Interventionism Under Fire

With Europe in economic turmoil, a small fascist group led by a powerful German industrialist plans to bring the continent under one leader. But first they must weaken the U.S. so it can’t interfere. The idea is simple…. Except conspiracists don’t count on Mack Bolan.

In Bolan’s search for a missing federal agent, he finds himself in a bloody firefight at the heavily guarded estate of an international arms dealer. As the bodies pile up around him, though, intel begins to paint a picture much bigger than one missing American. It’s a picture with devastating global repercussions—and the U.S. is about to take the first, calculated hit. Bolan must chase a burning fuse across Europe and America to prevent this promised fascist takeover.

A million things could go wrong, but they had to go in anyway.

The helicopter touched down and Bolan was the first one out. He dropped into a crouch and watched for any threats while the others disembarked.

The carnage was striking. The soldier counted two helicopters, their twisted and charred remains at ten o’clock and three o’clock. Fire ate the frames and pumped thick black columns of smoke into the sky. A quick sweep of the terrain revealed five dead uniformed guards. A couple of the corpses bobbed facedown in the swimming pool, the water around them clouded with blood. The bodies of two other men, both in black, were sprawled on the ground. Bolan assumed they were part of Geiger’s crew.

He also saw the bodies of at least a half dozen men and women in khaki pants and dark green polo shirts. They seemed to be equipped with holsters, additional magazines and handcuffs. Campaign hats lay on the ground near a couple of the shot-up guards. It hadn’t been a fight; it had been a slaughter.

Justice Run

Don Pendleton

Justice is justly represented blind, because she sees no difference in the parties concerned. She has but one scale and weight, for rich and poor, great and small.

—William Penn

Some Fruits of Solitude

Justice may be blind, but I am her eyes, forever seeking out those who would escape punishment.

—Mack Bolan

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

PROLOGUE

Monaco

Three months earlier

He had to get out of there.

The elevator doors parted and Fred Gruber burst from the confined space. He found himself surrounded by the sounds of meat sizzling, knives striking cutting boards and people shouting at one another in French. He looked around and saw men and women dressed in white chef hats and stained aprons standing at cooking stations, cutting vegetables or cooking meat on large griddles. On any other day, the amateur chef would’ve considered this a gift from heaven, a chance to watch skilled cooks make five-star French cuisine.

This night he couldn’t have cared less.

He just wanted to stay alive.

At first he tried walking fast through the kitchen, hoping to pass through with a minimum of fuss. He had covered maybe ten paces when one of the chefs, a heavyset man with a handlebar mustache, spotted him. Without setting down his utensils, the guy turned toward Gruber.

“What are you doing?” the chef demanded in French. “You can’t come in here.”

Without breaking his pace, Gruber forced a smile on his face and closed the distance between them.

“Sorry,” Gruber, an American, replied in the same language. “I am lost.”

Gruber brushed past the man, who was offering to help him find his way, but Gruber tried to ignore the man. On the other side of the kitchen, he saw an exit door. He wanted to get through it, step into the warm Monaco evening and run like hell to his car.

He wore blue suit pants, black wingtips and a white broadcloth dress shirt. The tails of the shirt were pulled out of his waistband. His tie was where he’d left it, looped over the back of a mahogany chair. His Glock was stuffed into his waistband.

Before he could take another step, he felt a hand clamp heavily on his left shoulder. His stomach plummeted and he whirled. His right hand slipped up under his shirt, fingers curling around the pistol’s grip, while his other one slapped the man’s hand away. In a heartbeat the chef’s expression went from mildly irritated to surprise. Gruber took a step back from the guy, ready to order him to back off, when he heard the elevator ding followed by the whoosh of the opening doors.

Gruber yanked the Glock from his waistband and displayed it so the chef could see it. The guy’s face paled and he stepped back. Gruber wheeled and resumed his sprint for the door, shoving other members of the kitchen staff from his path. Judging by the screams, the slap of footsteps against the floor and the clatter of dishes breaking, pandemonium had broken out behind him. Though his pursuers likely were armed, he doubted they’d try shooting at him in this crowd or, for that matter, in this building. The hotel catered to the rich and powerful, which included police chiefs and military generals. The last thing the people chasing him wanted was official attention. They had been operating in the shadows for years. Gruber had no doubt they wanted to keep it that way.

That’s why they wanted to stop him. He’d spent a couple of weeks in Berlin, rooting around for information. What he’d found had knocked him on his ass. Enough so that he’d considered contacting his old cronies in Washington. He’d dismissed the idea outright. What he knew just seemed too fantastic. If he called his friends at the Bureau, they might not believe him. They might even assume he was bored in retirement and trying to drum up excitement and relive his glory days.

He wouldn’t have blamed them.

Then he’d come to Monaco, to put some final pieces together. Gruber knew their plans; he knew the players. He finally had some proof. Now all he needed was to share what he knew.

When Gruber reached the exit, he pushed down on the release bar, shoved the door open and ran outside, barely slowing at all. The night was warm, with a light breeze. But the stench of rotting food rising up from the garbage bins hung in the air. He’d put several yards between himself and the kitchen by the time he heard the door slam closed behind him. Arms and legs pumping hard, he tried to gather speed as he put some distance between himself and the building.

He hadn’t expected to end up in this situation, running for his life. A former FBI agent, he figured he’d left all the dangerous stuff behind when he had retired from the Bureau, got his PI license and started chasing wayward spouses for a daily fee plus expenses. Then he’d gotten a call from an old man offering incredible money. What did he have to do to earn it? The old man sat on a corporate board with another guy who as of late had been disappearing for days on end. Money had been disappearing from the company’s coffers, too. Could Gruber look into it? The old man was willing to pay a retainer, put him up in sweet hotels and make sure he ate like a damn king.

Hell, yeah, Gruber could look into it.

Idiot.

He’d be lucky if he lived to spend his retainer.

When he reached the sprawling parking lot at the back of the hotel, he heard footsteps pounding against the pavement behind him. Pumping his arms and legs harder, he darted between a pair of parked cars.

His first inclination was to turn and fire on his pursuers. A warning shot over their heads might make them back off. He dismissed the idea. If he was still a U.S. federal agent, he’d do it and hope he could avoid any legal problems. As a private detective he had no authority, including the authority to carry or discharge a pistol in a foreign city. He’d bought the gun from a contact here in Monaco. When he asked the guy whether the gun was hot, the man had just smiled, knocked fifty dollars off the price and told Gruber to stow the questions.

Gruber heard something slap against one of the cars. He glanced down and saw a spiderweb had formed on the rear window of the vehicle, followed a heartbeat later by second bullet sparking off the car’s roof and zipping into the darkness.

They had sound suppressors.

Gruber dropped to one knee an instant before a storm of bullets pounded into the cars on either side of him, drilling holes in the bodywork. Slugs pierced tires, flattening them, as other rounds lanced through the windows.

Jesus, if he didn’t fight back, they were going to kill him right here. He hadn’t expected this. But either he was dealing with true believers willing to go to jail for their cause or they had enough money to buy their way out of trouble.

From what Gruber knew, it was a little of both. He was dealing with fanatics and they had money.

Moving in a crouch, he backed away from the shooters, sticking as close as possible to the silver Mercedes to his right. The cars were parked nose-in, so the bullets were piercing the trunk lids, the rear quarter panels and the roofs.

When Gruber reached the Mercedes’ front bumper, he saw it was parked a couple of feet from the front bumper of another luxury sedan. Rounding the car’s front end, he sandwiched himself between the two vehicles and popped his head up in time to see one of his pursuers—a guy built like a pro wrestler with the long, bleached hair to match—closing in on the car. He had his pistol extended forward in a two-handed grip, and Gruber could see a wisp of smoke coming out of the sound suppressor.

The guy was so intent on looking at where he’d last seen Gruber that he failed to see the former federal agent from his new position. Resting both arms on the car’s hood, Gruber drew down on the man, exhaled and squeezed off a shot.

The Glock roared and the shooter jerked back, as though hit by an invisible baseball bat. Releasing the pistol from his hands, he grabbed at his throat and collapsed to the ground.

To the former Fed’s right, a second thug togged in a loud Hawaiian shirt popped up from behind a parked car and squeezed off a couple of shots. The PI felt one of the bullets zing past his left ear. He folded down between the cars again, grinding his teeth as slugs pelted the Mercedes.

After a couple of seconds the shooting ceased and Gruber guessed his opponent was reloading. Rising slightly, he peered over the Mercedes’ pocked hood and saw the guy had dropped out of sight.

It also occurred to him that three guys had followed him from the hotel.

In the distance he heard sirens wailing and, out of reflex, he felt relief wash over him.

Yeah, he hadn’t wanted any legal entanglements. But that was before these bastards showed just how determined they were. Plus, the FBI agent and lawyer in him balked at running from a dead body, especially when he was the killer. Maybe he’d be safer in police custody. They’d contact his embassy, he’d tell them what he knew and Washington would, hopefully, swoop in to help.

They’d have to do something. Even if they didn’t help him, they had to stop the hell that was going to unfold across Europe.

He peered over the hood again and saw Mr. Hawaiian Shirt creeping across the parking lot toward him. Gruber raised the Glock and snapped off a couple of shots at the guy. The gunner flinched and darted out of sight.

The sirens were louder and closer.

Gruber heard the rustle of cloth behind him. He wheeled. A shoe sole hit him in the jaw and knocked him on his side. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.

Another man, the third guy who’d disappeared, stood over him, his sound-suppressed weapon aimed at Gruber.

“Please to drop the weapon,” the man said.

Gruber loosened his grip and the weapon clattered to the ground.

The guy grinned.

“You can’t stop this,” he said. “It’s gone too far.”

The gun whispered once. A bullet slammed into Gruber’s forehead and thrust him into blackness.

* * *

THE ALARM ON Reinhard Vogelsgang’s wristwatch beeped three times, interrupting his train of thought as he pored over the most recent profit-and-loss statements.

Clicking off the alarm, he removed his wire-framed reading glasses, set them on his desk blotter and rose from his chair.

Crossing the office, he moved to a rectangular panel built into the wall and surrounded on all four sides by wood molding. He pressed a small stud and the panel slid away, only the slight hum of a motor audible from behind the wall. Behind the panel was a recessed area that contained a large video monitor. He snagged a remote from inside the compartment, switched on the monitor and thumbed the button that turned on the screen.

The phone call had come twelve hours ago. The news he received had left a knot in his stomach and had forced him to make a decision. Considering the stakes, it’d been an easy one. Even so, the ramifications could bring all sorts of hell crashing down on his head if he didn’t handle it correctly.

The screen was separated into four boxes. In the far right corner sat an elderly man in a dark blue suit. In a box beneath him, the image of a woman was visible. The meeting’s third participant was late, as usual, joining the call two minutes after the start time.

“I guess we can begin now,” Vogelsgang said as the latest participant, Werner Nacht, a construction-industry magnate, seated himself.

“So sorry,” Nacht said.

“It’s nothing,” Vogelsgang replied.

“I was caught in a meeting.”

“Of course. No doubt it was more important.”

Nacht laced his fingers and leaned toward the camera.

“Tremendously important,” he said. “Shall I share?”

Vogelsgang shook his head.

“I think we’ve lost enough time,” he said.

“No, really. This has more than a little relationship to our work here.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about Monaco. I think everyone wants to know about that. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Vogelsgang forced a smile. “Of course. Please update everyone.”

“A private detective was killed tonight, shot down in the streets by a couple of thugs. They accosted him in his hotel and chased him into the street. Awful business.”

“Awful,” Vogelsgang agreed.

“Would you like to tell the rest of the story, or shall I?”

Vogelsgang swallowed hard. His forced smile fading, he shrugged and leaned into the camera. “We had a problem,” he said. “Someone sent a private detective after me. The man was better than we anticipated. He figured a few things out. I had him eliminated.”

The woman leaned forward.

