“Here they come!”

Blanca Herrera advised Bolan, as if she thought he might be unaware of the pursuit.

“I see them,” he replied. “Hang on.”

Almost before she could react to his warning, they cleared the alley and he cranked the Ford into the sharpest left-hand turn he could manage, startling a pair of jaywalkers who squealed and ran for safety on the sidewalk. Gunfire echoed from the alley at his back, even before the first chase car emerged. The pedestrians went prone.

Bolan was making all the haste he dared on residential streets, watching the sidelines where his own headlights and those closing behind him cast distorted, moving shadows. Any one of them might mask another late-night rambler, possibly a child, and Bolan had to balance that thought with the threat of death that rode his bumper. At the same time, if he drove too fast and lost control, smashed up the Ford, he and his passengers were facing sudden death, and the failure of his mission.

“Could you distract them for me?” he asked Herrera.

“How?”

“Shoot back!” the Executioner said.

Extreme Justice

The Executioner®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.

All evils are equal when they are extreme.

—Pierre Corneille,

1606–1684

Horace

Sometimes we have to match evil with evil. It’s a fact, and I’m prepared to pay the toll.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Prologue

Crooked Island, Florida

June 14

Armand Casale rose from the midnight surf, water streaming from the neoprene wet suit that covered his athletic body like a second skin. He spit out the mouthpiece of his scuba breathing apparatus and reached back with his left hand to interrupt the flow of oxygen. Leaving his face mask snug in place to spare his eyes from dripping saltwater, Casale shed his swim fins, hooked them to his belt and crossed the narrow strip of moonlit beach with long, determined strides.

He couldn’t help the moon, but a mad sprint across pale sand to reach the tree line would only invite the notice of the guards.

When he reached the trees without a siren going off or shouting men rushing out to cover him with automatic weapons, Casale reckoned he was halfway home. The hardest bit was still ahead, of course, but other members of his team had worried that he wouldn’t even survive the trip ashore.

Casale knew what he was doing. That was why he’d come alone, against the odds, instead of dragging half a dozen shooters with him like some kind of ragtag army launching an amphibious invasion.

Done right, it was a one-man job.

And if he failed, why take the others down with him?

His target lay a hundred yards inland. The small two-bedroom house would’ve sold for seven figures if it had been offered for sale. A buyer would’ve paid not only for the proximity to the ocean but also for the isolation, which was rare indeed wherever sand met surf around the Sunshine State.

The property was not for sale, however. Hadn’t been since Uncle Sam had snapped it up during World War II for naval exercises. More recently, the Justice Department maintained the property and used it as an outpost of the WITSEC program.

Witness Security, that was.

Casale didn’t know how much his boss had paid for information regarding the location of the Crooked Island safehouse, and he didn’t care. He had his orders, and he meant to execute the plan without a hitch.

Four guards, at least, and one primary target. Casale was authorized to kill them all, if necessary, and to hell with any heat resulting from the deaths of federal agents.

It was perfect.

Casale wasn’t sure exactly how his adversaries would be armed. The Smith & Wesson .40-caliber had been standard issue for the FBI since 1990-something. Shotguns were more than likely, though Casale couldn’t rule out lightweight automatic weapons.

Never mind.

Casale was prepared for anything. In lieu of backup, he was carrying a Spectre submachine gun and accessories inside an airtight plastic bag. The weapon measured only fourteen inches with its shoulder stock retracted, twenty-two if he attached the fat suppressor to its threaded muzzle. Fifty-round four-column magazines gave the Spectre an ammo capacity surpassing any other SMG, while its cyclic rate of 850 rounds per minute bested even the classic Heckler & Koch MP-5.

The Spectre was Casale’s last resort, however. He would hold it in reserve, in case the plan started to fall apart.

His two primary weapons were a customized Walther P-38 pistol, also fitted with a suppressor and hand-loaded subsonic rounds, and a brand-new toy that dangled in a scabbard on Casale’s belt.

He had only used the WASP injector knife once before on a human being—call it a field test—and the results had been dramatic. The WASP carried a 12-gram cartridge of CO2 gas inside its handle, triggered at the touch of a button through a tube in its 5.5-inch blade of razor-edged surgical steel. Upon release, forty cubic inches of gas were injected into the target’s flesh at minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit, expanding to basketball size and instantly freezing soft tissue on contact.

The WASP was created as a self-defense weapon for divers confronted by sharks. Injection of the freezing gas not only killed the shark, but also caused it to rise at dangerous speed, bursting open as it reached the surface and distracting other predators while the diver escaped, forgotten.

The knife retailed for six hundred dollars, but Casale’s hadn’t cost him anything. One of Don Romano’s thieves had stolen a case of them back in July, and Casale had appropriated two for himself, with enough gas cartridges to see him through a busy year. He had tried his new toy on a homeless man in San Francisco, two weeks earlier. Police were still puzzling over the case, while tabloid journalists beat the bushes for satanic cultists or black-market-organ harvesters.

After this night, the FBI would have a better handle on the mystery, but what of it? They might know how, and even why, but it would be a stone bitch learning who.

Casale slipped on the running shoes that he had carried in another plastic bag. He wasn’t taking any chances with a seashell or a piece of glass that might leave blood drops for the Bureau lab rats. No one had his DNA on file so far, but why risk injury and help his enemies at the same time?

A gliding shadow in the wind-swept night, Casale slowly approached the target, taking one step at a time.

Hyder, Arizona

June 14

HAROUN AL-RACHID SUPPOSED the small town’s name was meant to be a joke. Why else would agents of the U.S. government attempt to hide one of their most important turncoat witnesses in a community called Hyder?

It was the very sort of arrogance that most disgusted him about Americans, the smug conviction that they were superior in every way. Even their sense of humor was crude and tasteless, heavily dependent on insults directed toward nonwhite minorities or females.

Since bin Laden had surprised the Americans in 2001, Muslims had become targets of American humor. Al-Rachid understood the impulse—in truth, one of his own favorite jokes involved an American missionary and a priapic camel—but he still believed that the Great Satan needed to learn more humility.

This night, in his own small way, he was happy to help.

The desert outside Hyder, Arizona, bore no visible resemblance to that of his Saudi homeland. It lacked the massive, ever-changing dunes of perfect, almost silken, sun-baked sand. Instead, it was a place of grit and gravel, hard soil creased and creviced like an ancient reptile’s skin. It sprouted cacti, Joshua trees, mesquite and tumbleweeds, those prickly, erratic travelers that still made al-Rachid’s driver flinch each time once bounced across the two-lane road in front of them.

“Be careful,” al-Rachid ordered. “The police are everywhere.”

The driver acknowledged his order in Arabic, keeping his eyes on the highway revealed by their headlights.

In fact, except for those he’d come to kill, al-Rachid doubted that he would find another lawman in the area this evening. There was a one-man sheriff’s substation in Hyder, and the district had its own highway patrolman, but al-Rachid had been assured that the sheriff’s deputy went home at 6:00 p.m., except in cases of emergency, while the patrolman—called a state trooper—supervised four hundred miles of rural highway during his eight-hour shift. The odds against encountering him accidentally at any given place or time were higher than al-Rachid himself could calculate.

Upon arrival at their destination, it would be a different story. Al-Rachid and his two companions had been sent to kill one man, but he was guarded by at least four others, armed and trained.

No problem.

FBI agents—and all American police, in fact—were taught to save lives first and kill only in the utmost extremity. Nothing in their experience prepared them to match wits with dedicated warriors fielded by the Sword of Allah.

They would learn that lesson this night, to their ultimate sorrow.

Al-Rachid used a penlight to review the road map folded in his lap. He had the turnoff clearly marked, a thick black arrow pointing from the narrow highway to the right, or east.

“One mile,” he told the driver. Turning toward the soldier in the backseat, he commanded, “Goggles.”

Without answering, the man reached into a duffel bag on the seat beside him, drawing out two pairs of night-vision goggles. Al-Rachid took them both, placed one atop his map and held the other ready as his driver neared the access road that led to their intended target.

“Now,” al-Rachid announced. The driver switched his headlights off, turned slowly off the highway to his right and stopped a few yards down the unpaved road. Brake lights glowed ruby-red behind them, but al-Rachid could not prevent it, simply offering a prayer that his enemies were less than vigilant.

