Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

Two hours later, after a host of checklists – most relating to the mission – the airship was released from its tethering mast and the mission team were airborne.

Below, the Spider and Yoshokawa waved and then were quickly lost in the darkness as the airship climbed to 1,500 feet.

Fitzduane stared out one of the windows at the panorama below and ran through the operation plan one more time, trying to consolidate his overall mental model of what had to be done. Checklists were necessary and all very well, but the endless items covered tended to buzz around distractingly in your mind and then weigh you down with detail. Fitzduane now sought a clear overview. He was keenly aware that, prepare as you might, the operation was highly unlikely to go according to plan. His opponents were clever and devious people who would have their own agendas. He had to try to prepare for the unexpected.

He smiled to himself. Another way of looking at it was to anticipate the unknown, and that was a decided contradiction in terms. Well, all you could do was give it your best shot and then make sure that you acted with reasonable grace under pressure. And the last element was luck.

Summarized – and there were a few interesting moves to add to the scenario – the basic plan was simple. Fumio Namaka had been enticed out of his normal heavy security to meet Fitzduane in the seclusion of the walled gardens surrounding Hodama's villa. The villa would be searched by two representatives of both parties to ensure there were no hidden surprises, and then the two principals and one driver each would be allowed in. Then the conference would commence. It would be held in the open garden under floodlights, so that everyone could see everyone else and to minimize the chance of eavesdropping. If it rained, there was the adequate protection of the open-sided summer house.

Fitzduane had been far from sure that Fumio would agree to an open-air meeting, but logic was on his side. It did make sense to have all involved in plain sight, and Fumio Namaka was known to be paranoid about being bugged. As an additional concession, Fitzduane had agreed that Fumio could enter the villa grounds first, immediately after the initial search, so that there would be no opportunity for any ambush to be set up.

The first twist in the plan was that it would not be Fitzduane in the second limo. But from then on, it was up to the players on the ground, with just a little help from on high.

The requirement of having a tactical edge, if at all possible, had been drummed into Fitzduane when serving under Kilmara in the Congo. There he had found he had a natural talent for thinking this way, and its application had been accelerated by being repeatedly shot at. In modern high-technology combat, so much of death was random, but it still made a difference to have an edge.

Fitzduane had been taken aback by the Tokyo MPD airship when he had first seen it floating past his bedroom window at the Fairmont, but he had very quickly taken it for granted. And it was this fact that all Tokyo residents seemed to regard the craft in the same way that had given him the idea of using it.

Vast though it was, it was such a regular feature of the Tokyoskyline, it was, for all practical purposes, invisible.

A further curious but helpful fact about the airship was that it was very hard to judge its proximity. Most people knew the approximate size of a helicopter or aircraft and cold make a rough guess at range, but the airship was seldom seen by people on the ground, so range estimation in its case was problematic in the extreme. If you do not know the size of something, it is virtually impossible to estimate distance unless there is a familiar object at the same distance.

What this boiled down to was that you could use the airship as a monitoring platform for activities on the ground below without attracting any undue attention. An extension of that premise was that you could shoot from it, too. Of course, the other side could shoot back, but at least there was the consoling fact that a modern airship could not do a Hindenburg. Early aircraft got their lift from ultravolatile hydrogen, which was a fair definition of an accident waiting to happen. Today's birds had switched to the much more expensive but more stable helium. You could fire an incendiary round into helium and no reaction would occur.

The stability of helium was the good news. The bad news, if hostiles started shooting at you, was that an airship of the Tokyo model was an easy target to acquire and a hard target to miss. Then, having found the overall target, a hostile would not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that the vulnerable humans were likely to be in the gondola below. And better yet, flying slowly.

Maximum speed was only just over seventy-five miles an hour. In reality, if shooting did start, their initial projection through speed would be considerably less. They would be optimized for monitoring, which would mean hovering or traveling at a purely nominal rate, and the airship's acceleration left a great deal to be desired. The thing was supposed to float serenely. It was not designed to hot-rod.

Fitzduane played out various scenes in his mind.

Some of the possibilities were distinctly unpalatable.

The thought of an air-to-ground running gunfight over densely populated central Tokyo made him shudder. It was for that reason that he had agreed with the Spider that only aimed rifle fire would be used within the urban confines and even then be confined to targets within the grounds of Hodama's house. It had been a reasonable request, but it would have been nice to know that the opposition was going to follow the same restrictive rules. Frankly, he did not think they would, so invisibility and surprise were his best weapons. Of course, if the action switched to over the sea, then the Spider's rules would not apply. Then they could play hardball.

Al Lonsdale had been gazing out of one of the large observation windows that lined both sides of the gondola and now turned and came over and sat by Fitzduane. When they had converted the airship for the operation, they had left a walkway around the periphery of the gondola and a row of seats in the center.

They would be airborne for four hours before the 2:00 A.M. time of the meeting. The airship could not suddenly appear. It was unlikely that anyone would look u past the glare of the floodlights when reconnoitering the meeting, but on the off chance that they did, the ship had to be established as part of the scenery. The delay was a nuisance, because waiting was the hardest part of any action, but it was unavoidable. The endurance of the airship itself was not a problem. At slow speeds it used minimal fuel and could stay up for up to forty hours if necessary.

"Hell of a craft, isn't she, Colonel?" said Lonsdale, looking around the gondola with a proprietorial air. "Frankly, I'm surprised they're not more popular. I mean, what a way to see the country.

Smooth as silk."

Fitzduane was amused. Since Al had trained in the borrowed Airship Industries Skyship 600 – a model similar to the one they were flying in now – the Delta marksman had become something of an instant airship expert and advocate.

"Smooth as silk if the weather holds," said Fitzduane. "Now, some serious wind could make you reach for a long, paper bag – or so I hear."

Lonsdale grinned. The Achilles' heel of an airship was its behavior in high wind. With all that surface area, an airship's gas-holding envelope acted like a giant sail, and could pitch and roll just like a boat. On his first training flight, Lonsdale had been airsick.

"Someone's been talking," said Lonsdale cheerfully. "Anyway, that was a particularly shitty day and my pilot wasn't as expert as these boys. I don't think we're going to have any trouble tonight." He saw Fitzduane's eyebrows rise, and hastily added, "Well, not from the weather, anyway."