Grunting at the sight of the weapons, Bolan shot one of the guards in the armpit, So, they wanted to keep things quiet, eh? Bad for them, good for him.
As the guard fell, red blood arched away from the ruptured artery, and the rest of the guards quickly pulled back the arming bolts on the top of their weapons.
“Lu ta!” a large man with a mustache commanded, hosing the dark warehouse with a stream of small-caliber rounds.
The other men did the same, and ricochets filled the darkness, splinters flying off the wooden crates in every direction.
Quickly, Bolan thumbed more loose rounds into a magazine, then eased it into the Glock 18. Standing, he emptied the entire magazine, and one of the guards was slammed backward by the hellstorm of 9 mm rounds. All eighteen rounds cycled in under two seconds, and two of the guards were nearly torn to pieces. Dark blood splattered the concrete wall, and the Executioner ducked out of sight again as what was left of the men slumped in stages to the dirty floor.
Someone called out over the chattering of the weapons.
It sounded like the man with the mustache again, and Bolan now marked him as the new boss. The king was dead; long live the king.
Another man answered, a touch of nervous laughter marring the response.
Staying safely behind the heavy crate, Bolan opened the war bag and rummaged among the assorted weapons and high explosives. Locating what he wanted, he pulled out a couple of squat canisters. The British stun grenades were relatively harmless, only making an extremely loud explosion when detonated, along with a brief brilliant flash. They were designed to incapacitate an enemy, not kill. Humane weapons, if there was such a thing. However, in the right hands…
Pulling the pins, Bolan flipped three of the canisters high and wide over the crate, then charged for the exit.
Instantly, the guards started shooting, but a heavy wooden workbench prevented the .22 rounds from reaching him.
Moving low and fast, Bolan took out two of the guards with leg shots under the workbench. As they fell into view, he ended their lives with a single 9 mm round to the forehead, then hopped over the still body of the first guard he had killed upon entering the warehouse, and hit the exit door at a full run.
As he burst through, an alarm went off, but it made no difference now. Zigzagging across the junkyard, Bolan tasted fresh salt air and saw the shimmering harbor a split second before the stun grenades detonated.
Thunder and light filled the interior of the warehouse, and Bolan heard the guards cursing in surprise. Then the screaming began, as they continued to blindly fire their weapons into one another. Charging through the gate in the wooden fence, Bolan noted that no professional soldier would have made such a classic mistake. These men were merely street muscle, thugs for hire.
Sprinting down the curving road, the soldier soon reached a wooden dock, and almost dived into the water when he saw a small speedboat lolling in the waves alongside the pier. He changed the dive into a jump, and landed on the moving deck of the boat in a crouch, alongside a large wooden crate.
“Thought I told you to stay out near the breakers,” he growled, his gun sweeping the shadows of the craft for any sign of intruders. But only Tsai Adina was on board.
“And I thought you might need a fast escape,” Tsai countered, tucking the pearl-handled S&W .38 revolver into a black nylon holster at her hip. She was wearing a black scuba suit, her long hair braided into a ponytail.
Just then, an explosion came from the direction of the warehouse, followed by the long chatter of a machine gun, and then another.
“What the hell did you do back there, start World War III?” she demanded, tilting her head.
“Damn near,” Bolan countered, going to the helm and shoving the throttle all the way. In a growl of controlled power, the speedboat moved away from the pier and headed toward the breakers and the harbor.
However, they got only halfway there when the lights returned to the warehouse and a searchlight exploded into operation on the roof, the brilliant beam sweeping across the water.
“Take the helm!” Bolan commanded, pulling out the Glock.
As Tsai grabbed the yoke, he cradled the weapon in a two-handed grip and fired. The Glock almost seemed to explode from the rapid-fire discharge, the continuous muzzle-flash extending for nearly three feet. With a crash, the searchlight died.
“That was close.” Tsai sighed in relief, relaxing her stance slightly.
“Too damn close,” Bolan replied, sliding in his last clip.
Then he saw the front door open and out stumbled a large man with a mustache, cradling what appeared to be a Carl Gustav multipurpose rocket launcher.
Instantly, Bolan aimed and fired in a single smooth motion.
Riddled with bullet holes, the man stumbled backward and the Carl Gustav flew straight upward. The fiery wash blew off the legs of the dying man, and a moment later the roof of the warehouse violently exploded. Windows were shattered on both levels, and roiling flames filled the interior, spilling over the assorted crates, barrels, boxes and pallets of military ordnance.
“Sweet Mother of God,” Tsai whispered, making the protective sign of the cross. “Do you think that the place is going to—”
“Down!” Bolan snarled, dragging her to the deck.
For an entire minute it seemed as if his caution was unnecessary. The boat was coasting past the breakers into the harbor when there came a flash of light from the shore, closely followed by a mind-numbing explosion.
A roiling fireball rose from behind the piles of junk cars, slowly forming the standard mushroom pattern of any sufficiently hot detonation. Black clouds laced with flame extended across the rock jetty as smoldering pieces of broken concrete, smashed weapons, busted machinery and human bodies rained across the landscape. The dark water of the harbor churned from the falling debris, and Bolan grabbed the yoke to steer the speedboat farther away from the dangerous shoreline.
Everywhere across the Kowloon District, lights appeared in windows, and somewhere a fire alarm began to clang, then an air raid siren cut loose with a long, pronounced howl.
Burning out of control, the destroyed warehouse continued to explode irregularly from the tons of military ordnance that had been stored there. Bullets crackled like strings of firecrackers, land mines thundered, and as the remains of the warehouse began to collapse in upon itself, something flared white-hot for a long moment in the heart of the inferno, then died away, making the rest of the blaze seem pale and inconsequential by comparison.
“Well, that certainly put Ortega out of business!” Tsai laughed, shakily rising to her feet.
“Almost certainly,” Bolan said, giving a half smile.
“Almost? Damn, you’re a hard man to please.” Tsai started to say something else when somewhere in the darkness ahead there came the warning siren from a Red Chinese gunboat. It was promptly joined by another, and then countless more. Then an aircraft rumbled by overhead, the hot wash buffeting them both and rocking the speedboat.
“How did a jet fighter get here so soon?” she asked with a frown.
“It doesn’t matter. Time to go,” Bolan said, angling away from the open harbor and heading back toward the rolling waves cresting nosily on the rocky shoreline.
“I’m ready,” she announced, tucking the mouthpiece of her rebreather into place.
“Change of plans,” Bolan said, lowering their speed to avoid attracting unwanted attention. “You’re not going crash the boat as a diversion so that I can hijack a gunboat.”
She yanked out the mouthpiece. “We’re going to charge across Victoria Harbour and into up the West River in this old thing?” she demanded askance. “We’ll be slaughtered!”
“True.”