The four men were on edge. As seasoned pros, they had full confidence in their own abilities, and an inkling of what their foe had to offer as well. Though they hadn’t tangled with him before, they’d all heard the rumors. Even in this city, those rumors stretched credibility. And yet while pouring scorn upon them, these men couldn’t shake that sense of unease, the cold chill that ran down their backs whenever somebody mentioned his name.
Still, dealing with him should be a piece of cake.
Their weapons this evening told the tale. They carried recoil-less .44 auto Magnums. They had Uzi submachine guns loaded with 2.5 mm exploding rounds or 12 gauge Winchester auto shotguns slung at the hips of their Arctic combat suits. Two of them had hand grenades and incendiaries pinned to their flak jackets. The weapons were all lubricated with synthetic oil good to minus sixty degrees Celsius.
More than enough firepower to eliminate most targets. And to literally clean up afterwards, the last man in the detail held a long, thin nozzle. The other end connected to a canister on his waist. The burning mixture of high pressure oxygen and nitromethane gas could shoot out six hundred feet at six thousand degrees, reducing anything in its path to cinders.
Were-humans using shape-shifting drugs that turned them into bears or tigers couldn’t withstand such a blast.
The eyes in the middle of their faces, covered by a mask and goggles, didn’t brim with the tenacity of the hunter, nor even that of a killer, but rather with an eerie mechanical vibe.
But they hadn’t made it a dozen feet from the car when they began having second thoughts. The Arctic combat suits, including a thermal layer that would generate heat from any kind of pressure or movement, were guaranteed to hold up in the shade of the “Government Freezer.” But that didn’t extend to whatever was inside them.
While all these measures kept the epidermis warm, the cold seeped into the marrow of their bones. Unluckily for them, none of them had actually experienced this environment before. And the bad luck didn’t end there. A dozen feet in front of the shop, a shadow floated down from the sky like a bird of death and alit on the ground.
Confronted by both the unexpected appearance and beauty of the target they were after, these seasoned pros momentarily forgot why they were there and failed to pull the trigger.
Lowering his arms as if to bat down the flare of his slicker, Setsura Aki turned to face the assassins. He said, as if greeting colleagues at a business convention, “You’re from the Shiragi Syndicate, I take it?”
Their white breath clouded the air. Behind the goggles, their eyes wavered.
“My secretary filled me in on the details, though it’s not exactly news to me. Tonomura’s got guts, I’ll give him that. I didn’t think he was this reckless, though.”
Tonomura, the man who’d ordered the hit. His men stood there as if sincerely interested in everything Setsura had to say before opening fire.
“That’d make you the best of his black ops squad, meaning you take your orders directly from him. So I’ll ask you—did somebody recently pay Tonomura a visit?”
Setsura turned his eyes to the second man on his left, holding the Winchester shotgun. “How about you?”
Like he was answering the plea of his prey on the verge of death, the man said in a gravelly voice, “I—don’t know—really—”
“Next! And you?”
The man on the far left sported a ghastly white face. “This morning—a guy arrived—the secretary told me—that’s all—I know—”
Setsura nodded, apparently taking them at their word. “What sort of person was this guy?”
Like a teacher quizzing his students. Or more like the students quizzing their teachers. And seemingly equally unaware of how the tables had turned, the murderers’ mouths again moved.
“Twenty or so—pale—thin—a mole next to his mouth—”
Setsura’s reaction was a flicker in the depths of those endless dark eyes. “Fifteen years,” he murmured. His voice sounded no less far away. “This game of hide and go seek has gone on way too long. There’s hardly enough time to tie up all the loose ends. We’re really going to have to shutter the business for a while.”
He cast a glance at the men. They stood there like statues. “Disposing of you like this would hardly tax my wiles. I’ll give you a fair shot. I’m going to take the customary ten paces down this street. Ten paces. After that, feel free to fire away. Or not. Whether I turn around. Or not. You’ll be able to move soon enough.”
With that, he turned his back to them and started walking. At the same time, the binding cords immobilizing them dissolved away. Mutual glances of disbelief gave way to white-hot anger coursing through their limbs to their trigger fingers.
Setsura hadn’t gone five steps.
But their fingers didn’t move. That something in the cold had seeped down to the bone and muscle. They’d spent too much time in the shade.
They all closed their eyes. Not out of fear. They entered a state of autohypnosis, the mind separated from the body. No longer under the conscious control of the shooter, the finger pressed the trigger by sheer force.
Despite a caliber of 2.5 mm, the high explosive and fuses meant the lead projectiles would penetrate the body before exploding, leaving a hole behind the size of a cat’s paw. The muscles, bones and organs shattered, the body bent back, a fusillade of buckshot came next.
The inertia recoil auto shotgun spat out a stream of double-ought buckshot, nine pellets per shell, shredding the flesh like a torn rag. Any vestiges of humanity still left were soon devoured by the six thousand degrees of fire.
And they all missed.
The lines of fire split the air, scorched the asphalt, and lit up the empty sky. The target wasn’t even twenty feet away. Looking down at their hands, as if trying to ascertain the cause of the ineffectual assault, the black angel of death in front of them turned around.
With that same comely countenance. But the face of another.
“No. I said ten paces. You may execute your own penalties.”
He raised his right hand. The five fingers spread out. Like a maestro conducting a string ensemble of death, the guns of his assailants again spat fire.
At each other.
Torsos cut in two by the exploding rounds, heads blown apart by the shotgun, and turned into flaming scarecrows—these were the assassins. The blood and flesh and smoke and flame danced along the cruel streets while Setsura Aki stared up at the sky, like a fresh-faced college student contemplating the mysteries of the universe.
The “Government Freezer” knew as well that this young man was an exception to its rules. He alone couldn’t be frozen.