10

Chase

Their target ran through the rinse room, turning on a shower in his wake, ripping his shirt off from around his waist to don along the way. The other side ended at another rice-paper wall but with no exit this time.

So he made one.

Agent Harris ran for the exit, leaped across the small rinse room, ignoring the wet floor, while Agent Hessman came in behind her, much more careful of the slippery floor. Behind him, Lieutenant Phelps was the first to catch up, Professor Stein and the others a couple of paces behind. The rest of the bathhouse, meanwhile, was in an uproar, with women screaming and men angrily scowling. Somewhere in the corridor they had traversed, their guide was still calling out for them and wondering what the fresh commotion was all about.

“Get him,” Agent Hessman said to Lieutenant Phelps. “He’s our first lead.”

A quick nod and the younger man was off, pounding his way through the shower room, not caring what got wet. Agent Hessman reached in to turn off the shower, giving the others time to reach him.

“If I may ask?” inquired Dr. Weiss.

“A member of the Japanese team,” Agent Hessman shot back. “He’s a match for one of their mug shots. Plus, he spotted us. I’m guessing he came here to meet with or find someone. Robert, make sure these two brains don’t trip and break their heads open or something.”

“Right,” the captain replied.

Agent Harris broke out into an adjoining hall, her side of it paneled in more rice-paper, while the other side of the corridor sported mahogany paneling. To her left, the room opened up into what appeared to be a small shrine centered on a smiling Buddha statue being tended to by a robed priest with his container of burning incense. To her right, a pair of running feet disappeared up a set of stairs.

She took off right. Up the stairs she ran, the heavier tread of Lieutenant Phelps fast behind her, until she came to a landing on the second floor. This level appeared to be some sort of ballroom, with long curtains over the windows. A couple of workers swept the floor in preparation for some pending event. The man she was chasing now had his shirt fully on and was headed across the room toward one of the windows.

She let out a primal cry and took off like a bullet. She had nearly caught up to him when he saw her and spun around, dropping into a martial arts stance. He emitted a sharp cry, accompanied by a couple of quick jabs into the air, his face fixed in a glare of deadly menace. Agent Harris paused to survey his form, an arm out to pause the lieutenant as he caught up to her.

Following another cry, the Japanese man kicked, then lunged forward with a fist, jabbing for her face. Agent Harris merely leaned her head back to dodge.

“Standard karate,” she remarked blandly. “Cute.” She dropped down, left foot out in a cat stance, hands pointed up like knives to the sky, one in front of the other. “Black belts in hapkido and Tiger Crane. And you?” The slender black lady with a short haircut posed next to the mountain of muscle in front of the suspect, trapping him with only ten feet to a curtained window and little else. Except the door to his left, through which a man now came rolling out a wheeled cart full of silver serving trays, small porcelain cups, and a full tea service. The suspect wasted no time and ran to his left, grabbing one of the silver trays to fling out on his way to the door.

Agent Hessman ran up the stairs, leading the others in time to see Lieutenant Phelps bat the flying tray out of the way as Agent Harris went running after the man. The tray flew to one side, close enough for Agent Harris to catch as she passed the cart and drop it back onto the stack of other tea trays before the mystified server. “Gotta leave everything the way we found it,” she muttered under her breath.

“We need to go help them,” Professor Stein said.

“Are you sure?” Dr. Weiss asked. “They look like they’re doing pretty well.”

“We only have two combative personnel on this team,” Agent Hessman reminded them. “The rest are too essential to risk in a firefight. We follow but keep our distance.”

“Okay, where do we stand?”

A breathless Claire came running up the stairs behind the rest, pushing her way past Captain Beck to confront Professor Stein.

“We appear to have found our target,” Ben replied. “Or at least one of them.”

“One of them? How many people are you guys after?”

“Just don’t get involved in the fight,” Agent Hessman stated, then added after seeing the reporter in particular, “especially her.”

Before she could ask exactly what the man implied, Agent Hessman was running for the exit through which Lieutenant Phelps was now following Agent Harris. Ben was the first in pursuit behind him, followed by the reporter.

“I still wish I knew what you guys were after,” she called out.

“So do I,” Professor Stein quipped.

Agent Harris burst through the door to see before her a large kitchen and their target weaving through cooks and servers to the other side. She also saw something else: walls of cooking utensils, including several styles of knives, one of which the man they were after was grabbing off its hook as he dodged another surprised cook.

“Oh, this just looks lovely,” she remarked. “A room full of designer cutlery. We know how this is going to end.”

She charged into the room, dodging, ducking, and spinning, and then saw the one she was after raise the knife he’d grabbed as he readied to toss it. “A bread knife? You couldn’t have grabbed anything more challenging?”

She reached for the nearest object beside her as he hurled the long bread knife. She had picked up a large ladle, and she used it to parry the tumbling knife. Behind her, Lieutenant Phelps was running around to the right of the line of culinary worktables down the center of the room, thinking to cut the man off.

