Cold Snap

The two men, relatively secure with at least their fighting knives, still knew the best weapons in their arsenals were their alertness and the knowledge gained through dozens of ambushes and years of accumulated experience in the dark, dangerous back alleys of the globe. Right now, both men cautiously made their way through a literal alley in Tokyo, far from the neon-splashed streets that made the city synonymous with ultramodern and high technology. Here, just a few yards from automobiles run on lithium batteries and storefronts packed with the latest in electronics, streetlights came in the form of rare rice-paper lanterns lit from within by candles and security relied upon the alert nose and ears of a guard dog.

As assuredly as the two warriors of Phoenix Force were currently operating without benefit of firepower, history showed that the presence of assault rifles and shotguns would not be tamped by Japanese law. Tokyo was a city where air-soft replicas of the latest in front-line rifles was commonplace to the point where professional teams formed to engage in mass simulated gun battles. Hawkins and Manning simply knew they didn’t want to risk an engagement with an already edgy and on-alert Tokyo law-enforcement community. They could not risk the attention that guns would bring, not when they were here in a wholly unofficial status to meet with a NOC—a non-official cover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Whoever was working the angles of ruining the Japanese international image and national economy had made certain to work within operational security parameters that precluded any form of electronic communication. The NOC, however, had raised a report about RUMINT—intelligence gathered by rumor, in the parlance of normal, non-spy folks. It was a slim lead, one that had only been spotted through the tireless perusal of Huntington Wethers. A former cybernetics professor at UCLA, Wethers was now one of the computer wizards back at the Farm. He was nothing if not meticulous in looking for every possible thread of information, especially those that frayed and fell by the wayside of official investigation.

In Phoenix Force’s line of work, they knew that sometimes rumors were true. The five members of this world-spanning team had become urban legends in their own right, often identified as either members of a CIA black operations group or a special SWAT team under the aegis of INTERPOL, both of which were far from the truth. It was the blurry line between official backing that allowed the Farm’s commandos to board U.S. military aircraft bound for war or to be assigned to federal law-enforcement task forces and “unsanctioned” operations that kept their hands from being tied as they did not fear the diplomatic fallout from bringing down corrupt “allies” or rogues from within the United States government. Stony Man Farm had been developed specifically to avoid the entanglements of agency jurisdictional pride or the public face of international allegiances with those to whom human rights violations or the support of criminal or terrorist enterprises was not a point of concern.

Phoenix Force and Able Team were highly agile, quickly deployable teams that answered to the law of their own consciences. While special interest groups turned congressional debate over resolving issues into an endless circle of inane logic and politically advantageous rhetoric, the Farm’s cybernetic apparatus could burn through the internet, seeking out the true trails of evidence leading to the guilty. Able Team or Phoenix Force, or often both, would then be dispatched to properly solve the problem.

Those solutions usually ended with cold-hearted, greedy or fanatical murderers torn asunder by precision gunfire, all while minimizing the risk to noncombatants and bystanders as befitting a Stony Man commando. It was far more than a matter of pride that none of the Stony Man operatives had ever intentionally harmed an innocent person in the course of a mission. Be it combat or grim laser-precise direct action, the only ones who died were those who had innocent blood on their hands.

“Something feels wrong,” Manning murmured under his breath. Fortunately the hands-free communicator built into his nearly invisible earpiece allowed him to be heard loudly and clearly by Hawkins.

The Texan himself was also aware of a feeling of dread, of a potential for doom that hung in the air. He’d picked up a familiar scent wafting through the night air as he and the Canadian had made their way toward the small house owned by the NOC. “You catch a whiff of that?”

Manning, in the dim light of a distant rice-paper lamp, frowned deeply, his features darkening in the lengthened shadows. “Dead body.”

Hawkins scanned the small cube home of their contact and noticed that one of the windows was cracked open only slightly. He moved closer to the sill and took a deep sniff. It was with a queasy certainty that he could tell the exact length of time the corpse had been moldering inside the house just by the faint odor leaking through a window left ajar. “Seven hours.”

