CRIMEAN DEADLOCK

Ukrainian militants are the initial suspects in a terrorist attack on Washington, DC, until rumors surface suggesting Moscow was behind the bombing. But the investigation only raises more questions. Was the attack an attempt to mute US criticism of Russia, or a call to action to help suppress Ukrainian dissidents? Only one man can solve the riddle and mete out appropriate punishment: Mack Bolan.

From Manhattan’s Little Ukraine to the war-torn country itself, Bolan blazes a path of truth and justice to neutralize the threat...and prevent another slaughter on American soil even as the danger increases with enemies and allies emerging on both sides of the Crimean conflict. But the Executioner is no middleman; he has his own war to fight, and he won’t stop until his opponents are ashes.

Brusilov made it easy for him by trying to escape in the cruiser.

Bolan’s sniper’s mind ticked off the necessary calculations in a heartbeat: range, velocity, the distance he would have to lead his target for a hit.

He took a breath, released half of it, held the rest. His index finger curled around the Remington’s trigger, eased it back until he felt it break, then rode the recoil, eye glued to the reticle.

Downrange, a burst of scarlet splashed over the cruiser’s dashboard. Without a seat belt to restrain him, Brusilov slumped to the right and out of Bolan’s view.

Bolan didn’t stick around to see what happened when the cops arrived. He had removed the viper’s head, and while it would inevitably sprout a new one, that was not his concern this night.

The Executioner had another hand to play in the East Village, and he was already running late.

Terrorist Dispatch

The Executioner® Don Pendleton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.

—Napoleon I, Maxims

I reason with fanatics in the only language they understand.

—Mack Bolan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Legend

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Lincoln Memorial, National Mall, Washington, DC

The choice was obvious, when Oleg Banakh thought about it. Six million tourists viewed the shrine each year, according to the pamphlet he had studied while preparing for his final day on Earth. That averaged out to—what? Well over sixteen thousand visiting on any given day, year-round.

He had to kill only a fraction of that number to secure his place in history.

The homemade vest that Banakh wore beneath his thrift-shop raincoat made his neck and shoulders cramp, but it was fleeting, temporary pain. Each of its six hand-stitched pockets contained five pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, bristling with old rusty nails, screws, nuts and bolts added to serve as shrapnel. A nine-volt battery hung between his shoulder blades. Its wires snaked out to half a dozen detonators, twin leads trailing down his left sleeve to the simple detonator switch that dangled from Banakh’s cuff. Add the Mini-Uzi slung over his right shoulder, also beneath the coat, with extra magazines filling his pants pockets, and Banakh was packing more than forty pounds of sudden death on this bright autumn afternoon.

The detonator, he had been assured, was considered foolproof. It had two colored plastic buttons: green to arm the system, red to detonate the charges Banakh carried, blasting him to smithereens and Paradise, while any enemies within the killing radius received a one-way ticket to their special place in hell.

It was intended that he use the Mini-Uzi first, exhaust the magazines he carried if he had the chance, without allowing Secret Service agents or police to take him down before he had unleashed the C-4 storm. Gunshots would scatter any tourists who survived the first ferocious fusillade, but they would also draw in law-enforcement officers, ranging from street patrolmen to the special units that abounded in the nation’s capital, protecting the fat, decadent servants of the Great Satan.

Folded inside the raincoat’s deep interior breast pocket was the manifesto of his cause, three pages typed, meticulously spell-checked, all inserted in a plastic sleeve designed to keep the message safe amid the storm of battle.

Those who came to kill Banakh would be dealing with the other members of his team: five seasoned fighters armed with automatic weapons, each man prepared—make that expecting—to be killed before the sun went down.

A loyal member of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Banakh knelt before the huge statue of Lincoln, mouthed a silent prayer, then rose and set the manifesto carefully in place, well back between the giant’s shoes, where it would not be damaged by the detonation of his vest or gunshots fired into the monument by officers outside. The message would survive, and if no one took heed, their foolishness would only bring more grief upon their heads, upon their families.

Banakh turned to face bright sunshine on the steps where Martin Luther King once stood and spoke of dreams unrealized. His hands trembled as he unfastened the buttons of his raincoat, drawing back the right flap so that he could grasp the Mini-Uzi on its shoulder sling. A woman standing nearby had watched Banakh curiously as he’d prayed. Now she clutched her male companion’s arm and shouted, “He’s got a gun!”

“I do,” he told her. “And you haven’t seen anything yet.”

* * *

EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM lieutenant Rick Malone was wolfing down a meatball sub at a sandwich shop on 18th Street Northwest when his radio squawked to announce shots fired at the Lincoln Memorial.

Malone left his lunch on the table and ran to his cruiser, then gunned it from his parking space with the rooftop light bar already flashing, his siren winding up before he palmed the dashboard microphone and cut into the storm of chatter.

“ERT Malone responding to the shooting from the eleven hundred block of 18th Street Northwest. My ETA is ten minutes, with any luck.”

“Copy that, Lieutenant,” the dispatcher answered back. “Your team’s en route.”

Ten minutes if his luck held, and how many tourists would be killed or wounded in that span of time? Malone knew that depended largely on the shooter’s choice of weapons, his—or her—proficiency with firearms, and the quantity of ammunition he—or she—was packing. In the country’s present state, its fever pitch of anger, coupled with an obsessive love of lethal toys, Malone knew damn near anyone could snap at any time, for reasons only a psychiatrist could grasp.

Traffic was typically congested on the route Malone had chosen to the Mall, yielding reluctantly to lights and siren, slowing his progress toward the scene where people might be dying, even as he swerved around slow-moving trucks and buses, startled rubber-necking tourists, and sent cyclists clad in racing outfits veering toward the sidewalk. Three blocks out, with his window down, Malone could hear the loud snap-crackle-pop of automatic weapons fire. And not a single weapon, either, but a full-blown symphony of death.

* * *

OLEG BANAKH HAD watched two of his comrades die and wished them rapid transit into Heaven. The other three had found a measure of concealment—two in shrubbery around the monument’s retaining wall, the third behind one of its massive Doric columns. Banakh was inside, crouched between the giant seated statue and one of the columns that divided the memorial’s interior into three distinct chambers. Half a dozen bodies lay unmoving where they’d fallen when he’d gunned them down, and more were draped upon the marble steps outside.

Not bad for one day’s work, but Banakh and his team were not finished yet.

He had already put the manifesto in its place. Now all he had to do was to wait for reinforcements to arrive, with television crews, before he took his last walk in the sun.

His mission was already a success for the most part. That was obvious from the wailing sirens, the flashing lights, the vehicles and personnel from half a dozen law-enforcement agencies gathered outside, below the memorial’s staircase. More cars and vans, more uniforms and guns, were rolling in each moment. Banakh welcomed them, hoping a fair percentage of the officers would find their way inside the C-4’s lethal zone.