“You what?” she asked. “You had him killed? Without discussing it with us?”

The executive’s smile faded. “Let me assure you, it needed to be taken care of. I had no time to consult you. Frankly, I saw no reason. The decision was painfully obvious.”

Anger flashed in the woman’s eyes, but she stayed silent.

“What did he know?” asked the elderly man, a media mogul who owned two newspapers, three television stations and a book publishing operation.

Shrugging, Vogelsgang backed away from the large monitor and lowered himself into a leather chair. He knew what was coming and he wanted the best view possible. He responded to the old man’s question with silence.

After several seconds the old man’s face reddened. “Damn it,” he said, his voice growing louder, “what did he know? Did he know everything?”

Another shrug from Vogelsgang, who busied himself staring at his drink.

“He knew a few things,” Vogelsgang said finally. “He knew a surprising number of things for someone who’d come out of nowhere, a foreigner, in fact. He had credentials and experience, of course, but could barely speak the language.”

Vogelsgang turned his eyes up from his drink.

“He could barely speak German or French. Yet he pieced together so much information. He even started to tie me to the United Front. It was amazing, as though someone was feeding him information.” He paused and let his words sink in. “An insider, I mean.”

The woman, Katharina Rothschild, leaned away from the camera and licked her lips. “Do you know who hired him?” she asked, her voice husky.

“I have some ideas,” Vogelsgang said. “A hypothesis, really. Nothing more.”

He dipped an index finger into his drink and stirred it.

“It’s a bit early for a drink, I suppose. Still, I’m feeling good, feeling as though things are moving forward. A drink seems in order. I digress, though, Katharina. You’d asked me a question and I owe you an answer. No, I don’t know who hired our dead friend. My thought— My theory, if you will, is someone close to me hired him. Maybe someone who’s getting cold feet, someone who’s lost her sense of vision.”

He saw fear flicker in Rothschild’s eyes. “‘Her’?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Her. You said ‘her.’ Surely you don’t think I hired the man, do you?”

He made a dismissive gesture.

“Just a theory,” he said. “Okay, a little more than a theory, actually. We grabbed his cell phone and his laptop and scoured the hell out of those things. So it’s a theory based on evidence.”

The old man leaned toward his camera. “Katharina? Katharina, did you do as he says? Why would you do this?”

“I did no such thing!”

“Please, everyone, please calm down,” Vogelsgang said. “Let’s pull it together. Katharina, I admit it was a bit of a shock at first. However, now I want to thank you.”

Nacht, the construction executive, laughed derisively.

“Thank her?” he asked. “For betraying us? Have you lost your mind?”

Vogelsgang shook his head slowly. “Lost my mind? Quite the contrary. I feel as though I’ve gained it. For the first time in years, since I first began all the hard work on this, I’m really seeing how this works. See, I don’t... No, I can’t trust you people. I’ve suspected that for some time. And now you’ve proved me right. This thing I want to accomplish, this thing Europe and the world needs so badly, I must accomplish it by myself.”

“You’re throwing us out?” It was Nacht again. “Damn you, I’ve sunk millions into this! You can’t just toss us aside like this.”

“I appreciate your passion, Werner. It’s a business decision. Surely you of all people can appreciate that. Rest assured I’m not going to toss you aside or dissolve the partnership.”

“Well, what the devil are you talking about then?”

“It’s a liquidation.”

Nacht continued to protest as did the others. Vogelsgang pressed the mute button on his remote control and blissful silence fell over the room. He felt the anticipation building, a ticklish sensation in his stomach that spread to his groin.

The woman suddenly whipped her head to the side and appeared to gasp. She slapped a hand over her chest, as if to keep her heart from jumping out. Vogelsgang turned the volume back up just in time to hear a scream burst from her lips. From off screen, gunshots sounded and one slapped into her forehead, knocking her from her chair. His team would make sure it looked like a robbery, just as they’d made the detective’s murder look like a mugging.

Vogelsgang sat transfixed as the others died on-screen, one right after the next. A man togged in black, his face covered by a ski mask, jabbed a needle into the old man’s neck. His heart problems were common knowledge among friends, politicians and the financial press. Though he was ninety-three, he’d placed himself on a transplant list for a new heart.

He needn’t have bothered.

The syringe’s contents would result in a heart attack and be virtually undetectable in an autopsy.

In the other screen, Werner’s head was tilted to the right. Dead eyes stared at the camera, but his body was still. A black-suited figure stood behind the executive, still pulling on the rope looped around his neck. Vogelsgang’s mercenaries would make Werner’s death look like a suicide. A couple of his high-profile deals had gone south in the past few months, which would make suicide plausible.

Vogelsgang clicked a button on the remote control and the monitor went black.

The brush with the detective had been too close. He’d devoted too much time and money bringing this plan together to have it fall apart because of betrayal. There was too much at stake.

Looking up at the monitor, he focused on the image of the old man. Vogelsgang had known the man for decades. But looking at him now, he just felt cold. Vogelsgang knew he’d kill 100—hell, 1,000 more—just like this man to realize his vision.

Let the bloodletting begin.

CHAPTER ONE

Monaco

Present day

Jacques Dumond lived on an estate on the outskirts of Monte Carlo. A stone security wall surrounded the property, obscuring the grounds from passersby.

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, was at the wheel of a black Jaguar sedan. He guided the vehicle past the front gate. Peering through the windshield, he studied a pair of men standing outside a wrought-iron gate that led into the estate.

Though he could see no weapons, Bolan assumed the grim-faced men were guards because they seemed more focused on their surroundings than interacting with each other. And the smaller of the two, a slim guy decked out in a black suit, was holding what appeared to be a two-way radio in his right hand. The other guy—dressed in jeans, a white shirt and an ill-fitting blue sport coat, his bald head glinting under the streetlights—fixed his gaze on Bolan’s car as it glided past. The Jaguar was outfitted with black-tinted windows that prevented the big man from seeing anything other than his reflection as Bolan wheeled by.

Leo Turrin was in the front passenger’s seat. He nodded at the man watching their car.

“The big guy is yours,” Turrin said. “I’ll take the little one.”

“Thanks.”

Bolan drove three more blocks, making sure he was well out of the guards’ sight before he turned right. He drove another two blocks before making another right and maneuvering around the rear of the estate.

Pulling the car up to a curb, the soldier’s mind reeled through key facts about his target.

Before falling from grace, Dumond had been a high-level French soldier who specialized in counterterrorism operations. After a decade he’d moved to the dark side. His business card read “security expert,” but in truth he worked as a mercenary and enforcer for some of the world’s most vicious regimes. He’d led death squads in Sudan and Sierra Leone, trained antigovernment killers in Colombia and provided muscle for Mexican drug cartels. A scrape in that country had cost him his left eye. Apparently, once he moved into his mid-forties, he’d decided it was easier to sell guns than wield them. He began selling arms to some of the same criminal regimes he’d once worked for. The experts back in Washington disagreed on his exact body count, but knew it was significant, at least two-thirds of it being women and children murdered in the world’s conflict zones.

So, yeah, Bolan was hunting a jackal this night. The bastard’s blood-drenched résumé was more than enough to make him a legitimate target, but Dumond also had made the mistake of grabbing Jennifer Rodriguez, an American federal agent, which kicked him up a few more notches on the soldier’s hit parade.

Bolan and Turrin had arrived there ready to take on the Frenchman and his crew of gunners. Beneath a light black windbreaker, Bolan carried a pair of Beretta 93-R pistols in a double shoulder harness. The pistols were able to fire either single rounds or in 3-round bursts of 9 mm Parabellum ammo. With a foregrip in front of the trigger guard, the pistol could to fire 1,100 rounds per minute.

The soldier also had procured another of his old standbys. The 44 Magnum Desert Eagle Mark VII rode on his left hip in a cross-draw position. Outfitted with the six-inch barrel, the hand cannon’s magazine carried eight rounds.

Bolan’s other tools of war were sealed in the trunk. There he had stashed a Heckler & Koch MP-5 fitted with a sound suppressor, and a small duffel bag loaded with additional magazines for the submachine gun as well as an assortment of fragmentation, flash-bang and smoke grenades.

Turrin, on the other hand, had opted for a Benelli M-4 Super 90 shotgun. Manufactured by Benelli Armi SPA, an Italian company, the shotgun could be loaded with one 12-gauge round in the chamber and seven more in the tube. Like Bolan, Turrin was carrying a Beretta 93-R. He wanted the weapon because of its sound suppressor and its ability to fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull. But he also was armed with a .38-caliber Colt Cobra that was holstered in the small of his back. The short-barreled pistol’s aluminum-alloy frame made it light to carry and it was easily concealed.

Bolan eased the Jaguar to the curb, turned off the lights and killed the engine. He popped open the door and stepped into the warm night. Turrin had stepped out of the passenger’s side and both men made their way to the trunk.

Bolan raised the lid, reached in, hefted the duffel bag and slid its strap over his shoulder. The bag’s weight caused its strap to pull taut until he could feel it dig into the muscles of his left shoulder. Next he pulled out the MP-5 and checked its load. Turrin had pulled out the Benelli and was looping the strap over his right shoulder.

Reaching back into the compartment, Bolan pulled a rope with a grappling hook.

“You realize it’d be easier to go through the front gate,” Turrin said.

“Sure,” Bolan replied. “No one would notice two guys shooting two other guys and then busting through a wrought-iron fence.”

“I’m just making a point.”

“Rope climbing a little too strenuous for you, Leo?”

“No comment.”

Grinning, Bolan turned and looked back at the wall surrounding the estate. Inside the wall, Dumond usually had anywhere between four and six gunners patrolling the grounds, especially when he was entertaining high-end clients, most of whom also were prone to violence. And, according to his dossier, the arms dealer also sampled some of his own wares, carrying a pair of Detonics .45-caliber pistols beneath his well-tailored jackets and at least one combat blade.

Bolan keyed his throat mike.

“Striker to Base,” he said.

“Go, Striker,” a female voice replied. It was Barbara Price, the mission controller for Stony Man Farm. Bolan and Turrin were connected with the Farm’s ultrasecret facility thanks to satellite links.

“We’re EVA,” he said, “and ready to hit the town.”

“You’re clear,” Price told him.

“Did they crash the party?”

“They” was the Farm’s cyber team, which had been working to hack into the computers that controlled Dumond’s lighting, security system and other critical infrastructure ever since Bolan and Turrin had left the United States.

“Party crashed. Once we saw you stop outside the target, we set the outside surveillance cameras on a loop. If anyone’s monitoring the cameras, all they’ll see is the same empty street they saw three minutes ago.”

“Which is fine,” Bolan said, “until they realize they’ve seen the same car or dog walker pass by eight times in the last couple of minutes.”

“Guess you’ll have to move faster than they can think,” Price replied.

“Are you getting any good intel otherwise?”

“Satellites indicate four guys walking the grounds inside the wall,” Price said. “Two smaller animals, probably dogs, moving separately from them. That’s all in addition to the thugs at the gate. Looks like another moving around on the rooftop.”

“Okay,” Bolan replied.

He returned to the trunk and popped the lid again. Pulling aside a blanket, he revealed a rectangular box, covered in faux leather, which was about four inches thick.

He opened the box and from its interior removed a CO2-powered dart pistol. Breaking the weapon open, he slid a tranquilizer dart into the barrel and snapped it closed. He slipped a smaller box filled with extra darts into his jacket pocket.”

“Still won’t shoot dogs, huh?” Turrin asked.

Bolan turned toward him and shook his head. “The dogs don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. “They just do as their told.”

Turrin nodded his understanding. “You always did like your rules.”

“It’s what separates me from Dumond,” Bolan said.

“Yeah, that and his massive bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

Bolan allowed himself a grin. “There’s that.”

Shutting the trunk for a second time, the soldier slid the dart pistol into the duffel bag and moved toward the fence. If the cyber team had done its job, the motion detectors and other security devices should be disabled without actually registering on Dumond’s IT systems.

