CRITICAL IMITATION

A notorious assassin is captured before receiving the ultimate hit list from a major crime family. To protect the targets, Stony Man Farm sends Mack Bolan to infiltrate the family’s compound and secure the list. This time, Bolan has an extra weapon in his arsenal: he’s a dead ringer for the assassin. His impersonation is successful...until the escaped killer arrives on the scene. Suddenly, the race is on for Bolan to reach the targets before the assassin or his mercenaries can murder them—or Bolan himself. Yet despite the stolen identity, there will be no mistaking the Executioner’s signature blaze of hellfire and justice.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

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

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Copyright

Bullets thudded into the crippled SUV.

“I smell gas,” Pierce said. “Do you smell gas?”

“Try not to think about it, and give me cover fire,” Bolan ordered. “I’ve got work to do.”

The little mobster began laying down a withering 00 Buck fusillade with his 12-gauge. Bolan lined up the iron sights on the AK-47, then drew a breath, and let out half of it.

He pressed the trigger.

One of the Toretto hardmen gasped as blood and brains suddenly coated the side of his face. Next to him, the shooter Bolan had targeted had a crater where his forehead had been. The Executioner took advantage of the startled gunman’s moment of paralysis to punch a round through his throat.

The deaths spurred the shooters to redouble their efforts. They poured whatever they had left into the SUV. Something beneath the truck sparked. A flame caught. Soon the underside of the truck glowed yellow with fire.

“Time to move, Pierce!”

Death List

Don Pendleton

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

—Aesop

One man can stand against evil. One man can face the worst that life has to offer and, through his example, inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.

—Mack Bolan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1

Whiting, IL

As Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, reached out to shake the Mafia thug’s hand, the man’s white silk tie bloomed crimson. The soldier dropped to the plush carpet almost before his mind processed why he was doing so, and found himself staring into the dead eyes of the Mafia button man.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the Italian restaurant, which was owned by the Corino crime family, one of Chicago’s most notorious Mafia organizations. That meant that a good portion of the patrons reacted not by screaming for help but by drawing concealed weapons.

Bolan grimaced. He didn’t like what he was about to do, but there was no choice. He rolled himself up and over the corpse, placing the body between him and the south doorway. It was this entrance that was the source of the sudden attack. The Corino family was being hit. It was just the bad fortune of the hitters that Mack Bolan had been caught in the middle.

The Corinos had arranged for “Bolan” to meet them here because it was their home territory. This was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet. There being no honor among thieves, the meet was the first of several hurdles Bolan would have to overcome as the Corinos vetted him to make sure he was who he claimed to be.

Of course, he wasn’t.

Bolan drew a pair of Beretta 92-F pistols from the dual shoulder holsters he wore. The weapons had mother-of-pearl grips, which he detested. The pistols, and the custom shoulder harness that bore them, were the personal property of one Vincent Harmon.

* * *

“WHO IS VINCENT HARMON?” Bolan had asked Hal Brognola over the scrambled satellite phone connection two days before.

“He’s one of the most successful assassins in the world, Striker,” the big Fed had explained. From his Justice Department office, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia, had laid it all out for Bolan while explaining the soldier’s newest mission.

Vincent Harmon was a contract killer who had spent the last eight years on top of the Most Wanted list of more than a dozen international law-enforcement agencies. The list of targets attributed to Harmon included world leaders, captains of industry, underworld figures and various media personalities on the wrong side of Harmon’s employers.

“Why hasn’t the Farm prioritized this guy, if he’s such a big deal?” Bolan asked.

“Harmon has been a ghost,” Brognola replied. “The Farm has been tracking him for some time, but he’s an off-the-grid fanatic. He changes his identity frequently and uses cash and prepaid credit cards whenever possible. The guy likes to wear a fedora and scarf when he’s out in public, and avoids any venue where public surveillance is likely to spot him clearly. His devotion to electronic privacy is a way of life, not just a necessity of his job. It’s like a game to him.”

“How’d they catch him, then?”

“Every man has a weakness,” Brognola said. “Harmon’s is women. He’s fond of high-priced escorts, and he finally hired one whose devotion to privacy wasn’t quite so fanatical. She snapped a photo of him while he was sleeping and posted it to a social media site, to a gallery devoted to her more handsome paramours. Like a trophy. The Farm’s been running web-crawl sweeps for Harmon for years, so the photo was picked up. Harmon’s a man of habit, and this girl was evidently a favorite of his. We staked out her apartment. The next time Harmon booked her, a special operations team took him down.”

“Special ops? For one guy?”

“Harmon’s background is surprisingly similar to your own,” Brognola told him. “He served overseas as part of the war on terror, in a secret, purpose-built special operations group nominally attached to Delta. He’s an expert in small arms, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and improvised weapons and tactics. He’s also a stone-cold sociopath who’d murder his mother if he thought she was a danger to him.”

“How do we know that?”

“Because he murdered his mother when he thought she was a danger to him,” Brognola told him. “The Pentagon’s not talking because several of the records have been sealed and ‘lost.’ Harmon’s post-military activities have been a huge embarrassment to them and they’d prefer to pretend he doesn’t exist.

“One thing the team at the Farm has been able to confirm is that Harmon was running opium through a network he either built or acquired while overseas. Apparently with that network came contacts that set him up in the murder-for-hire business once some of his more unsavory activities were uncovered. The military gave him a dishonorable discharge and he was headed for a black-site prison for the rest of his life...but he escaped. He’s been popping up on our radar ever since, attached to various high-profile assassinations. But the moment we get a fix on him, he vanishes.”

“And the mother?”

“That was his first step on returning to the United States, we think,” Brognola said. “Vincent Harmon’s mother was found smothered to death in her own bed. Apparently he put a pillow over her face while she slept. He has no other family. His father has been dead for years. I guess he figured she was the one person who might be able to provide law enforcement with insight on his life and his habits, so he eliminated her as part of embarking on his new career.”

Bolan had chosen not to comment on that; it was simply too cold. “What’s the gig, then?” he asked.

“We’ve got a complete dossier on Harmon, which I’m transmitting to your secure phone now. Your task is to travel to Chicago and meet with a courier from the Farm, who’ll bring you Harmon’s personal effects. While Vincent Harmon is a zealot about staying off the grid, the criminals he works with definitely aren’t. We’ve been getting disturbing chatter about a meeting of the minds where the Mafia network is considered. The Mob’s working on a resurgence. Among its rumored plans is a wish list of assassinations to which all of the major families are supposed to have signed off. We believe Harmon has been selected for the series of hits that would take care of the list. The deaths would position the Mob as players for the next twenty years.”

“So you want me to throw a wrench in the works.”

