served him faithfully for the past five years without hesitation. Stopping three feet away, she bowed, a gesture he returned with respect, although he didn’t turn from his contemplation of the harbor.
“Stage one is complete, sir. The decoy vessel is under our control.”
“Were there any casualties?”
There was the barest pause before her reply made his head swivel in her direction. “Regrettably, yes. The men tasked to take the ship were overzealous during the assault. One man was killed, two wounded, and a woman was violated before she and the others were set adrift as originally ordered.”
Hu clucked his tongue. “Have the perpetrators been identified?”
“Yes. The death came at the hands of a young boy, who was used as a distraction. I have questioned him myself, and believe him when he says it was an accident. As for the other, he is downstairs, should you wish to speak with him yourself.”
Hu considered the offer, then turned to face her. “Take me to him. I would see this animal before he is removed from this earth.” Only the slight tremor in his voice betrayed his anger.
Zheng turned and led him back to the elevator, which was just large enough to hold both of them comfortably. The ride down was noiseless, descending into the sublevels below the building, where Hu had paid a princely sum in order to have a private garage with twenty-four-hour street access. For a man in his position, the ability to come and go unnoticed was more important than many would think.
At this time of night, there was only one vehicle in the private lot, a slate-gray Range Rover that barely rocked back and forth on its springs as the prisoner inside struggled to escape. From where he stood, Hu could barely hear the muffled thuds as the captive man slammed against the interior.
“My apologies, sir, he awoke sooner than expected.”
“No, that is all right. I would look into his eyes before you remove him.” Hu led the way, walking forward with a bare whisper of his virgin-wool trousers. He paused at the back door of the luxury SUV, waiting for Zheng to open it.
When the door rose, the man inside froze, caught in the act of hammering his bare feet against the back window glass. Gagged and bound hand and foot, he had worked himself into a sweat, the foul odor making Hu’s nose wrinkle.
“This will be cleaned once the cargo is removed.”
The man tried to catch Hu’s eyes with his own panicked ones, their normal almond shape distended by fear into wide, white ovals, marred by a swelling bruise under one. His split and puffy lips writhed as he tried to speak around the gag, the muffled pleas reduced to guttural grunts and cries.
“I would have rewarded you handsomely, enough to care for your entire family for years. Yet you let your base desires get the best of you during this first, critical operation.” Hu leaned close to the man’s blanched face. “And if I cannot trust you to carry out your orders on this simple task, then I cannot employ you any longer. But since you know too much about what I have planned for this city and the rest of the world, I regret to inform you that your termination must be permanent.”
Hearing his doom, the captive man lashed out with his head, trying to butt Hu in the face. A blurred form rushed in and slammed the man into the backs of the third-row seats. Zheng retreated just as quickly, her open palm out, ready to defend or attack as needed.
Hu shook his head sadly. Now, when he had spent so long preparing to put his plan into motion, he couldn’t afford any action—by himself or others—that would endanger the operation he had been planning for half his life. “It is foolish actions such as this that can
endanger everything we have worked for. Have him
removed as an example to the others that this sort of base behavior will not be tolerated. I trust you will come up with a suitable message for them.”
Zheng smiled, her expression devoid of any humor or warmth. “Yes, sir. I have just the right lesson planned. They won’t forget it, and he certainly won’t miss what I will use to drive the point home.” She closed the door on the gasping, crying man, his last mumbled pleas for what Hu assumed were mercy falling on deaf ears.
“Make sure he is never found.”
“Of course, sir.”
“When will we be ready to begin the second phase?”
“Once the lesson has been delivered, then it is a matter of locating the right vessels to commandeer. The men will need some time aboard to set the devices to ensure their proper destruction.”
“Very good, you will keep me informed as to their progress. Also, is the diversionary force ready to go on my orders?”
“Yes, sir, their fee to the event has been handled through one of our shell corporations. There is nothing tying it back to us. They are encamped in the desert thirty kilometers south of Tiznit, and are awaiting the word to move out.”
“Excellent. Please inform my pilot that his services will not be needed. I’ll be resting here tonight. I will see you in the morning.”
Zheng bowed again. “As you wish.” She went to the driver’s side of the SUV while Hu walked back to the elevator to return to his office—and the continued contemplation of the pit that was Hong Kong around him, and how best to cleanse it and the others complicit in a betrayal that stretched back more than half a century.
CHAPTER THREE
Eight hours later, Bolan, James and their prize were at Stony Man Farm, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jack Grimaldi had flown them out of John Wayne Airport on a red-eye back east, resulting in them enjoying a cup of real coffee—not Kurtzman’s superstrong black swill—and watching the sun come up over the fog-shrouded peaks.
Bolan had decided to spirit Araña back to Stony Man Farm to avoid any federal entanglements. The Executioner and James decided to check out leads the cyberteam had before they began questioning their informant. The two men heard a whoop just as they walked into the computer room in the Annex.
“What do ya think that’s about?” Calvin James asked.
“Akira either found the latest bootleg he’d been looking for, or he’s actually on to something. Only one way to find out.”
Akira Tokaido was one of Stony Man’s youngest members. He was also its best computer hacker, slipping in and out of foreign government mainframes, through criminal syndicate firewalls and anywhere else intel was needed from cyberspace.
But when Bolan and James walked to Tokaido’s workstation, his clenched fists weren’t raised in triumph at his latest sneak-and-peek, nor was he crowing about his success to anyone within earshot. Instead, his dark brown eyes were glued to a large monitor, his fingers blurred over the keyboard.
“Heard you hollerin’ in the hallway. What’s up?” James asked.
Tokaido didn’t take his eyes off the screen as he replied. “Shouted too soon. It’s probably just a false alarm. For a second, I thought I’d found a link to the Sale in the Sands.”
The name got both Bolan’s and James’s attention right away. Throughout the world, there were certain black-market events that Stony Man was constantly
