Книга - Deep Recon

Deep Recon
Don Pendleton


Tensions are on the rise after a BATF agent's cover is blown during a gunrunning bust in the Florida Keys. There's a leak within the Feds and Mack Bolan is sent in to search and destroy before more lives are lost.But with highly trained ex-marines running the guns and dedicated to eliminating loose ends, Bolan knows infiltrating the unit could be a fatal assignment.With nothing to lose, the mercenaries are ready to declare war on whoever gets in their way. It's kill or be killed, and the Executioner is ready to take them up on their offer if that's what will break the chain of command.









The only way to avoid a collision was to stop smashing against the guardrail


Swerving left long enough to disentangle the two vehicles, Bolan put his right foot on the brake, causing the Mustang to decelerate sharply.

The assassin’s car continued to scrape against the guardrail for several seconds before the assassin also swerved left. But unlike the Executioner’s maneuver, the assassin went too far and spun around counterclockwise. Tires squealed as the car went into an uncontrolled spin.

The truck didn’t slow down.

Bolan slammed his foot on the brake, bringing his car to a screeching halt. The truck did likewise, but had considerably more momentum on its side, and so did not stop immediately.

Bolan watched as the truck smashed into the other car.





Deep Recon


The Executioner







Don Pendleton







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I only love that which they defend.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

(1892–1973)

The Two Towers

I will protect the people of this nation from all traitors, whether by gun, sword, arrow—or my bare hands.

—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


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue




Prologue


The autumn winds blew in off the Gulf of Mexico and kicked up outside the midnight black car. It was windy enough that the twenty-five-year-old car creaked and squeaked and even shook at times.

It didn’t matter to Agent John McAvoy. He loved both the autumn season and his old retired police car, a 1982 Crown Victoria. There were better cars, but McAvoy loved things with problems and faults. He preferred to work with things and figure out what went wrong, then make them right. Often, he joked that that was why he married his ex-wife, only to learn that things could be fixed—people, not so much.

Back when he was a detective for the Chicago Police Department, McAvoy was that rarest of detectives who actually liked a good mystery, a stone-cold whodunit. McAvoy relished the cases his fellow detectives loathed. They all wanted the slam dunks, the easy arrests, where there was a reliable witness and plenty of physical evidence, plus minimum paperwork.

But not McAvoy. He wanted to solve things. It gave him a greater sense of accomplishment, the feeling of a job well done. That trait made him well-suited to the more complicated work done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He’d moved over to BATF after only ten years with CPD, having grown weary of Chicago’s weather and politics, and having needed a change after his divorce. Not that the politics were any better in Florida—in fact, they were worse, as hard to believe as that was—but at least there was more sun and no winter.

Best of all, no ex-wife and a lot more pretty women. It definitely had been the right move.

It had been months on this particular undercover case. Last May, he’d become Donald Kincaid, a Key West–based gunrunner. It was miserable, cozying up to the scum of the Earth, having to pretend to be their pals. However, the months of work had gained him valuable information.

He hoped it would all be worth it.

McAvoy sat at his steering wheel, a burning cigarette dangling from between his lips, reading the file on a former Marine lieutenant turned gunrunner named Kevin Lee. The BATF agent had read it all before, of course—Lee was one of the major players in South Florida—but McAvoy couldn’t get over Lee’s impeccable service record with the Corps, ending with a tour in Afghanistan. He had no reprimands, no bad behavior, no warning signs at all—it was spotless. Sometimes, he thought, people just flipped a switch.

It had taken him months to get the lead on this warehouse. McAvoy was sure that he was close to the jackpot, finally—the light at the end of the tunnel that would get him back behind his desk at the BATF field office in Miami.

He could see men were wandering aimlessly in and out of this warehouse on Stock Island, the penultimate of the islands that made up the Florida Keys, the last being Key West, the southernmost point in the continental United States.

McAvoy had parked his Crown Vic in the lot of a scuba diving place next door. The dive shop had several cars and SUVs present, as it was running a night dive, so McAvoy’s car didn’t stand out.

The warehouse was supposed to be shut down, but Kevin Lee had taken over the property through a shell company. That was the thing about illegal operations—nothing was legit or permanent.