So far, only a scattering of shots had been directed toward his hiding place, the shooters swiftly chastised by superiors. Banakh knew that his enemies revered their monuments to fallen leaders, drawing vicarious pleasure from the heroism that eluded them in daily life. Most would never join a righteous cause or fire a shot in anger, but it pleased them to recall that others of their species, long since dead and gone, had done great things.

This day, that changed.

Banakh glanced at his watch and saw that it was time for him to die. Smiling because his destiny had nearly run its course, he rose, clutching the detonator in his left hand, the freshly loaded Mini-Uzi in his right. His bullets might not reach the cars below, or any of the officers crouched behind them, but he hoped to keep their heads down, with some help from his surviving comrades.

All he needed was one final, shining moment on the stage, before he vaporized and vanished into history.

“Slukhay mene!” he shouted as he cleared the shadows, blushing with embarrassment before he caught himself and translated from Ukrainian. “Listen to me!”

Downrange below him, scores of faces watched from behind a hedge of weapons. Banakh started down the marble steps, ignoring calls for him to drop his weapon.

“Today,” he bellowed, “you have an opportunity to learn from past mistakes!”

The first shot struck low, an inch or so above his groin. Banakh began to fall, grimacing as he pressed the detonator’s bright red button and his world dissolved into a blast of white-hot light.

* * *

FIVE MINUTES LATER it was done. The three remaining shooters rushed the Secret Service line, spraying full-auto fire, and died without inflicting any casualties. Rick Malone moved up among them as the echoes faded, breathing the burned-powder smell of battle with an undertone of copper from the terrorists’ blood spilled on the steps.

Or make that sprayed, where their apparent leader had been vaporized as he went down.

The blast had partially deafened Malone. Shouting orders to his ERT team, hearing them answer as they stormed the monument to clear it, he had time to worry whether that would be a permanent condition. That would mean restricted duty, if it didn’t bump him off the job entirely, and he gladly would have kicked the bomber’s lifeless ass if any part of it were left intact.

One of his agents stepped back into sunlight, calling down to him. The muffled voice announced, “Got something you should look at, Lieut.”

“What’s that?” Malone called back.

“Looks like the crazy bastards left a note.”

1

Lincoln Memorial, One day later

What a difference a day made. Twenty-four hours after what the media was calling “the worst massacre in the capital’s history,” Mack Bolan saw few traces of the carnage that had taken place. There were a few chips in the marble columns, which the reparation crew had yet to patch, but otherwise the monument appeared pristine: no blood, no scorch marks from a C-4 blast, no lingering stench of explosives or offal to send tourists scurrying off to the next attraction. An untrained eye would never guess that nineteen people had been killed here, terrorists included, or that fifteen more were suffering at hospitals around the city, four of them unlikely to survive.

The monument had changed, however. There was no denying that.

Throughout the day and night preceding his arrival, Bolan saw that visitors had thronged the place, likely eclipsing any turnout for a single day since it was dedicated, back in 1922. Many had come, he knew, to capture photographs before the site was purged of bloody residue, although the Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police would have restrained the ghouls and kept them at a distance. Later, with the cleanup done, a pilgrimage had started, lasting through the night, not finished yet.

The signs were obvious. Along the rising steps, flanking a path left clear for any visitors who felt a need to go inside, mourners had left floral bouquets and wreaths in wild profusion, many bearing cards. Besides the flowers, other tokens had been left, as well: a dozen teddy bears in different hues and sizes, for the children who had fallen; Bibles, some of them left open to highlighted passages; sealed letters that would be removed, likely unread, expressing sorrow, rage and empty promises of retribution; several pairs of baby shoes; and standing tall amid the jumble, wholly out of place, a plastic pink flamingo.

Who could truly claim to understand the human heart?

It was approaching twelve o’clock, a normal workday, but there was still a crowd in front of the memorial. They stood in silence, for the most part, several of them gently swaying as if caught up in some private rapture, most just staring at the scene where people they would never know had died under the gun.

It struck Bolan that this was now a double monument of sorts. In the short run, before the public’s brief attention span expired, it represented both a martyred President who sacrificed himself to save a fractured nation, and a group of strangers who, by accident, had stained a page of history with their life’s blood. Their memory would fade, of course, as new atrocities demanded airing in prime time. The previous day’s slaughter would be relegated to a thirty-second sound bite aired on anniversaries, for the next three years or so, until it lost all relevance to anyone except the wounded and immediate survivors of the dead.

“Bitchin’,” a voice said, almost at his elbow. “Man, I wish we’d seen it.”

Bolan half turned, taking in a pair of pimply teenage boys who should have been in school. They would have ditched to taste a bit of modern history, unmindful of its import. Raised on mindless action films and video games, they had no concept of mayhem beyond what they saw as entertainment value.

Bolan could have dropped them both without breaking a sweat. Two punches, lightning fast, and they would learn the stark reality of pain—albeit just a taste—but what would be the point? He couldn’t save the wasted dregs of a lost generation, even if he’d been inclined to try.

And he had other work to do.

His visit to the killing ground was not coincidence. He hadn’t been in town on other business—hadn’t decided on a detour to sate his morbid curiosity. In fact, he’d crossed the continent to be there, flying through the night from San Francisco, but it wasn’t any kind of gesture to the dead.

He was expected there, at noon, and had arrived ahead of time, as was his habit. That gave Bolan time to scan the crowd and traffic flowing on Lincoln Memorial Circle, checking for traps, looking for enemies. It was the way he lived, although in this case it was wasted effort. Only one man living knew he would be in the nation’s capital this day, and that man was a trusted friend.

As for his enemies of old, the few who still survived, none even knew he was alive. Bolan had “died” some years ago, quite publicly—on live TV, in fact—and every trace of him had been expunged from law-enforcement files across the country, a concerted purge that left no file intact. If one of his remaining foes from yesteryear should pass him on the street this day, or sit beside him in a dingy bar somewhere, they wouldn’t recognize his face or wonder, even for a heartbeat, if he still might be alive.

For all intents and purposes, he had ceased to exist.

Which didn’t mean he was a ghost, by any means. He could reach out and touch his foes anytime he wanted to. Then they became the ghosts.

“It’s something, eh?” a new voice, at his other elbow, said.

“Something,” Bolan granted, with a sidelong glance at his friend Hal Brognola, who was a high-ranking honcho in the Justice Department.

“Let’s take a walk,” the big Fed said.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Bolan replied.

They walked, clearing the crowd of pilgrims, moving east toward the Reflecting Pool that stretched for more than one-third of a mile through the heart of the National Mall, between the Lincoln Memorial and the towering Washington Monument. Brognola waited until they had some breathing room before he spoke again.

“You’ve followed all of this, I guess.”

“I caught some of the live footage in Frisco,” Bolan said, “and got the rest while I was in the air. They talked about Ukrainians on CNN.”

“And they were right, for once.”

“Some kind of manifesto left behind?”

