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  Brognola leaned heavily on the cane he'd gotten from the hospital, his insides churning from the unreleased anger.

  "What makes you think the guy they were after here was your man?" Tucker asked.

  "The fact that he's missing and that we'd talked briefly about how he was coming into Tokyo. We didn't mention the water bus, but he had to get through Asakusa somehow. The description the detective gave sounded right."

  Tucker nodded toward the line of ambulances. "Must be a hell of a guy to survive this and manage to stay free of the police, too. I overheard one of the officers mention that a big, dark man with black hair escaped the area with a ninja who dropped two of these guys in the alley with a bow and arrows."

  "A ninja?"

  "I kid you not, an honest-to-God ninja."

  "And you thought I was reaching when I mentioned the possibility of the Yakuza."

  "Ninjas exist," Tucker said. "I've seen them kill. They're in and out in an eye blink. It's something you don't forget." He looked at Brognola. "So tell me, do you Justice guys have somebody over here working with ninjas?"

  "No."

  An uneasy silence sprang up between them, punctuated by the creakings and bangings the tugboat made as it settled the wrecked car on its deck.

  "Who is this mystery guy you brought in with you?" Tucker asked.

  "Michael Belasko." Brognola limped back toward the CIA man's car, hoping to end the line of questioning. "How long before you can know who these guys were?"

  Tucker fell into step beside him. "A few hours, probably. A few hours one way or the other. I should get something back sooner than Interpol gets back to you on that credit card you expressed them. It depends on how generous the home office is feeling."

  "You mean, how brave."

  "Maybe I do. Who's Belasko?"

  Brognola came to a stop and swiveled on the cane. "Surely you've read his file by now."

  "Yeah, I've read it, and it didn't mention anywhere in it how this guy had the training to move through this kind of action unscathed."

  "From what I understood the detective to say, Belasko didn't make it through this encounter unscathed. He was wounded. How badly remains to be seen."

  "I've also heard that you have access to a pet shark you sometimes throw into situations like this," Tucker said. "A one-man demolition squad who lives by that old axiom of 'kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. I've also heard him called other names than Belasko, other names that summon up whole other histories."

  Brognola didn't say anything.

  "Everybody's got a little dirt on them. It's an occupational hazard. You might remember that when you start pointing out dirty hands in this business."

  "I'll give it some thought."

  "God, but you're a hardass." Tucker's look was open and honest. "I want to run this aboveboard if I can, and all the secrets I had just got passed on to you. So are we in this together or what?"

  Brognola started toward the car again. "I don't speak Japanese."

  "Terrific," Tucker sighed.

  "Have you got anyone working stateside on this thing?" Brognola asked after the younger man got into the car.

  "Yeah, an agent named Winterroad has a lead on the pilot these guys used for the L.A. hit involving the publishing house. I should be hearing something about that soon." Tucker started the car and put it into gear.

  Brognola continued looking out the window, massaging his leg with his hand as the pain continued to wash over him in waves. The wounds hadn't caused any permanent damage, but they had made the cane a necessity for the next few days. Uniformed policemen were still taking statements from the crowd.

  A police car drove into the area and Goro Fujitsu got out. The detective who'd talked to Brognola and Tucker ran over immediately, falling into step with the Foreign Affairs man and talking animatedly.

  "Fujitsu may be a half step behind for the moment," Tucker said, "but don't ever make the mistake of underestimating him."

  "I won't," Brognola replied. "Despite whatever he's doing now, that man used to be a cop. You can see it in him if you know what to look for."

  Tucker pulled the car into the flow of traffic. "You're worried about Belasko, aren't you?"

  "I got him into this without telling him anything about it. He could have been killed because of me."

  "It's the situation," the CIA man said in a soft voice. "Everyone's playing this one close to the vest. People are going to get hurt this time around, and there's not going to be a damn thing you can do about it."

  Brognola didn't reply, but he felt the same way.

