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  Shooting Schedule

  ( The Destroyer - 79 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  And now, from the great folks who brought you Pearl Harbor...

  Nemuro Nishitsu remembered Pearl Harbor. He also remembered the rest of World War II and Japan's humiliating defeat. Nishitsu had been a humble soldier then. He was Japan's number one industrialist now. And he had the money, the power, and the madness to script a sneak attack that made Pearl Harbor look like a childish prank...made in the U.S.A. a pitiful helpless giant...and made Remo and Chiun the country's last vanishing hope...as the flag of foreign conquest was planted in the American heartland, and the Destroyer was X-ed out of the action...

  Destroyer 79: Shooting Schedule

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Prologue

  Nemuro Nishitsu knew that the emperor would one day die.

  Many Japanese refused to think about it. Almost no one believed in Emperor Hirohito's immortality anymore. That he was immortal was no more logical than the belief that the emperor's father had been immortal or his grandfather before him and on back to the fabled Jimmo Tennu, the first of his line to sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne. And the first Japanese emperor to die.

  That the emperor was divine was without question. Nemuro Nishitsu believed it on the day he left for Burma on a troop transport in 1942. He believed it all through the monsoon rains that beat on his helmet and his resolve through the endless days fighting the British and Americans.

  He believed it in 1944, when Merrill's Marauders captured General Tanaka's Eighteenth Army. Then-Sergeant Nemuro Nishitsu managed to escape. He took his faith in his emperor into the jungles, where he would fight on, even if he was the last Japanese to hold out. He would never surrender.

  Nemuro Nishitsu learned to eat from the monkeys. What they ate, he knew was safe. What they avoided, he assumed was poison. He learned to subsist on bamboo shoots and stolen yams, and to use the jungle maggots to clean out the pus from the ulcers that infected his legs. Sometimes he would eat the maggots after they had done their duty to the emperor.

  He killed anyone wearing an unfriendly uniform. Months passed and the uniforms became fewer and fewer. But Nemuro Nishitsu fought on.

  They found him in a ditch during monsoon season.

  The water cascading around his body was an unhealthy diarrhea yellow. Nishitsu had malaria.

  British soldiers took him to an interment camp, where he recovered well enough to enter the general POW population.

  It was in this camp that Nemuro Nishitsu first heard the whispers among his unit-the traitorous suggestion that Japan had surrendered to the Americans after some mighty military blow.

  Nemuro Nishitsu had scoffed at such a thing. No blow could bring the emperor to surrender. It was not possible. The emperor was divine.

  Then they were told they were going home. Not as the victors, but as the vanquished.

  Japan was no longer Japan, Nemuro Nishitsu discovered, to his horror. The emperor had renounced his birthright. Japan had surrendered. It was unthinkable. Americans ran the country under the mandate of an American Constitution that prohibited the mere existence of a Japanese army. Tokyo was a sea of rubble. And his home town, Nagasaki, was a desolation of shame.

  What astonished Nemuro Nishitsu more than anything else was the meekness of his formerly proud countrymen.

  He discovered this the day in late 1950, the twenty-fifth year of the emperor's reign, when a drunken SCAP bureaucrat nearly ran him over while Nishitsu was crossing the ruined Ginza to the little stall where he sold sandals in order to eat.

  Nishitsu was not hurt. A Japanese policeman came upon the accident scene, and instead of berating the obviously drunken American, asked him if he wanted to press charges against Nishitsu. Or would he settle for restitution?

  The drunken American settled for Nishitsu's sandal stock and every yen on his person.

  On that day, Nemuro Nishitsu tasted the bitterness Japan had spread throughout Asia, and it galled him. "Where is your rage?" he would ask his friends. "They have humbled us."

  "That is the past," his friends would say in furtive whispers. "We have no time for that. We must rebuild."

  "And after you have rebuilt, will you find your anger then?"

  "After we rebuild, we must build upon our accomplishments. We must catch up to the Americans. They are better than us."

