The manager had missed it all, somehow, and Bolan took him by surprise, dozing behind his desk. He grumbled, turning as his door opened, trying to get his tough-guy face in gear and not quite making it.
“I don’t know you,” he said, maybe the understatement of his life.
“You want to live?” Bolan inquired.
“What do you want?”
“Carry a message to your boss.”
“I am the boss.”
“Spare me. Take the message to him, or become the message. Your decision. Chop-chop.”
“Okay, sure. What is it?”
“Tell him if he’s smart, he’ll catch the next flight out to Tokyo and not look back.”
“I hear you.”
“Give it back to me.”
The Yakuza repeated it, and Bolan said, “So, go.”
Alone, but obviously not for long, he primed a couple of incendiary sticks, tucked one inside the top drawer of the nearest filing cabinet and left the other hissing on the manager’s desktop. The walls were cinder block and should contain the flames until firefighters reached the scene. Smoke triggered the alarm before he cleared the lobby, clamoring for notice in the sterile desert daylight.
* * *
West Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas
THE TOWN WAS going crazy, Mori Saigo thought. No, scratch that. Crazy was the recognized default position in Las Vegas for the tourists, entertainers and a fair percentage of the locals, even though they tried to talk it up as just another normal city.
Try this, then: the town was going crazier.
Saigo was stuck at Apex Pawn, out of the action, when he yearned to join the hunt for whoever was dumping on his family. If he could get his hands on one of them…
But, no. The order had come down for him to stay exactly where he was and keep the business safe. He understood responsibility, the strict chain of command, and never tried negotiating when Jiro Shinoda was in one of his explosive moods.
Apex made decent money for the Sumiyoshi-kai. Up front, it was a straight pawnshop, dealing with suckers who had gone all in and lost their last dime, desperate to pawn or sell a watch, a car, whatever, for the pittance Saigo offered, get back to the gaming tables for the big break that they knew was coming, if they just played one more hand, or one more after that.
Morons.
Behind the scenes, Saigo negotiated larger loans, at rates of interest the law did not allow. His customers included showgirls nursing habits, contractors who’d fallen on hard times of late, truckers who had to keep their rigs roadworthy, Gordon Ramsay wannabes who saw their culinary dreams slipping away—in short, the usual. Saigo was pleased to help them, at a going rate of 10 percent for ten days’ time. As long as they could pay the interest, he’d gladly leave the principal hanging over their heads from now until doomsday—or, if Jiro needed new investment properties, Saigo could cut another deal, keeping the strapped proprietors as lackeys or removing them entirely from the scene.
A few complained, but not for long, and never yet to the authorities. One who had threatened prosecution had a new position, fertilizing Joshua trees in Red Rock Canyon, west of town.
Saigo was drifting aimlessly around the pawnshop when the gaijin entered, looking like a backup roadie from a Lady Gaga tour: long hair, platinum blond, and some kind of tattoo wrapping around his neck in front. A pair of mirrored shades with glitter rims concealed what Saigo guessed were crazy eyes.
Same old, same old.
Saigo stood watching as his floor man moved to greet the customer. Before Tommy could say two words, the walk-in pulled a fancy-looking piece and stuck it in his face. Saigo immediately ducked behind the nearest showcase, shouting for his backup muscle.
Three of them came running, two with guns in hand, one carrying a metal baseball bat. The glitzy gunman swung his piece, clubbed Tommy to the floor and faced the other three before they had a chance to open fire. His shots were muffled, sputtering, no less destructive for the lower volume.
First, he took Adachi Kagemori’s face off, punching him back through the doorway he’d just exited. The second burst spun Fuma Mitsuhara like the arm on a lawn sprinkler, this one spraying crimson everywhere. Gamo Teru was caught flat-footed with his useless bat, reared back to throw it at the gunman, but he never made the pitch. Slugs opened him from belt buckle to breastbone, spilling things Saigo had never hoped to see.
“Are we done now?” the gunman asked, turning back toward Saigo’s paltry hiding place. “Can we get down to business?”
“What business?” Saigo asked him, rising to his full five-six on shaky legs.
