the ground. Her grandfather’s hand rested on her shoulder, his weathered face highlighted by the glow of the inferno. She looked up and saw the tears trickle over his cheeks, but his face remained an impassive mask. His brown eyes were unfocused, a sign that he was in touch with the Dreamtime.
Arana pursed her lips and looked back. The men got into their jeeps after their act of arson, not even bothering to pick up the gasoline cans that they’d used to soak the walls. When the law was too timid to poke its nose in, what need was there to hide the evidence? Somewhere, powerful forces were at work to accommodate the Chinese.
All it meant to her was that she and her grandfather had to leave, to run away from the only home she’d ever known. It filled her with anger.
“There will come a man,” the old man whispered. “A crusader who has faced these lowly criminals before. And when he arrives, he will bring death with him, to cleanse the outback.”
Arana looked at him.
“You will meet him in Darwin. And you will know him for his eyes are as cold as a winter sky,” her grandfather said.
“Darwin? We don’t have enough money to go there, and even if we did, they would follow us,” Arana explained, confused.
“I shall not be making the journey with you. I will remain here. The Dreamtime will protect me,” Grandfather told her. “You will go on your own. And though they shall try to interfere with your journey, you will be too clever for them. But remember, your skill will expire the moment you need it most, though luck and the crusader will catch you before you fall.”
Arana swallowed hard.
Grandfather Wangara pressed a roll of money into her palm. “Go swiftly, child. Time is of the essence, and the crusader is turning his eyes to our plight even as we speak.”
Arana nodded. She grabbed her backpack and took off, running across the desert. It was twenty miles to the nearest town, and there she’d catch the bus to Alice Springs. From there, it’d be an even longer ride to Darwin.
Her grandfather, though, was rarely wrong.
On a wing, a prayer, and a healthy slice of blind faith, Arana raced toward town, staying to gullies and ruts in the sand. Dawn was seven hours away, but if she hurried, she’d be at the bus stop shortly after sunrise.
1
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
