Lethal Risk

by Don Pendleton

  Do it, Bolan replied.

  There was a moment’s pause, then all the lights winked out at once, replaced by red emergency lighting. Startled cries and exclamations of alarm were quickly drowned out by a high, piercing electronic alarm. The shouts and cries grew louder and approaching footsteps could be heard. Bolan slung his bag across his shoulder and stood as the doctor rushed into the room.

  “You must come with me right now. The fire alarm has sounded, everyone must evacuate building!”

  “Lead the way, Doc!” Bolan followed the man into the hallway, where other white-coated personnel moved briskly but calmly through the halls. The doctor headed off down the main corridor, but Bolan took two steps to his left and pushed open the door to the stairwell.

  Drawing the Beretta, he kept the pistol near his leg as he went down two flights of stairs. The few people using the stairwell to go up paid him little attention, even as out of place as he looked.

  At the second sublevel, a knot of people rushed past, escorted by a security guard who did notice his presence and rattled off an obvious question in Cantonese.

  “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese,” he said and held out his ID card. The guard brushed it aside and grabbed his elbow to escort him back upstairs. When Bolan turned and saw that the last of the evacuating personnel ahead of them was out of sight, he brought up the butt of his pistol and hammered it into the guard’s forehead. He slumped over and Bolan relieved him of both his identification and his pistol, another QSZ-92.

  After dragging him under the stairs, Bolan walked to the secured door and tried it, expecting it to open. As the Stony Man team had suspected, the fire alarm overrode the door locks, allowing for faster evacuation. Cocking the Beretta, he stepped into the hallway, which was also bathed in red light. This level was nearly deserted, save for a couple of desk personnel, who were leaving, and two guards still at their stations near a door at the far end of the hall. Assuming Deshi Fang hadn’t set another trap for him, the man being held prisoner behind that door was Bolan’s target.

  Noticing a fire extinguisher in a nearby cabinet inset into the wall, he opened it and grabbed the red-metal canister. Prepping it to fire, he began walking straight toward the guards. He got to within five yards when the man on the left looked over, his eyes widening at the tall foreigner who was pointing a fire extinguisher at his face.

  “Shenme shi—” was all he got out before getting blasted with a thick cloud of white foam. The chilly stream caught him off guard and sent him staggering back into his partner, who shoved the blinded guard away as he brought around his submachine gun.

  Stepping forward, Bolan swung the extinguisher, smashing the end into the guard’s arm and making him cry out as both the ulna and radius snapped. He clutched his broken forearm, allowing Bolan to finish him off by whipping the end of the extinguisher into his face, breaking his nose and knocking him unconscious.

  The first guard had clawed the dissipating goop out of his eyes enough to see again—just in time to watch the bright red fire extinguisher swing toward his face. With a dull thud it smashed him to the floor, also out cold.

  Bolan stood to the side as he turned the knob and pushed the door open, but didn’t enter. Instead he poked the nozzle of the fire extinguisher inside and let it rip, squeezing the trigger until container was empty. Only then did he go inside, heading toward the bed at the center rear of the room, stepping carefully in the slick foam. “Halt!” He’d taken only one step before a body burst out of the fog on the left side of the bed, pointing a pistol at him. As the chemical cloud dissipated, Bolan saw the same man he’d taken hostage at the apartment building, the man who had led him here—Deshi Fang. If Bolan was going to get Liao out of here, he’d have to go through this guy.

  “Don’t—” the Chinese agent began when Bolan lifted the extinguisher tank and hurled it at the man’s head. The Executioner dropped to the floor on his side of the bed and fired three rounds at where he thought the man’s feet or legs might be. There was no cry of pain indicating that he’d hit Fang, but that was okay. The important thing was that Fang was distracted by either the extinguisher—which hit the floor with a loud clank—or by the bullets flying toward him.

  Springing to his feet, Bolan found his opponent out cold on the floor on the other side of the bed, a nasty welt springing up on his forehead.