“Tell Jiro that Vegas isn’t healthy for him anymore. He needs to leave, like now.”
Saigo summoned the nerve to say, “He won’t like that.”
Nodding toward Saigo’s dead men, the man replied, “Tell him there’s only one alternative. He’s leaving, one way or another. First class, or the cargo hold.”
Still trembling, Saigo blinked, and the intruder was gone.
* * *
North Decatur Boulevard
IN FACT, BOLAN had no desire for Jiro Shinoda to leave town. He wanted the kyodai stuck in Vegas, but away from downtown, preferably at his home in Summerlin, where Bolan could minimize collateral damage for the last act of his desert drama. Keeping the mobster pinned down in Sin City was his top priority.
Which brought him out to North Las Vegas Airport three miles from the city’s heart on Fremont Street. North Las Vegas was an independent city, with its own mayor, police and fire departments, wastewater services and recreational facilities. Clark County owned the airport, though, with three asphalt runways and 686 aircraft in more or less permanent residence. Two percent of those were private jets, including a Learjet 55 owned by Jiro Shinoda.
It was Bolan’s next target, to keep his prey grounded.
Bolan went off-road from Simmons Street, east of the airport, rolling over open desert, trailing beige dust in his wake. He stopped a thousand yards out from the nearest fence, say fifteen hundred from the runway, and stepped out into the waning heat of late afternoon, shadows stretching to meet him from westward. From the SUV’s rear compartment, he removed the tool he’d chosen for this job and prepped it.
He was pulling out the stops this time, hefting a Barrett XM500 sniper’s rifle. Chambered for .50-caliber Browning machine gun rounds, the Barrett was semiautomatic, a bullpup design, fed by a 10-round magazine behind the pistol grip, hurling its 750-grain projectiles downrange at 2,820 feet per second, with a killing range of 1,900 yards. To aid a shooter at that distance, it was mounted with a Leupold Mark 6 scope.
The APIT rounds Bolan had picked were special, too. The acronym stood for “armor-piercing incendiary tracer,” used in combat to destroy armored fighting vehicles and concrete structures. They combined penetration with a payload that would light up any fuel or other combustibles found in the bullet’s flight path.
Like a Learjet 55, for instance.
Bolan had no trouble spotting Jiro Shinoda’s plane. Hal Brognola’s file included photos of it, with the tail number clearly visible. All Bolan had to do was scope one of the fuel tanks, and he had no end of them to choose from: three in the tail, one in each wing, auxiliaries forward, under the passenger compartment and extending toward the cockpit—259 pounds of fuel in the tail cone alone.
He wasted no time setting up the shot, rested the Barrett’s bipod on the SUV’s hood and found his mark, way off across the desert and tarmac. Called it a moderate to easy shot from where he stood, requiring only clear eyes and a pair of steady hands.
The rifle bucked against his shoulder, and he held the scope’s view, saw the flash of impact from the Learjet’s tail before a larger ball of fire erupted there, enveloping the jet’s rear section, dropping its twin Pratt & Whitney power plants on to the runway. Shifting slightly, Bolan fired through smoke to drill the starboard wing and spark its larger fuel tank, feeling echoes of the shock wave where he stood.
Missi
on accomplished. Jiro Shinoda wasn’t flying anywhere in that $800,000 heap of twisted, smoking steel. But he’d be running, though.
The Executioner would bet his life on that, even at Vegas odds.
* * *
East St. Louis Avenue, Las Vegas
SHINODA GRIMACED WHEN he heard the news but managed to control his voice. “I understand,” he told the caller. “Thank you. There will be a bonus in your envelope this week.”
Nothing was free in Vegas, or anywhere else. Loyalty, he’d found, could be the priciest commodity of all.
Instead of phoning out, he rang for Yoshinoro Shiroo on the office intercom, already on his feet and moving when his number two came in. “What’s up, boss?” Shiroo asked him.
“Some bastard just hit the Lear at North Las Vegas. It’s scrap iron now.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going home,” Shinoda informed him. “Call in everyone, and I mean everyone. They’re no good to me wandering around the streets or watching over strip clubs.”
