Leonardo greeted Greg and Director Kelley somberly. When the sandy-haired man had asked him about bringing his boss underground, the turtle barely batted an eye. He was reeling too hard from the revelation that the Akiudo was responsible for performing something akin to a terrorist attack on American soil. And the subway might only be the beginning.
There was fear in Matthew Kelley's eyes today; not as much as the first time they'd met inside the crumbling Javits building the year before, but he appeared to be shaken nonetheless. The large man took everything in silently, until Leonardo addressed him directly.
"Well, you wanted to be inside the loop, Director," Leo said. "I'd say that you got what you asked for."
Kelley continued looking around. "I never imagined that something like this could exist. You…you've always lived down here?"
Leo nodded. "Yes. We can't exactly go out and rent an apartment."
"No, I wouldn't think…" Kelley trailed off. "You were in a lot of danger from that earthquake, weren't you? Did you suffer major damage?"
"Donatello's Lab was pretty much totaled, but we didn't lose much else."
"His Lab?" Kelley repeated.
"Yeah, Lab," Greg inserted. "Where do you think their medical staff operates? We can't hijack a hospital, even if they've joked about it."
Kelley glanced at Greg, then back at Leonardo. "Why is it so quiet?"
Leonardo shook his head. "We've been on high alert for weeks, Director—"
"Matthew," Kelley interrupted. "For all intents and purposes, my title doesn't exist down here."
The blue-masked turtle wasn't sure if he would be able to convince himself of that. "We've been watching for signs of the Akiudo within the city limits, pulling all-nighters to search for them. I don't know what we thought we were looking for, but this event with the subway wasn't it," Leo said quietly. "We're aware of the violence they're capable of, but this is still a new low for them."
"Where are the rest of your people?" Kelley asked.
"Around. We're all trying to digest this, Matthew. I can gather everyone up," he offered grimly. I'm also trying to imagine what in the world our next step should be, he added inwardly.
"That can wait, if it's easier," Kelley said. "Right now, I'd just like to catch up. I need to know what you know about the Akiudo."
"Let me grab Sayuri and Kat at least," Leonardo suggested. "It would probably suit us better to have them in on this discussion." He knew that the women were in the kitchen, and he had only to stick his head in the next room to invite them to join the conference.
"Would you like to sit down, Sir?" Greg sounded stiff as he addressed Kelley.
The larger man sank to the end of one of the couches, eyeing Greg. "You don't really believe that I wanted to put you in jail, do you, Heffernan?"
"I can only operate according to your threats," Greg said flatly.
"If you didn't make this so darn difficult, I wouldn't have had to threaten you!"
"All due respect, Sir, but you're the one who can't decide what you want. In, out, hands-on, hands-off! How do you expect me to react? This club isn't something you walk into on a whim; it's a commitment and a responsibility. If you can't honor that, then you don't belong here."
Kelley took a sharp breath. "All right, I get it. My position is complicated, Greg; you know that. I don't want to drag my family into this, and as much as I don't want to mix business either…Things are going on behind the scenes whether I condone them or not. It makes more sense for me to be aware of some of it rather than continually burying my head in the sand. Are you capable of accepting my presence here?"
"It's not your presence I have an issue with," Greg said bluntly. "It's whether or not you have the ability to keep your mouth shut about my friends. I don't care if I have to go to jail to protect them. I'll do it in a heartbeat. But you? You don't have that type of loyalty where they're concerned, and yes, that scares me. It scares me a whole lot."
Kelley rested his chin in one hand. "I suppose your fears are founded. I can't guarantee how far I'll be able to go to protect them, but I'll say this: I'm not going to betray them, their home, or you, Heffernan."
Leonardo cleared his throat as he sat down in a chair, and motioned for Katherine and Sayuri to come further into the room. "For the record, we don't require that type of 'throw it all away' loyalty from any of our friends."
"No, it just naturally evolves based on the way you guys constantly risk your skin for perfect strangers," Katherine said, and met Matthew Kelley's gaze. "Hello, Sir."
"James," he said soberly, and then looked at the Asian woman. "And you must be the Detective Kimura I've heard so much about."
Sayuri nodded. "I am she," the woman said cautiously. "You are Greg-chan's Director?"
"That's true, but this right here is outside of the…normal confines of FBI business. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on in our city." Kelley maintained eye contact with her. "Tell me about this Takashi character."
"What is it you really want to know, Director?" Sayuri asked.
He shrugged helplessly. "Whatever is going to help me to help you."
Sayuri's brow creased. "There is much that no one knows about Matsuo Takashi. The first stories of the Akiudo began circulating Okinawa roughly fifteen years ago. I was young and fresh from school. I worked my way up through the local Police department, hearing rumors about the gang from time to time.
"It was largely suspected that they were involved in illegal activity, but no one had been able to confirm it. They were like phantoms that didn't leave a trail. It was eight years before I had the opportunity to join a task force that focused on a specialized type of criminal investigation. Among other cases that we worked on, the Akiudo's was always open.
"We received a break in our investigation upon the Akiudo when we found an informant who was already in prison, seeking a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony. He led us to a safe house, and he gave us the first glance we had of the inner workings of the gang.
