Lethal Risk

by Don Pendleton

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Liao was crestfallen, even though there really had been nothing he could do about his situation. On hearing the sound of an approaching vehicle, he had ducked, still clutching the pistol, hoping that whoever was passing by would simply keep going.

  But the vehicle had pulled over behind the car, its bright headlights illuminating the interior. Gripping the revolver tightly in his sweating palm, he’d waited to see what would happen, vowing that they wouldn’t take him alive.

  The truck’s lights were turned off, although its engine kept rumbling. A powerful flashlight shone through the car windows, and Liao had caught a glimpse of someone standing behind the spotlight. Panicking, he’d raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

  The report was deafeningly loud. The side window shattered and the light disappeared. He’d heard shouts from outside. Someone had said “Shot fired” and “One person inside” and then he’d heard ominous clicking noises before a louder voice told everyone to be quiet.

  “Here’s how we’re going to handle this.”

  Straining his ears, Liao heard another click, followed by a pop, and then something fell into the backseat through the missing rear window. It had hissed as it bounced to the floor, spewing a stream of white smoke that had burned his eyes and throat the moment it touched him.

  Tear gas! Liao actually had a bit of experience with this sort of thing, as he had gone through government-supplied training on what to do in the event he was ever caught in a mob where the police used tear gas to disperse them. He’d even experienced being exposed to the gas, which, while very unpleasant, had been nothing compared to what he was going through now with his eyes and skin feeling as though they were being pricked with thousands of hot, tiny needles.

  His choices had been either to exit the vehicle or to try to remove the canister. Eyes stinging and tearing, he’d tried to find the grenade, but it has apparently rolled under the seat, for although he could feel the gas jetting out and burning his skin, he hadn’t been able to reach it.

  The entire compartment had filled with gas and even the broken window hadn’t made it dissipate fast enough. Barely able to stand being in the cloud, and knowing the discomfort was only going to worsen, Liao had tossed the revolver out and shoved the door open, shouting between coughs, “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”

  “Hands up! Put your hands up!” They’d grabbed him immediately grabbed, shoved him onto the hood of the car and searched him, which hadn’t taken long.

  Liao now stared at the quartet of gas-masked individuals pointing short-barreled submachine guns at him.

  “He’s clean, sir!” the searcher shouted.

  “Bring him over to the truck while the gas dissipates,” a voice near the truck called out. Pulling him upright, they marched him over to the side of what looked like a military surplus truck, where a bald, potbellied man dressed in fatigues and looking as if he’d been cast from spring steel-eyed him while puffing on a cigar.

  Through his swollen, tearing eyes, Liao made out a holstered pistol at the man’s waist.

  Seeing Liao’s discomfort, the man put a sloshing canteen into his trembling hands. “Pour this over your face. It’ll take most of the sting away.”

  Liao did so, the tepid water feeling better than any five-star spa treatment. He washed out his eyes and took three large mouthfuls, rinsing and spitting after each one. When he handed the canteen back, it was almost empty. “Thank you.”

  The man nodded at Liao’s police revolver, which sat on the fender of the large truck. “As you can imagine, we have many questions for you. Let’s start with your name.”

  “Chen… Li Chen.” The alias had come out before Liao had realized he was going to reply in the first place. Now that he had committed, though, he needed to come up with some kind of plausible story as to how he had ended up out here.

  The leader nodded. “And judging by how you’re dressed, I’m going to take a wild guess that you have no papers to back that up, do you?”

  A couple of the men chuckled, but the man turned his steely glare on them for a moment and the laughter died as quickly as it had begun.

  Liao humbly nodded. “You are right. I do not have any papers. I am from the Anding hospital in Beijing. I was being transferred to another facility under guard, but managed to overpower my escort and take his gun. I stole the car and drove until I ran out of gas. I was not sure what I was going to do next, then you arrived.”

  “And the reason you fired on my men?” the man asked.

