China White
Bolan was working on the laptop now, absorbing details on his adversaries that had been archived for future reference. He started with the Wah Ching Triad, which had surfaced in the 1970s after a rift developed in its parent syndicate, the Sun Yee On. Ironically, that translated to New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild, a mouthful of nonsense describing China’s largest triad “family” with some sixty thousand members worldwide. The Wah Ching faction had spun off on its own, as criminal gangs often did, and had survived the shakedown battles to establish an empire of sorts built on gambling and loan-sharking in Hong Kong and Macau, plus exports of heroin from the Golden Triangle to Canada, the States and Western Europe. Prior to the Afghan incursion on their turf, they’d fought a bloody war with soldiers from Mexico’s Juárez Cartel to keep a foothold in Texas.
In most respects, the Wah Ching was a traditional triad, with tattooed members who took the usual thirty-six vows prescribed since sometime in the eighteenth century. Their structure was familiar, from the Dragon Head down to the “Vanguard”—operations officer—and “White Paper Fan”—administrator—down to the oath-bound members known for some reason as “forty-niners,” and the uninitiated prospects called “blue lanterns.” Up and down the chain, each member of the crime family—an estimated six thousand in all—was pledged to sacrifice himself if need be, for the greater good.
Make that the greater evil.
Their Afghan rivals, on the other hand, had no such rigid structure or tradition spanning centuries. Theirs was a tribal sort of operation, where the man in charge had proved himself by ruthless violence, eliminating his competitors, making examples of them to the world at large. The man in charge, Khalil Nazari, rarely left Afghanistan. In fact, he rarely left his fortress compound in the desert west of Kandahar, where he lived under double guard by his own thugs and mercenaries from a private outfit also known for its extensive contracts with the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Call him untouchable...unless he could be lured out into the open somehow for an unexpected meeting with the Executioner.
It was something to think about, but in the meantime there was New York City, where Wasef Kamran ran the show for Nazari, moving in on Wah Ching territory with no apparent concern for collateral damage. If they’d just been killing one another, Bolan might have been content to let the bloodbath run its course, but that was not an option in a metro area with twenty million innocent bystanders.
The Farm’s computer files contained whatever information was available on the Wah Ching Triad and the Nazari syndicate from sources including the DEA, FBI, NYPD, Interpol, Britain’s MI-5, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Afghanistan’s State Intelligence Agency, the Khadamat-e Aetla’at-e Dawlati, or KHAD. Some of it was contradictory, and some was out of date, but the archives showed Bolan faces, some with home addresses, and gave him directions to known or suspected syndicate properties. There would be no shortage of targets, and the soldier guessed he would find others as he went along, by one means or another.
The key was focus, and accepting tough realities. He’d never stop the trafficking in drugs from Southeast Asia or the Golden Crescent, obviously. Wiping out the Wah Ching’s membership was clearly an impossibility, and taking down Nazari at his Afghan stronghold posed a list of difficulties that included forcing Bolan to contend with U.S. troops. When those ideas were taken off the table, what remained?
His brand of blitzkrieg, for a start, refined in battles with the Mafia, with criminal cartels and terrorists around the world. The opposition would be tough, determined, and they’d pull out all the stops to keep from losing any ground, but neither side had any practical experience with the phenomenon Hal Brognola once labeled the “Bolan Effect.” Long before some White House ghostwriter dreamed up the buzz words “shock and awe,” the Executioner had honed those methods to a razor’s edge and taught his enemies to spend their final hours in fear.
Unfortunately, humans being what they were, that was a lesson that required unending repetition. Each new wave of predators seemed to believe they were immune to repercussions for their actions. There were always new ones to replace the fallen, endlessly recycling common themes of plunder, savagery and exploitation. They were doomed by ignorance and arrogance to replicate the errors of their predecessors, until someone knocked them down with force sufficient enough to ensure they would never rise again.
Someone like Bolan, who would do the job because he could.
* * *
BOLAN WAS STRIPPING for a shower when a rapping on his door stopped him. Shirtless and half expecting Price, he moved to let her in and was surprised to find Grimaldi standing there.
“Bad time?” the pilot asked.
