The Executioner® Vigilante Run
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1

Camillus, New York

The hollow-core wooden door cracked and fell inward as Mack Bolan kicked it off its hinges. He stepped over the shattered particleboard, the barrel of his Beretta 93-R machine pistol leading the way. He swept left and right, his support hand gripping a small but powerful combat light and tracking with the pistol. The white beam illuminated the debris within the ramshackle trailer. The place was a mess and smelled worse than it looked. It stank of decay and reeked heavily of ammonia. The Executioner’s eyes watered as he stepped forward into the darkness.

The mobile home was a dump in more ways than one. The “lawn” outside was little more than mud dotted with weeds. Behind and on both sides of the moldy trailer, piles of garbage told the soldier exactly what he was about to find. Empty cans of paint thinner were stacked four and five high together with jugs of industrial chemicals, mostly hydrochloric and muriatic acid. There were other drums and barrels that he could not identify, and several broken wooden shipping pallets.

The refuse outside, piled ten feet high in some places, had smelled bad enough exposed to the open air; in the close quarters of the mobile home it was suffocating. A card table toppled as Bolan brushed past it. Dozens of empty cardboard boxes of generic dollar-store sinus and cold medicine fell to the floor.

Wading through the shin-high rubbish strewed on the floor—empty mason jars, spent bottles of camp-stove fuel, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers and more bulging bags of rotting garbage—Bolan tore away one of the black plastic trash bags taped over the nearest window. The glass was filthy and cracked, but through it he could see waning twilight. The stars above the snow-covered field would have been pretty if seen anywhere else. Here, they were only a backdrop against which to contrast man’s viciousness.

Bolan found the first body not far from the window.

The dead man was dressed in filthy denims under a leather biker jacket. He was covered in blood. The top of his head was gone and Bolan could not determine through the gore how old he might have been. Toeing the corpse over with the edge of his combat boot, the soldier got a good look at the logo on the back of the jacket: CNY Purists. He hadn’t heard of that one before. Slipping a tiny digital camera from a slit pocket of his blacksuit, Bolan snapped a couple of shots of the symbol, a stylized and fairly typical skull and snake surrounded by the letters of the gang’s name. The team at Stony Man Farm would be able to turn up intel on the group.

In the debris, Bolan almost missed the gun. The Colt Python was sticky with congealing blood. He left it there. The owner wouldn’t be needing it and evidence gathering was best left to the local police. Bolan was no cop, and he wasn’t there to tag and bag the obvious.

The floor creaked as the man in black made his way down the narrow hallway joining the trailer’s living room to what he presumed was once a bedroom. There was less garbage. The space was full of camp stoves, bottles of drain cleaner and a mess of tangled plastic tubing, metal drums and broken glass. The ammonia fumes were so intense that Bolan had to back out of the room. As he did so, the beam of his flashlight played across the bullet holes pocking the bare, water-damaged drywall.

There was a second bedroom at the end of the hall. It was a wreck like the rest of the trailer, but with more domestic debris. The litter was mostly dirty clothes and empty liquor bottles. A sawed-off pump shotgun, jacked open and empty, was lying on the floor amid a pile of fired plastic shells. Bolan’s light showed buckshot peppering the walls and even the floor in the bedroom and hallway. There were several more bullet holes here, too, large enough to be .44 or .45 slugs.

Two more bodies were sprawled on the floor. One was a long-haired, shirtless male wearing leather pants and engineer’s boots. The other was a half-naked woman. She was stretched out at the foot of a baby’s crib.

Bolan’s jaw tightened. The crib was missing slats from its railings and was covered in peeling paint. It was shoved against the wall under the room’s single window, the only one in the trailer not covered with black plastic. One leg was broken; it was propped on a broken piece of cinder block. There were bloodstained blankets inside.

In the center of the railing, the wooden spokes had been blasted apart, leaving a larger hole lined in splintered and broken dowels. The wall beyond the crib, visible through the slats on the far side, was dotted with three more large bullet holes.

The woman on the floor in front of the crib clutched a .38 snubnose revolver in lifeless fingers. She was emaciated, with deep, dark circles under her eyes. From what Bolan could see, she was toothless. Her chest was covered in blood and she’d taken multiple shots. Bolan pried the .38 from her grasp, his gloved thumb pushing the cylinder release and snapping it open. There were no indentations on the primers. She’d never gotten off a shot.

Steeling himself, the soldier rose and stepped closer to the crib.

The baby had taken at least one slug, maybe two.

Blue eyes hard with anger, Bolan stared down at the innocent life cut short by violence. He turned—

The window shattered. Something heavy and metallic bounced across the unmade and bloodstained bed before clattering to the floor.

The hand grenade rolled to a stop at Bolan’s feet.

His eyes widened. Without hesitation, the soldier threw himself out the already broken window, tumbling though the mud and slush and crashing through a stack of empty paint-thinner cans. Ignoring the noise of the falling containers, he ran as fast as he could pump his legs, doomsday numbers falling as he put most of a snow-covered and weed-chocked field between himself and the mobile home.

The muffled thump of the grenade—an incendiary, Bolan realized—was followed almost immediately by a series of deafening explosions. Waves of heat rolled over Bolan. The mobile home became an instant funeral pyre, its volatile contents consuming themselves and everything within the trailer as chemicals and cooking equipment went up in flames.

“He’s there! He’s there!”

Prone, Bolan whipped his head to the side as a shot rang out, digging a furrow not six inches from where his face had been. He rolled and got up, the Beretta still clutched in his fist. He’d lost his flashlight in the mad dash from the mobile home. Sighting on the muzzle-flashes, he drilled a series of 3-round bursts into the night. One of his unseen opponents cried out.

“Benny! Benny, you okay?” demanded the voice.

Whomever Benny might be, he was out of the action. Bolan was already moving, the noise of his steps drowned by the crackling fires eating the meth lab. There were at least three of them, plus the unfortunate Benny. They were fanning out, backlit by the dancing flames.

Bolan took careful aim and tapped out a single 3-round burst, tagging one of the moving figures in the head. The other two fired in his direction—one with a handgun, the other with a machine pistol of some kind. The stuttering of the full-auto zipper followed Bolan into the darkness. It was a 9 mm, most likely; probably a micro-Uzi or an Ingram. Bolan doubted a single round had come near him. The threat came from the aimed fire to his left, from the man who’d called out to Benny. The speaker’s partner was the spray-and-pray type.

As the deepening night filled more space between Bolan and the burning drug lab, he circled, flanking his pursuers. The two men were stumbling blindly after him. It would be easy to take them both, but he needed answers. That meant trying to get one of them alive.

“Carver! I don’t see him!” It was a different voice, the voice of the man with the machine pistol.

“Shut the fuck up, Stick,” Carver barked. “Watch for movement and then—”

It was good advice and Bolan took it, emptying his Beretta into Carver. The man went down without a sound. Another wild burst of Parabellum rounds went wide of him as Stick reacted. Shoving the empty Beretta into his web belt, Bolan dropped to his left knee, drawing his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the tactical thigh holster on his right leg. The gas-fed hand cannon thundered as Bolan triggered two boattail rounds low and left. The first one missed, but the second took Stick in the abdomen. The thug’s knees buckled and he dropped to the ground.

