The President frowned

“Why would Shen-wa want Snyder alive… Ah. So that he’ll know what we know about the Red Star, and can make preparations against our responses in advance.”

“And Snyder might know if Shen-wa is the person behind these attacks, and possibly his location,” Brognola stated.

“Striker certainly has courage, breaking into a Red Chinese maximum-security prison just to ask a man a question.”

“Whatever gets the job done, sir,” the big Fed said as a dark shadow swept past the window.

As a second shadow appeared, Brognola dived forward and tackled the President to the floor just as something exploded outside, the titanic force of the blast rocking the White House.

Stealth Sweep

Mack Bolan ®

Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

—General Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964

No matter the obstacles, I’m determined to carry on the fight, my solemn tribute to the men and women, soldier and civilian, who give their all to protect the innocent, and strive for the ultimate goal of peace.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Oskemen Valley, Kazakhstan

Impatiently, death waited to be released.

The rumbling sky was the color of oiled steel, and a cold rain fell in a heavy mist upon the rocky landscape. Jagged granite peaks soared high enough to rip through the dark storm clouds, a thick forest of pine trees glistened with moisture, and muddy creeks gurgled along twisting ravines until leaping off cliffs to unexpectedly become waterfalls.

With a low mechanical growl, a massive diesel locomotive slowly arched over a rocky foothill, the huge engine briefly eclipsing the crescent moon as it rested on the horizon. As the long freight train began the serpentine descent into the darkness below, a dull thump sounded from one of the sealed cargo carriages, then the corrugated roof blew off to sail away into the dripping trees. A moment later, a dozen spheres abruptly rose from inside the carriage on an exhalation of compressed air. Shooting high into the misty rain, the spheres snapped out curved wings and glided away from the chuffing locomotive just as it disappeared into a brick-lined tunnel.

As they skimmed low over the treetops, the outer covering of the strange devices crumbled away like dry ash to reveal sleek falcon-shaped machines, the wings and angular bodies painted a flat, nonreflective black. There were no running lights, no exhaust, no sound of an engine, and the machines sailed through the stormy night as silent as ghosts.

Spreading out in a search pattern, they circled the rolling foothills several times until visually confirming their location, then sharply banked away from one another and streaked away in different directions at nearly subsonic speeds.

SET ON TOP of a huge pile of broken slag was the curved white dome of a Kazakhstan military radar station, the outer protective surface oddly resembling a giant golf ball. Inside, the freshly painted walls were covered with amazingly lewd centerfolds from hardcore Spanish and Ukrainian sex magazines, along with posters of the white sandy beaches of the Caspian Sea to the far west. The coast was naturally rocky; the sand had been flown in by the Soviet Union government to create a private beach for its upper echelon. But now everybody had access to the little resorts. It was one of the more benign legacies of the brutal political regime.

Wrapping a dry cloth around the worn wooden handle, Sergeant Aday Meirjan lifted the softly bubbling pot. “Tea?” he asked over a shoulder.

“Thanks!”

“Sugar?”

Hitching up his new gun belt, Private Dastan Alisher frowned. “What am I, a barbarian?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Meirjan chuckled, topping off the pair of cracked ceramic mugs.

Hanging from the domed ceiling, clusters of humming fluorescent lights brightly illuminated a curved bank of controls, glowing radar screens and squat, utilitarian radio transmitters—the softly beeping heart of the radar station. Near the exit was a bubbling samovar, the delicious aroma of freshly brewed tea mixing with the stink of ozone wafting off the high-voltage transformers powering the antiquated electrical equipment. Positioned alongside the door to a cramped washroom was a hand-carved wooden gun rack filled with an assortment of weapons: old WW II German-made 9 mm “grease guns,” a pair of American Browning Automatic rifles, crude AK-47 assault rifles and glistening new AK-105 assault rifles equipped with grenade launchers and telescopic sights. On the floor below were crates of ammunition for each weapon. It was a miniature United Nations of death-dealing man stoppers.

Listening to the gentle beeping of the radar screens, the weary soldiers leaned back in their heavily patched chairs and took appreciative sips of the strong tea, the sweet brew bringing much needed freshness and clarity to their tired minds and limbs. This had been a long shift for both of them, and their time in Fort Purgatory was not over yet.

Located in the barren western region of the nation, Oskemen Valley was a good fifty miles from the gleaming skyscrapers and raucous discotheques of Oskemen City, and an equal distance from the horribly radioactive wastelands of the old Soviet Union nuclear test sites. While the radar station carried the official title of Listening Post 47, unofficially it was better known as Purgatory, a dead zone caught between heaven and hell.

Only a decade or so earlier, the valley had been the military foundry of the Soviet Union, with dozens of busy factories and manufacturing plants turning out an endless supply of missiles, torpedoes and artillery shells. But with the collapse of the USSR, the Russian soldiers fleeing back to their homes had taken everything they could sell for quick cash on the black market. Almost overnight, Kazakhstan had become an independent nation, and a major world power, equipped with hundreds of abandoned underground silos full of thermonuclear ICBMs.

The Kazakhstan government neatly removed itself from the deadly nuclear crosshairs of the rest of the world by simply giving the United Nations all fourteen thousand of their remaining Soviet nuclear weapons. It was a political tactic nobody had ever thought of using before.

Concentrating what limited resources the country possessed on constructing schools and repairing roads, Kazakhstan still maintained a strong conventional army, with hundreds of radar stations positioned along important passes through the steep mountains to keep a careful watch on the despised Russians to the north, and the equally distrusted Chinese to the east. Every other country along its borders could be safely ignored, as they lacked the technological ability to seriously threaten Kazakhstan.

Once they’d finished their tea, Alisher refilled the mugs this time, while Meirjan checked the steadily beeping radar screens. The noise would most likely drive most civilians mad, but to a soldier it was the beautiful music of peace. The rainy skies above the valley were empty of any aircraft, rockets or incoming missiles. Although why in the name of God anybody would want to invade the isolated valley, the sergeant had no idea whatsoever. But it was his job to guard the place, not ponder the intricacies of international politics.

“Anything coming our way?” Alisher asked, passing his sergeant a steaming mug and reclaiming his seat.

“Not in the sky,” Meirjan stated confidently.

“So, tell me about your pet project,” Alisher asked. They needed to talk about something to pass the time.

“Are you really interested?” Meirjan asked, arching an eyebrow.

Alisher gave a polite smile. “No, just bored.”

Sgt. Meirjan shrugged. “Fair enough. I found the parts stuffed in a truck, ready to be hauled back to Moscow.” He rose from his chair and walked to the main console. Set among the array of standard circular screens was a hexagonal one tinted a dark blue. Luminous arms swept around the circular screens as the dish mounted on the roof steadily rotated, but on the hexagonal screen a luminous bar moved up and down in counterpoint.

