Death Before Dishonor Page 18

  Then Terry's foot caught something, and he came down with a splat into the ankle-deep mud. He tried pulling his hand from the mud, but the mud pulled back. Terry overpowered the earth and climbed to his feet, wiping the mud and water from his face, finding himself at the base of the pi-shaped torii of the shrine. He waded through the mud towards the threshold of the arch.

  Terry heard the sound again and looked over his shoulder, seeing the dark landscape through the static of pouring rain.

  Terry started again, marching beneath the torii. Beyond it, he could just barely make out the weathered cemetery bisected by the sandō. He continued to follow the faint, strange sounds of clashing metal. The grounds around the cemetery and the shrine grabbed at his feet. Despite the wind resisting his movement, despite the rain's attempt at drowning him, the thunder's attempt to deafen him, and the lightning's attempt to terrify him, Terry pushed forward. He followed the distant sound to the honden, deep within the confines of the burial ground.

  Terry stumbled along the sandō, passing the worn wood structures. Terry passed through the haiden, unable to take refuge there because of its lack of walls. Just on the other side were slippery stairs that he ascended to the door of the honden. He pulled the door open, and it groaned from its age. Over the groans and thunder, Terry could hear faint but sharp clashes of steel and flat war cries. Then they went instantly silent. Terry stood in the sideways rain and beckoned into the midnight antechamber of the honden. No one answered.

  “Terry!” he heard several voices call to him over the storm from the opposite direction.

  Terry pulled the rotting door shut and disappeared into the darkness to hide. He climbed atop a huge wooden slab etched with kanji off to the right of the stanchions in the middle and huddled into a ball. He could faintly hear them calling to him still, but he refused to answer; he had nothing to say.

  Chapter Ten: Nuclear Winter

  A Shinobi has power beyond imagination. This power can only be wielded by Shinobi with honor. Shinobi without honor are a cancer that must be incised either by their own hand or another's hand. Only in death can honor be regained. Be vigilant and merciless and bring death to the dishonorable.

  The Fifth Mandate, translated from Ninpo.

  Trans-Ili Ala-Tau Mountains. One hundred miles south of Uralsk, Kazakhstan. Today.

  Terry and Yuri weren’t fond of politics, but political contracts tended to be the most lucrative, the most challenging, and most akin to the entanglements for which Ninpo was designed. After all, the ancestor Shinobi were more often than not used as instruments against the political rivals of the Shoguns. Like their classical brethren, Terry and Yuri were called upon to act as political instruments.

  The brothers were contacted by NATO authorities to assist in defusing conflict between Russia and Georgia. Specifically, the Ossetes had declared their intent to fully secede from the Georgian state. The government had chosen force instead of diplomacy this time and sought to quell rebellion decisively. In response, the Russian Federation had executed another invasion across Georgian borders to support the secessionists. In the ensuing violence, a radically partisan Georgian group named Rytsari Krasnoy Oseni—The Knights of the Red Autumn—or RKO for short, looking for an edge against the superior military might of the Russians, had located and seized a mothballed Soviet nuclear weapons facility buried deep in the remote mountains of the Altai and Trans-Ili Ala-Tau mountain ranges. Their intent was to make weapons out of the existing material to intimidate or attack the Russians and the Ossetes.

  More than just the belligerents were fearful of the aggressive move by the RKO. NATO, worried about a non-sovereign, often terrorist-affiliated group entering the world political arena, dispatched special long-range operatives to depose the RKO leadership. Unfortunately, all but one of the operatives had had their dental remains mailed back to their parent government. The RKO then had claimed that they would detonate a nuclear weapon in an undisclosed location in Europe if the West involved itself again. Seeking a less invasive means to accomplish their desperate goal, at which NATO had failed, authorities contacted Terry and Yuri.

  The brothers received a dossier containing intelligence they would need to execute the job and agreed to commence once they received half of the payment.

