OKINAWA, JAPAN PRESENT DAY

As the last of the rocks were moved away by Japanese contractors hired on the island, Professor Fallon called a halt. He asked the islanders and most of the Cal Riverside students to leave the cave for safety reasons. After hearing the story as told by the old soldier Seito the week before, the professor wasn’t taking any chances. The documents he had uncovered in Beijing twenty years ago with the aid of the Chinese government, during one of their more friendly and nonenlightened periods, had told him that beyond that wall could be found not only a great archaeological find with the Chinese junk, but also one of the most dangerous substances known to man.

Of the six people left to remove the last of the lava rock and stone, Sarah was out in front. A trained geologist, she would watch for instability in the rock fall when the opening was cleared. She was joined by Dr. Kowalski, who bore with her a device they called a “sniffer.” It would measure and analyze the air particles, and immediately alert her if any of the substance had become airborne after Tarazawa had sealed the excavation in ’45. Both women were now dressed in airtight chemical suits. Carl Everett wondered if their animosity was coming through their small speaker systems as they removed the last stone.

“Stand clear, Ms. McIntire, if you please. I must be able to get a solid reading,” Andréa Kowalski said.

Sarah was about to respond when she heard Carl clear his throat from about ten feet away. She instead backed away as ordered.

Andréa handled the microphone-shaped probe expertly as she eased it cautiously through the door-size opening, careful not to touch the stone itself. Once it was inside the opening, she placed a thin panel of steel over the hole and then thumbed a switch on the sniffer’s small control panel. Inside the darkness of the cave, the microphone-shaped device came apart with a small pop. The heavy springs inside engaged and sent two hundred small darts in all directions. Each dart was tungsten tipped and the small shaft was made of lypcochlorinide, which upon impact sent a burst of moisture into the air, activating any minute amounts of any substance that may be embedded in the lava rock. The tungsten heads were miniature radio units that would relay any findings to the device’s control panel. Of the two hundred darts, some found rock, others sand, and still others tumbled into the blackness. Andréa slowly brought up the particle gauge and read the virtual readout. The device was so sensitive it immediately broke down all the airborne elements in the old excavation.

The others watching Andréa’s progress could see the woman in her yellow chemical suit slowly relax her shoulders as the small darts sent back their vital information on the air quality in the cave. But none of them realized just how tense she had become.

Carl finally took a breath, not even knowing he had been holding it. He relaxed when he saw her remove the small steel plate from the hole.

Andréa removed a small round object from her belt, leaned into the opening, and tossed the small device as far as she could. The round object was a one-time-use portable analysis pod. Once thrown, it would separate into five different sections and its components would read the interior air of the confined space. It was so accurate that it picked up the traces of cordite and TNT that had been used in 1945, over sixty years before.

Andréa removed her hood. “All clear; only one strange reading I can’t figure out,” she said. “But it’s nontoxic.”

“What is it?” Professor Fallon asked, with concern.

“Trace amounts of blood.”

The others started to remove their own protective equipment.

“Don’t do that, please; just because there is nothing in the air doesn’t mean we won’t disturb trace amounts when we enter. The petrie darts only cover about ten percent of the cave; that leaves ninety percent capable of carrying something that could kill you all,” Andréa said blandly as she placed her own hood back in place.

As she turned and entered the cave, Professor Fallon and Carl and two other members of the dig team hefted the portable lighting they would use in the initial phase of the recovery. Sarah was the first to follow the CDC specialist into the opening. She switched on her flashlight once she was inside. At first, all she caught in the light was floating dust and the back of Andréa, who was waving another metal probe that was connected to her readout, this time making sure their footsteps weren’t bringing death with every movement they made. Then Sarah’s light caught the geometric shape of wooden scaffolding standing out through the dust swirls. Out of the darkness rose a black ship. Still legible on its side was what looked like a faded dragon carved into the dark wood. It ran the entire length of the ship and its tail wrapped around the stern. As she played her light around it, she could see that the bottom half of the vessel had deteriorated badly. The rotted planks that made up its hull were starting to collapse, causing the top deck to sag into the interior of the vessel.