They had considered shutting down the electricity remotely, but had decided against it.

Dumond had to expect someone would come for the missing federal agent, even if he’d done his best to move her around. If they shut down electric power to the estate, it would alert Dumond that something was about to happen. His security teams probably would retreat to the house and form an iron ring around Dumond and Rodriguez, making them harder to reach. Besides, it was a safe bet the facility was outfitted with backup generators that would fire to life shortly after the power went out.

Bolan figured it was better for them to take out as many of the exterior guards as quickly and quietly as possible. They still had surprise on their side, and the neighborhood around them had no idea of the mayhem about to erupt. The longer the Stony Man warriors could maintain their advantage, the better.

Bolan scaled the wall. The muscles of his arms, shoulders and thighs bunched and released, starting to burn as he reached the top ledge and pulled himself onto it. He lay across the top of the wall, MP-5 clutched in his right fist, ice-blue eyes scanning for threats, while he waited for Turrin to finish his ascent.

The little Fed reached the top of the wall, his breath coming in labored gasps, sweat pouring down his face.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

Bolan held up a finger to silence him, then jerked his head slightly to the left. Two of Dumond’s hardmen had fallen across his line of sight. The submachine-gun-wielding thugs were less than thirty yards from the Americans, walking a few yards apart from each other.

Bolan raised himself onto his elbows, like a cobra lifting its head from the ground. He lined up a shot on the closer hardman.

Turrin had filled his hand with his sound-suppressed Beretta and was maneuvering his body so he could put a shot into the second guard.

The Executioner caressed the MP-5’s trigger. The weapon coughed out a burst. Bolan had tried to catch the guy in the chest. In the instant the soldier squeezed the trigger, the man turned. The bullets ripped into his right shoulder and lanced into his ribs, caused him to yelp in pain and shock. As he stumbled back, his partner spun toward the commotion and was searching for a target with the muzzle of his SMG. Before he could trigger his weapon, Turrin cut loose with a triburst. The Parabellum manglers ripped a ragged line across the guy’s chest. He stumbled back a couple of steps before falling to the ground in a boneless heap.

Repositioning the grappling hook, Bolan dropped the rope down the wall. Letting the MP-5 fall loose on the strap, he gathered the rope in both hands and rappelled to the ground while Turrin covered him. When he touched down, the soldier dropped into a crouch and scanned the area for more attackers while Turrin made his way down the rope. Holding the MP-5 in his right hand, Bolan unzipped the duffel bag and withdrew the dart pistol. In the meantime, Turrin was kneeling next to one of the dead men. He plucked a bud from the dead man’s ear and, reaching under the guy’s coat, pulled the cord, tracing its length until he found the radio.

Bolan watched as Turrin slipped the bud into his own ear and listened for several seconds.

“They keep calling out names,” he said, speaking in a whisper. “I assume it’s these chuckleheads.”

The soldier nodded and slowly rose into a crouch. As Turrin began to uncoil from the ground, Bolan looked just over his old friend’s shoulder and spotted a shadow emerging from a copse.

Bolan’s hand snaked out and he struck Turrin in the right biceps. The impact knocked the man sideways. At the same time Bolan was able to aim the pistol’s barrel at the shape launching itself from the ground. He could see the German shepherd dog’s black face, jaws open, saliva-soaked fangs bared and gleaming as it hurtled toward him. The soldier triggered dart gun. The missile buried into the muscle of the animal’s shoulder. If the sting of the dart registered with the dog, it gave no outward signs. Bolan whipped to the side, the animal’s body hurtling past him, striking the ground, rolling once before springing up from the earth and turning back toward the humans.

A growl escaping its throat, the animal raced toward the Stony Man warriors. It leaped at Bolan, who was closer. Its jaws snapped at empty air. The soldier shoved his forearm out, and the dog’s jaws clamped down on it. Bolts of pain radiated from Bolan’s forearm, but he ignored it. The force of the dog striking him hammered Bolan from his feet and knocked him onto his back. He felt the animal’s jaws loosen and by the time he hit the ground, the soldier was able to push the dog away with a hard shove. It wheeled back in his direction. Mouth open, it stared at Bolan, but its stance had grown unsteady and it seemed to stare at Bolan without focusing on him. Whimpering, its legs grew rubbery and it dropped to the ground, panting.

Bolan turned away from the animal, certain it would be all right once the tranquilizer wore off. A quick scan of the sleeve of his windbreaker revealed torn fabric and punctured flesh, but nothing he couldn’t tolerate.

Turrin gathered the dart pistol from the ground and handed it to the soldier. Bolan took the pistol, broke it open, slid another dart into the breech and snapped the weapon closed.

“Bullets,” Turrin said. “Faster, more effective.”

“No,” Bolan replied.

“Figured as much.”

The Executioner gestured in the direction of the house with his chin.

“This way.”

He brushed past Turrin and moved in a crouch toward the mansion. A long expanse of land, much of it covered by a well-manicured lawn, lay between them and the massive structure. Several large oak trees rose from the ground, each of which would provide decent cover in a firefight. A driveway wound in from the front gate and carved out a semicircle in front of the house. A large circular pool stood in front of the building. In the center of the pool stood a statue of a woman dressed in flowing robes, a pitcher gripped in both hands. Water spurted from a hole in the pitcher and arced into the pool.

After a few seconds Bolan spotted three more guards moving in a ragged line in his direction. He shot Turrin a look. With a nod the little Fed acknowledged that he saw them. One of the towering oak trees stood several yards away. Bolan gestured for Turrin to circle it and catch the guards from the side while Bolan moved head-on at them. He nodded once to signal his understanding and headed toward the trees.

Bolan had returned the dart pistol to his combat bag. A group of halogen outdoor lights bathed the yard in white light. The lights had caused the trees’ canopies of leaves to cast fairly big shadows over the sprawling lawn, which provided them with additional cover.

The soldier knelt and brought the MP-5 to his shoulder. He flicked his gaze to the right and could see Turrin’s shadow melt into a nearby tree. The man’s location would position him within a couple dozen yards of the approaching hardmen.

“You have a clear shot?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah,” Turrin replied.

“On three,” the soldier said.

He whispered the three-count into his throat mike. When he reached the final number, he squeezed the trigger on the subgun. The volley of rounds sliced through the air between him and his targets as he dragged the SMG in a tight arc. At the same time, Turrin began firing the Beretta from Bolan’s right. The sustained volley tore through the guards, whipsawing them as both fighters unloaded their weapons.

Within seconds all three guards lay on the ground, dead.

Getting to his feet, Bolan ejected the H&K’s magazine, slammed a new one home and kept moving.

* * *

TWO DAYS EARLIER Bolan had walked into the War Room, part of the Stony Man Farm facility in Virginia, and taken in the activity buzzing around him.

Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, was seated at the large briefing table. A stack of folders stood at his right elbow. One was fanned open and its contents—papers and photos—spread in front of him on the tabletop. His tie was pulled loose from his throat and his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

Barbara Price was seated next to Brognola, studying the contents of one of the folders.

“There he is,” a voice called to his right.

Bolan turned and saw his old friend, Jack Grimaldi, grinning at him. The pilot, his slim frame togged in olive-drab coveralls, stood at the coffeemaker, a carafe clutched in his right hand. The other two hadn’t noticed Bolan until Grimaldi spoke. They lifted their eyes from the files.

Brognola greeted Bolan with a tight smile and a nod. “Striker,” he said, using Bolan’s code name.

Price flashed Bolan a warm smile, the curve of her full lips telegraphing a hint of invitation. When the soldier stayed at the Farm, he often shared a bed with Price. Though they had mutual respect for each other, their physical relationship revolved around satisfying a mutual need and not a deeper emotional commitment.

“Glad you’re back,” Price said.

“But don’t unpack the toothbrush,” Brognola added. “We have a priority mission that’s cropped up. You don’t have to take it, but you’re the best option we have.”

“No pressure,” Bolan said.

“Your country needs you,” Grimaldi said. “But don’t let that sway you, you goldbricker. Let me pour you some coffee so you can relax.”

“Did you ever think of becoming a military recruiter?” Bolan asked.

He looked at Brognola and nodded at the color photo the man held. “So, is she the problem?”

“Yes,” Brognola said, “and no.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Bolan replied.

Brognola grinned. “What I mean is, she’s the reason you’re here. But she’s one of the good ones. Jennifer Rodriguez has been with the FBI for a decade. Lots of arrests. She worked counterintelligence for a long time. More recently, though, the Bureau put her undercover tracking weapons dealers. Does a damn good job of it, too, from what I can tell.” Brognola paused and sipped at his coffee. “Unfortunately we lost track of her a couple of days ago. She was supposed to check in with her handler. She didn’t make the contact. By itself that’s not a big deal. They had a backup time in place, just in case she got waylaid. But that time came and went—”

“And still no word from Rodriguez,” Bolan said.

“Right.”

“Where was she?”

“Monaco,” Price said.

“Because?”

“She was tracking someone for the Bureau,” Price told him. “Ever hear of Jacques Dumond?”

Bolan thought about it for a few seconds before the name clicked with him.

“Weapons dealer,” he said. “French.”

“Right,” Price said. “He’s got a pretty impressive record. Sells a lot of weapons in the Middle East and Asia. His semiofficial client list includes North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. The non-state groups include Hezbollah as well as a couple of minor al Qaeda-inspired groups.”

Brognola leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Obviously we’re interested in all those clients,” the big Fed said. “With the large countries, it was at least a little easier to track the purchases. Not easy, but easier. Plus, those countries are a little more cautious about how they use those weapons.”

“A little,” Bolan agreed.

“But the radical Islamist groups? The U.S. had almost no information about Dumond’s transactions with them. We knew he was selling weapons. But what types of weapons was he selling them? In what quantities? We had no idea. You can imagine how happy that made us.”

“And Rodriguez was checking into this.”

“Right,” Brognola replied. “It was supposed to be low-impact. She wasn’t supposed to infiltrate too deeply. She was supposed to set up a couple of purchases, make a few contacts, pass along what she found and move on. The FBI set up a front company for her a few years ago to give her cover for some of her activities. It’s really just a shell. But it gives her some kind of base to use when she knocks on doors.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Bolan leaned back in his chair. Grimaldi slid into the seat next to him.

Brognola continued. “A lot of the work she does is monitoring the sales of high-tech weapons and large military weapons systems. Since she was involved in counterintelligence, she’s usually looking for Americans who are selling bad stuff to other countries or terrorist organizations.”

“But,” Price interjected, “Dumond likes the ladies, so the U.S. figured it might be good to have a pretty woman with lots of cash knocking on Dumond’s door. He might be a little more receptive. And it never hurts to cloud a target’s judgment with a little sex.”

“A French guy’s who’s also a skirt chaser?” Grimaldi said. “What are the odds of that?”

“Did she learn anything?” Bolan asked.

Brognola shook his head slowly. “We don’t know for sure, but considering how little time she was there, it’s highly unlikely.”

“We think Dumond had made her as an FBI agent before she ever arrived. We’re not sure how he did that. She’s worked in deep-cover operations for years, under another name. It’s all in the dossier we gave you. But anything she knew, she had learned from existing FBI files.”

“Maybe Dumond has a mole in the FBI,” Bolan said.

Brognola, who’d been digging in his pants’ pocket for a packet of antacids, heaved a sigh. “It’s possible,” he said. “The Bureau is investigating, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything on that front.”

Bolan leaned forward in his chair and fixed his gaze on Brognola. “I assume we aren’t just shooting the bull here?”

The big Fed was peeling the foil away from the roll of antacids. He glanced up at Bolan and shook his head.

“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have stomach problems. You know that?”

“At least you quit smoking.”

“Well, I suppose chewing on a cigar doesn’t count.”

“To each his own.”

