A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Read online

  A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set

  *

  Cover

  The 47th Samurai

  Colophon

  Also by Stephen Hunter

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1: Island

  2: The Scythe

  3: The Blockhouse

  4: A Request

  5: The Old Breed

  6: The Big White House

  7: Narita

  8: The Yanos

  9: Nii of Shinsengumi

  10: Black Rust

  11: Steel

  12: Sake

  13: Kondo Isami

  14: Ruins

  15: Toshiro

  16: Kirisute Gomen

  17: Ino

  18: The Shogun

  19: Dr. Otowa

  20: The Young Men

  21: The Cop

  22: Yakiba

  23: The Tokyo Flash

  24: The Eight Cuts

  25: The Floating World

  26: Kata

  27: The Samurai

  28: Dragons

  29: The Shrine

  30: Sword of Life

  31: Battle

  32: Kondo

  33: Orders

  34: The Taking

  35: Face-to-Face

  36: The White Room

  37: Strategy

  38: Nii’s Dreams

  39: The Kendo Champion

  40: The Big Shots

  41: Staging

  42: Moon Of Hell

  43: Chushingura

  44: Edo Justice

  45: Steel to Steel

  46: Office Politics

  47: Noto

  Acknowledgments

  Night of Thunder

  Colophon

  Also by Stephen Hunter

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: Prelims

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Part II: Race Day

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Part III: Last Lap

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Acknowledgments

  I, Sniper

  Colophon

  Also by Stephen Hunter

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter: 1

  Chapter: 2

  Chapter: 3

  Chapter: 4

  Chapter: 5

  Chapter: 6

  Chapter: 7

  Chapter: 8

  Chapter: 9

  Chapter: 10

  Chapter: 11

  Chapter: 12

  Chapter: 13

  Chapter: 14

  Chapter: 15

  Chapter: 16

  Chapter: 17

  Chapter: 18

  Chapter: 19

  Chapter: 20

  Chapter: 21

  Chapter: 22

  Chapter: 23

  Chapter: 24

  Chapter: 25

  Chapter: 26

  Chapter: 27

  Chapter: 28

  Chapter: 29

  Chapter: 30

  Chapter: 31

  Chapter: 32

  Chapter: 33

  Chapter: 34

  Chapter: 35

  Chapter: 36

  Chapter: 37

  Chapter: 38

  Chapter: 39

  Chapter: 40

  Chapter: 41

  Chapter: 42

  Chapter: 43

  Chapter: 44

  Chapter: 45

  Chapter: 46

  Chapter: 47

  Chapter: 48

  Chapter: 49

  Chapter: 50

  Chapter: 51

  Chapter: 52

  Chapter: 53

  Chapter: 54

  Chapter: 55

  Chapter: 56

  Acknowledgments

  The 47th SAMURAI

  ALSO BY STEPHEN HUNTER

  American Gunfight (with John Bainbridge, Jr.)

  Now Playing at the Valencia: Pulitzer Prize Essays on the Movies

  Havana

  Pale Horse Coming

  Hot Springs

  Time to Hunt

  Black Light

  Dirty White Boys

  Point of Impact

  Violent Screen: A Critic’s 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem

  Target

  The Day Before Midnight

  The Spanish Gambit (Tapestry of Spain)

  The Second Saladin

  The Master Sniper

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Hunter

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hunter, Stephen.

  The 47th samurai / Stephen Hunter.—1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Swagger, Earl (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  2. Swagger, Bob Lee (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Tokyo (Japan)—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Forty-seventh samurai.

  PS3558.U494A615 2007

  813’.54—dc22 2007006627

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7192-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-7192-2

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  With thanks, respect, and appreciation to the samurai of the Japanese cinema:

  Masaki Kobayashi, Hideo Gosha, Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Inagaki, Kenji Misumi, Tokuzo Tanaka, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Kihachi Okamoto, Tadashi Sawashima, Toshiya Fujita, Haruki Kadokawa, Yoji Yamada, Kazuo Kuroki, Yojiro Takita, Ryuhei Kitamura, Satsuo Yamamoto

  and

  Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Mioru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Tatsuya Nakadai, Shintaro Katsu, Raizo Ichikawa, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Tetsura Tambo, Sonny Chiba, Meiko Kaji, Michyio Aratama, Yunosuke Ito, Datsuke Kato, Yuzo Kayama, Machiko Kyo, Kashiro Matsumoto, Akihiro Tomikawa, Kiichi Nakai, Koichi
Sata, Aya Ueto, Masatoshi Nagase, Mieko Harada, Hiroyuki Sandada

  and

  the great Shinobu Hashimoto

  Turn, hell-hound, turn!

