Blood Toll. Don Pendleton

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      “Casualties?”

      “None,” Brognola said, “but one of our pilots had to eject after his plane and one of the Flankers clipped each other. As far as we know, the Chinese plane landed safely.”

      “What’s the fallout?”

      “It’s not good. The Chinese are calling it a deliberate act of provocation and talking about withdrawing their diplomatic personnel from American soil.”

      “So what’s the connection?” Bolan asked him.

      “The timing is suspicious,” Brognola said. “Hours after the incident, Han missed his check-in. We lost touch with him and haven’t been able to locate him since. Aaron and his people have found connections to the highest levels of the Chinese government’s covert-ops groups. There’s something China doesn’t want found—and I think Han was in the right place at the wrong time. That’s what makes this so delicate.”

      “So you want me to find out what happened.”

      “Barb is working with the locals on my authority,” Brognola told him. “Once she settles down all the egos involved, we’ll have a liaison assigned to you. In the meantime I’ll have Aaron vet whomever the locals assign.”

      “That will work.”

      “Bring Han out, Striker,” Brognola said, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “We need to know what he’s discovered.”

      Twelve hours after that phone call, Bolan was infiltrating the Cheinjong Industrial Supply building. Bolan crept through the loading dock and eased open the crash bar of a metal fire door. The access corridor beyond was dark. Unclipping a combat light from a pocket of his blacksuit, Bolan swept the corridor with the powerful light held below the Beretta in a supporting grip. At the end of the hallway, another fire door waited. The soldier paused and listened at the doorway.

      There were voices beyond. Two men, speaking Chinese, were approaching his position. Bolan took a step back and leveled the Beretta at the doorway, ready to send bursts of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds through the opening. The crash bar on the opposite side of the door moved with a hollow metal creak. Bolan’s finger tightened on the 93-R’s trigger.

      The door stayed shut. The Executioner waited as the men on the other side continued their conversation. It was obvious from the tones of their voices that they were arguing. Finally, one of the two relented. Their conversation continued, rapid-fire, as the voices receded. Bolan gave them a ten-count before moving back to the door and easing it open.

      The room beyond was a large machine shop of some kind. There were no personnel present that Bolan could see. Several tables bore electronic equipment, while boxes and wooden crates waited in stacks across the floor space. Metal housings, each the size of a thermos, were being turned out at one station. At an adjoining workbench, components were being fitted within each metal tube. As he moved quickly and fluidly across the floor, Bolan snagged one of the housings from the workbench and tucked it into his messenger bag. At the opposite end of the shop floor was a spiral metal staircase. He made for it and climbed quietly upward.

      The second floor was divided into office space. Bolan stayed low to avoid the Plexiglas windows set within the walls. He could hear people moving about, so he duck-walked to the end of the corridor in which he stood, making for the wooden doorway opposite. He managed to open and shut the door just before someone walked quickly past.

      The small office space was cluttered with cardboard boxes and dominated by a small desk and a smaller couch. Calendars, schedules and shipping documents were tacked and taped to the drywall.

      Curled up on the couch was a slight Asian man in a white short-sleeved shirt and red tie.

      Bolan whipped around the suppressed Beretta and prepared to silence the unlucky man as he stirred from his nap. The man muttered something, squinting in Bolan’s direction, sounding more embarrassed than alarmed.

      The soldier held his fire. A pair of thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses sat on the desktop. The Asian man reached for these, patting the desktop lightly as if he could not see them. The Executioner moved in quickly, sliding the glasses back out of reach and rapping the butt of the Beretta firmly against the side of the man’s head. He squawked and fell back as Bolan followed him down, clamping one hand firmly over the man’s mouth.

      “Do you understand English?” Bolan demanded.

      The man nodded and started to speak, but Bolan clamped his hand down harder.

      “Quietly,” Bolan cautioned. “If anyone hears us, you’re dead. Try to call for help, you’re dead. I need some answers.” The man nodded quickly.

      “What is your name?”

      “Wu Hong.”

      “Are you holding anyone here, Wu?” Bolan demanded. When Wu hesitated, Bolan pressed the muzzle of the Beretta’s suppressor against the small man’s forehead. “Last chance, Wu.”

      “We are,” Wu admitted.

      “Where is he?”

      “Here,” Wu said. “The office across from this one, in the opposite hall. Next to the conference room.”

      “Where is everyone else?”

      “The conference room,” Wu said gravely. “That is where they would be now. That is where I am supposed to be.”

      “Will they come looking for you?”

      “I do not know. Probably not.”

      “Good,” Bolan said. “What’s going on here, Wu? Who are you? What are you building?”

      “I cannot tell you.”

      Bolan pressed with the Beretta again. Wu merely squeezed his eyes shut.

      “Tell me.”

      “I cannot,” Wu repeated. “You will have to kill me.”

      Bolan knew he didn’t have time for a proper interrogation. He slammed the butt of the Beretta across Wu’s head again, putting the man out, then gagged him with his own tie and cuffed his arms and legs. Finally, he rolled the man over onto the couch, where it would look at least at first glance as if he was still stealing a nap. Checking the hallway, Bolan emerged and circled around to get a view of the opposite corridor.

      A single Asian man sat on a metal folding chair outside the conference room. The door had a window in it, but this was covered from inside in what appeared to be newspaper taped to the glass. Shadows of movement played across the newspaper, which did not conceal the light from within the room. The guard in the chair was reading a dog-eared paperback novel. Next to the conference room door was another, this one unmarked and bearing no window. If Han was inside, the guard outside the conference room was there to keep an eye on the Justice operative as much as to mind whoever was meeting in the room behind him.

      Bolan flattened himself against the wall, around the corner and out of the guard’s line of sight. Raising the combat light in the dim hallway, he started pressing the tailcap switch. The bright beam silently strobed the corridor. It easily overwhelmed the sparse overhead lights of the hallway, drawing the guard’s curious attention. The Executioner could СКАЧАТЬ