“That leaked out of the Capital Police,” Brognola groused. “When I find out who let it slip, there will be consequences.”

Bolan let that go by, waiting for Brognola to fill him in. Another moment passed before his second-oldest living friend asked, “How much do you know about the war that they’ve got going in Ukraine?”

“Started in April 2014,” Bolan answered, “spinning off their February revolution against what’s-his-name, Yanukovych?”

“That’s him.”

“Russia weighed in to crush protests against the old regime, and that caused wider rifts within the government. By March, pro-Russian mobs were clashing with antigovernment marchers all over the country, organizing paramilitary outfits on both sides. Russian regulars crossed the border in August, then they tried a cease-fire in September. Didn’t get far with it. In November, separatists won a big election in the eastern sector, a place that sounds like ‘Dumbass.’”

“Donbass,” Brognola corrected, smiling.

“Right. Which brought pro-Russian forces out in strength, supposedly directed by more regulars the Russian president was slipping in illegally.”

“Forget ‘supposedly,’” Brognola said. “He’s in it up to his eyebrows.”

“So, today you’ve got militias, warlords, regulars, all at each other’s throats, with normal folks caught in the middle. Russian troops are massed along the border, and Ukraine’s responding in kind. Is that about the size of it?”

The big Fed nodded, then asked another question. “What about Crimea?”

“A peninsula south of Ukraine and east of Russia,” Bolan said, feeling a bit as if he was back in his ninth grade geography class. “Disputed territory going back through history, for its strategic value. Seaports and natural gas fields. A majority of the population are ethnic Russians, but Ukrainians controlled the government until they got distracted by their February revolution. In March, something like 96 percent of voters backed a referendum to split with Ukraine and become part of Russia. The UN and the European Union ruled the referendum fraudulent. Russian regulars ‘temporarily’ occupied Crimea in April and haven’t gone home yet. Pro-Ukrainian resistance groups are putting up a fight.”

“Correct,” Brognola said. “Which brings us back to yesterday. The pricks who pulled it off claimed affiliation with the Right Sector, a Ukrainian nationalist party founded in November 2013. Depending on who you ask, their political orientation ranges from ultra-conservative to neo-fascist. They call their paramilitary arm the Volunteered Ukrainian Corps. It acts in conjunction with terrorist groups such as White Hammer, accused of perpetrating war crimes.”

“What’s their angle in the States?” Bolan inquired.

“Long story short, they’ve been clamoring for military aid, getting nowhere with Congress or the White House—one rare thing that the White House and Republicans agree on. Their half-assed manifesto boils down to a blackmail note. More incidents like yesterday unless we arm their side and put them on a par with Russia’s regulars.”

“Which isn’t happening,” Bolan surmised.

“Not even close.”

“They need discouraging.”

“And then some,” Brognola confirmed. “Our only lead, so far, is to an outfit in Manhattan’s East Village led by a transplanted gangster named Stepan Melnyk.”

“Never heard of him,” Bolan said.

“I’m not surprised. He swings a big stick in Little Ukraine there, but he hasn’t made much headway so far, butting heads with the russkaya mafiya operating out of Brighton Beach. Melnyk says he’s apolitical, of course, but ATF’s connected him to gunrunning between New Jersey and Kiev.”

“Why don’t they bust him?”

“It’s all tenuous, as usual. The Coast Guard grabbed a shipment six or seven months ago, some hardware stolen from Fort Dix, but nothing in the paperwork could hang Melnyk. If his small fry take a fall, they keep their mouths shut. Or they die. Simple and tidy.”

“And you think he armed the crew from yesterday?”

“Call it a hunch. We know he’s in communication with his old homeboys. From there, it’s just a short step to the Right Sector.”

“I’ll need more details,” Bolan said.

“I’ve got you covered.” Brognola removed a memory stick from an inside pocket of his coat and handed it to Bolan. “Everything we have is on there—Melnyk and the Russian opposition, Stepan’s buddies in the old country. If you have any questions...”

“I know where to find you,” Bolan said.

“Still doing business at the same old stand,” Brognola said.

“I’ll leave tonight, after I pick up some equipment.”

“Going to load up at the Farm?” the big Fed inquired. In addition to his Justice Department duties, Brognola was the director of the clandestine Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

“Nope. But I’ll stock up in Virginia. It keeps things simple.”

“Glory, hallelujah. So, you’re driving up?”

“Three hours, give or take. I’ll be in town by dinnertime.”

“Bon appétit,” Brognola said.

Arlington, Virginia

VIRGINIA WAS ADMIRED or hated for its gun laws, all depending on a person’s point of view. No permit was required to purchase any firearm, or to carry one exposed within a public venue. Permits were required to carry hidden pistols—unless, of course, it was stashed in the glove compartment of a person’s car, in which case it was permissible. Background checks on out-of-state buyers was a measly five dollars, conducted by computer at the time of sale without a pesky waiting period, which made the Old Dominion State a magnet for gangbangers throughout the Northeast.

Bolan had no problem at the gun shop he selected, located in a strip mall on Washington Boulevard. He walked in with cash and a New York driver’s license in the name of Matthew Cooper, who had no arrests, convictions, or outstanding warrants listed with Virginia’s state police or the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. Twenty minutes later he walked out with a Colt AR-15 carbine; a Remington Model 700 rifle chambered in .300 Magnum Winchester ammo, mounted with a Leupold Mark 4 LR/T 3.5-10 x 40 mm scope; a Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun; a Glock 23 pistol chambered in .40 S&W ammo, plus a shoulder holster and enough spare rounds and magazines to start a war.

Which was exactly what he had in mind.

Before he started, though, he needed sustenance and information. For the food, he chose a drive-through burger joint two blocks away from the gun store, bought three cheeseburgers with everything, a chocolate shake and fries. He chowed down in the parking lot, his laptop open on the shotgun seat, and reviewed Brognola’s files, which provided background information on the outfit he was tackling.

First up was Stepan Melnyk in Manhattan’s East Village, a neighborhood known as “Little Ukraine” for its latest influx of expatriates. Melnyk was forty-five, had served time in the old country for armed assault and smuggling contraband, then came to test his mettle in a brave new world. Like most immigrant gangsters, he began by preying on his fellow countrymen, running protection rackets, muscling storeowners to carry smuggled cigarettes and liquor, anything that might have fallen off a truck on any given day. From there, he had expanded into drugs and prostitution, human trafficking, gunrunning—all the staples of an up-and-coming hardman yearning to breathe free.

His number two was thirty-five-year-old Dmytro Levytsky—“Dimo” to his friends—another ex-con from Ukraine who blamed his arrests back home on political persecution. The State Department had been mulling over his petition for asylum for the past four years, which Bolan took as evidence that they were either being paid to let him stay, or else were mentally incompetent—a possibility he couldn’t automatically rule out, based on his personal experience with members of that sage department’s staff.