“Director Compton would have loved to have seen this.”

Sarah jumped at the sound of Carl’s voice. “Jesus, don’t do that,” she admonished. “You scared the hell out of me.” But he was right, she thought, Niles Compton, the director of the Event Group, lived for discovery like this, and he also would have loved to get it into one of the Group’s vaults for further study. Sarah shook off the thought of Niles and brought her focus back to where it should have been; after all, they were here to make sure the old legends about this ship weren’t true. That was the whole reason for her and Carl’s infiltration of this college dig in the first place.

“We may have a dangerous situation here,” Andréa said from the lower-most scaffolds.

“Danger?” Fallon asked as he looked at the ship, still giddy at proving his research right and vindicating Seito’s elaborate tall tale of an ancient vessel buried in a cave.

“The junk is collapsing in on itself. If that upper deck gives way, it will crush whatever cargo this vessel was once carrying, and if your theory and old Seito’s memory are correct, we could contaminate all of Okinawa.”

“Before we find out, doctors, I suggest you bring the old man in here and ask him a few more questions,” Carl said after he gained the top of the scaffold that looked down onto the main deck of the Chinese junk.

“He isn’t authorized, Mr. Everett,” Fallon said as he carefully eased his way to where Carl was standing.

“What have you got up there, Carl?” Sarah asked from below.

“The reason why Dr. Kowalski’s equipment was picking up trace amounts of dried blood,” Carl replied as the professor joined him.

“Good God, what in the hell is this?” Fallon exclaimed when he saw what Carl was looking at.

“Are you going to keep us in suspense up there or are you going to act like professionals?” Andréa said from the lower level.

“I think our old Lieutenant Seito needs to tell us why there are three skeletons in Japanese Army uniforms up here,” Carl said flatly.

They were all amazed an hour later when the old man, along with his interpreter, both now dressed in yellow chemical suits, bowed deeply at the waist at the remains of the three skeletons on the upper scaffold.

“Who is it?” Carl asked the old soldier.

The old man straightened with the aid of the interpreter. They could hear him breathing deeply of his oxygen, almost hyperventilating. Then he began to speak in his native Japanese.

“He said,” his interpreter translated, “that it is his great shame that this is Colonel Yashita and two of his army soldiers. Murdered, shot in the back by himself and Admiral Tarazawa.”

“He wanted to excavate the cargo, didn’t he?” Carl asked. “Yashita wanted to use it if it was still viable.”

The old man understood the question without need for the interpreter and nodded. Then he said something too low for the others to hear.

“Mr. Seito says it was a traitorous act on his and the admiral’s part, but that he would do it again. There had been enough death. They resealed the cave and in their report attributed the unfortunate loss of the colonel and his men in a cave-in.”

The group was silent. Carl just nodded his head at the old man and Sarah patted Seito on the back.

“Where is Dr. Kowalski?” Fallon asked suddenly.

Carl looked around; Andréa was nowhere to be seen. Then he heard the sound at the same time the others did. There was noise coming from inside the ancient cargo hold.

“Goddammit!” Carl exclaimed as he quickly stepped down onto the uppermost deck. His foot immediately crashed through the rotted wood as if he had stepped on a glass floor. As he gently tried to pull his booted foot free he saw the others rushing up the old wooden scaffolding. He held up his arm quickly. “Stay back! This damned thing is coming apart, I’ll—”

That was as far as Carl got, as his weight was enough to crack the rest of that section of deck. He felt weightlessness at first and then his stomach lurched up into his chest as he started to fall. There was a momentary darkness, then a bright flash of light. He felt something soft break his fall. He heard a loud grunt and then an expletive that sounded like French. Then he felt himself, and whatever it had been that broke his fall, strike the bottom of the hold.

