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  Sometimes she wondered whether that would ever change and, if it did, exactly how she might react.

  Chan heard the intercom announcing touchdown of the Asiana Airlines flight she had been waiting for. If Incheon International lived up to its reputation, Matthew Cooper should be clearing the arrivals gate within twelve minutes flat. Checking her watch, she shifted in her plastic chair and started counting, as she put that record to the test.

  In fact, he beat it, striding down the concourse after only ten minutes. Chan spotted him among the nationals returning from overseas and stuffed-shirt Western businessmen—a muscular, ruggedly handsome Yank who traveled only with a carryon and scanned the terminal with watchful eyes, seemingly unfazed by what he saw.

  Rising, Chan pulled the small handwritten cardboard sign from underneath her blazer, raising it into the stranger’s line of sight.

  * * *

  AIRPORTS IN ASIA varied with regard to size, hygiene and the amount of capital poured into them, but other aspects always struck Mack Bolan as the same.

  For starters, all those serving major urban areas were jam-packed, teeming with humanity of every class, crowding the concourse, giving way reluctantly, even for the nagging chimes of golf carts bearing physically disabled travelers. Guards in uniform surveyed the throng, doing the very least they could—in essence, nothing—to resolve the tangle of slow-moving, sometimes totally inert, pedestrians unless some physical disturbance broke out in the terminal. Some fliers rushed to reach the exits, jostling anyone who blocked their way, while others barely cleared the planes before they stopped at fast-food restaurants to stuff their faces, frequently blocking the thoroughfare.

  Restless after his long and rather boring transpacific flight, it came as a distinct relief when Bolan spied the cardboard sign, written in Magic Marker, reading Matthew Cooper. Angling toward it by degrees, returning nudge for nudge and shove for shove to clear a path, he rapidly assessed the woman who had raised the sign as being in her late twenties, attractive, fit and carrying a pistol on her right hip, underneath a tailored navy blazer.

  And the photo emailed to his phone by Stony Man pegged her as Lieutenant Chan Taesun.

  He reached her, finally, and said, “Lieutenant Chan? Matt Cooper.”

  “Welcome, sir. Is this your first visit to the Republic of Korea?”

  Small talk, not a probing question. Bolan answered. “No, and there’s no ‘sir’ for me. I’m strictly unofficial here.”

  “As I was told,” she said, “but very little else. Perhaps you would explain it in the car?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. “Lead on.”

  They cleared the terminal, the process taking longer than Bolan had needed to deplane upon arrival, and he found Lieutenant Chan’s car waiting in a red zone at the curb. Although unmarked, it was a standard-issue cruiser for the NIS and wore government license plates, a giveaway to anyone who knew what to look for.

  “We’ll need to get another ride at some point,” he advised her once he’d settled in the front passenger’s seat, Lieutenant Chan behind the wheel immediately to his left.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” she inquired, sounding suspicious.

  “Nothing on the face of it,” he said. “It has good speed and handling, but there won’t be any hiding it from the people I’m looking for.”

  She nodded, said, “I see.” No spy or cop alive trusted department “unmarked” cars for major undercover work. “And who, exactly, are you looking for, if I may ask?”

  “I have two targets,” Bolan answered bluntly. “One is Shin Bon-jae, guru of the Omega Congregation.”

  “He’s a great deal more than that,” Chan said as she pulled into the flow of traffic and began to navigate her way out of the airport.

  “I’ve read his file,” Bolan advised her. “A financial fat cat, sometimes kingmaker, and friend of politicians up and down the food chain. What he wants, he gets.”

  “Within the law, of course,” she answered with a small half smile.

  “Of course.”

  “And target number two?”

  “A North Korean SSD agent named Park Hae-sung, if he’s around.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name,” Chan said, “but I can check the files. If he’s in the Republic, then by definition, he’s illegal, subject to immediate arrest.”

  “And if he’s tied to Shin Bon-jae? What kind of complication are you dealing with?” Bolan inquired.

  She answered with a question of her own. “Do you have evidence of that?”

  “He’s absolutely linked to Lee Jay-hyun,” Bolan replied.

  “Shin’s man in the United States?”

  “Ex-man,” Bolan said. “He’s no longer fronting for the Congregation.”

  “Oh, since when?” she asked.

  “Since he died last night.”

  Chan blinked. “That will discomfit Shin considerably.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  “If I may ask, how did he die?”

  “Multiple gunshots, with a dose of fire.”

  “I see. And were you present at the time by any chance?”

  “Coincidentally. Did anyone explain this deal to you?”

  “I was ordered to meet you. I am here.” Her eyes flicked to the Hyundai’s rearview mirror, locked there for a beat before she said, “And now, it seems we have a tail.”

  * * *

  “STAY AFTER THEM!” Shim In-tak ordered.

  At the wheel of their black Samsung QM5, Heo Myung replied, “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “No backtalk!” Shim snapped. “Stay close or we may lose them.”

  “On the bridge?” Heo replied. “It isn’t possible.”

