Rules of the Hunt (9 page)
"Until
1952 when a formal treaty was signed with the
were an occupied country.
And as always,
Hodama gravitated to where power lay.
His release came neatly in time to avail of a major opportunity — suppressing
the rise of communism."
As the full
scale of the threat to the West of Stalinist communism became clear,
anti-communist opinion in
The Central Intelligence
Agency was founded.
The West began to
fight back.
The threat was worldwide.
The scale of the menace demanded drastic
solutions.
Some were legal.
Some were not.
In what the
Japanese called the
gyakkosu
, or
political about-face, SCAP — the predominantly military administration of
Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers — and the conservative
Japanese government in power at the time carried out an official purge of
communism.
It was decided that a strong
needed to stand against Soviet communism, and if that meant leaving some of the
militarist and their prewar industrial support structure in power, then so be
it.
But just so
much could be done through official channels.
Where more drastic methods were required — to break up a communist union
or intimidate a left-wing newspaper, for example — SCAP and the new
organization, the CIA, used gangs of local thugs.
Fairly soon, it became clear that these ad
hoc arrangements required organization, and into this opportunity stepped
Hodama.
Heavily funded by the CIA, he
used the
yakuza
to do the strong-arm
work and bribery to ensure that the appropriate anti-communist politicians got
elected.
Japanese
politics, as the prewar assassinations and other excesses showed, were never
exactly squeaky clean, but the contamination of
democratic system by institutionalized bribery could be traced directly to the
CIA.
The same thing was happening in
Communism was
checked, but at a high price.
Organized
crime received a major cash injection and direct links with the political
establishment.
And links with the
politicians meant protection.
In such an
environment, Hodama, the
kuromaku
,
thrived.
Adachi opened
his eyes.
Chifune had stopped speaking
and was reaching behind her head, her breasts uplifted by the gesture.
Her hair, glowing richly in the candlelight,
came
tumbling down.
Then she leaned forward to kiss him, and he put his arms around her and
held her and caressed her while they kissed.
*
*
*
*
*
January 2
There was no
time to bring in a rescue helicopter, so Kilmara had decided to use the
aircraft in which the terrorists had arrived.
There was no
margin for any other decision.
The
Rangers had done the best they could, but it was not enough.
Fitzduane had been too seriously wounded.
He was losing ground.
Kilmara made
the reasonable deduction that a machine meant to be used in such a covert
mission would be fully fueled, and the tank would probably have been topped up
when they had landed on the island.
So it
proved.
One of the Delta men was Unit
160 trained.
He could fly low and fast
and land on a dime.
Unfortunately, he
had no idea of the local geography or Irish radio procedures.
Anyway, thought Kilmara privately, his
would be practically unintelligible to the locals.
Sergeant Hannigan went with him to monitor
the injured, navigate and act as an interpreter.
Flying low was
vital.
Fitzduane had a punctured
lung.
The higher he flew, the thinner
the air, the greater the pressure put on his lung as he struggled to breathe —
and the greater the risk of his lung collapsing.
To the Delta
warrant officer, trained in contour flying, low meant low.
It was the most hair-raising and exhilarating
flight of his Ranger comrade's life.
Unfortunately, Hannigan was able to enjoy little of it.
Seatless, he had to work from a kneeling
position.
The noise and vibration of the
helicopter meant vigilant observation of the injured passenger's essential signs.
He took blood pressure and pulse repeatedly,
monitored airways occasionally,
fought
to keep the
drips in place in the exposed interior.
By the time
the helicopter arrived at
Hannigan was of the opinion that on the balance of probability, Fitzduane was
going to die.
*
*
*
*
*
The helicopter
trip took thirty minutes.
It was now
forty-five minutes since the shooting.
Mike
Gilmartin, the casualty consultant, had been briefed ahead by radio, and made
his own diagnosis now while his team went to work.
The consultant
anesthetist, Linda Foley, checked the airway for obstructions.
Clearly, he could not breathe adequately for
himself.
"Bag him," she
said.
An oxygen venting mask was
attached and connected to an Ambu-bag, and an anesthetic nurse began manually
compressing the bag, forcing oxygen into the patient.
The patient
was waxy white and his skin was clammy and cold to the touch.
He was struggling and bewildered,
straw-colored serous fluid leaking from his wounds, his clothing saturated in
clotting blood.
Closer examination
showed his breathing to be thirty-five gasping breaths per minute and his blood
pressure to be over eighty and unrecordable.
His pulse showed one-forty beats per minute.
Fitzduane was
showing a basic animal response to severe injury.
Unbidden by his conscious mind, he was cutting
of the blood supply to the less important areas and preserving the blood supply
to his brain so that his body could fight back.
Gilmartin
percussed Fitzduane's chest, and hearing the dull sound, immediately ordered a
chest drain.
