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

by J. T. Brannan

  Vinson’s eyes narrowed, his brain making instant recalls, processing and calculating information at a fantastic rate. ‘In Tucson,’ he said, ‘wasn’t there a girl there, arrested by the Tucson PD before being returned to Tokyo due to an expired visa?’ His mind worked harder. ‘Mark shot her, didn’t he? In the shoulder?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Abrams responded. ‘You’re the details man.’

  Vinson nodded to himself. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. Maybe that’s the connection? He feels guilty, flies over there, she’s involved in something, he helps out. I don’t know.’

  ‘Look into it,’ Abrams said, ‘as soon as you can. The last thing we need is someone like Mark going off on a lone crusade, especially with everything else that’s happening over there.’

  ‘Zen Ai Kaigi?’ Vinson asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ Abrams answered. ‘Dorrell tells me that his CIA station is sure that the assassination threats against Toshikatsu are real. And if he goes, there could well be an election. And the last thing we want is another ultranationalist government.’

  ‘It certainly didn’t work out too well the last time,’ Vinson agreed.

  ‘It certainly did not. But unfortunately, the prime minister is getting pressure from all sides on this thing, and after the China incident, we’re persona non grata there with a lot of people; and so while he might want our help, there’s no way in hell he’s going to ask for it, or receive it if we gave it to him. There’s a lot of anti-US sentiment there at the minute, and he’s got to be careful who he talks to.’

  ‘Looks like Cole’s there at exactly the wrong time.’

  ‘You can say that again; if he’s discovered there and linked to us, we’ll be giving Zen Ai Kaigi even more ammo. And it’s even worse on our end too, now we’ve got Jones sniffing around everything we’re doing.’

  Vinson nodded to himself again, knowing she was right. He’d been trying to get something on the Air Force colonel, but so far he’d had no joy; the man was clean, and had friends in high places. So far, he’d made no move against Force One or the Paradigm Group, but Vinson knew it wouldn’t last; the man was just biding his time, waiting to build up enough of a picture of what was going on before he did anything. A clever man; a dangerous man.

  ‘Consider it done,’ Vinson said, already standing; he would return to Forest Hills immediately and begin the investigation into the Japanese girl from Tucson, and Cole’s possible private mission to Tokyo.

  Colonel Manfred Jones was playing the game just right, Clark Mason considered as he relaxed into his private hot tub, the bubbles massaging his body, relaxing him wonderfully.

  Mason himself had rushed things on his previous attempts to usurp Abrams, he could admit that now; but this Jones boy was something else, a real machine, cold and calculating like Mason had never seen. He guessed it must be the man’s military training, which over the years had erased any natural feelings of impatience he might once have felt; but then again, maybe Jones had just been born that way.

  But the colonel had given him real hope for the future, convinced Mason that this new investigation wouldn’t be some simple flash-in-the-pan operation. It would take time, Jones had explained, but that was the only way of making sure that the evidence was collected properly, and the accusations stuck.

  It grated on Mason’s own impatience, in stark contrast to his admittedly I-want-it-now personality; but he knew it was for the best.

  Nothing would happen immediately; perhaps not for weeks, even months.

  But when it came, it would do so with an iron fist; and then Heaven help anyone who had ever been associated with President Ellen Abrams and her own private army.

  Kenzo Hiroshi looked out of the windows of the Shinkansen bullet train as it rushed him toward the mountain town of Hakone, and thought about the call to his secure satellite radio he had received that morning from his ninja unit. He watched the Japanese countryside emerge out of the urban blight of Tokyo and let out a long, slow sigh.

  His mission had changed; so be it.

  Well, perhaps not changed exactly; it was more accurate to say that it had been complicated by an additional task. He was still to engage in his primary mission to assassinate Toshikatsu Endo, but now he also had to go and ‘retrieve’ a missing girl.

  Seventeen-year-old Aoki ‘Yamaguchi’ Michiko – adopted daughter of Yamaguchi Mitsuya, the wakagashira of his most recent employer, the Omoto-gumi crime syndicate. Also known as kogani no ojo, this ‘golden princess’ was not to be harmed under any circumstances.

