Lethal Risk

by Don Pendleton

  Price brought up the next slide, showing a totaled sedan that had been T-boned with a vengeance. “The official story is that the car was in an accident—which fits at first glance. Except the usual driver of the car was missing and hasn’t been seen anywhere since. Carstairs’s body was the only one found at the scene, although hairs and fiber samples showed there were at least two other people in the car with him.”

  Bolan’s gaze had narrowed at the news. “How did he die?”

  “Our embassy sent out a press release stating that he died in a car accident,” Price replied. “Forensic autopsy showed he suffered multiple blunt force traumas to the head, causing a cerebral edema that ultimately killed him.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “Bruises on his hands and arms showed that he attempted to defend himself during the assault.”

  “The bastards beat him to death,” Bolan said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Price confirmed. “The whereabouts of Liao’s family is currently unknown.”

  “And what are we supposed to do about it?”

  “Officially, nothing, of course—even for us,” Brognola said then took a deep breath. “Unofficially, the President wants one man to go in, locate Liao’s family and him and get them all out of the country.”

  “One person?”

  Brognola nodded. “That’s right. But wait, it gets better. Although the White House has classified Liao a Priority One target, I’ve been ordered not to give you any backup or even support while you’re in-country. The potential risk of trace-back to assets in the US, or to any in-place assets is deemed too high, so you’ll be completely on your own. No extraction if the op gets blown and no aid if you get caught. I raised as much holy hell as I could, but the Man is holding firm.

  “You have to be false flagged, in case you’re caught, so the blowback will be aimed at another country. Given your knowledge of the language, I think we’ll have to go Russian, maybe even Georgian. An operative tasked with getting to Liao before the US does.”

  Bolan snorted. “That cover won’t hold up to a sneeze. There’s no way the Georgians would be able to penetrate Chinese intelligence that deeply. Assuming that we’re going forward, we’d best make this come straight down from Moscow. At the very least, if it did get exposed, it might make the President feel a little more paranoid about his neighbor to the east, and vice versa.”

  “Of course, you’re going to do your damnedest not to get caught.”

  “As always,” Bolan replied. “Besides, I’ve heard enough about Chinese prisons that I have no desire to see what one looks like up close.” He watched as Price and Brognola exchanged glances. “What?”

  “Well, regardless of whether you want to or not, you’re heading into a Chinese prison anyway.” The mission controller flipped to another slide. “We’ve located Liao—inside Qincheng Prison.”

  Bolan stared at the overhead satellite view of the prison built with cooperation from the Soviets during the 1950s. “Well, at least they won’t suspect anyone trying to break into the place.”

  “Yes, that may be your only advantage,” Price said. “Bear and Akira are working up an infiltration plan as we speak. They’ll work this mission exclusively.”

  “Well, then, there isn’t much else to say, is there?”

  Bolan put both hands on the table and started to rise, but caught Brognola’s troubled look. “If you chomp that cigar any harder, Hal, you’ll end up eating half of it. What’s on your mind?”

  To her surprise, Price saw something very rare—a hesitant reply from Hal Brognola. “Striker, you can always refuse this mission. We’ve done a lot over the years, you and me. Pounded a lot of ground, kicked in a lot of doors.”

  “And did a lot of good along the way, too,” Bolan reminded him.

  The big Fed nodded. “I know, I know. And normally, I’d be the first person backing you wherever you needed to go to complete the mission. I get it, and I get the risks you and the others take every time you’re in the field. But this one…” He spread his hands helplessly. “I just have a bad feeling about it. You’re sticking your head right into the dragon’s maw, and all by your lonesome, too. Shit, I don’t even think the embassy can help you if you get in a jam over there. You can say no.”

  “Hal, you know I wouldn’t refuse a mission the President thinks is important. And if the intelligence this man can deliver gives us the edge in dealing with the Chinese —and can prevent them from starting a war in the region—then it’s worth the risk,” Bolan replied. “I’ve executed enough missions with minimal equipment going in before. Besides, it’s Beijing. I’m sure there’s a thriving black market that will supply me with everything I need at only modestly exorbitant prices.”

