Human trafficking was a profitable business

Bolan watched as the slides showed girls and women being led from seedy rooms by uniformed police. Stretchers were used to carry out the ones who couldn’t walk, either because they had been drugged or their abused bodies had rebelled.

“Kurti answers to this man, back home,” Brognola said as the next slide revealed an older man.

“Rahim Berisha,” the big Fed said. “Think of him as Albania’s Teflon Don. He’s got the best friends money can buy on both sides of the law. He’s been indicted seven times, but something always goes off track at the Ministry of Justice—paperwork misfiled, warrants thrown out on technicalities, witnesses disappear. You get the picture.”

Bolan wished he could study that face through a sniper scope. “So the job would be…”

“Shut them down,” Brognola stated grimly. “Wipe them off the face of the earth.”

Mack Bolan®

Resurgence
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

There is no such thing in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except in the moment of execution.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804–1864

I guess that all depends on who you execute, and why.

—Mack Bolan

For Master-At-Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor

September 29, 2006 God keep

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Off Cape May Point, New Jersey

“Could be a fishing trawler, sir,” Ensign Jared Decker said.

“Could be trouble,” Lieutenant Commander Julio Martinez replied as he tracked the target with his AN/PVS-14 monocular night-vision goggle.

Martinez and Decker occupied the bridge of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Thresher, one of the eighty-seven-foot Marine Protector class vessels that were always named for aquatic predators.

The Thresher and its ten-member crew were on routine patrol from the Coast Guard’s Cape May Training Center, merging education with some practical experience. Their main targets were drug smugglers, but in the new world forged by 9/11’s flames they also had to watch for terrorists seeking a beachhead on American soil.

Three hours out from home, this might-be fishing trawler was their first suspicious contact.

“I can’t make out the name from here,” Martinez said.

“I couldn’t, either,” Decker answered.

“Better hail them, then, and see what’s up.”

“Yes, sir.”

He passed the order to the Thresher’s radio officer, seated no more than fifteen feet from their lieutenant commander. Decker had no doubt that Ensign Rachel Wells had copied the instruction, but Martinez demanded adherence to chain of command.

Wells gave him an “Aye, aye” and did her thing, trying to raise the trawler’s captain on a range of frequencies. No answer from the nameless target vessel, but they did get a response.

“It’s turning,” Martinez said, “and increasing speed.”

“Yes, sir!” Decker had trouble reining in his natural excitement.

“All hands to their duty stations,” the lieutenant commander ordered. “Run them down.”

“THEY’RE AFTER US,” Gjergj Cana observed.

“Of course. Are you surprised?” Masiela Dovolani asked.

“No. I just—”

“See to the cattle,” Dovolani ordered. “Keep them calm for now.”

Cana made no reply. There was no military discipline aboard the stolen boat, once known as the Adeline before its owner had been killed and dumped at sea, its name and registration numbers falsified and weathered artificial for maximum obscurity. But Cana didn’t hesitate when Dovolani told him what to do.

An act of insubordination could be fatal on this run-down pirate’s boat.

The “cattle” Dovolani spoke of was a group of twenty-seven frightened, hopeful men, women and children crammed belowdecks in a space that would have crowded half as many. Cana guessed they had fouled the head by now, as peasants will, but that was not his worry at the moment.

He was more concerned about survival.

Staying out of jail.

He scuttled to the hatch, a hunched shadow figure until he was pinned by the glare of a spotlight. Raising an arm to shield his eyes, Cana proceeded, wincing as a man’s amplified voice reached out for him across the water.

“Unknown vessel, stop your engines! This is the United States Coast Guard! Heave to and stand by for boarding!”

Not likely, he thought, and ran to the hatch. It opened easily enough, faint light below revealing troubled faces. Some of the women and children were crying.

“What’s wrong?” one of the grim-faced men called up to him.

Good question, Cana thought.

“The police are after us,” he told them, keeping it simple and watching their faces convulse. They didn’t have to know it was the armed forces chasing them.

“Keep quiet,” he added.

He had no real hope that any of them would be quiet, but Cana slammed the hatch shut before he faced any more questions.

Cattle shouldn’t speak in the first place.

The Coast Guard cutter hailed him once again on his run back to the wheelhouse. Cana braced himself for bullets, but they didn’t come.

“Well?” Dovolani challenged as Cana entered. “Did you quiet them?”

“They’re calm,” Cana said, “for now. Where can they go?”

“To hell, for all I care,” his boss replied. “This tub can’t hope to outrun that cutter.”

“So? What then?”

“We need a fire,” Dovolani said.

“What!”

“Just do it!” Dovolani snapped.

Cana opened a nearby drawer and grabbed a fat thermite grenade.

God help the cattle now.

“THEY’RE BURNING, sir!” The break in Decker’s voice embarrassed him.

“Burning and still running,” Lieutenant Commander Martinez said. “Stand by with the firefighting gear, but stay alert on those Fifties.”

“Aye, sir!”

Decker passed on the order via intercom, with no doubt in his mind that both gunners were ready for action behind their .50-caliber machine guns. Nervously, he dropped a hand to his right hip, where a SIG-Sauer P-229 R DAK semiauto pistol nestled in its tactical holster. Other members of the crew would be armed with M-16 A-2 assault rifles and Remington M 870 P 12-gauge shotguns, ready for boarding.

Assuming that the trawler didn’t burn up and sink before they could reach her.

“Is that someone going overboard?” Martinez asked.

“Can’t see them, sir,” Decker replied. “It might—”

There was no doubt then, in the next split second, as a human torch ran stumbling across the trawler’s rear deck, tripped and plunged over its side into the sea.

“Jesus!”

“Come on!” Martinez snapped. “Get up alongside!”

The helmsman was already taking action as Decker relayed the order, no standing on protocol now. The Thresher surged forward, gaining on the boat as it seemed to stall, wallowing in the Atlantic swells.

Gaining, for sure.

But Decker feared that they were already too late.

CHAPTER ONE

East Keansburg, New Jersey

The town was nondescript, one of a couple hundred on the Jersey shore that hadn’t grown notorious from sun-and-sleaze “reality” TV. It claimed three thousand residents and stood ten feet above sea level, with a public beach and small marina filled with cabin cruisers that aspired to being yachts when they grew up.

Mack Bolan wasn’t looking for a suntan or a sailing lesson as he traveled east on Seabreeze Boulevard, three hundred yards inland from Lower New York Bay. He was about to make a house call, crash a party that he hadn’t been invited to attend.

No problem there.

He’d done this kind of work before, more times than Bolan cared to count.

East Keansburg—alias “North Middletown,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau—wasn’t what the media would call a nest of crime. It covered half of one square mile and boasted 1,056 households with a median family income of sixty-one thousand dollars. Less than five percent of the town’s residents lived below the federal poverty line, and thirteen percent of those were senior citizens. Most of the problems handled by police were caused by minors, who comprised eighteen percent of the town’s population.

Overall, it was a pleasant place to live, where white males in particular found peace of mind between commutes to beehive offices in Newark, Staten Island or Manhattan. If it wasn’t Eden as described in holy writ, at least there were no serpents prominently on display.

It took a hunter’s eyes and nose to search them out.

Bolan would have bet his life that most East Keansburg residents had no inkling of evil dwelling in their midst, no clue that every salt-spray breath they drew was tainted by corruption of the foulest kind. What would they do if suddenly confronted with the truth? Consult the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office or the state police? Email their congressman?

Or would they simply turn away?

Bolan was sparing them that choice today, absolving them of any duty to investigate, react or live with their decisions. He’d identified the problem—or, rather, a symptom of a larger problem—and was on his way to operate. When he was done, he’d cauterize the wound and move on.

His job wouldn’t be done, by any means. But it would be a start.

A message would be sent.

A block before Seabreeze Avenue ran out of pavement and changed into woods, Bolan turned south on Weehawken Avenue. The homes and lots got larger there, most of them ringed by trees that shaded swimming pools or tennis courts. Not mansions yet, but like the boats in the marina, they had aspirations. Failure hadn’t left its footprint here.

A quarter mile south of Seabreeze, Bolan turned east onto Port Monmouth Road and followed it out to the end of the line. When he could drive no farther without getting wet, he parked his rented Ford Mondeo Mk4 in a small sandy lot used by beach visitors, removed a pair of compact binoculars from the glove compartment and scoped out his target.

This house was a mansion, though not in the league of the Hollywood spreads. From studying the floor plans, Bolan knew that the home’s three stories above ground amounted to some twelve thousand square feet, with a finished basement adding another thousand. Upstairs, six bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom. Downstairs, a parlor and living room, library, two dining rooms, plus a kitchen and pantry.

As for the basement…

There were no walled estates in East Keansburg, no gated compounds. The house Bolan had come to visit stood among trees, with no apparent guards or other defenses in place, but he knew that view was as deceptive as the mansion’s pristine paint job, hiding black soul-rot inside.

The sun was dipping westward out of sight, as he stepped out of the Ford and shut the door, then walked around to fish inside the spacious trunk. Already dressed for action in a slate-gray turtleneck, black jeans and hiking boots, Bolan removed his charcoal-colored blazer to reveal a shoulder rig supporting a Beretta 93-R pistol underneath his left armpit, with spare magazines for balance on the right.

The trunk gave up a MOLLE FLC vest and LBE web belt heavy with pouches for magazines, grenades and other combat accessories. The Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment system, with its Fighting Load Carrier vest and permanently incorporated Load Bearing Equipment belt replaced the ALICE suspenders and belt worn by U.S. soldiers from Vietnam through Desert Storm. Even distribution of weight on a warrior’s shoulders and hips permitted transportation of extra arms and munitions, including the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle autoloader on Bolan’s right hip and the Mark 1 trench knife on his left. Hoisting an M-4 carbine from the trunk before he closed it, he was dressed to kill.

The Executioner turned toward his target in the dusk.

“YOU LIKE THE WHISKY?” Lorik Cako asked his guests.

One of the hard-faced men grunted, gulping his Dewar’s twelve-year-old scotch. The middle of the three men stared through Cako without answering. His stout companion on the left asked, “When’s the show start?”

“Soon, my friend,” Cako replied. “You have had time to see the catalog?”

“They all look good on paper,” the anxious one said. “Air-brushed and enhanced for all I know. We need to see them in the flesh. You get my drift?”

“And so you shall,” Cako assured him, keeping up the smile that yearned to spit and snarl. “A few more moments, while I make sure that our other guests are satisfied with the refreshments, eh?”

“Whatever. Make it quick.”

It galled Cako to deal with pigs, but he had done so all his life. Experience failed to make the process any more pleasant, but at least it was profitable. This night’s work would put money in his pocket. More important, it would enhance his standing with the men who mattered most.

The hard-faced men who had dismissed him came from Kansas City. Next in line for Cako’s personal attention were two Japanese and two Koreans, standing by themselves in Asian solidarity despite the centuries of animosity that had divided their respective homelands. Three of them were drinking Jameson Gold Reserve Irish whisky, while a fourth—the younger looking of the two Koreans—sipped Smirnoff blueberry vodka.

There was no accounting for taste.

“Gentlemen,” Cako said, “the revue will begin in just a few minutes.”

The four Asians nodded in unison. Any one of them might slit Cako’s throat for a two-dollar debt, but none would risk offending him with rude behavior in his own household. He left them nodding, life-size dashboard ornaments, and wished their courtesy would rub off on Americans.

Cako caught Vasil Majko’s eye across the room and raised a hand, five fingers spread. Majko lifted his chin instead of nodding and departed to prepare the merchandise while Cako kept on circulating, checking on his customers.

They always came in pairs, as if one man might be incapable of choosing products from the lineup. Or perhaps they simply liked the show. Two from Colombia, two more from Mexico, a quartet from the Middle East and two portly Nigerians.

