Red Shark

Jefferson held the automatic pistol loosely against his leg, silencer pointed down. He took a deep breath and moved out. At the dogleg, he stopped and heard voices: Scott’s and that of someone he guessed was Tokugawa.

Jefferson flattened himself against a sliding door facing a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass panels, in which he saw his own reflection mingled with the softly lit garden outside. He inched forward; where the hallway turned into the main room, he rolled on a shoulder and peeked around the corner. Scott and Tokugawa were alone in the room. Jefferson pulled back, unsettled that there was no sign of the two bodyguards. Not good. He checked the timer on the transmitter: He had to move, now.

A bright reflection in the glass across the corridor caught his eye. He looked left, where a shoji screen had silently slid open, leaving a tall black rectangle in the wall. Light from an outdoor fixture had struck a shiny object inside the rectangle, and for a split second Jefferson had seen its flare reflected in the glass.

A fury of splintering wood and shredded paper exploded into the narrow corridor like a bomb. A muscular man holding a knife in his fist burst through the thin shoji screen at Jefferson.

Jefferson saw the flashing blade, rapier-thin, and instinctively whipped his head back as the point whistled past his chin. He reacted on pure instinct, ducked, pivoted on his haunches, and swung the automatic up in a one-handed grip. The man lunged again; Jefferson shot him in the face.

The silenced 9-millimeter round tore the top of the man’s head off, pulping his brains into a raspberry-colored mist, knocking him backward to the polished floor.

Jefferson sprang to his feet, spun around, and thrust the pistol, cradled in the cup of his left hand, at Jake Scott.

“Nice to see you again, Scott,” said Jefferson, “but you really should have followed the general’s orders.” He yanked the balaclava off his head, motioned with the pistol that Scott and Tokugawa should back up, and, eyes locked on them, stooped cautiously to pick up the dead bodyguard’s knife and the single spent cartridge case.

Scott looked past Jefferson at Ito, lying faceup in the hallway, his head shattered, brains stuck to the woodwork. Scott cycled through possible scenarios, searching for one that fit the current situation. Jefferson’s look of cold determination said what Scott had realized perhaps too late: He, like Fumiko, was expendable too.

“You’ve got a date in Yokosuka,” Jefferson said, eyes darting around the big room. “I’m here to see that you keep it.”

“Some unfinished business needed attention,” Scott said.

“Is that so?”

Tokugawa, seemingly unfazed by what had just happened, said calmly, “Your business, it seems, is to break into my home like common criminals and murder my servant. And now will you kill me too?”

Jefferson thrust the pistol at Tokugawa. “Shut up!” He jerked his head at the dead man. “Where’s the other one?”

“He’s bringing Fumiko down from upstairs,” Scott said.

“The hell for? She’s not our problem. You are. We’re getting out of here.”

“Uh-uh,” Scott said. “I came for Fumiko and I’m not leaving without her.”

Jefferson leveled the automatic at Scott. “My orders are to bring you in one way or another. She’s not part of the deal, get it?”

“She is now,” Scott said, looking behind Jefferson.

Jefferson warily shifted partway around, pistol still leveled on Scott and Tokugawa, and saw the blue-suited Ojima standing in the hallway behind Fumiko, an arm lashed around her neck. He had a Sig Saur pressed to her head. Scott saw an ugly purple bruise on her cheek, which, he thought, made her look totally helpless. Repelled yet hypnotized by the sight of Ito, she croaked something unintelligible, which Ojima choked off.