  “Be that as it may, Striker, this whole thing is starting to stink to me. We should consider the possibility that this is a trap, that this Liao could be a double-agent dangled in front of the US in the hope of catching us in the act.”

  “Hal—” Bolan regarded the big Fed soberly for a moment “—I go into just about every foreign country thinking someone’s gunning for me, because usually someone is. But the day I let that stop me from doing what we think is right is the day I hang it up for good.”

  “All right, I’ve said my piece.” Brognola turned to Price. “Do you have anything to add?”

  The Farm’s mission controller cleared her throat. “Given the potential difficulties of you not having access to your usual assets in the field, I’ve taken the liberty of working up a mission profile that would at least have you working with someone over there that could ease your way. He would have to travel as a tourist and rendezvous with you in the city itself—”

  “If you’re going to say John Trent’s name, forget it,” Bolan interrupted her. “He almost got killed in one of Stony Man’s ops. I’m not saying he wouldn’t help, but it’s pretty clear to me that the President would pitch a fit if he even got a whiff of a civilian being involved. It wouldn’t matter anyway. This one’s too big for John, and that’s not a slight. It’s going to have to be me—and me alone—going in.”

  Price grinned as part of Brognola’s tortured cigar hit the conference table.

  “Don’t worry, Hal. I’ll be back before you know it. The good news in all this is that they have no idea I’m coming. If Liao is already in custody, they probably think the matter’s over already. You’d be surprised at how much I can get done in those circumstances. Just make sure that cover jacket is airtight. The last thing we need is anyone in China getting even a hint that there’s a US operative in their midst.”

  Price slid a flash drive across the table to him. “This contains all of the data that Bear and Akira have been able to find so far. It’s a thirteen-hour flight from DC to Moscow, where you’ll officially launch from, so hopefully they’ll be able to ascertain where Liao’s family is being held in that time. Do you have any questions?”

  “Just one,” the Executioner replied. “When do I leave?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Zhang Liao’s eyes fluttered open and he blinked at the soft white light shining down on him from the ceiling.

  Turning his face away from the glow, he licked his dry lips and tried to swallow through a parched throat. His mouth also tasted sour and fuzzy, as though he’d been asleep for a long time. His head was pounding and slow, too, as if he’d just tied several on at the bar before going home. Liao didn’t drink, however—a rarity among Chinese. He preferred to keep his mind sharp to navigate the intricate corridors of power and deals within deals he had been trained to handle since he was a teenager.

  So, if he hadn’t had anything to drink…what had happened to him? The last thing he remembered was leaving his office for what would have been the last time…

  The embassy!

  He was supposed to be going to the US Embassy to defect, but something had happened on the way… He had been jostled by a stranger, and that was the last thing he could remember.

  Reaching up to touch his forehead as he tried to
recall what had happened to him, Liao got another surprise upon seeing his bare arm, which was usually dressed in an English-cut, button-down Oxford shirt. His eyes widened in surprise when he looked down to realize he was now dressed in a paper-thin hospital gown.

  His gaze traveled the rest of the room, taking in the metal-framed hospital bed he was laying on, the sterile, bare walls surrounding him, the door that appeared to lead to a small washroom, the safety-wired glass window with drawn curtains, and the security-locked, handleless door that was keeping him from leaving. Instinctively he sucked in a breath of the slightly metallic-tasting air as he realized that wherever he was, he was a prisoner.

  He looked down to the left at a cheap pressboard nightstand next to his bed, and right, where a wheeled tray sat with what looked like a call button on it. With cold fear starting to swirl in the pit of his stomach, Liao tested his legs and found that they worked just fine. Swinging them over the side, he got up, steadied himself as a wave of dizziness crashed over him, and walked to the washroom.

