Ninja Assault

Growing into his position as the next boss of the Sumiyoshi-kai, perhaps.

Or was it something else?

Atlantic City’s “big brother” was Noboru Machii, thirty-one, an ex-con who’d done time for smuggling methamphetamine before a key witness recanted and committed suicide—seppuku in the native tongue. That had blown the prosecution’s case, freed Machii on appeal and helped restore the honor of the dead man’s family—along with a substantial contribution to their bank account, supposedly the payoff from a life insurance policy that didn’t quibble over self-destruction in a righteous cause.

Now, Machii had a foothold on the boardwalk and was bound for bigger things, it seemed. If he could hand a piece of Tommy Wolff’s casino empire to the Sumiyoshi-kai, he would be well positioned for a top spot in the syndicate. Who could predict what might transpire when old Takumi finally cashed in his chips?

It was a gamble, right, and Machii had one strike against him, going in.

He didn’t know Bolan had dealt himself into the game.

CHAPTER TWO

Sunrise Enterprises, Atlantic City

The office complex wasn’t much to look at in comparison to the casinos standing tall along the boardwalk, one block closer to the ocean. Just four stories high, a drab rectangle painted beige, it gave no hint that anyone inside was tinkering with local history or planning to tap a vein of gold from the exalted gaming industry that kept Atlantic City on the map.

To spot those signs, a person had to look behind the stucco, maybe close one eye and make believe there was no weedy vacant lot next door, where homeless people had been known to light a bonfire on a winter’s night. A person had to know about Sunrise, and it was helpful if there was a team on tap like Hal Brognola’s crew at Stony Man, hidden within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, picking secrets from the cloud, thin air, wherever, and reviewing them until they all made sense.

In this case Sunrise Enterprises was a paper company, incorporated like so many others of its kind in Delaware, existing for the sole purpose of purchasing and selling stock in other companies. On paper, it was all strictly routine, aboveboard, and the company filed tax returns on time, paying its debts without complaint.

Look deeper, though, and Sunrise was an offshoot of another company, the G.E.A. Consortium, whose initials stood for Greater East Asia. It was just a fluke, perhaps, that during the 1930s and ’40s, Japan’s imperial masters had called their captured territory in the Far East and South Pacific the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Maybe.

Look deeper yet, and G.E.A. was owned by three middle-aged members of the Sumiyoshi-kai, including the family’s administrative officer, its legal adviser and its top accountant. Needless to say, they served at Kazuo Takumi’s pleasure and could be replaced at any time they ceased to please him.

Break it down. The drab four-story box was Takumi’s nerve center in Atlantic City. Strings were pulled inside those offices that ended human lives and had potential to disrupt the city’s—and, perhaps, the state’s—economy.

Bolan saw two approaches to the viper’s nest. He could obliterate it, salt the earth and scatter any stray survivors, or he could attempt a soft probe, look for opportunities to gain further intelligence and plan his final killing stroke accordingly.

On second thought, why not combine the two ideas?

One item in his bag of tricks was an infinity transmitter, designed to monitor conversations within a room through its telephone line, whether or not the phone itself was in use. Its name derived from the fact that phone line transmissions could be received at an infinite distance, unlike other bugs with a finite physical range.

But it still required that Bolan get inside to plant the bug.

And for that, he needed a diversion.

The internet provided a schematic drawing of the office block, showing him where and how to cut the building’s juice. There were battery-powered emergency lights on all floors, but severing the trunk line would deactivate security cameras found on all floors, while leaving the fire alarms live. If he could generate sufficient smoke to rout the office occupants, it all came down to a matter of time and nerve.

Sorting through his mobile arsenal Bolan selected weapons first. He wasn’t planning an attack, per se, but meant to be prepared for any unforeseen eventuality. An MP-5 K submachine gun fit the bill ideally—“K” for kurz, or “short,” in German, easily concealable even with a suppressor screwed on to its threaded muzzle. He would wear it on a shoulder sling, beneath a lightweight jacket, backed up by a Glock 17 that was lighter, easier to handle and loaded a higher-capacity magazine than the Beretta he had carried into countless other skirmishes.

