Dale Connelly grabbed the phone on the first ring.
“Ordnance. Master Gunner…”
“I know who you are,” said the voice Connelly had come to loathe. “Did you finish it?”
Connelly felt his stomach heave at the very mention of what he had been forced to do. “Yes, it’s done,” he said, biting down on each word.
With no one in the armory, he had been forced to seal the body of Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Wade in plastic trash bags wrapped with duct tape. The task was made even more difficult by the man’s body having started to stiffen with rigor mortis, after it had been stuffed into Connelly’s wall locker. Also, the poor bastard’s bowels had emptied, soiling his uniform trousers and requiring Connelly to douse the locker and his office with disinfectant and air freshener. After preparing Wade’s body with the bags and tape, he had hoisted his friend over one shoulder and moved him to the rows of storage crates at the back of the armory. It had taken some doing, but he had found a suitable container to conceal the dead Marine, covering him with foam insulation and other packing materials. He had then stacked a pair of smaller boxes atop the crate.
“It won’t take long for someone to find him,” he said, gripping the phone receiver hard enough that he felt his fingers beginning to tingle.
“After tomorrow, it won’t matter,” said the man on the other end. “Now, you go get your car.”
“My car? Why?”
“No questions,” the man snapped. “You drive. North on fifty-eight.”
Connelly frowned. “Where am I…?”
“You find out soon enough. You have two minutes to get in your car.” The line went dead, and Connelly pulled the receiver from his ear, looking at it. He returned it to its cradle just as there was a knock on his door.
“It’s open,” he said, rising from his chair as the door opened to reveal Sergeant Holt. The younger Marine poked his head inside.
“I have the LTI reports for you, Top.” He held up a file folder.
Connelly reached for the camouflage uniform cover and car keys sitting in the wooden letter tray positioned at the corner of his desk. “Just throw them on my desk. I have to step out for a bit.” He felt a lump forming in his throat, but forced himself to maintain his composure as he exited the office and began walking at a brisk pace for the armory’s front door.
“Something up?” asked Holt.
“Admin.” Connelly forced a sigh. “Some crap about needing to sign some papers they missed yesterday. It’s retirement stuff, so it’s now or never.” While a weak story, it was the best he could do off the top of his head.
Holt grimaced. “You going to be back for the party?”
Not breaking stride, Connelly tossed a wave over his shoulder. “Count on it.”
Assuming I’m not dead in an hour.
The Toyota sedan was sitting in his assigned spot outside the armory, and though it looked undisturbed Connelly saw the unfamiliar object sitting on the passenger seat even before he inserted his key into the car’s driver-side door lock. It was a mobile phone, one of those newer model “bag phones” with its own battery and a plug to feed off a car’s cigarette lighter. Without turning his head, Connelly tried to examine the surrounding parking lot for signs he was being watched, but saw nothing.
Bastards.
It wasn’t until he was away from the armory and through the air station’s front gate, traveling north from Futenma along Highway 58, that the phone rang. It took him a moment to fumble with the unit with his left hand while keeping his eyes on the road, but he wrestled the receiver free from its cradle and brought it to his ear, feeling the phone’s coiled cord stretching taut.
“Hello?”
“Just keep driving,” said the same voice. “I call you again when you get close to where you’re going.”
“What about my family?” asked Connelly, hearing his voice shake. “Are they all right? I’m cooperating with you. Please don’t hurt them.” Even as he spoke the words, he thought of his friend Tom Wade. It was obvious these people had no problems with killing, but his wife and children? Would they really go that far?
“Keep doing what you’re doing, and they’ll be fine. Watch your driving. Don’t need you getting in wreck.”
Connelly’s eyes widened as he realized the implications of the warning. Of course they were following him. He looked to the rearview mirror, seeing at least a dozen cars in the highway’s two northbound lanes. Any one of them could be his tormentors. Hell, they could all be following him, for all he knew.
“Can I talk to them?” he asked.
The man grunted something Connelly didn’t understand, before replying, “No. And don’t try calling anyone else. We’ll know. Just drive. We’ll call.” Then there was a click, and the mystery caller was gone. Connelly returned the phone to its cradle, eyeing the device an extra moment. Then a car horn startled him and he jerked the car’s steering wheel back to the left, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a cargo truck in the oncoming lane.
Damn it!
“Drive,” Connelly told himself, feeling the blood forced from both hands as he held the steering wheel in a death grip. “Just drive.”
