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  "But it travels to different continents," Yemon commented as he continued moving slowly down the length of the aquarium to feed the fish. "As the cocaine did that was found in the L.A. publishing offices. Father is still hunting for the heads of the shipping people who allowed that to happen." He looked at his brother. "It's no secret that you use the legitimate connections of our company to squeeze in deals of your own."

  "And you and Father have worked diligently to make sure my attempts to do this have become increasingly less profitable."

  "We have been successful."

  "Yes. Extremely so."

  Yemon put the box of fish food away.

  "Yet, in this case, one of your dock workers solicited me, saying he was sure he could get a package of my merchandise through. This, after months of which I have been unsuccessful at bribing any of the people within Father's company."

  Studying his brother's reflection in the aquarium, Yemon decided the reference to the company as their father's had been intentional. Suddenly his stomach felt as if it delicately balanced on a knife blade. He turned to face Saburo. "Give me this man's name."

  "It won't do any good. After I started thinking about some of the events that have happened of late, I had someone check on this man. I found out he'd been transferred to one of Father's British offices. With a promotion."

  Yemon kept his face neutral, not revealing any of the emotions flitting beneath.

  "I thought it also interesting that it was your name on this man's promotion papers, not Father's."

  Shrugging, Yemon said, "I have my faults as well as the next man. I've been known to make mistakes."

  "Not very many."

  The words hung in the air, suspended by possible threat.

  "In fact, I think that Father and I have both been guilty of underestimating you." The grin on Saburo's face was as blankly menacing as a shark's. He stood and approached the aquarium. He tapped on the glass with a forefinger. A Siamese fighting fish wavered through the water like an indigo-blue heartbeat until it bumped into the glass. "These fish have always fascinated you, haven't they?"

  Yemon remained silent.

  "You have had ones like these since we were children. Maybe, then, you do have something in this office that reveals the inner man. The Siamese fighting fish, once it reaches adulthood, claims the water as its own, challenging to the death any other fish that attempts to enter its area. Even its own family." Saburo smiled again. "Interesting, isn't it? But everything makes sense once you have the key to its operation."

  Glancing at the expensive watch on his wrist, Yemon said, "It's getting late and I'm tired. If you have something to say, get on with it. There's still much to be done in the morning."

  "You and Father are the only people in this family who have direct dealings with the Americans. I find myself now being stalked by an American. I ask myself how this can be. How can this man know me? Then I realize he doesn't know much about me. He doesn't know where to find me, or even where to look. He moves only on information about me, attacking the Yakuza holdings, hoping to force me into the open." Saburo took a hit of the marijuana.

  Yemon felt the knife slide under his stomach ever so slightly, puncturing, spilling a familiar coldness through his body. He sat at the desk. Things had obviously gotten out of hand, and he felt more in control. What to do became obvious.

  "I asked myself how this American might have come to know my name. I thought of the attack I made on the CIA agent and the Justice representative in the Foreign Affairs building. But I quickly dismissed that. That would have only provided an introduction at best, not given the man a reason to pursue me. Then I thought of the American mercenaries who had been killed on the Sumida River, of Shigeru who sometimes worked with me and was in the business of providing false passports. Shigeru was killed by an American Justice agent. I asked myself if it was possible Shigeru provided passports for the American mercenaries. Then I called his wife. Can you guess what I found out?"

  "No."

  "She told me Shigeru had provided the passports, and that he had been paid by me. Knowing I hadn't commissioned the work, I realized someone had used my name, and that brings me to you, Yemon." Saburo dropped the marijuana on the carpet and crushed it under his foot. "You remember, of course, that Shigeru was the man who constructed false identities for us when we hunted the killers of your wife. I told him then that if you ever needed anything, you could go to him and he would help you."

  "You're suggesting I had something to do with that?"

  "I know you did. Those ninjas who killed Shigeru were men in your special employ, men you trained yourself as Ogata trained us. Father doesn't admit to knowing of their existence, and perhaps he doesn't. But I do. Those men were the ones who put a quick end to the different outlets I had for shipping in Father's business. It took me months to find out who they belonged to. I was impressed at the time."

  "This is all idle speculation."

  "Is it?"

  Yemon met his challenging gaze wordlessly.

  "Would Father think so? After all, if you're involved in this as I think you must be, it has caused him considerable problems, as well."

  "Why did you come to me with this instead of going immediately to him?"

  "Because I wanted you to know I held your future in my hands as you have tried to make me feel for all of our lives. I was always the youngest, the most headstrong, the one Father could never take pride in. Yet I seem to remain the most loyal." Saburo smiled broadly. "I like that feeling."

  "So you intend to tell Father of your beliefs?"

  "Yes."

  "It won't make him feel any differently about you."

  "I think it will."

  "You're making a mistake."

  "Far smaller than the ones you've obviously made." Saburo turned to go.

  Yemon called out to him. "There is one thing you should know."

  "What?"

  "My wife's killers never existed. I killed her myself because she found out things I didn't want anyone to know." Yemon paused. "And I loved her very much."

  Saburo shook his head. "Such villainy."

  "We come by it honestly, though. Father brought us into this world with hands soiled by the blood of others."