Fishing in a pouch of his web belt, Bolan produced a small LED backup light. He held the little aluminum cylinder between the fingers of his left hand as he advanced on Stick, Desert Eagle at the ready. Stick was moaning and rocking slightly, clutching at his guts with both arms wrapped tightly around his stomach as he knelt doubled over and sobbing. Not far away, steaming in the snow, was Stick’s fallen MAC-10, the bolt closed.

“You son of a bitch,” he blubbered.

Stick was a lanky man of thirty to forty years with greasy shoulder-length hair and a face like a rodent’s. His chin was covered in a scraggly growth that made him look even more like a rat. In the blue-tinted glare of his pocket light, Bolan could see the logo on Stick’s sleeveless denim shirt—CNY Purists.

“Talk,” Bolan said simply.

Stick looked up accusingly. “What the fuck do you want?” he wheezed.

“I want to know what happened here.”

“You should goddamned know well enough what you done here, you bastard,” Stick sputtered. “You killed Chopper Mike! You killed his old lady! You killed their freaking kid, man. Why would you do that? Who are you?”

“Start from the beginning,” Bolan commanded. The triangular nose of the Desert Eagle never wavered. Hugging himself, Stick squinted at the man in black and appeared to look him up and down.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” he whimpered. His voice hardened. “I ain’t telling nothing to no tall, dark-haired badass dressed like a commando who just hit our place on Route 173.”

Bolan’s eyes grew wide again. He pistoned a vicious straight kick into the biker, sending him sprawling. There was a lot of blood, but Stick wasn’t wounded as badly as he’d let on. The wireless phone he’d been hiding—and into which he’d been speaking for someone’s benefit—landed in the snow a few feet away.

Growling like an animal, Stick surged to his feet. The serrated blade of a folding knife flashed in the beam of Bolan’s light. As the biker lunged, Bolan fired twice. Stick was dead before what was left of him settled wetly into the snow.

The Executioner retrieved the phone, a cheap and untraceable prepaid unit. The connection was still open. As his thumb went for the “status” button, the call was terminated from the other end. The local number Stick had dialed was the only one in the phone’s call log. Looking at the dead man and then glancing back in Carver’s direction, Bolan shook his head. For meth-running bikers, they were far from stupid. Still, he at least had a few clues to feed to the Farm.

As the meth lab continued to burn, Bolan heard the first of the sirens approaching.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

A S B ARBARA P RICE ENTERED Stony Man Farm’s computer room, nose wrinkling at the smell from the pot of industrial-strength coffee warming on a nearby countertop, she had to dodge Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman as he rolled by.

“Hal’s waiting on the scrambler and I’ve got work to do,” Kurtzman said, wheeling past and circling her in his chair as he transferred a memory stick from one computer to another, juggling a handful of processed satellite images and doing it all while holding a beer-stein-size coffee mug. The barrel-chested computer expert gestured with one massive forearm toward the communications gear at the far end of the room.

Smiling, Stony Man’s honey-blond, model-beautiful mission controller stepped past him. Kurtzman always got grumpy when he was short staffed. The rest of his team was on leave or at conferences in various parts of the States, leaving him to field most of their duties during a mercifully light week free of nation-endangering crises. There was more than a little humor to that, Price reflected; Kurtzman had suffered without complaint the injury that had left him a paraplegic for life—but he got testy when asked to answer the phone too often.

The man from Justice was waiting for her on the satellite feed. Though Hal Brognola didn’t appear too worried at the moment, Price knew it was only a matter of time before the big Fed would be forced to fight yet another looming disaster. The fact that he hadn’t come to the Farm in person was a promising sign. He’d have shown up in person if there were serious problems, Price thought.

“Barb,” Brognola said.

“Hal,” Price acknowledged, sitting down and holding the headset to her ear without putting it on. “What can we do for you?”

“It’s not me, at least not directly,” Brognola said. When Price did not comment, he continued. “I asked Striker to look into something that’s had Justice very concerned for the past two months.”

“Something we’re tracking?” Price asked, though she knew that was not likely.

“Too vague for that. We’ve been getting reports through Homeland Security of what was supposed to be terrorism, or isolated events that at least looked like terrorism. I did some checking and what I found was a series of murders across central New York.”

“Nothing new about that,” Price said evenly.

“No, nothing new about that,” Brognola admitted. “These were disturbing, though. A family and several others killed in a home in Skaneateles. Three cops shot in Syracuse. A string of arsons in a suburb of the city that claimed the lives of four children and at least three adults. On the surface they’re the usual crimes, though the rate is a lot higher for an upstate city that sees maybe twenty homicides in a normal year. We almost missed it.”

“Missed what?” Price asked.

“The pattern,” the big Fed said with a frown. “Larry Kearney is a contact of mine, used to be a reporter here in D.C. He runs a think tank in central New York now and has his hands in a local alternative paper. He spends his time doing what got him run out of Wonderland in the first place—pissing off politicians and raking muck.”

Price laughed. “He sounds like your kind of person.”

“More or less.” Brognola managed a faint grin. “It was Larry who put me on the trail. The murder victims—those who weren’t collateral damage—were all connected to the local methamphetamine trade. At least, that’s what Larry believes. He didn’t have much more to go on.”

“Why involve Justice?” Price asked. “Wouldn’t this be a matter for the local police?”

“It might be,” Brognola said grimly, “if not for Larry’s nose for corruption. He suspects collusion with local law enforcement. This isn’t simply drug dealers taking shots at the competition, either. He tells me, and I believe him, that there’s something more methodical at work.”

“A vigilante?” Price raised an eyebrow.

“That’s Larry’s theory. Given the brutality of the crimes and the alphabet soup of government agencies in which Syracuse is now swimming, it’s a circus. He called me to call in a favor. He said he thought I could cut through some of the red tape and produce results.”

“That’s a lot to ask of a man in your position.”

“Not if you know Larry,” Brognola said. “He was one of the best sources of insider information I had here. He knew where all the bodies were buried. That’s what made him enemies here—powerful enemies. I owe him. So I asked Striker to investigate.”

Price nodded. Who better to track a vigilante than Mack Bolan? Bolan had what was at times an arm’s-length relationship with the Farm, but the staff’s commitment to him, and his to them individually, was unwavering. She considered the man for a moment. Where was he? What was he doing? Price had an off-again, on-again relationship with the soldier. Neither of them asked for more than the other could give. It was enough. Still, she worried for him, when she let herself.

“What can we do?” Price asked. If the Farm could assist Bolan, she’d see to it.

“I’m relaying specifications he transmitted to me through his scrambled phone,” Brognola said, typing at his computer beyond the view of the sat link. “He needs a care package from you guys.”

“We’ll do our best to fill his wish list,” Price nodded.

“I also need Bear and his team to dig up anything and everything they can find on a biker gang called the CNY Purists. I’m sending a digital shot Striker took during a raid on one of their facilities last night that might help. You can send the data directly to him through his wireless.”

“We’ll get on it, Hal.”

“Thanks.” He moved to cut the connection.

“Hal?” Price asked.

Brognola paused.

“When you talk to him, tell him to look after himself.”

“I will,” Brognola promised. He cut the feed.

Price stared at the blank screen for a moment before turning to examine the incoming data. There was work to be done.

Camillus, New York

T HE E XECUTIONER LEANED against the black-and-white Syracuse police car, his arms folded across his chest. He’d spent a long night telling and retelling his story, doing his best to wear out the Justice credentials Brognola had provided in the name of Agent Matt Cooper. Now he was simply waiting for the all clear so he could resume his work.

