Crucial Intercept

“I understand. You’re doing your job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep at it.” Bolan nodded to him, stood and offered his hand. Sheddon shook it; his grip was firm.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Officer?” Bolan asked, looking back over his shoulder.

“Good luck with…whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

It took Bolan only a few minutes to gather up his gear, check the Crown Victoria for damage and get on the road toward Newport News. Once in motion, he pressed the gas pedal as close to the floor as he dared, weaving through traffic with skill and determination. He was already far behind the curve, but there was no point in delaying further. Until he knew otherwise, his quarry was more likely than anywhere else to be in Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, or beyond it. That meant he needed to be there, too, and soon.

He set the cruise control and, though he knew it was dangerous, spared a glance at his phone. He scrolled through the data the Farm was transmitting to him, calling up each image as it downloaded. There were brief personal biographies of the men for whom identities had been dredged up, and complete dossiers on two men not pictured. Bolan read in fits and starts as he switched his attention from the small screen to the road and back again. These were the Farm’s best guess at the likely leaders of such an Iranian strike group. It was a guess based on past Iranian intelligence ops and what Stony Man’s almost prescient computer team could tell him of known Iranian terror operatives—those operating with the nominal sanction of their frequently rogue state’s government.

The two dossiers were for men named Hassan Ayman, likely the senior member of an Iranian field team assigned to stir up trouble in the United States, and a Marzieh Shirazi, whose name Bolan remembered from several different terror bulletins in Europe. Each man had a file as long as Bolan’s arm. Shirazi was linked to several bombings of targets in Israel, where he had a close working relationship with the PLO and, more recently, with the Palestinian government that incorporated many high-ranking PLO figures, each man among them a murderous terrorist in his own right. Shirazi was small and squat, with a prominent brow, and dark, beady eyes pressed into a face that looked like it had stopped a brick at some point in Shirazi’s teenage years.

Ayman concerned Bolan more. He had no definitive terror incidents or murders assigned to him but, according to the file, he had long been rumored to be an extremely high-ranking official in Iranian intelligence. He was implicated in scores of deaths of civilians and nominally military targets alike, both in Israel and during the Iran-Iraq war. This last started in 1987. Apparently Ayman was believed, by the Farm’s team and as independently theorized by CIA analysts, to have been instrumental in several high-profile atrocities during the tailend of Iran’s “imposed war” with Iraq. If either Ayman or Shirazi was on scene, or if both of them were active in the here and present, on the streets of the urban United States, things would only get more bloody.

The big question remained: what did Iranian black-ops assassins want with a single former CIA cryptographer, a young man who had never, according to his file, worked as a field agent or on anything resembling a project related to Iran? This much was included in the data the Farm had sent on Baldero. It was a puzzle, and Bolan did not like puzzles. They pointed to incomplete information, and incomplete information, though a common problem in the field, was the most frequent cause of lost engagements. To gain and keep the initiative in combat required that he surprise his enemies. He did not intend to be on the other end of the exchange.

He was burning up the road, having passed Hampton and Newport News without incident, debating whether to cycle back and forth between them and Norfolk when his phone began to vibrate. The Farm would know he had reached the next city, of course; they were tracking him through the SAASM-compatible GPS tracking module in his phone. The Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module technology was the U.S. Military’s answer to GPS positioning. It ensured that, while his phone could be tracked by the team at Stony Man Farm, giving Price and her people up-to-date location data as Bolan traveled the country, no enemy could do the same, nor could false position data be transmitted to the Farm to misinform Kurtzman’s cyber team.

“Striker,” he answered.

“Striker, we have a mission-critical update,” Price said without preamble. “We are transmitting new coordinates to you as we speak. The advance field team has been combing likely spots for Baldero to go to ground, including local motels and gas stations. They have a pickup truck parked behind a Dumpster at a motel on the North Military Highway. They say it’s full of bullet holes.”

“Registration?”

“The truck was reported stolen in Charlottesville yesterday,” Price said, “and now it’s wearing a set of stolen license plates swapped from a similar Chevy S-10, also in Charlottesville.”

“Coincidence?”

“There’s that word again,” Price echoed.

“I’m on it,” Bolan said. “Out.”

It took him another fifteen minutes to reach the address, guided by the GPS directions in his phone. When he was close to the location, he stowed the phone and slowed, doing his best to stay inconspicuous. He found the motel and reconnoitered as quietly as he could, cruising around and hoping his interceptor and its missing side mirror wouldn’t scream “law enforcement presence” to Baldero if the man were watching and had reason to fear legal interference. Bolan was not a police officer, of course—he was a soldier. Baldero would not know that, though. To the fugitive Baldero, Bolan would represent the law, and any man running from so many shooters would either welcome rescue or fear capture. The situation would be very tense until the Executioner knew which way Baldero would break.