“To answer your question, no, we’re not just shooting the bull. This whole thing’s got the attorney general spooked. Unfortunately, FBI agents go missing sometimes. It’s not that. It’s the fact that someone apparently had outed her before she ever stepped foot in Monaco. Also, she has a head full of secrets. A lot of them concern Dumond’s competitors and our country’s efforts to curb illegal weapons trafficking. She also has an expertise in al Qaeda, Hezbollah and some Pakistani Jihadist groups. It was something she developed as part of her undercover work. Unfortunately, for her and us, that’s valuable information, information a lot of bad people would pay for.”

“He could use her like a Pez dispenser full of classified information,” Grimaldi said.

“Not the image I was expecting, Jack, but thanks for that,” Brognola said. “Bottom line is I’m asking you to swoop into Monaco, find the lady and get her the hell out of there. Or, God forbid, if she’s dead, find out who killed her and burn them down. I’m a big believer in letting the underworld know messing with American agents will only get you dead. I know you feel the same way.”

Bolan nodded his agreement, but stayed silent. He kept an arm’s-length relationship with the U.S. government. That meant he undertook missions on behalf of his country, but only the ones he agreed with. As much as he loved his country, he wasn’t an employee of its government, its military or its intelligence services. He rarely turned down Brognola’s requests for help, though he had a few times when something about the mission didn’t feel right.

This was not one of those times, though.

“I’m in,” he said.

* * *

THE FLIGHT FROM Washington, D.C., to Monte Carlo, Monaco, took about nine hours. Bolan slept the first six hours while Grimaldi piloted the aircraft, a Gulfstream executive jet. On paper, the jet was owned by an import/export company with its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. In reality, the DEA had seized the aircraft from a Colombian drug kingpin, given it a new tail number and registration and put it back into service for undercover operations.

After he woke up, the soldier downed a cup of coffee and pulled a brown valise from the seat next to his. Setting the case in his lap, he popped it open and withdrew a sealed mission folder that Brognola and Price had prepared for him.

Tearing open the seal, he pulled out a handful of papers and began leafing through them. He found a biography on Jennifer Rodriguez first. The picture of the FBI agent that Bolan had seen in the War Room was pinned to the front of the packet. The woman was a stunner. Her black hair spilled well past her shoulders in loose waves. Her eyes were a deep brown, and bore a striking intensity. She obviously was a beautiful woman, but Bolan had no trouble imagining a man twice her size squirming under her gaze.

The soldier removed the paperclip holding the papers and the picture together. He set aside the picture and studied the file. Rodriguez was a first-generation American, the daughter of a Mexican couple who had moved to the United States a year before her birth. Her father, Vidal, had moved to the U.S. to take a high-level job as an industrial chemist while her mother worked as an accountant for the same company.

As Rodriguez grew up, she proved to be a natural athlete and highly intelligent. She ran track while also making dean’s list as a pre-law student. Once she was accepted to law school, she quit competitive sports and focused on her studies.

Her parents had hoped she’d focus on corporate law. Instead she’d joined the FBI. With her ability to speak English and Spanish, she’d been assigned to the Los Angeles office, where she was mentored by Fred Gruber, that office’s special agent in charge. Gruber, who was on the cusp of retirement, and his wife, Kate, had taken the young woman under their respective wings and provided her with a surrogate family. The report noted that Gruber, who’d retired a few years later and started a second career as a private detective, had been killed in Monaco three months ago in a mugging.

Bolan didn’t believe in coincidences, especially in his line of work. He guessed that Gruber’s death had, on some level, played a role in Rodriguez volunteering for her latest undercover assignment. The soldier didn’t necessarily believe she’d come here looking to avenge Gruber’s death. Judging by her record, the woman was a pro and focused like a laser on her mission. There was always the chance, though, she’d visited the location of Gruber’s murder or some other landmark associated with his last case so she could connect with him, some way, one last time. It was a very human thing to do. Had it been the thing that had tripped her up and betrayed her identity? It was possible. Maybe Bolan would have a chance to ask Dumond.

Right before she’d gone off the grid, Rodriguez had contacted her mission controller. The guy, a Fed named Peter Kellogg, said she’d used her secure phone to call him from her hotel a few hours after she’d arrived in Monte Carlo. It was twenty-four hours before she’d been set to meet with Dumond for the first time. She’d planned to get some sleep and then have a look around Monte Carlo, maybe hit the beaches, since she wasn’t a gambler.

When she missed her next check-in call, Kellogg had gotten worried and eventually realized she’d disappeared.

Bolan set down the papers and drank more coffee. It was possible, he supposed, that Dumond hadn’t been involved in her disappearance. Maybe she’d fallen victim to a random crime, a robbery or rape turned to murder, for instance. It was also possible, the soldier realized, that she’d turned on her government. Those theories were plausible. The way Bolan saw it, though, the smart money still was on her being nabbed by Dumond for some reason. That made finding the Frenchman Bolan’s first priority once they hit the ground.

The guy apparently had done well for himself. According to a CIA file, he had not one but three houses sprinkled throughout Monaco. Two agency psychologists had labeled him as moderately paranoid, which explained why he moved between the various houses on almost a daily basis, never sleeping under the same roof more than a single night. It also might mean the guy had become suspicious of Rodriguez with little reason other than a chronic short circuit in his brain that made everyone look like an enemy.

Shifting in his chair, Bolan again pushed aside his questions about why Dumond did anything. Getting into the arms merchant’s head and understanding his behavior only benefitted Bolan to the extent it helped him find the missing FBI agent. Anything beyond that was distraction, one that could lead him down a wrong path and cost Rodriguez her life.

Price had checked with some of her former colleagues at the NSA. Dumond and his lieutenants apparently had gone silent within the past twenty-four hours. No calls or emails via the guy’s known numbers or email addresses. The key word, Bolan knew, was “known.” If he had an encrypted line the various intelligence agencies didn’t know about, it was possible he’d circumvented their surveillance.

Bolan skimmed the rest of the intelligence report. Dumond’s organization apparently was fairly big. In Monaco alone, he kept a fairly large contingent of muscle, at least a couple dozen.

The arms dealer had maintained enough contacts in the French government to buy himself a pass with the authorities in Monaco.

The French connection didn’t surprise Bolan much. Nearly half the population of that country, located on the Mediterranean Sea on the southern coast of France, was French and French was the official language. Bolan guessed Dumond was greasing palms in the French and Monacan governments. That was a key to building a criminal empire—put the government in one pocket and the business community in the other, and pillage at will.

Bolan noticed what he was thinking and a smile ghosted his lips. At times, he had to remind himself that most people were decent and honest, good people trying to get by. He spent so much time hunting the savages of the world—mobsters, rogue spies, corrupt dictators—it was easy to forget who he was fighting for.

He didn’t consider himself an idealist. But he was a soldier, a defender. As such, he needed to know he was fighting for a just cause. Otherwise he became a hired gun, a violent man, running from fight to fight, without reason. He would become a murderer instead of a soldier and Bolan couldn’t stomach that.

The soldier believed in what he did. He made no apologies for his methods. In his experience, brute force needed to be met with brute force. He needed to find the arms trafficker and free Rodriguez. The numbers were falling fast; hours had slipped away.

So he’d hit Monaco with a vengeance and accomplish his mission. Or go home in a body bag. In his life, in his War Everlasting, those were the only two options for Bolan.

* * *

WHEN BOLAN ARRIVED at the safehouse, he found Agent Peter Kellogg waiting for him.

Bolan had met a lot of FBI agents and none looked like the man who answered the door. By the soldier’s reckoning, the guy stood a few inches under six feet tall and looked wiry. However, he answered the door clad in torn jeans, a black T-shirt and cowboy boots. His long silver hair was pulled back from his face in a ponytail, and his salt-and-pepper beard was long and unkempt. The handle of a Glock 19 peeked above the waistband of his jeans.

Before Bolan could ask, Kellogg showed him his FBI credentials. The soldier flipped open a leather wallet containing a forged Justice Department ID featuring his Matt Cooper alias. Grimaldi, who was traveling as Jack Williamson, also showed the guy an alias ID.

Kellogg nodded, stepped back from the door and gestured for the men to enter the house.

“Well,” Kellogg said, “now that we’re done sniffing each others’ ass, you guys want some coffee?”

Both men said they did. Kellogg gestured with his chin at a door. “There’s the living room. Your buddy is here already if you want to hang out with him. Coffee’s in there. Let me get two more cups.”

The living room was huge, with polished hardwood floors, a fireplace and luxurious furniture. They found Leo Turrin standing at a shelf full of books, apparently reading the titles. He turned to them as they entered and made a face.

“Some tightass must buy all the Bureau’s books,” he said. “There’s nothing but international law texts and some history books about France and Monaco.”

Grimaldi snorted.

“Wow, did you read the titles all by yourself?”

“Screw you, fly boy,” Leo Turrin said.

“Got a headache from all that reading? Need to lie down?”

“Be careful,” Turrin said, “I have friends in low places. One phone call and I can have you rubbed out.”

Kellogg entered the room, a coffee mug in each hand. He looked at Bolan who’d been silent. “They carry on like this all the time?”

“Yeah,” Bolan said.

“Jesus, I ask Washington for help and they send me this.”

“Look, Easy Rider,” Turrin said. “No need to be a jerk.”

Kellogg smiled coldly. “Son, when I’m being a jerk, you’ll know it. I just want to make sure I have some people who can do the job. As for the clothes, they’re part of my cover.”

“As what? A clerk in a gay porn shop?” Turrin asked.

“Son of a...”

Kellogg took a step forward.

Bolan put a hand on his shoulder and said, “At ease.” He turned to Turrin. “He’s been working deep cover in an American motorcycle gang. It’s been branching out overseas, looking to set up shop in Paris and Berlin. Agent Kellogg is here to help the gang get a foothold in Europe. He’s also been funneling the information back to the FBI. Am I right, Agent Kellogg?”

“Well, at least one of you isn’t a damn buffoon,” Kellogg replied. “Yeah, that’s the short version of my cover. The guy who should’ve been running Rodriguez’s operation retired three months ago. I was filling in for him. Needless to say, I wish they’d had someone else do it.” He slurped some coffee. “Okay, is that enough about yours truly?”

“It is,” Bolan said. “We need to focus.”

Kellogg had set the mugs on an end table next to a carafe of coffee. Bolan poured himself some coffee, put the stopper back in the carafe and sipped the brew. Kellogg backed into an armchair and looked at Bolan.

“Let me say right up front, I feel shitty how this whole thing went down,” Kellogg said. “My team and I were planning to back her up every step of the way. She was going to wear a wire. That prick Dumond has a penthouse in Monte Carlo, and the meeting was scheduled for there. We had, um, appropriated some maintenance uniforms so our agents could put themselves within striking distance just in case things went south. I ran operations like this for years before I went deep cover. My people are pros. I—we—were going to have her back every step of the way.”

The guy’s eyes were bloodshot and rimmed by dark half circles.

“No doubt,” Bolan said. “Obviously someone figured out her identity beforehand, though, and nabbed her.”

“Yeah.”

“Which raises the question—was there a leak?”

Bolan had expected the guy to get defensive. Instead he shook his head wearily.

“I’ve asked myself the same question a few dozen times. I’ve gone over everyone’s file. If there’s a leak here, I can’t spot it.”

“Maybe you’re too close,” Bolan said.

“Maybe. I’d like to think you’re wrong. But, yeah, maybe. That’s why I asked Washington to shadow me on this. Headquarters has people going through the files of every agent and tech involved in this. If they say my team’s clean, they’re clean.”

Bolan sipped more coffee and set the mug on a table. His gut was telling him Kellogg was right; there wasn’t a mole in the guy’s organization. If that was true, it only made finding Rodriguez harder.

“A former FBI agent was killed here three months ago,” Bolan said.

“Yeah, Fred Gruber. Did you know him?”

“No, but Rodriguez did.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Not sure I have a point,” the soldier replied. “But it’s something to think about.”

