Stealth Sweep

CHAPTER FIVE

Kowloon District, Hong Kong

Thick greasy water slapped listlessly against bare rocks along the jagged coastline, and liberal amounts of broken glass sprinkled along the weedy beach seriously discouraged any potential swimmers.

Situated on a rock jetty, the old warehouse was isolated from the rest of the busy dockyard by a sprawling junkyard of smashed cars. The huge mounds of rusting metal and cracked fiberglass effectively hid what happened at the private warehouse from the view of the general public, and the police. A tall wooden fence topped with razor wire kept out the curious, while hidden security cameras and teams of armed guards kept out everybody else.

The Amsterdam Import-Export Company was a well-known cover for Leland Ortega, the largest arms dealer in all of Hong Kong. Half Spanish and half Chinese, Ortega specialized in relaying a wide assortment of death dealers back and forth between Asia and South America. The Chinese street gangs loved the Imbel 12-gauge pistols from Brazil, possibly the strangest weapon Bolan had ever encountered. The soldier had been planning on visiting Ortega sometime to shut him down permanently. However, this day he was at the warehouse for a different purpose: supplies. And he was there to help himself.

As Tsai Adina had promised, Bolan had acquired almost everything he wanted in the warehouse, along with a few wholly unexpected items, such as a brand-new Martin. That had been his first acquisition, the second being an old friend, a .44 AutoMag. The monstrous pistol was a real man stopper, the staggering recoil so difficult to control that the weapon was no longer in production.

Unfortunately, he didn’t locate any ammunition for the gargantuan weapon, but he brought it along anyway, just in case he passed by a heavy machine gun on the way out. Only a handful of shells for the AutoMag could make a real difference in any fight.

There also weren’t any Beretta 93-R machine pistols to be found, his preferred sidearm. But he had located several brand-new Glock 18 pistols. Identical to a semiautomatic Glock 17, the 18 was a true machine pistol, and discharged all thirty-two 9 mm rounds contained in an extended clip in just under two seconds. The recoil was bone-jarring, but a lot worse for anybody on the receiving end of that metal storm.

However, Bolan had been able to load only a single clip for the weapon when Ortega unexpectedly returned.

“Guards! Guards!” Ortega shouted, triggering a spray of 12-gauge cartridges from the big Atchisson autoshotgun cradled in his hands.

Dodging between tall stacks of crates, Bolan got hit in the back by the spray of double-0 buckshot, but his ballistic vest easily stopped the pellets from reaching flesh. However, the brutal impacts still felt as if he were being pounded by a rain of hammers. Rolling behind another crate, Bolan was startled to see an open briefcase full of .44 ammunition boxes. Quickly, he grabbed several to stuff into his war bag.

Wisely deciding it was time to go, he activated a remote-control unit attached to his belt, and pressed the detonator button. The muffled bang sounded from the direction of the utility room, and every light in the warehouse winked out.

“Son of a bitch!” Ortega bellowed even louder than before, blindly firing the autoshotgun into the darkness.

Ricochets bounced off the nearby concrete wall, and Bolan grunted as a spray of buckshot again hit him in the back.

Activating his night-vision goggles, Bolan stood and poured his last four rounds from the Glock pistol directly into the chest of the fat man.

Wildly firing back, Ortega grunted at the arrival of the 9 mm rounds, but didn’t fall.

Dropping the spent magazine, Bolan ducked behind a crate of G-11 caseless rifles. Quickly, he thumbed loose rounds into the clip. Clearly, the arms dealer was also wearing a bulletproof vest under his clothing. Or maybe even some of that military body armor Bolan had discovered on the second floor of the old warehouse.

The waterproof war bag slung across his back was heavy with a set of the armor, along with several blocks of C-4 plastic explosives. Bolan had known this third trip to the warehouse was pushing his luck, but the chance to get some plastique had been too good to pass up. Unlike Ortega, the agents of Red Star were famous for being excellent shots.

Slamming in the clip, Bolan jacked the slide and reached around the crate to put several rounds into a fire extinguisher attached to the far wall. As the pressurized container exploded, a cursing Ortega staggered into view, trying to wipe the stinging foam from his face.

Without remorse, Bolan fired twice more. Gushing blood, Ortega staggered backward, dropping the Atchisson to grab his ruined throat with both hands. Mercifully, Bolan put another round into the forehead of the dying man, and Leland Ortega finally paid the ultimate price for his life of crime.

