Ninja Assault

One more headache, on a night that was replete with them. Machii pushed that prospect out of mind and focused on his unknown enemies. He made it plural, since the man or men behind a raw act of aggression, in Machii’s world, would never carry out the act themselves. That left him with a list of possibilities to ponder, none of which stood out above the rest.

New Jersey was awash in crime and government corruption. That had been a fact of life for generations, going back a century and more, beyond the days when simple-minded folk thought they could cure a nation’s ills by banning alcohol. These days, the old Italian Mafia was in decline from former glory days, competing for survival in an ethnic stew of Chinese and Koreans, Cubans and Jamaicans, Russians and Albanians, Vietnamese and Japanese. Anytime contending sides brushed shoulders, there was bloodshed. Thanks in large part to Machii’s acumen, the Sumiyoshi-kai had managed to stay clear of overt violence so far.

Until this night.

Now, in a few short hours, everything he’d worked for was at risk. His very life was riding on the line, if he could not eliminate the danger to his family.

But so far, he had no idea where to begin the search.

“Is there a chance that Endo’s men wounded the person they were chasing?” he inquired.

“Our man on the police force doesn’t think so, but it’s possible his car was damaged by the shooting. Chips of glass were found, he says. A search is under way for cars damaged by gunfire, but it could be anywhere.”

And if they found it, Machii thought, it would probably be stolen, anyway. A competent professional would no more take his own car on a raid than he would dress up in kabuki robes.

“Who is most likely to move against us in Atlantic City, then?”

Watanabe thought about it for a moment, then replied, “I think, the Russians. Shestov knows you represent the family, and he’s been looking for a foothold in a great casino.”

“Shestov’s Ukrainian, not Russian.”

“What’s the difference?” Tetsuya asked. “They’re all barbarians.”

He had that right, at least. Pavlo Shestov was tough, ruthless and driven by ambition. It was said he watched the movie Scarface once a week, at least, and tried to mimic the ferocity of its protagonist. With thirty-five or forty soldiers on his payroll, he was capable of starting trouble, but would he be fool enough to take on the Sumiyoshi-kai?

Perhaps.

It was a starting place, at least.

“Pick up one of his men,” Machii ordered. “Try for the lieutenant. What’s his name, again?”

“Palatnik.”

“Question him. If Shestov is behind this, he should know.”

“And when we’re finished with him?”

“We can’t let him run back home and tattle, can we?” That would start a war with Shestov, if they weren’t already in the midst of one.

“No, sir.”

“Well, then.”

“I shall see to it myself.”

Machii raised a hand to stop him. “Let Yoshinori handle it,” he said. “I want you here with me.”

Watanabe frowned, as if uncertain whether he should take that as an insult or a compliment. Instead of answering, he tipped his head, a token bow, and marched out of the room.

Machii was about to pour another glass of whiskey, wondering if he should have a sandwich first, when an explosion rocked the house.

* * *

BOLAN HAD PULLED OUT all the stops for his incursion on Machii’s hideaway. He took the silenced MP-5 K, backed up with a Colt M4A1 carbine sporting an Aimpoint CompM4 reflector sight and an M320 grenade launcher mounted under the carbine’s barrel, fitted with its own side-mounted day/night sight. To feed the guns, he wore two bandoleers across his chest—one fat with 5.56 mm magazines, the other packing 40 mm high-explosive rounds—and wore a triple belt pouch for the SMG’s curved magazines. All together, Glock included, he was packing in 450 rounds of sudden death, hoping it was a great deal more than he would need.

Off road, the ground was treacherous beneath his feet. He had the goggles on again, scanning the turf for streams and ponds, long-stepping over them from one firm hummock to another. On his way, he kept checking the house, confirming that Machii’s lookouts were not on the move with a patrol into the marsh. From what Bolan could see, two hundred yards and closing through the moonlight, they seemed fairly well at ease, smoking and chatting on the porch.

That didn’t mean that they weren’t dangerous, by any means.

The Yakuza was not a blood in/blood out operation that required each new recruit to take a human life. Some members never got their hands dirty, beyond cooking the books at firms the syndicate controlled. Soldiers, by contrast, were recruited from the bosozoku “restless tribe” gangs in Japan, equivalent to outlaw bikers in the States, who grew up fighting for a scrap of urban turf and had their consciences seared out of them before they got to high school. Given any chance to join the big leagues, they jumped at it, seizing any opportunity to prove themselves through terrorism, homicide and torture.

All the best of manga entertainment, with real corpses.

Bolan had no doubt the guards would die to save their oyabun, and he was ready to accommodate them. First, though, he desired to get in closer, scout the lonely home’s perimeter and get a feel for how many defenders he was facing. When he made his move, he wanted it to come as a surprise and catch the soldiers with their guard down.