“He died from a random mugging,” Kellogg said. “I read the reports myself.”

Bolan responded with a noncommittal shrug. Chances were Kellogg was right and there were no links between Gruber’s death and Rodriguez’s disappearance, though it still nagged at him.

“You don’t look convinced,” Turrin said.

“I’m not.”

“Shit,” Kellogg muttered. Pulling a notebook and a pen from his jeans, he scribbled something in the notebook.

“I’ll have someone look into it.”

“Thanks,” Bolan said.

“I’m not sure what we’ll find, though,” Kellogg added. “Last I heard, he had his laptop with him when the mugging happened. The SOBs who killed him made off with his computer, his wallet and his phone.”

“You’ll probably find nothing,” Bolan conceded. “But it doesn’t hurt to check.”

“Fair enough. Without the hardware, it may take a while to find anything, unless he backed stuff up somewhere else.”

“Understood.”

“Okay,” Kellogg said. “Now that you’ve added to my to-do list, what’s next? Do you need weapons?”

Bolan shook his head. “We brought some.”

“Good,” Kellogg said.

The phone clipped to the agent’s belt began trilling so he answered it.

“What?” he said. He went silent for several seconds, occasionally nodding. The caller spoke loudly enough that Bolan could hear the voice, but couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“How sure are you about the information?” Kellogg asked. “Reasonably sure? What the hell does that mean? Fifty-fifty? Seventy-thirty?” The caller responded and Kellogg went back to listening and nodding for another minute or so. “Okay,” he said. “Put some people on the house. Keep track of every vehicle coming in and out of the estate. Try to be discreet, though. Good job.”

He ended the call, set the phone on top of his right thigh and looked at Bolan.

“Okay,” he said, “I think we caught a break. Dumond has three residences in Monaco. One of our sources knows which one.”

“Knows or believes he knows?”

“My agent is ‘reasonably certain,’” Kellogg said. He gestured air quotes when he spoke the last two words.

“Wow,” Turrin said.

“Man, you’re getting on my nerves.”

“Just trying to make you think,” Turrin stated. “The last thing we want is to bust into the wrong house and let Dumond know we’re here. Once that happens, he’ll disappear and take Rodriguez with him.”

“News flash,” Kellogg replied. “He already has disappeared.”

“I’m talking ‘leave the country’ disappear. You ready to deal with that?”

Kellogg glared at Turrin for a few seconds. Finally he heaved a sigh and nodded slowly.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“So, do you have an address?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah.”

“Get us some floor plans,” the soldier said. “We need to figure out our next move.”

CHAPTER TWO

Jennifer Rodriguez knew she needed a miracle.

She paced her makeshift cell and wondered about her next move. Her captors had taken away her watch and, obviously, her smartphone, and her cell contained no clocks. Combine that with the fact she was apparently in a basement of some kind, with no windows, and she really had no idea how long she’d been down here. She guessed it’d been twenty-four hours, but she couldn’t be sure.

She did know she was losing precious time. She’d come to Monaco to find answers. In the past several months, there’d been murmurs in the underworld about Dumond’s gunrunning operation expanding. A lot of the talk had been troubling because the Frenchman supposedly had begun acquiring large quantities of weapons from rogue military generals, particularly in the Middle East, where the U.S. supplied weapons to friendly nations. Dumond had a record for selling weapons to anyone willing to pay the price.

Initially, some had worried he’d sell arms to China so it could study the technology. Working undercover, Rodriguez had learned the weapons weren’t advanced enough to pique China’s interest. She’d also learned the tools of the death trade that were being trafficked also were coming from countries at odds with the U.S., such as Libya.

Once they crossed espionage threats off the list, at least as far as major powers were concerned, the problem became identifying the buyer. Was Dumond going to sell weapons to al Qaeda, Hezbollah or another major terrorist organization? They’d tried for months to get an answer, but kept coming up empty. While Dumond wasn’t discerning about his clientele, he did fret over security.

U.S. intelligence had found it damn near impossible to hack his computer. He switched phones regularly, handing the old ones to his lieutenants to carry and use. This confounded the intelligence agencies trying to track him and often kept him a step or two ahead of authorities.

That was why Washington had decided to send Rodriguez after him. She’d spent months infiltrating another arms-smuggling ring, had made lots of contacts, many of them mutual “friends” of Dumond and her. She’d put out the word she wanted to meet with him. The wheels had started turning, albeit slowly, and it had taken weeks before she got an audience with him.

She thought she’d gotten a break. Instead she’d walked into a trap.

Dumond’s people had overpowered her and searched her for a wire. The absence of one hadn’t improved her situation. They’d knocked her out and transported her from the meeting site to here, wherever that was. She had no idea whether she’d been moved across town or across the globe.

The whole thing had taken a weird turn when they’d started asking her about Fred, her first boss with the FBI. She’d tried to play stupid. That strategy had fallen apart when Dumond had held out a smartphone to her.

“Take this,” he said. “Look at the screen.”

She’d hesitated, then taken the phone from the outstretched hand and looked at the screen. Though she’d tried to keep her best poker face, she doubted she’d succeeded. The single image had triggered a flood of conflicting emotions—shock, grief, anger and fear being just a few. It had been a photo of Gruber, his wife, Kate, and Rodriguez, at Gruber’s retirement party. He stood in the middle of them, clad in khakis and a polo shirt, a tight grin on his lips, an arm around each of the two women. His successor, Donna Goldman, had shot the photo for him.

Rodriguez had noted the slight glaze of alcohol in his eyes and remembered how drunk he’d gotten that night, singing “Love Me Tender” with the karaoke machine, a record nine times. Aside from fueling his bad attempts at impersonating the King, the drinking had been notable for another reason. Gruber rarely drank and then in moderation. However, he’d arrived for his own party, seeming sullen and withdrawn. Kate later had confided that he hadn’t wanted to retire and that she was worried how it would affect his health. The alcohol had dissipated the black cloud around him and he’d loosened up, at least for the evening. The following day, though, he’d sunk back into his depression and remained there until he’d hung out a shingle as a private detective. Having a job had restored his sense of purpose and made him feel useful again.

He’d always sworn the PI gig had saved his life.

Since his death, she’d thought back on the bitter irony of those statements.

The photo had delivered a punch right to her heart.

Had she stared too long? Had her eyes glistened with tears? She didn’t think so. But, when it came to emotions, she knew the mind played tricks and the face sometimes could reveal too much information.

With little time to think, she’d made up the best story she could. She said she vaguely remembered meeting the couple at a party, but didn’t know them beyond that. Why did he have the photo on his phone? She’d shrugged and said maybe the guy was a pervert and liked looking at the picture. Her stomach had clenched as she’d uttered the words about Gruber, though she knew he’d understand.

It hadn’t taken Dumond long to shoot holes in her story. After more interrogation, he’d slapped his thighs, stood and given her a halfhearted smile.

“I don’t believe you,” he had said. “I will give you some time to consider your situation. Then I will come back and see you again. If you don’t offer a better explanation—” he shrugged “—I will use more aggressive methods of securing answers.” He turned the phone screen back in her direction. “I have friends in America. They would be happy to pay this woman a visit.”

His security chief, a man named Bellew, stood to his right. Dumond turned and looked over his shoulder at him. “What was her name again?”

“Kate,” Bellew said. “Kate Gruber.”

“Yes,” Dumond said. His lips split into a wider smile. “She’s a widow. Perhaps she would like the company.”

Rodriguez had tried her best to feign apathy and maintain her cover. When she’d spoken, her throat had felt tight and pushing out the words took effort.

“Hope those thoughts give your limp Johnson a little lift,” she’d said. “While we’re swinging things, you might want to think about what you’re doing here. I came here, with references, to transact business. If something happens to me...”

She let the sentence trail off. Dumond’s smile faltered for a moment before he caught himself and let out a dismissive laugh.

“See you in a few hours,” he said.

Dumond had left. She had no doubt things could get worse for her.

The arms dealer already had taken the leap of kidnapping someone he at least suspected to be a U.S. federal agent. He had to know he’d passed a point of no return, one where he couldn’t let her walk away alive. Either way, the U.S. government was going to hunt him down for this. From his standpoint, there was no incentive to leave behind a witness.

A chill raced through her, causing her to shiver even though the room was warm and stuffy. Without thinking, she stopped walking and hugged herself.

The weight of her situation hit her hard. There is no way out, she thought. They are going to kill me.

Her head suddenly felt light and her heart began to pound faster, speeding up in spite of the emotional and physical fatigue that gripped her.

Her chest tightened and she struggled to drag in a full breath. Jesus, she was going to die here. And she wasn’t even sure where “here” was.

She moved to the single bed, the room’s sole piece of furniture, and dropped onto the edge of the mattress.

Pull yourself together, she chided herself. If you give up, you will die. If you fight, at least you have a chance.

Granted, it was a small chance, but it beat the hell out of waiting for somebody to walk in and put a bullet in her head.

She looked around the room for the umpteenth time. Dumond’s people had removed everything from it except the bed. She could see impressions in the carpet, where there’d been shelving units standing against the wall, a small table and two chairs, a dresser. They’d stripped the mattress of its sheets. The bolts holding the metal frame in place were too tight to be removed with her bare hands. The bed’s frame also was bolted to the floor and couldn’t be moved.

They’d even stripped her belt and her shoe laces, presumably so she wouldn’t hang herself out of desperation.

Bringing her hands to her face, she massaged her temples with her fingertips. She’d been racking her brain for a solution for so long, she felt as though her thoughts just kept going in circles.

Yeah, she finally decided. She needed a miracle.

She again dismissed the thought. She’d spent too many years in law enforcement, seeing firsthand the pain and misery humans heaped on one another, mostly to steal a few bucks or to get their rocks off, to believe in miracles.

She heard a muffled sound emanating through the floor. Seconds later, it came again. Just a couple of pops in rapid succession.

Gunshots? Had somebody come to help her? Maybe she’d get her damn miracle after all.

CHAPTER THREE

“The crazy bitch has told you nothing?”

The statement from his security chief prompted Dumond to turn and give the guy a dirty look. Jean-Luc Bellew held his boss’s stare for a couple of beats before casting his eyes to the floor. Dumond turned away and walked to his desk.

“Is she secure?” the arms dealer asked.

“As secure as possible,” Bellew replied. “We aren’t set up as a prison. But she’s secure in that storage room. It has a heavy wood door and a couple of locks. She won’t be going anywhere.”

“She’d better not,” Dumond said.

Bellew’s cell phone began to buzz before he could make a further comment.

Irritated, the arms merchant turned to Bellew, who was digging in his pocket for his phone.

A couple of seconds later Dumond’s own phone began vibrating on his hip. He pulled it from the holder on his belt, saw he’d received a text message and began pressing buttons to access it. When he opened the text, he felt a cold sensation travel down his spine. BREECH, the message read.

He wheeled toward Bellew, his fear quickly turning to anger. The security chief had his phone pressed against his ear and was reaching under his jacket for something with his free hand.

“Don’t worry about the how,” Bellew said. “Just make sure they don’t get to the building. Send out the dogs!” He paused for a few seconds. “If you sent them out, where are they? Gone? What do you mean gone? Damn it. What? Call the police! We cannot call the police here, you idiot.”

Bellew pulled a Walther pistol from beneath his jacket and flicked his gaze at Dumond.

“I have him right here,” Bellew said. “Yes, I think you’re right. Let me call you back.”

By now, Dumond had returned his phone to its belt holder. He opened the lap drawer of his desk, withdrew a holstered Beretta and, pulling aside the tail of his jacket, attached it to his belt. He fished a couple of magazines from the same drawer and slipped them into his pocket. When he looked up, he saw Bellew staring at him.

“We should get you out of here,” Bellew said.

Dumond shook his head.

“We need to get the woman first.”

