CHAPTER 90

The sun had barely risen over Fuji’s snow-capped symmetry when the helicopter from Narita slowed to a roaring hover just above the trees that lined the river bank. The door was already open, and in no more then fifteen seconds the three assault troops had slid down the nylon cord and onto the sandy shore. No one saw them come, and by the time early risers were gaping out of windows at the sound of the helicopter, it had already moved off, heading swiftly northeast toward the city.

The soldiers were clad in black battle dress uniform and class three flak vests, Eagle jackets, and Nomex hoods that left only the eyes uncovered. They moved with practiced speed, their Heckler and Koch MP-5-SD6 submachine guns with integrated silencers pivoting, scanning, like parts of their bodies. They had been ordered to be cautious, to use deadly force on any civilians who might derail the mission only when absolutely necessary, but they were taking no chances. The targets themselves, of course, would be given no such latitude. On that, their orders were perfectly clear. “Targets pose an immediate and credible threat and are to be eliminated by any available means.”

Still, it was supposed to be a stealth mission, kills made silently, the bodies spirited out by helicopter in no more then fifteen minutes. The soldiers moved quickly up the river bank to the south side of the single-story ryokan. They had no specific information on which rooms the targets were occupying and there could well be other foreigners in the building, a building for which they had no specs, no blueprints, no real reconnaissance of any kind. The attack squad were also the information collectors, so target location needed to be doubly prompt.

The team leader nodded and the other two soldiers separated, staying low to the ground, moving almost on all fours, the long-barreled silencers of their guns’ eyes searching for prey. He wished they had gotten here an hour earlier. This was a predawn mission if ever there was one. What minimal intel they had said that there were only five guest rooms and the living quarters of the woman who ran the place, but they couldn’t be sure how many rooms the targets were using: could be as few as one or as many as three.

The team leader rose carefully and looked into the window four feet above the ground: a kitchen, no sign of life. He moved laterally, stopping behind a manicured yaupon holly. He was close to the front entrance and the building’s most exposed side, which gave onto a gravel road into the village. He returned to the kitchen window, applied a suction pad to the window pane, and drew a brisk circle around it with a diamond-tipped glass cutter. With a little pressure on the suction pad the circle snapped neatly out and he was able to reach in and flip the latch. In less than thirty seconds, he was inside.

The kitchen was cramped and bursting with oversized blackened iron pots, one of which hung over the hearth from a chain. The surfaces were of a graying wood, the floor slabs of stone. Apart from the egg-shaped electric rice cooker, the place might have been a thousand years old. Leading with the muzzle of his weapon, he ducked into a squat low enough to see beneath the navy cotton noren that hung from the door lintel and moved through into the hallway, leaving dark boot prints on the pristine floor. No sign of anyone.

A series of sliding doors extended down the matted hall. With the exception of the kitchen, the whole building was basically a single room divided by paper covered husuma into six-mat tatami rooms all branching off this central corridor. A sneeze at one end would probably be heard in every bedroom. He inched along the hallway, aware of deep, rhythmic snoring coming from the nearest room. As he laid his hand to the screen door, the second of the team appeared at the other end of the hall. They had come in through the back door. He shook his masked head once: nothing to report so far.

The team leader pushed the screen sideways and it slid in its wooden grooves with only the smallest whisper. The room was dark, but the sleeping form was an elderly Japanese female, curled up on a futon on the tatami floor: the proprietor. He closed the door and moved down the hall as his second leaned back out of the room he had checked: still nothing. They were running out of rooms.

He tried the next door, then the next, weapon poised and ready to fire. Both were deserted. A look at his second confirmed the same at his end. The targets had moved on.

He nodded back to his second, suddenly anxious to get out of this strange wooden house with its air of foreignness and antiquity, and gestured dismissively with one hand.

Move out.

Once a terror cell like this was flushed out into the open, their advantage quickly diminished. He’d get them next time.