Crucial Intercept. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ his reach into the bag. Bolan scooped it up quickly, checking to make sure he was still unobserved from his vantage behind the garbage containers. Then he unfolded the paper.

      Wear them in good health, it read in handwritten print. Stay alive. It was signed, simply, “Cowboy.”

      Bolan shoved the slip of paper deep into his pocket. He picked up the Uzi and, holding the weapon low against his leg, moved in on the motel. Once he was in the shadow of the building itself, he took out his phone and texted a message to the Farm’s quick-contact number, which would display on a readout in the Computer Room, asking for room number intel.

      Almost immediately, the responding text message came back, probably typed by Price herself: “Bear says man matching Baldero’s description checked in room 112. Grnd floor, East.”

      That would mean the Farm, or someone on the advance team reporting to the Farm, had checked with the front desk. Whether overtly using government authority, or covertly using some ruse, the Farm had determined that a man who looked like Baldero had checked into room 112, which Price was informing him was located on the ground floor of the east wing of the double-winged building.

      He made his way there, watching the doors and room numbers tick past in descending order as he went by. He was doing his best to ignore the gun held against his thigh. It was an old trick of role camouflage; if the gun wasn’t anything he noticed, a bystander might not notice it either. While there were always exceptions, Bolan knew from experience that most people simply didn’t look at the individuals around them. The majority of people walked through life in what one late, famous self-defense expert had called “condition white,” a state of blissful unawareness of their surroundings. Bolan was counting on that. It wouldn’t do for some particularly aware citizen to notice his weapon and call the police, perhaps tipping off Baldero that he had been located.

      He found room 112 and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. Reaching out with one hand, he rapped on the door quietly, using the back of his left fist.

      “Yeah?” came a voice from inside.

      “Housekeeping,” Bolan said. “You want fresh towels?”

      There was no reply from inside. Bolan could hear the occupant, presumably Baldero, shuffling around within. If it wasn’t his man, no harm would be done. If it was, however, he needed to take control of the situation right now. If he could get Baldero to open the door without causing a scene, he could quietly remove the man from the premises and take him into custody. Getting Baldero under wraps was the first step in stopping the shootings that were causing so much trouble, and in unraveling the mystery regarding why the shootings were happening.

      “Sir?” Bolan asked again. “If you’ll just open the door—”

      Just then a shotgun slug tore a hole the size of a quarter through the heavy motel door.

      4

      Straddling an upholstered wooden chair with his arms resting on the chair’s back, Yoon Jin-Sang focused the binoculars for a better view of the large, dark-haired man who had just entered the shelter of the motel’s second-floor overhang, sticking to the shadows. The man moved with unmistakable, deadly grace, like a panther. Yoon suppressed a shudder. He thought perhaps it was as they had feared, and the dreaded night-killer rumored in the reports trickling slowly down from military intelligence were true. If they were, he could believe that this man, the man he had just glimpsed in the binoculars’ view, was the night-killer. He did not say so. He knew the feelings of Kim Dae-Jung on the subject and did not wish to agitate his “superior.” When he spoke, he was careful to keep his tone subdued.

      “He is here.”

      “The large American?” Kim’s voice was too casual, almost indolent. The large, muscular man leaned back in his chair and paused to stare at the ceiling, as if he did not care.

      “Yes, the same man,” Yoon said. “He is approaching Baldero’s room.”

      Kim did not reply. Yoon banished the sigh before it could escape his mouth. His true superiors in military intelligence had given him his orders in no uncertain terms. He was to do his best to see to it that Kim carried out the mission with which he was tasked. Given Kim’s dangerously unstable nature, that might prove difficult, but it was not, they emphasized, considered impossible. Kim had been selected from the ranks of intelligence’s disgraced operatives because he was expendable and because he still had family members who ranked highly in North Korea’s military command and intelligence structure.

      It would suit the family honor of all concerned if Kim’s wild nature was harnessed where he could do the most damage among the hated West, and that was deemed to be the United States. If Kim died spectacularly, sacrificing himself in that self-destructive manner that so characterized him, this was deemed so much the better. Even their leader was at least dimly aware of Kim’s volatile nature. Certainly the man had disgraced himself and potentially his family publicly enough in North Korea, his eccentricities finally culminating in atrocities against North Korean civilians that even the government and its military enforcers could not ignore.

      For the mission to be an unqualified success, Yoon had the unenviable task of keeping Kim restrained in order for them to capture this American, Daniel Baldero, and spirit him out of the country. Kim had to live only long enough for the team to acquire Baldero; if he died thereafter, that was best. Yoon had been informed by his superiors, in fact, that Kim was not to survive the mission. If that meant he were to meet with an accident on his return to Pyongyang, well, that was what it meant. The problem was not seeing to such an accident—the problem was keeping Kim under control long enough for them to get that far. He was dangerous, unstable and unpredictable—but Kim was also a deadly warrior, a berserker with no fear. They would need him before the mission was over, especially if this night-killer was truly involved. Yoon swallowed again, his throat very dry.

      The three of them—Yoon, Kim and the woman, Hu Chun Hei—sat in the upper-story room of the motel across the street from the one in which Baldero had only just rented a room of his own. It had not been difficult to secure the space, even in a hurry. It had been more difficult to conceal their field teams in their trucks in the hotel parking lot, for Yoon feared they were entirely too obvious sitting there in the American sport-utility vehicles. They had already risked flushing the prey once, and they could not afford to be discovered, not yet. For the plan to succeed, they had to remain unseen until one of the foreign teams had acquired Baldero. Then Yoon, Kim and their men, along with Hu, would swoop in and steal the prize, like an eagle taking a fish in its claws. The Americans would look like fools, Kim would die a hero, and Yoon would return to a promotion and much political currency in Pyongyang.

      Already, their surveillance had shown them much, and their contact within the Americans’ government had told them even more. It was, Yoon thought, truly astounding, the lengths to which the traitor American had gone to keep them apprised of the situation this man had helped create. He cared only for money, it seemed, and Pyongyang had transferred vast sums to him to secure his cooperation. More had been promised. Whether the man lived to spend it would be up to Kim, more than likely, and Yoon cared only that the man live to the limit of his usefulness. After that, Kim could indulge his baser instincts to his heart’s content. No one would have to know—what was one more fat, dead American? Yoon laughed at the thought and wondered if Baldero understood the extent to which his fellow American was willing to sell him to the enemy. Probably Baldero did not. It was not important.

      The American government man had, in fact, fed Yoon’s people a steady stream of intelligence since helping to bring them and their equipment, undetected, into the country. It was easy enough for the fool, as he was telling them primarily of their competition—other teams, similar to their СКАЧАТЬ