and then the connection had been quietly handed over to Koancho.
Slowly and carefully, Chifune shifted her location from the cover of the fish sauce to a pallet of bags of rice. Whatever the smell, the thought had occurred to her that if shit started to fly, the undoubtedly rice had better ballistic stopping properties than glass bottles of fish sauce. Better still, it was Japanese rice. Thanks to subsidies, it might be many times the world market price for rice, but every good Japanese knew it was superior.
The elevator started to creak and groan. The warehouse floor was rectangular in shape, with the elevator and stairs located side by side to one end. Directly facing the elevator door, but to one side, Chifune was concealed. Her position gave her quick access to either the fire escape or the stairs if she had to make a run for it. Locating the fastest way to get the hell out was one of the first lessons you learned in training. Heroics were not encouraged.
There was a rattle, a further series of groans, and a crash, and the doors of the goods elevator were open.
Chifune's gaze was fixed on the opening. She was expecting Iron Box, dressed in her normal smart suit, too- high heels and crisp blouse, but it could be the night watchman up to check the stock and decide what to steal that night. Chifune had noticed in her reconnaissances that with typical Japanese modesty he limited himself to one case per night.
The minimal warehouse lighting, presumably a gesture toward security, was provided by a series of low- power naked lightbulbs dangling above the intersections of pallets. The filthy ceiling of the room and the matte colors of the packing cases absorbed the light, and clear visibility was difficult.
It was dawning on Chifune that she should have brought an image intensifier. Still, perfection was an aspiration, not a human characteristic. Instead she focused the EPC optical sight of her silenced Beretta on the elevator entrance, just as a small figure wearing either slacks or trousers stepped out and looked uncertainly from side to side.
It was Iron Box. Chifune registered that fact just as the significance of the flared sighting dot in the sight hit home. The sighting dot reacted to infrared light. Someone was scanning the gloom with an invisible infrared beam – invisible except to someone with an infrared viewer or the EPC sight. Someone else, who wanted to be covert, was in the warehouse.
Chifune tracked the source of the beam. Through the sight, it was like tracking a beam of light. Her gaze terminated at the crude wooden structure on top of the elevator shaft that housed the motor. She had considered that very hiding place herself, and she went cold at the thought. Her next question was, how did someone get up there without being seen by me?
There were two alternatives: either the watcher had arrived before Chifune and knew the Koancho agent was there, or else the watcher, or watchers, had entered the small motor room directly from a roof trapdoor in the elevator. Chifune tried to remember if she had seen such a trapdoor and decided she had not. It was an old, crude installation dating back to the postwar building rush, by the looks of it, and constructed with scant regard for building regulations.
Iron Box walked out hesitantly onto the warehouse floor, just as Chifune came to her disturbing conclusions. A split second later, flame flashed from the motor room, there was a hollow explosion, and almost immediately afterward, the Vietnamese fish sauce behind which she had been hiding exploded in a lethal mist of shrapnel and glass shards.
The destruction was near total. Two seconds later, there was another flash and double explosion from the grenade launcher, and what was left of the warehouse's trial shipment of Vietnamese Nuoc Mam sauce was vaporized. Chifune flinched behind her rice as hot metal thudded into the rice sacks, and gagged at the smell. She was spotted from head to toe with the awful stuff.
Iron Box was crouched on the floor, trying to take cover behind a pallet-load of drums of cooking oil. She was screaming, and oil was spewing from several of the drums where grenade fragments had penetrated.
The access door of the elevator room flew open and three figures in black ski masks jumped down onto the main warehouse floor.
Two figures with slung automatic weapons grabbed Iron Box. The third stood guard, a U.S.-made M16 automatic rifle fitted with an underbarrel grenade launcher in his hands.
Chifune realized that she was supposed to be dead, and certainly it was not for lack of trying. Two M79 grenades against one slight Koancho case officer and a few cases of fish sauce was overkill. The explosions had blown out the lightbulbs in her section. She crouched down behind the rice bags, thankfully shielded by the darkness. One handgun against three automatic weapons was not good odds. It did not make sense to die for an informant.
For a split second, Japanese giri and Israeli pragmatism fought a battle, and in the end sheer irritation at being fucked around by three goons won out. She heard a cry of fear and, looking over the top of her barrier, caught a glint of metal. Iron Box was struggling in one terrorist's hands, and he was pushing her onto her knees as the other raised a sword above his head. The third terrorist still kept a lookout, his weapon traversing the gloom of the warehouse as he scanned from side to side.
Chifune placed the red dot on the third terrorist and fired four shots when the combination was pointed well away from her. In case he was wearing body armor, she aimed for his head, and all four rounds impacted. The grenade launcher exploded with its characteristic double blast, and a pallet of the local version of Scotch whisky at the other end of the warehouse went up in flames.
Distracted by Chifune's attack, the terrorist with the sword looked away from his victim toward this new assailant, and Iron Box kicked him very hard in the balls.
He doubled up in pain just in time to be missed by Chifune's next burst of fire. She swore and ducked down, as the remaining standing terrorist got his automatic weapon into play. Rice showered in the air. It was like a wedding.
She sprinted a dozen paces to fresh cover, changing magazines as she ran, then rolled into the aisle and fired again in a long burst of aimed shots, just as Metsada, the action arm of Mossad responsible for the more direct approach, had trained her.
The standing terrorist was ducking down to change magazines as she skidded on the cooking oil, invisible in the gloom. Her weapon slid under a pallet.
The surviving terrorist had raised himself to his knees and now brought his katana down in a sweeping blow. Chifune just managed to roll to one side, but her left arm was gashed and she felt suddenly weak with shock.
Iron Box cried out a long 'Nooooo!' and then there was a dense dull sound as the terrorist's next blow cut down through the side of Iron Box's neck and on through her torso to terminate close to her pelvic bone. Nearly split in two, the informant, a look of horror on her face, slumped forward.
The terrorist looked fascinated at her as she collapsed.
Chifune picked up the fallen M16, switched the fire-selector switch to automatic, and with two bursts forming a rough Y, which she thought was appropriate, terminated the killer's short career as a swordsman.
Flames were licking up the warehouse, the floor was slick with blood, and the smell of the slaughterhouse and burning whisky mixed with Vietnamese fermented fish sauce was indescribable.
Iron Box had been due to tell Chifune about the involvement of Yaibo in a hit on an Irishman called Fitzduane. The terrorist group was indeed ‘The Cutting Edge,’ but the real issue had been who was wielding the blade. Chifune had her suspicions, but proof was in short supply.
It did not look as if Iron Box was going to be of much assistance.
7
Connemara Regional Hospital
January 31
Fitzduane had worked out a routine which – as he thought of it – allowed the hospital ghouls to do their thing, and him to do his.
In the morning he seemed to be an object for the medics to play with. He was woken at an ungodly hour, washed, fed, and otherwise got combat-ready, and then inspected.