“You clumsy oaf, you could have broken my equipment,” Andréa said from beneath him. “Or me! Now get off,” she ordered as she pushed at him.

As they both stood up, she silently held her light on something. The sight of it made her freeze instantly. She gestured for him not to move, by holding out her hand. Carl raised his light and in its beam he was amazed to see at least thirty large containers, yellowed with age and standing three feet in height, leaning against one another, still bound with the remains of old rotted restraining ropes used to keep them in place over seven hundred years before. The jars all had a red dragon, dimmed with age, painted on their sides.

“I’ll be damned,” Carl murmured under his breath.

“If whatever is in there is still viable, we all may be damned,” Andréa said as she stared at thirty-two containers of a mystery weapon Chinese legend said was the Breath of the Dragon.

Two hours later, after the dig team had assisted Andréa in setting up her equipment outside of the junk’s hull, they waited anxiously for her to confirm their worst fears. The grad students and Professor Fallon knew if the cargo was still an active powdered agent, they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of examining the ancient junk.

Carl finally put all the puzzle pieces together. The previous year, a seven-hundred-year-old Chinese laboratory had been unearthed during an archeological dig outside Beijing. When it was discovered by an Event Group infiltration unit that students of Beijing University had found trace evidence of a biological facility that was hundreds of years ahead of its time, the news had shaken the virologists at the Event Group badly. Trace amounts of chemical agents had been discovered inside the remains of kilns. Rudimentary microscopes made up of eight or nine different lenses of glass, providing the magnification needed to study the spread of disease, were also unearthed at a nearby, separate excavation that was also tagged by the Group. Those two elements side by side painted a historical picture that would shake modern science to its foundations if word was let out. Then it was discovered in old marching orders uncovered by the Computer Sciences Department at the Event Group that a powdered compound had been intended to be released into the air over seven centuries earlier by Kublai Khan’s invading force. The findings were passed up the chain of command until the president gave reluctant permission for the Fallon dig to include Carl and Sarah for reasons of national security, after they found out that Dr. Fallon had discovered the site through an alternate means while researching survivor records in Shanghai that told of a mysterious shipwreck on the island of Okinawa.

Still in her chemical suit, Andréa set up a small worktable inside the cargo hold of the Chinese vessel. Carl strung some makeshift lighting inside and stood by as the doctor made her analysis. Carl was the only member of the dig team she allowed inside, and only then because he was already there. Thus far she had carefully used a special drill to penetrate the beeswax and porcelain. Without extracting the drill she carefully slid a rubber collar down the drill bit and made it secure to the outer wax sealant, then withdrew the drill bit from the container and rubber gasket. As she freed the tool she quickly capped the rubber gasket with a rubber stopper, then she took a deep breath and sat back. From the supplies she had assembled on her small table, she pulled out a small vile of a clear chemical and shook it up until it turned amber in color. She then placed the very tip of the probe into it.

“If you’re a religious man, Mr. Everett, now’s the time to pray whatever this stuff is has deteriorated over the centuries and has become inert; if not, I’m afraid there’s one hell of a cleanup ahead of us.”

Carl didn’t respond; he had been silent throughout the entire procedure. Ever since he had fallen through the rotted decking of the junk, he had been keeping his eyes open and thinking a few things over. He had studied Dr. Kowalski’s dossier that Niles Compton had forwarded from the Group in Nevada, and it had said nothing about the good doctor’s speaking French. The information didn’t seem critical, but the dossiers were made up by the National Security Agency and they left nothing out. Still, he would be on the alert now for other slips.

As Andréa slowly pulled the small rubber cork from the gasket, she quickly plugged it again with the telescopic probe, then began cautiously to inch it into the porcelain container. Carl could hear her short, controlled breaths as she held her arm steady. She inserted the probe into the container until she met resistance and then she let go and shook her hands as if they had fallen asleep.

