“Try anything?” The smaller man grinned. “I haven’t had this much fun in years!”
Bolan shook his head, mystified by the man’s chutzpah. “Just get in line.”
He joined him behind what looked like two housewives, one grandmother, and a young professional woman in a pencil skirt and cream blouse, talking on a cell phone. All of them turned to look at the new odd couple that had joined the line, then gradually turned back to waiting, occasionally sneaking glances at the tall foreigner in their midst.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Bolan pulled it out to see a new message with the subject line: Vacation Itinerary. He opened it and scanned the contents, smiling at what he saw.
Change in plan.
Head north to border, go to AIV (+III).
Brother-in-law will pick you up.
Good old Jack, he thought. Translating the simple code turned the three letters into DLZ, which turned out to be Dalanzadgad Airport in southern Mongolia. A quick check of the distance put it at about 380 miles from their current location, which was easily drivable in their current vehicle.
Closing the message, he turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. The line moved forward more quickly than he’d expected, and the doctor was being served now. He was engaged in a rapid-fire exchange with the pharmacist, who seemed either bemused or reluctant to fill the doctor’s request.
Knowing every second counted, Bolan came up alongside the short man. “Is there a problem?”
The doctor turned to him and threw his hands up. “I don’t know. He says he’s not sure they have it in stock, and he has to check. It’s a common antibiotic. No pharmacy should be without it.”
The pharmacist’s face had grown steadily paler as the doctor had been speaking. Bolan looked around and noticed that they were more or less alone at the back of the store. His instincts told him the pharmacist was delaying for a reason. “Then to hell with it,” he said, pulling his pistol from his pocket and pointing it at the man behind the counter. “Tell him not to move.”
Gao did so and the man remained frozen while Bolan cleared the counter. “Come on, Doc.”
“Are you kidding? I’m too old to vault over a counter—”
“You either get your ass over here or I’m coming back there and throwing you over!” Bolan growled.
“Er…coming.” The doctor turned, hoisted himself up so that he was sitting on the counter and then swung his legs over, almost kicking the pharmacist in the chest as he did. He scooted to the other side and hopped down. “There, happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Bolan replied. “Just get in there and find the stuff, will you? And if they have anything stronger, grab that, too.”
Gao seemed to be taking his time choosing the items he needed.
“Come on, Doc, let’s go!” Bolan said, dividing his attention between the small man scurrying around the shelves and the space in front of the counter. “Coming, coming!” The doctor returned to the front of the counter, carrying a plastic bag filled with four containers. “It’s a rather crude cocktail, I’m afraid, but with enough water, it should do the trick.”
“Great, let’s grab some bottles and get the hell out of here.” About to leave, Bolan realized he had to stall the pharmacist from contacting the police. Noticing the skinny young man was wearing running shoes, Bolan told the doctor. “Tell him to lie on the floor.”
Gao did so and the pharmacist complied. Bolan swiftly untied his runners and hogtied him with the long laces, connecting his hands and his feet.
The pharmacist began to say something, only to have Bolan hold up his hand. “Right!” He quickly pulled off the man’s tie and gagged him with it.
The doctor clambered over the counter, followed by Bolan, who concealed his pistol in his pocket again.
“All right, grab some water and let’s go. I didn’t see any clothes, so he’s out of luck.”
“Yes, our drugstores aren’t really minimarkets like you have in America,” the doctor replied.
They found the water aisle and filled a basket with several plastic bottles. Bolan thrust a large handful of yuan at the doctor as they headed for the front. “Here—pay for it.”
They joined the line, which was moving much more slowly, with people using coupons and apparently wanting to pay with exact change. “Can you just toss the money at them and we’ll go?”
“It would draw more attention to us—” Gao began to say when they heard a scream from the back of the store.
“Too late!” Bolan replied. “Come on!”
While everyone else was looking toward the rear of the store, Bolan hustled the doctor toward the front doors. The man said something as he tossed the wad of money at the cashier.
“What’d you tell her?” he asked as they hit the door.
“‘Keep the change,’ of course!” he replied with a grin.
Coming out into the sunlight, Bolan blinked as he realized that a police car had just stopped behind the sedan and an officer was getting out. “Damn! Get in!” he said as he drew his pistol and pointed it at the cop. He had no intention of shooting the man, as he would never kill a cop. However, the cop didn’t know that.
“Stop! Raise your hands!” he commanded the officer, who stared at him blankly, one hand hovering over his holstered pistol.
“He doesn’t know what you’re saying!” the doctor said.
“If he doesn’t want to die, tell him to get his hands up!” Bolan ordered.
The doctor repeated the command in Cantonese and the cop’s hands shot up. “Step away from the car and lie on the ground,” Bolan said as he opened the driver’s door. The doctor repeated it and the officer complied. “Okay, get his gun.”
“Me?” the doctor replied.
“Yes, you!” Bolan said, glancing back to see several drugstore patrons staring out the window at him, some on smartphones, some recording what was going on. He turned and put a bullet into the glass window over their heads, making them duck for cover.