Peering through his Bushnell 8x30 Imageview Instant Replay Binoculars, McAvoy saw that the guards were fairly lax. There were only two of them, and they patrolled the perimeter once every hour or so—if they even remembered. One was wearing an MP3 player, while the other had been paging through a skin magazine, occasionally holding it up for his music-listening partner to share in the joy of the airbrushed, Photoshopped, silicone-laden female form.

Their rifles were slung unceremoniously across their shoulders. McAvoy was seriously tempted to take the warehouse now, but he didn’t have any backup. Using the Bushnell’s five-megapixel camera, he took several more pictures, then checked the memory.

The only thing he still needed was Lee himself. If he’d enter the building, and McAvoy got a picture of him doing so, that, along with all the other intel he’d gathered, would be enough probable cause for a warrant to hit the warehouse.

McAvoy’s plan was to wait until the night dive ended, and leave along with the other cars in the lot. If Lee hadn’t shown up by then, he’d try again tomorrow night. He’d been at this for months, and while he was eager to close the case, he was equally eager to do it right. It wouldn’t do after all this to get tripped up on some picayune piece of procedure just because he was in a rush to stop being Kincaid.

Moments later, as he was ashing his cigarette out the rolled-down window, he saw movement near his Crown Vic, and his plan suddenly changed.

McAvoy knew that whoever was out there would be easier dealt with in the open space of the parking lot. He put out his cigarette in the car’s ashtray and just as he was about to reach into the well between the seats where he kept his Walther PPK .380 a voice sounded from the passenger side.

“I wouldn’t move, if I were you Mr. Kincaid.”

The voice belonged to Kevin Lee.

“Or, rather,” Lee continued, “should I say Agent McAvoy?”

The BATF agent’s blood froze. He’d been so careful, worked so hard for months. How the hell had his cover been blown?

Still, he had to keep it up for as long as he could, especially since the other person he’d seen moving was now fully visible outside the driver’s door. It was one of Lee’s goons—a bulky Cuban named Jiminez—pointing a police-issue Glock 17 right at McAvoy’s head.

“Kevin? The hell’re you doin’ here? I’m just waitin’ on Lola, she’s supposed to be back from her freakin’ night-dive by now.” His partner in this undercover was a former Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputy turned freelance operative named Lola Maxwell, and her cover was as a woman who, among other things, loved to scuba dive.

“For an undercover BATF agent, you don’t play dumb very well, Agent McAvoy. I was hoping that it wouldn’t come to this. But I suppose that’s how it has to be.” Lee nodded to Jiminez.

At the same time as the nod, McAvoy threw his shoulder to his left, the metal of the suddenly open door slamming into Jiminez’s midsection, denying him the opportunity to pull the trigger.

McAvoy rolled out of the car on his left shoulder, coming up on one knee. He hadn’t had the chance to grab his Walther out of the car, and Jiminez was still holding his Glock.

McAvoy wasn’t worried about Lee. Despite having led a rifle company in Afghanistan—or perhaps because he had—Lee never carried. That was what he had goons like Jiminez for.

Pivoting on the leg whose foot was flat on the ground, McAvoy rose and thrust his other foot out toward Jiminez, catching the large Cuban in the solar plexus.

Jiminez doubled over, trying to catch his breath. With someone as big and well-muscled as the Cuban, you had to go for something that would hurt no matter who you were. One place was the solar plexus, where a good hit would knock the wind out of you.

Of course, McAvoy had actually been aiming for his balls. That always worked, too. But he kicked too high.

Unlike slamming the door into the Cuban’s body, kicking him in the stomach got him to drop the Glock. McAvoy snatched at it, even as a bullet whistled loudly by his head from behind.

Whirling, he saw another one of Lee’s guys—the Samoan guy, whose name McAvoy didn’t know, but everyone called him “Pooky” for some reason. The man was holding a Desert Eagle .50 Action Express, pointed right at where McAvoy’s head had been before he dived for the Glock.

The Desert Eagle had serious recoil, so it was hard to squeeze off multiple rapid-fire rounds. Gripping the Glock with both hands and turning so he was sitting on the ground and leaning against his Crown Vic to prevent his own recoil issues, the agent fired off six rounds.

