Human Target

An American hacker becomes target number one after she accesses the account of a Russian mob boss, revealing his organization’s terror plot against the U.S. by taking out its satellite system. She knows two things: they’re coming for her and she’s out of her league.

Having the intel the hacker stumbled into could prevent millions of deaths, and Mack Bolan is determined to find her before the Russians do. There’s only one problem. No one knows what she looks like. And when one of her friends compromises her location in London, the Executioner knows he must make his final move and end this high-stakes game of hide and seek...one way or the other.

The corpse of the gun-wielding rider was flung from the motorcycle

Bolan thrust himself to the side, rolled when he hit the ground and came up on one knee, his ice-blue eyes sweeping the terrain for more threats. A short volley from his M4 took down two more gunmen.

As he stood, Bolan loaded an HE round into the grenade launcher. He set his sights on a single-story building. An undulating glow of flames was visible inside the structure through the windows. A pair of bay doors that made up half of the building’s facade were buckling from the onslaught of the flames.

The handful of guards, who had been trying to hose down the structure, abandoned their work when they saw Bolan and began grabbing for their weapons.

He noticed another man climbing frantically into the cab of a tanker truck and, judging by his urgency, Bolan guessed the truck wasn’t filled with corn syrup.

The Executioner leveled the launcher and fired.

Blood Vendetta

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

1929—1968

Sometimes to get justice, you need to go around the law.

Is this right or wrong? That’s not for me to say. I am

no judge—I am the Executioner.

—Mack Bolan

The

MACK BOLAN

Legend

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a com-mand center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Tim Tresslar for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Prologue

The soft, steady beeping roused her from a light sleep.

For a half second, she thought it was her alarm clock, waking her for work. The bank! Jesus, she needed to get up!

Her eyes snapped open. Reality sank in and, like an unseen hand, it jerked her upright in her bed. The lamp on her bedside table flickered on and off in time with the beeping.

By the time she threw aside her blankets, her heart was pounding in her chest, her mouth dry with fear.

Muttering a curse, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, hauled herself upright and padded across the floor to a laptop computer that stood on top of the white pine dresser. The computer, which was hooked into her alarm system, was in sleep mode. She punched a couple of buttons on the keyboard and the screen brightened. A window with a layout of each floor of the two-story home was displayed on the screen. A flashing red dot indicated a tripped sensor at the rear door.

Turning, she grabbed a pair of black denim jeans that were hung over the back of a chair and slipped them on, followed by a black turtleneck and sneakers.

It might be no big deal, she told herself as she laced up her shoes. The house was supposed to be empty. Maybe it was some teens looking for a place to drink or screw. Or a homeless man looking for a warm place to spend the night.

Or maybe someone had come for her. The thought caused blood to pound in her ears. Fear stuck in her throat as a dull but insistent ache.

No, she told herself, not this night. She set her jaw and shook her head to flush out the panicked thoughts. Returning to her bed, she kneeled next to it and felt around beneath it for the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver sheathed in a leather holster. Her memory raced back to the pawn shop where she’d purchased the weapon, to her conversation with the owner. He’d patiently explained that the .38 wasn’t the most powerful handgun in the world, but it was simple and reliable. She’d tapped her finger against a glass case that contained four 9 mm auto-loading pistols.

“Aren’t those better?” she’d asked. “More bullets?”

She’d at least known that much about guns at the time. The pawn shop owner, holding the S&W revolver, the empty cylinder flopped out to the side, flashed a nasty grin. He flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped into place.

“Lady,” he had said, “you can’t put something down with five shots from this, save the sixth for yourself.”

He’d laughed.

She’d swallowed hard and with barely another word bought the revolver, three speed loaders and two boxes of hollowpoint ammunition.

Years later, she still hadn’t decided how much of what he’d said had been a joke aimed at further unnerving an already nervous lady and how much had been his true belief.

A night-light plugged into a wall outlet suddenly blinked.

The first alarm, which already had stopped beeping, was designed to wake her, alert her to an initial intrusion.

This one told her someone had set off motion detectors on the first floor. Belting the pistol around her waist, she reached under the bed again, feeling around until fingertips brushed against cold steel. She closed her hand around the shotgun barrel and pulled the weapon from beneath the bed.

The 20-gauge shotgun’s double barrel had been sawed down to eighteen inches. Like the revolver, she liked the shotgun’s simplicity. Easy to carry and load and unload. It didn’t require marksmanship to hit a target with this gun, even though she’d practiced with similar weapons over the years. At close quarters, even under stress, she believed she could fire the weapon and score a hit. Gunfights were not her specialty. Her skills lay elsewhere and likely were the catalyst for this late-night visit. Stuffing a handful of shells into her front right pants pocket, she came back to her feet and continued to move.

She’d drilled for this for years. Dozens of times in the real world, countless times in her head. She never knew who might come for her or how they might find her. But she always knew someone would come. She only hoped she was ready.

The night-light flashed again. A cold sensation raced down her spine. The flickering meant someone had stepped onto a pressure pad on the second floor and they were coming to her room.

She aimed the shotgun at the door.

The knob turned slowly and quietly. Had she been asleep she never would have heard it. She watched as the door swung inward and revealed a big man clad in black standing in the doorway.

In a flash, she saw his hand come up. The night-light’s glow glinted on a metallic object in his hand. Without hesitation, her shotgun exploded, twin tongues of flame lashing out from the barrel. The blast hammered the man’s midsection, hurled him from the doorway and into a wall opposite her bedroom.

She broke open the shotgun, reloaded.

Her luck was about to run out, that much she knew. She’d just taken out one armed man, probably in part because he’d underestimated her. Or maybe because they’d been ordered to take her alive. Whatever the reason, she guessed things were about to become much worse. They knew she was armed and willing to use a gun. If they were burglars, they’d probably get the hell out. If they were here specifically for her, though, they likely would keep coming for her.

Rounding the door in a low crouch, she gingerly stepped over the body of the first man she’d killed, looked around.

The bulb of a single small lamp burned downstairs, emanating a white glow that quickly was swallowed up by the darkness.

Her ears continued to ring and she forced herself to rely on her eyes as much as possible. She could see shadows shifting along on the walls and guessed others were waiting for her to come down the steps and fight her way out.

Panic started to well up from within. Her knees went rubbery and her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe.

She shook her head. Not happening. She had no idea who they were, or who they worked for, but she guessed her visitors had lost money to her—or more accurately to the Nightingale—meaning they had hurt somebody, maybe many people. Maybe someone like Jessica. An image of her sister—curly blond hair hanging past her shoulders, her stomach curved outward as she entered her third trimester of pregnancy—flashed through her mind. Her breathing slowed and her knees became steady again.

If they’d hurt someone like Jessica, and she’d taken their money, they’d gotten exactly what they deserved.

She crept into a second bedroom. Crossing the floor, she held the shotgun by its pistol grip with one hand and worked the lock on the window with her free hand. She raised the window, which went up about eight inches before it stuck.

She swore through clenched teeth, cast a glance over her shoulder at the door, but saw no one there. With a grunt, she gave the window one last push, but it remained jammed. Leaning the shotgun against the wall, she pushed against the window with both hands. It gave, but with a squeak that sounded like a bomb explosion in the stillness. A moment later, she heard one of the stair steps creaking under someone’s weight.

Pulling the .38 from its holster, she spun around and leveled the pistol at the hall. A shadow appeared in the doorway. She snapped off two quick shots. One slug hammered into the molding around the door, splintering the wood. A second drilled into the plasterboard to the right of the door, just a few inches above a light switch. The figure ducked from view.

Several heartbeats ticked by as she remained motionless, the pistol trained on the doorway.

A door slammed shut downstairs with a crack, the unexpected noise startling her body, which was already overloaded with adrenaline. In the distance, she heard sirens. She guessed someone had summoned the police to check out the gunshots. For a normal person, the sound likely would provide some comfort. But she’d relinquished any pretension of normalcy years ago. Her instincts told her to run. Run from the police. Run from the people who’d come for her. Just run like hell and figure the rest out later.

