by Barry Lancet
“Don’t see anything,” Noda said.
“You will.”
Noda cut the engine. Quiet swept over us. We listened and waited and focused. A noise echoed in the distance. The sound of a motor. A faint, grinding hum.
A black spot emerged at the top edge of the closest cloud band. It was some kind of all-terrain vehicle, small and boxy, like a dune buggy but with a black roof and glassed in on all sides. Grated tank treads circling the wheels pulled the vehicle upward.
“That’s the Walker,” Baba said with a sneer. “You’ll never catch him.”
* * *
I looked at Noda. Then at the Walker’s pickup. Then at the shed.
“What’s in the shack?” I asked.
Baba gave an indifferent shrug. “Research vehicle the scientists use. You don’t wanna touch that. It’s government.”
I headed for the storage unit at a trot. A hefty padlock secured a large door. Noda strutted up with massive bolt cutters he’d pulled from the trunk and snipped the lock shaft with ease. Our company cars were stocked with provisions for the road.
“Good thing we didn’t have to shoot it off,” I said.
Noda agreed. “Need the bullets.”
Our captive had carried no spare rounds on his person or in his car.
I looked up the mountain. “If we get close enough.”
I yanked the lock from its perch and swung back the doors. Inside, climbing gear and monitoring equipment for tracking volcanic activity lined the walls. In the middle was an industrial-size version of the all-terrain vehicle taking the Steam Walker to the top of the volcano. It had a bright-red fiberglass roof and tank treads three feet wide and four feet high.
I climbed into the cab but could find no keys. I searched the glove compartment, under the seats, the door pocket, and in the console between the front seats.
Nothing.
“You see a key anywhere?” I called to Noda, who scanned the walls and a workbench and said no.
I ran my hands down the steering wheel shaft and into the shadows. Near its base I found a starter button. Right. I pushed it and the machine rumbled to life.
“Got it,” I said. “Pull it out. I’ll be right back.”
I raced back to the car and grabbed the keys from the ignition. I drew the gun and waved the barrel loosely at the mountain. “Explain it to me.”
Behind us I heard a roar of steel tracks grinding up stone as Noda brought the monstrous machine out of its cave.
“The Steam Walker knows the volcano inside and out,” Baba shouted over the thunderous clamor of the machine. “Knows when the gas will come. Knows how to spot them hidden drop holes. Because the other Walkers taught him. He used to play around the edges of the no-go area, then started camping out on the mountain when the beatings got too bad.”
“What beatings?” I shouted back.
Noda pulled the transport alongside.
“They say his old man whipped the wife and kid. The Walker fled into the mountains. Stayed till the father cooled off. Only he wasn’t the Walker then. The beatings got worse, so the Walker stayed out longer. There were other Walkers on the mountain, they say. They took him in.”
“His father wasn’t a Steam Walker?”
Baba’s sneer was dismissive. “The only thing his father was was dead, after the mother was killed ‘falling down some steps.’ Beaten to death, of course, but no charges were ever brought ’cause nothing could be proved. A few years later, the father disappeared on his way to work. Never seen no more. A policeman went to the mountain to chase down the Walker. Never came back.”
“I see.”
His look was smug. “You two ain’t coming back, neither. The mountain’ll get you if the Steam Walker don’t finish you first.”
CHAPTER 62
WE plowed ahead up the mountain, the tank tracks grinding away and pulling us upward. We were gaining.
The Steam Walker had seen us as soon as we rose above the first line of cloud cover, and he’d jacked up his speed. We saw his vehicle pop forward, then strain and buck and drop back down to its previous pace. A white smoke trail curled from his tailpipe. Our tank of a mountain vehicle had already topped out, but we continued to gain.
“Can you see if Naomi is with him?” I asked.
“Can’t.”
Then I remembered a pair of binoculars I’d seen in the oversize glove compartment and yanked them out. I zoomed in on our target. The back window was a clear wall of Plexiglas.
