"Turn around," he called. "Slowly."
The man turned, exposing a young, boyish face. A half smile was fixed on his lips.
"Back slowly into the house," Bolan said, and the man reached down to take off his shoes. "Move."
The man shrugged and did as he was told. Bolan followed him into the house.
"You understand English?" the Executioner asked.
The man smiled again, nodding.
"Good," Bolan said. "Take your jacket off and drop it on the floor."
The man removed the sports jacket and dropped it. As Bolan kicked it away, he looked at the man and said, "I'm going to pat you down for weapons. Stand facing the door, hands on it."
The man assumed the defenseless position, and Bolan kicked his legs back farther. Bolan sided his weapon and began frisking the silent driver, immediately making a strange discovery.
The woman did nothing to show that she knew she'd been found out. Bolan finished the search, turning up nothing, then spun the woman around to face him.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked.
"My name is Junko Hashimoto," she said in a soft, feminine voice that didn't match her mannish clothes. "My esteemed father, Inazo Hashimoto, sends his greetings to the famous Mack Bolan." She bowed deeply.
Bolan picked her jacket up off the ground and handed it back after checking it. "What's going on here?" he demanded.
She ignored his question and walked over to the table, picking up the figure. "I see you have found the Daruma, our present to you."
"What does it mean?"
She looked at him with deep dark eyes. "It is the representation of a Zen monk who sat so long in meditation that his legs withered away. It never fails over, representing recovery from misfortune. We are your friends, Mr. Bolan. You need not fear us."
Bolan felt himself relaxing somewhat, falling into the ease of the young woman's conversation. "I have many questions," he said.
"Just so," she said, bowing slightly. "And they will all be answered."
"Then..."
She held up a hand to silence him. "By my father. Will you go for a drive with me?"
He looked deeply into her eyes, but they were as unreadable as Ichiro's had been. He took out the Beretta but did not point it at the woman. "I'm not going anywhere until I know what this is all about," he said. "And you have about five seconds to tell me."
She smiled again. "You will not shoot me with your gun, I think," she replied simply, then lowered her eyes.
Bolan waited. He sided the 93-R. "Let's go for a drive."
She handled the machine like an expert, moving them along the Higashi Highway at a steady 90 clicks per hour despite heavy rush-hour traffic.
To their left, the mammoth fairyland of steel and glass known as Tokyo sprawled in all directions, and where it couldn't grow out, it grew up. It was a totally modern city in every sense of the word, built on the ruins of its predecessor, Edo.
"Can you tell me where you're taking me?" he asked, turning to look behind them. His acute senses were on edge. A warning flashed in his mind.
She smiled over at him. "The Ginza," she said. "I think my father wants to impress you."
"And can you tell me why you're dressed like a man?"
"I have a destiny to fulfill," she said without elaborating.
The hairs were standing up on the back of Bolan's neck. He half turned in the seat, catching a swath of black as it swerved behind a Sapporo Beer truck.
"Change lanes," he said.
"Why?"
"Just do it."
She put her foot on the gas, outrunning a car beside them and then cutting in front of it. For a few seconds he got a clear view of him, a Sonnojoi on a motorcycle, maneuvering to get closer.
"Trouble," he said. "We're being followed."
"Can't be."
And then Bolan saw the second one, two lanes over, nearly parallel with them. The leather boy's shotgun was strapped on his back. Bolan turned to look out the back window again and thought he saw a third a bit farther back in the quickly moving traffic.
"How good are you with this thing?" he asked, reaching up to crank open the sunroof.
"I've raced professionally," she said.
"Good," he replied. "You drive."
Bolan unholstered both automatics, setting the AutoMag on the console between them. He stood on the seat, poking his head and upper body through the sunroof. From there he had a good view of the road in every direction. Sonnojoi were carefully spaced around them. He turned a complete circle and counted six, two of them in front.
The Executioner felt his lips curl over his teeth. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew the enemy when he saw him. And he knew what to do.