The truth be told, Shinoda was not convinced his soldiers would be any use to him, no matter where he stationed them, but if they had to die, then let it be defending him, at home. He did not plan on roosting there, of course, not with a madman—or a group of madmen—running wild around the city. He would pack whatever he required, empty his safes and hit the road as soon as possible.
Los Angeles was four hours away by car, but he did not intend to run that far. Instead, there was the cabin he had rented on Mount Charleston, half an hour from downtown, costing three grand a month for the occasional long weekend getaway: three bedrooms, two baths and a modern kitchen. His men could camp out on the sofas or the floor, assuming they had any time to sleep at all.
The thought of fleeing from an enemy galled him, but he did not plan to share Noboru Machii’s fate, if that could be avoided. Gaining distance from the battlefield would grant him breathing room. He could regroup, consider all his options, weigh the merits of survival versus honor under the code of bushido.
By rote, involuntarily, he ran the code’s eight touchstones through his mind: justice, courage, honesty, benevolence, politeness, honor, loyalty and character. Interpretation was the key, particularly in relation to the Yakuza, where normal standards of benevolence, justice and honesty received short shrift. Shinoda honored the code as he had learned it from his oyabun, placing his family—the sacred Sumiyoshi-kai—above all else.
Easy to say, until his life was riding on the line.
But this could be a valuable test. The world was his to win, or lose, depending on his mastery of crisis. And defeat by unknown adversaries was unthinkable.
CHAPTER TEN
Button Willow Drive, Las Vegas
Bolan sat downrange, slumped in the SUV’s driver’s seat, watching as Jiro Shinoda and his men got ready to evacuate. They worked efficiently, a flurry of activity, no motion wasted under supervision of a stone-faced supervisor whom he recognized from Hal Brognola’s dossier as Yoshinoro Shiroo, Jiro’s second in command. No guns were visible, but Bolan took for granted that the crew was armed, and he saw rifle cases being loaded into two black Hummers and the Cadillac XTS sandwiched in between them.
Bolan watched and waited while the Yakuzas walked their boss to the limo, shielding him with their bodies, then piled in around him, the leftovers breaking right and left to fill one Hummer or the other. Two young ones stayed behind, guarding the house, while three engines fired up in unison and the black caravan rolled out.
Bolan gave them a lead and saw the stay-behinds turn back toward Shinoda’s sprawling house before he followed, running without headlights the first two blocks, like someone who’d forgotten them with all the streetlights blazing overhead.
Heading east, they turned on Anasazi Drive to West Lake Mead, then followed that eastward again to Highway 95. Given a choice, the caravan turned north and Bolan trailed them, merged with traffic leaving Vegas on its way to who knew where. He had a full tank, wasn’t worried about running out of gas before the Hummers sucked their own tanks dry, and found a station on his radio that played the “golden oldies” with a minimum of chatter between songs.
Six miles on Highway 95 brought them to Kyle Canyon Road, running west through Red Rock Canyon in the general direction of Pahrump and California, somewhere on the other side. Traffic was sparse there, and he doused the SUV’s lights again, keeping the taillights of his prey in sight from half a mile behind. The next green highway sign he passed told Bolan they were headed for Mount Charleston—which, as he remembered it from other visits to Las Vegas, meant a dead end at the scenic peak.
He smiled at that, relieved that Shinoda wasn’t heading out the long back way from Vegas, through Death Valley, toward Los Angeles. It would have been a long, fuel-wasting way to flee Nevada, but a fair choice if he wanted dark, wide-open desert to reveal a tail. Mount Charleston meant a hideaway of some kind, close enough to keep a finger on the pulse of Vegas, while the kyodai felt more secure.
That meant some hiking, probably through forest, over rough terrain. Bolan was up for that, accustomed from experience to doing things the hard way, and he carried all the gear he needed for a trek to hell. The only question now would be how many backup shooters waited for their leader, wherever he was going on the mountain. Twenty were riding with him in the three-car caravan, but Bolan was accustomed to the long odds stacked against him.