  Everything in here was either stainless steel—like the toilet and sink, which were both bolted to the wall—or plastic, like the water cup, which was so flimsy it couldn’t be used for anything other than its intended purpose. Liao drank two cups of flat, warm water, and washed his mouth out with another cupful. He splashed some water on his face, feeling somewhat refreshed at the wet sensation, then dried himself with the small rough-cotton cloth sitting on the side of the sink.

  With nothing left to do, he returned to the bed and sat. Spotting the window again, he got up and walked over to it, moving the blinds aside just enough to peek out.

  As he’d feared, it didn’t show the outdoors. Instead it looked out onto a drab hallway, where men and women in drab-colored scrubs bustled back and forth down the corridor. One additional thing that he knew most hospitals didn’t have: the armed guard standing outside his door.

  What is this place? he wondered. Where am I?

  Just then the door clicked and swung inward, making him scoot back toward the bed. A man in a doctor’s white coat and dark maroon scrubs walked in, followed by the armed guard he had seen outside his room. The doctor, carrying a computer tablet under his arm, was probably a decade younger than him, his black hair already receding from his forehead buzzed short so he didn’t have to worry about it. The guard was even younger, maybe midtwenties and, from what Liao could see, in excellent physical shape. He was also well armed, with a holstered black pistol on the belt at his waist and a stubby submachine gun hanging from a strap over his shoulder. He stood stiffly just inside the door and never took his eyes off Liao.

  “Mr. Liao, so good to see you awake!” the doctor said in Cantonese, forcing Liao to focus on him. “I hope you have been comfortable during your stay.”

  Liao frowned at the man’s seemingly easy manner. “Who are you? Where am I? What is going on here?” He rose from the bed as he asked the last question, making the guard step forward.

  Without turning, the doctor raised his hand, gesturing for the guard stop in his tracks.

  His expression sobered and he motioned for Liao to sit.

  “Very well. You wish answers, and there is no reason to keep them from you. I am Dr. Chen Xu, head of surgery here at the Guaw Li transplant facility. You are Zhang Liao, a government employee turned traitor and attempted defector. Instead of holding a trial, which could prove very embarrassing to the government, they have delivered you to me.”

  “What?” Liao’s heart sank. “There must be some mistake,” he said, his brow creasing in confusion.

  The doctor smiled. “Oh, no. If you are brought here, then there was a very good reason. But do not worry about trying to contact anyone. This facility has been built over the past decade at great cost and secrecy, to avoid public embarrassments like what has happened with other facilities of the same type.”

  “And what is to happen now?” Liao asked, even though he had a terrifying feeling he knew the answer.

  Xu consulted his tablet, flicking through screens with his finger. “Well, we still have to run a few tests to get a sense of just how healthy you are—your blood work came back with excellent results, by the way.” He looked down at Liao and all trace of human warmth or compassion was gone from his demeanor. “And once those are completed to our satisfaction, we will sedate you and harvest as many of your internal organs as possible.”

  Liao stared at the doctor for a long moment. He’d heard what the man said, but it was as if his brain refused to comprehend the words. His mouth opened and closed as he struggled to come to terms with what was going on. “But…you can’t…what about my family?”

  Xu checked his watch, as casually as if making sure he wasn’t running behind in his appointments. “By now, they are no doubt in the hands of the Ministry of State Security. But do not worry, Mr. Liao, you will provide a far greater service to your country and its people in death than you ever did in life.”

  He turned and began walking to the door, temporarily blocking the guard’s view of the prisoner.

  Blind, unreasoning rage suddenly filled Liao. If what the doctor had said was true—if his family was captured, and him slated to die, with no one possibly knowing where he was and what had happened to him—then he might as well take at least one of them with him.

  Liao launched himself off the bed at the doctor’s back. He leaped on the doctor and bore him to the floor, his clutching fingers seeking the other man’s neck. If he could just get his hands around the smug bastard’s throat—

  Blinding white stars exploded in his vision and Liao blinked them away, only to find himself lying on the floor, clutching his head. The guard stood over him, his pistol aimed at his face.