Opposing Melnyk’s effort to expand was one Alexey Brusilov, lately of Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave at the southern tip of Brooklyn, on the shore of Sheepshead Bay. Most people didn’t know the bay was named for a breed of fish, not a decapitated ruminant. Mack Bolan had acquired that bit of information somewhere and it had risen to the forefront of his mind unbidden.

Brusilov was well established in his Brooklyn fiefdom, had defeated two indictments on assorted federal charges, and was well connected to the Solntsevskaya Bratva outfit based in Moscow, boasting some nine thousand members that the FBI could list by name. He was a stone-cold killer, though no one had ever proved it in a court of law, and had impressed New York’s Five Families enough to forge a treaty of collaboration with them, rather than engaging in a messy, pointless turf war that would be good for nobody. The Russian’s stock in trade was much the same as Stepan Melnyk’s: drugs and guns, women and gambling, neighborhood extortion, smuggling anyone or anything that could be packed into a semi trailer for the long haul.

Brusilov’s most able second in command was Georgy Vize, a young enforcer who was said to favor blades but didn’t mind a good old-fashioned gunfight if the odds were on his side. He was a person of interest in three unsolved murders, but willing witnesses in Brighton Beach were an endangered species. Raised from birth to mistrust the police at home, they’d had no better luck with New York’s finest on arrival in the Big Apple and mostly kept their stories to themselves.

Why stick your neck out, when the mobsters only killed each other, anyway?

And if they iced one of your neighbors by mistake, that was life.

Bolan saw opportunity in the uneasiness between Melnyk and Brusilov. It was the kind of rift that he could work with, maybe widen and exploit with careful handling, playing one side off against the other. War was bad for business in the underworld, but it was good for Bolan, just as long as he could keep the blood from slopping over onto innocents.

And that could be a problem, sure, since neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians were known for their discrimination when the bullets started to fly. Where an older generation of the Mob had certain basic rules, albeit often honored more in the breach than in the observance, Baltic gangs had more in common with outlaws from south of the border. They were full-bore savages, respecters of no one and nothing, as likely to wipe out a family as to bide their time and take down one offending member on his own.

So Bolan had his work cut out for him, and that was nothing new.

He finished off his last burger and hit the road.

Northbound on Interstate 95

THE MAIN DRAG from Washington, DC, to New York City was the I-95, a more or less straight shot for 225 miles, four hours’ steady driving at the posted legal speed.

Bolan used the travel time to think and plan, which were not necessarily the same thing. Planning was a kind of thinking, sure, but it required at least some basic information on terrain, opposing personnel, police proximity and average response time. Even weather factored in. A wild-ass warrior pulling raids with nothing in his head but hope and good intentions might as well eliminate the middleman and simply shoot himself.

Bolan’s rented Mazda CX-5 had a full tank when he started rolling north from Washington, meaning he wouldn’t have to stop along the way. He wore the Glock and had his long guns on the floor behind the driver’s seat, concealed inside a cheap golf bag he’d bought in Arlington, midway between the gun shop and the burger joint. The small crossover SUV had GPS and cruise control, two less things for him to think about while he was looking forward to the shitstorm in New York.

Brognola’s digital files included various addresses and phone numbers, both for Melnyk’s gang and Brusilov’s, along with photos of the major players on both sides. Bolan could find their homes and hangouts when he needed to, plot them on Google Maps and make his final recon when he reached the target sites, to maximize results and minimize civilian risks. An app on Bolan’s smartphone had the city’s precinct houses plotted for easy reference and made him wonder, as he always did, how seventy-seven patrol districts wound up being numbered 1 through 123.

Go figure.

He had certain basic limitations, going in. Bolan’s weapon selection in Virginia covered close assaults and sniping from a distance, but he’d had no access to explosives or Class III weapons: full-auto, suppressors and so on. He could absolutely work with what he had and make it count, but tools dictated tactics on the battlefield, as much as the terrain and numbers on the opposition’s side.

The good news: Bolan had a built-in conflict he could work with, Russians and Ukrainians reflecting the eternal strife between their homelands. They had lit the fuse already. Bolan’s challenge was to keep it sizzling, fan the flames and do his utmost to direct the final blast so that it damaged only those deserving retribution.

Making things more difficult, while waging war on two fronts, was the fact that Bolan also had to gather intel on Stepan Melnyk’s connection to the massacre in Washington. If the man had supplied the tools, as Hal suspected, was it strictly business, a labor of love, or a mixture of both?

Behind that question lurked a larger one. The conflict in Ukraine had been confused from the beginning, talking heads on television squabbling over whether Russia planned the whole thing as a power play or simply took advantage of a split within its former subject country. On the ground inside Ukraine and in Crimea, both sides longed for US intervention to assist in the destruction of their enemies, but military aid had been withheld so far, as much because of gridlock in DC as obvious concern about the right or wrong of it.

Could the attack in Washington have been a false flag operation? Viewed from one perspective, it made sense: unleash a handful of Ukrainian fanatics in the US capital, to swing the people and the government against their side. Whether America weighed in against the rebels overseas with military force or simply closed its eyes to Russia’s not-so-covert moves against them, the result would be identical, handing the independence movement yet another grim defeat.

That wasn’t Bolan’s problem, on the face of it. He couldn’t solve the troubles in Ukraine that dated back to sixteen-hundred-something, any more than he could cure the common cold. Bolan was not a diplomat, much less a peacekeeper. He was a man of war—The Executioner—and he had a specific job to do, first in New York, then following the bloody bread crumbs eastward, settling accounts as he proceeded.

By the time Bolan got to Newark, he had a sequence of events in mind. It was a plan of sorts, but flexible, bearing in mind that things would start to shift and change the moment that he squeezed a trigger for the first time. Nothing would be static, much less guaranteed. The battle would unfold, and Bolan would be swept along with it, correcting course whenever he could manage to, otherwise going with the flow until it crested and the losers drowned in blood.

It was familiar territory. Names and faces changed, but otherwise it felt like coming home.

2

East Village, Manhattan

The hub of Ukrainian culture in New York City—known for decades as “Little Ukraine”—was located in the neighborhood of East Village. An estimated sixty thousand immigrants inhabited the area immediately after World War II, and while that population dispersed throughout Manhattan’s five boroughs over time, two-thirds of the city’s eighty thousand ethnic Ukrainians still remained in the old neighborhood, with its familiar markets, restaurants and shops, dwelling in the shadows cast by All Saints Ukrainian Orthodox Church and St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Like any other group of new arrivals, from the first European colonists to the latest Hispanic and Afro-Caribbean waves, the vast majority of Ukrainian immigrants were hardworking, law-abiding individuals with nothing on their minds except adapting to the land of opportunity. And just as certainly, a small minority were criminals at home, maintaining that tradition in the country they had adopted.

Mack Bolan had his sights fixed on that clique, as he launched his campaign in Little Ukraine on a crisp autumn evening, around the dinner hour.