He passed a pair of bulky goggles to the driver, then put on his own, adjusting the head straps until the weight was fairly balanced. Every time he wore night-vision gear for any length of time, al-Rachid wound up with aching muscles in his neck and shoulders, but it was a minor price to pay under the circumstances.

Victory was now within his grasp.

He swiveled in his seat, confirming that the backseat gunner had his goggles on, the AR-18 folding-stock assault rifle held ready in his hands. Two more identical weapons lay on the floor at al-Rachid’s feet.

Given a choice, he would have picked Kalashnikovs, but in the present circumstances Armalites had been the best rifles available. They chambered 5.56 mm NATO rounds, slightly larger than the AK-74’s standard 5.45 mm Soviet cartridge, but the difference in practiced hands was minimal, and the Armalite’s larger 40-round magazine gave the weapons superior firepower.

Loaded with armor-piercing rounds, as these were, the rifles should defeat any Kevlar or similar protective apparel worn by the target or his bodyguards. In fact, the slugs should slice through body armor like a heated knife through cheese.

“Three-quarters of a mile,” al-Rachid reminded his wheelman. The driver knew that, but reminders did no harm, and there was no objection. As they drove along the unpaved access road, raising a plume of dust concealed by midnight darkness, al-Rachid dropped his map and lifted the twin rifles from the car’s floorboard.

They dared not drive directly to the house itself. Even with the headlights off, that would alert the guards and destroy their advantage of surprise. Al-Rachid would stop his driver halfway to the desert bungalow, then proceed on foot across the arid landscape to their goal.

With luck, he hoped to catch the target and at least one of his bodyguards asleep. The agents had to sleep and eat in shifts, with two or three of them remaining on alert around the clock.

But how alert?

Al-Rachid smiled as the car slowed, coasting to a halt.

A few more moments, and he would find out.

Crooked Island, Florida

ARMAND CASALE MET the first guard when he was still fifty yards from the house. He was surprised to find the middle-aged FBI agent at large after midnight, prowling the grounds while a chill breeze blew in from the gulf, but Casale supposed that even G-men got bored sometimes.

The agent had a riot-model shotgun, but he carried it in one hand, dangling beside his leg, its muzzle pointed toward the earth. Even if it was cocked, to fire the weapon Casale’s enemy would have to shift his hold, relocate his right hand to clutch the pistol grip and let his index finger slip inside the trigger guard.

Casale didn’t plan to give him time for that.

He crouched in shadow, perfectly immobile, scarcely breathing, as the roving sentry passed his hiding place. Casale saw the Kevlar vest his adversary wore, without a jacket to conceal it, and it didn’t worry him.

Ironically, while varied thicknesses of Kevlar could deflect most small-arms fire, they offered no significant protection against blades.

Casale gave his target three last strides, then rose from hiding, rushed upon him from behind and clamped his left hand tight against the agent’s mouth. His right hand drove the WASP’s blade through the Kevlar vest, which offered no more physical resistance than a heavy overcoat.

At once, Casale triggered the release of freezing CO2 into the G-man’s body cavity. The icy gas expanded instantly, traumatically displacing heart and lungs and arresting their performance in the time it took Casale to withdraw his blade. The dead man bucked and quivered in Casale’s grasp, then suddenly went limp and slumped facedown in the sand.

Casale reloaded the WASP, replacing its spent cartridge with a fresh one, then moved on. So far, his mission was on schedule, going off without a hitch.

He met no other lookouts between the killzone and the house. Approaching through the darkness, he saw lighted windows with their curtains drawn against the night, a television flickering from one room where the other lights had been extinguished.

No one saw Casale draw his silenced pistol from its plastic bag. No cameras scanned the house or yard, an oversight that would rebound against someone in Washington the next day, when the night’s news broke. Armand Casale circled the safehouse clockwise, searching curtained windows for a gap that would permit a glimpse inside.

He returned to his starting point without a break.

If nothing else, the FBI was good with drapes.

Casale didn’t know the walking sentry’s schedule, but he guessed that thirty minutes would be stretching it. How long had the G-man been prowling when they met? It was impossible to say.

Impossible, as well, for him to guess the knocks or other recognition signals that had been arranged between the agents guarding his primary target. Locating the safehouse had been difficult enough, and costly, but his sponsor didn’t have the juice to penetrate the local FBI itself and pick its brains.

No matter. Casale would make his way inside the house by any means required.

First he would try the doors.

They should be locked, of course. Locking the doors and windows was the most basic of all security precautions. Still, even the best-trained sentries sometimes made mistakes, and if the agents in the house expected their companion to return shortly…

Casale tried the back door first, considering it the more likely choice of sentries going out to search the woods and dunes. Like many seaside homes, the safehouse’s front door faced inland, while its back door and rear windows faced the sea.

Casale curled gloved fingers around the knob and tested it.

It turned.

Casale held his breath, expecting shrill alarms, a shouted warning, even gunfire.

Nothing happened.

Following the Walther’s lead, he stepped into a well-lit but empty kitchen.

He crossed the room, stepped into a darker corridor that branched left and right. The television sounds came from his left, presumably one of the bedrooms. Turning to his right, he followed the drone of voices speaking quietly but with no apparent effort at concealment.

Midnight was a quiet time, and Death was near.

Casale stepped into what would’ve been the living room and found two agents sprawled in easy chairs, debating some fine point of the derivative team sport Americans called football. One G-man faced the doorway where Casale stood; the other had his back turned toward his assassin.

The first man lurched forward, reaching for his gun. The sudden forward motion brought his face to meet Casale’s silent slug. Casale barely registered the splat of blood and brain against the chair’s upholstery.

He fired again before the second man could rise and turn, his neck and torso twisted as he tried to draw his pistol, strained to glimpse his enemy.

Too late.

The second bullet drilled his temple and kept going, spilling any final thoughts across the cheap rust-colored carpet. When he fell, the impact of his body was a solid, final sound.

Two left.

Casale doubled back along the hallway, slightly worried that some noise might have alerted the safehouse survivors. He tried the first bedroom and caught the last G-man asleep, blinking defensively against the spill of light before a bullet sent him to dreamland forever.

That left one.

Casale knew his primary target wouldn’t have a weapon. That was strictly, fatally forbidden by the WITSEC code. Only the guardians were armed, trusted to sacrifice themselves on the behalf of those they were assigned to watch.

Now, with the sacrifice complete, the target was defenseless.

He half expected that the last door would be locked, some vestige of a challenge for his effort, but the knob turned easily. Casale stepped across the threshold, recognized his target instantly from photos he had memorized.

The man lay on his back in bed. At the intrusion, he sat up.

“Vincent Onofre,” Casale said. Not a question, simply making sure.

The target’s mouth sagged open. “Who the hell are you?”

“Friend of a friend,” Casale said, and shot the traitor twice. One bullet through the forehead, and another through the temple as he slumped back dead, against his stack of pillows.

Done.

It was a good night’s work, with one last swim ahead of him before Casale made for home.

Hyder, Arizona

THREE MEN COULD NOT surround a house, per se, but they could cover it sufficiently by staking out three corners of the building. Each shooter thus had unobstructed views of two sides, cutting off any attempt by occupants to flee unseen.

Haroun al-Rachid claimed the northeast corner for himself, watching the north—or front—and east sides of the safehouse. Umarah, his driver, had the southeast corner, covering the east and south sides, while Tabari—on the southwest corner—watched the west and south.

Perfect.

Two lights were burning in the safehouse. One gleamed dully through a smallish frosted pane that had to have been the bathroom window, while another shone through crooked drapes and offered sliver glimpses of the kitchen. There were no signs of movement, but al-Rachid assumed that one or two guards had to still be awake.

His plan lacked subtlety, but had the virtue of surprise and overwhelming force. He would not give his enemies a chance to fight or run. Alert or dreaming, they were bound to die.

Besides the Armalite AR-18s, al-Rachid’s small arsenal included three LAW rockets, disposable bazookas featuring a lightweight plastic launching tube that held a 66 mm armor-piercing rocket with a high-explosive payload in its nose. Deemed obsolete against most modern tanks, the rockets still served well enough against civilian vehicles and homes.

As in the present case.

Al-Rachid’s companions had been trained to use the LAWs, advised that they would each have one shot only and had to make it count. Thermite grenades would follow the initial blasts, and they would stay to watch the house burn to its foundation, greeting any stunned survivors with their Armalites.

