Death Before Dishonor Page 38

  Yuri walked to the corner and turned so that he could keep out of Kawaguchi’s view. Terry kept a solid watch on Kawaguchi and gave Yuri updates. After several minutes, the target was on the move again, approaching Yuri’s position. Terry told him and started walking ahead of Kawaguchi but at a slower pace. Kawaguchi overtook Yuri on the crosswalk, swimming through waves of pedestrians. He reached into his pocket when his phone rang, rattling on in his nasal Japanese, and then he turned around sharply. He and Yuri made eye contact. Kawaguchi briefly showed a sign of being startled, but then he turned back around just as quickly and marched away, stuffing his phone into his pocket.

  Yuri boiled, stirred by frustration. “Terry, I think he noticed me.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “We made eye contact?”

  “You did what?” Terry’s pitch climbed an octave. “Are you new at this?”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “What’s he doing now? I’m having a hard time seeing him.”

  “He’s walking at his normal pace…”

  Kawaguchi took off, rocketing down the sidewalk and bulldozing anyone unlucky enough to get in his path.

  “Terry, he’s making a break for it!” Yuri yelled as he sprinted after his target.

  Terry cursed as he tried to keep his brother and Kawaguchi in sight over the cars and the numberless heads. He could barely keep a bead on them; he needed to get to higher ground. Terry hurried to the bus stop’s bench, launched himself onto the back of it, pushing several patrons away, drew his pistol, and aimed it at the bouncing head of Kawaguchi. Terry chopped off several rounds, the spent casings hitting several panicked patrons ducking for cover, but he was too far and too hurried to manage clean shots. The gun’s reports, however, stirred chaos at the intersection, pedestrians scattering in every which direction. Terry paid them no attention; he focused on Kawaguchi, attempting to land a few more shots, until the gun’s slide slammed open when the magazine ran dry.

  Terry leaped off the bench and ran into the parking lot that the street had become, reloading simultaneously. “Yuri, keep eyes on him. I’ll be there in a moment,” Terry huffed into his throat mic as he sprinted over to a motorcyclist. He brandished his gun, urging the cyclist from the vehicle. The cyclist didn’t argue, and Terry mounted the bike, stuffing the gun down his pants. Terry held the front brake and mashed the throttle. The motorcycle shrieked, burning an arc into the pavement until it was facing the opposite direction. Terry released the brake, and the front wheel peeled off the ground as the motorcycle rocketed through the packed rows of cars. Then he whipped the bike around the next turn to follow.

  “Terry, he’s heading for the train station,” Yuri said as he zigzagged through the stampeding crowd.

  Terry didn’t have time to answer; he could see Kawaguchi, and Terry drew the pistol from his belt, opening fire with his off hand through the crowd of people and cars. He couldn’t score a hit, though, with the maneuvering of the bike and his off hand degrading his aim. Terry stuffed the gun back into his belt, saving the rest of his ammunition, and poured on speed. He could see Kawaguchi sprinting for the stairs to the underground terrace. A second later, he was out of sight. On the one hand, that was bad—a target they couldn’t see was the same as a target who’d escaped. On the other hand, that was good—he wasn’t going anywhere; the next train wasn’t going to show for the next seven minutes.

  Terry shot past Yuri, weaving through cars to cross the street. He jumped the curb and hurtled down the sidewalk, coming up hard on the terrace entrance. Terry hunkered down against the bike’s tank, rolled the throttle back, and went headlong down the stairs. Pedestrians dove out of the way of the plunging motorcycle, the bike bucking angrily from end to end with Terry in the saddle as he dropped three stories into the cavernous, postmodern edifice.

  Kawaguchi looked over his shoulder at the roar he heard coming down the stairs. Then he saw Terry hit bottom and gun the throttle. Panic filled Kawaguchi’s stomach, and his veins filled with adrenaline as he sprinted for the stairs on the far side of the terrace, weaving between stanchions for cover. He dug into his briefcase as he ran, struggling to extract his gun.

