Stealth Sweep

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.