  Their employer required that the acknowledged leader of the RKO and the munitions expert that the RKO employed both be eliminated, as well as the operative’s body be located to confirm his status change from MIA to KIA. Terry and Yuri knew that the parent government was trying to tie up loose ends by disassociating its involvement in the Russo-Georgian conflict, which meant that if they found the commando alive, he needed to be eliminated.

  After careful review of the intelligence, the imagery, the terrain, and the topography, Terry and Yuri decided to infiltrate by crossing the Kazakhstan border aboard a plane piloted by Tajik smugglers out of Karachi, Pakistan, and parachuting into a drop zone twenty miles north of the facility under the cover of night.

  From there, the brothers would hike over the mountain and descend into the valley where the facility was hidden. Besides the infiltration, every phase of the operation had a primary execution tree and a backup execution tree in case the situation did not proceed ideally.

  The plan was to gain entry to the facility through the sewage spillway. To that end, Terry and Yuri would have to cut through the ice of the frozen lake, situated to the immediate west of the principal buildings, which was used in the cooling of the facility’s nuclear elements. From beneath the ice, they would ascend into the spillway and then proceed through the maintenance access into the facility. Once inside, they’d split so that they could complete multiple objectives simultaneously. That said, Yuri would find any supplies that had been smuggled into the facility by train and destroy them. After which, he would exfiltrate out of the main yard by going over the wall. Terry, for his part, would track down the operative and the high-value targets and eliminate them. Terry would then exfiltrate behind his brother, following his brother’s lead.

  If things went south, they had devised a solid backup plan. If their entry through the ice was compromised, they would switch gears and low-crawl through the snow to the helicopter pad—a plan they hoped to avoid. Crawling through snow increased the chance of hypothermia and frostbite. Moreover, that area of the facility had shorter walls than other parts, which, if the RKO leaders were worth their salt, meant that that area was more heavily guarded. The backup entry plan, at the very least, would give direct access to the facility even if it would be a bigger pain.

  If the spillway entry plan went off without a hitch but the maintenance access was blocked, Terry and Yuri planned to proceed through the ventilation. The shafts were anything but sophisticated, made up entirely of brick and mortar. They snaked throughout the facility like tunnels in a termite mound and were covered at the access points by metal grates.

  The exfiltration backup was to go out the way they came in, a situation they wanted to avoid at all costs. Simply put, swimming in was advantageous because they had time to dry off in the spillway. If they swam out, however, they would have no reprieve from the bitter subzero Kazakh winter.

  ***

  To protect themselves from the elements and to hide from scouts, airborne or otherwise, Terry and Yuri camped on the leeward side of the mountains in a shelter they had erected in less than an hour. They built a fire inside their shelter for warmth, knowing that the smoke would be barely visible since they were downwind of the facility with rising terrain in between. They planned to begin their attack after dusk. Until then, they rested and placed the finishing touches on their plan. Terry massaged his shins while he rehearsed it aloud, allowing Yuri to participate while he busied himself with checking their gear.

  “Once we get through the ice,” said Terry, “I’m first into the water. I’ll find the entrance to the mainline of the spillway. You anchor our cable and follow with the gear.”

  Yuri moved on in no specific pattern to the reb
reathers of their dive equipment.

  Terry continued, “If the mainline grate is still in place, we’ll set the cutting pylons. When you’re ready to arm them, you give the signal.”

  Yuri’s middle finger shot up.

  “Real mature.”

  Yuri cracked a smile; it was the little things that mattered.

  Their plan outlined that when they were into the mainline, they’d make their ascent to the spillway. They’d need to be efficient and couldn’t afford mistakes. They were using rebreathers and didn’t want to bust their submerge time with taking forever to find the mainline or in rigging the cutting materials if the grate was still present. Once they were into the spillway, they’d strip off and hide their wet gear. Then they’d file through the maintenance access into the facility proper with Yuri on point and Terry bringing up the rear. When they were at a safe staging point, they’d make any final adjustments before splitting up.