The delay was annoying, but necessary. He would need the cooperation of local law enforcement, and he needed to know who the federal players were. In addition, making himself known might shake loose whomever Brognola’s source believed was cooperating with the murderer or murderers Bolan sought. If he made a big enough target of himself, it was a sure bet someone would take a crack at him to get him out of the way.

At least three government agencies were represented—DEA, FBI and ATF—while the county sheriff’s office and two neighboring police districts had sent units, as well. Bolan had waited patiently while they worked through their histrionics and exaggerated outrage at his presence. One of the ATF agents had held the Beretta 93-R by two fingers as if examining a venomous snake; the FBI duo had threatened to haul him in for interrogation if his ID and story didn’t hold up. The city and suburban police had steered clear of him but shot him suspicious looks. About the only one of them Bolan didn’t immediately dislike was a rookie named Paglia, who watched him carefully but expressed no emotion. That one had the look of a decent lawman who, if he stayed on the force and kept his wits about him, would go far, Bolan thought. He’d seen the type. He’d seen the opposite, too.

When their phone calls and computer queries came back verifying Cooper’s affiliation with the Justice Department, the squawking had largely stopped. Bolan was, however, obliged to stick around until cleared to leave, if he didn’t want to burn any bridges. The mobile home had long since burned itself out, and the agents and police were busily picking through the smoldering debris.

Officer Paglia, who looked impossibly young to Bolan despite his air of competence, returned to his car to drop off several evidence bags. They contained shell casings and a few other odds and ends. Bolan did not expect any of the departments involved to turn up much of use from the burned wreckage, but there was always a chance.

Paglia also carried with him Bolan’s leather shoulder harness, in which was slung the 93-R and its spare magazines. He handed the harness to Bolan and then, from behind his belt, produced the Desert Eagle. “They say you can have your roscoes back,” Paglia chuckled. “They weren’t too happy about it.”

“I’m surprised they let you take any of the evidence,” Bolan commented, nodding at the agents in their variously lettered windbreakers.

“There’s enough to go around,” Paglia told him. Something caught his eye as he turned from his vehicle. He bent to retrieve a singed and empty cardboard carton. Several more just like it were scattered across the field, hurled there by the explosion. The agents and police officers had been walking on them for most of the night.

“Cold medicine,” he said.

“Pseudoephedrine,” Bolan told him. “It’s a precursor chemical, cooked from the over-the-counter drugs in order to manufacture methamphetamine.”

“Crystal meth,” the cop said. “This is a drug house?”

“It used to be,” Bolan said.

F ROM THE TREE LINE ACROSS the snow-covered field, Gary Rook watched the big man in black collect his things and return to the unmarked Chevy Blazer in which he’d arrived the previous night. Through the powerful scope of the Remington 700, the dark-haired man’s face was clearly visible. Rook did his best to memorize the intruder’s features. He had a feeling they would meet again, soon.

Rook had watched as the commando rolled up and entered the meth lab. There was something very unusual about the interloper. He moved like Rook himself—like a man who knew his way around a battlefield. His armed entry into the trailer was textbook, though Rook could have told him there was no one alive in the trailer.

The big, bearded man smiled through red-orange whiskers. His forearms tightened as he flexed his fingers on the synthetic stock of the Remington. Briefly he had considered putting a .308 slug through the commando’s head, but he’d decided to wait. It was a very informative delay. When the Purists arrived, more or less silently on foot, he assumed they’d walked in from wherever they’d left their vehicles, responding to some desperate call made from within the trailer before Rook had finished dealing with the occupants. He’d written off the newcomer then, only to watch in surprise as the man finished each of the bikers in turn. By the time the cops began to show it was too late to move without alerting them to his presence, so he stayed where he was. He watched as they detained the commando, went through their usual songs and dances, then grudgingly turned loose the man in black. Whoever he was, he had powerful connections to go with the ordnance he was packing.

The commando was rolling out in his SUV. Rook resigned himself to waiting until the police and the Feds cleared out, as well. Then he’d make his way back to his own truck and plan his next strike. He’d steer clear of the man in black if he could. If not, well, that was too bad.

If necessary, Rook would kill him, just like the others.

2

Syracuse, New York

Roger Kohler was a busy man. As CEO and majority shareholder of Diamond Corporation, Kohler shepherded an empire spanning everything from low-income rental properties throughout Syracuse, to paid city parking lots, to a piece of the Salt City’s inner harbor development area. He owned three of New York State’s six largest shopping malls—though not, much to his chagrin, one in the city itself. He was working to change that; he was brokering a deal to build the largest shopping mall yet in the state, on the city’s south side.

The project was not without its detractors. The Supreme Court had done him the favor of ruling that local governments could seize property for private investors if that property could be used to generate more revenue. Ostensibly that was for the “public good.” Whatever the justification, this de facto elimination of private property worked to Kohler’s advantage—or it would, once he got approval to seize a large enough chunk of the city’s southwest quarter. It had been done before. One of Kohler’s competitors, another major property concern, had successfully muscled out two dozen established businesses in the city to erect a high-priced luxury hotel that had yet to turn a profit. With that precedent set, Kohler expected only token resistance to his new mall. If legitimate companies could be shown the door in the name of higher tax revenues, who would care about a handful of drug addicts and gang members living in the city’s biggest slum?

Listen to any radio or television newscast in Syracuse and the words “There was a shooting today” or “There was a stabbing today” would be immediately followed by the phrase “on the south side.” Every American city had such a place, if not more than one—an overwhelmingly poor ghetto wherein most of the local crime and the criminals committing it could be found. What better place to clear away for dynamic economic development, for commerce? Kohler couldn’t imagine why everyone in the city didn’t embrace the idea.

There was squawking from the local activist groups, of course. These included wealthy liberals consumed with guilt about their own success, neighborhood sign-wavers belonging to political action and protest organizations, and a scattered few local politicians who had refused to join Kohler’s unofficial payroll. They wouldn’t stop him. Those who couldn’t be marginalized or ignored could simply be eliminated. Kohler maintained certain “business contacts” for that purpose.

Those were not the only problems. There were those who said the city’s depressed economy—the natural outcome of a state whose taxes consistently ranked it among the highest in the nation—couldn’t support such a large project. They didn’t see the opportunities for tourism that Kohler and Diamond promised. They didn’t see the sales tax revenues his consumer and community development center offered. There were those who claimed the city was still reeling from his competitor’s failure to successfully implement the competitor’s own pie-in-the-sky dreams of consumer paradise.

It didn’t help that the failed project—a tremendous mall expansion included absurd plans for everything from a water park and amusement center to a monorail linking the expanded facility to downtown Syracuse—was irrevocably coupled in the minds of locals to a series of bizarre publicity stunts.

Kohler had himself helped sink the project to make way for his own plans, though he regretted just how well it had worked. His own operatives had signed on for the supposed jobs that were created during the project’s opening stages, doing everything from enforcing mall curfew policies to cleaning up area subsidized homes in a bid to perform community service busywork. He made sure that his operatives were among those kept most discreetly in his employ—those who had criminal records. Then he leaked the records to the local newspaper, whose editorial board gleefully reported both the busywork and the felonies. The resulting public relations nightmare put an end to Kohler’s competitor’s dream of revitalizing the city. That left Kohler in what was supposed to have been the perfect position to take up the slack.

