Vaughn could see that Orson wasn't one for rah-rah premission speeches.
"We don't hear from you on your initial entry report in twenty-four hours, we'll consider your mission compromised."
Orson was standing in the entrance to the tunnel, looking up into the back of the truck. Tai and Vaughn sat on benches across from each other, their packed rucksacks on the space behind them.
"Roger that," Vaughn said. He hadn't told anyone about his encounter with Kasen – at this point it would make little difference, if any. The mission was on, and he had to make the best of it.
Diesel fumes from the idling engine wafted through the enclosed space. He felt a curious sense of detachment as he pushed away the thoughts and feelings about the coming mission.
"Is the primary mission canceled if we're killed during the recon?" Tai asked.
Orson stared at her.
"What do you care? You'll be dead."
Vaughn and Tai met each other's eyes. He wasn't sure what he read in hers. Anger? But there was something else. He turned to Orson.
"What if we're captured? Twenty-four-hour rule?"
He was referring to the concept that a prisoner could hold out against torture for twenty-four hours, then even the best would give up everything they knew. But twenty-four hours was enough time for every plan the prisoner knew to be changed, and for damage control to begin.
"Don't get captured," Orson growled. He slapped the side of the truck to let the driver know it was ready to go, then turned and walked away.
Vaughn pulled down the canvas flap covering the back of the truck.
"Friendly."
"This isn't a friendly business," Tai said. Vaughn wondered if she knew about his brother-in-law. Frank and he had discussed the problem of serving on the same team, but in the end they had decided they'd rather fight with someone they knew and trusted. That had not turned out well. As the truck rumbled its way toward the airfield, Vaughn began preparing for battle. Both he and Tai wore sterile camouflage fatigues of a make easily bought anywhere in the world. He put his body armor on, securing it with the Velcro straps. He then slid on the combat vest bristling with extra magazines, grenades, a knife, and the FM radio with which he could talk to Tai. He put the earpiece in, secured the mike around his throat, and when Tai had done the same, turned his radio on and moved to the front of the truck bay, as far from her as he could get.
"Read me? Over."
"Roger that," Tai responded.
"Over."
"Let's keep the radio off until just before jump to conserve batteries," Vaughn said.
"Then operate only on minimum settings. Over."
"Roger. Out."
Tai turned off her radio and Vaughn did the same. He returned to the rear of the truck and checked his pistol, making sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he put on his composite armor forearm guards. Tai noted that.
"What's your training in?" Vaughn knew she was asking for a specific martial arts discipline.
"Killing."
Tai laughed.
"Know enough of a bunch of various styles and master of none?" Vaughn shrugged.
"I don't have a black belt in anything, but I have trained in a variety of styles. What about you?"
"Black belt in hapkido and tae kwon do. And trained in a variety of styles."
Vaughn had expected as much, given the way she took down Kasen. He pulled his flight gloves on, flexing his fingers to ensure a tight fit, then secured the brass knuckles to his combat vest. Seeing that, Tai raised an eyebrow.
"That's a new one."
"Something from my childhood," Vaughn explained. He felt a flush of sadness, remembering Frank at the assembly area in the Philippines before the botched raid also commenting on the knuckles.Tai pulled something long and thin, wrapped in black cloth, out of her pack.
"Something from my childhood."
She unwrapped the object. A wooden scabbard and hilt appeared. Tai drew the blade. It was a shoto, a Japanese short sword, the blade about eight inches long.
"May I?" Vaughn asked.
Tai paused and then handed it over, handle first.
Vaughn took it. He was surprised how light it was. He turned it and looked at the edge. Razor sharp.
"How many times was the metal folded?" he asked, referring to the process by which such blades were handmade.
Tai smiled, holding her hand out to take it back.
"You know something of swords?"
"I spent time in the Far East," Vaughn vaguely answered.
"The making of this is a family secret," Tai said as she slid the blade back into its sheath. She then put the sword inside her combat vest, on top of the body armor, straight down along her chest, between her breasts.
"Interesting placement," Vaughn said. Tai shot him a sharp look. He held his hands up defensively.
"Sorry,"
"You get one mistake," Tai said.
"And you've made it."
Vaughn nodded.
"It was stupid."
Tai relaxed.
"A man who can admit he's wrong. That's something new."
The truck lurched to an abrupt stop, then gears grinded as the driver threw it into reverse. Vaughn lifted the canvas flap covering the rear and saw the back end of a C-130, ramp open.
"We're here."
CHAPTER 10
The report of Kasama's execution reached Abayon while he was once more hooked up to the dialysis machine. He was not surprised. Abayon knew the power of the Yakuza. And he knew that anyone who could do what had been done to Kasama was even more powerful. He had seen this before. A powerful organization struck by some group that lived in the shadows, one that seemed able to wield power with impunity. Not for the first time – or, he knew, the last – he wished he had not been so quick to cut Colonel Tashama's throat. In the six decades since that event, he had come to realize that it was as close as he'd ever gotten to someone who might have known what this shadow organization was. However, given the security levels he had run into whenever he tried to penetrate his enemy, he realized Tashama had probably known little more than he needed to hide this part of the Golden Lily here.
The nurse pulled the needle out of his arm and smiled at Abayon. He nodded his head in thanks. The dialysis was not a cure – it was a stop-gap measure designed to keep death a handsbreadth away. Time, the most valuable of all currencies, was what he needed. Just a little more time. And then he would embrace death. He had faced it many times before and he did not fear it – he only feared not completing what he'd set out to do so many years ago.
The issue of whether there was life after death had plagued mankind since the beginning of consciousness. For some people, usually those in the bounty of their youth, such a question was often considered in theoretical terms. For those in his situation, pinned to a wheelchair and hearing his life leave him molecule by molecule with each breath, it was a very real consideration.
He had managed to get the doctor to be honest with him, and Abayon knew that he would not be alive that long. What was beyond that increasingly occupied his mind. He was not one of the Muslims who believed heaven was a bountiful place of all the food one could eat and all the beautiful women one could take for one's own pleasure. Those were the naive dreams of ignorant men. A strict reading of the Koran indicated that man could have no concept of heaven because it was so far beyond anything experienced here on Earth.
Abayon liked the concept of something he couldn't conceptualize. It was a spiritual existence, not a physical one. There would be a birth of a soul from his own soul. And that new soul would reap the benefits of the type of life one had lived on Earth. According to his interpretation of the Koran, Heaven and Hell existed in the same place but on a different dimension. It was all relative, depending on what one could perceive and one's state upon death.