“Whatever is in there has hardened over the years. That’s good news; it means it may not be a powder any longer and easier to move if it proves active.”

“Makes me all giddy inside to know that, Doctor,” Carl said, keeping his eyes on Andréa and the container.

Andréa frowned behind her faceplate and then retrieved her portable analyzer from the table. She took two small electrical leads that protruded from the steel probe she had placed in the porcelain container and attached them to her laptop computer. Next, she took the 1/8-inch clear rubber tube on the probe and also inserted that into the side of her analyzer. Then she took a deep breath of her oxygen and started tapping commands on the keyboard. Suddenly the analyzer beeped three times in rapid succession. The indicator in the upper right corner of the analyzer flashed red.

“Well, that doesn’t look or sound too good,” Carl said.

Andréa didn’t respond. She laid the analyzer down slowly, leaving the probe in the container, and carefully stood. She backed away slowly and keyed her radio on the yellow sleeve of her chemical suit.

“Well, what is it?” Carl asked as Andréa backed away from the container.

“Professor Fallon? I don’t fully understand how the Chinese did it seven hundred years before they were supposed to be able to, but they managed to—”

“Dr. Kowalski, Mr. Everett, would you be so kind as to join us up on the scaffold please,” ordered a familiar voice. “I don’t wish to be unpleasant to your colleagues.”

Andréa looked at Carl.

“May I assume you have a weapon on you, Mr. Everett?” Andréa whispered as she reached into a small satchel attached to her side and brought out a Beretta nine-millimeter automatic pistol.

Under his faceplate Carl raised his eyebrows. “Is that standard CDC issue, Doctor?” he mouthed as he reached into his satchel and brought out a Colt .45 automatic.

“Is that Asaki, the nerd from the Okinawa government, talking?” Andréa asked quietly.

“Yes, and I don’t think I care for his tone,” Carl replied as he steeled himself for confrontation.

“Mr. Everett, if you are armed, please toss your weapon out onto the upper deck before you appear, or I’m afraid our friends here will do something distasteful,” Asaki warned.

Carl gestured for Andréa to slide her pistol into her chemical suit. Without hesitation she quickly released the Velcro, unzipped her suit, and plunged her Beretta inside; it was almost as if she had anticipated Carl’s order.

“We can remove the protective suits for now, there’s no trace of any airborne particles,” Carl said loudly.

He removed his hood and faceplate, tossed his .45 through the opening he had made when he fell through the deck, and then turned back toward Andréa.

“So, what agency are you with, Doctor? NSA, CIA, or is it someone else?” he whispered.

“Please come out on deck, so we may finish our business,” Asaki ordered. “Any untoward antics and we will begin harming your friends, starting with the students.”

Carl took a deep breath and waited for Andréa.

As she passed him, she removed her faceplate and hood, then shook out her red hair. She stopped long enough to retrieve her glasses from the small table. Then she turned and faced Carl as she put them on.

“In answer to your question, Mr. Everett, I guess you could say you know my husband, or ex-husband to be more accurate. You see, Mr. Everett, I also know you are no field security man contracted for the university at Riverside, but actually the number two man in the security department for what is known in very private circles as the Event Group,” she whispered. “My name is Danielle Serrate, formerly Mrs. Henri Farbeaux. Now I’m afraid we must do as they say before we get one of those innocent kids killed.”

Carl couldn’t move for a moment. He expected something, but not the former wife of the Group’s number one enemy. Now he knew why she cursed in French when she was caught off guard. Colonel Henri Farbeaux had been a thorn in the side of his organization for the better part of fifteen years. Farbeaux was far better at gleaning the historical record than most nations gave him credit for. Although ruthless in his pursuit of antiquities and technology, not necessarily in that order, he was a man who rivaled Group director Niles Compton in the IQ department, which was why he was so dangerous and had a death warrant out for him by at least five countries.