“Can’t be very important if they left it behind,” Alisher stated with a sniff. “Strange looking thing.”

“The Soviets also left behind several thousand working nuclear weapons,” Meirjan reminded him brusquely.

The private snorted. “True enough. How does it work?”

“By combing an active radar beam with a passive sonic receiver, sort of like sonar.”

“What is that for, flying submarines?”

Glancing sideways, Meirjan frowned. “My guess is that the Soviets wanted something to detect American stealth bombers by the noise of their engines.”

“Oh. Kind of useless in the rain, isn’t it?”

Reluctantly, Meirjan began to agree, when suddenly the blue screen started to blare a warning tone. Stepping closer, he frowned as a pair of small objects appeared on the blue screen. They were coming in low, arching around the huge Soviet factories just like birds, but moving way too fast.

“What are those, Sarge?” Alisher asked curiously, taking a sip from the mug.

“Don’t know yet,” Meirjan growled, dropping into a chair and adjusting the controls. The Doppler radar screens were clear of any airborne traffic. But the stealth radar clearly showed incoming craft. Wiping a hand across the blue screen to dislodge anything on the glass, he blinked as more objects appeared out of nowhere. Two were diving straight for the SAM—surface-to-air missile—bunkers, whereas another pair was going to the fuel depot, and the rest were heading for the radar dishes hidden on the mountainside…and the disguised listening station.

“Those look like ARMs,” Alisher said slowly, setting down his mug. It missed the table and noisily crashed to the floor. Neither soldier noticed.

“Yes, they do,” Meirjan muttered, trying to fine-tune the controls.

“Is…is this another intelligence test for the new guy?” Alisher asked, a surge of hope in his voice. “Like that bucket of steam the colonel asked me to get last week, or that hoop snake you wanted me to kill?”

“Maybe…” Meirjan said hesitantly, a hand poised above the alarm button. The Doppler radar was still clear. The logical explanation was that these weird blips were merely a glitch in the software, or better yet, just a practical joke from one of the other watch officers stationed at the post during the day. He relaxed a little at that thought. Yes, of course. What else could they be? That made a lot more sense than a salvo of antiradar missiles appearing out of thin air!

Just then, the first pair of blips reached a radar dish on the nearby mountainside. Immediately, that screen went blank, the foggy window facing that direction brightened with a flash, and there came the sound of a distant explosion.

“Those are missiles!” Meirjan snarled, flipping the red toggle switch.

Instantly, a howling siren cut loose outside, and whole sections of the control board came alive as the SAM bunkers, and electric miniguns hidden in the forest, cycled into action. But Meirjan bitterly cursed as their targeting systems swung harmlessly past the salvo of incoming missiles. Sweet Jesus, they couldn’t find them! Every radar screen was clean and green; only the experimental stuff registered the enemy ARMs.

His heart pounding wildly, Meirjan briefly glanced at the exit door. Then he spit a virulent oath and tore the cover off the control board to try and jury-rig a connection between the Soviet X-radar and the defensive-fire control system. With luck, it would take only a few moments….

“Red flag! Red flag! HQ, this is forty-seven, we have hostiles,” Alisher crisply said into a microphone, his hands quickly adjusting the controls on the old radio. “Repeat, we have—”

Just then, the entire universe became filled with white-hot pain for the two soldiers, but it lasted for only a second.

SPREADING RAPIDLY across the misty sky, the missiles slammed into the open concrete bunkers, detonating all of the surface-to-air missiles in the honeycomb launcher. The roiling explosion ripped the fortification apart, setting off the rest of the missiles, supposedly safe behind a fireproof wall. The combination blast ripped the night apart, the halo of shrapnel spreading out for ten thousand yards.

As sleepy soldiers stumbled about the barracks, grabbing boots and Kalashnikov assault rifles, another machine crashed to the ground directly before the front door, the explosion blocking the entrance. Then two more crashed in through the glass windows and detonated in midair. The fiery blast blew a hurricane of body parts out the windows only an instant before the massive stores of ammunition in the basement levels were triggered.

The roof was designed to withstand a direct hit from World War II artillery shells, but the new bricks walls weren’t and they actually bulged out slightly before shattering into total annihilation. Chunks of men, masonry and machines sprayed across the landscape, the civilian cars in the nearby parking lot peppered by steaming pieces of their former owners.

Only moments later, the remaining four SAM bunkers were obliterated, closely followed by the fuel depot, the rooftop Gatling guns, the main armory, and then a parking garage draped in heavy canvas. Briefly, the array of T-80 tanks, and a hundred other assorted military vehicles were exposed to the elements before the winged machines streaked in through the open sides of the structure to slam directly into the armored door protecting the massive stores of shells for the military behemoths.

Accelerating constantly, the first flying machine slammed full-force into the resilient barrier, merely denting it slightly and setting off a howling alarm. Then a second one hit, widening the dent into a breech, and the third punched through the seriously weakened door. As it fell aside, three more of the black machines swooped inside, moving almost too fast to see. A startled corporal wildly fired his AK-101 at the bizarre invader flying by his post, but missed it completely.

“Hello, headquarters?” a lieutenant sputtered into a telephone. “This is Oskemen Valley, and we are under attack by—”

Reaching the main storeroom, the machines found their targets, held a brief electronic conference and then promptly exploded. A deadly halo of burning thermite and stainless-steel buckshot filled the interior, killing a dozen more soldiers and rupturing thousands of rounds of assorted ammunition stored for the mothballed Soviet tanks. The first series of explosions ripped away the fireproof curtains and set off the sprinklers. Then the hammering concussion and tidal wave of white-hot shrapnel reached the main stockpile of military ordnance.

In a stentorian thunderclap, the entire five-story garage was torn from its foundation and lifted into the misty rain on a staggering column of writhing flame and black smoke.

Fifty miles away, in Oskemen City, an amateur astronomer stationed on the roof of the Amanzholov University caught a glimpse of the rising mushroom cloud in her telescope, and fell to her knees, begging for deliverance from the coming apocalypse.

After only a few minutes, a dozen raging bonfires dotted the rugged mountain valley. Everything of any military value was gone, completely eradicated with pinpoint accuracy. However, the roads and bridges were unharmed, along with the huge abandoned Soviet Union weapons factories. Only the windows were gone, the dirty glass shattered by the powerful shock waves.

As the military fires raged unchecked, a warm air rushed through the dark buildings, blowing away the years of accumulated dust from the forges, cranes and conveyor belts sitting patiently in the darkness….