“Just washing up,” Bolan replied. “It can wait.” He stood aside for his friend, then shut the door and slipped his shirt back on, leaving it loose, unbuttoned.
“I was thinking we should talk about tomorrow,” Grimaldi said. “New York, that is.”
“Okay.”
“I’m thinking we can fly directly there,” Grimaldi said, “unless you need to stop somewhere beforehand.”
“That’ll work,” Bolan agreed. “I’ll borrow what I need out of the armory.”
“Newark’s the closest airport, if you want to call about a ride.”
“Will do. You want a car?”
Grimaldi thought about it, then shook his head. “I’ll stick to wings for now. If we need a second vehicle for anything, I’ll pick one up along the way.”
“I expect New York won’t be the end of it,” Bolan warned.
“That’s the feeling I get, too. While you’re redecorating Chinatown, I’ll make arrangement for a bird with greater range. The Feds have got some business jets they’ve confiscated. I can probably get one of them on loan.”
“Flying in style.”
“The only way to go. Depending on our final destination, there’s a chance I can finesse some kind of gunship.”
“We can wait and see on that. It might be overkill.”
“Just food for thought. I’d rather have some rockets and a twenty-millimeter I don’t need than wish I had ’em when they’re nowhere to be found.”
“You’ve got a point,” Bolan agreed.
“So, any thoughts on where to start?”
“Find an informant if I can, first thing,” Bolan replied. “If one side or the other has a shipment due, I’ll try to take it down and go from there. Play one against the other if it feels right. Rattle cages. Blow their houses down.”
“Same old, same old.”
“Hey, if it works—”
“Don’t fix it,” Grimaldi said, finishing the thought for Bolan. “Right. I hear you. Want to get a beer or three?”
“I thought I’d catch up on my sleep.”
“Okay. I might try that myself,” Grimaldi said. “A little change of pace. What time tomorrow?”
“Six?”
“I’m there.”
Alone once more, Bolan shrugged off his shirt and had one leg out of his jeans before the knocking was repeated. Opening the door again, he felt his frown turn upside-down.
“All clear?” Price asked.
“Good timing.”
“Not so good,” she said, brushing past Bolan. “Jack was waiting for the elevator. I almost ordered him to wipe the smirk off his face.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
She cut him off, saying, “You didn’t have to dress all fancy for me.”
Bolan glanced down at his blue jeans. “These old things? Just something I threw on.”
“You want to take them off?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“But listen, if Jack—”
“Let’s just pretend Jack wasn’t here.”
Their intimate relationship was not a secret, in the strictest sense. They didn’t advertise it; tried to be discreet within the limits posed by their surroundings and the strict security imposed at Stony Man. The rooms weren’t monitored, but there were CCTV cameras in the corridors, as well as on the grounds outside. No one would question what went on between Bolan and Price, or try to second-guess them. They were warriors seeking solace, and if something more should come of it...
But nothing would.
Their lives were fixed in place, at least as far as Bolan was concerned. While Price might feel she’d had enough of Stony Man one day, might pull the pin and look for something else to do in government or in the private sector, Bolan could not walk away into a new career where everything was rosy and the storm clouds never gathered overhead.
That life was lost to him, a distant, faded memory. His father’s faulty choices had evoked disaster and determined Bolan’s path, an irredeemable diversion from what might have been. He’d never own a house, with or without a picket fence. Would never watch a child or two grow up, go off to school, get married, settle into a career. So what? A soldier learned that it was folly missing things that were denied him, things he’d never had.
What Bolan had, instead, was Stony Man and Barbara Price. He had a small but solid group of comrades who would never let him down—unless, of course, the good of many should outweigh the needs of one. That was a risk he had accepted willingly and would abide by to the bitter end.
And in the meantime, Bolan had a chance to make a difference. He’d made a difference in countless lives, nearly too often to recall. Someday his luck would turn, and he was ready for that, too.
Like the lady said, a happy ending was a story left unfinished.
Nobody got out of life alive.
“Sorry?” Bolan was aware of Price saying something, but he’d missed it.
“I said that you look like you’re a thousand miles away.”
“Nope,” he assured her. “I’m right here. With you.”
“Prove it,” she replied, pulling the zipper on her jumpsuit down around waist level.