  Terry split the distance between the rows of stanchions and rammed the throttle to its limit. The engine screamed as the bike devoured the space between Terry and Kawaguchi. Terry got close and realized that Kawaguchi had a pistol in his hand and he was trying to level it as he ran. Terry jerked the bike over, laying it on its side. Terry separated from the bike as it slid, scraping and howling, across the tile toward Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi couldn’t get away from it; the bike clipped his heels, pulled him to the ground, climbed over him, and drove him an easy twenty feet. Terry clambered to his feet, despite the pain of his power slide, and rushed over to Kawaguchi, following the trail of scratches and blood.

  Terry hopped up onto the overturned motorcycle that pinned Kawaguchi’s legs; Terry aimed the barrel of his gun at Kawaguchi’s eyes, who cried when the additional weight came down on his smashed shinbones. “Don’t run,” Terry said smugly. “You’ll just die tired.”

  There were sirens on the surface.

  Kawaguchi begged for his life. He pleaded and sobbed while he fought against the bike’s weight with his hands. Terry didn’t regard anything that bubbled from Kawaguchi’s mouth until Terry heard “Kintake.”

  Terry’s eye peeked out from behind the barrel. “What did you say?”

  “It was not me; I am not responsible! Omiyoshu Kintake is responsible!”

  “What’re you talking about? Where is he? What’d you do with my Shinobi-no-mono?”

  “I didn’t kill your clansmen!” Kawaguchi cried. “It was Omiyoshu Kintake who did it!”

  “You’re saying my Shinobi-no-mono killed my people?”

  “Yes, he ordered the attack! It wasn’t me!”

  “Where is my Shinobi-no-mono?” Terry growled.

  “He left for Dubai!”

  That didn’t make any sense. “Why is he in Dubai?”

  “To start his new life—a new life that he asked us to help him make.”

  The sirens grew louder.

  “Terry,” Yuri yelled as he hustled down the stairs, “we got to go! The cops are coming!”

  Terry looked over his shoulder at Yuri, and then his head snapped back to Kawaguchi. A sneer stretched Terry’s face, and he smashed Kawaguchi’s face with the receiver of the pistol. “You piss-ants will say anything to keep me from killing you all.” Terry stomped on the bike and yelled, “Where the fuck is my Shinobi-no-mono?”

  Kawaguchi cried, gurgling blood and spitting out tooth fragments. “I swear! My assistant arranged a six-month work visa for him through a contact at the embassy! Omiyoshu Kintake set up a business in Al Barsha outside Jebel Ali! I swear!”

  “We’ll see. I don’t believe a fucking thing you say. I’m going to find my Shinobi-no-mono—you can’t hide him from me forever—and I’m going to send as many your associates to early graves as I can while there’s still air in my lungs.”

  “Terry!” Yuri yelled. “Put a bullet in him! We got to go!”

  Terry pulled the trigger.

  ***

  Suzuka Mountains. Mie Prefecture, Japan. Today.

  The forest of the Suzuka Mountains was the somber auburn-gray that accompanied dusk, causing the forest of the Momochi territory to feel more alien than Terry and Yuri had remembered. They weren’t familiar with these forests; they’d had only a few prohibited incursions here when they were adolescents, incursions that had left them and Saki severely bruised and punished. This time, though, there was no one to stop them from invading and no one left to punish them.

  The terrain of Momochi territory was at a considerably higher altitude and lacked the constant rise and fall of the hills around Togakure Ryu. Instead of being nestled into a natural formation along a river, the Momochi village—Tomo Ryu—was set into hand-carved flats just beneath the summit of a fierce peak crowned with white, centered in
a range to the west of the Fujibayashi territory. The craggy terrain soared skyward at its highest and boiled up as cantankerous knuckles at its lowest, sporting less flora too. The trees were perhaps half as tall, and the low foliage was composed mostly of brown-green brush. Adding to the topographic violence were the harsh winds, whipping up one side of the peaks and hurling down the other. Walking a straight path through Momochi territory was next to impossible. Because of this, the Momochi were always hailed as better climbers than the Fujibayashi—and for that matter, the other clans before they disappeared—and the terrain was a testament to that reason.