  Chapter Five

  "You should come across him 'bout there, I 'spect," the gnarled old counterman said. His face was long and lean under his Dallas Cowboys cap. He tapped with a jagged fingernail, smudging a bit of oily dirt across the hand-drawn map resting on the stained Formica between them.

  John Winterroad took a mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket and made a light X next to the creek bend the man had indicated. His eyes felt rough and scratchy from the overnight flight from Los Angeles, and the extra caffeine he'd been running on since this morning was beginning to give him the shakes. It was already going on midnight, but he was too close to his quarry to back off now. He gave the old man a smile as he rolled up the map. "I appreciate it, Pop. Appreciate the information and appreciate your opening up long enough to take care of us."

  A gap-toothed grin twisted the man's features as he hooked his thumbs into the bib of his faded overalls and walked Winterroad back to the door of the little general store. "Ah, it weren't no trouble, young fella. You got the look of a man who's been down the road apiece today. Can't rightly say I'd have felt good about turnin' you away when you come knockin'."

  Winterroad shook hands with the old man, then headed for the rental car parked next to the two ancient gas pumps. Night had descended completely hours ago, leaving only hard and bright pinpricks of stars scattered across the black sky, smoothing the rough Vermont countryside. Harry Vachs, his latest partner, sat in the front seat watching him with a bored expression.

  He slid in behind the wheel and turned the key over as the old man locked the door and shuffled off to the stairway that led to his rooms over the store. The engine caught smoothly, and he pulled onto the two-lane road.

  Vachs chewed his gum, blew a small bubble and popped it loudly between his teeth. A chrome-finished .357 Magnum gleamed in his lap. "You and the old guy have a nice chat?" he asked in the flat, Midwestern twang Winterroad had learned to hate during the past four months.

  Glancing in the rearview mirror and finding only the night, Winterroad said, "He more or less gave us De Luca's campsite." He unfolded the hand-drawn map and passed it over for Vachs's inspection. "Never underestimate what you can gain by asking."

  "Sure, but did you ever think De Luca might have tipped that old guy to put people on the wrong track?"

  "if De Luca had been that smart, we wouldn't have been able to tail him this far." He watched the road carefully because the twists and turns of the high country were tricky at this time of night. They were even more so with the fatigue he kept at bay through an effort of will. He was irritated that Vachs had been up at least as long as he had but wasn't showing signs of discomfort yet.

  Vachs reached for the overhead light.

  "Don't turn that on," Winterroad barked.

  The younger man glanced at him sharply. "How the hell do you expect me to look at this map?"

  "There's a penflash in that packet of stuff I stored in the glove compartment. Use that."

  Vachs popped another bubble as he reached for the glove compartment. "You know what your problem is, Winterroad?"

  He didn't reply, knowing the younger man would tell him anyway.

  "You're a tight-ass. You need to loosen up a little, relax and have some fun. Working for the CIA doesn't always have to be cloak-and-dagger bullshit."

  The penflash flicked on, throwing a bright haze over the paper resting on Vachs's thigh.
<
br />   "Instead of using the interior light," he said with heavy sarcasm, "we could put a neon light on the top and advertise that we're in the neighborhood."

  "You're worrying for nothing. De Luca doesn't know us from Adam."

  Winterroad rubbed an eye with a broad, bony knuckle. "He might not know you, but he sure as hell knows me. He's run a few operations with me."

  Vachs flicked off the penlight. "That wasn't mentioned in the dossier we got on him."

  "These weren't the kind of operations you'd find in the files. De Luca's a free-lance pilot, just like the information says, but he's run more covert action for the Company than they have listed there. Bet on it. Part of the reason I was assigned to this was because I know the guy." He slowed, watching his odometer click over the final tenth of a mile the old man had said would take him to the first turnoff.

  The turn was difficult to locate because it was almost buried behind a towering oak with warped branches and a thick stand of Johnson grass. He made the turn and switched off the lights. Gravel popped under the tires with hollow sounds that echoed inside the car. He switched off the radio and listened to the thick silence crowd out the last strains of a heavy metal guitar.

