Kamikaze (22 page)

“Search him.”

Or at least Joe figured that’s what the thug with the mole on his cheek had barked in Japanese, for no sooner was the command given than there were paws all over him. And of course, the first item these goons found was the cellphone in his pocket.

Easy come, easy go.

By now, the redcoats had their fix.

“Walk with your hands in your pockets,” Joe had been told by an Asian cop with a section called Special Eye. He figured the “eye” was like private eye, and that’s what made it special. In fact, everything about the Mounties seemed special to them.

“The moment something happens, punch on the phone. It’ll appear to be dormant, waiting for a call, and I’ll be able to triangulate the signal and track you with this.”

The eye guy—for that’s what they called him—had waved some sort of receiver.

So here sat Joe, sandwiched between two heavies in the rear seat, where he was frisked by the Mole and a punk with a black-and-white samurai tattoo creeping up one side of his neck.

In front, the wheelman turned the corner and crawled away from the harbor.

The street sign read “Cardero.”

The tough in the passenger’s seat navigated from a glowing digital map.

A chill filled the car as the Mole lowered the back-seat window and tossed out the cellphone.

Crunch!

It was run over by the car behind.

“Double trouble,” Craven said. “The target has a shadow. It just ran over the cellphone jettisoned by T1.”

“How many in T2?” a voice asked through his earpiece.

“Can’t tell, Chief. Tinted windows.”

“The phone thrown out of T1—was it on your side?”

“Affirmative.”

“Did they make you?”

“I doubt it. The fog’s too thick. I couldn’t see in. The window’s a black hole into the back seat.”

“Hastings T-connects with Cardero. That gives you a reason to turn. If they turn on Georgia, your backdoor takes control.”

“Roger,” said Craven.

As a kid back in the fifties, DeClercq had been a fan of the Hardy Boys. He’d read every Franklin W. Dixon book up to
The Mystery at Devil’s Paw
in 1959, when he had opened a Christmas present and—he couldn’t believe his eyes—found in his hands
The Hardy Boys’ Detective Handbook,
written in
consultation with a cop named Captain D. A. Spina of the Newark (New Jersey) Police Department.

Holy cow!

That same day, he had founded the Gumshoe Detective Agency, staffing it with neighborhood kids who were hired out at twenty-five cents a case.

Rover missing?

Don’t worry.

The Gumshoes would find your dog.

Billy playing hooky from school?

The Gumshoes would track down the truant.

The success rate was remarkable—“If we can’t solve it, you don’t pay”—because Robert DeClercq used all of the Hardy Boys’ techniques. From their handbook, he learned how to put together a real fingerprint kit, and how to make casts and “moulages” of shoe prints and tire marks, and how to collect evidence at the scene of a crime, and how to talk the slang of the underworld—like using “do-re-mi” for money and “gun moll” for a babe who carries a criminal’s gat—and best of all, how to “shadow” a suspect.

Now, half a century later, that enterprising Gumshoe was sitting in the rear of a mobile command van, with two lives depending solely on his judgment. Who’d have thought that in this age of state-of-the-art surveillance, the watchers of Special O and other surreptitious followers around the world would
still
be using the system laid out on page 246 of
The Hardy Boys’ Detective Handbook?

But they are.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Sitting in the middle of the back seat, Joe turned his head right to glance at Tattoo, the punk who’d come out of the seawalk fog and pushed him into the car.

Tattoo was running a signal scanner up and down his body.

The punk said something in Japanese, and the Mole said something back.

Joe swiveled his head 180 degrees to stare at the kidnapper who’d thrown the cellphone out the window.

For their part, his abductors were glaring at the hearing aids the old man had in both ears.

“I’ve got the eye,” the backdoor said. “Just picked up the fare. I can’t see T1 through the fog. But T2’s east on Georgia.”

“I’m VCB,” reported Craven.

Visual contact broken.

“Moving up as backdoor,” confirmed the double back.

“Parallels?” DeClercq asked.

“I’ll move into double back,” signaled one of the outriders.