Stopping at the fifty-yard mark, well beyond the floodlights mounted on each corner of the house, Bolan began to circle clockwise, watching as he went for any traps, alarms or hidden cameras that might betray him to a watcher on the grounds. He found none and continued, counting half a dozen lookouts on his circuit. There were two in front, two more out back, one by himself on each end of the manor, north and south. The darkened patio, in back, offered the best approach, with tall translucent sliding doors fronting some kind of lighted recreation room.

The Executioner closed in, moving slowly in a half crouch, weighted by the guns and ammunition that he carried. He gripped the silenced MP-5 K, carbine slung across his back where he could reach it readily at need, both the rifle and its under-barrel launcher primed and ready. At a range of thirty yards, he stopped, knelt and checked again for any lurkers whom he might have missed.

The paired-up guards were definitely on their own.

Approaching them would be a needless risk. Bolan lined up the MP-5 K’s iron sights with a hooded post in front. He pinned them on the watchman to his left, no special reason, and squeezed off a snuffling 3-round burst that put him down, blood spreading from beneath him on the paving stones.

Before the second lookout could react, Bolan had swiveled toward him, squeezed the trigger once again, and opened up his chest with hollow-point rounds. The dying hardman slumped backward, but his index finger clenched around the trigger of his Micro-Uzi, rattling off a burst like fireworks in the dark, still night.

So much for stealth.

Before more lights came on inside the house, before the home team started cursing, shouting orders, Bolan let the MP-5 K drop and dangle from its sling, hauling the Colt around and bringing it to bear. He peered into the M320 launcher’s day/night sight, using its laser range finder, and sent an HE round across the patio, smashing through plate glass on its way and detonating when it struck the rec room’s southern wall.

* * *

NOBORU MACHII DROPPED his whiskey glass and bolted to his feet, cursing a sudden rush of dizziness he recognized as the effect of too much alcohol. He was not drunk, per se, but heard a buzzing in his ears completely unrelated to the blast of seconds earlier, and wobbled on his legs until he braced one hand against a side table and got his balance back.

He made it halfway to the wall-mounted gun cabinet before Tetsuya Watanabe burst into the study, pistol in his hand, asking, “Are you okay, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Machii almost snarled at him. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure, yet. I came to check on you. It may be—”

Gunfire crackled from the general direction of the rec room, soldiers crying out.

Machii did snarl, then. “Get out and deal with that! I’ll be there in a minute.”

At the cabinet, he fumbled with a small brass key to open it and took a shotgun from the rack inside. It was a Benelli M3 Super 90 12-gauge, which allowed a choice of pump-action or semiautomatic fire. Its magazine held seven rounds of triple-0 buckshot, with one more in the chamber, each equivalent to six .36-caliber bullets inside one cartridge. At close range, it was devastating.

And exactly what Machii needed at that moment.

As an afterthought, he snatched a pistol from its hook inside the cabinet, a fully loaded Walther PPQ, which stood for “police pistol quick defense” in German. That would give Machii eighteen extra shots, in case his 12-gauge and the guards stationed to defend him all proved useless.

The whiskey bottle beckoned to Machii as he left the study, but he cursed it and moved on, following sounds of combat toward the east side of the house. A smoky, chemical aroma in the air reminded him of the munitions that had fogged his office earlier, but this was subtly different. He recognized the scent of burnt gunpowder and explosives mixed together, and he had no doubt the house was under siege.

How had his nameless enemies located him? There was no time to think about that now, while they were still alive and doing everything within their power to kill him. Not police, he knew that much, since they always arrived with sirens, flashing lights and warrants. Someone else, then, who was not concerned with legal niceties, but only with the bottom-line result.

Machii’s ears rang with the sounds of gunfire now, the softer hiss of liquor working on his brain cells smothered by the battle din. He needed no guide to locate the firing line, but hesitated well short of the rec room, pausing in the hallway as another trio of his men ran past him, heedless of his presence on their way to join the fight.

If he could make it to the car and slip away, while they were busy…

Flushed with shame, Machii cursed himself and started moving toward the action, one foot following the other at a cautious, almost creeping speed. He kept his index finger off the shotgun’s trigger, worried that he might shoot one of his own soldiers accidentally, but he was ready to unleash a storm of lead within a split second, if threatened.

Another blast ripped through the house, much closer than the first. A rain of dust and plaster flakes sprinkled Machii as he huddled in the hallway, nearly deafened now. It was disorienting, but he knew where he was headed, only had to keep on walking in the same direction to become part of the action.

If he ran, there’d be no end to running. And no man escaped his private shame.

