Blood Toll. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ passed him, Bolan stepped past and behind the man, viciously driving the aluminum head of the compact light into the base of the guard’s skull. Bolan struck twice more in rapid succession, hammering down the sentry. He hooked his arm around the man at the last second, easing him down as he folded. He wasted no time securing the sentry, instead heel-toeing back down the hallway to the conference room. The adjacent office door was unlocked. Bolan slipped silently inside, easing the door shut behind him.

      With the combat light, he swept the dim, windowless room. There was no furniture. A few sheets of paper and some candy bar wrappers were scattered across the floor. A dirty bucket, obviously pressed into use as a toilet, sat in one corner. On the floor, sprawled against the far wall, was a body.

      Bolan knelt by the battered form of Jimmy Han, his face all but unrecognizable from the beatings he’d taken. The soldier checked his pulse. Han was alive, but in very bad shape. Bolan lifted the man gently by the shoulders and spoke to him quietly.

      “Jimmy. Jimmy Han. Can you hear me?”

      Han’s eyes fluttered open. He stared at Bolan blankly for a moment before drawing a ragged breath.

      “Are you…?” he whispered.

      “Brognola sent me,” Bolan said. “I’m taking you out of here.”

      “Knew he wouldn’t…leave me.”

      “Can you stand, Jimmy?” Bolan was only too aware that they were running out of time. If he didn’t get Han moving immediately, this soft probe was going to turn into a bloodbath.

      “Wait…” Han said weakly. He tried to free himself from Bolan’s grip. “I need…”

      “What is it, Jimmy?” Bolan said.

      “Outlet.” Han pointed at the electrical outlet against the far wall.

      Bolan eased Han to the floor and went to the outlet. Working a knife edge behind the plastic outlet cover, Bolan popped it off with a hard snap of his wrist. Inside the outlet was a white plastic square. The Executioner removed and examined it. He was holding a card key to a room at the Holiday Inn Waikiki.

      “Hid it there,” Han rasped from the floor, “when they first threw me in here….”

      “Jimmy?” Bolan said, taking Han by the shoulders again and lifting him to a sitting position.

      “James,” Han managed to say. “James…”

      Bolan could barely hear the man. He leaned in close. “Jimmy,” he said. “James. Talk to me. What is this key?”

      “Five…” Han said softly. “Five-nineteen. Five-nineteen…”

      Bolan watched as Han’s bloody, swollen face went slack. One of his eyes was swollen shut; the other turned glassy as the light behind it faded. A death rattle passed through his split lips. Bolan lowered the operative to the floor one last time and closed his staring eye.

      Pocketing the key, Bolan rose. His first priority was to escape Cheinjong. He had been too late to save Jimmy Han; he could not afford to let Han’s message die with him. Beretta held before him, he slipped out the office door and back the way he’d come, stepping over the unconscious door guard as he went.

      The conference room door opened. There was a pause, followed by alarmed voices shouting in Chinese.

      Bolan kept walking, rounding the corner at the end of the corridor. He had almost made the stairway when the first gunshot rang out. The Executioner broke into a run, throwing himself down the stairs and across the machine shop, the floor above and behind him echoing with running footsteps. He caught a glimpse of his pursuers as he crashed through the fire doors to the loading dock. At least half a dozen men with pistols and subguns were chasing after him.

      When the soldier’s combat boots hit the loading dock, the fire alarm inside began to ring like a school bell. This was obviously a signal to the sentries outside, who began to converge on Bolan’s position in response to the noise. One crossed Bolan’s field of fire and received a 3-round burst from the suppressed 93-R. The Executioner headed straight for the body, stepping over it without breaking stride and hurling himself at the perimeter fence.

      As he scaled the fence, two more sentries caught sight of him. Bullets burned past him as he rolled over the barbed wire topping the fence, hitting the ground on the other side with a grunt. He snapped another pair of bursts back at the sentries as automatic fire sprayed the ground where he’d been. Cheinjong’s guards were willing to use overwhelming deadly force in broad daylight on American soil. As Bolan ran for the nearby commercial buildings, putting distance between himself and the shooters, he wondered why they’d been so quick to cross the line. Something big was going down, something Jimmy Han was trying to tell him.

      Bolan’s rented Dodge Charger sat where he’d left it, in the narrow alleyway between two neighboring warehouses. The 3.5-liter engine growled when he turned the key. Leaving black marks on the asphalt, he guided the car through the alley, shooting out into traffic as he watched the rearview mirror. When two minutes passed with no sign of pursuit, he concluded he was not being followed.

      Steering with one hand, Bolan removed his secure wireless phone from an inner pocket of his blacksuit. The scrambled line buzzed as he connected to Stony Man Farm, cycling through a series of encrypted cutouts. After a brief delay, Barbara Price was on the line.

      “Striker?” Stony Man’s mission controller sounded tense. “What’s your status?”

      “Jimmy Han is dead,” Bolan told her. “Beaten to death. Cheinjong Industrial Supply is staffed by Chinese-speaking Asians packing automatic firepower. They cut loose on me as I was leaving.”

      “I’ve got Honolulu Specialized Services Division standing by,” Price said.

      “Tell them to move on Cheinjong as fast as they can get into position,” Bolan said. “But don’t count on that being fast enough.”

      “Striker?”

      “They’ve got some kind of manufacturing operation going,” Bolan explained. “It looks professional, which means they’ll have planned for discovery. I wouldn’t be surprised if SSD finds nothing but empty rooms and half-eaten lunches.”

      “I’ll do what I can to speed it up. What about you?”

      “I’ve got a lead,” Bolan said over the throaty roar of the Charger’s engine, “but if this starts to get complicated I’m going to need local backup. Has Bear finished looking over my HPD contact?”

      “He has,” Price said. “Your liaison is Sergeant Diana Kirokawa. She’s been commended for closing a number of high-profile murder and violent-assault cases. Thirty-six years old, fourteen years with the department. Half-Japanese, Hawaiian born. I’m transmitting an image and her data file to your phone now.”

      “Thanks, Barb,” Bolan said. “Contact HPD and see if you can have her meet me at the Holiday Inn Waikiki, soonest. I’m headed there now. Also, get a courier into position at that location. I have something I recovered at Cheinjong that I need to have analyzed ASAP.”

      “Will do. Striker?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Be careful.”

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