Murder Island

Bolan allowed himself a small sigh of relief and murmured, “Good luck, Spence. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

4 (#ulink_e87cb7f8-437d-5d84-b7b1-95f022d55d88)

“Well, isn’t that wonderful? All of them? Are you sure?” Hugo Meltzer hefted the remains of a chair and tried to force the tiger into the penthouse’s kitchen. His other hand held his phone to his ear. Meltzer grimaced as the tiger swiped at him. He kicked at it awkwardly and then jabbed at the animal with the chair. The tiger laid back its ears and exposed its teeth in a silent snarl. It wasn’t really dangerous. The beast was overfed and spoiled—little more than a plus-size house cat—but right now it was also wet, frightened and pissed off, thanks to Cloud and his as-yet-unidentified guest.

Meltzer was a tall man, and built spare. He’d been told he resembled a young Ron Ely, but he didn’t know who that was. He dressed nicely—not as well as Cloud, but better than he had. He didn’t buy-off-the-rack anymore when it came to clothes and guns, if he could help it.

“He used a what?” Meltzer glared at the phone and shook his head in disbelief. “Yeah, I know it was on the helicopter. I’m the one who showed him how to shoot the damn thing…Well, what about the truck— No, forget it. Keep an eye on the place…No, I don’t care if that’s where they filmed a scene from One-Legged Swordsman.”

The tiger pawed at the chair, nearly tearing it from Meltzer’s grip. “Get in the goddamn kitchen,” he shouted. “Not you,” he added quickly into the phone. “All you should be worried about is finding out where that damn plane went.”

The tiger roared. Meltzer cursed and bounced the phone off the tiger’s head. It jerked back, blinked and scrambled into the kitchen. Meltzer quickly pulled the door shut and wedged what was left of the chair under it.

He stared at the door for a moment and then tried to smooth his hair down. He cinched his tie and took a breath. Calm blue ocean, he thought. Calm blue ocean, soft sand, happy place. Hugo, go to your happy place.

His happy place was getting harder and harder to find, the longer he worked for Byron Cloud. Cloud was an immature psychopath, as rich as Croesus, with all the common sense of a particularly stupid and self-indulgent child. Meltzer was certain that working for Cloud was causing him to go prematurely gray, not to mention giving him an ulcer. He’d chased after Cloud for five years and considered shooting him at least twice a week. But the money was good and Cloud was generous when he remembered that actual humans were working for him. Which wasn’t often.

So, when Meltzer had heard that Byron’s big mouth had finally gotten him into the sort of trouble you didn’t get out of, limbs intact, he’d known it was time to renegotiate his contract. It had seemed simple. Grab Cloud and turn him over to the highest bidder.

Only somebody else had had the same idea. He looked around, taking in the bullet holes and spent grenade canisters. Whoever the guy was, he knew how to party. He’d played it sneaky right up to the penthouse when he’d gone straight to savage. Bodies were stacked in the corridor outside and the carpet was soaked in blood, which was a shame because it had been expensive.

He caught sight of a bullet-torn painting and winced. He covered his eyes and turned away. He’d spent weeks finding that painting. It really tied the whole room together. It even matched the damn tiger. He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m being punished, aren’t I? I’m in Hell right now, because that’s the only way I can explain this.”

Meltzer kicked a broken table, sending the pieces clattering across the tiles.

The day wasn’t going well. Then, his career hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d hoped. He’d bounced from the military to the private sector fast enough to give him whiplash, and the one wasn’t turning out any better than the other. “I should have been a dentist,” he muttered.

He’d sent some of his best men—well, they were capable, at least—to grab Cloud from the airfield. There were only so many places a helicopter could land without attracting attention, and given the way the kidnapper had torn through the place, Meltzer had been fairly certain he wasn’t intending to fly commercial. Cloud also had a tracking chip inside a false tooth. It was more of that spy bullshit Cloud liked to play with, but it was coming in handy now.

Meltzer patted his coat pocket. The miniature GPS unit was about the size of a mobile phone. As long as Cloud was somewhere in the immediate hemisphere, they could find him.

He was tempted to dig it out, but he already knew what it would tell him—Cloud was in the air, heading God alone knew where. And all thanks to one asshole in black fatigues.