Looping the shotgun over her back, she pushed herself through the window and disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

SHUTTING THE DOOR behind her, Davis turned the dead bolt and flicked the wall switch. Fluorescent lights sparked to life and bathed the room in soft white light. A wooden workbench, the surface scarred and blemished, ran the length of one wall. A tool chest, its metal skin scratched and mottled with rust spots, stood in another corner. A compact car, its red paint bleached by exposure to the elements, was parked in the middle of the room.

She shoved her keys into her hip pocket and withdrew one of the cell phones from her belt pack. With her thumb, she punched through a group of numbers, put the phone to her ear and listened as it dialed through a series of cutouts. She noticed her hands starting to shake, immediately felt her face flush.

It’s just adrenaline, she told herself. You’ve been through hell. It’s catching up with you. Ignore it.

After two rings, someone picked up on the other end.

“Yes?” It was Maxine.

“Good to hear your voice.”

“You okay?”

“All things considered.”

“What happened?”

“Someone came after me tonight.”

“Who?” Maxine asked, concern evident in her voice.

“I’m not sure. There were at least two people.”

“They still after you?”

“Not those two.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yes.”

“Let me ask again—are you okay?”

“No, but it needed to be done,” she replied. She gave a small shrug even though Maxine couldn’t see her.

“I’m sure it needed to be done. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

Davis said nothing.

“What’s your next move?”

“Get out of here,” Davis replied.

“And go where?”

“Tell you when I get there.”

“You don’t know? Or you don’t want me to know?”

“The latter.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not like that. Someone’s looking for me. They found me. Who knows what else they know—about me, the network, you. I need to disappear. It’s probably better that no one knows where I am.”

“I understand,” Maxine replied, her tone telegraphing that she didn’t understand.

“Do me a favor.”

“Of course.”

“I had to leave in a hurry. Call Nigel. Ask him to do a remote wipe of my systems. Please. I’ll also need some equipment. Cell phone—the usual stuff. Need to replace what I lost.”

“Consider it done. What else?”

“Nothing. Yet. I’ll be in touch.”

Davis ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her belt pack. She shut her eyes, rubbed her temples with the first two fingers of each hand. An image flashed across her mind, the first man she’d gunned down, body thrust back by the shotgun blast, his midsection ripped open. Her eyes snapped wide open and she covered her mouth with her hand. My God, she thought, I killed two people on this night, murdered them. A heaviness settled over her, dragged her to her knees. She hung her head, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

Chapter 1

Mack Bolan, a.k.a. the Executioner, rolled into the War Room at Stony Man Farm.

He wore blue denim jeans, a black turtleneck and black leather tennis shoes. Gathered around the room were Hal Brognola, Director of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Group, Barb Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, and Aaron the “Bear” Kurtzman, the head of the Farm’s cyber team. Brognola, shirt sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows, the top button of his dress shirt undone and his tie pulled loose, was seated at the head of the briefing table. Kurtzman sat to Brognola’s right, in his motorized wheelchair, a laptop computer open on the table in front of him. Price, her honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, saw Bolan first and flashed him a smile.

“Welcome back, Striker,” she said. “It’s good to have you back.”

Bolan nodded. “I have a feeling I won’t be here long. Am I right?”

“Very perceptive, Striker,” Brognola said. “As always, the choice is yours. But I think you’ll want a piece of the action on this, once you hear about it.”

The big Fed gestured at one of the high-backed chairs that ringed the table and Bolan settled into the nearest one. He set a brushed-steel travel mug filled with coffee on the table.

Kurtzman studied the cup for a couple of moments before giving Bolan a puzzled look.

“What’s that?”

“Coffee, last I checked.”

“I can see it’s coffee.”

“Then why ask?”

Kurtzman gestured with a nod at the drip coffeemaker that stood on a nearby counter.

“I made coffee.”

“I know.”

“You could have had some.”

“True.”

The creases in Kurtzman’s forehead deepened.

“But you didn’t want my coffee.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I just wanted this coffee, that’s all.”

“Because it’s better than mine.”

“I just wanted this coffee,” Bolan said. “That’s all.”

Brognola cleared his throat. “Seriously, I could listen to you clowns do this all day. But if you’ll indulge me.”

Kurtzman scowled. “This isn’t over,” he said, jabbing at the air between them with his forefinger.

Bolan nodded and gulped some coffee from his mug.

“Sorry to call you back in, Striker. Especially on the heels of another mission. But I wanted to give you first crack at this one.”

“I’m listening.”

Brognola pulled an unlit cigar from his mouth, set it in an ashtray.

“You ever heard of the Nightingale?”

“Assuming you don’t mean Florence or the bird, I’d have to say no.”

“You’re right. I don’t mean either of them. It’s a person, maybe several persons—we’ve not been able to nail it down. But there’s someone out there who’s been ripping people off for years, stealing money from their bank accounts.”

“White-collar cyber crime? Not exactly my area.”

“Agreed,” Brognola said. “But it’s not what you think. This—well, let’s assume it’s one person for the sake of argument—this individual targets a lot of the same people you do. Mobsters, terrorists, arms smugglers, even heads of corrupt states.”

“Steals their money?”

Brognola nodded. “Right from under their noses. He, she, whatever, is very good at this, too. Best we can tell the Nightingale steals pretty much with impunity.”

“From some very deserving people,” Bolan said. “Sorry, Hal, still trying to see how this applies to me.”

“Getting there, Striker. We don’t know what this individual does with the money. Rumor has it he or she has passed some of it along to crime victims, through a series of cutouts.”

“An altruistic thief,” Bolan said.

“Altruism or a big middle finger to her victims,” Brognola said, “we’re not really sure. Maybe both. Psychologists at Langley did a work-up and believe it’s as much as anything a way to salve this person’s guilt.”

“Guilt for?”

“For stealing,” Price answered.

“From scum,” Bolan countered. “Bad people.”

Price shrugged. “Good people, bad people. If you’re raised not to steal, you’re going to feel bad about it. Doesn’t matter if you know in your heart you’re doing the right thing. You’re still going to feel guilty.”

Bolan nodded his understanding. In his War Everlasting, he’d tried to maintain a few basic rules. Don’t harm police, even crooked ones. Don’t put innocent bystanders in harm’s way, even if it means letting a target escape. These rules had helped him maintain his humanity even when surrounded by hellfire and chaos. Though he’s killed countless times, he takes no joy from it.

“I can understand that,” he said.

“Thought you could,” Price replied.

“So, again, what does this have to do with me? And Stony Man Farm, for that matter?”

“We’re not one hundred percent sure ourselves. But we think the Nightingale may be in trouble,” Price said.

“Not that I’m unsympathetic,” Bolan said, “but there are a lot of people in the world who are in trouble.”

“We, that being the United States, have been tracking this person for a couple of years,” Brognola said, “ever since we confirmed their existence really. At first, we only caught small whiffs. Our intelligence agencies would hear a drug kingpin or a terrorist bitching because a bank account came up empty. The first few times, we wrote it off. We figured they were getting ripped off the old-fashioned way, either through an inside job or by a rival. The more analysts put the pieces together, though, the clearer it became that someone was picking their pockets.” A smile played on his lips. “And that someone was getting away with it.”

“How much did they get away with?”

Brognola shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Estimates run into the tens of millions of dollars. But they’re just that, estimates. A lot of the countries where the thefts occurred, well, the record keeping is for shit. And in Switzerland and some of the Caribbean countries? Not exactly bastions of transparency.”

Bolan looked at Kurtzman and cocked an eyebrow. “Since when has that stopped you?”

“I’m working on it,” Kurtzman said. “I’m working on it.”

The Executioner turned back to Price.

“You said this person—”

“Or persons,” she said.

“—or persons, could be in trouble. What makes you think that?”

Brognola pushed a thin stack of photos across the table to Bolan. The big American picked up the pile and studied the one on top. It was a picture of a man sprawled on the floor. His face was so pale from blood loss it seemed to glow. Dead eyes stared skyward. The flesh of his torso was shredded. The soldier glanced up at Brognola.

“Bear mauling?”

“Shotgun blast, smart-ass,” Brognola said. “Very close range. Gutted the stupid bastard.”

