скачать книгу бесплатно
“My eyes and ears can work independently, love,” McCarter said. “Right now, my eyes are snogging the hell out of your naked self.”
Mei smiled, then poked him in the center of the forehead. “Well, ears, pick this up. MIRVs can have any sort of warhead. Nuclear. Conventional. MOAB. Cloud seeder.”
McCarter suddenly felt himself focus, sitting a little straighter. “Seed the clouds over the ocean. And then do something that could increase the water temperature over a vast area.”
“Like, say, the thermobaric cloud from a MOAB,” Mei said. “What isn’t superheated gets vaporized by the blast, adding to the humidity. The sudden lack of air pressure sucks in more air...”
McCarter frowned. “Boom! One hurricane bomb.”
“Made from readily available materials, not just the Dong-Feng family of missiles,” Mei said. “The mathematics and physics of it are just way outside of my limits.”
“But if you hire thirty-seven thousand weather scientists and mathematicians, they could do the grunt work,” McCarter returned. “Damn.”
He started thinking about why the marauders would have wanted a Mach 10–capable engine and a guidance system meant to defeat radar when it clicked with him.
If you fired a ballistic missile, it would definitely show up on radars around the world. But, if you could take the individual components of different warheads and put those on the ends of the rockets, you could deliver all that firepower without giving away the fact that an ICBM was launched toward you to drop a hurricane on your doorstep, or let your original location be known. That had been one of the most troublesome contentions of tracking the origin of the two different attacks, as the missile blasts preceding them had followed a nap-of-the-earth course.
He’d have to run the general idea past people who were far smarter than him. McCarter was smart, but he was far from being a rocket scientist. These things sounded possible, and there was a United Nations resolution and treaty to prevent the weaponization of weather. Unfortunately, the United States was not a signatory, and neither were many other countries.
While all of this ran through his mind, he finished the cocktail that Mei had bought for him—his taste buds agreeing with her that it was delicious. He stroked her hair, squeezed her hand and hugged her tighter off and on. The time he put into thinking about the possibilities of the Chinese and American weapons systems combined felt all too long, and he was coming nowhere close to a solution, while the time he spent reveling in the warmth and human contact he shared with Mei was like the flicker of an instant.
He recalled what Gary Manning had said about Einstein and time relativity. “A second with your hand on a hot stove is like an eternity. A day with a girl you love is like a fleeting instant.”
Of course, McCarter liked the pool-table description of time and space interacting, too.
“So, why did you give me the pocket rocket?” McCarter asked.
Mei smirked. “Don’t I always... Oh, the revolver.”
“Cheeky girl,” McCarter chuckled.
“The informant who relayed the tidbits about the ‘hurricane’ missile was reported as having committed suicide,” Mei said. “He threw himself out of a fourth-story window. And when that didn’t work, he curb-stomped himself.”
“Curb-stomped. Figuratively?”
“Literally,” Mei answered.
McCarter wrinkled his nose. The literal act of a curb stomp was to set someone’s head and upper jaw against a hard, raised surface. Then, the person was either kicked in the neck, or a foot was brought heavily down. The result ended with torn cheeks, a crushed lower jaw and a skull messily separated from neck vertebrae. It was one of the most brutal means of murder McCarter had ever seen, one that even he hadn’t used in battle.
“You’re covered, right?” McCarter asked.
Mei nodded. “I’m paranoid as hell. And I’m surrounded by my people.”
McCarter could see the flicker of fear in those dark, almond eyes. He knew from personal experience that only the most brash of fools was never afraid.
“I’ll do you a solid, love,” McCarter murmured, lips close and brushing her ear.
“You’re not going to make yourself bait,” Mei said. “That’s insane.”
“Insane is my middle name,” McCarter countered. “Besides, if I can find the bastards who killed that informant, I could get a better handle on who made the theft.”
“And what if it’s MSS plugging a leak?” Mei asked.
“Then the Commie buggers have it coming for building a goddamn fleet-killing hurricane bomb.”