“Exactly,” Brognola agreed. “We have intel that says representatives of the Corino crime family will be meeting with someone they’ll believe to be Harmon. We have a time and location for the meet. We want to send you in as him. You’ll need to take his place, play the role long enough to get the list of targets and then see to it each of those targets is protected. We’ll assign support as possible, coordinating through the Farm, but there’s precious little we know for sure.”

“So I just have to play the Harmon role and brazen out the rest of it.”

“Pretty much. The two of you are the same size, hair color and overall build. You look quite a bit alike. If any of his clients has a better idea what Harmon looks like, and we have no evidence that they do, you can simply play the plastic surgery card.”

While Brognola couldn’t see him, that had made Bolan smile. More than once the Executioner had received a new face. The big Fed was absolutely correct. If anyone among the Corinos claimed Bolan didn’t look like Vincent Harmon, he could admit to having had plastic surgery. He had the scars.

“What about Harmon?” Bolan asked. “What’s he going to be doing while I’m taking his place?”

“Harmon has a long overdue date with a black-ops prison,” Brognola told him. “He is going to officially disappear, which should satisfy all concerned while keeping him out of your way for the duration of your operation.”

“Then I’d better get started. Miles to go before I sleep, as the man said.”

“Good hunting, Striker.”

The conversation with Brognola had been forty-eight hours and several hundred miles ago. In the two days since, Bolan had traveled to Illinois, met the Stony Man courier, briefed himself on the sketchy details available on Harmon and basically tried to get his mind around the role. Role camouflage was something he knew well, but that didn’t make it any easier when he had to try to be, at least for all appearances, the sort of man he had spent his life fighting against. Harmon was a sociopath and a savage, but he was not stupid. It was his intelligence that made the man so dangerous...and that had kept him out of the hands of law enforcement since he’d first taken to contract killing.

Getting the details of the initial meet with the Corinos, and presenting himself as Harmon, had gone off without a hitch. According to the internet chatter intercepted by the Farm, as well as some not-so-legally sifted emails from Corino family members, the meet was to initiate the relationship between Harmon and the Corinos. He had the talent; they had the job that needed to get done. Bolan just had to walk in as Harmon, gain their confidence, and play out the role until he got the information Brognola and the Farm required. It would be relatively simple to safeguard the targets on the list after that. At least, it should have been.

* * *

COULD’VE, SHOULD’VE, WOULD’VE, Bolan thought as gunfire tore into the corpse he was using for a shield.

He ran the events of the last few moments back in his mind. He had walked into the restaurant at the appointed time for the meeting. Immediately, a couple of thick-necked Corino leg-breakers had approached him. They had traded meaningless greetings as he’d reached out to shake the lead thug’s hand. Then the gunfire had started.

From his vantage on the bloodstained carpet, Bolan could see three men at the south entrance. The restaurant was raised from street level, which meant those entering from the south, off the street, had to traverse a half flight of stairs to get to the main dining floor. The gunmen were using the stairwell as cover, spraying the dining area with automatic weapons fire. Bolan could not make out all of the weapons used, but at least one of them was a MAC-10 machine pistol with a large suppressor. The muffled clap of the weapon was unmistakable, as was its thick, black muzzle. Bolan was, without a doubt, outgunned.

Not that it would make a difference.

Bracing his arms against the back of the dead man, Bolan extended both of Vincent Harmon’s Berettas. The pistols, despite their gaudy handles, were finely tuned and well maintained. Harmon was evidently a man who understood good gear, if not good taste.

In Bolan’s pocket was an expensive OTF automatic knife with a blade honed sharp enough to shave hair. That, too, had belonged to Harmon. On Bolan’s belt were Kydex holders for extra magazines. Something Harmon had not carried, but that, for matters of sheer survival, the Executioner had insisted on. It was unlikely anyone would notice or care.

The lead gunman poked his head up again and again, trying to scope out targets. Sporadic fire erupted from the dining level as the Corinos tried to regroup. Nearby, a man was gurgling loudly. It was the second of the two button men who had braced Bolan. The wounded man would not live long, but he would be in pain for every second that he did. He had been shot multiple times, including the throat. The dark arterial blood pooling beneath him told Bolan the whole story.

The Executioner considered sparing the dying Corino a mercy round, but fought the impulse. Mack Bolan might give the man a clean death, but Vincent Harmon would not.

The lead gunman poked his head up once again. This time Bolan was ready. He squeezed the trigger of his right-hand Beretta, putting a 9 mm hollow-point bullet through the shooter’s left eyeball. There was a shout of alarm from another attacker, probably because the dead gunner’s partners were now coated in his blood and brains.

Bolan wasted no time. He dropped the Beretta in his left hand, popped to one knee and snatched a pepper shaker from the nearest table. He tossed it overhand at the south stairs.

“Grenade!” Bolan yelled.

It was a dime-store trick in his estimation, but it worked. The remaining shooters scattered, trying to climb out of the stairwell to avoid the clattering object. They were shooting as they went, but Bolan was already prone again, well below the level of their wild spray-and-pray barrage. He punched one then two bullets through the heart of the first man. His second target was shot in the neck and jaw. The results were messy and final.

Bolan waited patiently as the Corino hardmen expended several more shots in the direction of the south entrance. Eventually, though, they figured out that the worst was over. Silence, broken only by the moans of the dying Corino button man, descended on the room.

The Executioner stood. He looked left then right, making eye contact with the other Corino gunners in the room. One of the older ones, probably the leader of the contingent been sent to meet him, nodded. Bolan nodded back and, gun in hand, scouted the south stairs. Among the bodies he found a fourth man still alive. Bolan kicked away the man’s weapon. It was the MAC-10 he had spotted right away.

“Who sent you?” Bolan asked, standing over the dying man. Blood coated the shooter’s face. He stared upward, blinking and trying to talk.

“Don’t bother,” said a voice next to Bolan. The soldier turned and sized up the newcomer. The man was shorter than the Executioner by almost a foot. He had a solid build and a bullet-shaped head that had been shaved smooth. He wore a thin goatee and a suit more expensive than anything Bolan had owned in civilian life. In his hand he held a short-barreled, Commander-length .45 automatic pistol.

“Why’s that?” Bolan said.

“He’s with the Torettos,” the newcomer replied. “Unfortunately he was also born with a terminal disease.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“It’s called being a Toretto.” The shorter man raised his .45 and put a bullet between the Toretto gunman’s eyes. Then he turned and stuck out his hand. Bolan, surprised, took it, finding the smaller man’s grip firm and confident.

“Vincent Harmon,” Bolan said.

“David Pierce. Son of a friend of the family,” he added.

“If you say so.” Bolan was watching his back as the remaining Corinos began policing up the dining area and securing the other exits. The dying button man had stopped moaning. Pierce followed Bolan’s gaze.

“That was Sammy,” he said. “He was a good kid.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“Neat trick you pulled with the saltshaker.”

