Ballistic Force

CHAPTER ONE


Koreatown, Los Angeles, California

The two men huddled in the littered backstreet alley. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” John Kissinger asked Mack Bolan, a.k.a. the Executioner.

Bolan smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “A little late to be asking that, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but still…” Kissinger didn’t finish his sentence.

Bolan was years removed from the time when his actions were motivated primarily by a hunger for vengeance, but Kissinger had asked for help in avenging the torture execution of a long-time DEA field agent he’d worked with before he’d been brought into the Stony Man fold. Given the number of times Kissinger had covered his back in the heat of battle, Bolan wasn’t about to turn down his friend’s request.

“Let’s do it,” Bolan told his colleague.

The two men stood in an alley located at the periphery of L.A.’s Koreatown, home for more transplanted natives of that long-divided Asian peninsula than any other locale on the planet. Most of the signs and billboards in the neighborhood—as well as the majority of the omnipresent graffiti scrawls—were in Korean, and the few early morning pedestrians Bolan and Kissinger had driven past while approaching their staging position had been Korean, as well.

The population was continuing to grow and so it was no surprise that this rundown neighborhood of warehouses and loft buildings was slowly being converted into residential housing. Work crews were already out in full force across the alley, gutting the one-time shipping headquarters for a long-defunct furniture manufacturer so that it could be turned into an apartment complex. Bolan and Kissinger welcomed the noise and clouds of dust. They were being backed up by three DEA agents, but there were an estimated twelve Korean gang members holed up in the building they were about to raid: any diversion would help level the playing field once the action began.

The building in question, located around the corner from where the two men were readying their weapons, was a four-story cinder block with faded paint, boarded windows and a condemnation notice posted next to the main entrance. For years the absentee landlord had ignored the city’s demands to make repairs following the ’94 earthquake and any day the structure would come under the wrecking ball. In the meantime, according to DEA intel, the Korean gang—self-christened the Asian Killboys—had taken up residence and made the site the waystation for their drug-dealing. It was there that DEA agent Rick Starr had been taken after a botched stakeout the week before. The feeling was that he’d refused to cooperate while being interrogated, because when his body had been discovered three miles away in a vacant lot next to a strip mall on Western Avenue, he’d been covered with cigarette burns and was missing his tongue as well as three fingers. Kissinger had learned of the torture while attending Starr’s funeral and even before the agent’s body had been laid to rest he’d vowed to strike back against his friend’s tormentors. Now, as he glanced at his watch and confirmed that the raid was about to begin, Kissinger steeled himself and murmured under his breath, “This one’s for you, buddy.”

At 7:35 p.m., right on schedule, a garbage truck rumbled past the renovation site and headed toward the condemned building. Both Kissinger and Bolan knew that a DEA agent was behind the wheel and that another officer was hiding in the rear hold. Bolan leaned forward and peered around the corner, glancing at the rooftop of the building directly adjacent to their target. There, the third agent soon appeared. He rose from a crouch once he reached the roof’s edge and took a few tentative swings before tossing a grappling hook across the twenty-foot gap separating the two structures. His aim was true and when he pulled the line taut, the hook snagged on the other roof’s outer ledge and held firm. Shifting hands, the agent grabbed a short-stocked rifle loaded with tear gas rounds and took aim at one of the few top-floor windows still paned with plate glass.

“Showtime,” Bolan muttered.

In unison, the Executioner and Kissinger charged from the alley and sprinted toward the condemned building. Bolan was armed with a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. Kissinger’s M-16 carbine had a flash-bang grenade loaded in its submounted M-203 launcher. As Stony Man’s resident weaponsmith, Kissinger had further tinkered with the rifle, shortening the barrel by three inches and the stock by an inch and half, making it more maneuverable in close quarters without sacrificing performance or accuracy.

The Stony Man operatives were halfway to their target when the garbage truck’s hydraulic arms groaned to life, lifting its mawlike scoop out of the hold. As the scoop swept up toward one of the boarded windows on the second floor, the agent hiding inside rose into view. He had a MP-5 subgun slung over his left shoulder, leaving his hands free to use a crowbar on the slab of plywood. Once he’d started to loosen the plank, his colleague on the adjacent rooftop fired a tear gas round into the top floor. By then, the driver of the garbage truck had gotten out of the vehicle and was circling to the rear entrance of the target building, cradling his own MP-5 close to his chest.