  Terry tapped his finger against the blueprint. “It looks like we can use this point here as the staging point. What is that, a loft?”

  Yuri peeled his attention away, limped over to his brother, and leaned over the chart. “Nope—that looks like a catwalk or an observation platform. See?” He brushed Terry’s hand aside and tapped it with his finger. “There are the ladders.”

  “Oh yeah. Alright.”

  “Might not be worth it. If there are sentries on the roofs nearby, they may spot us. If nothing else, it’ll be a pain to haul the rest of the explosives up there.”

  “Suggestions, then?”

  “Audible.” Meaning that they'd play it by ear and make a decision once they were planning to exit the vents.

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  Yuri limped back to his inspections. “Then why’d you ask?”

  Terry raised a concerned brow. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah—why?”

  “You’re limping. Is the cold bothering your foot?”

  “Screw this foot.” Yuri’s reply came out menacing.

  “You know you might want to see a podiatrist.”

  “Why? I’m not a kid.”

  Terry glanced around the shelter, confused. “W-what? Kid?” Then confusion turned into disappointment. “Not a pediatrician, numbnuts—a podiatrist—a foot doctor.”

  “I’m messing with you. I know what a podiatrist is. And fuck that, I don’t have time for doctors.”

  Terry laughed. For a moment there, he’d really thought his brother was mildly retarded. “Your foot isn’t going to get any better if you don’t. Kintake did some pretty serious damage. You’ve been limping for years when it gets cold.”

  Yuri didn’t look up from his work. “I might just put this foot in Kintake’s ass.”

  “Yeah, because that worked the last time you tried…”

  “I might just put this foot and a podiatrist in Kintake’s ass.”

  Terry laughed and went back to planning.

  From the staging point, they’d start the clock and go their separate ways. Terry would track and eliminate all three of the targets, which they estimated should take forty-five minutes. Then he’d exit the facility by the time sixty minutes elapsed. Meanwhile, Yuri would find the RKO’s supplies and rig them with explosives. They predicted that ten minutes would be sufficient since the satellite imagery showed the supplies imported by and stored in train cars. He’d be complete with setting the explosives once fifty minutes had elapsed, he’d escape by sixty minutes, and detonate by sixty-five.

  “Wait,” said Yuri, “what happens if you get hung up trying to exit a building?"

  Terry's hand went to his chin. “Good point. Tell you what, if I need extra time, I’ll chirp you twice on the phone.” The chirp would instruct Yuri to add five minutes, detonating instead at seventy minutes. After which, the brothers would find a place to bed down before making the three-week hike south out of the mountains.

  Terry stuffed the charts and diagrams into his pack and climbed over Yuri to help with the inspection. Yuri grimaced as his brother pushed over his back while using him for support. Terry settled on the other side and started with their snow shoes.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Yuri demanded without even looking up.

  “Shoot,” replied Terry.

  “You going to tell me what’s been going on?”

  Terry’s head was troubled by something he had been dealing with for months, and Yuri could see it. Terry was irritable and depressed but refused to talk about, not that that was anything new. Getting Terry to talk about his feelings was about as fruitful as finding an undiscovered bikini model in a senior citizen home. But Yuri was going to need to get to the bottom of his brother’s malaise if they were going to be successful with their current contract.

  “With what?” Terry asked.

  “You’ve been acting real testy.”

  Terry lifted his head. “Pot. Kettle. The color black. Does any of that ring a bell?”

  “I’m supposed to be petulant. I get it from our mother.”

  “At least you admit it.”

  “I do admit it. Now I need you to admit that you’ve been acting real volatile over the past six months.”

  “Get out of here with that noise.”

  “Terry, I’m your brother. I can’t keep operating like this. Please, talk to me.”

