diagonal, a flowing block from the second assailant’s kesagiri, which led quite naturally into a horizontal yokogiri, with four inches of blade opening eight inches of body. The destroyed man made a gasping sound, tried to step back, and fell.
Tanada looked about and saw war everywhere and was happy. Then he got back to work.
Nii was dreaming, filthily, completely, in anatomical detail, dreams that would shame most but only gave him a boner the size of a V-2. But then the V-2 exploded, and he came hard awake in time for another V-2 explosion, then a third and a fourth. Around him, he heard screams, starts, lurches; men jumped, some wailed, some grabbed weapons. The door was open, and someone rushed out, and Nii caught a glimpse of him brought down with a wicked blow.
Attack, he thought.
His mind dumped clear and empty. He had a moment of stupendous confusion as all his reflexes broke down. Two more, then two more explosions went off, but after the first, he got his eyes shut and buried in his fists.
When he opened them, the big room was half empty. He saw a man jump in, blade whistling, and take one of his friends down with a single blow, and in the ferocity of the blow, he knew there was no mercy this night, it was to the death. More men flooded the room, blades slicing the air, cutting through meat, killing. Someone threw a charcoal hibachi at an invader, who ducked and killed him with a cut across the belly.
Nii rose to fight, then remembered his mission.
Kill the little girl.
It wasn’t a judgment call. It was what he owed Oyabun. It became the only thing in his life, that plus the fact he would fuck her first, then kill her, then commit his beloved seppuku and go happily to his ancestors, his honor restored.
He rose, grabbed his sword, and as men surged forward and death and chaos were everywhere, he cut against the tide, found the steps, and rushed up, one flight, then another, and, entering the upper hallway, saw that so far it was empty. He counted the doors, which were popping open, and men were pouring out, until he reached the door to the white room that contained the little girl. He got out his key and fumbled to insert it.
Major Fujikawa saw that the plan was not quite working. That is to say, the congestion point seemed to be the doorways, where the violence was sharp and ugly and the whole thing coagulated into a subway platform at rush hour with swords. Not pretty.
He pulled out a whistle. There was no plan; in the hurried assembly of assault details this one had not been considered. But he understood that his people couldn’t kill efficiently enough at this rate. He blew the whistle, hard, and watched as dozens of eyes popped to him.
“Let them out, goddammit,” he screamed, “then kill them.”
What a good idea, everyone understood, and the crowding at the doorways immediately broke out as the raiders made way and the yakuza spilled out into the falling snow. There was a moment of near poetry, if the death even of evil men can be considered poetic.
Someone’s flash-bang went off in the crowd of fighters. It was a moment with the snow falling in the gentle Japanese fashion, and behind the screen of lulling white, men were briefly isolated by the flare of white chemical light in postures of attack and defense, the cuts stopped in midflight so that the whole had the clarity of one of Kuniyoshi’s woodcuts, an orchestration of muted color and delicate grace though applied to the subject of maximum violence. Fujikawa wished he had seventeen syllables at his command to press into a poem, but then he remembered he was a soldier, and he rushed forward, sword in hand, looking eagerly for someone to kill, aware that the chance to fight with a sword would never arrive at his doorstep again and he’d better take advantage of it.
The raid caught the great Kondo in an unfortunate position. He was in the shower, performing ablutions, readying for the next day’s events, when the first bomb went off, followed by three more.
His first thought: Fuck!
He knew immediately that by some magic, the gaijin had located them. He had a moment’s rage for the fellow’s guile and wondered who had helped him, and imagined their heads on the table next to the gaijin’s.
He got out, threw on his robe-naked, they caught me naked!-and edged quickly to the door. His bathroom was on the second floor, above the living room. He edged down the hall, looking for a view of the events, to decide upon an action. Though he couldn’t see much, he noted shadows on the wall from a stairway leading downstairs. The violence of the shadow-work dancing hard on the wall conveyed the violence of actuality. Then another flash-bang went off.
By chance he’d been looking directly at it and the brightness stunned him. He could not think, he could not see, he was defenseless.
Fuck!
He knew he could not retreat into the bathroom, for to do so would equal his death or his capture, actually the same thing. Yet he could not go back to his room where his swords were, because he could not see.
He heard the rising screams and smashing of fists, flesh, and swords as the fighting rose and knew that his men had been engaged by a force as large as they. He yearned to rush to his swords, claim them, and turn, whirling with violent purpose into the melee, cutting and cutting and cutting, knowing that he could turn the tide.
But he was blind.
He thought, The bathroom window.
It was a low drop-say ten feet to earth.
Blindly, he groped his way back to the bathroom window, slid it open, tried to remember exactly where the bathroom was with regard to the floor plan of the estate, realized that thinking cost him time and he had no time, so he launched himself forward, fell through cold space, and hit the ground with a thud.
“There’s one,” someone said, “grab him.”
In seconds four men had him.
“Give it up, brother. We won’t kill you if you surrender.”
“Don’t hurt me,” he said, going limp and sad. “I am a cook. Please, I only work here, don’t hurt me.”
Miwa tried to be calm. He listened to the general roar outside and understood what was happening. His only thought was to escape, but of course he was too frightened to attempt such a thing on his own. Therefore he assumed that Kondo, the ever-loyal retainer, would come for him.
After a few minutes, he realized that Kondo would not come for him.
Cursing his luck, he crawled to the doorway, slipped it open half an inch, and saw the same shadows on the wall that Kondo had seen.
They really frightened him.
He fought panic.
He thought, If I can hide, I will survive. They cannot stay long. They must attack, kill, then flee. I will never escape, but I can hide.
On all fours, he scrambled down the hallway, found steps downstairs, and like a snake, slithered down, into darkness.
“Please don’t hurt me, I am a cook,” Kondo said, as the arms locked him down, and someone pinned his arms.
“He’s nothing,” said a raider. “Akira, take him to the courtyard; we’ll continue.”
Three of his captors dashed away to join the general melee, still intense behind them.
“Come on, asshole,” said the remaining raider, “get going. Christ, you’re not even dressed, you poor son of a bitch.”
True, he wasn’t dressed, but Kondo blinked and watched as the strobes flashing in his brain shut down. He blinked again, watched vision assemble itself out of sparkly chaos, and he found himself alone in the backyard with his assailant, his arm pinned behind him as he was being roughly driven ahead.
“Sir, my arm?” he said.
“Shut up,” said the raider, or perhaps meant to say, but somewhere between the Sh and the ut, Kondo got
