Don Pendleton - Ballistic Force

The two men were on a Laughlin-bound private jet the FBI had charted back in Los Angeles. The Bureau had stepped into the picture as soon as the focus had shifted from the Killboys’ drug-running to their likely involvement with the men being held responsible for the death of Yong-Im Hyunsook. There were two G-men riding in the plane, across from Bolan and Kissinger. Jayne Bahn had sweet-talked her way aboard, as well, and was sitting across the aisle from the Stony Man operatives, cell phone pressed to one ear as she conferred with her colleagues back at Inter-Trieve’s West Coast headquarters in San Francisco.

“No thanks necessary,” Bolan told Kissinger. “I was happy to help out. How’s that ankle doing?”

“Feels okay as long as I’m sitting down,” Kissinger said. “They said if I keep my weight off it for a few days I’d be fine.”

“Knowing you, that’s not going to happen,” Bolan said with a grin. “My money says you wind up ripping loose those stitches in your arm, too.”

“No bet,” Kissinger replied. Thinking back to the firefight that had left him wounded, he went on. “I just wish we could’ve gotten them all. I mean, you gotta figure those two who drove off before the raid are the ones that whacked that guy in the valley.”

“We’ll catch up with them,” Bolan said evenly.

“I hope so.”

Bahn had gotten off the phone in time to hear the tail end of men’s conversation. “I hope you’re not saying it’s my fault they’re still on the loose,” she told Kissinger. “Hell, even if I’d been close enough to stop them, it would’ve tipped off the others and we wouldn’t have stumbled onto this whole hit-squad thing.”

“Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” Kissinger assured the woman. “Matter of fact, you kept another one of them from getting away. That makes you woman of the hour.”

“A lot of good that did,” Bahn scoffed. “Two hours of interrogation and the punk didn’t give up a thing.”

“Well, he’s just lucky we got called away,” Kissinger said. “Two minutes in the I-room alone with him and I’d have had him talking.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Bolan intervened.

Bahn smiled at Bolan. “Come on, he’s just flirting with me, that’s all.”

“In your dreams,” Kissinger said, suppressing a grin.

As the plane carried the group over the arid desolation of the Mojave Valley, the head of the FBI detail, Ed Scanlon, strode up from the rear of the plane. He was a tall, lean man in his midforties, wearing an off-the-rack suit and well-scuffed Oxford shoes.

“Got a wee bit of good news,” Scanlon announced, as he flipped his cell phone closed. “We went another round with that gang-banger and got him to spill. He confirmed what we’ve been expecting all along. One of the guys who rode off just before the raid is just the baby brother of a Killboy we’ve got chilling the morgue. The other guy’s a major player, though.”

“REDI?” Bahn guessed.

Scanlon eyed the woman, surprised. “You know about them?”

She nodded. “It’s the closest thing North Korea has to our CIA. Espionage, wet work. You name it, they get the call.”

“That’s about the size of it.” Scanlon continued, “Anyway, this guy’s name is Hong Sung-nam, and he’s bad news. We’ve got his crew linked to a handful of assassinations over in Asia, and last time we checked he was still over there.”

“Obviously you’ll need to update your records,” Bahn taunted.

“So it would seem,” Scanlon conceded. “We don’t know how he slipped stateside, but according to our stoolie, he showed in L.A. with a heroin shipment about a month ago and insinuated himself into the gang. Got the tattoos and everything. Apparently there were concerns that the Killboys needed more supervision so they’d spend less time butting heads with rival gangs and more time pushing the product. Of course, somewhere along the line he was rounding up info on these nuke defectors. And as long as he’s on the loose, we gotta figure he’s gonna work his way down that list you guys found.”

“Which means unless our raid scared him off, he’s probably on his way to Nevada,” Kissinger surmised. “Just like us.”

Scanlon nodded. “DEA’s selling that raid you were in on as strictly a drug bust. Hopefully Hong’ll buy it and stick to his game plan. We’ve got California Highway Patrol on the lookout for him, but if he’s worth his salt he’ll be able to evade any spot checks on the highways. I think our best bet’ll be to nab him when he tries to go after his next target.”

“If I remember rightly,” Bolan recalled, “the next guy on that list lived in Vegas, not Laughlin.”

“Good memory,” Scanlon said. “We’re changing our plans accordingly. You guys wanna play along?”

“What do you have in mind?” Bahn asked.

“Well,” Scanlon replied, “judging from how the three of you went gangbusters during that raid, I’m thinking you’d rather see some action instead of sniffing around Laughlin for this guy who’s third on the list.”

“You get points for flattery,” Bahn countered, “but you’re going to have to cough up more specifics.”

Bolan figured he knew where this was going and told Scanlon, “You want us in Vegas instead.”

“Bingo,” Scanlon said. “We’ve got the defector there under lock and key, but we figure if we plant a look-alike at his digs along with some backup, REDI’ll come in light and we’ll be able to get the upper hand on them.”

“And you want us for the backup,” Kissinger guessed.

“At least part of it,” Scanlon said. “We’ll have a crew there, but we’re spread thin looking for the Laughlin guy at the same time, so a few extra bodies couldn’t hurt.”

“Works for me,” Bahn said. “I just talked with my people and I’m green-lighted to follow through and see where this takes us.”

Bolan quickly weighed his options. Barbara Price had already asked him and Kissinger to help with the search in Laughlin, but Scanlon had been right in pegging him as someone who preferred the more proactive course. Fortunately his standing as a Stony Man operative was such that he could unilaterally change his plan of attack as developments dictated. He turned to Kissinger.

“How about if we split up,” he suggested. “You can take Laughlin and give that ankle a breather.”

“While you have all the fun?” Kissinger retorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, before this is over you’ll have more chances to jump into the fray.” Bolan nudged the aluminum crutches Kissinger had propped against the seat next to him. “You might as well give yourself a chance to recuperate.”

Kissinger thought it over, then nodded. “All right, all right. Laughlin it is.”

Bolan turned back to Scanlon. “Count me in.”

“Same here,” Bahn chimed in.

Kissinger stared at the woman bounty hunter, then grinned at Bolan. “Looks like I bailed just in time. Good luck, buddy. You’re going to have your hands full.”

Laughlin, Nevada

Although the casinos in Laughlin were set along the banks of the Colorado River, the town’s population, for the most part, lived a few miles inland, just west of a huge, coal-burning power plant that today, like most days, disgorged a steady plume of dark smoke from its towering exhaust chimneys. Randall Howland, a thirty-year veteran of the FBI, had spent most of the morning choking on the smoke as he maintained surveillance on the home of Li-Roo Kohb, one-time propellant expert for the Kanggye nuclear team. Howland had parked his nondescript Chevy sedan on the shoulder of a crestline road overlooking the defector’s neighborhood. Another two agents were biding their time downhill in a second car parked just past the stop sign where Li-Roo’s street intersected with Casino Drive. They’d been on stakeout now for the better part of three hours, waiting for the defector to return home or, better yet, for a sign of the REDI crew that was supposed to be in town looking to kill Li-Roo or at least abduct him and drag him back home to North Korea.