  —MACDUFF IN MACBETH

  1

  ISLAND

  SHOWA YEAR 20, SECOND MONTH, 21ST DAY

  21 FEBRUARY 1945

  A quiet fell across the bunker. Dust drifted from the ceiling. The burnt-egg stench of sulfur lingered everywhere.

  “Captain?”

  It was a private. Takahashi, Sugita, Kanzaki, Asano, Togawa, Fukuyama, Abe—who knew the names anymore? There had been so many names.

  “Sir, the shelling has stopped. Does this mean they’re coming?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It means they’re coming.”

  The officer’s name was Hideki Yano and he was a captain, 145th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion, under Yasutake and Ikeda, attached to Kuribayashi’s 109th Division.

  The blockhouse was low and smelled of sulfur and shit because the men all had dysentery from the tainted water. It was typical Imperial Army fortification, a low bunker of concrete, reinforced over many long months, with oak tree trunks from what had been but was no longer the island’s only oak forest, the sand heaped over it. It had three firing slits and behind each slit sat a Type 96 gun on a tripod, a gunner, and a couple of loaders. Each field of fire fanned away for hundreds of yards across an almost featureless landscape of black sand ridges and marginal vegetation. The blockhouse was divided into three chambers, like a nautilus shell, so that even if one or two were wiped out, the last gun could continue to fire until the very end. It was festooned everywhere with the latest imperative from General Kuribayashi’s headquarters, a document called “Courageous Battle Vows,” which summed up everyone’s responsibilities to the Sphere.

  Above all else, we shall dedicate ourselves to the

  defense of this island.

  We shall grasp bombs, charge the enemy tanks and

  destroy them.

  We shall infiltrate into the midst of the enemy and

  annihilate them.

  With every salvo we will, without fail, kill the enemy.

  Each man will make it his duty to kill ten of the

  enemy before dying.

  “I am scared, sir,” said the private.

  “I am too,” said Yano.

  Outside, the captain’s small empire continued. Six pits with Nambu guns in each, each gun supported by gunner, loader, and two or three riflemen flanked the empire to left and right. In further spider holes were martyrs with rifles. No escape for them; they knew they were dead already. They lived only to kill those ten Americans before they gave their lives up in sacrifice. Those men had it the worst. In here, no shell could penetrate. The concrete was four feet thick, riven with steel rods. Out there a naval shell from the offshore fleet could turn a man to shreds in a second. If the shell landed precisely, no one would have time for a death poem.

  Now that the attack was upon them, the captain became energized. He shook off the months of torpor, the despair, the terrible food, the endless shitting, the worries. Now, at last, glory approached.

  Except of course he no longer believed in glory. That was for fools. He believed only in duty.

  He was not a speech maker. But now he ran from position to position, making sure each gun was properly cocked and aimed, the loaders stood ready with fresh ammunition strips, the riflemen crouched to pick off the errant demon American.

  “Captain?”

  A boy pulled him aside.

  “Yes?” What was the boy’s name? He could not remember this one either. But these were all good boys, Kagoshima boys, as the 145th was drawn from Kyushu, the home of Japan’s best soldiers.

  “I am not afraid to die. I am eager to die for the emperor,” said the boy, a superior private.

  “That is our duty. You and I, we are nothing. Our duty is all.”

  But the boy was agitated.

  “I am afraid of flames. I am so afraid of the flames. Will you shoot me if I am engulfed in fire?”

  They all feared the flamethrowers. The hairy beasts were dishonorable. They chopped gold teeth from dead Japanese, they bleached Japanese skulls and turned them into ashtrays and sent them home, they killed the Japanese not decently, with gun and sword—they hated the blade!—but so often from miles out with the big naval shells, with the airplanes, and then when they got in close, they used the horrible hoses that squirted flaming gasoline and roasted the flesh from a man’s bones, killing him slowly. How could a warrior die honorably in flames?

  “Or the sword, Captain. I beg you. If I burn, behead me.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Sudo. Sudo from Kyushu.”

  “Sudo from Kyushu. You will not die in flames. That I promise you. We are samurai!”

  That word samurai still stiffened the spine of every man. It was pride, it was honor, it was sacrifice. It was worth more than life. It was what a man needed to be and would die to be. He had known it his whole life; he had yearned for it, as he yearned for a son who would live up to it.

  “Samurai!” said the boy fervently, now reassured, for he believed it.