For the diversion proper, Bolan chose four AN-M8 smoke grenades, each filled with nineteen ounces of Type C hexachloroethane—HC. Each cylindrical canister would emit thick white smoke for 105 to 150 seconds following ignition, enough to choke a four-story building’s ventilation ducts and keep any occupants scurrying for the nearest exit once fire alarms set them in motion.

Getting in and out before firefighters reached the scene was Bolan’s problem.

Make that getting in and out alive.

* * *

NOBORU MACHII FELT like celebrating. He had carried out the order from his oyabun without a hitch, had seen the two imported killers off, beginning their long flight back to Japan, and felt he had the local situation well under control. It was too early yet, of course, for a direct approach to Tommy Wolff’s estate, but Machii had his battery of lawyers hovering, gauging the time and monitoring every move by Wolff’s board of directors since the penthouse massacre, the night before last. As expected, there was posturing and jockeying for power, but Machii held the winning hand.

He’d spent the past eight months uncovering the secret sins of every member on the board at Wolff Consolidated. There were seven of them, and Machii knew them well, although they’d never met. In fact, he knew them better than their partners, wives and children did.

Machii knew that one of them collected child pornography and traveled once a year to Bangkok, where his indiscretions had been filmed. Another had been stealing from the company, a third selling insider knowledge to the firm’s competitors for half again his yearly salary. A fourth was what Americans presumed to call a “high-functioning” alcoholic, though he had not functioned well enough the night he struck and killed a homeless African-American with his Mercedes-Benz in Newark. No suspicion had attached to him so far, but that could change within an instant.

So it went, on down the line, with six of seven board members. The seventh was above reproach—a miracle, of sorts—but he could not prevail once Machii had secured a majority of the directors to support his takeover of Wolff Consolidated. In addition to the preservation of their guilty secrets, he would promise them secure positions and the standard golden parachutes in place.

As if a written contract could protect them when Machii tired of having them around.

He would have another kind of contract waiting for them then, and nothing any lawyer said would rescue adversaries of the Sumiyoshi-kai. Machii had taught Tommy Wolff that lesson, and if the dead man’s underlings refused to learn from his example, their deaths would be tantamount to suicide.

As far as celebrating went, however, it was premature. The prize was now within his grasp, but he had not secured it yet. Until the transfer of authority was finalized, Machii could not rightfully claim victory.

“How long shall we wait for the approach?” Tetsuya Watanabe asked.

Machii’s lieutenant was younger, still learning the art of patience. Left unchecked, he might have overplayed their hand, but he inevitably followed orders from his boss.

“After the funeral is soon enough,” Machii said. “A few more days will do no harm. If we approach them prematurely, they might panic and do something foolish.”

“I understand.”

Of course, Watanabe understood. The order had been simple and required no verbal answer, but he still observed the standard courtesy.

Noboru had another thought. “We should send flowers, yes? Preserve proper appearances, and—”

Suddenly, the lights went out. The air-conditioning gave a little gasp and died.

Machii swiveled toward his office window, with its view of the boardwalk casinos. Lights were blazing in the massive pleasure palaces, along the piers and on Atlantic Boulevard below. Rising from his chair, he told Watanabe, “It’s our building only. Find out what is wrong.”

“Yes, sir!” Watanabe was halfway to the office door when he acknowledged the command, already reaching for the knob. Beyond the door, the hallway’s emergency lights had kicked on, illuminating escape routes from the building in case of disaster.

A simple power failure that affected only Sunrise Enterprises?

It was possible, of course. And yet…

Machii reached into his desk’s top right-hand drawer, removed the SIG Sauer P250 pistol he kept ready there, and held it at his side. There was no need for him to check the weapon. It was fully loaded and ready to fire as soon as he depressed its double-action trigger. Its magazine held ten .45-caliber rounds, with one more in the chamber, enough to keep any prowlers at bay until his security team reached the office.

Machii was moving toward the panoramic office window when the fire alarm went off, making him flinch. The action was involuntary, barely noticeable even if he had not been alone, but it embarrassed him, regardless.

