Stealth Sweep

“And he had just found your lost wallet.” Bolan didn’t phrase it as a question.

“Something like that,” Brognola admitted with a shrug. As his jacket swayed open, he briefly exposed a shoulder holster and an old-fashioned snub-nose .38 revolver.

“Leave them alive?”

“Unfortunately. Getting this to you intact was a lot more important,” Brognola said, placing the laptop on the table. He pushed it over. “I’m eager to hear your opinion on this matter.”

Flipping open the lid, Bolan saw the monitor flicker into a scene of a rainy mountain valley. He concentrated on the brief recording. It was obviously taken from a series of security cameras, grainy and unfocused, shifting abruptly from one angle to another. Then the explosions started, and the recording ended soon after that.

Scowling, Bolan watched it again, then sat back and took a sip of the coffee. It was cold, so he waved at Lucinda for a refill.

“Anything else ya want, sweetie?” she asked hopefully. Her upper thigh pressed warmly against his hand on the table, and she shifted slightly to let him feel the play of the tight nylon against his skin.

“Just the coffee, doll,” Bolan said, leaving his hand in place, but quickly lowering the lid on the laptop. “We’re talking some business, ya know?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lucinda said softly, topping off the mugs.

As she turned, Bolan smacked her on the rear. She gave a little jump, then looked backward with the kind of primordial smile of the sort that once had toppled the city of Troy, and walked away with a pronounced bounce in her step, just to let the man see what he had missed having for desert.

“So, when’s the wedding?” Brognola chuckled, watching as the smiling woman disappeared behind the counter.

“Next week, in Vegas. Come as Elvis,” Bolan replied with a straight face, then returned to business. “All right, from the Cyrillic writing on some of the street signs, and the poor condition of the buildings, I would guess this was taken in the Ukraine.”

“Close. Kazakhstan.”

“Somebody blew up a radar outpost in some remote mountain valley. What does this have to do with me?”

Reaching inside the pocket of his flannel shirt, Brognola produced a small envelope. “On my orders, the NSA did a scan of all cell phones in the area during the time of the attack, and they recovered this.”

It was a blurry shot of a burning building with a bird flying by, silhouetted against the flames. Bolan started to ask a question, then paused. Barely visible in the firelight, he could see that the bird was armed with missiles. Obviously, it was some kind of an unmanned attack vehicle— UAV—a drone. Then the implications hit him. One drone couldn’t have done that much damage in a week. There had to have been several of them, eight, maybe ten. And if their first target was the radar station…

“It looks like somebody cracked the heat-signature problem on the engines,” Bolan muttered, returning the picture.

Tucking the photo away, Brognola nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. In my opinion there is no question of the matter. These shots are of a new type of stealth drone, fast, silent, radar-proof and incredibly lethal.”

“Fair enough. Then why are we meeting here and not in your office?”

“Because nobody else in the Justice Department agrees with me on this. Not even the President thinks that there is any real danger to America.”

“And what makes you think there is?” Bolan asked.

“Just a gut feeling.”

Bolan accepted that. Over their long years working together, he had learned to trust the man’s instincts. They had saved the soldier’s life more than once. “Haven’t the British been secretly working on a new stealth UAV?”

“You know your weapons. Yes, it would have worldwide strike capability, and carry a complement of thermonuclear weapons.”

With that kind of range and firepower, the British drone would be enormous. “How close are they to finishing it?” Bolan asked, leaning back in the chair. It creaked slightly under his weight.

“Decades, at the very least.”

“Then there is no way that this was a field test by the British.”

“Not a chance in hell. And even if the Brits had a working version, why bomb Kazakhstan? There’s nothing there of any importance.” Turning the laptop around, Brognola tapped a few keys and shoved it back. “Or at least, that was what I thought until these pictures were relayed back from a WatchDog satellite doing a pass over the area the next day. Pay close attention to what wasn’t damaged in the strike.”

Arching an eyebrow in frank surprise at the statement, Bolan carefully looked over the wreckage from the attack. The photos were black-and-white, but crystal clear, and he soon spotted the pattern in the destruction.

“Somebody is getting ready to do a Hitler,” Bolan said in a low, hard voice.