  Liao spread his hands. “Well, I am a fugitive, and your man was shining a bright light inside the car. I thought he was with the police and I panicked.”

  As a story pulled right out of thin air, it wasn’t half bad, Liao thought. And at least it might delay these men from finding out who I really am for the time being… Hopefully long enough for Mr. Edwards to figure out some way to rescue me.

  The man nodded. “And there is no one else with you?”

  Liao shook his head and even puffed his chest out a bit. “No, I did this all on my own.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to do next, Mr. Chen, because you’re coming with us.”

  Liao nodded. “And where are we going?”

  The man puffed on his cigar again. “Why, to the Cheng Dao reprimand center, of course.”

  He nodded to his men, two of whom came up behind Liao, pulled his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. “Once there, we’ll make sure you’re fed and clothed…and then we’ll find out if you’re really who you say you are.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  As he watched Liao being led to the back of the large military truck, Bolan wasn’t sure his day could get any worse.

  He’d already come up with and discarded a few plans for trying to free the defector from his new captors while sitting there, but had discarded each one as being too risky, both for Liao and himself. Although this new group didn’t read as military, despite their transportation, they appeared to have some training, including a well-disciplined chain of command.

  There was a brief conversation between the men clustered at the front of the truck before they all broke up, the subordinates heading for the rear of the vehicle, the bald man who had been talking to Liao climbing back up into the cab. With a puff of black smoke, the truck pulled out onto the road again and drove off into the night.

  Bolan waited a full minute, making sure the truck’s lights had disappeared from sight before getting up and running to the car, which was still leaking a thin stream of tear gas. Holding his breath, he opened all of the doors, then reached in and found the still very hot canister. He grabbed it and tossed it onto the road, then got out and took a deep breath of fresh air. Filling his lungs again, he went back inside the car, opened a bottle of water and poured it under the seat, making sure nothing there was going to catch fire. The floorboard hissed as the stream flowed across it, confirming his suspicion that the grenade had left flammable chemicals behind.

  Taking a small breath, Bolan tasted the lingering acrid harshness of the gas, but it was a minor irritant compared to what he had to do now. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he hit the concierge button, raising Tokaido immediately.

  “Listen carefully—Liao’s been captured.” Bolan gave him a brief rundown on what had happened. “I need you to track the truck they’re in, which is probably about a mile away from my current.”

  “We’re already on it, Striker,” the young hacker replied. “Once I got a fix on your location, I patched into a satellite over the area, and I have it for another four minutes. Hopefully that should be enough time to figure out where they’re going.”

  “Good. I’m going to retrieve my gas can, so I’ll be back in a few minutes for an update. Striker out.”

  Bolan turned off the link and slid out of the car, grateful to be in the night air again. He drank some water to hydrate and rinse the acrid taste of the tear gas from his mouth, then jogged up the r
oad to find his gas can. It took him a few minutes longer than he wanted, but at last he spied it in a clump of grass. Grabbing it, he double-timed it back to the car, where he realized the can didn’t have a spout to pour it into the tank. Also, the car had the usual metal plate blocking access to the tank to prevent theft.

  Looking around, he spotted one of the empty antibiotic medicine bottles lying on the floor of the car. Bolan scanned the area to make sure no one was nearby, then grabbed the bottle, stuck his pistol in the small end, pointed it away from the car and pulled the trigger twice. The oddly muffled report echoed out across the plain, but more importantly, the bullets had torn two ragged holes in the bottom of the bottle. Turning it over, he inserted the improvised funnel’s small end into the tank and carefully began pouring the gas into the car.

  When the container was empty, he popped the trunk and put both it and the funnel inside, then got into the car and called Tokaido again. “All right, the car’s fueled again, try to start it.”

  The engine turned over but didn’t catch. “Hang on, might take a couple times before it gets going,” Tokaido said. True to his word, the engine caught on the third try.

