BAD BLOOD

A gun battle between rival gangs terrorizes shoppers at a Miami mall, but Mack Bolan knows that cleaning up the mess in Florida is just the beginning. One gang’s main operation leads back to Jamaica, where its drug trafficking business is flourishing. And so is the practice of voodoo and human sacrifice.

Infiltrating the gang on its own territory is a deadly challenge. With most of the island on the cartel’s payroll or too afraid to come forward, Bolan’s only ally is a Kingston police officer. But no matter the odds, the Executioner will do whatever it takes to bring down the drug lord and his army of killers.

How many left?

One man from the first car, at least three from the third, if he’d taken out its driver. Bolan still had work to do, and he was running out of time before some passing driver heard the sounds of battle and called the cops.

The one thing Bolan would not do, regardless of the circumstances, was initiate a firefight with police. He’d made a vow that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Law enforcement officers, in Bolan’s mind, were “soldiers of the same side.” He’d evade them by any means, but would always stop short of lethal force.

Which meant he had to mop up his remaining enemies and get out of there before the police arrived.

Tick-tock.

He was about to go after the shooters from the third car when a flash of light alerted him to trouble. It was the Marauder’s dome light, coming on because one of its doors had opened. The woman bolting out of panic at the gunfire? Or had someone found her?

Either way, he had to check it out, but he couldn’t leave enemies behind while his back was turned.

Mouthing a curse, the Executioner moved out.

Blood Rites
Don Pendleton

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

—Aesop,

“The Swallow and Other Birds”

Evil takes root wherever good men close their eyes. Only scorched earth can kill the seeds.

—Mack Bolan

THE

MACK BOLAN

LEGEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

MB Legend

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Dolphin Mall, Sweetwater, Florida

“He’s late,” René Bertin announced.

“I know he’s late,” François Raimonde replied. “You think I can’t tell time?”

“Just sayin’.”

“Well, stop sayin’, unless you got a way to hurry him.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Then shut up.”

Raimonde had always wondered why the county named its largest shopping mall after a fish, until somebody told him it was named after a football team. That pacified him for a while, until he learned the team had no connection to the mall, which irritated him again.

Screw it.

The only thing he cared about right now was meeting Roger Dessalines and picking up the bag he was supposed to deliver, with twelve kilos of pure cocaine inside. Dessalines was running late, some twenty minutes now, and that was cause for worry, but Raimonde was trying not to let it make him crazy. Bad things happened when he tipped over the edge, as anyone who knew him could attest.

At least, the ones who were still alive.

Bertin muttered something under his breath, and Raimonde felt his cheeks heating up. “What was that?”

“I said why don’t he call, if he’s gonna be late?”

“You can ask him, if he ever shows up.”

“Man, we’ve been sitting here forever. It ain’t good, you know?”

Raimonde knew. Deals like this one were meant to go swiftly and smoothly, no waiting around. Every minute they spent in the mall’s parking lot, baking under the sun in their Lexus, raised their level of risk. Mall security circled the property every half hour or so, and they might call police if they figured Raimonde and Bertin looked suspicious. Police meant questions and possibly a search that would reveal their weapons and the gym bag filled with cash.

Bad news, but that wasn’t the worst.

They were in posse territory. In Raimonde’s opinion this was a stupid place for a handoff, but he hadn’t been consulted. Never was, in fact. Just got his orders and obeyed them like a soldier should. But sitting still for any length of time in posse territory was an invitation to disaster.

“Where is he?” Bertin grumbled, not quite whining.

“I told you—”

“Shit! Look there! You see ’em?”

Raimonde followed Bertin’s pointing finger and went cold inside, despite the midday heat. A jet-black Lincoln MKT was cruising through the lot, its large grille flashing sunlight like a monster’s toothy smile. The blacked-out windows hid most of its passengers, but Raimonde saw the driver and his shotgun rider plain enough, both of them sporting dreads, the wheelman wearing a crocheted Rasta cap.

“What are we gonna do?” Bertin demanded.

“Do our job,” Raimonde informed him, reaching underneath his seat for the machine pistol hidden there. Bertin grunted and reached under his baggy jacket to draw a Glock 18 selective-fire model, digging in a pocket to produce a 33-round magazine and swap it for the pistol’s normal clip.

“They see us, we’re in shit,” Bertin declared.

“More likely if we move.”

“This is Roger’s fault.”

“The boss said wait,” Raimonde said. “We wait.”

And so, they did.

* * *

“CHECK OUT THE LEXUS,” Shabba Maxwell said.

“Where?” Tyson Eccles asked from the driver’s seat.

“Open your eyes.”

Neville Bucknor chimed in, from the backseat. “I know that bastard at the wheel.”

Eccles eyed the Lexus as they passed it, thirty yards away and rolling slowly in the Dolphin Mall’s fire lane. They were Haitians, he was almost sure, even without the word from Bucknor.

“What are we gonna do?” Desmond Salkey asked.

“Same thing we always do,” Maxwell said. “They’ve got no business on our turf.”

“You gonna ask the boss?” Eccles said.

“Ask him what?” Maxwell demanded. “He said deal with any bad boys we find comin’ up in here.”

“Should shoot ’em dead,” Salkey chipped in.

“You wanna ask someone,” Maxwell said, “give me the wheel and split.”

“Ease up, man,” Eccles said. “I’m with you, brother.”

“No more talking, then. Get out your pieces.”

Maxwell’s weapon was a Micro-Uzi SMG. His two men in the backseat carried AK-105 Kalashnikov carbines, and Eccles had a twelve-gauge Ithaca 37 Stakeout model shotgun tucked into the map pocket of his driver’s door, ready to go.

“Okay,” Maxwell told them. “Do this thing!”

* * *

“ALL UNITS, CODE 30! We have shots fired at the Dolphin Mall, multiple injuries reported, still in progress.”

“Acknowledge that,” Corporal Tyrus Jackson told his partner. He was driving their patrol car, letting rookie Rick Lopez handle the radio.

Lopez snatched up the microphone and answered, “Unit 31 responding. We’re two minutes out.”

Jackson already had the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor up to sixty-five, rolling toward Northwest 117th Avenue. He’d make a right turn there, if no one slammed into their cruiser, and they’d arrive at the mall shortly.

“The Dolphin’s massive,” he reminded Lopez. “Call back and find out where the shooting is. With multiples, we got no time to waste.”

“Roger that.”

Lopez raised the dispatcher, and the answer came back with a wisp of static. “Southwest parking lot.”

“Ninety seconds, if we’re lucky,” Lopez said, and cut the link.

Multiple casualties meant a psycho on a rampage, or some kind of gang activity. Jackson was betting on the gangs, but you could never tell. Miami wasn’t just a melting pot, it was a boiling pot, where races and religions clashed, the rich flaunted their money and the poor wanted a piece of it. In any given year, Miami Metro saw it all, from slaughters in the family to drug burns, hate crimes, even human sacrifice.

