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  Lazy. They would pay for that before much longer, with their lives.

  But first, the generator had to go.

  Bolan and Chan stayed on the blind side of their adversaries lounging on the patio, approaching through the dark and crouching by the prefab hut erected as the generator’s home. A peek around its corner showed Bolan there was no padlock on the door. He simply had to risk exposure for a moment, long enough to open the door and do whatever had to be done to shut the generator down for good, beyond repair.

  “I’m using one of the grenades,” he told Chan after scouting the approach.

  “Firelight to see the guards by,” she replied.

  “We’ll need some distance from the blast,” he said.

  “Ready when you are,” she advised.

  “Start fading back,” he said as he unclipped one of the round grenades and freed its pin, holding the safety lever firmly in place.

  As Chan retreated, Bolan shot another glance toward the patio then stepped around the gunmen’s line of sight, opened the thin door to the generator’s hut and let his M308-1 wobble across the concrete pad.

  He bolted before the enemy caught sight of him and followed Chan into the dark. It wasn’t dark much longer as the napalm charge went off, blowing the shed walls outward even as they melted from the heat, fusing the generator into a great lump of useless steel, rubber and plastic. Lost in the explosion was the generator’s gas tank blowing out, barely a stutter after the grenade’s discharge.

  The house and grounds went dark, but Bolan knew exactly where his first three targets were. Sweeping the muzzle of his scattergun across the patio, he triggered three quick 12-gauge rounds, each blast spewing nine pellets of double-ought buckshot, each pellet equivalent to a .33-caliber bullet.

  His targets never knew what hit them, literally blown away and tumbling on the flagstone patio, awash in blood. Somewhere inside the house, a male voice shouted, challenging the sudden dark.

  It was time to go—rushing across the lawn through roiling smoke, past burning patches where napalm had set the grass on fire. Light from the burning, melting generator shed showed Bolan the direction, and Chan stayed with him, matching him stride for stride.

  Whatever hell awaited them, they would be meeting it head-on.

  10

  Park felt the rippling tremor of the first explosion through his chilled bare feet, not hearing it for itself. Whatever confirmation he required was registered on Shin’s face and the sallow faces of his three companions standing near the chamber’s open doorway. Turning to his nearest goon, the one clad in a normal suit, Shin snapped, “Go find out what that was! No, wait! I’m coming with you!”

  And then the room went black. One of the two white-coated ghouls scooped up a flashlight from the rolling cart and switched it on, casting long shadows in the room of pain.

  Shin told them, “Finish up the preparations here, but do not start on him until I have returned. You understand?”

  Their heads bobbed in unison, watching their master leave and slam the door behind him.

  Two on one made for more comfortable odds.

  “Get on the table,” one of Shin’s interrogators ordered, shining the flashlight directly in his eyes.

  Park faced them, smiling now despite his nudity, and answered, “I think not.”

  The two ghouls glanced at each other, nodding as some silent measure of agreement passed between them, both immediately turning toward the rolling cart of torture implements. The flashlight holder snatched a carving knife, while his partner chose a crowbar, separating as they turned to advance on Park and force him toward the wooden table where his life was meant to end.

  Park’s mind swirled with reminders of his training in Taekwondo and the unarmed martial art of Taekkyeon. He stood with his feet apart, knees slightly bent, as well prepared as he would ever be for self-defense against these would-be murderers. Mind-set was half the battle, he remembered, clinging to self-confidence, the will to triumph over any foe in hand-to-hand mortal combat.

  The butcher with the crowbar came in first, swinging the hooked end of the tool ahead of him then trying for a caveman swing over his head. Park rushed to meet the blow instead of fleeing it, his left arm bent and raised to block the swing as he lashed out to crack his adversary’s right kneecap with his left heel, followed with a swift, stiff-fingered jab into the white-clad monster’s throat.