There was no telling who their visitor had been, or who he was working for, but the helicopter’s destination put up a few red flags. Were the Feds renting out that airfield to some other concern? The guy, whoever he’d been, was nasty enough to work for any number of groups. They’d caught him on several security cameras, but Meltzer hadn’t watched the footage yet. From what he’d been told, their visitor went through the unlucky bastards on duty like a buzz saw on two legs.

Meltzer wanted a cigarette. He’d given them up when he’d started working for Cloud, and the cravings hadn’t gotten any easier. He was looking forward to that first cigarette almost as much as the expression on Cloud’s face when he turned him over to whoever paid up first.

There was a raft of eager bidders. When word filtered up through the back channels that Cloud was about to experience an extraordinary rendition, thanks to that deal with the Nigerians, Meltzer had decided to seize the moment. He’d contacted a dozen of Cloud’s regular clients, all of whom were anonymous—their identities hidden behind encrypted lines and voice scramblers—and made his pitch, which had essentially boiled down to “Give me money, and I give you Cloud. Don’t give me money, and I let the Americans have him.” They had quickly made a counteroffer: “Give us Cloud, and we’ll pay you. Don’t, and we kill you.”

In retrospect, it hadn’t been his smartest play.

Glass crunched behind him and he turned. A group of men who’d been the elite of Cloud’s security forces, up until about three hours ago, had come into the apartment. All were armed. “Is the little shit dead?” one of the men, a scar-faced ex-marine named Horowitz, asked. He sounded hopeful. “Did they get him?”

Horowitz was a meathead and a troublemaker with attitude issues that probably should have been dealt with when he’d been a kid. He was a constant pain in Meltzer’s posterior and had been since he’d been hired.

“No such luck.” Sippo grunted. An older, gray-headed thug, Sippo had a Ph.D. The book smarts hadn’t stopped him from stuffing enough cocaine up his nose to kill an elephant and they sure hadn’t helped when he’d turned to armed robbery to finance said cocaine habit. Now he was a rent-a-thug with a bald spot and a face like a strip of jerky.

“No,” Meltzer said. “They got him on a plane. He’s gone.”

“How?” Horowitz demanded. “You sent a truckload of our guys over there!”

“Oh, they got a flat tire,” Meltzer said. He rolled his eyes. “How do you think? Somebody shot them. All of them. The same somebody who busted in here and did this.” He waved a hand at the room around him.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t exactly introduce himself,” Meltzer said. “He’s a damn sight more effective than us, I’ll say that for him.” He surrendered to a moment of grudging admiration for the kidnapper. Whoever he was, the man had accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. It wouldn’t stop him from shooting the guy, if he ever got the chance, but Meltzer could give credit where it was due.

“Oh, damn it,” Horowitz said. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “What do we do now? Huh?” Horowitz had never been the patient sort.

Meltzer turned the bullet-riddled couch back over and flopped down onto it. “Give me a minute. I need to think.”

“Man, we don’t have time to think,” Horowitz said. “We need to go. The jihadists ain’t going to be happy with us. Or any of the others, for that matter. And who do you think they’re going to take that unhappiness out on, huh?” He gestured sharply. “Us, that’s who.” He looked around and heads nodded sagely in agreement, Sippo included. “We’ve got to do something. Maybe we can bargain with them. Buy our way out of the situation.”

Meltzer shivered slightly, as if the temperature in the room had dropped. He looked around, seeing hard faces and pitiless eyes. If it came down to it, Horowitz, Sippo and the others would turn him over to Cloud’s angry clients if they thought it would buy them a few more days. He couldn’t blame them, but all the same, he wasn’t looking forward to it.

He let his hand drift to the weapon holstered under his arm. It was his burden; a Mauser C-96. The pistol had been a gift from Cloud, though he shied away from the thought of that. Cloud had wanted his head of security to carry something fancy, as if he were a villain from a spy film and Meltzer was his quirky henchman.

That was their relationship in a nutshell. Meltzer had read his share of four-color funnies as a kid and he’d seen enough movies to know what happened to henchmen. Well, it wasn’t going to happen to him.