  He ran around the bed and grabbed Fang’s pistol and extra magazines, then looked at Liao, who was out cold and strapped to the bed. Bolan checked his vitals, which were strong, then unstrapped him and set him on the floor.

  He looked at the unconscious MSS agent, then at Liao. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “He’s got him!”

  Akira Tokaido’s excited shout, accompanied by his exuberant fists shooting into the air, came as no surprise to anyone in the Computer Room, as they were all watching the same security feed he was. What did surprise them was what Bolan did once he’d gotten Liao out of the bed. It was done in less than a minute, and by the time it was over, everyone in the room was grinning.

  “Bear, we need to verify the backup extraction plan,” Brognola stated.

  “I’ve been doing that since he first entered the room,” Kurtzman replied. “It’s going to be tight, since once Fang gets free, he’ll probably focus all of his resources on capturing Striker, but it should be doable if they can get clear of the city.”

  “I still wish we could have gotten them on a boat to South Korea. It would have been so much easier,” Price said.

  Brognola nodded. “Maybe so, but it would also be expected. By now the airports have all been alerted, along with all the harbors on Bohai Bay. There’s too much chance of being spotted there. Since they’ll be looking for them to try to reach Shanghai or Hong Kong and fly out, heading north is the safer bet—it’s the last thing they’ll expect.”

  The original backup plan had been to take either a train or bus north to the border town of Erenhot to get onto the Trans-Mongolian Express and ride to Moscow, where papers would be waiting for Liao at the US Embassy.

  “Right,” Kurtzman said. “Or, we could alter the plan and possibly have Striker and Liao out of there and over neutral airspace in less than twenty-four hours. You know, since the bus and train stations have most likely also been alerted.”

  Price and Brognola looked at each other. “What’s your idea?” she asked.

  “Well, according to my most recent data, Jack and Charlie are still in South Korea—”

  “What!” Barbara interrupted. “They were supposed to be in the air ninety minutes ago.”

  The computer wizard shrugged. “I know that, but Jack said their number two engine was running rough, and they didn’t want to start a six-thousand-mile flight if it was going to conk out on them. It sounded reasonable to me.”

  “A Rolls-Royce engine with less than twenty thousand miles on it ‘running rough’?” she pressed. “Really?”

  Kurtzman spread his arms. “Hey, don’t be shooting the messenger. I’m no pilot, so if you have questions, grill Jack when they return. The point is, since they’re still in the area, we could reroute them to the airport at Dalanzadgad, in the south of Mongolia, which is just about the same distance from Beijing as Erenhot. Since Striker’s got a decent car, he could drive there. They connect at the airport and whoosh—they’re flying over to Mumbai or Dubai or Moscow, or anywhere else they want to go. Hell—” Kurtzman tapped more keys “—with that Gulfstream’s range, they could make London no problem.”

  “Okay, let’s consider this alternative. And believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to get Striker and our target safe, but is the risk in altering the extraction plan at this late stage worth the payoff?” Price asked. “I mean, it’s not just Jack and Charlie we’re risking here, but the rest of Liao’s family. With the car, he could still drive to Erenhot and make the train as originally planned.”

  “Look, you guys all know I’m not a fan of winging these sorts of
things,” Kurtzman said. “However, if this guy is going to blow this wide open, then about twenty thousand cops and other personnel, including toll booth operators and ticket sellers, are going to be on the lookout for a six-three, blue-eyed, black-haired Caucasian with a Chinese man in tow. We all know Striker’s great at going to ground, but there he’s gonna stick out like a big white thumb. This plan gets them both away from the public faster, and minimizes contact with locals, any one of whom could blow the whistle on the whole thing.

  “My analysis of the revised extraction is that if we can make it happen in the next twelve to twenty hours, there is a less than ten percent chance of capture, with the percentages going up by around five percent, plus or minus two, for every six hours afterward—and that’s including the original train time, by the way.”