  "Hey," Vachs said, "that was Bon Jovi."

  "I know. They've played that same song at least a dozen times since we got here this morning."

  "It's a Top Forty station. What did you expect?"

  Winterroad stopped the car abruptly, catching the younger man off balance as it slid toward the bar ditch on the right. Dust swirled up around them.

  Vachs pushed himself back from the dash, an angry look starting to form on his unlined face. "Hey, what the hell…"

  Grabbing the younger man by the throat, Winterroad slammed him against the door. Vachs tried to struggle, then gasped as Winterroad closed off his air supply. He tried to kick. Winterroad slammed him into the door again, pressing his face close to that of the younger man's, breath sounding like a bellows through his nostrils. "Listen to me, you scrawny little sack of shit, because what I have to tell you may save your life." He took Vachs's .357 away effortlessly and threw it into the back seat.

  Vachs stopped struggling.

  "You're a stupid, punk kid, Harry," Winterroad said through clenched teeth. He kept his partner from moving. "Up until now you've been assigned zip as far as truly dangerous work is concerned. You've done baby-sitting jobs in a handful of countries, done courier work in the South American backyard. You've even done a little lie-swapping with the known Communist spies between here and Moscow, and maybe you've made it with a few KGB women because the other agents said you weren't a man until you hopped into bed with a piece of ass that might kill you in midstroke." He took a deep breath. "Now, until you actually lay your balls on the line, not knowing who's going to walk away the winner, you haven't done a goddamn thing. Do you understand me?"

  Defiance gleamed in the younger man's eyes.

  "Eric De Luca's been around the block," Winterroad went on. "He's been in more dustups than you've heard about. He was part of a Medevac team in Vietnam, reenlisted as part of the Agency's Air America program in Laos and flew with the Ravens in the Steve Canyon Program. When he checked out of that, he turned freelance and pulled contacts with a lot of merc units in South Africa. He's as good a flyboy as you'd ever want to pick you up in a hot LZ. That's why the Agency still uses him even though they know he works other jobs on the side."

  The younger man didn't say anything.

  Winterroad put the car in gear and moved forward slowly. "De Luca doesn't know the Agency's looking for him. That's why only a two-man team was put on him. That's why that file on him wasn't as complete as it should have been. The Company has been burned on this, but I don't know how or why. We're supposed to bring him in alive, or bring him in dead. Either way he gets taken down."

  "You talk like this guy is some kind of goddamn hero. What makes you think you can shoot him?" Vachs's tone was full of resentment.

  "Because if he sees me here, De Luca will know this is Agency business, and that he's the business. If he gets a chance, I know he'll try to kill me because he'll be thinking I'm there to kill him. I won't have a choice."

  "And this is all over that publishing house in L.A.?"

  Winterroad shook his head. "There's more to it than that."

  The resentment in Vachs's voice reached a new peak. "Is this in some other file you've seen that I haven't?"

  "No. This is reading between the lines. If you stay around the Agency long enough, you'll learn how to do that, too. Otherwise you don't survive this business." Winterroad took the next turnoff, winding down a narrow road that led toward the small creek the old man had told him about. So far so good.

  Vachs turned in the seat and reached for the .357.

  "Leave it there," Winterroad ordered. He turned off the car's lights and continued on in darkness.

  "What the hell's the matter with you?" Vachs demanded. "You surely don't expect me to go up against this son of a bitch unarmed?"

  "No, but I don't expect you to go out there waving that chrome piece around in the dark, either. Reach up under that seat and you'll find an oilskin pouch with a Colt Delta Elite 10 mm inside. There's a couple of extra clips in there, too." Winterroad switched off the ignition and rolled down the window as Vachs set the pouch on the floorboard. He looked at his partner, watching the younger man fieldstrip the mat-black piece, then reassemble it, snapping the first pound into place. "Leave the safety off and keep it in your hand," he advised in a quiet voice.

