rifle still smoking.
That’s when she fainted. Thus she was only dimly aware of being dumped into the back of the truck and driven away.
For Mizumi, nothing would ever be the same again.
Eight
Four days later
T HE USS FITZGERALD WAS coming apart at the seams.
Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
The massive carrier was shuddering, creaking, and groaning, all at the same time. It was caught in a cataclysmic pattern: giant waves would hit it broadside, allowing tons of water to crash down onto its huge flightdeck and knocking the vessel almost thirty degrees to port. Then, not a moment later, even larger waves would crash against its port side, serving to right the carrier again.
Alone in the hangar deck, Hawk Hunter was hanging onto the nearest stable piece of hardware, a fairly heavy support beam. Inside the cavernous deck, lit only by the soft red glow of the emergency lights, he could hear the sounds of unsecured gear clattering all around the decks.
Or were those really rivets popping?
They were sailing right through a full-scale tropical depression, a storm just one notch below an authentic typhoon. The winds were clocking at close to 70 mph, and the seas were running at fifty feet and more. The ship was being battered so badly that all but essential operations had been shut down, even to the point that no food could be served in the galleys. Not that anyone on board wanted to swallow anything more than antiseasickness tablets.
It was now 0300. The Task Force had first encountered the bad weather nearly twenty-four hours before, just as they’d passed the two-thirds mark on the way to the target area. And though the tempest was rough on the four ships and their crews, running smack into it actually turned out to be a beneficial twist of events: Nature’s elements, though stomach-turning, had provided excellent cover for the Task Force to close in on their destination without detection.
Indeed, all indications were that the Task Force hadn’t been spotted—yet …
Once the carrier finally stabilized, Hunter was able to let go of the support beam and resume his slow pacing. He’d been at it for nearly two hours now, walking, thinking, holding on, then walking and thinking again. He had much on his mind—too much—and he had sought the quiet peace of the hangar deck in an attempt to sort it all out.
So far, he’d been unsuccessful.
He was wrestling with the unorthodox mission that was before him, a mission that only he could undertake. For the dozenth time in two hours he took out the now-dog-eared sheet of paper that read “special targeting mission,” and once again read the sealed “ FOR YOUR EYES ONLY ” orders that Jones had given him shortly before the general had flown back to Washington from Vancouver.
The orders were brutally simple: while the Task Force air strikes were going on, Hunter was to land inside Tokyo, find Hashi Pushi, and execute him.
Once again those words burned their way into his overtaxed brain, this time even deeper. He was no stranger to the death and destruction of war. He had sent many enemies to their deaths in aerial combat and in hand-to-hand fighting. But there was a distinct difference here. Those men had been soldiers, too, fighting on a battlefield, with weapons on hand. As such, they at least knew what they could be in for once they stepped into that arena of combat, and they were prepared for it.
But this killing would be different—this killing, Hunter felt, might change him forever. For this was not going to be a typical combat situation.
This was to be an assassination.
He knew Jones was right when he had first explained the mission to him back in Vancouver. He knew that Wolf was right too; getting rid of Hashi Pushi would probably save countless lives on both sides. It would rid an already overly-troubled world of yet another set of catastrophic problems, akin to popping Hitler in 1933 or Saddam Hussein in 1991.
But was it right?
Bombing Hashi
That’s when she fainted. Thus she was only dimly aware of being dumped into the back of the truck and driven away.
For Mizumi, nothing would ever be the same again.
Eight
Four days later
T HE USS FITZGERALD WAS coming apart at the seams.
Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
The massive carrier was shuddering, creaking, and groaning, all at the same time. It was caught in a cataclysmic pattern: giant waves would hit it broadside, allowing tons of water to crash down onto its huge flightdeck and knocking the vessel almost thirty degrees to port. Then, not a moment later, even larger waves would crash against its port side, serving to right the carrier again.
Alone in the hangar deck, Hawk Hunter was hanging onto the nearest stable piece of hardware, a fairly heavy support beam. Inside the cavernous deck, lit only by the soft red glow of the emergency lights, he could hear the sounds of unsecured gear clattering all around the decks.
Or were those really rivets popping?
They were sailing right through a full-scale tropical depression, a storm just one notch below an authentic typhoon. The winds were clocking at close to 70 mph, and the seas were running at fifty feet and more. The ship was being battered so badly that all but essential operations had been shut down, even to the point that no food could be served in the galleys. Not that anyone on board wanted to swallow anything more than antiseasickness tablets.
It was now 0300. The Task Force had first encountered the bad weather nearly twenty-four hours before, just as they’d passed the two-thirds mark on the way to the target area. And though the tempest was rough on the four ships and their crews, running smack into it actually turned out to be a beneficial twist of events: Nature’s elements, though stomach-turning, had provided excellent cover for the Task Force to close in on their destination without detection.
Indeed, all indications were that the Task Force hadn’t been spotted—yet …
Once the carrier finally stabilized, Hunter was able to let go of the support beam and resume his slow pacing. He’d been at it for nearly two hours now, walking, thinking, holding on, then walking and thinking again. He had much on his mind—too much—and he had sought the quiet peace of the hangar deck in an attempt to sort it all out.
So far, he’d been unsuccessful.
He was wrestling with the unorthodox mission that was before him, a mission that only he could undertake. For the dozenth time in two hours he took out the now-dog-eared sheet of paper that read “special targeting mission,” and once again read the sealed “ FOR YOUR EYES ONLY ” orders that Jones had given him shortly before the general had flown back to Washington from Vancouver.
The orders were brutally simple: while the Task Force air strikes were going on, Hunter was to land inside Tokyo, find Hashi Pushi, and execute him.
Once again those words burned their way into his overtaxed brain, this time even deeper. He was no stranger to the death and destruction of war. He had sent many enemies to their deaths in aerial combat and in hand-to-hand fighting. But there was a distinct difference here. Those men had been soldiers, too, fighting on a battlefield, with weapons on hand. As such, they at least knew what they could be in for once they stepped into that arena of combat, and they were prepared for it.
But this killing would be different—this killing, Hunter felt, might change him forever. For this was not going to be a typical combat situation.
This was to be an assassination.
He knew Jones was right when he had first explained the mission to him back in Vancouver. He knew that Wolf was right too; getting rid of Hashi Pushi would probably save countless lives on both sides. It would rid an already overly-troubled world of yet another set of catastrophic problems, akin to popping Hitler in 1933 or Saddam Hussein in 1991.
But was it right?
Bombing Hashi
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