None of their countries suffered any shortage when it came to women, yet they traveled from the corners of the world to bid on Cako’s merchandise. His auctions never failed to lure men of substance, brought together by their common lust and greed.

And why not, in a world where everything was for sale? There was no reason for a rich man to deny himself whatever pleased him, society and its ever-shifting conventions be damned.

Lorik Cako was a specialist in supplying illicit desires. The men he served appreciated his inventiveness and the completely ruthless way in which he dealt with opposition on the rare occasions when it surfaced.

He would be a superstar someday—was nearly there, in fact—and owed it to a total disregard for the well-being of his fellow man.

Or woman, as the case might be.

This night he had on offer twenty-seven females, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty years. Three were certified pure, and some of the rest barely used. All were lovely in different ways, something offered for every taste.

Blondes and redheads for the Third World market. More exotic specimens for the Americans and the Colombians. Sometimes Cako might take an order in advance, for a specific type—or a specific individual, the riskiest and most expensive service of them all. Whatever was demanded, Lorik Cako lived to please.

“My friends,” he said, raising his voice above the murmurs of his customers, “if you will follow me downstairs, we shall begin.”

They trailed after him like hungry dogs.

Like jackals closing on a wounded animal.

BOLAN APPROACHED the house from the southeast, cloaked by shadows as night descended on North Middletown. A Friday night, with locals starting to unwind, their working week behind them, ready to relax with friends or lovers, food or alcohol, and greet the weekend with a smile.

His targets, in the bid house, should be getting down to business anytime now. Bolan planned to interrupt them, cancel their festivities and send them home in body bags.

He owed it to the Universe. The very least that he could do, under the circumstances.

And a foot inside the door for things to come.

He knew the auction was beginning when the guards emerged to start their foot patrols around the grounds. Two men, both swarthy types with bodybuilder arms and torsos, armed with folding-stock Kalashnikovs on shoulder slings. They came out through a side door, separated and began to walk around the house in opposite directions.

Perfect.

Bolan slung his carbine, palming the Beretta with its sound suppressor attached. The 93-R was selective fire—its R was short for raffica, “burst” in Italian—and it packed a 20-round box magazine plus one 9 mm Parabellum mangler in the chamber. Firing 3-round bursts, using the pistol’s foldable foregrip, Bolan could take down seven men before he needed to reload.

One target at a time.

The first mark passed within twenty feet of Bolan, barely glancing toward the shadows where death waited to claim him. The soldier hissed between clenched teeth, bringing the guy around to face him out of curiosity, and stitched him with a rising burst from sternum to larynx. Toppling backward through a haze of crimson mist, the rifleman was dead before he hit the ground.

Bolan retrieved him, holstering his pistol and dragging the corpse by its ankles until it was swaddled in darkness. He could rush the house now, use the side door where the sentries had emerged, but that meant leaving one man with an AK at his back.

Unwise at best. Potential suicide at worst.

So Bolan waited, timed his second target by the time it ought to take for him to stroll around the house. And when he showed, coming around the northeast corner at an easy walk, the Executioner was waiting.

Ready for the kill.

The sentry faltered, visibly confused at failing to encounter his companion coming from the opposite direction. Slowing further as he neared the spot where they had separated moments earlier, he made a face and fiddled with the strap of his Kalashnikov, as if to slip it free.

Too late.

Bolan’s Beretta stuttered three more muffled rounds and dropped the lookout in his tracks. Unlike the other one, he fell facedown, his arms spread as if to hug the earth or mimic crucifixion.

The Executioner hauled the second corpse to join the first, leaving them side by side in shadow, fifty feet out from the house. He yanked the magazines from both AKs, tossed them as far into the night as possible and found no rounds in either rifle’s chamber.

Done.

The dead weren’t concealed to the extent that any passerby would overlook them, but there were no other strollers on the grounds just now.

Only the Executioner.

And it was time for him to move.

As far as he could tell, all windows with a view of his direct approach were curtained, but that didn’t mean he would pass unobserved. Surveillance cameras were so small and unobtrusive these days that they could be hidden in a tube of lipstick, pair of glasses or an artificial flower. Tucking one or more away beneath the eaves of a three-story house would be child’s play.

A risk, then, but he had to take it.

There was no way to complete his mission without entering the serpent’s lair.

Once he’d decided on the move, action immediately followed. Bolan ran across the open stretch of lawn to reach the door his first two kills had used, wearing his carbine slung and clutching the Beretta in his right hand, while he reached for the doorknob with his left.

Clasped it. Felt it turn.

So far, so good.

He opened the door and followed his pistol into a washroom of sorts. A big stainless-steel washer and dryer stood to one side, with open shelving on the other. Various household supplies that could be used to clean the place or whip up crude explosives with the proper know-how.

Smells and voices drew the soldier toward a kitchen, his index finger taut on the Beretta’s trigger as he left the laundry room behind and went in search of prey.

THE FIRST GIRL WAS ONSTAGE downstairs, a nearly naked figure, clothed only in a gossamer see-through wrap, lit by spotlights mounted on the basement’s ceiling while her audience—prospective buyers—lounged in three rows of well-padded theater seats, their part of the auction room darkened. Lorik Cako stood behind them, rocking on his heels with carpet underfoot, ready to answer any questions that arose.

The one he got most often, as the show progressed, was a request for samples of the merchandise. Cako always refused, good-naturedly, reminding his potential customers that they weren’t permitted to consume food in a supermarket without paying for it first.

A second question, asked almost as frequently, involved the younger specimens whom Cako certified as “pure.” How could he prove the claim that justified a higher asking price?

Cako was ready with detailed reports from Dr. Paul Koprulu, a gynecologist. Dr. Koprulu supplied full documentation, diagrams and photographs for each certified virgin, but customers were free to have their own physicians examine the products.

For a nonnegotiable price fixed by Lorik Cako.

Business was good. Cako controlled himself around the merchandise, maintained strict supervision over his employees and was merciless with anyone who soiled the goods. The last example he had made—nineteen-year-old Vasil Ghica, barely off the boat himself—would stick forever in the memories of each man Cako had compelled to view the young transgressor’s execution.

Ghica had spent six hours dying. For the first two, he had wept for mercy. In the last four, he had begged for death. Cako had made his other soldiers mop up afterward, to drive the lesson home.

Cako’s customers weren’t required to call out bids like peasant farmers at a cattle yard. Each seat was fitted with a button in its left armrest, opposite a molded plastic cup-holder attached on the right. A simple finger tap logged silent bids in Cako’s control room next door, where Qemal Hoxha monitored the bidding and reported each new bid to his boss through a tiny earpiece.

As each new specimen appeared on stage, Cako announced a rock-bottom reserve price, ranging from fifty thousand dollars to three times as much, depending on the item’s beauty and her purity, where applicable. He then declared each bid as it was logged anonymously from the audience. These women weren’t earmarked for seedy brothels staffed by groggy drug addicts. Thus far, not one had ever failed to sell above the base rate Cako had established.

Now and then, a nervous customer might bid mistakenly. Cako allowed retraction of the offer, but only if the clumsy customer announced his error to the group. Embarrassment prevented most from rectifying such mistakes, and in any case they were rich enough that five grand more or less meant nothing to them anyway.

It was pure profit for the syndicate that Cako served, since they had literally plucked these women off the streets of cities all around the world. Their transportation costs were minimal, covered by drugs or other outlawed merchandise that traveled with them. A few, ironically, had even paid their own way to the States in hopes of finding a career in Hollywood or on the Broadway stage.

Such fools.

Bids stood at ninety thousand for the redhead in the spotlight, when his earpiece crackled. Cako smiled, preparing to announce another raise, but then heard Hoxha say, “Come quickly, sir! We have trouble!”

Frowning, Cako told his assembled patrons, “Please excuse me, gentlemen. A minor difficulty requires my brief attention. I’ll rejoin you momentarily. The bidding, meanwhile, stands at ninety thousand dollars.”

All of them tracked Cako with their narrowed eyes as he retreated through a side door, joining Hoxha in the small control room with its monitors, computers and microphones.

“What is it?” he snapped at Hoxha.

“Vasil says that the outer guards aren’t answering on their radios, and—”

Even underground, Cako heard the explosive rattle of an automatic weapon firing somewhere overhead. Inside the house. His house.

The buyers had to have heard it, too.

A rack in the control room held a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun and two AKM assault rifles. Cako grabbed the shotgun and told Hoxha, “Get in there with the customers and calm them. If we need to move them out, I’ll let you know.”

“And the women?” Hoxha asked.

“If there’s need and time, we’ll move them, too. Always take care of money first.”

“Okay, Lorik.”

Clutching his weapon, Cako left the small control room through its second door and stormed the nearby flight of stairs.

IT HAD TO HAPPEN sometime. Bolan had been hoping he could clear a portion of the house without attracting any notice. But when he reached the kitchen, there were two armed men negotiating something with a cook dressed all in white. Both shooters gaped at Bolan as he entered, reaching for their weapons simultaneously.

One fell without managing to draw his pistol, faceless from a 3-round burst of Parabellum rounds that punched his nose and forehead deep into his mangled brain. The other guy was faster, managing to pull his piece before another burst ripped through his chest. He triggered one shot as he fell, a wasted ricochet off tile that served as an alert to anybody else inside the house.

Bolan was moving as the second body dropped, waving the frightened cook away and holstering his pistol, going with the M-4 carbine as the other housemen started shouting back and forth, rushing to find out what had happened. Bolan couldn’t translate most of what they called out in Albanian, but he could track the gist of it.

They were coming prepared for a fight, coming to kill him.

Or they’d die trying.

Bolan cleared the kitchen’s exit and found two men armed with submachine guns double-timing toward him, grim-faced and determined. Dropping to a crouch, he stitched the pair from left to right and back again, watching them slam-dance into each other as they fell. The dying gunner on his left began to fire as he went down, the point-blank muzzle-flashes from his SMG setting his partner’s shirt on fire.

The Executioner was up and moving in a heartbeat, ducking to his right as someone at the far end of the corridor squeezed off a pistol shot. It missed him by a yard or more, but Bolan couldn’t see the shooter yet, since he—or she?—had drawn back out of sight around a corner.

Bolan had two goals—to liberate the women caged in Lorik Cako’s house and to eliminate the man himself, together with as many of his gunners as were willing to engage the Executioner. He guessed that would be all of them, which suited Bolan to a tee.

Long odds, but not the worst he’d ever faced.

Not even close.

Six down and counting, with how many more to go? Perhaps a dozen; maybe twice that, with an auction under way. If he could tag the buyers, too, so much the better, but he wasn’t feeling greedy.

Bolan edged along the hallway, watching doors to either side and waiting for the shooter at the far end to reveal himself once more. It happened seconds later, as the guy popped out to fire another round, then jerked back under cover while a burst from Bolan’s carbine filled the air with plaster dust.

No score.

Bolan paused long enough to palm a frag grenade, release its safety pin and pitch the bomb underhanded toward the shooter’s hiding place. It struck the wall down there and bounced around the corner, out of sight, starting a scramble with a frightened cry.

Four seconds later it blew, shrapnel scoring the walls, smoke and more dust erupting downrange. There were cries of pain, or perhaps pleas for help, all gibberish to Bolan’s ears as he advanced to deal with the survivors, whittling down the odds while there was time, before Cako’s troops got their act together and came at him in force. The more he could eliminate before that moment came, the better off Bolan would be.

Not home and dry, by any means, but still more likely to survive and help the women who were waiting for him somewhere in the house. Praying for help, perhaps, and waiting for an Executioner.

CHAPTER TWO

Virginia, two days earlier

Skyline Drive ran through Shenandoah National Park, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Its course covered 105 miles from Front Royal, the northern terminus, to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro, where it connected with Interstate 64 and U.S. Highway 50, branching off eastward to Charlottesville or westward to Staunton. Those who hadn’t seen enough trees yet could keep on rolling down the Blue Ridge Parkway for another 469 miles, to wind up in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Mack Bolan wasn’t going that far—or even to Rockfish Gap—in his rented Toyota Prius Model NHW20. He’d be leaving Skyline Drive between Luray and Skyland Lodge, taking care of ugly business on a lovely summer’s morning.