Al-Rachid released his launcher’s safety pin and drew it out to full length, balanced it across his shoulder as he aimed. The AR-18 rifle lay beside his right foot, in the sand, with the white-phosphorus grenade.

He armed the LAW, sighted on the window he had chosen for his target, six feet to the left of the front door, and pressed the trigger. Simultaneously, his two men released their rockets, warheads speeding toward the house with tails of fire.

Glass offered no significant resistance to the rockets. They were set to detonate on impact only with a solid wall, inside the house, where their explosive power would demolish timber, plaster, furniture and flesh.

The rockets detonated like a string of giant firecrackers, expelling smoke and shrapnel from their points of entry. Other windows of the safehouse shattered, front and back doors trembling in their frames but holding fast.

So far.

Before the echoes of the triple blast had time to fade, al-Rachid had palmed his Thermite canister, armed it, stepped closer to the stricken house and pitched it through the aperture where flames were visible already, spreading, feeding on the rubble, generating toxic smoke.

After the rockets, the grenades were relatively quiet. They made muffled whumping sounds inside the house, immediately spewing white-hot chemicals that would incinerate on contact virtually any man-made substance. Thermite would burn through tempered steel and concrete. Flesh and bone were nothing, in the scheme of things.

Al-Rachid stood waiting with his Armalite in hand, watching the safehouse burn. He felt the heat from where he stood and knew it had to be hell in there, almost beyond imagining. Still, traitors who abandoned sacred oaths of loyalty deserved no less. The Thermite blaze would give his target a foretaste of hell.

Justice.

Another job well done.

Al-Rachid was starting to relax when bullets churned the sandy soil around his feet, making him skip and dance away. He found cover behind a nearby Joshua tree, amazed that anyone was still alive inside the house, much less in any shape to fight.

Al-Rachid first told himself it might be ammunition cooking off inside the fire, but it defied the laws of physics that a clutch of random cartridges exploding could produce the pattern that had nearly cut his legs from under him.

Those shots were aimed by someone who had managed to survive both rockets and grenades.

So be it. They had planned for this.

Al-Rachid waited, resisted the impulse to fire back at the winking muzzle-flash he glimpsed sporadically. The raging fire would either eat his enemy alive or drive the man from cover where he could be shot at leisure.

All Haroun al-Rachid had to do was watch and wait.

Five minutes later, just when he’d begun to listen for the wail of sirens in the distance, al-Rachid saw a shadow figure move against the background of the flames. It lurched and staggered, nearly doubled over as the sole survivor of the holocaust hacked smoke and other fumes out of his lungs. Al-Rachid could not identify the weapon in his adversary’s hands and didn’t care to try.

He fired a long burst from the Armalite, expending half a magazine when two or three rounds would have sufficed. Al-Rachid was angry at his target, recognized the feeling as irrational and still allowed himself the luxury of overkill. His bullets dropped the man, then set his corpse to twitching, jerking on the arid soil.

When it was truly finished, when the safehouse had collapsed into itself and every part of it was totally engulfed by fire, al-Rachid beckoned his soldiers and they walked back toward their waiting vehicle.

1

San José, Costa Rica

June 19

Mack Bolan held the rented Ford at a nerve-racking fifty miles per hour, staying with the flow of traffic that jammed Avenida Central without ever seeming to slow its pace or stop for red lights. He kept a sharp eye on the drivers around him, many of them seemingly intent on suicide, while flicking hasty glances toward his rearview mirror, watching for police cars.

Bolan didn’t even want to think about what local law enforcement might say about a gringo driving through their capital with military hardware piled up in the backseat of his rental car.

“How much farther?” Bolan asked his navigator.

Blanca Herrera was a thirty-something knockout, her angel face framed by a fall of glossy jet-black hair, above a body that could grace a calendar.

Herrera checked the city street map, measuring with slender fingers. “Two kilometers, perhaps,” she said at last. “Turn right on Calle Quarenta—or Fortieth Street, you would say—then drive north to Avenida Cinco.”

“Right.”

Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately, they weren’t going to a fashion show at Sachs.

“If I may say again—”

He cut her off. “No calls. No warnings.”

“But I wouldn’t have to speak.”

“Hang-ups are worse. We can’t do anything to spook him now.”

The lazy shrug did interesting things inside her clinging blouse. “Ah, you know best. But if he is not home when we arrive…”

“We wait,” he finished for her. “Find a vantage point and settle in.”

“However long it takes?”

“Unless you know some way to read his mind and tell me where he’s gone.”

“No,” Herrera replied. “I can’t do that.”

“Well, then.”

“This gringo is muy importante, yes?”

“Muy importante, right.”

“But you expect to find him home alone? No bodyguards?”

“Gil Favor likes his privacy,” Bolan replied. “Besides, he’s paid your government for years to keep him safe and sound.”

“Some individuals, perhaps,” she answered somewhat stiffly.

“The police, the prosecutors and at least one president.”

“Ex-president,” the sultry woman corrected him.

“Whose squeaky-clean successor hasn’t made a move to change the status quo where Favor is concerned.”

“Are you forgetting that we have no extradition treaty with your country?”

“Nope. Neither is good old Gil. That’s why he didn’t need a troop of heavies. Until now.”

“And you believe he will be unaware of any recent danger to himself?”

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” Bolan replied.

That was the rub, of course. The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service had been sitting on the WITSEC murders, pulling every string available to maintain a media blackout, but any form of censorship had limits and the voluntary kind was typically as leaky as a sieve. Even without the press or television, Favor would have contacts in the States to warn him of a shift in climate, someone turning up the heat.

What would he do? Sit tight or run for cover with a new identity established in advance? Was he already running, gone before Bolan could corner him?

Or had the others, those who wanted Favor dead, already come and gone?

We’ll see, Bolan thought. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

“I’ve been here once before,” he said. “But farther south.”

“A job like this one?”

“Not exactly.”

“I am sorry,” Herrera informed him, face diverted to scan shops and restaurants. “It’s not my place to ask such things.”

“You’re right.”

She knew better, but they’d run out of small talk after ten or fifteen minutes. “If we find Favor at home—”

“We’ll find him.”

“When we find him, what approach will you be using?”

“Short and not so sweet,” said Bolan. “Someone wants him dead. His best chance of survival is to hop a flight with me and put his enemies where they can’t do him any harm.”

“Will he believe that? Knowing who and what they are?”

“No way.”

Gil Favor wasn’t stupid. He was something of a genius, in fact, where numbers were concerned, and he was also as crooked as a swastika. He’d realize that locking up the man in charge, even inside a death row cage, wouldn’t remove the price tag from his own head. Whether Favor testified or not, his chances of survival on the street—or anywhere outside protective custody—were slim to none.

“Why should he help you, then?”

“It’s my job to persuade him,” Bolan answered.

“And may I ask how you intend to do that?”

Bolan frowned, making his right-hand turn, dodging a motorcyclist who seemed to think lane markers were an optical illusion. His answer was curt and to the point.

“I’ll let him flip a coin.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Give the man a choice,” Bolan elaborated. “He can deal with me right now, or with someone else’s shooters down the line.”

“I see. And if he’s not persuaded by your logic?”

“Favor’s coming with me one way or another,” Bolan said. “This time next week, he’ll be in New York City, on a witness stand.”

“What happens if you take him all that way and he refuses to cooperate in court?”

“Somebody else’s problem,” Bolan answered. “My job is finished on delivery.”

They rode in silence for a time, then Bolan saw the sign and said, “Fifth Avenue.”

“Go west,” Herrera said. “His house will be the third one on our left.”

Bolan followed her directions, thankful that the major rush of traffic was behind them. Fifth Avenue was quiet by comparison, with stately homes on either side.

Here’s money, Bolan thought as he counted houses on the left.

“You see it, yes?” she asked. “Just there, the brick and stone.”

“I see it,” Bolan said. “And he’s got company.”

GIL FAVOR DIDN’T SIMPLYlike his privacy. He craved it, needed to be left alone the same way that he needed food, water and oxygen. It was the best—perhaps the only—way for him to stay alive.

Throughout his forty-seven years, no single interaction with the other members of his species had left Favor with a sense of what his fellow humans called fulfillment. Granted, he was happy while stealing and spending someone else’s hard-earned money, even found release with prostitutes who idolized him for an hour with the meter running.

