Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

Fitzduane was acting as a spotter and fire commander. He was observing the scene below through gyroscopically stabilized, twenty-power, range-finding field glasses.

The diagonal to the garden below as they circled was almost exactly five hundred yards, and this range appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of his vision, together with other targeting details. The picture quality was outstanding. In visual terms, he was a mere twenty-five yards away. There were night-vision options, but he did not need them. Within its fifteen-foot-high walls, as agreed, the Hodama gardens were brightly illuminated. The benefit of this level of brightness was not just that everything in the garden could be clearly seen, but also that looking up meant looking into glare. The airship could not be detected.

The gondola was now in darkness. This was something of a relief to Fitzduane, since the slaughter surrounding him could no longer be seen. His own hands and clothing were covered in blood, and though the observation windows were open he could still detect the acrid smell. A split-second picture of Mike Bergin's body flashed before him, and he thrust it from his mind.

That was then and this was now. Focus, focus, focus on the scene below.

Fortunately, the copilot was turning out to be damn good. After the initial shock of seeing his superior's face half blown away and deposited on the Plexiglas, Inspector- san had rallied and now was flying superbly. There was the occasional very slight vibration in height and distance due to variations in the night breeze, but mostly the airship held its circular course as if tied to the Hodama garden by some invisible line. Thrust vectoring of its two duct-mounted propellers, the ability to swivel the complete drive units in flight, was supposed to give an unusual degree of control – and it showed.

Fitzduane was also linked to the Spider on ground control. Now he watched Fumio drive into the Hodama grounds, leave his limousine, and take up position as arranged.

Fitzduane took care making his identification. Bearing in mind what he had planned, he was acutely conscious that Fumio could attempt a switch. His instinct told him it was unlikely. Fumio would want to be there personally to see his brother's killer destroyed.

Still, it was best to be certain. Fitzduane examined Fumio's distinctive crippled walk, his build, and his features with great care and quickly switched to infrared mode to detect any mask or similar anomaly. There was little doubt.

"Fumio has entered and is in position," said Fitzduane on the open net. "No surprises so far."

The Spider's people were watching all approaches, leaving Fitzduane and his team to concentrate on the garden. "Katsuda's limousine should arrive in about thirty seconds," said the Spider.

"Any sign of a backup for either of them?" said Fitzduane.

Surely there would be car- or vanloads of reinforcements ready to rush in. Both men were always heavily guarded and were devious in the extreme. He found it hard to believe that neither of them would be planning anything. It would be downright unnatural. And yet the Spider's men, who had the area saturated, had reported nothing so far.

Very weird.

Where were Yaibo? What was Katsuda really up to? Probably Schwanberg had known, but he was not going to tell anyone anything now.

"Still nothing," said the Spider. He, too, was unsettled.

Katsuda's truly repulsive appearance severely limited his public appearances.

He lived in the seclusion of his own world, in the darkness and shadows of his own creations. This behavior limited neither his work nor his ambition, but regularly he felt a need for release. Apart from his women and the ambivalence he felt toward them because of his burn-distorted features, his relaxation and his window to the outside world were the movies.

He watched them to the point of obsession. The movies were not inwardly disgusted by how he looked. They were pleasure, pure and simple.

Film fulfilled his need for escape, stimulated his imagination, and appealed to his sense of the dramatic. Privately, Katsuda considered that if events had not taken the direction they had, he would have made an outstanding actor. He had a fine voice and projected it well, and his movements were well-coordinated. All that was missing were looks.

From the movies, Katsuda had followed the extraordinary developments of special effects and, of even more interest, specialized makeup. Sometimes, the results on the screen were so good that it seemed to him he could apply them to his own situation and appear, albeit for a limited time, normal.

He had cultivated one of the leading makeup artists in Japan and had even sent him to Hollywood to advance his craft to state of the art. The results were encouraging, brilliant even, if he was seen from a short distance away, but in close-up the artificiality was always detectable. It was a bitter disappointment, but he persevered. One day, he thought, they would get it right, and it was undeniable that makeup skills were steadily improving.

For the meeting with Fumio Namaka, such an artifice was arguably not necessary, but it appealed to his sense of theater.

It would be an entirely appropriate way to lead into the final act of his destruction of the Namaka clan; and the actual execution method he planned to employ deserved such a buildup. Decades ago, Hodama and the Namaka brothers had eliminated Katsuda's family in a locked, burning house. Now the last of the Namakas would also die in flames.

Katsuda was very aware that Fumio might have a few tricks up his sleeve, so had devoted a great deal of time to taking precautions. He had studied the plan of Hodama's residence for several days and finally had come up with something that he was sure beyond any doubt at all would guarantee surprise. And, of course, his own preparations were in addition to the fire support he would be getting from Schwanberg in the airship.

Nothing was certain, but as his limousine approached the gates of Hodama's house, Katsuda was as sure as any reasonable man could be when making a major movie that his preparations would ensure success.

"See anything?" said Fitzduane.

"Negative," said Chifune, what was all business when operational.

"A lot of pebbles," said Lonsdale, who felt the mood could do with some lightening.

Both Chifune and Lonsdale were professional and would report instantly anything untoward, but Fitzduane was getting increasingly concerned and a little strain was showing. He could still see nothing but Fumio standing beside the open-sided summer house where they were to have the meeting and Katsuda being checked in and searched at the gate. Surely, he should have detected something else by now. He could not see the pair of them meeting and just sticking out their tongues at each other.

He had two snipers, Lonsdale and Chifune, eyeballing the confrontation, but their vision was severely restricted because their eyes were glued to their telescopic sights. That had been the original plan and had made sense with Fitzduane and Mike Bergin and the pilot monitoring the bigger picture, but it was somewhat problematical now they were short two pairs of eyes.

It was time to make a change in the arrangements.

Lonsdale was targeted, but Chifune was not yet allocated, and right now it was not much good having an extra sniper if she had nothing to shoot at. Also, in training he had noticed that Chifune was about as fast as anyone at acquiring a target, so if she had to return to her scope in a hurry, it should not cause any serious grief. Chifune was not as good with the Barrett as Al, but she was one hell of a combat shot p to about a kilometer.

For both of them, five hundred yards, with precision equipment, made for virtually guaranteed single-shot kills. The best of special-operations people were somewhat frightening.