  Additionally, the Momochi were historically famed, and chastised, for being an obstinate, zealous clan—the most difficult to invade—without the good sense to employ tactical retreats. The Shinobi knew better, though; the Momochi were obstinate because their enemies had to fight uphill, and the terrain didn’t favor tactical retreats from the Momochi, nor did the terrain encourage flanking massed enemies like the lands around Togakure Ryu, the Momochi preferring a Shinobi flavor of head-to-head attrition warfare. Terrain played a huge part in the history of Shinobi warfare and more often than not played a huge part in the past victories of the clans—the home-field advantage made enemies reconsider invasions. The brothers planned to neutralize the advantage with the element of surprise and a minefield of lethal force.

  Yuri went ahead and scouted the terrain to look for a prime location from which to spring their ambush, while Terry kept persistent surveillance on Tomo Ryu. Yuri passed imagery back to his brother via phone as Yuri mapped the terrain, trying to familiarize himself with it the best he could to minimize the home-field advantage of their ancestral enemy.

  Terry recalled Yuri after several hours when two scouts departed Tomo Ryu and ambled into a cutaway that led away from the village and into a tight crevasse constrained by sheer, towering walls. The two Genin scouts bounded past Terry’s hiding place, unaware of intruders, and jogged off—hopped, really—into the belly of the crevasse. They did a complacent, routine survey of the grounds in advance of the main party, leaving Tomo Ryu for an equally complacent training session after dark. Terry watched them swagger out of sight. Then he dropped a pin on his location and pursued them, keeping his position updated for Yuri.

  Terry followed them through the crevasse and into a depression in the slope that formed a natural cutout. Inside were a cave and a natural spring, around which the Momochi had erected a shrine in honor of a patron spirit. Terry was tempted to assail the scouts, but the Momochi would become suspicious when they didn’t return. Instead, he allowed the Genin to continue their routine and gleaned from them that a Momochi party would arrive here sometime after sunset. According to the Genin’s conversation, accompanying the party would be their kōchō. And if the kōchō were going to be in company, then several other high-ranking Momochi would be too. The leadership of the Momochi would be within a sword swing of each other. The downside would be that the Momochi’s most experienced fighters would all be together. Terry and Yuri would have one shot to get it right. If they dropped the ball, they’d have one hell of a fight on their hands.

  ***

  Terry was prone on the high ground, with his barrel trained along the pathway that led into the open-air shrine. Yuri was practically across from him, offset just to the right, on the far side. Terry would hit the targets from the front, and Yuri would hit them from behind. It was a sweet setup, like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Two strapping Chunin crept down the pathway into the shrine and scanned it. Their movements and their subsequent survey looked choreographed, like it was a pattern—a ritual—that they were expected to perform. Once they finished their survey, they signaled down the pathway, and a group of Jonin, numbering five in total, strode into the shrine. Behind them was the kōchō, Daishi Nishida, under the escort of his newest first, second, and third senior Chunin—the previous three having been killed in combat against Saki, Terry, and Yuri—like a newly ascended king being attended by his knights. Just behind them were three more boyish-looking Genin, two of whom were the earlier scouts.

  The Jonin in the lead stopped, regarded the shrine, and was opening his mouth to begin a speech when there was a crack of thunder that exploded the nearest Chunin’s face, spraying gore all over the Jonin. The Momochi barely had time to react before another thunderclap blasted a dreadful hole in an elder’s neck that squirted blood despite the owner attempting to stifle the flow with his hand.

  The Momochi scattered for cover, feeling their way through the darkness, but not before two more reports left a Jonin lying on his side and clutching his chest. The darkness didn’t aid the Momochi as much as they could have hoped, with Terry and Yuri aiming through nightvision. Then the thunderous reports became constant, with whooshes of heated metal, twangs of ricochets, clouds of stone shrapnel, and the cries of injured and dying Shinobi. Relentless sniper fire dropped Jonin and Chunin alike from headshots or shots to center mass.

  The second senior hunkered down behind a boulder, having an internal argument whether to rush out of cover to assist a comrade or try to spot the ambushers. Then, through the panicked fog, he saw Nishida hobble through the carnage on a mangled leg and back into the crevasse. Nishida was nearly being carried by a considerably older Jonin who had Nishida’s arm draped across his shoulder. There was a report, and the Jonin spilled to the ground, causing Nishida to topple. The second senior leaped from cover and sprinted toward Nishida.