“No wonder you were such a bitch,” he mumbled to himself as they started up.

Carl immediately took in the situation and knew from a military, or defensive, standpoint, he was going to be like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. With the way the bad guys were deployed in and around the cave, he could see he was hamstrung. Asaki had a crew of his own men and had organized six different areas in which he was holding the field team inside the cave. Carl knew Asaki had to have additional men, either in the larger cave or outside, more than likely both. Sarah and Professor Fallon, along with the old soldier Seito, were standing next to the Okinawa field representative, which Asaki obviously wasn’t or, worse, he was pulling double duty as a thug and bureaucrat; moreover, standing next to him, holding his very own Colt .45, was the old man’s interpreter.

“Please step aside and let Dr. Kowalski join us, Mr. Everett, we have much to do and a very short time to do it,” Asaki admonished while waiving a small pistol of his own.

Carl allowed the newly disclosed Danielle Farbeaux, or as she said, Serrate, to step up from behind him. He still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a part of what was happening here.

“Very good; as you can see, things are not as they seem. Your situation has turned from one of discovery to that of cooperation. Do this and I assure you no one will be harmed,” Asaki said loudly enough for all in the cave to hear, his voice carrying easily in the small enclosure.

“You… are a … dishonor,” said Seito in halting English.

Asaki ignored the old man and gestured for Danielle to come forward.

“Now, what sort of biological agent are we dealing with, Doctor?”

“I haven’t completed my analysis yet.”

“I think you are lying, but have no fear, Doctor, we have people for that; we will remove the weapon first and then—”

Andréa cut him off. “If you make one mistake, you could doom yourselves to a horrible death,” she hissed as she stepped directly on the remains and tattered uniform of the World War II army colonel. Her foot had come down on the colonel’s samurai sword. “Just why are you doing this?”

“The man you are so casually standing on is my grandfather. My real name is Yashita,” said the man they knew as Asaki.

Carl now understood at least part of what was happening. Who would have figured?

The government man adjusted the aim of his pistol and pointed at Seito, “He was murdered by this man and the cowardly, disgraced Admiral Tarazawa because they didn’t have the fortitude to save the war as my grandfather had wished to do with this gift from the gods. But today, old wounds will be healed and I will kill two birds with one single stone.”

Seito, the old warhorse and feisty to the end, spat at Yashita. Sarah, seeing the rage cross Yashita’s features, stepped in front of the old soldier without thinking. Then a strange calmness came over the government representative’s face and he smiled as he wiped the old man’s spittle from his cheek and neck.

“As I said, by the end of today my sense of justice will be satisfied.”

“What will someone like you do with a biological agent? Sell it to the highest bidder?” Carl asked, his hands still up.

“Nothing so mundane, I assure you. You Americans always think it’s the money. Money, money, money,” he said with a snarl. “The war never ended for many of us, Mr. Everett. Like my grandfather before me, I am a patriot and still very much active in the war with your country, as are many from all over the world.” He stepped forward and motioned below as ten men dressed in green chemical suits started up the scaffolding. They all carried large zippered bags. “After we have the weapon analyzed, it will be dispersed worldwide. Every element in our cause against the West will receive one canister. Who would have thought the great and mighty Kublai Khan would come to the aid of our struggle? This will be used to avenge the rape of my country and the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands,” he said as he watched Carl take a menacing step forward.

“Please, continue to advance, Mr. Everett, and we can begin this right now if you wish,” Yashita said as he aimed his gun at Sarah.

Yashita’s men pushed by Carl and Danielle, knocking them together, a move that forced Carl to grab her to keep her from tumbling off the scaffold. As he righted her, he found himself standing on the old samurai sword.

Yashita shouted in Japanese and his men below herded the students to the outer cave. Then he climbed the last scaffold, placed the protective hood over his head, and easily lowered his body into the hold to see the containers for himself.