  “What’s the word on the truck?” Bolan asked as he shifted into gear and pulled onto the road, stomping on the gas to reach the isolated garage as quickly as possible.

  “Not great. Unless they’re visiting, they’re headed back to what used to be called a laogai, or forced labor camp. Now the sign says Cheng Dao Reprimand Center. Sounds like a new name for a really old method. Guess Liao was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Bolan grunted. “The story of this mission so far. Well, the good news is that I wasn’t with him. The bad news is I now have to figure out a way to get him back.”

  “Yeah, there is that,” Tokaido replied. “Any ideas yet? By the way, you’ll want to be careful approaching that fuel depot. They’re there right now, loading some barrels.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Bolan replied, turning off the car’s lights to avoid being spotted. “Regarding a breakout plan, that’s kind of hard to construct when I don’t know what I’m heading into.”

  He was close enough to the storage buildings to see the lit-up truck backed up to the end of the garage. “They better not be taking all the fuel,” he muttered. “Are you going to be able to track them all the way to the camp, Akira?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about finding the place,” the hacker replied. “It’s a big open pit mine or quarry or something out there. Believe me, you can’t miss it.”

  “This just gets better and better,” Bolan replied as he watched. “Any intel on guard strength or security?”

  “Working on it,” Tokaido said. “Mainly it looks like they’re counting on the desolate countryside to take care of any escapees. The place is ringed by a double chain-link fence topped with razor wire and there’s one guard tower to cover the whole area, but other than that, the obstacles are all natural.”

  “Yeah, there’s still the problem of getting in, finding Liao and getting out again,” Bolan said. “Hang on, they’re finally leaving.” He watched the truck pull away from the gray storage building. It turned left onto the road and sped away into the distance. “It looks like they didn’t find the open side door. I’m going to sign off for now, Akira. I’ll report in when I reach the camp. Striker out.”

  “Good luck, Striker,” Tokaido said. “Stony Man out.”

  Still keeping his lights off, Bolan slowly pulled up to the gray building. Pistol in hand, he got out, looking around warily as he walked to the trunk and got the container and funnel out. He was about to head inside when he caught the scent of cheap, harsh tobacco. He froze with his hand reaching toward the doorknob and took a slow, careful breath, catching it again, stronger this time.

  Maybe they aren’t as disciplined as I first thought. In fact, given that amazing lack of common sense, they might be less intelligent that I gave them credit for, Bolan thought.

  However, he still had the problem of how to bypass whoever was inside—without having them alert the main camp—and get his fuel.

  Changing tacks on the fly, he raised his hand and knocked on the door. “Hello? Is anyone here? Hello?”

  There was no reply from inside for a few seconds and then the door flew open. On the other side stood a man dressed in dark green fatigues, his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, saying something in Cantonese.

  “Oh, great, someone is here!” he exclaimed, talking over the man’s speech, even as he took a step backward. “Look, I’m really, really lost and need directions,” he said, speaking slowly and loudly, just like a typical American tourist.

  As he’d hoped, the man stepped forward to follow him, his eyes widening as he saw the nearby car. The moment he took his eyes off Bolan, the big American exploded into action.

  Stepping forward again, he pinned the man’s gun hand against his side as he rocketed a short punch into his opponent’s jaw. The guard’s eyes glassed over and he sagged against the side of the door. Bolan followed up with another shot to the man’s jaw, knocking him out.

  He was about to ease the man to the ground when another shape appeared out of the darkness inside the garage, pointing a pistol and shouting at him. Instead of dropping the man, Bolan lifted him and shoved him at the second guard. The limp body fell to the floor, not coming close to the other man, but it did distract him for a crucial second.

  Not wanting to risk a gunshot near the fuel drums, Bolan leaped at him, chopping his pistol aside as he lowered a shoulder and plowed into the man. This guy was more alert, however, and tried to spin out of the way. He was only partially successful, however, and Bolan was able to stay with him, taking the man down in a tangle of struggling limbs.

