Quest of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  “I have the guts and I’m going to gut you with a full clip of 7.62, Mister Ross.” More laughter.

  There was the thump of boots on the path and Brent saw a blue-uniformed park policeman running up the path not more than sixty yards away. “Go back! Go back!” the American screamed. Either the man did not hear or he did not understand. Leaping over a small hump in the path, the policeman came into full view. He was an elderly man with a drooping gray mustache, face taut with strain and laboring for breath. He was unarmed.

  The AK 47 ripped off a dozen rounds and Brent saw a dark form to the left of the path step out from behind a pine tree, holding a pistol. A storm of bullets caught the policeman, stopping him in mid-stride as if he had run into a stone wall. Screaming with pain and surprise, he dropped instantly as if every muscle in his legs had been severed by a giant cleaver. There were a few involuntary twitches, and then he lay still in the embrace of death. But Brent had a shadowy figure in his sights. He got off six rounds so fast, the Otsu leaped like a machine gun.

  Caught by six 6.5-millimeter steel-cored slugs cleverly designed to bend and tumble, the terrorist leaped high, screaming and choking on his own blood; heart, lungs and shattered ribs churned to a single gory mass. He was dead before he thudded to the ground.

  There were shouts of rage and more bullets hummed by and crashed into the boulders. “Three left,” Yoshi said.

  Reloading, Brent could hear the peculiar hooting sounds of Japanese police cars in the distance. Brent said, “Time is on our side, Yoshi. They’ve got to kill us now or get out.”

  “They are Red Army, Brent. They’ll never give up.” Yoshi pushed himself up on his elbows. “They are coming,” he said, gesturing at two silhouettes moving in the shadows. His finger worked like a machine and the pistol bucked and he emptied his magazine. There was a scream, thrashing in the underbrush as a heavy body rolled and writhed in pain. While Yoshi paused to reload, there was a crash in the brush just a few feet away. A wild, screaming woman in a torn yakuta burst from the undergrowth and rushed toward them, firing an automatic. Jamming his clip into the stock of the Otsu, Yoshi cried, “Brent!”

  Whirling, Brent saw death rushing at him in a blaze of bullets that hissed past his head. There was no hesitation. He brought the woman’s breasts into his sights. Squeezed off a half-dozen rounds. Every bullet struck. She tumbled head first as if she had tripped over an invisible log. Moaning, eyes wild and showing white, she rolled against the rocks not more than four feet from Yoshi, twisting and scratching at the ground with broken fingernails, vomiting up blood and half-digested food. The sound of the AK 47 turned both men.

  Neeb was slithering up the slope toward them, firing short bursts. “That was my woman, Ross,” he shouted, spraying the rocks. “I’m going to stick this AK up your woman’s pussy and give her a fuckin’ she’ll never forget.”

  Brent tried to get off a shot, but a volley drove him to ground. “Yoshi,” he said, stabbing his pistol. “Around the rock. Behind the woman.”

  Nodding understanding, the aviator snaked his way around the large boulder and behind the woman who was still jerking spasmodically. Brent heard Matsuhara open fire and came up to his elbows, pistol ready. Neeb was firing again, but at Yoshi. Brent got off three rounds before the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber with a sickening metallic ping. Cursing and pushing on the ejector button, his right hand sent the spring loaded clip dropping to the ground while his left groped frantically in his pocket for a fresh clip. But the machine gun was silent and groans were coming from a clump of bushes just to the right of the path.

  Cautiously, the American and Yoshi rose. Mayumi came to her knees. Brent waved Yoshi back. “Stay with Mayumi, Yoshi,” he said softly. Slowly, he advanced on the groans. He found Eugene Neeb seated, back to a large rock. He was bent over, holding his shattered right arm with his left hand. Arterial blood spurted from his forearm and more blood welled from his left side. He was quivering and moaning with pain. Brent looked back at Kimio’s inert form, then the terrorist. The only emotion he felt was rage.

  “You’re using dum-dums, you son-of-a-bitch,” Neeb managed between groans, a thin ribbon of blood running from the corner of his mouth. “That’s savage, brutal…”

  Brent almost laughed at the insane statement. He raised the pistol.

  Fear transfixed Neeb’s features into a rigid, white mask. “What are you going to do?”

