Firespill by Ian Slater

Author:Ian Slater
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION/Thrillers
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

In Tokyo it was early afternoon. Through the unusually heavy smog that hung over the sprawling Asanami Shipyard, Police Chief Sunichi Yamada could see the towering, unfinished hull of a million-ton supratanker standing silently over the crowd of ten thousand demonstrators, like some great carcass besieged by swarming ants. Yamada’s hand tightened on the pistol grip of the bullhorn as the crowd, mostly students, surged further into the shipyard, through the main gate, past the high, barbed wire storm fencing.

Raising the bullhorn, Yamada ordered, “Spearhead formation!”

In one quick movement, the aluminum-shielded, blue-black-uniformed Kidōtai—the mobile squads—changed from two lines of a hundred riot-equipped men into a double spearhead. If they began to move and one man fell in the forward formation, one from the second would immediately take his place.

Here and there Yamada could see that groups of workers had joined the demonstration against the builders of the now American-owned MV Kodiak, but in the main the police chief could tell from the signs that this was the work of the university students. For that reason he was surprised that the protest had been so ill planned. No doubt it was due to the fact that the firespill—unlike political events—had happened without warning. Normally the radical organizers would never have allowed the crowd to gather in a road that had no side alleys and only one exit—in this case, the gate through the shipyard beyond the half-built tanker, which could take them nowhere except into the cold waters of the harbor. The only other way out was past the Kidōtai, and for an angry mob that was no way at all. Yamada took a deep breath. This demonstration would become a riot. He glanced at his watch again, for the sixth time in the last hour, and lifted the bullhorn. “You are advised that you are on private property. This constitutes a violation of Civil Ordinance Number—”

His next few words were drowned in the roar of the crowd. He waited patiently for a minute, then added, “You now have five minutes in which to vacate these premises.”

A barrage of rocks and bottles erupted from the crowd towards the Kidōtai. “Canopy!” barked Yamada, and the second row of shields clashed and rose in a single flash of sunlight, overlapping those that stood perpendicular, guarding the front line of men, forming an aluminum roof, covering the whole spearhead formation. The hail of projectiles bounced harmlessly to the already debris-strewn road.

The Kidōtai battalion stood steady, the rounded perspex helmet covers distorting their faces as they awaited the order to move. They had been through all of this a hundred times before. No one even looked round as they heard the caged buses roaring up the road and stopping behind them. They simply stood still, holding the five-foot shields in their left hands and the two-and-a-half-foot riot sticks in their right, like Roman legionaires. Immediately behind them, groups of regular police readied the tear gas guns, plopping the canisters into the stubby, black barrels. From

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