  The guard tried to club Bolan, but the Executioner went for the guy’s face, raking him across the eyes. The man grunted in pain and twisted his head away, exposing his throat. Stiffening his fingers, Bolan jabbed them into his adversary’s Adam’s apple, making him gag and choke. That worked so well that he did it again. The man’s struggles were weakening; he was fighting to breathe more than anything.

  Wrestling the pistol out of his grip, Bolan smacked him on the side of the head twice, the second blow collapsing him to the floor with a last wheeze. He turned and quickly dragged the first guard farther inside, then opened the large door, went to get the car and drove it inside the garage. He closed the door behind him. Unfortunately, besides the guards and the tractor, there was nothing else in the building—and certainly no drums of gasoline. Bolan double-checked everywhere, but the barrels were gone.

  Stripping the guards of their pistols, radios and ammunition, he tied them both up and left them behind the tractor, figuring someone would eventually notice they were missing and come out to find them. By then, he hoped to have Liao back and be long gone.

  For a moment he considered trying to pose as a guard and infiltrate the base, but one look at the uniforms put the kibosh on that idea. The fatigues were short for a six-foot-three man. Checking under the car again, he wasn’t thrilled to find a small puddle of gas forming, either.

  All right, if I can’t get gas, I’ll just have to get another vehicle, he thought. Time to get a look at where Liao’s being held to see if I can figure out some kind of way in.

  Collecting some tools he thought he might need before the night was over, he walked to the side door and checked for any lights on the road before pushing up the door and driving the car out. He went back and closed the door, knowing he should leave the place as close to the way he found it as possible. Once he was satisfied, he turned left onto the road and started driving. It wouldn’t do to have the guards discovered too soon.

  It didn’t take long for his destination to become visible in the distance. Powerful arc-sodium floodlights illuminated a giant, gaping pit in the ground, easily several football fields in diameter and probably two hundred feet deep.

  With the floods bathing everything in bright, white light for seve
ral hundred yards in every direction, Bolan stopped the car behind a hill just off the road and crawled to the top of it with his weapons bag and binoculars.

  Surrounded by a double layer of ten-foot-high chain-link fence with razor wire, a large cluster of buildings stood about twenty yards from the lip of the pit. There were several long structures that looked like barracks and a larger hall where the prisoners most likely got their meals. Separated by yet another fence were buildings that looked more comfortable, with amenities such as screened windows and something resembling a small patch of meticulously kept grass bordered by white rocks. He didn’t see any sign of the truck, although there was a large building that he marked as a probable motor pool.

  The guard tower was manned by three people that he could see. He confirmed that when they changed shifts, with Bolan marking the time. The trio of off-duty guards immediately headed for their own quarters, entering one of the nearest buildings to their entrance. Other than that activity, he saw no sign of anyone around.

  But as he kept watching, a whistle blew and a few minutes later a line of dusty, exhausted-looking prisoners in light gray uniforms began trudging up from the pit. They headed straight for the largest building, filing inside under the watchful eyes of another squad that had come out to supervise the transfer. Bolan counted at least one hundred and fifty men in the group. They’d be a great distraction, he thought, and most likely one of them had to speak English. But would it be worth the risk? After all, they didn’t owe him anything, and even the promise of escape didn’t mean much if they had nowhere to go once free of the camp. No, he decided, it would be best if he just slipped in, got Liao and slipped out.

  And that was the next question: where the hell was he?

  The sound of an engine echoing in the pit attracted his attention and he turned and focused his binoculars in time to see a small 4x4 truck drive up and out, with several men sitting in the back. It stopped in front of another building, not as large as either the mess hall or the barracks. The men in the back got out, removed another man lying on a stretcher from the cargo bed and carried him inside. The truck drove on to the building Bolan had thought was the motor pool and headed inside when a large, metal door opened.