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  “Well, for starters, you’ve been a real bitch to work with lately. Figured we could talk about what’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  Yuri stopped what he was doing. “C’mon, Ter, that’s bullshit, and you know it. Stop being such a little girl and talk to me.”

  “I’ve just been dealing with a lot of guilt lately.”

  “Guilt? Guilt over what? That job in Rio?”

  Terry wanted to talk about it but didn’t want to talk about it at the same time. He needed to get it off of his chest but didn’t want to let it go. Unable to make the choice as to which way to go, he chose the status quo—not talking.

  “Terry?”

  If Terry couldn’t talk to his brother, who could he talk to? Being bottled up wasn’t only punishing himself, but it was punishing Yuri too. He was taking the brunt of Terry’s torment, and Yuri, at the very least, deserved an explanation. He decided to open up. “I feel really guilt about our retaliation in Israel.”

  “Are you serious? Terry, it’s been like five years.”

  “See? That’s why I didn’t say anything.” Terry’s voice became venomous, regretting being open and wanting to bottle up again.

  “Whoa, easy, slick. I was just stating a fact. I wasn’t judging you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Just talk to me.”

  “Okay—I know this happened like five years ago, but I just can’t let go of the scene.” Terry swallowed, trying to dilute the pool of embarrassment in his stomach. “I still see the expression on that girl’s face as she looked at me through the window of the burning car—looked into me. Her eyes haunt me; they have ever since.”

  “Shinobi don’t hang onto death, Terry. Death comes for us all.”

  “True enough, but that doesn’t take away the guilt. What we did was wrong. What we did was motivated by revenge, not ethics.”

  “They attacked us first, Terry. We just returned the favor.”

  “No. We were foreigners in a foreign war that we had no business being involved in. We were killing not in the name of honor but in the name of an ideal that wasn’t our own. We were used, and we let ourselves be used. Surely, you felt it.”

  “What I feel is that we were young and didn’t know exactly what we were doing. We thought that’s where we needed to be. We thought the code implied we needed to be there. So, we were wrong.” Yuri shrugged. “I’m sure the ancestor Shinobi made mistakes along the way. Ninpo just didn’t appear to them overnight. It had to be developed.”

  “That doesn’t make what we did right.”r />
  “I’m not saying it is. What I’m saying is that we need to leave it in the past and move forward.”

  Terry wasn’t convinced.

  Yuri continued, “The Shinobi are ministers of justice; their duty is a righteous one. A Shinobi must execute his duty swiftly and precisely at all costs or be dishonored. At all costs, Terry.”

  “What we administered wasn’t justice; it was vengeance. We were driven by pride, not duty. We wanted to satisfy ourselves, not the universe. I think our honor is in question.” Terry stared at his hands. “The result: dead children and crippling guilt.”

  Yuri went over and sat next to his brother. “I got news for you, bro, we aren’t the first Shinobi to let our pride get the best of us. And we—”

  Terry cut in: “Yuri—”

  “Let me finish,” Yuri said, blocking Terry just the same. “We’ll find a way to make it right. I don’t feel any guilt towards it. I feel like that’s just the way the chips fell. The code doesn’t say vengeance is wrong."

  “You’re playing technicalities. And it’s that sort of ambiguity that made Shinobi detestable in the eyes of the Samurai.”

  “Call it what you want, Ter. The undersecretary got what he had coming to him. Dishonor kills indiscriminately. His dishonor killed those closest to him. We were the instruments of death, not the architects. We didn’t design any of that; we carried it out. Whatever your personal feelings were, they were coincidental—nothing more. Ninpo taught us that. And you’re not Samurai. And I don’t care what the Samurai thought. I wouldn’t care what they think if they still existed today. I follow Ninpo, not Bushido.”

  “I thought you didn’t care much for Ninpo.”

  “Terry, do we have to do this now? I don’t want to debate my feelings on Ninpo.”

  “No. I guess not. Now’s really not a good time.”