Lethal Risk

by Don Pendleton

  But how could she make that happen? What could she possibly offer this genial, smiling man that could guarantee her children’s lives?

  Baozhai sat straighter in the wing-backed chair and flashed her best smile—the one she’d honed on hostile reporters—on her interrogator. “I wish very much to help you, Major, but I am afraid that I cannot tell you what I do not know. My husband was very secretive about his business, and never discussed it at home.”

  That part was mostly true—Chinese men rarely discussed their business at home. While it wouldn’t gain her any real sympathy, she could hope for pity, perhaps?

  The major nodded, his smile slipping a bit. “That may be, but tell me, how did you come to be in a United States Embassy car, with an American attaché escorting you to what I can only assume was their embassy?”

  Well, she had to try. Baozhai licked her lips and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle out of her slacks. “I am not exactly sure why that happened myself. I had received a call from my husband earlier that evening saying to meet him at a restaurant in the vicinity.” She named a place near the American building. “Since my husband’s work had him associating with the Americans, we often went there for dinner. I didn’t think anything of it when he sent a car for us, as he planned to meet us there. It was only when we were detained outside our house that I feared something was wrong.”

  “Yes, let’s talk about that, if you don’t mind.” The man shifted in his chair, still mostly radiating calm and openness. “You claim that two men from the Ministry of State Security attempted to take you into custody, and that this—Mr. Carstairs—fended them off, injuring one in the process, and then ordered his driver to leave the scene, is that right?”

  Baozhai nodded, trying to stay ahead of the major long enough to weave some kind of plausible story. So far, she wasn’t coming up with anything besides her usual answers—an in-the-dark housewife caught up in larger events that she didn’t understand.

  “And all the while, you had absolutely no idea as to why representatives of the Chinese government would be looking to take you and your children into custody?”

  Baozhai crossed her legs to try to stop them from shaking. “I…can only assume that they were sent for my family’s protection.”

  “Yet you did not go with them when ordered, but stayed with Mr. Carstairs.”

  “I could not hear exactly what was said between the two men. I just saw them together, then the American did something to the other man, making him shout and move away, and he got into our car. The rest of what happened is in my statement.” Although regrettable, Baozhai thanked her lucky stars that the American had been killed in the accident, so he wouldn’t disprove her story. She had heard enough about the prisons of her homeland to know they would have gotten the truth out of him in short order.

  Realizing that she, too, had nothing to lose, she decided to try being a bit more assertive. “Begging your pardon, but we have already gone over all of this several times in the past few days. I have not gotten the chance to see my children yet today. I would like to see them now.”

  He snapped shut the manila folder he had been reading from and tucked it under his arm. “Rewards are granted for positive results, Mrs. Liao. Since we have not accomplished any positive results today, I am afraid that I cannot allow that. Perhaps you should think very carefully about what you had seen or discussed with your husband, and when I come tomorrow to ask these questions again, you will be more forthcoming with your answers.”

  With that, he rose and walked out of the room, leaving Baozhai alone again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Blood pressure one-seventeen over seventy-five. You’re doing quite well, Mr. Liao, although your pressure has been creeping up over the past few days.”

  Liao nodded blandly. “I can’t imagine why,” he deadpanned. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, he would have thought he was in a normal hospital, undergoing a battery of tests in preparation for a normal procedure or operation. Everything fit—the efficient nurses, the bland yet nourishing hospital food, the scheduled checks by the doctors. If only the end result hadn’t been the termination of his life, he would have considered himself to be receiving very good care overall. However, there was that looming end result.

  He had spent the first two or three days—he had to estimate, since there was no clock in his room—in a deep depression. He ate little, didn’t talk to anyone and just stayed in his bed for most of the day. He was depressed, it was true, but after the first twelve or fifteen hours, he had been primarily faking the symptoms to gain some time to think.

  That in itself had been difficult. At first his thoughts had been consumed with where his family was and how they were doing. He dared not ask, for fear of being told the worst—at this point, he figured it was simply better that he not know.

  To distract himself from that, he tried to come up with an escape plan, which proved to be extremely difficult. The guards were very professional in executing their duties. No one was ever allowed in his room by themselves, and the guard was always standing by the door, too far to reach, overpower him and seize his weapon, which Liao wasn’t even sure he knew how to use. Also, he’d learned that the main room was watched through closed-circuit television, and most likely his bathroom as well, making preparing any sort of device—not that he could come up with one—or plan unseen pretty much impossible. The one time he had inadvertently walked into the blind spot under where he thought the camera was, a pair of guards had appeared in his room within sixty seconds. The only way they could have known what was going on was because someone watching him had told them.

  The other option, taking a hostage, probably wouldn’t get him anywhere, either. Although the guards probably wouldn’t actually kill a nurse or a doctor, he couldn’t assume that they didn’t have a shoot-escapees-on-sight policy. Besides, he didn’t have anything to make a weapon out of, so taking a hostage was out of the question. The tray, cup and utensils for his meals were all soft plastic, sturdy enough to use, but useless for fashioning into any sort of weapon. They were also counted before and after he ate, and Liao was certain that anything missing would be found—one way or another. He supposed he could try to fashion some kind of strangling cord out of his bedsheet, but again there was the problem of being watched. The single ventilation shaft high on the wall was bolted shut; it was too small for him to squeeze through anyway. There simply was no remotely feasible way to escape.

