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

by J. T. Brannan

He had used the distraction of Fukuda’s speech to wander causally to the foot of the elevated corridor which separated the northern part of the square from the smaller south side, resting quietly in the shadows; and he had then used the distraction of Toshikatsu’s arrival to quickly climb up the metal-clad wall to the top of the corridor, his form low to the roof and concealed within the shadow cast by one of the Skytree’s huge metal pylons. He had been so quick, so smooth, that nobody had sensed any kind of movement, and now he was there, twenty feet above the crowd and with a perfect line of sight toward the stage, and Toshikatsu.

  The crowd was still going wild as the prime minister ascended the stairs, basking in what would be his last few minutes of glory.

  Kenzo used these moments to pull out the hidden weapon from its place on the corridor roof, hands working precisely and perfectly in the darkness, his movements slick and well-practiced.

  The crowd was beginning to quieten down now, and Toshikatsu was starting to thank them in his calm, mellow tones; but still Kenzo didn’t move from the prone position, keeping low and unobserved as he notched the first razor-tipped arrow, the second held in the fingers of the same hand so that he could fire both in rapid succession, with a minimum of movement.

  He was placing the third and fourth arrows – the ones with the explosive heads, the ones that would really make the story for the evening news reports – in the same hand when he saw the man near the front of the crowd, a man whose movement and posture he immediately recognized.

  The American.

  So he had survived the fall. Kenzo could hardly believe it, but knew what must have happened; by some stroke of fantastic luck, he must have fallen into a pool deep enough to absorb the energy of his descent.

  A part of Kenzo – the part that admired the American warrior and had regretted his death – was actually relieved. But the other part – far stronger – saw the man as a threat.

  He was pushing through the crowd, eyes roving everywhere, looking for . . .

  Me. Kenzo almost smiled. He’s looking for me.

  And of course he would – the American was the only person alive who could identify him. But this was a forlorn hope, Kenzo knew – he changed identity like a chameleon, and now, in the shadows above, he was completely undetectable.

  Kenzo breathed out, controlling himself, composing himself for the upcoming shots.

  The American didn’t matter, only Toshikatsu.

  Kenzo listened, hearing the prime minister’s words over the speaker system; he was well into the flow now.

  ‘And so I asked myself,’ Toshikatsu intoned loudly, ‘what do the people want? Do they want things to remain the same?’ He paused, then repeated the question with a variation. ‘Do you,’ he asked the crowd, ‘want things to remain the same?’

  He was met by echoed shouts of No! – No way! – We want change! – Change now! – and hundreds of similar epithets, which he let go on for several moments before calming the crowd with palms raised.

  ‘You are right,’ Toshikatsu continued, and Kenzo knew the time was near, his breathing slow and controlled, his heart rate just thirty beats per minute. ‘You are right! Things need to change, and the LDP – I, Toshikatsu Endo – will deliver that change! Over seventy years ago, the Americans forced upon us a – ’

  But Kenzo was no longer listening.

  He was moving, an inhuman form rising from the rooftop; a forest demon, the angel of death.

  And nothing would stop him now.

  10

  Cole’s iron will would never allow him to panic but – with the knowledge of what was at stake, the ramifications for the entire world if Toshikatsu was killed, with the crowd shouting around him, Toshikatsu firing them up with his rhetoric, people all about him, pressing in on him – his mind almost went blank, almost refused to work.

  Almost.

  But the threat wasn’t the crowd; he could see that now. He’d covered all angles, all positions.

  Which left longer-range weapons, a gun or – more likely for the ninja – a longbow or crossbow.

  And for that, the ninja would need height, yet not so much that he would be seen by the sharpshooters.

  Cole’s mind calculated everything in instants; he knew where the snipers were, their fields of view; he knew the range of arrows, their flight paths, the trajectories necessary to make a kill shot; he knew where the light was, where the shadow was; he knew where he would be if it was him about to make the kill.

  He knew where the assassin was.