“Pepper,” Bolan corrected.

“Whatever.” Pierce shrugged. “Come on. Mr. and Mrs. Corino are going to be plenty happy to hear that you saved our butts.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow and looked around at the carnage in the dining area. “You don’t think they’ll be saddened by the loss of... Sammy...over there?”

“I said he was a good kid,” Pierce stated. “Not irreplaceable. Besides, they’re looking to hire the best. So far, you’re not showing me anything otherwise, Harmon.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” As Bolan holstered Vincent Harmon’s gaudy Beretta—he would have to retrieve the other gun from the floor—he reminded himself of who he was and why he was there.

He had to play the role of Vincent Harmon, but he didn’t have to like it.

What he would like, however, would be to take out every last one of these Corino thugs.

“You okay?” Pierce asked. “You all of a sudden look like somebody slapped your old lady.”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“About all the work there is to do,” said the Executioner.

2

Pierce, behind the wheel of a gold Lincoln Town Car whose vintage had to be late nineties, hauled the wheel over and brought the Detroit battleship yawing around a turn. He drove quickly and aggressively, but his efforts were hindered by the marshmallow air suspension of the luxury sedan.

Bolan watched through the passenger window as the neighborhood around them grew increasingly affluent. They were headed into one of the nicer areas of the city, to the private home of Aldo and Rosa Corino. At least, that’s what Pierce had claimed he’d been tasked to do. He was supposed to take Vincent Harmon to the promised audience with the Corinos so that the hit man could be vetted for the extensive job awaiting him.

Pierce listened to public radio news as he drove. He was not stingy with his commentary.

“We ought to line up all the politicians,” he said, “and put a bullet in each of ’em. Start over. We could do with a little house cleaning.”

“I know a man in Washington who might agree with you.”

“Yeah,” Pierce said. “That’s the thing. Everybody knows the system’s rigged, but nobody does anything about it. But that’s the way the world works, I guess. What can one guy do?”

“One man can stand against evil,” Bolan replied. “One man can face the worst that life has to offer and through his example inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.”

Pierce shot Bolan a sidelong glance. “You’re a weird guy, Harmon.”

“I don’t chat politics often.”

“Right. That figures.” Pierce shifted in his seat.

The five-inch, grooved wooden dowel attached to his keychain rattled against his knee when he moved. Bolan had noticed the Japanese yawara right away; it was an effective self-defense tool. While it didn’t look like much, it could be used to break bones and deliver devastating blows by concentrating the force of the strike in the end of the dowel. Not a lot of Mob guys carried such accessories, though he’d known plenty who liked a good pair of brass knuckles or the comforting heft of a leather sap. It was an anomaly. A piece of data that painted David Pierce on Bolan’s radar as more than the typical Mafia goon. He would need to watch himself with the smaller man.

They drove in silence for a while as the area through which they moved continued to become more affluent. The homes they passed were easily worth millions of dollars. Eventually they reached the gated entrance to the Corino estate, which was walled off from the rest of the community.

Bolan took note of the security systems he could spot. The concrete barrier that surrounded the Corinos’ headquarters was ten feet tall and, he could see, about a foot thick. It had been landscaped with small trees and what might have been fake ivy, all in an attempt to make the stone security wall look more upscale. Cameras on pedestals above and behind the wall were spaced here and there. The fields of view would overlap at those distances. Each camera was equipped with the protruding bulb of an LED spotlight. The cameras appeared to be moving independently of one another, not sweeping in predefined arcs. As setups went, it was a solid one.

The front gate of the estate boasted a guard shack with a man in a nondescript uniform. To outside eyes, no doubt, the guard looked like any private security babysitter tasked with working the gate and logging visitors. One glance, though, and Bolan could see he was another of the Corinos’ thugs. He wore a light jacket over his uniform shirt. A telltale bulge was large enough to be a concealed shotgun or a submachine gun on a sling. He didn’t look like the typical bored rent-a-cop, either. He looked annoyed and ready to spring.

Pierce exchanged a few words with the guard at the shack before the iron gates opened on smoothly oiled tracks. The Town Car carried them effortlessly up the winding drive to the house. Bolan took careful note of the layout, as well as the various statues, shrubbery and other items that could be used for cover and concealment. The winding drive didn’t have to be winding at all. It had been designed that way to make it harder for an enemy to drive a truck full of explosives straight through the gate and into the house. The statues were likely bollards with deep concrete posts securing them in the ground. Grates in the paved drive also bore holes large enough for hydraulic barriers or tire-damaging spike belts.

“Quite the spread, isn’t it?” Pierce said. He pulled into a covered car park opposite the stairs leading to the columned front door. Throwing the Lincoln in Park, he pocketed his keys and gestured for Bolan to follow him. Two hulking guards in expensive suits stood at either side of the door. They wore Beretta 12 submachine guns on straps over their shoulders. The display was probably meant for Bolan’s benefit, but then, given that the front door wasn’t visible from outside the estate, it was possible they just stood around that way all the time. One of them held up a hand as Pierce and Bolan approached.

“Who’s this guy?” the guard asked.

“Move it, Tommy,” Pierce replied. “Vincent Harmon. He’s on the list. Got an appointment with you know who.”

Tommy started to move aside, although he looked like he wanted to argue. He waved them through, saying, “Mrs. Corino is pretty mad about Vincenzo’s.”

Bolan knew that was the name of the restaurant the Torettos had shot up.

Pierce made a face. “It’d be a frigging miracle if she wasn’t,” he said. “Now get outta the way.”

Bolan didn’t yet have enough information to put his finger on Pierce’s position within the Corino organization, but the smaller man walked around as if he were untouchable. That, too, was an interesting detail. The fact that none of the Mob guys they’d encountered offered more than a perfunctory challenge to Pierce’s approach told Bolan that the man was highly placed. He would need to contact the Farm to see why the Corino dossier he had been supplied had not contained a single mention of Pierce.

As he followed the mobster through the sprawling, opulently appointed home, Bolan felt like he was walking through a movie set rather than a place people lived. The whole house was decorated in Mob Modern: faux-tasteful antique furniture, paintings as forgettable as they were expensive and packaged decorator color schemes that might have come straight from the set of some overwrought Mafia film. The floors were polished hardwoods covered in expensive Persian rugs. Pierce, who wore hard-soled, Italian-leather shoes, seemed to delight in grinding his feet into the rugs, as if he thought them as tasteless an affectation as Bolan judged them to be.

One more note for the mental file, Bolan thought.

In an anteroom at the end of a long hallway, another pair of hardmen stopped them. Pierce looked more annoyed than usual as he and Bolan approached. “Stay steady and don’t kill nobody if I have to get a little rough,” he whispered to Bolan. “Things usually get a little rocky between me and Dumb-Dumb over here. He’s a nephew of the Corino family, and he figures he should have my job, not guard duty outside the sanctum sanctorum over here.”

