“Stop here!” Masateru yelled after the turn, and their car screeched to a halt. Masateru and Hideaki leaped out with their weapons in their shoulders as the Nissan came barreling around the corner in pursuit. They fired automatic bursts into the front of the car, shredding its tires. With a screech it veered onto the pavement and crashed into the side of a building.

  A series of single shots were fired from the immobilized Yamaguchi vehicle, a feeble attempt at self-defense. The response was overwhelming. The MP9s spat flame, firing more than fifteen rounds per second. The torrent of bullets smashed holes through the windshield of the sedan and into its occupants.

  Masateru’s weapon ran dry, the bolt locking open on an empty magazine as he walked toward the shattered car. He pulled open the driver’s door. The man at the wheel was dead, missing half his face. His partner in the passenger seat gurgled, struggling to breathe through punctured lungs. An old revolver was still in his limp grip.

  Masateru tossed the pistol aside and grabbed hold of the man’s shirt. “Who do you work for?”

  Bloody froth spilled from the man’s mouth as he tried to respond.

  “Useless swine.” Masateru handed his empty submachine gun to Hideaki. He drew his knife from his jacket and opened it with a deft flick of his wrist. Pulling the man’s head back by the hair, he slashed his throat with the blade, severing the windpipe, blood vessels, and tendons. Blood sprayed across Masateru as he cut down to the spine. His victim’s arms and legs convulsed, his eyes wide in shock.

  Thirty seconds later Masateru was back in the Lexus, severed head in the trunk, and they resumed their journey.

  Karla stared at him in horror as he used a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his face.

  “Who…who were those men?” she asked quietly.

  “Other Yakuza. Yamaguchi.”

  Karla’s hand shook as she touched the window where one of the stray Yamaguchi bullets had hit the armored glass. “They shot at us.”

  “They wanted to kill us. They wanted you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you are worth a great deal of money as a slave. They want to sell you to a rich, fat Arab for a million dollars. A rich Arab who wants to rape beautiful, young, blonde infidel women.” He let the words sink in before continuing. “But you do not need to fear this, because I will never let them take you. You belong to the oyabun and soon you will realize that serving him comes with great benefits.”

  Masateru handed Karla another two pills.

  She swallowed them and waited for their numbing effect. For a moment her thoughts wandered back to her sister and her home village. A single tear ran down her cheek and she consoled herself with the hope that at least her sister would be able to lead a normal life.

  CHAPTER 50

  “Oh shit, I’m sorry, Kenta.” Bishop could see by the amount of blood sprayed throughout the inside of the Nissan that the Yakuza men were dead, not to mention the fact that one of them was missing his head.

  “They paid the penalty for their mistakes,” the Yamaguchi enforcer said, his face betraying no emotion.

  “These guys were using fully automatic weapons, judging by how this windshield is all shot to shit.” Bishop picked up an expended shell. “Nine-millimeter submachine guns. Same as on the train.”

  The downshifting of a high-performance motorcycle engine announced Saneh as she brought her bike alongside them, killed the engine, and lifted her visor. “What happened?”

  “Compromised and executed,” said Bishop. “Now we’ve lost the girl and the lead.”

  “We can still watch the compound. They’ll come and go—”

  “Enough watching!” Bishop cut her off. “We hit the warehouse now and we hit them hard. Then we break down one of these assholes and put him through the wringer. I’ll make him sing like a motherfucking canary.”

  “Brian, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. We—”

  “I’m calling the shots now. Kenta, how many men do you have left?”

  “Three and myself.”

  “That’s all? What about Hero and all that talk of anything we needed?”

  “This is all we will get until we have proven our worth. It will be enough; we will kill these Mori-Kai.”

  “OK, it’ll have to do.”

  In the distance a police siren wailed.

  “We need to leave now,” said Kenta. “My people are still watching the warehouse. We will meet them and then attack.”

  “Sounds good; we’ll follow you.” Bishop was already getting in his car.

  Kenta donned his helmet and jumped on his cruiser. He roared up the street with Saneh and Bishop following.

