She rolled to a stop a few feet in front of him, gripped the Glock with her right hand, put her left arm on the windowsill, and leaned out. “Is everything all right?”
He walked straight to the window and looked inside. And found the muzzles of two Glocks looking back. He froze.
Larison was out of the car instantly, coming around the front, his gun up. “Hands up or die. Your choice.”
The guard chose the first alternative. In the earpiece, Delilah heard a similar transaction taking place with the fourth guard, in front of the residence.
A minute later, the guard was on the ground, wrists and ankles cuffed together behind his back, his gun and commo gear in Delilah’s bag.
“The residence guard is secured,” she heard John say. “Delilah, what’s your status?”
“Same. We’re on our way. We’ll be there in under a minute.”
Larison leaned down and checked the guard for a hidden handcuff key. When he was satisfied, he said, “It would have been easier to kill you. Safer, too. But we didn’t. We’re not going to be here long, and it has nothing to do with you. You understand?”
The guard nodded. “Yes.”
“I doubt there’s a neighbor close enough to hear a bomb go off here, let alone some shouting, but still I want you to promise me you’re not going to make any noise.”
“I promise.”
“You know what I’ll do if you break your promise?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep your word and I’ll keep mine.”
They got back in the Porsche and headed toward the main residence. Larison would join the rest of the team there. Delilah would drive Dox back to the teahouse, the highest point on the property and therefore the best spot to provide overwatch. Evie would bring the rest of the team, and Dash, and the horse and the dog, to the residence. They’d get what they needed from Grimble and be gone a few minutes after that.
If everything went according to plan.
chapter
seventy-one
RAIN
Rain paused in front of the main residence, bemused at the number of people around him. Dox was positioned on the roof of the teahouse with the sniper rifle. But that still left nine of them, plus Rain, at the residence: Delilah, Livia, Diaz, Manus, Evie, Dash, Maya, Larison, and Kanezaki. Not to mention the dog and the horse. Though at least the animals had stayed in the trailer. The humans had proven less persuadable.
The residence consisted of four separate buildings, each a beautiful example of the classic minka style: kayabuki-yane thatched roofs; hafu gables; kōshi mado latticed windows, everything perfectly proportioned and obviously incorporating only the finest materials. All of it was built out over the pond, connected by covered walkways, and interspersed with gardens of carefully tended niwaki trees, gravel, and stones set in subtle ishi o tateru koto—“rock arrangement”—patterns. Rain had never seen anything like it outside Kyoto. But unlike Kyoto, it was devoid of telephone and electric lines, modern architecture, the sounds of traffic, or anything else that would have been out of place in the seventeenth century. There was a cool breeze carrying a slight scent of cypress, and other than the birdsong and the distant sound of the waterfall by the teahouse, the area was soundless. If Rain hadn’t painstakingly built his own restored minka in Kamakura, he might have been envious. As it was, he was surprised at how wistful he suddenly felt. His mind rarely unlocked the box that contained memories of his mother, but it opened now. Kyō nite mo, kyō natsukashiya, she had said to him, holding his hand and quoting the wandering poet Bashō on a visit to the Kiyomizu temple complex in Kyoto when Rain was a boy. Though in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto. His mother had loved her adopted country in a way that, like Rain’s father, it had never really requited. For a moment he wished she could have seen what this gaijin Grimble had built here. He wished he could have shown it to her.