After she deflected the knife, she charged, her cry warning innocents out of the way. Ahead of her the man started running again, until he came to the end of the room with nothing near him but a counter and some drawers. Agent Harris wasted no time on a speech to warn him or talk him down, but simply steamrollered her way through the few cooks who hadn’t gotten the hint and already ducked out of her way. On the other side of the kitchen paralleling her was Lieutenant Phelps, who didn’t seem to care much for intervening obstacles, ambulatory or otherwise. He simply batted them aside.

In a last desperate chance, the man flung open one of the drawers and reached in. There he found more knives. With a grin he threw the first one at Agent Harris, followed by another and a third. Agent Harris responded with a wave of her ladle, deftly batting each aside. The rain of knives, however, did slow her charge.

Lieutenant Phelps was still coming at the guy from the right; Agent Harris from straight ahead. To the left was nothing but a window, currently open to help vent the kitchen. The guy threw a last knife and dashed for the window. He practically leaped through it, landing with a crash against a metal railing outside. When the two caught up to him, they could see what had caught the man on the other side.

“Fire escape,” she stated. “His friends might be below. Stay up here and cover me until I get down.”

“With what? We didn’t bring guns,” the lieutenant pointed out.

Agent Harris glanced once at the drawer full of knives and leaped through the window after the other.

He was already nearly to the ground when she emerged on the second level of the fire escape, and as she had predicted, others were down below waiting for him. Lieutenant Phelps had a fist full of knives ready to hurl when Agent Hessman came running up to his side, behind him in line Professor Stein, Claire, then Captain Beck urging Dr. Weiss along in front of him.

“Situation,” Agent Hessman stated.

“The rest of his team is out there below,” Lieutenant Phelps reported. “Looks like six of them, including the one we’ve been chasing. He’s running down a fire escape. Sue told me to cover her.”

Then came the sharp sound of gunfire. A single shot deflected off the edge of the fire escape railing just to one side of Agent Harris’s head.

“They brought guns?” Agent Hessman stated. “Ben, tell me something.”

Professor Stein peered carefully through the window as another shot rang out. She ducked that one, then slid her way down the last metal ladder, while her quarry ran over to join his team in what looked like a rear courtyard adjoining an alley leading out into the streets. The Japanese team was huddled behind a large dumpster, keeping Agent Harris pinned with another shot from one of their pistols.

“Looks like World War—I mean military service pistols,” he said, correcting himself for the benefit of Miss Hill’s presence. “Very good repro‍—uh, very good shape. Browning or a Colt, I would say.”

“Then they got us pinned unless Sue can distract them well enough,” Agent Hessman remarked.

“Then shoot back!” Claire snapped. “You’re federal agents; you must have some sort of firearms on you.”

“It was not . . . mission parameters,” Agent Hessman stated. “David, we need to get down there.”

“Right.”

The big man looked around, saw a convenient wok, and pointed to it. At their rear, Captain Beck scrambled for the large metal skillet and handed it off to the lieutenant.

“This should be heavy enough for those old pistols,” he remarked.

“What’s the fool talking about?” Claire hissed into Ben’s ear. “Those look like top-of-the-line military revolvers they got out there. And what are Japanese agents doing with American guns, anyway?”

“Later,” Ben whispered back. “Firefight, remember?”

“What are you people doing in my kitchen? Get out of here before I roast you!”

As Lieutenant Phelps climbed out the window, he held the large metal wok in front of himself like a shield. Angrily stomping toward them came what appeared to be the head cook, a long white chef’s smock on his body and a large and intimidating meat cleaver raised in his right hand. Claire immediately leaped to the occasion, dashing over to meet the angry cook in a war of confusing words.

“Hi, Claire Hill, reporter. I’m also doing another piece on kitchen cleanliness, and did you know you have rats around here?”

“No rats. Just group of people ruining my kitchen. Out!”

“Oh, but we saw the largest rat, and I’m afraid that things just got out of hand. We thought we’d find and catch it before anyone in your event might spot him. Now, do you know if this could be a whole infestation or just a single intruder?”

“Get out of my kitchen!”

Out on the balcony, a shot rang off of Lieutenant Phelps’s wok as he stood on the upper landing trying to make his way down the steps, while Agent Harris had found a five-foot Buddha statue fixed against the center of the back wall of the courtyard to take cover behind.

“Ben, how many shots do those things carry?” Agent Hessman asked.

“About six each, I think,” he replied. “Of course if they have a gun each, then it’ll be a while before reloading. And that’s assuming that while they look like excellent replicas on the outside‍—‍”

“Right, they might have a few mods. Okay, no time to wait until they run out; start tossing out whatever those two can use.”

Behind them, Claire decided to hold out against the angry head cook with a last-resort tactic that women have used for centuries. With a firm stance, her chin thrust up, she called out boldly, “You wouldn’t hit a lady, would you?”

In reply, the chef stabbed his large knife into the wooden table next to him, reached out with both hands to grip her by both shoulders, and, to her dismay, bodily picked her up, moved her to one side, put her down, and retrieved his knife. “Now out of my kitchen!”

Meanwhile Agent Harris was trying to think of a way to get across to the Japanese team that would involve her actually making it over there alive. They had the bin for cover, and while she and Lieutenant Phelps could outflank them once he made it to the ground, they still had no weapons. “There’s got to be another way,” she said to herself.