  "But he never turned on his own."

  "Because they never had anything worth taking," Yemon replied. "You were a fool to come here." He withdrew a Walther automatic pistol from a desk drawer and fired on his brother, emptying the clip.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bolan scrambled through the steel supports, hauling himself up to the next floor as the elevator closed in on him. He paused, rammed his combat knife through the slit between the doors and twisted. The metal grated as the doors parted grudgingly.

  Slipping his fingers through the crack, he pulled the doors open just as the elevator cage grazed his foot. He leaped, rolling across the carpet as the door closed behind him, then got to his feet with the silenced Beretta in hand. Ready or not, the opening numbers on the play had been kicked into motion.

  He jogged to the fire escape door, combat senses flaring wildly, searching for the security net that had settled around the Hosaka clan. Easing the door open with his fingertips, he peered around it, looking down, then up. One man stood in the landing below, cradling a MAC-10 in his arms. Another man, seen through slits of the metal stairs, was two more stories up.

  Lining up his target from the doorway, Bolan flicked the 93-R on single-shot and gently squeezed the trigger. Two floors up the 9 mm parabellum took the guard in the chest, punching him back into the wall. Even as he took his first staggering step, the Executioner followed with a second only a couple inches under the chin.

  The corpse hit the ground with a thud, and the MAC-10 slid across the carpet to bang end-over-end down the stairs. The guard two floors down looked up, bringing his weapon into target acquisition. Bullets chopped into the concrete walls of the fire escape, ringing from the metal and throwing sparks.

  Bolan put
the Beretta's sights on the guard just as the man found him. He triggered three rapid-fire shots, spacing them across the guard's chest and driving the man down. The elevator dinged open behind him. A quick glance showed him four or five armed men clustered inside the cage as he eased into the fire escape.

  One of the men shouted something Bolan couldn't understand, then pointed directly at him. The warrior didn't hesitate, knowing something had happened that he wasn't aware of, or someone had made him and was slow in reacting. He banged into the wall as he made the corner turning down the stairs. Bullets thudded into the metal door of the fire escape, punctuated by yelling.

  On the twenty-seventh floor he peered through the wire-meshed window of the fire escape door just as the five guards in the hallway rushed into the conference room. Judging from what he saw, the move wasn't a covering one for an external problem — rather a response to quell an internal one.

  He pushed through the door, holstering the Beretta as he readied the Uzi for the attack force that would come at him from the fire escape. The elevator doors at the other end of the hall opened. Two men stood against the walls of the cage, concealed by the corners of the doors.

  Bolan fired a short burst into the cage to keep the men honest, then shifted to the man coming out of the conference room. A row of 9 mm tumblers caught the guard in the chest and flung him away. The elevator doors began to close, and one of the men stuck out a foot to prevent it from doing so. The Executioner put a 3-round burst into the foot. As the man yelled and dragged his foot back into the cage, the elevator closed and began to descend.

  With one avenue of the three-pronged attack shut down momentarily, Bolan charged the conference room, coming to a halt to one side of the door. He changed clips in the Uzi, caught a flash of clothing coming through the entrance to the conference room and swung the buttstock of the weapon. The foldout wire stock caught the man in the face and drove him back inside.

  Two gunners slid across the floor from the fire escape, unaimed shots from their automatic weapons chewing hunks from the carpets and knocking holes in the plaster walls. Something bounced on the carpet ahead of them, there was a hollow pop, then white smoke filled the hallway and cut them from Bolan's view.

  * * *

  The crack of semiautomatic gunfire sounded like rolling thunder in the air duct. Able to make her way in a hunkered-down position, Ransom continued on through the duct work. She paused at a T in the duct, identifying the direction the sounds had come from. The mental map she'd constructed of the floor told her the gunfire had come from the same direction she was heading for.

  Perspiration covered her body under the black material of the suit despite the cooling air that surrounded her. Her leg muscles trembled from the long moments of sustained exertion.

  The duct work narrowed again as she neared Hosaka's offices, forcing her to crawl. Her rib cage, bruised and battered already, burned in renewed agony. Moments later more gunfire sounded. This time it was from fully automatic weapons that didn't let up.

  Confronted with a sudden choice of three directions, she took the middle route, squeezing into the darkness. She wondered if her weapons would catch on anything. A full-grown man wouldn't have been able to make the crawl, even without the weapons. The thin welds joining the duct work sections scraped against her breasts, cut into her hips, raked liquid fire across her back. Biting her lips against the pain, she forced herself forward on her elbows. Her sword caught. She paused to release it, then continued on.

  Her hand found a curve in the duct work made invisible by the blackness. The gunfire died away. She considered going back, choosing another direction, then realized there were no guarantees the others would be any different. Gunfire erupted again. She reached through the darkness, found the ridge of a weld and pulled herself forward.

  Light shone through a rectangle on the bottom of the duct ten feet away. Rising to her hands and knees, she made her way over to it, filling her lungs with air gratefully.

  Below, through the crosshatched view permitted by the screen, she saw the Justice agent, Belasko, against the outside wall near the Hosaka conference room. She took in the blacksuit the man wore, the weapons hanging from the military webbing, and was suddenly reminded of her grandfather. She realized the Justice man was in his natural element. Clothes didn't make the man — the man made the clothes.