  It worked, his enemy yelping in pain before Park’s fingers closed his windpipe for him, spastic fingers letting go of the crowbar. Park grabbed it out of midair as it fell, clutching the cold bar in both hands, whipping its vicious hook around to pierce the goon’s temple, opening his skull. Park gave a final twist to free the hook and let the dead man drop just as the other made his move.

  “Hiiya!” the torturer cried out in simulation of a skilled karateka. He rushed in with the long knife slashing, still trying to blind Park with the flashlight beam, but found he could not handle both at once. The crowbar came down on his wrist, snapping the scaphoid and the lunate bones, squeezing a howl of pain from the torturer’s thin lips. The carving knife rattled away from him while he tried to wield the flashlight as a secondary weapon.

  Park swung almost lazily, batting the light aside while trying not to smash it, lunging forward with the sharp end of the crowbar used for pulling nails and prying. When it ripped into the flesh beneath his would-be slayer’s chin, Park twisted it, applied more thrusting force and drove it through the goon’s soft palate, up into his skull.

  The man died standing, blood cascading down the front of his white coat and sluicing from the rubber apron. Only when his tremors ceased did Park withdraw the crowbar and allow his corpse to drop.

  The flashlight had survived its ordeal, guiding Park back to his clothing, casting eerie shadows all around the torture chamber as he dressed. When he was ready, Park picked up the crowbar, tucked the carving knife under his belt and let the flashlight lead him to the door. It opened at his touch and he moved on to make his cautious way upstairs.

  * * *

  AS BOLAN PASSED the corpses lolling on the patio, still limned with firelight from the generator hut, he saw faint movement on the far side of a tall, glass, sliding door that faced the pool and barbecue outside. He tried to count the human shapes inside, helped a little when one of Shin’s people pulled a penlight from his pocket to illuminate what seemed to be a gaming room.

  Beyond that, there was no time for reconnaissance. He cut loose from the hip with his 12-gauge, blowing the glass to smithereens, while Chan helped with a short burst from her Daewoo SMG. Inside the rec room, men were shouting, falling, dying where they stood or where they sprawled. One of them managed to produce a pistol and return fire, but his shots went high and wide as he collapsed.

  Bolan charged through the mostly empty frame of the glass sliding door, with Chan a step behind him. Scooping up the fallen shooter’s penlight, he followed the beam to reach a doorway opening onto a corridor that led him ever deeper into Shin Bon-jae’s mansion. There were no audible alarms without electric power, but the shouts of home-team players closing on the rec room told Bolan his entry had not gone unnoticed.

  “We should split up,” he told Chan. “Improve our odds of finding Shin and Park. Stay on the Bluetooth. Let me know if you run into something you can’t handle on your own.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, and flashed a smile before she turned away from Bolan, jogging into darkness as she moved along the right-hand corridor.

  Bolan veered to the left, using the liberated penlight sparingly, no reason to announce his presence visually if he could avoid it. Voices—some angry, some frightened—closed on him with every forward step he took, the blacked-out mansion feeling like a carnival funhouse with all the fun stripped out of it, replaced by sudden death.

  He still led with the USAS
-12, trusting the scattergun to sweep away whatever human obstacles he met along the way. By his count, he had thirteen buckshot rounds remaining in the shotgun’s magazine, and two more mags waiting to take its place. When those were gone, he’d switch off to the K-1 carbine and continue on, combing the house until he found its owner or the North Korean agent who appeared to be Shin’s prisoner, no longer an ally.

  And in the meantime, he would try like hell to stay alive.

  * * *

  SHIN BON-JAE FELT lost in his own home. It was the first time he’d experienced a blackout at the mansion, and no matter how he strained to picture every room, each hallway winding through the house, he felt disoriented, second-guessing where he was, crowding the bodyguard he’d taken with him from the torture chamber, hoping that the man could help him find his way. It helped when his companion drew a compact Maglite LED flashlight, its batteries projecting a white beam that swept ahead of them, through the shadows, like light saber in some Star Wars extravaganza.

