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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.