“See anything?” Noda called over the noise of the engine.
I scanned the interior and my heartbeat ticked up. “There’s a bundle in the back. In a blanket. It could be her.”
“Any movement?”
“Can’t see any . . . wait . . . I got the back of a head. A woman’s. Got to be her.”
“See a second ‘package’?”
“No.”
We stormed on. Noda maneuvered like a master, detouring expertly around outcroppings and steep slopes, fighting for each stretch of ground.
“You see the smoke coming out of his vehicle?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Bet he doesn’t know about it.”
With our larger transport, we’d cut the distance in half. The rim of the crater loomed overhead, ragged and sharp against a brooding sky. I scanned the final approach with the binoculars. If that’s where the Walker was heading, the last span could be accomplished only on foot.
“I’m thinking we should get the doc moving,” I said.
Noda nodded. “Do it.”
I pulled out my cell phone. Reception was weak but extant. Baba needed to be treated for his injuries, but any medical clinic would report the bullet wounds, and the national police would descend on all of us. Brodie Security had an ex–US Army doctor on call for the occasional delicate situation. We knew Baba wouldn’t talk on his own, but the police could legally hold him for months and chip away at his resistance.
I hung up and said, “He’s on his way. He’ll call when he arrives in Karuizawa.”
Next I rang Mari and her concern surfaced immediately. “Where have you been? Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just busy. We’re on the mountain and going after the Steam Walker.”
“The mountain?”
“Yes.”
“Brodie, that’s not good at all. Mount Asama’s like one of Japan’s most active volcanoes.” She pounded the keyboard. “Let me read this to you—‘from one to seven eruptions in every decade for the last century, some continuous for months or years.’ ”
“Didn’t know it was that active.”
“Lots of eruptions, but lava not so much. Other kinds. Says the mountain can rain down boulders as big as cars.”
“What about the gas?”
She tapped some keys. “Volcanic gas warnings happen like all the time. There’s one in effect now.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. They won’t let hikers within three miles of the top.”
My throat went dry. We were well past that point.
“Tell me more about that.”
She tickled the board and relayed what she found. The community was in the middle of a “noxious gas episode,” a period when the mountain spews out gases at irregular intervals. The crater might expel carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, or sulfur dioxide. People most often fall prey to the first one, which is odorless and colorless and kills by asphyxiation. As a precaution, locals carry gas masks in their cars, which works for some gases but not carbon dioxide.
After we hung up, I mentioned the gas to Noda, and he pointed to a strip on the visor above his head. I leaned over and read the Japanese notation. The band changed color when gas emissions were detected, at which time we were supposed to slip on gas masks and leave the area. I peered in the backseat. No masks. I raised myself up and scanned the rear storage bed.
Nothing.
* * *
We’d closed the gap to within one hundred yards.
I moved my bin
oculars between the Steam Walker and the human bundle he was carting up the mountain. Occasionally, he tossed a backward glance our way. There was no panic in his look. No excitability. No loss of nerve. Just a curious calm I knew we had to disrupt to take him down.
He had a plan, and even with our arrival he had not wavered.
I took out the Smith & Wesson. The gun had a maximum effective range of fifty yards, give or take. Not a hundred. But effective was a physical limitation, not a psychological one.
I aimed. Our vehicle bounced up and down, rocked left and right.
“Got a smooth patch coming up soon?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Call it.”
Forty-five seconds later, Noda said, “Twenty yards . . . ten . . . five . . . now.”
I fired high. The sound echoed across the terrain. The next instant the Steam Walker’s head jerked around. A fine crackle spread across the upper corner of his rear window.
“Nice shot,” Noda said.
Our prey popped the gas again and his machine bucked. Black smoke poured out the back, then a flame.
“I like that,” I said.
The Steam Walker’s vehicle sputtered and bucked again but it continued to shuttle forward. Smoke was billowing out now. The Walker wrestled with the steering wheel. The body in the back bounced around. Shifted. The blanket slipped down. I saw the face.
