Читать книгу Outback Assault - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

The penthouse apartment was palatial in scope. Twenty-five stories above the streets of Hong Kong, the multitiered dwelling would have qualified as a mansion in any other city in the world. The terrace included an expanse of lawn dotted with shade trees, as well as a swimming pool surrounded by polished black marble tile. The three-story dwelling had a large patio that looked out over Victoria Harbour. It was so high that in the shadow of night, the lights of the floating shantytown in the bay looked like a simple extension of Hong Kong’s vibrant streets.

The penthouse was the home of Wade Augustyn, a man considered by the outside world to be a polite, very private gentleman. Augustyn was known as a moderately wealthy philanthropist on the Hong Kong scene, but whispered back-street rumors had brought him to the attention of Mack Bolan. Bolstered by intelligence from Stony Man Farm, Bolan had determined that Augustyn was in the employ of the triads and the Chinese SAD, the Communist nation’s premier security organization.

Augustyn was a “cleaner.” He solved problems for his criminal and government cohorts one bullet at a time, usually from a comfortable distance. The death trail Bolan was tracking was long and twisted, especially when Augustyn had begun to operate not only in the criminal sphere, but also interfered with U.S. intelligence operations in the Orient. Augustyn’s alleged hit list included honest lawmen and operatives fighting for the security of the West against Beijing’s less than honorable pursuits.

The final nail that had marked Augustyn’s coffin was the execution of an American agent who was working behind the scenes trying to eliminate sensitive data that had been seized aboard a captured U.S. Navy spy plane. The agent’s dying actions had been two button presses, one to capture Augustyn’s face, the other to launch a desperate e-mail. With that action, Augustyn had been added to Stony Man Farm’s watch list.

Agent Lissa Reynolds’s final cell-phone digital image had been transmitted to the Farm. Reynolds had once been part of the Farm’s blacksuit operation, one of the few women tough and qualified enough to hang with the commandos and special agents who made up Stony Man’s security and training force. Bolan had met Reynolds only once, and she’d impressed him with her professionalism. That professionalism and unyielding determination had been cut off mercilessly.

Bolan looked at the rifle on the rooftop next to him. The Remington 700 was a nondescript hunting rifle, chambered for 7 mm Remington Magnum. Given the chance, the Executioner preferred a clean, antiseptic kill, and the high-powered hunting rifle would provide that in spades. Across the street from Augustyn’s penthouse, he was in a perfect position to pull the trigger on the man made wealthy by the blood of good people.

Unfortunately, after half a day’s stakeout, Bolan had only learned that the man was out of town, returning that night. In the meantime, the other distant reaching tool that Bolan had at his disposal, a long-range directional microphone, had picked up phone data. He called the Farm to see who was trying to get in touch with the assassin, but Augustyn’s penthouse was electronically secured. Except for the faint warble of his phone, Bolan’s microphone could pick up nothing thanks to a white noise generator. Even Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman and his cybercrew were incapable of breaking through Augustyn’s encrypted telephone lines, meaning that the wealthy killer had put as much work into securing his home as he did making it look luxurious.

“He just landed at the airport, Striker,” Kurtzman advised. “His driver won’t take long to get him home, and we haven’t made a dent in his system. By the time he gets there, he’ll know we’ve been trying to intrude because we tripped over some truly amazing black ice.”

Bolan knew enough of hacker-speak to know that “black ice” was a form of electronic security. For the cybercrew to be caught off guard by such measures was more circumstantial evidence that Wade Augustyn was someone with a lot to hide. It could be the industrial secrets of a less than honest businessman, but combined with Reynolds’s last photograph, in the court of Bolan’s opinion, it was more than enough to warrant a hard probe.

Bolan abandoned the mike and the rifle. Both had been picked up locally, and had been sanitized of fingerprints and DNA residue, in case the SAD discovered them. They’d be considered just two more pieces of black market equipment smuggled into China by foreign devils like the Yakuza or the Americans. As he made his way across the street, concealed on his person were a Chinese-made Norinco, a copy of the venerable Colt .45, and a silenced .32-caliber Walther PPK. It wasn’t his usual load in the field, but it was what was available.

The Executioner rode two elevators to reach Augustyn’s residence. The elevators took him as far as the floor beneath Augustyn’s. The top levels were accessible only via a private car that Bolan couldn’t get into without a security code. Kurtzman tried to open the system, but electronic countermeasures stonewalled the computer wizard. With the assassin’s homecoming only minutes away, Bolan would have to make do with more primitive means. As soon as the car reached the twenty-fourth floor, he stood on a side rail, punched through the access hatch and clambered on top. He tugged on thick leather gloves and climbed the ropes one level.

