“Will do,” Akiko said, her voice reaching Kurt through the earbud. “Good luck.”
The lights below went dark and the wake began marking a curve to the left. A few seconds elapsed before the cable began to haul them around in matching fashion. Leaning to the left in tandem, Kurt and Joe easily maneuvered their flying machine into the turn. As they straightened up, the island appeared. It was nothing more than a dark spot against the shimmer of the sea.
On a direct heading toward it, they began to pick up speed. A few minutes later, the boat began to weave back and forth.
“That’s our signal,” Kurt said. “Here goes nothing.”
He reached forward and grabbed a red handle designed to release the cable in an emergency. One pull brought it back to a safety detent. A second pull finished the job.
The cable snapped free with a metallic whine. The wingboard and the parasail rose unencumbered and began to slow.
Leaning forward like snowboarders ready to move downhill, Kurt and Joe eased the craft into a mild descent. The wake of the powerboat vanished down below as Akiko turned away and in a moment the only sound Kurt or Joe could hear was the wind blowing past them and the rush of blood in their ears.
“Slight crosswind,” Joe said. “We’re drifting to the south.”
They leaned to the left and the board tilted beneath them. For an instant it felt as if it would slip away, but the brilliance of the twin wing system became evident as the parasail above corrected for any overzealous maneuvering done down below.
Having adjusted for the wind drift, they overshot for thirty seconds and then turned back on course. The feeling was incredible. Kurt had made a hundred jumps in various kinds of parachutes. He’d BASE-jumped in a wingsuit and even flown an expendable glider nicknamed the Lunatic Express, but all those descents were either fast and furious or slow and peaceful. The wingboard was somewhere in the middle, controllable with a simple body lean; it responded to the slightest weight shift, but there was a graceful sense to the pace. It moved at forty miles an hour instead of traveling like a bullet the way you did in a wingsuit. “This is like surfing the sky.”
Joe was grinning as broadly as Kurt. “If we survive tonight, I’m going to make this my new hobby.”
Kurt glanced at the timer on his wrist and then at the altimeter. “Eight hundred feet. Been just over a minute. We’re more than halfway there.”
As they moved closer, the jagged black shape of the island grew larger and appeared to rise up in front of them. Even in the dark there was something sinister about the place. Kurt could see waves breaking against it in splashes of angry white foam. The abandoned buildings looked like battlements in the low light.
“Time to enhance our vision,” Kurt said.
Kurt reached up and pulled the infrared lenses over his eyes while Joe pulled down the night vision goggles.
Joe suddenly saw the island in green with gray tones. He could see the outlines of the buildings, the narrow overgrown alleyways between them and the rubble strewn in open spaces. The closer they got, the more dilapidated everything appeared.
The island had been abandoned since 1974. Some of the buildings had fallen into disrepair before then. The place had survived several typhoons and hundreds of storms. The concrete shells of the buildings remained standing, but they were crumbling badly, the windows were all gone and foliage growing in the gaps was doing its best to split the structures apart.
“We’re right on target,” Joe said, “but still drifting a little. We should have no problem clearing the first row of buildings and dropping on the second row, closer to the center of the island.”
“Can you tell the condition of the roofs yet?”
“Not really,” Joe said, leaning to the left once again. “We’re still too far away.”
Kurt’s view of the island was almost invisible. The cold concrete was actually cooler than the surrounding waters, making the island a dark void in a swath of gray. There were tiny dots of heat here and there, but, based on their size, he knew they were probably rodents and birds that lived on the island.
“Any sign of the Yellow Brick Road?” Joe asked.
“Not even a munchkin or a flying monkey,” Kurt said.
He scanned methodically, but the maze of buildings made it hard to see anything at ground level. “Can we drift right a little and then come back against the wind? I need a better view of the alleys.”
“We’re getting closer,” Joe said. “We’ll have to make it quick.”
They shifted their weight to the right and the wingboard made a graceful turn. Kurt got a view between many of the buildings, spied a dimly glowing area and made a mental note of where it was. “Can we go a little more?”
“Ten more seconds,” Joe said, “then we turn back.”
Joe began a mental count as Kurt peered back and forth, looking for any sign of activity.
“That’s it,” Joe said. “Lean hard left.”
Joe leaned into the turn and felt Kurt doing the same. As they threw their weight over and pulled on the control cables, the twin-winged glider pulled up and turned sharply. “Level off.”
They were now dropping rapidly and picking up speed at the same time. The sea vanished and the outer layer of man-made structures raced by, not far beneath the wing.
“We’re going too fast.”
Pulling back on the chute stopped the descent momentarily. The glider ballooned upward as the speed dropped. By the time they leveled off and began descending again Joe could see they were going to miss the landing zone.
“It’s no good,” Joe said. “We’re going to overshoot and crash into the mountain. Divert to the left, we’ll have to cross over and land in the open area at the front of the island.”
Joe leaned into the turn. Kurt reacted instantly and the wingboard curved toward a gap between the rock wall and the tallest building.
