He slammed her back into the Pai Gow table. Ignoring Paul Kirby’s terrified face as it swept through his vision, they both went down onto the bomb, then rolled off it. Amina sprang back up, sweeping her chattering gun in an arc across the space, while Dan rolled and scrambled under the table in the opposite direction, hoping to come up behind the mercenary. Instead he slammed right into a retreating Kirby.
Kirby waved his hands and tried to say something, but Dan was interested in only one thing. Using all his might, he wrenched the man off his feet and hurled him into Amina. The submachine gun went wide and the grenade popped out of her hand. Only problem was that the pin stayed wrapped around her thumb.
Ignoring everything, Dan leaped, grabbed the grenade, rolled, and came up throwing at the deepest part of the fountain. It was a perfect shot. The M75 had been domestically designed in Serbia and didn’t have the sophisticated destructive power of more solvent nations. Even so, its explosion sent metal, cement, and water shards everywhere, as well as knocking down everyone in the area closest to it.
That did not include Dan, already charging back toward Amina and Kirby, who were coiling about the floor like a cat trying to escape a clumsy dog. Just as Dan neared, Amina launched Kirby off her with a savage kick, practically sending the man back into Dan. But Dan blocked Kirby aside like he was a pesky running back in Dan’s college football days.
Dan then all but bounced off Kirby back at Amina, but she, at the same time, was bringing her M84 around. He could see by the timing that it would be centered on his chest before he could reach her, and he was going too fast to stop. But just as it seemed he’d be perforated, Alex caught Amina’s gun arm in hers while kicking the Serb savagely in the left knee.
Even after all the evil she had done around the world in general, and to the Morgan family specifically, Amina didn’t have a chance. Caught between the father and daughter, she screamed as they systematically took the mercenary apart like a homicidal tag team. Alex worked the woman’s body with kicks, breaking one joint after another, while Dan made a mess of her face, jaw, nose, and ears with a rain of punches.
Dan slammed Amina in the front of the throat, while Alex gave her a massive kick to the kidney. The Serbian mercenary crumpled down like a puppet with its strings cut. But before her body hit the floor, the Morgans heard Jenny’s voice in both their heads.
“Diana.”
They spun to see General Deng Tao Kung stalking Bloch with his still hooked hand straight out, his finger twitching on the double action trigger of the QSZ automatic, a Chinese-made armor-piercing round targeted for her head.
Alex brought up a Sig Sauer to stop it, but there were still too many gamblers in the way. Dan opened his mouth to shout at the other Zetas, but the noise was still too great in the devastated hall. Dan felt a pang in his heart that he was about to witness the unavoidable execution of his superior, when something moved in the corner of his eye.
Kung pulled the trigger, Paul Kirby leaped into view, the bullet splattering his chest. A moment after that, Lo Liu appeared behind the general, plunging a sword-shaped hunk of dried lava into his back.
The centuries-old petrified blade that had fallen from the peak just minutes before tore open Kung’s kidney, pancreas, and colon, then drove under his ribs to rip his liver, gallbladder, and spleen apart. As the general fell, clawing and screeching, Lo Liu planted her knee between his shoulder blades, and put all her weight on the lava sword, driving it all the way through him.
As Dan got close, he heard Lulu whisper to Kung, “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure the authorities classify this as an accident.”
Chapter 44
“The bomb would not have gone off,” Diana Bloch told Dan. “No way. Paul saw to that. We had been feeding him fake azide for months. His last words to me were ‘Don’t worry.’’”
Dan wanted to see her eyes through the dark, large, sunglasses, but even with the bright, late morning light, he could not.
They, like the others, were lounging ten miles from the nearest village, and, even so, that village only had a population of about three hundred. Framed with inspiring high cliffs on three sides, and faced by the glorious Purakaunui Bay in the South Pacific Ocean, peace and privacy were the words of this new day.
Dan, however, had a few more choice words for his nominal boss.