The interpreter and three of Asaki’s men herded Sarah, Fallon, and the old man toward Carl and Danielle.

“You two all right?” Carl asked.

“I’ve never felt so damned helpless in my life,” Sarah said angrily.

“This is a little different than your clean classrooms in Nevada, isn’t it, Second Lieutenant McIntire?” Danielle asked.

Sarah didn’t respond to Danielle’s sarcasm; she instead raised her eyebrows as she looked at Carl.

“Our Dr. Kowalski, as it turns out, is Danielle Serrate, the former Mrs. Henri Farbeaux.”

Sarah allowed her shock to show as she momentarily dropped her arms, eliciting a loud rebuke from their captors. She quickly raised them again. Then she laughed.

“No wonder she’s such a bitch,” she said, echoing Carl’s earlier comment.

Twenty minutes later, the armed men allowed them to lower their arms and ordered them to sit on the creaking wooden scaffolding. Carl was careful to place his ass right over the colonel’s old sword, as uncomfortable as it was.

“You work for the French Antiquities Commission?” Sarah asked.

“Yes, my being here has not been authorized. I learned that my former husband had started learning all he could about dangerous biohazards; he had an extensive file on the Kublai Khan invasion, which mentioned this vessel in several passages, so I thought he might show up here.”

“You went through all that trouble to track down your ex? Were you in that much of a reconciliatory mood?” Sarah asked.

“My mood was a bit darker, little Sarah; I was going to kill him,” Danielle answered coldly.

“He used to work for your department. What would your director say about that?” Carl asked her.

Danielle slowly turned toward Carl and smiled grimly. “I am the director of my department.”

Sarah and Carl exchanged looks.

“Who are you people? Is anyone who they said they were, when they signed on?” Fallon asked angrily.

Poor Fallon, Sarah thought. What could she tell him, that she worked for the most secret organization in the American government? That all she did is collect data from history and analyze it, catalog it, and learn from it to make sure her country didn’t make the same mistakes twice? A job that required her to infiltrate field digs from universities, and hire into private companies to gain information about anything and everything? That she was there to protect the American people and sometimes the world from themselves, because what they didn’t know is that their government agency knows most everything from the truth of religion to that of UFOs?

“Professor Fallon, all we can say is that we are here to help,” Sarah answered.

“I’m sure that will comfort him,” Yashita said as he climbed back up from the inside of the ancient hold. He removed his protective hood. “One thing you should know, all of you: there are no more heroes left in your part of the world, only robots that do the bidding of Washington and other dying entities just like it.”

“I think there may be one or two left in the West,” Danielle said smiling.

As if on cue, screaming started from the outer cave. Yashita looked confused and ordered his three men to investigate. As they started down the scaffolding, Danielle unzipped her protective suit, pulled her Beretta, and quickly fired, but missed Yashita as he jumped from the topmost scaffolds to the bottom one, landing hard and rolling. As he tried to stand, a tremendous explosion rocked the cavern, knocking everyone over. The chemical-suited men began exiting the hold of the ship on the ladders they had installed for their descent, and pulled handguns from their satchels. The interpreter started shouting orders and then the men turned their weapons on their captives.

“Oh, shit,” Carl yelled. He struck out with a rubber-booted foot, hitting the closest man and knocking him from his feet. He quickly grabbed for the man’s weapon, a small-caliber Colt, and fired into the facemask of another of Yashita’s man. As he did so he saw several others suddenly flop to the scaffold, as something unseen and unheard took them down. Their added weight hitting rotten wood was too much for the structure. It cracked and folded in on itself. Just before it did Carl saw several holes stitch across one of Yashita’s men as he fell backward into the cargo hold. Then that was it—they were all falling.

There were shouts coming from all areas of the cave. Carl was lying in the hull, stunned, with Danielle on top, fighting to get a hundred pounds of rotted wood off them. He could hear Sarah from somewhere shouting that Yashita was over to the left. Suddenly Carl felt himself lifted and shoved over. He felt hands reaching under him and then whoever was assisting him disappeared into the dust and smoke. Then he heard Sarah shouting again.

