Satsuki was already able to walk on her own.
The dizziness left by the grenade explosion was slowly fading, but the feeling of her feet stepping on the ground was still somewhat strange, as if the asphalt road was not as stable as she had imagined.
Chizuru kept supporting her.
Several elite guards on the outer circle held anti-riot shields, forming a protective circle that moved forward with them.
Occasionally, a stray bullet from the distance would hit a vehicle or roadside facility, and the surrounding people would subconsciously tilt their shield surfaces slightly toward that direction.
The backup car was not far away now.
Satsuki could even see the opened rear car door.
"Was someone hurt just now?"
She suddenly asked.
Chizuru's movement did not change.
"Yes."
"Is it serious?"
This time, Chizuru paused a little longer.
"One team member was killed."
Satsuki's previously steady steps noticeably slowed by half a beat.
She turned her head.
The shields blocked most of her view, and she could only see several cars blocking the road in the distance through the gaps between the two shields, along with continuously flashing figures.
For so long just now, she had regarded tonight as a game she had actively designed herself.
Even after the first round of vehicle collisions occurred, what she was still thinking about was how much of a headache Hoshino would have tomorrow, and how much further she could reach into the underworld's economic network by borrowing Washio's operation.
But now someone really died, and it was one of Saionji's people.
"Milady?"
Chizuru called out to her softly.
Satsuki withdrew her gaze.
"I am fine."
She continued walking forward, though her voice was a bit lower than before.
"Let us leave here first."
Chizuru nodded.
Just at that moment, a noticeably denser sound of footsteps came from behind.
Satsuki glanced back.
Dojima was leading a group of people rushing over here.
Many of the faces among them had not appeared at all just now.
"Reinforcements?"
"Should be."
Chizuru saw it too.
This time, the expression on her face finally relaxed a little.
Dojima quickly caught up with the protective circle.
He did not go inside, but looked at Satsuki through the outermost shield.
"Milady, we cannot follow the original evacuation plan anymore."
Satsuki looked at him for two seconds.
"Because of those Americans?"
"Because Washio's people are too weak."
This answer startled Satsuki for a moment.
Dojima turned back to look at the delivery truck.
The exchange of gunfire over there still came intermittently, but it was no longer as dense as it was at the very beginning.
"They dare to fight, and they are willing to risk their lives for Washio, and the weapons in their hands are real. If they were ordinary guards, they would probably have been scattered by them by now."
"But they do not know how to use these things at all."
Dojima looked at Satsuki again.
"If someone could smuggle military assault rifles and grenades into Tokyo, and also knew your route tonight, that person could not possibly truly believe that these people alone could kill you."
This sentence caused the expressions of several people around to change at the same time.
Satsuki fell silent.
Dojima then continued:
"They have already forced the main car to a stop, broken up the motorcade, and attracted most of our people near the delivery truck. If that last round was the entire plan, this arrangement is too wasteful."
Satsuki quickly understood.
The color on her face had already looked a bit pale due to the explosion and the wound on the side of her face, and now it faded a bit more slowly.
"What do you think they are waiting for?"
Dojima frowned, not rushing to give an answer.
If the purpose of the delivery truck in front of them was truly to drag them here, then he could only guess what the other party would do next.
But one thing was already clear—the originally intact security motorcade had been broken up by successive collisions, a large number of personnel were pinned down here by the gunmen in the delivery truck, Satsuki's main car was completely disabled, and even the backup vehicles and planned evacuation route had been exposed.
The other party went to such great lengths, pushing everything step by step to this point, impossible just to let Washio's people continue exchanging gunfire with them across a delivery truck.
Dojima's gaze moved away from Satsuki, sweeping across both sides of the road again.
After the explosion, most ordinary people had already fled the scene, but the vehicles they left behind were still blocking everywhere.
Some car doors were wide open, some engines had not even been turned off, and further away, more vehicles were blocked in the chaotic traffic flow.
Just now, almost everyone's attention had been attracted by Washio's people. Looking at this chaotic street now, Dojima had no way of knowing how many things were still undiscovered among them.