Fire?

It seemed unlikely, but it might explain the power cut. Instead of waiting in his office, he should—

Even as the thought took form, Machii smelled it: smoke. The scent was unmistakable.

Coming from where, exactly?

“Jesus!”

There was no one in the room to hear him curse or note his momentary loss of calm. With pistol still in hand, Machii went to find out what was happening and right the situation.

* * *

BOLAN HAD PARKED his rented car on Atlantic Avenue and locked it. As it was getting on toward closing time, he’d crossed through spotty traffic in the middle of the block and made his way along an alleyway behind Atlantic Avenue, past long ranks of commercial garbage Dumpsters bearing names of their respective pickup companies. He’d met no one along the way, except a stray cat that examined him in passing and decided that he wouldn’t make a meal.

At the rear of Sunrise Enterprises, Bolan found a fire escape. The lower portion of the ladder operated on a counterbalance system, wisely using nylon bushings and stainless-steel cables to ward off corrosion. When he jumped to grasp the lowest rung, that section of the ladder dropped to meet him, making no more noise than Bolan would expect from a bicycle passing through the alley.

Scrambling up the fire escape, bolt cutters dangling from his belt, the MP-5 K swinging underneath his right arm, Bolan checked each window that he passed. Some of the offices were empty, others occupied, but no one noticed him, bent to their work as if clock-watching at day’s end had been decreed a mortal sin.

Atop the roof, he found the junction box and used the bolt cutters to clip the padlock’s shackle. Once the small gray door was open, he could see the trunk line pumping power through the building, keeping it alive.

The bolt cutters had rubber grips, so there was no need for insulated gloves as Bolan spread the jaws to clasp the thick trunk line. One flex of his arms and shoulders, one brief shower of sparks, and twenty feet beyond the junction box, the building’s air conditioner shut down.

So far, so good.

Wasting no time, he crossed to stand over the air-conditioning unit, opened it and slit the silver wrapping on a large duct set into the roof. When that was open, Bolan took his smoke grenades in turn, removed their pins and dropped each of the four smoke bombs into the vent he had created with his blade. The unit wasn’t running to propel the smoke through lower ducts and vents, but each grenade contained enough HC to spread fumes through the topmost floor, at least.

And that was all that Bolan needed.

He approached the rooftop access door—no padlock on the outside there—and tried it. Locked, of course. With numbers running in his head, he stepped back from the door and raised his stubby SMG, firing a muffled 3-round burst into the steel door’s dead-bolt lock. Another moment and he was inside, descending steep stairs dimly illuminated by pale ceiling-mounted emergency lights.

Halfway there, Bolan removed a lightweight balaclava from his pocket, pulled it on and made a quick adjustment to permit clear, unobstructed vision. He had borrowed the idea from Tommy Wolff’s assassins, caught on video, and saw no reason why it shouldn’t work for him, if he was seen by anyone he wasn’t forced to kill.

Just plant the bug, he thought, but knew it might not be that simple. Nothing ever was, once battle had been joined.

Voices below made Bolan hesitate, but they were all retreating from the service stairs. No one would think of heading for the roof when they lost power. Down and out would be the drill, assisted by floor plans posted in offices and corridors, reminding people where to go in the event of an emergency.

He reached the bottom, peered around the corner and immediately saw the fire alarm wall unit to his left, within arm’s reach. Unseen, he grasped the unit’s pull-down handle, yanked it sharply, and was instantly rewarded with a clamor echoing throughout the building.

Sixty seconds, give or take, cleared out the fourth-floor hallway, even as the smoke from his grenades began to filter down through ceiling vents. Downrange, the last two visible employees reached a stairwell leading to the street below, pushed through its heavy door and disappeared.

Noboru Machii had a corner office at the far end of the hall, to Bolan’s right. Turning in that direction, Bolan double-timed to reach his destination, submachine gun gripped in one hand, while the other delved in a pocket and extracted the infinity device.

The clock was running now. Bolan could hear it in his head, louder than the insistent fire alarm.

