Richard Turner
Black Dragon
1
Like a flaming thunderbolt crashing into the earth, the doomed transport plane struck the ground and exploded into a blinding, orange and red fireball. Overhead, a couple of dark shapes raced through the clouds before turning back out to sea to look for another hapless victim to bring down. Anti-aircraft guns ringing the airfield roared to life, filling the air with lead, but it was all in vain; their tormentors had already vanished into the clouds.
A black plume of smoke curled up into the leaden sky, marking the death of yet another Japanese plane sent to evacuate those still trapped on Matua Island. With fear in their eyes, the soldiers looked over at the flaming wreckage, knowing that the noose was steadily tightening around them. They were next and they knew it.
A loud, protesting squeal escaped from the jeep’s brakes as the battered vehicle came to a sudden halt outside of a long, wooden building. Painted green to match its surroundings, the building was guarded by several tired-looking soldiers who unenthusiastically stood outside, with their long rifles slung over their shoulders. The men were actually mere boys conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army for the defense of the homeland from invasion by the encroaching allies. With their ill-fitting uniforms hanging off their emaciated bodies, the soldiers looked miserable and dejected. Shuffling their feet on the wet ground, the boys breathed into their hands trying to warm them up. Wearily climbing out of the passenger-side seat, a slender man with short black hair, dressed in dirty, rumpled clothes, said a few quiet words to the driver of the jeep before politely bowing and walking away. Clutched tightly under his arm, as if it were the most important thing he had ever held, was a worn, brown leather briefcase.
The unexpected sound of a machine gun firing nearby froze Kotaro Tanaka in his tracks. Fear coursed through his body. His heart raced wildly in his chest. His first thought was for the briefcase in his hands. Were they too late…? Had the Soviets arrived?
In the cold, gray light of dawn, Tanaka peered into the early morning fog, which hung over the camp like a ghostly white blanket, trying to pinpoint where the firing had come from. Through the swirling mist, barely fifty meters away, he saw a group of technicians and scientists forced off the back of a military truck by a squad of soldiers who shouted and cajoled the terrified people into a line with the long, sharp bayonets affixed onto the ends of their rifles. Tanaka shook his head when he recognized several of his colleagues being forcibly dragged away from the truck. The slaughter had been going on for hours. The new arrivals were quickly forced in front of a recently excavated ditch. Several men pleaded with the soldier to spare the women amongst them. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. The soldiers had their orders, and that was all there was to it. Tanaka watched numbly as a machine gun opened up, sending the bodies of the unfortunate Japanese civilians tumbling back into the ditch to join the dozens of others already lying there. The people had done nothing wrong, but the orders from Army Headquarters had been explicit. Only a handful of select personnel were to be spared. Anyone else who knew, or could have known, about the camp and its activities was to be exterminated. Tanaka numbly watched as a couple of young soldiers stepped forward and then hurriedly poured gasoline over the bodies. With a loud whoosh, the trench was set alight. Before long, a black cloud hung over the camp.
Tanaka looked away; he had seen enough death in the past few months to last him a lifetime. Late last night, word had spread through the camp like wildfire that the Soviets were landing in force in the Kuril Islands. The camp’s commander had told them they had at best a day before the Russians arrived to take their island. Tanaka may have worked side by side with many of the people being slaughtered; however, he honestly couldn’t name more than a few of them. A quiet man, Tanaka had never bothered to get to know his fellow scientists. They had a job to do and if dying for the Emperor was a person’s fate, then so be it. Although barely twenty-five years old, Tanaka felt and looked as if he were a man in his late forties. His short black hair had begun to thin on his head. With nerves stressed to the breaking point, he rarely ate or slept anymore. Tanaka’s once-round body had grown thin, almost anorexic. Dark, bloodshot eyes stared out through his only remaining pair of thick, silver-rimmed glasses.
He knew that there was still one last thing to do before he left. Tanaka hurried back inside the building that had been his laboratory for the past three years. His footsteps echoed down the long, empty corridor. Tanaka walked straight to his office. He looked over his shoulder to ensure that he wasn’t being watched, and then grabbed the stack of files that he had laid out earlier on his desk and jammed them all into his briefcase. Before he left, Tanaka bent down and reverently picked up a picture of his parents. Tanaka looked at the picture with sad eyes. His father wore the uniform of an army colonel while his mother was dressed in a long, traditional robe. They stood unsmiling, like granite statues outside of their home in Nagasaki. Mournfully he shook his head, knowing that he would never set his eyes upon them ever again, as he placed the picture inside his briefcase. Tanaka let out a deep, sorrowful sigh. He couldn’t believe that it had all come to this. When the war had begun with the Americans, he, along with millions of other young men, had enthusiastically supported his government’s decision. After the destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and the fall of Singapore, most had expected a quick victory over the corrupt American and British militaries, which naturally would be followed by a negotiated peace that would forever cement Japan’s rightful hold on the Far East. Now, however, everything was in ruins and his sacred homeland had been assaulted by new and deadly bombs that had leveled entire cities. The army tightly controlled word of what had happened, but he and several other key scientists had been informed so they could make preparations to leave immediately. What had it all been for? wondered Tanaka. His parents were dead, incinerated in the atomic blast that had razed Nagasaki. His only sibling, a naval officer, died when his aircraft carrier sank at Midway. Stepping out of his office, Tanaka looked down the darkened hallway and saw that he was the only person left inside the building. A feeling of loneliness and isolation filled his heart.
Until barely one week ago, the camp had been home to over two hundred scientists and research personnel. Now, however, most of the camp was gone, burnt to the ground, or demolished with explosives. Hardly anything remained standing to indicate that a clandestine military test establishment had once stood here. The top secret camp had been in operation for over eight years. Once guarded by a Japanese army regiment, the base now seemed eerily empty. Some of the key scientists had already been withdrawn back to Japan to prevent their capture, while the remainder lay dead in the smoldering ditch. Most of the soldiers fit enough to fight had been sent to help stem the Soviet armored forces steamrolling their way through Manchuria, leaving only the sick and very young to guard what was left of the camp. Tanaka had no doubt that they, too, would soon be dead, either by their own hand or at the hands of the Soviets.
Unit 881 was officially listed on the books as part of the Imperial Japanese Army Railway and Shipping Section; however, its true identity was far more sinister. As one of several army units clandestinely conducting weapons’ testing, Unit 881 was responsible for taking new and emerging technologies for use against the allied forces rapidly closing in on the home islands. Although not involved in the Japanese Army’s attempt to build an atomic bomb, Unit 881 had spent many long years looking at new ways to strike back and cripple America, but most ideas had proven to be too costly, inefficient, and time consuming, and time was no longer on Japan’s side.