A NARROW ASPHALT ROAD BRANCHED OFF TO THE RIGHT, and the arrow on the iPhone told Jake to take it. A few more turns put them onto a gravel road. Jake didn’t like the way Kitano was talking. He felt the menace coming off the old man, in addition to the smell of sweat, a pent-up aggression that might boil over at any moment. And the scratching-he was going to tear through his skin.
Kitano was starting to panic, Jake reasoned. Cracking up. Jake would have to keep a close watch when they got out of the car. He might try to run, or even attack, as preposterous as that seemed. Jake didn’t blame him. Orchid had viciously tortured Liam. She’d killed Vlad and Harpo, murdered Maggie’s housemate. She’d tried her best to kill Jake. What would she do when she got her hands on Kitano?
Kitano was distracting Jake with his anger, his stories about the war. It was dangerous, keeping Jake from focusing on his real adversary. Orchid was his target. He needed to keep his mind on Orchid, not on Kitano. Another hundred miles north and they’d enter a huge swath of nearly uninhabited wilderness and into what was known as the “north hole” in GPS satellite coverage. Satellites were predominantly over the equatorial regions: coverage got worse and worse the farther north you went.
Jake touched the trigger they’d implanted, the tiny thread next to his eye. All that was left to connect them to the outside world was the tracker, and soon even that might not work.
THE ROAD TOOK A SHARP LEFT, THEN BEGAN TO WIND THROUGH a forest of bare trees. Jake checked the time: they’d been driving now for almost eight hours. The clouds were thickening.
An address appeared on the iPhone: 23 Giles Street. Soon after, they came upon a series of cottages tucked back from the road, all empty for the winter. The windows were shuttered, the doors already blocked by small drifts of snow. Behind them, Jake glimpsed stretches of blue water through gaps in the woods. The slow-moving Saint Lawrence, here more a lake than a river, peppered with islands by the thousands. The border was halfway across. On the other side lay Canada.
Jake checked the addresses of the cabins on the right, the ones on the side of the river. Soon he saw 23 Giles, a nondescript saltbox with deep brown wood siding and an incongruous bright blue door. He pulled into the driveway, tires marking the snow, stopping in front of a two-car garage.
Kitano spoke. “If the other six Tokko failed, I was to be the last to strike. Holding back the Uzumaki until it was time.”
“Too bad Connor took it away from you,” Jake said. He got out of the car, approached the front window of the house, all the while keeping tabs on Kitano. Jake glanced though the glass pane. The interior of the house was empty and dark.
Kitano joined him on the porch, his movements jerky and quick. His eyes darted around, as though he sensed danger just out of sight. He was freaking out.
Jake left the porch and checked the garage. Inside was the FedEx van, the back door open. No sign of life.
He returned to the car and grabbed the iPhone. The arrow on the screen pointed through the house and toward the water, the word
He walked around to the back of the building, and Kitano followed. The wooden rowboat was pulled up into the middle of the yard, upside down to keep out the snow.
Two parkas were stored underneath.
Jake gave one to Kitano and put on the second himself. He prepared the boat for the journey, rolling it over and dragging it down to the edge of the water. Kitano excused himself, taking a piss over by the bushes. Jake watched him carefully.
MINUTES LATER, JAKE WAS ROWING ACROSS THE RIVER. HIS hands ached, from both the burns and the cold. The snow was still falling, cloaking them in a world of white. It was perfectly quiet. All except for the sound of the oars, the strain and creak of wood on wood, the small splashes as he pulled the oars through the water.
In the back of the boat, directly in Jake’s line of sight, was Kitano. The old man was silent now, huddled inside his parka. Jake was glad for the chance to focus. He was hyperaware of every shift of Kitano’s body movements.
The screen on the iPhone flickered. The map was gone, the display blank. Then two words appeared:
Jake lifted the oars, and the boat drifted in the current. They were in the middle of the vast, slow river, hundreds of yards from any of the islands. It was cold as hell. Kitano’s lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.
Jake took in his surroundings. The water. The gray-and-white clouds. The snow white on the shoreline, muted shadows cast by the empty trees. What were they waiting for? A boat? He played the oars back and forth in the water, keeping his muscles warm. He prayed that Dylan wasn’t suffering. Maggie would go crazy when she found out. She would be inconsolable. Assuming she was still alive. Jake tried to picture a way out of this, a scenario in which everything turned out all right. But it was impossible to imagine.
Kitano spoke again: “When Japan was conquered, our souls were imprisoned. We denied it. We managed to re-create ourselves within the matrix of the conqueror, like a bird living in the rib cage of the beast. The bird wakes up every morning and goes about its day. But soon the bird understands its fate. It lives in darkness. It lives in slavery. It serves no purpose but to digest the food of its host. It becomes a parasite.”
The old man’s eyes were lit up like coals. He had bits of white spittle in the corners of his mouth. “When this realization occurs,” Kitano said, “the bird first acquiesces. Accepts its fate. That is what I did. That is what the modern men of Japan have done, these grass-eaters. They are little birds, living inside the cage America built for them. They have never known any other life. They have never fought. They have never tasted blood.
“But the bars of the cage are rotting away. Soon America will be too weak to protect itself, let alone Japan. So the bird must act. The bird must fight its way out of the darkness, and back into the sun. Japan must break free. It must retake its position as a dangerous and proud nation.”
A chill ran up Jake’s spine. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you know what we call you? You Caucasians? The
“You’re insane. Japan doesn’t even have a real army,” Jake said. “Your constitution forbids it.”
“
“China and Japan hate each other.”
“Waters ebb and flow. The nations of Europe were mortal enemies for centuries. The Chinese and Japanese similarly fought, struggling for the upper hand. But now we will join together.”
Jake felt an incredible heat coming off Kitano. The man was on fire. Jake heard a humming noise coming from far away. After a minute, he spotted it gliding over the water, too small to be an airplane.
It passed directly overhead, then banked and circled. Jake recognized it-an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, maybe one of the old RQ-2 Pioneers the Navy had flown in the First Gulf War. Jake had seen them up close on a number of occasions: they were human-sized, a few feet tall, with a wingspan of maybe fifteen feet, primarily used for reconnaissance. This one was sleeker than the old RQ-2s, probably one of the newer RQ-7 Shadows. What the hell was an RQ-7 Shadow doing out here?
“Do you know the history of the kamikaze?” Kitano said, completely ignoring the UAV. “They are named for a pair of giant typhoons, the winds of God, that destroyed Kublai Khan’s Mongol fleets in 1274, and again in 1281. The Mongols came to invade Japan. They paid for their arrogance with their lives. Those not killed by the storm were slaughtered by the Japanese forces. For the next seven hundred years, no
The air was cold and still. Snowflakes fell slowly. “Cut the bullshit,” Jake said. “What the hell are you talking