  He peered back over the crowd, pushing forward, knocking some to the side as he struggled to get closer to the elevated corridor, the glass and steel tube that was raised above the square, its roof bathed in shadow, its line of sight to the stage perfect.

  At first he didn’t see anything, nothing at all.

  But then, like a serpent rising from its lair, he saw shadow move on shadow, the very vaguest of dark shapes slipping through the inky blackness around it.

  And then he acted, perhaps faster than he ever had before, perhaps matching his speed to that of his target, his mind and body as one, in perfect and fluid harmony.

  He had one chance, no more.

  11

  The arrow was almost in flight, almost released – and Toshikatsu Endo was so close to being dead – when a savage pain ripped up Kenzo’s right arm, causing all four arrows to fall to the rooftop, the bow string released uselessly as another sharp, stabbing pain erupted in his chest.

  Kenzo’s fingers went to the pain, rested on two flat metal objects, both buried deeply in his body, pulled them out in a state of near-shock, blood running freely over him.

  Even in the dark, he recognized them by touch alone; they were his throwing stars, his own shuriken, the ones he had used on the American in Sounzan.

  They had been returned to him.

  He looked down at the crowd, saw the American pointing toward him, shouting at the top of his voice; saw Toshikatsu’s security team grab him, cover him, bundle him away to safety, not a target anymore even if Kenzo was able to use the bow; saw the armed security personnel raise their weapons to him, opening fire above the heads of the crowd; felt the impact of the rounds in front of him on the metal, the high-powered rounds from the snipers hitting behind him, hemming him in.

  You’ve failed.

  The words hit hard, harder than the shuriken, harder than any of the bullets ever could.

  Ninja did not fail.

  Ever.

  But he was damned if he would die here, and so – bullets hitting all around him as the square below descended into absolute chaos – he sprinted across the corridor roof for the massive structure of the Skytree itself.

  The plan now in ruins, he would never allow them to take him alive.

  12

  Cole could barely believe that he’d hit the man; at that range, to only the very faintest of silhouettes, it was nearly impossible.

  And yet he had managed it, the throwing stars Nakamura had given him in the hospital room put to good work, work they had surely never been intended for by their owner.

  But it had been close, so close; the ninja had already been up and aiming the bow, and if Cole had been a fraction of a second too late, the arrow would have been in flight, and would have hit Toshikatsu soon after.

  But Cole had known where the man would be, as surely as he knew anything; and then instinct had propelled him onward, made his own attack clean and true.

  Cole watched as the corridor roof exploded in a hail of gunfire, the crowd going crazy, racing for the stairs, the elevators, anywhere they could to get the hell out of there; and through the chaos, Cole saw the shadow move on the roof, running fast through the onslaught of bullets toward the exposed metal frame of the Skytree.

  And then – before he knew what he was doing – Cole was running too, toward the man who was now climbing, determined that he would never get away.

  13

  Kenzo moved so fast that the shooters couldn’t keep up, even a
s he pulled himself up the frame of the incredible tower, edging ever upward, toward . . .

  He didn’t give his final destination any more thought, just let his body do the work, pulling him wide around the structure to avoid the worst of the gunfire, his hands and feet placing him expertly in every shadow, every crevice.

  He was a creature of the night, he could never die.

  They could never kill him.

  But the American . . .?

  He cut the thought off as he saw the American at the foot of the tower below him, watched in admiration and – possibly, he thought, yes, possibly – even fear.

  Fear was something he normally preferred to visit on other people, but he was certainly not a stranger to the feeling; he had been scared almost every day during his long years of training and apprenticeship.

  But now he knew how to control the fear, and that is what he did, shutting it off and concentrating purely on the physical sensation of climbing, his body edging ever upward, his black-suited form now clinging to the Skytree over two hundred meters above ground level, a mere dot on the side of the purple-lit metal frame.

  He looked down again and saw the American climbing after him, and immediately the ninja knew what he must do.

  14

  The gunfire had all but stopped now, either because the shooters no longer had a viable target, or because a ‘friendly’ was now on the scene and they had been called off.

