The Spy Devils by Joe Goldberg (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📕

Peng will come in first, scan the store, and take a tactical position in the far corner pretending to choose some snacks. Bai will follow in a few seconds. He will go to the coffee station and fill a to-go cup. When he is done, they will rotate positions so Peng can get his beverage.

They did exactly what he predicted.

A bulge in jacket near the small of their backs. Probably a Taiwan manufactured T75. Not a problem.

Bridger knew Chinese Ministry of State Security intelligence officers would typically carry a variant of the Chinese built QSZ-92 semi-automatic pistol. But when on an operation, they would acquire a handgun from the local market.

The MSS men paid the clerk at the bright white counter, exited the store, descended a few small steps, then turned right and right again down Wenchang Street.

Bridger clicked the sensor in his hand, sending the signal to his team that Bai and Peng were on their way. Bridger waited until the men had passed the side window. He stood, folded his paper under his arm, and left the 7-Eleven.

The assassins quickened their pace once they turned down Wenchang Street, now a claustrophobic narrow one-way maze of urban density. Dull apartment buildings were stacked above stores protected by corrugated metal pull-down security doors. Cars and scooters fought to occupy every inch of open sidewalk and road. Red advertising signs and green plants hanging off every apartment's balcony were the only colors besides dirty brown.

The Dragon Fire men turned left onto an arterial lane lined with more balconied apartments, cars, scooters, and trees. Under a square blue “P” parking sign, Bai and Peng stood at a door leading to a parking garage beneath the apartment complex.

“At the door,” Bridger announced.

Bai pulled the handle on the dirty white door, shooting sunlight into the darkness and exposing particles of dust swirling thick in the air. They tossed their coffee cups to the ground as they descended five steps. Peng entered first. Bai followed.

Rows of fluorescent lights spaced across the low ceiling illuminated a fifty-by-fifty-square-foot space. Concrete ran from wall to wall. Floor to ceiling. Wide support pillars were spread across the garage. Small cars, scooters, and motorcycles of every kind crowded the rest of the floor. Narrow aisles allowed just enough of a gap for the cars to squeeze their way to the ramp leading to the rusty door and the outside.

The space smelled like mildew, gasoline, and rubber tires.

Bai and Peng’s steps echoed as they moved toward a white Toyota passenger van backed against the far wall. A beep from the key fob and click from the van pinged through the air when Bai remotely unlocked the vehicle.

Reaching for the van doors' handles was the last clear thought each would have for many hours. They made the mistake of not seeing Demon and Beast rise from the shadows and extend telescopic batons into the unsuspecting faces.

An enhanced capsaicin neurotoxin concoction simultaneously sprayed from the end of a two-foot-long carbon fiber baton into the men’s faces. Momentary gasps and muted gagging followed. The sensory nerve endings in their corneas immediately inflamed, resulting in total blindness. Tear ducts exploded. The automatic reflex to rub stinging eyeballs only worked to spread the chemical and make the pain worse. Their nasal passages and throats became inflamed, as their larynxes became completely paralyzed.

Both men attempted to gulp clean oxygen into their now aggravated lungs but managed only to fill them with more capsaicin-saturated air.

The homemade paralyzing agent overrode their central nervous systems, forcing the muscles in their extremities to spasm. They collapsed to the cold concrete like a rock in free fall. A sickening hollow thud echoed off the walls as scalp and skull dribbled like basketballs against the floor. A few drops of blood mixed with the grime on the dirty garage floor.

Their teammate Milton—a tinkering genius—created the weapon. The Stick was a telescoping multi-threat baton that contained an intensity-controlled electroshock weapon—a stun gun—similar to a cattle prod used by farmers. Depending upon the dial setting, it could cause temporary “neuromuscular incapacitation,” as Milton called it. At higher levels, it delivered excruciating pain.

It was also a Taser capable of firing two small dart electrodes attached to wires to shock a person up to a distance of thirty feet. The most potent weapon was the jets that dispersed an array of dial-controlled toxin mixtures. Some settings pacified the victim. Some knocked the victim out. Some caused paralysis. If set at maximum dosage levels, it could cause the heart to stop beating.

Demon stood over Bai, a scowl on his seventy-year-old stubble-covered face. Demon’s hair was a short, tangled nest of gray. Deep creases snaked across his face, but there was still a youthful look in his eyes. They also contained the look that told people, “don’t fuck with me if you know what is good for you.”

Turning the black rubber handle on his baton, he jammed it behind the defenseless assassin’s ear. For three seconds, thirty thousand volts convulsed Bai into a violent wiggle. The uncontrollable muscle contractions shocked the drug-impaired body like an earthquake. Demon sauntered around the body and repeated his treatment on Peng.

“Shit, you are a badass, Demon,” Beast said.

He looked up with a smile. “It’s the amps, not the volts.”

“Demon. Really?” Bridger said as he came through an interior door to the garage. He had walked down Guangfu Road around to the other side of the building. He slipped into a gap between the structures, then entered through an unlocked, unguarded service entrance hidden between some trash bins.

“You said after Hong Kong I could do what I wanted to the last group,” Demon said.

“No. I didn’t. Finish the job.”

Beast took out rolls of duct tape and rolled it around the unconscious men’s feet and arms. Beast was less than half Demon's age, broad-shouldered and tall at a few inches over six feet. His bushy beard needed a trim in contrast to his head of dirty brown hair that was short and