CHAPTER ONE

Baltimore, Maryland

A rosy dawn was just beginning to crest above the horizon in the east, but the shoreline highway was still dark, the heavy traffic an incandescent river, an endless stream of headlights and brake lights. The expensive cars streamed by, the yawning drivers hidden behind tinted windows.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, changed lanes as he downshifted gears. “Are we talking about a ‘stolen arrow’ scenario?” he asked, glancing at the cell phone clipped onto the polished mahogany dashboard. A newspaper lay on the passenger seat, the checkered grip of a big pistol just barely visible beneath it.

“I can’t say more on an open line,” the voice of Hal Brognola replied over the stereo speakers positioned around the luxury car.

“Understood,” Bolan growled. “See you in fifteen.”

“Make it ten,” Brognola countered, and disconnected.

Taking the next off ramp, Bolan merged into the city traffic.

A few minutes later, the soldier turned a corner and saw the flashing neon sign for the Blue Moon Café. It spite of its proximity to the luxurious Crystal City Mall, this was a genuine, old-fashioned, greasy spoon diner that never closed. The coffee was perfect for degreasing tractors, and the pot roast could be used to patch tank armor, but the chili was spectacular. Best of all, the customers were a wide assortment of humanity, so the occasional predator went unnoticed. Bolan had met Brognola there on a few occasions.

A handful of cars stood in the parking lot, most of them positioned directly on the white lines of a space to make sure nobody dinged the smooth finish of the doors. Parking the sleek McLaren away from the other vehicles, Bolan turned off the softly purring engine and got out, deliberately leaving the keys in the ignition and the door unlocked. Crystal City wasn’t the best neighborhood, and he knew that by morning the expensive car would be gone, stolen and stripped into parts, completely erasing his tracks, and the vehicle’s connection to the Colombian drug lord he had permanently borrowed it from the previous day. If there was one thing the Executioner had come to rely upon, it was the insatiable avarice of humanity.

Pausing for a moment, Bolan patted his windbreaker to memorize the exact position of every weapon he carried: a switchblade knife in his pants pocket, a Beretta 93-R slung in shoulder leather under his left arm, a .357 Magnum Desert Eagle under the right, spare ammo clips in the pockets. Satisfied, he moved across the parking lot, his shoes crunching on the loose gravel.

A swatch of bright light streamed from the entrance of the diner, and as Bolan approached, the shadows near a rusty garbage bin shifted.

“Hey, mister, is this yours?” a raggedy old man asked, proffering a shiny alligator skin wallet. “I found it near the curb, and—”

Instantly stepping aside, Bolan felt something move through the darkness exactly where his head had just been. Brushing back his windbreaker, he drew the 93-R.

“Move along,” he whispered in a voice from beyond the grave.

Hesitantly, the two men paused, lead pipes clenched in their scarred hands. Then they looked into his cold eyes, and quickly eased away until the shadows swallowed them whole.

Holstering his weapon again, Bolan then walked around the Blue Moon diner twice, purely as appreciation, to make sure no professionals had it under surveillance. Those two fools were of no real concern, just a couple of muggers.

Going inside, Bolan found the diner packed with people hunched over tables and industriously eating. There was a constant clatter of silverware, a dishwasher chugged somewhere unseen, and a radio thumped out a stream of golden disco music from yesterday. The smoky air was rich with an enticing mixture of smells, including coffee.

Bolan took a table in the corner with his back to the red-and-white tile wall, getting a direct view of both the front and rear doors.

After a few minutes, a waitress walked to his table with an order pad. She was an aging beauty with titian hair that came from a bottle, and magnificent cleavage that seemed natural. Her name tag said Lucinda. The plastic had been cracked and repaired with tape.

“What’ll you have?” she asked, making the sentence one word.

“Chili and coffee, both hot,” Bolan said.

Lucinda tried to push the Midnight Special, but Bolan pushed back, and they didn’t quite come to blows before she relented. Tucking a well-chewed pencil behind an ear, she walked away in defeat, dodging tables and the fumbling hands of drunks.

The diner was busy, the customers a mixture of truck drivers, college students, pimps, clerks, tourists and a couple of slick willies who might as well be wearing a placard to announce their profession as the independent salesmen of recreational pharmaceuticals. Several of the pimps had some of their female employees along as company, so there was a lot of dyed hair and bare skin on display, but everybody was cool. The Blue Moon was neutral territory, the Switzerland of the Maryland underworld.

A scrawny Latino boy, who seemed far too young to be working at that hour, came over with a steaming mug of coffee, and got Bolan started just as a couple of state troopers entered by the front door. They sauntered past the soldier, joking with the fat guy behind the counter, and ordered some meat loaf sandwiches to go.

The cops departed just as Lucinda returned with his chili, along with a basket of sourdough rolls that Bolan hadn’t ordered, but deeply appreciated. He thanked her, and she accidentally-on-purpose bumped him with her bare thigh a few times before realizing that Bolan was simply being nice and not making a pass. Lucinda grudgingly accepted the rejection and walked away.

Not his type, Bolan noted, using a napkin to clean the spoon. However, even if he had been interested, he still would have done nothing. There were certain people in the world that a wise man only treated with respect: the very old, the very young, and anybody who would be left alone with your food for a significant length of time.

As expected, the chili was delicious, rich and meaty. Taking his time, Bolan ate slowly, keeping a close watch on the clock hanging slightly askew on the badly painted wall. The ten-minute mark had come and gone, and he was getting ready to go hunt for his friend when Hal Brognola strolled in through the front door.

Instead of his usual three-piece suit, the stocky Fed was wearing a loose vest, a red flannel shirt, denims and work boots to try to blend into the neighborhood. More important, his hair was mussed, and there were scratches on his cheek.

To Bolan, the man looked haggard, as if he was chronically short on sleep. But that was an occupational hazard in D.C.

Slung over Brognola’s shoulder was a laptop that probably cost more than what most people in the diner made in a month. As he went past the other customers, some of the pimps viewed the device with marked interest. Then they saw the Justice man glance back, and quickly returned to their meals.

“Sorry I’m late,” Brognola said, taking the opposite chair at the table. “I ran into an old friend.”

“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.

“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.”

“Just friends?”

“Just friends, and damn few of those.”

“I’m honored.”

Although quite small, the room was very clean, and clearly not designed to entertain clients. There was an easy chair by the window, and a laptop was humming. In the corner was a dresser piled high with folded laundry.

“Okay, who’s trying to kill you?” Tsai asked, going to the liquor cabinet and starting to make drinks.

“Best not to ask,” Bolan stated, sliding of his jacket. “None for me, thanks.”

“No?”

“Working.”

Glancing in a mirror, Tsai arched an eyebrow at the weapons on display, but said nothing.

“I need some guns.”

“More than those?” the madam asked.

“Better ones, if possible.”

“Well, I have a fairly decent armory in the office,” she said, thoughtfully biting a lip. “But I know where you can get more. Military stuff, right?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, thought so. Well, the Tong hasn’t given me any problems for years, but I like to stay prepared.”

