Stealth Sweep

“You took a big chance carrying these so close to the airport,” Bolan said, disassembling the pistol to check the internal workings before reassembling it even faster.

“Not really. I also deliver small packages for the local Customs inspectors,” Wong said with a laugh. “The local cops understand how the world works. As long as I only break the little laws, nobody asks about the big ones.”

“Fair enough.” Bolan screwed on a sound suppressor. Then he opened the box of ammunition, but as he started to thumb some rounds into an empty clip, he happened to look at the bottom of one brass casing.

“Damn it, those bastards have found me already,” Bolan growled, peering out the window. “Quick, pull over! We’re a sitting duck in this thing!”

“What’s wrong?” Wong asked in confusion, quickly shifting gears as he arched through the busy traffic. Horns blared at the maneuver, but the other vehicles melted out of the way.

“I’ve been made,” Bolan replied, brandishing the empty handgun. “When I hit the sidewalk, you run. Get clear fast!” He tried to put as much concern into his voice as possible.

“No, let me help!” Wong countered, savagely braking to a hard stop alongside a bright yellow fire hydrant. “Just tell me who—”

Flipping the useless pistol over, Bolan grabbed it by the sound suppressor and clubbed Wong directly behind the ear. The man crumpled with a sigh onto the wheel.

Dropping the weapon, Bolan reached around the moaning driver and grabbed a sleek .22 pistol. The safety was off the assassin’s weapon, and there was a round already in the breech for immediate use.

“What…don’t…” Wong mumbled, flapping his hands.

Ruthlessly, Bolan smacked the man in the temple with the HK and heard the deadly crunch of bone. Shuddering all over, Wong went still forever.

Rifling through the pockets of the dead man, Bolan unearthed two spare clips, a switchblade knife and some cash. But there was no cell phone or wallet. Hastily tucking everything into his jacket, Bolan exited the cab and walked casually through the array of vendors and pushcarts. Turning a corner, he snapped the switchblade into life and took refuge in a dirty alley that reeked of garbage.

Nobody seemed to be looking his way, so Bolan went deeper into the alley until reaching a small slice of sunlight coming in between two buildings. Quickly, he checked over the pistol and then the ammunition. Thankfully, both were clean, unlike what was in the box under the seat.

Every bullet had a manufacturer’s stamp on the bottom of the shell to show the lot number, location made and date. The police often tracked criminals by the brass ejected from a weapon. On the other hand, every major intelligence agency in the world made their own ammunition, which always lacked the stamp on the bottom. That was standard operational procedure. The cops knew something big was happening in their town when they found a corpse and empty “ghost” brass nearby. However, the ammunition in that box had carried a stamp, which meant it wasn’t CIA issue, and that meant Bolan’s cover had somehow been blown. He just didn’t know how, or by whom, but staying in that cab would have been his last act on Earth. Out of curiosity, he used the switchblade to pry open a cartridge for the HK, and out poured sand instead of gunpowder.

Just then, a tall figure blocked out the sliver of rosy sunlight.

Instantly, Bolan ducked, and something hot hummed by his head as a hard cough came from the darkness ahead. As the round ricocheted off the brickwork behind, Bolan dived to the side and fired twice, then twice more. The dark figure grunted from the impact of the tiny .22 rounds, but didn’t fall. Bolan bit back a curse. The other man had to be wearing body armor! The .22 rounds were doing less damage than a well-aimed snowball.

The silenced weapon coughing steadily, the other man slowly walked into the alley, blasting every pool of shadow.

Tracking the muted muzzle-flash of the weapon, Bolan guessed where his adversary’s head should be, then stood and triggered a fast six rounds in a tight group. There came the sound of multiple .22 ricochets off the brick wall, then a hard smack of lead into flesh.

Snarling curses in what sounded like Chinese, the other man fanned the darkness with his weapon until the clip cycled empty. The soft click of a clip being released could be heard, and Bolan surged forward, batting aside the bigger weapon with the HK, and ramming the switchblade upward with all his strength.