  “Stop! Do not fire!” Xu said as he picked himself up and straightened his disheveled lab coat. “I do not hold your actions against you, Mr. Liao. In your circumstances, I cannot be sure I would not have reacted in much the same way to this news. I am sure that, given a choice, you would not have wanted it to end this way. However, sometimes we do not have a choice in what happens to us.

  “Double the guard on this room, and no one is to attend to him alone,” the doctor said to the guard as he left.

  Pistol still aimed at Liao’s face, the guard slowly walked backward to the door and exited, leaving the man bruised, sore and very much alone.

  For the next several hours all he did was lie on the floor and weep softly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Forty-one hours after the briefing at Stony Man Farm, Mack Bolan sat in the back of a fifty-year-old, olive-drab military truck among a load of crated, bright green melons as it jounced along narrow mountain roads toward the outskirts of Beijing.

  Unlike most insertions, this one had been much more difficult. There had to be absolutely no trace back to any US military involvement, which scratched most of the usual methods, such as a HALO drop into the boonies. There was no way the United States was going to risk sending an aircraft into Chinese airspace—it would most likely bring their air force and army down on him.

  A commercial flight had been out of the question, as well. Even with an airtight cover, once he began moving through Beijing, any police attention would quickly trace him back to his entry into the country. Even if he had taken a trip through Europe, they would have backtracked him to the United States.

  In the end Bolan had hopped on a commercial airliner to Moscow, changed his identity there and then caught a local flight to Irkutsk International Airport, in the middle of Russia. From there, he had taken a dizzying array of transportation modes—including a two-hundred-mile cab ride and a six-hour stretch in the back of a horse-drawn wagon—before reaching Beijing. He’d crossed Mongolia entirely; every time his Russian passport had seen him through.

  Bolan had been careful to keep any answers to questions short and to the point. He didn’t have a native Russian accent, and didn’t want to give any customs officers a reason to suspect he was anything more than he was pretending to be: an
ordinary Russian businessman traveling to the east.

  It wasn’t the most perfect—or direct—plan, but it had gotten him here. Stiff from the many hours of sitting on things from a too short metal bench seat to a wooden wagon bed, he took a moment to stretch, careful not to dislodge any of the harvest surrounding him. Running on about ten hours of sleep total, he was still feeling pretty decent.

  Bolan took a deep breath, feeling oddly naked at the moment and even more oddly free. The President had been so paranoid that he hadn’t allowed him any of his usual devices to maintain contact with Stony Man. Since he was in one of the largest cities on Earth, he would have to purchase off-the-shelf items to use for communication. What he did have, in a concealed belt around his waist, was Chinese yuan, and plenty of them. Buying most of his gear wouldn’t be a problem. Using it to find four needles in a gigantic haystack containing more than twenty-two million pieces of hay—that was going to be a problem.

  And then, springing them out of wherever they were being held—another problem. Nothing exactly insurmountable, but definitely a challenge. And one Bolan was absolutely up for.

  In fact, he felt as disconnected to the rest of the world as possible at the moment, a ghost floating through landscapes and small towns and villages, with no primary base of operations, no backup…and little to no options if he was captured. It was a strangely heady feeling, relying primarily on his skills and wits to sustain him.

  The truck slowed and a fist thumped against the back of the cab. That was the driver’s signal—relayed through guessing and pantomime—for Bolan to climb up on top of the old 4x4, as they would be coming to a checkpoint soon. When the driver had stopped for Bolan, who had been walking at the side of the road after hitching a ride with three half-stoned college students on a driving tour through Asia, he’d blinked at Bolan’s attempt to tell his story—a stuck traveler trying to get to Beijing—and paid far more attention to the fistful of money Bolan had held out. He had scrutinized the Executioner carefully, then nodded as he fired off another burst of incomprehensible Mandarin. After a few minutes Bolan had gathered that he wasn’t supposed to have any passengers, so he would have to climb on top when the time came, which was now.