“It’s pretty thin, Sarge,” Grimaldi said.
“Thicker than what we usually have, Jack,” Bolan replied.
“You sure you don’t want to pop back to Pattaya and load up with some AK-47s with grenade launchers?” Grimaldi asked.
Bolan patted the Beretta knock-offs in his holsters. “I have more than enough for this. I’m on a quiet probe, not a full-fledged invasion. If the North Koreans figured out we were on to their smuggling operation…”
“Yeah,” Grimaldi replied. “Nothing on our scanners, and nobody’s lit us up with surface-to-air missile radar.”
Bolan’s lips were drawn tight as he opened the side door. Dragon Slayer’s stealth capabilities were second to none. There was no sound from the rotors as it blazed along. Infrared baffles, a Kevlar-coated hull, and dark paint robbed the enemy of its ability to make a visual identification of the phantom war bird. Without running lights and operating under starlight scopes, the aircraft was a shadow that sliced over the water. Anyone seeing it might take it for a UFO…
That brought Bolan back to the mutilated cattle. He had encountered enemies with stealth helicopters before. Untrained observers had taken them for unidentified flying objects, and assumed them to be alien visitors.
You don’t get more alien than me in North Korea, Bolan mused mentally. He tensed as he continued his internal countdown, settling his goggles over his altered eyes.
Dragon Slayer flared to a halt, centrifugal force struggling against Bolan’s nylon harness, trying to hurl him out into the gulf. As the momentum bled off, Bolan unsnapped and launched himself out the side door, spearing into the water in a graceful dive.
Grimaldi spun the stealth helicopter away, automated mechanisms closing the side door.
No words of encouragement were necessary, and none were spoken.
Instead, the Executioner swam for the shore, fifteen yards away. No boats floated in the darkness, and nothing moved on the beach. If North Korean forces were perched in wait beyond the tree line, rifles trained on whoever would come from the surf, they would cut Bolan apart effortlessly.
It was a risk that Bolan was willing to take. Something stirred behind the Bamboo Curtain, a monster that reached its tentacles from Thailand to, possibly, North America. Finding its heart would give the Executioner the opportunity to kill it, or at least to slow it so that Hal Brognola could mobilize Stony Man Farm and the United States government against whatever insidious plot lurked in America’s backyard.
Bolan padded up onto the sand and crossed the beach, his waterproof backpack bobbing on his back. He was free and clear, for now.
Unfortunately, getting into North Korea was only the beginning.
He still had miles to go before he reached the smugglers’ destination.
Bolan nestled in a copse and changed into his peasant gear and a wide-brimmed hat to further obscure his western appearance. A fast check of his disguise prosthetics, and he knew that he was in business. The Beretta pressed against his ribs under the baggy, shapeless gray jacket, its twin cinched against his hip under his belt.
But those were only to come out when he found the heart of this operation, if he got that far.
Throwing the sack over his shoulder, and leaning against the walking stick, Bolan stooped enough to seem a full foot shorter and began his march toward the smugglers’ destination. It was a simple disguise, making him enfeebled and bent with age. His paperwork, battered as if it were twenty years old, would pass a cursory inspection, and his knowledge of Southeast Asian languages would carry him even further.
It had been a long time since the Executioner had disappeared among the teeming masses of the Orient, but he still knew all the tricks of role camouflage that had proved a far more effective weapon than a handgun or a sniper rifle.
As prepared as possible, Bolan disappeared into North Korea.
“WE’VE GOT TROUBLES, Doctor,” General II-Raye Chong said into the phone.
“We, General? You’re the one discussing things on an open line.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. Our ship out of Thailand was intercepted by the United States Navy.”
“And your submarine disappeared without a trace. Yes, yes, I know,” the doctor responded, seeming bored and tired.
Chong grimaced at the dismissive tone. “We’ve been out of communications with the submarine, yes.”
“You would think that if they spotted U.S. Navy helicopters around a ship smuggling your latest round of experiments, they would have retreated to a safe harbor and contacted you.”
Chong felt his cheeks heat with anger.
“And there were no reports that the submarine was captured, even on the most sensitive of communications,” the doctor responded. “I know. I checked.”
“So, what now?” Chong asked.
“We presume that your operation has been compromised,” the doctor answered. “But, even if they did recover any intelligence from the submarine, there is nothing tying you and your smugglers to me here.”
“But—”
“And it’s highly unlikely that you’ll end up having an enemy visit you in force,” the doctor stated. “You’re safe in Korea.”
“And if someone is coming?” Chong suggested.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “At most, a handful of intruders into your territory. You should have sufficient forces to deal with them.”
“Doctor…”
“You truly are determined to try my patience, aren’t you?” the doctor asked.
“You know something about what I’m going to run into, don’t you?” Chong asked.
“I know everything, General,” the doctor returned. “That is why I am not some overdressed, desk-bound pencil pusher with delusions of adequacy, and you are not at the heart of this operation.”