“There’s no time,” the security chief replied. “We had half a dozen men patrolling the grounds—”

“Had? What the hell?”

“We’ve lost contact with them.”

Dumond’s hands clenched into fists. “Lost contact? Are they dead?”

“I have no idea,” Bellew replied. “I just know we can’t reach them and there are no technical problems with the radios. We have the capability, but no one is answering us.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“We need to go,” Bellew repeated.

“I can’t leave her here,” Dumond said. “She knows things. If I leave her here, there will be problems.”

“Problems? You mean from the Germans?”

“Mind your place,” the other man said.

“My place is to evacuate you.”

“We try to get the woman first,” Dumond replied. “Otherwise, I lose everything.”

“And what if we come across these intruders?”

“Then we damn well better kill them.”

* * *

BOLAN CLIMBED THE steps to Dumond’s mansion, the MP-5 held at the ready. Turrin hung back a couple of yards so he could cover Bolan’s six. The soldier moved up to the door. He tried to work the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

Feeling someone moving up behind him, Bolan looked over his shoulder and saw Turrin there.

“Don’t worry,” the little Fed said, patting the shotgun. “I brought a key.”

Bolan nodded and stepped back from the door. He watched as Turrin swung the shotgun’s barrel toward the lock. The soldier knew the weapon was loaded with slugs capable of pounding through a steel lock. Unlike ceramic rounds, though, the slugs wouldn’t disintegrate before pierced their target. Bolan figured it was worth the risk.

The shotgun boomed once. The slug mangled the lock and shoved it through the door, leaving behind a ragged hole. As the door swung inward, Turrin moved through it first, followed by Bolan.

The door led into a foyer with high ceilings. Paintings covered the walls and several busts stood on pedestals. Bolan guessed the items were expensive, paid for with the blood of innocents shed on the world’s killing fields.

Movement to Bolan’s right caught his attention. He turned and saw a pair of Dumond’s gunners step into view. The man in the lead, dressed in a gray suit, his hair shellacked with gel, swung the barrel of a machine pistol toward Bolan. The Executioner’s MP-5 coughed a fast line of bullets that pummeled the guy’s center mass. Even as the gunner crumpled to the floor, the second guard had marked Bolan’s chest with the red dot of a laser sight. Before the soldier could react, the hardman’s head suddenly snapped back in a spray of crimson.

Bolan threw Turrin a glance. The former undercover mobster had slung the shotgun and unleathered one of his Berettas. Bolan nodded his thanks, turned to the left and crossed the room, making his way to one of the exits, which opened into a long corridor. He’d taken a half dozen or so steps when he heard voices, accompanied by shoe soles clicking against the floor tiles. He held up a hand for Turrin to stop, but he had already halted. An instant later, a heavyset man with a shotgun stepped into the corridor. His eyes lighted on Bolan and he swung the shotgun in his direction. The soldier had the guy by a microsecond. He tapped the MP-5’s trigger and stitched a line across the new arrival’s torso. The shotgun clattered to the floor, but fortunately didn’t discharge. A second shooter appeared around the door frame, his hand filled with a submachine gun.

The hardman squeezed off a fast burst. The bullets sliced through the air just to Bolan’s left, missing him by several inches.

The Executioner responded by firing a burst at the shooter. The fusillade missed the shooter, but came close enough that it forced him to jerk back out of sight. The soldier edged down the hallway, hugging the wall. When he got close to the door, he snagged a flash-bang grenade from his web gear, pulled the pin and tossed the bomb into the room where the man was hiding. An instant later it exploded with a loud crack and a flash of light visible to Bolan even in the hallway.

As the noise died down, he went through the door low and found the guy standing near the doorway, disoriented. A burst from the MP-5 took the man down.

* * *

BELLEW DESCENDED the stairs, his eyes sweeping the area as he searched for the intruders, his submachine gun leveled and leading the way. His heart slammed in his chest and blood thundered his ears. It had been years since he’d been in a live-fire situation. That had been back in Africa, where he’d been surrounded by a dozen or more well-armed and well-trained mercenaries. Over the past few years, he’d spent more time sending other people into harm’s way while he sat back and planned.

Who the hell could have broken through their defenses? he wondered. For a residential area, the estate had been as secure as possible. They’d deployed sensors, cameras, armed guards, dogs. That someone had gotten past all that told him he wasn’t dealing with a run-of-the-mill burglary or home invasion. Besides, most of the underworld in the city, right down to the low-level thieves, knew better than to break into Dumond’s property.

That he couldn’t reach his mercenaries only heightened his anxiety. He obviously was dealing with at least one combat professional, if not more.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Bellew paused and listened hard. Somehow all the cameras had gotten fried. He’d tried to reach the monitor room, but they hadn’t responded. There was no way for him to know how many people he was up against or their location.

That left him to handle it the old-fashioned way—rely on his instincts and his senses.

To his right, he heard something. It was muffled, but unmistakable to anyone who’d spent any time at all in his deadly trade. Someone had just fired a weapon, and he heard the clank of brass hitting the marble tiles.

Bellew crossed the entryway, making his way to a door that would lead him deeper into the mansion’s first floor. Coming up on the door, he paused, chancing a look around the door frame. Down the hall, he spotted three men. He recognized one—a guy sprawled on the floor—as one of his guards. Arms and legs splayed out, his midsection was dark red.

Two men stood over the corpse. One was short with a medium frame. The second guy was tall with broad shoulders and jet-black hair. Bellew recognized the gun in the taller man’s hands as a Heckler & Koch MP-5.

Chancing another look, he saw the men were moving in his direction. Fear gripped him, and for a moment he considered bolting out the door. Maybe he could take these two by surprise. But it would be a damn sight easier without backup just to run out the door, flee the estate and get away with his skin intact. He guessed they’d already taken down nearly a dozen men. It wouldn’t be easy for him alone to take them down.

But if he ran? He’d get away with his skin, but it’d come back to haunt him.

He’d lose his reputation. Once word spread that he’d bolted on a client, he’d end up blacklisted. While he’d never bought into the notion of death before dishonor, he’d sure as hell choose death before poverty.

To hell with it. He’d try to take them.

Coming around the door frame, he entered the room, ready to take down his opponents.

CHAPTER FOUR

People who’d never been in combat didn’t understand what it did to the mind and the senses. How it changed a person, enhancing some perceptions and subduing others. Bolan understood the transformation all too well, though. He’d spent his entire adult life as a warrior—first as a U.S. Army soldier, then in his war against the Mafia and more recently his war against terrorism.

He’d spent his life honing his skills as a warrior. At the same time, he’d honed his senses. It was something he couldn’t turn off now, even if he wanted to.

When something nagged at him, alerting him to a threat, he couldn’t ignore it.

Acting on gut instinct, he turned just in time to spot a man coming through the door. The guy’s SMG was lining up on Turrin’s back. The soldier lunged, wrapped his arms around his old friend’s midsection and drove his right shoulder into his middle.

Turrin lost his footing and dropped to the floor. The bullets sliced through the air above them, missing them by a few feet. A microsecond of hesitation on Bolan’s part and Turrin likely would have been dead. Just as they hit the tiles, Bolan heard his friend grunt from the impact. The Executioner rolled away, brought up the MP-5 and squeezed off a burst at their attacker.

The bullets flew wide, though the onslaught was enough to make Bolan’s adversary dart from the doorway.

The soldier glanced at his friend. Turrin was already pushing up from the floor and appeared to be okay. Bolan was on his feet and moving slowly down the hallway, hugging the wall and waiting for his opponent to come back into view.

The guy was going to bolt or risk another shot at the Americans. Either way, Bolan needed to prepare himself to react.

He saw a blur of motion at the doorway. The gunner had popped back into view, the barrel of his SMG hunting for a target. In addition to his gun, half of his face and one of his shoulders was visible.

A burst of gunfire screamed down the hallway, but again left Bolan and Turrin unharmed.

The H&K churned out a short burst. The bullets drilled into the gunner’s exposed shoulder. A cry of pain burst from the guy’s mouth. His weapon fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.

Surging to the doorway, Bolan caught the guy on his knees. The fabric covering the man’s left shoulder was ripped and darkened with blood. His hand was under his jacket as he struggled to pull something free.

Bolan’s right foot lashed out and caught the man in the chin. The kick knocked the guy backward and caused him to land on his injured shoulder, eliciting another yelp from him.

Bolan moved through the door and locked the H&K’s barrel on the man’s chest.

The hardman froze and then tried to raise both hands. The move apparently sent bolts of pain coursing through him because he inhaled sharply and grimaced. Prying his eyes open, he raised his good hand.

Bolan reached down, grabbed a handful of the guy’s jacket and yanked him to his feet. He spun the guy and shoved him face-first against a wall.

Looking at Turrin, he said, “You do the pat-down.”

“Jesus, why do I always have to frisk these guys?”

“Nimble fingers.”

Scowling, Turrin stepped forward and searched the man. His hand disappeared under the guy’s jacket and came out with a Walther .380. Handing it to Bolan, he continued the frisk, ultimately turning up a couple of magazines for the Walther and a folding knife.

He pocketed the knife.

Bolan ejected the magazine from the Walther and tossed it aside. He then threw the empty pistol in the opposite direction.

Bolan turned the guy around.

The soldier pulled a field dressing from his pocket. Unwrapping it, he handed it to the man, who took it and gingerly placed it on his wound.

“You speak English?” Bolan asked.

“Yes.”

“Where’s the woman?”

The man hesitated. Bolan reached out and pushed down on the hand the man was using to hold the dressing in place. The man grimaced and moaned, bending slightly at the knees.

The captive cursed in French.

“Let me ask again,” Bolan said. “Where is she?”

The guy pushed himself up to his full height. He leaned against the wall for support, but glared at Bolan.

“Downstairs,” he said, forcing the word through clenched teeth.

“Downstairs where? And how do I get down there?”

The hardman opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and clamped his eyes closed for a couple of seconds, apparently riding out another wave of pain.

“Downstairs where?” Bolan repeated.

With some effort, the guy opened his eyes, turned his head left and gestured with his chin. Even that much movement seemed excruciating to the man. A double door stood a few yards away.

“Go through there,” he said. “Follow the hallway. There’s a freight elevator at the end of it...”

“Go on.”

“Hit the B2 button. Get off and...”

The hardman’s voice trailed off again. He looked pale and Bolan guessed the blood loss was weakening the guy.

“Get off on B2.”

“Three doors,” the guy said. “You want the second one.”

“Locked?”

The guy nodded. “Security card.”

“The one around your neck?”

Another nod.

Bolan took hold of the card and pulled up, drawing the lanyard over the other man’s head.

“How many guards down there?”

“How many have you killed?”

“Ten.”

“Two, maybe. They might have gone elsewhere.”

“Where’s Dumond?”

“Look, I already told you where the lady is. Isn’t that enough?”

“Answer the question.”

“I sent him away. I knew this was a lost cause,” Bellew said, licking his lips, “so I told him to go.”

“Where would he go?”

The guy’s eyes looked heavy and he was unsteady. Bolan guessed the effects of shock and blood loss were overtaking him.

“I don’t know. There’s Paris. There’s Africa.”

“Where in Africa?”

“Evergreen. Monet....” His voice was barely audible.

His eyes slammed shut and his body sagged. Bolan let him slide to the floor.

“Not much to go on,” Turrin said.

Bolan shrugged. “You look for Dumond,” he said. “I’ll find Rodriguez.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Turrin bolted up the stairs to the second floor in search of Dumond. He wanted to capture or kill the guy. If Dumond was in the house, Turrin guessed putting him down was going to require blasting through a line of well-armed thugs.

And maybe he wouldn’t make it. It was something he always knew yet tried not to think about. When his old friend Mack Bolan called on him for help, it almost always required putting his life on the line. Turrin expected it. It was one of the few things in life he’d made peace with.