Or, rather, tried to. The weapon jammed after the third shot. McAvoy aimed unpleasant thoughts at people who didn’t maintain their weapons.

One of the Glock’s bullets had sliced through Pooky’s left arm, shredding bone and muscle and cartilage. Blood had exploded from the wound, dripping onto the asphalt of the parking lot.

Unfortunately, Pooky was right handed, so he still held the Desert Eagle. And he didn’t even flinch from the bullet wound. McAvoy wasn’t sure if that was because Pooky was tough or because Pooky had more heroin than blood flowing through his veins.

The Samoan squeezed off another shot from the Desert Eagle one-handed, and stumbled backward from the recoil.

McAvoy only barely registered Pooky’s issues, though, as the .50-caliber round tore into his left thigh, pulverizing arteries and veins, destroying flesh and shattering bone. Blood gushed from the wound, and McAvoy realized with certainty that his femoral artery had been hit.

Blinking away the tears of pain that welled up in his eyes, he managed to clear the misfire and squeeze off another shot with the Glock, one that went right between the Samoan’s eyes.

That, though, was his swan song. He could feel the life draining out of him, his limbs growing weaker and weaker, his thoughts getting fuzzier, his vision getting cloudier. The only thing that remained vivid and constant was the agonizing pain emanating from his destroyed left leg.

The last thing Agent John McAvoy of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would ever hear was Kevin Lee saying the words, “Goodbye, John.”



LOLA MAXWELL wasn’t on the dive boat, of course. She was in a bar on Duval Street, clutching the same pint of beer she’d been nursing for over an hour, wondering where the hell McAvoy was.

He had said he would call her when he was back home, which would be after the night dive at the shop next to Lee’s warehouse. But that dive had started at eight o’clock and was scheduled to end at nine-thirty. True, the water was choppy, so the dive might have run late, but surely not more than forty-five minutes or so. It was only a five- or ten-minute drive back from Stock Island to Johnny’s bungalow on Eaton Street.

Which meant that Lola should have heard from him no later than a quarter to eleven or so. It was now creeping toward eleven-thirty.

There was a band playing cover tunes at the front of the bar, and they started playing “Brown-Eyed Girl” for the third time that night. That, combined with worry over John and lack of desire to continue being hit on by drunks, caused her to gulp down the remainder of her beer and depart.

She had a bad feeling about all of this.

When she came out onto Duval Street, the autumn breeze cutting through her shoulder-length red hair, she pulled out her cell phone, hoping that maybe she hadn’t heard the chirp of the ringer over the din of the cover band.

But there were no messages, no missed calls, no sign of Johnny.

As she ambled quickly down the sidewalk, expertly weaving her way around drunken college students and the like, she called Jean-Louis, her “associate”—a euphemistic term for extra muscle, in both the physical and firepower departments—in the hopes that Johnny might have contacted him.

“No can do, Lo,” he said. There was a lot of noise in the background, so Jean-Louis was probably at the Cutter’s Wharf, his preferred watering hole.

“I’m going to the warehouse.”

Jean-Louis hesitated. “You sure that’s such a good idea, boss?”

Lola snorted. Jean-Louis only called her “boss” when he was trying to talk her out of something. “I know it’s a bad idea, Jean-Louis, but in six months, he’s never missed a scheduled call-in. He’d only miss one if something awful had happened—I have to know.”

Minutes later, she’d arrived at her own bungalow on Whitehead Street, her cherry-red, fully restored 1965 Mustang convertible in the driveway. Sliding the key into the driver’s door, she slid into the seat and turned over the 289 2V engine.

Purring like a happy cat being scratched behind the neck, the engine went smoothly into reverse at Lola’s moving of the gearshift.

This late at night, the traffic was fine on Whitehead, and moving decently on Route 1 to the bridge, though it seemed agonizingly slow to Lola.

A pit opened up in the bottom of her stomach as she turned off Route 1 onto the side road that led to the dive shop, the warehouse and the restaurant across the street.

But Lola saw none of those things. She saw only the flashing lights and the yellow crime-scene tape.

Dozens of sedans and SUVs were parked, all with the rapid-fire sequence of colored lights that indicated they belonged to law enforcement. There were people wearing the uniform of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and plainclothes agents wearing windbreaker jackets with “BATF” stenciled in big white letters on the back.