Nodding, Bolan peeled the photo from the stack, set it facedown on the table and studied the next one. The next photo depicted a man laying in a hallway, his chest torn open. He glanced up at Brognola.

“Shotgun?”

“Bravo, Columbo. These two were found in a London residence, which based on the little evidence left behind, we think may have most recently been inhabited by Nightingale.”

“Any IDs on them?”

“Russian, both of them,” Brognola said. “The names are in the case file. Frankly, they’re inconsequential. Couple of hired hands. Interpol had listed them as suspects in a couple of murders, one in France, a second in the Netherlands. Not a couple of Boy Scouts. But they’re hardly supervillains.”

“But you don’t know who they’re working for?”

Brognola shook his head.

“I’ll get to that. But, in short, we believe it’s someone Nightingale stole from. From what we’ve been able to scrape together, they flew into London a couple of days ago. Bought their airline tickets under false names, with fake credit cards. Nothing in their luggage was of any use. If they hadn’t been busted for petty crimes along the way, it’s possible we never would have made them.”

“They leave anything behind?”

“Couple of cell phones. The London authorities are tracking them. We’ll see how far it takes them. Their weapons, obviously. Night-vision goggles. A rental car.”

“Most likely they didn’t fly into London with all that stuff,” Bolan said. “They must have had someone on the ground supplying them.”

“We thought of that,” Brognola said. “Solid theory. We don’t have the intel to back it up, though. But we have someone working that angle.”

“That someone is?”

“David McCarter.”

“McCarter’s in London? My apologies to the queen.”

Brognola grinned. “David was already over there, buying a Jaguar that had been buried under some tarps in a garage somewhere. We thought it might help having someone on the ground to act as—” Brognola made quotation marks with his fingers “—a liaison between MI5, Scotland Yard and the U.S.”

“God help us.”

“Yeah, we needed a diplomat, but we got McCarter. Imagine.”

“The Brits will appreciate his deft touch.”

“Look,” Brognola said, “here’s the upshot of all this. As you can imagine, the U.S. government finds itself in a unique position here. Officially, the government doesn’t condone vigilantes. We don’t condone stealing money from people, even if they’re criminals and terrorists, unless it’s part of a sanctioned intelligence operation.”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

Brognola downed some coffee and nodded. “Absolutely. What this person has accomplished is pretty damn amazing. As best we know, she or he has no governments backing her.”

“Which means no government-imposed constraints.”

“As I said, what Nightingale has been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing,” Brognola said. “This person has acquired account numbers and pieced together complex financial networks. He or she knows lots of things, and we want to know how.”

Bolan’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Look, if you want someone to plug a leak.”

“Hardly,” Brognola replied, shaking his head vigorously. “Frankly, we want to recruit this person. Nightingale could fill in gaps in our knowledge. There’s a place for those skills.”

“Off the books, of course,” Price interjected. “But we can offer full legal protection, a new identity, the works.”

“What leads do we have?” Bolan asked.

Kurtzman gestured at the stack of photos in Bolan’s hand.

“Look through those,” he said, “stop when you find a picture of a white-haired guy.”

Bolan found a close-up of a round-faced man with pink cheeks, pale green eyes and white hair trimmed down to stubble. He studied the photo for a couple of seconds, then tossed it, face up, on the tabletop. “This the guy?”

“That’d be him,” Kurtzman said. “His name is Jonathan Salisbury. He’s British by birth, but moved to the United States in the early 1970s and eventually became a citizen. Did a lot of computer work for the Pentagon, all highly classified. Guy was a genius.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead,” Kurtzman said. “Poor bastard asphyxiated himself in a garage. Neighbors found him in the car while it still was running. Hadn’t been dead long. I have a file I’ll give you with some clips about him. It was big news in the Beltway when he died.”

“I’ve never heard of him. He famous in computer circles?”

“More like infamous,” Kurtzman said. “Technically, he was in deep shit with the Feds.”

Bolan sipped his coffee. “Isn’t that like being a little pregnant?”

“I knew the guy,” Kurtzman said. “We weren’t friends, but I knew him. I knew his work. To say he was brilliant would be an understatement. His depth of knowledge when it came to computers and cybersecurity was nearly unmatched.”

“Except by you.”

“There are maybe three dozen people with this guy’s chops. Me and thirty-five others.” Kurtzman allowed himself a grin, though it faded almost immediately. “That said, the guy was branded a traitor.”

“Because?”

“He tapped into the Defense Intelligence Agency’s computers, dug up some records on a Russian guy, Mikhail Yezhov, and passed it along.”

“Passed it along to whom?”

Kurtzman shrugged. “Nobody knows for sure,” he said.

“That’s a pretty big deal.”

“Sure,” Kurtzman said. “I’m not saying otherwise. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But there were extenuating circumstances. His wife was killed. Not by Yezhov, but a couple of his shooters. At least that was the working theory of the Russian investigators. Not a far-fetched theory, either. But the Russians didn’t want to go after Yezhov, so they let the whole thing go. Salisbury’s wife was a criminal justice professor and taught at Georgetown University. She’d written a couple of papers on Yezhov’s network and then she turned up dead.”

“The Justice Department tried to get the Russians off the dime on this thing,” Brognola added, “but they wouldn’t budge. Apparently, Yezhov rates top-level protection in his country.”

“You think Salisbury got pissed off enough to steal information?” Bolan asked.

“And pass it along to Nightingale? Yeah, I do. That’s the theory. And our two dead friends have links to Yezhov, too.”

“Clearly,” Brognola said, “we think Salisbury killed himself. The forensic evidence says so. His coworkers and friends confirmed that he was despondent after his wife’s murder. That he couldn’t at least get a little closure likely only made things worse.”

“So he takes matters into his own hands,” Bolan said. “He gets caught and loses his security clearance and his reputation. And kills himself.”

“Right,” Brognola said.

“A month before the ceiling fell in on the guy, he took a trip to London,” Kurtzman said. “We’re assuming he took the intelligence he stole to England and passed it to someone else.”

“But we don’t know who for sure?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Kurtzman said, “we don’t. But we are hedging our bets that it was Nightingale. Yezhov likely sent these two thugs out to exact a little revenge, but they obviously underestimated Nightingale’s skill.”

“Will you take the assignment, Striker?” Brognola asked.

“What if I find Nightingale and he or she tells me to go to hell?”

“Then they do,” Brognola said. “Technically, the Nightingale is a fugitive. But you’re not a cop. Besides, I am guessing you have no interest in strong-arming someone just because Washington wants a chat with them.”

“Good guess.”

“You can say no,” Brognola said.

Bolan nodded. He’d always kept an arm’s-length relationship with the federal government and could turn down assignments that came his way. But his gut told him this one was important. He agreed to take it.

Chapter 2

Mikhail Yezhov wanted to smash something.

The man who stood before him, armpits of his shirt darkened with perspiration, breathing audible, seemed to sense it. Yezhov, fists clenched, a deep scarlet coloring his neck, circled the man, staring at him. The occasional flinch, or flicker of fear in the man’s eyes, caused a warm sense of satisfaction to well up inside Yezhov.

Decked out in a five-thousand-dollar suit, surrounded by shelves of leather-bound books, and mahogany wood-paneled walls, Yezhov looked like a Wall Street investment banker or a shipping magnate. He was neither. Though he had once posed as a stockbroker in London as an agent with Soviet intelligence during the waning days of the Cold War. But his background wasn’t in business; he’d been a Soviet soldier and a military intelligence officer during his brief career. Once the Communist state went belly up, he’d moved into the private sector, where he could use his talents as a spy to whip up mayhem for his clients against their competitors. He always guaranteed results and, on the rare occasions when he couldn’t deliver, it made him see red.

Like the present.

Like Yezhov, the man who stood before him was Russian. That was where the similarities ended as far as Yezhov was concerned. This foot soldier—was his name Josef or Dmitri?—had a slight frame compared to Yezhov’s bulk, big eyes that made him look surprised even in the calmest moments and acne that would embarrass a fourteen-year-old boy. His suit jacket hung limply from his narrow shoulders and beads of sweat had formed on his upper lip. All this only intensified his air of akwardness, in Yezhov’s opinion. When the man swallowed, his Adam’s apple popped audibly in the deathly quiet room.