The Blue Ridge Mountains never changed. Thrust upward by cataclysmic forces some four hundred million years earlier, they comprised a rugged spine of granite laced with quartz, sedimentary limestone and metamorphosed volcanic formations.

A motorcycle passed him, doing seventy or better, north of Thornton Gap. On any other morning—any other highway— Bolan wouldn’t have considered it a threat, but trips to Stony Man Farm, home to the nation’s most covert strike teams, were different, demanding even more alertness than he normally applied to daily life.

There was a possibility, however slim verging on nonexistent, that he might have picked up a tail in D.C. or at the previous night’s stop in Falls Church, Virginia. Officially, Mack Bolan didn’t exist. He’d been dead and buried for years, his various dossiers stamped Closed, filed and forgotten after a historic flameout in Manhattan’s Central Park.

But still… He’d been out there with various personas, and in his current incarnation as Matt Cooper, he’d been rather active lately. Most of Bolan’s enemies were well and truly dead, but there were bound to be some stragglers somewhere who had glimpsed his mug in passing, on some bloody killing ground or in some seedy dive. Hopefully, no one was on his tail. He hadn’t spotted anyone as yet.

Bolan turned off Skyline Drive onto the Farm’s single-lane access road. No gates were visible at first. Approaching vehicles or pedestrians had to round a corner first, by which time they had tripped two sets of sensors and were screened from view of any other passing travelers.

Alone, where they could be examined and condemned without an audience.

As soon as Bolan saw the gate, he keyed a pager-size device that would alert the Stony Man Farm team to his arrival. They already knew that someone was approaching, from the hidden sensors, but his signal would prevent a mobilized reaction in defense.

The gate still didn’t open, though. For that, he had to nose the Prius in and power down his window, leaning out to let a hidden camera focus on his face without a layer of tinted glass obstructing biometric measurements. The Farm was far removed from Hollywood in every way—not least among them being that a new arrival couldn’t pass on looks alone.

Bolan supposed there had to be intercoms somewhere around the gate, but no one greeted him by verbal communication. Instead, the steel gate topped with razor wire rolled open on its hidden track, taking its sweet time. He waited, then drove through and saw the gate reverse direction in his rearview mirror, shutting out the world.

It felt like coming home, if any place deserving of that label still remained on Earth, but even Stony Man wasn’t invulnerable. Some years back, a rogue CIA agent had pierced the Farm’s veil of secrecy and mounted an attack that claimed the life of April Rose, Bolan’s love. That debt was paid, but it would never be forgotten.

As he rolled up to the farmhouse, Bolan saw three figures waiting for him on the porch. Hal Brognola, stationed in the middle, was his oldest living friend and overseer of the Stony Man operation, working mostly from his office at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. Before the current program was created, the big Fed had been a G-man, hunting Bolan nationwide, drawn slowly into grudging admiration of the Executioner’s technique and its results, then into a covert alliance that could have cost Brognola his pension, if not his life and freedom.

On Brognola’s left stood Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller. Bolan caught her smile as he stepped from the vehicle, returned it with feeling, then turned his attention to the man on Brognola’s right.

Aaron Kurtzman, nicknamed “the Bear” for his beard and hulking size, had been shot in the spine on the same night April Rose died, confined to a wheelchair since then. The chair was low-tech, as Kurtzman had refused a motorized chair.

“You’re early,” Brognola declared by way of greeting.

“Caught a tailwind,” Bolan said, and shook hands all around.

“You need to freshen up, or shall we get to work?”

“Work’s good,” the Executioner replied.

THE FARM’S WAR Room was a basement chamber, accessible by stairs or elevator. Bolan’s party used the elevator for Kurtzman’s sake, those who were ambulatory taking familiar seats around a conference table built for an even dozen. So far, within the project’s history, there’d been no need to bring in extra chairs.

Brognola sat at the head of the table, with Bolan on his right, Price on his left. Kurtzman took the other end and manned a keyboard that controlled the War Room’s lighting and its audio-visual gear. He dimmed the lights a little, leaving them bright enough to read by without eye strain, and lowered a screen from the ceiling behind Brognola’s chair. Beside him, a laptop hummed to life.

“What do you know about Albania?” Brognola asked without preamble.

“It’s on the Adriatic, in southeastern Europe,” Bolan answered. “Facing toward the heel of Italy. Russia took over after World War II, but then there was some kind of break that pushed Albania toward China in the early sixties. The communist regime collapsed along with Russia and the rest of them, in 1991 or ’92, followed by chaos and violence. It’s one of the poorest, most backward countries in Europe. Beyond that,” he added, “not much.”

“That’s better than average,” Brognola said. “But you forgot the Albanian Mafia.”

“Okay.” Bolan breathed and bided his time.

“Like every other place on Earth,” Hal said, “Albania’s had its share of criminal clans and secret societies throughout history. I know you faced one of its organizations not long ago. They operate under a loose set of laws called kanuni, as you know, similar to the Mafia’s rule of omertà, triad initiation oaths, and so on.”

The big Fed paused, then proceeded when Bolan said nothing.

“Albanian mobsters made their living from vice and black-market trading under the old Red regime. They got their first real boost during the war in Kosovo, which interrupted the flow of Turkish heroin to western Europe through Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Rerouting tons of smack through Albania changed the drug landscape. So much heroin passed through Veliki Trnovac that the DEA started calling it the Medellín of the Balkans. Today, the Albanian Mob has active branches in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and they’re giving the Cosa Nostra a run for its money in Italy. Scotland Yard’s tracking Albanian operators in the U.K. And—huge surprise—they’ve made it to the States.”

“Sounds like a problem for the FBI,” Bolan said.

“And it would be, if we lived in normal times. By which I mean pre-9/11 times, without two wars in progress overseas and half the G-men in the country eavesdropping on mosques. It’s no great secret that the Bureau shifted its priorities after the towers fell. Hell, it was in the papers and on CNN—twenty-four hundred agents removed from ‘traditional’ investigations to work the terrorist beat, while Mafia and white-collar prosecutions dropped by 40 percent or more. They’re trying to redress that imbalance today, over at the Hoover Building, but they left the barn door open too damned long.”

“So, let’s hear it,” Bolan said.

“Last week,” Brognola said, “a Coast Guard cutter on patrol along the Jersey Coast tried to stop and search an unidentified trawler. The trawler’s captain made a run for it, then set the boat on fire and bailed. He got away somehow, or maybe drowned, with whatever crew he had aboard. The boat—a shrimper stolen from New Orleans six weeks earlier—burned to the water line with nineteen people still aboard.”

Bolan frowned. “You said—”

“That the captain and crew got away. These were passengers.”

As Brognola spoke, photos of a blackened, listing boat began to scroll across the screen behind him. Soon the focus shifted to recovery of charred and shriveled corpses, while the trawler did its best to sink and disappear.

“Illegals,” Bolan said.

The big Fed nodded. “From the autopsy reports, it was eight men, seven women and four children. Cooked alive belowdecks, for the most part.”

“Jesus.”

“Maybe He was watching,” Brognola told Bolan, “but He didn’t lend a hand.”

“They were Albanians?” Bolan inquired.

“Affirmative. Against all odds, the Coast Guard saved some papers from the wheelhouse. Traced a bill for fuel back to a dock on Bergen Neck, New Jersey. Sift through the standard bs paperwork, and you’ll discover that the dock belongs to this guy.”

Bolan watched new photos march across the screen above Brognola’s shoulder. Each image depicted a man of middle age and average height, with an olive complexion and black hair going salt-and-pepper at the temples. His meaty face reminded Bolan of a clenched fist with a thick mustache glued on.

“Arben Kurti,” Brognola said. “He runs the Mob on this side of the water, moving drugs, guns, people—anything that he can milk for cash.”

“So, human trafficking,” Bolan said.

“Split two ways. He offers immigrants a new start in the States, complete with bogus green cards, if they pay enough up front. Sometimes they get here and discover that they still owe more. You’ve heard the stories.”

“Sure.”

“The other side of it is purely what we used to call white slavery, before the world went all politically correct. Today its labeled compulsory prostitution. If the Mob can’t dupe women into using their underground travel agency, thugs snatch them off the streets of European cities, maybe some in Asia and Latin America, too. Age only matters if it helps to boost the asking price.”

Across the table, Barbara Price mouthed a curse that Bolan hadn’t heard her use before. Her ashen face was angled toward the screen as Kurtzman kept the pictures coming.

Girls and women being led from seedy rooms by uniformed police. Stretchers employed to carry out the ones who couldn’t walk, either because they had been drugged or used so cruelly that their bodies had rebelled, shut down in mute protest. A couple had the pallid look of death about them.

Bolan wondered whether it had come as a relief.

“Kurti answers to this man, back home,” Brognola said. Another string of slides revealed a somewhat older man, larger in girth if not in height, dressed stylish by southern European standards without working the Armani trend. He was fat-faced, with bad teeth and tombstone eyes.

Bolan wished he could study that face through a sniper scope.

“Rahim Berisha,” Brognola announced, by way of introduction. “Think of him as Albania’s Teflon Don. He’s got the best and worst friends that money can buy, on both sides of the law. Some say he knows the president of Albania, but we can’t prove it. There’s no doubt that he has connections to the Albanian army, moving weapons out the back door for a profit. Double that in spades for the Albanian State Police and RENEA—their Unit for the Neutralization of Armed Elements. Word is that Berisha uses SWAT teams to back up his hardmen when there’s any kind of major trouble.”

“Makes it rough to bust him,” Bolan said.

“So far, it’s been impossible,” Brognola said. “He’s been indicted seven times, but something always goes off-track at the Ministry of Justice in Tirana. Paperwork misfiled, warrants thrown out on technicalities, and so on. As you might suspect, witnesses called to testify against him qualify as an endangered species.”

Once again, no great surprise.

“So, the job would be…?”

“Shut them down,” Brognola stated. “Hell, take them off the map. This pipeline needs to close, for good.”

For good, indeed. And Bolan thought, at least for now.

He harbored no illusions about cleaning up the world at large, saving society or any such high-flown ideal. The best that any soldier on the firing line could do was fight, carry the day in one location at a time and hope he wouldn’t have to win the same ground back again before he had a chance to rest, regroup and savor something of his hard-won victory.

And every victory was transient. There was no such thing as killing Evil in the real world, only in the text of so-called holy books forecasting distant futures that the Executioner would never live to see.

But he was doing what he could, with what he had.

“I’ll need a rundown on the syndicate and major players,” Bolan said unnecessarily.

“All right here,” Brognola said, sliding a CD-ROM across to Bolan in a paper envelope. “You want to check it out before you go, in case you think of any questions?”

“Will do,” Bolan said.

“I’ve got a meeting back in Wonderland, with the AG,” Brognola said. “Barb or Aaron should be able to fill in the gaps, if I’ve missed anything.”

“You won’t have,” Bolan said with full assurance.

“Well.”

“Don’t keep them waiting,” Bolan said, already on his feet.

“They have an auction coming up in Jersey,” Brognola observed. “We don’t have any details, but it’s soon. You’ll find a couple guys on there who might know when and where, in case you want to drop around and place a bid. Or something.”

“That’s a thought.”

They shook hands once again and Bolan trailed the others from the War Room, back in the direction of the elevator. Brognola was talking while he led the way.

“Remember, it’s a different world there, in Albania. Picture the worst bits of Colombia, without the jungle. Their constitution guarantees all kinds of rights, and everybody from the cops to the cartels ignores it. Human rights? Forget about it. The legitimate economy is in the toilet, circling the drain. But hey, you’ve dealt with worse.”

And that was true.