“Yes.” Brognola sighed, as if releasing a heavy burden.

Once more, Bolan looked at the pictures of the smashed defensives of the Oskemen Valley, and the completely unharmed bridges, tunnels, electrical power plant and, of course, the old Soviet factories. It would seem that somebody knew their history.

For a long time after World War II, military strategists had analyzed the attack pattern of Hitler’s army, trying to figure out why he would pass by one town to attack another. The strikes almost seemed random, even chaotic, until some clever paper-pusher in the Pentagon compared the invasions to Hitler’s supply list.

None of the blitzkriegs were random—they were all precise hits on factories that he wanted to take intact, scientists he wanted captured alive, or mines that he desperately needed undamaged and fully operational, so that his engineers could regularly upgrade the backbone of his army, the panzer tank.

“Anything else been hit?”

“Unknown. Too many of the smaller countries surrounding China are third world nations. Their capital cities are relatively modern, but the outlying farms are still operated by sheer muscle power.”

True enough, Bolan supposed. “The people operating the drones probably hit the valley during a storm to try to disguise the destruction as lightning strikes,” he stated.

Brognola nodded. “Now, given the location of the valley…”

“Along with its complete lack of nuclear weapons.”

“…I think that we can easily make an educated guess who is behind all this,” Brognola growled, closing the lid on the laptop. “Our old pal, Red China.”

“You mean the Red Star,” Bolan corrected. He had tangled with the Communist spy agency before and found them a lot trickier, and much deadlier, than the KGB had ever been, even in its glory days.

Across the diner, a couple of pimps started shouting at each other over who owned what street corner, and suddenly switchblade knives snapped into view. Instantly, Lucinda hurried over with a pot of boiling coffee. As the pimps rose, she spilled it on the table and everybody quickly retreated to avoid getting scalded. Wheeling out a bucket and mop, the scrawny Latino youth started cleaning up the mess and the frustrated pimps took their fight outside and away from the other customers.

“This could just be an internal coup,” Bolan suggested. “The Red Star has wanted to seize absolute control over China for a long time.”

“Maybe,” Brognola admitted, folding his hands on the table. “But the worst-case scenario is that they’re planning to expand the borders of their nation, and seize everything they can—Russia, Laos, Vietnam, Japan, India—giving them an unbreakable stranglehold on the east, paving the way for a Communist expansion such as the world has never seen before. And after that…”

“World domination?” Bolan said, pulling out some loose bills from his pocket.

“Nobody has seriously tried that in a long time,” Brognola added. “I’ve been wondering when it would happen again.”

“Where’s the Farm on this?” Bolan asked, paying for the food and leaving a generous tip.

“Both teams are in the deep bush of South America handling another matter,” Brognola replied, typing on the laptop’s keyboard. A second later, the screen turned blank, the hard drive gave a loud buzz, then went silent and a puff of smoke rose from inside the machine.

“Barbara says it would take at least a week to extract Able Team and Phoenix Force. That is, without full military intervention,” Brognola continued, pushing aside the hot laptop. There were scorch marks on the tabletop where it had sat.

“So I’m alone on this.”

“I’ll try to rustle you up some tactical support some friends overseas. There’s an Israeli hacker who owes me a favor, Soshanna Fisher. But yeah. Basically, you’re alone on this.” Brognola gave a wan smile. “You’ve been there before.”

“Only out of necessity,” Bolan said, then rubbed the back of his neck. “This is a pretty wild-ass theory, Hal.”

“Yes, it is, Striker.”

“And you’re probably dead wrong.”

“Sure as hell hope so.”

“But if you’re right…”

“Yeah, I know.” Brognola sighed.

“I’ll call if I find anything,” Bolan said, offering his hand.

The men shook.

“Any idea where to start your search?” the big Fed asked. “China is mighty big. But—”

Bolan interrupted, standing. “I’m headed for Hong Kong first.”

Pushing back his chair, Brognola frowned. “What for?”

“To ask somebody about the drones,” Bolan replied, heading for the door.

Before the big Fed could respond, his cell phone vibrated.