  "They have conquered us," Nishitsu had retorted hotly. "That doesn't make them superior, only fortunate."

  "You were not here when the bombs fell. You do not understand. "

  "I understand that I fought for my nation and my emperor and I have returned to find my people have lost their manhood," he spat contemptuously.

  Nemuro Nishitsu was disgusted by all he saw. Shame blanketed Japan like the smog that came as the industries were rebuilt and revitalized. When he awoke in the morning, he could smell it-in the air. It etched the faces of the young men, and the fine women. No Japanese could escape it. Yet they all tried. And their faith was not Bushido, not Shinto, but American. Everyone wanted to be like the Americans, who were so mighty that they had humbled the once-invincible Japanese.

  Nemuro Nishitsu knew that he never wanted to be like the Americans. He also understood that the destiny of Japan lay not in the past, but in the future. He joined his countrymen in building that future until even he gradually lost his bitterness and hatred in the great rebuilding frenzy.

  It took years. The great Zaitbatsu companies had been dismembered by the Occupation government. Work was hard to come by. But opportunities awaited the bold. Slowly Nishitsu started a radio business to fill the manufacturing void. It grew, thanks to American transistors. It prospered, thanks to American markets. It diversified, thanks to American microchips-until Nemuro Nishitsu's bitterness faded as he was hailed as one of the rebuilders of Japan's postwar economy, friend of the emperor, and winner of Japan's highest honor, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. He became an oyaji, an "old man with power." And he was content.

  The bitterness all came back when the emperor died.

  Nemuro Nishitsu was in his Tokyo office, with its view of the Akihabara area, the electronics district he had helped turn into one of the most expensive stretches of real estate in the world, when his secretary came in and bowed twice before informing him of the emperor's death. He was surprised to see the tears in her eyes, for she was of the younger generation who never knew a time when the emperor was universally believed divine.

  Nemuro Nishitsu took the news in silence. He waited until the secretary had left the room before succumbing to weeping.

  He wept until he had no tears left.

  The invitation to attend the funeral was not unexpected. He turned it down. He preferred, instead, to watch the funeral procession from the street, with the multitudes. As the one-ton cedar coffin rolled by, carried by black-gowned pallbearers, he let the rain fall on his face. And in his heart, he felt that it had wiped away the years since he had gone off to war in his emperor's name.

  It was not too late to redeem his faith, Nemuro Nishitsu decided as tears of release mixed with the softly falling rain.

  He spent the next week going through the employment records of the Nishitsu Group. He spoke with his office managers and vice-presidents in quiet, forceful tones. Those who gave the correct answers to his artfully crafted questions were asked to find others who thought as they did.

  Months went by. The wisteria blooms of spring gave way to the heat of the summer. By fall, he had culled the most trustworthy employees of the Nishitsu group, from the highest officers to the lowliest salarymen.

  They were called to a meet
ing. Some came from the halls of the Nishitsu Group world headquarters in Tokyo, on the island of Honshu. Others came from Shikoku or Kyushu. Some came from abroad, even as far away as America, where they managed Nishitsu car factories. They had many names, as many faces, and skills in plenty, for the Nishitsu Group was the largest conglomerate in the world, and it hired only the best.

  The chosen ones sat on the floor in their identical white shirts and black ties. Their faces were impassive as Nemuro Nishitsu stepped up to the bare floor at the head of the room. The room was the conference assembly hall of the Nishitsu Group, where every morning the workers joined in morning calisthenics.

  "I have called you here," Nemuro Nishitsu said in his throaty but subdued voice, "because you are all right thinkers. "

  Heads bowed in acknowledgment.

  "I am of the generation that restored Japan to the economic state that it enjoyed in the world. I remember the old days. I do not cling to them. But neither will I forget them.

  "You are the generation that made Japan strong again. I salute your industriousness. For my generation was the generation that allowed itself to be humbled by American military power. Your generation is the generation that will humble America economically."