“Very wise.”

“I’ll send a girl to bring a map.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else?”

“A boat, small, fast, disposable.”

Turning to the left, Tsai saw the electric glow of China in the far distance and opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind.

“When do you want it?” she asked softly.

“As soon as possible.”

“Then I had better get moving.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Yangtze River Valley, Red China

“No! Please!” Colonel Weng Pei pleaded. “I had to act. Choi Lei at the CIA station said that a specialist was coming from America to deal with something big. He had to be eliminated.”

“Shut up,” Major Shen-wa Fen muttered, slashing his knife along the man’s throat.

As a torrent of hot blood gushed forth, the major pushed his gurgling commander out of the hovering Z-8 transport helicopter.

“You contemptible fool,” Shen-wa said in annoyance, cleaning the blade on a rag as he watched the hurtling body vanish into the thick forest below. “Who told him to move on the intel provided by our insider and lay a trap for the CIA agent? I want the Americans stonewalled, learning nothing as they rush about Hong Kong from one false lead to another until they meet the Lucky Lady!”

“Mice in a maze,” Sergeant Ming Bohai rumbled from the cockpit, angling the military helicopter away from the rolling forest and back toward home base.

Sheathing the blade, Shen-wa nodded. “Exactly! But now…”

Annoyed, he looked out the window, lost in his private thoughts. Was the plan compromised? He didn’t think so, which was lucky, because at this point it would be nearly impossible to stop. After five long years of planning, everything was dovetailing into place, and he wouldn’t allow anything to get in his way. Certainly not some hot-snot nephew of a politician, a fat fool who had never fired a weapon in combat, and earned his rank by throwing elaborate parties and kissing ass.

No wonder the world hates China, Shen-wa noted, leaning back in the jump seat. We’re a joke. As corrupt as the Americans and as decadent as the Russians.

Pulling a small ironwood pipe from the breast pocket of his uniform, Shen-wa tucked it contentedly into his mouth. Sadly, he couldn’t light the pipe, as smoking was strictly forbidden on board the helicopter. Something about the smoke bothering the advanced electronics. Still, having the stem between his teeth gave him no small measure of comfort, and it was an aid to clear thinking. How had a CIA agent been dispatched to Hong Kong so fast? What did the spy agency know?

Unlike most of the executive operatives in Red Star, the major was a tall, handsome man with perfectly combed hair, and the smile of a Beijing movie star. He always spoke softly, rarely above a whisper, yet combat veterans jumped as if he were cracking a whip. Nobody in the Central Military Command really understood how the major achieved the effect, not even the president, and every attempt to duplicate it had failed miserably. The aura of command radiating from Shen-wa was a natural talent, and had caused quite a lot of resentment in the regular army. His transfer from counterintelligence into the covert division of the Red Star had been as expected as rain in the spring—normal, natural and to everyone’s benefit.

“Sir, can the damage be repaired?” Ming asked, swinging away from the new high-tension powerline towers jutting up from the forest like the skeleton hands of dead robots.

“Most certainly, old friend,” Shen-wa replied, smiling around the pipe. “We’re fine. For the moment, at least. Your prompt action in telling me about this saved us all. It has helped save China itself.”

“Just doing my job, sir,” Ming demurred, leveling the helicopter so as not to draw unwanted attention from the workers below.

Childhood hadn’t been kind to the sergeant in many ways. It gave him a face from hell, and had started him on the twisted path to his present employment. Unusual for a race known for its rather compact stature, Ming was a hulking giant, well over seven feet tall and with shoulders as broad as a Tibetan ox. His fingers were so large he had to remove the trigger guard from his service pistol to operate the weapon, yet he flew helicopters with smooth precision.

“We’re all just doing our jobs,” Shen-wa said, lost in thought. The CIA…the CIA…why did that keep echoing in his mind?

Lost in contemplation, he made no further comments as the sergeant expertly piloted the helicopter over the small town of Sandooping, and then proceed up the river toward the gigantic Three Gorges Dam.

Finished only a few years earlier, the Three Gorges facility was the largest dam in the world, with twenty-seven hydroelectric generators fully capable of supplying power to half of China. Once, he had read the exact figures of how much voltage it generated, but then promptly forgot the number. He wasn’t overly interested in statistics, only results. The dam had cost thirteen billion euros to build, and so it had been relatively easy for him to siphon off a decent chunk of the funds for Project Keyhome.

The Three Gorges Dam was so huge that it had a series of locks alongside, elevators for cargo ships, and could lift entire oceangoing vessels from the lower runoff located at the bottom, to the vast lake on top. No other dam in the world could do that, and the fact was a constant source of pride for the major. The Chinese had always been creators, inventing black powder, rockets, the compass, and a host of other items that made modern life possible.

And soon they would bring freedom to every civilized nation on the planet, Shen-wa added mentally. Whether they wanted it or not. But first China had to clean its own house.

Receiving clearance from the air traffic controller inside the control tower atop the massive dam, the sergeant landed the helicopter directly on one of three circles set aside for emergency transport.

Even before the sergeant had shut down the complex machine, Major Shen-wa had exited the helicopter and walked far enough away that he could light his pipe.

“Orders, sir?” Ming asked, bending low as he walked under the slowing blades.

“You better go and report the terrible accident to your political officer, Sergeant,” Shen-wa directed. “Now remind me again, the colonel was drunk, as usual, and fell off the helicopter….” He paused expectantly.

“A hundred miles to the north, near the abandoned missile base?”

“No, better make it the south, near the rock quarry. That will be much harder to search.”

“Yes, sir. A hundred miles to the south, near the old rock quarry,” Ming replied, managing to look contrite. “We tried to land to see if there was anything we could do, but the terrain in the area made it impossible.”

“And we didn’t radio in immediately for help because…”

“We couldn’t! The colonel had ordered a halo of full radio silence around the dam.”

Removing the pipe, Shen-wa smiled. “Exactly. Such a shame.”

“Sir, what if they don’t believe me?”

“Then kill them all and throw the bodies into the gorge. In fact—” he gave a hard smile “—do it anyway. It’s time that we took over this facility. I’m tired of listening to these cowardly paper-jugglers.”

“Yes, sir!” Ming replied eagerly, giving a fast salute.

Shen-wa almost smiled at that, then it hit him. Less than thirty-six hours had passed since the attack on Kazakhstan. There was no way the CIA could have dispatched an agent to China in so short a time period. The colonel knew the bureaucracy of the Agency was horrendous. Whomever Colonel Weng had tried to capture was merely somebody pretending to be a CIA agent. That was the only logical answer.

Exhaling a long stream of smoke, Shen-wa grunted. The old bastard may have done the project a good deed, accidentally uncovering an unknown enemy before he could get close.

“Something wrong, sir?” Ming asked in concern.