There were no doors, but there was a ventilation duct access. Bolan scanned it with a flashlight and picked up the presence of pressure sensors on the grating. He fished a 25,000-volt stun gun from his breast pocket and pressed the spikelike leads to the edge of the grating. He tapped the firing stud for two seconds, then flicked on the stun gun’s safety. It was a trick that Stony Man’s Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz had taught him—a means of temporarily disabling an electronic sensor. The scorch marks it left behind were messy and provided telltale signs of the intrusion, but the Executioner didn’t intend to hang around Hong Kong long enough for that to matter.

Bolan removed the grating and entered the ventilation system, crawling to the first opening. A solid kick smashed the grate out, allowing him to slither into Augustyn’s penthouse suite. He’d only needed enough stealth to cross the street without drawing police attention. Now, hundreds of feet above street level in a home that was shielded by white noise generators and soundproofed walls and floors, the Executioner had a wide-open killing ground safe from Chinese interference, either from above or below the law. At the most, he figured he’d have to deal with Augustyn’s chauffeur, who would either have bodyguard training or be a professional killer in his own right.

Following the floor plans that Kurtzman had provided on the building, he moved to where the private elevator would be. It was secured behind a pair of ornate oak doors that, when opened, proved to be extremely heavy. Bolan could feel the weight of a sheet of armor plate sandwiched between the layers of thick, decorative wood.

The first floor had been tastefully decorated. Hardwood floors gleamed with no sign of heel scuffs marring their beauty even where Bolan had crossed them. He left the doors open, drew the .45 and let it hang low at his side while he searched the apartment. Minimal lighting made the place navigable.

A burst of static suddenly sounded over Bolan’s earphone. He flicked off the safety on his Norinco. He knew that Kurtzman had tried to get through to him. There had to have been only a narrow band through which communications could pierce the bubble of security that Augustyn had installed. Since Bolan was operating on a satellite signal, and his cell phone wasn’t coded for the encryption static that engulfed the apartment, he was unable to make out Kurtzman’s message.

It didn’t matter. The attempt to break through produced enough noise to alert the Executioner that Augustyn had arrived. Bolan returned to the huge doors and closed them. The latch snapped shut with an audible click and he turned. He put himself in the mentality of a world-traveling businessman. He spotted a space atop an intricately carved table where Augustyn would probably empty his pockets and with just a single step and a press of a button, access the messages left for him when he was out.

The hired assassin had a layer of anonymity between himself and his employers. As a matter of survival for Augustyn, he’d likely only take communications in his very secure home, not on the road with a cell phone. The potential to be traced by cellular signal was too great to secure Augustyn’s privacy.

Bolan took a step toward the answering machine and studied the sleek, disklike device. It had to have been cutting-edge technology either straight from Tokyo, or knocked-off in a Hong Kong back-alley electronics lab. He pushed the button and the digital player cycled through its memory, bringing up the three priority messages that had drawn Kurtzman’s attention.

“We need you. Tickets have been arranged for you to travel to Darwin. We’ll have a contact brief you on the cleanup,” the first message announced. The other two were identical to the first, no change in urgency, and had been spaced a day apart.

Nonpriority messages began to play on the sleek machine, but Bolan killed the playback. The machine requested to know if he wanted to retain the trio of messages as priority, and Bolan decided to leave them.

He moved to the room where he’d penetrated the penthouse and fastened the vent cover back into place. There was a slight bulge that kept it from sitting true, but it wouldn’t be noticed without a thorough investigation.

Bolan stayed to the shadows, listening for the triad assassin executioner to arrive. He didn’t have to wait for long. The heavy doors opened with a clack and he heard a deep, resonant voice tell someone to put the bags away. From his vantage point, Bolan could see Augustyn, a tall, powerful man. He was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. The image that dying agent Reynolds had sent was of the man disguised as a servant. Taking off his formal hat, he fit Bolan’s general appearance, over six feet in height, with wide powerful shoulders disappearing down into a slender waist, his torso a wedge of lean muscle. Black hair and blue eyes added to Augustyn’s vague resemblance to the Executioner.

“Couldn’t wait to get off the elevator to take charge again, eh, Wade?” an older man’s voice croaked.

Augustyn chuckled, his shoulders visibly jerking. “I’m tired, boss,” he said sarcastically.

He listened to the answering machine messages, and frowned. “Forget about the bags, Eugene. Fire up the computer and print out the tickets that Long sent.”

“Tickets?” Eugene asked. “Right. I’ll take care of it. Any idea where we’re off to?”

“Darwin, Australia,” Augustyn said. He wiped out the two redundant digital messages and listened to his remaining messages. “Another cleaning job.”

Eugene’s disgust was broadcast in an audible grunt. He stepped into the open, and Bolan saw a man in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair, looking like an older version of Augustyn, only an inch or so shorter. An older brother? Bolan wondered at first, but then decided Augustyn had to have sought out someone with a close enough resemblance to pass for himself. “Cleaning means we’ve got more than one target,” Eugene said.