  “Cancers are excised, mad dogs eliminated.”

  “No!” Neeb raised his hands as if his palm could ward off bullets. “I’m a human being.”

  “There’s no resemblance,” Brent said, centering the sight on Neeb’s forehead. “Not the slightest.”

  The wounded man screamed, “Mercy! Mercy!” and threw himself back, flat on his back, writhing and squirming.

  There was no pity, not a trace of human emotion in Brent Ross. Only the desire to destroy this animal — this blight on humanity. “As much mercy as you gave Kimio,” he growled.

  The wide eyes were staring at him when he pulled the trigger. The Otsu bucked and a small blue hole appeared between them. The tumbling slug exploded from the back of Neeb’s head in a burst of shattered bone and the yellow custard contents of his skull poured onto the ground. Legs and arms jerked and then the terrorist was gripped by his final stillness.

  Brent spat in the dead man’s face, turned and walked back up the hill where Mayumi crouched on her haunches, sobbing uncontrollably. Yoshi was seated, back to a rock, cradling his dead fiancé’s head in his lap. He was rocking and singing like a father comforting his sick child.

  Chapter Nine

  The funeral was on Thursday in the Zojoji Temple. Kimio’s son, Sadamori, was there and her daughter, Shimikiko Dazai, sat mutely with her husband, Osmu. Brent and Yoshi wore white as did all of the other mourners. Although Admiral Mark Allen and Colonel Bernstein had never met Kimio Urshazawa, they, too, attended dressed in whites. Bernstein had borrowed a uniform from Lieutenant Commander Nobomitsu Atsumi. Mayumi sat next to Brent and held his hand with a slack, cold palm. She trembled throughout the services.

  A small, wizened old Buddhist priest with the translucent skin of an aesthete conducted the ceremony. Aided by two acolytes dressed in homespun yakutas, the priest was in formal dress — black-lacquered shoes of pawlonia wood, baggy blue pantaloons and brown jumper. With jerky, arthritic movements, the old man circled the varnished walnut coffin chanting and praying as his two assistants filled the air with the smell of incense and the sounds of chimes. Brent understood little of the ceremony except an occasional phrase: “She has united body and mind with the universe,” which rang through the small stone temple over and over. Yoshi seemed not to see or hear. Near the end, Mayumi sobbed into a handkerchief.

  Brent was glad when the ceremony was over. Then, while the other officers returned to Yonaga in a staff car, Brent escorted a silent Mayumi back to her apartment in a cab.

  “It was for nothing, wasn't it Brent?” Mayumi said sipping her sake.

  “No one lives for nothing.”

  “But she died for nothing.”

  “I can't believe that.” He drank deeply from his sakazuki.

  “They were trying to kill you.”

  “Yes.”

  “That foul man knew you.”

  “Yes.” He emptied his cup and recharged it from a porcelain pitcher. He turned to Mayumi, blue of his eyes heightened by a film of moisture. “I liked her. I didn't want to see her dead.”

  She seemed not to hear. “You shot those men — that woman…”

  “My God, what did you want me to do, kiss them?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She began to sob uncontrollably. He put his arm around her heaving shoulders.

  Slowly she regained control and talked into a clenched fist. “I know you had no choice — they would have killed us all. But underneath it all — all the hate and killing in this world, something is wrong. Something is wrong with us.”

  Gently,
he stroked her hair, talked into her ear, “Something has always been wrong.” He looked out the huge window over the city, “Maybe we're a blighted species — imperfect, destined to destroy ourselves — a kind of universal drive to seppuku” His eyes widened with the surprise and wonder of a man who feels he has stumbled on a rare insight.

  She drove on like a relentless prosecutor, “There have always been Khadafy’s.”

  “Yes. Monsters. They’ve been called Caligula, Genghis Khan, Attila, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin…”

  “And they have been fought.”

  “By well-meaning men.”

  “But the followers of the monsters have always thought of themselves as well-meaning men, too.”

  Brent sat erect. “I suppose so.”

  “Certainly, the people you killed Tuesday didn’t think of themselves as evil?”

  Brent pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. Of course not.”

  “They had their cause.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s always the cause — isn’t there, Brent?” Her voice rose to the border of hysteria.

  He pulled her close. “Please, Mayumi…”

  “Leave, Brent.”