But as far as anything resembling a normal life?

Not even close.

That was to be expected now, given the circumstances of his present situation. He had millions of dollars in a bank account the U.S. government could never crack, lived well beyond the reach of federal warrants and didn’t really mind being a man without a country in his middle age.

He was about to pour himself another after-dinner brandy when the first alarm chimed softly. Nothing to get overwrought about, beyond the fact that any chime at all meant trespassers outside his home.

Now what the hell?

Favor had never been a violent man—well, almost never. He had earned the bulk of his ill-gotten gains by cooking the books and washing blood money for heavy-duty predators, skimming off a portion for himself when the distractions of a thug’s life blinded him to what was happening beneath his very nose.

Still, the survival reflex was as strong within Gil Favor as in any other human being who had lived by wits and guile for the majority of his or her life.

A second, louder chime told Favor that his uninvited guests were drawing closer to the house, along the driveway from the street outside. He wasn’t expecting any deliveries, but his mind still offered innocent suggestions for the visit.

Fat chance, however.

In four years and counting in his minipalace, he’d never had a salesman on his doorstep. No neighbors visited without an invitation, and he hadn’t issued any.

That meant trouble was coming, one way or another.

Favor set down his brandy snifter, rose from his recliner and retrieved the sawed-off shotgun from its hidden cubbyhole beside the liquor cabinet. The first cartridge was rock salt, for a wake-up call; the four that followed it were triple-aught buckshot.

“You should’ve picked another house,” Gil Favor muttered as he left his study, moving briskly toward the parlor and front door.

THE OCCUPANTS OF TWO CARS were unloading near the mansion’s broad front porch as Bolan passed the driveway, counting heads. He saw no uniforms, no proper suits that would’ve indicated plainclothes officers.

“They’re not police,” he said.

“What, then?” Blanca Herrera asked. “Maybe he has a dinner party.”

“Doubtful,” Bolan said. “You saw them, right? They don’t fit with the neighborhood.”

“He is a fugitive from justice,” she reminded him. “Why would his friends be chosen from the social register?”

“Good point.”

But Bolan knew Gil Favor wasn’t one for making friends. And if he did, the self-made billionaire would handpick those who best served his camouflage of affluent respectability.

“Why are you stopping?”

“I just want to check this out,” Bolan explained. “If they’re sitting down to surf and turf, we’ll wait and tag him after they go home.”

“And if it’s something else?” Herrera asked. “What then?”

He nosed the Ford into an alley two doors down from Favor’s driveway, switching off the lights and engine. “Then I intervene,” he said.

“Against eight men?”

“I’ll do my best.”

She scrambled out to join him in the darkness, while he was extracting hardware from the larger of two duffel bags on the backseat.

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’ve left the keys,” he told her. “If it gets too raucous, or I’m not back here in fifteen minutes tops, clear out.”

Herrera gnawed her lower lip, then said, “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“How will you stop me?”

He pinned her with a glare that made her take a slow step backward. “This is my part of the deal,” he said. “You got me here. Now step aside and let me work.”

“I’m fully trained,” she challenged.

“Not for this.”

“How would you know?”

He fought an urge to squeeze her slender neck just hard enough to break her grip on consciousness for twenty minutes, give or take. But what might happen if he left her in the car that way?

“All right,” he said through gritted teeth. “You asked for it.”

Her smile was fleeting but triumphant. Bolan wondered if she would live to regret her rash choice.

Already armed with a Beretta Model 92, snug in its armpit rig, Bolan retrieved a classic Uzi submachine gun from his duffel bag of lethal gear, spent three seconds attaching a suppressor to its threaded muzzle, filled his pockets with spare magazines to feed the SMG and clipped a flash-bang grenade to his belt.

His overanxious sidekick wore some kind of smallish pistol tucked inside her waistband. From his quick glimpse of its grip and the extended magazine, Bolan surmised either an HK4 or Walther PPK. She didn’t ask for anything more powerful as he prepared to leave the car, and Bolan hoped that she would have the sense to simply stay out of harm’s way.

Assuming that was possible.

They walked back from the alley to Favor’s driveway, Bolan covering the Uzi with his windbreaker. No traffic passed them on the quiet street, but he imagined neighbors peering from their windows, wondering about the sudden flurry of activity at Señor Favor’s place.

They wouldn’t call for the police right now, but at the sound of gunfire…

Bolan scanned the sweeping driveway and the house beyond, saw no one standing near the cars that had pulled in a moment earlier. Eight men had either gone inside the house or fanned out to surround it, vanishing from Bolan’s field of view.

“What now?” Herrera asked. “Do we knock on Favor’s door?”

“Not quite,” he said. Spotting the motion sensors ranged along the driveway, Bolan added, “Follow me. Stay off the pavement.”

She followed without asking questions. Bolan took advantage of the property’s strategically located trees as he approached the mansion, moving at an urgent pace. He had discounted booby traps upon discovering that Favor had no gate to keep stray dogs or children from the occacional intrusion. Blowing them to smithereens or crushing tiny ankles in a leghold trap would certainly have caused his stock to plummet with the neighbors.

“Don’t you think—”

He shushed her with a hiss and kept moving toward the house. They’d closed the gap to twenty yards or so when muffled gunfire echoed from inside the house. A shotgun, by the sound of it, one blast immediately followed by the pop-pop-pop of pistol fire.

Bolan made for the front door, thinking it would be the quickest way to get inside the house. He didn’t care if it was locked, already thinking past the first obstruction, wondering if he had come too late and Favor was already dead.

Vengeance was one thing he could definitely handle, but it would mean mission failure and freedom for another predator three thousand miles away.

He reached the porch and found the front door levered open, then pushed shut again by someone who had come before him. Bolan shouldered through it, smelling gunsmoke as he crossed the threshold.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ CLUTCHED his Ingram MAC-10 SMG and waited for a target to present itself. Nearby, not quite within arm’s reach, his point man lay facedown on white shag carpeting.

The gringo had surprised them with a shotgun blast from nowhere that had toppled Paco Obregon before they even glimpsed the man they’d come to kill. It was supposed to be an easy job, and now Rodriguez thought maybe he wasn’t being paid enough.

Their target was holed up inside a room no more than twenty feet from where Rodriguez crouched behind a sofa, painfully aware that springs and stuffing would not save him if the gringo kept on shooting. A glimpse had shown Rodriguez books inside the room, perhaps some kind of library. They’d have to rush the gringo soon, behind a wall of lead, and—

What was this?

Madre de díos!

Right before his eyes, Obregon was struggling to his feet, gasping and coughing, one hand pressed against his stomach while the other fumbled for his pistol on the carpet.

White shag carpet, without any stain of blood.

Rodriguez watched as Obregon brushed the rock-salt pellets from his shirt, wincing at contact with the bruised flesh underneath.

It was a trick! The damned gringo had tried to scare them off, as if Rodriguez and his men were children. The warning shot would cost the gringo his life.

Rodriguez was about to order the attack, when Paco Obregon retrieved his pistol, snarled a curse and rushed the door alone. A second, louder shotgun blast rang out, and this time there was blood aplenty, spilling everywhere as Paco vaulted over backward, crumpling in an awkward attitude of death.

Rodriguez crouched lower behind the sofa, all thoughts of rushing the door banished from his mind. Yet he couldn’t simply wait there and allow the gringo to terrorize him into immobility.

He had six more handpicked killers left, against one man who was accustomed to the soft life, swaddled by his money. Not so soft that he’d forgotten how to pull a trigger, obviously, but it would be shameful to retreat.

Worse yet, it would be fatal.

If Rodriguez failed, it wouldn’t be enough to simply return the money. He couldn’t just apologize and take a scolding.

No.

The man who had employed him wanted blood.

Rodriguez flashed hand signals at the two men he could see. The other four had entered through the back door of the mansion and were doubtless waiting for his signal somewhere on the far side of the library.

Frontal assault was the only option that he could think of, and if that meant losing men, so be it. He would be behind them all the way.

Rodriguez flashed another hand sign, and his soldiers nodded in response, both edging forward, clutching weapons tightly. They didn’t look at Obregon, leaking blood on the carpet, but rather focused on their target. Like professionals.