“If I’ve got to meet with a local contact, there’s going to be a laundry list of duties to carry out,” Augustyn returned. “Not only a direct kill, but applying more pressure than they could bring on their own.”

Eugene frowned. “This means a big, noisy mess. A deniable one to boot.”

“That’s why they’re calling me in. Print the e-ticket. If you want, you can stay behind and make up for our lost time in Hong Kong,” Augustyn replied. “They assume I travel alone anyhow, so you’d have to make your own way.”

“No, thanks,” Eugene replied. “I’d receive enough worried phone calls that I’d be stuck up the creek without a paddle if I took even another day away.”

“You?” Augustyn chided.

“And you, too, by extension,” Eugene amended, walking off.

The big assassin picked up a sleek cordless phone off the disklike answering machine and dialed a series of numbers. “Set up my usual Australia safari package. Darwin,” he said.

Bolan skulked down a hallway and closed in on Eugene as he hovered over a keyboard, scanning through e-mail messages. The Executioner waited until the man hit the print command on the electronic ticket, then stepped into the den behind Augustyn’s business manager. He jabbed a quick punch under Eugene’s ear, a blow placed perfectly to render him unconscious. The businessman slumped into Bolan’s arms, and he lowered the man on the floor. It took only a few moments to bind Eugene’s wrists and ankles to keep him to the upcoming fight. He’d need more intelligence from the man later.

A sudden movement in Bolan’s peripheral vision ignited his reflexes, throwing him to the floor an instant before the roar of a .45 split the air. The liquid crystal flat panel display for Augustyn’s computer burst, a quartersized hole blown through it.

“You’re good, whoever you are. I didn’t even know you were in the apartment until I heard Eugene’s grunt as you knocked him out,” Augustyn said.

Bolan didn’t answer. He had two alternate ways out of the office. One door to the right would force Augustyn to move more to intercept him, and it was close at hand. He shoved the desk chair toward that door and spun toward the farther exit from the den as another pair of .45-caliber slugs punched into the back of the chair.

As soon as he saw Augustyn disappear to intercept Bolan’s false path, the Executioner exploded in the other direction, drawing his .45 in one swift movement. By the time the assassin discovered he’d been bluffed, it was too late for Augustyn to do anything except blow a chunk of wall apart with another big slug.

“Nice trick,” Augustyn called out. Bolan heard him reload his half-depleted handgun. The Executioner remained silent, waiting for his opponent to reveal himself. Augustyn’s chatter was meant to distract Bolan, covering noises. The way that the apartment was laid out, with soundproofed walls, there was no certain way to locate Augustyn by sound, though the noise of reloading or acquiring new weapons could be heard.

Bolan cursed himself for not taking down Eugene in a quieter manner, but the business manager was fit and brawny enough to turn a struggle into an extended wrestling match had he taken any other approach. Lethal force would have left Bolan behind the curve in figuring out what Augustyn had just been hired to do. Considering Eugene’s voiced disgust, it had to be bad and he assumed a lot of people would die. Bolan had just declared war.

He looked down the hall to the corner and saw a reflective vase. He spotted Augustyn, observing the same curved, mirrored surface. Both men spotted each other at the same time, using the glassy surface to grant an around-the-corner view for defense. Bolan triggered the Norinco, blew the vase to splinters and retreated away from the intersection. Seeing another vase, he picked it up and hurled it toward the other end of the hallway. Crashing glass and an involuntary grunt of surprise told the Executioner that his distraction play worked and he nestled against the wall, crouched low and away from the edge so that he wouldn’t be in hand-to-hand range if Augustyn whipped around the corner, prepared to disarm him.

Bullets punched into the wall, noise and fury rocking through the quiet calm of the apartment, but the gun battle’s thunder was swallowed by Augustyn’s nearly obsessive privacy measures. The Executioner waited a moment, but he didn’t hear his enemy reload, and he knew that Augustyn had fallen back to flank him. Bolan turned and cut back toward the entrance to the apartment.

He was taking a chance, leaving Eugene at Augustyn’s mercy, but as disposable as Bolan had assumed the manager was, the assassin would be loathe to get rid of a good asset just because the Executioner had dropped in on their little setup. If it appeared that Bolan was getting a decisive advantage, Augustyn might fall back and make the effort to take out the older man, but for now, the cocky killer assumed that on his own turf, he was unbeatable.

As Bolan entered the living room, he caught a glimpse of the tall, black-haired assassin and dived to the carpet as the rattle of a machine pistol cut through the air. Parabellum shockers snapped into the wall he’d been standing in front of only a brief moment before. Bolan returned fire, emptying the Norinco and pulling the suppressed Walther to keep up the heat until he reached the cover of the alcove. The Executioner’s withering fire sent Augustyn packing into retreat, his autofire only resulting in damaged walls and shattered picture frames.