  He had a point. While they were on the Yeongjong Bridge, cruising for nearly three miles over open water, there was nowhere for the occupants of the Hyundai Sonata to go unless they stopped dead in the flow of traffic, left their vehicle and leaped 243 feet to the sea below. A certain suicide. Likewise, it was impossible for Heo to close in, restricted as they were by traffic flowing toward the mainland.

  “When we get to Seoul, then,” Shim answered, unwilling to be stumped by a mere driver. “What if they evade us then?”

  Heo rolled his eyes. “If you can think of any way to move up closer, let me know.”

  Behind Shim, Son Bo-mi observed, “We could get out and run up to them. Kill them where they sit.”

  Another idiot, Shim thought, and managed not to sigh. “Two problems, Son,” he said. “First, we were told to follow and collect them, not to murder them before a thousand witnesses. Second, if we follow your plan, how would we get away?”

  Embarrassed, Son replied, “I did not think. I am sorry.”

  “There is no need to apologize,” Shim said. “But try to think next time.”

  “Who are they?” Ju Junsu inquired. He was the Samsung’s other backseat passenger. Ju cradled a Daewoo K-1 carbine in his lap, while Son clung to a USAS-12—the 12-gauge Universal Sports Automatic Shotgun manufactured by Daewoo Precision Industries, which turned out nearly all of the Republic’s military small arms.

  This time Shim was ready with at least a partial answer. “The driver is an agent from the NIS. Her passenger, as you can see, has just arrived in Seoul.”

  “We don’t know who he is or why he’s wanted?” Heo asked.

  “We have our orders,” Shim replied defensively. “If more knowledge was necessary, I’d have been informed.”

  “In other words—”

  “There are no other words!” Shim cut the driver short. “Just do your job and drive the car.”

  A snort from Ju in the backseat told Shim he had scored, at last.

  By now they were within a hundred yards or so of the mainland, specifi
cally, a portion of Seoul’s teeming waterfront. Lunchtime was ending on the docks below them, stevedores and other laborers returning to their tasks, unloading ships or loading them, transferring cargo onto trucks or boxcars, where the rail lines passed close to land’s end. When cars began debarking from the bridge, there would be half a dozen streets for them to follow, fanning out from there into throbbing heart of Incheon, still more than thirty miles from the Republic’s capital.

  “Be ready when they leave the bridge,” Shim ordered Heo. “At your first chance, box them in and we shall take them from the car.”

  “The woman will be armed,” Heo replied.

  This time Shim fairly sneered at him, answering, “Fortunately, so are we.”

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD SWIVELED in his seat to see the Samsung SUV five car lengths to their rear, partly concealed behind a minivan. He counted four heads in the vehicle as he asked Chan, “You’re sure they’re tailing us?”

  “There’s no mistake,” she answered. “I first saw them at a yellow curb outside the airport terminal.”

  “Not picking up?” he asked.

  “Just sitting. Watching us walk out.”

  “You didn’t mention it.”

  “I wasn’t positive until they started following. They might have just been waiting for someone, but no one left or joined them before we pulled out.”

  “Okay. Four men. We should assume they’re armed. What are you carrying?”

  Chan drew the near side of her blazer back, letting him see the autoloader on her belt.

  “That’s it?”

  “I have a submachine gun in the trunk,” she said.

  “No good to us back there.”

  “I’m planning to evade them when we leave the bridge, not fight a battle.”

  “That is, if we have a choice. Speaking of which, if you can shake them, I’ll be needing weapons.”

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked, sounding suspicious now.

  Returning to his earlier question, he asked, “Didn’t anyone explain this bit to you?”

  “Which ‘bit’?”

  “First thing, I’m not a law-enforcement officer. I don’t belong to any US agency.” It was a lie, but it would have to do. He pressed ahead. “I’m not collecting evidence or building any kind of case for trial. I’m after Shin Bon-jae, plus Park Hae-sung and anyone behind them, one side or the other of the DMZ.”

  Chan had her eyes back on the rearview mirror as she asked, “When you say ‘after’ them...”

  “They’re tied to the sarin gassings in Los Angeles. Ideally, I’d like to find out how and why, on whose behalf. Whether I pin all of that down or not, I take them out.”

  She nearly hit the brakes at that, half turning in the driver’s seat to face him. “You are an assassin?”

  “I’m a soldier. This is war. I take it to the enemy.”

  “Your enemy, from crimes committed in America. But this is the Republic of Korea.”

  “And it’s been cleared with Seoul, through Washington.”

  “To simply kill one of the richest men in Asia, possibly provoking armed retaliation from the DPRK?”

  “Someone really should have given you a heads-up on the program,” Bolan said.

  “Well, they did not.”

  “So, here’s the bright side—all you have to do is shake the goons behind us, drop me someplace I can rent a car, and go back to your normal life. Forget we ever met and shut the TV news off for a while.”

  “You just expect me to—”

  “Do what your boss told you to do,” Bolan cut in, “and put it out of mind. But, first things first.”

  “The followers.”

  “Affirmative. We can’t drag a parade behind us into Seoul. We need to lose them one way or another.”