Rodriguez nodded, and they rose together, shoulders hunched into the charge—then started jerking, twisting, lurching through the half steps of some crazy, spastic dance Rodriguez didn’t recognize. It took a heartbeat for his mind to grasp what he was seeing, then he heard the whisper-stutter of an automatic weapon with a silencer attached.

His soldiers fell together, nearly sprawling over Obregon’s limp corpse. Rodriguez spun to face the new and unexpected source of peril, squeezing off a burst with his Ingram before he had a target in his sights.

Diving and rolling, wishing that the parlor’s furniture were made from steel and concrete rather than mere wood and fabric, Rodriquez glimpsed another gringo firing at him with some kind of submachine gun.

Bullets ripped through the upholstery of the stout recliner where he’d come to rest. Rodriguez raised his hand into the gringo’s line of fire, emptied the Ingram’s magazine and hastened to reload.

The target was supposed to be alone, goddamn it! He’d been told that there would be no bodyguards. It was a promise. In and out, with nothing to detain him at his task.

Bastards! Rodriguez vowed that if he made it out of this alive, there would be hell to pay.

Near panic, sweating through his rumpled shirt despite the mansion’s air-conditioning, Rodriguez started barking orders to the four surviving members of his crew. He didn’t know if either of his gringo enemies spoke Spanish, and he didn’t care. It was still five men against two, and Rodriguez could live with those odds.

One of the other soldiers answered him, a grim affirmative. It was enough.

Rodriguez broke from cover, bellowing his rage and firing from the hip with his MAC-10.

A BURST FROM BOLAN’S muffled Uzi dropped the shouting gunman in his tracks. That made four down, and he could hear the other four men of the home-invasion team before he saw them, coming down the hall in a stampede, all firing on the run.

Bolan saw nothing to be gained by waiting until they were visible. The hallway was a killing pen. He held down the Uzi’s trigger, sweeping its muzzle back and forth, vaguely aware of bright spent brass cascading from the SMG’s ejection port.

An instant later, Bolan’s targets stumbled into view, three of the four still firing, but without a focus to their aim. They peppered walls, floor and ceiling as their feet got tangled up and brought them crashing down. Except for all the blood and screaming, it resembled something from a slapstick comedy.

Bolan reloaded, watched the dying shooters long enough to satisfy himself that none of them presented any threat. Gil Favor hadn’t joined the turkey shoot, apparently preferring to remain invisible and bide his time. Bolan edged forward now, conscious of his female companion moving on his flank, her pistol leveled in a fair two-handed grip.

“Favor!” Bolan called out. “We need to talk.”

“So talk,” a strained voice answered. “I’ve already called for the police. Let’s chat until they get here, shall we?”

“That’s a bad idea,” Bolan replied.

“For you, maybe.”

“I didn’t come to hurt you,” Bolan told him.

“Right. I guess you’re with the neighborhood welcoming committee, then.”

“I’m not with these guys. If I was, why would I kill them for you?”

“I don’t give a shit. If you think I’m walking out of here before this place is full of uniforms, you need to have your head examined.”

“The police can’t help you now,” Bolan stated.

“I’ll just take your word for that, shall I?”

“I’d recommend it.”

“Sure you would. Why don’t I shoot myself right now? Spare you the trouble.”

“I was sent to bring you out of here alive.”

“To where?” Favor demanded.

Bolan took a chance. “Back to the States.”

The hidden fugitive barked laughter. “Thanks but no thanks. I don’t fancy serving thirty years.”

Bolan glanced at his watch, frowning. How long until the sirens wailed outside?

“I’d say you’re in a no-win situation, staying here,” Bolan replied. “The cops you bought and paid for won’t be watching when the next hit team shows up to finish this.”

“Who says I’ll be here?” Favor challenged.

“They’ll be waiting for you by the time the uniforms clear out tonight, if they’re not here already.”

“Pull the other one, my friend. I’m sitting tight.”

I don’t think so, Bolan thought, but he said, “Your call.”

“Damned right it is!”

Bolan unclipped the stun grenade and pulled its pin, ignoring Herrera as he moved in closer to the door that stood ajar, concealing Favor from his view. He’d have six seconds from the time he made the pitch, before his canister lit up the library.

“Hey!” Favor called out from the shadows. “You still there?”

I’m here.

The toss was easy, with a rebound from the doorjamb, putting it across the threshold. Favor blurted out a curse and started scrambling, but he had nowhere to go. Bolan dropped to a crouch, closing his eyes and clapping hands over his ears, hoping the lady would be smart enough to do likewise.

The blast was blinding, stunning, but not lethal. Bolan pushed into the smoky library and found Gil Favor writhing on the floor, convulsed and semiconscious. Once he’d kicked the shotgun out of reach, Bolan reached down and hoisted Favor to his feet, stood underneath the fugitive’s left arm—and found Herrera on his other side, gripping the right.

“We’re out of time,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She flashed a smile and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

They half dragged Favor from the house, past corpses, out the front door and across the sloping lawn. Bolan could hear sirens in the distance as they reached the sidewalk.

Favor was stumbling, not quite helping, by the time they reached the rental car. Bolan stashed the duffel bags of weapons in the trunk, then shoved Favor into the backseat.

“You stay with him,” he commanded. “Keep him quiet.”

It was a relief to get no argument.

He slid into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition key and winced as sudden headlights made it high-noon bright from one end of the alley to the other.

In the rearview, Bolan saw no flashing colored lights atop the car behind him. Maybe not police, then. But—

The muzzle-flashes settled it.

He had been bluffing Favor on the backup murder team, but it was true, and they had found him.

Bolan slammed the rental car into gear and stood on the accelerator, tires smoking as he fishtailed from a standing start.

2

Near Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Monday, June 18

The helicopter pilot held his altitude near treetop level as he took the chopper southwest, following the track of Skyline Drive along the stark spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Hughes 500 chopper cruised at 137 miles per hour, making it a relatively short trip for the passenger who’d boarded in Washington, D.C.

Mack Bolan didn’t mind the lack of opportunity for leisurely sightseeing. He had made this trip before, with variations, covering the same ground time and time again. Once, he had fought and bled for some of it, but that was ancient history.

This day was business. He was not a tourist, didn’t need to get his money’s worth from every mile.

“Five minutes, sir,” the pilot said, alerting him.

Bolan made no reply, waiting to catch his first glimpse of Stony Man Farm.

It was a working farm, which meant that crops were sown and cultivated, harvested and sold.

The “farmhands” who performed the daily chores at Stony Man were soldiers—Special Forces, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Marine Reconnaissance—all sworn to secrecy regarding their assignments at the Farm. They knew it was some kind of sensitive facility, and nothing more.

The helicopter pilot started speaking rapidly into his microphone, exchanging codes, responding to inquiries, satisfying Stony Man security that he and his lone passenger were who and what they claimed to be.

Failure of that test would produce immediate, dramatic, frightening results. The Farm’s AH-1 Huey Cobra attack helicopter stood ready to deal with intruders on two minutes’ notice. The Farm’s defense system also included Stinger shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles and strategically located .50-caliber Gatling guns with a maximum cyclic fire rate of 2,000 rounds per minute. And that was a fraction of the armory.

Long story short, no aircraft of any description landed at Stony Man Farm without clearance.

Bolan’s chopper approached the helipad, fifty yards from the plain-looking farmhouse and equidistant from the nearest outbuilding. No casual observer would’ve guessed at what went on inside the nondescript buildings. Even the radio aerials and satellite dishes were cleverly concealed.

As they were touching down, Bolan saw Hal Brognola coming out to meet him. Barbara Price walked beside the man from Justice, on his left. Other Stony Man personnel would be hard at work inside on one thing or another. Bolan’s afternoon arrival wouldn’t cause the long-term regulars to miss a beat.

They dealt with life-or-death decisions every day.

“Something important,” Brognola had told him on the scrambled sat phone. “We can talk about it when you get here.”

Brognola’s summons wasn’t that unusual, although they sometimes met at other sites. A visit to the Farm didn’t suggest the matter on the table was more critical or dangerous than one they might discuss by telephone. It might, however, mean that Brognola required the Farm’s sophisticated AV gear to make his presentation.

The chopper settled and his pilot killed the engine, waiting for the twenty-six-foot rotor blades to slow, their tips drooping. Bolan unbuckled, thanked his pilot for the lift and disembarked.

“Glad you could make it,” Brognola said, pumping Bolan’s hand.

