CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Las Vegas, Nevada
Mack Bolan glanced down at his watch and sighed: 12:04. Only a minute had passed since he’d last checked the time. Patience was a virtue, and taking part in a stakeout held about as much appeal to him as dental work. But there was little he could do about it. The first move would be up to the enemy, and there was still the chance that the REDI agents had been warned off and wouldn’t even show up. Bolan had no control over that. All he could do was wait and hope he and the others had made the right choice coming here.
The Stony Man operative was crouched behind a large trash container at the end of a cul-de-sac in Headliner Estates, a new Vegas housing development two miles west of the Strip. The roads running through the complex—all named after legendary Vegas performers—had been paved less than a week earlier, and Bolan could still smell the fresh asphalt in the late-night breeze. A half moon hung in the night sky, flashing its pale light on the skeletal framework of two dozen homes targeted for completion by year’s end. Three of the structures were finished already. One was the display home, located a block away just inside the security gates, where prospective buyers could get a sense of what a half-million dollars would get them in the present housing market. The other two homes were located on the Liberace Lane cul-de-sac where Bolan had positioned himself an hour ago. The house to Bolan’s immediate right had been bought by a family of trapeze artists that performed twice nightly at Circus Circus. The Flying Herreras weren’t home, however. Last night they’d been moved into a VIP suite at the Venetian so that FBI agents could use their place for a staging area as they kept an eye on the house next door.
The second home had been purchased earlier in the month by Kang Moo-Hyun, one of the defectors from the Korean nuclear team. Kang was presently ensconced at a fortified FBI safehouse in Carson City. His home had been taken over by yet another Bureau team headed up by Scanlon and a Korean-American agent who closely resembled Kang. Jayne Bahn was with the second team. Like Bolan, she’d wanted to take up a position outside, but Scanlon had overruled her. If Bahn held to her reputation for constant banter and wisecracking, however, Bolan suspected that by now Scanlon was regretting his decision.
As the minutes crept by, Bolan shifted his position slightly, relieving a cramp in his right calf. No one had ventured out of the two homes and the only activity he’d seen in the past hour had been that of a lone coyote wandering past one of the unfinished houses. Off in the distance he could see the ambient gleam of the Strip as well as the lights of planes lifting off or arriving at McCarran International Airport. Now and then a car would make its way along the main road leading past the housing complex, but Bolan doubted that the North Koreans would make so obvious an approach. More likely, he figured, they would arrive on foot, slipping down from the undeveloped foothills. From his post, Bolan had a clear view of the hills, where the Bureau had placed an additional four agents in the hope of intercepting the assassins before they could reach their destination. Bolan couldn’t see the G-men but assumed they were concealed behind some of the scattered clumps of mesquite and tumbleweed that dotted the otherwise barren landscape.
Bolan’d had a snack back at the urgent care facility in Laughlin, but as the stakeout dragged on, his stomach began to rumble. He tuned out the hunger pangs and busied himself with yet another cursory inspection of his small arsenal. Besides the Desert Eagle pistol clutched in his right hand, there was an M-16 assault rifle propped against the side of the garbage dumpster, and clipped to the ammo belt strapped around the waistband of his slacks were a pair of flash grenades and a wide-barreled Bellhauser 12-A flare gun. The Bureau had additionally given him a pair of night-vision goggles, but Bolan didn’t like the way they compromised his peripheral vision and figured he’d make do with the moonlight.
Bolan was also wearing a light-weight, bi-comm headset and, at a quarter past midnight, he got a call from Scanlon, who was posted at the rear window of Kang’s second-story rec room.
“We have a possible situation in the foothills,” came the whispered message.
Bolan waited for more details. When he didn’t get them, he asked, “How about some specifics?”
“We’ve lost radio contact with our men there.”
Bolan couldn’t believe it. “All four of them?”
“Affirmative,” Scanlon replied. There was tension in the man’s voice. “We’re calling in the chopper.”
The Bureau had an Apache assault helicopter on standby in a desert wash two miles from the housing development. Bolan, however, wasn’t about to wait around for the chopper’s assistance.