  Shin was unarmed and knew his bodyguard carried a pistol only, drawn now from its hidden holster after they heard gunfire echoing from somewhere on the ground floor. It was difficult to peg the source, darkness combining with dozens of intervening walls and doors to baffle sound and turn Shin’s senses inside out.

  He knew where other weapons could be found—a special armory concealed from casual inspection when he hosted visitors—but where was it, exactly, from their current position? Calling a halt to get his bearings, Shin decided it was three rooms farther on and to his left, a hidden closet in the library that opened when he touched a special latch, revealing long guns racked and ready, pistols dangling on the walls from hooks gripping their trigger guards.

  “The library!” Shin told his bodyguard. “Hurry.”

  A finite goal was helpful. Moments later they were standing in the mansion’s library, books shelved from floor to ceiling on all sides. One blank spot, in the northeast corner, yielded to Shin’s touch and bared his small but potent arsenal.

  Shin grabbed a Daewoo submachine gun, the K-7 model with its folding stock and integral suppressor. For backup he retrieved a sleek Beretta 8000 pistol, while his guard holstered the automatic in his hand and snatched up an assault rifle.

  Now they were ready for whatever they encountered in the dark—at least until they made their way outside and commandeered a car to make their getaway.

  * * *

  PARK HAE-SUNG FOLLOWED his captured flashlight’s beam upstairs to the ground floor, emerging in Shin’s kitchen from a door designed to imitate a pantry portal. Darkness still prevailed throughout the mansion, so he kept the light in his left hand, the crowbar in his right, acutely conscious of the large knife tucked under his belt. He would have felt more comfortable with a gun, but knew he would have to disarm one of Shin’s defenders to obtain one.

  Still, why not? And after that, a vehicle to get him out of there.

  Shouting and gunfire echoed through the house, adding another note of chaos to the blacked-out scene. Park faced the kitchen door, half glass, and saw pale moonlight shining on the backyard, guiding him. But he was focused on another target now. He wanted Shin Bon-jae, wanted to personally crush the rich man’s skull or cut his throat as payback for what Park had suffered in his custody.

  It was a rash move, on all levels. First, it meant prowling around the darkened house, braving gunfire, having no idea where Shin might be. Second, each moment that delayed his getaway put Park at greater risk.

  And third, of course, how would Pyongyang take it if he killed their friendly billionaire. Would that not be the final flourish on his own death warrant when word got back to Major Roh?

  Thinking of Roh only increased Park’s rage and helped him make the choice that sealed his fate. If he succeeded in destroying Shin, it meant a life in hiding from his fellow SSD assassins. But, like any agent working the illegal side, Park had some money and a new ID laid by for such emergencies.

  He wanted vengeance, and the only way to get it was to find his man, somewhere inside the midnight labyrinth of Shin’s palatial second home.

  Face set in grim determination, like a death mask, he turned his back on the tempting moonlight and moved into the darkness.

  * * *

  SHIN BON-JAE AND his lone defender, Congregation stalwart Jo Su-na, stood in a pitch-black hallway leading from the mansion’s library to the expansive formal dining room. From there they’d enter the kitchen. Shin would select a set of car keys from the rack wall-mounted near the door and make his way outside, hop into the vehicle he’d chosen—mixing size, solidity and speed—and escape.

  His time was running out in Seoul, he realized, but he was not done yet.

  Attacks on the Congregation’s hive, and now his second home, were serious but not immediately fatal. Shin still had a fortune at his fingertips, no end of places in the world where he could temporarily lie low, and countless friends who held the reins of power on both sides of the Korean DMZ. His newspapers and TV station would, of course, spin the events in any way he ordered: blaming the communists, enemies of his church, whatever came to mind once Shin had time to stop and think it through.

  He would survive to fight and earn more cash another day—unless he let himself be trapped and killed right here, right now.

  “Come on,” he ordered Jo, and nudged him toward the dining room.

  Jo’s penlight led the way, bobbing each time a new outburst of gunfire made him flinch involuntarily. Shin hung back just enough to keep from stepping on Jo’s heels—and to let any enemies they might encounter face his watchdog first, while Shin lined up a shot with his K-7 SMG.