  Therefore, with no way out, and his family most likely lost to him, Liao grew resigned to his fate. Well, not entirely. While he might not have been able to escape it, he realized that he could circumvent the reason they were keeping him here in the first place. All he had to do was to figure out a way to injure himself so that his organs would be unusable.

  They may kill me, he thought while lying in bed one evening, but they damn sure aren’t going to profit from my body!

  There only remained the question of how. A hunger strike wouldn’t work—he was sure that damned sociopath Dr. Xu would supervise the force-feeding himself.

  Poison was a possibility, but again, how could he poison himself with only the very limited means available?

  That question had occupied the next day or so. To not be put on antidepressants, Liao appeared to come out of his depression and began interacting with the staff more. But all the while he was racking his brain for a solution.

  The answer, of course, was a simple one. It came to him while he was relieving himself one afternoon. He rose and turned to flush the toilet when he caught sight of his feces floating in the bowl. He stopped and stared at it as the automatic system flushed it down. Might it be that simple?

  He returned to his bed and sat, mind whirling with the possibility. An educated man, he knew that simply ingesting the feces wouldn’t have the desired effect. For a moment he cursed his healthy lifestyle—an ulcer would have been perfect right now. But now, he was as healthy as a horse, more or less.

  However, what if
I introduce fecal bacteria to my bloodstream? All he would need is some kind of open wound and a judicious application of his own waste to the area.

  Except they were watching him. They were always watching him. Only when he was asleep, he guessed, and the lights were out, were they not. The real issue was how he would conceal his infection plan from them, especially when all he had to wear was a flimsy hospital gown.

  Again, the answer came while in the bathroom. He had been thinking about that problem while on the toilet when he realized that his entire body was covered by the gown when he sat. Also, he was as close to the infectious material as he was going to get right here, right now. But where to put it that wouldn’t be easily discovered?

  The answer came to him with such clarity that he nearly fell off the toilet. All he had to do was to break the skin near his groin and apply feces to the wound. It was going to hurt, but he was pretty sure he could scratch open the skin near his genitals, smear his waste on it and simply wait.

  He put his plan into motion that night, scratching at the skin near his scrotum under cover of the thin blanket.

  If anyone’s watching, they’ll probably just think I’m masturbating, he thought.

  It took a few hours and his fingers grew stiff and sore, not to mention the area he was injuring did not feel good at all. But by morning he had a raw, red, open wound near his scrotum that he figured should do the trick.

  Feeling better than he had in days, Liao got up and even whistled a little as he headed for the bathroom.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Now mobile and just another person in the tide of city commuters, Bolan was looking forward to the next part of the mission.

  Since he hadn’t been able to bring any weapons with him, Stony Man had reached out through encrypted web sites and list servers to various shadowy connections halfway around the world and arranged an armament package using third-party vendors.

  In other words, Bolan was about to go weapons shopping on the black market.

  Nobody had been pleased with that arrangement, as there were far too many things that could go wrong, the least of which included him walking into a trap or double-cross. However, bullets were going to start flying at some point during this trip and the Executioner needed some way to reply in kind.

  Every building around him looked as though it had been built from neon. Glowing, flashing signs promising massage, go-go dancing, and other vague, suitably illicit pleasures lit the night. Strip clubs and the like were supposed to be illegal in Beijing, but as with most other crimes, where there was a will—which meant people willing to pay for it—there was a way. In this case, it meant they weren’t advertised openly, but if you knew the right people, then just about anything could be had for a price.

  Young men and women flooded the streets, looking, buying and selling. Spotting the place he was looking for, Bolan took a moment to confirm the address. The building was three stories high and its front was covered with floor-to-ceiling windows, in which comely young women sat and beckoned passersby to come inside, or danced to lure them. Judging by the steady flow of patrons entering, business was good—the better to get lost in the crowd.

  That was also good news; the neighborhood seemed to cater to a diverse clientele. The crowd appeared to be a mix of various people and races. Bolan figured he’d have a better time blending in here. He parked the truck three blocks away, hoping it wouldn’t get blocked in by the snail’s-pace traffic creeping through the streets.

  Pulling his baseball cap low again, he headed through the gawking, talking, drinking crowd, heading toward the club’s entrance. Inside, he was met with a wall of noise and people, and the place was dimly lit by cheap colored-paper lanterns. Women danced on the bar to the loud approval of half-drunk men. It was hot inside, and reeked of grain alcohol, cigarette smoke, sweat and cheap perfume.

  Bolan shouldered his way to the back, where a narrow stairway led to the second floor and the VIP rooms. He walked up, putting his back to the wall as a parade of young women dressed in American-label baseball jerseys, jeans and shirts paraded by. On the landing, he took out a pair of cheap sunglasses and slipped them on, blinking in the already dim red light, then walked down to the third door on the right and rapped on the frame three times.