  Nemuro Nishitsu paused, his head quivering with age.

  "In two months," he continued, "it will be the first anniversary of the emperor's passing. What a gift to his spirit it would be if we were to erase forever the shame of our military defeat. I have devised a way to do this. It will summon no retaliation on our shores, for like you, I would do nothing to bring the terrible nuclear fist down on our people again.

  "Give me your faith, as I gave my emperor my faith when I was as young as you men. Give me your trust, and I will hand America a military defeat so shameful they will dare not admit it to the world."

  Nemuro Nishitsu looked upon the sea of faces before him. They were set, resolute. There was neither joy nor fear evident in their features. But he knew from their eyes that they were with him. He also knew that they had doubts, though they were unwilling to voice them.

  "I have given much thought to my plan. I have selected a man who will assist us in implementing it. You know his name. You will recognize his face. Some of you have met him, for he has worked as a Nishitsu spokesman in the past."

  Nemuro Nishitsu pointed his cane at a wiry young man standing off to one side of a massive projection screen.

  "Jiro," he said.

  The Japanese addressed as Jiro quickly hit a switch. The lights dimmed. In the rear a slide projector blinked on, throwing a dusty beam over the heads of the squatting assemblage.

  And over the head of Nemuro Nishitsu appeared a still image of a bare-chested muscular man with flowing black hair held in place by a headband. He cradled a portable Nuclear missile in his arms. Above his head, in English, was a legend in red block letters:

  BRONZINI IS GRUNDY

  The stony faces of the Japanese reacted instantly. They broke into smiles of recognition. Some clapped, a few whistled.

  And through the crowd raced a name. It was repeated over and over again until it became a chant. "Grundy! Grundy! Grundy!" they shouted.

  And Nemuro Nishitsu smiled. All around the world, in palaces and jungle huts, people universally reacted that way. The Americans would be no different.

  Chapter 1

  When it was all over, after all the bodies had been buried and the last foreign soldiers had been driven from what was, for three days in December, Occupied Arizona, world public opinion was in agreement on only one thing.

  Bartholomew Bronzini was not to blame.

  The United States Senate passed a formal resolution declaring Bronzini's innocence. The President of the United States awarded Bronzini a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor, as well as burial in Arlington National Cemetery. This despite the fact that Bronzini had never served in any branch of the United States Armed Services, served had ever held public office.

  Various groups protested the Arlington burial offer, but the President hung tough. He knew the controversy would blow over. Unless someone recovered Bronzini's remains, which no one ever did.

  On the day that began the last week of his life, Bartholomew Bronzini sent his Harley Davidson blasting through the gates of Dwarf-Star Studios with the wind tearing at his long black ponytail and a plastic-covered script tucked into his black leather jacket.

  He was not stopped at the gate. The guard knew his face. Everyone knew his face. At one time or another, it had been on every supermarket tabloid cover, magazine, and billboard in the world.

  Everyone knew Bartholomew Bronzini. Yet no one did. The receptionist asked for his autograph at the front desk. Bronzini grunted amiably when she slid a mustardstained paper napkin across the desk.

  "Got anything white?" he asked in his flat, slightly nasal voice.

  The receptionist jumped up from her chair and slid out of her panties.

  "White enough for you, Mr. Bronzini?" she asked brightly.

  "They'll do," he said, signing his name on the warm cloth.

  "Make it out to Karen." Bronzini paused.

  "That you?"

  "No, my girlfriend. Really."

  Bronzini automatically added a "For Karen" above his signature. He passed the underpants back to the receptionist with a shy smile but absolutely no readable emotion in his brown eyes.

  "I hope your girlfriend has a sense of humor," he said as the receptionist read the inscription with dazzled gray eyes.

  "What girlfriend?" she asked dazedly.

  "Never mind," Bronzini sighed. They never admitted it was for them. Only kids did that. Sometimes Bartholomew Bronzini thought that his only true fans were children. Especially these days.