Before he could reach the top of the stairs, a hardman rushed into view. The guy was lining up a shot at Turrin with his Steyr AUG. His mind and body conditioned by countless near-death experiences, Turrin triggered his Beretta. The handgun coughed discreetly and a 3-round burst of 9 mm bullets drilled into his adversary’s chest. Surprise flashed on the man’s features an instant before his body dropped to the floor at the head of the stairs.

Turrin stepped over the corpse, moved onto the second floor and ran his gaze over his surroundings. The stairs led into a semicircular landing. Ornate tiles covered the floor and crystal chandeliers lit the upstairs. Railed walkways ran on either side of the stairway, and across the landing a door opened into another corridor. Since the walkways were empty, Turrin crossed the landing and moved into the corridor. Three doors lined the right side and four stood on the opposite side.

The first two doors on Turrin’s right were open. He checked the first room quickly and found nothing. Inside the second room, he found an oak desk with a computer monitor on top of it. As he moved around the desk, he spotted the computer tower on the floor. The side was cracked open and fragments of circuit boards and other electronic guts were strewed over the floor. Apparently the PC had contained something of value. He made a mental note to check with the cyber team at the Farm to see whether he should try to recover it.

Slipping back through the door, he caught a fast-moving dark shape in his peripheral vision.

He spun in time to see a rangy man hurtling at him, his right arm pulled back, his hand clutching a gleaming knife. The guy was on him quickly. Turrin didn’t have time to swing the Beretta toward his attacker and squeeze off a shot. He saw the knife plunge at him and stepped sideways, letting the blade cut through empty air. As the knife slashed downward, the guy’s torso leaned forward, putting him slightly off balance. With his left hand, Turrin grabbed a handful of his attacker’s shirt and jerked him forward, hoping to send him hurtling into a wall. At the same time, Turrin used the extra space to bring the Beretta into play.

Unfortunately the guy caught his footing. His hand snaked out and, grabbing the wrist of Turrin’s gun hand, pushed it away so the little Fed couldn’t get a decent shot at him.

Balling his other hand into a fist, Turrin lashed out and flattened his adversary’s nose, causing the guy to moan. Turrin pressed the attack, thrusting an open hand up at the tip of the man’s nose and driving the broken cartilage into his brain. The guy’s fingers uncurled from Turrin’s wrist and he backpedaled a couple of steps before sinking to the floor.

The Stony Man warrior leaned against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath as he watched a last shudder pass through the man at his feet.

Two down. How many to go?

Hell, it was time to find out.

Turrin quickly searched the rest of the second floor, but found no one. Figuring he’d check the third floor next, he headed down the corridor. As he hurried forward, he heard footsteps pounding down the stairway, then spotted three men.

The hardman in the lead saw Turrin and reacted. In the blink of an eye he fired off a shot from a handgun. The weapon’s report echoed through the enclosed space as Turrin dived to his right just a bullet passed through the air where he’d stood only a microsecond before.

His body hit the hard tile floor, and sent bolts of pain through his chest and right shoulder. However, he kept a firm hold on his pistol and rolled away from his opponents.

Raising his pistol, he spotted the same thug trying to get another bead on him. The Beretta churned out a triburst. Two of the rounds missed the guy by inches while the third bit into his biceps. Through a haze of pain, the guy fired off two more rounds, both of which slapped against the floor just in front of Turrin’s face.

Turrin adjusted the aim on the Beretta and squeezed off another triburst, the rounds sinking into the man’s stomach and doubling him over. Turrin had spotted Dumond and was swinging his gun toward the arms dealer when the second hardman stepped between them. The Beretta’s Parabellum rounds drilled into the man’s torso. He teetered on unsteady legs but was still able to fire off a single round that zinged over Turrin’s head. Another trio of bullets from the Beretta hit the teetering thug’s chest and he pitched forward, his body tumbling over the stairway railing.

Dumond was gone, and Turrin could hear rapid footsteps on the stairs. He had been so hyper-focused on the two guards he’d missed his target sprinting away. From outside the building, the little Fed could hear the whipping of helicopter blades.

Dropping the magazine from the Beretta and reloading, Turrin got to his feet, cursing, then sprinted for the steps. By the time he reached them, he could hear Dumond running across the floor below. He surged downstairs but found that his target had disappeared. Hearing a heavy door slam shut to his right, Turrin spun in the direction of the noise and raced toward it.

Passing through a luxuriously appointed sitting room, the former undercover mobster found a heavy wooden door. He grabbed the knob and twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge. A dead bolt installed above the knob explained why the door was holding fast.

From the other side of the door, he could hear glass breaking. Muttering a curse, he holstered the Beretta, stepped back, unslung his shotgun and blasted through the shiny new lock. The dead bolt gave way in a shower of metal fragments and chunks of wood, and the door swung inward. The room in front of him was an office of some kind, outfitted with a desk, book shelves and filing cabinets.

Beyond the desk, Turrin saw the window had been broken out. The growl of a helicopter’s engines and the thrumming of its blades grew louder.

Turrin sprinted to the window and peered outside. A helicopter hovered overhead, the rotor wash causing tree branches and leaves to whip around as though caught in a monsoon. A rope ladder swung from the bottom of the aircraft. His eyes followed the length of the ladder. At the top, he saw Dumond, just a couple of feet from climbing into the craft.

Turrin aimed at the fleeing man. Before he could fire off a shot, though, two of Dumond’s ground thugs began unloading their automatic weapons at Turrin.

The sudden hail of bullets forced him to dive away from the window and land on the floor on his belly. Turrin rose, slinging the shotgun and unleathering his Beretta. He flattened against the wall and eased back to the window. Bullets speared through the opening, chewing holes in the large desk, shattering a set of crystal liquor bottles and glasses that stood on top of the desk, and ripping pockmarks in the walls.

Turrin remained just to the side of the window until the shooting subsided before he took a chance to peer around the frame. Dumond had disappeared inside the helicopter. One of the guards had slung his machine pistol over his shoulder and was climbing the rope up to the helicopter.

The other shooter, who was reloading his machine pistol, spotted Turrin in the window. The thug’s mouth dropped open. If he said anything, the noise was swallowed up by the helicopter. A burst from Turrin’s Beretta hit the man in the chest and knocked him to the ground.

The whine of the helicopter’s engines intensified, telling Turrin it was about to grab some altitude. He swung the Beretta, aimed at the aircraft and drew a bead on the second hardman on the ladder.

Before he could squeeze off a shot, though, the ladder came loose from its moorings and fell away from the helicopter. The man holding on to the ladder uttered a short cry before his body slapped hard against the ground.

Turrin climbed through the window. He ran a few yards before he stopped, raised the Beretta and tried to line up a shot at Dumond who was visible in the door of the retreating helicopter for a brief instant. Then he withdrew into the craft and slammed the door closed. Turrin let the pistol fall. There was no reason for him to waste another shot.

* * *

THE ELEVATOR CARRIED Bolan to the cellar. When the doors slid open, he stood to one side, holding the MP-5 in his right hand by its pistol grip. With his other hand, he kept a finger pressed into the Open Door button.

Light from the elevator spilled into the darkened hallway, illuminating several yards. Bolan saw shadows moving in the darkness.

The soldier took a flash-bang grenade from the pocket of his windbreaker, jerked out the pin and tossed the bomb through the doorway. He covered his ears as best he could, with one hand holding his pistol, and opened his mouth slightly. The grenade unleashed a white flash of light and a disorienting peal of thunder. The soldier went around the doorway in a crouch. One of Dumond’s hardmen had been knocked to the ground by the device’s concussive force. The other man was aiming his submachine gun at an angle, well past Bolan.

The Executioner swept the MP-5 in a wide horizontal arc as the weapon churned through the contents of its magazine. When he let off the trigger, the hardmen were sprawled on the floor in their own blood.

The soldier reloaded as he moved along the hallway. All the doors were locked. The soldier rolled one of the guards onto his back and searched through the pockets of the guy’s expensive suit. When he came away empty, he searched the second man and found a set of keys.

Bolan knocked once on the nearest door.

“Jennifer Rodriguez, are you in there? My name’s Matt Cooper. I’m from the Justice Department. I’m here to get you out.”

“Yes, I’m here,” the FBI agent replied.

The soldier tried a few keys and finally one unlocked the door. He pushed it inward.

Rodriguez had stepped back from the door and stood in the center of the room, staring at Bolan. The soldier was struck by her height first. Even at a distance, he could tell she was just under six feet tall and she still had a trim, athletic build. Her eyes were dark brown and Bolan could see the distrust beaming from them. After what she’d been through the past several days, he could hardly blame her.

She looked over Bolan’s shoulder. “Where’s the rest of the team?”

“The other half is upstairs.”

“Other half? There are two of you?”

Bolan nodded. As she moved to the door, he stepped back from the room and started walking toward the elevator. “Are you okay?”

“I haven’t eaten or showered in forever. But otherwise, I’m okay, yes.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Bolan ushered her into the elevator, then followed her inside and they returned to the first floor. When the doors opened, Bolan gestured for her to remain inside and he left the car.

A ragged line of hardmen was scrambling to head Bolan off. The soldier scythed them down with a barrage of 9 mm rounds just as the MP-5 clicked dry. Ejecting the magazine, he slipped his last fresh one into the weapon and called for Rodriguez to come out of the elevator.

They made a beeline for the front door with Bolan still in the lead. As they stepped into the warm evening, the soldier heard sirens screaming. Keying the throat mike, he called for Turrin.

“Yeah?”

“Meet me at the Jag,” Bolan said.

“Roger that,” the retired Fed replied.

“Jag?” Rodriguez asked. “You have a Jaguar? What department are you with again?”

“It’s complicated,” Bolan said.

When they reached the car, Turrin was already there, tossing some of his gear into the trunk.

The Stony Man warriors claimed the front seats, with Bolan behind the wheel. Rodriguez slipped into the backseat as Bolan stomped on the Jaguar’s accelerator. The car’s engine responded with a growl and the vehicle lurched ahead, barreling toward the gates of Dumond’s estate. Rodriguez twisted at the waist and stared through the rear window.

Bolan looked into the rearview mirror and saw a couple of muzzle-flashes wink in the darkness. A bullet struck the trunk lid, sparked against the steel and angled off into the darkness.

As the Jaguar neared the gate, another of Dumond’s shooters ran into the vehicle’s path, a machine pistol tucked in close to his body.

Turrin stuck an arm through his side window to fire on the guy. Even over the roar of the engine, Bolan heard the dry crackle of autofire and saw jagged flames lash out from the shooter’s weapon. The bullet went low. The Executioner heard something thunk against the vehicle and he guessed the round had hammered into the vehicle’s engine block.

Turrin’s Beretta roared twice, just as the Jaguar rolled over a speed bump. The car shuddered. Bolan clenched his teeth and fought to keep control of the steering wheel, which wanted to jerk to the right.

The bullets from Turrin’s weapon went wild, leaving the guard untouched.

Headlights bathed the hardman in their white glow, making his face look deathly pale.

His mouth dropped open and he threw up an arm to protect himself. The vehicle’s right front fender smacked into the shooter, the force spinning his body and heaving it into the air all at once.

“Bull’s-eye,” Turrin muttered.

* * *

THEY’D DRIVEN LESS than a half mile when Bolan caught a whiff of the distinctive odor from a busted radiator. The needle on the temperature gauge was rising to the red quickly. The vehicle probably would overheat in a matter of minutes. Bolan knew they needed to do something.

He glanced at Turrin. “We’re going to have to ditch,” he said.

Turrin nodded.

“Ditch?” the woman said. “If Dumond sends his people after us, we can’t outrun them on foot.”

Bolan looked up into the rearview mirror and saw a reflection of her staring at him.

“We also can’t outrun them in a dead car,” he said. “Trust me. We’ll get you out of here.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated, seeming to consider his words. “Okay,” she said with a nod.