There was no sign of the advance field team. They would have pulled out to some discreet distance once word got out that a Stony Man operative was on the way. The team’s job was not combat and its mission was to remain undetected, to go unnoticed as long as possible. Getting drawn into a firefight was not its purpose; the unnamed, faceless analysts who had sent so much after-action intelligence Bolan’s way thus far could only continue to do so if they stayed out of the way. That was fine with the Executioner. He preferred to work alone, whenever possible, and if there was a firefight to be had, he was content to bring it to the enemy.

He found the truck right where he had been told to expect it, hidden in the lee of a pair of industrial-sized trash containers behind the motel. He parked behind it, blocking it in, nose-out in case he needed to put the Crown Victoria into action quickly.

The truck’s engine was still ticking. It had not been parked for long and was still shedding excess heat from what had to have been a breakneck drive. Bolan could smell burning brakes and hot rubber, the unmistakable odors of a vehicle that had been pushed to its limits.

He had his canvas war bag slung over his shoulder. Before he moved on the motel, he paused to open the bag’s large cover flap. Inside was the mini-Uzi he had first noted when making a cursory inspection of the care package from Kissinger. He withdrew the weapon, loaded one of the 30-round box magazines from the bag and placed the weapon on the hood of his vehicle.

He recounted the other explosives and lethal surprises in the bag, as well as taking stock of the loaded magazines for the Uzi. Kissinger had thoughtfully provided several 20-round box magazines for the Beretta 93-R, its 9 mm ammo compatible with the Uzi. There were a handful of loaded mags for the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, too, and a few boxes of ammunition for both weapons.

Finally, he withdrew a small item he had at first overlooked. It was a rosewood-handled boot dagger in a leather sheath with a metal spring clip. He withdrew it, examined the four-inch, double-edged blade and resheathed the knife with a mental nod. Then he clipped the sheath inside his waistband in the appendix position, where he could draw it with either hand readily enough. His windbreaker covered it, barely, as it concealed his other hardware in their holsters.

As he went to pick up the mini-Uzi from the hood, a slip of paper fluttered from his sleeve, where it had been caught following his reach into the bag. Bolan scooped it up quickly, checking to make sure he was still unobserved from his vantage behind the garbage containers. Then he unfolded the paper.

Wear them in good health, it read in handwritten print. Stay alive. It was signed, simply, “Cowboy.”

Bolan shoved the slip of paper deep into his pocket. He picked up the Uzi and, holding the weapon low against his leg, moved in on the motel. Once he was in the shadow of the building itself, he took out his phone and texted a message to the Farm’s quick-contact number, which would display on a readout in the Computer Room, asking for room number intel.

Almost immediately, the responding text message came back, probably typed by Price herself: “Bear says man matching Baldero’s description checked in room 112. Grnd floor, East.”

That would mean the Farm, or someone on the advance team reporting to the Farm, had checked with the front desk. Whether overtly using government authority, or covertly using some ruse, the Farm had determined that a man who looked like Baldero had checked into room 112, which Price was informing him was located on the ground floor of the east wing of the double-winged building.

He made his way there, watching the doors and room numbers tick past in descending order as he went by. He was doing his best to ignore the gun held against his thigh. It was an old trick of role camouflage; if the gun wasn’t anything he noticed, a bystander might not notice it either. While there were always exceptions, Bolan knew from experience that most people simply didn’t look at the individuals around them. The majority of people walked through life in what one late, famous self-defense expert had called “condition white,” a state of blissful unawareness of their surroundings. Bolan was counting on that. It wouldn’t do for some particularly aware citizen to notice his weapon and call the police, perhaps tipping off Baldero that he had been located.

He found room 112 and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. Reaching out with one hand, he rapped on the door quietly, using the back of his left fist.

“Yeah?” came a voice from inside.

“Housekeeping,” Bolan said. “You want fresh towels?”

There was no reply from inside. Bolan could hear the occupant, presumably Baldero, shuffling around within. If it wasn’t his man, no harm would be done. If it was, however, he needed to take control of the situation right now. If he could get Baldero to open the door without causing a scene, he could quietly remove the man from the premises and take him into custody. Getting Baldero under wraps was the first step in stopping the shootings that were causing so much trouble, and in unraveling the mystery regarding why the shootings were happening.

“Sir?” Bolan asked again. “If you’ll just open the door—”

Just then a shotgun slug tore a hole the size of a quarter through the heavy motel door.