  But either way, the absence was welcome; Cole had enough to concentrate on just keeping hold of the brushed steel framework. There were ladders for workers, and Cole had used them for the initial part of his ascent, desperate to catch the escaping assassin; but the problem was that the ninja was not using them, he was just climbing the metal frame of the tower itself, unwilling to expose himself in the easier to access areas. And Cole had therefore been forced to climb the same way, following the ninja as he edged round the tower, pulling away from the side that overlooked the square, out of the spotlight of the media and the gun-happy security forces.

  Cole looked up, saw the ninja just a few levels above him, his climbing slow due to the shuriken wounds. But then Cole also had wounds of his own, mostly from their last confrontation in the Hakone mountains, and wasn’t climbing as fast as he ordinarily could. His grip was weak too, and there were times when it almost came loose, heart-wrenching moments when his life flashed before his eyes, and he saw himself plummeting to the hard concrete floor below.

  And still they climbed, meter after meter, level after level, until the people below were no more than insects, and then couldn’t be seen at all, and the wind whipped at his jacket and threatened to tear him off the face of the tower, and he wondered where the hell the ninja was going, there was no way down from here, what was the man doing?

  And as the wind picked up again, forcing Cole to wrap his arms tightly around one of the colossal steel extrusions, he risked looking up again and saw that the ninja had reached the base of the Tembo Deck, three hundred and fifty meters high. But there the building flared outward, and how the hell was he going to climb that?

  It was then that the ninja turned to look down at Cole, a smile on his surprisingly youthful face; the smile of the defeated, from one who has realized they cannot win, and doesn’t begrudge the victor the spoils.

  The man nodded his head toward Cole in silent acknowledgment, knowing that Cole had pursued him as far as he could go, and he could now go no further.

  And then the man let go of the tower and fell, his body sailing past Cole, the smile still on his face.

  And then the body was lost in the inky, purple-hued shadows below.

  15

  ‘A body?’ Nakamura shook his head. ‘No, we’ve still not found a body. We haven’t found anything at all, except the weapons he left on the corridor rooftop.’

  Cole sat and put his head in his hands, body shaking with the aftereffects of adrenaline, all released now, his body going into parasympathetic backlash.

  The climb down had been even worse than the climb up, but eventually he had managed to pull himself along to the ladders, which had made things a little better.

  Nakamura had been waiting for him back in the square, which was now all but abandoned except for a combined security detail of JSDF soldiers, SAT paramilitaries and TMPD cops.

  He’d done it, Nakamura had told him with a smile and a hug; he’d really done it. He’d saved the prime minister, and now the entire world would know that an American was responsible for stopping the assassination rather than being a part of it. Zen Ai Kaigi’s plan – or that of whoever had hired the ninja – was now dead in the water.

  Nakamura had described how Toshikatsu, on hearing of the American’s involvement, had taken his speech – the speech that would have declared his intent to redraw the constitution and start afresh – and had torn it to pieces in front of everyone, his mind now evidently made up on the subject.

  Cole was pleased of course, and also immensely relieved; he had done what had been asked of him, and had hopefully managed to stabilize Sino-US relations for the foreseeable future at least.

  But where was the ninja’s body?

  Cole had seen it fall into the shadows below, but nobody had seen it land, a fact which gravely concerned him. Nobody should be able to survive a fall like that, and yet . . . and yet . . .

  Cole shook his head, clearing the cobwebs out; it was of no importance now. Toshikatsu was safe, and the ninja would turn up somewhere.

  For now, there were more important things to be worried about.

  He turned to Nakamura, held his gaze. ‘Have you heard from my friends?’ he asked. ‘Have they found Michiko?’

  Nakamura looked at Cole and, eventually, nodded his big head up and down. ‘I just had the call, minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Mitsuya has been traced to a yakuza-owned villa in the Philippines just outside Manila. Michiko’s with him too.’

  For the first time that night, Cole smiled.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘let’s go get them.’