* * *
Standing on the porch, Yasuo Emura inhaled deeply, enjoying the drag on his cigarette. Holding the smoke in his lungs for an extra moment, he released it in a thin plume and watched it dissipate in the slight breeze. He stifled a yawn, checking his watch and grimacing at the time. The day had begun just after midnight, and after twelve hours it was already feeling long. It would be several more hours yet before he and the rest of the crew could even consider calling their work done. That only made Emura more irritable.
Just get me out of here by six. It was Ladies Night at his favorite bar in Okinawa-shi, which was also a popular hangout for locals and Americans from the nearby air base. According to the calendar, the military personnel had been paid a couple of days earlier, and the younger, single ones would be looking to part with too much of their money. Several of the American units had departed the island a week or so earlier for training exercises in Korea or the Philippines—Emura couldn’t remember which—and that meant a pack of bored military wives looking to dress up and have a good time. They were always such easy marks, or at the very least provided an entertaining distraction.
He was hungry, but the crew had already savaged the meager contents of the kitchen since arriving earlier this morning. Lunch was another reason to head back to town, but Emura knew that leaving now would only irritate Eiji Hazato, the group leader. There was a schedule to keep, after all. Emura looked to where the truck sat, ready to go. Another trip back to Naha was in the offing, and he knew that would likely keep him busy for the rest of the day. With luck, Hazato would let him go after that, and he could get on with preparing for some serious partying. Emura couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the beautiful blond American women he would meet, with their ridiculous dancing after they had too many overpriced and watered-down drinks. Easy marks, and easy money. Emura smiled.
Finishing his cigarette, he ground the butt against the house’s cinder block wall before tossing it toward the yard, which was still damp from the morning rain. He wiped his forehead with his hand, feeling the perspiration on his fingers. It was already too hot, and would only get hotter before the afternoon sun broke for the day.
Emura was turning to head back to into the house when he caught a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off something. A look toward the cinder block wall on the house’s west side obscured his view of the surrounding trees, but not enough to mask the movement of something dark. Turning in that direction, he squinted in an attempt to get a better look, and caught movement between two overgrown thickets.
“What are you doing?” called a voice behind him, at the precise instant Emura saw a figure moving around the trunk of a large tree, not twenty meters away.
* * *
“Yeager, wait!”
Jack hissed the warning just as Samuel Yeager let the first round fly, his Beretta pistol’s discharge muffled to little more than a metallic snap thanks to the sound suppressor fixed to its barrel. The single shot, from at least forty feet, was on target, taking the man on the porch just above his left eye. Yeager hadn’t seen the second man, who had chosen the wrong moment to step out of the house and now was a witness to the death of his companion.
“Son of a bitch.” Jack brought up his own suppressed Glock and tried to take aim as the second man stumbled backward toward the house. The pistol bucked in his hands and Jack saw the bullet drill into door where the man’s head had been an instant earlier. Then shouts rumbled from inside the house.
“Everybody move in,” said Yeager into the walkie-talkie clipped to his equipment harness before charging out from the concealment provided by the treeline and heading for the house. It had taken the group—Yeager and his four men, along with Jack, Banovich, Rauf Alkaev, and Manish Pajari—nearly fifteen minutes to spread themselves around the perimeter. Using the surrounding trees to conceal their movements, they searched for signs of guard patrols or other watchful sentries. They had encountered no one in the woods, bolstering Jack’s hope that anyone they had to face would either be in the house or the neighboring outbuilding.
Guess we’re going to find out, one way or the other.
“Come on,” Jack said, tapping Amorah Banovich on her shoulder as he set off after Yeager. The three of them had maneuvered into position on the house’s west side, which was free of windows. The lone man smoking a cigarette had been the only sign of life, and Banovich had tried to get Yeager to just let the guy go back inside before making any attempt to advance on the house. Jack had voiced his own support of the idea. It was the better tactical play, as it preserved their element of surprise at least for a short while longer.
Yeager had ignored their advice, and now here they were, charging across open ground in broad daylight. Their targets had been alerted to their presence and were likely preparing to repel the impromptu assault.
Idiot’s going to get us killed!
Staying low and utilizing the cinder block retaining wall to mask his approach, Jack ran straight for the house, sacrificing for speed any chance he might have as a moving target. Banovich ran beside him, matching him step for step while keeping more than an arm’s length between them. Both of them were forced to jump over or sidestep holes or ruts in the uneven ground, and as they drew closer Jack heard more shouts of warning and confusion. He figured they had perhaps ten seconds remaining to them before someone in the house got their act together and started deploying firepower.
“Stefan! There!”