The problem was that Kohler’s own project was losing money every day and didn’t seem likely to break even once ground was broken and construction started. The business plan simply wasn’t viable, and Kohler knew it. He could not and would not accept failure, however. That left him with only one option—supplementing his business plan off the books with income from another source.

Kohler was a realist. He had no family. He had no gods. He had only one goal, and that was to enrich himself. He was perfectly at ease with this fact. If it meant he had to consort with a certain class of people, so be it. They were necessary as long as they were useful. They were also easily removed once they stopped being useful.

It was with this thought in mind that Kohler told his secretary to admit Gerald “Pick” McWilliams. It was extremely unusual for Mr. McWilliams to show his face in the Kohler Towers. It was, in fact, forbidden, as far as Kohler was concerned. Only a matter of extreme urgency could bring McWilliams here. Only the severity of Kohler’s financial situation prompted him to permit such an intrusion.

McWilliams came dressed in a thrift store tweed suit that was at least a size too large for him, complete with a polyester tie as thick as a scarf that had to have dated back to the 1970s. The secretary admitted him without a word, and McWilliams almost managed to restrain a leer. Under other circumstances, Kohler would have had trouble blaming the man, as he’d hired Lori specifically to look good. She was blond, she looked great in a tight white blouse, and she never wore skirts longer than midcalf. She was even a passable typist. Mostly, however, she simply guarded the portal to Kohler’s domain and impressed anyone who came calling.

“Pick,” Kohler said without preamble, “what the hell are you doing here?”

McWilliams was a mouse of a man, thin and gaunt, missing a few teeth and suffering from questionable personal hygiene. He was Kohler’s go-between to the CNY Purists, a crude but effective local gang that had proved to be very useful in the less legal aspects of Diamond’s operations. McWilliams was easily intimidated, which was why Kohler tolerated him.

Roger Kohler was formidable enough in his own right. He stood three inches over six feet tall and had the thick build to show for the hours spent in his private gymnasium. He was also a third-degree black belt in karate, the knuckles of his hands scarred and thick from punching bricks and breaking boards. Though his silver hair was growing sparse, Kohler’s granite-hard features left no doubt that he was a man in his physical prime who had no qualms about crushing anyone who got in his way. Kohler permitted himself the visual fantasy of throwing an edge-of-hand strike into McWilliams’s throat simply for being beneath him.

“Mr. Kohler, sir.” McWilliams practically bowed and scraped as he spoke. “There’s a…a problem with the shipment.”

“A problem.”

“Yes, sir.”

“With the shipment.”

“Yes, sir,” McWilliams confirmed again.

“Would you mind telling me, Pick, just what the fuck I pay you people for? ”

Kohler came around from behind the desk, grabbing McWilliams by his wide lapels. “You and your friends have exactly one job to do, and that is to see that the product reaches Ithaca by Sunday! You have exactly five days to meet that deadline. If you do not, we have a serious problem. I will most certainly kill you, but I will have to get in line behind the Chinese and I’ll have to do it before they kill me! ”

“It’s not my fault!” McWilliams whined, making no attempt to protect himself as Kohler shook him like a dog worrying a chew toy. “They hit the cook house we were using. All the product’s gone and the place was blown to shit! We lost a lot of guys, man. You don’t know!”

Kohler paused and released McWilliams, straightening his own suit as he took a deep breath. “That,” he told McWilliams, “is precisely why I pay you and your fellow miscreants. These things happen. Straighten it out. Have a turf war, or something. Do whatever it is you people do. I don’t care who you have to kill. Just do it. Make the problem go away and make damned sure the shipment is all there, on time, by Sunday. Otherwise I swear I’ll break every bone in your body before Chang and his people get to me. ”

McWilliams nodded so hard that Kohler thought the unctuous little man’s head might snap off. The middleman scuttled away without another word, leaving Kohler to consider his empty office, his empty bank accounts and his very full schedule. He decided, then and there, that outside help was in order. He paused to bring up a few relevant files on his computer, including everything he had on McWilliams and his key associates. Then he accessed several of his confidential files. If the Purists couldn’t get the job done, he would bring in someone who could.

While he was at it, he’d see to it that McWilliams was erased simply for annoying him one time too many. McWilliams’s medical records contained an interesting fact. He’d pass that along in the spirit of cooperation. With luck, his new consultant could speed up the process and Kohler could get his business ventures back on track all the sooner.

Despite what he’d told McWilliams, he knew it was unlikely they’d make Chang’s shipment deadline. Given that, he’d have to make alternate arrangements, and given Chang’s difficult temperament, he’d have to make them himself.

Kohler sighed.

It was so hard to get good help these days.

Armory Square, Syracuse

T HE INTERIOR OF THE Tyrannosaur Barbecue was dark, crowded and loud, just the way Trogg Sharpe liked it. The massive leader of the CNY Purists held court there almost every day, seated at a plank table in the far corner of his domain with a plate of suicide wings or hotsauced spareribs in front of him. There was always a row of gleaming chromed motorcycles parked in front of the Tyrannosaur, which had been a Syracuse landmark for more than thirty years. At any given time, at least half of those bikes belonged to the CNY Purists, central New York’s largest and most brutal motorcycle club.

Sharpe’s bulk was as much fat as muscle. His tremendous belly distended the black Live to Ride T-shirt he wore under a leather vest sporting plenty of chain and the Purist’s colors. Still, he was no one to test lightly. Sharpe had put his fair share of men in hospitals with nothing more than his ham-size hands. At five foot eight and well over three hundred pounds, he lumbered slowly and inexorably through life, confident in the power of the Purists and in the damage he could do through sheer viciousness. The biker demanded relatively little of life—good booze, the occasional smoke. He liked a willing woman from time to time, the younger the better. Apart from that, he was content—as long as nobody got in his way. Those who did he beat down. Any man or woman who messed with him learned never to test him again. Or they died.

Sharpe smiled as he worked his way through a plate of ribs, reaching out and trying to grab the leather-skirted waitress as she clicked by on stiletto heels. She told him to screw himself and kept walking. Sharpe laughed. The Tyrannosaur was known for its great barbecue and its lousy, rude service. It was a tradition. He wiped hot sauce from his bushy beard with the back of his hand and reached for his beer amid the empties already collecting on the table.

The other Purists in attendance were circulating through the room, some eating at tables of their own, others engaged in a game of poker in the back room. Sharpe planned to join the poker game when he was finished eating. First things first.

Snapper, Sharpe’s third in command, was examining the jukebox across the room. He stared at the scarred glass box as if his life depended on the song he picked. Jesus, but it took Snapper forever to make a decision. Sharpe had just about run out of patience and was getting ready to demand something by CCR.

His world exploded.

One moment he was watching as the front door of the place opened—he saw the silhouette of a big man in dark clothing against the almost blinding light of day outside the darkened barbecue shack. The next moment, he was falling backward in his chair, a deafening roar in his ears as lightning bolts danced in front of his dimming vision. He hit the floor, but did not feel it. For Sharpe, everything that ever was disappeared into pain and brightness and then nothing.

B OLAN, IN HIS RENTED Blazer, pulled away from the drop point. A heavy war bag sat in the passenger seat, its zippers pulled open to reveal the cache of equipment and weapons within. The Farm’s gunsmith, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had done his usual excellent work, from the look of things. The men and women at the Farm had filled his gear requests and had even thrown in a few extras.

