Outback Assault

Grandfather had been right to take her and leave their tiny cabin to sleep in a hidden lean-to on the edge of their property, she realized. Ever since the troubles had begun, they’d felt no safety. The sheriff was either too scared or too well bribed to bother to take an interest in the affairs of the Chinese businessmen and their real-estate “transactions” with the Aboriginal Tribal Council.

Arana wrinkled her nose, brow furrowing in frustration. She knew that those transactions had begun to include a bullet in the head and a short trip to the bottom of a shallow grave. The Chinese and their local assistants were nothing more than a pack of savages who were only interested in finding a nice, secluded spot twenty kilometers from the great Uluru mound, the mystical gateway to the Dreamtime.

Arana didn’t know about the truth of the Dreamtime, but Grandfather Wangara’s wisdom seemed to come from sources far beyond those of normal men.

“We are far from our old doorstep, and we have night’s protection,” her grandfather told her. “It would take them hours to find us.”

Her grandfather said that the Chinese would not notice them, and Arana finally felt calm until a powerful crack split the night, a mushroom of fire rising from where their home had once been. Her stomach twisted as the fireball hung lazily, illuminating the gunmen surrounding the house. The building glowed from within.

Arana closed her eyes to the sight, not wanting to see her home burned to the ground. Her grandfather’s hand rested on her shoulder, his weathered face highlighted by the glow of the inferno. She looked up and saw the tears trickle over his cheeks, but his face remained an impassive mask. His brown eyes were unfocused, a sign that he was in touch with the Dreamtime.

Arana pursed her lips and looked back. The men got into their jeeps after their act of arson, not even bothering to pick up the gasoline cans that they’d used to soak the walls. When the law was too timid to poke its nose in, what need was there to hide the evidence? Somewhere, powerful forces were at work to accommodate the Chinese.

All it meant to her was that she and her grandfather had to leave, to run away from the only home she’d ever known. It filled her with anger.

“There will come a man,” the old man whispered. “A crusader who has faced these lowly criminals before. And when he arrives, he will bring death with him, to cleanse the outback.”

Arana looked at him.

“You will meet him in Darwin. And you will know him for his eyes are as cold as a winter sky,” her grandfather said.

“Darwin? We don’t have enough money to go there, and even if we did, they would follow us,” Arana explained, confused.

“I shall not be making the journey with you. I will remain here. The Dreamtime will protect me,” Grandfather told her. “You will go on your own. And though they shall try to interfere with your journey, you will be too clever for them. But remember, your skill will expire the moment you need it most, though luck and the crusader will catch you before you fall.”

Arana swallowed hard.

Grandfather Wangara pressed a roll of money into her palm. “Go swiftly, child. Time is of the essence, and the crusader is turning his eyes to our plight even as we speak.”

Arana nodded. She grabbed her backpack and took off, running across the desert. It was twenty miles to the nearest town, and there she’d catch the bus to Alice Springs. From there, it’d be an even longer ride to Darwin.

Her grandfather, though, was rarely wrong.

On a wing, a prayer, and a healthy slice of blind faith, Arana raced toward town, staying to gullies and ruts in the sand. Dawn was seven hours away, but if she hurried, she’d be at the bus stop shortly after sunrise.

1

The penthouse apartment was palatial in scope. Twenty-five stories above the streets of Hong Kong, the multitiered dwelling would have qualified as a mansion in any other city in the world. The terrace included an expanse of lawn dotted with shade trees, as well as a swimming pool surrounded by polished black marble tile. The three-story dwelling had a large patio that looked out over Victoria Harbour. It was so high that in the shadow of night, the lights of the floating shantytown in the bay looked like a simple extension of Hong Kong’s vibrant streets.

The penthouse was the home of Wade Augustyn, a man considered by the outside world to be a polite, very private gentleman. Augustyn was known as a moderately wealthy philanthropist on the Hong Kong scene, but whispered back-street rumors had brought him to the attention of Mack Bolan. Bolstered by intelligence from Stony Man Farm, Bolan had determined that Augustyn was in the employ of the triads and the Chinese SAD, the Communist nation’s premier security organization.

Augustyn was a “cleaner.” He solved problems for his criminal and government cohorts one bullet at a time, usually from a comfortable distance. The death trail Bolan was tracking was long and twisted, especially when Augustyn had begun to operate not only in the criminal sphere, but also interfered with U.S. intelligence operations in the Orient. Augustyn’s alleged hit list included honest lawmen and operatives fighting for the security of the West against Beijing’s less than honorable pursuits.