Yezhov moved in front of the man, stopped circling. He pinned the guy under his gaze.

“What now?”

“Our sources in Scotland Yard said they identified the two bodies,” the man said.

“Hardly a surprise.”

“Sir?”

“You hired known criminals to kill this woman. Neither was high-profile, but both had criminal records. It’s no surprise the police identified them. It was only a matter of time.”

The man opened his mouth to protest, apparently thought better of it, and slammed his jaw shut.

“Now, we have two corpses and a home that has been shot all to hell.”

“Yes.”

“And the woman lives.”

“Yes, she does.”

“And we have no idea where she is.”

The man paused, studied his black wingtip shoes for a couple of seconds before nodding in agreement.

“We have people looking for her,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time—”

“Before you mess this up even more.”

The man replied, but Yezhov didn’t bother to listen. He turned and saw his own reflection in a mirror that ran the length of the wall behind his desk. The rectangular mirror stretched from about the middle of the wall up to a foot short of the ceiling. It was one-way glass, on the other side of which was a small room packed with a console that controlled an array of audio and visual recording equipment. While he didn’t record every meeting, this one included, the setup came in handy when he gathered with high-level business executives and government officials from Russia and other countries, allowing him to gather blackmail material on the participants. As he’d said in rare unguarded moments, he had no business partners, only future victims.

Yezhov saw plenty in his reflection to admire. Though he stood a couple of inches below six feet, he was broad in the chest and shoulders, straining the fabric of his shirt. Arms crossed over his chest were thick, corded with muscles created with an exacting exercise regiment and anabolic steroids. His head was shaved clean. Small hazel-colored eyes, set far apart, peered out from his wide face, and were separated by a large nose that had been broken twice, once in combat and once in a bar fight.

For some reason, the annoying buzz of the other man’s words reached Yezhov, prompted him to turn back around and face the man.

“We’ll find her,” he said.

“No,” Yezhov said, shaking his head, “we’ll find her. You’ll have no part in this.”

Surprise registered on the other man’s face.

“Sir?”

“You’re done.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You had a location. You had a name. You had money, my fucking money. You fucked it up. You’re done.”

The man opened his mouth to speak. Yezhov silenced him with a gesture.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” he said. “This was a simple operation. A snatch-and-grab. One woman. The bitch was a banker, not a soldier. You hired two criminals, neither of whom apparently was up to the challenge.” He came around the desk and put himself between it and the other man. “I sent you to solve a problem, one fucking problem. Instead, you created more for me.”

“Sir...” the man began.

Yezhov, who’d been resting his backside against the edge of the desktop, arms hanging loose at his sides, made his move. His arms snaked out. The man flinched, but had no time to move before Yezhov’s fingers encircled his throat, thumbs levering down on the man’s windpipe. A pitiful gurgle escaped the man’s lips and he brought up his own hands, grabbed at Yezhov’s forearms. For a skinny man, his grip was surprisingly strong, Yezhov thought. Yezhov rewarded the man’s efforts by pressing harder against his throat. More seconds passed before the man’s body went limp. When Yezhov finally was satisfied that his failed employee was dead, he released his grip and let the man’s limp body strike the floor with a thump in a boneless heap.

Yezhov turned and motioned for one of his guards to step forward. That the guard, a combat veteran who’d killed Chechen militants without fear or conscience, hesitated pleased Yezhov. The Russian leader pointed at the body lying on the floor.

“Get that thing out of here,” he said.

The man nodded. Stepping forward, he knelt next to the corpse and raised the dead man’s torso at an angle, rested it against a bent knee. Grabbing the dead man from under his arms, the guard stood and dragged the limp form from the room.

“Lovely,” Yezhov muttered under his breath as he watched the whole thing.

A glance at the other guards situated around the room told Yezhov they were trying hard not to look at him, making a show at staring into their drinks or at one of the flat-screen televisions positioned throughout the room. That they were scared made him feel all the more powerful. But, he told himself, it wasn’t just about venting his anger. He wanted to teach these bastards a lesson. The price of failure in his organization was steep. And in his latest venture, with its high stakes, failure needed to be dealt with quickly and severely, not just because it made him feel good, but as a practical matter. Everyone needed to function at the highest levels possible.

Turning, he went back to his desk and hoisted the receiver on a secure telephone that stood there. Going from memory, he punched in a series of numbers. After a couple of seconds, it began ringing, his impatience growing with each ring. Finally, a familiar voice answered.

“What?” the man rasped.

“It’s me.”

A couple of seconds passed. “Okay.”

“I have a job for you.”

“A job for me?” Dmitri Mikoyan’s voice sounded incredulous. “Go to hell.”

“Look, you ungrateful—”

“Ungrateful? Remember Tajikistan? You almost got me killed ten times over. I’m grateful to be away from you.”

“I need you to run an operation,” Yezhov said. Mikoyan said nothing, but Yezhov heard him clucking his tongue on the other end of the connection. From experience, Yezhov knew that sound meant Mikoyan was thinking. Yezhov wasn’t even sure whether the other man even was aware of the noise, the habit.

“How much money?” Mikoyan asked.

“Don’t you want to hear the job first?”

“No. I know you. If you called me, it’s a crap job. The details don’t matter because the job will suck no matter what. So tell me about the money first and I’ll decide whether it’s worth my time.”

“Trust me, it is.”

“What is it the Americans say? Money talks. Bullshit walks. Give me numbers.”

Yezhov said an amount, twice Mikoyan’s usual fee.

Mikoyan laughed. “What am I? A bag lady? That is crap pay!”

“It’s also my only offer.”

More tongue clucking sounded from the other end of the line.

“Okay, I’ll take it.”

“I need you to snatch someone—a woman.”

“Sounds horribly complicated,” Mikoyan said, sarcasm evident in his voice.

“You’ve heard of the Nightingale?”

“Nightingale? Sure, I’ve heard the stories. Total bullshit. No one can steal all that money and get away with it.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Sure it is,” Mikoyan insisted. “It’s a story some crooked accountant cooked up after he embezzled money from the wrong guy. Did it to save his own ass. Don’t tell me you’ve bought in to this fairy tale.”

“I have.”

“Please—”

“She stole from me.”

“How much?”

“It doesn’t matter. It was a lot. The point is, she stole from me. I can’t tolerate that.”

“You want the money back.”

Yezhov shrugged even though the other man couldn’t see him. “I have little hope that will happen.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. You think she has dollars sitting around in suitcases somewhere? My guess is she takes what she steals, splits it into a dozen or so accounts and makes it all disappear. The last thing she wants is for someone to track her or take what she has stolen.”

“Okay, you don’t want the money. What do you want?”

“I do want the money—I just don’t have much hope I’ll get it back.”

“Fair enough.”

“I want her. I want her alive, Dmitri. I want to kill her with my bare hands.”

“To send a message.”

“Yes.”

“Consider it done.”

“I sent two other men to do it. Or, more to the point, one of my employees sent two men.” Yezhov glanced at the spot on the carpet where the recently removed corpse had fallen. “Make that a former employee. Anyway, they both ended up dead.”

“Should’ve called me first.”

“Maybe. I’ll send a courier with more information.”

The line went dead and Yezhov slammed down the phone.

A single, soft knock sounded against his office door. He looked up in time to see the door swing open and a woman enter. As always, her fire-red hair, which cascaded past her shoulders, caught his attention first, followed by her jade-green eyes. Her full lips spread into a wide smile, lips parting enough to expose even white teeth.

“Tatania,” he said, returning the smile. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Yes,” Tatania Sizova said.

Crossing the room, she walked to him, reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Stepping back, she eased herself into one of the wingback chairs that stood in front of Yezhov’s desk. Crossing her legs, she placed her folded hands into her lap.

Yezhov looked at his guards and dismissed them with a nod. One by one, they filed from the room. He finished making her drink—a gin and tonic—and handed it to her.

She thanked him for the beverage and, looking at him over its rim, sampled it.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Good.”

“I’ve seen little of you this week. You’ve been up early and working late into the night.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s the woman,” Sizova replied.

