China White

“Homeland Security?” Bolan suggested. “If the Reds have bent the rules somehow to smooth his way—”

“There’s still no proof of that. And while we’re working on it, Chinatown’s about to be ground zero in a war that’s making no allowance for civilians.”

“So, we’ll be putting out the fire,” Bolan observed.

“For starters,” Brognola agreed. “Beyond that, we should think about discouraging round two, three, four, whatever. Make them gun-shy, somehow. As for details...”

Bolan nodded, thinking that was where he came in.

* * *

THE SOLDIER’S “HOME” at Stony Man was modest; nothing but a bedroom with a private bath. There were a few books on a solitary shelf, mostly suggested reading from Kurtzman, a small TV with DVD player and a laptop with a DSL connection. When his downtime found him there, it was enough.

The only ghosts in residence were those that traveled with him—inescapable.

Bolan was working on the laptop now, absorbing details on his adversaries that had been archived for future reference. He started with the Wah Ching Triad, which had surfaced in the 1970s after a rift developed in its parent syndicate, the Sun Yee On. Ironically, that translated to New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild, a mouthful of nonsense describing China’s largest triad “family” with some sixty thousand members worldwide. The Wah Ching faction had spun off on its own, as criminal gangs often did, and had survived the shakedown battles to establish an empire of sorts built on gambling and loan-sharking in Hong Kong and Macau, plus exports of heroin from the Golden Triangle to Canada, the States and Western Europe. Prior to the Afghan incursion on their turf, they’d fought a bloody war with soldiers from Mexico’s Juárez Cartel to keep a foothold in Texas.

In most respects, the Wah Ching was a traditional triad, with tattooed members who took the usual thirty-six vows prescribed since sometime in the eighteenth century. Their structure was familiar, from the Dragon Head down to the “Vanguard”—operations officer—and “White Paper Fan”—administrator—down to the oath-bound members known for some reason as “forty-niners,” and the uninitiated prospects called “blue lanterns.” Up and down the chain, each member of the crime family—an estimated six thousand in all—was pledged to sacrifice himself if need be, for the greater good.

Make that the greater evil.

Their Afghan rivals, on the other hand, had no such rigid structure or tradition spanning centuries. Theirs was a tribal sort of operation, where the man in charge had proved himself by ruthless violence, eliminating his competitors, making examples of them to the world at large. The man in charge, Khalil Nazari, rarely left Afghanistan. In fact, he rarely left his fortress compound in the desert west of Kandahar, where he lived under double guard by his own thugs and mercenaries from a private outfit also known for its extensive contracts with the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Call him untouchable...unless he could be lured out into the open somehow for an unexpected meeting with the Executioner.

It was something to think about, but in the meantime there was New York City, where Wasef Kamran ran the show for Nazari, moving in on Wah Ching territory with no apparent concern for collateral damage. If they’d just been killing one another, Bolan might have been content to let the bloodbath run its course, but that was not an option in a metro area with twenty million innocent bystanders.

The Farm’s computer files contained whatever information was available on the Wah Ching Triad and the Nazari syndicate from sources including the DEA, FBI, NYPD, Interpol, Britain’s MI-5, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Afghanistan’s State Intelligence Agency, the Khadamat-e Aetla’at-e Dawlati, or KHAD. Some of it was contradictory, and some was out of date, but the archives showed Bolan faces, some with home addresses, and gave him directions to known or suspected syndicate properties. There would be no shortage of targets, and the soldier guessed he would find others as he went along, by one means or another.

The key was focus, and accepting tough realities. He’d never stop the trafficking in drugs from Southeast Asia or the Golden Crescent, obviously. Wiping out the Wah Ching’s membership was clearly an impossibility, and taking down Nazari at his Afghan stronghold posed a list of difficulties that included forcing Bolan to contend with U.S. troops. When those ideas were taken off the table, what remained?

His brand of blitzkrieg, for a start, refined in battles with the Mafia, with criminal cartels and terrorists around the world. The opposition would be tough, determined, and they’d pull out all the stops to keep from losing any ground, but neither side had any practical experience with the phenomenon Hal Brognola once labeled the “Bolan Effect.” Long before some White House ghostwriter dreamed up the buzz words “shock and awe,” the Executioner had honed those methods to a razor’s edge and taught his enemies to spend their final hours in fear.

Unfortunately, humans being what they were, that was a lesson that required unending repetition. Each new wave of predators seemed to believe they were immune to repercussions for their actions. There were always new ones to replace the fallen, endlessly recycling common themes of plunder, savagery and exploitation. They were doomed by ignorance and arrogance to replicate the errors of their predecessors, until someone knocked them down with force sufficient enough to ensure they would never rise again.

Someone like Bolan, who would do the job because he could.

* * *

BOLAN WAS STRIPPING for a shower when a rapping on his door stopped him. Shirtless and half expecting Price, he moved to let her in and was surprised to find Grimaldi standing there.

“Bad time?” the pilot asked.

“Just washing up,” Bolan replied. “It can wait.” He stood aside for his friend, then shut the door and slipped his shirt back on, leaving it loose, unbuttoned.

“I was thinking we should talk about tomorrow,” Grimaldi said. “New York, that is.”

“Okay.”

“I’m thinking we can fly directly there,” Grimaldi said, “unless you need to stop somewhere beforehand.”

“That’ll work,” Bolan agreed. “I’ll borrow what I need out of the armory.”

“Newark’s the closest airport, if you want to call about a ride.”

“Will do. You want a car?”

Grimaldi thought about it, then shook his head. “I’ll stick to wings for now. If we need a second vehicle for anything, I’ll pick one up along the way.”

“I expect New York won’t be the end of it,” Bolan warned.

“That’s the feeling I get, too. While you’re redecorating Chinatown, I’ll make arrangement for a bird with greater range. The Feds have got some business jets they’ve confiscated. I can probably get one of them on loan.”

“Flying in style.”

“The only way to go. Depending on our final destination, there’s a chance I can finesse some kind of gunship.”

“We can wait and see on that. It might be overkill.”

“Just food for thought. I’d rather have some rockets and a twenty-millimeter I don’t need than wish I had ’em when they’re nowhere to be found.”

“You’ve got a point,” Bolan agreed.

“So, any thoughts on where to start?”

“Find an informant if I can, first thing,” Bolan replied. “If one side or the other has a shipment due, I’ll try to take it down and go from there. Play one against the other if it feels right. Rattle cages. Blow their houses down.”

“Same old, same old.”

“Hey, if it works—”

“Don’t fix it,” Grimaldi said, finishing the thought for Bolan. “Right. I hear you. Want to get a beer or three?”

“I thought I’d catch up on my sleep.”

“Okay. I might try that myself,” Grimaldi said. “A little change of pace. What time tomorrow?”

“Six?”

“I’m there.”

Alone once more, Bolan shrugged off his shirt and had one leg out of his jeans before the knocking was repeated. Opening the door again, he felt his frown turn upside-down.

“All clear?” Price asked.

“Good timing.”

“Not so good,” she said, brushing past Bolan. “Jack was waiting for the elevator. I almost ordered him to wipe the smirk off his face.”