Serpent's Lair

“Don’t make any noise,” Bolan answered. “They’ve slowed down, and they’re looking for tracks.”

Honey glanced back at the trail Bolan’s big boots had dug up in his desperate run. She looked to him, doubtful, but he nodded her on. She turned and scrambled along as fast as she could without making the leaves rustle loudly with her passing. Behind her, Bolan followed, using a branch to wipe out their tracks.

They moved slow and low, and they kept their heads below the level of the saplings and tall grasses growing between the trees.

On the other side of some waist-high grasses, Honey paused. Bolan slipped in beside her.

“Aww, dammit. We’re closing in on a rise,” she noted. “They’ll see us.”

“Cut right. We’ll travel parallel to them. The ground is uneven and there’s a depression at the base of those trees,” Bolan whispered. “Get moving.”

TOSHIEE RAN ACROSS the compound. He knew that Master Zakoji was not to be interrupted, but with the sounds of gunfire rattling on the hill overhead, there was a threat of their facility being discovered.

Camouflage netting cast crazy, obscene shadows on the ground as he raced across the camp to the main building, where Zakoji kept his laboratory and office. It was wide and squat, and he knew that it sunk deep into the ground, where the bodies were taken, to be changed by the almost sorcerous machinations of Master Zakoji’s whitecoats.

Toshiee threw open the doors in time to see his leader, the man chosen by God to carry on the name of the great alchemist who dared defy a corrupt shogun, reborn in this time to bring Japan back to glory. He clapped his fist to his chest and bowed swiftly.

“What is it?” Zakoji asked, puffing a cigarette as he overlooked the glass enclosed underground labs.

“There was the sound of gunfire on the hill,” Toshiee said breathlessly.

“The Yakuza bring another of their victims and execute him, and you worry about that?”

“There was much gunfire,” Toshiee continued. “More than just when they render a body useless to you, my lord. This was the sound of thunder splitting the air. Like the sounds of a great battle.”

Zakoji turned, narrowing his gaze. He then nodded to the man to his left. “See if our scout on the hill is responding.”

“Great Master, so soon on the heels of the previous intrusion—”

“I shall have to get in touch with our men dealing with him,” Zakoji said. “You have done well.”

The young man bowed again. He caught the flurry of robes as his master turned, glimpsed the twisting form of the great crimson serpent embroidered into his kimono as he disappeared up the stairs toward his office.

TOJU SAKEI, KNOWN TO his followers as Master Zakoji, tore through the door to his office, his mind racing.

It couldn’t have been coincidence that brought a gun battle to his doorstep so soon after the government agent invaded. And yet, why would federal agents begin a gun battle so close by, ruining their element of surprise?

Sakei shook the many possibilities out of his mind. He needed all the information he could get. He glanced over to Umon, one of his lieutenants.

“Any word from our sentry?”

“Kawai isn’t answering his radio,” Umon answered, bowing his head reverently.

“Call our team torturing the government man back to the compound. And send some patrols into the woods. I want everyone on full alert, that means body armor and automatic weapons,” Sakei said.

“Who do you think is attacking us?” another man, Rikyu, asked.

“I’m not sure we are being attacked,” Sakei responded. He rubbed his black-bristled chin. “I think someone else brought their fight with the Yakuza into our backyard.”

Umon and Rikyu glanced at each other. “And if the Yakuza discover that the men they’ve been burying over the years are missing?” Umon asked.

“We won’t let them live long enough to analyze that information,” Sakei assured them. “Send out the patrols. Shoot to kill!”

Umon and Rikyu vacated his office, and Sakei looked out over the compound.

If he was going to take over Japan, fulfilling the legacy of the original Master Zakoji, he was going to need a few more days of privacy. Once he perfected the disease’s interactions with the corpses, then he would be able to bring down the great gleaming cities of steel and glass, sweeping away the neon modernization that poisoned the beautiful nation he lived in. He could make Japan a simpler, more noble land once again.

It was regrettable that he had to use the trappings of modern science, but the germ, the lowliest of all organisms, was older than mankind. It was ancient, and thus, in a way, it was worthy of his goal. Did not the alchemist Zakoji develop superior poisons and diseases with which to strike down his enemies centuries ago?

All that came to an end when the lone swordsman came to the secluded valley. Zakoji’s dying curse against the man had been heard over and over again, in tale upon tale in Sakei’s family.

Sakei thought that the government agent being tortured to death on the hill might be the reincarnation of that lone swordsman.

But Sakei knew that the sounds of battle so soon after sending the Koancho agent off to die was a sign. He hadn’t destroyed the reincarnation of the man in black.

But he would soon get his chance.

4

The Executioner continued to obliterate their back trail with the branch, taking care not to bob his head into view as he watched the pursuing team of Yakuza gunmen and American mercenaries. The enemy was hot on their trail to retrieve the young woman, and he had only a single 9 mm pistol with a short barrel and an 8-shot magazine. There was a real danger of Honey Anthony being gunned down alongside him as he tried to protect her.

The girl was keeping her cool, despite the bandages swathed around her bare feet and the fact that she was crawling literally on the ground. Occasionally she’d give a grunt of effort as she moved a limb and found herself overstrained in her position. Fear kept her head down, though. Fear and tenacity.

Bolan knew from reports that she was hardly fighting material, but she clearly had courage.

Bolan knew he could have been worse off, but even so, this wasn’t a good situation. He desperately wanted to get hold of a larger weapon, like an M-16, something that had the necessary punch to knock out large groups of enemies.

As it was, he was left with his best weapon. His mind.

Honey stopped abruptly, and Bolan dropped to one knee, checking on their pursuers. They were still about fifty yards behind in the forest, barely visible. He glanced at the girl. She was staring at the top of a hill up ahead.

“More bad guys?” she whispered.

Bolan took in the scene. A man was jammed into a tree, and three men with knives stood around him. His shirt was a gory mess, and his face a crimson mask of dried blood. The trio was laughing as it was doing its ghastly butcher’s work. Bolan frowned.

“They might be with that man who grabbed you back in the clearing,” Bolan noted.

Honey looked at him. “You think?”

The Executioner almost smirked. “If I can get the jump on them, I might be able to pick up some spare firepower.”

“That would be a good thing,” Honey said. The prospect of violence played across her face with a displeasure that Bolan knew all too well. It mirrored his own feelings. Violence was the last resort, but in Bolan’s world, he was already called in when that point had been looted, pillaged and burned to the ground.

“Stay close behind me,” Bolan whispered. He dropped his branch and swung around, making his way up the side of the rise. He looked back and saw that no one had spotted the outlines of the two black-clad people as they climbed toward the quartet near the killing tree.

As they closed in, the coppery smell of blood threatened to make Honey gag. She held it down, though. Bolan was inured to such scents.

He drew his Walther from its holster and leveled the front sight at the man nearest the victim pinned on the tree. The tortured man looked up, his dark eyes glassy, his face blood-spattered, but he didn’t give away the Executioner’s presence.