Don Pendleton - Murder Island

Cloud gaped at him and didn’t react until the soles of Bolan’s boots bit into the deck of the helicopter. Bolan wobbled a moment, warring against gravity, and then he lurched forward to tackle Cloud. The arms dealer slammed back against the other side of the compartment with a yell before charging at Bolan. Something gleamed in Cloud’s hand, and Bolan heard the hiss of the straight razor cutting the air as he jerked his head aside. He drove a fist into Cloud’s belly, and the arms dealer folded over his forearm, wheezing like an asthmatic. The straight razor clattered to the deck and Bolan kicked it through the open hatch. Grabbing a handful of Cloud’s throat, he slammed him into a seat, drew his Desert Eagle and aimed at the pilot, who’d been clawing for his own sidearm.

“Don’t,” Bolan said as he cocked his pistol. “Take it out, nice and slow, and toss it. I’d prefer not to shoot you, but the only person I can’t shoot is your boss. Remember that, and you might just get out of this in one piece.” When the pilot had disposed of his weapon, Bolan rattled off a series of coordinates and then said, “You know where that is?”

The pilot nodded. Bolan gestured with the Desert Eagle. “Good. Get going.” He looked back at Cloud, whose face was purpling as he clawed ineffectually at Bolan’s unyielding grip. He loosened his hold on the other man. “And you—behave.”

“You—you can’t shoot me,” Cloud croaked.

“Did I say I was going to shoot you?” Bolan asked. He smiled thinly. “I don’t need a gun to hurt you, Mr. Cloud,” he said, layering his words with as much menace as he could. Cloud blanched and ceased his struggles.

“All right, it’s cool, be cool, man,” he whined, holding up his hands. “I was just playing.” He sagged away from Bolan. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I’m the guy with the gun,” Bolan said. “Now sit back and shut up.” He grinned fiercely. “You’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Hello, Byron. How’ve you been?” Tony Spence said, his amusement evident. Bolan shoved Cloud forward. He’d bound the man’s wrists with a zip-tie on the trip to the airfield. He’d done the same to the pilot, and he propelled his second captive forward to stand beside Cloud.

“Spence,” Cloud said. He made the agent’s name sound like a curse. Spence was the CIA’s man in Hong Kong. He was short, plump and dressed like a tourist. The tooled-leather shoulder holster he wore beneath his cheap sports coat was occupied by a 9 mm pistol and his hands had the hard calluses of a fighter.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Spence said. He took his sunglasses off and grinned at Bolan. “Agent Cooper, good to see you again.” One of Bolan’s many cover identities, Matt Cooper was an agent of the Justice Department.

“Cooper,” Cloud said slyly, glancing at Bolan. “Is that your name? I’ll remember it.” Bolan didn’t feel threatened as much as amused. Cloud might consider himself a hard man, but Bolan had faced worse in his long, bloody career.

“Shut up, Byron,” Spence said, swatting Cloud on the back of the head. “The grown-ups are talking.” He smiled at Bolan. “They told me you were good, Cooper, but I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

“We aim to please,” Bolan said. “I wasn’t aware we’d met before.”

“Oh, we haven’t. I saw you at a distance, during that Ackroyd thing a while ago.” Bolan nodded. “The Ackroyd thing” as Spence put it, had been bad—a group of psychotic white supremacists had attempted to let loose an antediluvian plague. Bolan had tracked them halfway to the Arctic Circle before he could put paid to the threat they represented. “Good job with that, by the by,” Spence continued. “Anyway, when they said you could get our guy out of his sanctum sanctorum, I wasn’t sure, but we’ve tried everything else. Ol’ Byron here is a slippery one.” He took hold of Cloud’s arm. “Come on. You look like you could use a cup of coffee. We got time before our flight.”

“I could go for a coffee,” Cloud said.

“Shut up,” Spence replied amiably. He gestured to the pilot. “Bring him, too.”

Bolan hooked the pilot by the back of his shirt and pushed him after the others. As they walked, he took in the airfield. The cracked tarmac sprouted grass and the hangars and buildings had seen better decades. This had been an RAF base, once upon a time, but now it was privately owned. Whether the CIA was the owner in question, or merely borrowing it for the occasion, Bolan didn’t know.

Spence led Bolan toward a hangar that held a midsize private jet and a crew working to get the plane ready.

“Mine’s bigger,” Cloud said.

“Yours was bigger. The Chinese have probably confiscated it by now,” Spence said. He shoved Cloud at another man. “Get him on the plane and make sure he’s cuffed, for God’s sake. Wait—you got to use the toilet?” he asked, grabbing Cloud.

“I’m not a five-year-old,” Cloud snapped.

“Long flight.”

Cloud made a face and mumbled, “Yes.”

“Let him use the toilet and then cuff him.” He turned back to Bolan. “They used this place for Operation Yellowbird, you know,” he said as his people took the pilot and Cloud away. “One of several former airfields. MI-6 and the Agency share this one, though it’s on the books as the property of a Hong Kong film studio. You watch martial arts movies?”

Bolan looked at him blankly. Spence smiled. “Not a film guy, Cooper?”

“I read,” Bolan said.

“So do I,” Spence replied. “Mostly film books.” He grinned and Bolan shook his head and smiled back. “Anyway, they used filming as a cover for transporting a number of activists out of China to more hospitable climes. Whole thing was cooked up by a bunch of Hong Kong businessmen and the Agency got involved…”

“As they tend to do,” Bolan said.

Spence laughed. “Yeah. Got to keep those plates spinning, man.” He led Bolan into the hangar office. “Before my time, but I heard it was a hoot. Anyway, we’re lucky you got to him when you did. Someone—probably the Chinese—spilled the beans that we were onto Cloud, and it looks like his own people were getting ready to…you know…” Spence drew his thumb across his throat. “Hard to be an arms dealer these days, I guess.” He paused and then added, “Well, one that sells to terrorist groups, anyway.”

“You seem to be on a first-name basis with him,” Bolan said.

“Who, Byron? Yeah. He’s a mouthy little asshole, isn’t he?” Spence went to the desk, where a French press carafe sat on a tray. He tapped it. “Kenyan roast,” he said. “My one weakness.” He began to lower the press and the contents of the carafe gurgled. “I take this bad boy with me wherever I go. Anyway, yeah, Cloud’s a third-generation criminal. His granddaddy used to run a floating casino. He was mostly a blackmailer, but he dabbled in the arms trade and murder-for-hire. His daddy was of similar cut. Both were pretty nasty, so Byron’s comparatively harmless.”

“The weapons he sells aren’t,” Bolan said as Spence poured him a cup of coffee.

“Hope you like it strong,” Spence said, preparing his own cup. “And, no, they aren’t. But at least he’s not as good with a straight razor as his grandfather was, by all accounts.”

Bolan smiled. “True. So why bother with him now?”

Spence sipped his coffee. “Need-to-know, Cooper.” He smiled when he saw Bolan’s expression and waved a hand. “But between you, me and the deep, blue sea, he sold something he shouldn’t have had access to, to a group of Nigerian militants. We need to know how he knew about said something, how he got his paws on it, and who exactly he sold it to.” He scrubbed his chin with his knuckles. “Along the way, if we get a few more names and a few more grocery lists from him, well, so much the better.”