Bolan shot Pierce a glance.

“Well, well,” one of the two guards said when Bolan and Pierce were in earshot. “If it isn’t Davey. Hey, Davey. I been meaning to ask you a favor.”

“Yeah, Seb?” Pierce queried. “What’s that?” His tone did not match his words. He sounded angry, as if he knew what was coming and didn’t like it.

“Yeah. I was wondering if you could take this magic ring back to the evil mountain where it was forged.”

Bolan’s brow furrowed. Pierce, meanwhile, didn’t say a word for a moment. Finally he said, “We’re expected. Open the door.”

“You know,” Seb said, as if he hadn’t heard, “because you’re short. Short like those guys in that thing.”

“That narrows it down,” Bolan said.

Now it was Pierce’s turn to look at Bolan. Seb took a step closer and put a finger on the Executioner’s chest. “Look, dim bulb, maybe you don’t hear so good—”

That was the last word he got out before Bolan reached up, grabbed his finger and hand, and twisted, applying a joint lock that made the big thug howl in agony. Before Seb’s partner could step in, Pierce put himself in front of Bolan and Seb, blocking the way.

“Nope,” Pierce said. “Keep it in your pants, Joey.”

“Seb?” Joey asked. “What you want me to do?”

But Seb wasn’t in a position to answer any questions. Bolan continued to apply pressure to Seb’s finger joints and wrist, turning and twisting. “Here’s a free piece of advice, pal,” Bolan said quietly. “Never reach for another man. Never put your finger anywhere near him unless that finger is backed up with the rest of your arm. You can spear a guy in the throat. You can poke a thumb into his eye. Hell, you can grab a man’s eye socket like it’s a bowling ball, if you want. But never just put your finger on a man’s chest. You’re just looking to get hurt real bad.”

“What he said,” Pierce muttered, still eyeing Joey.

“You get me?” Bolan asked. “Or do I add a little pressure and make your nickname ‘Lefty’ for the rest of your life?”

“Nah,” Seb ground out through his teeth.

“I can’t hear you,” Bolan said, twisting.

“I said no! No!” Seb yelled. “I get you! I get you!”

Bolan released him. The mobster collapsed to the floor, grabbing his injured hand with his opposite palm and curling into a fetal ball. Pierce looked down, smiling, and shot Joey a disgusted look before he gestured to the doorway.

“After you, Mr. Harmon,” he said with a flourish. “And thank you.”

“De nada.”

They found Aldo and Rose Corino in a study decorated in the same manner as what Bolan had so far seen in the house. The appointments were opulent and over the top, as if it was all for show. Bolan ran the implications through his mind. The Corinos cared about being perceived as powerful and wealthy. Their images mattered to them. When an enemy’s ego put style over substance, that pointed to weakness. Which could be exploited and would ultimately be the fissures through which Bolan would crack and tear apart the Corinos’ armor.

“What was all that grab-ass in the hall?” the elderly Don asked.

“Nothing, Mr. Corino,” said Pierce. “Nothing at all. Uh, sorry for the interruption. And it’s very nice to see you again, Mrs. Corino.” He bowed slightly to the matriarch of the Corino family, perhaps even unaware that he was doing it.

One look at the dour, wrinkled, battle-ax face on Rosa Corino and Bolan could understand why. She had the permanently pinched, furrowed look of someone who wielded a lot of power...and who wasn’t particularly happy about it. She wore a neatly tailored suit jacket and skirt and surprisingly tasteful jewelry. A pair of half-lens glasses was perched on her nose, attached to a chain around her neck.

If Rosa Corino had a kind of Lady Macbeth aura about her, Aldo Corino was complementary to the role. He was a hunched, gaunt old man, wearing a cashmere sweater over a Ralph Lauren shirt. His slacks were expensive. His shoes, Italian loafers. He looked like he hadn’t gotten up out of his chair in days. He had a turkey neck and the face of a buzzard, with a prominent nose and sunken eyes. The Corino patriarch waved one hand, which bore a large, golden signet ring. The ring might, Bolan mused, be the only genuine antique in this ersatz mausoleum.

“Vincent Harmon,” Rosa Corino said. “We’re told that you were instrumental in driving back the attack by the Torettos today.”

“I was,” Bolan replied.

“You should have seen him, Mrs. Corino,” Pierce stated. “You’re getting your money’s worth with this character.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Aldo told him. From the pocket of his sweater he removed a brass pocket watch. He made a big show of opening and staring at the timepiece before slowly closing it and returning it to his pocket. “He has to prove himself.” The Mob boss put his fist to his gaunt face and coughed several times. He looked to his wife.

“The Torettos,” Rosa said. “They are your first test.”

“I don’t follow,” said Bolan, who followed just fine. He wanted there to be no doubt. He wanted to hear the Corinos explain precisely what they expected.

“All of the Chicago families have been deep in meetings for the better part of a year and a half,” Rosa went on. She kept her gnarled hands folded on her lap as she spoke, never gesturing with them. The absence of motion was what drew Bolan’s eyes. It was very likely, from the appearance of her fingers and knuckles, that Rosa suffered from severe arthritis.

“In that time,” Aldo added, having recovered from his coughing fit, “we’ve all agreed on a list. There are names. There are dates. There are specific places. The plan has been worked out and agreed to so that it benefits all of the families and doesn’t step on any toes. The times and places are nonnegotiable. The dates are nonnegotiable. The list is a list of people we need you to take out.”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “I got that much. But you’re tying my hands if you expect me to hit these people only in the times and places you specify. It’s bad tactics.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Rosa said coldly. “You’re supposed to be the best. The best can work within those constraints, can’t he? Because if he can, he can get very, very rich.”

“And if he can’t,” Aldo said, “he can get very...dead.” The old man had to stop to draw a breath in the middle of his sentence; clearly he suffered from some kind of pulmonary issue.

“How rich?” Bolan asked.

“Six figures for each hit. The families have pooled their money into a war chest for the right man. That man is you, Harmon. At least, that’s what we thought. You going to...make a liar out of me?” Aldo asked.

“No. Six figures I can work with. But I’ll need the list and the details. As much information as you have.”

“Not quite so fast,” Rosa said. “We called the meeting for the restaurant so David here could lay it out for you. There’s a test we need you to pass first. It will show us that we’re not wasting our time, our money and all our plans on you. If you can pass the test, you can have the list. We can’t afford to have anyone try and fail. If what we’re doing got out, all the families would suffer for it, and we’d miss our chance. The man who takes on this job has to prove he can succeed.”

“I’m waiting,” Bolan prompted.