"I do not know."
He finally answered.
"But if my judgment is correct, the thing they are truly waiting for might have just appeared now."
Dojima raised his hand to press his headset, his tone noticeably faster than before.
"Recheck the perimeter. Any vehicles that did not participate in the attack just now but have been parked nearby should be considered suspicious targets, and no one is allowed to approach them directly. Milady, do not get into the original backup car yet, rearrange the evacuation route."
A response quickly came through the comms.
"Understood."
Less than a hundred meters from the scene, inside a gray van that had remained parked in the traffic flow since earlier, six people had been sitting for a long time.
When the first few collisions occurred, they did not get out of the car.
After the grenade explosion, they still did not move.
Even when the gunfire of automatic weapons suddenly sounded from the back of the delivery truck, and people in several nearby blocked cars screamed and pushed open doors to flee one after another, they only looked at the chaos outside through the car windows, as if there was no difference between them and other ordinary people who did not have time to leave.
The attire of the six people in the car was not uniform.
The man in the front passenger seat wore thin-rimmed glasses, with a shirt collar visible inside his gray jacket; in the back row, someone wore ordinary suit trousers, someone wore a ubiquitous dark jacket, and closest to the door was a convenience store paper bag, revealing the upper half of an unfinished canned coffee.
If it were half an hour ago, probably no one would have deliberately taken a second look at them.
The things that were truly out of place with this appearance were all hidden under the seats.
The man in the front passenger seat had been holding binoculars all along.
Until the heavily deformed sedan in the distance completely lost its utility, and he saw the figure surrounded by black anti-riot shields in the center start moving toward the backup vehicle, did he finally put down the binoculars.
"The main car can no longer be used."
The man in the driver's seat gently nodded.
He looked to be around forty years old, with very short hair. Since earlier, he had hardly spoken many words, only occasionally confirming the state of the people in the back row through the rearview mirror.
"The target is moving toward the second car, but Saionji just had another batch of reinforcements coming in."
The man in the front passenger seat paused slightly.
"More people than expected."
Someone in the back row spoke:
"Are we continuing the operation?"
The driver did not answer immediately.
He looked ahead through the windshield.
The road had long been completely blocked by wrecked vehicles, and the lights of police cars and fire trucks were flashing continuously in the distance, but they could not truly enter the innermost part for a while due to a large number of abandoned vehicles.
At a closer position, Saionji's newly arrived personnel had already begun to fill in the original defense line, and several protective circles were noticeably more complete than before.
For an ordinary mission, these changes were enough to make people reconsider.
But the conditions that needed to be confirmed tonight were not how many people Saionji had brought from the very beginning.
"The route is still there."
The driver said.
The person in the back row glanced at him.
The driver reached out and pointed at the road outside the windshield that was almost impassable normally.
"They do have more people, but the places they can walk are even fewer. The main car is disabled, and the first batch of guards has been scattered by the events in front. As long as the target continues toward the backup vehicle, the conditions remain unchanged."
The people in the car nodded.
Two months ago, they received a job invitation from Manila through different channels.
The company nominally responsible for contact was a maritime security and high-risk personnel escort company, and the first advance payment came from a trading firm in Hong Kong.
The first contract they received was not actually disguised as an ordinary escort mission.
When that security company in Manila first contacted these people, they had already made the nature of the job quite clear: the location was in East Asia, the target was an important business figure with tight private security, the mission had a high probability of requiring lethal force, and the real client would not show up.
As for the target's name, exact location, and specific execution methods, they would only be provided after the personnel were confirmed.
People who would accept such conditions were not simply retired soldiers randomly found from ordinary security companies.
The intermediary responsible for recruitment first screened through the list of people he had cooperated with in the past, and the six people finally selected all had experience handling things for private clients that could not be put on a contract.
Someone had fought for a long time in southern Africa in his early years, and after leaving the army, bounced between mining areas and private armed forces; someone had done high-risk security in the Middle East for many years, but was not just responsible for safely delivering clients to their destination; and two others originally belonged to the regular military system, later leaving for various different reasons, and since then relied on international security contractors and private intermediaries to introduce work.