He felt the warm breath explode from the other man as the steel found flesh. Gurgling, the man stumbled, his weapon clattering to the ground. Grabbing a fistful of hair, Bolan slashed across his adversary’s throat and pushed him away. With blood raining to the ground, the man smacked into a wall and collapsed alongside a pile of garbage cans. A few seconds later the gurgling stopped.

As Bolan searched for the dropped weapon, he listened for any sounds of backup, sirens or running shoes. But nobody in the market had seemed to notice the brief tussle in the dark alleyway, or else the merchants simply knew better than to become involved in such matters. In this part of the world, the first rule of survival had always been stay low and don’t get noticed.

When finally satisfied that nobody was coming, Bolan checked over the new weapon. It was a sleek 9 mm Norinco pistol, the official sidearm of the Chinese Red Army. The grip was rough, and Bolan scowled at the realization that it had been cut with notches. No professional soldier would have done that, so this man had simply been a very talented amateur. Just some street muscle, nothing more. Fire-and-forget.

Locating the corpse, Bolan went through the pockets. As expected, there was no cell phone, car keys or wallet. But he discovered four more ammunition clips, a butterfly knife, an enormous wad of cash held together with a rubber band, half a pack of chewing gum, plus something small, rectangular and hard.

Lifting the object into the sliver of daylight, Bolan snorted at the sight of the Hong Kong “octopus” card, a prepaid pass for every form of mass transit in the city. Excellent.

Depositing everything he didn’t want into a garbage can, Bolan quickly left the area, zigzagging through the maze of back alleys until coming out a full block from where he had abandoned the cab. Strolling over to a street vendor, he purchased a cup of surprisingly good coffee, and sipped from the cardboard container while walking through the busy crowds.

There was a bad apple in the local CIA station. Maybe the cab driver was the only bad guy, maybe he was just a henchman. Whatever, the Executioner would hand over the information for Brognola to deal with.

It was a wake-up call, though. I can’t trust any of the established contacts, rendezvous, or safehouses, Bolan realized. He would have to find his own source of additional weapons, and some way to sneak into Communist China.

Looking over the noisy throng to make sure nobody was paying him undue attention, Bolan turned away from the Asian teenager sitting on a park bench. The young woman was smoking a cigarette, and smiled as their gazes meet, then hitched her denim skirt high on her thighs to show she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

Arching an eyebrow in pretend shock, Bolan then patted his pockets to mime that he was broke. She managed to look sad, then shrugged and turned away to find another big American tourist.

At the corner, Bolan dropped the coffee container into a waste can under the watchful gaze of an armed police officer, then boarded a tram headed for the waterfront. His choices were rather limited at the moment, so he was going to have to do this old school and infiltrate China through the criminal underworld. That would mean risking encounters with a lot of people who would be delighted to bury him alive, but there was no other recourse at the moment. Once the news of the drones became public knowledge, China would slam its borders closed, so time was short. That would mean getting his shoes shined.

Surreptitiously checking the pistol tucked into his belt, he smiled at the memory of the sultry redhead. A mixture of Irish and Chinese, she possessed the best traits of both races, intelligence, grace and a figure that made most internet sex bombs look like cartoon stick figures. Tsai “Pat” Adina was the tenth wonder of the world.

However, it had been a long time since Bolan had last seen the woman. Hopefully, she was still working freelance, and he wasn’t walking directly into another trap.

CHAPTER THREE

Engels Air Force Base, Russia

The abandoned freight yard, high on a hill overlooking the air base, was overgrown with weeds and brambles. The small brick building that had once served as an office was almost buried from sight under multiple layers of ivy.

The steel railroad tracks were long gone, and the wooden ties crumbled back into the earth. Only random pieces of rusting machinery lay about on the cracked asphalt, along with unrecognizable piles of trash and windblown leaves. Once, there had been thousands of cargo containers waiting patiently to be shipped across Russia. Stacked on top of one another, the containers had formed cubist mountains that rose defiantly to challenge the Ural Mountains on the horizon. But now there was only a handful of the big steel boxes, most of them rusted through in places to become homes for rats and other small vermin.

