The Patriot Attack (18 page)

Outside Yaita
Japan

J
on Smith eased the car along the suburban Japanese street at precisely the speed limit. The houses on either side were a mix of styles, a bit more colorful than he’d expected and all borrowing to some extent from traditional Asian architecture. Most lots were at least an acre, and the overall landscape was too wide open to offer much cover.

He’d managed to find a rental car with tinted windows that, combined with his dark hair and complexion, would prevent him from attracting too much attention. Not that the neighborhood was exactly awash with pedestrians. He’d seen a group of kids playing soccer in a school playground about two miles back, but beyond that the area looked almost deserted. Everyone was still at work.

His target, the materials engineer Genjiro Ueda, lived directly ahead on a wooded hill rising a few hundred feet into the overcast sky. Sun glinted from the windows of widely spaced houses, and a narrow road was intermittently visible through the trees. It was a much more workable setting for what he was there to do. The lots expanded to an even more generous three acres and the foliage grew in density with elevation. The question was whether to go now or to wait for darkness.

It didn’t take long to arrive at a decision. When he and Randi had split up so she could go after Akito Maki, they’d agreed that speed would have to take precedence over discretion. If they were right about Takahashi, he’d be circling the wagons around his people as fast as he could.

Smith kept a close watch on his rearview mirror as he ran through the details Star had uncovered about his target. Ueda was in his late forties and a little thinner and more fit than Smith would have preferred. He’d been a postdoc at the Tokyo Institute of Technology studying carbon fiber technology when he’d suddenly left to start his own firm. He made a good wage—the equivalent of low four hundreds in US dollars—but even the inestimable Star had been unable to get a good bead on who his clients were.

Satellite photos and a few street views from Google showed an elegant two-story house with a fence that was more form than function and lacked a gate. Star had been able to find no evidence that Ueda and his wife of fifteen years had any kind of security system. Also, no kids, no pets, and no neighbors within view. The engineer seemed to work largely out of an office in his house, and his wife didn’t have a job. So the hope was that he’d be there. Smith wasn’t particularly anxious to have to sit around and wait.

The grade of the road started to steepen and he maintained his speed, counting driveways as he went up. The idyllic neighborhood wasn’t exactly Afghanistan but that didn’t stop the adrenaline from pumping. Normally, Covert-One ops were planned to the very last detail. By comparison, this one felt hopelessly half-assed. He was still suffering badly from his injuries and probably only functioning at 60 percent of peak. There had been no time to insert a surveillance team to recon the area, he had no backup, and the sum total of his operational experience in Japan consisted of getting shot in the back with a crossbow bolt.

Smith reached for a compact Taser lying in the passenger seat as he turned into Ueda’s driveway. The plan was to shock him, stuff him in the trunk, and get the hell out of there. Three minutes tops, depending on the situation with his wife. As Randi was fond of saying, what could possibly go wrong?

Smith’s normal bias would be to park down the road and go quietly over the wall, but someone was bound to notice a six-foot American wandering around the neighborhood. Particularly when he started climbing fences in broad daylight. Better to try to stay a little closer to the natural rhythms of the area.

He parked behind a Toyota SUV and slipped the Taser into his pocket before stepping from the car. Nice house, nice yard. Nothing out of place.

Not that appearances meant much. If he’d been fighting for the other side, he’d make sure everything looked as normal as possible to draw his opponent in.

There was no bell in evidence next to the door, so Smith gave it a few hard raps with one hand, keeping the other wrapped around the Taser in his jacket.

When footsteps became audible on the other side, he moved back a pace and checked behind him again. A moment later the door was opened by an attractive Japanese woman who looked to be in her midthirties. She seemed genuinely surprised to see an American on her porch, and Smith cautiously took it as a good sign.

According to Star, she’d taken five years of English in secondary school. Based on her grades, though, he decided to enunciate carefully.

“Hello. I’m Professor Jon Richards from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is your husband at home?”

Her brow knitted a bit but she seemed to understand. “Please come in. He is here. He is in his…office.”

Smith smiled easily and stepped across the threshold, closing the door behind him.

“Please stay,” she said deliberately, then started toward the back of the house.

He waited for her to disappear and then followed silently, still clutching the Taser. It would have been preferable for her not to be home, but that had probably been too much to hope for. Nothing a little duct tape couldn’t solve.

He saw her pass through a doorway at the back and decided this was his best chance. According to the architectural plans, there was only one way in and out of the room. They’d be easier to control in the confined space.

He could hear Genjiro’s voice, slightly elevated in volume but completely unintelligible.

“Good afternoon,” Smith said, trying to sound cheerful as he entered the medium-sized home office.

