In any case, the man didn’t look like a US soldier. His equipment was too half-baked for someone who’d been in the army. A soldier who could bring his gun with him would surely have body armor, too. Also, the M9 was a model used by the US Army in the past, but had since been phased out. Old army guns could find their way into private hands. It wasn’t unusual for the army to lose track of its old supplies. And the US Army had bases in Japan.
That Beretta had clearly seen lots of use. It was perfectly possible that an unscrupulous soldier “rescued” it from getting scrapped and sneakily sold it to a Japanese buyer to make some money on the side.
Fuki took a photo of the dead man’s face with her smartphone. She sent it to HQ and waited for orders, thoughts racing through her mind. Was Sakura okay? Why did this guy, kitted out for a nighttime battle, appear out of nowhere? What connected the hunter and the armed guy on the third floor? Why did both of those men shoot unprovoked?
…What was this place?
She had so many questions, and the information she had available didn’t yield any answers.
HQ hadn’t come back to her yet with new orders. Should she act on her own initiative? But there were booby traps on the third floor, and that armed man was lying in wait there, too. Should she go to the emergency staircase instead? But the enemy was likely to keep a close eye on that entrance, too, after Sakura triggered his trap.
Both options seemed very risky, but of the two approaches to the third floor, she preferred the emergency staircase. If she went that way, she might be able to find out if Sakura was all right.
Just as Fuki made up her mind, the operator spoke again.
“We’ve found a match for the photo you sent us. We’re just about to get an ID on him… He was a detective working for Kanagawa Prefectural Police.”
A police detective? Then the source of his gun was probably Yokota Air Base. The detective might’ve confiscated it from a gang operating in that area. Maybe he appropriated both the gun and the motorbike from the same gang… That seemed likely, but it still didn’t explain anything about what the man was doing in the abandoned building.
The DA was probably looking into his background as Fuki spoke with the operator. They’d be able to access his personal information and check his private communications and such, but doing a full check on him would take time—time they did not have.
“Fuki, look out the window!” shouted Commander Kusunoki.
Fuki looked up from the dead body. She saw a thin dark line outside the window. And then the silhouette of a man. He pressed the soles of his boots against the window… Then she saw a massive gun barrel pointing straight at her.
“What the…?!”
There was a blinding muzzle flash, and the window shattered. The gunshot, as loud as an explosion, rumbled through the room.
The enemy had fired at the side of Fuki’s head. She fell to the floor as if someone had knocked her down. The bullet had grazed her. She didn’t actually dodge it—she fell onto the floor from shock when the bullet grazed her skin.
The moment she hit the floor, Fuki forced herself to roll sideways, in case the enemy was going to fire again. But he didn’t. Fuki managed to catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye. The large man was also rolling on the floor inside the room.
He must have rappelled down using a rope, then he planted his feet on the window, leaning back so he was parallel to the ground when he shot at Fuki. When the window shattered, he swung and leaped into the room.
As soon as both Fuki and the man stopped rolling, they fired at each other. Her gun was relatively quiet owing to the suppressor, while his fired with a loud boom. Both of them fired only to suppress the other, their bullets flying wildly off-target.
They both rolled again, to put some distance between them, until they stood in opposite corners of the room cluttered with display boards.
Crouching on one knee, Fuki raised her Glock. She couldn’t see the enemy—a display board in front of her was blocking her line of sight. It was the same for him, though.
Should she shoot now? Could she? Fuki thought about how many bullets she had left. She’d used too many on the rider. And she’d fired once just now. She tried to remember exactly how many rounds she’d fired…and figured out she had one bullet left in the magazine. She badly wanted to reload, but would she have the time for that?
She couldn’t see her opponent, and he couldn’t see her, either… He might sense her reloading and use that opportunity to open fire at her, but the likelihood of him killing her with his first few bullets was very low. She should just do it…
“…Are you a Lycoris?” the man asked in a low voice.
Fuki, who was about to change her magazine, froze.
The existence of the Lycoris was known to very few—some members of the underground, who’d had contact with Lycoris agents that they might have regretted, some members of public bodies which cooperated with Lycoris, such as the police and some politicians… Should any of them be indiscreet and tell an outsider about the Lycoris, it would sound so far-fetched it’d be written off as an urban legend at best. And if someone was determined to let society know that the Lycoris were real, measures would be taken to remove them from the picture immediately without anyone being the wiser.
This man knew about the Lycoris and recognized that Fuki was one when he saw her… That considerably narrowed down who he could be.
“Come on, girl, answer me!”
By speaking, the man was more or less revealing his location. Fuki made a slight adjustment to the direction she was aiming her gun at. Still, there was at least one display board in the way. She wasn’t quite confident that she’d be able to kill the man with one shot.
“Only one person, two at most, will leave this place alive. Why worry so much, just because it’s classified information? It’s not going to spread. You might as well talk.”