Nishitsu vans were waiting for the sleepy union protesters. They were driven in silence to the location and let off at a base camp of circled tents and RV's.
Somewhere nearby, a portable gas generator started up with a coughlike complaint.
Jiro Isuzu stepped out of an RV and bowed so low that Lee Rabkin took it as a sign of total surrender. "Ready to play ball, Isuzu?" He sneered.
"Barr? Not understand. Brought you here to negotiate union rore in firm."
"That's what I meant," Rabkin said in a superior voice, thinking: Boy, this Jap is dumb. No wonder he tried to dance around the union.
"Forrow, prease," Isuzu said, turning smartly on his heel. "Negotiation trench has been prepared."
"Trench?" someone whispered in Rabkin's ear. Rabkin shrugged unconcernedly and said, "Hell, they sit on the floor at mealtime. I guess they negotiate in trenches."
They followed Jiro Isuzu beyond the base-camp tents and a short way into the desert. It was an eerie sight by moonlight. Hollows lay in impenetrable shadow and the gentle dunes resembled silvery frosting. Up ahead, three men stood in silhouette, AK-47's cradled to their chests.
"What's with the guns?" a union member asked nervously.
"It's a war picture," Rabkin said loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Maybe they're rehearsing."
Isuzu suddenly disappeared. Rabkin hurried to catch up and found that Isuzu had simply walked down a plank and into an eight-foot-deep trench in the sand. Shovels stood chucked on one side of the freshly dug pit.
Isuzu called up, "Come, prease."
"When in Rome, I guess," Rabkin muttered. He went in first. A guard hurried off to the generator. "They must be going to rig lights," Rabkin told the others following him into the trench.
"Good. It's as black as a snake's asshole in here." When at last everyone was standing in the dark trench, Jiro Isuzu barked a quick command in Japanese.
"Well, do we sit, or what?" Rabkin demanded, trying to see Isuzu's face in the murk.
"No," Jiro Isuzu told him in a polite voice, you simpry die."
And then Lee Rabkin's eyeballs seemed to explode from within. He felt the electric current ripple up through the soles of his feet and he fell on his face. His nose completed the circuit and fried his brains like scrambled eggs and cooked his corneas cataract white.
Jiro Isuzu watched the bodies Jerk and fall disinterestedly. They smoked like bacon even after the electric current was shut off from the metal plates under the sand at their feet. Although it was again safe for him to walk from the trench, he preferred not to step over so many white-pupiled corpses and accepted the hands that reached down to pull him off the protective rubber mat that was the same beige shade as the sand.
Isuzu threw another order over his shoulder and walked off without a backward glance. Dawn was only an hour away, and there was still much to do. . . .
Chapter 11
On the morning of December 23, a Canadian cold front descended on the United States of America, plunging the nation into below-zero temperatures. On this historic day, the two warmest cities of the country were Miami, Florida, and Yuma, Arizona. And it was not warm in Yuma.
When the morning sun broke over the Gila mountains, Bartholomew Bronzini had been up an hour. He had a quick breakfast in the Shilo Inn restaurant, then returned to his room to do his morning workout.
When he stepped out of the lobby, two things surprised him. The first was the cold. It felt like forty degrees. The other was the absence of union picketers. Bronzini ducked back into the lobby.
"No pickets today?" he asked the girl at the registration desk. "What goes on?"
The receptionist leaned closer. "I have a girlfriend at the Ramada," she whispered. "That's where they're staying. She says they left in the middle of the night without paying their bill."
"Probably ran out of money. Thanks."
There were no picketers at the location access road when Bronzini blasted his Harley-Davidson onto it. He passed the checkpoint, which consisted of two Japanese guards standing near the destroyed T-62 tank.
The guards attempted to wave him to a stop. Bronzini didn't bother to slow down.
"They must be joking, trying to keep me off my own set," he muttered. "Who do they think they're dealing with? Heather Locklear?"
The base camp was deserted. Off in the near distance, one of the prop tanks was chugging back and forth in the sand. It had a bifurcated plow blade mounted on the front. The tank used the blade to make piles of sand and push them into a hole.
Bronzini sped up to the main-unit location. He got a surprise when he turned the corner.
There were over a thousand men lined up in battalion formation. They wore brown People's Liberation Army uniforms and stood with their AK-47's at parade rest. On either side of them, the tanks and APC's had been lined up in ruler-straight rows. Tank commanders and crewmen clustered in front of the waiting machines. Jiro Isuzu stood facing them, his back to Bronzini.
Bronzini dismounted and walked up to him. "Bronzini san," Isuzu demanded hotly, "what you do here so earry?"
"Nice uniform, Jiro," Bronzini said coolly. "If you're going to be an extra too, who'll be directing? A gaffer?" Isuzu's face darkened.
"I wirr direct from within shot at times. You are famiriar with technique."
"I've directed myself," Bronzini admitted. "Never with a sword, though."
Jiro Isuzu grasped the scabbard of his ceremonial sword. Bronzini knew swords. It was not Chinese, but a samurai sword. It looked authentic, too.
"Sword bring good ruck. In famiry many generation."
"Try not to trip over it," Bronzini told him. He indicated the phalanx of extras. Several of the crewmen were going from man to man, distributing Federal Express envelopes. "We are firming Chinese sordier preparing for battre,' Jiro said unctuously. "Not need you yet."
"Yeah?" Bronzini noticed the Japanese crewmen were also in uniform. Several were filming the proceedings with hand-held Nishitsu video cameras. A big yellow Chapman crane lifted a thirty-five-millimeter film camera over the men, capturing a breathtaking panoramic shot of the formation.
"Cameraman in uniform too?" Bronzini said quietly. "We need every man. Not enough extras."
"Uh-huh." As Bronzini watched, the soldiers squat ted in the sand and, removing knives from belt scabbards, started paring their fingernails. They next chopped off a lock of hair. The clippings and hair were carefully deposited in the Fedex envelopes and sealed.
"What the heck is this about?" Bronzini asked. "Chinese war custom. Sordiers going into battre send home parts of serves to be buried in famiry urn if they not return."
Bronzini grunted. "Nice touch, but don't you think the Fedex envelopes are a bit of a stretch?" Uniformed groups went through the formation as the extras climbed to their feet. They collected the envelopes.
At a nod from Isuzu, they raised their fists and shouted, "Banzai!"
"Banzai?" Bronzini said. "Stop me if you've heard this one before, Jiro, but 'banzai' is Japanese."
"Extras get carried away. We edit out. Okay?"
"I'll want my technical adviser to okay all this stuff. He's due in today. I won't have my name on a piece of shit. Understand?"
"We arready reave message at hoter. Ask him to meet us at airdrop site. Okay?"
"Not okay. I read the script last night. I know this is a Japanese film, but does my character have to die?"
"You hero. Die tragic heroic death."
"And the part about the Americans nuking their own city really bothers me. What do you call that?"
"Happy ending. Evil Red Chinese die."
"So does the civilian population. How about a rewrite?"
"Rewrite possibre. We talk rater."
"Okay," Bronzini said, eyeing the soldiers in formation. "This is amazing. How many people you got here?"