Chong took a deep breath.
“Careful, General, we wouldn’t want you to get too upset. You could drop dead of the most innocuous ailments,” the doctor replied. “At least, that’s what the coroner would make of my skill.”
Chong’s spine chilled at the thought. He’d seen how the doctor had been able to strike down enemies miles away. Chong and several of his underlings had met with the man once. When the doctor returned to his home base, thousands of miles away, the doctor had informed the general and his staff of their vulnerability to his whims via a conference call.
At the utterance of the word “whim,” Lieutenant Sung had suddenly fallen into a fit of seizures. Foaming at the mouth, the Korean thrashed on the carpet, unable to cry out in agony as the doctor described how Chong and the rest of his staff had been implanted with subdermal, remote-control devices. Each contained a highly lethal biotoxin that became untraceable within moments of the victim’s expiration.
Sung lasted fifteen minutes, puking and twisting violently on the floor before he died.
Fifteen minutes that had to have felt like an eternity in hell.
“Remember, General. Deal properly with me, or I shall become very, very cross,” the doctor informed him.
Chong cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” Chong could hear the doctor’s smile as he spoke.
The strange doctor gloated on the other end of the phone line, and there was nothing that General Chong could do to stop him.
He had entered into the bargain with the man to forge his own destiny, free from the Beloved Leader who seemed determined to hurl the world into chaos.
Instead, Chong knelt before a new master who cherished the power of life and death as if he were a sorcerer.
“If you are going to receive visitors, General, I advise you to be prepared now. They should arrive within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If you can, call in all the high-tech surveillance and all the best soldiers you have access to,” the doctor advised. “I’ve lost several friends to the kind of opposition that can make a submarine disappear without a trace.”
Chong tilted his head. “So soon?”
“If they’re not in the country already, they’ll be there by dawn,” the doctor informed him. “And they will arrive invisibly, but with enough force to level your base.”
“Is there no one you can send to aid me?” Chong asked.
“Not presently,” the doctor replied. “But, please, feel free to kill yourself before falling into enemy hands. Because if you do become a prisoner, I can guarantee that it will be the longest, and last, fifteen minutes you’ll ever spend.”
Chong clenched his eyes shut, his throat closed off as he restrained his scream of rage and terror.
“Have a nice day,” the doctor replied, hanging up.
“I am in hell,” Chong said as he lowered the receiver to its cradle. “As the Americans say, I have made my deal with a devil, and now that deal has come due…and I am in hell.”
His moment of calm frayed at the edges as his hands began to shake. His eyes snapped open and he picked up the phone and hurled it, wires snapping as he tore it free from the desk. Its shell smashed on the wall, splintered plastic and shattered electronics raining to the floor in a shower that Chong immediately realized was nothing more than a futile display of his impotence.
If he succeeded, surely the Beloved Leader and the government would learn of the enemy’s intrusion into his base, and he would be brought under investigation. That investigation would result in imprisonment, and the doctor would come through on his threats of extermination.
If he failed, he faced an unknown force that would destroy everything he fought to protect, and perhaps face torture at enemy hands.
Chong’s secretary entered the office. “Sir?”
Chong smiled at her. “I’m sorry, Mi. Could you summon my staff?”
“It’s one in the morning, sir.”
“It’s vital,” Chong told her. “Tell them…”
He looked at the shattered telephone.
“Tell them that it’s the doctor’s orders. They will come.”
Mi looked at the general, confused. She eyed the destroyed phone, then left his office. A brief glimpse of her face showed him pale, tight fear.
Chong felt a moment of pity for her. Mi had been a loyal assistant, and a skilled, amorous mistress. It would be a shame if she were harmed in the fallout.
But if it were a choice between his own life and hers, Chong knew exactly who mattered the most to him, and her corpse would provide as able a shield as any other’s. He had to cut his losses.
SHE WAS KNOWN as Mi Qua to General Chong, but she was known as someone else to Dr. Kent Stevens, the man Chong had just spoken with. She was born Clarice Mi, in San Francisco, and she was Stevens’s mole.
She made certain that she got through to all of Chong’s men, the transmitter in her personal phone forwarding recordings of each call back to Stevens. She pitied Chong, played so easily for a fool. While Stevens had been working on a device similar to what the general feared, subdermal implants that could be set off by remote control, releasing lethal toxins within minutes, it was far from perfected. The prototype barely had a range of thirty feet, let alone capable of transmitting across the globe.
It didn’t matter, though, to the relatively insensate Korean conspirators under Chong.
They never realized that Mi was there, other than as attractive window-dressing. They dismissed her as anything more than Chong’s secretary and sex toy, and when Stevens initiated his proclamation of doom upon the hapless Sung, she simply thumbed a lever on her lighter, launching a biodegradable sliver of concentrated biotoxin into the flesh at the back of the man’s neck.