Checking the screen, Brognola saw the call was from one of his contacts in the NSA. Only minutes ago, the Lady Durga, the flagship of the Indian navy, a brand-new, state-of-the-art, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, had been reported sunk off the Sea of Bengal after entering a fog bank. All hands lost. It was a major blow to India.

Plus, at the exact same time, a research lab in South Korea got hit by lightning during a rain storm and mysteriously burned to the ground. They had been working on a new type of radar. The entire staff of technicians and scientists were dead, and all of their records destroyed, along with the only working prototype.

“Move fast, Striker,” Brognola muttered, snapping the phone shut with a savage jerk of his wrist, “because it looks like its has already hit the fan.”

CHAPTER TWO

Northern Laos

Five trucks jostled along the old dirt road meandering through the steaming jungle. Razor-sharp machetes welded to the grilles and bumpers helped trim away the hanging vines and thorny creepers that regularly overgrew the winding road. By this time the next day, there would be no trace that anybody had driven through the jungle at this point, which was the precise reason this particular road was used so often.

High overhead, tiny monkeys ran and chattered in the treetops, while at the noise of the engines colorful birds took wing. They erupted from the bushes and flew into the air like living fireworks, briefly filling the sky with wondrous colors. Somewhere in the distance, a tiger roared, announcing a fresh kill, a crimson snake slithered through the flowering wines and hordes of unseen insects endlessly sang their secret song.

In the rear of each truck was a single large trunk, securely strapped to the metal floor and surrounded by armed guards, their scarred faces grim and unsmiling. This was their second run of the month, and everybody was eagerly thinking of the exotic pleasures their bonus would purchase once the five trunks were delivered across the border. Heroin was very big business in China, and no country in the world grew it better than Laos. The much vaunted black-tar heroin from Turkey was laughable in comparison.

“Sometimes I wish that I was Chinese and the government would subsidize my opium,” a young private said with a laugh, nudging the trunk with the steel toe of his army boot. “Think of it! They buy at fifty a kilo, then sell it on the streets at ten. Ten!”

“Perhaps there is something good to be said about communism, after all,” another private replied.

“The drug is just another way to keep their slaves from rebelling,” a large corporal growled without looking up from his French comic book. “We use whips and chains, the Chinese use heroin. What is the difference?”

“Shut up, all of you,” a grizzled lieutenant muttered, dropping the ammunition drum from a massive Atchisson autoshotgun, only to slam it back into the receiver. “Never talk about business in the open.”

“Way out here?” a private asked. “Who is going to overhear us, a lizard working for Interpol?”

“I said be quiet,” the lieutenant repeated, clicking off the safety. “That’s a direct order.”

Grudgingly, the troops obeyed, and went back to polishing the dampness from their AK-101 assault rifles, and daydreaming about the fleshpots of Vientiane. The capital city offered many tender delights for a real man with hard cash.

Sitting in the second truck of the convoy, Tul-Vuk Yang pulled a slim Monte Cristo cigar from the breast pocket of his military fatigues and bit off one end. Spitting it away, he then thumbed a gold lighter alive and applied the hissing flame to the tip of the expensive cigar. Once the tip was cherry-red, Yang removed the flame and drew the pungent smoke deep into his lungs. Ah, wonderful! The foolish Americans used all sorts of bizarre chemicals to cure their broadleaf tobacco in only a few hours—arsenic, lead, formaldehyde—while, the Cubans allowed their tobacco to naturally cure in direct sunlight. The process took a month instead of six hours, and aside from the obvious health benefits of not breathing in vaporized arsenic, the difference in taste was beyond belief.

“Magnificent!” Yang sighed, exhaling a long stream of dark smoke.

“Sir?” the driver asked, glancing sideways.

“Nothing, my friend. Pay attention to the road! The rebels have been planting more and more of those homemade bombs these days, and—”

A thunderous explosion ripped about the jungle as the road just behind the convoy violently exploded, smoking pieces of men and machinery spraying outward in every direction.

“Incoming!” Yang shouted, the cigar dropping from his mouth. Clawing at the radio in the dashboard, he pulled up a hand mike. “Alert! Red alert! We are under attack!”

Instantly, the five trucks increased their speed, and soon were racing along the rough dirt road at a breakneck pace. Following close behind, the barrage of incoming missiles chewed a path of destruction after them, coming ever closer.