But multiples, with a shooting still in progress, meant his day had gone to shit, barely an hour after roll call.

“Here we go,” he said, and swung onto the ring road that encircled Dolphin Mall. He heard the gunfire now. Snap, crackle, pop, telling him there were automatic weapons in the mix. Not one, but several, which meant this wasn’t just a random head case run amok.

“What do we do?” Lopez asked, sounding worried.

“Same as always,” Jackson answered. “Whatever we can.”

* * *

“BABYLON IS COMIN’,” Salkey said, pointing at the police car entering the parking lot.

“I’m not deaf,” Maxwell reminded him, reloading as he moved to head off the patrol car.

They’d pinned the Haitians down but hadn’t killed them yet, though Maxwell reckoned one was wounded. He’d seen crimson spatters when they started firing on the Lexus, but their targets both returned fire, peppering the Lincoln MKT before Eccles had swung around behind a bulky pickup truck. They’d have to strip and burn the ride when they were finished here, which pissed him off to no end.

And now, police.

Tracking their progress through the parking lot was easy. The siren was wailing, blue and white lights flashing on the roof rack. As they turned into the nearest lane and started toward the Lexus, Maxwell rose before the cruiser, hosing it with Parabellum slugs.

“Die, Babylon!” he shouted as their windshield imploded, the driver’s face turning red-raw in an instant. The cruiser swerved and crashed into a station wagon, then stalled.

The young Latino passenger bailed out, whipping a sidearm from its holster, but he wasn’t fast enough. Maxwell cut loose on him, the Micro-Uzi’s bullets ripping through his brown uniform, releasing scarlet blooms on impact.

“Shoulda worn your vest,” he jeered, and turned back to the battle going on behind him.

Two pigs down, two Haitians still to go. Then they’d torch the Lincoln and find a way back to the boss, to report.

“Party time,” Maxwell muttered, and moved off to meet his enemies.

1

Norland, Miami Gardens, Florida

Mack Bolan hit the ground running in Miami. He had driven down from Stony Man Farm, in Virginia, breaking up the journey with an overnight stop in Savannah, Georgia. The drive let him carry the gear he’d picked out for this mission without any hassles from airport security, and if something happened to the car—a confiscated narco-smuggler’s Mercury Marauder, whose records had been lost somewhere between its forfeiture and its delivery to Stony Man—there would be no comebacks on Bolan or the Farm.

The warring parties were a tough Jamaican outfit called the Viper Posse, and a Haitian gang whose leaders hadn’t bothered thinking up a catchy name. Both dealt in drugs, illegal weapons, human trafficking and sundry lesser rackets. They’d been stepping on each other’s toes around Miami for the past two years, the body count increasing, but this last flamboyant battle at the crowded Dolphin Mall caused a ripple out of Washington, propelling Bolan to the Sunshine State.

Nine dead and thirteen wounded in the latest firefight, which was probably a record, even for South Florida. The body count included three known Viper Posse members, two illegal Haitian immigrants, two Miami-Dade police officers, and two shoppers caught in the crossfire. The wounded were bystanders, more cops and a couple of mall security officers. Local law and the feds were all over it, turning Miami’s Haitian and Jamaican enclaves upside-down, but cries of racial profiling had touched off protests in the streets, and when you got down to it, no police force in the States could chase the Viper Posse’s leaders once they split for home.

That was where Bolan came in.

He didn’t need warrants, indictments, subpoenas, or writs of extradition. He wasn’t logging evidence for use in court, and didn’t have to read a perp his rights before he brought the hammer down. He’d been hunting human predators of one kind or another from his youth until his staged death in Manhattan some years back, with nothing changed except his face and name.

His war was still the same. The opposition’s ranks were inexhaustible.

Most of the residents of Kendall, southwest of Coral Gables, were law-abiding people. However, those who stood outside the law had earned a reputation for ferocious violence.

While most posse members were nominal Rastafarians, purportedly worshiping late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I as a god and smoking ganja as a sacrament, the island-spawned gang also swam in a current of Obeah, a West Indian belief system with African roots, akin to Voodoo or Santeria. The practice of Obeah involved blood sacrifice. Animals were ostensibly preferred, but some practitioners were rumored to spill human blood for important rituals, or when they sent a special message to their enemies.

Murder was all the same to Bolan, whether carried out with automatic weapons or machetes, and he normally repaid the predators in kind. He had no fear of “magick,” black or white, but recognized that many people felt its draw and thereby left themselves open to victimization. When superstition crossed the line into mayhem and became a tool for terrorists, the Executioner was ready to step in and shut the circus down.

Beginning now.

* * *

GARCELLE BROUARD KNEW she was staring in the face of death as Winston Channer stood before her, showing a ghastly smile. A fall of dusty-looking dreadlocks framed his oval face, eyebrows replaced by rows of small, deliberately inflicted scars, more of them on his cheeks in tight spiral designs. His teeth were either capped or filed to points, so that his smile displayed a double row of fangs.

“You’re as good as dead,” he told her.

Garcelle kept her face impassive and replied, “So, get it over with.”

“Not so fast, child. I’ve got a message for your family.”

“You think that will change the way they deal with you?” She laughed, enjoying the expression on his feral face. “You’ll only make things worse.”

“Be worse for you, no doubt. Think Daddy will like it if I send ya back in pieces?” Channer narrowed his eyes and asked, “Why are you smiling?”

She kept the mocking smile in place while answering his question. “I’m imagining the things he’ll do to you. How long he’ll keep you tied up on his table, screaming.”

“You like the screams, eh? When I start on you, scream plenty for me, will ya? No one’s coming to help you.”

That was true, she realized. The Viper Posse occupied this whole apartment complex. She sat in unit 227, bound to a straight-backed wooden chair with plastic zip ties. She could scream until her lungs bled, and the other yardies wouldn’t interfere with Channer’s fun. Nor would the neighbors, who’d been terrorized into submission when the Viper Posse routed tenants from the Palm Glades complex and converted it into their headquarters.

Police? Forget about them. They patrolled Kendall’s white neighborhoods routinely, but required an urgent call to trespass on Jamaican turf around Three Lakes. The last time they’d visited Palm Glades, it sparked a confrontation that sent nine yardies to jail, and seven coppers to the hospital. The gang was not evicted, though, because it kept a battery of top-end lawyers on retainer and possessed a bill of sale for the suburban property.

No. She was on her own, and that was bad.

Fatally bad.

She couldn’t bargain with the Viper Posse’s local honcho, couldn’t bribe her way out of the trap. Channer was bent on capturing her father’s territory, taking everything he had, and would not settle for a consolation prize.

She was a pawn to him—or worse, a living sacrifice.

“I don’t want to cut your head off first,” Channer said. “That spoils my game and tells your daddy he’s got nothing left to hope for. Mebbe I should start down on the other end, eh?”

