Showing results for "The Samurai" in Mystery

On leave in Tokyo, American GI Robert Sand is shot trying to protect an old man from a quartet of drunk American soldiers. As Sand passes out, the old man springs on his tormenters, beating them senseless with frail, wrinkled fists. He is Master Konuma, keeper of the ancient secrets of the samurai, and Sand is about to become his newest pupil. Over the next seven years, the American learns martial arts, swordplay, and stealth, becoming not just the first black man to ever take the oath of the samurai, but the strongest fighter Konuma has ever trained.

Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment when their fathers met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived. More than 60 years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. His search has led him to Crazy Horse, Idaho, where Bob Lee, ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, has settled into a restless retirement and immediately pledges himself to Yano's quest.

Even the finest samurai occasionally needs to hone his skill. Robert Sand is in Japan, pushing his body to the limit under an aged sensei's guidance, when he gets the message that practice is over. A French arms dealer named Valbonne has gotten ambitious, and is about to start selling something rather more deadly than a bootlegged Kalashnikov. He is building an atomic bomb.

The Chinese diplomat walks into the revolving door just a step ahead of the grenade. Samurai Robert Sand is too late to save him from the blast, but as the smoke clears he is hot on the grenade-tosser's heels. In Central Park, Sand disarms the killer and knocks him unconscious. His name is Ivan Vanich, and he is posing as a Soviet operative. His real employer is a power-mad millionaire, who arranged the hit as part of a plot to upend a Russo-Chinese trading contract and seize the profits for himself. The diplomat in the revolving door was only the first to die.