Just then a door was slammed open and out ran five large Asian men wearing body armor, night-vision goggles, and carrying mini-Uzi machine pistols. The boxy weapons were equipped with coffee-can-size sound suppressors almost as large as the machine pistols themselves.

Grunting at the sight of the weapons, Bolan shot one of the guards in the armpit, So, they wanted to keep things quiet, eh? Bad for them, good for him.

As the guard fell, red blood arched away from the ruptured artery, and the rest of the guards quickly pulled back the arming bolts on the top of their weapons.

“Lu ta!” a large man with a mustache commanded, hosing the dark warehouse with a stream of small-caliber rounds.

The other men did the same, and ricochets filled the darkness, splinters flying off the wooden crates in every direction.

Quickly, Bolan thumbed more loose rounds into a magazine, then eased it into the Glock 18. Standing, he emptied the entire magazine, and one of the guards was slammed backward by the hellstorm of 9 mm rounds. All eighteen rounds cycled in under two seconds, and two of the guards were nearly torn to pieces. Dark blood splattered the concrete wall, and the Executioner ducked out of sight again as what was left of the men slumped in stages to the dirty floor.

Someone called out over the chattering of the weapons.

It sounded like the man with the mustache again, and Bolan now marked him as the new boss. The king was dead; long live the king.

Another man answered, a touch of nervous laughter marring the response.

Staying safely behind the heavy crate, Bolan opened the war bag and rummaged among the assorted weapons and high explosives. Locating what he wanted, he pulled out a couple of squat canisters. The British stun grenades were relatively harmless, only making an extremely loud explosion when detonated, along with a brief brilliant flash. They were designed to incapacitate an enemy, not kill. Humane weapons, if there was such a thing. However, in the right hands…

Pulling the pins, Bolan flipped three of the canisters high and wide over the crate, then charged for the exit.

Instantly, the guards started shooting, but a heavy wooden workbench prevented the .22 rounds from reaching him.

Moving low and fast, Bolan took out two of the guards with leg shots under the workbench. As they fell into view, he ended their lives with a single 9 mm round to the forehead, then hopped over the still body of the first guard he had killed upon entering the warehouse, and hit the exit door at a full run.

As he burst through, an alarm went off, but it made no difference now. Zigzagging across the junkyard, Bolan tasted fresh salt air and saw the shimmering harbor a split second before the stun grenades detonated.

Thunder and light filled the interior of the warehouse, and Bolan heard the guards cursing in surprise. Then the screaming began, as they continued to blindly fire their weapons into one another. Charging through the gate in the wooden fence, Bolan noted that no professional soldier would have made such a classic mistake. These men were merely street muscle, thugs for hire.

Sprinting down the curving road, the soldier soon reached a wooden dock, and almost dived into the water when he saw a small speedboat lolling in the waves alongside the pier. He changed the dive into a jump, and landed on the moving deck of the boat in a crouch, alongside a large wooden crate.

“Thought I told you to stay out near the breakers,” he growled, his gun sweeping the shadows of the craft for any sign of intruders. But only Tsai Adina was on board.

“And I thought you might need a fast escape,” Tsai countered, tucking the pearl-handled S&W .38 revolver into a black nylon holster at her hip. She was wearing a black scuba suit, her long hair braided into a ponytail.

Just then, an explosion came from the direction of the warehouse, followed by the long chatter of a machine gun, and then another.

“What the hell did you do back there, start World War III?” she demanded, tilting her head.

“Damn near,” Bolan countered, going to the helm and shoving the throttle all the way. In a growl of controlled power, the speedboat moved away from the pier and headed toward the breakers and the harbor.

However, they got only halfway there when the lights returned to the warehouse and a searchlight exploded into operation on the roof, the brilliant beam sweeping across the water.

“Take the helm!” Bolan commanded, pulling out the Glock.

As Tsai grabbed the yoke, he cradled the weapon in a two-handed grip and fired. The Glock almost seemed to explode from the rapid-fire discharge, the continuous muzzle-flash extending for nearly three feet. With a crash, the searchlight died.

“That was close.” Tsai sighed in relief, relaxing her stance slightly.

“Too damn close,” Bolan replied, sliding in his last clip.

Then he saw the front door open and out stumbled a large man with a mustache, cradling what appeared to be a Carl Gustav multipurpose rocket launcher.

Instantly, Bolan aimed and fired in a single smooth motion.

Riddled with bullet holes, the man stumbled backward and the Carl Gustav flew straight upward. The fiery wash blew off the legs of the dying man, and a moment later the roof of the warehouse violently exploded. Windows were shattered on both levels, and roiling flames filled the interior, spilling over the assorted crates, barrels, boxes and pallets of military ordnance.