He leaned back down into the car. Junko was slipping into racing gloves, her eyes intent on the road.
"It may get rough!" he yelled.
She shot him a glance, then nodded, her jaw set. Bolan hated to put her in such a critical spot, but he had no other choice. The Sonnojoi were tightening the noose, closing in on them from all sides.
The road turned into a long, looping overpass that rose high into the air above Tokyo's slums. It was as if a planner thought the height would insulate the drivers from the misery.
The motorcycles closed in at once. As Bolan turned to his left; the punk in the black helmet beside them was unslinging his Remington.
The cycle veered closer, the man steering with his left hand as he swung the rifle around with his right. Bolan didn't wait for an introduction. Bracing his arm on the roof, he aimed for the punk's head. The shot merely nicked the helmet, but it jerked the man enough so that he got his shot off too quickly. The passenger's window of the Porsche clone shattered into a million pieces.
Junko yelled once but didn't lose the road, as Bolan put another shot into the helmet. This time brains splattered out the other side, and the motorcycle veered sharply to the right, crossing in front of a car.
It hit the overpass rail, and the punk's body flipped over the handlebars to fall sixty meters to the roof of a dwelling below.
"Bolan!" Junko yelled. "Front!"
He turned just in time to see one of the motorcyclists take aim at them. No time to sight, Bolan tracked and fired from instinct. The man's spine exploded. He came up off the bike, his body hitting the hood of their car and rolling to the windshield. His cycle jagged left, where the oncoming car hit it and spun, causing other cars to pile up.
"I can't see!" Junko screamed, and Bolan dropped the Beretta back into the car and leaned down to try to dislodge the body from the hood, where it was bleeding all over the windshield.
Another punk came up beside Bolan as he leaned over the front of the car. Junko jerked right, and the man's shot went wild as he steered to avoid them. Unable to pump, he bumped up close, using the shotgun as a bludgeon.
Bolan was vulnerable, stretched out with two hands on the dead punk as Junko veered wildly across the road. The punk swung out hard, and a wave of excruciating pain shot through the big man's ribs.
He gritted his teeth and screamed into the wind, pulling the body off the car and literally tossing it onto the motorcycle beside them. Bike and rider went down in a tangle of limbs. The beer truck bounced hard over the debris and jackknifed, smearing the leather boy all over the parkway as its trailer twisted off the mooring to slide to a horrible screeching crash. Thousands of bottles of beer burst from its seams to cover the road in a cascade of glass and foam. Cars swerved and skidded, tires shredding on the glass as they piled into one another, blocking the highway completely from behind.
Bolan let himself fall back through the sunroof, wrapping his arm around his side as the pain shot through him. Junko was glued to the wheel, staring past the wipers that worked to clear away the blood. Bolan reached for the AutoMag as one of the leather boys drove quickly up on his side, gunning his engine.
Bolan kicked his door open and the punk drove right into it, taking it off the hinges. He flew over the handlebars and
came down on his neck, head and helmet separating from his body to bounce crazily down the highway.
Bolan had counted four. Two left. Another had dropped back and was holding his shotgun stiffly.
"Down!" Bolan shouted, pulling Junko over with him as the windshield blew out in a shower of glass. They sat up quickly, Bolan emptying the AutoMag into the biker as Junko crossed two lanes of traffic to go after the last motorcyclist on her side of the car.
The man saw her coming, but he lost his shotgun as he grabbed the handlebars with both hands for control. He slowed, trying to drop back, but Junko geared down, moving into his lane and shoving him over.
She moved him closer and closer to the guardrail. When the punk increased speed, so did Junko, edging ever closer. There were only inches between them and inches separating the punk from a sheer drop to the ground below. They could hear him yelling hysterically. It was some of the best driving Bolan had ever seen.
He caught her eyes for just a second, and he saw something wild, something irrational, in them. Then she moved the wheel just a touch. The man, caught between the rail and the car, twisted off the bike and over the rail. He reached downtown Tokyo the quick way.
