Tokyo
Japan
General Masao Takahashi could no longer make sense of a world he thought he understood. There was no sound but the ringing in his ears and there was no light beyond a few muted rays coming from above. The only thing that seemed familiar was the ache in his shoulder, though he didn’t know why it hurt or when the pain had started.
After a few moments his equilibrium came back enough for him to realize that he wasn’t sitting upright. His arm was jammed between the back of the vehicle’s front seat and the door. The light filtering in was coming through a window. The car was on its side.
“Genzo,” he called out, but his driver didn’t answer.
Takahashi freed his arm, finally feeling his mind start to come back online. He was crumpled against the driver’s-side rear window, and through the glass he could see a mix of bright floor tiles and rubble.
“Genzo,” he said louder, righting himself to the best of his ability and leaning forward through the seats. His driver hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and lay motionless with one hand hanging loosely through the steering wheel. There was a blood smear about ten centimeters in diameter on the undamaged windshield, and when Takahashi reached for his man he discovered the stain had come from what had once been Genzo’s forehead.
He stood on the door panel and reached up to try to open the door above him. The latch worked and he managed to crack it, only enough to let in a wave of black smoke and terrified screams.
The handle was suddenly torn from his grasp and he threw an arm up against the filtered glare of the afternoon sun. Someone was shouting at him but the buzzing in his ears and crackle of flames made it impossible to understand anything that was being said.
He felt a powerful hand grip him under his injured arm and he was immediately dragged out of the vehicle.
“General!” the man shouted directly in his ear. “Are you hurt?”
Takahashi just shook his head, still dazed.
“Come on! We have to get out of here!”
From his elevated position on the side of the limousine, Takahashi could finally take in his surroundings. The building was thick with smoke but still recognizable as some kind of store. He remembered the roar and the flash now. An explosion. His vehicle had come partially through a cement wall and partially through a display window. The burning figures that had at first looked like mannequins were, he now realized, corpses strewn among shattered brick and shredded clothing.
“Let’s go, General! Now!”
He was pulled off the car and his arm was thrown painfully over a broad set of shoulders. Men from his chase car, some bleeding badly, others visibly burned, fell in around him as he was swept deeper into the wrecked building.
As they progressed, the still bodies were replaced by ones writhing in agony or trying pathetically to escape the approaching flames. He saw a small child, half his body charred black, wailing next to a motionless young woman. Someone running past scooped the child up and disappeared like a ghost into the choking smoke.
They slammed through a metal door and the open space turned into a dark hallway. His head continued to clear and after a few more moments he forcibly slowed. “Where are we going?”
“The fire exit,” one of his men said.
“Are you sure there is one?” Takahashi asked, feeling himself being pushed forward again. “We could get trapped by the fire.”
“We’re certain, sir. We’ve been through all the buildings on your normal travel routes. This has a rear exit that opens onto the next street.”
He had no reason to doubt what he was being told. His security detail had been handpicked from the best men the country had to offer.
“My vehicle,” Takahashi said.
“Sir, we need to focus on getting you out of here.”
The man ahead of him had a hand against his earpiece as they ran, nodding at whatever was coming over it. “General, I have confirmation that a helicopter is on its way and will be airlifting the car out.”
Takahashi didn’t respond. Justifying the urgency of the salvage operation would be difficult but significantly simpler than the explanations necessary if the police got hold of the limousine.
They burst through another door and came out onto a relatively quiet secondary street. Pedestrians were talking in frightened tones and pointing at the smoke just starting to clear the tightly packed buildings. Takahashi’s men barreled right through them, going for a half-unloaded truck parked at the curb.
Its owners were too stunned to offer any resistance, instead watching in silence as the head of Takahashi’s security detail shoved the general through the driver’s door and then leaped in after him.
In the rearview mirror Takahashi saw his remaining men stepping in front of cars and forcing their occupants out into the street. Within thirty seconds two of his men had pulled a commandeered Prius in front of the truck and another three had a BMW a few meters off its rear bumper.
“Please get down, General!”
He ignored the suggestion. The likelihood that there was a secondary team looking to finish the failed assassination attempt was remote at best. And even if it hadn’t been, he was not going to cower like a child in the face of it.
“What’s the ETA on that chopper, Lieutenant?”
“I’m being told it should be on-site within half an hour, sir. After that, it’ll take another fifteen minutes to hook up the cables. Where should the vehicle be taken, sir?”
Takahashi didn’t immediately respond, looking at the stunned expressions of the people they passed while trying to calculate exactly what had happened and who was responsible. “I’ll give you a destination when it’s in the air.”