“Up there,” Turrin said, pointing at something beyond the windshield. Bolan followed where he was pointing and saw the mouth of an alley up ahead. The smell of antifreeze intermingled with overheated plastic, metal and oil had grown stronger. The soldier acknowledged Turrin with a nod.

A couple of seconds later when they reached their destination, he cut the wheel to the right and guided the car into the narrow alley. He killed the engine but left the headlights burning. “Wait here,” he growled.

Popping open the door, he stepped from the vehicle and walked up to the front end and checked the damage. Bullet holes pockmarked the grille in a ragged line.

Another slug had taken out one of the running lights. White plumes of steam curled up from around the edges of the hood. The car definitely was damaged goods.

Moving back to the driver’s door, Bolan leaned inside, pulled up on a floor switch that opened the trunk and switched off the headlights.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Turrin nodded and exited the car. The woman climbed from the backseat and, eyeing the two men cautiously, approached them. She stopped several feet away from them.

“We need another car,” she said.

“We’ll get one,” Bolan replied.

“What, are you going to steal one?” she asked, her voice incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“Wait! What?”

Turrin looked at her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The big guy does this shit all the time.”

“He’s a federal agent!”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“No time,” Bolan said.

The Executioner glided past her and moved to the trunk. He slid his fingertips into the seam between the edge of the trunk lid and the car and pulled. The lid sprang open. He tossed the MP-5 into the trunk. When Turrin saw what Bolan was doing, he reached into the car, pulled out his shotgun and tossed it into the compartment. Bolan slammed the lid.

He hated to leave the weapons behind, but he had little choice. They could conceal their sidearms under their jackets. But walking around a foreign city with shotguns and submachine guns would probably attract all the wrong kinds of attention.

For all intents and purposes, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had rendered the weapons untraceable. If someone ran the prints on the weapons, they’d find nothing. Any prints the soldier had left behind as Mack Samuel Bolan or under his aliases Matt Cooper or, before that, Mike Belasko, had been scrubbed. Whenever he had any brushes with the authorities, the Farm’s cyber team hacked into the computers after the fact and erased any mug shots or fingerprints that might have been taken. As far as the world was concerned, Bolan was dead and had been for years. It was a fiction that Stony Man Farm went to great lengths to maintain.

From the corner of his eye he saw Rodriguez standing there, watching them. Bolan raised his right foot, set it on the bumper and pulled up the cuff of his pant leg. A small Glock pistol rode on his ankle in a holster. He drew the pistol. He sensed Rodriguez tensing, saw her back away a step. Turning toward her, he extended his hand and offered the weapon.

“You need a little something,” he said.

Nodding, she took the pistol from him, pulled back the slide and looked to see whether a round was in the chamber. Satisfied, she let the slide snap forward and slipped the pistol into her waistband.

“Thanks,” she said.

Spinning away from the car, the Executioner strode toward the mouth of the alley. When he reached it, he paused for a couple of heartbeats and glanced in both directions to see whether Dumond’s men had followed them. Men and women, tanned and fit, walked up and down the sidewalk, smiling and laughing.

Bolan slid the Beretta into the shoulder holster under his jacket and stepped from the alley, with the others moving behind him. As they moved up the street, he glanced at Rodriguez. The woman had plastered a smile on her face and was walking with a steady, confident gait, all of which took attention from her mussed hair and ripped jacket. In the distance, Bolan could hear sirens. He assumed police and emergency vehicles were speeding to Dumond’s estate. Once they arrived, they’d find the place littered with bodies.

And, if prowl cars weren’t already sweeping the area for Turrin and him, they soon would be. Once the police found the Jaguar, they’d realize whoever had driven the car had moved away on foot. They’d establish a perimeter that would make it harder for Bolan and the others to get away quickly.

They needed to move fast before that happened.

They’d put a couple of blocks between themselves and the Jaguar when Bolan spotted a police car halted at the intersection just ahead of them. The officer driving the car stared at them. Had Dumond or his people given the police a physical description? Bolan doubted it, but he felt himself tense up just the same.

“Is he looking at us?” Turrin asked, his voice low.

“Seems like it,” Bolan replied.

Rodriguez cast a glance at the soldier. “What if he is looking at us?” she asked.

“Let him look,” Bolan replied with a slight shrug.

“We can’t fight him.”

“You’re right. We can’t. And we won’t.”

One of the few rules Bolan had in his War Everlasting was that he never would draw his weapon on a police officer, even if the cop was about to shoot him. A second later, the traffic light changed and the squad car lurched forward and turned onto the street Bolan and the others were walking along. The officer at the wheel gave them one last look as he drove past, but kept going.

“Thank God,” Rodriguez said quietly.

“Yes and no,” Bolan said. “We just gained a couple of minutes. But if the guy’s instincts nag at him enough, he may turn around and want to talk to us. Look at us. We don’t exactly look like rich, carefree tourists.”

“True.”

When they reached the intersection, Bolan veered right down a side street and followed it away from the main drag for three blocks. An older-model blue Citroën parked along the curb caught the warrior’s eye. He walked up to it, peered through a side window, looking for blinking red lights that might signal an alarm, but saw nothing. Pulling his arm back, he shot forward and drove the point of his elbow into the glass. The window shattered on impact, glittering shards falling to the ground and into the car.

Bolan reached through the window, unlocked the door and within seconds was seated inside the vehicle, working to hotwire the starter while Turrin watched their surroundings. Once the engine growled to life, Turrin opened the passenger-side door and gestured for Rodriguez to climb into the backseat. As she settled inside, he stuck one leg into the car before the sound of yelling caught his attention. He turned and saw an elderly man, silver hair contrasting against deeply tanned skin, running down the street, yelling in French and shaking his fist.

Turrin folded himself into the car and slammed the door just as Bolan began wheeling it from its parking space. He gunned the engine. The Citroën gained speed as it hurtled away from its owner who was now standing in the street, shaking a fist at the thieves stealing his car. The soldier navigated the car out of the neighborhood and aimed it toward the safehouse.

CHAPTER SIX

“How did you screw this up?” the voice on the phone asked.

Seated in the helicopter, Dumond bit down on an angry reply and squelched a desire to heave his phone across the floor. He hated the son of a bitch on the other end of the line. He didn’t even know his name. Not his real name, anyway. But he knew he’d love to put a bullet in the bastard’s head.

“It’s complicated,” the Frenchman replied, regretting the words instantly.

“Perhaps you need an easier job,” the other man said.

“No.”

“You lost the woman.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“You lost her.”

Dumond heaved a sigh. “She got away. Yes.”

“Was she looking for me?”

“No.”

“No?”

Dumond squeezed his eyes closed. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“She never asked about you.”

“Which means nothing.”

“I told you someone attacked us. I lost eighteen people today.”

“How many did they lose?”

“You bastard!”

“Well?”

“None,” he said.

“And how many men were there?”

“You know the answer!”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“Two. It was just two men.”

The other man fell silent. Dumond thought he heard a lighter being worked, followed seconds later by the sound of a slow exhale. The pause only heightened Dumond’s anxiety.

After several seconds the voice said, “Go to Tunisia.”

The line went dead.

* * *

VOGELSGANG SLAMMED DOWN the receiver of his secure phone. The sound of someone chuckling to his right caught his attention and prompted him to spin his chair in that direction. Friedhelm Geiger was leaning against a wall, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at him. No, more to the point, Geiger was smirking at him.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Vogelsgang demanded.

“The Frenchman screwed it up, right?” Geiger said. “Did I not say this would happen?”

Vogelsgang ignored the question and instead studied the smoke curling up from the end of his cigarette. After several seconds he nodded slowly.

“You were right,” he said. “The Frenchman was a complete washout.”

Vogelsgang quickly repeated Dumond’s account of what had happened, breaking off occasionally to puff from his cigarette. When he finished, he looked over at Geiger, who was rubbing his clean-shaved chin with his thumb and forefinger. The smirk had morphed into a scowl and his brow furrowed.

“Two men took out eighteen of Dumond’s people?”

“That’s what Dumond said. What? You don’t believe it?”

Geiger pushed himself off the wall and started across the office toward a small bar located in the corner. Opening a bottle of spiced rum, he poured some into a short glass, sealed the bottle and, drink in hand, headed back to Vogelsgang.

“Dumond’s a pussy,” Geiger said. “But his security team’s another matter entirely. I can’t believe two men took out the whole team.”

“You think he’s lying?”

“Not necessarily,” Geiger replied, shaking his head. “He may have counted wrong. Fog of war and all that bullshit. Dumond’s not a soldier. Perhaps he’s been shot at before. I don’t know. But under that sort of stress, it’s easy to get things wrong.”

Vogelsgang nodded once. “But we still have eighteen men dead. That much we can be sure of.”

“Yes.”

“Let me ask the obvious question, then,” Vogelsgang said. “What if he got it right? What if it was just two people?”

Geiger drank more rum. Staring into the glass, he swirled the liquid around. “They’d have to be damn capable,” he said.

“Indeed.”

“Especially to do this with little or no visible support. No special vehicles. Nothing but small arms. I’d say Dumond was lucky to escape with his skin intact.”

“How many people in the world could do this?”

Geiger considered the question and shrugged. “Not many. I could do it. Not too many others. A handful, maybe.”

“Exactly. That means we’ve drawn the attention of someone quite formidable. And now we should assume they’re following Dumond. They won’t let him just walk away from all this. They’ll want to arrest him.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad as long as Dumond would keep his mouth shut. But we know better. If it’d buy him another ten seconds of breathing, he’d blurt out everything he knows.”

“So deal with him. And, if someone’s tracking him, take them out, too.”

“With pleasure,” Geiger said.

He set his empty glass on a nearby table, turned and headed for the door.

* * *

VOGELSGANG WAITED UNTIL the other man had exited the room before allowing himself a small chuckle and a pitying shake of his head. Geiger was a good soldier, a true believer, resourceful and smart. His mistake was in believing they were in this thing together.

He was wrong. Geiger indeed was a formidable soldier. The former intelligence officer was, at best, a pawn, an attack dog. Like any dog, he could be useful and loyal. But, if Geiger forgot his place, Vogelsgang had people available who could deal with him.

Vogelsgang had a small army waiting in the wings and he was sitting on a storehouse of cash. That made him unstoppable.

His thoughts went back to the situation in Monaco. Whether it was two people or four who attacked Dumond was an interesting question. The more important question was their identity. Vogelsgang had to assume it was the Americans coming to help one of their own, or another country working on behalf of the United States, an ally such as Britain.

Either way it now meant they’d attracted unwanted attention. Or, more to the point, Dumond had attracted attention.

Geiger had been right. The man was a clown. Vogelsgang had hoped to use the Frenchman’s greed and stupidity to an advantage. Even so, he’d also been careful to build firewalls between Dumond and himself. Dumond didn’t know his real name or his location. Vogelsgang spoke letter-perfect English with no trace of an accent, and his secure phone processed his voice through a distortion device. He was sure the man had no idea of his nationality. Vogelsgang also paid the man with funds from a bank in the British Virgin Islands. Though Geiger had helped pick several members of Dumond’s security team, the two men had never met directly. Even if someone hunted down Dumond, chances were slim he could betray Vogelsgang and his associates. Just to be on the safe side, though, Vogelsgang would feel better once Geiger killed the man and closed that hole.

Vogelsgang didn’t need the distractions.

Not now.

He was on the edge of changing history. He’d spent a life working hard. A son of working-class parents, he’d never been satisfied when he’d looked at their way of life, stressing over mortgage payments and other bills. Vogelsgang had started work in the same machine shop that had once employed his parents. Unlike them, he’d had a head for numbers and a willingness to stick a knife in someone else’s back. Within a few years he was working on the administrative side of the business. In another ten years he’d bought the place from its original owner, using blackmail to force the owner to sell for next to nothing. From there Vogelsgang had begun the slow process of building an industrial empire, one with its roots in Germany, but with factories in India, Bangladesh and other developing countries.

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