soon be off the wooden floor and onto the tatami mats where visitors sat. Still, he could not retreat much longer. Two yakuza guards with slung Uzis and drawn katanas stood against the wall. They would soon prod this cowardly foreigner back into action.
There has been some mystery about what had happened during the abortive hit on Yasukini-dori outside the Fairmont and some talk about the gaijin 's fighting prowess. It was now clear that the gaijin had had nothing to do with his escape. The police must have intervened unexpectedly and it was as simple as that.
'The Romans were primarily infantry,' Fitzduane's father had said. 'After they lost high ground, cavalry in the form of Attila the Hun and the Goths, for example, became the dominant arm for a while, and swords became longer and more used for cutting. You needed a long sword if you were going to fight from a horse, and using the point if you are a horseman is near impossible. From a horse, you slash. The point only comes into play with a spear or lance, and even then it is largely limited to one kill. A pointed weapon sticks in its victim, and if you are on a horse, either you let go or else you get thrown.'
Kei Namaka stepped forward, his face red with anger. 'Fitzduanesan, what you are doing is not permissible. You must not retreat over the tatami mats. It is not proper. Fighting must be confined to the wooden floor. If you do not follow the rules, I shall order my men to cut you down. Frankly, you are a great disappointment.'
Fitzduane stopped retreating, as if unsure what to do next. His shoulders were bent and he was carrying his sword low. There was a decided aura of defeat about him. He looked around, and the two yakuza wall guards brandished their weapons and made it clear that if he retreated any more, he would be killed. It was an imminent threat. The guards were only a couple of paces behind him. He was barely out of sword range.
He remembered his father again. 'From the end of the Roman Empire for about the next thousand years, Western swords tended to be long, straight, wide-bladed, and heavy – and used primarily for slashing. This was the case whether horsemen or infantry were involved. Either way, a long heavy weapon was favored. Disciplined fighting in shielded, mutually protecting lines, Roman-style, was no longer practiced, and a long heavy weapon was deemed necessary to cut through armor and had the added advantage of keeping your enemy a reasonable distance away.
'Armor,' Fitzduane's father had continued, 'became somewhat redundant when guns were introduced in the fourteenth century, and evolving technology, thanks in no small part to the Arabs, found a way of making swords thinner and lighter. And so, in the sixteenth century, the rapier emerged. It was a lighter, narrow, two-edge-bladed weapon with a primary emphasis on killing with the point.'
Fitzduane looked up, first at Hitai and then at Kei Namaka. 'Namaka- san,' he said. 'What we are doing is insane. All of this' – he made a gesture encompassing all in the dojo – 'is unnecessary. The result can only be death and imprisonment. Why? Why? It's pointless. Even if you succeed in killing me, there are others who know what I know.'
Kei Namaka's initial anger turned to a black, sullen rage. The gaijin 's behavior was no longer merely inappropriate. It was embarrassing. It was causing him, the chairman of the Namaka Corporation, to lose face. It was an unendurable humiliation. He made a gesture of contempt. 'Kill the gaijin,' he said in Japanese, 'and take your time about it.'
20
Tokyo, Japan
June 28
Because of its involvement in defense, Namaka Special Steels was a restricted military area, so Chifune ordered the Koancho pilot to circle the rooftop landing zone twice, while announcing that this was a special police inspection through the loudspeaker.
Half a dozen armed uniformed guards could be seen on the roof and a small control tower doubtless held more, so she did not want a hot landing if it could possibly be avoided.
The helicopter was in Tokyo MPD livery, and police authority was respected in Japan, so she did not expect any serious difficulty in actually landing. Whether she would be able to get much further than the roof was another question, but she would worry about that after they had touched down. Normally, her Koancho credentials could get her into just about anywhere. The security service was held in some awe.
The reaction from the guards was unexpected. The helicopter was energetically waved away and then a booming amplified voice from the ground announced: “Warning. This is a restricted area. Do not try to land or we will open fire. I repeat. Do not try to land or we will open fire.”
Chifune and Oga looked at each other in shock. This was unprecedented. 'Extraordinary,' muttered Oga. What was nearly violence-free Japan coming to when guards on a steel plant could threaten an official aircraft with lethal force? Respect for authority was going to hell.
'Decidedly odd, Sergeant- san,' said Chifune. She ordered the pilot to circle again, and perused the landing pad through a pair of pintle-mounted, high-power, gyroscopically stabilized glasses. Because of the vibration inherent in their design, helicopters were terrible things to use binoculars from, but the gyro stabilization made all the difference. The picture was rock-steady and, magnified fifteen times, the guards looked nearly close enough to touch.
She pushed the glasses on their mount over to Oga. Koancho has all the latest surveillance toys, he reflected, as he focused the instrument on a group of guards below. Suddenly, the strange reaction of the guards made sense. ' Yakuza,' he said forcefully. 'I recognize some of the faces. These cannot be proper Japanese Defense Agency- cleared guards. These people are criminals. What are they doing here?'
'I expect the Namakas know the answer to that,' said Chifune grimly.
She called up Koancho control, transmitted a picture of the faces below in real time to the duty officer, and called for backup. A voice in reply told her not to try to land until reinforcements arrived. She started to argue, then noticed that a panel on top of the control tower had opened and several guards carrying something had emerged. The video link with control was still running. There was a brief warning cry from the horrified duty officer, and then a line of red tracer stabbed into the sky toward them and the radio went dead.
A line of holes appeared in the cabin fuselage and Detective Sakado spasmed in his seat belt, as two heavy. 50-caliber rounds punched through his side and blew the best part of one lung and half his rib cage out of the front of his body.
The helicopter dropped like a stone and sideslipped over the roof, as the pilot implemented immediate evasive action away from the line of tracer. It was a reflex action and effective in that it was unexpected, but it brought them closer to the control tower.
A second burst from the. 50 punched through the airspace they had just left, but then a third burst caught the tail rotor. The helicopter started to spin on its own axis, but they were now so close to the roof landing area that they hit almost immediately.
There was the sound of screaming metal as the skids dragged across the metal grating of the landing area, showering sparks everywhere, and then the rotors disintegrated as the wrecked machine came to a halt against the base of the control tower.
The impact had been severe, but the short drop made it far from fatal, and the slide across the pad had dissipated much of the energy. Strapped in as they were, Chifune and the surviving detectives were bruised and shaken but otherwise unharmed. Immediately, they scrambled out of the cabin door and took shelter at the base of the tower away from where the helicopter had impacted. The pilot tried to follow them, but just as he was climbing out, the fuel tanks blew and engulfed the near side of the control tower and much of the landing pad in burning fuel and red-hot debris.
A guard staggered toward them. A long piece of rotor blade had hit him in the back as he ran away from the crashing helicopter, and as they watched he pitched forward, thick blood spewing from his mouth.
A figure peeled over the roof parapet of the control tower. They were too close to the base of the tower for the. 50-caliber to be brought to bear on them, but the guard had a submachine gun and was bringing it to the point of aim as Chifune fired. The guard jerked and blood sprayed from him as the burst cut him open, then he pitched over the parapet edge and crashed to the ground beside them.
Chifune crawled toward the body. They had to take out the heavy-machine-gun team on the control tower