One of the items Bolan had specifically asked for was a portable police scanner, programmed with the appropriate local frequencies. Another was a handheld GPS unit. If he was to track a murderer in unfamiliar territory—territory his quarry knew, presumably—Bolan would need a technological edge. He’d learned well in battlefields across the globe that terrain, and knowledge of it, could make all the difference in an armed conflict.

Bolan switched on the scanner and set it to rotate through its presets automatically. Almost immediately, it came to life with an excited voice: “…I say again, shots fired, shots fired, Tyrannosaur Barbecue, North Willow. It sounds like a damned war! Shots fired, shots fired…”

Bolan thumbed the GPS unit to life and checked it. He was only blocks away.

The Blazer’s tires squealed as he put the accelerator to the floor.

G ARY R OOK HAD PLANTED ONE combat boot against the crash bar on the front door of the Tyrannosaur. He’d kicked it in, took a single step, raised his Smith & Wesson 625 and fired. The .45ACP hollowpoint round thundered straight for Trogg Sharpe, bowling over the fat man and dumping him in a corpulent heap on the sawdust-strewed floor.

There was a moment of absolute silence as bikers, other patrons and serving staff all turned to Rook, eyes wide in shock.

Rook cut loose.

He methodically moved the four-inch barrel of the big stainless-steel revolver, firing the weapon double-action each time he found a target. A biker standing by the jukebox was hammered into the now-shattered glass, blood and bone flecking the shattered CDs inside the unit. Another was whipped backward as a slug tore a channel through his head, spraying brain tissue out an exit wound the size of a quarter. Rook did not hear the screaming as he dropped men and women alike, his ears ringing despite the foam earplugs he wore. As the revolver clicked empty on the seventh pull, he used his left hand to draw an identical weapon from the second of two cross-draw leather holsters at his waist. His prey began to return fire as he started cycling through another half-dozen 230-grain rounds.

The bikers were brutal enough, but they had no technique and no initiative. As long as Rook could keep them on the defensive, he knew he would win every time. He almost laughed as a stocky Purist in leather pants and a denim vest popped up from behind an overturned table—just in time for Rook to pump a round through his chest. The biker caved in on himself and Rook dropped to the floor.

Holstering his revolvers, Rook drew two full-size Rock Island Armory 1911-style .45 automatic pistols from leather shoulder holsters under both arms. Then he was up again, sparing two rounds for a crawling Purist he’d wounded through the gut with the first salvo. He stepped over a dead waitress, her hair snaking through a growing puddle of blood, and made his way to the back. There, he knew, there was almost always a card game going on.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the doorway as Rook hugged one side of the opening. There were Purists back there, all right, and they were waiting for him to stick his head in and get it shot off. Rook smiled again. From the shoulder bag hanging across his chest, he withdrew a Molotov—a simple beer bottle filled with gasoline, a gas-soaked rag plugging the neck of the bottle. He waited for a lull in the gunfire and then tossed the bottle.

“Look out!” someone shouted from the back room.

Rook whipped one hand around the doorjamb and fired the .45 dry. At least one of the rounds managed to ignite the gasoline. The whoosh of flame was followed by an agonized cry as one of the room’s occupants began to burn. Rook risked a direct look through the doorway and fired his other .45 empty, tagging at least one cowering Purist who had not been caught by the fire. Then he backed out into the main room of the Tyrannosaur, reloading each of his .45s awkwardly as he juggled both weapons.

The crackle of fire and the sudden squealing of smoke alarms did not distract him as he stalked through the room. Something moved in the shadow of one of the booths on the far wall. Rook blasted it three times and kept going. He shouldered through the doors to the Tyrannosaur’s kitchen.

“You bastard!” someone screamed. Rook jumped back and narrowly missed being slashed by the big kitchen knife, wielded by a heavy man in a dirty white T-shirt and apron. The balding, middle-aged man could only be a cook, from the look of him.

“Wait,” Rook protested.

The man grunted and slashed again, driving Rook back the way he’d come. Rook shrugged mentally and shot the man center mass, watching dispassionately as he dropped his knife and fell to the floor.

That was life in the big city, wasn’t it?

The police would arrive at any moment. Rook took another Molotov from his bag, lit it with a disposable lighter from his pocket and tossed it in to the center of the kitchen. It burst and tinted the scene orange. Rook could feel the searing heat on his face as he left through the kitchen’s emergency exit, ignoring the alarm bell that started ringing as soon as the door opened. His truck, parked illegally in the alley behind the Tyrannosaur, was waiting for him.

He did not even spare the burning restaurant a glance in his rearview mirror as he sped away.

B OLAN SKIDDED AROUND THE corner at the Willow Street intersection, skirting the Tyrannosaur and almost sideswiping a row of parked motorcycles. He came to a halt and threw himself from the vehicle, war bag slung across his body over one shoulder. He could see flames dancing at the rear of the building as black smoke filled the sky. There was no other activity. The place was a loss, and the soldier had obviously just missed whatever had happened. Several people from neighboring businesses had come out to watch the fire and were talking animatedly to one another. Bolan could sense their eyes on him as he backed away from the building.

Bolan caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned in time to see a gigantic man, his face covered in blood, stagger from the building. He was followed by a second, much thinner man, who was cradling his arm. The smaller man’s skin was lobster red. He was badly burned.

The fat man raised a .38 revolver and opened fire, screaming.

Bolan heaved himself behind the Blazer. One of the slugs tore into the fender; another blew the tire. Bolan unleathered his Beretta and prepared to bring it into play. Before he could fire, he heard the revving of a motorcycle engine.

Jumping up, the Executioner tracked the big man as the chopper squealed away, carrying both wounded men. It shot past the Blazer and toward the milling crowds on the street. The big man on the bike spared Bolan a venomous glance backward but did not fire again as he surged away. Bolan held his fire; there were too many innocents between him and the biker. The bike burned around a corner and disappeared as Bolan turned back to his Blazer and its flat front tire.

For the second time in as many days, he heard police and fire sirens in the background, headed his way. The Tyrannosaur continued to burn and he was no closer to finding the man responsible.

3

Liverpool, New York

Gary Rook was in hell.

He visited hell every night. Every night was the same as the last. In his sleep, he was terrorized by dreams of Jennifer as she’d been near the end—toothless, thinner than seemed possible, racked with spasms and tics. The haunted look in her sunken, bloodshot eyes was something he’d never forget, not for as long as he lived. There was no doubt in Rook’s mind that when he finally got to hell, she would be there to meet him. Seeing her every night was simply his penance, his prepayment for the sins he had committed and would continue to commit. Only when he was on the streets, making them pay, could Rook feel some measure of peace, some sense of justice and satisfaction. At night, the knowledge of what he’d done weighed heavily on him. Thoughts of what Jennifer herself would think of what he was doing hurt him even more.

Rook had no illusions. He knew that what he was doing was wrong. He knew that he was doing it for himself, too—Jennifer was long past caring and nothing he did would bring her back. Rook was a murderer. He was guilty and he expected, eventually, to be caught or killed.

He didn’t care.

Whipping his head to the side as he woke himself from the nightmare, Rook gasped. He blinked a few times, then brought his wristwatch to his face and tried to focus on it. It was morning, and later than he liked. He sighed. He had better waste no more time.

He sat up in the sweat-stained, tangled sheets, staring uncomprehendingly at the pillow lying on the floor near the full-size bed. The apartment was almost bare except for the bed and a few cardboard boxes stuffed with clothes and other personal items. Guns, ammunition and other supplies were strewed about the floor. There was no furniture on which to place them. Rook owned no television, either—he couldn’t be bothered to spend any time in front of one.

