The cult leader lunged again, but this time the ronin was ready for the attack and batted it to one side. He sliced down to carve through the embroidery of the serpent on Zakoji’s kimono, parting muscle and flesh as he did so. Bones gleamed from the opened wound.
The ronin winced as he felt his shoulder carved again. As they retreated from each other, Zakoji stumbled, teetering out of the way of a backswing that would have opened up his belly in one swoop. The ronin, however, felt the brutal bite of steel in flesh, his forearm nicked deeply. Blood seeped down to his grasp, both hands sticky and wet.
Zakoji snarled, clutching his wounded bosom, squeezing his kimono’s slashed fabric tight against the cut. The crimson serpent image on the front darkened, growing more sinister as it drank deeply of the necromancer’s blood. Wild, enraged eyes stared at the ronin and his control was completely gone.
Hacking with one arm, Zakoji lashed out. The ronin blocked two staggering blows with his sword, then pivoted out of the way. He speared the cult leader through his stomach, in the wake of a wildly missed downswing. The two fighters’ bodies were tight against each other.
“You slay me now, you defeat me now…” Zakoji spit. Blood poured over his lips. “But in another lifetime…another lifetime…it is you who will taste bitterly of defeat on this very spot.”
Zakoji gripped the injured ronin’s clothes, coughing up more blood, but in a single spasm, he was dead. The ronin lowered the man to the ground, shaking his head.
He stumbled away, knowing that he had to return to his infant son, to be on the road once more. He would not return this way again. He would not forget Zakoji’s promise, and he offered a prayer to the universe that whoever came to this valley would be able to defeat the sorcerer’s prophecy.
A convoy of two vans and two automobiles tracked its way up the side of the hill overlooking the stagnant stream. Their passing sent doves flying from tree branches, fluttering into the sky with startled warbles and the flash of wings.
A man in a black windbreaker and black jeans stared out the window at the brown water cutting its way among the cobblestones. His cold blue eyes lingered on the scene for a moment, and his memory searched, as if for some handle on the sudden wave of déjà vu that washed over him.
Mack Bolan dismissed the feeling, returning instead to his thoughts of the mission ahead.
1
He was posing as FBI Hostage Rescue Team Agent Matt Cooper. He popped the magazine on the Glock 23 pistol, checking the load. He reinserted it and pulled back the slide, observing the blunt .40-caliber nose of the bullet in the chamber. His stark blue eyes looked up to greet Rhode Hogan, who sat across from him in the back of the van.
“Satisfied, Agent Cooper?” Hogan asked. “I know the FBI started using those a few years ago. I wasn’t sure if you’d be happy with it.”
“As long as it goes bang when I pull the trigger,” Bolan said, shrugging the nylon shell of his black windbreaker off his shoulders. He stuffed the gun back into its holster, with two spare magazines to balance it out.
Hogan smirked. It was all he could do to suppress a full-blown laugh. “That’s the kind of attitude I like from a man. Maybe it won’t be so bad having you on hand.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled with this job either, Hogan.”
“I know,” the mercenary said. He leaned back, looking at the lush Japanese countryside. The valley dropped away as the van crawled up the road. “One man sent for this job. Usually the Feds send a dozen of you guys on one of these cases.”
“One was the most we could get your boss to accept,” Bolan replied. “He trusts you.”
Hogan lowered his head, smiling even more widely, not looking at Bolan. “That’s pretty sad, considering.”
Bolan didn’t make a sound, except for the noise of his palm striking the grip of his pistol.
The mercenary and his men turned on Bolan, fists and rifle butts swinging out at him.
Bolan whipped up his windbreaker and slashed it out like a whip, blinding the men on the right of him in a wave of black, snapping fabric. The movement managed to deflect a blow with one deft movement, pushing it down to snarl other attacks aimed at him.
Hogan cursed the fluid reactions of the FBI agent. While his jacket was tangling up the clubbing weapons of the men to his right, he was shouldering hard into the man on his left, his foot meeting Hogan himself in the breastbone and driving him back into his seat.
While there was strength in numbers, in the confined space of the van, there were only so many avenues of approach to attack. Bolan was shielded by the bodies of the very men who were attempting to pile on him. He swung his borrowed Glock free, but the slash of a rifle barrel forced him to aim low at Hogan’s belly. He pulled the trigger on the pistol.
Nothing happened.
“Oh, by the way, the round we put in the pipe didn’t have a primer. Not something you’d be able to see if you were doing a press check,” Hogan said, taunting. He threw his big frame at Bolan, but again, the jumble of striking arms and weapons stopped him. Hogan’s gun slammed into the Executioner’s Kevlar vest and drove the wind from his lungs. With a surge, Bolan snapped his elbow into the face of the man to his left, rolling the head with the impact. He kicked at the head of the man to Hogan’s right, bouncing him off the back door of the van with such ferocity that he landed in the security chief’s lap.
Hands grabbed at Bolan from his right, but he had wrapped his hand around the frame of an MP-5 and he used it like an ax, chopping down on wrists and forearms. Men grunted and recoiled, hissing in pain from the slashing impacts. Hogan reached out and grasped the frame of the machine pistol, trying to twist it out of Bolan’s clutches, but the Executioner brought his knee up and caught Hogan in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. A hard shove sent the steel frame of the gun cracking into Hogan’s cheek and jawline, a dizzying blow that made him see stars for a moment.
Diving low, Bolan slipped between two of Hogan’s burly mercs. They had recovered from his initial attack on them, but were still slow. The warrior gave them both pause with punches to their sides, striking them in the kidneys. Choking noises exploded from their mouths and they folded to form a barrier between Hogan and his quarry.
“Stop him!” Hogan called. His beefy hand wrapped around Bolan’s ankle, squeezing tight. It was like holding on to two hundred pounds of bucking bronco as the muscular form tried to rip its way to freedom. The security chief stopped the Executioner’s exit from the back of the van for a moment, but the back doors had flown open during the melee, revealing the empty road behind them. Dust kicked up from the rear tires displacing gravel.
The driver called out to complain about the commotion and the sudden flapping of the rear doors in his mirrors. Bolan twisted and shoved one of the mercs hard against Hogan, their heads bouncing as the van jostled violently on the road.
With the impact of skulls, Hogan let go of Bolan’s ankle, and he quickly slithered out of the back of the van.
Mack Bolan hadn’t counted on Rhode Hogan to have set him up for a snatch and burn, but his skill and prowess had carried the day. When he came to a rolling halt in the middle of the road, he realized that there were still two more carloads of Hogan’s mercenaries plowing up the hillside. The grille of the first chase car was only yards away from him and closing fast.
“HOW MUCH ENGLISH DO you speak?” the girl asked.
Hideaki Machida squeezed his eyes shut and fished a bottle of painkillers out of his suit’s breast pocket. He shook six into his palm and popped them into his mouth, relishing the bitter chalkiness of them as he ground them with his teeth. He opened his eyes and looked at Rebecca Anthony, wishing to hell that her father’s men would get here already and take her off his hands.
She was dressed all in black,