Bloodlines

High Wire

It was sheer luck alone that the Takeda-Uesugi unit and Masamune were both free and within the three hour window. Masamune arrived first at the cabin. No doubt he'd broken a couple driving laws to get there, but Ieyasu was unspeakably grateful for it.

"Got here as fast as I could. Mitsuhide brought me up to speed." Masamune stripped off the dress shirt he wore and untucked the undershirt from his jeans. "Had to get out of a Pentagon thing, but I couldn't leave you hanging here. What's the plan?"

"Once the other team gets here I'll fill you in."

It didn't take long. The other four descended on the location only a half hour later, and the small group piled around the small cabin kitchen table. Fortunately she'd been paying enough attention to the bunker layout that she managed a relatively good map. Kenshin, Shingen, and Masamune winced at it.

"That's not much space."

"There's a word for that in Spanish that my mom taught me," Masamune half joked, "'Shitty'. Shitty is the word."

"Yeah, that's a hell of a terrible position to be in," Shingen agreed. "Sasuke, would you...?"

The man didn't respond; he just nodded and shouldered his rifle, heading out the front door. Yuki followed close behind him with a wave and a, "I'll be his spotter!"

Ieyasu scowled at the map. "The issue is this; from what I'm understanding of the phone call I fielded, they're not only aware of my presence here, but I'm interpreting it as a direct threat on the real Tokugawa."

"I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to off him," Kenshin answered idly. "He's a liability."

Masamune patted himself down for cigarettes and lit one, opening the window. "Yeh. We don't have much time to get him out, but that bunker is a death trap. I don't know what we can do here without a little intervention."

—

Dr. Tokugawa was not the kind of man that liked being in someone else's hands, and he was aware now more than ever that he was just a loose end in freefall. If he'd identified that strange woman as a possible ally (and god forbid if he were wrong, but he was very, very certain in the near two-decades of captivity that she was a safe bet), it was only a very short time until everyone else knew what he'd done.

No time to second guess. Now was the time to act.

The cameras on him were constantly monitored. Messing with it would render the situation very tenuous indeed. Instead he focused on doing exactly what his captors always wanted him to do: making a bomb.

This one was small scale, to be certain, but that didn't matter. All the components were there. He'd put off doing the damn thing so long that he was very sure no one thought him capable of creating it in such tight time constraints, but he knew exactly what he was doing.

Almost two hours later, he had something.

Now time was of the essence. At last, Dr. Tokugawa slipped off his lab coat and flung it up toward the camera. Success! It caught there, obscuring his movements. As swiftly as he dared with the high-yield ordinance, he crossed the room and tacked the bomb to the door, locking it three times over.

No more would they try and use him.

With a shaking hand, he scrawled a note on a piece of paper and slid it under the door. If you attempt to open this door and remove me, the resulting explosion will level the whole bunker.

If the FBI were here, it would lend them valuable time.

—

It was nearly midnight when Yukimura radioed back to the others in the cabin.