"It was from him that we learned that the Akiudo was involved in trafficking, not drugs or stolen goods, but young women. We trod carefully in following up leads, but not carefully enough. We didn't think we would be expected when we converged upon the safe house, but we were wrong. We had no sooner started combing the house, than explosives leveled the property with my team inside.
"I was the only one who survived. The event kicked off the one-woman crusade against the Akiudo that I was never willing to relinquish, not even when all the officers around me believed the gang had faded out of existence. I was still determined to find them, though I was hopelessly alone in my quest. That was until I received an unexpected phone call from the United States." Sayuri looked at Greg.
The sandy-haired man swallowed deeply. "I'm the one who contacted Sayuri, but our story with the Akiudo didn't start with me." Greg turned to Leonardo.
The blue-masked turtle met Kelley's steady gaze. "It was a night like any other when we're running a patrol on the surface. We'd already split up, and Raphael and I observed a group of men behaving strangely outside a Club."
"And they turned out to be Akiudo?" Kelley asked.
"No, but they worked for them," Leo answered. "We found out later on that the gang was using American men to perform a lot of their dirty work inside the Clubs rounding up targets. The men blended in with regular clientele easily, and they were expendable, meaning that Takashi didn't care what happened to them.
"Raph and I staked out the Club to wait for the men to come out, and sure enough, they were up to no good. They exited with two women who'd obviously been drugged. At that point my brother and I stepped in, without any idea what we were getting into. We had no difficulty taking out the Americans, but it didn't end there. First one of the Akiudo showed up, and Raph and I worked together to bring him down. Then several more of them arrived, without any warning. We were on the street level, concerned about maintaining a low profile, and keeping the young women safe.
"We made the choice to flee over the rooftops, but we were pursued both over the city, and on the street. They got ahead of us and we were cornered. We'd already sent out a distress signal to our other brothers, and they barely arrived in time to save our shells. The four of us had to fight as hard we could, but the battle still ended without us. One moment we were still straining to overcome them, and the next, the Akiudo had disappeared with the young women."
Kelley shook his head. "They don't sound human. I've seen you move, and I know about the extraordinary skills you possess. But this gang…"
"They're warriors too," Leonardo supplied. "Some of them are better than others, but they're definitely nothing to scoff at. Of course at the time, we had no idea what was going on. We didn't get our first break in the mysterious case until some of the Akiudo began searching for us.
"They threatened someone behind prison walls, who was known for having 'Phantom' connections. He was nothing but an insignificant kid who worked for another enemy at one point. We don't know what he told the gang, but the young man also came forward to contact our people. That was the first time we heard about the Akiudo." Leonardo nodded at Greg.
"I began performing my own research, and that's when I learned about Sayuri," Greg said. "We started exchanging e-mails and phone calls about the gang. That was our original connection."
"There are a lot of things we could tell you about the Akiudo," Leonardo said thoughtfully. "We can get into more of the old stories later, but here's what you need to know for the moment. Takashi is a cold, superstitious man who's obsessed with power. It's nothing for this gang to kill several people at a time. They're absolutely lethal."
"How did you know that they would return to the United States?" Kelley glanced at Sayuri. "Did you hear something to that effect?"
"No, it didn't start with Sayuri this time," Leo said tightly. "It began here several weeks ago, the night that Brandon was supposed to get on that plane."
Kelley's head whipped around. "When he was kidnapped?"
Leo nodded. "That was when Donatello was attacked too. We didn't get to the bottom of everything until we found out that Bran wasn't on that plane. We followed his implant to the Night Club, and in the process of performing surveillance, Kat and I made another disturbing discovery. We observed a high-ranking member of the Akiudo, and heard his end of a telephone conversation. That was when we found out that Takashi had plans for returning to the United States.
"The individual that we discovered was regrouping with a number of the gang members who were left behind the last time the Akiudo was on US soil. The man led an independent mission to kidnap Brandon, and then attacked Donatello when he walked into the apartment unsuspecting."
Kelley's forehead furrowed. "Soiree," he said suddenly. "Local cops got the call to pick up all those Asians…and one dead. That was you guys? That was the Akiudo?"
"Yes," Katherine spoke up. "But I'm the one who killed that man. It was in self defense of another member of our team."
Leonardo shot Kat a look, but the woman scowled.
"He already has enough information to destroy us all, Leo," she pointed out.
Kelley appeared to be sizing Katherine up. "Self defense?"
"Yes," she insisted. "He had Timothy Long by the throat, and he was about to snap his neck. I trust you remember him from the boat last year?"
Kelley looked concerned. "This is difficult, James. This information puts me in a precarious position."
"You wanted to know," she said sharply.
"I did," he allowed and sighed. "Now the rest of them are here, and the only other thing I want to know for the moment is how you're going to find them."
"We don't know yet, Matthew," Leo said. "But we're the reason Takashi's here, so I'm sure he intends to reveal himself somehow. We'd much rather find him before he has a chance to do anything else, but I think it's going to take some cooperation between all of us."