His target, chosen from the list Hal Brognola had provided, was a restaurant on East Sixth Street, halfway down toward Avenue B. The place was called The Hungry Wolf, known as a favored hangout for the thugs who served Stepan Melnyk. Bolan’s drive-by recon had revealed that the restaurant was closed to walk-in diners for a private party. Two men on the door guaranteed that no tourists wandered in by accident.

Was it a celebration of the carnage in DC? Some kind of session called to lay out future strategy? Or did the outfit gather periodically to let off steam after a hard week of extortion in the neighborhood?

No matter. They were in for a surprise, regardless of the reason for their banquet.

Bolan perched atop a seven-story office building opposite The Hungry Wolf, with a clear view inside the restaurant through two large plate-glass windows. Peering through the Leupold sight mounted on his Remington bolt-action rifle, he felt almost like a guest invited to the party, moving in among the four-and six-man tables, touching-close but unseen by the men whose night he meant to spoil.

For some, it would be their last night on Earth.

The Model 700 was not designed with war in mind, though Remington did sell a special “Entry Package” model for urban police departments, and the US Army had adopted an altered version, dubbed the M24 Sniper Weapon System in military speak, for long-range use in combat. Bolan’s civilian version held four .300 Winchester Magnum rounds, one in the chamber and three in a round-hinged floorplate magazine. Its barrel measured twenty-four inches and could send a 220-grain bullet downrange at a velocity of 2,850 feet per second, striking with 3,908 foot-pounds of cataclysmic energy.

All good news for a sniper on the go.

Bolan had been in place awhile, spotting the restaurant’s arrivals as they entered, scanning faces already seated at tables when he took his post. Stepan Melnyk was nowhere to be seen, but Dmytro Levytsky was making the rounds, slapping shoulders and laughing at jokes from his soldiers, here and there bending to whisper in ears. A maître d’ in a tuxedo loitered on the sidelines, muttering to waiters as they passed, dispersing drinks and appetizers. No one on the staff looked happy to be there, but they were working quietly, efficiently, focused entirely on the task at hand, avoiding eye contact with any of their customers.

Bolan did not plan a sustained attack, his first time out, but he had four spare cartridges lined up beside him on the rooftop for a quick reload if time allowed. The shooting would be loud, and there’d be no mistaking it for anything mundane, such as a vehicle’s backfire in the street. Once he began, there’d be no stopping until Bolan disengaged and fled the scene, hopefully well ahead of any armed pursuit.

He scoped the two hardmen on the entrance first, decided not to kill them yet, and let the Leupold scope take him inside The Hungry Wolf. He felt like one himself, at times, when it was time to thin the herd of savages who preyed on so-called civilized society. He wasn’t bloodthirsty and hadn’t killed out of anger since the first strike that avenged his family, many years ago, but there was no denying that eliminating vicious predators lifted a weight from Bolan’s soul, if only temporarily.

So many goons, so little time.

He chose a laughing face at random, framed it with the Leupold’s reticle, inhaled and let half of the breath escape as he began the trigger squeeze.

* * *

AT FIRST, DIMO LEVYTSKY thought some stupid tweaker high on meth had lost his mind and tossed a rock or something through the broad front window of The Hungry Wolf. It took another second for his brain to wrap around the fact that Trofim Kulik’s bald head had exploded, spraying blood and brains in all directions as he toppled forward, headless, into his eggplant mezhivo.

Even as the others at his table were recoiling, reaching for their sidearms, Levytsky saw a second bullet crack the window, this one bringing down a goodly portion of the clean plate glass. Round two drilled Marko Shestov’s pudgy neck and almost took his head off, severing the arteries and loosing crimson jets that might have made Levytsky laugh in other circumstances, thinking of a whacked-out Rain Bird sprinkler.

But Levytsky wasn’t laughing as he hit the carpet, reaching up to push over his table, which gave him at least some flimsy cover, while his free hand fumbled for the Colt .380 Mustang XSP pistol he carried tucked beneath his belt, around in back. It wasn’t easy, going for a quick draw with his right arm underneath him, as he was scared to rise and make a target of himself.

The rifle’s third shot—it could only be a sniper, the Ukrainian had concluded—made a wet sound slapping into flesh, as more voices raised in snarls and curses from the restaurant around him. He could hear somebody puking, hoped it was a waiter or the maître d’ and not one of his soldiers publicly embarrassing himself.

Levytsky had no idea where the sniper was firing from, but since his lookouts on the street weren’t firing back, he took for granted that it had to be someplace high up and out of pistol range. Or maybe his two spotters, skinny Sasha and fat Illia, had already split, fleeing to save themselves. It was a damned pain in the ass finding decent help these days.

Levytsky gave up on the Colt, useless for any kind of long-range work, and fished out his cell phone instead. Job one was to inform his boss of what was happening, in case the rifleman was part of something bigger, threatening the brotherhood. He hit speed dial and waited while a fourth shot took out half the second street-side window, drilling someone who began to howl in agony, as if a real-life hungry wolf was gnawing on his leg.

It rang once at the other end, then twice, three times, and someone picked up midway through the fourth ring, growling, “Yeah?” Levytsky knew he should have recognized the voice but couldn’t place it with the world collapsing all around him.

“Put the boss on!” he commanded.

“Who is this?”

“Dimo, you dumb shit! Go get him! Now!”

“Okay.”

Levytsky thought the shooting might have stopped—maybe the sniper figured out he ought to cut and run—but then a fifth shot came, just as a deep, familiar voice came on the line, asking him, “Dimo? What the hell?”

“They’re killing us down here!” he said. “You hear this?”

Levytsky raised his cell phone aloft, above the capsized table, actually praying for a sixth shot now, so that Stepan Melnyk wouldn’t mistake him for a drunken ass. The shot came, answering his silent prayer, but not as he had expected.

When the phone exploded in his hand, it sent a hard jolt all the way to the Ukrainian’s shoulder, as if some big ape had struck his forearm with a baseball bat. He yelped and yanked his arm back, half expecting that his wrist would be a bloody stump, but all five fingers wiggled at him when he tried them. Nothing broken, no blood on his hand or sleeve.

It was a freaking miracle—or damned good shooting on the sniper’s part.

Huddled on the floor behind his fragile barricade, Levytsky asked himself, who was this guy?

* * *

BOLAN LEFT HIS brass behind when he departed from the rooftop, one shell anchoring a slip of paper to prevent a breeze from snatching it away before somebody found the sniper’s nest. That done, the Remington tucked more or less beneath the knee-length raincoat he wore, the Executioner cleared the rooftop access door and hurried down the service stairs to reach the back entrance to the ground floor.

Two minutes later, he was back inside the Mazda CX-5, left waiting for him in the alley behind the office block, and rolling out of there. Bolan turned away from Sixth Street without passing by The Hungry Wolf to judge the impact of his rifle fire. He’d killed five men and used one round to spook Levytsky when he’d raised a cell phone from behind his upturned table, either snapping photos on the fly or letting someone on the line hear Bolan’s shots to make a point. The raised sleeve of the underboss’s sky blue jacket had been unmistakable.