Manning nodded agreement with Hawkins’s assessment. The brawny man went to the door and, deftly drawing the Tanto from its sheath, hammered the chiseled point into the doorjamb just off to the side of the door handle and lock combination. Against wood and brass, and focused by the sturdy knife, Manning was more than adequate to open the locked door with the sound of a sharp crack in the space of only a moment.

Hawkins had his knife out, the Karambit held with his trigger finger through the loop, the wicked talon of the blade sticking out from the bottom of his fist. The grip was rock-solid, making it nearly impossible to pry from his grasp. He also produced a powerful LED Surefire pocket-size flashlight. He was to take point and would only activate the switch when he absolutely needed to illuminate a target.

Neither Hawkins nor Manning had anticipated the need for night-vision goggles, so the less they used their flashlights, the better their natural senses would allow them to maneuver in the darkness. Less utilization of flashlights would also lower their profile.

Like it or not, if the Tokyo police showed up to a house with a corpse inside, Hawkins and Manning had both illegally broken into the dwelling. Suspicion over the death would fall on them.

Manning clicked his tongue and Hawkins glanced back at his partner. The Canadian had had the foresight to bring along latex gloves to minimize the chances of leaving behind fingerprints or DNA. Hawkins pocketed the knife and sheathed the Karambit swiftly to free up his hands for donning the gloves, then quickly rearmed and readied the light to scan the shadows if necessary.

“Won’t have much time,” Manning mused softly. “The door cracking open will have been heard by someone.”

“This doesn’t seem like an area with a lot of 9-1-1 callers,” Hawkins said, following his nose to the body.

The Texan came to a halt, seeing the outline of the body on the floor.

In life, her name had been Veronica Moone. At least, that was the name given to her nonofficial cover. She’d been there in the guise of a young college graduate traveling abroad, living in Japan, sometimes working as a translator and sometimes teaching American English to local students. The ruse had given her plenty of room to move around, allowing her to travel to different Japanese cities for schools or businesses needing English translators. Invariably she’d had an inside edge for identifying potential threats to those global corporations.

In her role, either speaking to the parents of grade-school students or conversing with young businessmen looking to make it easier for themselves internationally, she could pick up details and information with far greater precision than the most advanced satellite imagery.

Moone wasn’t the name she’d been born with, Hawkins doubted, any more than their cover names were real.

Seven hours and her body was still in rigor. Kneeling beside her, he used what little ambient light was available to look for signs of injury. Barring that, he cupped his fingers over the lens of the flashlight and the glow between his fingers and a gleam he let loose to splash over her body. Shielding the light from being visible through the windows gave him immediate illumination, both figuratively and literally.

A line of bruising on her throat, marked by a large knot of blackness over her windpipe, revealed the tool of her death as being a garrote.

Manning took a glance, then frowned. “Silk scarf with a coin knotted into the middle.”

“Or para-cord around a large chain link,” Hawkins said, though he didn’t really believe that. “Why in hell would someone kill her along the lines of a Thuggee killer?”

Manning’s shrug didn’t give Hawkins any good vibes. Unfortunately, Manning’s familiarity with the cultlike murder/assassination was only too much of an indicator of how often different killers resorted to techniques such as these. Hawkins hadn’t been on the team in one instance where the masterminds behind a new Thuggee cult had gone so far as to create an animatronic statue of the Thuggee’s deadly goddess Kali, complete with a compact microwave laser unit installed in her elaborate headdress that could kill with a single robotic glance.

“The Thuggee, the Assassins, the Ninja, they’re all effective, and the more they appear as something either cultlike or outré, the more layers of obfuscation fall between the murderer and the victim,” Manning said. “We’re likely the only two people in this city, or even Japan, who could have figured out that Veronica here was murdered because she was a CIA operative instead of just a poor unlucky victim of a death goddess fetishist.”

“Striker ran into some Thuggee like this a while back, too, only operating in the Middle East,” Hawkins returned. “And let’s not forget England and the so-called Ripper killer.”

“Makes you wonder if fifty to a hundred years from now, some hush-hush group disguises their disposal of witnesses as the work of a fiend with a machete and a hockey mask,” Manning mused.

