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

neatly combed over. The visible parts of his face wore the tanned skin of a man who spent a life outside. His movements were quick, precise, and surgical. He had the straight-backed posture of someone who got things done.

“Two in the bag,” Demon announced thirty seconds later as he and Beast stood over the two men—their wrists and feet now bound with tape.

Beast opened the rear cargo doors of a Mitsubishi SUV parked a few spaces away, then picked up Peng and tossed him inside. Demon looked at Beast and then picked up the limp body of Bai and threw him through the opening like he was stacking wood. The assassin hit the floor with a hard thud.

Beast got behind the steering wheel of the SUV. Bridger took the passenger seat. Bridger liked having Beast in the driver’s seat. Besides being the best at offensive and defensive driving, Beast was cool under pressure, reliable, loyal, and deadly.

Demon jumped in back, closed the door with a bang, and jammed his baton into Bai’s groin. The man lurched like a fish taken off the hook and tossed into the bottom of a boat.

“Oops, my mistake.” He looked at Bridger, who just shook his head.

When Imp gave the all-clear signal, Beast started the SUV.

No Mistakes. So far. So good, Bridger thought.

The man on the roof across Wenchang Street had expected the garage door to open. He was just amazed at how swift it must have happened. He checked his watch. Three minutes.

These Spy Devils are quite impressive. I have to admire their efficiency.

He smiled when the garage door opened and the Mitsubishi SUV pulled out. When his men had gone to check on their van yesterday, he told them to look for any large vehicles in the garage. His men reported that among the scooters and small passenger vehicles, there was one Toyota truck and a Mitsubishi SUV. They had placed tracking sensors on each.

He felt bad about using two of his men as bait. He was getting short of men, but Bai and Peng had stepped up when he asked. Whatever it took to get his revenge against the Spy Devils, he would do. If that meant offering up two of them as bait, wáng yáng bǔ láo. Better late than never.

He looked at his phone. The tracking application was working perfectly. When he knew the exact location of the Spy Devils safe house, then bào chóu xuě chǐ. He would get his revenge and erase the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the Spy Devils and their leader.

The one called Bridger.

3

The Hard Way

Taipei, Taiwan

“Helloooo?” Bridger gently tapped his palm on the side of one man’s face, then the other. “Wakey, wakey,” he said like he was trying to get a child up in the morning on a school day.

Bai and Peng were sitting slumped in barely functional folding chairs. The eyelids of the two drugged Dragon Fire men slowly opened, revealing glassy eyeballs. The tissue surrounding their eyes and under their noses were red with the irritation from the spray and subsequent rubbing. Beast had cut the tape off their wrists and feet. Bridger wanted to allow them the belief they were not prisoners.

They wouldn’t run—they couldn’t if they wanted to. The gas would not wear off for at least thirty minutes, maybe more. Just in case, Beast stood by the door, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. He held his Devil Stick in one hand. His preferred weapon of choice, a Sig Sauer P226, was in the other.

Beast was the hairiest guy Bridger had ever met. If he shaved in the morning, he had a full beard by lunch. So he gave up and grew the beard all the time.

Beast wouldn’t talk about it, but Bridger had read his military file. As much as Bridger could tell, Beast was a Special Forces Intel NCO for a combat battalion—Iraq area of operations, who somehow stepped into a shitshow involving an undercover operation involving terrorists, tribal leaders, Syrians, and smuggling routes. Whatever happened, Beast found himself on the shelf, then out of the service.

Bridger found him working security on a construction site in Indiana, of all places.

He was a perfect fit for the Spy Devils.

The SUV carrying the three Spy Devils and two unconscious Dragon Fire men arrived after a two-hour surveillance detection route, SDR, through the busy Taipei streets and surrounding area. When Beast was certain they were clean, he drove to a small one-story, seemingly forgotten utility building he had scouted days before. Surrounded by farmland and buried behind fences and deep foliage, the structure was hidden off a one-lane auxiliary road. The road connected on both ends to Xidong Road, Sanxia District, New Taipei City. An irrigation river ran behind it.

The fifteen-by-fifteen-foot interior was a mess. Stacked in a corner like pancakes were large coils of thick red hose. Bags of what looked and smelled like fertilizer fanned out from along the walls at ninety-degree angles. Pipes, broken buckets, and an assortment of ancient tools Bridger thought were last used to build the Great Wall lined the rest of the cinder block walls. The air smelled like a compost pile.

It was an ideal place to talk to the Chinese MSS officers unobserved and uninterrupted.

“Wake up, damn it!” Bridger shook his head in disappointment and nodded to Demon, who stood behind the MSS men. Demon wore his usual blue jeans and a black pullover jacket. He also had his Devil Stick. Prominently tucked into his belt was his faithful Springfield Armory Colt M1911.

“Hey!” Demon shouted. When they still didn’t move, he flipped his thumb over his Devil Stick to “cattle prod” mode and tapped each man on the shoulder.

Crackles sounded as they jolted off their chairs and fell onto the dirty concrete floor.

“Sorry about that, guys,” Bridger told them in perfect Mandarin—letting the men know he spoke their language—which warned them he understood anything they would say. Bridger knew from previous interrogations of