Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  The Baron said, with a nod to Nagano and Hayashi, “You may speak in front of these men, Kozono.”

  “As you wish, Baron-san. I only wish to regrettably report that,” a pause for an audible swallow, “your niece does not seem to be on the castle grounds.”

  The Baron stood. “What do you mean?”

  “The servants report to us that she has not been seen since this afternoon. After a preliminary search yielded nothing, a more thorough search of the castle and grounds was undertaken. She is gone, Baron-san.”

  “I see. That will be all, Kozono. Report to me immediately when she returns.”

  “Hai, Baron-san.”

  Kozono again bowed before departing.

  Hayashi stared into his cup of saki.

  Nagano said, “Do you think she knows?”

  Baron Tamura said nothing.

  Ballard told Mischkie and Hanklin about the commander’s hunch.

  Hanklin snorted. “So we’re supposed to expect an attack tonight, huh? Hell, I’ve been expecting an attack every night for the past four years!”

  They were among the few enlisted men billeted at the hotel. They shared a room directly across from 315. Their room had been cleared to make space for rifle racks that held three M-ls and three .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns. On a table next to the racks were boxes of spare ammunition.

  “So what do we do that we haven’t done already?” Mischkie wanted to know.

  “Not much,” said Ballard, “just more of the same. Tex, you park yourself across the hall in 315 and stick next to the general.”

  Hanklin made a face. “Aw, do I have to, Sarge? Everybody’s so goddamn quiet and polite over there, it’s enough to drive a poor country boy plumb insane.”

  “You’re already insane. Stick to the general everywhere he goes unless it’s to answer a call of nature. Wil, you take a stroll out back. See what the perimeter looks like.”

  “Will do.”

  “Let’s get to it then. I’ll be down front taking a look around.”

  Yokohama was a phantom city. Some of the larger structures had survived, but much of the city had been destroyed by fire bombs. Of the buildings here and there that remained, blinds were drawn and shop windows were boarded up.

  The few people Keiko passed along the network of narrow streets—some bicyclists, mostly pedestrians—wore gauze masks and were dressed in rags. Several times she felt eyes upon her and would look around to see emaciated, harrowing faces peering out through jumbles of fragmented masonry.

  The darkness echoed eerily with women’s laments and the wailing of hungry children. Occasionally a battered vehicle would thread its careful way over the pitted, rubble-choked streets.

  Most of the businesses had been closed for months. There were no longer willow-lined boulevards, no more did the women wear colorful kimonos. The city was dreary, lifeless.

  She heard the buzz of activity around the New Grand Hotel two blocks before she stopped walking to stand at the curb opposite the hotel’s main entrance.

  A line of American soldiers with rifles encircled the hotel. The entrance was well lit. There were shadows along the sides of the building, she noted.

  The ninja would use this to their advantage.

  There was a smattering of curious civilians across from the hotel entrance. Keiko made herself a part of them for a short time.

  She was right in doing what she had come here to do, she told herself. Her identity would not be divulged to the Americans. If they somehow forced her to, she would give a false name.

  Keiko would warn them of what was about to happen. She would tell them about the ninja, to save General Douglas MacArthur’s life, because this was her duty as a human being, to stop the suffering that would befall Japan if MacArthur were assassinated. Only she could do this, but she would not tell the Americans anything about her uncle, no matter what they did to her. She would not betray the Baron, she told herself. She could not do that.

  Across from where she stood, several American soldiers stood around a jeep equipped with a radio antennae, a command post of sorts. She started across the street toward them.

  The three assassins found the perfect spot of concealment behind a single wall portion left standing several hundred meters down and across the street from the New Grand. There was no one about to witness the silent transformation.

  Shedding the shabby garb worn since Tateyama, they donned the all black costume of the ninja. Jackets equipped with various pockets for holding a wide variety of weapons, a hood covering the face with slits for eyes, and leggings covering the lower part of the body, completed the effect of completely blacking out each man’s presence in the darkness. Their feet were concealed in sandals cushioned with cotton padding that would muffle any trace of their feather-light approach, and each man wore a short sword slung across his back. They pressed against the wall as a truckload of American soldiers rumbled past.

