I raised the Hi Power with the butt end protruding past my wrist and hammer-fisted it into the base of his skull like I was trying to bury it there. There was a satisfying crack, and he shuddered and then began to pitch soundlessly forward. I hauled him back by the collar, smashing the butt into his face on the way down. He landed on his back, the grass muffling the sound of the impact. His eyes were unfocused but his mouth was twitching — he wasn’t dead yet. I dragged his head back by his punch-permed hair and something came off in my hand — Christ, it was a toupee. I tossed it aside, sunk my fingers into his eye sockets, pulled his head back, and blasted the butt of the Hi Power into his exposed throat. I felt cartilage breaking and knew he was done.
The radio screeched. Shit. A voice said, “You all right?”
I picked it up and keyed the mic. “Yeah. Just taking a leak.” The reception was sufficiently shitty that I didn’t think he’d notice any difference between my voice and the dead yakuza’s.
“Make it fast. You’re supposed to be watching.”
“Okay.”
I dropped the radio and patted him down. He was unarmed — okay, this one was just the spotter. I propped him up, sat behind him, put my feet against his lower back, and shoved him into the bushes, his pants sliding up his legs as he went. When he was far enough forward so they could see him again, I pulled some branches behind his back to keep him in position. Not exactly lifelike, but the other two were far enough away and there was enough foliage concealing him to make me confident they wouldn’t notice anything was wrong.
I proned out and looked out at Fukumoto’s plot, making sure there was plenty of green concealing my camouflaged face. I could see his two buddies, one at the southwest corner of the wall, the other at the southeast, just as I had figured they would be. They were hanging back under the trees, partly for concealment, I imagined, and partly to get out of the sun. Hanging back like that had certain advantages, but it entailed a critical disadvantage, too: though they had line of sight to the now-dead spotter’s position, they couldn’t see each other.
I picked up the radio and checked the controls. Tempting to take it with me, but I didn’t see any way to mute it short of turning it off entirely. Even if I cranked the squelch, it might not be enough to prevent it from coming on in the face of a strong signal, and if one of the other yakuza decided to get on the radio when I was coming up behind them, it would blow my position. So I turned it off, wiped it down, and left it in the grass alongside its late owner. Then I slid down from the elevated plot the same way I had come in and began circling wide clockwise, using the trees and thick stands of darkened markers for concealment. I didn’t need to move quietly this time, and was able to come up behind the southeast guy’s position in a matter of minutes. I crept soundlessly through the trees, the Hi Power out now, my heart racing. There he was, leaning against a tree trunk, dressed like the first guy, smoking a cigarette. These guys weren’t much on cover for action, but on the other hand I supposed not too many people were going to give an obvious yakuza a hard time for loitering in a cemetery.
Five meters away, I angled out so I could see him in profile. The way he was leaning against the tree, I wasn’t going to have complete blind-spot access to his back the way I had with the first guy. I had just worked out that my best chance would be to rabbit-punch him with the muzzle of the Hi Power when, whether out of dumb luck, or animal instinct, or for no reason at all, he turned and looked right at me.
His mouth dropped open and his hand went for the inside of his jacket. But I already had the Hi Power out, and before he could even grab what he was reaching for it was pointing at his face. I looked in his eyes and shook my head twice, and he got the meaning: Don’t do that, you won’t make it. His hand slowly came out and he started to put both arms in the air.
“Take it out with your left hand,” I said quietly. “Slowly and carefully. Place it on the ground. I’ve got all the slack on this trigger taken up already. One twitch and you die. You don’t want to make me twitch.”
He complied. When the gun was on the ground, he said, “You have no idea who you’re fucking with, do you?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
He laughed.
Well, he was tough, I’d give him that.
“Face down,” I said. “On the ground.”
He laughed again. “You want to live? Turn and run. And you better run fast. And far.”
“I might do that. But I’ll get a better head start with you face down. Or dead. Which is it going to be?”
Again, he complied.
“Arms above your head,” I said. “All the way. Fingers splayed. And spread your legs.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but the psychology of compliance is interesting. Getting the initial yes is the hard part. Once the subject starts complying, each subsequent step seems like just a minor addition to what’s already been done, and you can get a remarkable amount of cooperation. At this point, he was so obedient we might as well having been playing Simon Says.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that in his yakuza arrogance, he assumed I was just going to hightail it. If he’d known what I’d done to his friend five minutes earlier, I doubted he would have been nearly as sanguine.
Once his arms were above his head and his legs were spread, there was no way he could effectively react to anything I did. Which is why he didn’t have a chance when I stepped up alongside him, raised my leg, and stomped the back of his neck. His arms flapped and his body jerked. He was probably dead already, his spinal cord severed, but I stomped him twice more to be sure. I rolled him over and took his gun — another Hi Power. Standard issue with the Gokumatsu-gumi, apparently. I shoved it in the back of my pants, took a deep breath, and started circling clockwise again.
It took me less than a minute to reach the third guy. I eased up behind him and saw I was just in time — he had the radio out. “Hey, are you there?” he said. “Somebody answer me.”
I stepped out so I was ninety degrees from him, the Hi Power leveled at his head. “Of course they’re not answering,” I said. “They’re dead.”
He jumped and turned toward me, his right arm reflexively going for his jacket but stopping when he saw the muzzle of the Hi Power.
Son of a bitch. It was Pig Eyes. The guy who’d tried to strangle me at the Kodokan, who had almost lost a testicle for his troubles.
“You want to live or you want to die?” I said.
He spat. “Put down the gun. We’ll see how it goes then.”
“Sure, I’ll put it down. Right after I shoot you in the face with it. Like you said, we’ll see how it goes.”
His arms drifted upward, his nostrils flaring with anger.
“Now slowly take out your gun with your left hand. And slowly put it on the ground.”
He did.
“Now turn and put your palms on that tree, spread your legs, and lean forward so the tree is taking all your weight.
He did so, but not to my satisfaction.
“No, that’s not enough. Spread your feet further. And move them farther back from the tree.”
He did.
When I was satisfied he could do nothing defensive without spending at least a full second getting his legs under him and his hands off the tree, I approached and picked up his gun. Another Hi Power. I jammed it in my waistband, my pants getting tight under the belt with the bulk of the two pistols. “Who sent you?”
He glanced behind so he could see me. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t look at me. Look at the tree. I mean, who do you work for? Who wants me dead?”