Just then, a fiery dart streaked between the first and second truck, the exhaust blowing in through the open windows.

“Close!” the pale driver yelled.

“Too close,” Yang growled, scanning the sky for any sign of the enemy helicopter. The bastard had to be tracking his trucks by the heat of the engines. There was only one solution for that. He thumbed the mike alive.

“Everybody use your grenades. Throw them randomly, as far away as you can!”

Moments later, the jungle shook from multiple explosions all around the convoy. Bushes erupted from the soil, and trees toppled over. For an intolerable length of time, it seemed to the drug runners as if the entire world was exploding all around them.

Then the vines parted before the first truck and there was the Dee-wa Bridge, a modern box trestle that spanned a white-water gorge to reach the other side. Yang grinned at the sight of China. Nobody sane would dare to attack them there! The Chinese Red Army was bad enough, but the Red Star agents were psychopaths, genuine sadists who loved torture and bloodshed. No one dared to offend the dreaded Red Star!

“We’re safe!” the driver yelled, as the first truck bumped onto the bridge and rapidly accelerated across the smooth, perforated flooring.

“Not yet,” Yang replied, drawing a Very pistol, and firing a round straight upward.

The flare arched high into the sky and exploded into scarlet brilliance. Almost instantly a missile slammed into the sizzling flare and detonated in a controlled thunderclap.

Laughing in victory, Yang fired more flares as fast as he could, every one targeted by a missile and then swiftly destroyed.

“Last truck is on the bridge!” a voice announced over the radio.

“Now we’re safe.” Yang chuckled, lowering the flare gun.

That was when he saw a flock of big black birds hovering over the Dee-wa Gorge, as if they were nailed to the empty air. He blinked in surprise, then screamed as the winged machines cut loose with all of their remaining missiles at point-blank range.

The entire length of the Dee-wa Bridge was engulfed in a fireball from eighteen antitank missiles. The steel mooring ripped from the concrete beds, and the trestle writhed like a dying thing, twisting and convulsing, rivets flying and welds cracking until the bridge was smashed into a million pieces. Smashed and on fire, the armored trucks tumbled down into the gorge, the men already dead from the bone-pulverizing concussions.

It took the burning vehicles almost a full minute to reach the bottom of the gorge, and trees were flattened for a hundred yards from their meteoric impact. Then a pair of drones arrived to crash among the smoldering wreckage and ignite their self-destruct charges of thermite. Soon, a raging chemical bonfire filled the area, melting the metal trucks into slag, vaporizing the cargo and forever completing the total annihilation of the infamous Yang Moon Convoy.

Patiently, the rest of the Sky Tiger swarm waited until their miniature computers were assured everybody was dead, and the cargo of opium was beyond recovery. Now the machines automatically switched to their secondary targets, and swooped away to find the next bridge of any kind that crossed the Dee-wa River. The wild waters had a different name in each new territory, but the drones were concerned only with bridges and dams. At each one, a drone would smash into the structure and set off its payload of deadly thermite. Burning at the surface temperature of the sun, the lambent fire destroyed everything it reached. Concrete, iron, granite or steel—nothing could withstand the hellish infernos.

Less than an hour later, there were no functioning bridges between Laos and China, and the drug trade between the two nations was terminated for the time being.

Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong

THE AIRPORT WAS bustling with crowds of people arriving and departing, and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the Chinese soldiers standing on the overhead catwalks carrying QBZ assault rifles.

Maintaining a neutral expression, Bolan gave them only a cursory glance, then ignored the guards completely, just like everybody else. The Customs line moved swiftly, faster than he had expected, and soon he was standing before a small Asian man who scrutinized his passport as if knowing it was a fake. Except that it wasn’t, aside from the name imprinted on the federal paper.

“And what is the purpose of your visit, Mr. Dupree?” the customs inspector asked, looking at the passport. “Business or pleasure?”

“A little of both, hopefully.” Bolan chuckled, looking past the two men going through his luggage. “Seems like quite a party out there. Is today something special, like your Independence Day?”

“Liberation Day,” the Communist corrected, studying the fictitious travels of Adam Dupree, a sewage pump salesman from Detroit, Michigan. “But that is not today. You are just in time for the Hungry Ghost festival. A colorful celebration from our more primitive past.”