Garcelle tried to imagine what it would feel like, having her feet cut off. Would she bleed out? Not likely, if her captors wanted her alive and suffering. A propane torch would cauterize the wounds, but searing would not stop infection. Not that it would help. Channer would no doubt dismember her completely, long before gangrene could end her misery.

Tell them no more than you have to, she thought grimly. Everybody breaks, but hold on as long as you can. Make the bastards work for it.

“Ten toes it is,” Channer declared, and moved off toward the doorway. He opened it and called to someone on the Other Side, “Gimme the little saw, brother. And one of those blue tarps.”

* * *

BOLAN HAD GONE all out, picking his tools for the Miami mission. Riding with him on the southbound highway was a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a Benelli M4 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun, a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum pistol, and his favorite Beretta 93R selective-fire sidearm. For long-range work, he’d picked a Barrett M98B sniper rifle. The Barrett is a bolt-action weapon, feeding .338 Lapua Magnum rounds from a ten-round detachable box magazine. Top off that ensemble with spare magazines all around, plus two dozen M68 fragmentation grenades, and the Executioner was ready to rumble.

His first target was a so-called social club, the Kingston House, located on Southwest 80th Street near Snapper Creek Park. Intel from Stony Man identified it as a hangout for the Viper Posse’s goons and part-time headquarters for Winston Channer, honcho of the posse in South Florida. Bolan could not predict if Channer would be in when he came calling, but he pegged the odds at fifty-fifty. Either way, demolishing the joint and taking out the posse soldiers he found on-site would send a message to the man in charge, and ultimately back home to Jamaica.

Bolan parked his Mercury a half block north of Kingston House, secured it and set the ear-splitting alarm. If all went well, he wouldn’t be gone long, and he’d return to find his rolling arsenal where he had left it. Otherwise, he’d have to improvise.

Leaving his ride, he took the Steyr AUG with an AAC M4-2000 suppressor attached, both handguns and a couple of grenades. It was supposed to be a hit-and-git, not a protracted battle, but he prepped for any snags he could imagine, and a few that didn’t come to mind immediately. Bolan’s protracted war had taught him that preparedness counted for more than luck.

The place looked dead as he approached it. Never meant to draw outsiders, the exterior was relatively drab: two stories, with beige stucco on the outside, a flat roof, no neon flashing in the night. Unless you were a Viper Posse member or associate, you had no reason to stop at Kingston House, and any trespassers would be discouraged in a most emphatic way.

He scouted the approach and found no guards watching the street. Given the state of modern CCTV cameras, lookouts might well be watching him from inside, but Bolan wasn’t bothered by that possibility. He was expecting opposition.

Counting on it.

He walked behind the club, bringing the Steyr out from underneath his lightweight raincoat. It had drizzled off and on all day, reason enough to wear the coat that hid his hardware, but the time had come to let it rip.

Bolan tried the back door, found it locked and fired a muffled 3-round burst into its dead bolt, shattering the lock. He followed through without a second’s hesitation and found himself inside a corridor that passed a kitchen on the left and restrooms on the right. Apparently no one was using either of the two facilities just now. Ahead of him, Bolan heard voices coming from some kind of rec room, half a dozen by the sound of it, engaged in a friendly argument. Above his head, the sound of footsteps told him there were other posse members on the second floor. There was a heady scent of ganja in the air.

“That girl’s hot,” one of the possemen was saying, “know what I mean?”

“You’re speaking true,” another said.

“I wouldn’t lie to ya,” the first voice said.

Bolan crashed the party, counting seven heads around a pool table. He was quiet till one of them spotted him and squawked a warning to the others. Then he began to take them down with nearly silent 5.56 mm NATO rounds. They scrambled, seeking cover, groping for their weapons.

First to draw his pistol was a porky soldier with a rainbow-colored Rasta cap atop his head. Before he had a chance to aim, Bolan’s next burst sheared off the left side of his face, but the soldier still managed one wild shot as he was falling, wasted on the ceiling. A shout up there told Bolan that the club’s other inhabitants were on alert and pounding toward the stairs.

* * *

“WHAT’S THAT?” WINSTON CHANNER demanded, standing over his captive with a hacksaw in his hand.

“Sounds like your boys are shooting each other,” Garcelle Brouard told him, smiling.

Channer swung his free hand, striking her across the right cheek. Spitting blood, Garcelle supposed she was fortunate he hadn’t used the saw.

“Big man,” she sneered, with crimson lips. “Untie me, and we’ll see how tough you are.”

“I’m gonna fix this, then come back and fix you, hear me?”

“Big talk,” she spat at him, expecting to be struck again, but Channer turned away, setting the hacksaw on a nearby table as he left the room. A moment later, he was back again, drawing a switchblade from his pocket, snapping it open as he moved behind her chair.

“Looks like your daddy sent his man to fetch you home. I’ve got a big surprise for him. He’s as good as dead.”

She felt the blade pass through the plastic ties that held her arms behind the chair. Then the knife was at her throat, the point drawing a bead of blood below her jawline on the right. Channer’s free hand gripped her hair as she slowly rose to stand beside him, measuring her chances of escape.

Not good.

“You think I’m gonna let you go? Not gonna happen, trust me. I want your daddy’s man to see your head come off.”

Hearing that, she almost turned to grapple with him, then decided she might have a better chance once they were on the staircase leading to the ground floor. He would be off balance then, distracted by the chaos going on below, and if she timed her move exactly right—

Big if, she thought.

One slip, and he would punch the blade up through her soft palate, into her brain, or simply slash her throat. There’d be no time to cut her head off with the relatively small knife, but Channer didn’t need to. He could kill her with a short flick of his wrist, and have the same effect on her father.

Not that it would save Channer.

Garcelle hoped she’d live long enough to see her father’s men blast Channer into hamburger and leave him leaking on the stairs. It would be worth it, to die knowing she had outlived the worthless Rasta piece of crap.

He shoved her through the office door, onto the landing and toward the staircase. More shots echoed from below, but they were dying out now. Which side would emerge victorious? She guessed it didn’t matter, but she hoped to see Channer’s thugs laid out, dead or dying, when they reached the stairs.

Not justice, necessarily, but vengeance.

Other Viper Posse soldiers had collected on the second-story landing, staying well behind their captain and his human shield. They seemed content to let Channer press forward, face the danger on his own and possibly distract the enemy before they joined the fight.

Cowards. Given the chance, she would have spit on them. But there would be no chance. Garcelle knew she was almost out of time, about to die at twenty-six years old.

They reached the stairs and Channer shouted, “Hold on down there! I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Come down, then,” somebody answered. Not a voice she recognized.

A white man stepped into view, surprising Garcelle. She didn’t recognize him, knew she would have remembered that grimly handsome face if they had ever met. Who was he, then? And why was he here, killing Channer’s men?

“Who are you?” Channer demanded, tightening his grip on Garcelle’s hair, pressing his blade’s tip deeper into yielding flesh until she nearly sobbed.

“Is that your last question?” the white man asked.

“How about I cut this gal’s head off. How’d that be?”