“No problem,” Bolan answered.

Price’s handshake was professional, the final squeeze a bonus, like her smile.

“I’ve got lunch and a presentation set up in the War Room,” Brognola explained. “We’ll head on down, unless you need to freshen up.”

“I’m good,” Bolan assured him.

“Good,” the big Fed echoed. “Good is good.”

Bolan found Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman waiting to greet him in the soundproofed, air-conditioned War Room.

Bolan met the Farm’s technical wizard halfway to the conference table, stooping slightly for their handshake since Kurtzman was in his wheelchair. Paralyzed by bullet fragments in his spine the day a band of renegade commandos raided Stony Man, Kurtzman had left intensive care with grim determination to never let the shooting slow him down.

Those who were standing settled into chairs, Brognola at the table’s head, Bolan and Price flanking him. Kurtzman took his traditional position at the AV console.

“Right,” Brognola said. “Let’s get this party started.”

The big Fed cleared his throat and waited for the first slide to appear onscreen behind him.

Half-turned to face the screen, Brognola saw a full-face mug shot of a swarthy man, black hair combed back from an aristocratic forehead, eyes nearly as dark pointed like twin gun barrels toward the camera. The face, though full, tapered to a decisive chin. Its mouth seemed nearly lipless, like a razor slash. The nose had once been broken, then reset with fairly decent skill. Less care had been applied to mend an older wound beside the left eye, pale scar tissue trailing onto the cheek.

“Antonio Romano,” Brognola announced, “described by certain tabloid writers in New York as ‘the last Don.’”

“I wish,” Bolan replied.

“Romano heads what used to be the Marinello Family. You remember Augie, I suppose?” Brognola asked the Executioner.

Bolan nodded. “I had to kill him twice.”

“Romano’s not that durable, but he’s been lucky,” Brognola continued. “Until two months ago, that is. A federal grand jury in Manhattan slapped him with a couple dozen racketeering charges, this and that, then hit him with the clincher—two counts of conspiracy to aid a terrorist attack on the U.S., collaborating with the Sword of Allah.”

“That’s a new one,” Bolan said.

“Damned right. If he goes down for that, he’s gone for good. Maybe the needle, if the prosecution proves his link with a September bombing near the UN building.”

“How’s it look?” Bolan asked.

“It was looking great,” the big Fed said, “until last Thursday night.”

“What happened?”

“Basically, the roof fell in.”

Brognola nodded for another slide. Romano’s frowning visage was replaced with two faces side by side. The face on the left had a weasely look, long and lean, while the other was softer, more cultured. The weasel had long, greasy hair. His companion was going bald and wore a pair of gold-rimmed trifocals.

“These are—or were—the prosecution’s two key witnesses. The rodent on the left is Emmanuel Agostino, aka ‘Manny The Ferret.’ Go figure. He was a capo in Romano’s Family, working the waterfront. DEA caught him moving a heroin shipment from Turkey without Don Romano’s approval or knowledge. That puts him underneath the doghouse, whether he’s convicted or acquitted. Stealing from the Family and risking a conspiracy indictment on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Manny was smart enough to know he had no future if he didn’t cut a very special deal.”

“Which was?” Bolan asked.

“Manny’s waterfront connections were diverse,” Brognola said. “One of them was a Saudi sporting diplomatic papers—and immunity—who acted as liaison with a Sword of Allah sleeper cell in Brooklyn. They were buying stolen weapons, ammunition and explosives from Romano’s people, getting ready for a killer party set to go on New Year’s Eve.”

“This wasn’t on the tube,” Bolan observed.

“It got the silent treatment,” Brognola explained. “Homeland Security assumed correctly that they’d only clipped a weed but hadn’t found the roots. Meanwhile, Manny was talking up a storm. He finally directed G-men to the fellow on your right.”

“Who is…?”

“Dr. David Tabor, born Dawud Tabari in San Diego, with a Syrian father and an Irish-American mother. Tabari changed his name legally to Tabor at age nineteen, after his parents went down in a murder-suicide. According to police reports, Dad talked himself into believing Mom was stepping out and satisfied his ‘honor,’ then remorse kicked in. One instant orphan in his freshman year at Stanford premed. Dad’s insurance wouldn’t pay off for a suicide, but Mom’s had a double-indemnity clause for accidental death.”

“Murder’s an accident?” Barbara Price asked.

“It is, in life-insurance-speak,” Brognola said, “unless the beneficiary took out a contract on the dear departed. As it was, the father wouldn’t have received a dime, but since he shot himself, Tabor banked a tax-free million bucks that carried him through med school and beyond.”

“I’m not seeing the terrorist connection,” Bolan said.

“Something the kid picked up from Daddy,” Brognola replied. “Namely, hatred of Israel, Jews and anyone associated with them—which includes the U.S. government. He kept a low profile during med school, his internship and residency, then he put out feelers to the dark side and hit pay dirt. For the past five years, at least, he’s been performing services for members of the Sword, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups here in the States.”

“What kind of services?” Bolan asked.

“Medical. He’s like one of the old mob doctors from the thirties, but he’s not a quack and never lost his license. Any terrorist who’s injured in the line of duty, Tabor is on call to patch them up without reporting it to the authorities. And did I mention he’s a plastic surgeon?”

“Ah.”

“You see the possibilities,” Brognola said.

A nod from Bolan, no response required.

“Long story short, Manny The Ferret got a line on Tabor somehow, dealing with the other side, and when he rolled he took the sawbones with him. Gave him up first thing, and then the doctor rolled.” Brognola shrugged. “I guess they don’t make zealots like they used to.”

“Seriously,” Price said.

“Between the two of them, they linked Romano to the Sword of Allah, and Romano was indicted on a list of charges that were meant to keep him out of circulation till the next millennium, whether or not he made it to death row. His trial is scheduled to begin three weeks from Tuesday. That’s tomorrow, by the way.”

“About that falling roof,” Bolan reminded him.

“I’m getting there. Manny and Dr. Tabor both went into WITSEC, pending their appearance at the trial. The Bureau had them separated, Manny on an island off Florida’s gulf coast, the doctor out in small-town Arizona. Thursday night, a couple hit teams dropped them both, with all their guards. We lost the witnesses and eight G-men. Guess I don’t need to tell you the attorney general’s pissed.”

“I hear you,” Bolan said. “But what can I do?”

“Well,” Brognola said, “as luck would have it, there’s still one more witness who could make the case.”

Bolan could see where the man from Janice was headed. “Who is it?” he asked.

Brognola nodded, Kurtzman keyed another slide, and Bolan watched a new face surface as the dead men faded. This man was clearly accustomed to the soft life, with an oily shine to his wavy hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. The eyes were gray-green, curious. Beneath the cookie duster, pink lips formed a careless smile.

“That’s not a mug shot,” Bolan said.

“He’s never been arrested,” Brognola replied, “but it was close. The name may be familiar. Gilbert Favor?”

“What, the Wall Street guy?”

“None other,” Brognola confirmed. “They called him Vesco Junior when he split, going on eighteen months ago. The SEC brought charges on a string of junk-bond scams that made Favor a billionaire. And yes, that’s with a b. Clearly, he wasn’t stupid. Someone he’d been paying for insurance tipped him off the night before his charges were announced, and Favor caught the red-eye down to Mexico, then on from there to Costa Rica, where we haven’t got an extradition treaty. He can live a sultan’s life down there until he’s older than Methuselah, and we can’t touch him.”

“Legally,” Bolan amended.

“Right.”

“What ties him to Romano?” Bolan asked.

“Junk bonds weren’t Favor’s only pastime,” Brognola responded. “He’s a money mover, good with numbers in the Rain Man kind of way. What it looks like now, he laundered cash for half the East Coast Mobs before he hit a little snag on Wall Street and got burned. One of his clients—based on testimony from the late, unlamented Ferret—was Antonio Romano. Favor did some banking for the former Marinello Family, saw where the money came from, where it went. The whole nine yards, in short.”

“And he can tie Romano to the Sword of Allah?”

“Manny says—said—that he can. The problem, as you see, is twofold.”

“How to bring him back, and how to make him talk,” Bolan said.

“We’ll take care of Part B,” Brognola assured him. “All you need to do is drop in, have a chat with Favor and convince him to perform his civic duty.”

“Just like that.”

“I may have understated its complexity,” Brognola granted.

