The door slid back again and Ito stood in front of it, his face frozen into a distorted mask.

“Well done,” Smith said as he brushed by the scientist and crouched next to the body. The screwdriver was still lodged in it and he retrieved the tool, wiping the blood off and stashing it in one of the pockets of the jumpsuit he’d been provided.

Unfortunately, there was no equally practical place to store the man’s Glock. In the end, Smith had to unzip the front of the jumpsuit and stuff it in the waistband of his boxer shorts. Not exactly at his fingertips but it would have to do.

“Dr. Ito,” he said, standing and putting a hand on the still-dazed scientist’s shoulder. “The server room. Where is it? We don’t have much time before the cameras come back online.”

57

57

Northeastern Japan

The layout of the facility was predictably simple—nothing more than a set of wide corridors carved from the earth, most of which emanated from a massive central cavern. Individual shafts occasionally split off, leading to storage areas. Some were filled with fifty-gallon drums containing nuclear waste, but most were empty. Others had been hijacked by Takahashi’s organization and were guarded by the familiar composite doors.

Smith and Ito moved along at an excruciatingly casual pace, with Smith’s head bowed submissively. Just another worker on his way to make some trivial repair for management.

Of course, that cover story would bear precisely no scrutiny at all but his dark complexion and black hair would be enough to dampen the interest of anyone more than twenty paces away. Thankfully, no one had come anywhere near that close so far.

They crossed the main artery leading to the loading area and Smith subtly shifted his gaze to the massive blast doors and the smaller adjacent door dedicated to pedestrian traffic. Two men were standing guard in front of the exits, both with compact assault rifles hanging across their chests.

Ito ducked into another corridor and Smith felt himself relax a bit when they left the guards’ line of sight. The passage dead-ended into a door after about another fifty yards, and Ito stopped to speak to a camera bolted above it.

Smith didn’t understand anything that was said, but they’d settled on a story about a problem with the rebooting of the security system. Specifically, a couple of physical connections that weren’t responding. Not exactly a stroke of genius, but reasonably credible and it went a long way toward explaining why Ito was accompanied by a large man with a screwdriver.