  The night was alive with the activity extending along the streets in either direction from the hotel. When the troop transport was well past, Nakajima looked around the corner of the wall section, then left the cover of the wall and surrounding rubble to dart across the street to the front of a line of buildings that remained standing. Saito and Mikassa followed to join him without a word spoken. They advanced on the hotel at intervals like wraiths in the night.

  Mischkie paused at the window on the second floor landing of the stairwell which led down to the side entrance of the New Grand.

  The sentries stationed throughout the hotel were looking sharp and alert as far as he could see. The hallways had quieted down. Conversation drifted through some doors left open.

  He gazed at his reflection in the darkened glass of the window. He had a strange sensation that the reflection reminded him of someone else, and realized it was the tired, haggard face of his father.

  Night made the ruined city an ocean of blackness that stretched outward to infinity from beneath the window. It reminded him of standing on the beach and staring out at the black vastness of the ocean as a boy on hot summer nights like this.

  No, not like this. He blinked away thoughts of home. And when he blinked he saw the girl on his eyelids. The Filipino kid. He’d seen that face on his eyelids and in his sleep every time he closed his eyes since it happened.

  Evita. Sweet kid. Flirt. Nice kid. Deader than hell from a Jap bullet.

  He turned from the window and continued down the stairs.

  Corporal Santella tried to look sharp when Kujack came down the line. Kujack always seemed to have it in for him. “Goldbricking as usual, Santella?”

  “I’ll open fire soon’s I see something to fire at, Sarge, less of course you want us to mow down those civilians across the street.”

  As he spoke, Santella noticed the slightest trace of a breeze when there was no breeze, the sensation so fleeting he dismissed it.

  “Cork the lip and keep your eyes peeled,” Kujack snapped, and he continued down the line.

  They gained the base of the side wall without detection and paused there. They had passed within inches of the sentries.

  Controlled breathing techniques allowed them to remain absolutely motionless until certain they had not been seen. Then they went about their task with a soundless economy of movement, each unwinding from his belt a rope with a three-pronged grappling hook at one end, the prongs resembling three iron talons of a claw, designed to serve dually as a wall-climbing device and weapon.

  Each man swung his climbing rope above his head and let fly. The discreet click of the prongs grabbing hold on masonry above the line of third floor windows was indiscernible. Each man tested his rope with a double pull and placed one foot to the wall to begin climbing.

  Saito tapped Nakajima lightly on the shoulder and pointed. Nakajima looked. He saw Keiko Tamura speaking with the American sergeant he had slipped by during their penetration of the perimeter.

  Keiko and the soldier were having a spirited exchange. He could not hear wha
t was being said, but he clearly saw the impatience with which the young woman pressed her point.

  Saito and Mikassa eyed him in the faint light for some signal. He nodded.

  Without a sound, they began scaling up the shadows of the front wall of the hotel.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hanklin needed a chaw of tobacco so bad he could taste it, but of course there was no place to spit, and so the pouch stayed in his pocket and he worked hard at trying not to look as antsy as he felt. He and the general were alone in the suite of rooms. MacArthur sat at a writing table, going over reports.

  Hanklin went to one of the windows. He stood to the side of it and peered out past the curtain at the street scene below. There was plenty going on down there, but there seemed to be no danger.

  So much for commanders’ hunches.

  He wondered how smart an idea it would be to sneak a chaw while the general wasn’t looking and just spit it out through that open window.

  Ballard emerged from the front entrance of the hotel and the first thing he saw was Kujack going at it with a Japanese civilian female, over by the jeep.

  She was in her early twenties. Ballard noted that she had a good figure, on the slender side but nice, a lovely face of high cheekbones and full lips and a steadiness of eye that bespoke confidence and self-reliance. He realized that he had not inventoried a woman so in years, maybe not since Carla.