Artistically surrounded by a dozen other corroded containers, one steel box was heavily streaked with rust and bird droppings, but still in good shape, and unbreeched. Lying in the nearby weeds were the gleaming white bones of an itinerant worker, what the Americans would have called a hobo. Still clenched in her right hand was an iron crowbar whose sharp tip perfectly matched a set of gouges in the surface of the unopened box. Four years ago, the woman had climbed the wire fence and attempted to break open the container, hoping it was full of stereos, or cell phones, or anything that could be sold on the black market for a fast ruble.

She’d labored for hours to pry open the access panel, and her reward had been a searing burst of pain as 20,000 volts of electricity surged through her body, making her blood boil, her kidneys shrivel, her teeth shatter, then her cooked brain quite literally explode.

The rats and black beetles had feasted well that autumn, but soon the bounty of flesh was gone and only the bones remained, along with a few scraps of cloth, and the relatively undamaged crowbar.

Suddenly, the steel box began to softly vibrate, the dried bird nests and loose scales of rust dancing along the top until tumbling over the ends. With a hard clang an internal lock disengaged, and the lid swung aside just as a dozen spheres blasted upward on a column of compressed air.

Spreading their wings, the drones swooped from the sky, skimming low across the weedy fields of rubbish to fly straight off the end of a limestone cliff. Diving sharply to build speed, the war machines streaked straight down toward the sprawling air base that filled the valley below.

The leaves on the trees shook from the wake of the Sky Tiger drones as they flashed past a radar station and a SAM battery. Spreading out in a curve, the drones separated and began pumping out their deadly cargo of sarin nerve gas.

Coming out of the control tower, a pair of airmen were the first to die, their faces barely able to register the fact before their bodies dropped, twitching, to the tarmac, and then went still forever. A guard in a kiosk set alongside the main hangar saw the drone and reached for the red security phone on the wall, but his hand never finished the short journey before he was sprawled across his desk, red blood pouring from every orifice.

Getting ready for the morning reconnaissance patrol along the Chinese border, the two pilots strapped into the cockpit of their MiG-35 jet fighters actually saw the drones flash by, and managed to get out a warning over their throat mikes before the sarin gas penetrated the seals of their planes. As their vision began to fade, the pilots frantically turned up the flow of oxygen to their masks. That bought them a few precious seconds of nearly unbearable agony, then they slumped over in their seats, convulsing and gushing red life.

Accidentally, one of the spasming men shoved the control yoke forward, and the idling jet engines instantly surged, revving to full power. With nobody at the controls, the MiG-35 started to drift and narrowly missed crashing into an Mi-26 cargo helicopter full of dying paratroopers. Then the MiG ran over a bleeding flight controller sprawled on the ground, and swerved wildly around to clip an attack helicopter and crash directly into a Tu-160 strategic bomber.

Since the MiG wasn’t in the air, the air-to-air missiles lining both wings weren’t armed, nor were the thermonuclear bombs loaded into the Tu-160. But that made little difference to the maintenance truck carrying a full load of high-octane jet fuel.

The fiery blast engulfed a dozen other war planes, quickly setting their own stores of fuel ablaze, then cooking off the warheads in their assorted rockets and missiles. With nobody alive to stop it, this quickly became a chain reaction of explosions that rapidly escalated into a rampaging cacophony of destruction, shattering windows for a thousand yards, buckling the control tower and even flipping over the cars in the distant parking lot. The heavily armored thermonuclear bombs inside the belly of the Tu-160 were completely undamaged in the maelstrom, as were the underground SAM batteries. But a split second later, the thermobaric bomb inside the Tu-160 ignited.

Designed as it was to explode in the sky above an enemy target and utterly obliterate it, the device’s titanic detonation shook the entire base, shattering the pavement back into gravel and burning every trace of the deadly sarin nerve gas from existence. Unstoppable, the hellish shock wave of the Russian superbomb careened along the ground, brushing aside planes, trucks, men and machines as if they were dried leaves. Then the heat flash expanded in a staggering halo effect that set fire to everything organic: corpses, tires, trees, boots, roofing tiles and the drones.

Slowly, a rumbling mushroom cloud of smoke and flame formed above the annihilated air base, and charred pieces of corpses and partially melted chunks of billion-ruble jet fighters rained down across the countryside for miles….

