Outback Assault. Don Pendleton

to him. There had to have been only a narrow band through which communications could pierce the bubble of security that Augustyn had installed. Since Bolan was operating on a satellite signal, and his cell phone wasn’t coded for the encryption static that engulfed the apartment, he was unable to make out Kurtzman’s message.

      It didn’t matter. The attempt to break through produced enough noise to alert the Executioner that Augustyn had arrived. Bolan returned to the huge doors and closed them. The latch snapped shut with an audible click and he turned. He put himself in the mentality of a world-traveling businessman. He spotted a space atop an intricately carved table where Augustyn would probably empty his pockets and with just a single step and a press of a button, access the messages left for him when he was out.

      The hired assassin had a layer of anonymity between himself and his employers. As a matter of survival for Augustyn, he’d likely only take communications in his very secure home, not on the road with a cell phone. The potential to be traced by cellular signal was too great to secure Augustyn’s privacy.

      Bolan took a step toward the answering machine and studied the sleek, disklike device. It had to have been cutting-edge technology either straight from Tokyo, or knocked-off in a Hong Kong back-alley electronics lab. He pushed the button and the digital player cycled through its memory, bringing up the three priority messages that had drawn Kurtzman’s attention.

      “We need you. Tickets have been arranged for you to travel to Darwin. We’ll have a contact brief you on the cleanup,” the first message announced. The other two were identical to the first, no change in urgency, and had been spaced a day apart.

      Nonpriority messages began to play on the sleek machine, but Bolan killed the playback. The machine requested to know if he wanted to retain the trio of messages as priority, and Bolan decided to leave them.

      He moved to the room where he’d penetrated the penthouse and fastened the vent cover back into place. There was a slight bulge that kept it from sitting true, but it wouldn’t be noticed without a thorough investigation.

      Bolan stayed to the shadows, listening for the triad assassin executioner to arrive. He didn’t have to wait for long. The heavy doors opened with a clack and he heard a deep, resonant voice tell someone to put the bags away. From his vantage point, Bolan could see Augustyn, a tall, powerful man. He was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. The image that dying agent Reynolds had sent was of the man disguised as a servant. Taking off his formal hat, he fit Bolan’s general appearance, over six feet in height, with wide powerful shoulders disappearing down into a slender waist, his torso a wedge of lean muscle. Black hair and blue eyes added to Augustyn’s vague resemblance to the Executioner.

      “Couldn’t wait to get off the elevator to take charge again, eh, Wade?” an older man’s voice croaked.

      Augustyn chuckled, his shoulders visibly jerking. “I’m tired, boss,” he said sarcastically.

      He listened to the answering machine messages, and frowned. “Forget about the bags, Eugene. Fire up the computer and print out the tickets that Long sent.”

      “Tickets?” Eugene asked. “Right. I’ll take care of it. Any idea where we’re off to?”

      “Darwin, Australia,” Augustyn said. He wiped out the two redundant digital messages and listened to his remaining messages. “Another cleaning job.”

      Eugene’s disgust was broadcast in an audible grunt. He stepped into the open, and Bolan saw a man in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair, looking like an older version of Augustyn, only an inch or so shorter. An older brother? Bolan wondered at first, but then decided Augustyn had to have sought out someone with a close enough resemblance to pass for himself. “Cleaning means we’ve got more than one target,” Eugene said.

      “If I’ve got to meet with a local contact, there’s going to be a laundry list of duties to carry out,” Augustyn returned. “Not only a direct kill, but applying more pressure than they could bring on their own.”

      Eugene frowned. “This means a big, noisy mess. A deniable one to boot.”

      “That’s why they’re calling me in. Print the e-ticket. If you want, you can stay behind and make up for our lost time in Hong Kong,” Augustyn replied. “They assume I travel alone anyhow, so you’d have to make your own way.”

      “No, thanks,” Eugene replied. “I’d receive enough worried phone calls that I’d be stuck up the creek without a paddle if I took even another day away.”

      “You?” Augustyn chided.

      “And you, too, by extension,” Eugene amended, walking off.

      The big assassin picked up a sleek cordless phone off the disklike answering machine and dialed a series of numbers. “Set up my usual Australia safari package. Darwin,” he said.

      Bolan skulked down a hallway and closed in on Eugene as he hovered over a keyboard, scanning through e-mail messages. The Executioner waited until the man hit the print command on the electronic ticket, then stepped into the den behind Augustyn’s business manager. He jabbed a quick punch under Eugene’s ear, a blow placed perfectly to render him unconscious. The businessman slumped into Bolan’s arms, and he lowered the man on the floor. It took only a few moments to bind Eugene’s wrists and ankles to keep him to the upcoming fight. He’d need more intelligence from the man later.

      A sudden movement in Bolan’s peripheral vision ignited his reflexes, throwing him to the floor an instant before the roar of a .45 split the air. The liquid crystal flat panel display for Augustyn’s computer burst, a quartersized hole blown through it.

      “You’re good, whoever you are. I didn’t even know you were in the apartment until I heard Eugene’s grunt as you knocked him out,” Augustyn said.

      Bolan didn’t answer. He had two alternate ways out of the office. One door to the right would force Augustyn to move more to intercept him, and it was close at hand. He shoved the desk chair toward that door and spun toward the farther exit from the den as another pair of .45-caliber slugs punched into the back of the chair.

      As soon as he saw Augustyn disappear to intercept Bolan’s false path, the Executioner exploded in the other direction, drawing his .45 in one swift movement. By the time the assassin discovered he’d been bluffed, it was too late for Augustyn to do anything except blow a chunk of wall apart with another big slug.

      “Nice trick,” Augustyn called out. Bolan heard him reload his half-depleted handgun. The Executioner remained silent, waiting for his opponent to reveal himself. Augustyn’s chatter was meant to distract Bolan, covering noises. The way that the apartment was laid out, with soundproofed walls, there was no certain way to locate Augustyn by sound, though the noise of reloading or acquiring new weapons could be heard.

      Bolan cursed himself for not taking down Eugene in a quieter manner, but the business manager was fit and brawny enough to turn a struggle into an extended wrestling match had he taken any other approach. Lethal force would have left Bolan behind the curve in figuring out what Augustyn had just been hired to do. Considering Eugene’s voiced disgust, it had to be bad and he assumed a lot of people would die. Bolan had just declared war.

      He looked down the hall to the corner and saw a reflective vase. He spotted Augustyn, observing the same curved, mirrored surface. Both men spotted each other at the same time, using the glassy surface to grant an around-the-corner view for defense. Bolan triggered the Norinco, blew the vase to splinters and retreated away from the intersection. Seeing another vase, he picked it up and hurled it toward the other end of the hallway. Crashing glass and an involuntary grunt of surprise told the Executioner that his distraction play worked and he nestled against the wall, crouched low and away from the edge so that he wouldn’t be in hand-to-hand range if Augustyn whipped around the corner, prepared to disarm him.

      Bullets punched into the wall, noise and fury rocking through the quiet calm of the apartment, but the gun battle’s thunder was swallowed by Augustyn’s nearly obsessive privacy measures. The Executioner waited a moment, but he didn’t hear his enemy reload, and he knew that Augustyn had fallen