But every time he faced long odds, the laws of probability kicked in. Some day…

Bolan derailed that train of thought before it reached its terminus. Only a would-be martyr went to war anticipating failure. Just as only fools ignored the risks involved.

“Safe trip,” he told the big Fed on the farmhouse porch.

And wished himself the same.

CHAPTER THREE

East Keansburg, New Jersey, the present

A shotgun blast shredded the wall two feet above Mack Bolan’s head, frosting his hair and shoulders with a cloud of plaster dust while streamers of wallpaper flapped like dying tentacles. He answered with a short burst from his carbine, saw his adversary lurch and stagger out of sight beyond a corner, but he couldn’t guarantee the kill.

The odds were in his favor this time, since few human beings managed to survive a torso wound from 5.56 mm NATO rounds. The relatively small projectiles started to tumble when they penetrated a medium more dense than air, thereby creating catastrophic wound channels through flesh and bone. While entrance wounds were smaller than a quarter-inch across, inside the target might be virtually disemboweled.

Which didn’t necessarily equate to instant death.

The gunner with the 12-gauge had been moving on his own two feet when Bolan saw him last. Whether he dropped dead after passing out of sight or was prepared to fire again, lying in wait, remained to be discovered.

He hugged the nearest wall, aware that it could offer little in the way of physical protection from a bullet, but concealment had to count for something. Moving in an awkward crouch, Bolan held his carbine in the low-ready position with its butt against his shoulder and its muzzle canted toward the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. The hold facilitated forward motion and allowed “big picture” scanning of the target zone, without sacrificing any significant first-shot speed.

Six feet from the corner, he paused, listening. It didn’t help much, with the shouts and sounds of running feet that echoed through the house from every side, but Bolan didn’t plan to blindly rush around the corner and be gutted by a buckshot charge.

So much to think about.

Besides the unknown number of assailants still inside the house, he had the captive women and their prospective buyers on his mind. Meanwhile, somewhere in the ritzy neighborhood, someone was probably alerting the police to sounds of gunfire from the Cako spread.

East Keansburg had no law enforcement of its own, relying on the county sheriff’s office for protection in a pinch. The internet told Bolan that their 9-1-1 commo center was in Freehold, the county seat, ten miles to the south. That didn’t mean the nearest cruiser would be starting out from headquarters, but it would take some time to organize a SWAT team after first-responders reached the scene and called for backup.

Every second counted, even so.

With that in mind, he made his move. Stepping off from the wall he’d been hugging, Bolan aimed his M-4 carbine at the corner, picked a spot where someone might be crouching if he had an ambush on his mind and fired off half a dozen probing rounds.

It wouldn’t be precision work, by any means, but 5.56 mm rounds were made to penetrate three millimeters of steel at six hundred yards, or twelve millimeters at a hundred yards. Drywall or lath and plaster was merely tissue paper to a bullet traveling more than twice the speed of sound.

A strangled cry rewarded Bolan’s searching fire. He followed it around the corner, found his adversary stretched out on one side and dying with a fresh wound in his chest to match the first one in his shoulder. Bolan kicked the shotgun out of reach and stripped a pistol from the gunman’s belt, dropping the magazine before he pitched it back the way he’d come.

Keep moving. Find the women. Find Lorik Cako.

Simple intentions, but they weren’t so easy in a labyrinthine madhouse with an enemy of unknown numbers now on full alert.

As if in answer to his thought, Bolan heard footsteps slamming down a nearby staircase, soldiers hissing back and forth to one another in Albanian. He’d memorized a photo of the scum who owned the mansion, but that pockmarked face had thus far managed to elude him. Meanwhile, any other male he spotted on the premises was fair game until proved innocent, and Bolan wasn’t in the mood to check IDs.

It sounded like an army coming down the stairs, maybe another on the second floor, and the Executioner still had to reach the women he presumed were quartered in the basement. All the while he had to somehow manage to stay alive and dodge any police who might arrive before he finished up.

A piece of cake.

Bolan angled toward the stairs, letting the carbine lead him, squeezing off a burst when only feet were visible and hearing angry cries in answer. One man tumbled into his field of fire and jerked helplessly as Bolan’s next burst found him, opening his chest.

The M-4’s magazine had to be running low. The soldier ducked into an open doorway, seeking cover while he switched it out, releasing the mag with two rounds left inside and swapping it for a full one. He was about to feed the hungry carbine when a wheezing figure rushed at Bolan from his blind side, strangling hands outstretched.

Bolan reacted without thinking. He slammed the carbine’s butt into his attacker’s ribs and dropped the magazine, drawing his trench knife as he turned. He swung the weapon butt-first, cracking his opponent’s forehead with the short spike on its pommel, smashed his teeth in with the knuckleduster built into the grip, then drove the six-inch blade between the stunned Albanian’s ribs.

One twist, and it was done.

He sheathed the knife, scooped up his fallen magazine and checked it, seated it into the carbine’s receiver and got himself back in the game.

PANIC WAS WEAKNESS, and in many situations it was fatal. Lorik Cako didn’t plan to die this evening, but he had a great deal more to think about than simply getting out alive without a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

His customers, for one thing, and the women who were living, breathing evidence against him, capable of sending him to prison for a hundred years simply because of their existence in this time and place.

Above all else, he had to think of Arben Kurti and the men behind him, what they’d do to Cako if he failed them, or if they suspected that he might cooperate with the police to save himself from jail. On balance, Cako realized that he’d be better off exactly where he was, shot dead, than carried to some slaughterhouse where Kurti could interrogate him and dissect him over time.

Regis Bushati met him as Cako reached the ground floor, with sounds of automatic gunfire echoing around them.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Cako demanded.

“Intruders!” Bushati replied.

“How many?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, find out, for Christ’s sake! And call out the cars. Have them come to the back door at once.”

“Yes, sir!” Bushati responded.

While Bushati ran off to obey his instructions, Cako hesitated in the corridor, smelling gunsmoke. His first instinct told him to go and meet his enemies, destroy them all, but he also had to think about his customers downstairs. If they were killed or injured in his care, there would be hell to pay from their respective syndicates.

Not only in New Jersey, but beyond.

That thought made Cako wish that he could flee the house and simply keep on running. But where could he go? Where in the world would he be safe, once Arben Kurti and Rahim Berisha started hunting him?

Nowhere.

Turning back to the stairwell behind him, he retraced his steps, descending once more to the basement. Qemal Hoxha met him, looking anxious, holding one of the AKM rifles.

“They want to get out of here, Lorik,” he said.

“Can you blame them?”

Cako returned to the theater, where the first nearly naked woman still stood under spotlights, her eyes glazed from the drugs she’d been given to keep her in line. She reminded him of an animal caught in a car’s charging headlights, paralyzed with fear.

The buyers started shouting at him all at once. Despite their babel, Cako got the gist of it. They wanted explanations for the noise upstairs—and more important, as Hoxha had already said, they wanted out.

“Gentlemen, please! I can’t respond if all of you are shouting!”

Cako gave them two full seconds to quiet down, then took a backward step and raised his shotgun, squeezing off a blast into the basement’s ceiling. Shattered fragments of acoustic tiles rained down over his guests as they flinched from the weapon’s roar.

And shut their mouths in unison.

“As I was saying, cars are being brought around to take you safely out of here. You’ll be protected on the way, and I sincerely hope you will accept my personal apology for the disruption. At a later time, the merchandise will be available for bidding at substantial discounts, as my compensation for the inconvenience. Now—”

“What is happening?” one of the Japanese demanded, cutting Cako off.

“It seems there are intruders on the property,” Cako replied. “I’m taking steps to deal with them, but in the meantime it is best for you to leave, before police arrive.”

That got them moving when the gunfire might have kept them rooted where they stood. When Cako turned to lead them up the stairs, they crowded on his heels, jostling one another for position in the line. Bringing up the rear, came Qemal Hoxha to cover their escape.

IN RETROSPECT, Bolan couldn’t have said exactly when he felt the tide turning against him. He’d been headed for the mansion’s basement, accessed through a kind of study where the books lining three walls appeared untouched except for weekly dusting, but had found the stairs too late. The place was empty, though a smell of sweat and perfume told him that it had been occupied quite recently.

He had a look in the control room, saw the empty gun rack on one wall and double-timed to check backstage. There was a kind of dressing room—perhaps undressing room was more appropriate—with scraps of lingerie strewed here and there on furniture that didn’t match the pricey tone out front, and stronger perfume in the air.

Baiting the hook.

An elevator served the dressing area, its small car built to carry four passengers, tops. Call it seven trips for twenty young women, if someone rode the elevator up and down with them.

Bolan admitted to himself that there’d been time to clear them out since his first gunshots, but would Cako send them back upstairs into a firefight? Never mind humanity. It sounded like a risk of valuable merchandise, and any living witness could be used against him if she fell into the hands of medics, cops and prosecutors.

Since they hadn’t been exterminated in the dressing room, it followed, then, that Cako had removed them from the premises. Or he was trying to. They might be going with the buyers, in the fragile hope that he could still log sales despite the interruption of his little show.

No time to waste.

Bolan was turning toward the stairs once more when he heard shooters coming down to join him. He couldn’t guess their number or determine how well they were armed, but once he dropped the first of them the rest could hold the stairs forever with a single gun, keep Bolan bottled up below until they either smoked him out or the police showed up to make things infinitely worse.

Long years ago, Bolan had vowed that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Occasionally he had broken that rule when faced with an extremely brutal, or murderous law enforcement officer. He regarded everyone who wore a badge as soldiers of the same side in his war against the predators. He would help honest cops arrest their dirty comrades, but would never kill an everyday officer to save himself.

If the cops found him here, with no means of escape, he’d surrender. Face trial yet again, with no help from Brognola or anyone else at the Farm. And beyond that?

The end.

He fired a short burst toward the stairs, discouraging the enemy advance, then looked around his prison. He could take the elevator up a floor or two, but if the shooters knew he was downstairs, they would cover all the stops, automatic weapons poised to smother him with fire before the door was fully open.

What, then?

If Cako’s buyers and their merchandise had left the house without going upstairs, there had to be another exit somewhere in the basement. Something Bolan could discover, given enough time.

But time was one thing that he didn’t have to spare.

“Start looking, then,” he muttered to himself.

It had to be right there. Somewhere.

With grim determination, Bolan started searching for a way to save his life.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Bolan found it. There was yet another staircase hidden at the southwest corner of the house, disguised as storage space. The door was still ajar when he reached it, peered inside and saw steep stairs ascending to ground level. When nobody shot his head off, the soldier forged ahead, mounting the stairs and wondering where he’d wind up.

Fresh air washed over Bolan as he cleared a ground-floor doorway, hesitating long enough to verify that no gunmen were waiting for him to emerge. Maybe the housemen didn’t know about the stairs. Maybe they’d just forgotten.

When the Executioner emerged, a minicaravan of limousines was rolling off along the driveway that would take them out through Cako’s wrought-iron gates and off to anywhere they pleased.

Unless he stopped them first.

Bolan triggered a short burst toward the final car in line and saw his bullets spark off armored steel. He guessed the limos would have run-flat tires, as well, but even if they didn’t he was bent on stopping all of them, not just the train’s caboose.

Which meant he needed wheels.

Some fifty yards away he saw a seven-car garage standing with doors wide-open, as if all those shiny toys inside were left on permanent display. As for ignition keys, he’d have to work that out.

But first…

Below him, Bolan heard his trackers penetrate the basement, shouting, firing, drawing closer by the heartbeat, closing on the staircase that they couldn’t miss.

Scowling at the retreating limos, Bolan primed another frag grenade and waited until he heard footsteps on the stairs below him, then released the spoon and counted off four seconds. He dropped the lethal egg with only two seconds remaining on its fuse, and ran like hell.

He barely registered the blast, was focused solely on the long garage and cars inside it. On arrival, Bolan spied a small space off to one side where a wall rack held assorted automotive tools.