  “Yao?” The beaded curtain was pushed aside and a tiny woman with huge eyes, fake lashes and dressed in a traditional Chinese silk dress stared up at him. Her eyes widened even farther in surprise, but she quickly masked her reaction and cocked her head at him.

  “Chen song wo,” Bolan replied, saying that Chen had sent him. He tapped his baseball cap, the only one he had seen in the room.

  She raised a smartphone and looked at it for a moment, then nodded. “Come in,” she said in English.

  Bolan entered a small room lined with bench seats and pillows, with a small serving table in the middle. As with the rest of the upstairs, the room was lit with red mood lighting. The woman pulled a sliding door closed, immediately muting the cacophony outside to a dull roar. “Would you care for some entertainment while you wait?”

  “No, thank you,” Bolan replied as he chose a seat that allowed him to keep an eye on both the doorway and the woman keeping him company. “I’m here to pick up a package, and then I’ll be gone.”

  “I am afraid it will be a few minutes,” she said, extending a slim hand to the table, which had a single bottle and four glasses on it. “Something to drink, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you.” Bolan was well aware of the Chinese custom of sealing a business deal over alcohol, and he was just as determined not to let it interfere with his business. It was bad enough that he was in a public business, with not many escape routes if the deal went south. On the other hand, the fact that the handoff was going down here instead of in an isolated warehouse on the docks probably meant the black marketers had done this before and had a system in place.

  Not inclined to make small talk, he glanced at the woman, who smiled shyly at him, then resumed watching the door. An ashtray sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by several books of matches. Bolan picked one up, studied the outline of a nude girl on it and slipped it into his pocket with a small smile.

  In a few minutes the door slid open and an older woman poked her head in and rattled off a couple of sentences in rapid-fire Cantonese—at least Bolan thought it was Cantonese. He paid close attention to the young woman’s reply, which was short and to the point. The older woman nodded, said something else and then left.

  “Your package will be here shortly,” she announced.

  “You understand that I will wish to inspect it before I hand over the rest of the payment,” he said, resting his hands on his legs.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Arrangements have already been made.”

  As she said that, the door slid open again and two suited men stepped inside, filling most of the rest of the space in the room. Each one carried a large nylon gym bag slung over one shoulder.

  “Here is what is to happen,” the small woman said. Bolan noticed she was now holding a stun gun in her right hand. “Under supervision, you will be allowed to inspect your purchase as you see fit. At no time will you be allowed to load or otherwise prepare any of it for firing.” She pressed the stud of the stun gun, making the metal prongs crackle with electricity, for emphasis. “Once you are satisfied with the merchandise, you will hand over the rest of the agreed-upon payment. Do you agree to these terms?”

  At Bolan’s nod, the woman nodded to the man on the left, who stepped forward and set his bag on the table, then stepped back. Moving slowly, Bolan unzipped the bag and opened it to look inside before reaching in. Satisfied there were no surprises, he removed a heavy leather holster and opened it.

  Inside was a stubby, matte-black pistol with crosshatched grips that resembled a knockoff Walther PPK, only not quite as small and sleek. Holding the Type 59 pistol in one hand, Bolan glanced at the woman. “This is the PPM model, as agreed?”

  She nodded. “C
hambered in 9 mm Parabellum.”

  He nodded, pulled back the action to check the barrel and chamber, then swiftly fieldstripped it to ensure that any identifying marks or numbers had been removed—they were—that it was in decent shape, and that no parts—such as the firing pin—were missing. A cleaning kit was included, along with five magazines and two hundred rounds of 9 mm ammunition. Stony Man had promised to double the price if they could include a sound suppressor, but had no luck.

  Bolan reassembled the pistol and worked the action again. It was in fair condition—the slide was a bit sticky, most likely due to lack of proper maintenance. If he had the time, he would remedy that. Under normal circumstances, he’d be more likely to throw the probably twenty-year-old gun at an enemy instead of trying to shoot them, but he had no choice in the matter. It was easily concealable, and fired one of the most common bullets in existence. He checked out the magazines, ensuring that the springs were clean and functional, and that they all fit into the pistol, then examined each box of bullets.

  He was aware that if they were planning a sting or double cross, now would be the time. To them, he would just be one more foreigner who got in trouble while in their country and disappeared, never to be seen again. Under the guise of inspecting the rounds, he palmed a bullet and then slipped it into the chamber when he “checked” the pistol one last time before zipping the bag shut and nodding. “It is acceptable. Next?”

  The man on the right stepped forward and set his bag down. This one was the real test. Pistols were, of course, illegal for citizens to possess. What should be in this bag pretty much meant an automatic death sentence if these people were ever caught with it.

  Bolan unzipped the bag and removed what resembled the love child between an AK-47 and an old World War II–era M-3 “grease gun.” While it would never take any prizes for looks, the 7.62 mm Type 79 submachine gun was small and accurate.

  Bolan fieldstripped this weapon as well, checking for removal of any identification as well as verifying that it would also fire when called upon. The subgun looked to be better cared for than the pistol. In fact, it looked so good, he wasn’t sure it had ever been fired.