case, freed Machii on appeal and helped restore the honor of the dead man’s family—along with a substantial contribution to their bank account, supposedly the payoff from a life insurance policy that didn’t quibble over self-destruction in a righteous cause.
Now, Machii had a foothold on the boardwalk and was bound for bigger things, it seemed. If he could hand a piece of Tommy Wolff’s casino empire to the Sumiyoshi-kai, he would be well positioned for a top spot in the syndicate. Who could predict what might transpire when old Takumi finally cashed in his chips?
It was a gamble, right, and Machii had one strike against him, going in.
He didn’t know Bolan had dealt himself into the game.
CHAPTER TWO
Sunrise Enterprises, Atlantic City
The office complex wasn’t much to look at in comparison to the casinos standing tall along the boardwalk, one block closer to the ocean. Just four stories high, a drab rectangle painted beige, it gave no hint that anyone inside was tinkering with local history or planning to tap a vein of gold from the exalted gaming industry that kept Atlantic City on the map.
To spot those signs, a person had to look behind the stucco, maybe close one eye and make believe there was no weedy vacant lot next door, where homeless people had been known to light a bonfire on a winter’s night. A person had to know about Sunrise, and it was helpful if there was a team on tap like Hal Brognola’s crew at Stony Man, hidden within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, picking secrets from the cloud, thin air, wherever, and reviewing them until they all made sense.
In this case Sunrise Enterprises was a paper company, incorporated like so many others of its kind in Delaware, existing for the sole purpose of purchasing and selling stock in other companies. On paper, it was all strictly routine, aboveboard, and the company filed tax returns on time, paying its debts without complaint.
Look deeper, though, and Sunrise was an offshoot of another company, the G.E.A. Consortium, whose initials stood for Greater East Asia. It was just a fluke, perhaps, that during the 1930s and ’40s, Japan’s imperial masters had called their captured territory in the Far East and South Pacific the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Maybe.
Look deeper yet, and G.E.A. was owned by three middle-aged members of the Sumiyoshi-kai, including the family’s administrative officer, its legal adviser and its top accountant. Needless to say, they served at Kazuo Takumi’s pleasure and could be replaced at any time they ceased to please him.
Break it down. The drab four-story box was Takumi’s nerve center in Atlantic City. Strings were pulled inside those offices that ended human lives and had potential to disrupt the city’s—and, perhaps, the state’s—economy.
Bolan saw two approaches to the viper’s nest. He could obliterate it, salt the earth and scatter any stray survivors, or he could attempt a soft probe, look for opportunities to gain further intelligence and plan his final killing stroke accordingly.
On second thought, why not combine the two ideas?
One item in his bag of tricks was an infinity transmitter, designed to monitor conversations within a room through its telephone line, whether or not the phone itself was in use. Its name derived from the fact that phone line transmissions could be received at an infinite distance, unlike other bugs with a finite physical range.
But it still required that Bolan get inside to plant the bug.
And for that, he needed a diversion.
The internet provided a schematic drawing of the office block, showing him where and how to cut the building’s juice. There were battery-powered emergency lights on all floors, but severing the trunk line would deactivate security cameras found on all floors, while leaving the fire alarms live. If he could generate sufficient smoke to rout the office occupants, it all came down to a matter of time and nerve.
Sorting through his mobile arsenal Bolan selected weapons first. He wasn’t planning an attack, per se, but meant to be prepared for any unforeseen eventuality. An MP-5 K submachine gun fit the bill ideally—“K” for kurz, or “short,” in German, easily concealable even with a suppressor screwed on to its threaded muzzle. He would wear it on a shoulder sling, beneath a lightweight jacket, backed up by a Glock 17 that was lighter, easier to handle and loaded a higher-capacity magazine than the Beretta he had carried into countless other skirmishes.
For the diversion proper, Bolan chose four AN-M8 smoke grenades, each filled with nineteen ounces of Type C hexachloroethane—HC. Each cylindrical canister would emit thick white smoke for 105 to 150 seconds following ignition, enough to choke a four-story building’s ventilation ducts and keep any occupants scurrying for the nearest exit once fire alarms set them in motion.
Getting in and out before firefighters reached the scene was Bolan’s problem.
Make that getting in and out alive.
* * *
NOBORU MACHII FELT like celebrating. He had carried out the order from his oyabun without a hitch, had seen the two imported killers off, beginning their long flight back to Japan, and felt he had the local situation well under control. It was too early yet, of course, for a direct approach to Tommy Wolff’s estate, but Machii had his battery of lawyers hovering, gauging the time and monitoring every move by Wolff’s board of directors since the penthouse massacre, the night before last. As expected, there was posturing and jockeying for power, but Machii held the winning hand.
He’d spent the past eight months uncovering the secret sins of every member on the board at Wolff Consolidated. There were seven of them, and Machii knew them well, although they’d never met. In fact, he knew them better than their partners, wives and children did.
Machii knew that one of them collected child pornography and traveled once a year to Bangkok, where his indiscretions had been filmed. Another had been stealing from the company, a third selling insider knowledge to the firm’s competitors for half again his yearly salary. A fourth was what Americans presumed to call a “high-functioning” alcoholic, though he had not functioned well enough the night he struck and killed a homeless African-American with his Mercedes-Benz in Newark. No suspicion had attached to him so far, but that could change within an instant.
So it went, on down the line, with six of seven board members. The seventh was above reproach—a miracle, of sorts—but he could not prevail once Machii had secured a majority of the directors to support his takeover of Wolff Consolidated. In addition to the preservation of their guilty secrets, he would promise them secure positions and the standard golden parachutes in place.
As if a written contract could protect them when Machii tired of having them around.
He would have another kind of contract waiting for them then, and nothing any lawyer said would rescue adversaries of the Sumiyoshi-kai. Machii had taught Tommy Wolff that lesson, and if the dead man’s underlings refused to learn from his example, their deaths would be tantamount to suicide.
As far as celebrating went, however, it was premature. The prize was now within his grasp, but he had not secured it yet. Until the transfer of authority was finalized, Machii could not rightfully claim victory.
“How long shall we wait for the approach?” Tetsuya Watanabe asked.
Machii’s