“I aim to please,” he said.
“And since you’re a marksman, hit me with your best shot.”
Time enough to put the war on hold for one night and remember in the morning what he would be fighting for.
“I was about to take a shower,” Bolan told her.
“I could scrub your back or something.”
“It’s a deal.”
They moved together toward the bathroom, shedding clothes and apprehensions on the way. Tomorrow was as distant as forever and would take care of itself.
CHAPTER THREE
Canal Street, Lower Manhattan
“Keep going, damn it! Don’t stop here!” Louis Chao snapped.
“No choice,” John Lin answered back. “We’ve got a flat, in case you couldn’t tell.”
“Drive on the rim!”
“Too late. We’re bogging down.”
Those words were barely out before Chao felt the sharp edge of their left front wheel plow into grass and sod. The Focus shuddered, wallowed in the trough it was digging, then stalled as Lin kept bearing down on the accelerator.
“Stop! You’re flooding it!”
The engine coughed and died then, leaving Lin to pound his fist against the steering wheel, cursing in Cantonese.
“Stop it!” Chao snapped at him. “They’re coming! Everybody out!”
The car would be a death trap if the Afghans caught them in it and they couldn’t drive away. Chao didn’t plan on being caught inside with bullets ripping through the windows and the flimsy bodywork into his body. He’d already cocked the Bushmaster and held it ready as he rolled out of the car, crouching behind it with his door open, where it could serve him as a partial shield from either side. It wasn’t much, but better than if he was caught out in the open by his adversaries.
Martin Tang was last out of the Ford, clutching a pistol that seemed woefully inadequate under the circumstances. He was empty-handed, otherwise, and Chao snarled at him, “Get the bag!”
“But—”
“Get it! We’re not leaving it behind!”
Tang did as he was told, leaning inside the Ford to grab the suitcase filled with heroin and drag it out behind him. As he did so, Chao could hear the SUV approaching, fat tires ripping furrows in the grass someone had spent a fortune tending, and the men inside it had resumed their firing at the Ford. He wondered for a fleeting instant who the other man had been, glimpsed briefly in a car behind the Chevy Trailblazer and firing at it, then at Chao’s car. A policeman? Would he join the fight without the usual flashing lights and siren?
There was no more time to think about it then, as the Trailblazer passed their small sedan, two automatic weapons spitting deadly fire, their bullets hammering the Ford along its driver’s side. Chao cursed them and returned fire with his Bushmaster, the first time he’d been able to retaliate so far. He was pleased to see his bullets stitch a line of bright holes on the chase car’s left rear fender, even if they didn’t reach the men inside.
Lin was out and firing with his Uzi, ripping off what seemed like half a magazine in one long burst. Chao hoped that he had spares, firing like that, but didn’t take the time to chastise Lin for wasting ammunition. Time was better spent aiming his own shots more precisely, if he could, instead of yelling at his Wah Ching brothers in the middle of a firefight.
Do or die, he thought. If they went home without the heroin, no explanation he could fabricate would placate Paul Mei-Lun. Death from a bullet would be preferable to whatever Mei-Lun devised as punishment for losing merchandise worth three cool million. Bearing that in mind, Chao braced himself and tracked the Chevy as it turned, preparing for another strafing run, this time on his side of the crippled Ford.
“Watch out!” he warned the others, just in case their nerves had blinded them somehow. He saw Lin crouching with the Uzi held in front of him, while Tang was trying to crawl underneath the Focus, making little progress with its chassis low against the ground.
“Martin! Come out and fight!”
Tang obeyed, but seemed as if he were about to weep, a pitiful display that shamed him and his Wah Ching brothers. If they had not needed him just then, Chao thought he might have shot the whining little coward.
Chao dropped to one knee, shouldered the Bushmaster’s stock, and hoped that the sedan’s door would prevent the first few rounds from striking him. He craved a chance to kill one of his enemies, at least, before he died. Just one would be enough to prove that he had fought with courage, done his best, and he could face his triad ancestors without a trace of shame.