  Survival of the fittest was the first law of the universe, the only one Shin treated as inviolate.

  He smelled smoke now—only the first taint of it, still not close enough to threaten his escape plan—and wondered if his fine, palatial home was burning. It had cost him millions. Built from nothing, with donations from his faithful followers around the world, he would shed no tears over its loss, as long as he escaped, survived, went on.

  Another eighty feet of mediocre progress brought them to a lounge that served the mansion’s dining room. When he had dinner parties, the invited guests would gather in the lounge, admire the artwork on Shin’s walls and sip whatever drinks they favored prior to sitting at the table. Conversation flowed, along with alcohol, but all of that was just a memory, no more substantial than the smoke Shin smelled.

  He prodded Jo across the lounge and through a swing door that led them to the dining room with its long table and set of eighteen matching chairs. Shin always kept his parties small enough to give each guest a measure of his personal attention, making them feel valued, wanted, loved. It was part of the charisma that had made Shin what he was.

  And what was that, exactly, with an unknown enemy about to drive him from his home?

  As Shin and Jo entered the dining room, another figure entered through a second door that served the kitchen. Shin might not have seen him, but the new arrival had a flashlight, sweeping its pale yellow beam across the room where Shin had sat and broken bread with friends in bygone days.

  “Identify yourself!” Jo called out to the man who held the light, his penlight’s beam lancing through the dark.

  The man did not give his name. Instead he swept his own light over them, found Shin and offered him a bleak, horrible smile.

  * * *

  CHAN TAESUN HAD to use another of the M308-1 grenades. She had not planned on it. Knew it was dangerous to set the mansion ablaze when she had not found her quarry and had no idea where Matthew Cooper had gone. But three of Shin’s defenders armed with automatic weapons had surprised her, pinning her down in what appeared to be a sitting room, with sofa clusters spotted here and there, facing a huge, wall-mounted LED television set.

  Boys and their toys, she thought.
Age never seemed to make the slightest difference.

  The TV set was gone now, blasted into hissing slivers by a burst of automatic rifle fire, and she was sprawled behind a three-piece sofa set that did a fair job of absorbing bullets but would not last indefinitely. Pinned without a chance to use her submachine gun, Chan saw no way out except to use one of the napalm bombs, which would, in turn, ignite a firestorm in the sitting room and make her escape a dicey proposition even without hostile bullets swarming overhead.

  She took the chance, freeing one of the fat eggs from her belt and priming it, lobbing it overhand in the direction of the crackling gunfire meant to drive her out and cut her down. Four seconds later came the blast and then the mighty whoosh of flames as they consumed her screaming enemies, setting a full half of the spacious room on fire.

  Chan bolted, half expecting rifle slugs to find her, but the only adversary she could see was busy leaping, dancing, vainly slapping at the flames engulfing him. She might have spared a mercy burst but nearly panicked as the napalm’s heat wave crisped her eyebrows, sucking air out of the room into its fiery heart. If she did not escape to clean air soon...

  She burst into a hallway, relatively free of smoke, though it would not take long to fill. Disoriented by her brush with death, Chan turned left on a whim, to leave the spreading fire behind her, and moved on toward what she guessed had to be the mansion’s formal dining room, calling to Cooper on her headset.

  Hoping he would answer soon, that he could still answer at all.

  * * *

  PARK KNEW HE could not close the gap between him and Shin Bon-jae before the master’s bodyguard could aim and fire. Instead, Park lobbed the crowbar, putting all his strength behind the pitch, seeing the black tool wink with glimmers of the penlight’s beam before it struck.

  Park was not skilled enough to have the weapon stick on impact, like a javelin, but it smashed into the oval face of Shin’s watchdog, breaking his nose, perhaps a cheekbone, maybe even fracturing his skull as he slumped backward, triggering a short burst toward the dining room ceiling.