Outback Assault

“N-no, sir,” Waylon stammered.

“Your choice. Spill your guts, or I spill you into the street and take everything apart the hard way,” Bolan said.

Waylon began to talk. He was grateful to be dragged onto the balcony and thrown atop Augustyn’s clammy, pulped form, despite the splatter of blood from the assassin’s caved-in face that spurted over his clothes. He dragged himself away from the corpse and looked to Bolan, who had a laptop sitting on the table.

“What’s that for?” Waylon asked.

“Paying your debt to society,” Bolan informed him.

“Listen, I was just Augustyn’s business manager. I never pulled a trigger!” Waylon said.

“I know. You’re still covered in stains from your blood money, however,” Bolan replied. “Get to work.”

Waylon sat behind the keyboard and saw the screen contained Augustyn’s private, Cayman Island bank accounts. “What do I do?”

“Empty them,” Bolan said.

“But, how will I live?” Waylon asked.

The Executioner lifted his Norinco .45. “Without a hole in one side of your skull and a grapefruit-sized excavation cavity on the other.”

“Okay,” Waylon answered.

“You’re in charge of that killer’s legitimate business holdings. Manage them well, and make your money. Continue his role as philanthropist and run his companies well,” Bolan continued. “If your businesses fail and people suffer and go out of work, I’ll be back.”

Waylon nodded.

“Open these accounts and transmit to this array,” Bolan told him, putting down a piece of paper. “Empty the coffers.”

Waylon glanced at Augustyn’s fortune. Hundreds of millions of dollars in several accounts were going to be transferred to the set of banks Bolan had put before him. He looked questioningly toward the Executioner. “This was a robbery?”

“This was eliminating pure evil,” Bolan stated. “However, his blood money will be put to use for some good.”

“In your pocket?” Waylon asked.

Bolan shook his head no, disdain for the thought registering in a hard, chilling glare. The money from assets acquired while Bolan was on missions would have made Bolan one of the richest men in the world. But Bolan had no interest in such things. The money would be used by Stony Man Farm to fund future missions.

Waylon finished transferring Augustyn’s funds. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Bolan asked.

“For assuming that money was your motivation,” Waylon stated, obviously trying to get back on Bolan’s good side.

The Executioner shook his head.

“It wasn’t Augustyn’s, either,” Waylon continued. “He did it for the thrill.”

“That’s not my goal, either,” Bolan warned. “Don’t think too hard about it, Eugene. This is the end of your old life. Now’s your chance to be a saint and wash the grime off your soul.”

The businessman nodded and watched as the big black .45 went into Bolan’s hip holster.

“Grow old gracefully, Eugene,” Bolan said. “And you’ll never see me again.”

With that, the Executioner left the lavish penthouse, just as the sun cracked the skyline.

BOLAN TOOK THE TIME to dispose of the guns in Augustyn’s apartment. He didn’t want anyone in the Hong Kong underworld to get hold of the assassin’s rather impressive firepower. He had gone to an auto yard and hidden the submachine guns, rifles and handguns he’d stolen from the triad assassin inside the trunk of a car on the pile to be crushed and compressed into a cube of scrap metal. He would have liked to have set some of the arsenal aside for himself, including the new .338 Lapua Magnum-chambered Barrett rifle. The big gun was a state-of-the-art antipersonnel weapon that would give a marksman a reach of a mile.

He’d have to find something in Darwin from Augustyn’s supplier.

Bolan waited an hour, and as soon as the magnet dropped the arsenal-packed junk mobile into the compressor, he left. He could hear the grinding of metal into a fused, crushed block. He got into his rental car and drove to the airport, where the electronic ticket would ferry him to Darwin, Australia.

He pulled his phone from his pocket in response to its subtle thrumming vibration, and flipped it open to hear Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, on the other end.

“You’re not coming home?” Price asked.

“I’ve got some unexpected business. I’ll be extending my trip,” Bolan answered.

“Striker, we’ve got a few operations waiting on the back burner here at home,” Price told him. “You’re not even certain what Augustyn had been hired for.”

“He was hired to be an exterminator. And these aren’t vermin he’d been called in on, these are human beings,” Bolan explained. “If they’re people I normally would have targeted, then good. I’ll do the job, and then take out Augustyn’s paymasters.”

“And if they’re citizens in the way of the triads?” Price asked.

“Then I just burn down the gangsters,” Bolan stated. “I’ll come home even faster.”

“Be careful down there, Striker,” Price said.

“I’ll take care of things and keep you posted,” Bolan replied, hanging up.

Bolan considered the situation. No one in Darwin would be prepared for an all-out power play by the triads, and no naval blockade or aircraft carrier offshore could calm this conflict.

It required the Executioner’s touch of cleansing fire.

BOBBY YEUNG STEPPED OUT of the back of the Ford Explorer once his bodyguards had determined that the area for the next five hundred yards was empty of human habitation except for the police and fire officers looking at the burned-out ranch house. The sheriff, Ansen Crown, noticed him and walked over.

“What’s the story?” Yeung asked as Crown approached him.

The sheriff looked around, then shook his head. “Arson. No bodies found.”

Yeung nodded. He restrained his frustration as he realized that the rednecks he’d hired had been sloppy. Obwe “Grandfather” Wangara was one of the last men alive among the tribes with the determination to expose the Black Rose Triad’s operations in their territories.

“You heard about the girl boarding the bus to Alice Springs, right?” Crown asked.

Yeung nodded. Wangara’s granddaughter, Arana, was missing from the ashes of the fire. A lone, eighteen-year-old Aboriginal girl would be hard to find in the outback. If she reached any authorities Yeung’s triad had not paid off, there would be difficulties.

Killing native people in a remote location of Australia was one thing. Dealing with government officials in the open would be another. Yeung wished that the Black Rose Triad’s assassin would respond and pick up his electronic ticket. While he was irate with the men he’d hired locally, he knew that the triad assassin was trustworthy. The man had been a powerful, secret asset. His very appearance turned attention away from the organization he worked for, as the triads were notoriously loathe to use non-Chinese in their employ.

“Just make certain that no one raises a stink about the old man’s home burning. If possible, report him dead,” Yeung stated.