One target down, a stone tossed into Stepan Melnyk’s pond, and Bolan knew the ripples would be spreading even now. His next mark, chosen at the same time he had picked The Hungry Wolf, was the Flame, a nightclub that advertised Ukrainian cuisine, a wide range of flavored vodkas and a waitstaff dressed in traditional peasant garb. The Flame’s backroom casino was not advertised in any guidebook, telephone directory or tourist flyer, but the players tracked it down by word of mouth. It was, of course, illegal in Manhattan, but it stayed in operation somehow, almost certainly because police were greased to look the other way.

Bolan did a quick recon on the place and found its two back doors: one for deliveries of various supplies, the other for a hasty exit from the gaming room, in case a miracle occurred and law-enforcement agents came to raid the joint. Both doors were locked from the inside, of course, but that was no impediment.

For this job, Bolan switched out Remingtons, taking the 12-gauge with its 7-round magazine and an eighth round in the chamber, three deer slugs to start with, and the other five double-aught buck. It was a guaranteed door-buster and man-stopper. He had the Glock for backup, in a shoulder rig, and three spare magazines.

He wore a baseball cap and kept his head down for the camera out back, as there was no point in giving anything away this early in the game. Bolan took out the raid door’s hinges first, two one-ounce chunks of rifled lead shearing through masonry and metal. By the time he blew the dead bolt out, the door was ready to collapse, and all he had to do was stand aside.

The shotgun blasts had sparked a panic in the Flame’s casino, setting off a stampede toward the main saloon and dining room. That suited Bolan perfectly. He didn’t want civilians in the line of fire, if there were Melnyk soldiers on the premises.

He crossed the threshold in a rush, through gun smoke, following the shotgun’s lead. A handful of the nightspot’s well-dressed gamblers were jammed together at the normal exit, those who had preceded them causing a hubbub in the main part of the club as they ran through, men babbling, women squealing out of fright. Behind them, shepherding the stragglers, stood two thugs with pistols in their hands.

Security.

The man on Bolan’s left noticed him first and raised his shiny automatic pistol, hoping he’d have time to aim. The Remington was faster, perforating the goon with buckshot from a range of forty feet. The guy was airborne in a millisecond, hurtling backward, slamming hard against a wall and sliming it with blood as he went down.

His partner broke for cover, squeezing off a hasty shot that wound up somewhere in the ceiling, diving for the roulette table. Bolan dropped and met him with another charge of buckshot as he landed on the carpet, firing through the open space between the table’s heavy, ornate legs.

Bad move.

Counting the seconds in his head, waiting for other shooters to appear, Bolan spotted a satchel underneath the dice table immediately to his right. He checked it—empty—and began collecting wads of cash the panicked players had abandoned in their flight. A second table added to the haul. Not great. That made it something like eleven grand, but it would help as stage-setting and added to Bolan’s war chest.

He was all about sustainable campaigns.

No slip of paper was left behind this time. He didn’t want to overdo it, and he was swiftly running out of time. Out front, somebody would be on the phone, likely to Stepan Melnyk rather than the cops, and syndicate response time might top that of the police.

A moment later he was out, jogging to reach his car and get away from there, seeking the next stop on his list.

* * *

“SAY WHAT, AGAIN?”

Stepan Melnyk could not believe his ears. He had to hear Dimo Levytsky say it one more time.

“The guy left a note, up on the roof he shot from, across the street. Our blue friend let me see it.”

“So? What does it say?” Melnyk demanded.

“It’s printed in Russian, like on some kind of computer. I could read it pretty well, though.”

“Dimo.”

“Yeah?”

“I asked you—”

“Right, Boss. It says, ‘You are finished in New York.’”

“Say that again.”

Levytsky repeated it, his voice gone wary, as if he feared Melnyk would blame him for the insulting note’s content. No worries, though, on that account. Melnyk already knew exactly who to blame.

“Goddamned Alexey.”

“I don’t know, Boss.”

“Eh? You don’t know what?”

“Um, well, I know we’re having trouble with him, but it seems odd, Brusilov leaving a note like that. I mean, it points right to him, like he’s signing off on it. Now the cops’ve got it, and they’re bound to pull him in.”

“He won’t mind that,” Melnyk replied. “They question him each time a babushka falls down and skins her knee. He’s used to it. I bet he even likes it. Big, tough man.”

“But Boss—”

“This way, he rubs our nose in it, knowing the NYPD can’t do squat. They won’t find any CSI crap on the paper, bet your life on that. He skates on this for sure, unless we hold him to account for it.”

“So, that’s a war, then.”

“Five of our guys dead? You’re goddamn right it’s war. We gotta—” Melnyk’s other line distracted him, a little cricket chirping in his ear. “Hold on a sec. I got another call.”

He didn’t recognize the number on his cell phone’s LED display. Melnyk answered, a curt “Who’s this?”

“Me, Boss.” It was Arkady Cisyk, from the Flame club.

“Where you calling from?”

“The phone in the pawn shop, down the street.”

“The hell?”

“We got hit, Boss. Some guy comes in the back, drops Taras and Dimal, then grabs up some cash off the crap tables and splits.”

Melnyk’s mind focused on the money first. “How much did he get?”

“I don’t know,” Arkady said. “The place was pretty full. This time of night it could be ten, twelve, maybe fifteen grand.”

“Son of a bitch!” Another thought struck Melnyk. “Did he leave a note?”

“A what?”

“A note. You know, a piece a paper. Writing on it? Like a freaking note?”

“No. Was he supposed to?”

Melnyk bit his tongue. Dealing with idiots was like Chinese water torture. “Are the cops there?” he inquired.

“Just rolling up. I better get back.”

“Play it smart, eh?”

“Sure, Boss. I went out for smokes and didn’t see anything. Don’t worry. I have it covered, Boss.”

Cisyk broke the link and Melnyk switched back to his other line. “Dimo?”

“Right here.”

“Some prick just took down the Flame club.”

“Holy shit! Another sniper?”

“This one walked in, smoked a couple of the boys and robbed the tables.”

“Son of a bitch! That Brusilov. What are we going to do?”

“Chill out, right now,” Melnyk replied. “And then start planning for a trip to Brighton Beach.”

* * *

BOLAN’S HAUL WAS thirteen thousand dollars and some change. Not bad for six or seven minutes’ work, plus something like two dollars’ worth of shotgun shells. So far, he had reduced Stepan Melnyk’s reserve of troops by seven men, subtracted from an estimate of fifty. Bolan thought it was a decent start, and he was far from finished for the evening.

The Melnyk outfit would be going hard soon, locking down while Stepan mounted an offensive of his own, but Bolan thought he still had time for one more decent strike, at least, before he shifted to the second phase of his New York campaign. He had already chosen from the list of targets Brognola had provided, picking a whorehouse Melnyk operated on East Ninth Street.