The kyodai’s office, reeking of smoke, was vacant when Bolan got there, and a white haze was seeping from the ceiling vents. He left the door to the reception area wide open, as he’d found it, and moved on to penetrate Machii’s private sanctuary.

Empty.

Bolan went directly to the spacious desk, set down the bug he’d taken from his pocket and retrieved a small screwdriver. Within ten long seconds he’d removed the base plate from the telephone, surveyed the wiring and began the installation.

When he’d cut the trunk line on the building’s roof, it had no impact on phone service to the floors below. Landlines were powered by another system altogether, usable in blackouts, and he hadn’t touched their power conduit when he was turning off the lights at Sunrise Enterprises. He scanned the phone’s guts, finally wedging the infinity transmitter in beside the set’s digital answering machine. A simple clip job finished it, with no need to strip any wires and risk short-circuits sometime in the future. A few keystrokes on Bolan’s cell phone, and the bug went live, the arming signal cut before the desk set had a chance to ring.

He was finished, except for putting back the base plate. He had three screws set, was working on the fourth, when he heard voices coming down the corridor in his direction, speaking Japanese.

Unhappy voices, which was natural enough, and now he had to scoot.

Bolan tightened the fourth screw down as far as it would go and pocketed his screwdriver. He replaced the phone as he had found it, nothing out of place as he surveyed the desktop, making sure no traces of himself remained.

Now, out.

Machii’s office had a private washroom, and the washroom had its own connecting door to yet another room beyond, labeled as Storage on the floor plan he had memorized. That room, in turn, had its own exit to the corridor from which he’d entered the office. If his luck held, he could slip around behind whomever was approaching in a heated rush, and slip back to the roof while they were fuming in the office.

And if not, at least he might come out behind them. Give them a surprise.

Meeting opposition was a risk on any soft probe, always kept in mind, no matter how much preparation went into avoiding contact. With his work done, the transmitter live and waiting to broadcast whatever words were spoken in Machii’s office from now on, it wasn’t absolutely critical for Bolan to escape unseen.

But it was vital for him to escape alive.

The washroom door was shut when Bolan reached it, and he closed it tight behind him once he was inside. No dawdling in the john to eavesdrop on the Yakuza returning to the office. He was out the other door in seconds flat, and found that Storage meant a bedroom where Machii could sleep or party privately, with someone who had caught his fancy. There was no one in the boudoir, smoky now and ripe with HC’s tangy odor, and he crossed directly to the other door. Bolan paused there, ear pressed against the panel, listening.

And heard nothing.

Behind him, in the Machii’s private office, two men conversed, their words incomprehensible to Bolan. Taking full advantage of their evident preoccupation, he stepped out into the corridor—and found two young men gaping at him in surprise.

“Hakujin!” one declared.

“Supai!” the other snapped, as both reached for their holstered pistols.

Bolan didn’t need to speak the language to know that they had pegged him as an intruder. He had them beaten, going in. The MP-5 K sneezed two muted 3-round bursts from less than twenty feet, stitching the young men’s chests with 9 mm Parabellum hollow-point rounds, mangling their hearts and lungs, stopping those hearts before the guards knew they were dead. They fell together, but he didn’t stick around to see it, sprinting for the service staircase that would take him to the roof.

It was a judgment call. To reach the street without retracing his original approach meant running back the full length of the corridor and rushing down eight flights of stairs—two zigzag flights per floor—among Sunrise employees exiting in answer to the fire alarm. If he got past them all, that route would put him on Atlantic Avenue, busy with traffic and pedestrians. If someone brought him under fire out there, it could become a massacre.

Better to do the unexpected thing, descend via the fire escape and exit through the alley. Cornered there, if he ran out of luck, at least Bolan could fight without much fear of injuring civilians.

He was on the roof and sprinting for the fire escape when someone shouted from behind him. Next, a pistol cracked, and Bolan heard the whisper of the bullet as it flew past his cheek.