“Get it and let’s go!” Bolan shouted, putting a bullet into the police car’s right front tire. The doctor yanked the officer’s gun from its holster and brought it back to Bolan, who grabbed it and pushed the smaller man toward the car. “Get in!”
Gao scrambled over to the passenger seat as Bolan piled in behind him. The car was already on, and he shoved it into Reverse and floored the accelerator.
The large Mercedes-Benz shot backward, the powerful V8 engine driving it into the lighter police sedan and shoving it out of the way. Bolan didn’t stop, but cranked the wheel hard so he was now facing traffic. Putting it into gear again, he peeled out of the parking lot as he heard several bangs behind him, their rear window shattering into tiny pieces. Damn it, did every cop carry a backup piece? he wondered.
“Both of you stay down!” Bolan shouted as they roared into traffic, nearly sideswiping a passing window-washing truck. As it slewed away, one of its ladders fell off its hooks and made two other cars screech to a halt. Within a minute, a mini traffic jam was escalating behind them.
“Where’s the nearest on-ramp to the highway? We need to get on the G110 heading west!” Bolan said.
“There should be an entrance within the next two or three kilometers,” Gao said. “Might I advise slowing down a bit? Our speed is likely to attract attention.”
“Right now, Doc, I don’t think we could possibly attract any more attention than we did at the pharmacy,” Bolan replied, but he slowed anyway. “Were either of you hit?”
Gao looked down at himself, as if the very idea had never occurred to him. “I seem to be all right. How about you, Mr. Liao?”
“I am fine, as well,” he answered, slumped in the rear seat amid dozens of pebbles of safety glass.
Between glances behind them for any signs of pursuit, Bolan kept an eye on him in the rearview mirror. Despite the excitement of the past few minutes, Liao actually seemed calmer, if a bit pale. “I must admit that I am not feeling very well.”
�
�You got the bag, Doc. Can you whip something up for him?” Bolan asked.
“I will once we get on the highway and headed in the right direction,” Gao answered. “The farther out one goes, the most desolate the countryside becomes.”
“Good,” Bolan replied. “I’ve had enough civilians watching me here to last the rest of my life.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“You know, I’m starting to think that Striker can’t go anywhere in China anymore unsupervised,” Tokaido said. “Everywhere he goes, there’s some kind of trouble.”
His attempt at humor fell a bit flat; there were a couple weak smiles, but no one said anything else. The young hacker rolled his eyes. “Why the long faces? At least they got away, and with the medicine, right?”
The team in the Computer Room had just finished watching the drugstore debacle, as he was already calling it.
With Kurtzman and Brognola both going off to get some much-needed rest, it was just Tokaido and Price now.
Price would have slept if she could. She’d tried, but every time she closed her eyes, her mind filled up with all of the possible things that could still go wrong on the mission. Although she was far too much of a professional to voice them aloud, it was nearly impossible to not think of them. And after forty-five minutes of tossing and turning, she’d admitted defeat, gotten up and headed for the Computer Room.
Now she shifted from side to side as she saw the stolen luxury sedan smash aside a Beijing police car and speed off into traffic, almost causing two accidents as it got away. As it was, traffic was still snarled up at the site, which did help matters a bit.
“You’re right, Akira. It just would have been good to have been able to get in and out without causing so much…commotion,” Price said. “This is definitely going to attract Fang’s attention, and the closer he gets, the closer they get to being caught.”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad timing for a joke, especially after everything that’s happened, right?”
She smiled and patted his shoulder. “It’s all right. They can’t all be winners.” Refocusing on the tasks at hand, she studied the different views of traffic from the cameras, watching as the Mercedes-Benz, now missing its rear window, joined the rest of the sluggish traffic on the superhighway. “If only there was some way to mislead the MSS as to where they’re going…”
“Only some way?” Tokaido sniffed in mock insult. “You wound me, Barb. Watch this.”
His fingers flew over the keyboard as he brought up a video-editing suite. She watched over his shoulder as he isolated the car and seamlessly inserted it over a similar car in the traffic flowing the other way. Using digital editing tools, he swiftly modified its appearance to match the angles of the other cameras on that stretch of highway and inserted the car, allowing for the time it would take to reach each camera, at the proper point in the file. “It won’t pass a really close scrutiny,” he said while placing the last one, which showed the car taking an off-ramp heading south, “but it’ll pass a cursory or even midlevel inspection. For our purposes, it should be fine.”
“That’s fantastic work,” Price said. “Well done.”
“Well, it is what you pay me for,” he replied. “Now I just have to remove him from all city cameras on the western road, which should take a couple of minutes.” He used a similar model car, but with a different color and license plate, to replace Bolan’s car in the heavy traffic. “And…voilà! One disappearing car, moved around to be seen heading in the opposite direction—” His quick grin vanished just as quickly as his main screen flashed red. “Crap.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Someone got footage of Striker at the drugstore, and it’s being uploaded to a government server right now.”
“But I thought you scrubbed the gas station and pharmacy cameras?” she asked.