He glared at her. If she felt threatened, though, she didn’t let it show. Instead, she sipped from the gin and tonic again, then set it on a small table.

“You’re obsessed with the woman,” she said. “She’s pissed you off.”

“Nonsense! There’s no room for that in my operation. Stakes are too high.”

“Of course.”

Yezhov detected something in her voice.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m worried, that’s all.”

“Worried? About?”

“You.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? You’re focused on this woman. We’re in the middle of something so much larger and you are worried about her, about revenge.”

“I’m focused on the mission.”

“The mission doesn’t include chasing shadows or drawing attention to us with ham-handed kidnapping attempts.”

“Don’t tell me what the mission is,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice.

Sizova sat back in her chair, as though stung. Her lips pressed together in an angry line and her eyes narrowed. Yezhov had seen the look before and knew he had crossed a line. He also was angry enough not to care.

“Don’t speak to me like that,” she said.

“Don’t tell me how to run my operation,” he said. “I have this under control.”

Her angry look turned to one of mild amusement.

“I can tell,” she said.

He fought the urge to come out of his chair and hit the woman. Experience told him not to. Sizova, outwardly gorgeous and delicate, had been trained since her teen years in the dark arts of hand-to-hand combat, as well as with weapons. Even if he did take her, he’d pay a price for his victory—a lost eye or an ear torn from the side of his head. That was the best-case scenario.

Yezhov exhaled.

“I have this under control,” he repeated. “Taking her out isn’t an aside from our mission—it’s a major piece of our mission.”

Her expression softened.

“What do you mean?”

Yezhov stood up and walked to the small bar. Grabbing a clear glass tumbler, he turned it over and reached for the vodka.

“What do I mean?” he said, unscrewing the bottle’s cap. “I mean, she knows. Or she will know what we’re up to.”

“Stop being so damned cryptic!” she said.

Satisfied with the amount he had poured into his glass, he put the top back on the bottle and set it aside. Picking up the drink, her turned and looked at her.

“I mean she knows. She knows more than my fucking bank balance. When she hacked into our system, she stole all kinds of information.”

Sizova had paled slightly.

“Our deal,” she said.

“Yes, our deal,” he said. “The Sentry project, the antisatellite technology—she has that information.”

“Maybe she hasn’t seen it.”

Yezhov shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. She stole tons of data. It’s possible she hasn’t had time to look through it yet. But it’s also likely she has. At some point, she will comb through all of it, exploit the information for further attacks on us. Regardless, we have to proceed as if she knows.”

“Meaning—”

“Meaning we have to kill her. And anyone who’s helping her. But first we must find her. Luckily, I have a plan for that.”

Chapter 3

Bolan and McCarter met outside the headquarters of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. The fox-faced Briton, a Coke in his grip, was leaning against an iron railing and staring out at the Thames River, swollen from a recent rain. The Executioner noticed his old friend wore a black trench coat and a red necktie that occasionally lashed out from beneath the coat. A black leather valise stood on the concrete next to McCarter’s leg.

Seeing Bolan from the corner of his eye, McCarter turned and shot the Executioner a lopsided grin and a small wave.

“Welcome to paradise, Yank,” he said.

“Glad to be home?” Bolan asked.

McCarter shrugged. “Longer I’m away, the less it feels like home. Good to be here, though. I did get a hell of a deal on a Jaguar. Sweet little black number.”

“Love to see it.”

“See it from a distance, if it’s all the same,” McCarter said. “The cars you touch tend to end up pocked with bullet holes or blown to smithereens. I’d at least like to race this one once or twice before it ends up in the scrap heap.”

“Fair enough,” Bolan said, a smile ghosting his lips. “Our friends at MI5 playing nice?”

“Nice as can be expected, considering I just swooped in from across the pond and asked to see the family jewels. The bloke here, Damon Blair, seems decent enough. Balked a little at first, but got on board once he found out we have some heavyweights behind us.”

Bolan nodded. “Good, let’s go see what he has to say.”

* * *

BLAIR’S OFFICE WAS on the top floor of Thames House and had a window that overlooked the river. Blair was a small man, with straw-blond hair that was unkempt, a wide nose and large ears.

Bolan identified himself under his oft-used alias, Matt Cooper. Blair gestured for the two men to sit.

Bolan lowered himself into a chair that stood in front of Blair’s desk. McCarter took the seat next to him. Leaning forward, Blair laced his fingers together and set them on the desktop.

“Welcome to our fair city, Mr. Cooper,” Blair said.

“Matt,” Bolan replied.

“David says you’re looking for information.”

Bolan nodded.

“You want information on the Nightingale.”

Bolan nodded again.

“Man of few words, eh?” Blair said. “Well, not sure what I can offer you. As you can understand, we can’t—and I won’t—tell you specific sources.”

“Sure.”

“And the Americans probably have a lot of the same raw intelligence on this as we do. So I’m not sure what I have to add.”

Bolan crossed his legs, right ankle balanced on left knee.

“Fair question,” the big American said. “And, you’re right, our two countries probably have a lot of the same information, since we share so much. But you have two advantages. One, you’ve been following this individual for—what?—a couple of years now. And, two, you actually are on the ground. The shootings happened in Bayswater, just a stone’s throw from here. I’m guessing you’ve seen all the latest information on the shooting, including any police reports and other intelligence gathered. You know the area. You might have some insights into Nightingale’s behavior that a guy like me, someone who just parachuted into town, would miss entirely.”

Blair grinned. “So you can speak, eh? Okay, fair enough. What questions can I field for you two?”

The Executioner noticed the other man didn’t promise to actually answer the questions, but let it slide.

“What’s your take on the Nightingale?” Bolan asked.

Leaning back in his chair, Blair glanced at the ceiling and rubbed absently at his throat for a moment, apparently collecting his thoughts.

“She—our psychologists believe she’s a woman—she’s lost something. More likely she’s lost someone, maybe even several people, and she’s enraged. Probably so enraged she no longer feels or notices it. It’s like an arthritic joint. Bugs you all the time, affects how you move, maybe your choice in activities and lifestyle. But you’ve become so accustomed to it, you barely pay attention to it. Or you only do so on a limited basis.”

“I don’t buy it,” McCarter said. “How can someone be that bloody angry and not know it?”

“Pot meet kettle,” Blair said

“Don’t put me on the shrink’s couch,” McCarter growled.

“Above my pay grade.”

“She’s angry,” Bolan interjected.

“Enraged. Enraged, but conflicted. She obviously feels some guilt over what she does. That means she’s going against her grain by stealing.”

“Our analysts guessed the same thing,” the Executioner added.

Blair nodded. “That’s all low-hanging fruit. The real question is what does it all mean? And what is it about her that makes her handle her anger this way? A lot of people have bad things happen to them, things that change their lives and their perspectives. But this made her, well, a little daft. Not insane in the classic sense, mind you, but it knocked her off course. Our shrinks believe underneath all the rage and activity lies a lot of guilt.”

“For?”

“Whoever got hurt, she probably feels—or felt—responsible for them. Not for the action that hurt them, but for not being there to save that person. Maybe even for not being killed, too.”

“You mean survivor guilt,” Bolan asked.

“Sure. And a little bit of that is normal, especially with a tragedy. But this—starting a whole new life, going underground—smacks of someone trying to atone for something. Not just wondering why a bullet or a bomb didn’t take them instead. But really trying to atone for something done or, hell, not done for that matter.”

“That being?” McCarter asked.

Blair shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Thanks for crystallizing it, lad,” McCarter said.

Blair’s neck and cheeks turned scarlet. “Sorry, didn’t realize I was supposed to do all your damn thinking for you.”

Uncrossing his legs, Bolan leaned forward.

“You’re a smart guy,” Bolan said, his voice even. “You have a theory.”

“Lots of theories. That’s how I spend my days, collecting information and spouting theories. When it comes to this young lady, though, it seems pretty damned easy actually.”

Bolan gave what he hoped was an encouraging nod. Apparently it worked.

“If we have traced her history back far enough—and it’s a big bloody ‘if’—her first two strikes occurred less than five years ago. Hit the money men for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi branch. Pretty nice piece of work, that. From what we know their IT crew came straight from Saddam’s government, a Sunni who studied computer science at Oxford. Once we knocked Saddam out of power, this guy suddenly found himself out of a job, got pissed off and joined al Qaeda. Lots of Sunnis did that in those days.”

