Serpent's Lair

Machida watched as Hogan leaned toward one of his men.

“Oh, it’s never soft and easy, huh?” Hogan whispered. “Okay, bring out the girl, and we’ll give you the goods,” Hogan said loudly.

The sound a walking stick disturbing the gravel path broke off the dialogue.

BOLAN LOOKED TO HIS LEFT, to the overgrown path. A gaunt man wearing old-fashioned robes was tapping a seven-foot-tall walking staff as he made his way among the rocks and weeds. His wooden sandals swept aside stones and gravel with each step. From the length of his hair and beard, he seemed to be ancient. Bolan was torn between shouting for the old man to turn back and opening fire on the marksmen in the tree line.

He glanced down and saw that even the Yakuza men were looking among themselves. They, too, wanted to say something, and one of the gunners even waved at the walker on the path. Bolan knew enough Japanese to understand the hissed “Go back!” command.

The walker stopped, gazing glassily over to the tree line, scanning it as if to catalog the men hidden among the bushes and grasses.

Bolan held his fire as the limousine door was flung open in a sudden flash of movement.

Rebecca Anthony was running for her life into the middle of a hellzone.

HOGAN SHOUTED AS HE SAW the girl break from the limousine. “She’s getting away!”

Nickles ran toward the trees, making it three steps before a single gunshot into the sky brought everyone up short. Honey paused, halfway to the tree line, her feet already bleeding from cuts where the gravel of the clearing dug and jabbed into the soles of her bare feet. She was suddenly rethinking the preference of being shot in the back. She took a deep breath, then started whimpering as she glanced between Machida, Hogan and the stranger who was coming down the path.

“I’m not going to let you get away, Rebecca,” Machida called out. “Everyone stays where they are.”

The old man continued walking toward the tableau.

Machida switched to Japanese. “I told you, old man, stand still.”

Hogan looked at the walker’s eyes. They were glazed and unfocused, hard black marbles that looked everywhere and nowhere at once. It was an odd, disconcerting visage, like the world was completely beneath him. The walker didn’t stop his movement, despite the command in Japanese.

“Kill him,” Hogan said.

Machida regarded Hogan coldly.

BOLAN CLOSED IN ON the first sniper he’d seen, hoping to cut the distance the bullet from his Walther flew. The shorter the flight path of the bullet, the less disturbed air. The sonic crack from the 9 mm slug wouldn’t draw as much attention. He glanced to his right, and saw that the snipers at the tree line were all keeping their eyes focused on Hogan’s mercenaries.

Machida had just been challenged to kill the intruder on the scene, and Bolan wanted to give the old man a chance to get out of this alive.

At three feet away, Bolan stood over the gunman with the hunting rifle. The sniper sensed the Executioner’s presence and swung the rifle around quickly. Bolan squeezed the trigger, and the gunman toppled lifelessly to the forest floor. Bolan’s hand snagged the rifle before it clattered to the ground.

The Executioner dropped to his knees and quickly slid into the dead Yakuza soldier’s place. In the shadows of the foliage around him, none of the other gunners reacted to his sudden action. The bolt-action rifle would be worth a lot in a gunfight. Ten spare rounds for the magazine were stuck into a saddle on the stock of the rifle.

The Executioner turned his attention back to the stand off in the clearing. The walker passed by Rebecca Anthony as she stood in the middle of the gravel. The spindly figure stopped, looking her over.

“Dammit… I just want to get away from all of this,” she said, voice trembling and soft, but full of angry resolve.

Bolan shouldered the hunting rifle. He’d have five, maybe six shots before he had to reload or switch to the Walther, but he refused to let the girl be harmed.

The walker grabbed her wrist and sneered, flipping aside his robes.

That’s when everything that Bolan knew about the situation turned upside down. The old man was suddenly sporting a fistful of Uzi.

3

When the walker pulled out his gun and yanked the girl in close to his body, several things happened at once.

The fleeing hostage screamed in terror. Her black-lipstick-smeared mouth opened wide, and she clutched a wiry arm of the walker.

The Yakuza head soldier, leveled one Beretta at Hogan and quickly drew a second pistol to aim at the walker. He shouted for his men to remain calm, but even from where he sat, Bolan could see that there was a tremor as he aimed unsteadily at the old man with the Uzi.

