“He’s probably using an alias,” Brognola said, “but hopefully the address will be legit.”
“Depends on whether or not he’s still using his Phoenix driver’s license,” Kurtzman cautioned.
“It’s worth a look anyway,” Brognola said. “We should do a run on Li-Roo’s phone records, too.”
“Already on it,” Kurtzman said. “That, plus the FBI’s going through his computer in hopes they can come up with some kind of e-mail link to Shinn.”
“I hope it works,” Brognola said, “because now that REDI has Li-Roo, odds are they’re going to lean on him until he tells them where they can find Shinn. We need to beat them to him.”
“Well, with any luck,” Price said, “Mack’s tracked down this safehouse of theirs in Goffs. If he can rescue Li-Roo and take REDI out of the equation, we just might be able to nip this part of the crisis in the bud.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Goffs, California
“False alarm?” Mack Bolan murmured as he stopped pedaling his borrowed mountain bike and coasted to a stop along the shoulder of the dirt road leading to the isolated farm the REDI operatives were supposedly using as their hideout. Jayne Bahn slowed to a stop alongside Bolan and stared at the rundown house, located less than a hundred yards up the road. The house was dark.
“Maybe they just called it a night,” Bahn said.
“Or maybe they spotted the choppers,” Bolan suggested.
“I don’t see any cars,” Bahn said.
“Could be they’re parked around back,” Bolan said. “That or in the barn.”
“There’s one way to find out for sure.”
“Yeah,” Bolan said.
He got off his bike and set it among the weeds growing off the side of the road. Bahn followed suit, then they left the road and climbed over the wood-rail fence surrounding the untended farmland. Bolan slid his Desert Eagle from his shoulder holster. Bahn reached behind her and drew the 9 mm automatic pistol she’d tucked inside the rear waistband of her slacks.
“Should we wait for backup?” she asked as they crouched among the ragged cornstalks. Bolan glanced back the way they’d come. They’d passed the CHP foot officers a few hundred yards down the road, and the men were nowhere to be seen in the dim moonlight.
“Let’s get a little closer first,” Bolan said. “No sense knocking ourselves out laying out a perimeter if we’re on a wild-goose chase.”
Bolan remained crouched as he led the way through the corn field, quietly brushing aside the withered stalks. Bahn followed close behind, keeping a steady eye on both the house and the adjacent barn. There was still no sign of activity in either structure. As they neared the edge of the field, Bolan stole a glance over his shoulder.
“I’ll check the house,” he told her. “You want to take the barn?”
Bahn nodded, then split off from Bolan, using the last row of corn for cover as she approached the dilapidated barn.
Bolan’s was a trickier predicament. Except for a few scattered tumbleweeds, there was nothing but open ground between where he was standing and the darkened farmhouse. Anyone peering out one of the south-facing windows would see him the moment he stepped clear of the corn. Bolan figured that was a chance he would have to take.
The Executioner sucked in a slow breath, then let it out just as slowly. Breaking from his cover, he sprinted toward the house, passing by the tumbleweeds. He’d made it as far as the driveway when the sound of gunfire erupted in the night. The shots weren’t coming from the house, however, and Bolan didn’t stop running until he reached the front porch. Then, crouching behind the corner of the porch, he glanced toward the barn, where the shots had come from. He heard a car engine groan to life and seconds later a pickup barreled out of the barn.
Bolan couldn’t see Bahn, and he wasn’t sure if she’d been the one who’d fired the shots. It didn’t matter, because now his total focus was on the pickup, which spit gravel as it raced along the driveway, headlights off.
The soldier took quick aim and fired at the vehicle, sending a .44 Magnum slug through the front windshield. He’d apparently missed the driver, though, because the truck stayed on course and picked up speed, bound for the dirt road.
“Not so fast,” Bolan murmured.
