Kamatori’s eyes were filled with unbelief and the fear of a miserable and shameful end. The pain was there too.
Pitt knew he was looking at a near corpse and got in the last word before the eyes went sightless in death.
“No divine passing for a killer of the helpless. Join your prey and be damned.”
53
PITT REMOVED A Viking battle-axe from its brackets on a wall and returned to the video monitor room. Stacy had already picked the locks on the chains confining Giordino and Mancuso and was working to free Weatherhill.
“What did you do with Kamatori?” Giordino asked, peering curiously around Pitt’s shoulder into the trophy room.
“Mounted him with the rest of his collection.” He handed the axe to Giordino. “Break up the robots so they can’t be repaired anytime soon.”
“Break up McGoon?”
“And McGurk.”
Giordino looked pained, but he took the ax and smashed it into McGoon. “I feel like Dorothy trashing the Tin Man from Oz.”
Mancuso shook Pitt’s hand. “You saved our asses. Thank you.”
“A nice bit of swordplay,” said Weatherhill. “Where’d you learn it?”
“That will have to wait,” Pitt said impatiently. “What’s Penner’s grandiose scheme for our rescue?”
“You don’t know?”
“Penner didn’t deem us worthy of his confidence.”
Mancuso looked at him and shook his head. “There is no plan for a rescue mission,” he said with an embarrassed expression. “Originally we were to be evacuated by submarine, but Penner ruled that out as too risky for the sub and its crew after reviewing a satellite photo of Suma’s sea defenses. Stacy, Tim, and I were to make our way back through the tunnel to Edo City and escape to our embassy in Tokyo.”
Pitt nodded at Giordino. “And the two of us?”
“The State Department was alerted to negotiate with Suma and the Japanese government for your release.”
“The State Department?” Giordino moaned between chops. “I’d sooner be represented by Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
“Jordan and Kern didn’t take into account Suma and Kamatori’s nasty dispositions,” said Mancuso cynically.
Pitt’s mouth tightened in a hard bitter line. “You people are the experts. What’s the next move?”
“Finish the job as planned and hot-foot it through the tunnel,” answered Weatherhill as Stacy opened the lock and his chains fell away.
“You still aim to destroy the Dragon Center?”
“Not completely, but we can put a dent in it.”
“With what?” inquired Giordino. “A homemade magnet and an axe?”
“No sweat,” Weatherhill replied airily, massaging his wrists. “Suma’s security forces may have taken our explosives kit during our capture and subsequent search, but we still have enough for a minor bang.” He sat down and pulled off his shoes, prying off the soles and incredibly kneading them into a ball. “C-Eight plastic,” he said proudly. “The very latest in explosives for the discriminating spook.”
“And the detonators are in the heels,” muttered Pitt.
“How’d you know?”
“Positive thinking.”
“Let’s move out,” said Mancuso. “The robot’s controllers and Kamatori’s human pals will wonder why his private hunt has been shut down and come running to investigate.”
Stacy stepped to the door leading outside Kamatori’s personal quarters, opened it slightly, and peered around the garden outside. “Our first hurdle is to find the building with the elevator to the underground center. We were led up here from our cells blindfolded and didn’t get a feel for its exact location.”
“I’ll lead you to it,” said Pitt.
“You know the location?”
“I should. I rode it down to the hospital.”
“Your magnet won’t be of much help if we run into a squad of robots,” Mancuso said grimly.
“Then we’ll have to expand our bag of tricks,” said Pitt. He moved over beside Stacy and looked through the cracked door. “There’s a garden hose just under that bush to your left. See it?”
Stacy nodded. “Beside the terrace.”
He gestured at the katana she still held in her hand. “Sneak out and slice off a few feet.”
She stared at him quizzically. “May I ask why?”
“Cut up the hose in short lengths, rub one against a piece of silk, and you strip out the negative electrons,” Pitt explained. “Then touch the end of the hose against a robot’s integrated circuits, making the electrons jump and destroy the delicate components.”
“An electrostatic discharge,” murmured Weatherhill thoughtfully. “Is that it?”
Pitt nodded. “You could do the same thing by rubbing a cat or dragging your feet across a carpet.”
“You’d make a good high school physics teacher.”
“What about the silk?” asked Giordino.
“Kamatori’s kimono,” Weatherhill said over his shoulder as he hurried into the trophy room.
Pitt turned to Mancuso. “Where do you intend to set off your firecrackers where they’ll do the most damage?”
“We don’t have enough C-Eight to do a permanent job, but if we can place it near a power supply, we can set back their schedule for a few days, maybe weeks.”
Stacy returned with a three-meter section of garden hose. “How do you want it sliced?”
“Divide it into four parts,” Pitt answered. “One for each of you. I’ll carry the magnet as a backup.”
Weatherhill came back from the trophy room carrying torn shreds of Kamatori’s silk kimono, some showing bloodstains, and began passing them out. He smiled at Pitt. “Your placement of our samurai friend made him a most appropriate piece of wall decor.”
“There is no sculpture,” Pitt said pontifically, “that can take the place of an original.”
“I don’t want to be within a thousand kilometers when Hideki Suma sees what you’ve done to his best friend.” Giordino laughed, throwing the broken remains of the two roboguards into a pile in a corner of the room.
“Yes,” Pitt said indifferently, “but that’s what he gets for pissing off the dark side of the fence.”
Loren, her face still and angered, observed in mounting shock the awesome technical and financial power behind Suma’s empire as he led her and Diaz on a tour through a complex that was far more vast than she could ever imagine. There was much more to it than a control center to send, prime, and detonate signals to a worldwide array of nuclear bombs. The seemingly unending levels and corridors also contained countless laboratories, vast engineering and electronic experimental units, a fusion research facility, and a nuclear reactor plant incorporating designs still on the drawing boards of the Western industrialized countries.
Suma said proudly, “My primary structural engineering and administration offices and scientific think tank are housed in Edo City. But here, safe and secure under Soseki Island, is the core of my research and development.”
He ushered them into a lab and pointed out a large open vat of crude oil. “You can’t see them, but eating away at the oil are second-generation genetically engineered microbes that actually digest the petroleum and multiply, launching a chain reaction and destroying the oil molecules. The residue can then be dissolved by water.”
“That could prove a boon for the cleanup of oil spills,” commented Diaz.
“One useful purpose,” said Suma. “Another is to deplete a hostile country’s oil reserves.”
Loren looked at him in disbelief. “Why cause such chaos? For what gain?”
“In time, Japan will be almost totally independent of oil. Our total generating power will be nuclear. Our new technology in fuel cells and solar energy will soon be incorporated in our automobiles, replacing the gasoline engine. Deplete the world’s reserves with our oil-eating microbes, and eventually all international transportation—automobiles, trucks, and aircraft—grinds to a halt.”