Gerard located
the power cables, and didn’t hesitate. With three or four grunting tugs, he
pulled them free of the generator, in a shortcircuiting fritz of crackling
electricity. From inside the prefabricated building, he heard the air
conditioning whir to a stop; and from the generator he heard a cough, and a
stutter, and finally silence.
The Tengus were
locked inside, without air or light. Most of them were in a painful and
suspensory trance, so they wouldn’t notice. But the few who did notice, and
discovered that they were gradually suffocating from lack of oxygen and
stiffling with
heat,
could beat on the door all they
wanted. They would never get out alive.
Gerard ducked
out of the barn, raised his automatic high, and fired off three shots. They
cracked loudly in the still mountain air and echoed from the distant ridges.
It took only
seconds for five Oni guards to come running from the main ranch building. They
caught sight of Gerard as he ran around the back of the barn
,.
They paused, aimed, and opened up a quick burst of fire with their Uzi
submachine guns. Suddenly the afternoon was applauding with echoes.
One of the Oni
called to the others that they should circle the barn and prevent Gerard from
running away. But just as he said that, Maurice and Mack, who had been
crouching patiently behind their rocks with the M-60E1, opened fire on them
from what–to a general-purpose machine gun with a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet
per second and a cyclic rate of 600 rounds per minute– amounted to point–blank
rage.
All five Oni
jumped and danced like marionettes. The ground around them pattered with
bullets, and dust rose up in scores of tiny spurts, until they spun and
collapsed, awkward, disjointed, and lay dead.
Gerard appeared
from the other side of the barn and shouted, “Okay! There can’t be more than
one or two of them left! Let’s get in there!”
El Krusho
hoisted up the machine gun, followed by Mack with his ammunition box, and
together they loped down the lower part of the slope and across the ranch
compound.
Meanwhile,
Jerry had reached the window of the outbuilding. He flattened himself against
the wall and took a quick, darting look inside, the way the Marines had taught
him before he had been dropped into Japan. He could see David lying on a cot in
there, mercifully and miraculously alive; but he also glimpsed ajapanese guard
in a black silk mask standing by the door. Jerry had two distinct advantages,
however: surprise, and the fact that he was holding a submachine gun, while the
guard appeared to be armed with nothing more than a holstered revolver.
Jerry thought
,
I’m too old for this.
Too slow, too
tired.
But all the same, he curled himself backward, like Kent Tekulve
winding up for one of his odd submarine pitches, and then he rolled himself,
shoulder first, through the window of the outbuilding, with a smash of glass
and rotten wood framing, and across the floor.
The Japanese
guard snatched for his revolver, but he was split seconds too late. Jerry
slammed off a deafening burst of 9-nun.
bullets
,
al,most a whole magazine, and the guard’s chest and legs and belly turned into
pulped tomatoes.
There was an
odd silence. The room was rilled with sharp, gunpowdery smoke. The guard
turned, uttered a very Japanese-sounding sigh, and fell to the floor. David
said, “Dad–’
Jerry raised a
hand, indicating that David should stay where he was, keep quiet. “Arc there
any more of them?” he whispered.
“Five,” said
David, wide-eyed.
“Six altogether.”
It was then
that they heard the deep, bronchial rattle of the M-60E1. Jerry stood up, and
changed the magazine of his SMG, recocking it, ready for more killing. David
had never seen his father like this before. Not cold and ruthless and
efficient, handling a machine gun as if he handled one every day. He began to
understand at that moment that war was something you never forgot.
There are
bespectacled insurance assessors in Cleveland who can still strip an M-3A1
without hesitation.
Jerry said,
“Are you okay, David? They haven’t hurt you?”
David,
frightened, shook his head.
“All right,”
said Jerry. “Let’s get out of here.
Out the window.
Then turn sharp right, and run like hell, up the slope, toward the treeline. If
you hear any firing at all, dive for the ground and stay there. I’ll be right
behind you, but just remember that you can run faster than me.”
David climbed
cautiously out the window. “
It’s
okay, Dad,” he said.
“There’s nobody out here.”