Not all of them knew each other, but at least four of them had already jointly executed two missions in the past.
The team leader responsible for piecing this temporary team back together was also not taking this kind of contract without asking about the client's identity from the Manila intermediary for the first time.
What truly made them finally agree was the price.
The remuneration offered by the other party far exceeded normal overseas security contracts.
After signing the agreement, they paid an advance payment sufficient to make anyone seriously consider this job, and the remaining part would enter pre-designated overseas accounts separately after the contract was completed.
More importantly, from documents and entry identities to vehicles and equipment needed within Japan, everything was prepared in advance by the employer through different intermediaries, and they only needed to arrive at the designated location at the agreed time.
The real second part of the materials was only delivered to their hands after arriving in Tokyo.
Inside, the target's photo and name appeared for the first time.
Saionji Satsuki.
When seeing this surname, someone in the team indeed fell silent for a long time.
Even without a deep understanding of Japan's financial world, they knew this was not a target that could just disappear into the corner of a newspaper after being killed.
The team leader even re-confirmed the remuneration and evacuation arrangement with the intermediary on the spot, but the reply received was only one sentence—if anyone quits now, they can take the already paid money and leave, and the remaining contract will be filled by others.
In the end, no one left.
People who could be screened all the way here were no longer the type of people who would suddenly develop moral scruples upon discovering that the client wanted to kill a 'big figure.'
What truly made them hesitate was only the risk, and the other party obviously knew this long ago, so the price offered was originally calculated based on making people willing to take such a risk.
After that, they obtained more complete operation materials, which included Satsuki's possible locations, the basic characteristics of Saionji's security motorcade, and pre-arranged evacuation arrangements.
The only person they had seen together was a middle-aged man who had appeared twice in a Manila hotel.
The other party never left a name.
Even who handed these materials to him, they did not know.
But no one asked further.
In this line of work, knowing more was not necessarily better.
The man in the front passenger seat glanced at the distance again.
"The target has stopped."
This time, the driver frowned slightly.
Saionji's people seemed to have sensed something.
The figure that was originally ready to enter the backup car was once again surrounded by guards, several people around began to inspect the road, and the protective circle expanded outward a bit more than before.
"They are changing the evacuation plan."
Someone in the back row picked up the convenience store paper bag by their feet and casually shoved it under the seat.
"Did they discover us?"
"Does not look like it."
The man in the front passenger seat picked up the binoculars again and looked for a moment.
"It should just be that the things in front made them suspicious."
The driver gently let out a breath.
"Then according to the original plan."
After this sentence was spoken, the atmosphere in the car finally changed.
Several people in the back row lowered their bodies simultaneously.
The equipment bags hidden under the seats were pulled out one by one.
After the zippers were opened, no one spoke, each lowering their heads to check their own belongings.
The cabin, which had looked somewhat crowded earlier, soon only had the friction of clothing, the gentle collision of metal parts, and a certain extremely restrained mechanical sound.
The driver reached out and turned the key.
After the engine restarted, the car body shook very slightly.
At the same time, inside another ordinary sedan closer to Satsuki, a man who had been sitting next to the driver's seat for a long time also lowered his body, lifting an inconspicuous cloth bag from his feet.
The zipper was slowly pulled open.
The person inside finally confirmed the firearms one last time and pushed the magazine in.
A very soft metallic click came from the car cabin.
The real operatives never prepared to engage in a long-term frontal firefight with Saionji's people.
All the previous collisions, explosions, and gunshots did not need to actually kill Satsuki.
They only needed to pull away the guard force originally concentrated around her, completely stop the heavily armored main car, and then force Saionji to transfer Satsuki step by step to another position that was easier to attack according to their security contingency plan.
And now, these conditions were basically fulfilled.
Inside the gray van, the man in the front passenger seat glanced at his wristwatch.
The second hand had just crossed the twelve o'clock direction.
9:11 PM.
He raised his head.
"Time is up."
June 27, 1991, 9:11 PM.
Operation 'Stahl' begins.