  "Mind telling Bernie I'm here?" he prompted. He had to snap his fingers to get her attention again.

  "Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Bronzini," she said, coming out of her trance. She picked up the phone and hit a button. "He's here, Mr. Kornflake."

  The receptionist looked up. "Go right in, Mr. Bronzini. They're ready for you now. '

  Bartholomew Bronzini pulled the script from his jacket as he walked down the fern-decorated corridor. The ferns were festooned with expensive Christmas ornaments. Despite being handcrafted of silver and gold, they looked tacky, Bronzini thought. And there was nothing tackier than Christmas in Southern California.

  He was, Bronzini thought for not the first time in his long career, a long way from Philadelphia. Back home, the snow didn't scratch your skin.

  Bronzini didn't knock before he entered the sumptuous Dwarf-Star Studios conference room. No one ever expected Bartholomew Bronzini to knock. Or to speak fluent French, or to know his salad fork from a shellfish fork, or do anything a civilized person would do. His image had been indelibly burned into the consciousness of the world, and nothing he could say or do would ever change that image. If he could have cured cancer, they would have whispered that Bronzini had hired someone to cure cancer just to hog the credit. Yet if he started swinging from the chandelier, no one would have batted an eye.

  Every head came up when he entered the room. Every eye was on him as he paused at the open door. Bartholomew Bronzini was nervous, but no one would guess that. Their preconceived ideas would reinterpret everything he said or did to fit their image of him.

  "Hi," he said quietly. That was all. The men in the room would read a world of meaning into that one word.

  "Bart, baby," one of them said, rushing to his feet to guide Bronzini to the only empty chair, as if he was too stupid to sit down without assistance. "Glad you could make it. Take a seat."

  "Thanks." Bronzini took his time walking to one end of the conference table. Every eye followed him.

  "I think you know everyone,' the man at the opposite end of the table said in a too-bright voice. He was Bernie Kornflake, the new president of Dwarf-Star Studios. He looked about nineteen years old. Bronzini swept the faces at the table with his sullen, heavylidded eyes. A birth accident had dama
ged his facial nerves so that only yearly plastic surgery kept them from closing completely. Women found them fascinating, and men, threatening.

  Bronzini noticed that every one of the executives was under twenty-five. Their faces were as unlined and devoid of character as Play-Doh fresh from the can. Their hair was moussed into a variety of rock-garden shapes, and red suspenders showed from under their unbuttoned Armani coats. The business had come to this. Fetuses in expensive silk suits.

  "So, what can we do for you, Bart?" Kornflake asked in a voice as smooth and colorless as vegetable oil.

  "I have this script," Bronizi said slowly, flopping it on the immaculate tabletop. It slowly uncurled like a Venus's flytrap. Every eye went to the script as if Bartholomew Bronzini had laid down a soiled diaper instead of four agonizing months of writing.

  "That's great, Bart. Isn't it great?"

  Everyone agreed that it was great that Bartholomew Bmnzini had brought them a script. The phoniness in their voices made Bronzini want to puke. Fifteen years ago every one of these pansies had cheered him on in one of his now-classic roles, each one of them burning with a single desire: to make movies.

  "But, Bart, baby, before we get to your perfectly wonderful script, it just so happens we have this idea we think would, really, really fit your current profile," Bernie Kornflake said.

  "This script is different," Bronzini said slowly, an edge creeping into his voice.

  "So's our idea. You know, we're about to turn the corner into the nineties. It'll be a whole new ball game in the nineties."

  "Movies are movies," Bronzini said flatly. "They haven't changed in one hundred years. Sound came in and title cards went out. Color replaced black and white. But the principle is still the same. You tell a solid story and people will pack the theaters. Movies will be the same in the nineties as they were in the eighties. Take my word for it."

  "Wow! That's profound, Bart. Isn't that profound?" Everyone agreed that it was profound.

  "But we're not here to talk to you about movies, Bart, baby. Movies are out. We figure by 1995, 1997 tops, movies are going to be passe."