The colonel glared up at him, but did as ordered. Moreno got to his feet, cursing. He pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the colonel, his finger curling around the trigger.

"Not yet," Abayon ordered his friend.

Instead of a bullet, Moreno spit, the glob splattering on the officer's face.

"Keep him covered," Abayon ordered as he put the sword down and quickly went through the prisoner's pockets.

He drew out a leather wallet that contained identification and papers.

"Colonel Tashama," Abayon read.

"From the Kempeitai."

Moreno hissed as he heard the name of the infamous military intelligence branch of the Japanese army. They had led the way in rape and torture on the main island.

"What did you put in the mountain?" Abayon asked.

Tashama just glared at him. Abayon stared back, thinking it through.

"You are the only one who knows where the entrance to the tunnel is. In fact, who probably even knows what mountain you tunneled into."

He knelt down, the edge of the sword resting across Tashama's neck, and smiled.

"Except for my friend and I."

Muscles on Tashama's face twitched, but still he remained silent.

"Whatever you buried there must be very important," Abayon continued, "for you to have killed so many of your own men. For you to go to such extreme lengths to keep this place secret."

Abayon shrugged.

"It does not matter."

Even as Tashama frowned, Abayon drew the blade across the man's neck, the razor-sharp edge easily slicing through skin, cartilage, and arteries. Blood spouted and Tashama gasped, his body spasming as his life poured out of him.

"He could have told us things," Moreno said disapprovingly, his initial rage having subsided.

"He was Kempeitai," Abayon said, wiping the blood off the blade on Tashama's uniform blouse.

"He would never have spoken. Besides, we know where the tunnel is. We can find out for ourselves what is in there."

In the years after, Abayon often reflected that Moreno was right, that in immediately killing Tashama, he'd been too rash that day. They could probably have learned more from the man.

In the days that followed, Abayon led a group that swam out to the patrol boat one dark night, slaughtering the sailors on board and scuttling the boat, effectively cutting off any Japanese contact with the island and the tunnel. Then the gathered guerrillas went to work digging through the debris into Hono Mountain.

When they managed to break through, Abayon, mindful of what they'd witnessed, ordered everyone except Moreno to remain outside as the two of them went into the complex. What they found there stunned them so much that they remained inside for three days before returning to the anxious group of men who awaited them.

Abayon had the men block the entrance once more. He knew with the war still raging there was nothing that could be done with such treasure, and he feared the return of the Japanese. The priority right now was the war.

Within the year, they had gone on the offensive against the Japanese, returning to the main island and hooking up with a handful of American officers, including Colonel Volckman, who were organizing the resistance. They fought for over six months before the base camp that Abayon was in charge of was overrun by Japanese soldiers led by a traitor. Moreno was wounded but escaped. Abayon, in charge of the rear guard action, and his wife, who stood by his side, were knocked unconscious by a mortar blast and taken prisoner.

Given what happened next, Abayon often looked back and thought it would have been better if both of them had been killed by that mortar round.

Now, over sixty years later, with one last glance at the mummified body of Colonel Tashama, Abayon turned his wheelchair around and headed back out the way he'd come. Since he had not been killed then, all that was left to him was vengeance. It had taken decades, but the time was now at hand to pay back those who had done such terrible things to his family and his people.

CHAPTER 7

The target window was tight. Vaughn checked his watch one more time. He was in a hotel room, using the key card he'd been handed by the driver when they pulled up to the service entrance in the rear. The driver had not said a word, just tapped his watch and held up a single finger – one hour – which confirmed the parameters in the packet Vaughn had received.

Upon entering the room, he had assembled the rifle, a round ready in the chamber. He pulled the dresser over to a position about three feet inside the open window, so the muzzle of the weapon didn't extend outside, a sure giveaway and sign of an amateur. He was seated in a chair, the stock of the rifle against his shoulder.

He put his eye back on the scope and scanned the well-lit street below. There had been no sign yet of the target.

The target. Vaughn considered that term. Royce's logic notwithstanding, he knew he was now far out on the thin ice of covert operations. He had no idea who the target was, why he was killing him, or whether that limo would actually be there to take him back to the airfield. And he wasn't even sure which of those problems should be his priority.

One of the first lessons Vaughn had learned in his Special Forces training was to expect the worst, and in this case the worst was that he had been abandoned here. However, he saw no reason why Royce would do that – after all, it did make sense that this was a test to gauge his abilities and commitment to Section 8 in order to join the team.

Vaughn mentally shrugged, still watching the street. He'd been in worse places. At least this was Japan, and if push came to shove, he could try to make it out on his own – although, as he thought about it, he realized he was here illegally, with no passport, no identification, no money, on a mission to kill a Japanese national.

Not good, but doable.

As long as he was on the good-bad track, he considered something else: he had never even heard a whisper of a unit called Section 8. And he'd conducted several top secret, real-world missions for the United States in various places around the world. In a way, that was good, because it meant the unit's cover was solid. But as with all the other aspects of his current situation, it was also bad, because he was operating off very scanty intelligence.

The sniper rifle felt heavy in his hands, even though most of the weight was supported by the bipod on the dresser and the stock pressed against his shoulder.

He lightly ran his finger over that edge, experiencing the yawning darkness he'd felt seeing his brother-in-law's body. He folded the picture, slid it back in his pocket, and checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes left in the target window. He picked the rifle back up and scanned the street, trying to shut out all thoughts other than the mission at hand.

Still, there was a part of him that hoped the target window would pass without having to shoot and -

The subject walked out of a building, exactly as in the surveillance photographs. He was flanked by two men, both with the hard look of professional security personnel, and seemed to be in a rush. A car with tinted windows pulled to the curb and he was headed for it.

No time to consider.

Vaughn centered the reticules on the target's head, his finger on the trigger. He exhaled, felt the rhythm of his own heartbeat, and in the pause between beats he smoothly pulled back on the trigger.

The round hit the target in the head, snapping the man back with a spray of blood and brain. Vaughn automatically shifted the scope to the guard closest to the target and almost pulled the trigger, but stopped.