  Two men raced from the fire escape, firing their weapons blindly. Reaching into the concealed pockets of her suit, she pulled out a smoke bomb and dropped it through the slits of the screen. When the white smoke billowed up, she drew her sword, kicked the screen from its moorings and dropped through the opening behind the two guards.

  Ransom hit the carpet without making a sound. Unable to see the men enveloped in the cloud as they were unable to see her, she listened, remaining in a squat, her legs shifting like springs to take her instantly in whatever direction she decided to go. She let instinct and training guide her. Bringing the sword around in both hands, she slashed at what she thought to be knee level.

  The keen blade cut through something, and someone yelled. Bullets streamed in through the white smoke. Dropping flat against her bruised rib cage, keeping the cry of pain locked tight inside, she saw a foot materialize near her face. She seized the foot, yanked and yelled. Bullets crashed into the man's body as he went off balance.

  Rolling out of the quickly dissipating smoke, Ransom gathered her feet under her and stood, finding a place against the wall. Farther down the hallway she saw Belasko whirl around the doorway to unload two quick bursts inside the conference room. A man's death scream was cut off midway.

  The man she had cut with the sword stared at her over his shoulder as he scrambled for his dropped weapon. Ransom stepped forward, moving by reaction loosely guided by thought. Using the sword one-handed, she cut through the man's throat, turning away instantly as movement from the fire escape drew her attention.

  A man peered around the doorway and brought his weapon up. The smoke was gone now, leaving her a clear target for the gunner. A shaken was in her fingers before she knew it, then gone just as quickly. The whirling star imbedded in the man's hand and drove him back inside the fire escape.

  Another pocket of her uniform yielded a small handful of caltrops designed to penetrate shoes. Ransom threw them at the floor, scattering them in the path of the people taking cover in the fire escape.

  Sword in hand, she turned back around, only to find herself face-to-face with Belasko's weapon. She reached for a throwing knife, knowing she'd be too late.

  * * *

  "Down!" Bolan yelled, and the woman obeyed instantly.

  The field of fire now clear, the Executioner swept a withering burst over the fire escape door, driving long scars across the metal and emptying the rectangular glass window.

  Ransom rolled to her feet and took up a position on the other side of the door. Breathing rapidly, she held the sword straight up in front of her in steady hands. Perspiration gathered around her dark eyes.

  Bolan smelled the whisper of perfume around the woman, so out of place with the other sights, sounds and smells of the carnage that had overtaken this section of the floor.

  "Saburo?" she asked. Her voice was slightly muffled by the mask.

  "Inside," Bolan said. He shelved the questions he wanted to ask, accepting the woman as unplanned backup, though he planned to watch every move she made. She had acted in his defense twice, but he had no intention of fully trusting her until he understood her motivations.

  He glanced back inside the conference room, seeing one of the two remaining guards left alive try to streak across the room. He emptied the last of the clip as he took the man out, the bullets chopping out the large glass windows of the room as they overtook him.

  With no magazines left for the Uzi, he slung it upside down across his back as he drew the Desert Eagle and pulled back out of the room. Glancing at the elevator light indicator, he saw the cage on the rise again.

  Bullets smashed into the d
oorframe next to Bolan from the gunner concealed behind the overturned metal table. Dropping to one knee as the gunfire died away, the Executioner extended the Magnum in a Weaver's grip and started blowing holes through the table. The harsh, flat boom of the .44 filled the hallway. The third round caught the hidden man and spilled him into view. Before he could bring his weapon to his shoulder, Bolan moved into the doorway and sent a 240-grain hollowpoint through the gunner's face.

  The body fell as he went into motion. He lifted one of the H&K submachine guns the hallway guards had been armed with and held it out to Ransom. "Can you use this?"

  "I've never used firearms."

  Bolan pushed it into her hands. "Point it in the general direction and pull the trigger in one- or two-second counts. You've got at least one elevator full of replacements coming from that end."

  She wiped her sword clean on a dead man's shirt and sheathed it, then stepped back to the doorway as Bolan turned his attention to the door. He tried the handle and found it locked. "Do you know whose office this is?" he asked.

  "Yemon's."

  Bolan nodded and pointed the Desert Eagle at the lock, standing to one side of the door. "Watch yourself, because he and Saburo are missing from the head count I've done. I imagine they're not in here alone." He pulled the trigger, checked the torn metal, then aimed and pulled the trigger again. Pieces of the lock scattered across the carpet at his feet. Surprisingly no one fired at him from inside.

  Behind him, the H&K submachine gun chattered to vibrant life. "They're here," Ransom called in a cool voice.

  Bolan tested the door and it swung inward. He eased it open a little more and jammed the toe of his boot into it as he continued to stand to one side. "How many men?"

  "At least a half dozen, maybe more." Ransom fired the submachine gun again, drawing return fire.

  The Executioner flipped the door open and peered around the corner. The only body he saw was the one slumped on the other side of the door. The office was empty; He heard the H&K run dry and glanced at Ransom. "Fall back, away from the door."