McCarter took out his phone and transmitted a file to her device.
“Call my lads,” McCarter told her.
“And what do I say?” she asked.
McCarter stood and adjusted his jacket, making certain the revolver was still firmly in its pocket holster. “Hunting season is open.”
* * *
ROSARIO BLANCANALES leaned on his cane, standing and admiring the Cenotaph, a memorial to the honored dead of both World War I and World War II. The 1940s had been a vastly different time, when Hong Kong was more or less homogeneous and still clung to a mix of old ways and new British fads that filtered in with Great Britain’s protection as a colony in Her Majesty’s empire. During the second conflict that the Cenotaph commemorated, Hong Kong had suffered greatly from Japanese incursion. Citizens starved, medics even under the neutral protection of the Red Cross had been murdered, and more than ten thousand women and girls had been brutally raped. Those names were not carved into this tower of stone, but there was still a brief, powerful prayer for them.
“May their martyred souls be immortal and their immortal spirits endure.”
He could not read the Chinese characters in which the inscription were made, but he knew the meaning. Standing there, he could see that spirits did endure.
Because of all the corporations that called Hong Kong home, because of the cultural impact that it had on the world, even the 1997 transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China had done little to dim the neon, the glory and the wild mayhem that was this grand old city. On every level, from the lowest of underground crime to the peaks of wealth and power, the city was simply too vibrant, too energetic, to have been tamped down by Communist rule, to the point where fried chicken and pizza had infiltrated the mainland.
Blancanales’s phone came to life. He answered it. “Hola, amigo!”
“What’ve you got for me?” He heard McCarter on the other end.
“Just a bit more news about the weather,” Blancanales replied. Over their secure, encrypted devices, the two had mapped out the way this conversation had to go. They then switched to disposable cell phones for the sake of seeming secure, all the while leaving their conversation open to prying ears.
The two were acting as bait, especially since McCarter had told him of the efforts to silence those in the know about the raid on the Weather Modification Office’s technology test area along the Gobi Desert.
There was a good chance it might have been the government who killed the man, but his manner of death was brutal and hand-to-hand, the work of someone who knew better than to pack firepower in this country. Someone who did not want the handiwork traced back to them. That didn’t make sense, even for the Ministry of State Security, who would have no problem shooting someone for the crime of treason.
No, crushing someone’s skull with a boot stomp was the act of their enemy, killing without leaving signs of weapons or nationality.
So Blancanales and McCarter traded discussion. The Phoenix Force leader had been seen leaving the contact of the murdered man: Mei Anna. They were hoping that someone would be on his scent, listening to his phone calls, something that could be done with a phone-cloner unit, a device small enough to slide into a pocket.
Right now McCarter was approximately ten blocks away, walking in Blancanales’s direction.
And Blancanales, despite his salt-and-pepper hair and the cane he leaned on, looked good playing the part of an old man. The cane was a martial arts weapon. Blancanales was an experienced practitioner of bojutsu—not jitsu but jutsu—the practice of the use of the short staff or cane in actual combat, not the art.
To be certain, Blancanales did have a firearm on his person, but a very flat, concealed weapon. He didn’t relish getting into a gunfight in Hong Kong, not when the police would fall upon him armed to the teeth.
They kept talking, trading vague references about missile technology and the weather manipulation systems, going for length of call, making certain their opposition could home in on them.
It was a risky gambit. Blancanales kept tensing at the sight of official-looking cars, glad that they were mostly the same Hong Kong park maintenance vehicle, and the occasional passing police car. This kind of loose talk could drop a lot of heat on them.
Blancanales recalled the motto of David McCarter’s old unit, the British Special Air Service: Who Dares, Wins.
That’s when Blancanales noticed a van pull to a stop and disgorge two tall men dressed in black. They didn’t appear to be armed, but they didn’t need to be. They were both taller than Blancanales, and the leather gloves they wore over their ham-size fists were quiet proof that this dare had drawn a response.
Blancanales leaned a little harder against his cane.