The terms used by Oscar weren’t the same ones the Hardy Boys had used, but the system was. In the “straightline surveillance system,” five cars move as a pack. Whoever’s being followed is referred to as the “target.”
More than one target means they get prioritized. T1 for the primary. Then T2, T3, and so on. Some cases grow so huge that they require a target sheet. Each T refers to a suspect, and if an unknown male appears, he becomes U/M.

Here, T1 was the car with Joe in the back.

T2 was the car working counter-surveillance: yakuza hoods following yakuza hoods to see if they were being followed. That was the “double trouble” mentioned by Craven. T2 was the car that had crushed the cellphone seized from Joe.

Ideally, the five-car pack would work like this:

Target 1

Target 2

Buffer Vehicle(s)

Control

Parallel       Backdoor       Parallel

Double Back

Craven, who would be in the control car with the I guy and a “foot” (a cop who could hop out and follow on foot, if necessary), would track the target vehicles on a straightaway. As control, he’d be the one “with the eye,” and would
call the changes. In a straight line behind him would be his backdoor and the double back, and flanking the backdoor would be the parallels (east and west parallels or north and south, depending on direction).

The quickest way to get made is to ride “bare” on the bumper of a target, so the watchers let cover cars slip in between the target and the pack. That way, the bad guys see camouflage in the rear-view mirror.

“Never turn with the target” is the Special O rule of thumb. If the bad guys turn, the control drives straight ahead. The backdoor closes up to fill the control position, then turns the corner with the target while the double back becomes
his
backdoor. One of the parallels changes lanes to become a new double back, and the original control circles the block to take that empty slot.

The target turns, Oscar shuffles ...

The target turns, Oscar shuffles ...

“Any monkey can do surveillance,” they say in Special O. “But to do it well is an art.”

It’s like ballet. There’s constant motion, and the fluid shifting ensures that all roles are covered. Ideally, the bad guys never realize they’re being followed, because what’s going on behind them seems to change at random.

Ideally.

But not today.

Unluckily for Oscar, the fog was a wild card.

Tossing out the cellphone was an ominous sign. That left only the hearing aids in Joe’s ears as fallback. At the moment, they were Oscar’s eyes
and
ears, transmitting
images and sounds to the command van. Lose them and O would be reduced to physical surveillance. And if that failed in the fog ... Bye, bye, Hetts.

By dead-end intersecting with Cardero, Hastings Street had given Craven a reason to turn. But no buffer cars had appeared before T2 vanished into the haze, so he had no option but to ride bare on the counter-surveillance car. When both targets then turned left on Georgia, Craven relinquished control to his backdoor and, listening to the shuffle through his earpiece, drove on into the West End.

“What’s going on in T1?” he asked the I guy.

The Asian translated the intercepts that were passing from Joe’s hearing aids to DeClercq’s command van.

“One guy says, ‘The scanner shows the hearing aids are giving off signals.’

“Another guy replies, ‘Of course. They’re electronic.’

“The first guy argues, ‘If we toss them out, the old man won’t hear her scream.’

“The other guy responds, ‘Get rid of them. It’s not worth the risk. He can’t be totally deaf. And she’ll be shrieking.’”

“Is that it?” Craven asked.

“The bugs are picking up noise.”

“What kind of noise?”

“Static.”

“You mean interference?”

“More likely a hearing aid being removed.”

“Damn,” said Craven.

“The second voice is back. ‘Turn here,’ it says. ‘Let’s see if we’re being followed.’”

“The last thing we need.”

“Now more static.”

“The other hearing aid?”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” said Craven.

“The intercepts just died. But I think I heard the second guy say, ‘If we’re being followed, then I’ll claw his eyes out, and you cut his throat.’”

Heads or Tails

How long had it been since
that
came bouncing down the stairs?

An hour?

Several hours?

She had lost track of time.

Her wristwatch was hidden under the sleeve of her sweatshirt, the material lashed to the chair by the bindings around that arm.

So what had gone on up there?

And who’d made those grunting sounds?

Shortly after the mystery car had driven into the garage and Genjo Tokuda had left this sushi bar to greet his son, the Sushi Chef, cocking his head and listening as if something wasn’t right, had released his grip on the Mountie’s breast and followed the yakuza boss up the steps.