He lunged away from the porch and ran alongside the truck as it raced past. There was no way he could keep up with it, so he instinctively cast aside his gun and grabbed at the tailgate with both hands, then pulled himself up, dropping one knee on the rear bumper and swinging the other leg over the gate. He was pulling himself up into the truck bed when the Ford reached the road and turned sharply to the left. Bolan was thrown forward sharply against the wheel well. His shoulder absorbed the bulk of the blow and he felt a jabbing pain race down his back and along his arm. He ignored the pain and got to his knees, then began to crawl toward the cab. He could just barely make out the silhouette of the man behind the wheel.
The driver knew he’d just picked up an unwanted passenger, and the pickup swerved wildly as he jerked the steering wheel from side to side. Bolan lost his balance and tumbled into one side of the truck bed, then found himself rolling to the other side as the Ford continued to veer back and forth on the dirt road. He was struggling to regain his balance when the driver took one hand off the wheel and hammered at the cab’s rear window with the butt of his pistol. The window finally shattered and the truck slowed as the driver twisted around, trying to get off a shot.
The moment he saw the gun, Bolan rolled to his left. A shot thundered above the sound of the engine and the slug ripped through the fiberglass lining of the truck bed, missing Bolan by a good two feet. Seconds later he heard shouting out on the road, and he was once again crawling toward the cab when there was a loud thud. The entire truck shuddered, and even as Bolan registered the sound as that of someone being struck head-on, there was a quick series of more thuds as a body bounded across the front hood and up over the roof of the cab. Bolan recoiled just in time to keep from being struck when the body sprawled to a stop in the truck bed alongside him. There was just enough moonlight for Bolan to see that it was one of the CHP foot officers.
As the pickup continued to race down the dirt road, the slain officer’s partner fired, striking the cab with several rounds but failing to take out the driver, who managed to keep control of the vehicle without easing off the accelerator.
Once the Ford stopped swerving, Bolan once again started to make his way toward the cab. Off in the distance he could hear sirens squealing to life and up ahead he could see the flashing lights of the CHP patrol cars positioned at the junction where the road hooked up with Route 66.
Bolan was within a few feet of the shattered cab window when the driver suddenly yanked the steering wheel sharply to the right. Bolan was thrown off balance yet again as the pickup left the road and crashed through a flimsy wire fence. It was all Bolan could do to stay aboard the vehicle as it began to bound over the uneven terrain of an open field. The body of the slain officer slid into him, then rolled away, then collided with him again.
The Ford continued to buck and jolt for another hundred yards as the driver tried to make his getaway, refusing to let up on the accelerator or to use his headlights to get a better idea of where he was headed. He finally ran out of luck when the ground suddenly dropped out beneath him and the Ford went airborne, hurtling across a wash. It failed to make it to the other side and instead crashed into the soft, loamy embankment of the far side. The impact threw Bolan forward, over the roof of the cab, his arms and legs flailing as he was flung through the air.
He landed hard, right shoulder first, and somersaulted several times before coming to a stop several yards shy of a tall, gnarly Joshua tree. Dazed, it took him a few seconds to gather his wits. His shoulder was throbbing and he’d skinned both knees, but at least he was alive, which was more than he’d counted on. Groaning, he straggled to his feet. The slain CHP officer had been thrown clear of the pickup, as well, and lay in a contorted hea
p twenty yards to his right.
As for the truck, Bolan could only see the roof. He staggered toward the wash, snatching up a softball-size boulder, ready to defend himself, if need be, against the driver.
Ok-Hwa Zung, however, was in no shape to put up any more of a fight. The young Killboy hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, and when the Ford had plowed into the embankment, he’d been thrown partway through the windshield. He was slumped over the front hood, blood flowing from his lacerated face.
Past the wash, Bolan saw a trio of CHP cruisers raising clouds of dust as they approached from several directions. Another two patrol cars remained on the road, racing toward the farmhouse. From the other direction, a helicopter was also drifting its way toward the farmhouse.
As he waited for the various vehicles to converge on the wash, Bolan tossed aside the boulder and made his way down the embankment to the pickup. There was no one else in the front seat and no sign that anyone else had been thrown clear of the vehicle when it had crashed into the wash.