The tape cordoned off both the warehouse and the dive shop.

The pit in Lola’s stomach grew wider.

She parked the Mustang and managed to talk to Deputy Hobart, who’d always had the hots for her, into letting her past the tape.

Several agents were standing over two dead bodies, using various pieces of crime-scene investigation equipment. One victim was a giant of a man, wounded in both the forehead and left arm, the former likely to have been the fatal shot. But Lola barely noticed that, instead focusing on the one with the mangled left thigh: Agent John McAvoy.

“Noooo!” Lola cried out as she raced toward the body, her eyes welling with tears.

One of the agents stopped her, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug that kept her arms at her side.

“Let me go!”

Another agent stared hard at her. “Who the hell are you, lady? And what are you doing in my crime scene?”

“My name is Lola Maxwell—I was working with Johnny—with Agent McAvoy.” Then she remembered the password Johnny had given her in case she ever found herself speaking to a BATF agent about this case. “Galleria.”

The agent blinked twice, then looked at the person manhandling Lola. “Let her go.”

After she was free, Lola knelt so she could see Johnny better, years of training keeping her from actually disturbing the body and any evidence it might contain. It looked like his thigh had been hit by a large-caliber bullet that shredded the femoral artery. He would’ve bled out in moments.

The other body meant that nothing would come of it from an investigative standpoint. The Samoan—who looked like one of Lee’s goons, the one they called Pooky—killed the BATF agent, and the BATF agent killed Pooky. Lola had been a cop too long to know that this was just two murders that had conveniently solved each other. The paperwork would be clean and easy, the cases would improve the county’s crime stats, and life would go on. No one would avenge Johnny’s death because they knew who killed him.

Her heart ached from the sight of his glass-eyed stare, but she vowed that she would carry on, the cold fire of vengeance burning behind her tear-filled eyes.




1


The satellite phone had interrupted Mack Bolan’s fishing.

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been on a rented boat in the middle of Bear Lake near Atlanta, Michigan, all day, but not a single salmon had taken the bait at the end of his line. Was it really fishing if you didn’t catch any fish?

Bolan rarely took downtime, as there was always something that needed his attention. He valued his R and R, and he was a practical man. He had never subscribed to the notion that the rest and relaxation was the most important part of fishing. If one wanted to rest and relax, there were plenty of ways to do it, and he wouldn’t have had to leave his rented cabin or take the small motorboat into the middle of Bear Lake.

No, he wanted to fish. But the salmon weren’t exactly cooperating.

The Executioner took very few vacations, but it was time for him to kick back and clear his mind, take time so that his body could heal from all that he’d put it through in the past few weeks.

But he’d been in Montmorency County for twenty-four hours, and he was bored, so he quickly snatched up the sat phone when it signaled an incoming call.

“Striker,” the gruff voice of Hal Brognola said, “sorry to interrupt your time off, but it’s been twenty-four hours, so I assume you’re ready to go back to work?”

Brognola knew him well. “What’s the mission?”

“There’ll be a Stony Man plane on the tarmac at Atlanta Municipal Airport within the hour to take you to Key West International Airport. The full mission brief will be there.”

“Anything else?”

“It’ll all be in the intel package. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Bolan disconnected with Brognola after his goodbyes and steered the boat back to the shore.

It took fifty minutes to return the boat, pack his few things into a duffel, check out of the cabin, and take his rental car to the airport, where he returned it. Stony Man had sent a private jet just as Brognola had promised. Bolan could see Charlie Mott, one of Stony Man’s pilots, waiting on the tarmac.

Bolan went easily through security, his credentials allowing him to bring his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 handgun into the airport without question. He had only the one weapon—he was, technically, on vacation, after all.

Boarding the plane, he saw that Brognola had anticipated his needs, as usual. An ICC aluminum case covered in black ballistic nylon sat on one of the eight comfortable chairs, and a Pelican 1780W HL Long Case on another. A quick look revealed they held a Mark XIX Desert Eagle .357 Magnum pistol and an RRA Tactical Entry 5.56 mm automatic rifle, respectively. On one of the two seats opposite where the weaponry had been placed was a laptop.