Jerry climbed
after him, stiffly, wondering how the hell he had ever managed to roll through
the whole window-frame. Then the two of them ran side by side toward the trees,
keeping their heads well down. Within a minute, they were safe in the bushes,
behind the rocks. Jerry panted,
“It’s okay, we
can stop here. Stop, we’re all right.”
From the
hillside, Jerry saw what happened next from a bird’s-eye view. Mack and El
Krusho were still jogging across the ranch compound–Maurice with his machine
gun angled across his shoulders–when a silvery-blue Lincoln limousine appeared,
speeding toward the ranch with an ocher-colored plume of dust rising up behind
it. Almost simultaneously, Gerard came into view from behind the barn, shouting
something to Mack and Maurice, and waving his arm toward the Lincoln.
David said,
“What’s happening? What are those guys doing?”
“Those guys
helped me to save you,” said Jerry tersely.
The Lincoln
swerved around in the front yard of the ranch, scoring a wide semicircle in the
dirt with its tires. As far as Jerry could see, there were at least four or
five people in it, two or three of them women. He faintly heard Gerard Crowley
shouting, “Mack–for Christ’s sake, don’t shoot–that’s my wife! Those are my
daughters!”
Then, from the
ranch house, a man came running, sprinting toward the Lincoln with his head
down. Gerard raised his automatic and fired two sharp shots at him, missing
both times. But the man dodged and weaved and stumbled, and only just made it
to the limousine as it gunned its engine and began to speed back the way it had
come. A door flapped open, and a hand reached out to drag the man inside the
car. He almost missed, desperately clawing for the door handle to give
himself
leverage. But then the Lincoln slowed momentarily,
and he managed to scramble in.
Gerard raised
his pistol once more, but as the Lincoln roared away down the drive, he
realized that he probably wouldn’t hit it anyway, and pushed his gun back into
his pocket.
Jerry and David
stayed where they were for five or ten more minutes, while Maurice and Mack and
Gerard searched the ranch. At last, Gerard called, “It’s clear! You can come
down now!”
Stiffly,
slowly, Jerry and David came down the slope to the ranch house. Maurice and
Mack were already on the veranda, their machine gun propped against the rail,
both of them looking scared, a little shocked, but satisfied. Gerard was
puffing noisily at a cigar, and pacing up and down with his hands thrust into
his pockets.
“You didn’t see
that, man,” said Mack to Jerry.
“Five of them, in five
seconds.
I couldn’t believe it.”
“My brother’s
going to eat shit,” said Maurice.
Gerard asked,
“How’s your boy, Jerry? Okay?”
“I’m fine, sir,
thank you,” said David. He paused, and then he said, “And
thank
you, for everything you did.”
“I’m afraid my
motives weren’t entirely philanthropic,” said Gerard, his cigar glowing in the
twilight. “Apart from which, it looks like the one who actually rescued you was
your dear old papa. I saw that guard, Jerry. Squashed canteloupe isn’t in it.”
‘‘Who was in
that limousine?” asked Jerry. “I thought I heard you say your wife and
daughters.”
Gerard puffed,
blew out smoke, and nodded. “That limousine belongs to Mr. Esmeralda, the guy
who originally employed me to work out all the finances and building work that
this program was going to take. I was also responsible for bringing Japanese
workers and recruits in from Kobe. They’re not all here now, although I always
had to make sure that they were delivered here.
“As far as my
own personal experience with him goes, Esmeralda is a snake. The kind of guy
you’d pay quite a lot of money to have nothing to do with. I don’t know what
the hell he’s doing with my wife and daughters. Maybe he’s holding them as
hostages. But you may as well know that I’ve been living apart from my
wife–well, most of the time–and I don’t get on very well with Kelly or Kathryn.
I guess when they’re older, I might. But not right now.”
‘‘Who was the
man who ran from the ranch and jumped into the limo?” asked Jerry. “He looked
Japanese to me.”
“That,” replied
Gerard, “that was the one man we should have captured or wasted. That was the
man who’s been running all of this Tengu business, Doctor Gempaku. Gempaku
claimed that he’d once discovered a way to make Japanese athletes into the best
in the world–faster and stronger and totally tireless.