* * *
BOLAN COULD FEEL the Camry start to slide on the grass and turned his steering wheel into the skid, easing his foot off the gas pedal. The chase was ending, since a lucky shot had flayed one of the Ford’s front tires, and plowing over soft ground had it bogging down. The Chevy SUV was slowing, too, its front-seat shooter popping off rounds toward the Focus, while his partner in the backseat tried to keep an eye on Bolan’s progress.
The Executioner made it harder for him, cranking through a U-turn that maneuvered him away from the location where the Ford had stalled and left his Camry with its nose pointed uphill, back toward Canal Street. That way, if it started taking hits, the bullets ought to spend their force inside his trunk, or in the backseat, without doing any damage to the rental’s engine. He’d be able to evacuate the scene, at least—if he was still alive and fit to drive.
That was by no means certain, with the automatic fire already hammering the park, no more than thirty yards from where he took the battle EVA. Pursuing the Trailblazer any further would have made the fight a demolition derby, likely leaving him afoot when the police arrived to spoil the party. And since being jailed was not on Bolan’s list of things to do that afternoon, he opted for audacity to shift the odds a bit.
Audacity, and maybe just a little bit of luck.
The MP5K wasn’t heavy. Truth be told, it weighed about the same as the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle autoloader Bolan often carried as a backup piece. Add roughly a half pound for the Beta C-Mag and it still came in below six pounds, lightened a fraction of an ounce with every 3-round burst unleashed. He wasn’t firing at the moment, though. The soldier was covering ground instead, closing the gap between himself and six men trying hard to kill one another in the middle of the park.
The Executioner came at the Trailblazer from its blind side, more or less, half crouching as he sprinted across the sloping turf. The shooter in the backseat tried to get an angle on him, squeezing off a burst to get the range, but rushed it so that half his bullets struck the inside of the tailgate, peppering the grass while Bolan ducked and rolled aside.
He squeezed off two short bursts in answer to that fire and saw his target flinch from the incoming rounds. Wounded? It was impossible to say, but when the Afghan fired again, his rounds tore through the Chevy’s roof, a reflexive act accompanied by what Bolan assumed to be a shout of profanity.
Closer. The SUV’s tailgate and left rear quarter panel were his cover now. They wouldn’t stop a rifle bullet, but they kept the shooters in the Trailblazer from spotting him until he showed himself—which, as he saw it, couldn’t be put off for any more convenient time.
Nine blocks from the Fifth Precinct and he was running out of time.
Bolan reached up, holding his SMG one-handed, and unloaded through the Chevy’s left rear tinted window, spraying the interior with Parabellum rounds and shattered glass. A cry from somewhere near at hand told him he’d scored at least one hit before the SUV lurched forward, roaring off to make another sweep around the Ford sedan.
Leaving Mack Bolan totally exposed.
* * *
“DAOUD? DAOUD!”
Ahmad Taraki, bleeding from his scalp where shards of glass had stung him, swiveled in his seat when Daoud Rashad refused to answer him. The reason for his silence was revealed immediately. Fresh blood spattered the backseat of the SUV; Rashad was sprawled across that seat with half his face and skull sheared off.
Taraki still had no idea who had attacked them from behind, but he could see the bastard now, as Kazimi took them on another run around the crippled triad vehicle. The stranger was a white man, not Chinese, and he had fired on both cars during the pursuit along Canal Street, which made no sense in Taraki’s mind.
The answer: kill the attacker now before he harmed them further.
But the three Chinese were firing at Taraki and Kazimi was swerving enough to spoil Taraki’s aim as he tried to return fire on the drive-by. His magazine ran dry after unloading half a dozen rounds, but he was satisfied to see one of the triad gunners stagger, clutching at his chest before he fell. Taraki fumbled to reload the rifle, cursing his clumsy fingers, and then his driver had them lined up to charge directly at the white man who had killed Rashad.
“Run over him!” Taraki ordered. “Smash him into pulp!”
“I’m trying!” Kazimi snapped.
Their unknown adversary stood his ground, waiting, some kind of machine pistol held steady in his hands. Taraki snarled a curse and started firing through the Chevy’s windshield, scarring it with spiderwebs before a chunk of glass the size of his own head broke free and slithered off the hood, clearing his field of fire. By then his enemy was firing back, not panicked as might be expected, but squeezing off precision bursts.
