Free Matt Drake 07 - Blood Vengeance by David Leadbeater

His only link to the real world was the noise—a woman trying to calm her crying baby protesting as she was moved aside by the agents, a voluble older man demanding that the agents stop and immediately sort the stoplight situation out, a man arguing forcefully with someone about whose fault it was that his brand new Jaguar had suffered damage—one of the agents having to step in and diffuse the situation before it came to blows. Coburn became acutely aware that his protective detail was undermanned—he had sent two of his best to oversee the Gates investigation, but as the seconds and minutes passed and nothing happened, he began to breathe more easily. Maybe the stoplight disruption had been a glitch; a snag thrown up because, quite frankly, it was barely ever used.
    Franks put pressure on his shoulders, slowing him down. “Dillion is ahead,” he whispered, then louder. “You four go in first.”
    Coburn looked up. A wash of golden light flooded across the sidewalk where the Dillion proudly stood. The ring of agents steered him toward the gold-paneled, wide-open front doors, passing underneath the blue-and-white-striped ornate canopy. Tourists and civilians stood about in comical poses, gawping. Cameras flashed and cell phones took video, annoying the agents no end. Every flash made a trigger finger twitch and gave the periphery agents a vital moment of focus turned away from the President.
    “Alpha Bird One ETA two minutes ,” Marnich said.
    “Inside.” Franks pushed them toward the well-lit lobby. As soon as they pushed through the doors his men began to yell.
    “ Clear the lobby! Clear the lobby now!”
    The President would be fully secured and guarded inside here. Coburn slowed and began to think about the cell phone in his pocket, wondering if a call to his wife was in order. He was reaching for the device when Franks’ soft growl stopped him cold, freezing the marrow in his bones.
    “It ’s a fuckin’ trap.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
     
    Mai Kitano paced the floor of her hotel room, frustrated that she would have to wait four more hours before her meeting with the master assassin, Gyuki.
    Her old clan, the organization which had bought her from her destitute parents, wanted her back, and Gyuki, their most formidable hitman among hundreds, had all but demanded she meet with him in Tokyo at 1300 hours today.
    Men like Gyuki , she mused, were not real men . Born in bloodshed, ripped from their families at a young age by warfare, strife or murder, they were trained to hunt and kill from the time they could walk. They knew no luxuries, no worldly trappings or any other life. This was all they had ever known, and thus they could maintain a focus no other fighting man in the world was capable of.
    Ninjas ? They might be. The old concept of the word had been lost through time. Mai herself was one of them, but even she conjured up images created by the Hollywood studios whenever she heard the word. But such fantasies did not bother these men, having no real concept of the outside world. They knew only what they were told and moved through the night, cloaked in shadows, except under extreme circumstances.
    Such as Mai. For Gyuki to demand a meeting in broad daylight in a public place was unheard of. The master assassin would be as distracted as he was ever going to get.
    Mai ’s thoughts slipped back to Matt Drake. She hesitated even to think the word boyfriend. It was a somewhat alien concept to her, too permanent for their line of work. If she allowed herself to be drawn into an easier life, to relax for even a minute, she knew she would die. Just look at what had happened to Drake back in DC when she had momentarily let down her guard.
    Now as she paced, the phone rang , and she shook her head to see it was Drake calling. He hadn’t wanted her to come alone to Tokyo, and in his desperation had forgotten the etiquette that had built between them, trying everything short of handcuffs to make her stay. Now she