  A few minutes later Bishop followed the two bikes into a warehouse. He glanced in his rearview mirror as two Yakuza gangsters closed the doors behind him.

  The building was about the size of a tennis court. The holes in the roof and garbage piled in one corner were evidence that it had been abandoned. At the far end were two Yamaguchi Mercedes. Kenta was standing close to them with Saneh and one of his men. Bishop grabbed his backpack from the trunk of his car.

  “We are very close to the Mori-Kai,” said Kenta as Bishop joined them. The gangster drew a rough diagram with his finger on the dusty trunk of the Mercedes.

  “Good choice,” said Bishop as he watched Kenta carefully mark out a map of the building.

  The two Yamaguchi henchmen who had slid the doors shut joined the group. They were dressed in the dark suits and white shirts that seemed to be the uniform of traditional Yakuza.

  Bishop shook his head. “Some tailor’s making a killing off you guys.”

  Kenta looked at him blankly.

  “Never mind. Go on.”

  “It is a big concrete warehouse. There are heavy steel doors at the back where the Lexus drove in. I think it is a place to keep cars.”

  “A garage?” Saneh asked.

  “Yes, a garage, but that is not the best way in. At the other end of the building there is a wire fence and a door. Without explosives it is the only way in.”

  “Great work, Kenta, you’ve done well. Any ideas how many are inside?”

  Kenta shook his head. “Hard to say. I think at least six, maybe more.”

  “Damn, pretty sure you guys aren’t packing CQB rigs.”

  “I don’t understand.” Kenta looked confused.

  “I meant, what firepower have we got?”

  “I have my revolver, these two have pistols, and he has a shotgun.”

  “That’s a bit light,” Saneh pointed out.

  “It’ll be fine,” Bishop said as he unzipped his backpack and pulled out the PX4 9mm subcompact and two magazines. “You used one of these before, Kenta?”

  “Like a Makarov.” He nodded.

  “Kind of.” Bishop handed him the weapon. “That old hand cannon of yours is shit-hot but I thought you might like a few more bullets. Run it as a backup if you want.”

  Kenta took the weapon. The lightweight polymer pistol with its thirteen-round magazine looked like a toy in his tattooed fist.

  “Thank you.”

  Saneh gave him a quick rundown on the controls while Bishop quickly checked their other two handguns.

  “So, how we going to do this?” Saneh asked once they were ready.

  Bishop tapped the trunk, where Kenta had drawn a map in the dust. Everyone gathered around. “It will be simple, yeah. We drive through this fence in the Mercs. Shoot all the bad guys and free any women they might have captive. Somewhere along the way we’ll want to grab a prisoner. The higher up, the better.”

  “What do we do with the girls?” Saneh asked.

  Kenta replied, “I’ll call our friends in the police. They will take the women.”

  Bishop nodded. “And if the police do their investigations properly this should lead to other locations.” He made a mental note to ring Baiko. “It’s a good plan. Let’s go kill some Mori-Kai.” He cocked his pistol, securing it in a paddle holster on his hip. The four Yakuza followed suit before getting into the two Mercedes.

  Saneh grabbed Bishop’s arm as he made to jump into one of the front passenger seats. “Look, cowboy, we’re not running armor or long arms and we have no idea what’s in that building. These MK guys are playing for keeps, so take it easy, OK?”

  Bishop gave her a hard look and then nodded. “We’ll let the Yamaguchi boys do the heavy lifting. But if it goes sideways don’t expect me to sit back and do nothing.”

  CHAPTER 51

  MORI-KAI HOLDING FACILITY, HIMEJI DOCKLANDS

  “Hold on!” grunted Kenta as the Mercedes bounced over the curb and smashed into the security gate. The automated sliding mechanism sheared off and it buckled, jumping out of its track as it wrapped around the front of the car.

  The Mercedes crunched into the side of the building as Kenta slammed his foot on the brakes.