“Got some mighty pretty girls on those floats going by,” Bolan replied, giving a wink.

The Customs official almost smiled. “I cannot speak on such matters. You understand?” The passport was returned, and the suitcase snapped shut. “Enjoy your stay. Break no laws. Next, please!”

Bolan tucked the passport inside his plaid sport coat.

Taking the suitcase, he merged into the next line and passed through a glistening arch that looked like something straight out of a science-fiction movie. It even gave a low, ominous beep when he passed through. A moment later, the woman sitting behind a glowing screen waved her hand and a guard stepped aside with a nod.

The inspectors had found nothing illicit, or illegal, in his belongings because there was nothing to be found. He didn’t have so much as a penknife or a sharp pencil in his pockets. Smuggling weapons through airports was getting tougher every year, and while Bolan hadn’t expected the airport to have the new-style body scanners yet, he was very glad he had decided to play it safe. The modified X-ray machine had given the woman at the console a clear view of his naked body. Everything was revealed without the traveler being bothered by the inconvenience and embarrassment of disrobing or receiving a pat-down. These days, the dreaded cavity search was reserved only for people who acted unduly nervous, or broke the rules.

Exiting the airport, Bolan took a moment to look around at the bustling crowd of tourists, hustlers and armed police. Outside the terminal, the air was much warmer and a lot more noisy, with people talking in a dozen different languages. Most were Asian, and Bolan could detect the subtle difference between the Chinese, Japanese, Cambodians and Macauns, the other recent acquisition of Red China. But there were also a lot of European blondes and British redheads mixing with the Asian ravens.

The Hungry Ghost festival didn’t start until the next day, but there were dozens of floats being prepared, along with an army of pretty woman practicing dance steps. Bolan was impressed. Their elaborate costumes covered every inch of their bodies, yet, somehow, the dancers still managed to exude an aura of sultry eroticism. What the Brazilians did with partial nudity, the locals in Hong Kong did with simple body movement and grace.

Before he’d left the States, Bolan had Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, arrange for a gun drop with the CIA.

Turning his attention to the line of cabs parked along the curb, Bolan easily spotted one bearing the faded logo of a half-moon, the symbol he was told to look for. As he walked that way, the other cab drivers shouted out their prices, and special offers, but the soldier ignored them. He had just traveled halfway around the world, and his contact was driving a specific cab.

“Taxi, mister?” a tall Asian driver asked, lowering his MP3 player. Instantly, the screen went dark. “Clean and cheap! Best rates in town!”

“Now, I heard that the Star Ferry is the fastest way to reach the Kowloon District,” Bolan said, tightening his grip on the suitcase.

“True, but very smelly!” the man countered, swinging open the door. “Hong Kong means fragrant harbor, only nowadays it refers to the reek from the industrial plants and pollution!”

“Well, my business is handling sewage….” Bolan said with a shrug, and stepped into the cab.

The cabbie closed the door, then got behind the wheel.

Quickly, Bolan checked the work permit on public display. The faded card was sealed inside a sleeve of foggy plastic, but the picture matched the driver. The name listed was Samuel C. Wong.

“Where to first?” Wong asked, starting the engine.

“Madame Tsai Shoe Repair,” he replied.

Shifting into gear, Wong gave no outward sign that the name meant anything special as he started the engine and pulled away from the terminal.

Merging into the stream of traffic, the cab was soon ensconced in a wild mixture of old and new vehicles—sleek hybrid cars and old ramshackle trucks that seemed to be held together with bailing wire. Huge BMW flatbed trucks hauling machinery muscled past flocks of people pedaling furiously on bicycles. Neatly dressed businessmen and women zipped along on scooters, while burly men covered with tattoos roared by on motorcycles, mostly Hondas and Suzukis.

As the cab stopped for a red light, Wong glanced into the rearview mirror. “Check under your seat.”

Warily, Bolan did so and found a flat plastic box sealed with duct tape. Thumbing off the tape, he popped the top and pulled aside an oily rag to reveal a slim 9 mm pistol, a sound suppressor, a belt holster and a box of standard ammunition.