“W.T. F., Diana,” he said in response to her contention about the bomb, as well as the late, somewhat lamented Paul Kirby.
She lowered her head, and then lowered her sunglasses, to look at her favorite blunt instrument. Then, without a word, she popped the sunglasses back over her eyes before leaning back in the beach lounge chair to watch the others enjoying themselves.
Linc and Karen were playing in the crystal clean blue water. Alex and Lulu were successfully trying to surf. Danhong and Conley were walking—among other things—in the expansive grasslands behind them. Lily and Scott were attempting sun tans. Jenny was sitting beside Dan, so she heard Bloch’s next words as clearly as her husband.
“I play the long game, Cobra. You know that.” Then, remembering the thirteen years Kung had been plotting, she added, “Apparently we all do.”
Dan leaned down in his deck chair to put his elbows on his knees. “Not just long, Diana, deep. What was Kirby? A double agent? A quadruple?”
“He was our agent, Cobra,” she stressed. “Alone. Undercover. Doing what he had to in order to be ready for the most important double-crosses.”
Dan sat back, shaking his head. He had to begrudgingly admire the guy. He couldn’t have gone undercover. He’d be chewing off faces and breaking balls the first hour.
“Really,” he said, still not being able to get his head around it. “That devious, huh? I mean, did he act like a bureaucrat with a bug up his bum simply as cover?”
Diana made a dismissive sound. “No,” she said. “That was actually him. But, his general sense of officious disapproval certainly made him an easy target for enemies trying to find possible traitors, so it served our purposes.” She turned back to Dan and lowered her sunglasses again. “But make no mistake, he was as loyal as you.”
Dan felt honest regret. “I did make a mistake about him, Diana,” he admitted. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Diana leaned back, slipped her sunglasses up, and let the sunshine bathe her as Jenny took her husband’s arm, her expression one of appreciation and pride.
“For what it’s worth, Cobra,” Bloch responded, “Paul probably wouldn’t have accepted your apology, so don’t worry about it.”
Just as everyone was getting back to their much-deserved, long-postponed down time, they felt a now instantly recognizable downdraft. They looked up to see what they now were calling Palecto II hovering above them. Conley and Renard had brought them here in Palecto One almost immediately after the general’s grisly death. Almost immediately, because they had wanted to stay and help until Feng San Wu all but threatened them with physical expulsion if they didn’t make themselves scarce.
“We can handle this,” he had told them, “as we’ve handled every other Mainland incursion onto our freedom. But not if the authorities find a bunch of gweilo.” Then, of course, he added a Confucius quote as he turned to direct the clean-up. “‘If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.’”
Zeta could take a hint, and Renard quickly decided on the destination while Smith made sure the azide, counterfeit or not, was stowed and the rest of the bomb was carefully disassembled. But still Zeta’s exodus was further delayed when a still somewhat stunned Lulu had insisted on getting them all the proper beach wear and accessories. Turns out friends of the family had them available wholesale, since the supply at Happiness Place was now filled with needles, rips, and holes.
So now all the operatives started to make their way under the Flying Fox in perfectly fitting bathing suits, cover-ups, sandals, and towel
s. As they looked up like gawkers at a U.F.O., one hatch opened and Mr. Smith, in a tailored lightweight suit, slowly lowered to the sand in the center of their circle.
“Hmmm,” he considered as he looked at all of them and their serene surroundings. “Everything in neighboring Australia is poisonous. Nothing here in New Zealand is.”
“Outside of us, of course,” Bloch reminded him as she stepped up.
“Outside of us,” he agreed. “Could be worse though. At least General Kung isn’t here.”
“Where is the bad general?” Dan asked mildly as Lulu and Alex trotted up from the surf, carrying boogie-boards and wearing short-sleeved, short-panted, surfing wetsuits.