Mott quietly closed the door to the plane and clambered into the cockpit. “We’ll be in the air in two shakes, Striker. Nice to have you aboard.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Good to see you again.”

Taking the seat next to the laptop after stowing his duffel, the Executioner picked it up and opened it, settling it on his lap while the machine left standby mode.

The laptop’s desktop—which was from a proprietary operating system created by Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man’s computer expert—had only one folder visible on it, simply labeled Striker. Bolan double-clicked on it.

For the rest of the trip south, Bolan read through every file in that folder. The latest in a series of attempts by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get close to a Key West–based gunrunner named Kevin Lee had failed, a long-term undercover agent named John McAvoy had been found dead near an empty warehouse. According to McAvoy’s partner, an operative named Lola Maxwell, McAvoy had believed the warehouse to be one of Lee’s main stashes for illegal weaponry he wanted to move, but McAvoy was made, and the warehouse cleaned out. The forensics report from the warehouse didn’t provide any useful evidence. And a dead body was left behind to take the rap.

McAvoy had gotten much deeper than any previous undercover operative. His identity was known only to his handler, who had specifically been given autonomy to pick his own agent in the hopes of avoiding a leak. Still, he was made and executed.

BATF had a leak. Bolan’s job was to find the leak and plug it once and for all.

Bolan knew both Maxwell and McAvoy by reputation. The latter was a solid agent with a good record, including an impressive bust of an operation working out of Chicago during his days as a CPD detective, after which BATF recruited him. He would be sorely missed.

Maxwell was more of a wild card. A sheriff’s deputy in Monroe County, Florida, she moved on to the CIA and then became a freelance operative much like Bolan himself, though with less latitude, secrecy, or support than Bolan enjoyed. The CIA let her go for reasons undisclosed, at a time when the presidency changed hands from one political party to another. That meant that either she screwed up in such a way that was embarrassing to the company, or it was a political move by a new commander in chief putting his mark on things. Or, possibly, both.

According to the memo from Brognola that led off the documents in the file folder, Bolan was to work with Maxwell to uncover the leak and put Lee away. The higher-ups at BATF were not thrilled about it, according to Brognola, but knew that they had to get their own house in order first.

After the plane landed smoothly on the short runway at Key West’s small airport—it received the rather outré designation of Key West International Airport by virtue of its proximity to Central and South America—Bolan took the two cases, but left the laptop. He’d tapped the special key that would wipe the hard drive.

In the small waiting area near the two small baggage claim stations Bolan spotted a large man with a round, bald head, huge arms that ended in wide shoulders, a barrel chest, squat legs, and no discernible neck, who seemed to have spotted him, also. Despite the man’s size, Bolan couldn’t detect an ounce of fat on him—easily done, as he was wearing a skintight muscle shirt and shorts. The Executioner noticed that the large man walked with a slightly odd gait and his right arm stuck out a bit farther from his side than his left. He was a man who was used to walking with a shoulder holster, and who didn’t have it on because airport security would’ve been all over him.

Bolan readied himself as the man walked toward him. If this guy was one of Lee’s men, it didn’t bode well for this assignment. An op that began with a firefight five minutes after Bolan landed meant big trouble. Also, any leak had to have been tugboat-size if the Executioner’s own involvement was known by his target only a couple hours after he got the mission.

The man walked up to Bolan and said, “Are you Mr. Cooper? I’m Mr. Faraday. I’m here to take you to Lola.”

“Any particular reason why I should believe you?” Bolan asked.

Faraday was now standing close to Bolan. He was half a head shorter than the Executioner, but twice as wide. Still, Bolan had taken down bigger opponents unarmed, and he had his SIG-Sauer handy if he needed it. For that matter, he had two solid gun cases, one in either hand, both of which would make excellent blunt instruments should the need arise.

Then Faraday whispered the word “Galleria.”

From his airplane reading, Bolan knew that was the BATF code word for McAvoy’s op. In and of itself, it didn’t prove as much as Faraday probably thought it did. If there was a leak, then McAvoy’s code word might well have been common knowledge in Lee’s organization.

Plus, Faraday’s name appeared nowhere in that same airplane reading, which had included a full dossier on Lola Maxwell.