“Yes and no,” Shen-wa replied, removing the pipe. “After you terminate everybody in the political office, go to Hong Kong and find out who it was that entered the island. He isn’t a CIA agent, and we need to know who this man actually works for.”

“Perhaps the American…ah…NAS?”

“NSA,” Shen-wa corrected. “But no, they are code breakers. More paper-pushers. This was the act of somebody with blood in their veins. A professional. A killer.”

“Perhaps the Mossad.”

“Yes, that could very well be,” Shen-wa answered slowly. “The Israelis are very good at what they do, almost as good as us!” He chuckled, and the sergeant joined in for the sake of solidarity.

“Find this man,” Shen-wa said. “Question him thoroughly. Then poorly hide the body, and blame it on the Russians.”

“What if he is Russian, sir?”

“Blame it on them anyway. Who can keep track of their internal politics, eh?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Ming replied with a crisp salute.

Puffing on his pipe, Major Shen-wa watched as the sergeant strode away, loosening the massive .50-caliber Norinco pistol holstered at his side. Just for a fleeting moment, Shen-wa almost felt sorry for the poor bastard, but then it was gone, a random thought lost on the breeze.

Leaving the small heliport, Shen-wa walked to an iron door and waved his identification card before the scanner. There came a subtle hum, and the door unlocked, then cycled open to the sound of working hydraulics.

Stepping inside, the major walked past a huge soundproof room full of technicians busily operating the complex controls of the gargantuan power station. A pretty woman at one of the consoles smiled at him in passing, and Shen-wa politely touched his cap in reply. Lieutenant Lee Jade was a distant cousin, and he had gotten her the job in case he needed some insider information about the daily operations of the dam. So far, he hadn’t, but it was nice having family nearby, anyway. After all, family was why he was trying to help China conquer the world.

Reaching a private elevator, Shen-wa showed his identification card to the wall scanner once more, then pressed his hand on a glowing sensor plate. There came a slight tingle as the plate sent a few volts of electricity through his fingers to make sure the hand was still alive, and not detached by an enemy spy in order to facilitate entry. This was another Chinese invention, although he had heard rumors that the West had also created a similar device, for the exact same reasons.

It was a very long ride down to the bottom level, and Shen-wa emerged from the elevator in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Tapping out the glowing ashes into a trash container, he then slowly walked toward a sandbag nest with two soldiers stationed behind the waist-high barrier. They looked strong and fit, even though one was clearly much older than the other. Both men were in full dress uniform, heavily armed and wearing class four body armor. Field soldiers got class two armor, and special forces wore class three. Class four was much too heavy to wear in combat, but the bulky armor was perfect for soldiers who could sit down and rest for most of the day.

“Major!” a young private called out crisply, snapping a strange weapon to his chest in lieu of saluting. The barrel of the weapon was ridiculously large, the ammunition clip even bigger, and there was a bandoleer of 35 mm shells draped across his chest, with two more tucked into loops at his side where he normally would have had a sidearm.

“So, it finally arrived,” Shen-wa said softly, looking over the QLB 35 mm grenade launcher. “Yes, Major!”

“And you passed the mandatory testing?”

“Of course, Major!” the young private stated proudly. “I can fire the QLB in my sleep, and repair it in the dark!”

Hefting his own QBZ assault rifle, the older private grunted in acknowledgment. “He actually can, Major. I’ve seen him at the gun range. Fast. Faster even than Sergeant Ming.”

“Show me,” Shen-wa commanded, pointing down the corridor. “Destroy that light, third from the end.”

In a blur of motion, the young private crouched as he swung up the oversize weapon and fired. Hot smoke and flame belched from the muzzle, and a hundred feet away a light fixture exploded into debris, leaving a fist-size dent in the steel wall.

“Why nonexplosive rounds?” Shen-wa asked sternly.

“Only the first two are solid,” the young private replied crisply. “The next three release hundreds of razor-sharp fléchette rounds. The last shell in the clip is high-explosive, armor piercing.” He grinned. “In case an invader is also wearing body armor.”

“Very wise. Carry on,” Shen-wa said, walking around a corner. Just a few words now and then, a touch of courtesy, and the troops would die for him. It was a good investment.

An iron gate closed off this section of the corridor, and the major again pressed his hand to a sensor plate. The gate unlocked with a clang, and he went through, closing it tight behind. Electronics were all well and good, but he would always put his real trust in simple cold steel.

An unmarked door was at the end of a short corridor, and sitting at a plain wooden desk nearby was a mature woman in a long civilian dress, the flowing black fabric decorated with colorful flowers. A plate on the desktop had her name in both Mandarin and Cantonese. She was industriously typing away on a computer keyboard, and looked up at his approach.

“She’s waiting in the office,” Wu Cassandra said without any preamble, not pausing in her work.

“Thank you, Miss Wu,” he said, walking past and opening the door, which gave a musical chime.

Across the office, a tall woman in a tan outfit looked up in surprise at the noise, then jumped to her feet and gave a salute. “Good evening, sir!” she cried out.

There was a canvas duffel bag on the floor near her chair, along with a nylon travel bag locked with a red security seal. Shen-wa recognized it as a weapons kit. “At ease, Zhang,” he said, closing the door.

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Zhang Meiron replied uneasily, but stayed erect. It had been a long flight from Taiwan, and she was more than a little tired. However, she was also grimly determined not to show any weakness before the dreaded old man.

A veteran of numerous wars, the major had helped create the Red Star, and had personally terminated over a hundred enemy spies during his long career. It was rumored that he had even helped design the August 1st Building, the headquarters for the entire Chinese military. The only reason Major Shen-wa held so a low rank, instead of being in charge of the CMC, was that he was a maverick, a loner who hated politics, and disliked obeying the rules, being much more interested in getting results.

Just like me, Zhang thought proudly.

Six feet tall, and built like a professional weight lifter, Zhang found that nothing in the world easily accommodated her. Beds were too short, doorways too low, shirts too tight, and romance was mostly a matter of finding somebody drunk at a bar, and leaving quietly in the morning before finding out his name. Only the military had accepted her with open arms, in spite of its many reservations to a woman serving in combat.

Automatically cycling closed, the armored door to the office shut with a muffled boom.

“Why are you out of uniform and dressed like a civilian?” Shen-wa demanded.

“Sir, I…I was told to remain inconspicuous in my travel here,” she replied.

“Logical and reasonable,” he agreed, starting across the office.

Resembling a research library, the metal walls of the domed room were lined with bookcases stuffed with bound technical manuals. There were no personal effects anywhere in sight. No sports trophies, family pictures, knickknacks or executive toys. It was neat and impersonal, a place of work, nothing more.