Just as the lieutenant made it to the ground, a crash sounded, followed by two more. Both Harris and Phelps looked to see another wok come hurling out from the window to join the first two on the ground; then came a series of large kitchen knives.

“Take your pick!” came Agent Hessman’s shout.

“Nothing like service with a smile,” she quipped to herself.

She waited until the rain of kitchen implements stopped, and looked to where the nearest large wok had landed, but Lieutenant Phelps was ahead of her. The large man ran out, weaving from side to side, a bullet bouncing off his wok shield, hit the ground while grabbing up one of the other fallen woks, and threw it over to her. She caught it in a tuck and roll out into the open, then, with that as a shield, ran for one of the larger knives.

Back up in the window, Agent Hessman watched as Agent Harris grabbed one of the knives as she ran to one side, while Lieutenant Phelps snaked a hand out to grab one near where he lay and waited for another shot to dent his wok before leaping to his feet with a cry that sounded much like an angry bull elephant.

“Two against six,” Dr. Weiss observed. “They’ll never make it.”

“Don’t count Miss Harris out yet,” Agent Hessman corrected as he watched. “She’s special ops through and through.”

“Out of my kitchen!”

Dr. Weiss was the first to stand up and turn around to face off against the angry man, only to discover the other guy was about an inch taller than he was.

“I thought all you Japanese guys were short?”

“Out!”

Faced with an angry cook with a large meat cleaver, the physicist could think of only one thing to do. “Uh, Lou? I think the man wants to talk to you.” He stepped aside.

Clang!

To the sound of heavy metal meeting brain, the cook went limp and crashed to the ground like a rag doll. Standing behind him was Claire holding on to a large Japanese skillet with both hands and looking a little guilty. “There was one more wok left.” She winced. “I hope I didn’t hurt him too bad, but he manhandled me.”

“Things’ll get worse than that unless we can get down to that courtyard without getting shot,” Agent Hessman stated. “Beck, you bring anything?”

“Officially?” the captain replied. “No.”

“Unofficially?”

The captain reached into a pocket and pulled out a small gun no bigger than the palm of his hand.

“Derringer, 1875, mint condition, good for a single shot. Figured it would make for a good holdout weapon without standing out.”

“That’s a girl’s weapon,” Claire remarked. “It’ll never hit them from way up here.”

“True,” Agent Hessman admitted, “but they don’t know that. We just need it for the noise. Here.”

Captain Beck handed the small pistol over; then Agent Hessman carefully leaned out the window . . .

The shot nearly caught Harris and Phelps by surprise, and certainly the Japanese team. In the confines of the small courtyard, it echoed until it sounded like a much bigger gun than it actually was. That was all the other team needed to hear. After a quick discussion among themselves and a last shot to keep the two pinned down, they made a break for it, running straight for the alley exit and the freedom of the Japanese section of the city.

Freedom for five of them, at least. The minute they broke, Lieutenant Phelps bolted to his feet, dented wok in one hand and large knife in the other, and charged straight at the nearest team member. Covering him, Agent Harris broke into a run herself, electing to give her own wok a toss like a Frisbee, followed by a thrown knife as she neared.

At the top of the fire escape, the others saw their chance, and Agent Hessman led the way as he nearly ran down the metal steps, followed in turn by each of the others. He hit the ground just in time to see the rearmost Japanese team member raising his pistol as a hurled knife from Agent Harris cut into his hand. A scream and the pistol went flying, followed quickly by the man himself as the lieutenant slammed into him.

The man hit the ground, the lieutenant’s knife in his chest. The rest didn’t stick around but ran off down the alley as fast as they could.

Agent Harris was the first to the body after Lieutenant Phelps, and quickly checked it.

“Dead,” she announced as Agent Hessman came running up to join them.

“We need a prisoner to question next time,” Agent Hessman snapped. “Okay, the two of you go after the Japanese team. The rest of us will be here looking for clues.”

“Got it,” Agent Harris said with a nod.

By the time Ben and Sam came jogging up behind Agent Hessman, the other two were already running down the alley after the Japanese team. Claire approached, saw the bleeding body, and swallowed a lump in her throat, while Captain Beck reached an arm around to turn her away.

“Perhaps the lady should not see this.”

“No,” Claire said after a moment. “Nellie Bly saw much worse in her career. I can do this.”

“Well, I’m not sure if I can,” Ben stated. “I didn’t think there’d be bodies on this trip.”

“A man admitting he’s afraid of a little blood?” Claire teased. “Didn’t you see any in the war?”

Professor Stein stammered for a moment, then changed the subject by shifting his full attention to Agent Hessman, who took the hint.

“We won’t have much time before they come back here to see what all the fuss is about,” the team leader stated. “Assume we have no more than five minutes. I’ll check out the body. Ben, you see if they dropped anything of interest over where they were hiding behind that garbage bin.”

Grateful to have both the subject changed and an excuse to avoid picking around a freshly dead body, Professor Stein hurried over to the bin while Agent Hessman bent down for his examination.