LITMIR.BIZ

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right.”

      “Knock it off, you two,” Bolan intervened.

      Bahn smiled at Bolan. “Come on, he’s just flirting with me, that’s all.”

      “In your dreams,” Kissinger said, suppressing a grin.

      As the plane carried the group over the arid desolation of the Mojave Valley, the head of the FBI detail, Ed Scanlon, strode up from the rear of the plane. He was a tall, lean man in his midforties, wearing an off-the-rack suit and well-scuffed Oxford shoes.

      “Got a wee bit of good news,” Scanlon announced, as he flipped his cell phone closed. “We went another round with that gang-banger and got him to spill. He confirmed what we’ve been expecting all along. One of the guys who rode off just before the raid is just the baby brother of a Killboy we’ve got chilling the morgue. The other guy’s a major player, though.”

      “REDI?” Bahn guessed.

      Scanlon eyed the woman, surprised. “You know about them?”

      She nodded. “It’s the closest thing North Korea has to our CIA. Espionage, wet work. You name it, they get the call.”

      “That’s about the size of it.” Scanlon continued, “Anyway, this guy’s name is Hong Sung-nam, and he’s bad news. We’ve got his crew linked to a handful of assassinations over in Asia, and last time we checked he was still over there.”

      “Obviously you’ll need to update your records,” Bahn taunted.

      “So it would seem,” Scanlon conceded. “We don’t know how he slipped stateside, but according to our stoolie, he showed in L.A. with a heroin shipment about a month ago and insinuated himself into the gang. Got the tattoos and everything. Apparently there were concerns that the Killboys needed more supervision so they’d spend less time butting heads with rival gangs and more time pushing the product. Of course, somewhere along the line he was rounding up info on these nuke defectors. And as long as he’s on the loose, we gotta figure he’s gonna work his way down that list you guys found.”

      “Which means unless our raid scared him off, he’s probably on his way to Nevada,” Kissinger surmised. “Just like us.”

      Scanlon nodded. “DEA’s selling that raid you were in on as strictly a drug bust. Hopefully Hong’ll buy it and stick to his game plan. We’ve got California Highway Patrol on the lookout for him, but if he’s worth his salt he’ll be able to evade any spot checks on the highways. I think our best bet’ll be to nab him when he tries to go after his next target.”

      “If I remember rightly,” Bolan recalled, “the next guy on that list lived in Vegas, not Laughlin.”

      “Good memory,” Scanlon said. “We’re changing our plans accordingly. You guys wanna play along?”

      “What do you have in mind?” Bahn asked.

      “Well,” Scanlon replied, “judging from how the three of you went gangbusters during that raid, I’m thinking you’d rather see some action instead of sniffing around Laughlin for this guy who’s third on the list.”

      “You get points for flattery,” Bahn countered, “but you’re going to have to cough up more specifics.”

      Bolan figured he knew where this was going and told Scanlon, “You want us in Vegas instead.”

      “Bingo,” Scanlon said. “We’ve got the defector there under lock and key, but we figure if we plant a look-alike at his digs along with some backup, REDI’ll come in light and we’ll be able to get the upper hand on them.”

      “And you want us for the backup,” Kissinger guessed.

      “At least part of it,” Scanlon said. “We’ll have a crew there, but we’re spread thin looking for the Laughlin guy at the same time, so a few extra bodies couldn’t hurt.”

      “Works for me,” Bahn said. “I just talked with my people and I’m green-lighted to follow through and see where this takes us.”

      Bolan quickly weighed his options. Barbara Price had already asked him and Kissinger to help with the search in Laughlin, but Scanlon had been right in pegging him as someone who preferred the more proactive course. Fortunately his standing as a Stony Man operative was such that he could unilaterally change his plan of attack as developments dictated. He turned to Kissinger.

      “How about if we split up,” he suggested. “You can take Laughlin and give that ankle a breather.”

      “While you have all the fun?” Kissinger retorted. “I don’t think so.”

      “Look, before this is over you’ll have more chances to jump into the fray.” Bolan nudged the aluminum crutches Kissinger had propped against the seat next to him. “You might as well give yourself a chance to recuperate.”

      Kissinger thought it over, then nodded. “All right, all right. Laughlin it is.”

      Bolan turned back to Scanlon. “Count me in.”

      “Same here,” Bahn chimed in.

      Kissinger stared at the woman bounty hunter, then grinned at Bolan. “Looks like I bailed just in time. Good luck, buddy. You’re going to have your hands full.”

      CHAPTER NINE

      Laughlin, Nevada

      Although the casinos in Laughlin were set along the banks of the Colorado River, the town’s population, for the most part, lived a few miles inland, just west of a huge, coal-burning power plant that today, like most days, disgorged a steady plume of dark smoke from its towering exhaust chimneys. Randall Howland, a thirty-year veteran of the FBI, had spent most of the morning choking on the smoke as he maintained surveillance on the home of Li-Roo Kohb, one-time propellant expert for the Kanggye nuclear team. Howland had parked his nondescript Chevy sedan on the shoulder of a crestline road overlooking the defector’s neighborhood. Another two agents were biding their time downhill in a second car parked just past the stop sign where Li-Roo’s street intersected with Casino Drive. They’d been on stakeout now for the better part of three hours, waiting for the defector to return home or, better yet, for a sign of the REDI crew that was supposed to be in town looking to kill Li-Roo or at least abduct him and drag him back home to North Korea.

      Howland was beginning to think they’d begun their stakeout too late. Maybe, he thought, the reason the man hadn’t answered the door earlier was because he was lying dead inside his house, already taken out by the same men who’d killed his colleague, Yong-Im Hyunsook, back in Los Angeles. That, or maybe the scientist had already been abducted. In any event, Howland had had his fill of twiddling his thumbs and breathing the exhaust from the power plant. Reaching inside his car, he keyed the dash mike and contacted his colleagues down the hill.

      “This is getting us nowhere,” he told the others. “I say we go back to Li-Roo’s place and invite ourselves in.”

      There was a moment’s hesitation before the driver of the second car replied, “Done. We’ll meet you there.”

      Howland got into his car and drove down to Casino Drive, then circled around the power plant to Yancy Drive. Li-Roo Kohb lived halfway down the block in a small, twenty-year-old starter home set back on a small plot of land that, like most of the other residences on the street, had forsaken lawns in favor of cacti, succulents and other drought-resistant plants capable of withstanding Laughlin’s brutally hot, arid summers. There were a few people out, some tending to plants, others lazily basking on their front porches in the late-afternoon heat. One of Howland’s colleagues had already gotten out of the other car and was approaching the defectors’ next-door neighbor, holding out his FBI badge. The man’s partner, Agent Sandra Pearle, was standing next to the car, which had been parked two houses down from Li-Roo’s home.

      “We should’ve done this in the first place,” she told Howland after he’d parked and joined her.

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