Chapter 6

To the untrained eye, the Yakuza operations in this aircraft hangar might have seemed pitiful. An ineffectual cog in their machine that remained fully staffed despite running next to no inventory. In truth, a barebones hanger was merely a sign of their preparation for this extraction.

Whatever business this airfield typically saw would have been altered, rerouted or halted so the lines of their operation didn't cross. It might have been different at the height of the Yakuza's power, but now the assets of a whole corporation could be frozen if just one part were snagged by law enforcement. The return from running both at once was dwarfed by the risk of associating the two. When it came down to it, they could only afford to run one line of their operation at a time, and so tonight, the only contraband they intended to run through here was Elaine.

It had left him with relatively little to work with in the way of supplies. He'd have to make do with what little remained and what he already had prepared.

Not a full minute had passed before they broke the radio silence.

"You've got some balls, I'll give you that."

It was a new voice this time, and Gin guessed he now conversed with the highest authority available within their present ranks. Or, at the very least, their highest authority left. He wondered if his new opponents had wasted that minute deciding who was in charge, or if they'd spent it more wisely organizing a strategy.

"Still, I'm curious how you picture this ending for yourself," the new voice continued.

"Should we skip right to a negotiation of terms then?" Gin intentionally misinterpreted his meaning, giving the man an easy opportunity to rush through this.

They were in a hurry, and Gin had something they needed. Those two facts were indisputable. The only question then was how they would go about getting it from him.

"You've killed all our men, your hostages, not a great negotiation strategy." The man gave in answer. Gin, whose hands were too preoccupied to answer the radio besides, let the man's predictable stall sit. "You don't agree?"

"You don't need men." Gin didn't stop his task to answer, haphazardly holding the button down on the side of the radio even as he hefted a load. His grunts punctuating his statements. "You need fuel." He thunked a tank solidly for good measure before releasing the button.

"You would sell us our own fuel?"

Gin looked over his work, now completed, and tried not to grin too much as he said, "Sell it back, yes."

"It's a hell of a plan. Ransoming fuel you haven't even stolen."

"If you think it's still yours, come get it." He goaded somewhat recklessly. Gin had, by that point, exited the hanger. If they had entered at that moment exactly, they likely could have done just that. There was little else preventing them from doing so than the bravado of his bluff.

"You'd like that, right?"

Gin was careful to only allow sound to pass through the radio in his hand when he spoke now. He'd left the other radio back in the hanger of course, sitting on the barrels of fuel echoing their conversation about from where he'd let them assume he was waiting for them.

"It would suit me just fine. It's your remaining men who I think might find it disagreeable. But it doesn't have to be that way, how about as a show of good faith I flip on those edge lights for you. No one would profit if your chopper couldn't land here after all."

"Do what you will," Gin's opponent responded with false resignation. "I could hardly stop you."

"What's the problem? Finding you have a finite number of men?"

"More than you have," he countered.

"True enough," Gin said, as he reached the place where he had disconnected a juncture in the extension cord before. Originally, this had been to eliminate any possibility those edge lights might come on while he was sneaking up on the man who was setting them out. Circumstances had changed and reconnecting them now would help solidify his misdirection. The only problem being the location, between the first of the edge lights and the hangar door. Perhaps seven or eight seconds of hard sprinting from the closest treeline. A location where the lights from the landing site would reveal his shape when they came on, undoubtedly.

He might have been able to lie close enough to the ground that they wouldn't be able to make him out in the dark. But he wouldn't have the time to inch along the grass and make his slow way to cover.

The blades of the approaching helicopter had come to slowly dominate all sound in the area as it closed in. He'd have to risk the whole ploy, or it would all be for naught.

Supposing they'd bought his ruse to that point, they wouldn't be looking for him so far outside the hangar. It was a rather thin layer of protection to have between him and gunfire, but he didn't have the luxury of another. Gin prepared for the dash, held the radio and extension cord at the ready, and willed his voice to embody an overconfidence he did not feel.

"I still wouldn't bet on your odds."

"No?" A small voice shrilled an answer against the thunder of the chopper overhead, even as Gin was well on his way toward the treeline. "What advantage could you possibly hope to press? I'm still trying to work out how you plan to profit from this ridiculous holdup."

Their conversation stalled just a moment as the helicopter came to land, Gin reached the treeline, and the cut of the blades finally slowed. He slackened his pace but didn't stop. There was still a ways to go, and he needed to ration out his stamina.

Even so, he took a moment to still his breathing, resume the illusion he was relaxed, and speak into the radio.

"There's always a profit to be made off of desperation. And your lot reeks of it." That had been theatrical and he knew it. Although it was only as overacted as this entire pointless exchange.

"Who are you?"

"I imagine introductions will play very little bearing on these negotiations."

"What negotiations? You don't have anything to negotiate with."

He wondered if the man on the other end had realized yet just how much stalling Gin had been party to, or if he still thought he was in control of the situation.

"Am I not staring down a pair of two-seater propeller planes?" He wasn't; he was lying under a tree where he had stashed a very long, very beautiful rifle that had played a much larger role in the original plans for this evening. Still, Gin recalled his earlier appraisal of those planes in the hangar. "They probably work nicely for smuggling contraband overseas. Risky though, cruising close enough to the water that you're off radar."

"And how exactly do you plan on stealing them?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I've no intention of stealing the planes."

He expected the man understood his meaning right about the time flames licked up around the remaining tanks of jet fuel. The resulting burst illuminated the field outside the hangar just long enough for him to make out where two shapes had been flanking the hangar's exit.

So they had sent men for him after all.

He watched as they got their feet back underneath themselves, and waited till they fully caught the light. A rifle firing here, in this open of a field, gave such a loud and sharp crack it was like the sky itself split with each shot. He doubted anyone here had mistaken the sound of it.

He maimed the men outside of the hanger door, only aiming to take them out of the fight. No more, no less. He intended to cripple their operations, not to utterly decimate them. Although it sat well within his power to do so from this position. The helicopter landing site had flooded with light since he had last passed through it, and very little of it remained out of range of his scope.

What had seemed a daunting location to approach on foot had shifted into a location that afforded precious little cover to its occupants. A fact with which they were just now coming to terms; Their realization clear in the silence that followed the shots.

"I think we can do away with false pretenses now." Gin called over the radio, doing anything but just that. "I am in possession of enough fuel to get that helicopter of yours to Suzuki Tower and back, and only enough fuel to do so. As you are in dire need of just that. Surely, we can come to some arrangement."

"Bastard." The man on the other line spat.

Gin grinned at that. "So," he began once again, "terms."