The final nail that had marked Augustyn’s coffin was the execution of an American agent who was working behind the scenes trying to eliminate sensitive data that had been seized aboard a captured U.S. Navy spy plane. The agent’s dying actions had been two button presses, one to capture Augustyn’s face, the other to launch a desperate e-mail. With that action, Augustyn had been added to Stony Man Farm’s watch list.

Agent Lissa Reynolds’s final cell-phone digital image had been transmitted to the Farm. Reynolds had once been part of the Farm’s blacksuit operation, one of the few women tough and qualified enough to hang with the commandos and special agents who made up Stony Man’s security and training force. Bolan had met Reynolds only once, and she’d impressed him with her professionalism. That professionalism and unyielding determination had been cut off mercilessly.

Bolan looked at the rifle on the rooftop next to him. The Remington 700 was a nondescript hunting rifle, chambered for 7 mm Remington Magnum. Given the chance, the Executioner preferred a clean, antiseptic kill, and the high-powered hunting rifle would provide that in spades. Across the street from Augustyn’s penthouse, he was in a perfect position to pull the trigger on the man made wealthy by the blood of good people.

Unfortunately, after half a day’s stakeout, Bolan had only learned that the man was out of town, returning that night. In the meantime, the other distant reaching tool that Bolan had at his disposal, a long-range directional microphone, had picked up phone data. He called the Farm to see who was trying to get in touch with the assassin, but Augustyn’s penthouse was electronically secured. Except for the faint warble of his phone, Bolan’s microphone could pick up nothing thanks to a white noise generator. Even Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman and his cybercrew were incapable of breaking through Augustyn’s encrypted telephone lines, meaning that the wealthy killer had put as much work into securing his home as he did making it look luxurious.

“He just landed at the airport, Striker,” Kurtzman advised. “His driver won’t take long to get him home, and we haven’t made a dent in his system. By the time he gets there, he’ll know we’ve been trying to intrude because we tripped over some truly amazing black ice.”

Bolan knew enough of hacker-speak to know that “black ice” was a form of electronic security. For the cybercrew to be caught off guard by such measures was more circumstantial evidence that Wade Augustyn was someone with a lot to hide. It could be the industrial secrets of a less than honest businessman, but combined with Reynolds’s last photograph, in the court of Bolan’s opinion, it was more than enough to warrant a hard probe.

Bolan abandoned the mike and the rifle. Both had been picked up locally, and had been sanitized of fingerprints and DNA residue, in case the SAD discovered them. They’d be considered just two more pieces of black market equipment smuggled into China by foreign devils like the Yakuza or the Americans. As he made his way across the street, concealed on his person were a Chinese-made Norinco, a copy of the venerable Colt .45, and a silenced .32-caliber Walther PPK. It wasn’t his usual load in the field, but it was what was available.

The Executioner rode two elevators to reach Augustyn’s residence. The elevators took him as far as the floor beneath Augustyn’s. The top levels were accessible only via a private car that Bolan couldn’t get into without a security code. Kurtzman tried to open the system, but electronic countermeasures stonewalled the computer wizard. With the assassin’s homecoming only minutes away, Bolan would have to make do with more primitive means. As soon as the car reached the twenty-fourth floor, he stood on a side rail, punched through the access hatch and clambered on top. He tugged on thick leather gloves and climbed the ropes one level.

There were no doors, but there was a ventilation duct access. Bolan scanned it with a flashlight and picked up the presence of pressure sensors on the grating. He fished a 25,000-volt stun gun from his breast pocket and pressed the spikelike leads to the edge of the grating. He tapped the firing stud for two seconds, then flicked on the stun gun’s safety. It was a trick that Stony Man’s Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz had taught him—a means of temporarily disabling an electronic sensor. The scorch marks it left behind were messy and provided telltale signs of the intrusion, but the Executioner didn’t intend to hang around Hong Kong long enough for that to matter.

Bolan removed the grating and entered the ventilation system, crawling to the first opening. A solid kick smashed the grate out, allowing him to slither into Augustyn’s penthouse suite. He’d only needed enough stealth to cross the street without drawing police attention. Now, hundreds of feet above street level in a home that was shielded by white noise generators and soundproofed walls and floors, the Executioner had a wide-open killing ground safe from Chinese interference, either from above or below the law. At the most, he figured he’d have to deal with Augustyn’s chauffeur, who would either have bodyguard training or be a professional killer in his own right.

