had feasted well that autumn, but soon the bounty of flesh was gone and only the bones remained, along with a few scraps of cloth, and the relatively undamaged crowbar.
Suddenly, the steel box began to softly vibrate, the dried bird nests and loose scales of rust dancing along the top until tumbling over the ends. With a hard clang an internal lock disengaged, and the lid swung aside just as a dozen spheres blasted upward on a column of compressed air.
Spreading their wings, the drones swooped from the sky, skimming low across the weedy fields of rubbish to fly straight off the end of a limestone cliff. Diving sharply to build speed, the war machines streaked straight down toward the sprawling air base that filled the valley below.
The leaves on the trees shook from the wake of the Sky Tiger drones as they flashed past a radar station and a SAM battery. Spreading out in a curve, the drones separated and began pumping out their deadly cargo of sarin nerve gas.
Coming out of the control tower, a pair of airmen were the first to die, their faces barely able to register the fact before their bodies dropped, twitching, to the tarmac, and then went still forever. A guard in a kiosk set alongside the main hangar saw the drone and reached for the red security phone on the wall, but his hand never finished the short journey before he was sprawled across his desk, red blood pouring from every orifice.
Getting ready for the morning reconnaissance patrol along the Chinese border, the two pilots strapped into the cockpit of their MiG-35 jet fighters actually saw the drones flash by, and managed to get out a warning over their throat mikes before the sarin gas penetrated the seals of their planes. As their vision began to fade, the pilots frantically turned up the flow of oxygen to their masks. That bought them a few precious seconds of nearly unbearable agony, then they slumped over in their seats, convulsing and gushing red life.
Accidentally, one of the spasming men shoved the control yoke forward, and the idling jet engines instantly surged, revving to full power. With nobody at the controls, the MiG-35 started to drift and narrowly missed crashing into an Mi-26 cargo helicopter full of dying paratroopers. Then the MiG ran over a bleeding flight controller sprawled on the ground, and swerved wildly around to clip an attack helicopter and crash directly into a Tu-160 strategic bomber.
Since the MiG wasn’t in the air, the air-to-air missiles lining both wings weren’t armed, nor were the thermonuclear bombs loaded into the Tu-160. But that made little difference to the maintenance truck carrying a full load of high-octane jet fuel.
The fiery blast engulfed a dozen other war planes, quickly setting their own stores of fuel ablaze, then cooking off the warheads in their assorted rockets and missiles. With nobody alive to stop it, this quickly became a chain reaction of explosions that rapidly escalated into a rampaging cacophony of destruction, shattering windows for a thousand yards, buckling the control tower and even flipping over the cars in the distant parking lot. The heavily armored thermonuclear bombs inside the belly of the Tu-160 were completely undamaged in the maelstrom, as were the underground SAM batteries. But a split second later, the thermobaric bomb inside the Tu-160 ignited.
Designed as it was to explode in the sky above an enemy target and utterly obliterate it, the device’s titanic detonation shook the entire base, shattering the pavement back into gravel and burning every trace of the deadly sarin nerve gas from existence. Unstoppable, the hellish shock wave of the Russian superbomb careened along the ground, brushing aside planes, trucks, men and machines as if they were dried leaves. Then the heat flash expanded in a staggering halo effect that set fire to everything organic: corpses, tires, trees, boots, roofing tiles and the drones.
Slowly, a rumbling mushroom cloud of smoke and flame formed above the annihilated air base, and charred pieces of corpses and partially melted chunks of billion-ruble jet fighters rained down across the countryside for miles….
Southern Hong Kong
LEAVING THE PUBLIC TRAM at the downtown station, Bolan walked outside the terminus into organized chaos.
The Kowloon District of Hong Kong was unlike anyplace else in the world. A wild mixture of old and new gleaming skyscrapers rose above wooden shacks, rickshaws racing alongside hybrid limousines. Diesel buses fumed alongside electric streetcars, and trucks of every description rumbled past, carrying the goods of the world. Bicycles didn’t flow in streams, but moved in flocks like birds on the wing, and the constant chiming of their little bells was only a background murmur to the orchestra of voices talking, laughing, singing, crying, arguing, pondering, lying, cutting deals or just chattering away.
A hundred vendors were selling everything imaginable from small stalls lining the sidewalks. If the Chinese government deemed something legal to sell, then it was available in Kowloon, usually at a discount price if you bought six of them.
A hand fleetingly touched his hip, and Bolan savagely slapped it away. With a startled cry, the pickpocket moved off fast, cradling his broken wrist.
If there were any traffic laws, nobody was paying attention to them, and Bolan simply crossed through the busy traffic like everybody else, wherever he pleased, the traffic lights seeming to be merely decorations.
Since Hong Kong had once been a British colony, the street signs were also in English, and Bolan easily located the waterfront, although he heard the warning blasts from the tugboats long before he actually saw water.
The crowds were thinner here, and scurried to keep out of the way of the rattling forklifts that wheeled about in conga lines ferrying about an endless array of cargo pallets. The voices were far more impatient, and the use of vulgarity infinitely more prevalent.
Leaning on an iron railing that had been recently painted, Bolan looked across the choppy bay. Since Kowloon faced south, and Mainland China was on the other side of the island to the north, there was only open water to the horizon. In the murky distance was another landmass, oddly named Hong Kong Island. How the inhabitants kept the two islands separate was a puzzle to most outsiders, and a constant source of amusement to the locals.
Though the harbor was choppy, with low swells cresting on the rocky shoreline, the waterway was full of sleek pleasure craft, old fishing trawlers, junks, wooden rafts, futuristic hovercraft and colossal cruise liners that resembled floating islands of light.
There were also a scattering of Chinese navy gunboats, their radar constantly in motion, the deck guns and depth-charge launchers covered with tarpaulins as protection against the salty spray, and the idle curiosity of the much-prized tourists. But the armed sailors on deck were openly carrying 5.56 mm QBZ assault rifles, and stared suspiciously at everybody and everything. Even the tourists. Most of them laughed and took pictures with their cell phones, but the wiser heads turned away and went about their business. China valued tourism, but only to a point.
Keeping to the shadows, Bolan watched the gunboats move along on patrol, blazingly bright halogen searchlights sweeping across every small craft that approached. He grunted at that. These were the new Wall of China, Communist hard-liners more resolute than stone, grim men who couldn’t be bribed, or dealt with.
Turning away from the water, Bolan headed back into the maelstrom of chatting people. It had been a while since he had last been here, but the memories came flooding back, and he soon located the Tsai Shoe Repair Shop. The brass sign above the front door was small, almost unreadable, and the windows were in desperate need of a good washing. Yet Bolan knew that the place was one of the most profitable enterprises on the entire island.
The public side of Tsai Shoe Repair was strictly legitimate, with eager cobblers fixing worn-out soles, replacing broken heels and polishing leather to a mirror sheen. New shoes were available for purchase, as well as a foot massage. However, unlike most shoe repair shops, the business occupied