Thump!

What’s that? Jackie had thought.

Someone taking a tumble?

Then ...

Bump ...

Bump ...

Bump ...

Down the stairs it had come, splattering the walls with blood before it hit the floor of the sushi bar and rolled over to Jackie’s foot like a bowling ball.

Then she’d heard the grunts.

Punctuated by a muffled voice.

Male or female, the corporal couldn’t tell.

Any moment, she had thought, the grunts will turn to screams. But they hadn’t. Then finally, the mystery car had exited the garage and, caught by the security camera that fed the screen in the sushi bar, vanished into the first tendrils of mist creeping up the mountainside.

Again, the screen had faded to black.

Then nothing ...

Nothing ...

Not a peep from above.

And as time stretched into what her anxiety computed to be an eternity, Jackie began to wonder if Tokuda had departed with his son, leaving her to stare down at the cold eyes gazing up at her from the Sushi Chef’s severed head.

Snaking her way down the mountainside in her half-brother’s car, Lyn Barrow wondered how her twin would react when he learned what she had done to his father.

Poetic justice.

Her
Way of the Warrior.

Still, she had little doubt that her half-brother would be enraged by this twist of fate.

All his life, he’d been struggling to understand who he was. Now that a relationship with his father was finally within his grasp, she had snatched it from him to meet some needs of her own.

Would her half-brother want to kill her?

Probably.

And if so, what should Lyn do to defend herself?

Fratricide might be the only answer.

Tracking a suspect through the West End was like hunting the Minotaur in the labyrinth.

These days, the West End is a maze of streets.

In the beginning—1862—“the three greenhorns” were Vancouver’s first white settlers. That trio had visions of building a big metropolis named New Liverpool on their 550-acre parcel of rainforest. But “the three greenhorns” turned out to be an apt nickname, for their development savvy was sorely lacking. Indeed, a U.S. cavalry raid on an Apache village in Arizona had, bizarrely, turned up a stack of promotional pamphlets aimed at selling their lots.

The coming of the railroad in 1887 had helped the three greenhorns realize their dream, however. Almost overnight, the West End was the place to be. Victorian top hats began constructing mansions with gardens, stables, and ballrooms with floors laid over dried seaweed for “bounce.” The area became known as “Blueblood Alley.” The end of the Gilded
Age turned those castles into rooming houses, and the explosion of high-rise mania in the 1960s helped transform the West End into the most densely populated square mile in Canada.

With all those settlers crammed into cell blocks of two hundred apartments or more, the streets—which had been laid out for horses and buggies—were choked with belching autos. City planners responded by blocking off the most congested intersections with shrubs and benches to deter traffic from veering off the main byways. Today, you need a guide to help you navigate your way through the urban canyons, and that’s what the T1 yakuza thugs had in their car.

An electronic guide.

A twenty-first-century scout.

“There,” DeClercq had said shortly after the cellphone was tossed out. His finger was pointing at an image that had been captured by one of the fiber-optic cameras in Joe Hett’s hearing aids and beamed to the bank of closed-circuit TV monitors in back of the command van. Inside the target vehicle, the captive was craning his head right and left as if to look at the goons flanking him in the back seat. He was actually giving Special O the layout of who was sitting where within the car.

But now the signals were dead and the screens were blank; the hearing aids had also been ejected from T1. The stalking had turned into a game of cat and mouse through the narrow, foggy canyons of the West End.

“If we’re being followed,” the Special I tech had translated, “then I’ll claw his eyes out, and you cut his throat.”

“I’m eastbound on Robson,” the current control reported. “T1 just turned south on Broughton.”

“And T2?” DeClercq asked.

“It’s turning too.”

“Cover cars?”

“Negative. All traffic’s going straight on Robson.”

“If we go bare on the bumper, the colonel is dead. Backdoor?”

“Here, Chief.”

“Turn a block before Broughton and head south on Nicola.”

“Roger.”

“Control,” said DeClercq, “keep on going. Once you’re past Broughton, turn south. I want you driving parallel on the other side of the targets.”

“Got it.”

“Both parallels?”

