to the armor-clad grappling techniques of the samurai, and had long been Japan’s unarmed combat method of choice. But Kano had applied modern, scientific thinking to the art, as well as a more practical form of training, and now the Tokyo Metropolitan Police – always keen to be on the cutting edge – wanted to see which was best.

  Fifteen contests were arranged, with Kano’s Kodokan victorious in thirteen, with the other two bouts declared as draws; the opposing jujutsu team didn’t win a single fight. News of this incredible victory soon spread far and wide, judo’s future success was guaranteed, and members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had trained in the art ever since.