However, as far as the Koreans were concerned, Stevens had managed to implant unstoppable doom under their flesh. They lived at his largess, and that insured their loyalty.
Anything less would result in death.
Mi smirked and felt an ounce of pity for the conspirators, but the heady rush of being in total control of their lives washed away that jot of guilt over fooling them.
Chong’s usefulness was coming to an end. Stevens had finished with the Koreans a long time ago, and with the code word he had dropped in his conversation with the general, Mi was prepared to clean house.
After that, she had her own means of getting back to the United States. She’d be happy to be out of this armpit of the world.
She couldn’t be happier to be done with this place.
CHAPTER SIX
Salt Lake City, Utah
Rachel Marrick would be happy to be done with the autopsy. She looked at the body of the security guard on the table, the flesh peeled back from his ribs, and was glad for the strong menthol paste under her nostrils.
“You can see where the bullets struck bone and deflected violently after impact,” the coroner stated. “I haven’t seen wounds like this since the original Vietnamera 5.56 mm rounds.”
“Tumblers,” Kirby Graham intoned. “That’s what we called ’em back before the switch to the newer ammo in the Marines.”
“Yes,” the coroner stated. “They strike fluid mass and destabilize violently.”
“Hitting bone only makes the disruption worse, doesn’t it?” Stan Reader asked. He leaned closer, making certain his mask and his paper cap were firmly in place so as not to contaminate the corpse. As it was, the collapse of the bank had introduced enough foreign matter into the body. “I’ve read studies of dissatisfaction with the newer ammunition due to its less potent penetration and terminal performance in flesh.”
The coroner plucked a round from the dead guard’s chest. It was a slender sliver, less than .22 inches wide. “This round missed bone.”
Reader held up a tray for the coroner and the physician dropped the spent round in the metal bowl. Marrick watched as Reader took a caliper to the bullet.
“It’s 5.45 mm,” Reader announced. “You were correct, Agent Marrick.”
“Imagine how thrilled I am,” Marrick replied. “It still doesn’t get us any closer to finding his murderer.”
“I’m curious about another point,” Reader stated. “None of the video footage recovered from the bank was readable.”
“The bank hostages described them as carrying what looked like a small motor,” Graham noted.
“We assumed it was something to do with the vault itself, but they simply had the bank staff open the vault,” Marrick responded.
Reader frowned. “What about the bank’s computer records?”
“The mainframe was in the basement,” Graham stated. “We can’t access anything through landline connections, and we’re pretty sure that once we dig out the hardware, it’s going to be scrap.”
“And erased,” Reader added.
“A portable electromagnet?” Marrick offered.
“A possibility. To someone unversed in such technology, it would appear to be just another motor,” Reader said.
Graham frowned.
“They were wearing full masks,” Marrick added. “But they tossed around enough Korean, and they were all small and wiry…”
“But they were far too organized and capable for a simple street gang,” Reader finished.
“I’ve got a couple of leads I can follow,” Graham stated.
“The street gangs themselves?” Reader asked.
“There are enough rivalries between them that someone might want to let us know what’s going on,” Graham said.
“They’re usually pretty closedmouthed,” Marrick mentioned.
“I just introduced them to some of my ever-lovin’ charm,” Graham replied with a wink.
Marrick glanced at Reader. “That means…”
“That means Kirby scares them more than their traditions,” Reader interjected. “You forget. I know my old buddy pretty well.”
Marrick glared at Reader. “I know. He is my partner. Just remember, invite me to the wedding.”
Graham looked at Reader, then shuddered. “I’m not that desperate.”
She looked at Graham, still bristling. “Do you think that we can really get anything out of the gang scene? I m
ean, the Salt Lake P.D.’s Asian Crimes task force is trying to get their own leads on this case.”
“I plan to see what they find out, too,” Graham told her. “Unless you want to go check things out at the station. That’ll free me up to do some snooping.”
“And who gets to babysit the egghead?” Reader interjected.
Graham chuckled. “Feel up for some clobberin’ time?”
Reader glanced to Marrick. “Agent Marrick?”
She held up her hand. “The less I know, the better. I can’t put anything in my report that I don’t know anything about.”
“Plausible deniability,” Graham said.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Reader quipped.
“Just don’t get him killed,” Marrick warned.
“I’m sure I can handle myself,” Reader stated.
Marrick looked at the pair as they exited the morgue.
She didn’t doubt for a minute that they knew how to handle themselves. She only hoped that they didn’t make too much of a mess.
READER RODE SHOTGUN as Graham drove. He had settled himself into a light trance, meditating. His mind expanded beyond the limits of his body as he emptied his consciousness of all thought.
Graham had seen the meditation exercises before. At first he had been concerned about his friend, but after a while, he attributed it to his friend’s brilliance and awesome talents. The mental shutdown allowed him to organize his thoughts on a subconscious level, to the point where he could awaken from his trance and come up with a leap in logic that would seem almost astronomical.
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