Still and all, Bolan was willing to go along with Faraday for the time being, if for no other reason than to gather information.

He followed Faraday out to the sun-drenched parking lot, where he led them to a 1965 Mustang convertible.

Bolan’s hopes for this mission continued to plummet. A cherry-red Mustang was hardly the most inconspicuous vehicle to be using for an undercover op. And if it was part of Maxwell’s cover, should she really have sent it out to pick him up?

Faraday squeezed his massive frame into the Mustang, which also went some way toward explaining the choice of car: Faraday’s bulk would not have fit comfortably in a more modern sedan. Of course, sedans were hardly the only option, and the prevalence of SUVs made that a far more inconspicuous mode of transport.

Bolan slid quietly into the passenger seat after placing his duffel and gun cases in the backseat. As Faraday drove out onto a road that ran alongside the Gulf of Mexico, Bolan saw that this was hardly the only vintage car around. That mitigated the problem, but hardly solved it.

Gazing past Faraday’s head, Bolan looked out and saw the bright blue sky, broken by the occasional white cloud, the sun’s brightness doubled by reflecting off the blue-with-whitecaps water of the Gulf. The water was also filled with boats of all kinds, ranging from small yachts to sailboats to motorboats very similar to the one he was using for fishing in Michigan earlier this day. Other, smaller boats were used to drag parasailers through the sky.

The road came to an L intersection, and the Mustang continued on it, turning right. Faraday navigated through several other streets, which contained various houses colored in pastels. A large number were new construction, due to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, though Bolan noted that they were still in the same style as the ones that were constructed in the nineteenth century when Key West was a major port of call and the wrecking industry was at its peak.

The Mustang pulled into the driveway of a bungalow on Whitehead Street. It was white with blue trim.

Before going inside, Bolan removed his Desert Eagle from its case, assembling it in just a few moments.

“You ain’t gonna need that,” Faraday said.

The Executioner said nothing, but continued to put his weapon together. He saw no reason to take Faraday at his word.

When the Desert Eagle was placed snugly in his waistband, reducing the SIG-Sauer in his shoulder holster to the status of backup weapon, Bolan said, “Let’s go.”

Inside the bungalow was sparsely furnished and lit by garish tropical daylight. Under the right circumstances, such bland décor and intense natural light could be used to disorient, but this was southern Florida, where bright sun was the order of the day.

Inside was a tall woman in her early- to mid-thirties with red shoulder-length hair and stunning emerald-green eyes. She wore a tube top that barely contained a sizable chest, flip-flops, and toenail polish that were all the same red as the Mustang. Her denim cutoffs had a belt holster that contained a Beretta U22 NEOS 22LR pistol.

“Lola Maxwell, I presume?” Bolan asked.

“That would be me. My contacts said you were the best. I’ve never known them to be wrong.

“We’re trying to bring down a gunrunner here, Mr. Cooper, one who killed a BATF deep-cover agent.”

“Yes, I know. I read the file. What I don’t know is what you and your thug over here have to do with any of this.”

Faraday tensed at the “thug” reference, but calmed at a look from Maxwell.

“Jean-Louis is my associate. He used to be an enforcer for a drug crew out of Key Largo, until I put him away. He’s been working for me since he did his time.”

“And you?”

“Since I left the CIA—”

Bolan almost smiled. “Since the CIA kicked you out on your ass, you mean. Don’t screw around with me, Ms. Maxwell. I take on jobs that need to be done, and I can’t do it with incompetents working alongside me.”

“I’m not incompetent!” Maxwell said. “My leaving the CIA was political. I’m sure you know all about that.”

“Yes, which is why I avoid politics.”

“In any case, BATF hired me to provide support for Johnny—for Agent McAvoy on his undercover job.”

Jerking a thumb toward Faraday, Bolan asked, “And he fits in where?”

“He helps me out,” Maxwell said evasively, staring at the floor. “Look, it’s easier to do this kind of thing if you have some kind of local talent. Jean-Louis and I know a lot of the players, plus we have deniability with BATF. Anyone digs, they’ll find an ex-con and an ex-spook. My current work is completely off the grid—kinda like yours, I presume.” She added that with an ironic smile. “And we’re wasting time. I think I know who might’ve fingered Johnny.”