Hogan shouldered his MP-5, ready to spray either the Yakuza leader or the stranger who’d grabbed the girl. His bulletlike head lowered over the sights, deep-set eyes squinting.

The Executioner tightened his grip on the hunting rifle in his hands, brain racing to evaluate which was the greatest threat to the hostage.

The walker laughed as he pressed the Uzi to the girl’s temple. She closed her mouth but still looked around, the muzzle sliding all over her greasy, slicked hair.

Bolan couldn’t risk a head shot on the goon, in case he pulled the trigger on the girl. He swept the meeting ground. Mercenaries and mobsters alike were taking cover behind vehicles, and to either side of him, along the tree line, gunmen were communicating from their hiding spots. Everyone was trying to figure out what to do.

“Kojo,” someone said. A trail of Japanese followed that was too quick for Bolan to understand, but he knew it was directed at him.

“Hai,” Bolan whispered in response. He hoped to hell he hadn’t blown it.

There was a sudden movement to his left. A harsh sentence was uttered, and Bolan brought up his Walther, pumping out a single bullet into the darkness. The 9 mm slug quietly hit its target, but the gunman gave a scream as he tumbled from the tree line.

The walker spun, and the Uzi came away from the girl’s head. The dying Yakuza shooter crashed into a clump of tall grass, and the old man twisted, looking around for more enemies in the trees.

The Goth girl seized the opportunity, bent double and broke away from the man. She charged madly toward the path, paying no heed to the sharp stones digging into her feet. Fear drove her onward.

Bolan shouldered his rifle, targeting Hogan, who was in midswing to shoot down the Anthony girl. Bolan squeezed the trigger. He felt the hot splash of a stray shotgun pellet slice across his shoulder midshot. The Executioner’s round was off target.

Machida blasted the walker full in the chest with his Beretta, while others opened up on the man, throwing him to the ground.

Hogan grunted, his weapon getting off two shots, then stopping short as a .30-caliber rifle bullet smashed into the frame of his machine pistol and drove him onto his back. Bolan adjusted his aim and threw the bolt on the rifle, hurriedly chambering another shot.

“Hogan! There’s someone else in the tree line!” Machida warned. The gangster opened fire with his other Beretta. The Yakuza men swung their weapons to open fire on the Executioner’s position, but by that time, Bolan was already hot-footing it out of the way.

The mercenaries held their fire, looking on in disbelief as the Japanese mobsters ignored them, turning their attention on some mystery threat.

“Dammit! Shoot the trees!” Hogan roared at his men. He was aching from being slammed in the chest by his own gun. His hand hurt, but he pulled his Colt and opened fire on the spot where the single rifle shot had come from.

THE EXECUTIONER CHARGED through the woods, heading in the direction of the path where Rebecca Anthony intended to make her escape. While on the run, he threw the bolt on the hunting rifle to chamber another round and fired into the shadowed mass of a gunman blazing away with his handgun. The shooter screamed, and his body tumbled away. The number of bullets slicing through the forest hadn’t decreased; they were still out for his blood. Bolan cut hard to the right, charging to where he estimated the young woman would be on the path.

HONEY’S FEET HURT as she made the run along the path. She expected one of the bullets behind her to thunder into her flesh and drop her any minute. She felt completely helpless as she pumped her legs, striving to survive for just a few more yards, to get around the bend and into the foliage.

The prospect of getting shot while escaping filled her with dread. The plan to run for her life and strike out for her freedom seemed like the scatterbrained plot of a woman doomed to die.

Then two hundred pounds of muscle rammed into her in a blindsiding crash. One strong arm scooped her off her cut and bloody feet and carried her into the heavy bushes and trees on the opposite side of the path, as gunfire crackled all around.

“Stop shooting! Stop shooting! He has the girl!” Machida shouted.

“Fuck!” Hogan screamed. “Get into the woods!”

Honey stared up at the man carrying her. He was craggy faced, and intense. However, the way he held her, putting both arms around her to support her, told her something.

This black-haired stranger had no business with either the Yakuza or the mercenaries who showed up to retrieve her for her father.