“Got a name?” McCarter asked.

“He does,” Blair replied. “Khallad Mukhtar. Not that it matters. The Americans took him out years ago. Hit his car with a Hellfire missile while he was tooling ’round Tikrit. Took out three other al Qaeda guys, his security detail, in the process.”

“Good show, that one,” McCarter said.

“Indeed. But here’s my point, Nightingale already hit him months before that. She also hit two guys in London, a couple of Saudis, couple of fire breathers. They collected all kinds of money from sympathizers, not just in the Middle East, but also Europe, and funneled it back to al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. One of those assholes got deported back to his own country. Saudis put him into a government-sponsored rehabilitation program. When he reappeared six months later, he was a changed man, denounced al Qaeda and the Jihad.”

“A real beacon of light,” McCarter said. He took a swig from his Coke and swallowed loudly.

“An organic change of heart to be sure,” Blair said, allowing himself a dour smile.

“So she went after Islamists from Iraq,” Bolan said. “You thinking she’s related to a soldier killed in Iraq?”

“That was my original thought,” Blair said. “But that didn’t sit well with me. Not entirely, anyway.”

“Because?”

“Originally, it was a gut feeling. But I started piecing this thing together more and found another common strand between our first targets.”

Turning slightly in his chair, the analyst’s left hand disappeared below the desktop and the soldier heard a drawer being pulled open. Blair hummed and Bolan heard papers rustling. When Blair’s hand came back into view, he had a photograph and a couple of newspaper clippings in his hand. He tossed the items on the desk. Bolan and McCarter leaned forward and studied the items.

The picture was a still photo of carnage. The crumpled remains of a train car on its side, its silver skin scorched black, the interior belching oily smoke. It apparently had been ripped from between two other cars and thrown from the tracks. The soldier saw firefighters armed with hoses dousing the car with water. An officer from London’s Metropolitan Police pointed at something unseen, mouth open in a yell, while two other officers ushered civilians away from the wreckage.

Blair smoothed down one of the rumpled newspaper clippings with his palm, pushed it forward so the Stony Man warriors could read it.

“I know I could have printed it out from the internet,” he said, “but I’m still partial to the newsprint-and-ink version.”

Bolan nodded, but focused his attention on the clipping.

Terror Bombing Kills Seven

Seven passengers were killed—including a pregnant woman on holiday—and three others were injured when a bomb planted by an Islamic militant group tore through a train car’s interior.

The dead also included four London residents, a French tourist and another American, a man believed to be the husband of the pregnant woman killed in Sunday’s explosion, authorities said.

In a statement sent to news organizations, a group of Islamic militants with ties to al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the bombing. The act was meant as a protest against the presence of British troops in Iraq, according to the statement.

Bolan scanned through the rest of the article, but found few other details useful to his search. It mostly contained eyewitness statements and comments from police and politicians vowing to hunt down those responsible.

Blair spread out a second article on the desk. Between the headline and the story, Bolan saw the photos of seven individuals lined up.

With his index finger, Blair tapped the picture of a young woman. The photo portrayed her from the shoulders up. Her hair was blond and her mouth was turned up in a warm smile.

“That’s the American. Name’s Jessica Harrison. Beautiful young woman. According to a New York Times profile that ran at the time, she was six months pregnant. Her husband, Jeremy, was fresh from foreign-service officer school and was stationed at the London embassy. He’d been in the country four months before he was killed. She arrived that day. They were on their way from Heathrow to the U.S. embassy compound. Diplomatic cables and other information from your government pretty much confirmed the information in the Times piece.”

It struck Bolan that the analyst was drawing details completely from memory.

“You’ve spent a lot of time on this,” the soldier said.

Blair gave him a lopsided grin. “Shows, doesn’t it? Normal people have hobbies or, better yet, girlfriends. Anyway, I thought for sure this woman was the key. See, she had a twin sister, Jennifer Davis—Davis was the dead woman’s maiden name. Her sister worked for a couple of major U.S. banks. Really understood the nuts and bolts of financial transactions. And did I mention she oversaw information security at another point in her career?”

“Happy coincidence,” McCarter muttered.

“Smart woman, obviously. Quite lovely, too, though more serious than her sister, judging by the photos I’ve seen.”

“So she went underground?” Bolan asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Blair said. “She’s dead.”

“Dead?” Bolan leaned forward.

“Very much so. As I said, she was my favorite guess for the Nightingale when I first started poring over all this stuff. But circumstances have forced me to change my mind.”

“‘Circumstance’ being that she’s dead,” the Executioner said.

Blair nodded. “Seems a logical conclusion to draw, doesn’t it? It’s not likely she faked her own death and just fell off the grid. I mean, right? Who does that?”

Bolan said nothing. In the waning days of his war on the Mafia, he’d done just that, allegedly dying after a bomb destroyed his war wagon. When that ruse fell apart, he’d been forced to stand trial for the blood spilled in his War Everlasting. Ultimately, he’d “died” a second and, as far as the public was concerned, final time. This time it had stuck, but that was partly because of his experiences as a soldier and the help of the White House and Stony Man Farm.

Presumably, this young woman had none of those resources at hand, he told himself.

“She died in a house explosion,” Blair said. “It was six months after her sister died. The local fire department blamed it on a gas leak. Neighbors saw her walk in after work. An hour later, an explosion tears through the house, incinerates the damn thing.”

“They thought it was suicide,” Bolan said.

“According to her coworkers and family, she collapsed when her sister died, took a month off work to recover from the shock. When she finally did come back, people said she’d changed. She was sullen, depressed and withdrawn.”

“No surprise,” McCarter said.

“Agreed. But as time went on, according to the interviews I saw, she got worse rather than better. Since her sister was lost in a terrorist attack, the authorities gave the case a hard look before they closed it, but they found no signs of foul play. She could have died from an accident, which seems plausible. She’d called the gas company to the house at least once about a month before the explosion to report the smell of gas. Or she gave up and killed herself.”

Bolan nodded. “If she’s dead, why tell us all this?”

“More to illustrate a point,” Blair said. “Jennifer Davis fits the profile pretty well. So do a couple of other women. They didn’t check out, either, for various reasons. If you’re trying to find the Nightingale, it won’t be easy. That’s really the point I am trying to make here. You’re chasing a ghost.”

They spent the next hour going through the other information Blair had, including other suspects who’d turned out to be false leads. The Stony Man warriors thanked Blair for his help and left Thames House, along with a flood of civil servants heading out for lunch.

“Fun to yank his chain, but he seems like a good enough lad,” McCarter said. “Not much help, though. Sorry for dragging you out here.”

“It’s been a long flight,” Bolan said. “Let’s see if Kurtzman dug up anything in the meantime.”

* * *

AFTER HIS VISITORS left, Blair forced himself to sit in his office and, for an excruciating twenty-two minutes, pretended to work. Finally, he grabbed his sack lunch from his bottom desk drawer, grabbed his windbreaker from a hook on the wall and headed out the door.

A nervous flutter in his stomach nagged at him and, as he made his way through the corridors of Thames House, he felt as though all eyes rested upon him. He bought a foam cup filled with hot tea from a street vendor and walked a few blocks from MI5’s headquarters, where he bought a couple of newspapers from a newsstand.

Though he tried to look nonchalant about it, he surveyed the streets for any signs he’d been followed. He saw nothing amiss, but knew that meant absolutely zero. He wasn’t a trained field operative. Though he understood surveillance and countersurveillance techniques and principles, he hadn’t applied them in the real world. Said other ways, he was out of his element, over his head or any other clichés one wanted to apply.

Folding the newspapers in half, he put them under his arm and continued on two more blocks to a small municipal park. With the edge of the folded newspapers, he brushed some leaves and other debris from a wrought-iron bench. He seated himself on the bench, drew his tuna sandwich from the bag and took a bite from it. Nerves continued to roil his stomach and he didn’t want to eat. However, he also wanted to make it look as though he was here in the park for a reason, some reason other than the truth.