Bolan breathed out, easing himself down in the seat. "You aren't bad," he said.
She smiled over at him, hurrying to join the flow of traffic in front of them. "You're not so bad yourself," she said in a light but firm voice, before beginning to pull her gloves off with her teeth.
Bolan pulled the clip out of the AutoMag, throwing it out the open door to bounce along the highway. He reached inside his yukata to grab another from his combat harness. What in the hell had he gotten himself into? he wondered.
5
Lieutenant Ichiro walked along the blocked-off stretch of the overpass surveying the damage. He carried a bright red umbrella, the rain pattering gently against it. Nearly a kilometer of road was blanketed with human and metal debris. Everywhere the beam of his flashlight fell was more devastation.
Though they had opened up one lane to slow-moving traffic, the jam caused by the pileups stretched back over five miles. The darkness of the night was punctuated by a continuous string of headlights and the silence by blowing horns.
Emergency vehicles and city cleanup crews worked all around him. The beer truck driver jumped up and down, yelling, as a street crew swept up the remnants of his entire load. The roadway smelled like a brewery.
He walked to the edge of the drop-off, where a motorcycle was still twisted around a guardrail as if it belonged there. The driver's body was illuminated below by the lights of the ambulance that was there to take him away.
Sonnojoi.
And the Executioner was loose on the streets.
"Lieutenant," came a voice behind him, and he turned to see his assistant, Sergeant Natsume, who was wearing a bright yellow slicker and rain hat.
Hands on the guardrail, he returned his gaze to the city street far below as the ambulance drivers picked up the sheet-covered body and placed it in the back of their van. "What have you got, Yukio?"
"The final count is six dead," the sergeant said as he wiped the rain off his face.
Ichiro turned to him. "Sonnojoi?"
"All of them."
"Hai." Ichiro resumed his walk, letting the flashlight beam sweep easily along the roadway. Natsume walked with him. "What else?"
"Twenty-seven cars involved in the pileup with the beer truck, a few minor injuries, bumps and bruises."
"Did anyone see anything?"
"It happened too fast," Natsume said. "The truck driver gave us the best description. He said the men on motorcycles all had shotguns and that they came upon a crazy American who poked his head out of a sunroof and blasted them away."
Ichiro suppressed a smile. Bolan. It had to be. "Anything else on the breakout today?"
Natsume wiped his face again. "They found the van abandoned in a rice field a little while ago. They're examining it now."
The flashlight caught something glittering on the road. Ichiro moved toward it, stooping. "They won't find anything," he said.
He handed Natsume his umbrella and pulled a pen from inside his sports jacket. He stuck the pen in the middle of the metal object on the ground and picked it up, examining it under the flashlight. The expended clip of an automatic pistol.
He stood and handed Natsume both the clip and pen, taking back the umbrella. "Have them dust this and also that section of car door we found for fingerprints," he said. "Then try and match them to the prints we took from the man who broke jail today."
"Hai," Natsume bowed quickly and hurried off.
Ichiro stood at the end of the long line of destruction and turned back to stare at it, shaking his head. How could one man cause so much mayhem?
There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that Mack Bolan had been involved in the melee here today, though how he had managed to get out of jail was still a mystery. He respected the man tremendously, was secretly happy to see so many dead punks. He had suspected for quite some time that the Sonnojoi were involved with racketeering — especially drug running — to finance their hate campaigns, yet the constraints of the law kept him from going after them the way he'd like to do. But this — this was too much. Innocent people could have been hurt. No, as much as he liked and respected Bolan, he'd have to track him down and bring him back to face the consequences of his actions. And Kendo Ichiro rarely failed to bring in a suspect.
* * *
The French restaurant atop the Sony Building was very dark, save for a few candles that burned on the table of Bolan's host, Inazo Hashimoto, or Hashi-san, as everyone seemed to call him.
Mack Bolan stood before the floor-to-ceiling window that stretched across the whole side of the restaurant and looked down at the glitter of the Ginza.