Moone, her mousy-brown hair cut short, but not boyishly so, might have been more attractive if all the blood had not drained from the right side of her face, leaving it gaunt, and settled into the left side, rendering it bloated and discolored. Her hazel eyes glinted in the shielded light, her having died with them open.

“Not a real Thuggee. They always close the eyes of their victims,” Hawkins noted.

“Obfuscation, obfuscation,” Manning repeated grimly. He turned away from the scene and moved toward the back of the house. The front door was locked, and there might have been another exit.

Hawkins knew that the death she suffered would not have been easy or gentle. The coin in the center of the garrote would have crushed her windpipe, so even if the pressure had been released, she would have had no chance of getting another breath. The strangling cord had been pulled tight, but there were no signs of fists balled up against the underside of her mandibles, meaning that while she’d suffocated, her brain had received blood. Moone wouldn’t have passed out.

A crust of dried tears pooled at the corners of her eyelids. Her end had been slow. Cruel. Meticulous.

All to cover up a conspiracy. This woman, who genuinely had taught people a language they’d wanted to learn, had been murdered. She’d gained information about what might have been a clue as to why shiploads of Japanese whalers died in a salvo of ship-busting missiles. Hawkins normally had a low opinion of those who engaged in wanton murder, but so far the logic of these brutal deaths escaped him.

Certainly, Hawkins had more than a little passing concern for the smart, almost relatable giant mammals of the ocean. Even as a good-ol’-boy hunter, he believed in conservation, not sloblike slaughter. He couldn’t fathom the slaughter of an endangered animal just to make a rug or to simply get a piece of rhinoceros horn to enhance the strength of their own horn. Be that as it may, the Japanese sailors killed on the factory ships were not killers. They’d simply been working jobs to feed their families.

However, many in the world saw the deaths of “evil Japanese hunters” as a cause to rejoice. Those who simply wanted to protect an endangered species, and the lawmen who sought to protect their freedom of speech, had also been slaughtered.

Dead was dead, so it shouldn’t matter, but Hawkins was offended. He was raised with strong values of what was right and what was wrong. Being murdered for doing your job was in the wrong column, so he sympathized with the Japanese sailors, and even more for the widows, orphans, surviving siblings and parents of those who’d died at sea.

Moone was a covert operative; she’d known that any one of her investigations could have brought her to a violent death. But seeing her lying there, murdered in this manner, Hawkins felt a pang of guilt for her. She looked innocent. She’d tried to do right by her country. She was a sister in arms. A face to which he could attach the statistics of those murdered.

Movement out in front of the house brought Hawkins’s attention back to the present and he rose from beside the dead girl. The light had instantly been smothered by his hand and he made certain the toggle switch was turned off. “Gary?”

“I’m out in the alley,” Manning answered over his hands-free com.

Hawkins padded in the direction his friend had gone. “Movement through the front door.”

“I’ll circle around,” the Canadian returned. “Stay put unless it’s a badge.”

“Yes, sir,” the Texan replied. He perched in the shadows by the back door, making certain that his presence was unseen in the frame of the partially open entrance.

Tense, he waited to see who would show up on the doorstep of a murdered girl. And just in case, he had both knives out and ready, hoping to greet the assassin.

CHAPTER FIVE

The door swung clumsily on its hinges, the shattered lock giving no resistance as it was pushed open and reached the apex of its usual swing with a slam. No flashlights sprayed their glare, no echo beyond the entrance to Moone’s kitchenette. T. J. Hawkins was familiar enough with police procedure to know that cops would not enter a darkened house without lights. Sure, the glare would make them an obvious focus, but in dim conditions as in Moone’s almost empty home, the blaze of LED bulbs would actually do more to blind an ambusher than anything else.

As well, police officers would also call out to inquire if anyone was in trouble within.

The bastard or bastards at the door were most likely not cops.

That meant that he and Manning had made contact with an enemy. Hawkins subvocalized confirmation to his partner. “Close them off.”

“On it,” Manning returned.

Two syllables and Hawkins knew there was nothing that would stop the big Canadian from coming to his aid short of a wall of blazing death. And even then, Manning’s combination of genius and brawn would likely find a way to punch through that barrier, as Hawkins had come to know the Phoenix Force veteran.