Quickly, he injected a local
anesthetic, and without waiting for the three to five minutes it took for the
drug to fully effective, made an incision in the muscles over the lower end of
the fifth rib space and opened up the muscle with a forceps.
It was not
enough.
He inserted his surgical-gloved
finger to open the wound up more,
then
replaced it
with a forty-centimeter-long plastic tube.
Blood, a
mixture of bright-red arterial and bluish venous, rushed out in a bubbly,
dirty-red stream through an underwater seal and into a container on the
floor.
A second tube protruded from the
container and released the air that was escaping from Fitzduane's lung.
Half a liter of blood came out in the first
two minutes.
Oblivious to
his surroundings, semiconscious, confused, and terrified, Fitzduane was
struggling.
The anesthetist and her
staff watched with concern and quickly moved to tape down the cannulas.
It was all too easy for them to dislodge from
the veins and go into tissue.
Gilmartin
exposed the wounded leg and applied a fresh pressure dressing, while a nurse
applied a direct manual pressure.
The
leg was unnaturally white, a sign that the femoral artery and vein were
damaged.
Further, the patient had clearly
sustained a multiple fracture.
"What a
bloody mess," he said.
"Let's
prep him for the theater."
The
preparations continued.
Fitzduane's
blood pressure slowly improved to ninety to one hundred systolic and his heart
rate had slowed to a hundred beats per minute.
He was now
adequately resuscitated for surgery.
Thirty minutes
had passed since his arrival at the hospital.
It had been one hour and fifteen minutes since the shooting.
He was wheeled
into the operating theater.
4
January 3
Chifune left
sometime around dawn.
Adachi had
opened one eye as she touched her lips to his but had not protested.
She had never yet stayed a full night with
him and refused to explain why, and what was just the way of it.
In time things might change.
Meanwhile, murder and
kendo
and lengthy lovemaking were exhausting.
He drifted back to sleep.
He awoke
officially when the alarm clock shrieked.
The Japanese electronics industry was a great believer in innovation,
and this ridiculous thing, which was a clock in the form of a parrot, had been
bought for him one Sunday when they had been browsing around Akihabara.
It looked horrible, the digital clock face
that peered out of its stomach was obscene and sounded revolting, but it did
wake him up and it had some sentimental value.
Nonetheless, he was determined to shoot it one of these days.
Which reminded him.
Where was his gun?
He went
hunting and found it under his socks.
It
was a .38 Nambu Model 60 with a five-chamber cylinder.
It was not exactly state of the art compared
to American personal firepower, but in peaceful
He buckled on the damn thing, and two
speedloaders to balance out the weight, with regret.
Orders were orders.
The thought
came to him that the vast majority of Japanese had never handled a gun.
Neither would Adachi if he had any choice in
the matter, but weapons were not an option, even in the Japanese Defense
Forces.
Adachi had had
a good time in the paratroops but had never seriously associated the military
life with the need to kill anyone.
He
just enjoyed the camaraderie and jumping out of airplanes.
He regarded infantry badges and Purple Hearts
that he had met at Atsugi during training.
He just could not imagine deliberately killing another human being.
Adachi slurped
a bowl of herb tea and ate some rice, a few pickles, and a little grilled
fish.
He bowed toward the ancestral
shrine he kept in a niche of the living room and headed for the subway.
He had looked a little hollow-eyed when he
checked himself in the mirror earlier, but apart from a certain understandable
fatigue — he had slept only about three hours — he felt great.
It was not yet
seven in the morning, but the train was jammed with work-bound
sararimen
— male salaried employees in
their uniforms of blue or gray business suits, white shirts, and conservative
ties.
Squeezed in between them were OLs
— office ladies — the catchall title given to women office workers.
Some OLs might have university degrees and
other excellent qualifications, but even so, the serious work belonged to the
men.
An OL's job was to make the tea and
dot
he
chores and bow prettily and get married.
An OL was a second-class citizen.
Adachi thought
of himself as moderately progressive, but he admitted to himself that he had
more or less accepted the status quo until he had met Chifune.
Now he found himself looking at OLs and other
Japanese women with renewed interest.
If
Chifune was representative of the true nature of Japanese womanhood,
for some interesting times.
He slipped his
folded copy of the
Asahi Shibumi
out
of his pocket and scanned the news.
There was another bribery scandal in the Diet, the Japanese Parliament,
and the Americans were getting upset about the trade balance.
Nothing ever
changed.
He refolded the paper with some
skill — it was an art form like origami to do such a thing in a subway car
during rush hour, but you got good with practice — and checked the stock
market.
Nothing had changed there,
either.
The Nikkei was still going
up.
Day after day, that was all it
did.
Half of
shares.
Property values were going
insane.
Adachi was glad he had been a
paratrooper.
There was nothing like
jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft to remind you that what goes up must
come down.
He invested, but cautiously.