Flashback

“The point, Bottom-san?”

“I’m talking about your Japan being a victim of the same demographics that killed Greece and Italy and Holland and Russia and those other countries we were talking about—declining birthrate. Greeks have all but disappeared. Half the European countries have seen their native populations mostly replaced by Muslim immigrants…”

“Yes, Bottom-san, but Nippon does not allow such immigration, Muslim or Korean or any other sort.”

“Yeah, but that’s not my point, Sato-san. Your birthrate is still declining. Your population was what—around a hundred and twenty-seven million or something when I was about twenty. Now, just twenty-some years later, it’s… what?… ninety million or something?”

“Closer to eighty-seven million, yes,” said Sato.

“And declining rapidly,” said Nick. “Almost forty percent of your population is sixty-five or older. That’s old, man. No more little Nipponese running around on the tatami mats to fill your jobs, man your factories, and enlist in your armies. What will it profit Nakamura—or any of the other keiretsu billionaire big shots—to become Shogun in a country where no one’s left but a few old farts?”

“Exactly,” said Sato. Ezacry. Nick was beginning to understand the fat sonofabitch without straining to. “This is why we must conquer China, Bottom-san.”

“Conquer China?” repeated Nick, his jaw sagging as far as it could in the helmet with its tight chin-strap. “I thought our guys were being paid to fight there for you as part of your contribution to the UN effort to help stop the Chinese civil wars.”

Sato said nothing.

“Your plan is to conquer China?” Nick repeated stupidly. “Eighty-seven million of you elderly Japs trying to conquer a country with a population of… what?… one-point-six billion people?”

“Exactly,” Sato said again and it didn’t sound quite so funny to Nick this time. “But China is a country of one- point-six billion people that has imploded far worse than your United States, Bottom-san. Economic disaster. Cultural chaos. Inflation. Stagnation. Riots. Revolt of the military. Total breakdown of their outmoded Communist political system. Warlords. Civil war.”

“So Japan is just trying to conquer a chunk of it.”

“Hai, Bottom-san. Merely a chunk. Perhaps a third of it—but the most productive third. Including Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. India—another UN ‘peacekeeper’ there—can have much of the rest. Negotiations with India are ongoing.”

Nick thought, India with its one-point-eight billion people or whatever it is now. Holy shit, Japan and India and Indonesia and the Islamic Caliphate are carving up the world while we freebase flashback and blow ourselves up.

Restraining the urge to weep again, or laugh, or bark at the moon just visible on the monitors rising above the smoke-hazy eastern horizon, Nick said, “And little Keigo Nakamura was going to be the heir apparent of this possible Shogun who may be ruling over a new empire of three-quarters of a billion people.”

“Probable Shogun,” said Sato. “And yes. Although a shogun is not exactly a king and although power does not always descend through the oldest—or only—son, if Hiroshi Nakamura becomes the first Shogun in one hundred and sixty-four years, Keigo Nakamura would have been the daimyo most eligible for ascension to the Shogunate upon his father’s death… if the other daimyos, keiretsu warlords, would have agreed.”

“All that going on,” murmured Nick, but the bead-microphone was clearly transmitting his murmurs, “and the stupid little twerp was over here in the States shooting a video documentary about flashback.”

“Yes,” said Sato.

“And you let someone kill him,” said Nick.

“Yes,” said Sato.

“Well, if that screwup didn’t earn you an order to commit seppuku from Old Man Nakamura, I can’t imagine what would,” said Nick.

“Yes,” said Sato.

“Boxcar One, this is Boxcar Two,” came ninja Willy’s voice over the truck-to-truck comm net. Willy was driving the second vehicle. “Do you see that boy on a horse, Sato-san? Over.”

Boy on a horse? Nick looked from display to display. The ride had been so uneventful, except for this truly weird conversation, that he’d forgotten all about where he was and what was going on outside the sealed vehicle.

“Roger, Boxcar Two,” replied Sato on comm. “I’ve been watching him for some time now, Willy. Over.”

Nick finally found the screen showing the boy on a horse. The mini-drone sending the images seemed to be only forty or fifty feet above the kid. The boy seemed to be about Val’s age—thirteen or fourteen at the most.

No, Nick corrected himself, Val’s older. He just turned sixteen a few weeks ago. And I forgot to call him to wish him happy birthday.

This boy was spanic, shirtless, shoeless, and wearing only dirty, raggedy shorts that looked to have been cut down from a man’s pair of chinos, and he was mounted on a nag so old and swaybacked that the boy’s bare toes almost touched the dusty earth. The boy and old horse were scrawny enough that ribs showed through scabbed brown flesh on both of them.

“I don’t see a phone,” said Bill from his position in the top gun bubble turret of the other vehicle.

“Me either,” said Joe from their own gun bubble.

“Boxcar Two, Boxcar One,” broke in Toby from where he rode shotgun in the front of the second Oshkosh M-ATV. “It could be in his pocket, voice activated. The kid could be sending coordinates to artillery right now.”

“Roger that, Toby,” Sato said calmly. “Has anyone heard anything?”

Nick realized that the drone was sending audio as well as the video feed, but when he managed to match frequencies with it, all he could hear was the wind through the dry grass around the kid and the occasional lazy swish of the swaybacked horse’s tail.

“Negative that, Boxcar One,” replied four voices.

“Boxcar One and Two,” continued Sato. “Has anyone seen his lips moving?”

Again, four negatives came back over comm. Nick felt like an idiot. A left-out idiot.

“Boxcar One, I have the fifty-caliber mounted,” said Bill from the bubble of the second truck. “He’s about a hundred and thirty meters east of us. I can reach him easily.” Easiry. They were obviously all speaking in English for Nick Bottom’s benefit.

“Roger that, Boxcar Two,” said Sato. “Please keep tracking him until we are out of sight about a kilometer ahead. Joe, do you have him?”

“Yes, Sato-san.”

“Allow Bill to keep his eye on the child and the horse. You keep pivoting and report anything else.”

“Roger that, Sato-san.”

“Boxcar Two… Bill?”

“Hai, Boxcar One?”

“I am watching the monitor but driving, so please be sure to tell me the second the boy moves… especially if he turns his horse around. Please tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing. Watch the drone monitor when we pass out of visual.”

“Hai, j-shi,” came Bill’s fast, sharp response.

Tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing? thought Nick.

When they’d passed over the little rise and started descending into a broad valley toward a bridge over a dry riverbed, Nick asked, “What was all the questioning and talk about my feelings and Japan and China all about? I don’t believe it was random.”

“It is about Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev and your meeting with him tomorrow morning, Bottom-san.”

“Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? And what do you mean my meeting with the guy? You’ll be there, too, won’t you?”