ears were ringing from the explosion and he could barely hear his own voice.
“What about your ankle?” Bolan asked.
Kissinger took a tentative step forward and clenched his teeth. “Feels like a sprain. I’ll live.”
Glancing upward, Bolan said, “My guess is they’re all up top, but let’s do a quick sweep here just in—”
Bolan fell silent as Kissinger put a finger to the mouthpiece of his gas mask and pointed to an open doorway two doors down from the ravaged elevator. Sunlight poured out through the opening, betraying the shadow of someone moving inside the room.
Both men dropped to a crouch. Favoring his bad ankle, Kissinger inched forward and took aim at the doorway, then fired the stun charge from his carbine’s grenade launcher. By the time the grenade went off inside the room, Bolan was already on his feet and rushing the doorway.
Just inside the room, one of the Killboys screamed and grabbed at his ears as he writhed on the floor. Bolan kicked away the automatic pistol the man had dropped, then swung around and fired at another two Koreans standing ten yards away next to an upended row of Army cots. Both men went down, but not before one of them had sent a 9 mm Parabelum round whizzing past Bolan’s ear. The shots just missed Kissinger as he hobbled his way through the doorway.
When he saw the first Korean grabbing for his fallen handgun, Kissinger lunged forward and knocked the man out with the stock of his carbine, then took aim at the gangster’s head. He stopped short of pulling the trigger, however, when he detected motion off to his right. He glanced over his shoulder and saw yet another Korean crawling out a far window onto the fire escape.
Bolan spotted the man at the same time and veered away from the toppled cots toward him.
“I got him!” Bolan called.
The Killboy paused halfway out the window and drove Bolan back with a quick shot, then disappeared from view. As the Executioner gave chase, he could hear a steady exchange of gunfire up on the fourth floor. Kissinger could hear it, too. He made sure the man he’d cold-cocked was still unconscious, then limped his way back to the doorway.
“I’ll help them finish things upstairs,” he shouted to Bolan.
The soldier nodded, then crawled out the window onto the fire escape. Glancing down, he spotted the fleeing Killboy. The Korean had already reached the second floor and was getting ready to jump to the ground. Bolan leaned out over the railing and took aim at the man.
“Freeze!” he ordered.
The gangster ignored the command and leaped down to the alley.
One of the renovation workers, wearing white coveralls and an oversize work cap, had wandered over from the adjacent building, and the Korean grabbed hold of him from behind, using him as a shield and pressing the barrel of his pistol to his captive’s skull.
“Damn it,” Bolan cursed as he yanked off his gas mask. There was no way he could get a shot off without risking the worker’s life.
Bolan was debating his next move when, to his amazement, the worker suddenly lashed out with an elbow, jabbing his captor squarely in the ribs. In the same motion, the would-be captive torqued free of the Korean’s grasp and stabbed at the man’s shins with a well-placed karate kick. The Killboy’s leg buckled and he let out a pained cry as he was struck by a second blow, this one to the base of his skull. His gun clattered to the asphalt and he soon followed suit.
In the fracas the worker’s cap had fallen off, and when a spray of long brown hair tumbled out, Bolan realized for the first time that it was a woman. His shock was surpassed moments later with a flicker of recognition.
“Jayne Bahn?” Bolan whispered under his breath.
He quickly clambered the rest of the way down the fire escape, catching up with the woman as she pinned the Korean to the ground, twisting his arm behind his back in a full Nelson. When she glanced up and saw Bolan, Bahn shook her head with equal disbelief.
“Well, well,” she chided. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jayne Bahn was a veteran field agent for Inter-Trieve, a globally active bounty hunter service whose abnormally high success rate had drawn an ever-growing list of high-profile clients, both in the U.S. and abroad. Jayne had done more than her share to bolster the company’s reputation, and several times she’d crossed paths with Bolan while on assignment overseas, most recently during a mission in Indonesia involving jihad insurrection. Now, once again, fate had thrown them together. Bolan wasn’t sure why.
“What are you doing here?” Bolan asked the woman once he caught up with her.
“I think they call it surveillance,” Bahn replied.
The Korean she’d taken on slowly came to, and when he began to struggle against Bahn’s hold had, she gave the man’s arm another sharp twist. He grimaced and began cursing her in his native tongue.
“Yeah, I love you, too, sweetheart,” the woman told him.
By now the neighborhood was alive with the wailing of police sirens. Three squad cars soon screeched into view and the moment they rocked to a stop, out spilled a handful of armed officers. Some went to work cordoning off the area from the throng of curiosity seekers drawn by the bedlam; the others strode toward Bolan and Bahn, guns drawn.
Bolan flashed a badge packet identifying him as a special agent for the Justice Department. His affiliation with Stony Man Farm—not to mention the existence of the Farm itself—was a well-guarded national secret and whenever pressed to identify himself, Bolan usually relied on his Justice credentials. When the officer in charge balked at Bahn’s ID, Bolan quickly vouched for her. Squared away, they turned over their prisoner and headed back toward the Killboys’ hideout. The garbage truck’s engine was still running, but the building itself had fallen eerily silent.
“Okay, now,” Bahn said once they’d reached the broached front entrance, “you’re here because…”
“Uh-uh,” Bolan countered. “Ladies first.”
“Since when was I a lady?” Bahn wisecracked.
“The jury’s still out,” Bolan said, “but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Such flattery, how can I resist?”
Once inside, Bolan led the woman to the nearest stairwell. As they started up the steps, Bahn explained that Inter-Trieve had been hired by the family of slain DEA agent Richard Starr to track down the head of the North Korean outfit supplying the Killboys gang with heroin and methaphetamines.
“That would be Kim Jong-il,” Bolan told her, referring to the rogue nation’s enigmatic leader. “Do they really think you’re going to bring him in?”
“There’d be one hell of a bonus if I could,” Bahn said. “But I think they’d settle for somebody further down the food chain. One of their generals or else the guy who middlemans their stuff to the States.”
“Good luck,” Bolan murmured skeptically. The tear gas had begun to dissipate inside the building, but neither