Let the hunt begin.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_e8998bc9-a33e-5b45-92e7-9bcbea895085)
David McCarter walked at a brisk pace, the disposable cell phone to his ear, continuing his conversation with Rosario Blancanales, letting the words come out as something only slightly above gibberish. Luckily, he and the other man were working from a script they’d memorized. They needed only to hit proper keywords to attract attention, and the use of a prepared script allowed them to concentrate on their surroundings. The trouble with playing bait was not that they were consciously in the line of fire, but that they had to be aware where that line started. He heard Blancanales’s tone change.
“Hunt,” the Able Team veteran said, and the phone clicked off.
The word “hunt” was not in reference to Huntington Wethers back at Stony Man Farm, but that their objective as bait had succeeded. Someone had showed up. McCarter’s eyes kept sweeping the street and sidewalk around him. No one had come toward him yet, though he had an itch at the base of his neck, a tingle of danger that wasn’t exactly on a conscious level. McCarter had survived enough operations to realize that the unfocused discomfort was not a sign of his instincts misfiring, but actually picking up on some subtle hints that he was being stalked.
McCarter had his hands in his jacket pockets, his right hand’s fingers wrapped around the handle of a .22 Magnum Taurus. Even out of a short barrel like the snubby, it had nearly the energy of a 9 mm bullet, and there were eight of them in the cylinder. McCarter also had his knuckle load, the deadly spike capable of killing, though in this instance, he was more interested in stunning his foe.
Questioning a corpse would not be the easiest of things, but if worse came to worst, McCarter could at least rifle through a dead man’s pockets and make observations about the state of his body. He’d also get photographs and fingerprints of the dead man, but right now, he wanted someone who could speak.
Even as he dangled himself as bait, there was also a section of him worried about Mei Anna and her people back at the bar. That tingle of warning at the base of his skull told him that it was likely he had drawn the wolves away from her door. As it was, the bar was on a tight lockdown, to the point where Mei had literally stuffed the revolver into McCarter’s pocket the minute they saw each other. Attacking her now to cut off the seep of information would be too risky and foolhardy. Even if they somehow succeeded in attacking her in her own headquarters, the cost in manpower and the attention the violence would bring would undo any efforts at cover-up.
There. McCarter’s instincts rose in reaction to a sight out of the corner of his eye. As was the case with most instinctual responses, McCarter’s conscious mind wasn’t quite certain of what had popped up on his radar, but he knew where the threat was. He knew the distance to what triggered his surge of fight or flight. The sidewalks around him were packed with people, all of varying heights, even though the six-foot McCarter loomed over many of the Chinese in the crowds.
There were other six-footers sprinkled here and there, but none of them appeared to be trailing him nor showing aggression. Then again, McCarter was keener to stay low profile when trailing someone, and if their enemy was assassins out to protect their conspiracy, they would not make a lot of noise, not until they were within striking distance.
No, McCarter’s opponent was quiet and had only betrayed something small that tripped his instincts, but had kept him from actually noticing the attacker. He fought against the urge to concentrate on memories and input. The best result he had in reaction to ambush was not to concentrate on what could be wrong; instead, he should just look for the whole picture. His reflexes worked finely because he didn’t distract himself from the totality of input being picked up by sight, sound and touch.
And that was when McCarter saw the person shoved out of the way, just out of the corner of his eye, an instant before he whirled in swift, certain response. McCarter folded his arm and brought the “chicken wing” down tight against his side, suddenly blocking the punch that swung at him, low and aiming at his kidney. Britain’s Special Air Service taught that an attack on an opponent’s kidneys was the surest path to incapacitating them with a minimum of fuss. A knife would cause instantly lethal renal shock, but a punch would crumple a man like a discarded newspaper.
McCarter’s elbow took the force of the stunning punch, pain jolting up through his shoulder. But the pain was not indicative of broken bone or dislocated joint because his fist still remained clenched and ready. McCarter extended his arm, snapping his fist at the foe who struck at him, but the enemy was swift. Knuckles scraped the nearly bald head of the compact fireplug of a man, but the brunt of his punch was slipped by a quick movement of his head.