One shooter was behind him when he turned, and Bolan saw another peeking from the rooftop access doorway, clearly not as bold as the front-runner. Bolan sent the shooter spinning with a 3-round Parabellum burst, his white shirt spouting scarlet, then sent three more rounds to make the doorway peeper duck back out of sight.

Eighteen rounds remained in the MP-5 K’s magazine, and Bolan didn’t plan on using any more of them topside than he could help.

He still had no idea what might be waiting for him in the alley below.

He glanced over the parapet, saw no shooters prepared to pick him off as he descended, and swung out onto the fire escape. Taking the metal ladder rung by rung was slow. Instead, he gripped the side rails with his hands and braced the insteps of his shoes against them, sliding down until he struck the asphalt fifty feet below and landed in a crouch.

Above him, gunshots echoed. One round struck a commercial garbage bin to his right and spanged into the heaped-up garbage it contained. Another slapped into the pavement, closer, a reminder that he had no time to waste.

Raising the MP-5 K’s muzzle, Bolan chipped the concrete parapet above him with a parting burst and saw a face fly back, out of frame. He couldn’t rate that as a hit and didn’t care. His rented wheels, a Honda Civic, waited for him on Atlantic Avenue, no more than half a block away.

He ran.

The rooftop shooters would need time to reach the alley. As for soldiers on the inside, he’d already dealt with two and given any more something to think about. Assuming they had walkie-talkies for communicating, someone from the lobby could be on his case by now and waiting for him when he reached the sidewalk, but it was a chance he’d have to take.

The alley was a trap now; staying where he was meant death.

A brief pause at the alley’s mouth, tucking the MP-5 K out of sight beneath his jacket, hand still on its pistol grip through a slit pocket on his right, and Bolan cleared the sidewalk, glancing right and left as if it was a normal day, nothing to be concerned about. When no one called him out or gunned him down, he stepped off from the curb, jaywalking as if he did it every day, angling through traffic that, with any luck, would slow his pursuers.

Twenty feet from the Honda, Bolan palmed the keyless entry fob and released the driver’s door lock, instantly rewarded by a flash of taillights and a perky blipping sound. A moment later, he was at the wheel and gunning it, letting the taxi on his tail brake sharply, driver leaning on his horn and offering a one-finger salute, as Bolan pulled away from Sunrise Enterprises.

He could listen to the office bug right now, in theory, but he had more pressing matters on his mind—survival being foremost on the list—and Bolan figured that Noboru Machii wouldn’t spend the next few minutes in his office, strategizing with his men. There would be firefighters to deal with, and police, the problem of eliminating corpses in a hurry.

Something else he’d thought about, while planning his incursion: when Machii did begin to talk, the odds were good that he’d be speaking Japanese. While Bolan’s talents were diverse, he’d never had the opportunity to learn more than a smattering of Japanese. And that would have been a problem, if the superteam at Stony Man Farm hadn’t devised a program for his smartphone, offering real-time translated readouts from a list of major languages. The readout wasn’t perfect—something on the order of closed captioning on normal television—but he’d get the gist of what Machii said and go from there.

First, though, he had to get away. Find somewhere it was safe to sit and eavesdrop once his adversaries chilled a bit and had a chance to think.

Bolan checked his rearview, frowning as he saw a car behind him, weaving in and out of traffic, closing fast. Three shapes were inside the vehicle, maybe four, and while they might be office workers in a rush to get to happy hour, Bolan wasn’t taking anything for granted.

What he needed was a place to take the shooters, if they were shooters, and dispose of them without civilians getting in the way. The Ventnor City wetlands were behind him, too much trouble to reverse directions, and O’Donnell Memorial Park, five blocks ahead, would probably have too much foot traffic for him to risk a firefight.

What was left?

He thought of Chelsea Harbor, on Atlantic City’s other waterfront, three-quarters of a mile inland from the Atlantic and the boardwalk. There would be civilians, naturally—workmen, people going in and out of restaurants, whatever—but it sounded better than the obvious alternatives.

He reached South Dover Avenue, turned left against the lights and traffic, hoping there were no cops at the intersection to observe him. If the chase car wasn’t chasing him, he’d lose it there.