“David is an expert on the Toretto family,” Rosa stated. “He’s going to go with you, give you the lay of the land. We want you to remove the thorn that is the Torettos from our side. I don’t care how you do it. I don’t even care if people know you did it for us. That’s actually part of why we need them taken out. They struck us because they think we’re weak. They think they can defy us. We have to show the other families that anyone who defies us will die. Make it big. Make it loud. Or make it quiet, so long as it’s horrible. We want to make a statement.”

“Right. I feel like there’s a catch.”

The Corinos looked at Pierce, who swallowed hard. “Nobody knows where the Torettos are headquartered,” he said. “We know some of their territories, and we know some of their holdings, but they’ve guarded their whereabouts carefully when it comes to the Toretto bosses. That’s one of the reasons we haven’t been able to take them down before now.”

“David is modest,” Aldo said, wheezing. “David himself is one of the reasons we haven’t been...able to take down the Torettos. Because David was given the job, and he couldn’t do it.”

Pierce turned red but shifted so that he was facing Bolan and away from the Corinos. “We need the help of a professional,” Pierce said. “Somebody skilled in assassination. Somebody who can help me root out the Torettos and decimate them once and for all.”

“I’m your man,” Bolan said.

“We’ll see,” Aldo told him. “We’ll...see.”

3

Chicago’s South Side

“You mind telling me what that was all about?” Bolan asked, as Pierce guided his Town Car through the seedier sections of town. The smaller man had not discussed their destination with the man he thought was Vincent Harmon. He had merely motioned to the car, fired it up and started driving. Bolan had been content to give Pierce some time with his thoughts, but his patience had its limits.

“It’s a long-standing thing,” Pierce said. “Son of a friend of the family, I told you. In syndicate circles, family is everything. If you aren’t blood, you’ve got to work twice as hard, be twice as hard, to show them you deserve to be here. And when somebody like Seb figures he should be the field commander for our street guns? Well, somebody like me, who fought his way up through the ranks over years of service... He figures I don’t rate, and I should be pushed outta the way. All because my father worked for the Corinos all his life but wasn’t a member of the family itself. The syndicate has changed, Harmon. We used to believe in loyalty.”

“Yeah,” Bolan said, unable to help himself. “It’s like a guy can’t shark loans at three hundred percent interest and then sell his clients’ daughters into prostitution to pay off their debts anymore.”

“Hey, hey, that’s not fair,” Pierce protested. “I don’t go in for any of that crap. I don’t run girls and I don’t have a hand in any of that type of thing. It’s my job to keep the other families from killing the Corinos. I run our guns and I make sure security is tight. I’m a security specialist, Harmon, not some loan shark’s leg-breaker.”

“It’s a dirty business,” Bolan said. “I’m not sure anyone can dip his hands in that river of blood and come up clean.”

“Says the guy who kills people for a living,” Pierce shot back.

“Touché.”

“Anyway,” Pierce said, “I’m not going to be doing this forever. I’ve been saving my money. I’m gonna open up my own shop.”

“To sell what?”

“It’s not important,” Pierce replied. “C’mon, let’s focus on the task at hand. You know where we are?”

“The south side.”

“No kidding.” Piece sounded annoyed. “I remember I used to walk into the room while my old man was watching television. I’d say, ‘What you watching, Dad?’ And he’d say, ‘A movie.’ Look, Colonel Obvious, this is Toretto territory. We’re way behind enemy lines down here. Keep your eyes peeled for gun barrels pointed our way.”

“What’s your plan?”

“This is your show,” Pierce said. The Corinos figure you’re the guy who can bring down the Torettos where I’ve failed. Well, fine. Show me you can do it.”

Bolan shrugged. “You don’t think we should gear up first?”

“Trunk’s fully stocked,” Pierce said. “We’ve got everything you could ever need.”

“You might be surprised,” Bolan replied. He paused, mulling over the situation. It was not the first time he’d had to think on his feet. “You don’t know where the Toretto headquarters is, but you know this is their territory. That means they’ve got business holdings in the area that you do know about.”

“Right.”

“Take us to one,” Bolan said. “Someplace where a lot of money changes hands.”

“We know the Torettos have a laundry,” Pierce told him. “But they keep the location as secret as their headquarters. For obvious reasons.”

“Doesn’t matter. Someplace that handles a lot of cash would have to have that cash laundered. We find the first, it leads us to the second, assuming we leave at least one person alive.”

Pierce stared at Bolan for a long moment before turning his eyes back to the road. “What about a numbers joint? Sammy Pinch books for the Torettos out of the back of a bar on 79th. The Rose, it’s called.”

“Numbers? There’s still money to be made with all the lotteries that offer the three-number game?” Bolan asked.

“You’d be surprised. The payoffs are larger and a bettor can run a tab. Can’t do that with the state lottery.”

“Okay. That’ll do.”

“There’s always a bunch of guys guarding the place,” Pierce warned. “A couple of cars outside and plenty of triggermen inside. The Torettos don’t screw around when it comes to their cash.”

“I’m counting on that. Just get us there.”

“So what about you, Harmon?” Pierce asked. “You aren’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I dunno,” Pierce said. “A skinny guy in a black-on-black suit and a pencil-thin mustache, constantly playing with a switchblade. Maybe a silenced pistol in a shoulder holster. That kind of jazz.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have a mustache.”

“You aren’t exactly skinny, either,” Pierce said. “You’re tall, though. I’d have to get up on my own shoulders just to look you in the eye.”

“I’ve never known a man’s height to make much difference in his ability to fight.”

“Me, either,” Pierce said. “But you’d be surprised how many of the Corinos’ own bully-boys have tried to take a shot at me over the years. They see a short guy, they figure he goes down easy.”

“But not you.”

Pierce raised his right hand and made a fist. His knuckles were massive knobs. “There’s not a knuckle in this fist that hasn’t been broken,” he said. “I drove a truck over the road for eight years before I came to work for the Corinos. My shifting arm still hits like a hammer.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Yeah,” Pierce said, laughing. “I bet you will.”

It didn’t take much longer for them to reach the bar in question. Bolan surveyed the neighborhood with a practiced eye. “This place have a back door?” he asked.

“Yeah. That alley goes all the way back to the other side.” Pierce jerked his chin in the direction of the alley.

“Park us around back. You promised me a fully stocked trunk.”

“Yeah, we got that,” Pierce said.

With the Lincoln parked to block the rear entrance, Pierce popped the trunk.

Bolan whistled in appreciation. “You do have all the toys,” he said.

“Never leave home without ’em.”

Packed away in the trunk were at least half a dozen submachine guns, loaded magazines and a couple of shotguns. A pair of AK-47 assault rifles had modular bags beside them that Bolan assumed contained 30-or 40-round magazines, and a bandolier of grenades. A couple of nondescript crates sat underneath the weaponry, which Pierce kept concealed beneath a black wool blanket. The Lincoln’s trunk was very deep, allowing a person to transport a great deal of cargo.