And keys.

He snagged one for a Rolls-Royce Phantom, dropped into a driver’s seat that felt more like an easy chair and gunned the 6.5-liter V12 engine into snarling life. After releasing the parking brake, the soldier stood on the accelerator and roared out of the garage.

He was in time to see a line of gunmen spilling from the exit he had used, a couple of them looking wobbly on their feet. Bolan had no time to examine them for wounds, determined as he was to catch the limo caravan, but they saw him and moved to intercept the Phantom as he powered out along the driveway.

Was the Rolls-Royce armored against small-arms fire?

He’d find out any second now.

They opened up at thirty yards with two Kalashnikovs, an Uzi and another SMG resembling an old Smith & Wesson M-76. It sounded as if Bolan was driving into one hell of a hailstorm, bullets scarring glass and gouging divots in the Phantom’s paint job, but they didn’t make it through to nail the driver in his comfy padded seat.

He could’ve saved himself some time by driving past the firing squad and simply leaving them behind, but they were running out to meet him now, still firing as they came.

A quick twist of the padded steering wheel and he was in among them, startled faces gaping at him in the high-beam glare of headlights. One was quick enough to dodge and throw himself aside, but Bolan took the other three.

A glancing blow for Mr. Uzi, maybe a broken hip of shattered ribs to pain him for the next few decades when it rained. His two companions took the full brunt of the hurtling Rolls. One rolled up on the hood, squealing, and smeared the windshield with blood where his face collided with the glass, before he slipped away to starboard and was gone. The other fell beneath the car, tires thumping over flesh and bone, five thousand pounds and change turning the shooter to a screaming pancake on the pavement.

Then he was off in hot pursuit of Cako’s limo train, the Phantom gathering momentum as he kept its pedal to the metal—or, to be precise, it’s stylish carpeting. Bolan could see the first black limousine already passing through the open gate, taking off. Number two was close behind it, with the others lining up to take their turns.

Bolan saw a bright spark in the rearview mirror, then a trail of fire was chasing him along the driveway, gaining fast. Before he had a chance to twist the steering wheel, the RPG projectile struck the Phantom’s left-rear fender and exploded, slamming the Rolls-Royce off course while delivering a solid kick to its tail.

Bolan hung on, feeling the tire go flat at the back, and kept the pedal down, grinding along the driveway, trailing smoke and sparks behind him.

HOW LONG BEFORE THE gas tank detonated, if it did at all? Bolan knew he was pushing it, stretching his luck to the consistency of tissue paper, but he had to reach the gate before it closed. Even if he was forced to let the limos slip away, he still had to escape from Cako’s walled estate, live on to fight another day.

He almost made it.

From a distance, the Executioner could see the rolling gate begin to close behind the final limousine. It wasn’t fast, but didn’t need to move like lightning, with the Rolls still sixty yards or more away. With the Phantom’s left-rear bumper scraping blacktop, he couldn’t squeeze another mile per hour from the straining engine.

If he didn’t make it through the gate, what, then?

Stop short, perhaps, and climb atop the Rolls, then jump from there and roll over the gate. He’d be an easy target for the shooters coming up behind him, one of them presumably still carrying the RPG. It was small satisfaction to suppose that they’d be trapped inside when the police arrived.

What difference would it make to Bolan, if they killed him first?

The gate was slightly more than halfway shut when Bolan reached it, rumbling across his path from right to left. He swerved to aim directly for the closing gap, uncertain if the Phantom’s six-foot-six-inch width would clear.

Almost.

He scraped the stone and concrete gatepost on the driver’s side, got roughly halfway through, and then the gate crunched up against the Phantom on his right. Cursing, he tried to power through, flayed paint from both sides with a high-pitched grinding sound that resonated through his teeth like talons on a chalkboard.

Stuck.

He couldn’t force his door to open, but he powered down the window, wriggled through with difficulty with his web gear, then leaned back inside to grab his M-4 carbine from the seat.

Barely in time.

Bullets were pinging off the Rolls and off the gate as Bolan pulled his weapon free and spun to face his enemies. He saw the RPG man lining up another shot and Bolan didn’t hesitate, slamming a burst into his target’s chest, then ducking as the guy pitched over backward, triggering the rocket. It cleared the gate by about six inches, hurtling off into the night.

And then the rest of them were firing, Bolan spraying them with 5.56 mm manglers as he dodged behind the gatepost. It was solid, but it wasn’t huge. His enemies could flank him easily, set up a cross fire that would root him out and cut him down.

Or they could simply open up the gate.

How long before one of them thought of that? Five seconds? Ten?

When life was measured by a stopwatch counting down, it clarified the mind. Bolan was ready for the flame-out, reaching for another frag grenade, determined to eliminate as many of the shooters as he could before he fell.

With all the gunfire ringing in his ears, he almost didn’t hear the Porsche Boxster approaching, only recognized it as the jet-black convertible slid to a halt on the road some twenty feet from where he crouched. There was a woman in the driver’s seat, leaning across to shout at Bolan through her open window.

“Need a lift?”

He didn’t hesitate. Pulling the frag grenade’s pin, Bolan lofted the bomb over the gate and sat tight for six seconds until the charge blew. Then he broke from cover, firing backward with the M-4, one-handed, not looking or caring to see where his bullets might strike.

The Boxster’s passenger door swung open to greet him. Bolan dropped into the deep bucket seat, slammed the door and felt sudden acceleration press him backward into leather.

Glancing at him while she drove, the woman said, “I’d call that quite a cock-up. Wouldn’t you?”

CHAPTER FOUR

New Jersey Turnpike, northbound

“I didn’t catch your name back there,” Bolan said when they’d covered several miles with no sign of pursuit.

“Natalia Volkova,” the lady said.

That pegged her accent. Russian.

“Okay,” Bolan replied. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful that you helped me out back there. But could you tell me how you happened by?”

She glanced at him around a spill of auburn hair that draped the shoulders of her conservative suit. She hardly needed makeup, but she wore dark lipstick and some eye shadow. Bolan couldn’t be sure of colors in the red-orange dashboard light.

“I did not, as you say it, ‘happen by,’” Volkova corrected him. “I have been watching these Albanian mudaki for nearly six weeks.”

“Mudaki?” Bolan echoed.

“A figure of speech,” she replied with a hint of a smile. “My point is that I am investigating them, not saving you. You understand?”

“I’m getting there. One thing’s still a little hazy, though. Which agency is it you’re representing here, again?”

She lost the smile, so tenuous to start with. “You would argue jurisdiction now? Perhaps I should deliver you back to the place I found you, eh?”

“Relax,” Bolan suggested. “I just want to know where I should send my thank-you note.”

After a silent mile, she said, “I am not from your country, yes? I think you know this.”

“It was sinking in,” Bolan agreed.

“Lorik Cako and those he serves are not only a problem in your great New Jersey and New York. They plague a list of countries, mine among them.”

“Which would be?” As if he didn’t know.

She missed a beat, then said, “The Russian Federation. Are you frightened now? You wish to jump out of my car?”

“I’ll stick at least until we hit a Waffle House,” Bolan said. “So, what are you? FIS or FSB?”

“FSB,” she replied, in a voice that almost made it sexy.

“Aren’t you supposed to operate primarily inside the federation?”

“Primarily,” she said. “But like your FBI, we are empowered to pursue domestic cases when they lead abroad.”

“So Washington knows that you’re here, and what you’re doing?” Bolan asked.

“I’m an investigator, not a diplomat,” Natalia said. “I follow orders, leaving all negotiations in the hands of my superiors. And you?”

“No one’s ever accused me of diplomacy,” Bolan replied.

“From what I saw tonight, you are a man of action. Not entirely legal action, granted. But I envy you a little.”

It was Bolan’s turn to frown. “Be careful what you wish for,” he replied.

“Sorry?”

“Forget it. After what you saw and heard tonight, why did you pick me up?”

“Perhaps because you’ve done what I have wished to do since I began tracking these animals. Perhaps I hoped that we could share intelligence and bring them down together. That sounds foolish, I suppose?”

“Not necessarily,” Bolan said. He’d collaborated with the FSB before, but had to ask, “What will your people say?”

Volkova shrugged. “Sometimes, what they don’t know won’t hurt me, eh?”

“I hear that,” Bolan said. “It’s risky, though.”

“You seem to favor risk.”

“The calculated ones, at least,” Bolan stated. “I’ve never cared for jumping off a cliff blindfolded.”

“Did you know what to expect at Cako’s house tonight?” she asked.

“An auction.”

“Da. That bastard sells women and children as if they were cattle. I hoped to gather evidence and give it to your FBI if all else fails. But now…”

“I know. Tonight I missed the women and the buyers,” Bolan said.

“The limousines?” Volkova asked.

“Long gone,” Bolan replied.

“Perhaps not,” the Russian agent said.

“Meaning?”

“First things first,” she answered. “You did not walk out to Cako’s home tonight, with all those guns. Where is your car?”

“Back in East Keansburg,” Bolan said. “A rental. Nothing in it that can hurt me, but I’ve lost my clothes, some extra hardware.”

“We can go back for it,” she said.

“Tonight? Police will have the neighborhood staked out and locked down tight.”

“Perhaps tomorrow, then. Or we can get another car. As for your clothes—”

“About those limousines,” he interrupted her. “What did you mean?”

“I know Cako’s buyers,” Volkova replied. “Every one of them a foreigner, like me. They won’t fly out tonight, for Hong Kong, Bogotá, wherever they come from. First they will wish to shout at Cako, then relax and sleep. Perhaps, when they have slept, even complete the business that they came to do.”

Bolan considered it. Something to hope for, anyway. Better than abject failure.

“Are you on to something?” he inquired. “Or is this wishful thinking?”

“I can tell you where the customers are registered,” Volkova said. “A few calls will confirm if they’ve gone back to their hotel rooms. And if not, I know where Cako is most likely to conceal them.”

“And the women?” Bolan asked.

“They’re valuable merchandise,” she said. “Why throw it all away, if he can make a profit for his masters, after all?”

New Jersey Pine Barrens

LORIK CAKO HAD stepped outside his house to make the call, smelling the pitch pines all around him. He was glad now that he’d left to come outside, as Arben Kurti’s shouting through the cell phone made his ear ache.

“What do you mean, you don’t know who’s responsible?”

“Arben—”

“I have police already calling me, now on their way with questions. What am I supposed to tell them, Lorik?”

“Tell them nothing, Arben. You know nothing. It’s true! They can’t break you on that.”

“Break me? Break me? No one breaks me, you punk!”

Cako cringed and answered, “No, sir. Of course not.”

“What about the women, then? Are they safe?”

“The buyers were my first concern.”

“It should have been security,” Kurti replied. “You’re sure these weren’t police?”

“Impossible,” Cako replied with perfect confidence. “American police don’t come in shooting. They bring warrants, helicopters, lights and cameras. Reporters follow them. It’s not at all the same.”

“Which leaves my question still unanswered,” Kurti said.

“I’ll find out who it was,” Cako assured his lord and master. “You can trust me.”

“I’ve already trusted you,” Kurti said. “Now I wonder if I should regret that choice.”

“I cannot tell you what to think,” Cako replied, bluffing it out. “But if you let me prove myself, you won’t be disappointed, sir.”

Kurti considered it and offered no direct response. Instead, he said, “The sale is ruined, I suppose. We’ll have to pay the clients back for traveling so far for nothing.”

“I believe we can proceed,” Cako suggested, “once I’ve calmed them down. Some discounts may be necessary, but I think that they would hate to go home empty-handed.”

Kurti spent another silent moment on the line, then said, “Do what you can with them. The merchandise cost nothing, after all. Disposing of it may create more problems than a discount sale.”

“My thought exactly, sir.”