  “That’s all I need to hear,” Brognola stated. “Make it happen, and inform Striker of the change in plans. The sooner we get all of them out of China, the better.”

  Price noticed him watching her and he motioned her off to one side. “Are you okay? You look like you just drank a cup of stale coffee.”

  “No, it’s—” Price sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Look, I know this all works out in our favor, but…you know Jack delayed their flight on purpose, right?”

  “I don’t know it specifically, but let’s just say I have a strong suspicion about it,” Brognola replied. “Look, you know part of everyone’s job is to execute their mission parameters as they see fit. And just like Striker volunteered to stay behind to try to recover Liao, if Jack got a hunch that they were still going to be needed, and ‘arranged’ it so they were available, then so be it.”

  “I know that, and normally I’d agree with you, except that he’s risking the rest of the Liao family, too,” she replied. “Mongolia and China have grown really tight over the past thirty years—infrastructure investments, mining partnerships, security, you name it, they’re working on it. If anything goes wrong, Mongolia will hand them over on a platter rather than antagonize their best buddy to the south, and this whole thing will have blown up in our faces in the worst possible way.”

  “All very true,” Brognola agreed. “So we’d better do our best to make sure that everything goes smoothly until they’re on that plane.”

  “The biggest issue at the moment is getting across the border. If they can manage that, then they’d be ninety percent of the way out.”

  Brognola nodded. “Then let’s make sure that ten percent is as simple as possible, right?”

  “Right, starting with figuring out the best way to get them across that border unnoticed.” Price walked back to Kurtzman’s workstation.

  “You guys gotta check this out,” Tokaido said, pointing to the wall screen. “Striker’s got the perfect disguise for waltzing right out of there in plain sight.”

  Price looked up, smiling as she saw him wheeling the motionless Liao in a wheelchair down the main hallway. “Good, keep tabs on him, and notify me when he’s clear of the facility,” she said. “Meanwhile, here’s what we’re going to do…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Garbed in a white lab coat, and with a paper mask covering the lower half of his face, Bolan wheeled the unconscious Zhang Liao out of the facility’s main doors. The fire alarm was still going off, and many of the evacuated technicians and patients were gathered in the parking lot.

  Noticing Bolan as he exited, a guard said something to him in Cantonese and pointed to the rest of the patients, who were grouped together under three more guards’ watchful eyes.

  Keeping his head down, Bolan nodded and wheeled him over to the group of patients, then stood nearby, trying to figure out how to get him away from the hospital without starting a bloodbath. He could see his car, about a hundred yards away, but it might as well have been in Mongolia for all the good it did him now.

  But that wasn’t the only problem, he realized. He was wearing a lab coat and had his face partly covered, but he couldn’t do anything about his height. He was still several inches taller than every single person around him. If he didn’t get Liao out of here fast, they were both dead.

  The wailing siren of an approaching fire engine gave him the distraction—and the plan—he needed. As it drove into the parking lot, Bolan looked around for the doctor who had been with him in the MRI room. He found the man standing with a few other doctors away from the rest of the group. The others turned to watch the fire engine arrive, allowing Bolan to move alongside the man. “Just stay calm and don’t make any sudden moves.”

  “What do you mean?” The man looked down at the muzzle of the gun, hidden by Bolan’s crossed arm, that poked into his side. “What is—”

  “Not another word or a lot of people here die,” Bolan said. “Come with me.”

  He led the doctor a few steps away from the others so they could talk without being overheard. “It’s very simple. You’re going to help me get a patient out of here without raising an alarm, or you and many people here will die. Help me right now, and you can save all of them. What’s your answer?”

  The doctor looked down at the black pistol again, then up into the Executioner’s ice-blue eyes. “I—I will help you. What do you want me to do?”