“All this weight, it’s a wonder it doesn’t play hell with your air suspension.”

“You know about that, eh?” Pierce said. “Yeah, it’s a pain. But I like the old girl. She has a sense of style. Show me another car that will let me haul a payload like this and still give me room to bring home groceries.”

“Do a lot of grocery shopping, do you?”

“It sounds better than saying I can still fold a guy up and fit him in there.”

“I can’t argue there.”

Pierce selected a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun. A Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment—MOLLE—pouch full of shells was part of the arsenal inside the trunk. The little Mafia operative tucked the tab of the bag into his belt, giving him fast access to reloads. He jacked the first shell into the shotgun.

“Cover the rear door,” Bolan ordered. “I’m going to go around the front.” He selected an integrally suppressed HK MP-5, as well as several loaded 9 mm magazines clamped together in groups of two. Bolan took a canvas shoulder bag from the trunk, slung it across his chest and tucked magazines and grenades into it.

“You sure you wanna do that?” Pierce asked. “I just got done telling you there’s always a bunch of guys in there.”

“I like the direct approach when it’s appropriate. Anybody who comes at you who looks like a Toretto doesn’t get to leave. Anybody else is not our problem. Can you handle that?”

“I know most of the Toretto crew by sight. Shouldn’t be a problem.” When Bolan paused, he said, “Hey, look, Harmon, I don’t go around shooting just anybody. I been in this game too long to be some kind of mad-dog killer.”

“Or an assassin?”

“You said it, I didn’t.”

“Just keep that shotgun at the ready. You’re sure there are no innocents here? I don’t want to cap some guy whose only crime is showing up to work today.”

“The Torettos own the Rose, body and soul,” Pierce said. “The full-time bartender is a Toretto hire, a lifer named Jack. Has a big scar across his nose. You can’t miss him. There are a few waitresses and whatever. They’re not players, but they work for the Torettos, and they know it. No innocents in there by any definition I can speak to, Harmon. They know the score.”

“Fair enough, but just because the waitresses know who they work for doesn’t make them dirty. Just stupid. So take care.” Bolan slung the MP-5 behind his back and made his way through the alley, watchful for enemy gunners. For purposes of this exercise, he had to consider the enemies of the Corinos his own enemies. It was part of staying in role camouflage for an undercover job like this.

He would never forget, nor ever forgive, the role the Mafia had played so long ago in the destruction of those near and dear to him. It was fighting the Mafia that had propelled him onto the path he walked. Organized crime in the United States had lost considerable power over the years, but still, like a bad skin rash, the organization kept coming back. And because he was the Executioner, he would continue burning them out of their hidey-holes wherever he found them.

Despite himself, he found Pierce more than a little likable. The man had the kind of no-nonsense, down-to-earth demeanor that Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi had possessed when he’d first encountered the man on a mission against organized crime. Few people brought up Grimaldi’s past as a pilot for hire for the Mob, but Jack never forgot it, Bolan knew. The man was driven to atone for any early mistakes he might have made in that regard. It was one of the things that made him so brave and committed to the mission of Brognola’s Sensitive Operations Group.

Were there similar redeeming qualities in Pierce? Possibly.

Emerging from the alley, he surveyed the street in front of the bar. Pierce had said there were always a couple of cars out front. Those would be guard vehicles, with sentries posted inside. Probably something nondescript, so that sentries could sit and watch unnoticed. It was less conspicuous than posting men outside the bar itself, especially if they were typical Mob toughs. A practiced eye, including those of law enforcement, could spot a character like that from blocks away.

It didn’t take him long to find what he needed. There was an old Chrysler K-car on one side and a newer Chevy Malibu on the other. Each had a man sitting at the wheel. Of course, he couldn’t take a chance that these were simply innocent people sitting in their vehicles for whatever reason. There was an easy way to make sure of that.

He reached into his borrowed war bag, pulled out a pair of grenades and yanked the pins. He let the spoons fly free and shouted, “Hey! You guys with the Mob?” As he did so, he held the grenades aloft.

The two sentries wrenched open their doors, clawing for guns hidden under their coats. Bolan threw the two lethal eggs and then put himself to the sidewalk. The move stung, but it beat eating the shrapnel that was about to—

The grenades exploded, ripping through the gas tank of the K-car and punching into the engine compartment of the Malibu. The explosions flattened the two sentries. Bolan paused long enough to kick their guns into the burning wreckage, preventing them from being picked up and used against him. He was philosophically opposed to leaving loaded guns on the street for the neighborhood kids to find, too. Bringing up the MP-5 on its sling, he slapped the charging handle, jacking a 9 mm round into the chamber. The Heckler & Koch machine pistol was a fine weapon. It would serve him well, provided it had been properly maintained. Pierce didn’t seem like the sort to tolerate sloppy weapons maintenance.

Bolan let his foot do the talking. He kicked in the door to the bar and shouted loudly, “Anybody here with the Torettos?”

A number of people scattered, heading under the tables or out the back door. Bolan would have to trust that Pierce knew what he was doing. He was more interested in the man with the sawed-off shotgun that popped up from behind the bar. He did, indeed, have a scar across his nose.

Bolan punched a single bullet into the middle of the guy’s face. Jack the Bartender discharged both barrels into the floor as he fell backward behind the bar. There was movement on both sides of the bar as a pair of gunners tried to flank him. Bolan shot first one and then the other. The sound-suppressed MP-5 was not completely silent, but in the close confines of the bar, it wasn’t punishing his ears. Bolan was grateful for that. As much close-quarters fighting as he did, hearing loss was a real concern.

Bolan looked left then right. The bar was the best cover available. He took it at a run and vaulted over, displacing several glasses in the process. On the other side, he crouched by the body of the dead Mob bartender and waited. The sound of running feet soon reached him.

“Hi, there!” he said, popping up. The Mob gunners rushing to the front room from the back turned at his words. He shot each of them down in turn, careful this time to sweep their legs. One of them wouldn’t take the hint. He tried to fire back from the floor, so Bolan punched another few shots into him before moving carefully out from behind the bar. This time, he used the opening at the side. The spring-loaded bar top was already open.

“Don’t try for it,” Bolan warned the man on the floor. The thug was reaching for the .38 revolver he had dropped. At Bolan’s approach, he withdrew his hand and went back to clutching at his lower calf. A neat bullet hole, through-and-through from what Bolan could see, had gouged a hole in the flesh of the man’s leg.

Somewhere at the back of the bar, Pierce’s shotgun barked. Bolan tensed. There were two more shots in quick succession, as fast as a man could rack the pump. Then the bar was silent.