“Of course. It’s standard operating procedure,” Tokaido replied as his fingers blurred over his keys. “This is on the cell data network. Damn smartphones make our job harder.”
“And easier, don’t forget,” she gently chided.
“Yeah, yeah. It all comes out to about fifty-fifty in my book,” he muttered. “Still, this isn’t that hard to mess with. I don’t even have to wipe it, just manipulate it so that they can’t get anything usable out of it…” He tapped more keys then hit Enter with a flourish. “And two for two! One blurry smartphone movie later, it could be any six-foot-three, black-haired man pointing a gun at that police officer.”
Price breathed a soft sigh of relief. Next to acquiring the Liao family, making sure Striker’s appearance didn’t appear on any media was the second highest priority. So far, they were winning that battle, but it was a constant slog, and for every piece of footage they cleaned, there was always the unverifiable idea that they might have missed something. But that couldn’t be helped. She had to have faith that Stony Man’s resident team of geniuses could get the job done.
“I’m going to grab another cup of coffee. Do you want anything?” she asked as she headed toward the door.
“Another soda would be great, thanks,” Tokaido replied without looking up, already planning the next phase of their surveillance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“What do you mean, the Mercedes-Benz people can’t help you? They’re supposed to be able to track their cars if they’re stolen, right? Well, that’s exactly what’s happened to this one!…What do you mean, they can’t find it?…Wait a minute, wait a minute, they’re saying they’ve lost track of the car, as well? That is incredible…Of course I want you to keep on them about it! Call me if there is any update, anything at all…yes…all right, goodbye.”
Disconnecting his phone, Fang resumed pacing back and forth outside the facility’s main gate, resisting the urge to check his watch yet again. Other than the manufacturer’s inexplicable lack of awareness of the location of one of their own vehicles, there had been no other updates for the past ten minutes and he was growing very concerned that the window to catch with the American and Liao was truly closing for good.
So far the organ transplant facility’s surveillance system had been a complete failure in revealing any data on the intruder. Everything had been scrubbed—destroyed, to be blunt—from the time the car had first pulled into the parking lot to the time he left. If there hadn’t been four eyewitnesses, they wouldn’t have even had that sketchy description—and part of a license plate—to broadcast.
The blast of an air horn tore him out of his thoughts and Fang looked up to see two army trucks approaching. The heavy-duty 6x6 troop carriers were long-haul vehicles meant to transport a dozen men and their equipment comfortably. The sight brought a long-lost smile to his face.
General Zhao leaned out of the passenger window of the first truck and waved him over just as Fang’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out as he ran over to the APC, where the general opened the door for him to climb aboard.
Zhao had recovered from the Shanghai incident well and was now the epitome of the career military officer. He kept in scrupulous shape, running five kilometers every dawn, and his career record was impeccable. With a neat mustache, sharp brown eyes that missed nothing, and razor-cut hair—his one affection—he looked fresh and ready for action, the very opposite of Fang at the moment.
“Hang on!” the MSS agent said as he read the update. “Finally, some news!” He showed it to Zhao. “Take us to this address as fast as you can!”
With a belch of black smoke the lead truck pulled back out into traffic as Zhao extended his hand. “It is good to see you, Deshi. What’s it been, three years now?”
“Something like that.” He shook the other man’s hand distractedly and finally had to tear his gaze away from the front windshield with an effort. “I apologize for my rudeness, my friend. This whole situation has spiraled more and more out of control with each passing hour. Thank you for coming to my aid.”
“Of course. It is no more than what you have done for me,” he replied. “Without jeo
pardizing any matters of national security, what can you tell me about the situation?”
Fang glanced at the driver before he spoke, eliciting a chuckle from the general. “Do not worry about him. Every one of these soldiers was handpicked for this mission. You can count on their discretion.”
“All right.” The MSS agent gave the description of the fugitives they were looking for, but told the general nothing about why they were wanted.
Zhao hadn’t gotten to his current position by being dense, however. “Sounds like the Americans are up to no good again. This seems to be going to a lot of trouble for one person, even for them.”
“I cannot comment on that,” Fang replied, which was, of course, an answer in itself.
“It is not much of a description to go on,” the general remarked. “Are you certain the US is behind this?”
Fang nodded. “Indeed, all I have to go on is the man’s voice and his eyes, but that’s enough. Besides, Liao hadn’t gone to any other nations seeking asylum, so the idea that someone else just happened to stumble across him and tried to bring him out is ludicrous. Add in the idea that they would try to rescue his family as well, it’s even more ludicrous. Can you imagine the Russians even considering such a thing?”
Zhao chuckled and shook his head. “All right, so the question now is where are they trying to get to? Of course, you have notified all transportation centers to be on the lookout for this man?”
Fang nodded. “Once I realized what I was dealing with, it went out immediately. Yet somehow he managed to sneak the rest of the family out, right under my nose. Either that, or he has them so far hidden underground that we cannot find any trace of them.”
“First things first. He is the primary target, and the family, although their loss is embarrassing, is secondary,” Zhao said. “We know that he is in a car, the description of which is plastered all over the media. Surely it should not be that hard to find.”
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