  Bishop jumped out of the car, lifted his pistol, and fired a shot at the CCTV camera positioned over the door. He missed. Before he could fire again, Saneh blew it off the wall.

  “Getting shaky, old man.”

  “Nice shooting, Tex.”

  The four Yakuza made for the door and stacked up on either side of it, weapons ready. Their actions reassured Bishop. The gangsters seemed to have experience in room clearance; either that, or they had watched too many action movies.

  One of the men reached for the door and tugged on it. It was locked. He did what any inexperienced soldier would do, tried to kick it in. The steel-framed door didn’t move an inch. He grunted in pain and limped to one side. Another of the Yakuza lined up to repeat the performance.

  “STOP!” Bishop holstered his pistol and wrenched the Remington 870 from the hands of one of the Yakuza. He pumped the action, raised the weapon, and fired it directly into the door handle.

  The blast tore the locking mechanism completely apart and the door bounced open a few inches. Bishop pumped the shotgun, blasting two rounds in through the gap.

  He leaped back to the side as automatic fire slammed into the door from the inside, flinging it open. One of the Yamaguchis aimed his pistol in through the gap and fired. A bullet punched through his forearm, shattering the bone and knocking the handgun to the ground. More rounds snapped through the doorway.

  Bishop grabbed him, dragging him away from the fusillade of fire. He handed the shotgun back and drew his pistol.

  “Saneh, cover me.” He moved up close to the open door.

  “Covering.” Saneh came in behind Bishop.

  He moved swiftly across the doorway, his pistol transferred to his left hand. He caught a glimpse of a target and fired twice. Once he reached the other side he returned the gun to his master hand and fired again.

  Bishop made eye contact with Saneh and moved through the doorway into the room. Shots from a pistol rang out and Bishop fired toward the muzzle flash. Someone grunted and fell to the floor.

  Saneh was right behind him. She pumped a shot into another figure already facedown on the carpet. “You said they’d do the heavy work.”

  “Did you see those guys? They’d all be dead by now. CHECK!”

  “Covering,” Saneh responded as she scanned the two doors leading from the room. Bishop ripped the magazine from his pistol and slapped in a fresh one.

  “On gun,” he announced as he raised the pistol.

  “Off gun,” Saneh responded.

  Kenta and two uninjured men moved into the room behind the PRIMAL pair. “Where to now?”

  “Now we clear every room,” replied Bishop.

  “We will lead. You have done enough.” Kenta moved forward with his revolver holstered, PX4 in hand. He opened the far door and flinched as a bullet sizzled past his head. He fired three rounds back down the corridor. The shotgun-wielding Yakuza joined him, blasting the corridor with buckshot. Both of them ran through the door, jogging down the corridor.

  “This is not going to end well.” Bishop stripped the MP9 submachine gun off one of the dead Mori-Kai, pulling a fresh magazine from under the dead man’s jacket.

  Saneh grabbed the third Yamaguchi and oriented him toward the remaining exit. “You watch this door.” He looked at her blankly so she pointed at her eyes and then the door. He nodded.

  “Sarah, get in here!” Bishop was in the corridor, submachine gun in his shoulder. Kenta and his offsider had already passed through the next door. Shots rang out and the air filled with the stench of cordite.

  As Saneh moved down the corridor she looked in through a door window at a pretty blonde Caucasian chained to a bed. She was wearing lingerie. “You’re kidding me,” she muttered.

  “It’s a damn holding facility,” Bishop said as he checked the other rooms. “There’s six girls here. They’re all chained.”

  “It gets worse.” Saneh was peering in at the torture cell, replete with the tools of bondage and pain.

  “Motherfuckers,” Bishop spat.

  More gunfire sounded from deeper in the facility and Bishop started jogging toward it. “That doesn’t sound good. We’ll come back for the girls.”

  He pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. A few feet in front of it the shotgun-wielding Yamaguchi lay facedown in a spreading pool of blood. Halfway across the waiting room a Mori-Kai gangster was lying on his back, his torso savaged by buckshot. Another one was dead in front of a bar, his face blown away. More gunfire sounded from a doorway at the end of the room.