Bolan would need to move quickly. It would not take long for the cops to show up, even in a neighborhood like this. One gunshot could be ignored. A few would probably go unnoticed for a little while. But the twin explosions, followed by the battle inside, would bring first responders. Bolan had no desire to be anywhere near there when they showed up. He had always lived by the cardinal rule that he would not engage police officers. He was not about to start now.

Pierce emerged from the rear hallway. He had his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. “All clear out back,” he said. “I tagged a couple. We gotta get out of here, Harmon.”

“I know.” Bolan dragged the wounded man to his feet. “You know this guy?”

“Yeah,” the Toretto gunner said with a sneer. “He knows me—”

Pierce smashed the pistol grip of his shotgun into the man’s jaw. He reeled, and Bolan held him upright. “Shut up, punk. You don’t get to have attitude.”

To Bolan he said, “He’s one of Toretto’s numbers boys, yeah. I’ve seen him before.”

“What I need,” Bolan said to the bleeding thug, “is an address. The place where your bosses launder their money.”

“I’m not telling you—” the thug started, only to have his head snapped back by another blow from Pierce’s shotgun grip.

“I’ve got this hippie niece,” Pierce said. “She taught me about medicine bags.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow at that.

“A medicine bag,” Pierce went on, holding up one finger, “is this little cloth bag full of bits and pieces of things. Crystals. Stones. Herbs. Nonsense like that. Like a little bag full of useless little junk that hippies carry around their necks.”

“Why you telling me this, man?” the thug whined.

“Because,” Pierce said, smacking the thug in the chest with the shotgun to punctuate each phrase, “you tell us...what we want to know...or I make a medicine bag...full of your teeth.”

The mobster managed to blubber an address through the blood in his mouth.

4

“This is a money-laundering operation?” Bolan asked.

“This is it.”

“This right here.”

“This right here,” Pierce repeated. He put his hand to his face. Bolan realized he was struggling not to laugh. Bolan, himself, could not help but grin.

The words “Coin Op Laundry” had been painted, many years ago, on a sign that was struggling not to fall off the ancient brick building. The street it faced was narrow even by congested Chicago standards. Trash was piled high on either side of the building, strewed in clumps across the pavement and blowing past in whirls and eddies of dust and debris kicked up by passing traffic.

“Get your shotgun,” Bolan ordered.

“How you want to do it?”

“You take the back. I’ll go straight in the front.”

“They’re loaded for hell and gone in there, Harmon,” Pierce replied. “You sure you want to just stick your junk in a hornet’s nest like that?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Not here to judge you,” Pierce said.

Bolan shot the Mob enforcer a quizzical glance before stepping out of the car. The pair went to the Lincoln’s trunk. This time Bolan selected an AK-47 knockoff and threw a MOLLE rifleman bag loaded with 30-round magazines over his shoulder.

Pierce raised an eyebrow at the assault rifle. “Why the AK?”

“I want to make an impression.”

“It does do that,” Pierce admitted. The little enforcer waved, took his shotgun and made his way around the corner of the laundry building into a fetid alley so narrow he had to turn sideways to get through.

Bolan, meanwhile, held the AK lowered, against his body. He glanced up and down the street. There was no police presence and no civilians moving around that he could see, which was good. They were about to make enough noise that police response would be inevitable. They would need to get in, get this done and get out before they could be confronted by law enforcement.

No time to be subtle, in other words.

Bolan put the AK-47 to his shoulder, snapped the selector switch to automatic fire, then kicked in the front door of the laundry. The largely hollow receiver of the Kalashnikov rifle rang like a drum when it was fired, making the weapon sound like the Hammer of God to the uninitiated in close quarters. Bolan was counting on that blitz effect to take down however many Toretto gunmen might be holed up in the laundry.

First, though, he had to make sure he wasn’t dealing with any innocents. It was fine for Pierce to claim this was a Mob money laundry, but as the old Russian proverb said, “Trust, but verify.”

“Federal agent!” Bolan bellowed. “Hands where I can see them!”

The irony of impersonating a Mob hit man impersonating a federal agent was not lost on Bolan. He was nominally a federal agent himself, even if he had kept the government at arm’s length for many years now.

The cramped coin-op laundry looked like any of others Bolan had seen over the years. The walls were dominated by inset dryers. Rows of large, front-load washing machines were laid out in three long lines that jutted into the square space. The floors were scuffed-and-stained linoleum that probably dated to the moon landing.

Then there was the fellow with the Beretta 93-R, presumably a Toretto gunner, who leveled the piece at Bolan but did not fire. He was standing behind the dingy service counter at the back of the room, the sort of place an attendant would dole out change and sell single-use packets of detergent and fabric softener. He stared openmouthed at Bolan, his eyes wide.

“I said,” Bolan enunciated carefully, keeping his sights between the gunman’s eyes, “federal agent. Put the gun down.”

“You’re no Fed. You put yours down.”

“Last chance,” Bolan said. “You one of the Torettos?”

“You stupid cop.” The sound of a bell ringing came from the rear of the laundry, echoing along a small hallway that led to the back of the building. Footsteps pounded on the linoleum.

Reinforcements, Bolan thought.

Where was Pierce? Why wasn’t he covering the back?

The gunman grinned. Clearly he thought his own guys were coming to back him up, which made all the difference in his attitude. “You stupid cop,” he said again. “Yeah, we’re Torettos, all right, and that’s the last name you’re ever going to—”

Bolan shot him in the face.

A lot of guys thought if they just kept talking, it would mask their movements, like the telltale clenching of a hand on the butt of a gun as the owner prepared to fire. Bolan had seen every trick in the book. He had walked battlefields from one end of the Earth to the other. He wasn’t falling for something like that. It was obvious the gunner was going to plug him, and now that he had confirmed these were Mob goons, he didn’t have to worry that this might simply be the best-guarded laundry in the state.

He didn’t know too many shopkeepers or hired clerks who carried Beretta machine pistols, though.

The sound of Bolan’s shot brought the other gunmen boiling out from the back room. He noted a couple of pistols, a sawed-off shotgun and what had to be Spectre subguns, something he didn’t encounter in the field too often. He dropped to one knee and started slapping the trigger on the AK, fanning the barrel from left to right at knee level.

The gunmen screamed and started toppling. Bolan dived behind the nearest line of washers. The machine shook and rattled as the gunmen hammered the appliances, screaming and trying to drag themselves back toward the rear hallway. The linoleum was suddenly awash in blood. There was a good chance at least one of them had been nicked in an artery and would bleed out quickly...but it wouldn’t be quickly enough for Bolan’s purposes.

Bullets had a nasty tendency to go right through interior walls and hollow-core doors. Appliances were among the few household items that could stop small-arms fire. Bolan didn’t want to trust his washing machine to stop many more rounds, though, so he rose, bringing the AK to his shoulder. A few quick bursts was all he needed to put down the opposition for good. He bounded over the bodies, conscious of the numbers counting down before the law would arrive.