  But apparently she was under the protection of a man, about who very little was known except the danger that he posed. Over the past twelve hours this man had supposedly killed a great many foot soldiers of the Omoto-gumi single-handedly, as well as escaped from members of the TMPD and the paramilitary Special Assault Team. Evidently he was a man to be reckoned with, and a part of Kenzo was excited by the prospect of facing him.

  However, the greater part of his personality – the cold, calculating, professional part – was disturbed that he had no details about the man besides a blurry CCTV image from the club he’d wrecked in San’ya, which had been forwarded to Kenzo’s secure cell phone. He was a westerner of average height, build and features; hardly much to go on.

  What was pleasing, on the other hand, was that the girl was carrying a tracking device under her skin without even realizing it, which would make finding her incredibly easy. He had the tracking device now, handed to him at the station back in Tokyo, and also had various photographs of Michiko, including her passport and other forms of government ID; he’d even been provided with pictures from her childhood and adolescence, although these were less useful.

  It wouldn’t be long now before the bullet train arrived at Odawara Station; he’d have to change there for the Odakyu Railway service to Hakone-Yumoto, but he’d still be making good time. He checked the tracker again, making sure of the girl’s location, glad to see that she was still traveling towards the beauty spots around Hakone, probably seeking sanctity in the mountains as fugitives had done for years.

  But she was still unknowingly waiting for him to catch up, ready to be taken back to her family in Tokyo.

  Kenzo smiled, as he thought then about the American’s good fortune; the man would be killed within sight of the glorious Mount Fuji.

  It was a beautiful place to die.

  3

  ‘So they’ll let us in?’ Cole asked, speaking into the receiver of a payphone as he looked across the busy parking lot of Sounzan Station toward the incredible sight of Mount Fuji in the distance.

  He heard Bruce Vinson sighing on the other end of the line, and knew the man wasn’t happy; and why should he be? Force One’s number one man had gone AWOL and was in the middle of causing an international incident, while there was enough trouble to be dealing with back home.

  ‘They’ve been advised,’ Vinson replied eventually. ‘The gate crew will let you in without ID, Pete has spoken to Colonel Wilkes directly and he’s instructed his men.’

  Cole let out a sigh of his own, this one of relief. Colonel Jeremy Wilkes was the Commanding Officer of the Combined Arms Training Center, Marine Corps Installations Pacific – otherwise known as ‘Camp Fuji’, due to its location just a few kilometers away from the mountain.

  When Cole and Michiko had escaped from the Akasaka area on the stolen police motorbike earlier that day, Cole had known they wouldn’t get far traveling like that; and so they had ditched the bike as soon as they were able, and stolen a car.

  In the car, they’d finally managed to escape Tokyo and had headed on the main road south to Yokohama. The drive had been excruciating, forever held up by the rush hour traffic, and Cole had considered going straight to Haneda airport, sure that the police would not yet have had time to blacklist them; but then he’d remembered that Michiko had no identification with her, and they’d be no time to get any.

  It was then that he knew it was
time to call in help; after all, he’d already found his daughter and achieved his aim. There was no harm now in receiving some assistance in getting them both back to the United States.

  He had therefore ditched the stolen car in the huge parking lot of a shopping mall and called the Paradigm Group in Washington; it was just after eight in the morning in Yokohama, which meant it would be about six in the evening back on the eastern seaboard of the US. Bruce Vinson would definitely still be working.

  Vinson had been relieved to hear from him, but was not pleased; apparently, questions were being asked by the Japanese authorities about covert US action in their territory, and distrust was building which could damage future relationships.

  Cole was sorry to hear that, but – as he’d looked across at Michiko, waiting for him patiently in the stolen car – he’d not regretted his actions for a second.

  And to Vinson’s credit, his anger had turned to disbelief, and then ultimately to understanding, when Cole had told him about his daughter, and his reason for being in Japan in the first place.

  Cole had then asked his chief-of-staff for his help – the yakuza and the police were after them, they had no identification, and they needed to get the hell out of Japan. What could Vinson do for them?