“And find the people who caused me this headache,” Kurti said. “I want them alive if it’s possible. Dead, just as good. But be sure, understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“Your job now depends on it. As does your life.”

“Understood.”

Despite the warm night, Cako felt goose bumps rise on his arms, as a chill snaked its way down his spine. Before he had the chance to speak again, try ending their talk on a slightly more positive note, Kurti broke the connection. Cako heard the dial tone buzzing in his ear and killed his cell phone.

He couldn’t fault Kurti for his anger. All Cako could do now was fulfill his promises and hope that his success restored the confidence he had enjoyed before tonight.

First, calm his buyers and persuade them to permit another showing of the merchandise, perhaps at bargain prices. He would have to lay on more security, assure them of their safety—but where better to conduct the sale than in the vast Pine Barrens, shielded from the eyes of man and God alike?

Next, Cako knew he had to identify the bastards who had stormed his home, humiliated him and put his life doubly at risk. They’d failed to kill him outright, as was plainly their intent, but he was still in danger from his own captain if he could not find some swift way to rectify the situation.

Failure in this case was not an option.

It was do or die.

And when it came to agonizing death, Lorik Cako believed that it was best to give, rather than to receive.

THE ROOM WAS SMALL but tidy, had a lived-in look about it and smelled pleasantly of Volkova’s perfume. Bolan was no connoisseur of ladies’ fragrances, but thought this one had some kind of flower etched on blue glass bottles, which presumably helped to boost the price.

Whatever. Under different circumstances, he imagined it would do the trick when skillfully applied to someone who resembled his companion.

In the full light of her motel room, Natalia Volkova lived up to Bolan’s first impression—and then some. She was what the British tabloid page-three writers like to call a “stunna,” see-worthy in any setting.

But this night she was all business.

“You know the Pine Barrens?” she asked, while Bolan sipped a cup of halfway decent java from the coffeemaker that the motel provided for its guests.

“I know of it,” he said. “Pine trees and cranberries, with very few inhabitants than anybody bothers counting. Something like a million acres of it is a national reserve. Odd animals. Some say the Jersey Devil hangs around out there.”

She smiled and asked, “Are you afraid of monsters, Mr. Cooper?”

There’d been no harm he could see in giving her the standard cover name. Bolan had plentiful ID to back it up—a valid driver’s license, passport, credit cards—but she’d made no attempt to verify his name.

In fact, she likely didn’t care.

For all he knew, her real name could be Anna Khrushchev or Josefina Stalin. As long as she was fairly straight with him and they were moving in the same direction, toward a common goal, what difference did it make?

The cover world was all about illusions, anyway.

“The monsters I’m familiar with are human beings,” Bolan said. “They haven’t scared me yet.”

That wasn’t strictly true, of course. A soldier who denied ever experiencing fear was either lying or a stone-cold psychopath. Her could have been more accurate and said the human monsters in his past had never scared him off a mission, but Natalia got the point.

“Cako has a house in the Pine Barrens,” she informed him. “Not on state land, but nearby. There are no neighbors. It is his retreat, what you might call a home away from home, yes? He can do things there that might be dangerous in East Keansburg. I’m confident that he will be there now, perhaps with those who came to see him for the auction.”

“And the women,” Bolan said.

“Most probably. Whatever he decides to do with them, tonight has taught him to proceed with greater privacy.”

Whatever he decides to do with them.

They could be dead already, Bolan realized. It might be Cako’s smartest move, eliminating witnesses and evidence, but there was still a chance that the Albanian would try to turn a profit on the deal that had gone sideways for him, thanks to Bolan.

And the mobster would be wondering who was responsible for his embarrassment. Somebody higher up the food chain would be riding him for answers, breathing down his neck in the pursuit of sweet revenge.

“You know where I can find this home away from home?” Bolan inquired.

“I know where we can find it, Mr. Cooper.”

“It’s Matt,” he said. “And no offense, but all I’ve seen from you so far is fancy driving. I appreciate the lift and all, but if we’re talking penetration of a well-defended hardsite, that’s another story altogether.”

Sitting on the bed, leaning toward Bolan where he occupied the small room’s only chair, she said, “So far, all I have seen from you, Matt, is a chase you nearly lost, together with your life. I spent four years in the Russian army, three of them with Spetznaz, before moving to the FSB. I was a member of the Special Operations Service and participated in my share of actions against Chechen terrorists.”

Spetznaz was Russia’s equivalent of the Green Berets, well respected worldwide for their training, skill and demonstrated ruthlessness. Sometimes they went overboard, as in the Moscow theater siege of 2002, when critics blamed Spetznaz troops for killing a hundred-odd hostages along with thirty-three Chechen militants.

Bolan wondered if Volkova had been there, a part of the action, and decided not to ask.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it that you have the nerve to pull a trigger. Do you have directions to the target? Better yet, a layout of the house and grounds?”

She smiled and tapped her temple with an index finger as she answered, “Right in here.”

ARBEN KURTI HAD CHANGED his mind. After a transatlantic phone call that had literally left his ears burning, he had decided—or, to be precise, Rahim Berisha had decided for him—that he could not leave his buyers solely in the hands of Lorik Cako. This underling had been capable enough until this day, but one mistake was often fatal in the world Kurti inhabited.

And if a head had to roll, Kurti didn’t intend it to be his.

So he was driving with a dozen of his soldiers through the night, with a surprise for Cako. The man would resent it, but if he was smart he’d keep his mouth shut and accept the wisdom of his betters as his own best chance to stay alive.

Kurti was taking over.

He would charm the foreign buyers, salve their wounded feelings with whatever balm it might require. He had no end of alcohol and drugs available, and Kurti might even allow them to take turns sampling the merchandise. Enough, at least, to whet their appetites for more.

At a reduced price, certainly.

But not too much reduced.

Life was a business, after all. And so was death.

Kurti had only visited the vast Pine Barrens once before. On that occasion, two of his unruly soldiers had required a dose of special discipline. Kurti had driven them to Cako’s woodland hideaway, where no one but the members of a hand-picked audience could hear them scream.

And scream.

For hours on end.

Kurti pretended to derive no pleasure from such terminal events, because excessive lust for blood could be a weakness, just as surely as a fear of spilling any blood at all. A man should manage to control his base emotions at all times—except, perhaps, at the climactic moment of his rutting with a whore.

And even then he should be able to react effectively if threatened by an enemy, confronted by some crisis.

Anyone who lost control completely was a fool.

And easy meat for adversaries.

He was counting on a certain weakness in the men who’d flown halfway around the world to bid on human merchandise. They had been shaken up this night, endangered, and would naturally be irate. Their dignity was ruffled, even if they’d suffered no real injury.

In situations such as this, dealing with ruthless men of power, Kurti knew certain concessions had to be made. He would admit responsibility for their discomfort, to a point, and offer his assurance that the insult would be punished. He might tape that punishment, as it unfolded, and provide free copies for the personal amusement of his guests.

As for the women, they were still available. Still lovely and unsullied by the incident that had disrupted Cako’s first attempt to sell them off. Would any of the buyers choose to go home empty-handed and declare their trips a total waste?

Kurti thought not.

His thirty-year career in crime, devoted to obtaining profit from the misery of others, had taught Kurti not to miss a trick along the way. Instead of granting his unhappy guests access to any of the merchandise, he thought it might be fun to stage a little show for them. Let them observe the girls with one another.

Wait until their lust took over, and no discounts were required.

He might even increase the asking price.

Why not?

His buyers were men who lived by the rule of supply and demand.

And sometimes died by it.

It had crossed Kurti’s mind that the men who had raided Cako’s estate might follow up with a strike at the Pine Barrens site. He deemed it unlikely, but part of him hoped that it would come to pass.

That way, Kurti could avoid expensive, time-consuming searches that exposed his men to greater risks from both their unknown enemy and the authorities. He had been lucky so far, with the FBI and DEA, whose focus on Albanians had cracked the Rudaj syndicate in Queens but left the group that Kurti served intact.

That luck had been too good to last, perhaps, but Kurti meant to take advantage of it while he could.

By this time tomorrow, he hoped to have good news for Rahim Berisha at home.

And to save his own life in the process.

VOLKOVA USED a piece of motel stationery to sketch a map of Lorik Cako’s place in the Pine Barrens, giving Bolan a bird’s-eye view of the spread and its lone access road.

“You’ve flown over the place?” he inquired.

“But of course,” she answered, smiling. “Several companies advertise tours of the region. I chose Jersey Devil Airlines. Their pilot was most attentive.”

“I’m not surprised. No photos, though?”

“I did not wish to give him food for thought, yes?”

“Right. Good thinking.”

Bolan guessed that he could trust her memory, considering the fact that she was set to bet her own life on it. What the drawing didn’t offer was a head count of the staff on-site or any hint concerning Cako’s possible security precautions.

“It’s a good-size house,” he said. “And that’s a barn?”

“Apparently. Of course, it may have been converted into lodging, or for other purposes.”

Like selling kidnapped women off as slaves.

Or chopping captives into bite-size pieces for the local forest scavengers.

“It’s too bad that I lost my rental car,” Bolan observed. “I had some gear stashed in the trunk that could’ve come in handy.”

“More than this?” she asked, half smiling, as she nodded toward his carbine and assorted other hardware piled beside his chair.

“More ammunition,” Bolan said. “A sniper rifle. And an M-32 MGL.”

“The grenade launcher? Forty millimeter, I believe.”

“That’s it,” Bolan concurred.

“It would be useful. I suggest we go back for your car, after we sleep.”

He had to frown at that. “Sounds like we’re wasting time.”

“Cako will need that time to calm his customers, if they’re still with him. If they’re not, we have lost nothing.”

“Nothing but the women,” Bolan said.

“You think he will dispose of them?”

“He might.”

“Cako may be a zhopa—what you call an asshole—but he’s first a businessman. He won’t dispose of valuable merchandise without good reason. More importantly, his masters would resent it.”

“After last night, he may think he has a reason,” Bolan said.

“I doubt it. Certainly, he faces inquiries from the authorities. His house may need repairs. But who can link him to the women or even prove they exist? In his mind, I assure you—and in Arben Kurti’s mind, as well—the living women still have value. Now, if they were rescued by police and were prepared to testify…”

She didn’t have to finish it.

“Okay,” Bolan agreed. “Let’s say you’re right. I have to get it done this time. Clear out the hostages and deal with Cako, then take Kurti out before he slips away.”

“You’re an ambitious man,” Volkova said.

“I dropped the ball tonight,” Bolan replied. “Call it damage control.”

“And I will help you.”

“Won’t your people be upset?” Bolan inquired. “I don’t imagine you were sent to hunt down the Albanians this way.”

She shrugged and told him, “My superiors appreciate results. There was no realistic prospect of collaborating with your FBI toward prosecution of Kurti or Cako. I’m more likely to be charged myself, for some infringement on homeland security.”

“I take it you don’t have a diplomatic pass?”

“Only a simple tourist visa, as it happens.”

Simple tourist. Right.

“Okay. We give the other side some time to pacify their customers, then see about my car when everybody’s heading off to work. Sound fair?”

“I’ll change now,” Volkova said, “to save some time.”

He watched her take some items from a dresser drawer and disappear into the small bathroom. Ten minutes later she was back, dressed in a tight black turtleneck and matching jeans, hair tied back in a ponytail. All that she needed was some war paint to cover her peaches-and-cream complexion, but Bolan wasn’t complaining.

“You’ve come prepared,” he said.

“I do,” she told him, ducking to retrieve a duffel bag from underneath her bed. She set it on the bedspread, opened it and pulled out an AKS-74U carbine. The U stood for Ukorochenniy—“shortened,” in Russian—and the stubby piece lived up to its name. It was a standard Kalashnikov AK-74 assault rifle, truncated to fire from an 8.3-inch barrel, with a skeletal folding stock. Ammo-wise, it chambered 5.45 mm rounds with the same magazines holding thirty or forty-five cartridges, with an effective range of six hundred yards and a full-auto cyclic rate of 650 rounds per minute.