4

Straddling an upholstered wooden chair with his arms resting on the chair’s back, Yoon Jin-Sang focused the binoculars for a better view of the large, dark-haired man who had just entered the shelter of the motel’s second-floor overhang, sticking to the shadows. The man moved with unmistakable, deadly grace, like a panther. Yoon suppressed a shudder. He thought perhaps it was as they had feared, and the dreaded night-killer rumored in the reports trickling slowly down from military intelligence were true. If they were, he could believe that this man, the man he had just glimpsed in the binoculars’ view, was the night-killer. He did not say so. He knew the feelings of Kim Dae-Jung on the subject and did not wish to agitate his “superior.” When he spoke, he was careful to keep his tone subdued.

“He is here.”

“The large American?” Kim’s voice was too casual, almost indolent. The large, muscular man leaned back in his chair and paused to stare at the ceiling, as if he did not care.

“Yes, the same man,” Yoon said. “He is approaching Baldero’s room.”

Kim did not reply. Yoon banished the sigh before it could escape his mouth. His true superiors in military intelligence had given him his orders in no uncertain terms. He was to do his best to see to it that Kim carried out the mission with which he was tasked. Given Kim’s dangerously unstable nature, that might prove difficult, but it was not, they emphasized, considered impossible. Kim had been selected from the ranks of intelligence’s disgraced operatives because he was expendable and because he still had family members who ranked highly in North Korea’s military command and intelligence structure.

It would suit the family honor of all concerned if Kim’s wild nature was harnessed where he could do the most damage among the hated West, and that was deemed to be the United States. If Kim died spectacularly, sacrificing himself in that self-destructive manner that so characterized him, this was deemed so much the better. Even their leader was at least dimly aware of Kim’s volatile nature. Certainly the man had disgraced himself and potentially his family publicly enough in North Korea, his eccentricities finally culminating in atrocities against North Korean civilians that even the government and its military enforcers could not ignore.

For the mission to be an unqualified success, Yoon had the unenviable task of keeping Kim restrained in order for them to capture this American, Daniel Baldero, and spirit him out of the country. Kim had to live only long enough for the team to acquire Baldero; if he died thereafter, that was best. Yoon had been informed by his superiors, in fact, that Kim was not to survive the mission. If that meant he were to meet with an accident on his return to Pyongyang, well, that was what it meant. The problem was not seeing to such an accident—the problem was keeping Kim under control long enough for them to get that far. He was dangerous, unstable and unpredictable—but Kim was also a deadly warrior, a berserker with no fear. They would need him before the mission was over, especially if this night-killer was truly involved. Yoon swallowed again, his throat very dry.

The three of them—Yoon, Kim and the woman, Hu Chun Hei—sat in the upper-story room of the motel across the street from the one in which Baldero had only just rented a room of his own. It had not been difficult to secure the space, even in a hurry. It had been more difficult to conceal their field teams in their trucks in the hotel parking lot, for Yoon feared they were entirely too obvious sitting there in the American sport-utility vehicles. They had already risked flushing the prey once, and they could not afford to be discovered, not yet. For the plan to succeed, they had to remain unseen until one of the foreign teams had acquired Baldero. Then Yoon, Kim and their men, along with Hu, would swoop in and steal the prize, like an eagle taking a fish in its claws. The Americans would look like fools, Kim would die a hero, and Yoon would return to a promotion and much political currency in Pyongyang.

Already, their surveillance had shown them much, and their contact within the Americans’ government had told them even more. It was, Yoon thought, truly astounding, the lengths to which the traitor American had gone to keep them apprised of the situation this man had helped create. He cared only for money, it seemed, and Pyongyang had transferred vast sums to him to secure his cooperation. More had been promised. Whether the man lived to spend it would be up to Kim, more than likely, and Yoon cared only that the man live to the limit of his usefulness. After that, Kim could indulge his baser instincts to his heart’s content. No one would have to know—what was one more fat, dead American? Yoon laughed at the thought and wondered if Baldero understood the extent to which his fellow American was willing to sell him to the enemy. Probably Baldero did not. It was not important.

The American government man had, in fact, fed Yoon’s people a steady stream of intelligence since helping to bring them and their equipment, undetected, into the country. It was easy enough for the fool, as he was telling them primarily of their competition—other teams, similar to their own, from nations hostile to their interests and to the United States, whom the American had similarly helped to enter the nation. The North Koreans had paid him the most, and promised yet more, and thus the North Koreans enjoyed the privilege of the traitor’s further betrayal of the rest of his customers. How such a man thought himself anything but an animal, loyal to no one and nothing, Yoon could not fathom. Surely the man knew he had no honor, and that his actions earned him no esteem among those he greedily served against the land of his own birth? It amazed and disgusted Yoon, who nonetheless was determined to use the traitor until he could be used no more. Distasteful as this business was, their team could not have succeeded without this assistance from within the ranks of the American government.