To Joe’s amazement, Kurt was still looking through the thermal imaging goggles, following Joe’s instructions perfectly, while studying the island for heat sources.
“Straighten up,” Joe said.
They were rushing toward the gap between the central peak and a building to its left. Joe calculated that they’d clear the gap with twenty feet to spare.
Suddenly Kurt pulled on the cables. “Turn back,” he shouted.
“What? Why?”
“Hard left,” Kurt said, leaning over sharply.
Joe did as Kurt ordered and they turned the wingboard rapidly, whipping it around in a 180. This cost them a lot of speed and momentum and they dropped fast on their new heading.
Trees growing out from one of the buildings scraped the bottom of the wingboard and Joe scanned ahead of them, searching for a landing zone.
There was a wide roof two hundred feet directly ahead of them, but he could see they’d never make it.
“Lean right,” Joe said.
They curved back to the right, dropped farther and thumped onto the roof of another building. The impact was hard enough that they bounced, skidded forward and then spun when the right-hand tip of the wing clipped a vent.
Joe was thrown from the bindings that locked his feet into position. He hit and rolled, tumbling several times and losing the night vision goggles in the process.
He looked up to see the wingboard sliding, stopping and then moving again as the parasail caught the wind off the peak. Kurt was still locked into the bindings and was gathering in the sail as fast as he could.
Joe rushed toward him, caught the other end of the parasail and pulled hard. The parasail collapsed with his effort and the wingboard stopped where it was.
Before Joe could ask why Kurt had called for the dangerous last-minute turn, a helicopter rose up from the far side of the central hill and thundered overhead. It was heard more than seen as all its lights were still out.
“Sorry fo
r messing up our nice approach and landing, but I caught sight of the heat plume from their engines before we crested the hill,” Kurt said. “Another few seconds and we’d have fouled their rotors in a very painful way.”
“I hope they didn’t see us,” Joe said. He glanced into the distance. He could hear the helicopter traveling straight and low. It was still blacked out and moving away from the island. There was nothing to indicate anyone on board had spotted them. “They must have been using our backup landing zone as a helipad. Awfully tight quarters to take off and land in. If I was the pilot, I’d be far more worried about the side clearance than keeping an eye out above me for anything that might be dropping in.”
“They’d be coming back if they’d spotted us,” Kurt said. “Let’s get this chute tucked away.”
Kurt gathered the last of the parasail’s material and wrapped it with the guide wires. Joe lifted the edge of the wingboard and helped Kurt shove the sail underneath.
In the distance, the helicopter switched its lights on and banked toward the city. “They don’t seem to be coming back,” Joe said. “But the real question is, did they take Nagano with them?”
Kurt shook his head. “It would make no sense to bring him here and then take him away. That was a shuttle run. A drop-off. He’s here, all right, probably with your old friend Ushi-Oni. They just can’t keep the helicopter here for too long on the chance someone would notice.”
43
HASHIMA ISLAND
USHI-ONI stood by a dilapidated building watching the helicopter leave. He would have preferred to be on it, but Han had ordered him to stay behind and had promised to arrive shortly with his payment, assuming the swords were authentic.
They’d better be authentic, Ushi-Oni thought to himself. He’d killed three policemen and half a dozen Shinto priests and monks to obtain them.
He glanced at the sword in his hand. It was the famed Honjo Masamune, if the dying monks were to be believed. Ushi-Oni wasn’t sure. He had to admit the weapon was light; in fact, it seemed to weigh almost nothing at all. And how it gleamed.
All around him was rubble, crumbling concrete and tangled vines. The clouds were growing thicker and lower as the threatened storm closed in, but the sword caught what little light was reaching them and amplified it.
Rumor had it that Masamune had worked crushed gemstones into his blades. Oni wasn’t sure, he could see nothing of the sort, and such an act would make the weapons brittle and useless for fighting, but the weapon was almost luminescent in his hand.
A rusted metal door opened behind him and Han’s lead scientist Gao poked his head out. Gao’s face had a feral quality to it. He reminded Ushi-Oni of a rodent emerging from its den.
“You need to come with me,” Gao said. “Han wants everyone inside.”
Ushi-Oni shook his head. He wasn’t fond of closed-in spaces. Time in various prisons had seen to that. Besides, he was sweating. The fever was coming back. He needed more powerful antibiotics. “You go, I’m staying out here.”
“Suit yourself,” Gao said. “But I’ll need the sword. We have to examine it in the lab.”
Instead of handing Gao the sword, Oni extended it toward the diminutive scientist, bringing the tip within an inch of Gao’s chest. “After I’ve been paid.”
Gao pulled back, putting some distance between himself and the blade. He took one more glance at Oni and then retreated into the stairwell, shutting the decaying wooden door behind him.
Oni turned to the surroundings. There was not much to see from his vantage point, only abandoned monoliths and a broken hill that had been hollowed out by the miners. Still, the ruined island begged to be explored.