The single humanizing aspect was a small black lacquered cabinet set under a large flag of China. The cabinet was made in the style of the Hung Dynasty of the fourth Century BCE, and whatever had been its original purpose, it was now well stocked with liquor bottles, glasses, an automatic ice dispenser and a tobacco humidor.

“So, how much do you know about this project?” Shen-wa asked, going to the liquor cabinet.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then why did you agree to the assignment?” he asked pointedly, making a stiff drink of whiskey, then taking a seat behind a large redwood desk. Covered with piles of reports, and computer monitors, the desk was set kitty-corner to the rest of the room, so that his back was protected by the plain steel walls.

Zhang paused uncertainly. “Because I wish to work with you, sir,” she replied honestly. “You’re a living legend!”

“No matter what the project is?”

“My faith in you is absolute!”

“How touching,” Shen-wa whispered, almost smiling. “Make yourself a drink, Lieutenant. Relax.”

“Not while on duty, sir.”

Taking a sip from his glass, Shen-wa said nothing.

Suddenly, Zhang realized that she was being tested, not merely interviewed, and wondered what would happen if she failed.

“You’re smarter than you look,” Shen-wa said, turning on a monitor. “Very good. I suspected as much. You hide your intelligence to catch an opponent by surprise.”

“It is a man’s world,” Zhang stated, keeping the emotion from her voice. “A woman is either smart or pretty. Nature made my choice for me.”

Clearly, that confused him. “But you are both,” he said hesitantly.

She scowled, but said nothing. Did he really mean that?

“Ah. I see that we disagree.” He smiled, typing briefly on the keyboard. “Good! I like that. Now sit down. I prefer to talk at eye level.”

She wavered, wondering if this was another test.

“That was a direct order, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” she replied, sitting down and stretching her long legs. She was in traveling clothes of a loose tan jacket, white blouse, pleated tan skirt and flats. High heels made her long legs look good, but the additional height only served to alienate her more from the rest of scurrying humanity.

Briefly, Shen-wa glanced at her legs in frank appreciation, then went back to the monitor.

Pleased with his controlled reactions, Zhang warily studied the officer behind the desk. Major Shen-wa Fen was old, but clearly in excellent health, his face and hands braided with muscle. Her guess was that he was a student of kung fu, probably Southern style, from the appearance of his fingers. The bent pinkie was a dead giveaway to those who knew what to look for. Old, but fast and accurate. That would make him a very deadly opponent, indeed. It would seem that the major also liked to attack with surprise. She liked that and felt a growing warmth in her stomach. She liked that a lot.

In spite of the outside environment, Shen-wa had a deep tan, and his thick black hair had natural wings of silver at the temples. There was no other word for it but dashing.

Then she saw his eyes looking directly at her face in mild disapproval, and felt a chill. Oh yes, she knew that look well enough. She had seen it a thousand times before in combat zones across the world. It was the face of a killer, as cold and merciless as an open grave. Briefly, Zhang wondered what he would be like in bed.

Thinking along similar lines himself, Shen-wa grinned as a report scrolled on the monitor about a drone attack on the Tokyo computer complex that controlled the coastal defense guns for Japan.

“Sir?” Zhang asked.

“One moment,” he replied curtly. Ah, the backup computers in Osaka had also been destroyed, along with a busful of technicians racing to effect emergency repairs. More food for the demons of hell, he thought. There could never be enough dead Japanese, but it was merely the beginning. France would be next, then Russia again, followed by the United States.

“Ahem, sir?”

He looked up with a broad smile. “Yes?”

“When did Colonel Weng die?” Zhang asked, crossing her legs at the ankles.

“How could you possibly know that he…” Shen-wa scowled. Was she testing him now?

“Weng is—was—the head of security for the Three Gorges Dam,” Zhang stated with a neutral expression. “If you need another, then he must have failed in some gross manner involving your private project, and now you require a replacement. Why else would you summon me?”

Templing his fingers, he openly smiled. “Publicly, he fell out of a Z-8 transport.”

“And actually…?”

“I slit his throat and threw him out alive. The man acted foolishly, and may have alerted enemy forces to my plans long before I was ready to openly act against them.”

“Is the project compromised?” she asked, leaning back in the chair. Her jacket spread wide, exposing a holstered 9 mm Norinco pistol and spare ammunition clips.

“Not at the moment. But for want of a nail…” He made a vague gesture.

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “I know the allusion, sir. Will my first duty be disposing of the body?”

“Already taken care of by Sergeant Ming. You will meet him later at the general staff meeting tonight. However, at the moment I need you to take over all matters involving security for Project Keyhome.”

“I accept,” she said.

“Excellent!” He rose to offer a hand.

She stepped closer and they shook, maintaining the hold for much longer than necessary. They could each feel a bond start to form between them that was more than just impersonal business.

“Do I need to know what Sky Tiger is?” Zhang said, reclaiming her chair. “Or would it be better for me to work in the dark?”

“It would probably facilitate matters if you were fully informed,” Shen-wa said, reaching for a thick security folder. He was starting to like this bold woman more and more.

Pressing his thumb to the metal clasp, Shen-wa waited until it hummed twice, announcing that the explosive charge was deactivated, then tossed it onto the desk.

Uncrossing her legs, she leaned forward to pick up the massive folder, and started riffling the pages. As her fingers touched the paper, it turned bright red at that exact spot.

“Let me summarize,” Shen-wa said, excited, and slightly embarrassed, by the brief glimpse down her blouse. Her breasts were small but firm, and the lieutenant was obviously not wearing any sort of undergarment.

“Not necessary, sir,” she replied, speed reading through the pile of reports and documents. “Is…is this already in operation? Wait…yes, I can see that it is from the dates the cargo boxes were shipped.” She looked up, her eyes bright with excitement. “I gather the drones are a success.”

“Eminently so!” Shen-wa beamed proudly. “Every few hours a new flight is unleashed to secure a critical bridge, destroy a vital airfield or assassinate a potential troublemaker. In two days, we will be ready to move.”

“And then…?”

Tapping the keyboard, he started the printer humming, and said nothing in reply.

Sexy or not, he was a reticent bastard, Zhang thought. “What about the CMC in the August 1st Building?” she asked, spreading her legs on impulse to see if the major would notice.

Privately, she was sexually excited by the sheer force of the man and didn’t care in the least about the vast difference in their ages. Zhang had no objection to going to bed with a superior officer. She did that often, but only after being assigned to a project. Never before. She didn’t trade sex for advancement, as some female officers did. That was an insult to the uniform.

“The August 1st Building?” Shen-wa muttered, slowly returning his gaze to her face. This time he didn’t seem embarrassed in the least. “Once I inform the Central Military Command of these events, the fat occupants of the August 1st Building will have no choice but to comply with my plan and attack at full force in all directions!” He gave a cold grin. “Soon, the West will be crushed, and China will finally be the dominate military force on the entire planet!”