  “Mayumi!” There was shock in his voice.

  Her voice was low and hard with a timbre he had never heard before. “Please leave, Brent.” She pulled away.

  He drained his cup and left.

  When the cab stopped at the gate house and Brent saw the great carrier’s flight deck and superstructure looming over dock B-2 like a great steel cliff, the terrible emptiness he had felt after leaving Mayumi began to fade, replaced by a curious sense of security, an ineffable attachment that he had not felt since his mother’s death. He knew it was not just the usual sailor’s affection for his ship. It was far more than that. It was Fujita and his insidious powers. There was an aura about the admiral that penetrated a man’s veins like a fog through dark streets — an arcane force that controlled, shaped and warped, depriving a man of free will itself. It was almost as if the old admiral was a kami who had come to life with a full armament of incorporeal forces to bend men to his will, commanding fanatical loyalty from the crew. Brent knew he shared it.

  “I’m home,” he said to himself, alighting from the cab. For the first time in two days, the young lieutenant smiled.

  The young American knew something unusual was afoot the moment he stepped off the accommodation ladder onto the quarterdeck. “You are wanted in Flag Plot immediately, Mister Ross. Staff meeting, sir,” the junior officer of the watch, Ensign Inozo Nitobe said, saluting.

  Quickly, Brent entered the elevator and waited impatiently as the small car rose two decks and then up into the island. Within two minutes, he entered the conference room where the meeting was already in progress. But the full staff was not in attendance; only Admiral Mark Allen, Yoshi Matsuhara and Captain Irving Bernstein sat quietly while a glowering Admiral Fujita stared the length of the table from his usual place at the head. Hastily, in the sudden silence, Brent found his chair next to Admiral Mark Allen.

  “Mister Ross,” Fujita said, staring at the young American. “Commander Matsuhara gave me a full report on your fire fight in Ueno Park.” He gestured at Bernstein, “Captain Bernstein has been discussing a report he just received from Israeli Intelligence.” He nodded to the Israeli.

  Holding a computer printout, Bernstein stood. “I just decoded this transmission,” he said, raising the document. “It’s a report on your friend…” His eyes found Brent and then Yoshi. “Your late friend, Eugene Neeb.” He glanced at the document, spoke with bitter irony. “He was born in Arcadia, California, in Nineteen-fifty-two, the son of a relief valve manufacturer and horse breeder, Thomas Neeb, who was the owner of the Neebco Valve Company.” He looked up. “Very wealthy — Eugene had all the advantages.” He returned to the document. “Attended private schools and UCLA where he fell in with radical fringe groups. He led riots protesting the war in Vietnam and was suspected in the bombing of the campus police station. In 1972, he murdered his economics professor, Christopher Olton, whom he termed ‘a fascist, capitalist pig’. He vanished to reappear in Paris as a protégé of ‘Carlos the Jackal’ — sorry, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.”

  “Carlos, the darling of terrorism?” Admiral Allen said.

  “The one and only,” Bernstein said. “After Carlos murdered his closest aide, Michel Moukarbal, the honor was handed to Neeb who by now had joined the French Communist Party and worshipped Karl Marx as a demigod. Together, Carlos and Neeb took seminars at the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow. Here, young Eugene mastered all the techniques of arson, explosives, karate, assassination, extortion, ambush, disguise, clandestine travel, recruitment, communication, and weaponry…” He looked up. “Especially the AK forty-seven assault rifle.”

  He returned to the report. “He also trained at camps in Aden and Libya and became a confirmed member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a close friend of Yassir Arafat. In Nineteen-seventy-five he performed his first assassination — he shot a minor Dutch embassy official in his bathroom in London with a 9-millimeter Walther equipped with a silencer. The next year, he and Carlos bombed three Paris newspapers with stolen American grenades, killing eleven people. Then, taking orders directly from Khadafy, he struck out on his own, surfacing in Spain where he used some of the leftover grenades to help Spanish Basques blow up General Franco’s designated heir, Admiral Carrero-Blanco. Then he was ordered to Switzerland where he and two Arab Sabbah lobbed three grenades into the offices of Japan Air Lines in Zurich. They killed three women and two children. We lost track of him for a couple years until he showed up at Camp AZ Zaouiah near Benghazi, Libya, in Nineteen-eighty as an instructor. Here he fell in love with his most apt student who was training with a contingent of the Japanese Red Army.” He looked up. “Her name was Kathryn Suzuki.”

