“You have nothing to fear from Marshal Jin. America will be defeated.” Tokugawa turned his gaze on the ugly granite headquarters of wartime Japan’s Imperial Army. “I promise you.”
Two men decked out in glossy double-breasted suits eased down a second-floor hallway above a sex club in Kabukicho. The mawkish aroma of cheap incense hung in the air; pulsing techno from 10,000-watt amplifiers vibrated the floor under their feet.
At the end of the hallway slivers of yellow light spilled from around a sliding door that opened onto a small, private room. The two men approached, listened, and heard throaty, urgent grunting, and, in sync with the techno beat coming from downstairs, the rhythmic slap of naked flesh on naked flesh.
With caution, one of the men slid the door open a crack and peeked in. He saw flickering lantern light and leaping shadows, and in the center of the room on a tatami mat, the intertwined bodies of a wiry Japanese man and two Thai girls. The man was fucking one of the girls doggie-style, while the other one, on her back at the bottom of the pile, urged them on with her mouth and hands.
A yakuza body tattoo covered the man’s sweaty back and buttocks. Intricate and colorful, it depicted the mythical Japanese boy warrior Kintaro astride a bear, fighting a pair of coiled, evil-looking serpents. Only one man in all Japan had that tattoo: Naito. As if alive, the tattooed serpents’ thick coils swelled and flexed as Naito rammed his cock into the girl.
The two men burst into the room brandishing unsilenced Glock 17s. The girl down on all fours screamed. In the split second she had left to live, one of the killers recognized her as the shofu — prostitute — he had fucked the night before. He remembered that her name was Peach Blossom. Under contract to Ojima, Naito’s boss, she had just arrived from Bangkok. Young — not yet sixteen — and petite, very pretty, she was already Naito’s favorite.
Before Naito could pull out of her, the two men opened fire. Nine-millimeter Parabellum slugs shredded soft young flesh, gristle and bone, tore into wiry muscle and ripped apart the boy warrior Kintaro and his serpents.
The killers took a moment to survey their work: A fine red mist hung in the room, clotted on walls and floor; fragments of straw matting floated in the air; smoking cartridge cases lay scattered across the floor and on the bodies. Satisfied, they snuffed the lantern and departed, sliding the door closed behind them.
Downstairs, the techno hadn’t skipped a beat.
7
Jake Scott entered the USS Reno’s torpedo room, reconfigured to the needs of the SEAL team. Nine men, their equipment and weapons, had been crammed into an already tight compartment fitted with Mark-48 ADCAP torpedoes strapped to their cradles, and where sailors hot-bunked due to lack of space. Scott relished the familiar smells of ozone, sweat, and lubricating oil.
McCoy Jefferson stood in the central aisle between the waist-high torpedo storage tables, stripped to his skivvies. He had been working out, and his muscular upper body glistened with sweat, as did his shaved head.
One look at him and Scott felt the torment his own body had been through during a highly compressed training session at Pearl that had had the SEAL team wondering who the hell this guy Scott was and what did he think he was trying to prove.
Scott did have to prove himself, through physical workouts, SCUBA training, and refresher courses on tactics and with weapons in the SEAL armory. He had to refine his shooting skills, marksmanship, and magazine manipulation. He also had to relearn how to safely handle C4 explosive and get reacquainted with casualty care. The sessions had left Scott exhausted but exhilarated by the knowledge that he still had the physical and mental stamina to handle the mission they were training for.
A full day had been spent test-flying MAVs. Ominously, two micro bugs had crashed during the last flight, which had left Jefferson surveying their wreckage and frowning. He had cautioned them that with only a primary bug and one backup — due to their enormous cost — any crashes on Matsu Shan, like the ones at Pearl, and they’d be shit out of luck.
To wrap up training, a full day had been devoted to maneuver at sea to test the ASDS, a 65-foot-long, battery-powered miniature submarine designed to deliver SEALs to their objective from specially configured full-sized submarines. The eight-foot-diameter, titanium-hulled mini-sub had a range of 125 nautical miles and a top speed of eight knots. The sub could accommodate ten men: two pilots and eight SEALs and their gear. The pilot and copilot handled navigation through an advanced sonar and electro-optical surveillance system.
With its extended range, speed, and payload, the ASDS was capable of operating on its own, and without Deacon having to run the Reno virtually onto the beach — Scott’s nightmare — to launch the mini-sub. Instead, the Reno could lay in deep water, where she wasn’t likely to be detected. Even so, Deacon had agreed to take the Reno in as far as he could to make the swim-in as short as possible and to minimize the problems they might have with currents, tides, and also with bioluminescence, which could reveal to an enemy ashore the presence of an ASDS and its swimmers. Scott knew Deacon was a damn good sub driver, and, like himself, was willing to risk his balls for a mission.
But during the maneuvers, Scott had found scant opportunity to mesh with Deacon. Scott was nominally his boss and in charge of the mission; Deacon was ultimately responsible for the safety of his ship and crew. Still, Scott and Deacon had worked well together, and the Reno’s crew had been eager to prove just how good they were.
Hours after a final mission briefing from Radford via SVTC from Washington, and with the SEAL team embarked, Deacon had had the Reno at sea. Scott had watched Hawaii’s Diamond Head disappear off the horizon behind the Reno’s boiling wake. Minutes later, with the sub’s wave-wrapped bow pointed due west, Deacon had ordered, “Dive! Dive! Diving officer, make your depth six hundred feet.”
Reactor spun to full power, the Reno had flanked it west under the Pacific, destination Taiwan.
In the torpedo room Scott stepped around disassembled weapons laid out on a rubber mat: 5.56mm short-barreled M4A1 carbines, some with M-203 grenade launchers; suppressed 9mm Sig Saur pistols; and Remington 870 12-gauge choked shotguns.
SEAL Petty Officer First Class Zipolski sat cross-legged, cleaning and checking the weapons and filling M4 20-round magazines with sub-sonic, hollow-point man-stopping ammo. Nearby were night observation devices, PRC-148 inter-squad radios, and a miniature SAT-COM — satellite communications — receiver, and cell phones with embedded crypto-systems. Each piece of equipment had received a thorough going-over by Zipolski. The rest of their weapons—20-pound demolition charges, breaching charges, and grenades of various types, including white phosphorus and fragmentation — had been stowed in the ASDS secured to the Reno’s afterdeck over an escape trunk, which provided access.
“Morning, sir,” said Zipolski, not looking up from his work. An M4A1 bolt slammed shut in its receiver.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Tom Brodie grunted a hello as he watched Zipolski work. Built like a brick, Brodie was the mission coordinator. The other members of the team assembled in the torpedo room also greeted Scott: Petty Officers Caserta, Leclerc, and Ramos, and SEAL corpsman and shooter Van Kirk. Also present were Lieutenants (jg) Allen and Deitrich, the ASDS’s pilot and copilot.