  Winterroad opened the door and stepped out of the car. The smell of the creek and the outdoors softly wrapped around him, bringing images to his mind that had been sharpened by the general store. Then the hardness of the SIG-Sauer pistol in his right hand distorted them, moving them from pleasurable memories to past killing grounds that had been just as dark and treacherous as this one promised to be.

  He slipped on a black windbreaker and turned up the collar to cover the whiteness of his exposed neck. The navy blue polo shirt and charcoal-gray slacks he wore would help shield him in the night.

  Winterroad moved quietly through the darkness as he circled the incline that would take them to De Luca's camp. For a moment he wondered how accurate their information had been so far. De Luca hadn't been an easy quarry to run down, but neither had the trail been filled with the twists and turns that might ordinarily follow in the wake of a professional who knew he was being hunted. He gripped the pistol tighter and kept moving through the dense forest.

  "I'm not forgetting what happened back there in the car," Vachs promised in a quiet but rough voice.

  Pausing to glance at his partner, Winterroad saw that Vachs was safely out of reach. He didn't say anything because he knew it would only escalate the argument. Vachs was still young enough to be hung up on the macho image that working for the Agency projected. The man simply hadn't been around death to know how easily it could reach out and take him.

  Twenty minutes later they found De Luca's campsite located in the small concavity where the old man had said it would be. A fire burned in a generous pile of embers and painted garish shadows on two sides of the tent north of it. The eastern boundary was marked by the shallow creek. A line of trees farther down the incline the agents had climbed formed the western boundary, then circled around to frame the ragged trail coming from the south end. A Ford Bronco sat silent and still in the gap.

  Winterroad shifted his pistol to the other hand and dried his palm on his pant leg. He glanced at Vachs, saw the question on the man's face and drew a quick line across his throat before the question could reach his partner's lips. Vachs looked sullen and turned away.

  Winterroad crept closer, using the trees and brush to shield him. His partner started to follow, but he waved the man to a stationary position.

  Then, glancing back at the campsite, he tried to put a mental finger on what was wrong. There was a cold spot between his shoulder blades that he couldn't ignore. He started to move
forward again, duck-walking to keep a low profile so that he wouldn't be outlined against the night sky.

  Then he froze instantly as an object was tossed from the tent. His left hand locked immediately under his right palm as he lifted the SIG-Sauer and pulled the hammer back. He tracked the flight of the unknown object as it started back down. It was cylindrical, short and stubby, familiar. It was…

  "Don't look at the fire!" he yelled to Vachs. He turned his head and dived into the underbrush. "Don't look at the fire!" Maintaining a death grip on the pistol, he clamped his left hand over his eyes, kicked out with his feet and crawled toward the biggest tree he remembered seeing.

  Even behind his hand he could see the green light of the tossed flare as it exploded into brilliance. Then the familiar stutter-bark of a MAC-10 ripped apart the silence of the night.

  * * *

  Rain spattered Mack Bolan's trench coat as he left the tiny Japanese cafe where he'd stationed himself for the past ninety minutes. The .45 was a solid bulk in his right coat pocket, and he was careful to keep it from being noticed as he threaded his way through the press of the afternoon sidewalk crowd.

  Dark clouds had claimed the city, leaving the tall buildings wreathed in dull yellow that faded gray to black. The traffic on the streets was heavy, allowing him to keep pace with the metallic blue Toyota without breaking into a run.

  His target, Kendo Morressy, kept a steady rhythm going on the steering wheel with his fingers while he studied the traffic. He didn't appear to be in a hurry when he flipped on the right turn signal to get into the fast lane.

  Bolan moved at once, turning on his heel and streaking for the Toyota. A car horn bleated indignantly as a Nissan braked to avoid him. He put out an arm as the car rocked to a halt, then levered himself past it. Morressy had just begun to turn his head, eyes widening in surprise as he realized he was the goal.

  Reaching the Toyota, the Executioner opened the passenger door and slid inside, hit at once by the intensity of the music rushing from the speakers. He brought the .45 into view, leveling it at Morressy and said, "Drive."