It was a short drive—everything in the East Village was close to everything else—and he parked a half block from the target, between a deli and a Mexican taquería.

The sky was drizzling when he stepped out of the Mazda, perfect cover for the raincoat he was wearing, which in turn concealed his Colt AR-15. The carbine was a semiautomatic version of the classic M16, identical in every way except for the omission of selective fire. The one he’d purchased was the “Sporter” model, with an adjustable stock and twenty-inch barrel, loaded with a STANAG magazine containing thirty 5.56 mm NATO rounds. It couldn’t match the parent rifle’s full-auto cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, but the Executioner didn’t plan on tackling an army division.

He walked back to the brothel, suitably disguised as an apartment building, and rang the doorbell, waiting until a well-appointed woman of a certain age appeared to greet him with a practiced smile, asking the stranger on her doorstep, “May I help you?”

Brognola had furnished Bolan with the phrase that opened doors. “I’d like a bowl of borscht, please,” he replied.

“Of course,” the madam replied, beaming at him. “We have a full menu of delicacies. Please, come in, sir.”

Bolan waited for the door to close behind him, then showed her the carbine. “No alarms,” he told her. “Your life depends on it. Play straight with me and nobody gets hurt.”

“I would be happy to cooperate, of course, but—”

When her eyes flicked to the left, he swung in that direction, just in time to meet a charging buffalo head-on. The carbine’s barrel cracked a solid skull and the man dropped. Bolan stooped, relieved the heavy of a .45 and tucked it in a pocket of his raincoat.

“Anybody else?” he asked the lady of the house.

“Only the girls and customers,” she said.

“Okay, then. Where’s your fire alarm?”

Confused, then frightened, she led Bolan to the main salon, showed him the red pull station mounted on a wall between two reproductions of Van Gogh’s Flowering Orchards and Picasso’s Guernica.

“And where’s the kitchen?”

“Through that archway,” she directed.

“Okay. Get the place cleared out,” Bolan ordered.

“But—”

He triggered three quick rounds into the floor. “No dawdling,” he advised her. “You’re about to have a fire.”

He left her to it, found the kitchen on his own and yanked the range’s gas line from the wall. It hissed and sputtered in his hand like an unhappy viper, until he laid it on the marble countertop, secured beneath a heavy skillet near the microwave. Next, Bolan shoved a small soup pot and two handfuls of silverware into the microwave, set it to cook for ten minutes and headed back for the salon.

An exodus was underway, including sleek women in lingerie and filmy robes, accompanied by men in sundry stages of undress whose forms and features weren’t the type to normally attract young beauties. Not, that was, unless they paid up front and very well for the attention they received.

This night, the johns were not going to get their money’s worth.

Approximately half the crowd had cleared the brothel’s doorway when the microwave exploded, touching off the broken gas line. Thunder rocked the place, a ball of flame erupting from the kitchen entryway lighting up the door frame, spreading quickly to the wallpaper and carpet. Newly motivated stragglers sprinted for the street, trailed by their host, with Bolan bringing up the rear.

The madam stopped to face him on the stoop. “What do you think you’re doing?” she inquired.

“Whatever Mr. Brusilov requires,” he said, and winked at her before he left her standing on the steps, backlit by fire.

3

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Bridge was free, but Bolan spent seven dollars and fifty cents of Stepan Melnyk’s money to leave Manhattan through the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, instead. It was North America’s longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel, stretching for 9,117 feet under the East River at its mouth, emerging between Red Hook and Carroll Gardens. From there, he simply had to follow Interstate 478 to the Prospect Expressway, six lanes leading south to Brighton Beach.

The seaside neighborhood was wedged between Manhattan Beach and Coney Island. Russians began arriving in the 1940s from Ukraine’s third-largest city, giving the district its nickname of “Little Odessa,” changing over time to “Little Russia.” Known as a hotbed for the Russian mafia, Brighton Beach was first colonized by vor v zakone—“thieves-in-law”—during the early 1970s, and remained the outfit’s leading stronghold on the Eastern Seaboard.

Bolan had skirmished with vor v zakone before, several times, and he understood their mind-set. Anyone who kept them from a given goal was in for trouble, frequently extending to the target’s family without regard to age or gender. Any “code” imagined by romantic types who wrote about the underworld without inhabiting its sewer had no application in the real world, where the Russian heavies settled scores with blood and suffering.

A language Bolan understood.

Rackets in Brighton Beach were more or less the same as in any other New York City neighborhood—or any city nationwide, for that matter. Immigrant gangsters started out preying on fellow countrymen with loan-sharking, extortion, peddling drugs and luring young women into prostitution. When good boys went bad, the Mob helped them along, received their stolen goods and armed them to the teeth against their enemies, collecting “taxes” all the while from each illicit deal. When they were strong and rich enough, the syndicate expanded into smuggling contraband from other states and other continents, the latter commonly including weapons, human beings and narcotics. All of that was found in Brighton Beach, the only question for a one-man army being, where to start?

If Bolan had to pick one racket that he hated more than any other, he would cast his vote for human trafficking, a modern form of slavery. Any of the others could be rationalized to some extent: people loved to gamble and get high, they craved cheap merchandise, were fine with buying sex and hoarded guns they didn’t need because it was a grand American tradition. Human trafficking, meanwhile, involved abduction, rape and forced addiction, turning women and kids into hustlers with minimal shelf lives, spending their last years in abject sexual degradation.

Bolan had no feelings for the slavers, other than contempt.

They could expect no mercy from him in the end.

His first stop was an address on Brightwater Court. It was just another house, from all appearances, but this one was a house of horrors for its captive occupants. At any given time, as many as two dozen victims smuggled in from Russia, Eastern Europe and the Near East might be held within its walls while being “broken in,” a process that incorporated heroin and rape around the clock to weed out any stubborn vestige of humanity.

The vor v zakone considered it “schooling,” preparation for a foul career that, while short-lived for most, was still immensely profitable for its overlords.

Unfortunately for them, the scum who worked for Alexey Brusilov had no idea that Bolan was about to pull the plug and cancel “classes” in their “school” for good.

And any members of the “staff” he found on site were going down the hard way.

East Village, Manhattan

“IT’S ASHES,” DIMO LEVYTSKY SAID. “A total loss there.”

Stepan Melnyk ground his teeth to keep from screaming out his rage. He felt his temples pounding and wondered if a sudden stroke might free him from his misery. He managed, finally, to speak.

“One man?”

“That’s what Oksana says.”

The whorehouse madam. “What else did she say?”

“Not much. One guy, like I already told you, with some kind of rifle. She says M16, but what do women know?”

“Was he Russian?”

“That’s the funny thing.”

“Funny? Funny? You see me laughing here?”

“Funny unusual, I meant to say.”

“So, spit it out.”

