Don Pendleton - Lethal Risk

The pain in his wrist was increasing, but Carstairs managed to turn the canister toward the man’s face and blast him again. Although the chemicals didn’t faze him, the buffeting spray did make him instinctively turn his face away, which was what Carstairs had wanted.

Plucking the canister out of his pinned hand, he smashed it into the driver’s face, feeling the man’s cheekbone break with a palpable snap. Carstairs didn’t let up; driving the end of the plastic-and-metal device into the side of the man’s face, ignoring his weakening attempts to fend him off.

Finally, when the driver was bloody and semiconscious, and no longer an immediate threat, Carstairs reached across, opened the driver’s door and shoved him into the street.

Sliding into the driver’s seat and trying not to cough at the lingering wisps of gas, he put the car in Reverse and began backing up to the nearest intersection. Fortunately there was no one behind him.

“What was all that? Why did you do that to him?” Mrs. Liao asked.

“He was Chinese military,” Carstairs said between coughs. “Whatever your husband has done, a lot of people want him really bad—”

As he said that, they reached the intersection and were immediately flooded with bright white floodlights. Carstairs had just enough time to look over when the car was broadsided by a huge truck. The impact sent them flying across the intersection and into the side street, where the car landed on its roof.

Flung around by the crash, Carstairs found himself lying on the ceiling of the overturned car, a heavy tightness compressing his chest. He tasted blood. One eye was swelling shut and a dull pain bloomed in his ribs. Even so, he knew he had to get Mrs. Liao and her children out and away before more soldiers came. He tried to move, but found himself pinned by the seat. He looked around for his phone but couldn’t see it nearby.

Footsteps crunched on the shattered glass from the window and Carstairs looked out to see a pair of wing tips standing next to the wrecked sedan.

Sets of combat boots appeared next to the shoes and a face leaned down to look in at him in surprise. “The American is still alive.”

“Kill him and collect the others,” came a curt reply. “Make it look like the car accident did it.”

The man looking in on him produced a pistol and turned it around so he was holding it by the barrel. Trapped and unable to move, Edward Carstairs watched as, without a word, the Chinese soldier began crawling toward him, pistol held at the ready to bash his skull in.

“Well, it just goes to show that you can always trust the State Department to take what should be a simple extraction job and screw up the entire thing.”

Mission controller Barbara Price stared at Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, for a long moment before shaking her head. “Coming down a bit hard on State, aren’t you, Hal? It’s one thing to dodge the local police, or even the ministry. It’s another thing to go up against the Chinese military—”

The gruff man sitting across from her snatched the chewed-to-death cigar from his mouth and used it like a big, brown exclamation point as he interrupted her. “Whenever an officer of the United States government is performing his duty in what is perceived as a foreign environment, which by nature should be considered potentially hostile, all necessary precautions must be taken to ensure his safety as well as the safety of those he comes into contact with.”

Brognola stuck the remains of the unlit cigar back into a corner of his mouth. “Above all, the embassy should not send out just one man to collect the family of the biggest potential defector since Tretyakov! Now it’s turned into the largest screwup since Wang Lijun!”

“The hero police chief of Chonqing City, who was also investigated for the organ transplant facility he founded—”

“Organ transplant facility, my ass,” Brognola interrupted again. “Those butchers are harvesting the insides of political prisoners like the Falun Gong and selling them to the highest bidder. They conveniently get rid of their ‘protestors’ once and for all, and make a tidy profit to boot. Wang tried to buy his way into the US with a trove of documents implicating several high-ranking Chinese officials. Supposedly, although we were never able to confirm this, those documents were instrumental in taking down power politician Bo Xilai. And when State gets the chance to pull in someone who’d make Wang’s knowledge look like peanuts, they bungle the whole thing from the start. Now he’s in the wind and nobody knows where the family went! Balcius will be lucky to keep his job after all this. Not to mention we have to go in and somehow clean up this unholy mess.”

“Well, we’re good at that,” Price reminded him.

“I know, I know. But Striker’s going to have to stay so far under the radar on this one he might as well tunnel into Beijing. We can’t afford to let this spiral into an international incident. We’re just lucky the Chinese also want to keep this as quiet as we do. The black eye on relations between the two countries would take years to fade.”

Price looked down at her tablet, hiding a smile. She didn’t blame Brognola for his irascible attitude. As the Farm’s liaison to the President and a head honcho at the Justice Department, the big Fed had to wade into the alphabet soup that was Washington, DC, on a daily basis to try to glean whatever useful intel he could from the multitude of often-bickering departments on the Hill.

“What’s Striker’s ETA?”

“We sent him the Priority One message—” Price consulted her watch “—nine minutes ago. I’m sure Cowboy and he are double-timing it back.” She referred to John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s premier weaponsmith.

As if in confirmation of her statement, her tablet pinged with a message from Akira Tokaido, a top hacker and member of the Farm’s cyber team.

Striker inbound. Coming your way in 10 seconds.

“He’s on his way here right now,” she confirmed, making sure her presentation was ready.

They both looked up as Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, strode into the War Room carrying a ceramic mug. “Barbara. Hal,” he said, greeting each of them with a nod.

As he slid into a high-backed leather chair, Bolan blew on the mug of steaming coffee and sipped it cautiously, grimacing as he swallowed. “Just when I thought I was used to Bear’s brew, he changes it up on me.” He glanced at Brognola with a raised eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want a cup, Hal? It’ll take the edge off.”

“Bear” was Aaron Kurtzman, who was as good with making Stony Man’s computers do everything but sit up and dance as he was bad at brewing remotely drinkable coffee.

“Yeah, that and ten years off my life.” Brognola had already pulled out the other indispensable aid he was never without, a roll of antacid tablets, and thumbed a pair into his mouth. “Keep that damn cup as far away from me as possible. The smell’s bad enough. I’d hate to have to actually drink it.”

Despite the potentially top-secret materials they were about to discuss, Price watched the two men sparring with an internal grin. Between them, Bolan and Brognola had carried the fight for justice and freedom to all four corners of the globe, and knew each other better than any person alive. Even she wasn’t privy to all parts of their relationship, which was fine by her. Some things were best left alone.

“Barbara, why don’t you fill Striker in on the mess we’ve found ourselves in, courtesy of those jackasses over at State?”

Barely resisting rolling her eyes, Price exchanged an it’s-gonna-be-one-of-those-days glances with Bolan as she started her program deck.