It was Naomi.
Alive or dead, I couldn’t tell.
We heard rattling sounds, then the frame of his car shuddered and went still. The volume of smoke had redoubled.
The Steam Walker hopped lightly from the driver’s seat, grabbed a daypack, and trotted uphill, lobbing a look our way with the same calm assurance.
He had left Naomi behind.
We raced on.
CHAPTER 63
WE’D separated the Steam Walker from his victim.
Our quarry continued to trot uphill, which spoke volumes about his conditioning. Occasionally, when he hit a steep section, his upward jog transformed itself into a series of mini-switchbacks, three strides one way, then three back.
Noda pulled up inches short of the Steam Walker’s stalled machine and I leapt out. Naomi was in the back, a motionless log.
Please, not Ken’s last child.
“Naomi,” I called.
There was no response.
Her forehead was warm to the touch. When I ran a finger under her nose, I felt a warm exhale, shallow but steady.
There was still a chance.
“Naomi,” I called again. Gently, I shook her shoulders, and her eyes opened with lethargic ease.
“Brodie,” she said with a sleepy smile.
“Naomi, how do you feel?”
“Like I’m floating on cotton. Where am I?”
“Mount Asama. Near Karuizawa.”
Startled, she tried to pull herself upright, then gave up when her body wouldn’t obey. “Last I remember I was in Narita, heading for the woman’s powder room.”
She’d been driven across three prefectures and up a mountain. The Steam Walker seemed to possess a whole arsenal of potent pharmaceuticals.
From a distance, Noda said, “She looks okay. We should go.”
I checked Naomi’s pulse. Her eyes strayed toward the second voice but they had trouble locating the source. When she finally did, she stared with alarm at the rough bulldog bulk, with its bisected eyebrow.
“He’s a friend,” I said. “We work together at Brodie Security. Will you be all right here for a while?”
“It’s comfy.”
“Uh-huh. Any pain? Numbness? Strange feeling anywhere?”
“Oh no. I’m just kinda happy.” She giggled.
I’d been so focused on Naomi, I hadn’t noticed a second body on the floor, cloaked head to toe with another blanket.
“Looks like we found Stockton’s guy,” I called.
“He alive?”
I pulled back the cover, felt for a pulse on his neck, and found a slow, rhythmic beat. I nudged him lightly, then harder, but he slept on. He looked Japanese. I extracted a wallet from his back pocket. This was not Stockton’s man.
“The name Jun Tasaki mean anything to you?” I asked Noda.
“No. We got to go.”
I nodded at the smoke snaking from the tailpipe. “We better move them away. The thing could blow.”
“Okay, but quick.”
We carried Naomi and Tasaki from the stalled vehicle, set them down, and covered them once more with blankets. In the front seat, I found a custom-made body harness. It echoed designs for baby carriers but was enlarged and reinforced to hold an adult. It had thick, padded shoulder straps for hauling a heavy load, a series of horizontal belt loops with buckles, plus a crotch strap to separate the legs and lock the body in place. That’s how the Walker conveyed his victims the last stretch to the rim of the volcano and beyond.
“We’ll come back soon,” I said to Naomi, then Noda and I hopped back into our tank and headed after our prey once more.
The research vehicle gained on the Steam Walker.
“Why’d he leave them alive?” I asked.
“Because he’s experienced.”
“Meaning what?”
“You ever carry a dead body?”
A hint of nausea ruffled the edge of my stomach. “No.”
“Dead weight is harder to manage.”
The nausea rose. “Drugged is easier?”
“Much.”
I focused on the chase. Three hundred yards on, the upward grade became too steep. Our motorized transport had reached its limit.
“Got to hoof it,” Noda said.
“Wait,” I said, and reached over and peeled the warning strip from the visor and slapped it to the sleeve of my jacket.
The Steam Walker’s jog had slowed to a fast walk, which was still faster than the pace Noda and I managed. I kicked it up a gear and felt the thin air burn my lungs.