  Able Company caught primary assault. It was simply Able’s turn, and Charlie and Item and Hotel would offer suppressive fire and flanking maneuvers and handle artillery coordination, but it was Able’s turn to go first. Lead the way. Semper fi, all that fine bullshit.

  There was a problem, however. There was always a problem, this was today’s: Able’s CO was shaky. He was new to the 28th and rumors had it that a connected father had gotten his son the command. His name was Culpepper and he was a college boy from some fancy place who talked a little like a woman. It wasn’t anything anybody could put a finger on, not homo or anything, he just wasn’t somehow like the other officers. He was fancy, somehow, from fancy places, fancy houses, fancy parents. Was Culpepper up to it? Nobody knew, but the blockhouse had to go or Battalion would be hung up all day here and the big guns on Suribachi would continue to shatter the beachhead. So Colonel Hobbs assigned his battalion’s first sergeant, Earl Swagger, to go along with Captain Culpepper that morning.

  “Culpepper, you listen up to the first sergeant. He’s old breed. He’s been around. He’s hit a lot of beaches. He’s the best combat leader I have, you understand.”

  “Yes sir,” said Culpepper.

  The colonel drew Earl aside.

  “Earl, you help Culpepper. Don’t let him freeze, keep his boys moving. I hate to do this to you, but someone’s got to get them boys up the hill and you’re the best I’ve got.”

  “I’ll get ’em up, sir,” said Swagger, who looked like he was about 140 percent United States Marine Corps, chapter and verse, a sinewy string bean of a man, ageless in the sergeant way, a vet of the ’Canal, Tarawa, and Saipan and, someone said, Troy, Thermopylae, Agincourt, and the Somme. They said nobody could shoot a Thompson gun like the first sergeant. He’d fought the Japs in China before the war, it was said.

  Swagger was from nowhere. He had no hometown, no memories he shared, no stories of the good old days, as if he had no good old days. It was said he’d married a gal last time home, on some kind of bond tour for the citizens back there, and everybody said she’s a looker, but he never pulled pictures or talked much about it. He was all guile, energy, and focus, seemingly indestructible but one of those professionals with what some would call a gleam in his eye who could talk any boy or green lieutenant through anything. He was a prince of war, and if he was doomed, he didn’t know it, or much care about it.

  Culpepper had a plan.

  Swagger didn’t like it.

  “Begging the captain’s pardon, it’s too complicated. You’ll end up with your people all running around not sure of what to do while the Japs sit there and shoot. I wouldn’t break Able down by squads but by platoons, I’d keep a good base of fire going, and I’d get my flamethrowers off on the right, try and work ’em in close that way. The flamethrowers, sir, those are the key.”r />
  “I see,” said the young man, pale and thin and grave and trying so hard. “I think the men are capable—”

  “Sir, once the Japs see us coming, it’s going to be a shit storm out there. They are tough little bastards, and believe you me, they know what they are doing. If you expect men to remember maneuver patterns keyed to landmarks, you will be disappointed. It has to be simple, hard, basic, and not much to remember, or the Japs will shoot your boys down like toads on a flat rock. The important goddamn thing is to get them flamethrowers in close. If it was me, I’d send the best blowtorch team up this draw to the right”—they looked at a smudged map at the command post a few hundred yards back—“with a BAR and a tommy-gunner as cover, your best NCO running the show. I’d hold your other team back. Meanwhile, you pound away from your base of fire. Get the bazookas involved. Them gun slits is tiny but a bazooka rocket through one is something the Japs will notice. Sir, maybe you ought to let me run the flamethrower team.”

  But the colonel said, “Earl will want to lead. Just let him advise, Captain. I need him back this afternoon.”

  “But—” the young captain protested.

  “Sergeant Tarsky is a fine man and a fine NCO. You let him move some people off on the left when we go. He’s got to get a lot of fire going, and the people here in front, they’ve got to be working their weapons too. I need a lot of covering fire. I’ll take the blowtorch team up the right. The Japs will be hidden in monkey holes, but I can spot ’em. I know where to look. So the BAR man can hose ’em down from outside their range. We’ll get in close and burn ’em out, then get up there and fry that pillbox.”

  Culpepper hesitated a second, realized this smart, tough, duty-crazed hillbilly from some dead-end flyspeck south of perdition nobody had ever heard of was dead right, and saw that his own prissy ego meant nothing out there.

  “Let’s do it, First Sergeant.”

  The Type 92s fired 7.7 mm tracer. White-hot bolts of illumination cut through the mist and the dust. Through the gun slit, you could not see men, not really—but you could sense them, maneuvering a foot at a time through the same chaos. Where the bullets struck, they lifted clouds of black sand.