Empty bottles of bourbon lay on their sides at the foot of the bed, next to an overflowing ashtray. Rook found his mostly crushed box of Marlboros, in which he’d stuffed another disposable lighter, and sucked to life one of the last of his cigarettes. One of his .45s, cocked and locked with a round in the chamber, lay on the sheet where it had been under his pillow. He picked it up, snapped off the safety and considered it.

He would never kill himself. He wanted to, sometimes, but not badly enough to actually do it. To be honest, it scared him. He knew where he was going and wasn’t in a hurry to get there. Besides, while he was alive, he could keep killing members of the Purists. He might even be able to kill them all.

He wondered what he would do, then. But it didn’t matter. It would be a long time before he got them all.

Syracuse, New York

“C OME ON , J ACKER ,” T ROGG grunted, holding the bloodstained bag of ice to his aching head. “Hurry the fuck up.”

“I’m doing my best, man,” Jacker whined. His left arm in a sling, Jacker moved a felt-tipped marker back and forth on the dog-eared sheet of copy paper. He paused to push stringy, dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and then bent to his work again.

“Don’t test me, Jacker,” Trogg rumbled. He flexed the fingers of both his hands, picturing them wrapped around a throat. He wanted to find that commando. It had to be the same guy; there was no question. It was the guy who’d hit the cook house, the guy who’d butchered Chopper Mike, Mike’s old lady, and even his rug rat. Trogg had done worse himself over the course of his life, but this was different. This was family. This was the Purists. Nobody tried to do the Purists like this son of a bitch had done. He was going to pay. Yeah, he was going to pay, but first he was going to suffer. Trogg was going to take great pleasure in torturing the bastard until he went insane—and then torturing him some more until he died.

The doctor Trogg used for these little incidents had treated him and Jacker, taken his bribe and scuttled off. Trogg almost had to laugh. It was a good bet the city’s south side was the only part of Syracuse that still got house calls from the local medical establishment. Like anything in life, you could have whatever you wanted if you didn’t care what it cost and you didn’t care what laws you broke. Sure, a lot of the doctors paid to come by were, well, less than legitimate, but you took what you could get.

Trogg knew he was lucky to be alive. His head felt as if it were going to split open. The bullet had creased his forehead but left his skull intact, leaving him with what was going to be an impressive scar when the stitches came out. He was doped to the gills on codeine from his private stash of painkillers. Jacker had bad burns and a busted arm, but he’d recover, too. He wasn’t going to be very pretty, what with the skin all screwed up on his arm and face and neck, but then, he hadn’t been that pretty to start with.

“He’s gonna pay, man,” Trogg said out loud, not so much to Jacker as to the Universe itself. “We’re gonna find him and we’re going to make him scream and beg to die.”

B OLAN SAT AT THE interrogation room table with the rookie, Officer Paglia, opposite him, both of them shuffling through files. The impromptu work space had that entrenched locker-room tang that so many rooms like it never lost—sweat, mostly, mixed with stale air, peeling paint, and the stink of bodies long neglected and abused by their owners. Bolan’s credentials had gotten him the space and enough cooperation to get the young officer assigned to him for support, but Syracuse’s chief of police and his federal counterparts had made it clear they weren’t happy to have him butting in. Bolan didn’t care what they thought as long as they stayed out of his way.

“This is everything you have on the Purists and any killings involving them?” Bolan asked.

“Everything—murders we believe or that we know they’ve committed, and all of the killings of Purist members in the area,” Paglia confirmed. He shrugged. “To be honest, a lot of guys on the force seem to think the folks upstairs don’t want to try real hard to solve those.” He pointed to several crime-scene photos depicting what could only be dead bikers.

Bolan nodded. The Purists were scum and their deaths were no big loss. But innocent victims were getting caught in the cross fire. A vigilante war had been launched, and the killer apparently saw everyone who got in his way as legitimate targets, even if they had nothing to do with the gang or its members.

“What are you looking for?” Paglia asked. Bolan looked up at the young man. There was real intuition there—and Paglia could obviously see that Bolan was no by-the-book, procedural investigator or forensics analyst. The soldier decided to be honest with the cop.

“I need some way to predict where the killer will go next,” he admitted. “I can’t stay one step behind him. I’ve got to anticipate his moves so I can cut him off.”

Paglia considered the photographs and manila files, then started hunting through them. “I think I know,” he said.

Bolan watched, curious.

“Here.” Paglia presented him with a file. “As far as I know, there’s been no hit there, but the location is central to Purist operations. I’ve heard rumors through the force that we’ve tried a couple of times to get undercover agents in the gang, specifically to get a look at this place. The word is that this is where the bodies are buried.”

“And?” Bolan pressed.

“Can’t get in.” Paglia shrugged. “They’re too suspicious or just too smart. They won’t accept someone they don’t know. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Bolan considered that. While relatively new to the force, Paglia was typical of police officers everywhere—hooked into gossip that was more true than false, though never completely accurate. The thin blue line was shot through with grapevines. You could drop a pen in the break room of a station house at three in the morning and, by five past three, every cop on duty within ten miles would know about it.

In the file photo, an innocuous building sat on a street corner in a vaguely industrial-commercial district. A large, fading sign on the front of the facade proclaimed it Zippers Arcade.

“You want to find the Purists,” Paglia told him, “go to Zippers. If you don’t find them first, they’ll find you. ”

Bolan nodded. It was time to make a move.

T HE SEEDY BAR AT THE corner of East Fayette Street and Columbus Avenue bore a cracked but still-bright sign proclaiming it Club Lightning. A stylized lightning bolt striking the silhouette of a man and woman adorned the sign and, Rook presumed, invoked its name. Across the street from the bar—which bore several No Loitering notices and boasted a metal sign forbidding the possession of guns, knives and drugs on the premises—was an equally seedy barbershop. Close examination of both buildings would reveal several old bullet holes. The corner of East Fayette and Columbus was notorious in Syracuse. Shootings occurred there regularly, thanks to violence in and around the club. Several attempts to shut down the bar under public safety ordinances had failed.

Rook pulled his pickup truck to a stop in the barbershop’s parking lot, blocking the exit. An African-American man in his late teens or early twenties immediately exited the shop and challenged him.

“Hey, man,” he said. “You can’t park that there. Move your ass.”

Without hesitation, Rook shot him.

The .45ACP round from Rook’s four-inch Smith & Wesson 625 Mountain Gun punched through the young man’s chest and turned his white shirt a bloody red. Without pausing, Rook walked calmly across the street, drawing his second Smith & Wesson 625 with his left hand. The Hogue grips on both weapons felt warm in his palms. He did not break stride as he kicked in the door, planting his foot in the center of the metal warning sign.

The Whiteshirts were strange bedfellows to the CNY Purists but, as Rook had discovered, drugs and drug money often forged alliances between otherwise bitter enemies. An inner-city gang composed primarily of young black men, the Whiteshirts’ uniform was simple: plain cotton T-shirts, usually worn many sizes too large, sometimes with white bandannas. They were among the city’s more brutal gangs.

Rook had known for some time that the CNY Purists used the Whiteshirts to distribute drugs throughout Whiteshirt territory. The white supremacist philosophy of the Purists did not seem to get in the way of using an allegedly inferior race to extend their reach and their profits. The fact that most of the customers were of the same race as their subcontractor pushers was probably something the Purists thought greatly amusing.