But I pressed on. Noda kept pace. The surface of the volcano was dark and grainy with volcanic sand and pebbles. Elsewhere it was covered with cascades of rocks the size of cantaloupes. Boulders too large to climb appeared in odd clusters. Low-lying mountain scrub staked out protected crevices.
Our man was thirty yards from the rim of the crater, and we were twice that distance from him. We trooped on. It was a slog. I checked the gas patch on my arm. No change. The slope steepened for the Steam Walker. His pace slowed while ours did not. We closed the gap further. His daypack bobbed with each step.
When he was ten yards from the rim, we’d narrowed the distance to twenty. I drew the gun and yelled for him to stop. Normally, I could hit a target from this range, but the uphill grade complicated the shot.
The Walker moved on without bothering to look back, so I put a slug in his vicinity and a cloud of volcanic dust bloomed a yard to his right. Accuracy was not a problem. He stopped and turned.
“Come down here,” I said.
“No.”
I didn’t shoot and he smiled. Noda and I advanced. The Steam Walker moved to resume his ascent and I said, “Do that and I’ll empty the gun. One slug ought to connect.”
One slug was all I had left, but he didn’t know that.
He turned to face us.
CHAPTER 64
WE caught up a minute later. Our breathing came in spurts. My lungs were on fire. I wondered if it was the gas, but the Steam Walker looked to have no such concern, so I let the thought pass.
Our new captive stared at us. I did the same, inspecting him for bulges suggestive of hidden weapons. I saw none. The Steam Walker wore baggy mountain gear in browns and grays. Concealed weaponry was possible but unlikely. Why would he be carrying? He had expected no interference today. He’d planned to ascend the volcano alone and dispose of the bodies as he’d done who knew how many times before.
At five-six, he was not a big man, but I knew from experience that he was swift and agile. His face was still largely hidden in the shadow of his cap, but even so I c
ould see that this was not the visage I’d seen in the bamboo forest or that Shu had described for the Napa County Sheriff’s Department. Nor was it the one I’d seen behind the blowfish restaurant. This was a third face, and I presumed his real one. For those confrontations, he’d applied makeup with a deft touch to disguise his features. Today, he’d expected no face-off, only a routine retrieval at the warehouse from a worn-out trucker and an old caretaker, so he’d opted for a simpler disguise. His nose was slim, not broad. His cheekbones were prominent but not the exaggerated height of the police sketch. The eyes, however, were the same. Piercing and predatory. He ran them up and down Noda, then me.
“Got any more bullets in that gun?” the Walker said in his characteristic whisper.
“Enough.”
He nodded lazily, then called my bluff. He feinted left, and moved right.
I shifted with him, then corrected as he changed direction. The earth underfoot was pumice and pebble. It was loose and unstable. Which made maintaining traction hard, especially in street shoes. We had not come prepared to climb a mountain. The Walker had. I began to slide downhill. I flapped my arms and recaptured my stability.
Noda was not so lucky. Succumbing to the same feint, the chief detective, in black loafers with soft rubber-foam soles and even less traction than my black-on-black sneakers, watched helplessly as his feet drifted downhill. He windmilled his arms, overcorrected, and frowned as he flopped over onto his stomach and was dragged downhill. He raked the ground with bent fingers to stall his downward momentum, but succeeded only in drawing trails of loose fragments after him.
I was suddenly one-on-one with the Steam Walker.
On his home ground.
And all but rooted to where I stood.
Clearly, the fine volcanic rubble had worked its way into our shoe treads during the short hike to the top, neutralizing any purchase our footwear might have possessed. Well aware of the mountain’s attributes, the Walker had knocked Noda out of commission with the simplest of moves.
Now he advanced on me.
I scrambled to secure a footing, but there was none to be found. I could plant my feet on the shifting volcanic debris beneath my shoes, but no foothold would support a sudden move. If I took a swing at the Steam Walker, I’d lose my balance and go tumbling downhill in Noda’s wake.