“You could do that,” the gunman said. “But what comes next, without your shield?”

“I’m not joking,” Channer snarled. “Ya think I’m scared? I’m going to—”

Before he could complete the thought, the white man raised his weapon, aimed, and fired a shot that seemed to be directed at Garcelle.

* * *

THE BULLET FOUND its mark, ripping through Channer’s left arm, which was raised to let him clutch the woman’s hair. Its impact drove him backward and broke his contact with the hostage, who immediately lurched away from him and tumbled headlong down the stairs. A fall like that could kill you, but she landed at the bottom more or less intact and started struggling to her feet.

“Come on!” he snapped at her, still covering the balcony above. Channer had fallen back, beyond Bolan’s line of sight, but others were crowding after him, their faces peeping cautiously downstairs.

Bolan discouraged them with a short burst that ripped through ceiling tiles and brought fragments raining down. A couple gunmen fired blindly in his direction, pistol shots, and missed by yards. Bolan stood his ground and let the woman scramble toward him, fresh blood weeping from her nose and from a cut beneath her jaw.

“Please, get me out of here!” she begged him. “I can pay you!”

“That way,” Bolan said, nodding toward the hallway leading to the back door, “while I cover you.”

She ran, seeming no worse for having fallen down the stairs. If she was hurt, she managed to disguise it well. Bolan retreated from the staircase, walking backward as he followed her, still covering the Viper Posse shooters on the second floor. Each time one showed his head, Bolan squeezed off a round or two and sent them ducking out of sight.

He heard the back door open as the lady shoved against it, bursting out into the night. She might run off without him, and if so, he wished her well. The last thing Bolan needed was a sidekick looking for sanctuary.

But she didn’t run. He found her waiting in the alley, looking frantic. “Don’t tell me you walked here,” she implored, her accent something from the French Caribbean. Haitian, maybe, though there were other possibilities.

If she was Haitian, it put her presence at the Kingston House into a new perspective. Not merely a captive, but perhaps a prisoner of war.

“The car’s down that way,” Bolan told her, pointing. “Half a block.”

“You’ll take me out of here?”

“I didn’t plan to hang around.”

“Please hurry, then, before they catch us!”

She was off and running after that, with no idea what Bolan’s ride might look like. To delay pursuit, he fired another short burst through the open door, no targets yet in sight, then followed her at double time.

“The Mercury,” he told her as he caught up.

“This? It’s old.”

“It’s vintage,” he corrected, and unlocked the doors remotely, sliding in behind the wheel while she sat next to him.

Downrange, he saw armed men erupting from the back door of their social club, scanning the alley and the street beyond for targets. Bolan left his headlights off as he revved the Marauder’s engine, cranking through a tight U-turn, but they were sure to spot him anyway. Less than a minute later, he had two cars in pursuit and gave up the deception, switching on his lights.

“They’ll catch us,” she worried aloud. “We can’t outrun them in this…this….”

“Don’t underestimate three hundred ninety cubic inches,” Bolan said, still not entirely sure he wanted to escape from Channer’s men. More damage could be done by getting rid of them for good, but he required an open killing ground for that, without civilians in his line of fire.

Someplace like the nearby park, perhaps, where he could find some combat stretch, with all the kiddies safely home for dinner, schoolwork and TV time with families.

“They’re coming!” his passenger warned.

“Stay down after we stop,” he told her.

“Stop! What do—”

“Hang on! We’re almost there.”

2

The winding road led Bolan through Snapper Creek Park to a deserted visitor’s center. A couple of dim lights still burned inside for security’s sake. The extra cover wouldn’t hurt when he went EVA, and he was hoping the trees around the building would conceal muzzle-flashes from drivers passing by. As for the racket, he could muffle only his own guns. The rest were out of his control until he silenced them by force.

He reached the smallish parking lot and put the Mercury Marauder through a tight bootlegger’s turn. Bolan switched off the headlights as he killed the rumbling engine, grabbed the Steyr and was out of there in seconds flat.

“What about me?” his passenger called after him.

“Stay there!” he snapped, and left her, merging with the night.

It wasn’t dark for long. Two chase cars were approaching on the same road he had followed. They claimed both lanes, so no one could slip past them, high beams swallowing the darkness, but they weren’t in any hurry now. Still making decent time, but nothing risky as they came on, sniffing for an ambush.

To the north, where Bolan could have fled the park along another looping road, a third car was approaching, headlights off, a subtle touch defeated by the widely spaced floodlights. It had been a smart move, sending in another team to cut off his retreat, but Bolan wasn’t worried yet.

Three cars, say four men to a ride unless they packed them in like cocktail sausages. A dozen wasn’t all that many if he handled it correctly. If he blew it, on the other hand, one man was all it took to bring him down.

Bolan tracked the two cars on his right through the Steyr’s integral telescopic sight. He put his first round through the tinted windshield of the chase car rolling down the left-hand lane, approximately where the driver’s face should be. The car lurched, started drifting toward a grassy verge, then straightened out and stopped as someone got the steering wheel under control.

By then, Bolan had shifted to the second car and fired another muffled shot, hoping the silencer that doubled as a flash-hider would cover his position. Round two pierced the second windshield with a plink, but this car didn’t swerve or stall. Instead, it suddenly accelerated toward the parking lot where Bolan’s Mercury sat waiting. The chase car’s headlights were switching off, three doors already opening before it came to rest.

Call that a miss, on driver number two.

Three men had tumbled from the first car he’d fired on, and he saw four scrambling from the second now. He had a choice to make, and he made it swiftly, spinning toward the third car, still approaching with its lights turned off. He used the glint of floodlights on the windshield as his guide, firing another single shot intended for the driver.

And scored this time, if the reaction of the vehicle was any indication. It stopped short, as if a dead weight had slipped down and landed on the brake pedal, the engine muttering to be unleashed, but for the moment stuck exactly where it sat.

Call that two out of three.

As men erupted from the third car, Bolan swung back toward the other two. He couldn’t trust the night to cover him forever, even with the AUG’s suppressor masking his location, but he still had time to do some damage now, before he had to move.

The soldiers sent to kill him were the same sort he’d encountered back at Kingston House, with dreads and baggy shirts intended to evoke an Afro-Caribbean vibe. Their scruffy clothing was in sharp contrast to the bright, shiny weapons they carried, all ready to rip at the first glimpse of a target.

Coming at them any second now.

* * *

THE FIRST SHOT SEEMED to come from nowhere. It cracked the windshield and ripped open Lenny Garvey’s face. The driver gave a little grunt, as if surprised, then slumped over the steering wheel, taking the vehicle off course till Gordon Crawford reached across and disentangled Lenny, gave the wheel a twist and thrust a leg between the driver’s dead ones, stamping on the brake.

“Get out of the car!” he shouted at the backseat soldiers, leading by example as he bailed out and hit the pavement on one shoulder, gasping at the sudden pain. “Damn it!”