Ten more minutes remained, give or take, until they reached the mountain and began ascending. Bolan checked his rearview, saw no headlights coming up behind him on the two-lane blacktop and relaxed.
His enemy had picked the game, thinking the rules were under his control. The Executioner had a surprise in store for him.
With any luck, the last one of Jiro Shinoda’s life.
* * *
Mount Charleston
THE SOLDIERS SHINODA had dispatched from town ahead of him were waiting when he pulled into the cabin’s parking area, a graveled space with room remaining for another car or two, despite the Hummers and the Cadillac. Light shone from every window of the cabin, holding shadows from the dark forest at bay, and smoke curled from its chimney made of rough-hewn stone, scenting the air.
The kyodai followed procedure, waiting for his men to pile out of the Hummers and surround his limo, weapons ready on the off chance that an enemy had reached the mountain lair ahead of them. It was far-fetched, of course, but there was no such thing as too much caution in a shooting war.
The night was cool as Shinoda finally stepped from the Caddy, brushing at imaginary wrinkles in his London slim-fit suit from Burberry, tailored from virgin wool that had only cost him $2,195 on the Strip. It wasn’t warm enough to spare him from the chill, however, and he wasted no time heading for the cabin, brushing past the guards who lined the front porch, seeking light and warmth.
Something was cooking in the kitchen, its aroma vying with the fireplace as a treat for Shinoda’s senses. He guessed that it was something grilled on skewers, possible the Kobe beef he favored, globally renowned for tender succulence. Maybe seafood tempura on the side, to make it turf and surf. For just a moment, as his mouth watered, he almost believed the meal could compensate for being driven from his home.
Almost.
Reality caught up with him as Shiroo came in from the dark, issuing orders to the troops who filled the cabin’s spacious living room. They’d planned the details in advance: how many men would be on watch at any given time, where they would be positioned, how the roving teams would circulate around the property. The first shift would be changing into warmer clothing, gloves included, since Nevada desert nights were cold at best, and colder still on mountain peaks. Sun-baked by day and chilled from dusk till dawn, it was a paradox that the mobster recognized without trying to understand.
“We’re good here,” Shiroo reassured him, when the soldiers had their various assignments. “Leave it to the police for now.”
“I don’t trust the poli
ce,” Jiro replied.
“Of course not, but they’re good at this. The only reason they exist is to protect rich people and their property.”
“You think I qualify?” Shinoda made no attempt to veil his sarcasm.
“Why not? You pay taxes and bribes, like every other leading citizen.”
“They tolerate us, but they value orderly procedure. Chaos frightens tourists, so it frightens the authorities.”
“More reason for them to eliminate the problem,” Shiroo said.
“Or blame us for it. They elect the prosecutor here, if you remember. He can frighten voters with the ‘yellow peril.’”
“That’s old-fashioned thinking. Not politically correct.”
“What is correct about Las Vegas?” Shinoda challenged. “It’s a monument to greed, built up by criminals who now pretend their hands are squeaky clean. They ban whoring to pacify the churches, but continue to protect it.”
“So, our kind of town,” Shiroo said, smiling.
“But we’ll never fit the profile. Don’t deceive yourself into believing otherwise.”
“You know the saying, money talks.”
“Money talks, all right,” the kyodai agreed. “But a white man’s money always has the louder voice.”
“You’re in a mood,” Shiroo suggested. “We should have something to eat.”
Shinoda acknowledged his second in command’s wisdom with a nod. “The Kobe beef?”
“And lobster tempura, naturally.”
“For the soldiers?”
“Nikujaga,” Shiroo answered, a stew of meat and potatoes, seasoned with soy sauce and sugar.
Shinoda allowed his second in command a compliment. “You think of everything.”
“That’s my job, sir.”
* * *
BOLAN WAS DRESSED in black, no camo necessary in the forest on a nearly moonless night. Instead of blackening his face with war paint, he’d put on the balaclava, topped with the night-vision goggles that immediately turned the shadowed woodlands green. His combat boots were tan rough-outs, temperate weather style, and laced up tight.
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