  After a moment’s thought, Vinson had told Cole to keep heading along the coast until he came to the turn-off for the mountain passes of Hakone; and once in the small town, to call him again. In the meantime, Vinson would work on getting Cole admitted onto Camp Fuji, where he would be safe from the people who were after him.

  In their hastily concocted plan, a US Marine Corps chopper would fly them out of Camp Fuji and onward toward Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa – the largest USAF base in the entire Pacific region – where they could board a military transport plane back to the US.

  After his first call to Vinson, Cole had then stolen another car – still wary of using public transport due to the security net which would be closing around them – and had set off into the huge mess of intercity traffic. He knew the train would be quicker, but it simply wasn’t worth the risk.

  The news Cole heard now, after his second call, warmed him immensely. General Peter Olsen – Chief of the Joint Chiefs and one of the three controllers of Cole and Force One – had stepped in, and Camp Fuji was to be opened for the two fugitives. If they could get a chopper across to Kadena, Cole had no doubt they could return to the US with no problems on board one of JSOC’s ‘black’ flights, sans passenger manifesto.

  Cole wasn’t calling from Hakone itself; he’d passed through the town but had been put off by what appeared to be a large police presence and had driven further up into the mountains to the tiny village of Sounzan. He had been starting to become paranoid, all too aware of how long he’d been in the same stolen vehicle – it had taken hours to escape the gridlock of Yokohama, and the highways out of the city weren’t much better – and was glad to move off the busy Route 138 and onto the smaller, winding roads of the scenic area. After Sounzan, he would continue west toward the tip of Lake Ashi and then to Kojiri Pass, where he’d then turn north toward Gotenba and the US Marine base.

  The hamlet he was now in was a nexus of the Hakone Course, a popular tourist route around the national park; the station he stood outside was where trail walkers met with travelers on the cable-train, to be transferred to the Hakone rope-cars which took them across bubbling sulfur pits and onward to Lake Ashi. It was a beautiful place, but one from which Cole wished to immediately move on; they needed to get to Camp Fuji, and the sooner the better.

  ‘Thanks Bruce,’ Cole said, ‘and please pass on my apologies to the president, and to Pete and Cat as well. But I had to come here.’

  ‘I understand that, old chap,’ Vinson replied in his clipped English tones, ‘and don’t worry, I’m sure everyone else will understand too. Just don’t get into any more trouble, understood?’

  Cole smiled, despite the situation. ‘Understood.’

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Vinson said, ‘just a quick query, since you’ve been in Japan. We’ve received word of an assassination threat to the prime minister there, have you heard anything?’

  ‘Nothing direct,’ Cole said, although he relayed the information about the death of Yamamoto Tsuji and how the man’s head had been thrown into Toshikatsu’s compound, how the police thought the same assassin might be the one behind the threats to the prime minister; the rumor that the man was a ninja.

  ‘I say,’ Vinson said, ‘shame you can’t stay and help protect him really, especially with the rally coming up tomorrow. Ah well, that’s not your problem right now.’ He sighed. ‘Come on home and we’ll see what happens. And Mark?’

  ‘Yes Bruce?’

  ‘I’m glad you found her.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Cole said earnestly, and broke the connection, looking back to the car.

  When he did, his heart froze.

  Where the hell was she?

  Cole raced over to the car and looked frantically inside.

  Nothing.

  He turned around in barely-controlled panic, scouring the immediate area for her. Had she been taken? While Cole had been on the phone, had someone snuck upon them and spirited her away, right from under his nose?

  But then he saw her, buying a steaming tray of noodles from a street vendor across the small parking lot, and relaxed. He couldn’t blame her after all; Cole hadn’t eaten since early the previous evening, and he had no idea when Michiko’s last meal might have been. Added to which, the physical toll of the past twelve hours was more than many people would have been able to tolerate. He knew that adrenaline would have kept her from being hungry for a considerable amount of time; but when that time was up, her hunger would hit with a vengeance. And at the end of the day, despite the hard life she’d had, she was still only seventeen years old.

