any rate,” the woman went on, “there I was, casing the place out, when some guy plays Batman and goes crashing through one of the windows here. Next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose.”
She pointed to the top-story window the DEA agent stationed on the adjacent rooftop had crashed through using the grappling hook line. A slain Korean lay dead on the floor just inside the window, an AK-47 at his side.
Halfway down the hall, Bolan and Bahn caught up with John Kissinger and the two surviving DEA agents. They were in a large room where the Killboys stored their drug wares. The agents were looking over a folding table stacked high with street-ready bags of heroin and several cardboard boxes filled with methaphetamine capsules. Kissinger stood over two of the gang-bangers killed in the firefight. Bolan recognized one of them as the man the weaponsmith had knocked out on the third floor; apparently he’d regained consciousness and decided to die fighting instead of making a run for it. Kissinger’s right ankle was still bothering him and he’d bound his wounded arm with a strip of cloth that was fast changing color from white to red. He did a double take when he saw who Bolan had brought into the room with him.
“What do you know…Our favorite party-crasher,” Kissinger said.
“I’ve been called worse,” Bahn countered evenly. “Nice to see you again, too.”
“Let’s wrap this up,” Bolan said.
Leaving the DEA agents to inventory their drug haul, Bolan, Kissinger and Bahn ventured into the hallway and conducted a room-to-room search of the rest of the building. They encountered no further resistance and wound up back in the third-floor room the Killboys had used as a crash pad. Bolan sized up the toppled Army cots and quickly did the math.
“We’ve got two more beds than we do Koreans,” he surmised. “We better take another look around.”
“I don’t think we need to,” Bahn told him.
“Why not?” Kissinger interjected.
“I saw two guys leave right after I got here,” she explained. “They were in a late-model van. Dodge, I think.”
“Did you get a look at the plates?” Bolan asked.
“Hey, I was two buildings away. Give me a break.”
“Not much chance of them coming back here after this,” Bolan said.
“Rats like this have more than one nest,” Bahn theorized. “I’m sure they’ll turn up.”
“Let’s see what else we’ve got here,” Bolan said.
He was already beginning to search the compound. There wasn’t much to go through. Besides the cots, there were a few sheets and pillows, a couple heaps of rumpled clothes and a cardboard box overflowing with fast-food wrappers and soda cans. Kissinger tipped the box over and started looking for clues and evidence amid the trash. Bolan and Bahn turned their attention to the clothes, checking pockets.
“No help here,” Kissinger grumbled, coming across only a few back editions of a local Korean newspaper and a foreign language porno magazine. He flipped through a few of the magazine’s glossy pages, then glanced over at Bahn.
“Nope,” he said. “Thought for a second that might have been you in the Miss November spread here.”
“Har-har,” Bahn deadpanned.
“Hang on,” Bolan said. He’d come across a folded sheet of paper in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. Bahn and Kissinger approached as he unfolded the paper, revealing a computer printout with two columns of names. The printout was in English, but there were Korean characters scribbled alongside either column. Most of the names in the second column had addresses listed beneath them. Only one of the addresses was in Los Angeles; the others were in Nevada, Illinois and Washington, D.C.
“Distribution network?” Kissinger wondered out loud.
“I don’t think so,” Bolan said. “Otherwise all the names would have addresses. Besides, they probably have other distributors back east. It’s gotta be something else.”
Bahn peered over Bolan’s shoulder, then whistled to herself as she pointed at one of the names in the first column.
“Yong-Im Hyunsook,” she whispered.
“Ring a bell?” Bolan asked her.
“I might be wrong, but, yeah, I think so.”
When she didn’t elaborate, Kissinger prodded her. “And?”
“Again, I might be wrong, but if I’m right about this guy’s name, we just might have opened up a whole new can of worms.”
“Get to the point, would you?” Bolan snapped.
“Touchy, aren’t we?” Bahn teased. She went on, “Okay, let me put it this way. If this Yong-Im guy’s who I think he is, we’re definitely not talking about just street gangs and drug-dealing anymore.” Tapping the paper for emphasis, she added, “What we’ve got here is a hit list.”
CHAPTER THREE
Canoga Park, California
It was a little past eight in the morning when Hong Sung-nam pulled his rental van to a stop halfway down the block from Dr. Yong-Im Hyunsook’s one-story tract home. He’d planned on arriving sooner but had gotten hung up in traffic. It had also taken longer than expected to apply the slap-on decals that would make the van appear as if it were part of the local cable company’s truck fleet. Hong was dressed in a plain navy-blue outfit that closely matched the uniforms worn by the company’s field workers. He’d picked up the outfit at a secondhand store in Koreatown the previous afternoon. It was missing the Trident Cable logo, but Hong doubted anyone would notice. If anything, he was more concerned about the short sleeves, which barely covered the freshly inked Killboys tattoo on his right bicep. There was also the matter of the name tag sewn above the right pocket of his shirt. There weren’t many Koreans named Norm.
As he waited inside the van, Hong saw an overweight, middle-aged man in a peach-colored sweat suit jogging his way on the sidewalk. The hit man quickly grabbed the clipboard on the seat beside him and glanced down at it, scribbling gibberish as he waited for the jogger to pass. Moments later, however, he was startled by a rapping on the passenger-side window. Hong looked up and saw the older man gesturing for him to roll down the window. Hong tensed, then leaned over and cranked the handle, lowering the window a few inches.
“What’s up?” the jogger said. “They told me on the phone it’d be a couple days before they could get somebody out here.”
Hong thought quickly and responded, “Change in schedule.” His English was fluent but bore a heavy Korean accent.
“Decent.” The jogger pointed back the way he’d come. “Only thing is, you’re at the wrong end of the block. I’m the last house on the right—22421.”
Hong glanced at his clipboard, pretending to look over his work orders for the day. “I have three calls on this block,” he told the man. “You’re on the list.”
“Perfect,”