“You didn’t pack that flying coach,” Bolan said.

“Indeed not,” Volkova replied. “The diplomatic pouch is good for something, yes?”

“Seems so. About that sleep…”

“We are adult enough to share the bed, I think.”

“Suits me,” the Executioner agreed.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Pine Barrens

Lorik Cako seethed internally but dared not let his anger or embarrassment be visible. He viewed Kurti’s surprise arrival as a calculated insult, an expression of his leader’s sense that Cako couldn’t handle any of the problems that confronted them, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

Not with Kurti’s hard-eyed men surrounding him.

Cako was forced to smile and nod and play along, ever the dutiful subordinate who wouldn’t harbor any disloyal thoughts regardless of the provocation. Total crap, but it was a way to stay alive.

For now.

He trailed Kurti around the house, flanked by the soldiers who had invaded his home. Of course, it wasn’t actually Cako’s home, either on paper or in fact. A phony corporation formed for that specific purpose held the deed, while Kurti and the syndicate they served had paid the tab. Still, Kurti only visited the rural house on rare occasions, so it felt like home to Cako—more than the defiled abode in East Keansburg—and he resented the intrusion he was suffering this day.

And still he smiled, watching his master work.

Arben Kurti could be a suave and charming man when circumstance demanded it. He had a way with ladies, for example, that beguiled them into thinking that he was a gentleman steeped in the kind of chivalry enshrined by romance novels. Once they had surrendered to him, though, it was another story altogether. Some endured him. Others fled.

A few had not survived.

This morning, with the first pale light of dawn just visible over the barrens, Kurti used his charm to placate Cako’s foreign customers. He sympathized, commiserated, nodding as they bitched and moaned to him about their disappointment and the peril they had suffered.

Never mind that none of them could show a scratch for all their trials and tribulations.

Granted, they had been disturbed and caught a whiff of gunsmoke as they left the other house. What of it? Each and every one of them were murderers, notorious for their brutality. Their whining angered Cako nearly as much as the raid on his house at the shore.

But Kurti had a way with men, as well as women. He was bringing them around, no doubt about it. Alternately frowning, nodding and joking with the clients, he’d managed to convince them that they shouldn’t write their trips off as a total waste. Why turn around and leave without the merchandise they’d hoped to purchase in the first place, when it still remained available?

Within arm’s reach, in fact.

By breakfast he had charmed them all. Cako’s personal chef prepared a feast, skipping the ham and bacon on the Muslim plates as ordered, and the waiters offered whiskey for those diners who desired to spike their morning coffee as a special treat.

“To get the juices flowing,” Kurti told them.

He had saved the day—but was it anything Cako himself couldn’t have done? How would they ever know, when he wasn’t allowed to try?

For the first time in their association, spanning seven years, Cako felt hatred for the man who pulled his strings. When Kurti told this story to Rahim Berisha—and he would, no doubt—all of the credit would be his, while Cako took the blame.

That was, if Kurti lived to tell the tale.

With enemies at large and staging vicious raids, who could predict how long he might survive? And if by some chance he was slain, together with his bodyguards, Berisha would be forced to trust Cako’s accounting of events.

Who would be left to contradict him, after all?

“Come, come! Enjoy!” He beamed at his guests, matching his own enthusiasm to Kurti’s. “We have great surprises in store!”

“WE STOP HERE,” Volkova said, “and proceed on foot.”

“Sounds fair,” Bolan replied.

The Porsche Boxster wasn’t an off-road vehicle by any means, but Volkova nosed it cautiously into a copse that offered her a hiding place of sorts. Determined searchers would be sure to find the car, but passing drivers had a decent chance of overlooking it.

So far, they’d met no other traffic on the two-lane forest road, which helped their odds of passing unobserved.

The trip to Bolan’s rental car had thankfully been uneventful. By the time they drove past Cako’s mansion in East Keansburg, nearly all of the police had left. A sleepy uniformed patrolman on the gate ignored them going east, and showed no greater interest when the Porsche returned short minutes later, with a Prius trailing after it.

The rest was easy.

Bolan found a nice, anonymous open parking garage, stashed his car and moved what he needed to the Boxster’s trunk. They were off with time to spare.

Volkova took them southward on the Garden State Parkway, skirting the eastern border of the barrens, then cut over to the west on State Road 72, leaving civilization behind. Using the map in her head, she’d brought them to their present point, standing beside the Porsche and suiting up for war.

“If anything should happen—”

“Don’t start that,” he rudely cut her off. “You’ll jinx yourself.”

“I simply wish to ask that you contact my embassy.”

“No promises.”

She wouldn’t let it go. “And if I called, for you?”

“There won’t be anybody home,” Bolan replied. “Let’s saddle up.”

He was as equipped for this raid as he was the previous night, except for the addition of a Milkor M-32 grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40 mm rounds to feed its 6-shot revolving cylinder. The M-32 resembled a space-age version of the 1920s Tommy gun, complete with foregrip, shoulder stock and drum. Its payload was vastly more dangerous, though, including high-explosive, HEAT, buckshot, incendiary and chemical irritant rounds. Operating on the same principle as a double-action revolver, the Milkor could empty its load in three seconds in rapid-fire, with an Armson Occluded Eye Gunsight providing optimum accuracy out to four hundred yards.

With the M-4 carbine and his sidearms for backup, Bolan felt ready to meet any challenge Cako might throw at him.

And then some. Damn right.

Watching out for copperheads and timber rattlesnakes along the way, he let Volkova lead him toward the larger serpent’s den.

“YOU SEE?” Arben Kurti said. “All is fine.”

“Of course,” Cako replied, swallowing bitter bile.

“These people are putty in my hands. You must know how to deal with people, Lorik.”

“As you say.”

It might be true their customers were fools, but Cako thought that Kurti was the biggest fool of all. How could he look at Cako with that stupid grin and not feel the radiant heat of his subordinate’s anger? Was he blind?

“You need to get the merchandise ready, Lorik. This lot will be done stuffing their faces soon, and we can’t keep them waiting any longer.”

“I’ll see to it,” Cako replied through clenched teeth. Turning away, he spied Qemal Hoxha and beckoned him across the dining room. A moment later Hoxha was beside him, waiting for instructions.

“Is the merchandise prepared?” Cako asked.

“Ready, as you ordered,” Hoxha answered.

“When the clients finish gorging, they’ll be moving on to the display room. Watch for stragglers and—”

At first, he thought the sound was thunder, but a rattling of glassware told Cako that he was mistaken. He glanced back at Kurti and saw the smile wiped from his face.

An explosion!

Against all logic, Lorik Cako felt a welling of sensation that resembled gratitude. Or was it pure relief?

Could it be true? Had his enemies somehow pursued him here, of all places, arriving at the moment when he needed them?

Was this his golden opportunity to punish them for his humiliation, and to rid himself of Arben Kurti at the same time, with a perfect scapegoat for his treachery?

“Lorik—”

“Forget the women,” Cako snapped at Hoxha. “Get our men together. Now!”

Qemal ran off to call the gunners, just in case some might have missed the first shot of the battle. Cako reached inside his jacket, drew the pistol that he carried in a custom-tailored shoulder holster, holding it against his thigh as he turned back toward Kurti.

Not yet.

Not with all these witnesses.

It would be helpful to him if the foreign customers survived, but that was secondary in his thoughts. Beyond the first imperative of personal survival, Cako focused on eliminating Arben Kurti and his unknown enemies.

As for the latter, he would love to capture one of them alive. Find out exactly who they were—or who they worked for—and report the information to Rahim Berisha as an indication of his competency. Moving on from that point, as the syndicate’s new chieftain in America, Cako could mount a campaign of reprisal.

Seek and find the men responsible.

Destroy them, root and branch.

“Lorik! Come here!” The sound of Kurti’s voice was like sandpaper on his nerves.

“I’m coming,” he responded, putting on a solemn traitor’s face.

THE FIRST GRENADE was Bolan’s wake-up call for Cako and his soldiers. After closing to a range of fifty yards, seeing the limousines and SUVs standing in ranks outside of the Albanian’s pineland retreat, he had decided that a stealthy probe wasn’t the way to go.

So, blood and thunder, then.

The first round was HE, aimed toward the middle SUV in a three-car lineup. All black, all branded with the leaning L inside an oval that denoted Lexus products. The last he’d heard, their prices started around seventy-seven grand and went up from there as the options piled on. None of them had an automatic fire extinguisher, however.

Not that it would’ve done any good.

Bolan’s high-explosive round punched through the middle LX10’s rear window and exploded, shattering the glass on vehicles to left and right before the target SUV’s fuel tank erupted into roiling flames. A lake of fire began to spread beneath the other cars while Bolan sprinted toward the southwest corner of the house, Volkova on his heels.

As planned, the blast brought soldiers pouring from the dwelling. Not all of them, of course. If they had any kind of discipline at all, a sizeable contingent would remain inside to guard their principles and see to any preparations for escape.

If there was any way to flee.

If they had anywhere on Earth to go.

Bolan supposed the men he’d come to kill would think about their homes. Some might give passing thoughts to lovers, wives and children. None of that affected Bolan’s plans or his determination to succeed.

He knew one side of those he hunted, and it was enough. He didn’t care if they loved puppies, said grace over dinner or got dewy-eyed watching an opera. The fact that evil men might have a spark of goodness buried somewhere deep inside wasn’t his personal concern.

Bolan was not their final judge.

He was their judgment.

Another car blew up as Bolan cleared the corner of the house and kept going. He could hear Volkova close behind him, footsteps keeping pace with his, no hint that she was running out of breath or stamina after their long hike through the pines.

That Spetznaz training coming through.

Ahead of them, a door swung open and a swarthy gunman stepped into the roseate light of dawn. Bolan zipped his chest with three rounds from the M-4 carbine, slowing just enough to keep a crimson mist from settling on his face as he brushed past the falling corpse.

The door opened into a mudroom, boots lined up on vinyl flooring, jackets hanging on wall hooks, a metal trash can doubling as an umbrella stand. Bolan covered the room beyond, a kitchen, braced for opposition every step along the way.

And found it when he’d cleared the kitchen doorway, dropping as the loud metallic rattling of an AK-47 stung his eardrums. The rifle’s 7.62 mm bullets chewed their way across the kitchen wall and cabinets, shattering glassware inside. He crouched behind an island in the middle of the kitchen, hoping it was stout enough to stop the next few rounds, no clear idea of where Volkova was or whether she’d been caught framed in the kitchen entryway.

He had to take care of business first, let the lady warrior watch out for herself.

Bolan switched guns again, swapping the M-4 for the shorter but heavier M-32. Aiming would be a problem in his present circumstances, so he pressed a button to collapse the launcher’s stock and thereby shaved eight inches off its total length.

Now it was shorter than a Spectre M-4 submachine gun or Beretta’s famous M-12 model, easier to handle in a cramped space when there was no option for a well-aimed shot.

Nothing to do but let it rip and hope the play paid off.

He pushed off with his feet against the island’s base, cursed when he felt the thing moving, then he was committed, squeezing off his first shot as he glimpsed the doorjamb, triggering a second right behind the first, then rolling back toward cover.

The Kalashnikov stuttered again, but its voice was eclipsed by the hard double slam of explosions nearby. Someone screamed, or he may have imagined it.

Lurching upright, Bolan made for the doorway, plunged through it and into a snapshot of hell.

NATALIA VOLKOVA’S ears were ringing, nearly deafening her, as she vaulted from the kitchen floor to follow the big American through the next doorway in line. She knew where he was going—where he meant to go, at least—but wasn’t sure exactly how to get there.

Cako would have stashed the captive women underground if possible. If not, he’d have them under lock and key upstairs, out of the way until their new prospective owners were prepared to watch another flesh parade. In either case, she and the tall American had to dispose of Cako’s men before they could remove the prisoners.