Hearing Banovich’s warning and seeing her pointing toward the house at the same time, Jack noted a figure to his right, exiting the house from a rear door. Only the man’s head, bald on top with close-cropped black hair on the sides, was visible over the retaining wall, but Jack also saw the barrel of a rifle aiming at an angle toward the sky. It took him only an instant to recognize it as an M16, or at least some variant of the assault rifle. Yeager saw the new threat, too, and he sprinted toward the wall away from the rear of the house, angling to keep from the other man’s view.
Jack and Banovich reached the wall just as a second Okinawan man, this one more heavyset than his companion, barreled through the house’s rear door and onto the back porch. In his meaty right hand was a large caliber pistol. From its shape and size, Jack figured it for a Desert Eagle, a powerful handgun that could do serious damage if its wielder had any idea what he was doing.
It was Banovich who’d opted against giving him that opportunity. Rising up so that she could aim over the top of the retaining wall, she let loose with three quick rounds from her Glock. At least two struck the big man in the chest. Jack saw his body react to the shots, and the Desert Eagle barked as the man’s finger convulsed on the trigger. A .50 caliber round punched into the side of the house before he dropped facefirst onto the porch. The man with the M16 was turning in their direction and bringing the weapon around to take aim, but Jack was faster. He fired two rounds into the rifleman’s head, sending him stumbling backward off the porch and collapsing into the mud.
Other shots were ringing out around the area now, and Jack could make out the suppressed weapons from the assault group, interspersed with shots coming from the house or immediately outside it. On the far side of the house, Jack caught sight of Alkaev and Pajari advancing with two of Yeager’s men on the buildings. There were more shouts coming from inside the house now, and as Jack studied the structure, his eyes fell on the lines running from one corner of the house to a pair of poles at the mouth of the gravel driveway leading out of the front yard.
Damn it. How did I not see that sooner?
Had he been distracted by Yeager’s premature triggering of the assault? Maybe, but that was no excuse. It was a rookie mistake on his part, one for which he would have chewed out any of his men if this were a Special Forces op. There had been time during their earlier survey to identify the power and phone lines. Of course, the plan at the time had been to approach by stealth and take out everyone in the house before any of the bad guys could react to being ambushed.
The best laid plans, and all that.
“Cover me,” he said, closing his left eye as he took aim at the point where the lines connected to the house. He fired three rounds and one of the lines fell free, and a fourth shot took care of its companion.
Banovich nodded in approval. “Power and phone. Good thinking, Stefan.”
“Come on,” called Yeager, and Jack looked over to see the man bracing his back against the retaining wall at its far end. “We’ve got to hit them while they’re still confused.” He punctuated his remark by pushing off from the wall and stepping around it, pistol aimed out in front of him.
“Let’s go.” Arms extended and with both hands cradling his Glock, Jack maneuvered around the edge of the retaining wall, ignoring the sounds of gunfire from the other side of the house and searching for immediate threats. Training and experience guided his movements, ensuring he swept the area ahead with eyes and weapon and never lingering too long on any one fixed point. He forced himself to take deep breaths, not allowing the rush and stress of the moment to cloud his vision. He heard Banovich moving behind him, and as he swept from side to side he caught glimpses of her mimicking his movements.
The Glock’s barrel moved past the front of the cargo truck backed up to the entrance of the outbuilding and Jack started looking for anything closer to the house. He sensed movement to his right before he saw it. Feet on the ground just behind the truck slipped in the mud, and Jack dropped to one knee an instant before the man, another Okinawan, appeared from around the vehicle’s far side. He was wielding a shotgun, but its barrel was pointing at the ground when his eyes fell upon the intruders in his midst. Jack fired twice just as the man was starting to raise his weapon. Both rounds took him high in the chest, pushing him back against the truck’s front bumper. Banovich’s Glock coughed once, putting a bullet into the man’s head and dropping him for good.
“Stefan!”
Something to his left caught Jack’s eye just as Banovich snapped her warning, and he shifted to see another man charging through the house’s rear door. He was holding an M16 and struggling to bring the weapon to his shoulder and take aim. Jack’s first shot was just to the right as he brought the pistol around and the bullet splintered the doorjamb. It was still enough to make the man flinch, giving Jack time to adjust his aim, but before he could shoot there was more weapons fire from inside the house. The Okinawan’s body twitched as rounds struck him in the back and he pitched forward, tripping over his own feet and falling from the porch.
Yeager appeared in the doorway, Beretta grasped in both hands, and put a final round in the fallen man’s head. Looking up from his work, he nodded toward Jack and Banovich, his expression flat.
“Clear.”