“Who are you?” Genjiro said, standing up from behind his desk. His English was solid and so was his body. According to Star, he’d been involved in the martial arts since he was five years old.

“I’m an engineer with MIT,” Smith said with another disarming smile. “I was in the neighborhood and Bob Darren said I should come by and introduce myself.”

He maintained eye contact with Genjiro, making certain that he wasn’t looking toward the Taser sliding out of Smith’s pocket. Unfortunately, his wife was paying more attention.

Instead of running or shouting, though, she whipped around and aimed an extremely well-executed spinning back kick right at Smith’s head. He ducked, feeling her foot pass through the top of his hair as her husband leaped across his desk.

If he lived through this, Star was going to get a serious ass chewing for missing the woman’s fighting skills.

There was no question that he was losing control of the situation, and he had only a few seconds to get it back. The woman recovered quickly and transitioned smoothly into a front kick aimed directly at his testicles. If he was 100 percent, he’d have foot-swept her, Tasered her husband, and been on his way. But those days were over for a while.

There was no choice but to use the Taser on her. She stiffened and dropped like a stone just as Genjiro launched a brutal side kick. His background was in tae kwon do, so he’d be heavy on foot techniques—a game Smith had no interest in playing. He slipped the kick and grabbed hold of the man, going for his neck, but mostly trying to stay close enough to shut down his offense.

Genjiro managed to swing an elbow, but Smith moved even closer and was struck by the man’s triceps. He took a vicious stomp to his right foot, but the light hiking boots he was wearing absorbed the brunt of it and gave him time to snake an arm around the engineer’s throat.

After decades of training, though, Genjiro wasn’t going to make it that easy. He went for Smith’s fingers and almost got hold of one before Smith could close his fist. The Japanese was off balance and Smith managed to spin him to the ground, landing hard on his back with both knees. That dazed the man enough for Smith to sink the choke hold deeper and tighten it as much as his injured back would allow. Genjiro clawed blindly behind him and Smith buried his face into the man’s back to protect his eyes. After thirty seconds the engineer started to weaken. Smith kept the pressure on, not easing off until Genjiro was on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness.

When Smith rolled the man over, he reached out weakly but stopped when he felt the suppressor of Smith’s Sig Sauer pressed up under his chin.

“We can all walk away from this no worse for the wear, Genjiro. I just want to talk to you about your work.”

“I’m a consultant. I—”

“You work for Masao Takahashi.”

Smith realized he’d been hoping that Genjiro wouldn’t have any idea what he was talking about—that he and Randi were wrong about all this. It was clear from the man’s eyes, though, that he knew exactly what was being asked.

“Who?” the Japanese said, obviously too panicked and oxygen deprived to come up with a more elaborate denial.

“You’re telling me you don’t know who Takahashi is?”

“I…of course. But—”

“Your country’s on the brink of war, Genjiro. And Takahashi’s doing everything he can to make sure it happens.”

“Make sure it happens?” the man said as his head cleared. “The Chinese attack our ships, they try to kill him. We have a right to defend ourselves!”

“What if I tell you that I think Takahashi sank the
Izumo
? That he
wants
this war.”

“Impossible! We can’t defeat China. The Americans would get involved and we would end up in a bloody stalemate that serves no one. Takahashi knows this better than anyone.”

Smith nodded imperceptibly. Of course Genjiro wouldn’t have the big picture. He was just a soldier. A brilliant one, but a soldier nonetheless.

“Do you think you’re the only one he recruited? What about Japan’s other geniuses? The ones who used to make your country the world’s technological capital. Where is Hideki Ito? Where is Akito Maki?”

Genjiro didn’t respond, considering what he’d just heard.

“Takahashi has an army of men like you designing weapons for him,” Smith pressed. “But you’ve done too good a job. Mutual assured destruction no longer applies. Takahashi thinks he can win.”

Genjiro opened his mouth to speak but whatever he said was drowned out by the sound of shattering glass.

Smith dropped and rolled to his side with his pistol held out in front of him. A large projectile had come through the east window and slammed into the back wall. It shattered on impact, sending what looked like a bunch of finned .50-caliber rounds cascading to the floor.

Genjiro used the confusion to pull away and struggle to his feet amid a sound that reminded Smith of the Independence Day bottle rockets his father used to buy on the black market.

“Get your ass down!” Smith shouted as tiny jets of flame erupted from the backs of the objects lying around the room. A moment later they began to skitter across the floor and take to the air.

Smith managed to grab Genjiro’s ankle but it was too late. One of the projectiles hit him in the right side, puncturing his heart and both his lungs before erupting from his back in a spray of blood, tissue, and bone. It cartwheeled out of control, finally hitting a wall and going dead.