The gunman hiding in the rear hallway nearly took Bolan’s head off. The Executioner ducked at the last second as rounds from the man’s pistol tore into the wall near the doorway.

The sound of a shotgun blast at close range was followed by the toppling of a body. Bolan risked a fast glance around the door frame and then took a second, longer look. Pierce was standing there. His scalp was covered with blood, but he was holding his shotgun and standing over the body of the Toretto gunman.

“What happened to you?”

“Don’t ask.” Pierce gestured to the rear door of the laundry. “I’ve got some unfinished business out back. This door—” he jerked his chin at the door facing the exit “—leads downstairs. I don’t know how many guys are going to be down there, so if you want to wait for me...”

“I’ve got it,” Bolan said, reasoning that an assassin like Harmon would take pride in being able to handle business himself. “Try not to take any more shots to the head.”

Pierce grunted and headed back outside. Bolan eased the door to the basement level open and stole a look down the stairway. The steps were solid, which was good. Open stairs would make his feet and legs a target the whole way down.

Of course, anybody down there would just be waiting to shoot him when he got to the bottom. He needed something. He went back out into the charnel house that was main area of the laundry.

Pausing to scoop up the Beretta 93-R and search its owner for more 20-round magazines—he found several—Bolan tucked the weapon into the waistband at his back. Then he grabbed a cardboard box that was by the front door. It was of heavy stock and large enough for his purposes. He took it to the basement stairs and flattened it at the top. Then he drew both of Harmon’s Berettas, thumbed the hammers back and the safeties off, and perched himself on the collapsed box.

“Federal agent!” he shouted, and pushed off.

The gunfire that greeted him told him the men in the basement had no qualms about murdering a government agent—or an unwelcome visitor—and that marked them as hostile combatants. The bullets didn’t find their mark: Bolan was sliding down the steps at a breakneck clip, riding the piece of folded cardboard like a toboggan. Bullets cracked and splintered the steps behind him. The shooters were too slow. The Executioner’s sudden slide had given him just enough of an element of surprise.

He hit the bottom of the steps with a jolt, rolled through a somersault and stood with Harmon’s Berettas in both hands. The basement was a warren, lighted by bare bulbs hanging from extension cords mounted to the ceiling. Folding tables were arranged in rows. Some were covered with stacks of cash. At least one bore plastic bags of white powder, which was either heroin or cocaine. The smell lingering in the room told Bolan it was the latter. Whatever the Torettos were laundering, it was tied to illegal drug operations.

It was cool in the basement, but the gunmen working here were shirtless and wearing only swim trunks. There were three of them. Two wielded automatic pistols. The third had a cut-down Ruger Mini-14 sporting a pair of magazines taped end-to-end.

Bolan shot the Ruger wielder in the face. His weapon made him the greater threat. As the standing corpse started to turn, its finger convulsed on the trigger. A single 5.56 mm round belched from the weapon’s chopped barrel, punched a hole through a stack of bagged cocaine and pierced the second gunman’s stomach at the navel. The button man folded, screaming.

The third shooter had managed to draw down on Bolan with reasonable calm, firing off a pair of shots as he squinted against the glare of a nearby hanging light. The mobster’s aim was close enough that it drove Bolan to the floor on his back. The angle was wrong, but there was no time to worry about that. Instead, Bolan took aim at the bare light bulb and neatly popped a round through it. The bulb exploded in the gunman’s face.

The shooter dropped his gun and clawed at his face. Bolan stood once more, aimed carefully, and put a round through his adversary’s forehead. Then he moved to stand over the gut-shot mobster, kicking away the man’s pistol as he did so. A quick search told him he had eliminated all resistance. There were no secondary exits from the basement, unless there was a hidden hatch.

A creak on the stairs behind him made him whirl. He leveled both Berettas at the sound, but it was only Pierce, holding his shotgun by the receiver and raising both arms in surrender. The blood on his scalp was drying in a runnel past his nose. He looked annoyed.

“Only me,” he said.

Bolan lowered his guns. “You settle your business out back?”

“Yeah. But not well. I was hoping to get somebody alive. They figured out what we were doing when you hit the front. Here I am, covering the back, when one of them throws open the door and hits me with a gumball machine.”

“A what?”

“A gumball machine, for crying out loud!” Pierce groused. “You know, the stupid thing that sits in the back of every coin laundry you’ve ever walked into, filled with gum that hasn’t been changed since Kennedy was shot. Nailed me right in the head with it. I hit him in the head with the shotgun and made sure he was out, but by then the rest of the guards were already dancing with you. When I went back to get him so he could answer some questions, he was already awake enough to dig for a backup piece. So I had to plug him.”

“It happens,” Bolan said. Was Pierce telling him the truth? Or was this some clever ruse? And to what end? He wasn’t sure what the Mob enforcer had to gain by lying, but he filed the suspicion away nonetheless. In this game, you simply couldn’t take anyone’s agenda for granted.

Pierce surveyed the dead men and whistled softly. “These guys, the guys upstairs... You’re a one man death squad, Harmon.”

Bolan shrugged off the memories the comment brought back. He had put a few notches in his pistol grips over the years, to be sure. “I do what’s necessary,” was all he said.

Pierce looked more closely at the dead men. “Wait a sec. I know this guy.”

“Who is he?”

“His name really was Mike,” said Pierce. “Mike Morelli. He’s a cousin to Paul Toretto, the Don of the family.”

“Let’s question him.”

Pierce looked at Bolan as if the Executioner was insane. “He’s been shot in the head, Harmon. You’re not going to get anything out of him except juiced brain.”

“His pockets,” Bolan said.

Pierce nodded. He searched the corpse, coming up with a money clip, a folding knife, a lighter, a few other inconsequential items and an electronic car key.

“Maybe Mike’s car has some clues,” Pierce suggested. “You grab it and follow me. We’ll get gone before the cops show, find a parking lot, then search it from top to bottom.”

“Solid plan. Hand me his lighter.”

“You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to, are you?”

“No time for anything else,” Bolan said. The first sirens were barely audible in the distance. Given that they were at basement level, that put the cops too close for comfort. The Executioner flicked the lighter and started one of the stacks of cash ablaze. The cops would call the fire department, which would stop the blaze from getting out of hand, but hopefully the fire would gut the basement before it was put out. Bolan’s policy was never to leave anything behind that could benefit an enemy, if he could help it. If the coke and the cash ended up in a police evidence locker, it might magically find its way out again. Better to destroy it in situ.

“Man,” Pierce said as the stack of Mob money started to burn behind them. “That hurts to watch.”

“It’s going to hurt more for the Torettos before we’re done.”

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