“Where the hell are the rest of them?” he wondered out loud.
“BEATS THE HELL out of me,” Jayne Bahn told Bolan ten minutes later when he caught up with her at the REDI safehouse.
They were standing in the front yard near one of the CHP cruisers that had raced to the house after the first shots had rung out. The officers were in the house, looking for evidence as to where the REDI team had fled to with their prisoner, Li-Roo Kohb. Jayne had already done a quick room-to-room search and come up empty-handed.
“The place is a mess, but there was no sign of blood, so we can hope that defector’s still in one piece,” Bahn told Bolan. “My guess is they figured their work was done here and split, leaving your Killboy friend to drive back to L.A.”
“Speaking of blood,” Bolan said, gesturing at a deep, bleeding scratch on the woman’s cheek.
“It’s nothing,” she said, wiping the blood away. “When that guy took a pot shot at me, I hit the ground, quick. The ground hit back. But from the sound of it, I think you got the worst of it.”
“Yeah, he took me for one hell of a ride,” Bolan conceded, rubbing his sore shoulder. His right hip ached, as well, and his left arm was raw with abrasions from his rough landing after being thrown from the runaway pickup.
“The only thing they left behind that raised any kind of flag was a syringe,” Bahn went on. “It was on the floor in one of the back bedrooms and still had some fluid in it.”
“Smack?” Bolan wondered.
“I don’t think so. If somebody was shooting up, it seems like they would’ve taken the needle along with the rest of their kit. I wouldn’t make any bets on insulin, either.”
“They probably used something on Li-Roo, then,” Bolan guessed. “A sedative, most likely, though I wouldn’t rule out some kind of truth serum.”
“Could be,” Bahn said. “And considering what we just found out about Li-Roo being in touch with this Shinn guy, if they got him to talk, they’re gonna be one step ahead of us.”
“Again,” Bolan murmured.
They were interrupted suddenly by a shouting in the back yard. The Clark County Metro chopper, which had been circling the farmhouse with its searchlight, was now hovering in place above the area where the shouting had come from.
Bolan and Bahn jogged around the side of the house in time to see three CHP officers huddled around an old well. One of the officers had just climbed into the well and was using the winch rope to lower himself into the hole. The chopper’s search beam was directed straight down into the well.
“Got ourselves a body,” one of the officers told Bolan when he and Jayne joined them.
“Li-Roo?” Bahn wondered.
Bolan moved closer to the well and peered down. The water table had apparently dried up years ago, because when the officer in the well let go of the rope, he was standing on solid ground twenty feet down. Bolan saw the body but couldn’t get a good look at the face.
“White male,” the officer called, “and from the looks of it, he hasn’t been here long.”
“Not our guy, then,” Bahn said.
The Metro chopper hovered in place a few moments longer, then pulled away and gently set down in the backyard near the barn, where another team of officers was checking out the area where the Ford pickup had been parked before Ok-Hwa had attempted his ill-fated getaway. Even before the pilot had killed his engines, two uniformed Metro officers piled out and scrambled clear of the rotor wash. They joined their CHP counterparts near the well and crowded in for a better look at the body.
“I’ll be damned,” one of the Metro officers muttered.
“What’s that?” Bolan asked. “You know who it is?”
The officer nodded. “Yeah. I helped the guy change a flat tire back in Vegas before I hopped on the chopper.”
“Whereabouts?” Bahn interjected. “Anywhere near the Headliner Estates?”
“Pretty close, yeah,” the officer said. “He was parked off the shoulder on a road just over the hill from there.”
Bolan exchanged a glance with the female bounty hunter. “That explains how that guy we were looking for slipped the dragnet.”
“I think so,” Bahn said. “He must’ve high-tailed it back here and hooked up with the guys who grabbed Li-Roo.”
Bolan turned back to the Metro officer. “I assume you got a make on the car.”