  “We’re going to go get that man.” Bolan nodded at the unconscious Liao. “When we do, you’re going to come up with a reason why he needs to go to another hospital, and then you and I will take him in my car. I’ll be watching you during your conversation with the guards. If I see any hint that you’re trying to warn them about me, you’ll die first, followed by whoever’s closest—guards, doctors, nurses, I won’t discriminate. Now, I don’t want it to come to that, and I’m sure you don’t, either, right?” The doctor nodded. “Okay then, let’s go.”

  He escorted the man to the slumped-over Liao. The doctor put on his stethoscope and checked the man’s heart, then thumbed back his right eye and shone a penlight into it. He rattled off a sentence to the nearest guard, who asked one question but was cut off by the doctor, who jabbed a finger at the road. The guard started saying something else as he pointed at the facility, but was cut off again by the doctor, who grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and began pushing him across the parking lot.

  “Good work, Doc, you seem to have put him in his place,” Bolan began as they went, trying not to walk faster than the man beside him.

  “Don’t look behind you,” the shorter man snapped. “If they see you acting suspicious, they’ll stop us for sure.”

  They were about halfway across the parking lot when they heard a shout from the group in front of the building. Bolan looked back to see two guards and a doctor walking toward them. When he saw Bolan look back, the doctor raised his hand and shouted again.

  “I think they’re on to us,” he said. “Move faster. You get into the passenger seat. I’ll get him into the back.

  As they approached the car, it turned on by itself. Bolan made sure the doctor got into the front seat, then pushed the wheelchair to the driver’s side. There he turned and aimed his pistol at the small group of men, firing several rounds over their heads and making them hit the ground.

  Opening the rear door, he shoved Liao across the backseat, tossed in his weapons bag, then fired three more shots to make sure their heads stayed down before jumping into the car and speeding toward the guard post.

  “Keep your head down!” Bolan said as shots rang out behind him. He didn’t hear any bullets strike the car, which was fortunate, since bullet holes would be a dead giveaway, and finding decent wheels would be harder the farther away from the city they got.

  The guard post was coming up fast, with one of the two on duty there stepping out and raising a hand to stop them—something Bolan had no intention of obeying. He stepped harder on the gas, making the luxury car leap forward as he lowered the driver’s window. Sticking his pistol out, he fired bullets at the guard and the shack, making both men dive for cover—and more importantly, not activate the spike barrier.

  “Hang on!
” he said as they hit the crossbar hard enough to soar a foot off the ground then crash back to the road. The Mercedes-Benz handled it well, with Bolan making a minor correction before recovering and accelerating into traffic.

  “Are you okay?” he asked the doctor, who had gingerly straightened and was now looking back at the quickly receding building in the distance.

  “Yes, I am unharmed, thank you.”

  “Great, since you’re here, do me a favor and check on him.” Bolan jerked a thumb at Liao, who was sprawled half on, half off the backseat.

  “Yes.” The doctor unbuckled his seat belt and twisted to take a look at Liao. “My name is Heng Gao. What should I call you?”

  “Nothing right now,” Bolan replied. “If you do talk, I’ll be pretty sure you’re addressing me.”

  “Well, I don’t know what your plan is right now, but you may be interested to know that this man really is sick.”

  “What?” Bolan asked. “You mean something more than the aftereffects of whatever they doped him with?”

  Dr. Gao nodded. “I’m afraid so. I won’t show you, but he has a rather inflamed wound near his groin. He’s showing the first signs of sepsis.”

  “Sepsis? How the hell did he get that?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I’m not sure myself. Our facility is kept very clean, so there should have been no chance for him to come into contact with anything that would make that sort of injury.” He rubbed his chin. “The only thing I can think of is he somehow inflicted it on himself—perhaps, once he learned where he was and what was to happen to him, he decided to contaminate his organs so they would be of no use to us.”

  “Great,” Bolan muttered. “What’s the prognosis?”

  “From my very cursory examination, he looks to be in the first twenty-four hours of the illness. But without some kind of treatment, he will quickly grow more and more sick. Eventually his organs will weaken and shut down, and death follows soon after.”