The bald attacker whipped out his other fist, a punch that should have hooked around to strike McCarter at the base of his spine, but the Briton was also moving, turning to bring his other arm in front of him as a means of shielding himself. That left hook from the bulldoglike man snapped into McCarter’s own arm, blunting that strike. The ex-SAS commando lashed out with his left boot, striking toward the ambusher’s knees, but the enemy’s footwork was swift and he seemingly danced away from the initial assault.
Now that they were face-to-face, McCarter could see that this guy was some form of European, though matching the diminutive height of the rest of the Chinese populace average around him. What he lacked in height, he made up for in bulk, arms sausaged into windbreaker sleeves with big fists poking out. The Phoenix Force commander could see the deformation of his foe’s knuckles, showing that this guy had trained long and laboriously to make his hands hardened clubs devoted to pain.
The squat killer moved in again, and McCarter switched feet, stabbing out with his right to try to catch the man under his sternum. Those meaty cudgels crossed, blocking the attack, and the Briton retracted his kick even as blunt fingertips clawed at the slack around his shin. That didn’t slow the bald assassin’s onrush. McCarter kept his feet at right angles to each other, forming the tactical T that ensured it would be difficult to push him off balance. It was ingrained into his reflexes, so that even as he backed away from another snapping fist, the Briton’s footing was certain.
The sudden eruption of martial arts combat on the sidewalk made people scatter, which thankfully allowed McCarter some breathing room. He didn’t have to worry about bystanders wandering into the melee and becoming injured. McCarter slap-deflected another assault, and went on the attack, whipping his elbow around to catch his foe in the face. With both of their forward momentum combined, McCarter felt his humerus spark with the jolt of “funny bone” reactions, but was rewarded with his opponent staggering backward.
McCarter kept on the attack, only to catch a snap kick that barked off his shin, knocking the support from beneath him. The Briton staggered to his other foot to maintain his balance, spearing at the attacker with a knife hand. Fingernails gouged at forehead, bushy eyebrows and down into the enemy’s eye, McCarter making as much use of his increased reach as he could. Even as that raking slash connected, a powerful hammer struck him in his exposed side.
In his lunge, McCarter had left himself open. Ordinarily such a mistake would have come and gone too quickly for an opponent to take advantage. This time, however, the punch knocked the wind from the Phoenix Force commander and he stumbled to one knee. The squat attacker rubbed his eyes across his forearm, blinking blood away that seeped from his torn skin. The club-fisted warrior lunged in, but McCarter kicked off with all of his strength, lunging headfirst into his foe’s stomach. Fists that had been aimed for his head or neck instead fell upon his heavily muscled back and ribs. The impacts were painful, but not fatal, while McCarter lifted the killer off his stubby legs.
The Briton hooked the back of his foe’s thighs and then allowed himself to topple forward, wrenching the assassin down to the sidewalk. The man released a pained grunt before his knees wrenched upward, dislodging McCarter from his position. The Phoenix commander hammered off a side punch, unable to target his foe’s kidneys, but the body blow went further toward emptying the bald attacker’s lungs.
McCarter fired off a second punch, striking below his enemy’s belt buckle, the blow stabbing deep into the man’s groin muscles. He cupped his hand over the assassin’s knee and pushed it out hard to the side, exposing the soft inner crease that McCarter wailed a second punch into, this time aiming for the inner thigh to disrupt the femoral artery. His foe wailed in pain when that blow connected, but McCarter was not through. The Briton tangled his arm with the attacker’s lower leg, then wrenched hard.
The bald little fighter’s knee popped with an ugly sound, driving his voice into a higher octave of pain. Twisting his ankle forced the guy to flop to his stomach. This wasn’t a mixed martial arts ring fight. There would be no tapping out. McCarter slammed the guy in the kidney with everything he still had in the tank. With that final chop, there wasn’t any sign of further violence from his foe.
