Rules of the Hunt (78 page)
Beside him, Chifune rapid-fired an entire magazine of
.300 Magnum at the pilot.
The Huey rose about fifteen feet, then half-rolled and smashed into the
still-burning summer house.
Seconds
later, there was a series of explosions as the fuel tanks, ignited by the
exploding .50 and the surrounding flames, blew up.
The leading police armored car smashed through into the locked double gates
and rolled forward, its machine gun chattering.
More armored cars moved in and gave covering fire, while en entry team of
kidotai
in helmets and body armor
moved in on foot.
The terrorists on the ground fought till they died.
Katsuda's surviving
yakuza
in
their frogmen's suits raised their hands.
*
*
*
*
*
Reiko Oshima, the leader of Yaibo was in the copilot's seat of the
airborne Huey when Lonsdale fired, and she saw the holes of the .50 as they
punched through the engine compartment of the landed helicopter.
The significance of the direction of fire was immediately apparent.
"UP AND EVADE!" she creamed into her microphone.
"UNLESS YOU WANT US ALL TO GET BARBECUED
LIKE THAT OTHER IDIOT.
GET THE FUCK
UP.
WE'RE TAKING FIRE FROM ABOVE."
Startled both by Oshima's screaming and by the explosions in front of him
from the other helicopter, the pilot was overheavy on the foot pedals and the
Huey's tail wagged from side to side in what was known as the "Huey
Shuffle."
He recovered and then banked the machine away from the combat and climbed
at maximum revs for his life.
Beside him, Oshima scanned the sky for the source of fire.
She was looking for a police or army
helicopter, so she initially disregarded the airship.
She could see nothing, and that was not
believable, because an official helicopter would not leave the scene while all
hell was breaking loose below.
She knew how official minds worked when airborne.
They liked to buzz around and report things
and follow procedure.
If there was a
police unit up there, any moment some uniformed idiot with a microphone was
going to fly alongside and ask her to surrender and she was going to blow his
interfering brains out and send his machine in flames down on top of the
That was
the way these people thought and acted.
She had been outmaneuvering them for years.
Could it be the airship?
She had
never remotely considered the airship in the past — it was just part of the sky
over Tokyo, like clouds in the rainy season, and it had never entered her
thinking one way or another — but now she focused on the huge floating
structure as it receded into the distance.
It was inconceivable that the
would actually think of firing down into an area of the city which housed some
of the most exclusive residences in
but she had temporarily forgotten to factor in the
gaijin
Fitzduane.
He had
already demonstrated a flair for the daring and unorthodox.
An aerial ambush from the airship would be
exactly the kind of tactic he would employ.
A shiver of anticipation ran through her as she thought of the
significance of the mayhem in Hodama's gardens.
The
gaijin
was still alive.
She had caught a brief glimpse of Namaka as they had flown in, but there
had been no sign of Fitzduane.
He should have been there.
He was
the bait.
But was it not more likely
that, having baited the trap, he would withdraw and watch events
play
out from a safer location?
The
gaijin
was daring and clearly did not lack courage, but he was no fool.
Suddenly, Fitzduane's plan became clear to her.
He had used the strengths of his opponents
against each other and he had been not only the bait but the catalyst of their
destruction.
Fumio Namaka, normally so
farseeing and cautious, had been blinded by his obsession with the destruction
of his brother's killer.
Katsuda had
been impelled by his desire for revenge against the Namakas and his ambition to
become the new
kuromaku
.
Who knew what other elements were
involved?
And worst of all, her own
organization had committed its full strength out of obligation to the Namakas
and had been caught in the trap.
The full realization of how they had all been outmaneuvered by this
foreign barbarian filled her with gall.
But if her analysis was correct, it also meant that Fitzduane was in the
airship.
He had achieved complete tactical
surprise, like a hunter concealed on high in a tree hide, but his main defense
had lain in remaining undetected.
And
clearly he had not fully considered the possibility of his prey being airborne
too.
Oshima felt confidence in her judgment restored.
It had been her idea to use the two stolen
Japanese Defense Forces helicopters.
Several Yaibo members had received helicopter training in
ironically from North Vietnamese instructors using captured Hueys.
For some time, she had seen the relevance of
air power in terrorist operations and saw nor reason why the authorities should
have a monopoly on air mobility and firepower.
The roles were now reversed.
The
hunter in his hide would now be the hunted.
And the airship would be a hard target to miss.
This time Yaibo would have the high ground.
Oshima pointed toward the receding airship.
It was already several miles away.
They had lost time looking for a police
helicopter, but they would soon make it up.
The Huey, she knew, was much faster than that huge bag of gas.
"Pursue the airship," she said, "and
maneuver
so that we can attack from above.
They
won't be able to see us and they won't be able to shoot back.
And hurry.
I want that craft downed right over the city."
The propaganda significance of destroying such a large and visible symbol
of authority over
capital city would be immense.
The pilot increased power, and the Huey sped above the neon-lit city
toward a target they could not miss.
