2 cobra 19 first cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 19 Snake Eyes for Hikaru

 

I counted down in freefall before I could pull the ripcord. Those stealth planes can do remarkably slowly as well as fast, so that a stumble would not see me too far off my course. I was looking below in infra red; handy to be able to just change the way I saw the world with a thought, and my expensive eye job, like my expensive nose job, had saved me more than once. Like my enhanced reflexes.

And good, the flyboy had made allowances for my jazzed reflexes. I was spot on target.

So I pulled the ripcord at the right moment, and as always felt that momentary relief when the jerk of its opening told me it was working, and I was not about to do a high dive into solid earth.  I needed to be nearly down before I could do more than adjust a little. It works like sails on a ship; changing shape of the ’chute allows directional control. But I also had to hit that small hole in the automated defences.

When I say ‘small’ it was about twenty feet across; which is damnably tiny when you’ve come nearly a thousand times more than that straight down.  And of course, it isn’t straight down.

Oh, please Newton’s first law is that a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an external force.

And I was going at several hundred miles an hour laterally as well as, once clear of the plane, accelerating at 9.81m/s². Gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth. He’d been going against the rotation, which helped a bit, but not a lot.  And then there were crosswinds.

The pilot had a computer which told him when to kick me out; which was a relief. As far as I can gather it was about a mile from the target, to take into account my lateral speed.  I had a computer on the parachute rig as well, and it had a camera to adjust but I’d done the calculations beforehand as well with the mark one brain, to make sure the computer did not foul up. I have a clock in my headware. It helps with working out when one is down to half a mile up to pull the ripcord.

Besides, doing the math helps me not to feel worried.

I’m not afraid of heights.  Not in the least. I am just as happy as Ichiro had been to do roof running. What I am afraid of is sudden stops when hitting the earth at terminal velocity because of having to rely on equipment, not my own body.

However, I drifted in through the hole, heading the right way, and used my secret weapon; compressed air. Jets of flame were out of the question, but compressed air brings Newton’s third law – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – into play, and if it went out the nozzle one way, I went the other. Not rocket science.

Although the principle is similar.

Not that I suppose anyone actually cares.

Anyway, I managed to claw a hold onto the fancy stonework finials atop the house, and swung over to settle in a gulley behind it before the chute dragged me off. It was folding down and trying to drag me, and I pulled firmly on the ropes to bring it to me rather than the other way around, where it might dangle past a window and be seen.

I was in.

 

I took time to bundle up the parachute as small as possible, and to wrap it well with its own lines after I had taken off the webbing that held it to me. It was re-usable so it could be packed away again, but on top of a sloping slate roof in the dark is not a good place to pack it properly.  It was a nice piece of kit, and if I could retrieve it, I might. If not, well, that was as it was.  So long as it was small enough and securely-enough fastened somewhere out of sight from anywhere, I was satisfied.

I tied it to those fancy finials in the end. It might block the drainage, but it wouldn’t cause a leak  right away.

I looked for a good point of ingress.

The easiest way was through one of the skylights, set flush to the slates. I peeped in to one.  There was a prone body below; presumably a sleeping servant.  These old locks are easy to jigger, and nobody ever bothers with burglar alarms on the servants’ quarters. I dropped in a small sleep smoke capsule, shut the window the sliver I had opened it, and waited for it to do its work. It’s fast acting and quickly disperses, and I planned to hold my breath in any case.

I dropped in, slowly releasing the window behind me. If window such a skylight could be called. I could not stand fully upright under it; I know I’m tall, but it can’t be easy having a room with a sloping roof. There was an upright wall under it that side, but only about four feet tall. It seemed to be taken up with shelving and drawers, as good a use of the space as any. There was a wall just below the apex of the roof; I judged there would bedrooms each side with a central corridor, and the service staircase leading all the way down, behind doors originally covered in green baize, to hide the noises of the servants and the kitchens from the delicate ears of the effete aristocrats for whom the house was built.

Yes, my prejudices are on display. You already knew that I grew up a poverty-stricken orphan and that I despise most of the clients for whom I have killed, and the prey who were mostly their own kind. 

I’ve learned to make exceptions.

I knew that Hikaru had a bedroom on the level below the attic.  Also his receiving room, his study, and his sitting room. It was laid out as far as was possible like the rooms of a daimyo in a traditional Japanese castle. He had had some walls knocked out to be replaced with shoji screens.

I had to wonder whether a little application of C7 to one of the damaged bearer walls would just being down the whole rotten edifice.

A good, hard kick might have done it.

On the other hand, it’s a messy way to go about killing someone.

Uncertain, likely to kill other people, and not guaranteed to get the target. Or at least, not cleanly.

That’s why I don’t often use explosives. I’m a professional.

And if the government wanted everyone dead, they have only to drop a bomb. Mind, that would be a bit obvious, wouldn’t it... and the government, like anyone in the public eye, wants plausible deniability. Or, in other words, someone who can, at need, become a scapegoat.

No, I don’t trust the Guvmint to see me right.

I do trust Tarquin to do his best.