Smith raised his arm and made a fluttering motion with his fingers. “Dust in the wind,” he said mildly before trying to give them his best serious look. “Wheels are in motion now to convincingly explain his absence from this mortal coil.”
“What was his deal, anyway?” Alex asked as Conley and Guo arrived from the opposite direction. “What was he trying to do?”
Lulu sniffed. “Create an excuse to invade Taiwan, of course.” She looked at the others. “They’ve been trying to do that for years.” Her eyes reached Danhong. “No offense meant.”
“None taken,” the Chinese woman said. “She’s right, you know.”
Smith straightened, looking at the horizon. “Yes, looks that way, sadly. Our…discussion with the Alpha survivors leads us to believe that Kung wanted to have his mooncake and eat it too. If the bomb had had the effect he planned, it would have set off a tidal wave of earthquakes that could have torn the fragrant island apart.”
“Then the Chinese would either be blamed,” Danhong surmised, “or, if it was seen as a natural disaster, rush in with humanitarian aid…”
“Humanitarian,” Lulu said with equal amounts of derision and disbelief.
“Either way,” Smith interjected, “Kung was prepared to take the lead in occupying Taiwan, which would cement his reputation and power within his own country.”
“Nonsense,” Bloch countered. “What’s in that for Alpha?”
“Ah,” Smith smiled at her. “I think all this rest and relaxation is softening your brain, Diana.” He turned to Dan as she pouted. “Because Cobra was right. Alpha essentially consisted of rich despots who had to rely on a network of hired help.”
Dan stood straighter, giving Conley and Alex an I-told-you-so look.
“But they knew that would never work in the long run,” Smith continued. “So they needed an ever-growing source of dissatisfied youth to solidify its Alpha Army.”
Both Danhong and Lulu’s expressions displayed growing awareness.
“Ooh,” Guo marveled. “The Party would not have liked that.” She looked around the circle. “They want the one-point-four billion Chinese to serve China, not Alpha.”
“Which is why I’m sure the bad general wasn’t planning on telling them,” Smith said. “Just bask in his power while finding Alpha recruits in private, and maintain his pragmatic, fiercely patriotic face in public.” Smith lowered his gaze to the sea. “Now,” he said, motioning slightly toward Lulu, “if you’ll excuse us…”
The others watched as the two walked off along the water’s edge.
“Oh, to be a fly on the sand for that conversation,” Linc mused, getting yet another arm swat from O’Neal.
“With your luck,” Karen told him, “You’d get stepped on.”
“It’s okay,” Alex assured them. “Lulu and I had a long talk during the flight here. Seems Smith had an unrelated meeting in Taiwan with four different South Asian movers and shakers thirteen years ago. Hoping not to be seen with any of them in public, he reserved a room at a hot spring spa that he thought was far away. But Kung being Kung, he had Smith shadowed, and for whatever reason, decided the spa’s landlords were a security risk.” Alex shrugged. “Or maybe he was just a demented, sadistic, power-mad bastard.”
“He certainly acted like one in the casino,” Jenny said to her daughter. “Did Lulu guess the truth?”
Alex looked after the pair, who had stopped about a hundred yards down the beach. “Nah. When Smith called to arrange the Alpha ambush at her place, he led with that.”
As the others watched the two return, Renard checked in with Chilly, who was on board Palecto II, while Dan checked in with Valery, who was back at the classic car dealership in Massachusetts.
“You’re welcome to come here,” they had both basically told their employees.
“Not much of a beach guy,” the others basically replied. “Besides, somebody’s got to hold down the fort, don’t they?”
“Especially now that the hacker who must not be named is up on more charges than I care to count,” Chilly had added.
“Especially with Yuri wanting to kill me half the time,” Dobrynin had added. “But don’t worry. They don’t call me Tarakan because I’m an insect. They call me that because I’m hard to kill.”