  16

  The Philippines was a home away from home for Yamaguchi Mitsuya; as the main controller of the Omoto-gumi’s sex trade activities, Mitsuya conducted a lot of business within the islands, and kept several properties scattered throughout the archipelago.

  The one which he had chosen for this most recent visit was a palatial villa on the northern shore of Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the Philippines, and only a few miles away from Manila. Mitsuya had protection in Manila, the Omoto-gumi having forged strong links over the preceding decades with its police force, its politicians, and its all-powerful trafficking gangs. The villa itself was well guarded, with both Omoto-gumi soldiers and men brought in from the local Akyat-Bahay gang as well as local cops being paid off to stop and search vehicles approaching via the surrounding roads. Mitsuya brought in a lot of money to the area, and nobody wanted that disrupted.

  Today was a special day, Mitsuya thought as he accepted the freshly-squeezed orange juice and the cup of black coffee from the maid and stared out through the open louvered doors, across the veranda to the tropical garden beyond. He heard the song of birds in the garden, and he allowed the sound to relax him. He’d been keyed up for too long, anxious for too long, and he had been starting to come apart at the seams. Today was a special day, but yesterday had been a disaster.

  The ninja – the man who had killed Yamamoto and returned Michiko to him – had failed to assassinate Toshikatsu Endo. And more than that, he had failed because of a man, an American, whose heroic actions had been captured on TV cameras and had now been broadcast to the entire world. The whole plan to blame the attack on the CIA was destroyed, and the evidence which had already been planted to blame the US had been quickly dismantled by the police and the press.

  All of which meant that the whole Omoto-gumi/Yamaguchi-gumi/Zen Ai Kaigi master plan was no more; the ultranationalists were out, and Toshikatsu and the LDP – buoyed by the prime minister’s recent survival – were very much back in.
And Japan’s relationship with the United States had actually been strengthened by the affair rather than destroyed.

  Mitsuya had no idea what had become of the ninja – apparently the man had thrown himself off the top of the Skytree, although his body had not been found. Mitsuya had made inquiries with the ninja clan, based nearby on one of the small outlying islands of the eastern Philippines, but their agent had not reported back, and was therefore presumed dead.

  But it wasn’t all bad news, at least not for the Omoto-gumi; Chomo had yesterday been elected kumicho of the Yamaguchi-gumi and – even without the political backing of a Zen Ai Kaigi government – that still meant that the dreams of Mitsuya and his brother had finally been realized. They had taken back their birthright, restored the Yamaguchi-gumi to the family bloodline.

  Chomo was due to be officially sworn in as the supreme godfather today, in a special sake-sharing ceremony at the Yamaguchi family compound in Kobe which would be followed by a huge banquet for Chomo and his rivals, who were now to be his sub-bosses. Mitsuya grinned at the thought; Kojiro Shinzo – the oyabun of the Inagawa-kai, and the man to whom Mitsuya had once been forced to make a gift of his little finger – was now subservient to him, just as he’d always dreamed. It would be fun trying to think up a way for Kojiro to make the same sacrifice to him.

  Chomo had originally wanted Mitsuya by his side at the ceremony, to establish him as the new oyabun of the Omoto-gumi now that his elder brother had moved on, but it was soon decided – given recent events – that he would be better off establishing a secure location for Michiko until things had cooled down.

  Mitsuya thought once more about the American – a man who had still not been officially identified – and his teeth clenched together, his momentary relaxation gone. The ninja who had returned Michiko to him had come bearing news of great interest – and utter horror. For it appeared to be the case that this man was Michiko’s real father, the sonofabitch GI from Bangkok who’d fucked Mitsuya’s wife Asami and then caused no end of trouble for the Omoto-gumi’s Thai partners, killing seven of them and costing Mitsuya a fortune in the resulting renegotiation of their business dealings. But he knew it wasn’t the lost money which was causing his stomach to churn as he thought about the past; it was the insult to him, the utter shame, the loss of face that had been inflicted upon him.