“Jun,” she said, and moved faster, almost angrily. She had so much weight on my chest it was getting hard to breathe, and she was grinding herself into me so hard it hurt my pelvis, albeit in a wonderful way. “Jun,” she said again, looking into my eyes, and then again, more loudly, and then her mouth opened in a perfect O and her eyelids fluttered and her voice dissolved into a long, startled cry.
I kept moving with her, confused, surprised, afraid to hope. Was she coming? God, it was so beautiful, she was so beautiful.
It went on for a long time, and then suddenly she was sagging against me, panting. I held her and stroked her hair and whispered her name over and over. She settled against me, her face to my shoulder, and I could feel tears against my skin.
“Are you okay?” I said softly, still stroking her hair, trying to see her face.
She pushed herself up and looked at me, her eyes watery, her cheeks streaked with tears. She shook her head. “That felt so good. I never felt anything like that.”
“Sayaka…did you, do you think you just came?”
She smiled and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know. It just…it felt so good. Like an explosion. But did I? I didn’t know I could.” She cried harder. “I didn’t know.”
I felt my own eyes fill up, and I pulled her into me, embarrassed she would see. But I was too late. She pushed herself up again and laughed. “Jun,” she said. “My tough guy.”
I laughed, too, but the tears were still coming.
She stroked my cheek. “Why are you crying?”
I cleared my throat and tried to blink away the tears. “I’m not.”
She laughed again. “Liar.”
I wanted so much to tell her I loved her. To just blurt it out. But I was afraid to. I was afraid she’d think it was just a crush, that I was too young for her, that I was being silly.
But I did. God, I loved her.
“I’m just happy,” I said. “You make me happy.”
Sometimes I wonder now whether it would have made any difference if I’d told her right then. Probably not. And I try to convince myself that she knew anyway. But I’ll never really know. I wish I’d told her. Wish it as much as I wish anything. But I didn’t.
I headed out not long after that. I felt bad I couldn’t tell her why beyond that it was work, and it made me feel worse when she didn’t press. I wanted to get this all behind me. But to do it, I couldn’t just walk away, not unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life in rooms at shabby love hotels, constantly looking over my shoulder. If I wanted to win, first I had to double down. Then I could leave behind everything I’d been mixed up in. Dead, buried, and gone. Over time, maybe even forgotten.
I stopped at a discount store and bought a pair of green pants, a green long-sleeve tee shirt, and a green baseball hat. Not exactly top-level camouflage, but enough to confer an advantage. I also picked up some face paint, the kind children use to turn themselves into cats and turtles and God knows what. I left my bag in a coin locker in Ueno Station — keeping only the Hi Power — parked Thanatos, and walked to Yanaka. I used a public restroom on the way. I’d deliberately drunk nothing that morning and I didn’t really need to go, but still I knew it was probably my last safe piss for a while.
I was several hours early, but had to approach carefully in case they might anticipate that. I didn’t think they would — I’d never shown up early to meet McGraw, and he would have noted this laxness on my part, likely assumed he could count on it, and then briefed Mad Dog’s people accordingly. But no sense taking chances.
I came in over the northeast wall rather than through one of the entrances. I doubted they had the manpower to post someone at every gate, but on the other hand I didn’t know what kind of influence Mad Dog might command following his father’s death. Maybe there were dozens of soldiers trying to curry favor with him.
I made my way to the elevated plot by cutting between the grave sites, avoiding the main roads traversing the cemetery. Again, probably unnecessary, but also again no downside to being careful. There were only a few people about, mostly pensioners walking dogs; a few devoted friends or family members laying flowers or lighting incense; mothers with toddlers in the attached children’s park. Nothing rubbed me the wrong way.
Approaching from the north, I avoided the stone steps, instead pulling myself up the side and into the row of bushes there. I waited, watching and listening. Crows cawed; summer insects buzzed; a Yamanote train chimed in the distance. Other than that, it was as quiet as…well, you know.
I opened the little jar of face paint and wiped diagonal streaks across my face, my fingers tracing the lines from combat memory. Then I pocketed the paint, flipped the baseball cap around backward, flattened out on the earth, and waited. It was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were a pain in the ass, and I realized I’d probably been excessive in wondering whether Mad Dog and his people would put themselves through this kind of discomfort. You’d have to be crazy. Or at least accustomed to much worse after humping a sixty-pound ruck in the Southeast Asian boonies. The sick thing was, it was comfortable for me. Yes, I was holding a pistol rather than a CAR-15, and Yanaka smelled like city rather than jungle, but overall it felt familiar, natural, like something I’d been honed for and maybe even was meant for. I felt compact and mean and deadly. And God help the team that was coming here to take me out.
I’d been in place for two hours when I heard footfalls on the stone steps to my right. I kept perfectly still, glancing over without moving my head. A burly, thirty-something, punch-permed Japanese guy in a double-breasted suit with lapels as wide as the wings on a 747 was approaching. A nice little adrenaline flush spread through my gut. Okay, looked like they’d sent the yakuza A-team this time, not a threesome of incompetent chinpira. He walked with a swagger, I noted, and I liked that, liked the over-confidence it suggested. He didn’t even examine his surroundings. He just walked over to the south side, found a relatively sparse spot in the bushes, and pushed the branches aside. He pulled out a radio, keyed it up, and said, “I’m here. Yes, I can see you both.”
So there were three of them. Okay. Was one of them Mad Dog? I got the feeling no. Three would be the bare minimum to cover points of ingress. These guys were the assault team. If Mad Dog was here, it would be as a spectator, maybe at some remove. No way to know except to go through these three, and then see if anyone was still around when I was done.
He squatted, keeping the radio in one hand and holding the branches aside with the other. It didn’t look comfortable. But I supposed he wasn’t expecting to be there long. Well, it would be rude to keep him waiting.
I pulled myself forward on my elbows, the Hi Power at the ready. If he turned, I’d drop him, but if it came to that I had to assume his comrades would hear the gunshot and I would lose the element of surprise. Better to get close and do it quietly. I spent ten minutes creeping out of the bushes and onto the grass. Once the potentially noisy branches were behind me, I was able to move more quickly. I covered the twenty feet from my line of bushes to his in under thirty seconds, keeping to a low crouch. He never heard me, never had a clue, not even when I was directly behind him.