“Sweet Mother of God,” Tsai whispered, making the protective sign of the cross. “Do you think that the place is going to—”

“Down!” Bolan snarled, dragging her to the deck.

For an entire minute it seemed as if his caution was unnecessary. The boat was coasting past the breakers into the harbor when there came a flash of light from the shore, closely followed by a mind-numbing explosion.

A roiling fireball rose from behind the piles of junk cars, slowly forming the standard mushroom pattern of any sufficiently hot detonation. Black clouds laced with flame extended across the rock jetty as smoldering pieces of broken concrete, smashed weapons, busted machinery and human bodies rained across the landscape. The dark water of the harbor churned from the falling debris, and Bolan grabbed the yoke to steer the speedboat farther away from the dangerous shoreline.

Everywhere across the Kowloon District, lights appeared in windows, and somewhere a fire alarm began to clang, then an air raid siren cut loose with a long, pronounced howl.

Burning out of control, the destroyed warehouse continued to explode irregularly from the tons of military ordnance that had been stored there. Bullets crackled like strings of firecrackers, land mines thundered, and as the remains of the warehouse began to collapse in upon itself, something flared white-hot for a long moment in the heart of the inferno, then died away, making the rest of the blaze seem pale and inconsequential by comparison.

“Well, that certainly put Ortega out of business!” Tsai laughed, shakily rising to her feet.

“Almost certainly,” Bolan said, giving a half smile.

“Almost? Damn, you’re a hard man to please.” Tsai started to say something else when somewhere in the darkness ahead there came the warning siren from a Red Chinese gunboat. It was promptly joined by another, and then countless more. Then an aircraft rumbled by overhead, the hot wash buffeting them both and rocking the speedboat.

“How did a jet fighter get here so soon?” she asked with a frown.

“It doesn’t matter. Time to go,” Bolan said, angling away from the open harbor and heading back toward the rolling waves cresting nosily on the rocky shoreline.

“I’m ready,” she announced, tucking the mouthpiece of her rebreather into place.

“Change of plans,” Bolan said, lowering their speed to avoid attracting unwanted attention. “You’re not going crash the boat as a diversion so that I can hijack a gunboat.”

She yanked out the mouthpiece. “We’re going to charge across Victoria Harbour and into up the West River in this old thing?” she demanded askance. “We’ll be slaughtered!”

“True.” He glanced at the large wooden crate in the rear of the craft. “Which is why we’re going back to the boathouse. I’ll need some time to get ready.”

“Get ready for what?” Tsai asked, looking over the crate. It had been the first thing the big American had hauled out of the warehouse, and even though he had used a hand truck, judging from his expression at the time, it had to weigh a ton. There was no company logo, manufacturer name or even a description on the packing slip, only a string of numbers.

“Okay, what is it?” she demanded, loosening the ponytail to let her hair billow in the wind. “A miniature submarine or something?”

“Better, if it actually works,” Bolan answered, throttling down the engine to head for the shore.

CHAPTER SIX

Pushing open the swing doors, Sergeant Ming walked into the Ichi Ban restaurant radiating death the way a furnace radiated heat.

Instrumental jazz was playing over the wall speakers mounted in the corners of the sushi bar, nearly masking the steady sound of traffic from the busy street outside. A pretty waitress with a solemn expression was working the cash register, the punching of the keys and the rattle of the old machine sounding almost like music itself.

“We’re closed!” a short fat man announced from behind the counter, both hands busy washing crystal wine goblets.

“Not anymore,” Ming snarled, firing the Norinco from the hip.

Across the room, the waitress looked up just in time for her face to be removed, then the bartender jerked backward from the arrival of a .50-caliber hollowpoint slug, his brains blowing out the back of his head to splatter across a gilded mirror and the neat rows of imported liquors.

The noise of the shots echoed throughout the restaurant, and seconds later the wooden lattice of the pass-through was slammed aside and two Japanese men shoved out double-barrel shotguns.

Already safely behind a bubbling stone fountain, Ming fired a fast five times, and one of the sushi chefs staggered backward, blood everywhere, his face bristling with splinters from the ruined lattice.

The other chef bellowed in rage, spittle flying loosely from his distorted mouth. The double-barrel 12-gauge boomed like thunder inside the restaurant, and the stone fountain exploded into rubble.

Water gushed high from the shattered pipes, and Ming answered back with the Norinco, the big pistol blowing hellfire and doom from his scarred fist.

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