  Bishop stopped to check the Yamaguchi for a pulse.

  Saneh kept moving and poked her head around the door into the garage area.

  “Kenta!” she exclaimed.

  The Yamaguchi heavy was crouched behind an overturned workbench. Bullets gouged the concrete around him and slammed into the steel-plated bench top.

  “How many?” Bishop joined Saneh at the doorway.

  Kenta held up three fingers and then pulled out his Colt Python revolver, firing over the bench with a pistol in each hand.

  A submachine gun chattered in response, spraying the area with bullets.

  “We’re outmatched.” Saneh fired two rounds in the direction of the vans parked in the garage.

  “That’s what the Russians thought in Stalingrad.”

  “You want to wait for winter to kill them?” Saneh fired another two rounds.

  Bishop grabbed a bottle of 150-proof whiskey and a book of matches from the bar. “No, I’m going to improvise with this.” He pulled a tie from the neck of one of the men Kenta had killed and wrapped it around the neck of the bottle. Then he grabbed the shotgun and handed it to Saneh. “I’ll need you to hit the bottle once I’ve thrown it. I’m borrowing this straight from Uncle Molotov’s guide to revolutionary warfare.”

  “We’ve only one round,” she said, checking the tubular magazine under the barrel. “You’re a better shot. You should do it.”

  “Tell that to the camera you nailed. Plus I’ve got a better throwing arm.” Bishop lit the tie. “Kenta, cover us!” he yelled. “On two.”

  “One.”

  Kenta’s pistols barked as he emptied them over the bench.

  “Two.”

  Bishop stepped out from the doorway and lobbed the bottle into the air. It sailed high up above the vans.

  Saneh raised the shotgun and fired.

  The bottle exploded, spraying flaming liquid across the garage.

  Bishop took advantage of the homemade distraction and sprinted through the doorway into the garage. He fired a long burst from the looted submachine gun as he ran toward the vans. One of the Mori-Kai died with a bullet through the head as he beat at the burning alcohol on his jacket.

  Saneh dropped the empty shotgun and followed Bishop into the fight. She moved to the opposite side of the vehicles, her pistol held ready. The barrel of a machine pistol appeared at the rear of a van and she fired, forcing the Mori-Kai back. She punched two more .45-caliber rounds through the side window and the back of the van. There was a grunt, followed by the clatter of a weapon hitting the ground.

  The remaining gunman had been under the bottle when it exploded. The burning liquid ignited his polyester suit, turning him into a blazing fireball, screaming and rolling across the floor, beating at his clothes. Kenta silenced him with two bullets to the chest.

  “We’ve got a live one here.” Saneh was standing over the man she had shot through the van, her pistol pointed directly at his face. He was clutching his arm. “He’s the last.”

  Bishop aimed his submachine gun at the wounded man, then lowered it. “Good work. Kenta, get him on his feet. We’ll take him to the torture cell.”

  The three of them escorted their captive back down the corridor. Bishop opened a metal door and Kenta dumped the Mori-Kai on the metal grated floor. The injured man grunted in agony as he landed.

  “Saneh, can you use Kenta’s mate to sort out the wounded and the girls?”

  “Why? Because it’s a woman’s job?”

  “Really, you want to do this now?”

  She fixed him with a stare and disappeared down the corridor.

  Bishop took a plastic chair from the corner and placed it in the middle of the room. Then he lifted the man off the floor and dropped him onto the chair.

  “Kenta, I want you to repeat everything I say in Japanese and then translate his response back to me, OK? We don’t have long, so this needs to work smoothly.”

  Kenta shook his head. “It does not matter. He will not talk.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he is Yakuza.”

  “I thought you said the Mori-Kai were not true Yakuza.”

  The Mori-Kai watched them from the chair. His arm was bleeding but his face remained impassive, eyes devoid of emotion.

  “I did, but even if he is not true Yakuza he will not talk. Even the lowest dog in Japan has honor.”

 

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