*
*
*
*
*
"Fitzduane-
san
," said
the Spider.
"Radar confirmed by
visual observation reports that our airship is being pursued by a
helicopter."
There was a
pause.
"Two helicopters were
reported stolen by the JDF five days ago.
We regret — but we have every reason to suspect terrorist action."
"Roger that," said Fitzduane, who was thinking.
The Spider's voice was urgent.
"You may well be attacked, Fitzduane-
san
,
"
he
said, "but I would ask you to remember the rules of
engagement.
There
must
be NO civilian casualties.
Whatever the provocation, you must not return
fire over
Evade and escape, Fitzduane-
san
, but do not open fire."
"How long do we have before the Yaibo chopper gets within
range?" said Fitzduane.
"Two to three minutes minimum," said the Spider.
"Maybe longer.
And they may never attack.
But it is important you be warned."
"Out," said Fitzduane.
The world now divided into his team and the rest, but there was one
member he did not know too well.
He went
to sit beside the pilot.
The inspector-
san
looked scarcely out of diapers, but
most Japanese looked young for their age.
In a few words, he told him the situation.
The pilot grimaced and turned to Fitzduane.
"Colonel-
san
," he said.
"I
have been trained in all normal aspects of airship operation, but this ship is
not a fighter."
He paused for half
a beat and then spoke again.
"But I
will do whatever can be done."
Fitzduane had initially thought the pilot looked about eight.
He revised his opinion after sitting
closer.
Close up, the kid was undeniably
over fifteen.
To have achieved the rank
of police inspector, he was clearly on the fast track.
"Inspector-
san
," he
said.
"Where did you go to
university?"
"Todai," said the pilot proudly.
All roads let to and from
"Well, that's all right, then," said Fitzduane cheerfully.
The pilot turned and looked at this lunatic
gaijin
blankly.
"You move and shake when I tell you, Inspector-
san
," said Fitzduane.
"It's kind of like lateral thinking, only different.
No looping the loop of Immelman turns.
Just a couple of sexy
maneuvers at exactly the right time.
Understand?"
The inspector-pilot-
san
still
looked puzzled, until Fitzduane spoke for about twenty seconds.
Then realization dawned and his face lit
up.
"Ah so!" he said with
enthusiasm.
Fitzduane looked genuinely pleased.
"I always wanted to hear someone say that," he said.
*
*
*
*
*
The Yaibo helicopter was a scant hundred yards away from the airship, but
slightly above and behind.
The gondola was below and out of sight.
They could see the airship and could get so close they could almost
reach out and touch it, but the airship crew in the gondola below could not see
them.
The enemy was blind.
"Open fire.
Empty your
magazines," said Oshima, and two AK-47s and five 9mm submachine guns
crackled into action.
The Huey was flying with both doors open, but still the noise was
deafening.
Cartridge cases cascaded out
of the automatic weapons, bounced off the cabin floor, and then slid into the
neon-lit glow of the darkness to fall two thousand feet to the city below.
Three hundred full-metal-jacketed rounds penetrated the sausage-shaped
balloon of the airship in under ten seconds.
Helium gas began to leak from the holes.
*
*
*
*
*
Turbines whining, a flight of JDF Super-Cobra gunships on full military
power climbed into the night sky over Atsugi and headed toward the airship.
"ETA ten — one zero — minutes," said the Spider.
There was no acknowledgment.
"Gunships will rendezvous in ten — one
zero — minutes," he repeated.
Static came back at him.
In midcommunication, the airship had gone
suddenly silent.
*
*
*
*
*
"Bloody hell," said Fitzduane, with some understandable
irritation, as the radio in front of him shattered in a cloud of sparks.
The rounds, judging by the angle of entry, were coming from above and the
rear.
Before striking their
communications, the fire must have punched through the double polyester coating
of the envelope twice on its way in and out and then through the Kevlar-reinforced
plastic of the gondola itself.
He had hoped that such a combination would have stopped the light
automatic fire normally used by terrorists, but he was being disabused.
He was learning more and more about airships
and modern firepower in a hurry.
Frankly, he did not object to the acquisition of this information as such
— he rather liked airships — but the manner of learning left a great deal to be
desired.
The back of his hand oozed blood from an encounter with a piece of
razor-sharp plastic blasted out of the casing by the bullets, and he sucked the
wound.
A cut about an inch and a half
long was revealed.
All in all, they were being very lucky.
The terrorists had been shooting at them for well over a minute, he
estimated but so far nothing too vital had been struck.
Yaibo was discovering the hard way that scoring hits on something as
large as an airship was not the same as doing it damage.
True, they were losing the gas that kept them
up, but the bullet holes were so small in relation to the overall size of the
envelope that it was going to take some time before all of the lift was
affected.
Fitzduane had heard that
pilots in World War I had had much the same problem with German zeppelins
before the incendiary had been invented.
On the other hand zeppelins were allowed to shoot back.