Oni could smell the rain coming, but he didn’t care, it might even help quell his fever. Picking a direction at random, he crossed the open expanse where the helicopter had landed and walked out into the dark.
44
ROOF OF BUILDING 37, HASHIMA ISLAND
KURT LAY FLAT at the edge of the building. He studied the terrain through the infrared filter. The central mountain was on his right while a nine-story building lay to the left. A concrete pedestrian bridge several floors below spanned the diagonal gap between the two.
The hillside was dark and cold, nothing resembling a heat source could be seen. The bridge was darker still. And the concrete shell of the building on the far side was like empty caves stacked one on top of the other.
Joe crawled forward beside him.
Kurt looked up. “Did you find the night vision goggles?”
“No,” Joe said. “They must have gone over the edge.”
“Better them than us.”
“True,” Joe said. “See anything?”
“There’s an oval swath down there in the clearing,” Kurt said. “Residual heat left behind where the helicopter sat for the last two hours.”
“Any sign of the passengers?”
“Not yet. No sign of a vent or doorway radiating heat. All these buildings are dark.”
“So much for the Yellow Brick Road,” Joe said.
As Kurt went back to scanning the buildings the rain began to fall. It came lightly at first, tapping him on the shoulders with a soft patter, trickling through his hair. Soon it was falling steadily, not a tropical downpour but cold, gray rain that would fall all night.
Kurt ignored it for now, concentrating on the task before him. He studied the structures one by one. Across and down, across and down. The tangled complex of buildings impressed him. Built over the decades, some were spaced so tightly there was barely an alleyway large enough for a bicycle to fit between them; others had been built right into each other, with outer walls knocked down and hallways extended.
Han’s people could be hidden in any one of them. At least that was Kurt’s initial impression.
“These buildings are more dilapidated than I thought,” he said. “A demolition crew would have a field day here.”
“Might not need them,” Joe said. “Some of these structures are partially collapsed already.”
With Joe’s words, it dawned on Kurt. “I know where they are.”
“Did you spot something?”
“Not a thing,” Kurt admitted. “But if you were hiding on this island, would you set up shop in a building that could collapse at any moment, one that couldn’t keep the rain out or the wind from howling through?”
Joe grinned. “Probably not. You think they’ve gone underground?”
Kurt nodded. “They dug coal out of this island for decades. The mine has several entrances and large open galleries where it’s warm and dry.”
“Sounds inviting,” Joe said. “Let’s go.”
The first stairway they came to was a fire escape connected to the outside of a building. The rusted metal was flaking badly and had pulled away from the building in several places. Definitely unsafe.
Kurt pushed on it with his boot and the entire thing swayed. “That’s not going to support either of us.”
“Let’s find another way,” Joe said.
He found a caved-in part of the roof where one side of a concrete slab had dropped. It angled down into the building like an off-ramp. The wet surface was slick and they scaled it carefully, sliding the last few feet.
The interior of the building was a dank, fetid world. Rainwater was dripping through a hundred cracks in the ceiling; plants and vines grew in many places. Several inches of muck covered the floor.
“Housekeeping must be on strike,” Kurt mused.
The infrared goggles were useless inside the dark concrete building, but they soon found an inner stairway, forced the door open and began descending toward a bridge that led between two buildings.
“If we cross here, we can get down to the ground level without having to go outside,” Kurt said.
“Staying inside won’t keep us dry,” Joe said, sidestepping some
more runoff, “but at least it’ll keep us out of sight.”
They crossed the span with caution, avoiding the gaping holes and burgeoning cracks that suggested the bridge would not remain in place for much longer. And came out on the other side. Kurt dropped down to one knee and signaled for Joe to hold up.
“I was wrong,” Kurt whispered.
“You? No.”
Kurt nodded. “Not everyone is out of sight. There’s a patrol on the hillside. Two men. From up there, they will see us as soon as we hit open ground.”
* * *
• • •
PATROLLING in the rain was miserable duty. So thought every soldier who’d ever been forced to do it.
Han’s men were no different. They did as ordered, but they didn’t have to like it. They started out hiking up the central hill that dominated the island; climbing through the foliage was even more difficult than navigating the slick and well-worn stairs. The arrived at the top of the hill and took their positions.
“You see anything?” the leader of the two asked.
His partner shook his head. “Something’s wrong with my equipment,” he said, pulling off his night vision goggles. “All I see are flares.”
The leader pulled the hood back on his rain slicker and stepped over to his subordinate. Each of them had a pair of night vision goggles, but the scopes were less effective in the rain. Raindrops, like all water, bend and refract light. Studying the terrain through the falling drops was like looking through a kaleidoscope.
The leader looked through the goggles and then handed them back. “Turn down the resolution.”
He did the same with his own. The lightning in the distance was another problem. The goggles had a circuit that prevented it from blinding them, but it still caused flaring on the screen that lasted for several seconds each time it flashed.
“Why are we even out here?” the subordinate said, putting his goggles back on and pulling the rain gear up over his head.