And then, what?

Set them free to roam New Jersey or America at large, without a source of income or, in some cases, a grasp of English? What would happen to them then? Would it be any better than a sale into the living hell of slavery that she was trying to prevent?

Volkova closed her mind to those considerations, concentrating on the methods and mechanics of survival in a combat zone.

They were outnumbered ten to one, perhaps. Or more? Only surprise and sheer ferocity could save them, now that they had stepped into the dragon’s den.

But would that be enough?

She followed her ally and saw a gunman rising on her left, behind a couch, and spun to drop him with her AKSU-74. One round punched through his cheek, another through his upper lip, and he was nearly headless as he toppled over backward, out of frame.

Ahead of her, another high-explosive charge went off. More men were shouting, cursing in Albanian. And there! Was that a woman’s voice? She thought so, turned to track it with her ringing ears and met another scowling shooter with a pistol leveled at her face.

There was no time to crouch or dodge the shot. Volkova gutted him with 5.45 mm rounds, braced to receive the bullet that would kill her, but the impact of her own rounds spun him like a dervish and his shot went wild, striking a wall or ceiling panel somewhere in the smoky room.

The Russian agent looked for Cooper, saw him disappearing through another doorway, bodies scattered in his wake. She had a choice to make—follow the man, or seek the women on her own.

Another scream decided it.

Volkova wished Matt Cooper well and veered off to pursue the sound, sidestepping corpses as she went. She cleared another doorway, stepped into a hall with doors on either side and waited for another cry.

Closer, this time. Somewhere ahead.

When she had covered half the hallway’s length, one of the doors opened downrange. A gunman stepped into the corridor, didn’t seem to notice her at first, as he was more focused on the man who followed close behind him.

Lorik Cako.

He cursed someone in the room, still out of sight from where Volkova stood, and reached back as if to drag the person through the doorway. Then his gunner saw the Russian and brought all movement to a halt.

“Look out, boss!”

But Cako couldn’t look out. It was too late for that.

Too late for anything.

Volkova cut them down, kept firing even as they fell and after they were on the floor, dead meat twitching from bullet strikes. She caught herself in time to ditch the AKSU’s empty magazine and slip a fresh one into the receiver, then advanced to peer around the doorjamb.

Panicked faces stared back at her, shaded by a stark light overhead. Volkova didn’t bother counting. Didn’t have the time to spare, and couldn’t say how many captives Cako was supposed to have, for starters.

“Come with me,” she said, not knowing if they spoke English or not. She tried Albanian and then Russian before she ran out of languages.

One of them worked, apparently. Huddled together, weeping softly, the women filed out to follow her.

FURIOUS AND frightened at the same time, Arben Kurti lapsed from English back into his native language, raging at the soldiers who surrounded him.

“A diçka!” he demanded, but the broad command to “do something” provided no direction. Failing that, he cursed them, while they hunched their shoulders, hung their heads and took it like submissive children, long inured to rigid discipline.

And, somehow, it actually helped.

Not them, of course. But Kurti suddenly felt better after venting his accumulated anger and frustration. Now, if only he could get his hands on Lorik Cako’s throat and squeeze until the little bastard’s eyes popped out, he would be almost happy once again.

Except for one small detail.

He was in the line of fire from enemies whom he couldn’t identify, and it appeared that they were closing in.

“It’s time to go,” he informed his men but telling them that hardly ensured that they could actually leave the house alive.

If there were enemies outside…

Kurti moved to the nearest window, crouching there, and peered into the pale morning. He saw no gunmen waiting there, from either side, but the three Lexus SUVs that had delivered Kurti and his team to Cako’s hideaway were burning, spewing oily smoke across the landscape.

Never mind.

The nearest of the limousines was still intact. If they could reach that car and get it started, they could still escape. Let Cako deal with the attackers. It was his place, after all, and he’d been after Kurti for the past two years, begging for more authority.

Would there be keys in the limos?

Kurti grabbed his nearest soldier by one arm and ordered him to check the car for keys. “Signal if you can start it, and we’ll join you.”

The young man bobbed his head, muttered, “Yes, sir,” and made a beeline for the nearest exit.

Seconds later, Kurti saw him jogging toward the limousines, looking around in all directions as he moved, squinting against the smoke. He reached the nearest vehicle, opened the driver’s door and leaned inside. A moment later, he was facing toward the house, thumb raised above a clenched fist in the universal sign of victory.

“Come on!” Kurti snapped at the rest. “We’re leaving this cursed place to the rats.”

And it did seem to be cursed. Kurti had heard the grim Pine Barrens legends. Surely, it had been bad luck for those he’d executed there, as an example to the rest of his subordinates. Now, somehow, it was coming back to haunt him.

But Kurti had found his escape hatch.

He would beat the curse, yet.

One of his soldiers led the way outside, the others taking up positions that would shield their chief from incoming fire as they moved toward the limo. They were halfway there, his point man urging them to hurry, when it happened.

Suddenly, with just an unobtrusive popping sound for warning, a grenade lofted above and past them, detonating as it struck the long black limousine dead-on. One second, Kurti’s rifleman was waiting for them by the vehicle; the next, he was a flaming scarecrow, dancing in a lake of fire.

Kurti cursed, and his soldiers turned to face their enemy. It startled him to find a single man confronting them, and hope sparked in his chest before the stranger’s automatic rifle started spitting death among them, toppling Arben Kurti’s human shields.

At last he was alone, with nothing left to do but close his eyes and wait for death.

The house he’d fled seemed strangely silent now.

A heartbeat later, darkness swallowed him.

BOLAN HEARD female voices coming up behind him, turned to face them with his finger on the M-4’s trigger, then relaxed. Volkova, trailed by thirteen women clad in terry robes and rubber flip-flops, focused on the bodies strewed across the parking area.

“So Kurti made the party,” she remarked.

“I think it disappointed him,” Bolan replied.

“Cako’s inside,” the Russian said. “He didn’t want to let these go, but I persuaded him.”

“The buyers?” Bolan asked.

“No sign of them. I hoped you might have found them. I suppose we’ll have to go back in.”

“No need for that,” Bolan said, as he broke the Milkor’s cylinder and started to remove spent cartridges, dropping them at his feet. “I brought some party favors for the housewarming.”

He filled the empty chambers with alternating HE rounds and pyrotechnic cartridges, closed the cylinder and stepped aside to give himself a clear shot past the huddled, frightened women. All of them stood watching as he raised the grenade launcher and started firing, putting hot rounds through the windows of the house where they had been confined most recently.

Ear-spanking HE blasts covered the pop and hiss of his incendiary rounds inside the house, but flames quickly took hold. He waited until smoke was billowing from the shattered windows, half expecting some of Cako’s customers to break for daylight, but they didn’t show.

So be it.

“Do you think they found some way out through the back?” Volkova asked.

“It’s fifty-fifty,” Bolan said. “If they’re out wandering around the barrens, we can leave them to the state police. If they’re inside…”

He didn’t need to finish it and didn’t plan to wait around for stragglers. Even in the barrens, the smoke signals raised by Cako’s burning house and cars would draw attention. Bolan planned to call it in himself, once they were on the road. Fire-fighters should be on the scene in time to save the woods.

But not any survivors hiding in the house.

“What should we do with these women?” Volkova asked.

Bolan surveyed the former prisoners and said, “They won’t fit in the Porsche.”

Volkova frowned and said, “Perhaps the barn? It seems safe from the fire.”

“Let’s check it out.”

They crossed the smoky open ground together, found the barn unlocked and pulled its broad front door aside on creaking rollers. It was relatively clean inside, a farm tractor standing in the central aisle between two rows of empty stalls. An ancient hint of animal manure lingered in the air.

“Suit you?” he asked.

“They should be safe here while they wait for the police,” Volkova said.

“Okay by me.”

“And then our work is finished here?” she asked.

“Here,” he agreed. “But I’m not finished yet.”

“Where, then?”

“I’m following the pipeline home,” Bolan explained.

“It’s a coincidence,” Volkova said. “I’m going back that way, myself.”

“Free country,” Bolan said, and stood back while she led her thirteen charges inside the barn.

CHAPTER SIX

Kombinat, Tirana, Albania

Rahim Berisha hated to receive bad news. That quality didn’t set him apart from any other person on the planet, but his temperament and reputation made his various associates leery of breaking news Berisha might not wish to hear.

Killing the messenger, for him, was more than a cliché.

Still, problems had to be recognized, examined—and, if possible, resolved. The first step toward a solution was admission that a failure had occurred.

Berisha slept till noon most days, as a concession to his night-prowling lifestyle. Most days, his business was concluding as the sun rose, driving the nocturnal folk back into hiding.

Pimps and whores. Drug addicts and compulsive gamblers. Thieves and smugglers.

All were creatures of the night. Berisha’s people.

No. They were his subjects.

In the afternoons, he dealt with daylight dwellers: politicians and police, judges and lawyers, so-called “honest” businessmen who came to him with hats in hand and open palms outstretched for money.

Everyone Berisha knew craved something. It was human nature, and the failing of his race. That understanding had already made him rich beyond his childhood’s wildest dreams.

And in the months to come, he would grow richer still.

Unless someone spoiled it for him.

That was always possible, of course. Berisha might be rich and powerful, a cunning strategist and ruthless fighter, but was not superhuman. He couldn’t be in two places simultaneously, much less several hundred places, supervising every transaction carried out by his subordinates.

A leader had to delegate authority, which meant he had to trust the people he had placed in charge of different tasks and territories. Those subordinates had to fear him more than they feared loss of cash and status. More than they feared prison.

More than they feared sudden death.

His servants had to be constantly aware that failing him, betraying him, would bring about worse punishment than anything their adversaries could devise—a screaming death that might go on for days.

Berisha understood, therefore, how Zef Kaceli felt when he came knocking on the study door and said, “There’s another call from the United States.”

Kaceli added an apology and said, “Line one, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Berisha braced himself as he picked up the telephone, depressed the lighted button for line one, and said, “Hello.”

He didn’t recognize the voice that answered him, wasn’t expected to, in fact. The caller introduced himself as Ali Dushku and the name clicked instantly. Dushku was Arben Kurti’s chief lieutenant in the far-off territory of New Jersey, U.S.A.

“What is it, Ali?” Berisha asked, taking pains to keep it casual, while he was calculating time zones. Half past noon in Tirana made it 6:30 a.m. along the eastern seaboard of America.

Dushku made a pathetic gulping sound, as people did sometimes to clear their throats before delivering dire news. And well he might, since this news was the very worst.

Arben Kurti was dead, along with Lorik Cako and at least two dozen of their soldiers. Federal agents and police were picking up the pieces, questioning whatever stragglers they could find. A second large, expensive property had been destroyed by unknown enemies who came and went as if they were invisible.

“What of the clients?” Berisha asked, all business to the bitter end.

“Missing,” Dushku replied. “Most likely dead. The house burned down. They may have been inside it.”

“And the merchandise?”

“Recovered by police.”

Of course. Perfect.

“I’m sorry,” Dushku blurted out. “Arben insisted I remain in Newark. If I’d been there, sir—”

“Then you would be a corpse,” Berisha interrupted him. “I would be learning of your death from someone else.”

Dushku fell silent then, waiting.

“Avoid contact with the police if possible,” Berisha ordered. “If they find you, tell them nothing. Since you weren’t with Kurti, you can’t tell them what became of him. As for the customers and merchandise, you know nothing.”

“Nothing. Yes, sir.”

“Give me your cell-phone number.”

Dushku did as he was told. Berisha memorized the number, as he had so many others. An eidetic memory was priceless in the world of crime, where written records were a threat to liberty or life itself. Albania had ratified Protocol Number 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2007, forbidding capital punishment under any circumstances, but life in prison was no life at all.

Control of evidence and witnesses was critical.

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