The Fifth Profession (55 page)

The glow on the peak intensified as Savage neared it. Through his infrared goggles, he studied the trees for closed-circuit cameras, scanning his infrared flashlight across the forest. He reached a chain-link fence and reminded of the fence at Mykonos, felt doomed to repeat the past.

The fence, green through Savage's goggles, had no boxes on its posts, no wires, no vibration sensors. Uneasy, Savage climbed it. Akira landed beside him. The rain increased. They crept higher.

Savage suddenly knew what they'd find next, and his premonition worsened. He was right! Ahead, through the trees, the next obstacle was another fence, but this fence
did
have boxes on its posts with wires from one to another!

It's the same setup I found on Mykonos, Savage thought. The man who designed Rachel's husband's defenses also designed them for Shirai! Do Shirai and Papadropolis
know
each other? Coincidence?

No!
Nothing's
a coincidence!
Everything's
connected! Mykonos! Medford Gap! Kamichi! Shirai! Papadropolis! It's all a pattern!

Déjà vu
and false memory! We thought we were free, but our every move was controlled. Predicted.

We're rats in a maze. A labyrinth. And with every dead end, we were forced to run for—guided toward—the most promising path, the line of least resistance.

Here. On this mountaintop.

Like Rachel's husband's estate. And Medford Gap. And …

Savage reached for Akira, determined to grab him, spin him, and urge him back down the mountain.
We've got to get away from here. It's a trap! It's what Shirai wants! We were tricked into coming here! It's …

Akira sensed—and spun from—Savage's grasp. Even through his goggles, Akira's glare of confusion was vivid. He spread his arms.
What?
he wanted to know.

Savage couldn't risk revealing their position by speaking. Frantic, he motioned that they had to leave.

Akira spread his arms again. He shook his head in confusion.

Savage almost whispered hoarsely,
We have to get out of here.

But the sounds past the fence made him freeze.

On the peak.

Amid the glow.

Shots. The rattle of automatic weapons. The crack, crack, crack of pistols. The boom of shotguns. Men screamed. Wails pierced the night.

Drenched with rain, Savage spun toward the fence. The shots—the
shrieks
—persisted. Jesus. Savage lunged toward the fence. Shirai was being attacked! If he dies, Savage thought, if we don't get there in time, if we don't protect him, we'll never know …

A pistol barked. A machine gun burped. More screams.

No!

Savage resisted the impulse to grab the fence. Control! He had to keep in …

A hand's length away, he stared at the fence. At the post before him.

And cringed. The box, the vibration sensor. The wires that led from this box to another. They'd been severed! Some-one got here before us! Savage thought. A hit team went after … !

We've got to … !

Savage leapt, grasped, scrambled, scurried, climbed. Amid the hissing rain and the jangling chain links, he heard Akira clamber after him. They struck the ground and tumbled, rolling to their feet. Pistol ready, heart thundering, Savage charged toward the crackling shots, toward the agonized screams.

And the night became deathly silent.

16

The silence was paralyzing. Time seemed suspended.

Abruptly Savage and Akira dove toward the mud. Careful to keep their weapons from being clogged, they squirmed forward on their stomachs, approaching the glow that radiated from the top of the bluff.

This final slope was bare. It reminded Savage of the slope he'd climbed to reach Rachel's husband's estate. And again he anticipated the next obstacle he'd encounter, a line of posts that would transmit microwave beams from one to another and trigger an alarm if an intruder passed through them. An invisible fence. But even with a microwave detector, an intruder would have to find a way to avoid the beams, as Savage had done on Mykonos. Crawling higher through the mud, scanning his infrared flashlight, Savage tingled when he saw the posts.

Above, the bark of another gunshot broke the silence. Freezing, Savage aimed his Beretta toward the left side of the peak, the direction from which he'd heard the shot. Rain drenched his back. Mud soaked his chest. He scowled through his goggles, straining to listen for anyone creeping toward him.

But what he heard instead, from beyond the rim of the peak, were car doors being slammed, the sudden roar of an engine.

Then
another
engine. The roars intensified, tires crunching over gravel, spinning through mud.