THE WALKER STIRRED. He sat up with a sudden lurch and aimed at Machida, holding down the trigger of his Uzi. Despite a blood-spattered face, the slender old man was still in fighting form, and if the Yakuza boss hadn’t spotted the motion out of the corner of his eye, he would have been cut down where he stood. As it was, the limousine was peppered with 9 mm holes.

Hogan swung around the back of the car and pulled the trigger on his Colt .45, snapping two shots into the head of the walker, blowing off a huge chunk of skull in the process.

This time, the Uzi-toting old man slumped for good.

Machida and Hogan walked slowly to the lifeless man. Both reloaded their pistols on the slow, uncertain journey over, and saw that the wisps of mustache and beard were glued-on fakes, half-washed away by the spray of blood from the first salvo of fire the combined forces launched at him.

Machida bent and pulled at the ratty gray robes of the old man and saw the black Kevlar armor underneath. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

“You tell me, Hoss,” Hogan said. He raised and leveled his Colt at the Japanese mobster. Machida looked at him but kept his pistol aimed at the ground.

“You think I wanted this fool to let the girl get away?” Machida asked. “She’s running into the woods.”

“This is your country, man. You had men in the tree line,” Hogan grumbled.

Machida shook his head. “We’ll help you find the girl. Under one condition.”

“You’re giving me new conditions for the deal? You already have the ransom from Anthony.”

“I’m not talking about the blueprints,” Machida answered. “Well, in a way I am.”

Hogan lowered his gun. “What are you talking about, then?”

“You came dressed to kill, so to speak. That’s why I had men watching, ready to burn you back. I figured you’d have body armor and automatic weapons,” Machida answered. “What I didn’t anticipate were the two problems coming out of the woods.”

“And how do you know they were two separate problems?”

“Simple. One didn’t want his presence known, but his hand was forced when you were about to shoot the girl,” Machida answered. “This one is Japanese. I’m not sure about the identity of the other man….”

“He’s allegedly an FBI agent named Matt Cooper,” Hogan replied.

“Allegedly an FBI agent? Or allegedly named Matt Cooper?” Machida inquired further.

“Both. I’m thinking he was using us to get closer to you and your boss, and just ended up on the wrong end of our sting,” Hogan answered.

Machida rubbed his chin. “A temporary truce, then? It’ll be more profitable to work together. And there is nothing wrong with taking the blueprints you have, and making two copies of them. One you can blackmail Anthony with, and one we can sell on the black market.”

Hogan tilted his head. “It sounds like a win-win situation.”

“But does it sound acceptable to you?”

The mercenary put his hand forth. “It’s a deal.”

Machida didn’t trust the American as they pressed flesh, but at least it would give the Yakuza headman some stretch to figure out how to deal with him.

BOLAN CAME TO A HALT, his reserves of strength exhausted during his frantic run through the trees with Rebecca Honey in his arms. He set her down and squatted, looking at her feet.

“What’re you stopping here for?” Honey asked, trying to mask her doubt and uncertainty with a hard edge to her voice.

Bolan didn’t bother looking up from the cuts on the soles of her feet. Most of them were shallow, but a couple of them were deep and painful looking, seeping blood. He grabbed his T-shirt and ripped it. There was a slight gasp as Honey looked at his naked abdomen.

“Did you lose a fight with a weed cutter?” she asked.

Bolan shook his head. “Occupational hazard. Scar tissue. Your feet look like they’ll be okay if I can control the bleeding with some direct pressure compresses.”

“And all you have is your T-shirt. What happened, you forgot to go to the standard action-hero supermarket before going on this little adventure?” Honey asked. She looked down at herself, her deliberately torn clothing had no extra material to add to her own healing.

“Why the hell were my father’s men trying to shoot me?”

“They wanted more money,” Bolan answered.

“And you?”

“Name’s Matt Cooper. FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Rebecca…”

“Call me Viscious Honey…or Honey for short.”

Bolan looked at her. “Honey, we’re cut off and have to find some transportation out of this valley. There are men hunting us down who would like nothing better than to gut me like a fish and leave me to watch whatever they’re going to do to you.”

Honey nodded. “Let ’em try something. I’ll make it cost them. Though, I am curious at how well the kidnappers treated me.”

“Not due to honor. Just smart business on the part of the Yakuza. However, Hogan’s going to show you off, roughed up, probably even tape any beating or other abuse they inflict on you,” Bolan said.