Kazimi croaked out a dying gasp as he slumped back in the driver’s seat, his hands sliding off the steering wheel and down into his blood-drenched lap. His foot was still on the accelerator as he slid down in the seat, the SUV still charging forward, though it had begun to drift off course. Taraki grabbed the wheel and tried to bring the vehicle back on target, toward the man he meant to kill, but when he tore his eyes away from Kazimi’s corpse, his enemy had leaped aside, out of the Chevy’s path.
Taraki cranked the wheel sharply, swerving to the right. He guessed it was too little and too late, but what else could he do? Firing the Bushmaster with one hand, steering with the other while a dead man held the SUV at cruising speed, he tried to salvage something out of the disaster that had overtaken him.
Too late.
Another burst of submachine gun fire blew through the Chevy’s shattered windshield, ripping through Taraki’s left shoulder and arm with stunning force. He might have squealed in pain—couldn’t be certain of it with the roaring in his head—then he was slumping to his right, against his door, as the Trailblazer tipped and rolled onto its side. Kazimi, never a fan of seat belts when he was alive, slithered across the console, settling with his mutilated face jammed underneath Taraki’s chin.
“Get off me.” Taraki’s voice grated, but he had no strength left with which to shove his former driver away, much less crawl out from under him. His left arm was a useless dangling piece of meat, his right pinned underneath his own weight and the corpse’s, still clutching the Bushmaster but now incapable of lifting it.
He heard footsteps approaching; knew that it could only be an enemy, but didn’t know whether it was the white man who had wounded him or one of the Wah Ching gunners. Cursing and weeping in frustration, straining with whatever strength he still possessed to raise his gun, Taraki listened to the grim approach of death.
At the last moment, with an effort that exhausted him, Taraki craned his neck to peer out through the windshield, focusing on feet and legs outside. He struggled impotently to free his weapon, mouthing curses as the man dropped to one knee and peered inside the toppled SUV. It was the stranger, naturally, frowning at him as he raised his submachine gun toward Taraki’s face.
Before the world went black.
* * *
A BULLET SIZZLED past Mack Bolan’s ear and panged into the capsized SUV, leaving a shiny divot in the roof where paint had flaked away. He ducked and rolled, putting the blunt nose of the Trailblazer between himself and the Wah Ching thugs who’d missed a chance to take him down.
Stalemate?
He couldn’t let it go at that, with precious seconds slipping through his fingers. Sirens would be coming at him any time now, closing off Bolan’s escape route from the battle that he’d never meant to fight in this location, with civilians in the way. He glanced around as best he could, saw no one raising cell phones yet to record the action as it happened, but the idea added one more level of concern.
His face on YouTube? Not a great idea.
Of course, it wasn’t his face. Not the one he had been born with, anyway. No one would look at him and think Mack Bolan? Someone told me he was dead! Still, going viral to the world at large would definitely cramp his style, and might require yet another session with the surgeon who had given him his battle mask.
No, thanks.
Before he made another move against the Wah Ching gangsters, Bolan pulled a roll of silky black material out of his left trouser pocket and slipped it over his head. It was a balaclava, black nylon and ultra-thin, that fit him like a second skin, with a “ninja” oval opening for eyes alone, masking the rest of Bolan’s face. Now he was ready for his close-up, if it came to that, switching out the MP5K’s nearly empty magazine for a fresh one, bracing for his move.
First step: to take the triad hardmen by surprise within the limits of his present circumstance. They had to have seen where he had gone to ground, so Bolan crept along behind the Trailblazer until he reached its rear end, pausing there just long enough scout the landscape cautiously and choose his angle of attack. Behind him, twenty yards or so from where he crouched, the Camry waited for him, still had access to Canal Street if he finished his business soon enough and wasn’t cut off by police.
Too many ifs.
The way to do it, he decided, was a plain, straightforward rush, with cover fire as needed on the relatively short run to his destination. Short was relative, of course. Ten feet could feel like miles when a person was under hostile fire. The first step could turn out to be his last. Still, Bolan had to make the effort, or his intervention in the fight had been for nothing, a colossal—maybe catastrophic—waste of time.