Even as Hawkins thought of the difference between how police and criminals would enter a house with a broken door, he replaced the small Karambit in its sheath, drawing the pocket flashlight, thumb over the cap switch. The tiny light would prove useful, not only in the prevention of mistaking Moone’s CIA contact with a murderer, but also blinding them in the darkness if they truly were here with murderous intent.

The first figure lurched into view and Hawkins hit the switch, blasting him in the face with 320 lumens of brilliance. The painful blue blaze made Hawkins’s target throw his hands up to shield his eyes and, in a moment, Hawkins could discern the brief flash of Korean features as the man backpedaled. Hawkins could also make out the gleaming silver finish of a Desert Eagle in the intruder’s hand. Normally this would have been all the justification any member of Phoenix Force would need to use their weapon to kill the armed opponent, except for two things.

T. J. Hawkins was a member of Phoenix Force, and had been chosen not just for his willingness and ability to kick ass, but also his quick wits and swift decision-making. While Hawkins had allies who regularly used the Desert Eagle magnum autoloader—Mack Bolan and Gary Manning chief among them—he had yet to see a five-foot-one Korean woman pick such a large and unwieldy weapon as her primary weapon. Hawkins held off on utilizing the Ranger knife, instead using the flat of the blade as leverage to hook the woman’s gun wrist and tug powerfully.

Her grip on the pistol broke, and instead of the clunk of heavy, high-quality steel impacting the wood flooring, it was something lighter. Hawkins also realized that the gun in the woman’s hand was not cocked. The Desert Eagle was a single-action design, with a slide-mounted safety. Carrying the gun with the hammer down was no way to use it, not without clumsily thumbing back the hammer to make it fire.

The woman had been given an air-soft replica of the pistol, likely in an effort to get her shot to death. Hawkins killed the flashlight, then swept the girl behind him. The last thing Hawkins wanted to do was to bring harm to an innocent bystander. Even as the woman dropped to the floor, the Texan was aware that she’d discovered the dead body.

“Veronica!”

The figure behind her was five-foot-six, judging by the size of his shadow, and there were yet two more in the group, both about the same height as the man in the lead. Hawkins had about five inches on all of them, and from the looming shadow behind them, Manning was about to be on hand immediately.

There was a grunting curse and Hawkins could only make it out to be an Oriental dialect. It didn’t matter what the source of the epithet was; he saw the unmistakable motions of someone raising a pistol to shoot. Hawkins clicked his flashlight on and in an instant this man, armed with what looked like a SIG-Sauer P-228, winced and half turned away from the brilliant glare of the light. The man must have had his finger on the trigger as the crack of a 9 mm round added an extra bit of flash to the darkened room.

This bastard was armed and intended to kill. With a flick of his wrist, Hawkins lunged. The broad point of his dagger hit the man just off center of his nose. The crackle of face bones and the sudden surge of paralysis striking the gunman informed the Texan his aim was true. Six inches of steel embedded into the killer’s brain. Unfortunately the blow was so powerful it lodged the knife there, ripping it from Hawkins’s grasp.

Behind the dying man, Manning grabbed one of the other two in a head-scissoring arm lock. The smaller Asian gurgled, sputtering, attracting the attention of the center man, who suddenly realized he was not beset on both sides by relative giants.

Hawkins didn’t go for the Karambit on its thong around his neck. There was a good chance these killers might have good intel on what was going on, on why it had been so vital to murder an American English teacher. Rather, he punched forward with the end of his flashlight. The Surefire model that Hawkins carried had a crown around its lens, a high-impact aluminum ring that not only could be used for protecting the lens of the flash, but also could be used as an impact weapon. The crown design, with semicircular scallops taken out of the perimeter, had been designed to snag skin rather than slip off, as well as to increase the force of the punch.

Hawkins slammed it at the corner of the man’s jaw, spiking into the juncture of nerves and blood vessels running through the neck to feed the man’s brain. With a single blow, the Texan laid him out.

In the meantime Manning had taken his opponent in a sleeper hold. Deprived of fresh blood and oxygen to the brain, his man had also passed out.

