antipersonnel weapon that would give a marksman a reach of a mile.
He’d have to find something in Darwin from Augustyn’s supplier.
Bolan waited an hour, and as soon as the magnet dropped the arsenal-packed junk mobile into the compressor, he left. He could hear the grinding of metal into a fused, crushed block. He got into his rental car and drove to the airport, where the electronic ticket would ferry him to Darwin, Australia.
He pulled his phone from his pocket in response to its subtle thrumming vibration, and flipped it open to hear Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, on the other end.
“You’re not coming home?” Price asked.
“I’ve got some unexpected business. I’ll be extending my trip,” Bolan answered.
“Striker, we’ve got a few operations waiting on the back burner here at home,” Price told him. “You’re not even certain what Augustyn had been hired for.”
“He was hired to be an exterminator. And these aren’t vermin he’d been called in on, these are human beings,” Bolan explained. “If they’re people I normally would have targeted, then good. I’ll do the job, and then take out Augustyn’s paymasters.”
“And if they’re citizens in the way of the triads?” Price asked.
“Then I just burn down the gangsters,” Bolan stated. “I’ll come home even faster.”
“Be careful down there, Striker,” Price said.
“I’ll take care of things and keep you posted,” Bolan replied, hanging up.
Bolan considered the situation. No one in Darwin would be prepared for an all-out power play by the triads, and no naval blockade or aircraft carrier offshore could calm this conflict.
It required the Executioner’s touch of cleansing fire.
BOBBY YEUNG STEPPED OUT of the back of the Ford Explorer once his bodyguards had determined that the area for the next five hundred yards was empty of human habitation except for the police and fire officers looking at the burned-out ranch house. The sheriff, Ansen Crown, noticed him and walked over.
“What’s the story?” Yeung asked as Crown approached him.
The sheriff looked around, then shook his head. “Arson. No bodies found.”
Yeung nodded. He restrained his frustration as he realized that the rednecks he’d hired had been sloppy. Obwe “Grandfather” Wangara was one of the last men alive among the tribes with the determination to expose the Black Rose Triad’s operations in their territories.
“You heard about the girl boarding the bus to Alice Springs, right?” Crown asked.
Yeung nodded. Wangara’s granddaughter, Arana, was missing from the ashes of the fire. A lone, eighteen-year-old Aboriginal girl would be hard to find in the outback. If she reached any authorities Yeung’s triad had not paid off, there would be difficulties.
Killing native people in a remote location of Australia was one thing. Dealing with government officials in the open would be another. Yeung wished that the Black Rose Triad’s assassin would respond and pick up his electronic ticket. While he was irate with the men he’d hired locally, he knew that the triad assassin was trustworthy. The man had been a powerful, secret asset. His very appearance turned attention away from the organization he worked for, as the triads were notoriously loathe to use non-Chinese in their employ.
“Just make certain that no one raises a stink about the old man’s home burning. If possible, report him dead,” Yeung stated.
“I’ve got everything hushed up,” Crown answered. “But without a body—”
Yeung interrupted, holding his frustration in check. “Do what you can. I’ve got a troubleshooter coming in to help out with this.”
“I can pass most of this off on bigots getting drunk and riled, but an organized assassin…” Crown began.
“If you had done your job the way I wanted you to, none of this would have been necessary. Since you couldn’t evict these people, just be glad I need a mouthpiece among local law enforcement. Otherwise, we’d be using your bones as that old man,” Yeung snapped. “Got that?”
Crown clenched his jaw but nodded in quiet agreement.
“Don’t fuck with me. I know where you live,” Yeung snarled. He turned and got back in his SUV. His cell phone warbled and he plucked it from his pocket.
“Bobby, our man picked up his ticket and boarded his flight.” The call was from Frankie Law, his right-hand man. “Our troubles are over.”
“I’d like to think so, Frankie,” Yeung replied. “But the situation’s just gotten a little more complicated. The Abos who were straining at the leash finally slipped out of sight. At least one of them is on the way to civilization.”
“I’ll get our boys on the street. What’s the description?” Law asked.
“Five feet, black, about eighteen. Fairly cute for a little black girl,” Yeung stated.
“Damn, not the chick,” Law said.
“You’ve got a problem with that?” Yeung inquired.
“I just wanted a little taste. She was nicer than you let on,” Law replied.
“Find her and kill her when you’re done,” Yeung ordered. “These fuckers have given me enough headaches. “Just find the little bitch and deliver her head to me. Keep the rest for whatever you want.”
“Kinky.” Law chuckled.
“Dammit, Frankie!” Yeung said. It was too late. His head man in Darwin had hung up.
Yeung put the phone away, looking out the window.
When he’d been asked to set up a major transportation hub and processing center for the triad’s heroin pipeline, Yeung had jumped at the chance. It would be his ticket to the top of the heap in Hong Kong. Now, a year later, he was sick of the outback, sick of the Aborigines and the ugly, inbred whites with their mush-mouthed butchering of the English language, and he was sick of being stuck on the ass of the planet. He was a city boy. He wanted to be back among skyscrapers and neon lights and bodies packed together like sardines, with loud music, cigarette smoke and perfumed whores jammed in around him, pawing over his senses.
The facility was operating at half capacity, but once it was running at full power, he’d be called back to Hong Kong to be given an opportunity to rise up the ladder.
All it would take would be a few more dead Aborigines, and he would have the facility operating with impunity.
He was glad that the triad’s assassin was coming to fix it all.
3
Bolan got off the plane, eyes sharp for the presence of any members of the Black Rose Triad who would be at the airport to greet him. If they knew Wade Augustyn by sight, they would know something was