Well, they
banned him from the Toyko Olympics because he was using weird and unethical
training methods. But you can understand what kind of a guy he is: dedicated,
peculiar, unethical, very old-style Japanese. He would have gotten on well with
Yamamoto, all those guys.”
Jerry said,
“What’s going to happen to the Tengus? How many was he trying to prepare?”
Gerard smiled.
“Six altogether, I believe. But they’re all contained in that prefabricated
building now, without air and without cooling. They’re probably feeling pretty
damned uncomfortable right about now, and if you ask me, I think they deserve
it.”
“What are you
going to do?” asked Jerry.
“Do?”
said
Gerard. “I’m going to leave them there. They’re shut in
behind four inches of reinforced steel, and there’s no way at all that they can
get themselves out.”
Jerry said, and
his voice was unsteady, “They’re men. They’re people. You’re just going to let
them die?”
Gerard snapped,
“They killed Sherry Cantor, didn’t they? They killed Admiral Thorson. They
damned well nearly killed me.”
“So you’re
going to be their judge and executioner?”
“For fuck’s
sake,” said Gerard, “you’ve been watching too many episodes of Kaz.’’
There was an
explosion from the direction of the barn. Glass was knocked out of the
ranch-house windows like afternoon sleet, and the ground itself, hard-baked as
it was, felt as if it were recoiling from a seismic shock. They rushed to the windows
in time to see the huge rolling column of fire that was all that was left of
the prefabricated Tengu building, and the flaming chunks of timber and aluminum
which turned over and over in the sky.
“What the hell
happened?” said Mack.
Gerard watched
the sparks showering down. His face was blank, far away, the face of a man who
has almost managed to achieve what he always wanted.
Revenge?
Satisfaction?
It was impossible to tell.
He said, “I
don’t know for sure. There was an oxygen pump there, designed to take some of
the oxygen out of the air in the building, make it thinner, you know? That’s
what they asked me for when I arranged to have it built. I disconnected the
generator wire; maybe the sparks from the wire ignited the oxygen.”
Maurice Needs
watched him with a frown, as he said, “Anyway, we did what we set out to do,
didn’t we? Huh? Those Tengus are broiled burgermeat by now.”
Gerard said,
“That’s not enough. We’ve still got to get Gempaku, and Esmeralda, too, if we
can.”
“I think it’s
time we left this to Sergeant Skrolnik,” said Jerry.
“Are you
kidding?” snapped Gerard. “Do you think the police could have pulled off an
attack like this one, and still brought your boy out safe? That’s my wife and
daughters that man has there, and even if I don’t particularly get on with
them, I don’t want to see them hurt, either.
What’s more, if
we let even one of those Japanese bastards live, they’re going to keep after us
until they kill us. How would you feel if Gempaku or Esmeralda were caught by
the police, and then released on bail? I know how I’d feel. I’d feel like
leaving the goddamned country, and fast.”
David held
Jerry’s hand. “Do you think we could go home now?” he asked.
Jerry ruffled
his hair. “Sure. I think we’re finished up here for now. Gerard? Can you guide
us back?”
Gerard nodded
and ran his hand through his hair. “Okay,” he said. “I think we did the best we
could. Let’s go.”
They were just
about to leave when they heard a telephone ringing. Jerry said, “Leave it.
Don’t answer it.” But Gerard opened the front door of the house, listened, and
then ran quickly upstairs to Doctor Gempaku’s office. He snatched up the phone
and said, “Yuh?”
A man’s voice
said, “Mr. Esmeralda?” Gerard hesitated, and then answered, “Yes. That’s right.
Who is this?”
“You don’t
soundx Mr. Esmeralda.”
Gerard said, in
what he hoped was a strong Colombian accent, “Of course this is Mr.
Esmeralda. Who
else do you think is going to be sitting out here in this godforsaken ranch at
this time of day?”
“I’m sorry,”
the man said. “This is John O’Toole, from the Tahiti Way pier at Marina
del
Key.
I’ve fixed up
the yacht you wanted. I was
lucky,
the guy who was
renting her this week suffered a heart attack, and had to bring her in early.
She’s really neat, you’ll like her.
The Paloma.
Real luxury through and through.
Television, air
conditioning ,
waterbeds.’’