The sandwich became a sticky ball inside his dry mouth and he washed it down with the tea. Three children played nearby. The middle one, a slim girl with long, blond hair, threw a ball to one of the other children, who caught it and tossed it back to her. She let loose with a giggle. A smile tugged at Blair’s lips, followed almost immediately by a mental image of Eleanor, face pale and still, the sound of his ex-wife sobbing, a swirl of people putting their hand on his shoulder, uncomfortably uttering words meant to comfort. The memory of his ex-wife, Daphne, sobbing, makeup smeared, cut him anew. A dull, all-too-familiar ache formed in the middle of his chest.

He set aside the sandwich. With his thumb and index finger, he reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, withdrew a phone and flipped it open. It wasn’t his phone; it had shown up inside his flat—the bastards had broken into his place while he was at work—and was in a brown envelope on his kitchen table.

With his thumb, he punched in some numbers. On the third ring, a woman’s voice answered.

“Yes?” the woman said.

“I got a visit,” Blair said.

“Okay.”

“They asked questions.”

“About our friend?”

“Yes.”

“And you told them what?”

“What we agreed I’d tell them. Nothing more.”

“Good.”

Chapter 4

Malakov hung up his phone. His ever-present scowl deepened. The Russian, who’d been a bodybuilder and hockey player in his youth, remained thick in the shoulders, neck, arms and legs. He moved with a silence and grace that belied his size.

His hockey teammates had called him “Juggernaut” because, despite his size, he’d glided quickly, forcefully across the ice, and pounded his opponents. A whitish, ropelike scar ran from his temple to the bottom of his jaw, a leftover from his days as a Russian special forces soldier when he’d forced himself on a Chechen woman. She tried in vain to stop him by hitting him in the side of the head with his own vodka bottle. He still recalled how the bottle had shattered. He’d been too drunk to feel the sting of his flesh tearing open, but the haze of alcohol and time had done nothing to dim the memory of his blood bursting forth in a crimson spray on himself and the woman. A rare smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when he recalled how his blood had heightened her terror and his ardor.

Every once in a while, after he’d downed a few drinks, when talk amongst his comrades inevitably turned to sexual conquests, he’d shared that story. Occasionally, it yielded laughter, but more often than not he’d found his comrades greeted the tale with stunned silence. He chalked up their reaction to what he considered Russia’s uptight sexual culture, where people repressed their primal urges. Sometimes his countrymen mystified, even disgusted him.

Hands moving on autopilot scrambled for and located a cigarette. He lit it, took a couple of drags and stared through the windows, which ran nearly from floor to ceiling, of his London penthouse. He saw from his faint reflection he was scowling again and he viewed it like the return of an old friend.

Something was wrong. John Lockwood had sounded different. Granted, he always was an uptight prick, more balls than brains, but loyal to whomever filled his bank account. Malakov had made the British prick a rich man over the last several years and had asked for nothing other than his loyalty.

Now the big Russian worried that he’d lost that. If so, that was a problem because, while he’d tried to keep as much information as possible from Lockwood, he’d had to know at least a little bit.

Enough to do whatever job Malakov had tossed his way.

If he was—how did the Americans say it?—going off the reservation... Malakov didn’t finish the thought. He already knew in his gut how that play would end.

Two members of his security detachment, a couple of former Russian paratroopers, were seated at a large circular table. They smoked cigarettes, drank coffee and played cards. Malakov shook his head in disgust. Lazy bastards, born to be followers, he thought.

“Vasili,” he snapped.

A compact man with neatly trimmed black hair and pale skin whipped his gaze in Malakov’s direction.

“Sir?”

“You’re my security chief, yes?”

Vasili looked confused. “Yes, of course.”

“Yet you sit there playing cards. You think this is—what?—a retirement home? You are ready to retire, it seems.”

“No, sir, of course not.”

“Maybe you consider playing cards working. Maybe for someone as dim as you, that is the case.”

The other man’s eyes narrowed. “No, sir.”

“So I am wrong,” Malakov said. He allowed some menace to creep into his voice.

“Of course not,” Vasili said, shaking his head no. “Perhaps I can do something for you?”

“Perhaps. John Lockwood. You do remember him, yes?”

“Of course.”

“I find myself troubled. Not afraid, but troubled. I want to speak with Lockwood. Find him and bring him here.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and Vasili, bring me a couple of the girls, too. I feel bored and would like some company. Perhaps tonight I can make new memories for myself.”

* * *

BOLAN AND MCCARTER were seated in the Briton’s new Jaguar, parked across the street from John Lockwood’s strip club. Kurtzman had come up with Lockwood as a possible source of information on Yezhov since he had worked within the Russian’s crime ring for years. Bolan looked at the car’s steering wheel. “Nice car.”

“Don’t even think about it, mate,” McCarter said. “I don’t even like you being in the same country as one of my cars. You’ll drive it over my dead body.”

“Only if there were no other escape routes.”

“Funny,” McCarter said, swigging from his can of Coke. “Laugh riot is what you are.”

McCarter stared through the windshield. Bolan followed his gaze and saw a trio of women. All were dressed in low-cut blouses, short skirts and stiletto heels, huddled together near the mouth of an alley, talking.

“Normally, I hate stakeouts,” McCarter said, grinning. “Don’t like to sit still this long. But considering the view, I am willing to make the sacrifice.”

Bolan nodded, but said nothing. No doubt, the women who’d stopped by the car were attractive. They’d dutifully flirted and joked with the two men until it became apparent they were not going to make a sale. Then they’d moved on.

“You two are either cops or fags,” a young redhead had snapped.

“Wrong on both counts,” McCarter had called after her.

Finally, thirty minutes later, the women had stopped coming by.

McCarter again turned to Bolan. “You know, it’s going to look suspicious, us just sitting out here. Being a John isn’t a spectator sport, last I checked. We’re going to get pegged as cops.”

“You thinking of sampling the merchandise?”

“Anything for the cause,” McCarter said. “No, I’m just thinking we may want to move on, if nothing happens. Maybe find another spot to watch the goings on.”

Bolan nodded. “You’re probably right.”

McCarter grabbed the ignition key. But before he could turn it, a black SUV cruised by, streetlights gleaming white on the vehicle’s tinted windows. The SUV slowed at the mouth of an alley next to Lockwood’s strip club, turned. Bolan glanced at McCarter, who was also watching the vehicle. Then he popped open his door and went EVA.

He darted across the street. Tires squealed against the pavement as drivers braked hard to avoid hitting the warrior. Irritated drivers honked their horns or flashed their bright headlights at Bolan. The soldier tuned them out and focused his attention on the alley.

Once he’d made it to the sidewalk, he noticed the tail end of McCarter’s Jaguar as the vehicle sped to the nearest corner, slowed and turned. He unzipped his coat, reached inside and drew the Beretta from its shoulder holster, but kept the gun hidden beneath the jacket.

Bolan walked along the front of Lockwood’s club. When he reached the alley, he stopped and peered around the corner. The black SUV stood in the alley. The vehicle’s engine idled, belching a whitish exhaust from the tailpipe.

Two shadows disembarked from the vehicle and walked toward the club. One of them opened the club’s side door and both figures disappeared through it.

Bolan keyed his throat microphone.

“Two just went inside,” he said. “Unsure if we have any more in the vehicle.”

“Roger that,” McCarter replied.

Bolan heard a door latch click and he froze. The soldier melted into the shadows and pressed his body against the club.

The rear passenger’s-side door flipped open and a man stepped from the vehicle. The guy was tall and lanky. His bald pate gleamed under the glow from the single exposed bulb moored to the club. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. He slammed his door. A second man stepped from the driver’s seat, a pump shotgun held in his hands. He rounded the rear of the SUV and moved toward the other guy.

“Hope Lockwood’s here,” said the guy with the shotgun. Bolan noticed the man spoke English with a thick accent. “Malakov’s going to have our asses if we don’t bring this guy back with us.”

“Don’t worry,” the bald guy replied. “Lockwood’s here. He’s not the type to run.”

“Gutsy?”