Crawford kept moving, damn the pain. He hadn’t heard the shot, although his window was open, and had seen no muzzle-flash. Same story when the second chase car took a hit, but this one evidently missed the driver, since he charged on toward a parking lot some fifty yards ahead of them, and then squealed to a halt.

The plug car, coming at them from the north, took the next hit. Crawford was up and running when it swerved and stalled. He still had no sight of the enemy, but knew the white man wasn’t firing from the car he’d abandoned in the parking lot.

Two targets, neither of them visible as yet, and Crawford couldn’t go back to his boss if either one eluded him. Channer was hurt and raging, gone to ground by now, away from what was left of Kingston House before the pigs from Babylon rolled in.

Crawford clutched an M4 carbine loaded with a SureFire 60-round magazine, two more stuffed into pockets in his floppy shapeless jacket, worn with sleeves rolled back over his tattooed forearms. In his belt was wedged a Beretta 92G-SD pistol, and he worried that it might pop loose while he was running.

Crawford dropped behind a tree whose trunk was stout enough to cover him from any shooters working near the building. One armed man should be his only adversary, but he couldn’t sell the woman short, either. She had an instinct for survival, and you never knew who might be handy with a weapon, if one fell into their hands.

Armed or not, she had to die.

The notion of a white man bursting in to save her boggled Crawford’s mind, but he couldn’t afford to focus on that now. Survival was his one priority—which meant getting through the firefight with his skin intact and finishing the job he’d been sent to do. If he fell short, the death awaiting him at Winston Channer’s hands would make a gunshot seem like Heaven’s blessing.

He looked around and found the other two survivors from his car still crouching near it, angling weapons toward the visitor’s center, waiting for a target to reveal itself. Beyond them, four men from the second car were circling through the shadows cast by the building, seeking the man who’d brought them under fire.

Crawford hissed at his two lazy soldiers, then took a chance and raised his voice when they ignored him. “Move your ass!” he commanded, punctuating the order with an emphatic motion from his rifle.

Glowering, the two of them broke cover—and a bullet instantly found Byron Taylor, spinning him around with blood spraying as he hit the road facedown. Ini Munroe, beside him, gave a yelp and sprinted toward the building where the other soldiers were engaged in tracking down the sniper.

“You bring his head to me!” Crawford shouted after them. “And find the woman!”

Munroe offered no acknowledgment, but kept on running with his head tucked low, ready to open fire with his Kalashnikov if threatened. Trouble was, the threat might not be recognized until another bullet struck and laid him out.

Crawford knew he’d have to move soon. Hiding while his soldiers did the dirty work might be the normal mode of operation in some syndicates, but in the Viper Posse, leadership was understood to mean precisely that. Word got around if someone in the upper ranks was slacking.

Which was the first step toward a bloody end.

Cursing, he edged around the tree, taking a precious moment to prepare himself, then burst from cover, shouting, “Burn in hell!”

Whatever waited on the Other Side, two of his men had solved the mystery already, and instinct told him they would soon have company.

* * *

BOLAN SAW THE second runner drop, then swung back toward the quartet from the second chase car. They were fanning out along the east wall of the visitor’s center, crouching as they scuttled through the shadows, searching for the shooter who had slain their comrades. So far, none of them had spotted Bolan, but his good luck couldn’t last much longer as they closed the gap, advancing steadily.

One way to keep from showing muzzle-flashes was to lob a frag grenade.

He palmed one of the M68s, pulled its pin and pitched the grenade overhand. The bomb had a three-second fuse plus an impact fuse for backup, which would blow the charge three to seven seconds after it hit the ground or some solid object. No backup was needed this time, though, as the timer worked efficiently to fill the night with smoke, fire, shrapnel and screams.

It wasn’t a clean sweep, of course. The shooters had been smart enough to spread out while they hunted, so that one burst from an automatic weapon couldn’t drop them all at once. Two took the brunt of it, riddled with jagged shards of steel, and one shooter’s arm separated from his trunk and went airborne, hand still clutching his machine pistol. The little stutter gun erupted when it hit the pavement, emptying its magazine with one long burst.

The two remaining soldiers from the second car were stunned, one of them limping as he tried to turn and flee, but neither one of them was going anywhere. Bolan had spotted them while the shrapnel flew, and clipped the limper with a single round between the shoulder blades that punched out through his chest and sprayed the nearby stucco wall with blood. It took a moment for the dead man’s injured legs to get the message, then they folded, dropping him facedown onto the sidewalk.

That left one, and he was running for his life, firing backward, blindly, with some kind of stubby Kalashnikov carbine. Bolan recognized the Russian weapon’s sound and ducked a stream of slugs that fanned the air above his head, finding his spot by pure dumb luck.

The Executioner framed the shooter with the Steyr’s sight and hit him with a double-tap that ripped into his left side, low, an inch or two above his waistline. Nearly lifted off his feet, the soldier spun, dreadlocks fanned out around his screaming face like serpents on Medusa’s scalp, and went down firing, landing heavily, his back against the wall.

It shouldn’t take him long to bleed out, but he was a danger in the meantime, his Kalashnikov still spitting death in Bolan’s general direction. One more shot from twenty yards drilled through his forehead, bounced his head against the stucco as it emptied through a fist-size exit wound, then let him slump, slack-limbed, into the awkward sprawl of death.

How many left?

He made it one man from the first car, at least three from the third, if he’d taken out its driver. Bolan still had work to do, and he was running out of time before some passing driver heard the sounds of battle coming from the park and called the cops.

The one thing Bolan would not do, regardless of the circumstances, was initiate a firefight with Miami-Dade Police. He’d made a vow, at the beginning of his lonely war, that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Law enforcement officers, in Bolan’s mind, were “soldiers of the same side.” He’d evade them by whatever means he could, but always stopping short of lethal force.

Which meant he had to mop up his remaining enemies and haul ass out of there before the police arrived.

Tick-tock.

He was about to go after the shooters from the third car when a flash of light from Bolan’s right alerted him to trouble. It was the Marauder’s dome light, coming on because one of its doors had opened. The woman bolting out of panic at the gunfire? Or had someone found her?

Either way, he had to check it out, but he couldn’t leave enemies behind while his back was turned.

Mouthing a curse, the Executioner moved out.

* * *

GARCELLE BROUARD HAD heard enough, huddled against the floorboards of the white man’s car, to know that he was never coming back. She should have bolted instantly, the moment she was left alone, but something—maybe confidence in how he’d handled Channer and his soldiers at the Kingston House—had made her play along.

And now, was it too late?

She had to find out for herself.

She fumbled blindly for the door latch, reaching up, behind her head, afraid to show herself with bullets flying all around. She nearly changed her mind when an explosion echoed through the night, and what in hell was that about? She heard men screaming, more guns going off, but so far—miracle of miracles—no slugs had struck the car in which she sat.

That almost changed her mind, a small voice in her head saying, Stay here!

“No way,” she answered.