“He didn’t have an accent, the way she tells it. Just a regular American, okay? But then she asked him something.”

Melnyk waited, then snapped, “Am I supposed to guess?”

“Sorry. She asked him what did he think he was doing there. And he said back to her, ‘Whatever Mr. Brusilov requires.’”

“That bastard! It was him!”

“Not him, but—”

“You know what I mean, idiot! He sent this guy. Maybe the same one who shot up the Flame and the restaurant.”

“Maybe. I guess.” Levytsky shrugged.

“Who does Alexey have hanging around who works like this?”

“No one I ever heard of,” Levytsky answered. “He’d have sent more guys, I think, except to snipe The Hungry Wolf.”

“Meaning he’s brought somebody in. A specialist,” Melnyk extrapolated from the meager evidence in hand.

“Could be.”

Most times, Melnyk enjoyed a yes-man, but Levytsky was getting on his nerves. “That’s it? ‘Could be’? You want to put some thought into this?”

Another shrug. “It’s obvious. We gotta hit him back. Hit hard.”

Melnyk nodded. “If we were sure.”

Now it was Levytsky’s turn to look surprised. “Sure? Who’s not sure? The guy leaves a note in Russian, telling us we’re finished, then he tells Oksana that he works for Brusilov. What more do you need, Boss?”

“Something.”

“Well...”

“It doesn’t seem a little bit too obvious to you, Dimo?”

“That Brusilov, he’s always been cocky.”

Melnyk could hardly disagree with that. The Russian was an overbearing bastard who liked to laugh when he insulted people to their face, so they’d feel stupid if they took offense. He might be dumb and arrogant enough to leave a note, or have one of his shooters dropping names, but—

“What if it was someone else?” Melnyk suggested.

“Someone else? Like who?” Levytsky inquired.

“I’ve got two thoughts on that, but I can’t prove either one.”

“Let’s hear them anyhow,” his underboss replied.

“One thought, it could be Georgy Vize.”

“His number two? Without Alexey signing off on it?”

“If Vize was hoping we’d take out his boss and help him get a leg up, maybe.”

“I don’t know. What was your other thought?”

“Somebody from outside.”

“Like where, outside? New Jersey?”

“How in hell do I know?” Melnyk growled. “Outside. Could be from anywhere, trying to start a war that hurts both sides. Create a vacuum, like they say, and let some new blood in.”

“Armenians,” Levytsky suggested, his dark eyes narrowing. “I hate those sons of bitches.”

Truth be told, there was no end of candidates when Melnyk thought about it. He and Brusilov alike had stepped on many tender toes while staking out their fiefdoms in New York, including the Italians, Irish and some Russian predecessors whom Brusilov had removed, feeding the fish in Sheepshead Bay. Then there were other ethnic gangs chafing to rise and conquer territory, even if they wouldn’t fit: besides Armenians and Chechens—who were just another breed of Russian, when you thought about it—there were Cubans, Salvadorans and Colombians, even Israelis waiting in the wings.

Levytsky wasn’t convinced. “I still say we should hit him back, before he hurts us any worse.”

“Do nothing until I give the word,” Melnyk replied. “We clear on that?”

“Sure, Boss. Whatever you decide.”

But was there something hinky in Levytsky’s eyes, as if he might go off and try some action on his own.

I need to watch that one, Melnyk thought, wondering if his trouble might come from inside, rather than without.

Brightwater Court, Brighton Beach

THE BROWNSTONE WAS a way station along a trail of abject misery. Behind its drab facade, atrocities were the routine. Its soundproofed walls held secrets locked inside and kept the neighbors from complaining to police—who got their weekly cut, of course, but who had to make a show of taking action if the straight folk bitched too loudly, for too long. Beyond the old three-story house lay routes of suffering that spanned the continent, carrying slaves off to Manhattan and Atlantic City, to Chicago and Detroit, Miami and New Orleans, San Francisco and Los Angeles, even Toronto and Vancouver, with a thousand other destinations in between.

The victims, brought here from their hometowns, sold by parents, or the tourist spots where they’d been drugged and kidnapped, would be women under twenty-five or children, either sex. They would have been selected by appearance first, and then with some thought given to their families. If they were being sold, that raised no problem. Otherwise, the spotters would be on alert for runaways and party girls, for wannabe celebrities, for the abused and lonely ones who gave off victim vibes. The hunters would be smart enough to pass on trust fund brats and anybody else whose families were well connected, likely to make trouble if their little darlings disappeared.

His latest target wasn’t like the brothel he had torched in the East Village. This place was a lockbox, a chamber of horrors, with no clientele but a handful of affluent freaks who dropped by, now and then, to unleash their demons in private. What happened inside stayed inside, or went into the bay.

No knocking, then. No small talk. Bolan climbed the concrete steps and pumped two 5.56 mm rounds into the front door’s locking mechanism, then kicked through it to a murky foyer, where a sleepy-looking thug was scrambling upright from a metal folding chair. He made it halfway, then another round punched through his forehead and he sat back down without so much as a grunt.

Bolan swept on, taking no prisoners. His gunfire brought two more goons on the gallop, one armed with a pistol, while the other held a sawed-off shotgun. Bolan dropped them with a quick one-two and started kicking doors.

Some of the rooms were empty. Others had bleary occupants sprawled on filthy beds, drugged out, some of them manacled. He left them where they were, no time for individual rescues, and watched for other guns along the way. A fat guy waited for him when he reached the stairs, blasting a pistol round into the wall near Bolan’s head before a clean shot from the Executioner punched into the gunner’s chest and put him down.

The second floor was empty. The third floor’s rooms were mostly empty, but those that were occupied offered glimpses of unimaginable suffering. Bolan found no more enforcers, no one standing by to take a heaping helping of his fury, so he made his way downstairs and outside, palming his smartphone as he cleared the house.

He had the number for NYPD’s Sixtieth Precinct, the cop shop serving Brighton Beach, programmed in. An operator picked up on the third ring, laughter in her voice until he said, “Shots fired, men down,” and spit out the address, then cut the link.

Seacoast Terrace, Brighton Beach

“SO OUR COUSIN from Kiev is having trouble, eh? I won’t lie to you, Georgy. This news makes me glad.”

Alexey Brusilov was seated at his desk, inside his private office on the second floor of Café Moskva, smiling broadly at his second in command. Georgy Vize, by contrast, did not seem to share his godfather’s excitement at the news.

“I’m hearing other things,” Vize said.

“What other things?”

“Our friend at Police Plaza says the restaurant shooter left them a note.”

“What kind of note?” Brusilov asked.

“In Russian.”

“Ah.”

“And so he thought of us,” Vize said.

“So what? Lots of people speak Russian.”

“There’s something else.”

“Tell me,” Brusilov ordered.

“Your name was mentioned at the bordello.”

“By who?”

“The shooter.”

Brusilov considered that and saw a pattern forming. “Someone’s playing games with us.”

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