It was all over and done, but time was no longer on Phoenix Force’s side. The first of the men had fired a gunshot. If the bursting of Veronica Moone’s front door hadn’t inspired this neighborhood to call the police, that act of violence would.

“My knife is stuck in his face,” Hawkins told Manning. The Phoenix veteran nodded and applied his strength and leverage to the task of retrieving the weapon as the Texan turned to the Korean girl.

“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

“It’s okay,” Hawkins replied with a soothing drawl. “I don’t want to see you hurt, either. Are you all right?”

“They killed Ronnie,” the woman said. She was numbed.

Hawkins rested an arm around her shoulders. “We need to go. Can you come with us?”

She nodded.

“You speak Korean?” Hawkins asked. It wasn’t a foolish question. There was a population of Koreans who lived in Japan as a minority, but some of them might not have kept true with their ethnic origins. Back in Texas, Hawkins had met enough Hispanics who denied their cultural heritage, preferring to live within the flow of Texan ethnicity. They were third-and fourth-generation Americans.

“Yes,” she answered. “They gave me a gun...”

“I know,” Hawkins said, helping her to her feet.

“Hey,” Manning whispered. Hawkins turned and found his knife being handed to him, handle first, the blade wiped clean. “Their car is outside.”

“Enough room for us?” Hawkins asked, sheathing his knife.

“Just four,” Manning responded.

“Take her. I’ll catch up on foot,” Hawkins replied. He turned to the Korean girl. “Follow this man. We both want to protect you.”

She looked doubtful at first, but when Manning threw one of the goons over his left shoulder, then picked up the other unconscious man as if he were a duffel bag, she nodded.

“Don’t dawdle,” Manning suggested to his younger partner.

Hawkins shrugged. “Just enough to throw them off your trail.”

Manning nodded, knowing what his friend intended.

With that, Manning and the girl were out the front door. They piled into a minivan, emphasis on “miniature.”

All need for stealth past, Hawkins turned on the lights and examined the small home, now the worse for a second corpse. He couldn’t help but think that he’d failed Veronica Moone, but was also aware the young woman would have secured information somewhere. He mentally went over all the trade craft he’d learned and developed since becoming an operative for Stony Man Farm. The CIA NOC would have had to secure what notes she’d assembled in a place that would not be obvious, even to trained intelligence agents, but could be accessed quickly in the event of an emergency or a swift exit.

When the Koreans came to kill her, one of her first thoughts would have been about the information she’d stored away. He examined the room once again and then looked at the dead woman’s posture on the floor. She’d been dragged into the kitchen by the garrote that had crushed her windpipe. One of her shoes was in the living room, on a small rug. Hawkins thought that maybe she’d hidden her info somewhere in the relatively Spartan living area, but immediately dismissed that. She had been moving away from the kitchenette. Hawkins turned and scanned the shelves.

Two bags of rice caught his attention. One was open, partially used. The other didn’t look as if it had been opened, but the sack holding the rice had been taut, pillowlike. Hawkins went for the more stuffed bag and saw that its top flap had been secured by a swatch of duct tape.

“If your cell phone ever gets wet, put it in a container of rice to dry it out,” Hawkins murmured aloud. Considering Japan was a nation that had experienced its fair share of traumatic tidal waves, it would also prove a smart place of storage for small electronics that could hold data... He tore open the bag and sifted through. After a few moments he felt something inside. It was a PDA. Just to make certain, he rummaged through the rice some more and came away with four thumb drives.

Hawkins pocketed the items, then frisked the corpse of the murderous Korean who’d nearly shot him. There were no pieces of identification on the man, not even clothing tags. There were, however, two spare magazines for the Norinco copy of the SIG-Sauer P-228. He pocketed them, picked up the pistol and depressed the decocker, lowering the hammer and returning initial trigger pull to a drop-safe, flinch-resistant twelve pounds of weight. He pocketed the pistol and noticed the flicker of red-and-blue flashes through the open door.