Had she already lost her mind? Garcelle decided she would leave that worry for another time. Right now, the one thing she was focused on was getting out of here alive.

She found the latch at last, yanked it, and threw her weight backward against the door. It gave and nearly spilled her to the pavement, as a dome light flared above her, telling anyone nearby that she was on the move.

“Damn!”

She rolled out of the Mercury, landed on all fours, and reached up to shut the door, hoping that Channer’s men were all too busy fighting for their lives to notice her. Those men had come specifically to kill her, but there was a chance her unknown rescuer would keep them busy long enough for her to sneak away.

What did she owe a perfect stranger, after all?

Only her life.

That almost stopped her. Almost. But she told herself she’d suffered through enough already, and she couldn’t help the stranger, being unarmed herself. Police were bound to show up any minute, and the last thing Garcelle needed was to wind up in a jail cell.

No. She was definitely running. It was every man—or woman—for themself.

Garcelle began crawling toward the nearest cover, some tall trees, the nearest of them about fifty feet away. She could duck behind them, scramble to her feet and run, if no one cut her down before she reached them. A bullet struck the pavement near her left foot, stinging Garcelle’s calf with asphalt shrapnel.

Move!

Throwing caution to the wind, she vaulted to her feet and ran as if her life depended on it—which, in fact, it might.

No warning shouts behind her. That was good, at least. If she could get a head start on whoever tried to follow her, maybe she could lose them in the dark. If not…well, it was better than remaining in the stranger’s car, a stationary target.

Garcelle slammed into a solid body. She recoiled from the impact, lost her balance and fell back to the ground.

One of the Rasta goons stood over her, leering, his automatic weapon aimed at Garcelle’s face.

“And where do you think you’re goin’?”

* * *

FOUR MEN HAD MANAGED to escape the third car, all moving well enough despite the shot Bolan had fired to stop their progress. He didn’t know if that meant he’d missed the driver, or if they’d begun with five men in the vehicle, but Bolan had no time to work out the specifics.

All four had to die.

They hadn’t seen him yet, but they were moving in, holding a kind of skirmish line formation as they scuttled through the shadows, dodging lighted areas as best they could. It didn’t help much, since he had them spotted from the start, but stopping them required a measure of finesse, to keep the fight from tipping into chaos.

Bolan took the point man first, a clean shot through the chest that sat him down and left him slumped there, his shoulder supported by a hedge he’d probably hoped would cover his advance.

The other three had seen their comrade drop, and while they couldn’t tell precisely where the killing shot had come from, they immediately laid down fire to sweep the nearby shadows. Bolan was beyond their killing radius, so far, and seized the opportunity to drop a second gunman, double-tapping him from thirty yards to plant him facedown on the unforgiving pavement.

The remaining two were close to losing it. He saw it in their jerky movements. He heard it in the curses they were flinging at an unseen enemy and their random fire into the night. He stitched them with a short burst, half his Steyr’s magazine exhausted now, and watched them fall together in a snarl of flaccid arms and legs.

That left the girl and who else, still alive on Bolan’s killing field?

He went to find her, didn’t have that far to look before he saw the posse gunman looming over her and grinning like he’d just unwrapped the greatest Christmas present ever.

The range—some forty yards—was nothing for his rifle or its telescopic sight. Backlit by floodlights from the parking lot, the posse thug was perfectly positioned for a clean shot through the head, chest, any part of him that Bolan chose. Playing it safe, he aimed for center mass and stroked the Steyr’s trigger once, sending a 5.56 mm mangler downrange and closing the gap in less time than a heartbeat required.

The Rasta shooter toppled over backward, slowly, like a falling tree, and hit the pavement with a solid sound, skull thumping asphalt. Bolan scanned the killing ground for any further opposition, then moved to help the woman stand, gripping her arm.

“If this is where you want to stay,” he said, “it’s fine with me.”

She seemed to think about it for a second, then shook her head. “No.”

“Okay, then. We should get a move on.”

He released her and walked back to the Mercury, the woman following a step or two behind. Still considering if she should bolt? He gave her all the room she needed, but she climbed into the shotgun seat beside him as he slid behind the steering wheel.

Bolan twisted the ignition key, gunning the Marauder’s engine. “Guess I should introduce myself,” he said. “Matt Cooper.”

“I’m Garcelle. But you know that, of course.”

“Do I?”

She blinked at that. “My father sent you…did he not?”

“Afraid I’ve never met the man,” Bolan replied.

“I do not understand.”

“I found you by coincidence,” he said. “A lucky break.”

“Unbelievable,” she said. “I thought… So, you’re a policeman?”

“Strike two.”

“But, then…?”

Leaving the parking lot and rolling west, he said, “Start with your name.”

“Garcelle. Garcelle Brouard.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. “Which means your father would be—”

“Jean Brouard.”

Top Haitian gangster in South Florida, perhaps in the United States. And yeah, it all made perfect sense now.

Bolan had come looking for a war, and he’d dropped into the middle of it, picking up a prize that might prove useful—or turn out to be a deadly albatross around his neck.

3

Richmond Heights, Kendall, Florida

The doctor wasn’t licensed in America, although he’d had a thriving practice in Jamaica. He’d been arrested for trafficking in Class A drugs, served three years and was stripped of his professional credentials…before he was forgotten by the state. No one in Kingston missed him when he’d slipped away to Florida—at the suggestion of the Viper Posse—to help in situations such as this one.

“You will live,” he told his patient. “I have stopped the bleeding and repaired the tissue damage. I am pleased to say the bullet missed your humerus and caused no damage to the shoulder socket.”

Winston Channer, groggy from the pain and drugs he’d been given, answered, “Damn! It hurts like hell!”

“That’s to be expected. These bullets tumble inside tissue, as you may know, and—”

“Stop the double-talk! What about my arm?”

The doctor frowned. “If you’re careful with it, if you rest and follow my directions, you will probably regain full use of your arm.”

“Probably? What do you mean, probably?”

“As I was trying to explain—”

“You damned quack! I’m going!”

He rose, fighting the sudden dizziness. Two of his soldiers came forward to support him as he rolled off the table and found his unsteady footing. Behind Channer, the doctor seemed about to panic. “You must rest!” he warned. “Your blood loss—”

“You’ll lose blood, if you don’t shut your mouth!”

The doctor backed away, nodding in resignation.

“Gimme a phone!” he ordered no one in particular. Both of his men extended cell phones, and he took one, opened it, began to dial.

“Who ya callin, Boss?” one dared to ask.

“Gordon. We shoulda heard from him by now.”

The call went straight to voice mail, ramping Channer’s fury up another notch. “Damn! Where is he?”

“He hasn’t called, Boss,” one of Channer’s soldiers said.

“I know that! I woulda talked to him if he’d called.”

He was about to close the phone and hand it back when it surprised him with a chirping tone. Channer almost dropped it, let another ring pass while considering if he should give the cell back to its owner, then decided he would answer it himself.

“What?”