“I’m not going back to my father.”

Bolan sighed. “I don’t care what you do. I just want to make sure you’re away and safe. If you do what I say, things will be all right.”

Bolan tightened the strip of cloth around Honey’s foot and she gasped again, wincing in pain. Her foot was wrapped from the ball to near the ankle, a single restraining strap up around her ankle providing her with some security for her injured foot. Bolan pressed his thumb along her other foot, but only received a faint hiss as he touched one particularly deep cut.

“I’m trying to give the worst, most painful cuts as much protection as I can. I wish there was a better way, but at least your injuries will be wrapped up until I can get you some footwear,” Bolan said. “If we’re lucky, the next Yakuza guy I fight will have boots you can manage in.”

Honey smirked. “Great. You’re not only a shining knight, you’re an eternal optomist.”

“Planning ahead for possibilities and probabilities. I’m hoping to avoid conflict the rest of the way back to Tokyo, but in case we can’t, I’m going to make the most of the fights,” Bolan answered. “Even if that means looting a few dead bodies.”

Honey’s lip quivered, then she shrugged. “I don’t mind. They kidnapped me, and they want to kidnap me again.”

Bolan took a moment to withdraw the Walther and replace its partially spent magazine with a fresh one. He set the weapon in the grass and Honey reached for it. Bolan froze, looking at her as she held the weapon in her lap.

“I don’t want to leave it behind,” she said. “It’s the only gun you have, right?”

Bolan regretted ditching the hunting rifle, but he had no spare ammunition for it, and he’d needed his arms free to carry Honey. “Yeah.”

Bolan removed the Yakuza gun belt and unhooked the pouches and holster from it. They were all connected to the belt, by J-hooks, so he didn’t have to take off his own belt and run it through the loops. He clipped them on firmly, then stashed the partially spent magazine in its pouch. He held out his hand for the Walther.

Honey seemed reluctant to turn it over, though she wasn’t aiming it at him.

“Honey, we don’t have time for this. What’s wrong?”

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked. “You don’t look like an FBI agent.”

“What makes you think that?” Bolan asked.

Honey pointed to the scars across his body, visible through the open front of his torn shirt. “An FBI agent with that much scar tissue would have had a desk job by now. Knifed and shot that many times? Plus you have another gun,” she said, pointing at his shoulder.

Bolan gingerly slid out of the Glock’s holster, the leather scraping his injury.

“Hogan, your father’s mercenary, gave me a dead pistol. Took the firing pin out so it wouldn’t shoot. I had to ditch it.”

He took the shoulder holster and began digging briefly. When he had a hole big enough, he shoved the useless belt, holster and Glock ammunition into it then pushed and smoothed leaves and dirt back over it.

Honey moved closer to Bolan, her eyes wide. She handed over the Walther, and Bolan took it, instinctively knowing that their pursuers were close. He made a count of the enemy. There were nine visible across the section of woods that he could see.

“That way,” Bolan said, pointing. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Yeah. Let me go first into any traps?” Honey asked. “Who knows what kind of shit that creepy skinny guy left all over this valley.”

“Don’t make any noise,” Bolan answered. “They’ve slowed down, and they’re looking for tracks.”

Honey glanced back at the trail Bolan’s big boots had dug up in his desperate run. She looked to him, doubtful, but he nodded her on. She turned and scrambled along as fast as she could without making the leaves rustle loudly with her passing. Behind her, Bolan followed, using a branch to wipe out their tracks.

They moved slow and low, and they kept their heads below the level of the saplings and tall grasses growing between the trees.

On the other side of some waist-high grasses, Honey paused. Bolan slipped in beside her.

“Aww, dammit. We’re closing in on a rise,” she noted. “They’ll see us.”

“Cut right. We’ll travel parallel to them. The ground is uneven and there’s a depression at the base of those trees,” Bolan whispered. “Get moving.”

TOSHIEE RAN ACROSS the compound. He knew that Master Zakoji was not to be interrupted, but with the sounds of gunfire rattling on the hill overhead, there was a threat of their facility being discovered.