  The second senior came over top of his kōchō. “Nishida Sensei, I have you!” But a hole blown in the second senior’s forehead caused him to tumble over Nishida and convulse against the rocks.

  Nishida crawled to his feet and hobbled down the crevasse. An injured Jonin followed him; the two surviving Genin ran back up the crevasse toward Tomo Ryu.

  Yuri dismounted and pursued the Genin. Terry went after Nishida.

  The Genin ran as fast as their feet would take them up the tight vein, gasping for air in the burning cold and tingling from the panic. As they felt their way back up the scantily moonlit path, they glanced over their shoulders like paranoid antelope looking for lions. The crevasse seemed like a never-ending hallway in a horror movie: the danger was real and present, just unseen and unknowable.

  There were suddenly two cracks of thunder from directly above, where Yuri stood atop a crevasse wall, and both Genin fell, one spilling the contents of his cranium and the other clutching a gaping hole in his chest. Yuri scanned the pile of bleeding Genin creating a small river in the crevasse. One wasn’t moving, but the other rolled over, trying to catch his breath. Yuri hefted a rock of substantial weight, aimed it, and let if fall onto the still living Genin. Gravity did its job, leaving the Genin’s right leg twitching.

  Yuri checked for reinforcements coming from Tomo Ryu and for other survivors trying to escape. Nothing. So he ran off to find his brother.

  Terry was into the crevasse and on Nishida’s trail. The old man was gravely injured; he couldn’t have gotten far. Terry paused and listened. He didn’t hear anyone clawing their way up the steep igneous walls, nor did he hear the injured tempo of footfalls plodding along the pathway. The kōchō was surely hiding, probably hoping to catch Terry unawares as he passed by.

  Terry slung his carbine and drew both his pistol and his ninjatō, supporting his gun hand with his sword arm as he vigilantly crept down the widening crevasse toward the terminus of a saddle. He eyed the rocks and boulders that pocked the serpentine path, watching for movement. The kōchō was here; just where here was he?

  The question didn’t remain unanswered for long. Two gunshots echoed down the crevasse from a point closer toward Tomo Ryu. Using the cacophony to cover their movement, the kōchō and his Jonin protector lunged from behind nearby boulders nearly simultaneously, with a near vertical slash from Nishida and an angled slash from the Jonin. Terry managed to get clear of Nishida, but he wasn’t so fortunate where the Jonin was concerned. The angled slash bit into Terry’s tricep, an u
narmored portion of his ensemble that would have likely been completely severed from his body had Terry not bounced backward. Terry hissed from the pain and squeezed rapid shots into the Jonin’s trunk, dropping him on the spot. Nishida hurled another slash that let out a metal-on-metal reply when it struck Terry’s pistol, yanking it from his hand. Terry was lucky it wasn’t his hand that flopped to the ground.

  The kōchō showed no quarter, keeping up his assault by cutting ribbons in the air between them. Terry settled his defense, answering the swings of Nishida’s sword with his own and backing up the crevasse to leverage the cramped space and Nishida’s hindered mobility. A testament to the tenacity of Shinobi, Nishida’s attacks continued, Terry intercepting them or opening the distance enough to avoid them. Terry continued to use distance to slowly move into an advantage.

  Nishida committed one last time, trying to feint high and then drive the blade through Terry’s heart. Nishida’s injury, however, highlighted his intent, and Terry was able to anticipate the attack. As Nishida’s blade came out from behind the feint, Terry intercepted it, locking it with his own blade, and drilled Nishida with a rock-solid fist. Nishida’s head snapped back, but he didn’t release the handle of his sword. Terry drilled him two more times before snatching the sword from Nishida’s grip and slinging it over his head; the blade tumbled several times before it came to rest at Yuri’s feet, who had since descended into the crevasse and was coming up behind his brother to help. Terry then impaled the inside of Nishida’s thigh, the blade scraping the bone with its edge and bursting out the other side. Nishida crumbled to his knees, dripping blood in a pool. Terry hooked a shot to the side of Nishida’s head, dropping him before Terry yanked the sword free. Nishida mewled from the pain on his hands and knees.