  He strode over in their direction.

  Kujack saw him coming. “I was just getting ready to send for you, Ballard. Got a hot one here. Could mean trouble.”

  “I must speak to someone in authority,” the woman said to Ballard. “It is most urgent.”

  “Says someone wants to bump off General MacArthur,” said Kujack.

  “Is that true?” Ballard asked her.

  She returned his stare unflinchingly with a curt nod. “Ninja,” she said evenly. “It will happen tonight.”

  “Ninja,” Kujack muttered. “What the hell’s a ninja?”

  “Invisible assassins,” said Ballard. To the woman he said, “The ninja were five hundred years ago. The ways of the warlords are a long time gone.”

  “The ninja will come tonight,” she insisted, “to kill MacArthur.” Not panicky, but imploring him. “You must believe me.”

  He studied her face.

  “I believe you. Come with me. Tell me what you know.”

  “You don’t understand. There is no time. Wherever General MacArthur is, you must get him to safety. It could happen at any second.”

  He cast a glance over his left shoulder, in the direction of the line of lighted windows of Room 315.

  One of the windows was at a juncture where a corner of the extended front entrance met the front of the hotel, and there were plenty of shadows at that juncture.

  “Not a thing,” Kujack grumbled. “What the hell, Ballard, you figure we got us a looney here? I’ll take her into custody.”

  Ballard did not reply. He glanced at the woman to make sure she was staying in place. She wasn’t going anywhere. She had seen the direction of his gaze and was looking that way, too.

  He grabbed a spotlight mounted on the jeep with his left hand and swung it around, thumbing on the beam. He could not be sure but he thought he saw a blur of something skitter out of the beam at almost the instant he flicked it, somewhere between the first and second story windows at that juncture where the deeper shadows had been.

  “There!” the woman shouted.

  He knew what he had seen, what that blur of movement barely sensed up there meant. He unholstered the .45 automatic brought the pistol around into a straight-armed target acquisition, and pegged off a round, the buck of the .45 sounding flat in the thick night air.

  A pulsing finger of angry orange flame spat at that point where he had seen movement.

  There came a shout of pain.

  He held the .45 straight-armed on that section of wall, oblivious to the excited reaction to his firing.

  Holding his fire, he moved the spotlight around in circles. He found nothing more to shoot at.

  A falling body pitched away from the wall and landed with an audible thump on the pavement close to the jeep, seconds after the sound of the shot faded; an awkwardly twisted pile of black clothing, lay unmoving on the sidewalk.

  Kujack muttered a vivid curse.

  “Good shooting, Ballard. You stopped him cold!”

  “There are more.”

  Spotlights were switching on up and down the line, rifles tracking upward toward the front of the hotel. Ballard saw nothing up there except heads popping out of windows along the full length of the wing. Someone else saw this and started yelling, “Don’t fire! Hold your fire, hold your fire!”

  “Don’t let that woman get away,” Ballard barked at Kujack.

  He broke away from the jeep at a run without looking back and stormed through the hotel entrance. Soldiers came pounding along after him. He took the stairs three at a time at a dead heat gallop, hoping Mischkie heard the shot and was closing in, hoping Hanklin and MacArthur were not already dead up there in 315.

  Mischkie heard the pistol shot from out front. He was along one side of the building, checking up on the line of sentries posted there.

  The first priority was to protect the general. He fisted his .45 from its shoulder rig and slammed back into the building, heading up the stairwell toward the third floor.

  A big bass drum started pounding inside his head, and all he could hear was the drum beating louder and louder and faster and faster but it did not slow him down.

  The shot sounded like it came from right outside and directly below the line of open windows.

  “Aw, horsefeathers,” Hanklin groused.

  He pawed out his pistol with his right hand and a plug of chewing tobacco with his left, bit off a healthy chomp and rushed the nearest window. A flurry of black movement sprung through one of the windows, passed the drapes, into the room, enveloping him, pitching him backwards to the floor under the momentum of the assault.