  She turned back to the car, heaping a huge, steaming ladleful of noodles into her open mouth and caught his eye, smiling self-consciously back at him with her mouth full of food.

  Cole nodded and smiled back, unable to be angry with her. What did it matter now, anyway? They were almost there, within the safety of the US military. It wouldn’t be long, and this whole nightmare would be over.

  No! his inner voice screamed at him, knowing that complacency was the enemy, the thing that ruined plans, operations, lives. Complacency was the devil itself, and had killed more good men and women than time.

  And so he looked around, taking in the scene around him. It wasn’t inconceivable that they would be found; the yakuza had informers and contacts everywhere, and the Japanese police were experienced and sophisticated. Mitsuya would have got the description – and probably pictures too – of Michiko out all over Japan, and his own face might have been pulled off CCTV images from the nightclub or the hotel, been programmed into face-recognition software onboard high-res surveillance drones which would be crisscrossing the sky above them, unseen yet ever-present.

  How had the yakuza and the police known they were at the New Otani? It could have been investigative work by Nakamura or others – which had then been bought by Mitsuya and the Omoto-gumi; or else Mitsuya’s citywide network of informers might have spotted them entering the hotel, despite Cole’s best efforts at counter-surveillance, and the police had merely been following the movements of the yakuza foot soldiers.

  Or was there something else?

  Cole’s mind raced furiously as he took in the ugly concrete edifice of Sounzan Station, its twin cables reaching further up the encroaching mountains, modern cable-cars dangling precariously from the high-tension wires; he saw the scattered tourists taking pictures, eating and chatting, playing and laughing; observed the cars, bikes and buses pulling into and out of the station’s parking lot on a regularly, never-ending basis, the fury of sound and movement strangely hypnotic; the incredible, majestic beauty of Japan’s fabled Fujiyama, golden in the midday late summer sun.

  His mind turned and turned, and he was hit with an awful possibilit
y – was Michiko being tracked? If she truly was the Omoto-gumi’s cash cow, the golden princess who would lead Chomo and Mitsuya to the highest echelons of organized crime, how would they ensure that she didn’t escape them again? They could keep her under lock and key of course, and indeed they had done; but what if something went wrong, and she escaped anyway? Cole would definitely have put a tracking device in her, hidden it under her skin, done it in such a way that she wouldn’t even know she had it.

  He nodded his head, sickened; he would have put it somewhere near her shoulder wound, to be hidden by the scarring from the gunshot she had received at Cole’s own hand.

  Suddenly, the mountain village started to constrict around him, tunnel vision focusing only on Michiko as he suddenly began to feel terribly vulnerable, as if the entire world was watching them; he had to fight to broaden his perceptions, get a grip on himself.

  Michiko was halfway back to the car now, but she wasn’t moving fast enough. He had to check her for a transmitter, there was no time to lose; if he found it, he could dig it out and throw it inside another car, or maybe into the cable car going up the mountain.

  Hurry up! his mind screamed at her, but he tried to calm himself, unwilling to draw attention their way.

  His mind was spinning in all directions as he tried to make plans and back-up plans. If the Omoto-gumi knew where they were, they might already have moved ahead and blocked off the upcoming mountain roads; or given the information to the police, who might be able to block off the entire area.

  What would they do?

  Michiko was only thirty feet away now, still eating her noodles, and that was when Cole saw him; a man, average in every way, walking at an oblique angle from Michiko that looked accidental but which Cole saw instantly would eventually, conveniently, converge with her. And it would converge with her directly next to a dark blue rental van with smoked windows.

  It could be nothing but a coincidence, but Cole didn’t believe in such things; in his world, they seldom occurred. The man bothered him too, but only because it was like seeing a mirror, a person so highly skilled that he had to disguise his abilities from anyone looking. There was a fine line between an average man, and an expert in the combat arts effectively concealing their skill by appearing to be average, but Cole’s gut instinct told him that the man making his subtle approach to Michiko was the second. The scary thing was how truly average the man appeared to be, which indicated someone with a great level of skill, perhaps even better than Cole’s own.