But if I became a political liability? He’d be road-rollered aside and I’d be in chokey before you could say ‘I never done it, squire.’

Which was, as well as impending fatherhood, another bloody good reason to get out of the business whilst the getting was good. Tarquin had made good on his promise to cut me in on anything extracted from those I had taken down, when investigations showed up their criminal empires; and I was ready to enjoy it.

And I must not for one moment let up my guard in contemplation of getting out and doing so. It was just one more job, one more sanction, I am the blade and I feel nothing but the air through which I whisper my way.

There is an advantage to having shoji doors in a personal fortress. Though they can be penetrated by bow or bullet, or blast for that matter, it’s obvious if someone has a light on in one of the room complexes. Otherwise, To each their own.

So, why wasn’t I moseying out down the corridor on the floor below the servants’ quarters to make a quick kill and get it over with?

Because there was no more green baize, and though the servants were still expected to be quiet – easier when wearing tabi than in Victorian hobnailed boots – there was noise of voices from the master’s floor.

So, I kept on going down, in order to get a better idea of the lay of the land than the odd glimpse through windows. It might save my life getting out.

No, I wasn’t going to listen to them speaking. Old, traditional Yakuza bosses consider themselves to be daimyo of their demesnes, regardless of what any real aristocracy in Japan think of them; and it’s an affectation to speak court Japanese which is so formal and full of archaic words that it is almost another language.  I mean, it’s like speaking old English in a modern setting; when few people can even manage to understand all of Shakespeare. Hweat! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Or in other words, ‘Listen! The spear-armed Danes of times gone by, and their kings, had courage and greatness, and we have heard of the campaigns of these noble warriors.’  And imagine if this was the language of Congress? You get my drift. Mind, if would go better in verse...

Listen! In times of long ago

The Danes, with spear,  blades, iron-wrought

Under their kings, who glory sought

In fearless courage braved each foe

 

And in their mighty battle deeds

Well-told in hall and hearth again

We hear the prowess of these men

O’er foaming horn of honey-mead.

 

I must use that if I do decide to go back to coaching the sin bin.

I was using it as a meditation to keep me calm. I had no idea who I might run into; if anyone.

As it happened, the next floor was basically given over to the two sons I had killed already. Or, in the case of Isamu, left him to kill himself through stupidity. There were a couple of guest suites, but presumably they were given over to the guys who were talking with Hikaru.

I went through their personal effects to find out who they were, and found that we had the head of the Whispering Willow gumi and the Five Swords gumi. I wondered if they were urging Hikaru to pull in his horns over seeking the elusive Jay Silverheels or whether they were trying to force a hostile takeover on a rather leadership-light rival gumi.

They had dossiers with them on me as Jay, on Hikaru, and on every death in the family. There seemed to be some dispute over whether I had killed any of them but Sanji. I deduced from letters that I found, that the other gumi were trying to persuade Hikaru that just because Jay Silverheels had duelled Sanji, and won, did not mean that he had killed everyone else. I suspected that they were jittery and afraid that Hikaru would make things too hot for all the ‘biznessmen’ on the west coast.

So sorry, omae, too late.

Tarquin had hinted that taking down the other two big families would pay well.

I pondered.

It might be worth the risk to take down all three, for the bonus.  If I could do it without risk.

 

I carried on going down.

The ground floor held the ballroom and sundry rooms off it, salons for playing cards, a reception room, and a nice library, which was moderately intact with the collection of some 19^th and 20^th century books.

I wanted that for my bonus.

I love real books.

I checked that they were real books, not casts of book backs by the foot for display; and books they were.

Mind, a few feet of false books inside the real ones could be a good way to hide things.

I let my nose figure out if there were any books which were not books; the smell of leather-bound volumes is so distinctive.

No.

But I would consider the idea.

I did not go down to the basement; some of the servants slept there. And I did not need to interfere with them.

I went back to the top full floor, and made my way along the shoji screens. I discovered which room the talking was in, and slid into the nextdoor room. A small slit in the shoji between them permitted me to see the old man and the two younger Yakuza bosses sitting on cushions, drinking sake, and arguing. A soft-footed servant gathered up an empty jug of Sake and the cups, and left the room. He limped slightly.

I left the room I was in, right behind him as he headed for the service stair.

A whiff of sleep gas, and I caught the tray before it fell as well as managing to grab him with one hand to ease down gently.

I dragged him into Hikaru’s bedroom out of the way, tied him up, and gagged him.

It was cold-blooded murder but I would never have a better chance, and these were men who happily ordered the deaths of others as well as trading on misery in various vices.

The servant was in black; they were engrossed and people see what they expect to see.

I gave it long enough to have refilled the jug and get clean glasses, and went back along the corridor, remembering to limp slightly, to give the right appearance to my shadow, and the sound I made, if any were listening.

I knelt in the proper manner to open the shoji, the tray held over my faithful silenced Ingram.

None of them even looked up.

I put down the tray; and opened up with a double tap to the head of each.

The Ingram packs a 9mm cartridge, and even on single shot, this does serious damage. I did not think that the extra eyes I drilled in each of them would see again.

It was then that the girl came in from the far room; and started screaming.