  Hanklin felt the .45 fly from his grasp.

  Ballard heaved his way down the third floor corridor, elbowing through the swelling confusion and commotion as people poured from their rooms.

  No more than forty seconds had elapsed since he picked off that ninja from the shadows near the windows of Room 315. Rifle-bearing soldiers were trying the handle and pounding on the door of MacArthur’s suite but there was no real concern at this point since the single shot had come from outside. Another few seconds and there would be real concern.

  Ballard reached the door as Mischkie pushed his way through from the opposite direction. The sentry banging on the door stepped aside in deference to them. Ballard planted himself directly in front of the door, lifted back his right foot, and sent the door off its hinges with one powerful kick.

  He went in low, catching a quick view of Tex Hanklin, flat on his back with a man straddling him, a ninja like the one below, raising a foot-long sword with both hands above his head to deliver a death blow.

  Hanklin erupted with a volcanic snarl, half rebel yell, half primal ferocity unleashed. He pressed one foot against the floor beneath him for leverage and bent his other leg to place that foot against the ninja’s chest, flipping his attacker off and almost out the window through which the ninja had obviously gained entry.

  Mischkie stormed in behind Ballard. Soldiers from the hallway started pouring in after them.

  Another ninja flew into the room feet first from outside, landing silently. This one flung something at Ballard, a small, whizzing, spinning, deadly-looking something that glinted in the light.

  Ballard leaned to the side from the waist. The weapon sizzled past and one of the soldiers in the doorway uttered a gurgling scream and fell into those behind him.

  The ninja reached behind his back to unsheath his sword. He assumed a combative stance, slicing the air with the sword, his eyes like polished black marbles through the slits in his mask.

  Across the ro
om the first ninja recovered from having been slammed into the wall by Hanklin and charged in again. Hanklin met him, coming off the floor with his fists clasped. He slammed his left elbow with all of his strength into the ninja’s crotch with the good-natured hoot of a country boy having a time. The ninja squealed at the devastating blow, his knees buckling. He gripped himself where it hurt the most, and the sword dropped from his hands.

  Hanklin reached out and caught the sword before it hit the floor. He lunged with the sword and the ninja squealed again when Hanklin, with a triumphant snarl, shoved the sword to the hilt into the man’s heart. Then he withdrew the sword and stepped back. The ninja collapsed.

  Ballard pointed his .45 at the remaining assassin, motioning with his pistol emphatically, ordering, “Drop it, drop it,” knowing the man most likely did not speak English.

  Ballard saw Mischkie swing his pistol around on the ninja.

  “No, Wil,” he snapped. “We need one of them alive.”

  The ninja ignored the .45s aimed at him. He screamed some sort of battle cry and flung himself at Ballard, the sword flashing high over his head.

  Mischkie shouted something unintelligible, filled with rage, and fired once, twice, three times and kept on firing his full clip of seven rounds, the pounding blasts sharp and violent indoors, every round lurching the ninja back a step until he dropped his sword and with a small sigh, nearly lost beneath the reverberating echoes of the gunfire, slumped to the floor not far from the man Hanklin had killed.

  Hanklin casually spat a wad of tobacco that meteored across to slap the forehead of Mischkie’s ninja. “I think you got him, Wilbur.” He waved an open hand back and forth to clear the wafting gun smoke from near his eyes.

  Ballard asked, “Tex, where’s the general?”

  Hanklin chuckled. “The one place you told me I didn’t have to watch him.”

  There came the sound of a flushing toilet from somewhere in the suite, and MacArthur appeared in a connecting archway, surveying the carnage, every ounce of the famous bravado in place.

  “You gentlemen make it extremely difficult for a man to appreciate his time alone,” he admonished in a dry deadpan, then became all business with a jolt of surprise when he saw the dead American soldier in the doorway and the two black-clad corpses. “What the devil. Ninja!”