“As we should be,” Zhang acknowledged, placing the folder aside. “However, sir, there will be opposition.”

“And that is where you come in, Lieutenant,” Shen-wa whispered, the strobing light of the monitor highlighting his craggy features in stark relief.

“Sir?”

The printer stopped humming and Shen-wa passed her a photograph. “After the staff meeting, have Sergeant Ming find this enemy agent. He was nearly apprehended in Hong Kong by one of our operatives working as a cabdriver, but we both know what he will do next.”

“Of course. The obvious choice is Macao, so he will not try there. I would think that a clever man would attempt to sneak into China through the city of Guangzhou, what they call Canton. The heavy industry there will offer good cover,” she replied, then frowned. “No, that is the location of Red Star field office. There will be agents everywhere. Instead, he’ll try for…Fufa, on the coast, where there will only be the harbor patrol and a few police to worry about.”

Debating the matter, she gave a nod. “Yes, Fufa. The heavy industry there would offer good cover for a stranger. It is the more logical location.”

“He would have no reason to check Fakkah?”

“None, sir.”

“Good. And not even an American would be bold enough to go anywhere near Guangzhou,” Shen-wa said, making a short note on a sheet of sticky yellow paper with a stubby pencil. “Have Ming find the man, and detain him.”

“Kill him?”

“Not until he talks first,” Shen-wa said, gesturing with the pencil. “If he is CIA, I wish to know everything about all the other CIA operatives in mainland China—who they are, locations, specific goals and such.”

“So that we can remove them.”

“So that you can, Lieutenant,” he said, attaching the note to the side of the monitor.

Slowly, she smiled.

CHAPTER FIVE

Kowloon District, Hong Kong

Thick greasy water slapped listlessly against bare rocks along the jagged coastline, and liberal amounts of broken glass sprinkled along the weedy beach seriously discouraged any potential swimmers.

Situated on a rock jetty, the old warehouse was isolated from the rest of the busy dockyard by a sprawling junkyard of smashed cars. The huge mounds of rusting metal and cracked fiberglass effectively hid what happened at the private warehouse from the view of the general public, and the police. A tall wooden fence topped with razor wire kept out the curious, while hidden security cameras and teams of armed guards kept out everybody else.

The Amsterdam Import-Export Company was a well-known cover for Leland Ortega, the largest arms dealer in all of Hong Kong. Half Spanish and half Chinese, Ortega specialized in relaying a wide assortment of death dealers back and forth between Asia and South America. The Chinese street gangs loved the Imbel 12-gauge pistols from Brazil, possibly the strangest weapon Bolan had ever encountered. The soldier had been planning on visiting Ortega sometime to shut him down permanently. However, this day he was at the warehouse for a different purpose: supplies. And he was there to help himself.

As Tsai Adina had promised, Bolan had acquired almost everything he wanted in the warehouse, along with a few wholly unexpected items, such as a brand-new Martin. That had been his first acquisition, the second being an old friend, a .44 AutoMag. The monstrous pistol was a real man stopper, the staggering recoil so difficult to control that the weapon was no longer in production.

Unfortunately, he didn’t locate any ammunition for the gargantuan weapon, but he brought it along anyway, just in case he passed by a heavy machine gun on the way out. Only a handful of shells for the AutoMag could make a real difference in any fight.

There also weren’t any Beretta 93-R machine pistols to be found, his preferred sidearm. But he had located several brand-new Glock 18 pistols. Identical to a semiautomatic Glock 17, the 18 was a true machine pistol, and discharged all thirty-two 9 mm rounds contained in an extended clip in just under two seconds. The recoil was bone-jarring, but a lot worse for anybody on the receiving end of that metal storm.

However, Bolan had been able to load only a single clip for the weapon when Ortega unexpectedly returned.

“Guards! Guards!” Ortega shouted, triggering a spray of 12-gauge cartridges from the big Atchisson autoshotgun cradled in his hands.

Dodging between tall stacks of crates, Bolan got hit in the back by the spray of double-0 buckshot, but his ballistic vest easily stopped the pellets from reaching flesh. However, the brutal impacts still felt as if he were being pounded by a rain of hammers. Rolling behind another crate, Bolan was startled to see an open briefcase full of .44 ammunition boxes. Quickly, he grabbed several to stuff into his war bag.

Wisely deciding it was time to go, he activated a remote-control unit attached to his belt, and pressed the detonator button. The muffled bang sounded from the direction of the utility room, and every light in the warehouse winked out.

“Son of a bitch!” Ortega bellowed even louder than before, blindly firing the autoshotgun into the darkness.

Ricochets bounced off the nearby concrete wall, and Bolan grunted as a spray of buckshot again hit him in the back.

Activating his night-vision goggles, Bolan stood and poured his last four rounds from the Glock pistol directly into the chest of the fat man.

Wildly firing back, Ortega grunted at the arrival of the 9 mm rounds, but didn’t fall.

Dropping the spent magazine, Bolan ducked behind a crate of G-11 caseless rifles. Quickly, he thumbed loose rounds into the clip. Clearly, the arms dealer was also wearing a bulletproof vest under his clothing. Or maybe even some of that military body armor Bolan had discovered on the second floor of the old warehouse.

The waterproof war bag slung across his back was heavy with a set of the armor, along with several blocks of C-4 plastic explosives. Bolan had known this third trip to the warehouse was pushing his luck, but the chance to get some plastique had been too good to pass up. Unlike Ortega, the agents of Red Star were famous for being excellent shots.

Slamming in the clip, Bolan jacked the slide and reached around the crate to put several rounds into a fire extinguisher attached to the far wall. As the pressurized container exploded, a cursing Ortega staggered into view, trying to wipe the stinging foam from his face.

Without remorse, Bolan fired twice more. Gushing blood, Ortega staggered backward, dropping the Atchisson to grab his ruined throat with both hands. Mercifully, Bolan put another round into the forehead of the dying man, and Leland Ortega finally paid the ultimate price for his life of crime.

Just then a door was slammed open and out ran five large Asian men wearing body armor, night-vision goggles, and carrying mini-Uzi machine pistols. The boxy weapons were equipped with coffee-can-size sound suppressors almost as large as the machine pistols themselves.

Grunting at the sight of the weapons, Bolan shot one of the guards in the armpit, So, they wanted to keep things quiet, eh? Bad for them, good for him.

As the guard fell, red blood arched away from the ruptured artery, and the rest of the guards quickly pulled back the arming bolts on the top of their weapons.

“Lu ta!” a large man with a mustache commanded, hosing the dark warehouse with a stream of small-caliber rounds.

The other men did the same, and ricochets filled the darkness, splinters flying off the wooden crates in every direction.