The city was like a giant child's toy, all bright reds and yellows, flashing neons and huge movie billboards. This was where everyone, native and visitor alike, came to play. The Ginza. The Street. Shops and restaurants and theaters jammed together along wide sidewalks that were built to accommodate thousands of people at a time. Across from him a giant, computer-controlled billboard lit the sky, its flickering lights pantomiming men playing basketball while advertising a soft drink.
"They call you Striker," Hashi-san called to him from the table.
"Sometimes," Bolan said, turning to stare at the man.
There were three people seated at the table. Hashimoto, a small, unremarkable man with wire-rimmed glasses, Junko, who had changed into a beautiful white silk kimono complete with a flower in her hair, and a strange, nondescript character in a black business suit they simply referred to as Dr. Mett. Mett was a quiet man of indeterminate origin, who seemed to be Hashimoto's bodyguard. Bolan couldn't place him in these surroundings and simply added him to the growing list of mysteries that were confronting him.
"How do you like my city?"
"It's a city," Bolan said, turning from the window and moving back to sit at the table. "You broke me out of jail?"
Hashi-san smiled with thin lips. "You are a man who gets to the heart of the matter," he said.
"And you're a man who doesn't like to answer questions."
The old man bowed and waited as a waiter moved quickly through the darkness to clear the dishes off the table before speaking. "Much of what you see out of that window belongs to me," he said. "Tokyo was destroyed by firebombs in 1945, a city of wood and paper. We were reborn into the age of the computer, and I helped to rebuild with glass and steel, especially with steel. My people call me Hashi-san, meaning 'the bridge,' because I try to bridge the gap between the old ways and the new, between the ancient Japanese spirit of yamato damashii and the realities of the present day."
"You speak English very well," Bolan said.
"Domo arigato," Hashimoto said, bowing again. "English is the international language of business, a language I must speak to survive, for my country to retain its greatness in the world."
"What has
this got to do with me?" Bolan asked.
"Most everything, Mr. Bolan," Junko said.
"Maybe I'm a little slow," Bolan replied. "Why don't you explain it to me."
When the old man got up, Bolan realized how frail he was. He moved to the window and stood with his back to it, the glitter of Tokyo surrounding him.
"I helped rebuild my land after the war with the Allies," he said. "And I became very rich because of it. But as is the tradition of my people, business is only a means for me to take care of my family, a legacy to pass on to them.
"I had a son, Mr. Bolan, a fine young man who, I'm afraid, I indulged too much for his own good. He became involved in the buying and selling of illegal drugs, poisons to rot the minds of our heritage, our youth. By the time I found out, it was too late. He was killed by local criminals in a drug buy. His body was hacked up for a few thousand yen worth of white powder."
"Cocaine?" Bolan asked.
Hashi-san nodded slowly. "Cocaine." The old man drew a long breath. "Do you know what it's like to have your world destroyed before your very eyes?"
"Yes," Bolan answered quickly, his insides tightening involuntarily.
"I believe you do," Hashi-san said, walking over to sit next to Bolan. "Soseki was my only son. When he was gone, my reasons for being alive were gone, also. My world became empty. Junko, my daughter, has tried to fill her brother's shoes and I honor her for that, but..." A deep sadness overcame Hashi-san as he looked down at the table. He looked up, lips quivering. "She is not a man. My family name, my lineage, dies with me. I am a Buddhist, but my roots are Shinto. We worship our ancestors... but there will be no one to honor me."
Bolan thought of a young woman trying hard to be a man, and he thought about the drug traffic in Japan. "Did the Yakuza do it?"
"Yakuza, yes," Hashi-san said. "And others. Sonnojoi."
"You are the one who got me out of jail," Bolan said.
"Governments are run by business," Hashi-san said. "In Japan we make no game of it. I am made aware of everything that goes on in my city. When I heard of your arrest and the circumstances and your identity, I... arranged for you to be set free."
Code of Dishonor Page 4