On the other end, a voice he recognized asked, “Germaine? Where’s the boss?”

“You’re talkin’ to him. Did you find ’em?”

Hesitation on the line, before the caller answered, “They’re dead, Boss.”

“What? Who’s dead?”

“Those boys, all of them.”

“What?” Channer repeated, feeling foolish. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s true. I seen ’em myself, and Babylon’s all over there.”

“Damn it! Did they kill the white man?”

“Didn’t see him, Boss.”

“What about the woman?”

“She’s not here.”

Snarling an incoherent curse, Channer switched off the cell and tossed it from him. Someone caught it, tucked it in a pocket and was wise enough to ask no questions.

“All our brothers are dead,” he told them. His wounded arm throbbed—the local anesthetic wearing off—which only worsened Channer’s mood. “How could one man do all that?”

When no one answered, Channer decided on his own. “He couldn’t do it! It’s impossible.”

“He must’ve had help,” one of his soldiers offered.

“This shit isn’t finished,” Channer said. “I’m gonna find this bastard and he’s gonna say who sent him.”

“And the woman?” asked his other bodyguard.

“She’s run home to her papa,” Channer replied. “Where else?”

“Good thinkin’, Boss.”

“I’m gonna hear this white man screaming out his lungs. He’ll beg to die before I’m done.”

One of the soldiers cleared his throat and asked, “You gonna tell the Don, Boss?”

Damn! Channer had almost let that aspect of the problem slip his fevered mind. His master would be waiting for a call in Kingston, and he couldn’t stall much longer.

“Of course,” he replied. “I’ll call him soon as I find the scrambler phone.”

“I’ve got it,” said the soldier to his left, reaching inside his jacket.

Channer could have slapped him, but he took the phone instead and switched on its scrambler, waiting for the green light to stop flashing and burn steadily. When it was ready, he speed-dialed the only number in its memory.

Nearly six hundred miles away, a grim voice answered on the second ring. “What’s happening?”

“I’m sorry, Boss,” he said. “I’ve got bad news.”

* * *

Briar Bay Park, Kendall, Florida

BOLAN HAD PARKED his Mercury and sat there in the dark with Garcelle Brouard. She had declined medical treatment and agreed to speak with him before he dropped her off, her final destination still unspecified.

“So, Channer picked you up to strike a blow against your father,” Bolan said.

Garcelle nodded. “I’m not sure if he expected to collect a ransom or dispose of me. Either way, he misjudged my father.”

“Your father wouldn’t miss you? Wouldn’t pay to get you back?”

“I cannot say how he might feel if I was dead,” Garcelle replied. “I like to think he’d mourn, of course, but that may be wishful thinking. As for paying ransom? Never. It would set a precedent that he could not abide.”

Clearly, she was an educated woman, not the standard mobster’s daughter raised on perks and privilege.

He changed tacks. “Are you sure about the hospital?”

“I’m fine,” she said, raising a hand to lightly touch her swollen lower lip. “You came—how do they say it—in the nick of time?”

“That’s how they say it. Were they grilling you about your father’s business?”

“Trying to, but there was nothing I could tell them. From the time I was born, I’ve been excluded from that side of Papa’s life. It was important to him, I believe, to have a semblance of a normal family. As if that’s even possible.”

He heard a note of bitterness in Garcelle’s voice and followed up on it. “I guess it isn’t easy on your mother, either.”

“I suppose it wasn’t, but she died when I was four years old. Was murdered, I should say. A business rival of my father’s set a bomb, and… It was difficult for me to understand, at first. I missed her, as you may imagine. Papa never remarried, although whether out of loyalty to Mama’s memory or to avoid another incident, I couldn’t say. There were tutors, and a governess.”

“We’ve all lost people,” Bolan said, remembering his parents and his younger sister, lives cut short by the Mafia intrigue that launched his never ending war.

“That’s true, of course. The past five years, I’ve been away at school in Paris. Papa thought I would be safe there.” With the bare trace of a wicked smile, she added, “If he only knew.”

“And now, you’re back.”

“Six weeks ago. It took that long for Channer’s men to find me, I suppose.”

“Where will you go now?” Bolan asked.

“Back to Papa, first, to put his mind at ease. From there, I would imagine he’ll send me off again. As long as it’s not Haiti, I’m content.”

“Not homesick, then?”

“You’ve been to Haiti?”

“On occasion.”

“Then you know the answer to your question. While my family has never suffered poverty, at least within my lifetime, Haiti is a pit of misery and crime. That must sound quite ironic, eh?”

“Well… Men like your father haven’t exactly helped make things better.”

“Of course. And, as you can see, I’ve taken full advantage of his filthy money.”

“It’s a choice,” Bolan acknowledged. “You’re well educated. You could make your own way in the world.”

“Blood tells, as the saying goes. Also a song, I believe.”

Bolan wasn’t a preacher. He dropped it. “So, where should I take you?”

“I have a friend in Coral Gables, if it’s not too far out of your way.”

He estimated twenty minutes on South Dixie Highway, give or take.

“Sounds good,” Bolan replied, and fired up the Marauder’s mill.

* * *

Windward Road, Kingston, Jamaica

JEROME QUARRIE HAD NEVER learned to take bad news in stride. He’d been trying, lately, to control his temper. It was sheer folly, in the midst of war, to kill his men each time they disappointed him.

The way things had been going lately, he’d have no soldiers left.

And so he listened, teeth clenched, to the story of pathetic failure Winston Channer told him. Nineteen soldiers dead, seven at Kingston House, and twelve lost in pursuit of the mysterious white man who staged the raid. It was a grave loss, nearly ten percent of Quarrie’s whole Miami garrison, but what infuriated him the most was losing the woman.

His hostage.

Channer had stopped talking. Quarrie took a deep breath, tried counting to ten as he’d been advised, but only got to five.

“All those brothers dead, but you’re still livin’.”

“I nearly lost my arm.”

“I find out this is your fault,” Quarrie said, “you’re gonna lose your head.”

“Boss, I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” Quarrie said. “Find the woman and the man who snatched her from you. Kill the two of them and bring me proof. You can’t do that, I’ll do the job myself, and then kill you. Understand?”

“All right, Boss.” Relief was audible in Channer’s voice. “It’s all good. I miss, I’m dead.”

“Remember that,” Quarrie replied, and cut the link.

He reached for some rum and ganja, for the maximum effect. One scorched his throat, the other seeped into his lungs and made his troubles seem, if not remote, at least a little more removed from his immediate concern. He had already given orders to be left alone, unless the house burst into flames, and even then he knew his men would hesitate to clamor for attention.

“I’m gonna drink your blood,” he muttered to the unknown enemy, the man who’d appeared from nowhere, slaughtering his men and foiling Quarrie’s scheme. “Don’t think I’ll forget. I won’t stop until I pay you back for this.”

Until the job was done.