Following the floor plans that Kurtzman had provided on the building, he moved to where the private elevator would be. It was secured behind a pair of ornate oak doors that, when opened, proved to be extremely heavy. Bolan could feel the weight of a sheet of armor plate sandwiched between the layers of thick, decorative wood.

The first floor had been tastefully decorated. Hardwood floors gleamed with no sign of heel scuffs marring their beauty even where Bolan had crossed them. He left the doors open, drew the .45 and let it hang low at his side while he searched the apartment. Minimal lighting made the place navigable.

A burst of static suddenly sounded over Bolan’s earphone. He flicked off the safety on his Norinco. He knew that Kurtzman had tried to get through to him. There had to have been only a narrow band through which communications could pierce the bubble of security that Augustyn had installed. Since Bolan was operating on a satellite signal, and his cell phone wasn’t coded for the encryption static that engulfed the apartment, he was unable to make out Kurtzman’s message.

It didn’t matter. The attempt to break through produced enough noise to alert the Executioner that Augustyn had arrived. Bolan returned to the huge doors and closed them. The latch snapped shut with an audible click and he turned. He put himself in the mentality of a world-traveling businessman. He spotted a space atop an intricately carved table where Augustyn would probably empty his pockets and with just a single step and a press of a button, access the messages left for him when he was out.

The hired assassin had a layer of anonymity between himself and his employers. As a matter of survival for Augustyn, he’d likely only take communications in his very secure home, not on the road with a cell phone. The potential to be traced by cellular signal was too great to secure Augustyn’s privacy.

Bolan took a step toward the answering machine and studied the sleek, disklike device. It had to have been cutting-edge technology either straight from Tokyo, or knocked-off in a Hong Kong back-alley electronics lab. He pushed the button and the digital player cycled through its memory, bringing up the three priority messages that had drawn Kurtzman’s attention.

“We need you. Tickets have been arranged for you to travel to Darwin. We’ll have a contact brief you on the cleanup,” the first message announced. The other two were identical to the first, no change in urgency, and had been spaced a day apart.

Nonpriority messages began to play on the sleek machine, but Bolan killed the playback. The machine requested to know if he wanted to retain the trio of messages as priority, and Bolan decided to leave them.

He moved to the room where he’d penetrated the penthouse and fastened the vent cover back into place. There was a slight bulge that kept it from sitting true, but it wouldn’t be noticed without a thorough investigation.

Bolan stayed to the shadows, listening for the triad assassin executioner to arrive. He didn’t have to wait for long. The heavy doors opened with a clack and he heard a deep, resonant voice tell someone to put the bags away. From his vantage point, Bolan could see Augustyn, a tall, powerful man. He was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. The image that dying agent Reynolds had sent was of the man disguised as a servant. Taking off his formal hat, he fit Bolan’s general appearance, over six feet in height, with wide powerful shoulders disappearing down into a slender waist, his torso a wedge of lean muscle. Black hair and blue eyes added to Augustyn’s vague resemblance to the Executioner.

“Couldn’t wait to get off the elevator to take charge again, eh, Wade?” an older man’s voice croaked.

Augustyn chuckled, his shoulders visibly jerking. “I’m tired, boss,” he said sarcastically.

He listened to the answering machine messages, and frowned. “Forget about the bags, Eugene. Fire up the computer and print out the tickets that Long sent.”

“Tickets?” Eugene asked. “Right. I’ll take care of it. Any idea where we’re off to?”

“Darwin, Australia,” Augustyn said. He wiped out the two redundant digital messages and listened to his remaining messages. “Another cleaning job.”

Eugene’s disgust was broadcast in an audible grunt. He stepped into the open, and Bolan saw a man in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair, looking like an older version of Augustyn, only an inch or so shorter. An older brother? Bolan wondered at first, but then decided Augustyn had to have sought out someone with a close enough resemblance to pass for himself. “Cleaning means we’ve got more than one target,” Eugene said.

“If I’ve got to meet with a local contact, there’s going to be a laundry list of duties to carry out,” Augustyn returned. “Not only a direct kill, but applying more pressure than they could bring on their own.”

Eugene frowned. “This means a big, noisy mess. A deniable one to boot.”