“Here, Chief,” said one of them.

“Ditto,” replied Craven. After relinquishing control, he had cycled around to the empty parallel position.

“Head for Davie Street. One at Jervis. One at Nicola. If either target emerges at that end, holler.”

“Affirmative.”

“Roger.”

“Double back?”

“Here.”

“Break away and head for the causeway through Stanley Park. To get to the North Shore, if that’s where they’re going, they must pass Lost Lagoon. Eye the road and the
underpass. If they escape down Georgia or around the lagoon, you’ll see them.”

“Will do.”

“Okay, everyone, listen up. We’re tracking the target cars on parallel streets. Because the West End is a labyrinth, that limits their choice of routes. Once they know they’re not being followed, Oscar will regroup. How’s the fog?”

“Bad, Chief.”

“Thicker by the minute.”

“Good. That’ll slow the targets down to a crawl. As soon as you’re in position, pitch the feet.”

From his position between Tattoo and the Mole, Joe had sight of one corner of the rear-view mirror. Since they threw out the cellphone, they had been shadowed by what Joe assumed was a counter-surveillance car. But after they zigzagged a block east from Broughton onto what Joe read as Jarhead Street—which had to be wishful thinking, the Marines and all, because he could barely make out the signpost through this gray shroud—the vehicle behind them fell out of sight.

With a jerk, the driver wrenched the lead car west and accelerated, picking up speed faster than those inside could see ahead.

The Mole said something.

The wheelman checked the mirror.

There was nothing back there for him or Joe to see.

As the navigator called out directions from the digital map, the car weaved through the West End. Judging from
the
oooo-wah, oooo-wah
of foghorns grumbling in the haze, they had just one or two blocks more before they would plunge into the sea.

“Chief, it’s Winter. Yamada just arrived.”

“Does he have the MOU?”

“Yep. Showtime.”

“Good. We’re going to need it. Bring him in.”

Most people who passed the command van and the cluster of similar trucks on the downtown side street wouldn’t have taken a second look. Decades of moviemaking in Hollywood North had accustomed Vancouverites to hundreds—more likely, thousands—of similar-looking shoots. “When I hear the thunder of hoof beats, I think horses, not zebras,” the old saying goes, and it would be thinking zebras to conclude that the white van was really a mobile cop shop.

The back door opened.

Two men climbed up and in.

The back door closed.

And shut out the world.

The inside of the box could have been the set of a techno-thriller or the monitor room of a network like CNN. DeClercq sat in the director’s chair facing a wall of screens, each of which was fed by mobile cameras in the field. The watchers working this case were “wired up,” which was actually a misnomer, because each had a microscopic
wireless
plug buried in one ear. Each was also “miked”
with a transmission device so sensitive and multidirectional that it captured both nearby voices and background noise. Sergeant Winter was wired up and ready for action, but as commander of this intricate operation, DeClercq had headphones clamped over both ears so nothing distracted his focus.

Yamada bowed.

DeClercq swiveled his chair, releasing an earphone so they could talk.

“The situation is worse than we thought this morning. In addition to killing Colonel Chuck Hett and launching a kamikaze dive at the convention center, Genjo Tokuda and his gang have abducted both Colonel Joe Hett and his granddaughter, Corporal Jackie Hett, whom you met in my office.”

“He’ll kill them,” stated the diplomat.

“I know,” said the chief. “We don’t know where Corporal Hett is, but we’re tracking the car with Colonel Hett in it through the foggy West End.”

DeClercq gestured toward the bank of screens, each of which was fuzzy with so much haze that it looked like static.

“Does Tokyo understand that I will do what I have to do?”

“Yes,” confirmed the consul.

“Good,” said the Mountie, indicating the MOU in Winter’s grasp. “Does the memorandum of understanding cover whatever eventualities I might face?”

“Tokyo knows Tokuda.”

“Is that a yes?”

“The document can be read that way.”

“Then that’s how I’ll read it. I’m going to turn on the speakers so you can follow along. It’s cramped in here, but I’m sure we can find you a seat. Sergeant Winter will explain what we’re doing. Please excuse me. I must get back to work.”