“Uh-huh.”

“But seriously,” Brognola pressed, “we think it’s doable. We’ve got someone on the ground to help you out. Translator, guide, chief cook and bottle washer.”

“It’s Costa Rica,” Bolan said. “We have to take for granted that he’s greased the law and politicians.”

Brognola nodded. “Oh, big-time, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“No reason I can think of why he ought to come back voluntarily.”

“Nothing occurred to me,” the man from Justice said.

“So, it’s a kidnapping on hostile turf.”

“These days, we call that a rendition,” Brognola corrected.

“Call it anything you like. It could get messy.”

“Diplomatically, of course, we can’t appear to be involved.”

Meaning I’m on my own, as usual, Bolan thought.

“Who else knows about Favor?”

“Well,” Brognola said, “Romano, obviously.”

“Does Romano know you’re looking for him?”

“Hard to say. We have as many leaks in Washington and New York as we ever did. For sure, Romano knows the state’s primary witnesses are dead. And since the charges haven’t been dismissed, he knows the prosecution plans to go ahead with something else.”

“So it’s a race,” Bolan said. “And I’m starting out behind the pack.”

“I grant you, it’s a challenge,” Brognola said.

Or a death sentence, Bolan thought.

But he said, “I’ll need his file.”

San José International Airport

June 18

THE WORST THING about red-eye flights was arriving at some ungodly hour in a deserted airport terminal. The shops and restaurants were closed, shuttered and dark. No throng of passengers or loved ones armed with flowers and balloons greeted arriving flights. Footsteps rang hollowly on concrete floors, while dull-eyed custodians pushed their brooms along the concourse.

Granted, 9/11 and the war on terror had imposed some barriers to any overt ambush in an airport, but the dead zone of a terminal at 2:00 a.m. reminded Bolan of occasions in the old days, when he’d left commercial flights to find guns waiting for him in the crowd. Nor would a setup be impossible this day, by any means, particularly in a nation that had earned a global reputation as a safe haven for felons on the run.

He counted seven people waiting for his fellow passengers, noting that none of them spared him more than a passing glance. His contact, according to Brognola, was supposed to meet him at the airport, but if something had gone wrong already, this soon in the game…

Bolan was a hundred feet from his arrival gate, eyeballing a sign that directed him to rental-car agencies and guessing that all would be closed, when a soft voice at his elbow said, “Matt Cooper?”

Bolan turned and blinked once at the lady, scanning her from head to toe in nothing flat before he said, “You have me at a disadvantage, Ms….?”

“Blanca Herrera. And I doubt that very much.”

Her grip was firm and strong as they shook hands. “You’re late,” she said. “No trouble on the flight, I hope?”

“Some kind of warning light came on, approaching Mexico City,” Bolan replied. “They don’t exactly set a land-speed record in the maintenance department.”

“It was probably siesta, Señor Cooper. You’re no longer in El Norte.”

“So I noticed.”

“You have luggage?” she inquired.

“Just this,” he said, hoisting his carry-on.

“A man who travels light. That’s good.”

“I still need wheels,” he said.

“I know a good rental agency. An independent. We can use my car until morning and rent one then.”

Bolan nodded. “And there’s a man I need to see about some gear.” A glance at his watch produced a frown. “He won’t be open for a while yet.”

“Have you slept?”

He nodded. “There was nothing else to do.”

“Then breakfast,” she said cheerily, “if that’s agreeable.”

“If you can find a place that’s serving, I’m with you.”

They cleared the terminal and Herrera led him underneath the floodlights to a parking lot. She handed him the keys. “If you wish to learn the city, it is best for you to drive.”

“Sounds fair.”

She took the shotgun seat and guided Bolan from the parking lot into sparse traffic. He followed her directions toward an all-night restaurant.

En route, she asked him, “May I know the nature of this gear that you require?”

“Hardware,” he said, “in case I get into a tight place unexpectedly.”

“And these would be illegal tools?”

“I haven’t brushed up on the local statute books,” he said, “but probably.”

“I think I know the man you seek.” She spoke a name and cocked one stylish eyebrow.

Bolan nodded. “That’s the guy.”

“You’re right about his hours,” Herrera said. “He operates a pawnshop as his—how you say it?—front.”

“That’s how we say it.”

“Very good. Unfortunately, he does not open for business until nine o’clock in the morning. Can you do your other business then, as well?”

Bolan considered it. “It would be better after nightfall,” he replied.

“Then you are graced with a free day in San José,” she told him, putting on a smile that seemed a trifle forced. “If you allow me, and you have the energy after your flight, I’ll be your tour guide.”

“Sounds good,” Bolan said, keeping both eyes on the road. “We’ll start with target zones and access routes, then hit the culture afterward, if we have time.”

3

San José

Wednesday, June 20

A bullet struck the rear of Bolan’s rented vehicle and spent its force somewhere inside the trunk. Bolan stood on the accelerator, racing down the narrow alley, scattering trash cans in his wake.

The chase car’s driver didn’t seem to mind. He kept a lock on Bolan with his high beams, plowing through the refuse heaped across his path and battering aside the upended cans.

There were at least two shooters in the chase car, one in the front shotgun seat, another in the backseat, on the driver’s side. Bolan knew that much only from their muzzle-flashes, since the high beams in his rearview mirror ruled out any head count.

Two guns minimum, and Bolan knew the driver would be armed, as well. The odds weren’t bad, compared to some he’d faced.

Suddenly, a second pair of headlights joined the chase, behind the first pursuit car, gaining rapidly along the alley’s dark and narrow track. Bolan ruled out police, because the second vehicle displayed no flashing lights, sounded no siren.

Beside him, Blanca Herrera swiveled in her seat, her face blanched by headlight beams. She watched the chase cars, while Gil Favor huddled in the backseat, offering the smallest target possible under the circumstances.

“Here they come!” Herrera advised him, as if she thought Bolan might be unaware of the pursuit.

“I see them,” he replied. “Hang on.”

Almost before she could react to that warning, they cleared the alley and he cranked the Ford into the sharpest left-hand turn he could manage, startling a pair of jaywalkers who squealed and ran for safety on the sidewalk. Gunfire echoed from the alley at his back, even before the first chase car emerged. The pedestrians went prone.

Bolan was making all the haste he dared on residential streets, watching the sidelines where his own headlights and those closing behind him cast distorted, moving shadows. Any one of them might mask a another late-night rambler, possibly a child, and Bolan had to balance that thought with the threat of death that rode his bumper. At the same time, if he drove too fast and lost control, smashed up the Ford, he and his passengers were facing sudden death, the failure of his mission.

Triumph for Antonio Romano.

“I need someplace where I can deal with this,” he told Herrera. “Ideas?”

She blinked at him, eyes bright with fear, then said, “Maybe the riverfront? They have warehouses, docks. Few people at this hour. Also waste ground.”

“Good.”

Bolan was already speeding northward, in the general direction of the Rio Torres. All he had to do was stay the course and hope the gunners trailing him didn’t get lucky with a bullet to his gas tank or a tire.

“Could you distract them for me?” he asked Herrera.

“What?”

“Shoot back.”

His words seemed to confuse her for a moment, then she powered down her window, leaned into the wind-rush gale and fired a pistol shot at the nearer chase car. Bolan saw it swerve, the driver taken by surprise, losing acceleration just as Herrera fired again.

“Try for the radiator,” Bolan called out to her.

“What?”

“Between the headlights!”

“Sí!”

She triggered two more shots, and while the chase car lost a bit more ground, Bolan had no idea if any of the bullets found their mark. Regardless, he took full advantage of the other driver’s lapse and put more road between them, speeding through dark intersections with a silent prayer that there would be no damned fool driving with his lights off, no foot traffic crossing just as Bolan barreled past.

Gil Favor’s neighborhood boasted some of the smallest street signs known to man, perhaps another mark of high-priced exclusivity. It was impossible to read the signs in the glare of his headlights, racing through the streets at speeds he normally reserved for freeway driving, while two carloads of assassins tried to run him down.

Instead, Bolan reviewed the street map he had memorized that afternoon, while they were killing time. He knew that he must be a good half mile below the riverfront, at least, but he was heading in the right direction, making decent time. If he could just—

The Ford’s rear window suddenly imploded from a bullet’s impact. Herrera bit off the greater part of an instinctive scream, while Bolan ducked and heard—or felt—the slug zip past his face. It struck his rearview mirror, sent it spinning to the floor somewhere, and drilled a neat hole through the windshield as it exited.