By the time Scott and Dan signed off, Smith and Lulu had returned to the group, looking like they completely understood each other. Then the Taiwanese girl and Alex ran back to the surf. Conley and Guo returned to their “hike.” Linc and Karen retraced Smith’s steps along the beach. Scott and Lily started preparing a picnic. And Dan and Jenny returned to their beach chairs beside Diana’s lounge.
Smith stood over them, casting the trio in shadow.
“So, Diana,” he said. “You never answered my question.”
She looked up as she took her sunglasses completely off. “What question, Jonathan?”
Dan’s eyebrows raised at her first-time use of what may, or may not, have been Smith’s first name.
“What are you going to do now?” he repeated.
“Whatever do you mean?” she replied with a bit of pseudo-innocence. Jenny assumed it was payback for the crack he’d made about her softening brain.
“Well,” he smiled. “You have no headquarters, you have no homes of your own. You are down to your very few, very best agents. You can go anywhere, do anything.”
He looked off toward the grasslands, then to the mountains, and finally to the sea—before settling his beneficent smile back on her as Palecto II’s embarking handle lowered toward him.
“So what is it going to be, Diana?” he asked. “Same-old same-old, or something new, lean, and mean?”
She did not reply. In fact, she all but ignored him, stretching out like a satisfied feline in the sun.
“Well, let me know what you decide,” he told her, “and I’ll start arranging the financing for it.”
And with that, he seemed to float up toward the stealth craft. It shot into the clouds, then off in the general direction of America.
Dan just tried to relax and enjoy the company of loved ones and trusted friends. But all too soon, he found himself thinking about what Feng had told him while hustling them out of the devastated casino. First the old man had revealed that he’d used his tai chi to push Amina off him, then he’d given Dan a glimpse of the future.
“Do not worry, Yanjingshe,” he had said, using the classic Chinese for Cobra, “all evidence of this gambling will soon be gone, so we can start to repair the unfortunate natural gas explosion.” The old man may not have winked, but he might as well have. “If ever you return to our fragrant isle, I hope you will visit our new, improved farm. You shall be most welcome.”
Then, of course, he left Dan with a quote as the elevator door closed. “‘Think of tomorrow,’” Confucius and Feng San Wu had said. “‘The past cannot be mended.’”
Dan turned and got in Diana Bloch’s face.
“So,” he said to her point blank. “Whatcha gonna do?”
Sneak Peek
Don’t miss the next exciting Dan Morgan thriller by Leo J. Maloney
DEEP COVER
Coming soon from Lyrical Underground, an im
print of Kensington Publishing Corp.
Keep reading to enjoy a sample excerpt…
Chapter 1
As soon as he stepped off the elevator, Dan Morgan knew that something was different in the hallway. His hand found the butt of his Walther PPK as his brain registered what it was: perfume.
He could smell a few distinctly different brands lingering in the air. That meant the women they had booked had arrived.
The models were necessary for their cover. American arms dealers operating in their particular corner of the business would have a parade of attractive women coming in and out of their suite.
Peter Conley had been making those arrangements with local modeling agencies. He had a knack for it, though the task was tougher in Turkey now than it had been in years past. It was a sign of the ways things were going in that country.
First they came for the swimsuit models, Morgan thought.
The smile died as it reached his lips when he heard the cries from inside the room. His Walther was in his hand and he was running down the hallway before the sound had fully registered.
As he got closer, he heard more cries and shouting. Though the sound was muffled by the door, he could definitely hear female voices. Something was going on in the suite.
Morgan’s key card was in his free hand by the time he reached the door. There was no time for a stealthy entrance. As soon as the light on the lock turned green, he pushed the door open and threw himself inside.
What he saw stopped him cold. He’d run a dozen scenarios in his head as he raced to the room and he wasn’t even close.
This is new, he thought.
Peter Conley was sitting at the small dining table that had been moved to the center of the living area of the suite. Four very attractive young women in cocktail dresses were sitting around him, laughing loudly.
War of Shadows Page 30