Mr. Shotgun laughed and shook his head. “Try greedy. He’s got his club. He’s got a couple of flats in London and some collectible cars. He won’t leave all that behind. He’d try to swim with gold bricks in his pocket, if he could.”

Bolan ran the numbers. He figured the two guys inside likely would make it to Lockwood’s office in less than a minute.

The soldier stepped from the shadows. The man holding the shotgun apparently caught the movement from the corner of his eye, wheeled toward Bolan’s direction and raised the weapon to his shoulder in one fluid movement. But Bolan had the drop on the guy and triggered the Beretta. The handgun chugged out a tri-burst, the bullets ripping into the guy’s torso. The impact caused him to backpedal a couple of steps before he crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap.

The second guy, eyes wide with surprise, clawed underneath his jacket for hardware. The Beretta coughed out another burst and the slugs drilled into the thug’s chest. Even as the guy folded to the ground, Bolan stalked past him to the club’s side door.

The Executioner opened the door and saw it led into a storage room at the rear of the club. The Beretta poised before him, he stepped inside, closed the door. Steel shelves stood one behind the next, loaded with boxes of liquor and snacks. He strained his ears for signs of the two other gunners. The only sound he heard was heavy metal music, muffled but discernible, as it ground out of the club’s sound system. Exiting the storeroom, he stepped into a brightly lit corridor, the same one he’d been through earlier that led to Lockwood’s office.

The Executioner glided down the corridor, past the doors of what he assumed were rooms for private shows. When he got within a dozen steps or so of Lockwood’s office, he heard Lockwood’s voice, taut and loud, emanating through the closed door.

“The bloke had a gun on me, what was I supposed to do?”

“Quiet!”

His fingers wrapped around the knob, the soldier gave it a gentle twist. It moved a quarter inch or so, stopped. It was locked.

The big American stepped back, aimed the Beretta’s muzzle on the lock, fired. The bullet pierced the steel, destroying the lock. Bolan raised his foot, slammed it against the door. It swung inward, the soldier following behind it.

Even as he barreled through the door, Bolan sized up the situation. Lockwood remained, where Bolan had left him earlier, trussed up to the chair. His bodyguard still lay on the floor, sleeping off the beating he’d received less than an hour ago from McCarter. One of the Russians stood before Lockwood, left fist cocked on his hip, right hand clutching a Glock with a sound suppressor screwed into the barrel. The other stood forty-five degrees to Bolan’s right. His back was to Lockwood, while he stared at a small bank of television monitors that Bolan had noticed earlier. Cameras feeding the monitors peeked into the private rooms. An MP-5 submachine gun filled his right hand. The barrel, also fixed with a sound suppressor, was pointed toward the floor. But the commotion finally yanked his attention from the skin show unfolding on the monitors. His gaze was whipping in Bolan’s direction and he was flicking the cigarette away as the MP-5 swung up.

The Beretta sighed once and a hole opened in the Russian’s forehead. The Executioner watched as the man’s body went slack. Even as the shooter collapsed to the ground, a bullet sizzled past Bolan’s neck. The soldier whirled toward the second Russian, the Beretta tracking in on the man. The handgun coughed once and a 9 mm slug lanced into the guy’s shoulder. A cry erupted from his lips and the Glock tumbled to the ground.

To his credit, the man recovered quickly from the pain of the gunshot, he bent down to get the pistol.

But with a couple of long strides, Bolan closed the distance between them and drove a foot into the man’s chest. The Russian shooter fell onto his behind with a grunt. The Executioner set his booted foot onto the man’s lost weapon and centered the Beretta’s muzzle on the man’s forehead.

“Stop,” Bolan said.

Instinctively, the man tried to raise his hands. He winced, grunted and stuck his good hand in the air. The guy glanced at the injury. Bolan looked at it, too, saw a dark shiny stain had formed around the bullet’s entry point. The man shifted his gaze to Bolan.

“I’m bleeding,” he said.

“And I bleed for you,” Bolan said.

McCarter’s voice buzzed in Bolan’s earpiece. In the same instant, both Lockwood and the Russian began peppering Bolan with expletive-filled tirades. The soldier tuned them out and keyed his microphone.

“Go,” Bolan said.

“Outside’s still clear,” McCarter said. “Need me to come in?”

Bolan did and told him so.

Signing off, Bolan turned to the Russian. The guy’s skin had paled from the blood loss and Bolan guessed the man would go into shock soon. He had to move quickly.

“How are you feeling?” Bolan asked.

“I told you I am bleeding, you fuck,” the guy replied. “I’m going to bleed to death.”

Bolan shook his head. “Doubt it,” he said. “Not from that wound. Oh, you’ll bleed. But it would take a while before you actually bleed out.”

Bolan paused a couple of beats. Then he waved the Beretta. “This is a Beretta 93-R. Shoots 9 millimeter rounds. Whisper-quiet, which is nice. I like that. But what I really like is that it fires three bullets at a time. Very handy.”

The man’s gaze was intent on Bolan, but he didn’t seem to be following what the soldier was saying.

“Now the gutshot?” he said. “The one I am about to give you? That’s going to really screw you up. Three bullets can tear the hell out of your organs. Maybe pierce your spine. I’m not a doctor, but you get a wound like that—” Bolan shrugged “—bleeding is the least of your worries.”

Another pause.

“Upside is, you won’t have to worry long. You’ll welcome death.”

Bolan saw the light go on in the guy’s eyes. The Russian licked his lips.

“What do you want?” the man said.

“Information.”

“Fine.”

* * *

THE HINTON TOWER stood among the office towers in London’s financial district. It’s hide of mirrored windows caught the spectrum of lights emanating from traffic signals and streetlights, and corporate signs moored to neighboring office towers.

The Executioner stepped from the shadows of an alley that ran between the Hinton Tower and its closest neighbor, a skyscraper that housed a global bank. A black nylon briefcase hung from his right shoulder. McCarter emerged a heartbeat later, a nearly identical briefcase slung over his shoulder.

Bolan’s ice-blue eyes surveyed the building’s exterior, matched it with the intelligence he’d gained. The thug who had given them this intel worked for a man named Malakov—who just so happened to be a high-ranking associate of Mikhail Yezhov. Malakov, once a tenant in the building, had bought it out of receivership after the bottom fell out of London’s commercial real estate market. That transaction had allowed him to install a tighter security. This included plainclothes, armed guards in the lobby, tougher firewalls on the computers managing the security system and a rooftop helipad to allow for private departures.

“Nice digs,” McCarter muttered.

Bolan nodded.

“You think our boy’s information was good?”

“He was about to bleed out,” Bolan replied. “What do you think?”

“Impending death makes for a hell of a truth serum. Good job bandaging him up, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Seems a little counterproductive, this whole shooting-people-then-tending-to-their-wounds thing,” McCarter said.

Bolan shrugged. “Made a deal with the guy. Not sure he deserved to live, but I made a deal. I don’t think he’s going to bother anybody for a while. MI5 was going to send in a cleanup team, take him to a hospital. They’ll extradite him.”

“So we can shoot him again, at another time in another place.”

“Gives us something to look forward to,” Bolan said.

“True that.”

By this point, the soldier and McCarter had reached the line of glass doors leading into the tower’s lobby. Despite the hour, the revolving door spun easily, spitting Bolan, then McCarter, into the lobby. A handful of men and women, well-groomed professional people in suits, strode purposefully in a dozen different directions through the lobby. This didn’t surprise Bolan. The Russian had told him that Malakov ran a massive energy-and-stock futures operation on the building’s first two floors. With the staff making trades globally, people populated the building around the clock.

A pair of burly men togged in navy blue sport coats, gray slacks and red ties were seated behind an information desk that stood in the middle of the lobby. The Stony Man warriors approached the desk. The guards, who’d been talking, fell silent and looked at Bolan and McCarter.

“Help you?” the younger man asked.

“Have some documents to drop off,” McCarter said. He patted his briefcase to emphasize the point.

“Documents for who?”

“Apex Trading,” McCarter said. “On the twenty-second floor.”

“I know what floor it’s on,” the man said. “Who at Apex?”

“Ed Haggar.” Kurtzman had grabbed the names with an internet search and fed them to Bolan.

The young man shook his head. “Don’t know him.”

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