Southern Hong Kong

LEAVING THE PUBLIC TRAM at the downtown station, Bolan walked outside the terminus into organized chaos.

The Kowloon District of Hong Kong was unlike anyplace else in the world. A wild mixture of old and new gleaming skyscrapers rose above wooden shacks, rickshaws racing alongside hybrid limousines. Diesel buses fumed alongside electric streetcars, and trucks of every description rumbled past, carrying the goods of the world. Bicycles didn’t flow in streams, but moved in flocks like birds on the wing, and the constant chiming of their little bells was only a background murmur to the orchestra of voices talking, laughing, singing, crying, arguing, pondering, lying, cutting deals or just chattering away.

A hundred vendors were selling everything imaginable from small stalls lining the sidewalks. If the Chinese government deemed something legal to sell, then it was available in Kowloon, usually at a discount price if you bought six of them.

A hand fleetingly touched his hip, and Bolan savagely slapped it away. With a startled cry, the pickpocket moved off fast, cradling his broken wrist.

If there were any traffic laws, nobody was paying attention to them, and Bolan simply crossed through the busy traffic like everybody else, wherever he pleased, the traffic lights seeming to be merely decorations.

Since Hong Kong had once been a British colony, the street signs were also in English, and Bolan easily located the waterfront, although he heard the warning blasts from the tugboats long before he actually saw water.

The crowds were thinner here, and scurried to keep out of the way of the rattling forklifts that wheeled about in conga lines ferrying about an endless array of cargo pallets. The voices were far more impatient, and the use of vulgarity infinitely more prevalent.

Leaning on an iron railing that had been recently painted, Bolan looked across the choppy bay. Since Kowloon faced south, and Mainland China was on the other side of the island to the north, there was only open water to the horizon. In the murky distance was another landmass, oddly named Hong Kong Island. How the inhabitants kept the two islands separate was a puzzle to most outsiders, and a constant source of amusement to the locals.

Though the harbor was choppy, with low swells cresting on the rocky shoreline, the waterway was full of sleek pleasure craft, old fishing trawlers, junks, wooden rafts, futuristic hovercraft and colossal cruise liners that resembled floating islands of light.

There were also a scattering of Chinese navy gunboats, their radar constantly in motion, the deck guns and depth-charge launchers covered with tarpaulins as protection against the salty spray, and the idle curiosity of the much-prized tourists. But the armed sailors on deck were openly carrying 5.56 mm QBZ assault rifles, and stared suspiciously at everybody and everything. Even the tourists. Most of them laughed and took pictures with their cell phones, but the wiser heads turned away and went about their business. China valued tourism, but only to a point.

Keeping to the shadows, Bolan watched the gunboats move along on patrol, blazingly bright halogen searchlights sweeping across every small craft that approached. He grunted at that. These were the new Wall of China, Communist hard-liners more resolute than stone, grim men who couldn’t be bribed, or dealt with.

Turning away from the water, Bolan headed back into the maelstrom of chatting people. It had been a while since he had last been here, but the memories came flooding back, and he soon located the Tsai Shoe Repair Shop. The brass sign above the front door was small, almost unreadable, and the windows were in desperate need of a good washing. Yet Bolan knew that the place was one of the most profitable enterprises on the entire island.

The public side of Tsai Shoe Repair was strictly legitimate, with eager cobblers fixing worn-out soles, replacing broken heels and polishing leather to a mirror sheen. New shoes were available for purchase, as well as a foot massage. However, unlike most shoe repair shops, the business occupied the entire five-story building, including the garage next door.

The set-up was simple. A customer walked in for a repair, or maybe just a shine, and had a few minutes to kill with nothing to do except watch television in the waiting room or read magazines. But if he wished a beautiful young hostess would happily escort him upstairs to a wonderland of fleshly delights. The Tsia Shoe Repair was the premiere brothel of Hong Kong, and unlike so many other brothels, the customers here always left with whatever possessions they had originally arrived with.

Walking into the garage, Bolan used the employee entrance to bypass the shoe shop and go directly into the waiting room. As expected, it was empty. The brothel made no money from a full sofa, only full beds.