Bolan swiftly reloaded, shielded by Augustyn’s sofa, but he realized his enemy had accessed a heavier supply of weapons. He’d been outgunned before, so it wasn’t worth considering. Instead, he focused on what he could control. He looked into the kitchen, but a small mirror had been smashed, obscuring its ability to betray Augustyn’s presence.

That was good news. Bolan’s discovery of Augustyn’s corner views meant that the assassin was destroying his own means of detecting the Executioner’s pursuit. It was a two-edged sword, and Bolan wasn’t going to rush headlong into the kitchen in case Augustyn was laying in wait. Without grenades to clear the rooms of the penthouse, Bolan was going to have to take things slow and steady, using his senses to their utmost.

Just as he made this realization, the Executioner heard the familiar sound of the bounce of a grenade hitting carpet. Bolan tucked down and cut loose with a loud roar, instants before the living room’s atmosphere split apart in a peal of catastrophic noise. The shout saved his eardrums from the effect of the stun-shock grenade, and the bulk of the sofa protected him from the blazing glare of the mini-bomb’s flash powder and shock wave. He pushed to his feet, already knowing what was coming next and he spotted Augustyn as a blur through the kitchen doorway, wielding a pair of long-bladed knives.

Bolan fired the Norinco, but the assassin was moving too quickly for a direct center mass shot. A .45-caliber slug sliced through Augustyn’s side, slowing him and throwing off his pace. One of the nine-inch blades lashed down and rang violently against the slide of Bolan’s .45, knocking it from his hands. Only the steel of the pistol had prevented Bolan’s finger from being severed by the vicious slash, and he lunged in before the killer could follow up with the second knife. His shoulder-block took Augustyn in the breastbone and knocked him off balance, blowing breath from his lungs. Bolan wanted to unsnarl his Walther from where he’d pinned it between his opponent’s torso and himself, but with the glare of knife blades in his peripheral vision, he took the path of least resistance, hooking his emptied hand around and catching Augustyn over his ear.

The blow was meant to stop the assassin cold, but the savvy killer had seen it coming and tilted to one side, reducing the force from fatal to merely mind-reeling. The tip of one of the butcher knives flicked out and took Bolan across the bicep, a shallow cut, but one that forced the Executioner into a momentary retreat. Reflex had pulled him out of position for a shot with the Walther.

Bolan pulled the trigger anyway, the .32-caliber bullet exploding against the carpet next to Augustyn’s head and distracted him enough so that the kick the assassin had been intending to launch missed shattering Bolan’s jaw by mere millimeters. Another tug of the Walther’s trigger elicited a grunt of pain, but it was answered by a second kick that took Bolan in the gut, staggering him backward.

Augustyn lunged, reaching for Bolan’s fallen .45, but the Walther spoke again, a bullet chopping the frame of the Norinco and spinning it out of Augustyn’s grasp.

“Son of a bitch!” Augustyn snarled. The knife whipped out of his hand as he threw it, the blade whirring so close it gouged a narrow furrow in Bolan’s shoulder. He struggled to reach the .45, but Bolan lunged for the killer as he dived again for the big pistol. Their bodies crashed like great rams, paused in the air as the forces of their momentum struggled to overcome each other and then gravity pulled them to the floor.

Augustyn wrapped the fingers of one powerful hand around Bolan’s throat, the grasp strong enough that the soldier felt the air cut off from his lungs, fingertips pressing against his carotid artery to deny his brain fresh blood. Bolan clamped one hand over Augustyn’s bicep and punched hard into the assassin’s elbow. Bone cracked like a gunshot, eliciting a wail of agony. The lethal pressure crushing his throat was gone, and Bolan saw that the hired killer’s opposite shoulder had been wounded by the Walther, keeping Augustyn from using it to throttle Bolan. It was a small mercy that had saved Bolan’s life.

The Executioner rammed a hard knee into Augustyn’s breastbone, ejecting the breath from the man’s lungs. He knuckle-punched the Hong Kong hit man in the Adam’s apple and the assassin’s eyes bulged as his throat collapsed under the brutal strike. His tongue lolled from his mouth and his wounded arm reached up to grab hold of Bolan’s jacket. A second jutting-knuckle strike spiked between Augustyn’s eyes, bone shattering under the force of the blow. The hit man fell limp with a full-body shudder.

Bolan cradled his aching knuckles. The blows had done their job, saving his life and ending that of a triad-hired murderer.

He staggered to his feet, retrieved the Norinco .45 and went to look for Eugene.

The Executioner had travel arrangements to make to meet with Augustyn’s former employers.