“Sure did,” the officer replied. “It was a ’98 Toyota. I called it in, so we’ve got a record of the plates.”
“Well, if the body’s here, the odds are the car came with him,” Bolan said.
“I hear you,” the officer said. “I’ll get an APB put out.”
“Good idea,” Bolan said. “Now we just have to hope they don’t pull another switch on their way to wherever they’re headed.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Bahn said. “CHP told me that pickup you went joyriding in was stolen, and these guys did a switch right after they snatched Li-Roo. My guess is they’ll stick to the same MO with the Toyota.”
“If that’s the case,” Bolan muttered, “we’re back to square one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Laughlin, Nevada
Once he’d disclosed the address of the safehouse in Goffs, REDI operative Cho Il-Tok had run out of bargaining chips. Yes, he suspected there were other members of the nuclear team being targeted by North Korean operatives, but as FBI Agent Ed Scanlon had speculated earlier, Cho knew nothing about the ill-fated REDI assignments in Chicago and Washington, D.C. As for Shinn Kam-Song, Cho could only confirm that care had been taken to bring in Li-Roo Kohb alive because it was hoped he might be able to lead them to the missing defector. And now, having heard back from Bolan after the raid on the safehouse, Kissinger felt certain that the North Koreans’ ploy had worked.
“Bad news, huh?” Harmon Wallace said as Kissinger got off phone with Bolan.
“Looks that way.”
Kissinger had left Cho Il-Tok in the care of FBI Agent Holland back at the care center and returned to the Shores, where, for the past hour, he’d helped Wallace root through the casino’s backlogged surveillance footage for some clue as to Shinn’s whereabouts. They’d hope to make quick progress by concentrating on SUR-CAM footage of the resort’s registration area, but, as luck would have it, this week the Shores was hosting a weeklong convention of the Pac-Rim Investors Council, and two-thirds of the people signing up for rooms were either Asian-America or natives of PRIC’s three overseas members: South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
Each time Wallace came across a guest who even remotely resembled Shinn, he had to freeze the footage and wait for Kissinger to download the frame onto the computer linking him with Stony Man Farm so that the image of the guest’s face could be highlighted, blown-up and tweaked by one of Kurtzman’s pixelization enhancers until the features became clear enough to cross-match with a head shot of the missing defector. It was a cumbersome process, and after another ten minutes, Wallace sounded an even more troubli
ng prospect.
“It’ll be a real bummer if we go through all this footage and it turns out this guy never even checked in,” he groused.
“What are the odds of that?” Kissinger said. “I mean, we’ve got footage of him getting on the elevators, then coming out with a tote bag. Add it up.”
“I know,” Wallace said, “but just because he stayed here doesn’t mean he’s the one who took out the room.”
“That’s a long shot,” Kissinger murmured. “I think we’re on the right track here. We just need to stick with it.”
“I know, I know.” Wallace reached for the coffee cup next to his viewing monitor. He took a quick sip, then checked the wall clock. It was a little after four in the morning. Yawning, he ventured, “Well, on the bright side, we’ve already gone through two hundred guests. Only another thousand or so to go.”
“Maybe we’ll figure out a way to speed things up,” Kissinger said.
Wallace managed a grin. “Too bad computers don’t drink coffee.”
The men fell silent and lost themselves in the monotony of the task. Several times they perked up momentarily when it looked as if they might have spotted their man, only to discover, after enhancing the still frames, that the man registering at the desk was somebody other than Shinn Kam-Song.
When they finally did get a break, twenty minutes later, it was from another quarter.
FBI Agent Scanlon strode into the security office, carrying a cardboard tray loaded with doughnuts and fresh cups of coffee.
“Got some good news to go with this,” he told Kissinger and Wallace.
Scanlon quickly explained that while they’d been unable to pull anything useful out of Li-Roo Kohb’s computer, his phone records had turned up three incoming calls made over course of the past week: two the day before Shinn’s visit and one the day Shinn had turned up on SUR-CAM footage of the karaoke lounge.
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