McCarter tested his weight on the kicked leg and felt lucky that it had merely been a glancing kick. There was no seeming fracture, and he could move his foot. That was more than his ambusher could say.
The Phoenix leader grabbed him up by his collar. As soon as McCarter had him ready to move, Gary Manning brought his minivan to the curb, honking the horn.
With a hearty heave, he slammed the bald, club-fisted assassin into the back of the van, then climbed in and slid the side door shut.
“I thought you would have had this one done long before I got here,” Manning quipped.
McCarter shrugged. “I played it out because I know how much of a bitch Hong Kong traffic is.”
Manning looked over his shoulder at McCarter. Even in the dim interior of the van, he could see the Briton had been through a hell of a fight. The Phoenix commander cinched the guy’s wrists together behind his back with cable ties, more than one just to make certain the restraints would hold the thick-shouldered killer.
The thug looked up from the floor at the two men, and McCarter rested the sole of his boot against his throat.
“Gettin’ yer throat stepped on is a slow, ugly way to die,” McCarter growled. “You might have a chance not to die if you sit still.”
“Leg.” The man spoke. The word was too short for any hint of accent to arise, but McCarter looked more closely at his appearance, pulling out his pocket flashlight and his personal cell device. With a click of the button, the commander had his prisoner’s photograph taken. A few motions with his thumb and the photograph was on its way to Stony Man Farm.
“I know your pin took a twistin’. I did it, mate,” McCarter told the prisoner. “You going to tell me who you are or where you came from?”
“Eat the dicks.” The attacker spit.
McCarter sighed. “Then just lay there and shut up.” To emphasize his point, the Phoenix Force leader pulled the revolver from his jacket pocket and leveled it at the man’s face.
“Only a .22,” the prisoner said. “It’ll roll right off my skull.”
McCarter smirked. “But it’ll take out both of your eyes and mutilate your face. I’ll leave plenty for you to talk with, but you’ll be blind and hideous for the rest of your miserable existence.”
That quieted the assassin.
Now to find out how Blancanales was doing with his hunt.
* * *
THE BRUISERS GREW closer to Rosario Blancanales as he leaned heavily on his cane. They regarded him with stony, hate-filled glares. Both were taller than Blancanales, and seemed to have been chosen for the sake of the width of their shoulders and thickness of their limbs. That didn’t mean they didn’t possess skill, but Blancanales was hedging his bets on keeping them mentally disarmed. As he stood, using the cane as a crutch, and dressed in loose, baggy clothing, he tried to cast the image of an old man trying to play a young man’s game.
Both of them were European, possessing Slavic features. At least they were smart enough not to wear sunglasses at night, but now, the Able Team veteran was on the alert that these two guys could be so much more than just bags of cement with fists.
“Gentlemen?” Blancanales greeted them as they got within a few yards of him. “I’m afraid you found me out.”
Neither spoke as he scanned Statue Square, the park where Blancanales had been observing the Hong Kong cenotaph. They were making certain they hadn’t been drawn into a trap with human bait. This spread-out tourist attraction would provide plenty of places for Blancanales’s backup to hide and there were rooftops that could be used for sniper overwatch.
One of the men had yellow scrub for hair. The other, with a rust-colored scouring pad for his top, Blancanales noted, stepped right up to him and looked down upon him.
“Your friend, he will not be speaking to you again,” Blondie said.
Blancanales looked down, sighing. “He was a good man.”
“We will need to ask you some questions.” Blondie’s big hand wrapped around Blancanales’s shoulder and squeezed hard. Those fingers, thick as sausages, clamped down with painful precision, making Blancanales stand straighter, no acting required to twist his features into agony. The blond Russian reached down to take away Blancanales’s fighting cane.
You underestimated them, Blancanales thought the moment before he slashed the hardwood cane against the side of his oppressor’s knee. Through his knowledge of human anatomy and his years of not only training but field experience with the fighting stick, the simple slice suddenly toppled the brawny Russian, forcing him to release the Able Team veteran’s shoulder.