Akira jabbed Savage and pointed. Far to their left, headlights glared, glinting off raindrops, rushing down the lane from the peak. Two cars flashed by, blurs speeding down toward the valley, disappearing among trees.

The roar of the engines diminished, the rain and forest muffling them. Thirty seconds later, Savage couldn't hear even their far-off drone.

He slowly rose to a crouch. Mud slithered off him. He shuddered, his nervousness sharpened by the cold. Wary, he approached the line of posts, straining to listen for a wail from his microwave detector. But his earplug didn't wail.

He hesitated, frowning. Was it safe to assume that the system had been disabled?

What difference did it make?
he suddenly thought. Who'd respond to the alarm? Nobody fired at those cars as they sped down the lane. The hit team did its work. That final shot, just before the cars sped away, was a
coup de grâce.
Everyone's dead up there!

He stepped through the open space between the posts and flanked by Akira, ready with his pistol, climbed the open rain-swept hill, sank to the mud near the top, then crawled the last few feet to peer over the rim toward the glow.

17

What he saw astonished him. His heart skipped. Beside him, Akira exhaled.

Shock. Although climbing this mountain and proceeding past the various security barriers had been a disturbing reminder of when Savage had infiltrated Papadropolis's estate on Mykonos, he now felt sickened with a terrible memory of another building. Dismay made him gasp. He took off his goggles. With horrified recognition, he found himself staring at the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.

No! A bizarre Japanese facsimile of it!

The place was huge, stunningly long, an eighth of a mile. Arc lights glared all around it, every window illuminated, shrouded by rain. Its central portion made Savage think of a Japanese version of a castle, five stories high, each with a parapet beneath a downward-slanting roof that curved upward at the rim. But joined to it on either side were sections with different heights and radically different styles. A traditional thatch-roofed Japanese farmhouse was linked to what looked like a slate-roofed shrine. A ceremonial teahouse abutted a cypress walled pagoda.

Savage shook his head, fighting the dizziness that attacked his sanity. Most of the sections—their function—he didn't have the knowledge … he couldn't identify. But of this much he was sure. They all shared a common denominator. The entire surreal structure depicted, was a monument to, a meticulous re-creation of, the various stages of Japanese architecture.

Overwhelmed, he lowered his eyes from the impressive, grotesquely concatenated building. His dismay increasing, he squinted from the glare of the arc lights and frowned so severely that his brow ached, seeing bodies across the lawn.

Men.

Japanese.

Some wearing suits, others martial-arts costumes. Each had bloodstains on his chest … or else on his back, depending upon which agonized position the man had assumed when he struck the ground.

Savage counted ten.

All were Japanese. All had pistols or automatic weapons beside them.

None was moving. Fishhooks seemed to tear at Savage's guts.

Despite the cleansing rain, the stench of gunfire continued to hang in the air. And another stench, which became more pronounced as Savage stood and wavered, approaching the aftermath of the massacre. The stench of body gasses vented through bullet holes, of bowels that had voided in death throes.

The coppery smell of blood soured Savage's mouth.

Akira frowned toward the pattern of the scattered corpses. “Some,” he said, “the men wearing suits, were sentries. When the shooting started, they ran to confront the attackers. The others, those who wore a karate
gi,
must have rushed from the building to help.”

“And they all got taken by surprise.” Subduing a tremor, Savage picked up a pistol and sniffed its barrel. “It hasn't been fired.”

Akira examined an Uzi. “Nor has this one.”

“The hit team was organized. Efficient. Extremely skillful.”

“They snuck up through the trees,” Akira said.

Savage nodded.

“They did their work and used the cars in the motorcade to make their escape.”

“But we didn't see any vehicles on the road,” Savage said. “How did they get here?”

“Days earlier perhaps. If they knew their targets would eventually arrive, they could have waited patiently. I once stood guard on a principal for forty-eight hours.”

“And I was trained to lie motionless in a jungle for days,” Savage said. “Yes.” His throat burned from bile. “For all we know, they managed to infiltrate this place quite a while ago. They hid and … A matter of discipline.”

“But who was their
daimyo?”