As the scaffold started coming down, she had grabbed for the interpreter’s weapon. It had fired and Sarah felt a searing pain crease her shoulder. The man had then fired point-blank at Seito. She yelled again in warning, and saw the old soldier jump to the right, pushing debris from the scaffolding out of his way as he did. Sarah started to pull herself out of the mess of rotted wood, when she saw Yashita above her, firing at someone in the cave below. She wondered if the students had somehow gotten free and started this nightmare. Suddenly she felt herself lifted, by none other than Yashita. He was bleeding from the mouth and shaking her.

“Who are you people?” he screamed.

Below them, Carl finally pulled Danielle to her feet, took the Beretta from her firm grasp, and then tried to step free of the debris that covered the cave floor. As two men took aim at him, he knew he couldn’t get the pistol up in time, but even before he could try to shoot, a line of tracers struck the men and they went down. That was when Carl noticed someone dressed in black Nomex and wearing a nylon hood and gas mask step out from a rock out-cropping. He was about to shout when he heard other, louder screams of outrage coming from behind them. The man in black ran forward; Carl and Danielle quickly followed.

“I want out of here! You will allow me to pass or this woman’s death will be on you, not I,” Yashita shouted again. His pistol was pointed right at Sarah’s temple. She had a scowl on her face as if she were far more angry than scared.

The man in black acted as though he hadn’t heard; he slowly inched forward, his Ingram submachine gun not wavering a millimeter. Carl reached out and tried to stop the black-garbed commandos but the man easily shrugged his hand away. From behind the black goggles and a night-vision scope placed over the gas mask, the man’s eyes were trained directly at Yashita. Carl knew that if the commando fired, Yashita could have a knee-jerk reaction and kill Sarah anyway.

Suddenly there was a loud shout in Japanese and a figure jumped out of the darkness. The bright and shiny edge of a blade made a streak in the darkness, and Yashita’s pistol hand fell away from Sarah’s head. Sarah was sprayed with blood as she pulled free of her captor’s other arm. Then all movement stopped as all eyes fixed upon Seito. He held the samurai sword high. Blood was coursing down his chest, staining the yellow plastic of his chemical suit. With a scream of outrage, he brought the sword down and into Yashita, severing him from the neck to the center of his chest. The old man watched his enemy collapse. He continued to stand there quietly, sword unmoving, his brown eyes focused on the dead man before him. Then he slowly allowed the sword to fall from his arthritic grasp as he crumpled onto his right side.

The man in black ran forward with his weapon still trained on Yashita’s head. When he saw no movement, he quickly went to Sarah and, with one powerful arm, lifted her to her feet. Carl and Danielle ran toward the fallen Seito. Carl immediately saw the bullethole in the old man’s chest and exhaled in exasperation. He then lowered himself and raised Seito’s head. Danielle sadly took the old man’s hand into her own.

There were seven commandos all together. Six of them had herded the students and Fallon into a protective bunch at the cave’s opening; all were in good shape, from what Carl could see.

“Had to go and play soldier again, huh?” he asked the dying Seito.

“The … man … had no … honor.”

Carl nodded.

Seito smiled as he looked at the man in black Nomex. The old man started to say something in English but failed. Instead he croaked out a few sentences quickly in Japanese, the words slurring as he finished, and then his eyes closed and he was gone.

“I wonder what he said,” Carl asked, brushing some gray hair out of the old man’s eyes.

“He said he had heard what Yashita said about there being no heroes left,” Danielle translated.

The man in black removed his night-vision gear, gas mask, and hood in one movement. Jack Collins, the director of security for the highly secretive Event Group and Carl’s boss, looked down at Seito.

Danielle frowned. “He said that Yashita was wrong; where there are good men, there will always be heroes.”