  Eyes wide, Brent straightened rigidly. “So, that’s it…” he said, slapping the table.

  Bernstein eyed Brent. “You killed Kathryn?”

  Allen answered before Brent could speak. “One between the eyes. The same as Neeb.”

  Fujita spoke to Allen, “Both had earned their bullets. My only criticism of Lieutenant Ross is that the pair should have been dispatched slowly with more inventiveness.” He smiled at Brent. “You are learning.”

  Mark Allen flushed and began to respond but was cut off by Bernstein who continued the accounting, “In Nineteen-eighty-one, Neeb was ordered to Japan where he led student uprisings and was suspected in the bombing of the El A1 offices in Tokyo. Then five Tokyo police stations were bombed.”

  “Five?” Brent said in wonder.

  “He was ambitious,” Bernstein said, looking at Brent. “He vanished after the bombings and didn’t reappear until Tuesday of this week.”

  “Actually, earlier, on the picket lines,” Brent said, turning to Yoshi Matsuhara. “Isn’t that right, Commander,” Brent said into the flyer’s ear.

  Yoshi turned slowly like a man awakened from a dream. He directed himself at Admiral Fujita with a soft, matter-of-fact voice, “Request permission to commit seppuku, Admiral.”

  Silence spread through the room like a viscous fluid, coating everyone and everything, the whir of the blowers beating softly in Brent’s ears like the wings of the angel of death.

  Fujita studied the flyer for a long moment before he spoke. “You blame yourself for your fiancée’s death?”

  “Yes, sir. I was warned. The gods sent a lightning bolt at a propitious moment. I did not listen.”

  “That’s not true,” Brent said, agonized. “I talked you out of it. It was my fault. I should commit seppuku.” Brent felt Admiral Allen’s hand clutch his arm. “Brent,” Allen said, shocked. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “It’s quite clear to me, sir. I was remiss — made a mortal error — threw away the life of a helpless woman.”

  “No,” Yoshi interrupted. “It was I…”

  “I can�
�t believe this,” Mark Allen sputtered. “Enough!” Fujita shouted. “If it is redemption in death you seek, both of you will be provided with ample opportunity shortly. The Emperor needs you, nirvana can wait.” His black eyes burned into Yoshi. “Have you forgotten how the forty-seven ronin waited a full year to avenge the betrayer of their daimyo?”

  “No samurai can, Admiral. But we had our vengeance. All four terrorists died in the ambush.”

  “Was that enough, Yoshi-san? Does that satisfy you? Can you abandon your emperor, Yonaga, your new pilots at Japan’s most desperate hour?” He placed a hand on the Hagakure. “You know the book tells us the samurai who does not dip his sword in the blood of vengeance will be forsaken by the gods and Buddha.” Matsuhara entwined his fingers in a temple, thumped them on the table. He said to Fujita, “After we defeat the enemies of the Mikado, will you honor my request?”

  “Damn it, Yoshi,” Brent interrupted. “It was my…” Mark Allen came half out of his chair. “Have you lost your mind…”

  Fujita’s shout cut through the voices like a blade. “Enough!” Everyone stared at the old man. “Do I have your word — both of you?” He pushed the Hagakure down the table. “Swear on it.”

  Matsuhara placed his hand on the book. Brent hesitated, then dropped his big hand on top of Yoshi’s. “No. No,” Mark Allen gasped.

  “I swear,” the two officers chorused.

  Smiling and pushing on the table, the old admiral came to his feet. Every officer in the room rose and faced the tiny man at rigid attention. “This meeting is closed,” Fujita snapped. Brent found himself bowing with the Japanese. Mark Allen’s face was stricken with anger and disbelief.

  “Brent! What is happening to you?”

  Brent Ross knew Admiral Allen was upset and tried to avoid him after the meeting. However, grasping the young lieutenant’s arm, the admiral had guided him into his cabin as they exited Admiral Fujita’s meeting.

  Brent sat wearily while Mark Allen paced in the small space between the desk and the bunk. He continued, “Brent, I’m worried about you”