Bolan folded his arms over his chest. He didn’t like this. “How long were the two of you sleeping together?”

Maxwell blinked. “What are you talking about?” Her attempt at ignorance was pathetic.

Moving toward the door, the Executioner said, “We’re done.”

“What?”

“You slept with your partner. You’re working with an ex-con. And I get the feeling you’re more interested in vengeance for your lover’s murder than in justice against a gunrunner. I appreciate the lift from the airport, but I’ll take it from here by myself. Like I said before, I don’t work with incompetents.”

Bolan put his hand on the front doorknob when Maxwell said, “Wait!”

Turning, Bolan asked, “For what? You’re not going to convince me that this op is anything but botched from the start. You’re too close emotionally, and that clouds judgment—people end up dead. I don’t want one of those people to be me, so we’re done.”

“But I told you, I know who fingered Johnny.”

That got Bolan’s hand off the doorknob—temporarily. “Why didn’t you tell the BATF agents at the scene this?”

“Because I wasn’t thinking straight at the scene. I’ve had a day to think about it, and I know who it has to be—Kenny V. The V is short for Valentino, his last name, but a lot of the boys call him Hot Lips.”

“A good kisser?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Maxwell said. “No, they call him that ’cause his lips are always flapping, and the boys all think that his mouth’ll catch fire, they flap so fast.”

“If he’s that good a talker, how is he still alive?”

“He doesn’t just talk well, he hears everything and knows everybody. He always makes deals that are good for both parties, and he never squeals.”

“Time to break that streak, then,” Bolan said, confident in his ability to extract information. “Where is he?”

“A bar on Sugarloaf Key called Micky’s. He practically lives at the corner table between the jukebox and the pool table. We can be there in twenty minutes.”

“No, I can be there in twenty minutes. I work better alone.”

“Dammit, Cooper, you don’t know the players, and you don’t know the territory.” She chuckled. “And look at you. You stand out like a sore thumb.”

“Maybe. But I can’t do my job and babysit you two. So stay here.” Looking at Faraday, he said, “Car keys.”

Faraday looked confused.

Glowering at Maxwell, Bolan said, “You want my help, we do things my way, and that means I go alone with no chance of you two following. I either take your car, or I slash the tires and go rent one of my own. Pick one.”

Maxwell bit her lower lip, then nodded toward Faraday, who handed over the Mustang’s keys.

“Smart choice.” Bolan departed the bungalow.

The Mustang’s engine turned over as soon as Bolan applied the key. The old car hummed like the well-oiled machine it was, and the Executioner was silently impressed with at least one aspect of Maxwell’s character: she kept this four-decade-old car in pristine shape.

Once he’d put some distance between himself and Maxwell’s bungalow, he took out his sat phone, which was also equipped with a GPS and a secure Internet connection. The latter enabled him to quickly obtain the precise address of Micky’s on Sugarloaf Key, and the former provided directions.

Sure enough, it took almost exactly twenty minutes to get there. Bolan found a parking lot belonging to a bowling alley a block away from Micky’s, and he parked the rather distinctive Mustang there.

The Executioner played a serious game, one with his life on the line constantly, and he would only trust someone he could count on to back him up. Every indication showed that Maxwell and her “associate” didn’t qualify.

He pulled his jacket around him closer as he walked toward Micky’s. The sun was setting and the temperature was plummeting. The wind that came in off the Atlantic was bitter and cut through Bolan.

Micky’s was a large shack that probably had been used for storage once upon a time. From a distance it looked fairly rickety, and Bolan wondered how it survived hurricane season. But as he got closer, he saw evidence of steel reinforcement. A battered sign gave the name of the place, and what few windows there were were frosted over.

This area of Florida specialized in open-air eateries and drinkeries, and for a place to be this enclosed bespoke a certain illegality.

As if to reinforce that, Bolan walked through the thick metal door to find his nostrils assaulted with cigarette smoke. There were few interior public spaces left that allowed smoking, and while Bolan wasn’t completely up on the Florida State code, he was fairly certain that bars in this state qualified. Places like this, though, bars that catered to the scum of humanity, tended to be smoke-filled throwbacks to a bygone era, a testament to how little the criminal element had changed.