Now he was blind in back, except for side mirrors that shrank the chase cars down to toy size. He didn’t need the printed warning that reflected objects May Be Closer Than They Seem.

“Give them a few more rounds,” he ordered Herrera, guessing that she’d fired off roughly half her pistol’s magazine already.

“Right!”

She scrambled to obey, as Bolan held the pedal down and waited for his first glimpse of the waterfront.

BLANCA HERRERA GRIMACED, mouthing silent curses as the wind from behind her whipped long hair around her face, stinging her eyes. It was already bad enough, men she had never met trying to murder her, without betrayal from her own hair in the bargain.

She had practiced often enough with her HK4 pistol to feel confident with stationary, inanimate targets, but this running battle through the streets of San José was something else entirely. In her wildest fantasies, Herrera had thought that if she ever tried to shoot another human being it would be in some classic film noir setting, possibly a city park at midnight or the murky hallway of a derelict motel.

The last thing she’d imagined, when she set out with Matt Cooper to retrieve his witness from a mansion in the heart of San José, had been a bullet-riddled car chase leading to the riverfront.

If they survived that long.

She saw more muzzle-flashes from the nearer chase car and replied with two rounds from her own weapon. The sharp reports, though swiftly blown away, still stung her ears. The target vehicle swerved jerkily, but once again she couldn’t tell if either of her bullets had made contact.

In the excitement, Herrera had forgotten that she was supposed to count her shots. Had she fired six or seven? Since the pistol’s slide was closed, she had at least one cartridge left before she had to fumble for the spare clip in her handbag.

Now the second car was gaining ground, trying to pass the first or pull abreast so that gunmen in both chase cars could fire at her and Cooper. Angry at the presumption of her enemies, Herrera triggered her first shot at the second car—and saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

“Damn it!”

She ducked back inside the Ford’s window, wind-tangled hair obscuring her vision as she reached down for her purse. She’d dropped it on the floor between her feet, after they shoved Favor into the car, before their enemies had shown up and begun the chase.

She snatched the bag and opened it, rooting past wallet, lipstick, compact, facial tissues, hairbrush, searching for the one thing that might save her life. Of course the pistol’s extra magazine had slithered to the very bottom of her bag, beside a jingling key ring.

She dumped the purse into her lap, snatched up the slim black magazine and let the other items spill between her legs, onto the floorboard. One touch of a button dropped the empty magazine out of her pistol’s grip, and she replaced it, thumbed the catch to close its slide and put a live round in the chamber.

Ready.

I’ll count this time, she thought, and know when I run out of bullets.

When she was unarmed, helpless against her enemies.

“We’re getting there,” Cooper said from the driver’s seat.

She knew he meant the riverfront, but couldn’t say how far they’d traveled while she was exchanging gunshots with the enemy.

“I’ll try again,” she said, kicking the contents of her purse aside and turning toward her open window.

“Wait. How many rounds do you have left?” he asked her.

“Eight.”

“What caliber?”

Another bullet struck the Ford, making her wince as she replied, “Three-eighty.”

“Better save them for the main event,” he said. “I can’t replace them.”

Main event, she thought. Kill or be killed.

“But if they overtake us—”

“Two blocks, tops,” he promised her. “We ought to have some stretch then. See what happens.”

As if answering his comment, two more bullets whispered through the broad rear window’s vacant frame and punched holes through the windshield. Herrera was surprised that it did not collapse entirely.

With windows blown away or open, Herrera smelled the Rio Torres well before she saw it, with the docks along its southern bank. Another moment, and she saw warehouses where the merchant ships unloaded cargo seven days a week. Some also docked at night, she reasoned, but she saw no crews at work in the immediate vicinity.

What now? she wondered, startled when Matt Cooper answered her. She wasn’t aware that she had spoken.

“Now we improvise,” he said. “No rules. We need an edge of some kind, but I haven’t found it yet.”

Cooper had turned onto the waterfront. Behind them, Herrera saw the chase cars following.

Squeezing the pistol in her fist until her knuckles ached, she watched their enemies and told him, “I think we have run out of time.”

“WE HAVE THEM NOW,” Armand Casale said. The anger that had burned inside his gut during the chase was fading now, relaxing into satisfaction.

Killing was the best part, always.

“After them,” Casale ordered, settling back into his seat as his driver stepped on the gas. Off to their left, the other chase car kept pace, both engines growling in the night.

Casale didn’t know these people who had snatched his target out from underneath his very nose, killing a number of his people in the process. Given half a chance, he would’ve liked to question them at length, but something told him that they were not likely to surrender.

Fine.

Eliminating them would be the next-best thing—more satisfactory for him, in fact, than keeping them alive. Above all else, he had to carry out his main assignment and make sure Gil Favor’s mouth was shut for good.

Casale carried a submachine gun manufactured from a Ruger Mini-14 automatic rifle, designated the AC-556F. It had a folding stock, unlike the parent weapon, and could fire full-auto or in 3-round-burst mode, using a custom brake to keep the muzzle from climbing. If he needed backup with a little extra kick, the stainless-steel Colt Anaconda in a shoulder rig below Casale’s left arm ought to fit the bill.

Casale didn’t care about the men he’d lost so far that evening. They were expendable, no friends of his, and could be easily replaced. Only his duty to Antonio Romano mattered at the moment, and that duty was to guarantee that prosecutors in New York would have no traitors to support their case against the Don.

The Rio Torres waterfront appeared to be deserted at that hour, no one to disturb them or to summon the police. Casale clutched his weapon as they sped along behind the bullet-scarred sedan, wondering whether any of the shots they’d fired so far had wounded Favor.

Maybe he was dead or dying even now, huddled inside the vehicle.

Be sure. And kill the others, too.

No witnesses.

It was a rule that always served Armand Casale well.

So far, he hadn’t fired his weapon during the pursuit, but that would change as soon as they were close enough for him to reasonably guarantee a hit. He had spare magazines, along with other tools and weapons, but Casale hated wasting ammunition—hated wasting anything, in fact, except the people he was paid to waste.

And this time he was being paid quite well.

The bullet-pocked Ford was doing sixty miles per hour, based on the speedometer on Casale’s own dashboard. Granted, his vehicle was stolen, like the other chase car, but its gauges seemed to function properly.

At that speed, his intended prey would soon run out of waterfront.

As if on cue, the unknown driver whom they were pursuing hit his brakes, the taillights flaring, while he whipped the steering wheel hard to his left. Casale knew it was the left, because the Ford spun to his left, tires shrieking as the sedan made a quick one-eighty and rocked to a halt, maybe a hundred yards in front of him.

Now, what the hell…?

The old guys back in Jersey called that fancy driving a bootlegger’s turn, something from their whiskey-running days, before Casale’s parents had been born. The faceless driver had a certain style, but what he didn’t have was any hope of getting off the riverfront alive.

“Slow down,” Casale told his wheelman. “Let’s see what he’s got in mind.”

The driver slowed but didn’t stop. The other chase car took its cue from Casale’s, keeping pace.

“He wants to go down fighting,” Luca offered from the backseat.

The faceless driver who had let Gil Favor live on borrowed time was revving his engine now. Not going anywhere, just goosing it, the way street racers do at traffic lights sometimes.

Was it a challenge? Casale wondered. Did he want to play a game?

Let’s play a round of chicken, Casale thought. And I guarantee you I won’t flinch.

Of course, it didn’t really matter what the nameless driver wanted. Once they closed the gap a little more, Casale meant to kill the stranger and his passengers. His firing would unleash the other members of his crew, and they would turn the Ford into a giant colander.

Only a few more yards…

When they were almost there, the bullet-punctured Ford leaped forward and charged directly toward the narrow space between Casale’s stolen chase car and its mate.

“IS THIS THE MAIN EVENT?” Blanca Herrera asked.

“This is what we’ve got,” Bolan replied. “Soon as we’re close enough, unload with everything you have.”

Eight rounds, he thought. Not much, but maybe she’d get lucky.

Maybe.

“Now!”

He stamped on the accelerator and released the parking brake. Some kind of gasping, squeaking noise came from Gil Favor, lying on the rear floorboards, then Bolan lost it in the clamor of his engine and their guns.

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