Camouflage netting cast crazy, obscene shadows on the ground as he raced across the camp to the main building, where Zakoji kept his laboratory and office. It was wide and squat, and he knew that it sunk deep into the ground, where the bodies were taken, to be changed by the almost sorcerous machinations of Master Zakoji’s whitecoats.

Toshiee threw open the doors in time to see his leader, the man chosen by God to carry on the name of the great alchemist who dared defy a corrupt shogun, reborn in this time to bring Japan back to glory. He clapped his fist to his chest and bowed swiftly.

“What is it?” Zakoji asked, puffing a cigarette as he overlooked the glass enclosed underground labs.

“There was the sound of gunfire on the hill,” Toshiee said breathlessly.

“The Yakuza bring another of their victims and execute him, and you worry about that?”

“There was much gunfire,” Toshiee continued. “More than just when they render a body useless to you, my lord. This was the sound of thunder splitting the air. Like the sounds of a great battle.”

Zakoji turned, narrowing his gaze. He then nodded to the man to his left. “See if our scout on the hill is responding.”

“Great Master, so soon on the heels of the previous intrusion—”

“I shall have to get in touch with our men dealing with him,” Zakoji said. “You have done well.”

The young man bowed again. He caught the flurry of robes as his master turned, glimpsed the twisting form of the great crimson serpent embroidered into his kimono as he disappeared up the stairs toward his office.

TOJU SAKEI, KNOWN TO his followers as Master Zakoji, tore through the door to his office, his mind racing.

It couldn’t have been coincidence that brought a gun battle to his doorstep so soon after the government agent invaded. And yet, why would federal agents begin a gun battle so close by, ruining their element of surprise?

Sakei shook the many possibilities out of his mind. He needed all the information he could get. He glanced over to Umon, one of his lieutenants.

“Any word from our sentry?”

“Kawai isn’t answering his radio,” Umon answered, bowing his head reverently.

“Call our team torturing the government man back to the compound. And send some patrols into the woods. I want everyone on full alert, that means body armor and automatic weapons,” Sakei said.

“Who do you think is attacking us?” another man, Rikyu, asked.

“I’m not sure we are being attacked,” Sakei responded. He rubbed his black-bristled chin. “I think someone else brought their fight with the Yakuza into our backyard.”

Umon and Rikyu glanced at each other. “And if the Yakuza discover that the men they’ve been burying over the years are missing?” Umon asked.

“We won’t let them live long enough to analyze that information,” Sakei assured them. “Send out the patrols. Shoot to kill!”

Umon and Rikyu vacated his office, and Sakei looked out over the compound.

If he was going to take over Japan, fulfilling the legacy of the original Master Zakoji, he was going to need a few more days of privacy. Once he perfected the disease’s interactions with the corpses, then he would be able to bring down the great gleaming cities of steel and glass, sweeping away the neon modernization that poisoned the beautiful nation he lived in. He could make Japan a simpler, more noble land once again.

It was regrettable that he had to use the trappings of modern science, but the germ, the lowliest of all organisms, was older than mankind. It was ancient, and thus, in a way, it was worthy of his goal. Did not the alchemist Zakoji develop superior poisons and diseases with which to strike down his enemies centuries ago?

All that came to an end when the lone swordsman came to the secluded valley. Zakoji’s dying curse against the man had been heard over and over again, in tale upon tale in Sakei’s family.

Sakei thought that the government agent being tortured to death on the hill might be the reincarnation of that lone swordsman.

But Sakei knew that the sounds of battle so soon after sending the Koancho agent off to die was a sign. He hadn’t destroyed the reincarnation of the man in black.

But he would soon get his chance.

4

The Executioner continued to obliterate their back trail with the branch, taking care not to bob his head into view as he watched the pursuing team of Yakuza gunmen and American mercenaries. The enemy was hot on their trail to retrieve the young woman, and he had only a single 9 mm pistol with a short barrel and an 8-shot magazine. There was a real danger of Honey Anthony being gunned down alongside him as he tried to protect her.

The girl was keeping her cool, despite the bandages swathed around her bare feet and the fact that she was crawling literally on the ground. Occasionally she’d give a grunt of effort as she moved a limb and found herself overstrained in her position. Fear kept her head down, though. Fear and tenacity.

Bolan knew from reports that she was hardly fighting material, but she clearly had courage.