China White. Don Pendleton

giving it to all of them at once. “Get out and take your places. Anybody fires before I give the word, he’s dead.”

      * * *

      BOLAN TRACKED THE Hummers through his AN/PVS-10 nightscope until they parked and Wah Ching soldiers started climbing out, all clutching long guns. Bolan counted off a dozen targets armed with automatic rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, picked out Paul Mei-Lun among them, then went back to watching for the other team.

      The triad boss had played it smart, coming an hour early to the meet and staking out his men to cover both approaches, east and west of Lighthouse Park. It was a sound move, sensible, maybe the best that he could manage without formal military training or a sniper’s long view toward the waiting game. He had the park well covered, but he obviously hadn’t given any thought to checking out the nearby hospital.

      Too public and too risky. Now, too late.

      Before he’d come out to the island, Bolan had detoured past a vacant lot off FDR Drive, near the Queensboro Bridge, and dumped the stolen heroin, torching it with a can of lighter fluid he’d picked up in transit. The smack was up in smoke, long gone, but still working to Bolan’s benefit, drawing his targets into rifle range.

      And now he saw more headlights sweeping toward the park, coming along West Road. A Lincoln Town Car led the new arrivals, followed by a matched pair of Volkswagen Phaetons. They rolled past the hospital’s northwestern wing, slowing as they closed in on the park and the lighthouse beyond. The Lincoln coasted to a halt beyond the tree line, and the Phaetons followed suit.

      He waited, watching through the nightscope while doors opened on the luxury sedans and more men bearing weapons stepped onto the pavement, fanning out in a defensive formation. Bolan had no trouble picking out Wasef Kamran, the Lincoln’s shotgun rider, carrying a Spectre M4 SMG. The men arrayed around him were all similarly armed, mostly with variations of the tried and true Kalashnikov assault rifle.

      Bolan counted fifteen Afghans below him, giving them a three-man edge over the Wah Ching team. He saw lips moving, couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he registered surprise on Kamran’s face when Paul Mei-Lun stepped from the shadows to reveal himself.

      A frozen moment passed, then Kamran shouted something to his rival, probably a question, possibly a challenge. Mei-Lun shouted something back and stood his ground, confusion written on his face and shifting into anger as he registered betrayal, trying to decide who was responsible.

      Bolan focused his night sight on the soldier standing just to Wasef Kamran’s right, placing his crosshairs on the hardman’s dull face two hundred feet in front of him. The range was virtually point-blank for his M-110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System—easy pickings—as he sent 175 grains of sudden death hurtling downrange toward impact at 2,570 feet per second.

      The target’s skull exploded, its mangled contents splashing Wasef Kamran’s face and thousand-dollar suit. Kamran recoiled, raising an arm too late to keep the muck out of his eyes and mouth, looking dazed as he shouted something to his other men.

      It was the signal they’d been waiting for: to open fire and turn the quiet park into a little slice of hell on earth.

      * * *

      WASEF KAMRAN COULD NOT believe his eyes when Paul Mei-Lun stepped from the shadows, cradling some kind of spacey-looking weapon in his arms. The Afghan mobster felt his gut churn, knew damn well the stranger he’d arranged the meet with had not been Chinese—but had Mei-Lun arranged the call? It seemed impossible, since he had lost the heroin that afternoon.

      “What are you doing here?” Kamran called across the dark expanse of grass.

      After a split-second delay, Mei-Lun yelled back at him, “I’m here on business. Why are you here?”

      Kamran was considering an answer when it happened. To his right, Amir Sadaty’s head burst open with a sodden ripping sound, as if someone had struck a melon with an ax. Its contents flew in all directions, warm blood spraying Kamran’s shoulder, face and hair. He lurched away before the man collapsed, his legs folding under him, and snapped an order at his other soldiers.

      “Fire!”

      Along the skirmish line, they all cut loose in unison, their muzzle-flashes lighting up the park. Kamran saw Mei-Lun go down but couldn’t tell if he was hit or merely seeking cover from the storm of bullets hurtling toward him. Kamran wiped the blood out of his right eye with a sleeve, then fired a short burst of his own toward where he’d last seen Mei-Lun standing.

      And, of course, the Wah Ching leader had not come alone. In answer to the fire from Kamran’s men, at least a dozen guns were sniping at his party now, their slugs buzzing around him like a swarm of mosquitoes on steroids, all thirsty for blood. He saw another of his soldiers fall, clutching a hip and firing back one-handed as he dropped.

      “Behind the cars!” Kamran cried out for those who weren’t already ducking under cover. “Everybody! Quickly!”

      Bullets struck the Lincoln Town Car and the two Volkswagens, taking out their windows, hammering their doors and fenders with the noise of a demonic hailstorm. Kamran rolled across the Lincoln’s trunk and landed on his knees, cursing the pain that lanced through them from impact with the pavement.

      What were the goddamned triad goons doing here? More to the point, where was his heroin?

      Kamran pushed up into a crouch and waddled toward the front end of the Lincoln, where a couple of his men were trading shots with Mei-Lun’s soldiers. They would have to torch the cars when they were finished here, assuming they could even drive away, and file a theft report with the police. But first, they had to finish killing off the Wah Ching gunners who had pinned them down.

      And all before someone inside the hospital summoned police.

      Kamran had nearly reached his soldiers when the closer of them suddenly pitched over sideways, knocking down the soldier to his left. Kamran had seen the blood spurt from his throat, an inch or two below his right ear, nearly shearing off his head, and knew the angle was all wrong.

      He pressed closer against the car, then turned back to face the hospital. The shot had come from that direction, somehow. From the trees or someplace higher up? With all the gunfire ringing in his ears, he could not single out a given shot, but it occurred to him that Mei-Lun had boxed them in to cut off their retreat.

      Mei-Lun or someone else.

      Once more, he heard the unknown caller’s mocking voice, directing him and giving orders, setting up the meet. A man with the audacity to kill six soldiers and escape with ten kilos of heroin, perhaps? Did that explain the Wah Ching presence at their rendezvous? Were both sides simply chessmen in his deadly game?