Rook didn’t care about most of that. He didn’t care about the politics, he didn’t care about the socioeconomic impact of crime in the city, and he didn’t care who was selling what to whom. That was a job for the police—a job they’d been failing at for some time. For years city leaders had resolutely denied that there were gangs operating in Syracuse, despite what everyone knew to be true. Rook could never understand how they thought pretending the problem didn’t exist would change reality.

All that mattered to Rook was that hurting the Whiteshirts would hurt the Purists. The more Rook kept up the pressure, the more he hurt them, the easier it would be to hurt them again. He would go on hurting them, too, until he’d gotten them all or until he was dead.

Jennifer deserved no less.

The heavy metal door gave under Rook’s booted foot, swinging inward on rusted hinges. The interior of the club was dark and smoke filled, some of it cigar and cigarette, some of it pot, all of it illegal in a state that outlawed smoking in all public buildings. Rook almost laughed out loud as he considered administering the death penalty for this particular violation.

He shot the first man he saw. In the darkness, with his pupils contracted from the outside light, he could barely see at all. He targeted shadows and movement, emptying both revolvers in an ear-stinging fusillade. He shot the bartender. He shot a waitress running for the back, where he presumed an exit through the rudimentary kitchen offered faint hope of safety. The revolvers clicked empty and he holstered them. Switching to his 1911s, he hammered slugs through furniture and people. There was no resistance and no shots were fired at him.

It had been a slaughter.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Rook counted a pair of Whiteshirts near the door and three more sprawled on the floor by the bar. The other bodies were collateral damage. Rook dismissed them. Anyone in the club was up to no good, regardless of their connection—or lack of it—to the Purists.

Rook spun on his heel and made for the door. He knew he’d have to move fast. The cops were never far from this part of town. He needed to be a long way away before they arrived on the scene. In the meantime, another message—and another declaration of war—had been left for the Purists, courtesy of their hired help.

P ICK M C W ILLIAMS , dressed in a gold shirt and khaki pants in an attempt to blend with the crowd, sat in the airport bar nursing a beer. He glanced around nervously and checked his watch again. He’d checked the boards. The man Trogg had called “Kohler’s guest” was late because his flight had been delayed. McWilliams had been waiting for almost two hours and was getting stiff and sore.

McWilliams was trying in vain to signal the bartender from his booth for another beer when he saw the man enter the lounge. McWilliams had no physical description to go by, but this newcomer had to be the right guy. His eyes never stopped moving. He watched every corner of the bar almost at once as he stalked through it like he wanted to kill everyone. If what Trogg had said about Kohler’s brief phone call was true, the guy could kill everyone there, McWilliams thought.

The newcomer zeroed in on McWilliams almost immediately, his eyes narrowing as he took in the biker’s out-of-date clothing. He made his way to the booth and sat without invitation, his hands hidden beneath the table.

“Well. Aren’t you a piece of work,” he said. His voice was smooth, deep and quiet. It was the voice of a man who didn’t shout, who didn’t repeat himself. It was the voice of a man who was used to getting what he wanted the first time he asked.

“Pick,” McWilliams said, extending a hand. The man’s gaze flickered to it disdainfully before centering on his face. McWilliams withdrew his hand, feeling like a sucker, and swallowed his pride. Getting angry with this dangerous bastard would only get his ticket punched.

“Carleton,” the man said.

McWilliams didn’t know if it was a first name or a last name. He did not ask. Carleton was maybe five-nine, five-ten, and nearly two hundred pounds. His hair was cropped close; his face was outlined by a severely trimmed mustache and beard. He was wearing a black button-down silk shirt, a subdued black-and-gray tie and black slacks under an expensive looking trench coat that might have been Armani. McWilliams didn’t know if Armani made coats, but he knew money when he saw it. This Carleton did well for himself and had a big Rolex watch on his wrist to show for it.

“I was told someone would meet me,” Carleton said.

McWilliams said nothing. He produced a large manila envelope and slid it across the table.

“Next time,” Carleton said with a sigh, “slide it under the table.” He opened the folder while holding it out of sight between his body and the wall against which the booth was set. Looking up at McWilliams from behind small, round, wire-frame glasses, his gaze flickered left and right before coming to rest on the biker again. He said nothing.

“What?” McWilliams finally asked.

“I was just thinking that Kohler strikes me as a lot more professional than, well, you,” he said. “What’s a worm like you doing in his employ?”

“I don’t work for him,” McWilliams said. “I’m with the Purists.”

“I’m sure you are,” Carleton said, waving one black-gloved hand. His tone was clear. He didn’t know or care who or what the Purists might be. “Regardless, when Kohler contacted me he said he had a serious problem. If I had a serious problem, I would hardly send the likes of you to convey it.”

“Now just wait a minute,” McWilliams began, finding his nerve. “Just who the hell do you—”

Something jabbed him.

“Ow!” McWilliams jumped in his seat. “What did you just do?”

“Mr. Pick,” Carleton said, cutting off the biker before McWilliams could protest, “have you heard the expression ‘shoot the messenger’?”

McWilliams started to go for the revolver in the back of his waistband, but his arms suddenly felt heavy and warm. He kept trying to reach for the gun, but his limbs wouldn’t obey. His head felt wobbly as he looked at Carleton, confused.

Carleton smiled tightly. “Thank you for the information. Good day.”

McWilliams could only watch as his visitor stood and strode out of the bar, the envelope in one hand. As the well-dressed man swept past a trash can at the entrance, he dropped something in it. McWilliams caught a glimpse of what he thought was a syringe.

He was already slumping in his chair, his throat closing, his breath catching as he tried and failed to cry out. He struggled to draw air, feeling and hearing the croak that left his lips.

Eventually, someone in the bar noticed him sitting there, flailing, and rushed over to try the Heimlich maneuver. By then it was far too late. Pick McWilliams was dead of anaphylactic shock before the EMTs were even called.

Z IPPERS A RCADE WAS A strip club sprawled in a commercial-industrial area on the northern fringes of Syracuse, with an auto yard on one side and a custom upholstery shop on the other. The Executioner had contacted Barbara Price to cross-reference the local data Paglia had provided. Given the size of the city and the scope of the operation—neither of which was particularly significant in the grand scheme of things—there wasn’t much, but Aaron Kurtzman had managed to turn up a few morsels.

The upholstery place, a family business in Syracuse founded forty years previously, was legitimate. The auto yard wasn’t. Tracing its ownership and the ownership of Zippers produced a common front company that was itself a placeholder for a trust that owned multiple other properties. Most of those properties had been connected to Purist-related violence. The trail went all the way back to something called the Diamond Corporation, headed by one Roger Kohler.

Kohler would receive Bolan’s attention in due time. For the moment, the soldier needed to find whoever was killing the Purists—and anyone else who stumbled into the path of the killer’s bullets.

Bolan left his SUV parked nearby, in the parking lot of a closed service station. Its windows were boarded over and bore faded paper signs proclaiming For Sale or Lease. He circled to the rear of the block of businesses and walked casually through the neighboring lot behind them. A dark, three-quarter-length windbreaker worn over his blacksuit covered his hardware from casual observers. Nothing in his manner was furtive or otherwise suspicious. He walked as if he belonged there, at a brisk but unhurried pace. He saw a few pedestrians. Traffic was moderate. It consisted mostly of delivery trucks, most likely headed to the assembly warehouse and lumberyard visible in the distance.