The time to leave was now and he opened the back door into the alley. Hawkins’s sudden arrival startled two cats in flagrante delicto and the animals leaped away from each other, yowling in protest. It almost would have been funny, but the feline racket and their flight sent garbage can lids toppling with a gonging clatter. The police out front would no doubt have heard the noise.

Hawkins produced the NP-228 and fired two shots into the kitchen floor through the doorway. That racket would most assuredly have drawn attention, but it would also freeze the Japanese policemen where they stood. Once again, the Texan’s familiarity with police procedure, most specifically Japanese procedure, meant that he would not have to worry about inciting an international incident. The cops out front would be loath to open fire immediately, for fear of harming a possible hostage or out of concern that bullets would cut through one building and harm someone in a nearby structure.

With that lead going for him, Hawkins made the pistol safe and took off down an alley between two houses. Vaulting short fences was little effort for him, and he wove through the neighborhood as fast as he dared without attracting further attention to himself. It took him twenty minutes before he allowed himself on the main street, circling back to where he and Manning had parked their rental vehicle. The wisdom that kept them from parking too near to where they were going had served them well. The car was undisturbed, even though it was likely a half dozen police cars had driven past it.

Hawkins slid behind the wheel, fired up the engine and took to the streets back to the safe house that had been set up for him and Manning. Along the way, he took care to ensure that he wasn’t trailed, either by the law or by whichever Korean murderers had been waiting in reserve. The three men might have been bowled over by the pair of Phoenix Force veterans, but that didn’t mean they were incompetent. There could easily be backup agents elsewhere, but so far, Hawkins seemed to have lucked out.

Even so, he engaged in evasion techniques twice during the drive to the Phoenix safe house. Getting sloppy and complacent was a certain path to being shot dead. It was attention to details that had allowed the two members of the team to capture prisoners and to find a friend of the murdered CIA agent.

“That’s the assumption,” Hawkins mused. He would have to plug the devices into their sat case—a briefcase-size computer unit with USB and fire-wire ports and several sizes of flash-card data reader slots—to be sure. Through it, Able Team or Phoenix Force could instantly transmit data to Stony Man Farm for investigation. Built-in filters would catch any viruses or logic bombs hidden in potentially sabotaged data, just in case the Koreans had wanted Hawkins and Manning to find the drives and PDA.

“What’s your status?” Hawkins asked through his hands-free communicator.

Manning’s response was swift. “Prisoners secure. Girl quiet. No law-enforcement interception. No tails.”

“Good news,” Hawkins replied. “Found the agent’s stash of data and her secure device. No tails here.”

“Remain sharp,” Manning told him.

It would take a while for Hawkins to arrive at the safe house, but that allowed him time to continue searching for possible enemies. While he would have liked to forward Veronica Moone’s intel to the Farm, haste would not just make waste, it also would leave him more vulnerable to being wasted.

When he finally pulled up to the safe house—actually an abandoned store along the waterfront—he made sure the car was well hidden. The minivan was also there, empty and locked down.

Hawkins looked over the appropriated pistol. He still hadn’t taken off the latex gloves he’d been given when he and Manning had discovered the crime scene. He didn’t remove them, hopeful that he’d find fingerprints of the dead man on the gun itself. His instincts told him the three men might have been North Korean agents, especially since they’d reverted to what he assumed was Korean when they’d cursed in surprise at Hawkins’s attack. There was still a possibility that the three men might have been South Korean, as well.

If there was one truism in Southeast Asia, old grudges clung to the peoples as if they were strangling vines. Though World War II was years before, Koreans still held an enmity toward Japan and the violations of human rights inflicted upon the whole of the peninsula during their imperial expansion. People had been reduced to slave labor; thousands had been tortured or had died of overwork. In Korea, as well as China, the Japanese military had sated whatever desires their troops had had with gigantic rape camps. The men didn’t need to be North Korean to hold a grudge against Japan.

Hawkins stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket, where he kept the appropriated combat pistol. He doubted that three people could get the drop on someone as strong and smart as Manning, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

“It’s me,” Hawkins called out as he entered, unlocking the door ahead of him. As soon as he was through, he closed the door firmly and reset the locks. He saw Manning standing, arms folded. “No trouble with the prisoners?”