Most of the others hadn’t gotten off the ground yet and Smith stayed low, going for Genjiro’s wife. He had no idea what the hell these things were or what their capabilities were. Did they have a targeting system or did they just fly at random and cut down everything in range? Either way, he wasn’t planning on hanging around to find out.

Smith heard a loud whoosh behind him and he dived, rolling over the top of the woman who was just starting to shake off the effects of the Taser. The projectile barely missed him, rocketing past his right shoulder and sticking in the heavy wood molding near the ceiling.

If all these things managed to get into the air, Smith knew that his survival would be measured in seconds. He grabbed the dazed woman, dragging her toward the heavy desk that dominated the room. She screamed and he felt the warmth of blood splattering across his face. When he looked back, a chunk the size of a baseball was missing from her right thigh.

His plan to get beneath the desk and pull it toward the wall as cover was starting to look completely pointless. It was quickly becoming clear that these things weren’t just high-tech shrapnel—they had some kind of command and control structure. If they weren’t able to get around the desk, they’d go right through it.

Smith lifted the struggling woman into a fireman’s carry and went for the broken window, falling through it and bringing what glass was left in the frame down on them.

He rolled on top of the woman, lying on his back with his Sig Sauer aimed toward the open window—more out of habit and training than an expectation that it would do any good. After an excruciatingly long two-count, he came to the realization that they weren’t following. He could still hear the bottle-rocket sound of their engines, but whoever programmed them had obviously set them up to stay within the confines of the house.

He moved off the moaning woman and into a crouch, sweeping his weapon from left to right. They were sandwiched between the house and a dense, blossom-covered hedge. He couldn’t see out, but that probably meant no one could see in either. His vehicle would be to the right at about twenty yards, but it might as well have been a mile. Genjiro’s wife was going into shock and his injuries were going to make carrying her that distance a slow and painful process.

Smith pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed Randi, sliding cautiously along the rough-hewn boards that sided the house.

“Yeah,” she said, picking up on the second ring.

“Abort! Do you understand me? Abort!”

“Jon? What the hell—”

His body was suddenly racked with a kind of pain he’d never felt before. Randi’s voice turned to static and he felt his legs buckle. The gun fell from his hand as he fought to stay upright. Then everything went dark.

Utsunomiya
Japan

J
on!” Randi shouted into the phone. “Jon, can you hear me?”

It was obvious he couldn’t. The static was so loud that she had to hold the phone more than a foot from her ear. And then it went silent.

She resisted the urge to slam the cell repeatedly into the dashboard of her rented car and instead threw it on the passenger seat. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper and she gunned the car into oncoming traffic, turning onto a slightly less crowded street lined with high-rise apartment buildings.

As expected, there were no empty spaces, so she pulled into a loading dock decorated with emphatic signs that she assumed said “No Parking.”

“Calm down,” she said in the empty confines of the car.

People walking by on the sidewalk started looking at her with vague concern, probably based on her expression. She picked up the phone again and pretended to be in the midst of a cheerful conversation. A few moments later, no one was giving her a second thought.

What the hell had happened? She’d seen Smith bleeding from an artery, getting shot at, and playing with viruses that could wipe out half of humanity. He always sounded like he was speaking at a PTA meeting. This call had been different and it unnerved her. He’d sounded desperate.

She turned the wheel to pull back out into the street but then stopped before releasing the brake. Her first instinct was to try to make it to him, but what was the point? It would be almost an hour’s drive, and that was only if the GPS in her phone stopped inexplicably switching into Japanese.

Her target was only about a mile away and her second instinct was to go for him despite Smith’s warning. Akito Maki was the last lead they had, and if they blew it what was the next step? Snatching random Japanese scientists, hooking them up to car batteries, and asking if they’d been spending their weekends building a science fiction army?

She looked across the street and saw an Imperial Japanese war flag flying over the entrance to an apartment building. It was one of probably twenty she’d seen that day. And then there were the demonstrations, T-shirts, banners, and barricades erected in front of Japan’s government buildings. Grocery stores were having a hard time keeping their shelves stocked as people squirreled away supplies to get them through what everyone seemed certain was coming.

She slammed a hand into the wheel and it felt so good she did it a few more times. Normally she’d assume that Smith had escaped whatever he’d gotten himself into, but his injuries were slowing him down badly. More likely he was dead or captured.

A man in a police uniform was approaching from the north and he pointed sternly at her. She gave an apologetic nod and eased back into traffic. The GPS in her phone warned her in Japanese that she was headed away from her destination. She turned it off and dialed Fred Klein.

If they ever needed one of his miracles, it was now.