The back door of Zippers was labeled and unmanned. Bolan spotted a closed-circuit television camera aimed in his direction and paused. He looked hard at the device, then resumed his course. Up close, he confirmed what he’d thought to be the case—the cable leading from the rear of the camera terminated directly against a four-by-four wooden post set in the asphalt overlooking the rear of the club. It was a good bet nobody had taken the time to hollow out the post in order to run a cable down its length. The device was a dummy, the kind anyone could buy from a novelty catalog. As he approached he noticed the generic warning sticker pasted to the back door, claiming the building was protected by an alarm system.

Reaching out with his left hand, his right inside the windbreaker, Bolan tried the door handle.

The metal fire door swung silently open.

“Gotcha!” yelled the Purist in biker leathers and colors who stood just on the other side of the door. The twin muzzles of the sawed-off double-barrel shotgun in his fists looked very large as Bolan stared down their bores. He heard the metallic clicks of the weapon’s twin hammers being cocked.

“Wait—” Bolan said.

The roar of the shotgun was deafening at close range.

4

Bolan folded his knees beneath him as he spoke, dropping down and back in a controlled fall. The shotgun blast washed over him—he could feel the heat on his face. As he landed on his back, his chin tucked in to protect his head, he lashed out with a vicious kick that caught the gunman at the ankle.

Bone snapped. The man dropped like a felled tree, screaming. He’d spent both barrels in the shotgun. Bolan was up and on top of him before he could maneuver to reload. The Executioner drew his Beretta 93-R from its custom shoulder holster. The sound suppressore was already affixed, and three flat slaps signaled the biker’s end.

Ears ringing from the close-range shotgun blast, Bolan bent to pick up the fallen weapon. He dropped it into a nearby trash can, where it wouldn’t be quickly found and used against him. Then the soldier stepped over the corpse and made his way cautiously through the door, leading with the Beretta. He had lost the element of surprise with that 12-gauge detonation. He would have to rely on simple, brutal force. He shrugged out of his windbreaker and let it drop, giving him un-obstructed access to his combat harness and gear.

The corridor was empty. Bolan’s combat boots were loud on the creaking floorboards. He stopped, listened. There was no sign that anyone within had heard the shotgun, which made no sense.

He was staring down a dirty, poorly lit corridor lined in old wood paneling and cluttered with piles of old newspapers and a couple of stinking plastic bags of trash. The corridor terminated in a T leading left and right. Tattered posters for X-rated movies papered the far wall. From somewhere ahead came the muffled bass of dance music, obviously from the main area of the club. Bolan took another step and the floor creaked again. He froze.

He heard the answering creak from around the corner.

They were waiting for him, playing it smart, they thought. Bolan quietly plucked a flash-bang grenade from his combat harness. He triggered the little hockey-puck shaped device—one of Kissinger’s little helpers, as Cowboy called them—and threw it at an angle so it bounced off the far wall and ricocheted around the corner. Quickly he crouched, turned away, and shoved his hands over his ears while opening his mouth wide and squeezing his eyes shut. The deafening, blinding eruption was mercifully brief, so bright he could see the flash through his closed eyes.

Bolan was up and stalking as the afterimages of the blast left floating green shapes in his vision. There were three of them writhing on the floor—two to the right and one to the left, where they’d been waiting to ambush him. Two handguns and a shotgun littered the floor. The men wore Purist colors. This time he didn’t bother collecting weapons; he simply moved on, reloading the Beretta to replace the partially spent magazine with a fresh twenty rounds.

He chose the right-hand corridor; the left was a dead end that terminated in a bare cinder-block wall. Bolan made his way down the hallway, keeping his head, arms and weapon steady and searching for adversaries. There was a shriek, and then another. Ahead of him, he saw movement. Suddenly, five half-naked women ran from a dressing room ahead and to the left, brushing past him as if he wasn’t even there. Bolan let the strippers pass, his Beretta held at low ready. He waited.

The two gunners ducked out, one high, one low. The bottom man got off a shot that went high and wide. Bolan drilled him with two bursts through the torso, the Beretta rising to sweep the top man in the same arc. The second man—both were dressed in Zippers T-shirts and khakis, probably what passed for club security in this crime pit—was punched backward as the slugs entered his neck and chin. The little .380 Colt Mustang he had been clutching fell from nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor.

Bolan took the corner wide to maximize his cover and keep any potential targets in his field of vision as he entered the dressing room. He passed the lighted mirrors and scattered lingerie without a glance, instead scanning every corner for hidden threats. The door leading from the dressing room to the main part of the club was shut. He planted one boot just left of the doorknob and cracked it open without trying the handle, diving low as he entered.

“Now! Now!” someone yelled. Gunfire ripped from three points at once and Bolan had no choice but to blitz forward, legs pumping. The club area was multileveled, colored lights washing down from scaffolding on the ceiling. One of the shooters was in the DJ booth, where deafening techno continued to bleat from mammoth speakers along the walls. Another was somewhere in the scaffolding—Bolan couldn’t tell where—and a third was on the move on the lower dance-floor level. Bullets ripped the slick tiling behind Bolan’s feet as he ran for the DJ booth. Strobe lights flashed from above, obscuring the muzzle-flashes from the gang members’ guns. There were no customers. Bolan had reached the club before it opened. With the strippers gone, he knew chances were good there no innocents to get caught in the cross fire.

With no cover afforded by the tiered but largely open club area, Bolan shoved the Beretta before him and unleashed a fusillade of 9 mm rounds at the DJ booth, forcing the gunman there to duck. Gunfire followed him as the other two shooters tried to claim him, but he was moving too fast and the colored, flashing lights were causing the Purists as much trouble as they were causing the soldier. Bolan threw himself flat beside the half-height doorway to the DJ booth. The biker within—a broken, older-looking man with a shaved head, wearing a leather jacket with one sleeve cut off—swung his short-barreled 9 mm Colt submachine gun in Bolan’s direction, but he was too slow. The Exectutioner stitched him up the groin and through the torso, emptying the Beretta with two last triple bursts.

The two remaining shooters concentrated their fire on Bolan’s position. He stayed low, letting them rip up the wall above his head, dousing him with drywall dust. The dead Purist had several spare magazines for his Colt, so Bolan appropriated them and the weapon, shoving the long stick magazines under his web belt at his side. He reloaded his Beretta and holstered it, then reached up blindly and began slapping buttons on the DJ board. On the fourth try, the music stopped. Bolan slapped a couple of more buttons and managed to switch off the strobe lights and the track lighting, plunging Zippers into darkness.

He waited for the shooting to stop, then crept silently from the booth, feeling his way along the outer wall of the club area, walking in a low crouch with a corner of the Colt’s telescoping stock tucked against his shoulder. Then he stopped and remained perfectly still, controlling his breathing.

“Gord!” one of the Purists finally shouted. “Gord! Gordy, man, where are you?”

“Over here, moron,” Gordy finally answered.

“Do you see him?”

“No, Chigger, I don’t see him. If I saw him, I’d be shooting at him! I can’t see anything.”

“I don’t hear him.”

There was a pause. Bolan waited. He very quietly slipped the combat light from his pocket and held it in his fingers, wrapping his remaining free support-hand fingers around the forestock of the Colt.

“I think he snuck out!” Chigger offered from a spot across the room and to Bolan’s right. “Maybe when the lights were out!”

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