At the back of the room was an unmarked door that opened onto a short flight of stairs that led straight to the second floor. Halfway there, Bolan passed a burned-out light fixture, and smiled for the hidden video camera. The soldier reached the top step, and as he pushed open the door, a tiny woman rushed forward to grab him around the waist.

“Colonel!” Madame Tsai said into his stomach, tightening her grasp. “My God, I never thought I’d see you again!”

“Nice to see you, Pat,” Bolan replied, prying her loose to kiss the woman on the forehead.

The owner, manager and madam of the brothel, Tsai Adina, was extremely small. She barely reached five feet, and cultivated an explosion of red curls to give her an extra few inches. Add spike high heels and she just managed to reach about five feet five. Bolan guessed that she weighed somewhere around ninety-nine pounds, but every ounce was in exactly the right place and proudly on display in a skintight bodysuit that revealed every curve. The front was cut low to show off her cleavage, along with some sort of tattoo on her right breast.

Although surrounded by a cloud of jasmine perfume, Tsai used very little makeup. She wore a slim holster at her side. The madam liked to run a peaceful business, but if there was trouble with an unruly guest, she served as the bouncer and easily convinced most people to leave with the swift application of a French police baton. The handle was only seven inches long, barely visible in a closed fist. But with a snap, it extended to twenty-seven inches of coiled steel, and proved more than sufficient to convince even a meth freak that it was time to go home. As small as she was, nobody sane ever tangled with Tsai Adina twice and lived to tell the tale.

“How are things?” Bolan asked.

“Never better.” Tsai smiled, going on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

Although Bolan had been acquainted with the woman for years, she knew him only by his various alias’s. His name changed from time to time, but she was smart enough to never ask embarrassing questions. Keeping secrets was part of her stock-in-trade.

“Got someplace where we can talk in private?” he asked.

“Trouble, John?” Tsai asked in real concern. Her face was only inches away, her eyes a deep blue, almost turquoise.

“Not for you,” he replied honestly, “and you can call me Matt Cooper.”

She looked at him hard for a few moments, then nodded. “Follow me.” She escorted him into a second waiting room.

This one was much more impressive than the one downstairs, and a lot more populated. There were several red leather couches full of men, and a few women, with everybody politely trying to not look at one another. The carpeting was thick to help mask any noise from the polishing machines downstairs.

Instrumental music played softly over disguised speakers, and the oak panel walls were heavily decorated with pictures of the female staff members in various stages of undress, along with numerous shots of celebutantes in bikinis, or less, removed from magazines.

Pushing her way through a beaded curtain, Tsai walked along a dimly lit hallway, her high heels clicking with every step. The passageway was lined with closed doors from behind which came the expected cries, moans and groans of adults indulging in the most basic of recreational activities.

Turning left, the woman proceeded through a small room filled with the night shift. Most of the prostitutes were eating dinner or working on laptops. The rest of the women were touching up their lipstick or brushing their hair.

Bolan followed Tsai into an elevator and she pressed a button for the fifth floor.

With a ping the elevator opened, revealing a big sign in the hallway that stated there was a hundred dollar fine for loud talking. More doors lined this corridor, but these were different from the working rooms downstairs. These doors had locks and peepholes.

“How many on staff these days?” Bolan asked, looking down the long corridor.

“Thirty,” Tsai replied, pulling a key out of her cleavage and unlocking a door. “Well, twenty-nine, actually. My roommate, Lu-Ann, is out with the flu.”

“The nine-month flu?”

“No, just the plain flu.” Tsai laughed and she opened the door. “Sneezing and sniffling and such.”

“Send her my best.” Stepping inside, Bolan relaxed his stance slightly when he saw the room was empty. Bookcases full of paperbacks and CD jewel cases lined the walls, and off to the side, a big-screen TV was set before a curved sofa. The screen was dark, but the DVR underneath steadily counted down as if recording something unseen. There were two beds, at opposite ends of the room, and an open door showed a small bathroom decorated with light blue tiles.

“Welcome to the inner sanctum,” Tsai said, closing the door and locking it. “No customers allowed.”