* * *
Yeager and his men were efficient enough, Jack observed. Even with the assault’s rocky start, the group had made short work of the raid, dispatching eleven men in less than two minutes and suffering no casualties. A sweep of the area revealed that ten of the eleven men were dead. The lone survivor had taken a single shot to the stomach, and Jack and Banovich had attempted to dress the wound with bandages from the first aid kit on Yeager’s equipment harness. Despite their efforts, Jack could see that the injury would end up being fatal if the man didn’t receive immediate medical treatment.
“My guys have finished their sweep,” said Yeager as he walked to where Jack and Banovich stood near the cargo truck and the outbuilding. Banovich had found a faucet and they were using its slow stream of water to wash the blood from their hands. “No sign of anybody hiding out.”
“Did they find anything interesting?” asked Banovich.
Yeager shook his head. “We collected the individual weapons, IDs, and a few other things, but nothing of any real value.”
Checking his watch, Jack said, “We can’t stay here. Somebody had to have heard the shots.”
“You’re right,” replied Yeager. “If someone called this in, then we’ve got ten, maybe fifteen minutes to be gone before the police show up.”
“There’s nothing in there,” said Banovich, gesturing to the truck and the shed. “A couple of cases of the rifles, but that’s it. If the rest of the shipment even made it out here, it’s gone.” She scowled. “No sign of our money, either.”
Yeager rested his forearms on the magazine pouches affixed to the front of his gear belt. “We’ll take whatever’s left. Call it a peace offering for Jimura-san.”
“What about the men?” asked Jack, wiping his wet hands on his trousers. “Are we sure they’re all Kanashiro’s?”
Regarding him with skepticism, Yeager asked, “What do you mean?”
Jack glanced first to Banovich before replying, “We found out this morning that the Japanese military has agents embedded within Jimura’s organization. They’re obviously trying to build a case against him. If what you say about Kanashiro is true and he’s trying to muscle out Jimura, then it makes sense that the JSDF would have agents in his group, too.”
“Why didn’t you say something about this before now?”
“Because we didn’t trust you,” said Banovich. “Besides, I can’t believe Jimura doesn’t suspect moles and spies within his network. Do you trust all of your men?”
For the first time since well before the assault, Yeager smiled. “I don’t trust anybody. Point taken.”
After ordering his men to load whatever could be found in the cargo truck and with Banovich directing Alkaev and Pajari to help with that effort, Yeager led her and Jack back into the house, where the lone survivor of the raid lay sprawled on a couch. One of Yeager’s men stood watch nearby, his pistol in his hand. The bandage Jack and Banovich had applied to the wounded man’s stomach was already dark red, and blood was seeping around its edges. His breathing fast and shallow, the man’s complexion had turned pale and he was sweating.
He’s not going to make it, Jack realized.
“Where’s the rest of the stuff?” asked Yeager without preamble as he moved to stand before the man. When the Okinawan didn’t answer, Yeager kicked his foot, which elicited a grunt of pain from the man. “Where are our guns and money?”
Swallowing, the man didn’t lift his head from the couch. “Gone. Moved. Two hours ago.”
“Where?”
A raspy cough escaped the man’s lips, and he reached up to wipe his mouth. “North. Motobu, or maybe Nakijin.”
Glancing to Jack and Banovich, Yeager said, “They’re towns north of Kadena, up on the coast.”
“Motobu,” whispered the wounded man. “I think I heard … someone … Motobu.”
Yeager nodded. “I think I know the place he means.” Without saying anything else, he drew his suppressed Beretta and put two quick rounds in the other man’s chest. Then, with the same casual air one might use to invite them to lunch, he turned to Jack and Banovich. “Let’s go.”
His eyes lingering on the dead man, Jack forced himself not to offer any emotional reaction. This situation was continuing to circle the drain, and he was no closer to finding a way to contact his CIA handlers. Were they even still looking for him, or had they written him off? Did they think he was dead, or that his cover had been blown? How much longer did he have before they pulled the plug on the operation and cut their losses?
Cohen wouldn’t leave him twisting in the wind. Jack didn’t know about anyone else, whether they were here on the island or back at Langley, but he was certain Abigail Cohen would not abandon him so long as there was breath in her body.
You willing to bet your life on that, Jack?
Yes. He trusted Cohen. His faith in her was absolute. The question was, did she feel the same way about him?
“Stefan,” said Banovich from behind him, and Jack turned from the dead Okinawan to see her standing at the entrance to the hallway that would take them to the rear of house. “Are you coming?”
Jack nodded. “Where else do I have to go?”