One of Machii’s guards staggered into view, emerging from a side door to the kitchen. He was unarmed, clearly dazed, a flap of scalp dangling above one eye as blood streamed down his face and soaked his white dress shirt. The soldier did not recognize his boss, shuffling toward him like a zombie, one arm out to brace and guide himself along the wall.

Machii stepped in front of him and clutched the wounded man’s lapel. “What’s happening?” he asked the soldier who stood blinking in his grasp. “Who is attacking us?”

“I do not know, sir,” came the reply.

Of course the young man didn’t know. How could he? He was stunned, brain scrambled, and the enemy would not have introduced himself. Machii stepped around his useless flunky, finding new courage in his own ability to move with purpose toward the battle.

With his finger on the shotgun’s trigger, he was prepared to kill his adversaries or die trying.

* * *

BOLAN HAD KILLED five gunners since entering the house, which made it seven altogether from the patio until he reached the modern, institutional-sized kitchen. Three had been together in the rec room when his first HE round detonated there, one more or less beheaded by the blast and shrapnel, while the other two were shaken to the point of immobility and sat there, staring at him, while he put them down for good.

The other two came charging in as he was moving through the smoke and dust from the explosion toward a door connecting to the kitchen. Sighting him, they both gave out kung fu–type shouts and leveled pistols in his general direction, but their zeal did not equate with combat readiness. One bullet hissed past Bolan’s ear, a foot or more off target, and the second shooter didn’t have a chance to fire as Bolan’s M4A1 carbine answered, stuttering short bursts and gutting them with 5.56 mm manglers.

The NATO rounds were made to yaw and fragment at their cannelures, shredding a target’s vital organs with a storm of shrapnel while the main part of the slug tumbled through flesh and muscle, carving out a devastating wound channel. The two gunners went down, flailing, out of action in a heartbeat, likely dead before their slayer cleared the kitchen door.

The large room, mostly stainless steel and copper, had three exits. Bolan had one covered, while the others, he supposed, would serve a dining room and, possibly, a hallway running through the house to other rooms. He had the kitchen to himself for ten or fifteen seconds, then his ears picked up the sound of more hardmen closing from the right, beyond a swing door. Bolan crouched behind a serving island in the middle of the kitchen, carbine angling toward the door.

When it flew open, Bolan glimpsed the formal dining room beyond—something from Better Homes & Gardens—then three gunners blocked the view, crowding the doorway in their rush to meet the enemy. Two of them carried submachine guns, and he couldn’t see the third one’s hands.

Instead of wasting bullets on the trio, Bolan let them have a 40 mm HE round, ducking behind the heavy wood-and-granite island as it blew, unleashing thunder in the kitchen with a storm of brick dust, plaster, ventilated pots and pans. When Bolan looked again, two of the attackers were down, the third no longer visible, either propelled back through the doorway by the shock wave or—a slim chance—quick enough to save himself.

Bolan rose from cover and proceeded toward the dining room, uncertain where he’d find Machii in the house, now that his probe had turned into a running firefight. Some commanders, in that circumstance, would lead their soldiers by example; others, a majority, would be content to issue orders, all the while intent on looking out for Number One. The samurai mind-set might help determine how Machii acted, but he couldn’t count on that to put the Yakuza boss in his rifle sights.

First thing through the door into the dining room, he saw that the third shooter had escaped, leaving a trail of blood across beige carpet and along the nearest wall, likely from trailing fingertips. With no one else in sight, Bolan went after him, the smears and splashes leading to another door six yards in front of him. There was a blood smudge on the doorknob, verifying that his quarry had passed through it in his flight from the explosion.

He hesitated at the door, listened and heard nothing beyond it. Careful to avoid the bloody knob, he eased it open, started to lean through—then jerked back as a sudden movement to his right warned Bolan of a trap in waiting.

He recoiled, crouching, and grimaced as a shotgun blast shattered the door frame, heavy buckshot pellets drilling wood and drywall. Bolan waited for a follow-up that didn’t come, while calculating odds of getting nailed if he proceeded through the exit to the corridor beyond.

A shotgun gave his adversary an advantage. Marksmanship was secondary, with a scattergun, to nerve and steady hands. If Bolan rushed the doorway, he could wind up getting peppered, and the gunner was loading double-0, at least. One hit, much less a pellet cluster, could be fatal or debilitating.

On the other hand, if he stayed where he was, it could mean reinforcements coming down the corridor or through the kitchen at his back. They might come both ways, trap him in the dining room and finish him, if they had guns and guts enough to pull it off.

Given the choice, Bolan would almost always choose attack, and this was no exception.

But he had a little something different in mind.

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