Savage shrugged in disgust. “A fanatical left-wing group. The Japanese ‘Red Army.’ Who knows? We lost our chance. We got here too late. We'll never, damn it, find out.” He stared from one corpse to another.

“But I do know this.” Savage swallowed. “These men were our obstacles, the barriers between us and Shirai. As much as we needed to get beyond them, to question Shirai,
they
were compelled to protect him. The fifth profession. They obeyed the rules. They knew their duty. They did their best to fulfill their obligation. They died with honor. I …”

“Yes.” Akira wiped rain from his melancholy eyes, stood bolt-straight, and bowed.

He murmured, as if praying.

“What did you say?” Savage asked.

“I commended them to their ancestors. I promised to respect them until my
own
death. I swore to do my best to sense them, their
kami,
in the wind and the rain.”

“Good,” Savage said. “In America, the equivalent—at least if you're Catholic, as I was raised—is ‘God bless. God speed.’ “

“Their spirits will understand.”

Savage abruptly added, “Shirai… Maybe he isn't dead.” Hope made his heart pound. “Maybe the hit team only wounded him. Maybe he managed to hide.” He walked, then raced toward the building. “We've got to find him.”

Akira surged next to him. “Don't hope. As much as I want answers … It's futile. The assassins knew their work. They didn't have a reason to run away. They wouldn't have left unless they accomplished their mission.”

“But there's always a chance!”

18

They reached the building, the central area, the five-story structure with parapets beneath sloping roofs that made Savage think of a Japanese castle. The door was open. Light spilled out.

Savage darted toward one side, Akira the other, peering crossways through the opening, checking the interior in case not all the members of the hit team had gone, or in case some of Shirai's guards had survived and were braced to shoot at what they thought were more assassins coming through the door.

Detecting no threat, Savage lunged inward on an angle, Akira sprinting sideways, taking the opposite direction. They crouched, aiming tensely, spinning this way and that, muscles rigid, checking everything around them.

No danger.

Because everyone was dead. The room, a great hall made of burnished teak, with chandeliers shaped like Japanese lanterns, was littered with corpses.

Savage cringed and lowered his pistol. Again the coppery smell of blood, the stench of excrement thrust forcibly past traumatized sphincter muscles during violent death, made him want to gag.

To his right, near an open panel, five bodies lay in pools of blood. Three others sprawled near the back. Four others were slumped on a staircase to the left, just about where the Medford Gap stairway had been situated, and like the stairway at the Mountain Retreat,
this
one crisscrossed upward.

“Dear God,” Savage said. He forced himself farther into the hall and, subduing vomit, stared at the carnage. “How many more will we find?”

In horror, they searched adjoining rooms, finding more bodies.

“It's almost too much to …” Savage slumped against a wall. Beside him, pen-and-ink drawings hung next to swords. The arts of peace and war. He wiped moisture off his brow, sweat mixed with rain. “I've been in combat zones, too many to mention. I've killed so many times I dream of legions of corpses. But this is …” Savage shook his head fiercely, as if strong enough denial would erase the carnage around him, would made the corpses disappear. He scrunched his eyes shut, reluctantly opened them, and winced again from the horror. “Too much. When this is over, when we're finally able to give up, to back off, to retreat, I welcome what you yourself called …”

“Salvation.”

“What I want is …”

“Peace?” Akira asked.

“And an end to threats.”

“But there'll
always
be threats,” Akira said. His melancholy voice dropped. “It's the way of the world.”

“The difference is …” Savage breathed. “I'll no longer risk my life for strangers. Only for Rachel.”

“Your training still conditions you. You look after someone else,” Akira said. “From now on, I will be my principal. I'll protect
myself.”

“You'll be very lonely.”

“But not with you as my friend.”

Savage felt a surge. “Did I actually hear you say that? Friend?”

Akira gestured, closing the topic. “We need to find Shirai. This won't be finished …”

“Until we do.” Savage pushed himself away from the wall. “But where would—? We've checked these rooms. He isn't—”

They turned toward the stairs. Surrounded by death, oppressed, Savage crossed the hall, stared at the blood trickling down the steps, and climbed, passing one body after another.