  “I shall try my best.

  “And failing that,” he said, “start thinking of a place where we can draw them in and take them by surprise. There must be someplace like that on the waterfront or on the road to Seoul.”

  “A trap, you mean.”

  He nodded and repeated it. “A trap.”

  They were running out of bridge. Ahead of them, some cars were already debouching onto surface streets, peeling away in various directions on their chosen course into Incheon. Bolan felt naked without weapons, but he couldn’t help that now. If they were forced to fight their stalkers, if Chan led the enemy into a trap, he’d try to reach the SMG in the Sonata’s trunk. That ought to even up the game a little, although his side still would be outnumbered and, presumably, outgunned.

  No matter. Bolan had faced killer odds before—some very recently—and had survived, unlike the enemies who tried to put him down. If he could question these pursuers, that would be ideal, but he might also need a miracle to capture one of them alive.

  More likely, they would simply have to go—by any means available.

  And that was Bolan’s specialty.

  * * *

  CHAN TAESUN WAS confused and—yes, she could admit it—worried by the fact that she and Cooper had been spotted at the airport and followed to Incheon by what appeared to be a group of thugs. She was not frightened yet, per se, her normal disposition did not lean toward weakness of that sort, but if the circumstances had been different, she would have used her two-way radio by now to summon help.

  Unfortunately, Chan’s orders for this assignment ruled out contact with her headquarters except in the case of dire emergency. In her opinion, being followed through the streets of Incheon with no shots fired did not rise to that level of necessity—and by the time shots were fired, if they were, a shout for help would come too late.

  According to her captain’s orders, Chan’s involvement with the tall American was meant to be a secret from the bulk of her department, even from the captain, if she understood his convoluted phrasing properly. And, speaking of confused, it seemed she had been assigned to drive a foreign killer around Seoul, exacting payback for the sarin murders in America, his vague description of the mission up to now leaving her all the more troubled.

  “They’re closing in,” Bolan said.

  “I can see that,” she informed him. “Are you still intent on trapping them?”

  “It works for me.”

  “There is a street nearby,” she said. “It has a canning factory, abandoned, and some warehouses employed for storage. Traffic rarely is a problem.”

  “Workmen?” Bolan asked her.

  “Not unless a load is being picked up or delivered to one of the warehouses.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  “Your plan, in that case?”

  “Gain a lead on them, if you can manage it. Get to the ambush site, pull in and turn around so we’ll be facing them. Open the trunk soon as you stop, so I can grab the SMG.”

  “A firefight, then.”

  “Unless these four want to surrender.”

  “And if this is some kind of mistake? If they are merely travelers?”

  “You would have shaken them by now,” Bolan replied.

  He was correct, she knew, and as they wound through streets adjacent to the waterfront, Chan felt the tingle of excitement she had experienced in other situations rife with danger, starting at her nape, stirring the short hairs there and then racing down her spine. It was, she knew, the fight-or-flight response, and Chan Taesun had never cared for flight.

  As if in answer to her silent thought, Chan noted movement in the rearview mirror and beheld one of the chase car’s occupants now leaning from the window of its right-front door, aiming some kind of weapon at her Hyundai. Before she had a chance to warn Cooper, the gunman fired, missed shattering her rear window but striking the left-side window post. The bullet made a clang as if someone had thrown a rock at the Sonata.

/>   “A mistake?” Bolan said, not quite smiling. “Travelers?”

  Chan felt a rush of angry color to her cheeks. She stood on the accelerator, burning rubber through an intersection where the light had turned against her, while a semi driver blew his air horn in a mammoth bleat of protest. She rolled on, with Cooper swiveled in his seat, watching the would-be killers closing in behind them.

  “How much farther?” he demanded.

  “Four, maybe five, blocks.”

  “Remember, pull in, gain distance if you can and then reverse directions.”

  “I heard you the first time!”

  As it was, in her excitement, Chan came close to driving past the street she wanted, braking only at the final instant with a curt, “Hang on!” to Cooper as she cranked the Sonata’s steering wheel and worked its pedals. Not quite rising on two wheels, they made the corner, roaring past the empty factory that once canned tuna, squid and crab. No trucks or men were loitering around the warehouses that lined both sides of the remaining cul-de-sac.

  She’d gained a hundred yards or so on their pursuers, noting they’d also nearly missed the turn into what she now thought of as their trap. “Hang on!” she warned Cooper again, putting the Hyundai through a tire-screeching turn that left them rocking when she stopped the car, now facing the direction from which they’d entered.

  “The trunk!” he snapped.

  Before she popped the lever, Chan told him, “The submachine gun is a Daewoo XK-9. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Rings a bell,” Bolan replied, already rolling from his seat. “I’ll do my best.”

  6

  “They’re turning!” Shim shouted. “Follow them! Turn! Turn!”

  “I can see, asshole!” Heo barked back at him while skidding through the turn.

  Shim might have struck his driver then, would have been well within his rights for Heo calling him an asshole, but he was afraid that he would crash the speeding Samsung QM5.