* * *

Coral Gables, Florida

GARCELLE BROUARD HAD no friends in Coral Gables, but she did have an apartment on Granada Boulevard. The man who called himself Matt Cooper dropped her off, wished her well and drove away in his Mercury Marauder with its motor rumbling.

The doorman greeted her with all the courtesy her high-priced rent deserved, and he solemnly assured Garcelle that no one had come asking for her in her absence. Neither had there been reports of any lowlife gangster types lurking around the neighborhood. The very notion seemed outrageous and amusing, given the development’s security precautions and its good relationship with the police.

Despite that reassurance, Garcelle exercised her usual degree of caution as she rode the elevator to her floor, one level underneath the penthouse occupied by the star of a TV show set in Miami. She checked the tiny scrap of paper that she wedged between the door and jamb each time she left, unnoticeable until it had been dislodged, and then impossible to put back in the same place once the door was opened. Only Garcelle knew the combination to the door’s keypad. In the rare event of an emergency, firefighters would be forced to use an axe or pry bar to get in.

She let herself inside, then instantly secured the two dead bolts before she searched the flat, armed with a pistol she kept in the kitchen. There was another wedged between the cushions of her sofa, and a third in Garcelle’s nightstand. One of many things she’d learned from Papa: always be prepared.

It was embarrassing that she’d been taken by surprise, out on the street, but she was home now, relatively safe—a concept more or less devoid of meaning in the present circumstance—and it was time to let her father know that she’d escaped. As to how much she’d tell him, Garcelle knew the answer.

Everything.

She’d lost her cell phone to the Viper Posse, but it didn’t matter. Garcelle grabbed the cordless from the kitchen, took it with her as she roamed through the apartment, checking every room and closet, stopping down to peer beneath the bed. When she was satisfied at last, she sat down on the bed, two guns beside her now, and dialed her father’s number. Abner Biassou took the call, her father’s second in command.

“Hello.”

“Abner, I need to speak with Papa.”

“Miss, are you—”

“I’m fine. Just put him on.”

Another moment passed before her father’s voice came on the line.

“I’m sorry, my dear, but I cannot—”

“Negotiate with kidnappers?” She laughed at him. “Of course not, Father.”

“But—”

“That’s why I had no choice but to escape.”

“You’re free? Where are you? How did you—”

“Not now,” she interrupted. “This line’s not secure.”

“Of course. But I must still know where you are, to send protection.”

“I’m at home and safe for now. But if you’d care to send a car…”

“I’ll send a caravan,” her father said. “A convoy.”

“Nothing quite so obvious.”

“Two cars, then. I insist.”

“That should be more than adequate.”

“You constantly surprise me, child.”

“There are more surprises waiting, when I see you.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed.”

“Good news, or bad?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I am intrigued.”

“You must be patient for a little longer.”

“Lock your doors, and—”

“I know what I’m doing. Goodbye, Father.”

She cut the link, cradled the cordless phone and spent the next ten minutes packing what she needed for a stay away from home. Cosmetics were not a priority, but she packed clothes, two extra pairs of shoes and every document she could think of: her driver’s license, passport, birth certificate professionally altered to present her as a native-born American, and so on.

Garcelle packed her three pistols, as well. There was no point in leaving them behind for an intruder to discover. Two of the guns were Glock 19 Compacts, both perfectly reliable and efficient, but her favorite was the Heckler & Koch P2000 SK, a sub-compact model that weighed only twenty-four ounces while packing ten hollow-point rounds. Garcelle was proficient with all three weapons, but she’d never shot a man.

Since her experience with Channer’s thugs, she hoped—not for the first time—that she might be favored with the chance to find out what it felt like.

All in due time, she decided, and was ready when the buzzer rang from downstairs, the doorman announcing that her escorts had arrived. She took her rolling bag, two guns inside it and the P2000 SK in her purse, and left her comfortable flat, perhaps for good. If she did not return, so be it. Finding new accommodations would not be a problem.

She was more concerned about survival at the moment.

And revenge.

* * *

FROM CORAL GABLES, Bolan traveled north to Miami Shores, a stretch of waterfront abutting Biscayne Bay. Here, the Viper Posse made their presence felt by dealing drugs while skirmishing with the gangs that had preceded them, as well as latecomers who’d claimed a slice of turf after the fact.

His target was another posse hangout, this one called Armagideon, a Rasta variation on the final clash of good and evil from the Book of Revelation.

Bolan parked a block down range, on Northeast 96th Street. He locked up the Marauder and took the Steyr AUG and pistols with him as he walked down to the club, scanning the street along his way for any lookouts. He saw none and wondered if word of his first clash with Channer’s minions hadn’t reached the village yet, or if the soldiers here had chosen to ignore it.

Either way, they were about to get a wake-up call.

As he approached the club, Bolan heard its roof-mounted air conditioner kick into life, its droning loud enough to cover him as he tried the front door’s knob. It turned and Bolan slipped inside, his silenced rifle up and ready to meet any challenge from within, but no one stopped him as he cleared a smallish entryway and moved along a short hall, toward the sound of reggae music. He had nearly reached a curtain made of colored beads when the expected outer guard appeared, clutching a sandwich in his right hand, a beer bottle in his left.

The shock of being confronted by a man with a gun immobilized his adversary for a crucial second. Bolan took advantage of it, squeezing off a single shot that drilled the hungry man’s chest and punched him backward through the rattling curtain, toward the strains of island rhythm. Bolan followed, arriving just as the dead man’s companions registered his body flopping on the floor.

Four of them leaped up from a card table where they’d been playing poker; two more bolted from a bar on Bolan’s right, reaching for weapons hidden underneath their baggy tie-dyed shirts. A seventh posse member was behind the bar, cracking a beer, but he dropped it when he noticed the intruder and his automatic rifle.

Time does not slow down in combat. Quite the opposite, in fact. When the smoke clears, survivors may have only fragmentary memories of what they did, or who they killed, in order to survive. Bolan, thanks to his long experience, saw everything that happened with a perfect clarity, but had no images of slow-mo tumbling corpses, bottles shattering artistically behind the bar, or any other tricks well-known from Hollywood.

It was an ugly business, killing, and he did it very well.

He had the Steyr set for 3-round bursts and made them count, beginning with the guy behind the bar, who had more cover and was reaching for a weapon. That target fell, surrounded by a drifting mist of blood, as Bolan turned to work the room, tracking from left to right and nailing others as they came. When he finished, there were nine rounds left in his translucent magazine, and pools of blood were spreading on the vinyl-covered floor, merging to form a single crimson lake. Of seven adversaries, only one had fired a shot, and that was wasted on the ceiling.

When no one else appeared, Bolan took the time to move behind the bar and smash a number of the rum and whiskey bottles shelved there. Then he ignited their dribbling contents to produce a wall of hungry, hissing flame. He saw no sprinkler system—tag them with a violation of the building safety code—which would allow the fire to spread, and maybe find its way upstairs before some passerby raised an alarm.

You wanted Armagideon, he thought. So, here it is.

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