“Point and shoot, Philo sir.”
Patrick gripped the edge of the building’s exterior door, moved it enough to shoulder it open, bettering the vines that held it in place. They both slipped inside.
Sunlight through a skylight, then additional sunlight through the side windows of each room they investigated. No evidence of recent human activity here, a room with desks that looked like an abandoned office, dusty, drafty, but with leftover human detritus: shelving, an old icebox, shoes, dressers, and slatted bunkbeds.
“Philo sir.”
“Yeah?”
“In the corners, sir. Nests.”
“Yeah.”
Along the edges of the room and in the corners, loose twigs, branches, and wispy things that floated as their shuffling feet kicked up the dust. Whatever animals had found homes in here—mice, rats, stray dogs, cats—they hadn’t had far to look to make their digs comfy. The wispy things were feathers, the room lined with them.
Patrick stopped in his tracks.
“What is it, bud?”
“My mother.”
“What?”
“She was Japanese. She said her mother lived with the chickens…”
Patrick was recovering a memory, Philo realized. His eyes bulged, a PTSD moment hitting him, unexpected, showing him no mercy. “Here. In Hawaii, in… in the…”
Internment camps, Philo finished for himself.
“What if she was here—”
“Patrick. We can’t do this now, we need to check the rest of this place out, see if Kaipo is here, get her out…”
The farther they moved inside, room by room, the more artifacts they found on the floors and the shelves. Bowls, dishes, Japanese dolls, “geisha” hair pins and other hair ornaments, bolts of cloth, chopsticks. And a sampler, on a shelf: an embroidered American flag, a heavy layer of dust covering it. Philo kept walking. Patrick picked up the sampler in his wake, blew off the dust, held it up close to his face.
“Patrick. C’mon, bud, move it—”
Patrick put it down. “Sir, forty-eight stars, sir. I counted them.”
“Fine, keep it, put it in the bag, but let’s go!”
The artifacts trail ended at one large, vault-like door, ajar. They squeezed through sideways, Philo’s shoulder protesting, him grunting under his breath.
On the other side, a voice beyond a wall. Male. They halted, held their breaths to listen. It was a one-sided conversation in Japanese. When the voice stopped talking, no other noise filled the void.
Until something mechanical started up.
A generator, Philo mouthed silently to a nodding Patrick. Philo retrieved his gun. Confrontation time. He poked his head out far enough for one eye to see around the corner.
One man, hazmatted, his headgear in place, his tools and other paraphernalia scattered about him, needles, clothing, saws, tarps; a scalpel in his hand. A cell phone sat on a separate table, a handgun next to it. Plugged into the generator was a circular saw. Beyond him, a woman lay strapped onto a conveyor belt.
Kaipo Mawpaw.
Sunlight showed her face, her head, her hair. Cornrows. Not how he remembered her, but it was her. She did not seem awake, her eyes closed, yet she wasn’t attached to anything. Then he saw the blood. It dripped from an open wound in her abdomen, onto the conveyor belt, then onto the floor. A bloodied Sleeping Beauty, maybe already dead…
Patrick sidled up next to him to spy on their target.
Philo whispered, “See anyone else in here, bud?”
A headshake.
“On three, then.”
They rushed their man after the countdown, Patrick taking him out like a linebacker does a defenseless quarterback, putting him on his back. Philo arrived, leaned in, ripped off the guy’s headgear, stuck his Sig in his face. “If she’s dead,” he groused, “you’re dead.”
Their prey stayed mute with no attempt to retaliate, instead glanced past Philo’s drooped shoulder at additional company now in the room.
“Put your gun on the floor,” came the order.
Behind them, three Japanese men leveled multiple guns on the two undesirables who had crashed their torture party. Philo placed his weapon on the floor.
“Raise your hands.”
Their hands went up, three hands at least, Philo having trouble raising the fourth.
“All the way up!” the Yakuza said, but Philo couldn’t comply, groaning in his attempt. “No? Then I will do it for you—”
“Stop!” a loud voice boomed. From the rear, a recovered Jerry Mifumo powered past Yabuki’s guards to move front and center in confronting Philo and Patrick. Loose workout pants, a comfy sweatshirt, and a duffle bag across his shoulder hid the man’s magnificent physique and, Philo supposed, his shame.
“I separated this man’s shoulder,” he said, addressing his associates, but his interest lay solely in Philo and Patrick, “before this man separated me… from my dignity. Three raised hands will have to do.” He looked skyward and spoke a quick Shinto prayer in Japanese, ending it in English. “I have been given the chance to remedy this. Thank you, ancestral warriors…”
A closer look at Mifumo’s duffle. It resembled what baseball players carried to their games, with long side pockets for baseball bats. In use was one side pocket only, a black bat handle exposed. Mifumo gripped it and slid it out. Not a bat. A Samurai katana sword.
An exaggerated, noisy, metal-against-metal release separated sword from sheath. The Yakuza cavalry mumbled among themselves. Then came the nodding and the smiling.
“Quiet, please! You are all dismissed. I will take it from here. You, doctor-san”—he addressed the hazmatted man standing like a statue in a corner—“you should stay.”
The soldiers snickered, their arm gestures mimicking chopping, endorsing this as an outcome, then they filed out of the room.
Mifumo dropped the sheath, circled behind Kaipo, who was still horizontal and still not moving. Seeing the exposed blade, Philo started forward.
“Oh, you fear for her,” Mifumo said. “I wouldn’t, Trout. All that blood, she looks dead already. And this isn’t for her. Please keep your distance.”
“Where’s Yabuki, Jerry?” Philo said, refocusing him, advancing a step.
“The oyabun? He’s arranging a… surprise.” On stealthy feet, Mifumo neared the door the men had used