Quickly, Bolan thumbed more loose rounds into a magazine, then eased it into the Glock 18. Standing, he emptied the entire magazine, and one of the guards was slammed backward by the hellstorm of 9 mm rounds. All eighteen rounds cycled in under two seconds, and two of the guards were nearly torn to pieces. Dark blood splattered the concrete wall, and the Executioner ducked out of sight again as what was left of the men slumped in stages to the dirty floor.

Someone called out over the chattering of the weapons.

It sounded like the man with the mustache again, and Bolan now marked him as the new boss. The king was dead; long live the king.

Another man answered, a touch of nervous laughter marring the response.

Staying safely behind the heavy crate, Bolan opened the war bag and rummaged among the assorted weapons and high explosives. Locating what he wanted, he pulled out a couple of squat canisters. The British stun grenades were relatively harmless, only making an extremely loud explosion when detonated, along with a brief brilliant flash. They were designed to incapacitate an enemy, not kill. Humane weapons, if there was such a thing. However, in the right hands…

Pulling the pins, Bolan flipped three of the canisters high and wide over the crate, then charged for the exit.

Instantly, the guards started shooting, but a heavy wooden workbench prevented the .22 rounds from reaching him.

Moving low and fast, Bolan took out two of the guards with leg shots under the workbench. As they fell into view, he ended their lives with a single 9 mm round to the forehead, then hopped over the still body of the first guard he had killed upon entering the warehouse, and hit the exit door at a full run.

As he burst through, an alarm went off, but it made no difference now. Zigzagging across the junkyard, Bolan tasted fresh salt air and saw the shimmering harbor a split second before the stun grenades detonated.

Thunder and light filled the interior of the warehouse, and Bolan heard the guards cursing in surprise. Then the screaming began, as they continued to blindly fire their weapons into one another. Charging through the gate in the wooden fence, Bolan noted that no professional soldier would have made such a classic mistake. These men were merely street muscle, thugs for hire.

Sprinting down the curving road, the soldier soon reached a wooden dock, and almost dived into the water when he saw a small speedboat lolling in the waves alongside the pier. He changed the dive into a jump, and landed on the moving deck of the boat in a crouch, alongside a large wooden crate.

“Thought I told you to stay out near the breakers,” he growled, his gun sweeping the shadows of the craft for any sign of intruders. But only Tsai Adina was on board.

“And I thought you might need a fast escape,” Tsai countered, tucking the pearl-handled S&W .38 revolver into a black nylon holster at her hip. She was wearing a black scuba suit, her long hair braided into a ponytail.

Just then, an explosion came from the direction of the warehouse, followed by the long chatter of a machine gun, and then another.

“What the hell did you do back there, start World War III?” she demanded, tilting her head.

“Damn near,” Bolan countered, going to the helm and shoving the throttle all the way. In a growl of controlled power, the speedboat moved away from the pier and headed toward the breakers and the harbor.

However, they got only halfway there when the lights returned to the warehouse and a searchlight exploded into operation on the roof, the brilliant beam sweeping across the water.

“Take the helm!” Bolan commanded, pulling out the Glock.

As Tsai grabbed the yoke, he cradled the weapon in a two-handed grip and fired. The Glock almost seemed to explode from the rapid-fire discharge, the continuous muzzle-flash extending for nearly three feet. With a crash, the searchlight died.

“That was close.” Tsai sighed in relief, relaxing her stance slightly.

“Too damn close,” Bolan replied, sliding in his last clip.

Then he saw the front door open and out stumbled a large man with a mustache, cradling what appeared to be a Carl Gustav multipurpose rocket launcher.

Instantly, Bolan aimed and fired in a single smooth motion.

Riddled with bullet holes, the man stumbled backward and the Carl Gustav flew straight upward. The fiery wash blew off the legs of the dying man, and a moment later the roof of the warehouse violently exploded. Windows were shattered on both levels, and roiling flames filled the interior, spilling over the assorted crates, barrels, boxes and pallets of military ordnance.

“Sweet Mother of God,” Tsai whispered, making the protective sign of the cross. “Do you think that the place is going to—”

“Down!” Bolan snarled, dragging her to the deck.

For an entire minute it seemed as if his caution was unnecessary. The boat was coasting past the breakers into the harbor when there came a flash of light from the shore, closely followed by a mind-numbing explosion.

A roiling fireball rose from behind the piles of junk cars, slowly forming the standard mushroom pattern of any sufficiently hot detonation. Black clouds laced with flame extended across the rock jetty as smoldering pieces of broken concrete, smashed weapons, busted machinery and human bodies rained across the landscape. The dark water of the harbor churned from the falling debris, and Bolan grabbed the yoke to steer the speedboat farther away from the dangerous shoreline.

Everywhere across the Kowloon District, lights appeared in windows, and somewhere a fire alarm began to clang, then an air raid siren cut loose with a long, pronounced howl.

Burning out of control, the destroyed warehouse continued to explode irregularly from the tons of military ordnance that had been stored there. Bullets crackled like strings of firecrackers, land mines thundered, and as the remains of the warehouse began to collapse in upon itself, something flared white-hot for a long moment in the heart of the inferno, then died away, making the rest of the blaze seem pale and inconsequential by comparison.

“Well, that certainly put Ortega out of business!” Tsai laughed, shakily rising to her feet.

“Almost certainly,” Bolan said, giving a half smile.

“Almost? Damn, you’re a hard man to please.” Tsai started to say something else when somewhere in the darkness ahead there came the warning siren from a Red Chinese gunboat. It was promptly joined by another, and then countless more. Then an aircraft rumbled by overhead, the hot wash buffeting them both and rocking the speedboat.

“How did a jet fighter get here so soon?” she asked with a frown.

“It doesn’t matter. Time to go,” Bolan said, angling away from the open harbor and heading back toward the rolling waves cresting nosily on the rocky shoreline.

“I’m ready,” she announced, tucking the mouthpiece of her rebreather into place.

“Change of plans,” Bolan said, lowering their speed to avoid attracting unwanted attention. “You’re not going crash the boat as a diversion so that I can hijack a gunboat.”

She yanked out the mouthpiece. “We’re going to charge across Victoria Harbour and into up the West River in this old thing?” she demanded askance. “We’ll be slaughtered!”

“True.” He glanced at the large wooden crate in the rear of the craft. “Which is why we’re going back to the boathouse. I’ll need some time to get ready.”

“Get ready for what?” Tsai asked, looking over the crate. It had been the first thing the big American had hauled out of the warehouse, and even though he had used a hand truck, judging from his expression at the time, it had to weigh a ton. There was no company logo, manufacturer name or even a description on the packing slip, only a string of numbers.

“Okay, what is it?” she demanded, loosening the ponytail to let her hair billow in the wind. “A miniature submarine or something?”

“Better, if it actually works,” Bolan answered, throttling down the engine to head for the shore.