“I said I needed to think,” he repeated softly. His fingers brushed against the Mauser’s grips. He didn’t want to kill them—any of them—but he would if he had to. For now, he needed them. They were his muscle, and good muscle was hard to find in the current economic climate. Russian oligarchs and Saudi royalty paid more, and the private security companies offered better benefits. All Cloud offered was access to hardware and a blind eye in regard to repeat indiscretions.

“And I said—” Horowitz began, obviously looking to start something.

Meltzer was almost tempted to let him land the first punch. Instead he jerked to his feet and aimed his pistol at the other man’s crotch. He caught hold of Horowitz’s collar.

“I don’t care what you said,” Meltzer replied calmly. “Cloud didn’t hire you for your skills as a raconteur. He hired you because you’re a murderous thug.” He let his eyes roam across the faces of the others. “That’s why he hired you all. But don’t forget that I’m the biggest, most murderous thug here, right? And I need to think.” He dug the barrel of his pistol into Horowitz’s crotch. “You feel me, chum?” he asked, letting his gaze settle on Horowitz. When the man nodded, he stepped back and holstered his pistol. “Good, glad we got that cleared up.”

Horowitz backed away. “We still don’t know what we’re doing. The locals are going to be all over this place before we know it,” he said sourly.

“And we won’t be here when that happens.” Meltzer had made plans for just such an eventuality. There’d been no predicting when Cloud would wear out his welcome in Hong Kong, so he’d thought it best to be prepared. He let out a slow breath.

“Right, here’s what we do. Horowitz, Vasily, check out that airfield. Whoever was set up there has probably bugged out, but they might have left something behind. I’m betting that plane was heading to Tokyo, but I doubt that’s the final destination. Cloud hasn’t pissed off the Yakuza, to my knowledge.”

He clapped his hands together. “The rest of you know the drill. Start burning files—hell, burn the sheets. Burn everything. This place is going to be as busy as Grand Central Station at rush hour when people figure out what’s happened, and we don’t want anybody getting their hands on anything. We’re already in enough trouble. I’ll take care of Cloud’s office.” He paused. “Oh, and somebody get the tiger out of the kitchen, huh? We’ll drop it off at an animal sanctuary or the bus station or something. And get my phone while you’re in there. I have a few calls to make.”

5 (#ulink_60d70bdb-7638-50d6-af9c-0e26bf929a61)

Sham Shui Po District, Kowloon Peninsula

The Executioner’s Hong Kong safehouse wasn’t very big, but then, Bolan had never required much space. He rented the apartment under an assumed identity provided for him by Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man’s burly computer expert. Kurtzman had found the space in the gray market and rented it out through local brokers. The top-floor apartment had been made into Bolan’s safehouse. It contained only a military cot, a fridge full of cheap food bought from the large market on the corner of Ki Lung Street and, of course, an armory.

The latter wasn’t as well-stocked as Bolan ordinarily liked. It was built into the apartment’s closet and hidden behind a wealth of knock-off clothing bought from street vendors on Cheung Sha Wan Road. Bolan had constructed it himself, using the materials he’d had at hand to create a false back. Behind a section of loose paneling, he kept a spare set of gear—another set of fatigues, body armor and web gear, a UMP and ammunition and a backup pistol.

He’d left the airfield as soon as possible. Once Spence and Cloud were in the air, Bolan had figured that his part in the operation was done. He’d taken the truck and left it several blocks from the safehouse. Spence’s ground crew would take care of the bodies left behind and the helicopter, and then split, if the Agency was still following standard protocol. Someone in the chain of authority would smother any reports of gunfire, and the whole event would be buried under Bullshit Mountain, along with every other screwup.

And it had been a screwup. As he stripped out of his shredded body armor and damp fatigues, Bolan wondered whose mistake it was. Had Cloud’s helicopter been tracked to the airfield? Or had there been a leak somewhere further up the line? The truck must have been in transit not long after he’d caught Cloud, which meant that whoever had sent it was efficient, or they had reason to suspect where it was going. If it was the latter, then Spence’s operation was compromised and had been since the beginning.

In Bolan’s experience, that was true of most such operations. It was one of the many reasons he preferred to work alone; fewer moving parts meant fewer mistakes. Dressed now in his street clothes, he sat on the cot, swiftly dismantled both pistols and then dried and oiled them. They could survive a dunking, but proper weapon maintenance was paramount in the Executioner’s view.