The bar floor was nowhere near large enough to cover the full space of the building. In and of itself that didn’t say much: the Florida Keys weren’t structurally sound enough geologically to support much by way of basements, so the bar’s storage facilities were probably aboveground. Still, Bolan was sure there was more than liquor stored in the area he couldn’t see.

Bolan strode in like he owned the place, heading straight for a wooden stool at the bar. With a single glance he took in the interior: a bar along the left wall, a bartender standing behind it drawing the tap for a customer who sat at the far end, and a floor with a lot of wooden tables. While most of those tables had one or two men sitting at it—there wasn’t a single woman in the place—the one between the jukebox and the pool table was empty.

So much for “practically living there.” Bolan was running out of patience with Lola Maxwell already, and the op was less than twenty-four hours old.

He ordered the lightest beer they had. The bartender glared at him, and Bolan glared right back.

“You a cop?” the bartender asked.

Assuming a cover identity without a moment’s hesitation, Bolan spoke in a New York accent. “Jesus H., is that a stupid question, or what? You really think I’m gonna just say, ‘Yeah, I’m a cop’? I swear to Christ, the sun must bake your brains down here.”

“When’d you come down from the Big Apple?” the bartender then asked with a smile.

Florida was filled with transplanted New Yorkers, so the accent wouldn’t be hard for a bartender to place, but Bolan’s cover required him to play dumb. “What makes you think I’m from New York? And we don’t call it ‘the Big Apple,’ either, asshole.”

“Look, maybe you’ll want to try one of the places out on Route 1.”

“Yeah? Kenny V hang out there, too?”

The bartender frowned. “You’re here to see Hot Lips?”

“Christ, you don’t really call him that, do ya?”

At that, the bartender smiled. “I’ll get your drink.”

As the bartender pulled the tap for the light beer, the door opened to the sound of someone talking a mile a minute.

“So I says to the bitch, I says, ‘Hey look, bitch, if you don’t wanna be doin’ the deed, then you shouldn’t’a been all cozyin’ up to me like you was.’ And she was sayin’, ‘I thought we was just dancin’,’ and I told her, ‘Yo, bitch, when you dance with your cootchie all up against my leg, my guess is that you wanna be doin’ more than dancin’, you feel me?’”

That had to be Kenny Valentino. He had a shaved head, a chin beard and a gold tooth on the left side of his mouth. He seemed to be talking to himself, but as he entered Micky’s, Bolan could see the wireless phone device in his left ear.

“I’m at the joint now, I gotta bounce. Hey, tell Delgado that Lee owes me, a’ight? Good. Peace.”

He tapped the side of his wireless device, then signaled the bartender. “Yo, Marty! Draw me a beer!”

Marty, the bartender, nodded as he brought Bolan his beer. “That,” Marty said to Bolan, “is the guy you’re looking for.”

“No kidding,” Bolan said sardonically. “Kinda worked that out on my own, know what I’m sayin’?” He also was starting to understand where the Hot Lips nickname came from, if he was blithely mentioning Lee’s name over an unsecured mobile phone line.

Kenny said hello to pretty much everyone in the bar, and engaged them in quick conversations. Though “conversations” may have been the wrong word, since none of the people other than Kenny actually said anything.

There were only two people Kenny didn’t acknowledge. One was Bolan. The other was the man at the far end of the bar whom Marty had been serving when Bolan came in.

Bolan paid close attention to all the exchanges, especially the one between Kenny and a short, overweight Latino gentleman with pockmarked skin. After Kenny acknowledged him, the Latino looked right at the man at the end of the bar.

That man then got up and went over to Kenny.

The world seemed to move in slow motion for just a second. Bolan immediately noticed the bulge of a handgun. As the man reached under his windbreaker, Bolan leaped up from his own stool and ran toward the man, reaching for his Desert Eagle.

Even as Bolan moved, the man pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber handgun.

“What the f—” were Kenny’s last words, as the man squeezed the trigger four times, putting each shot in Kenny Valentino’s chest. The first bullet ripped into his chest, instantly pulverizing his heart. The subsequent three shots, which shredded his lungs, ribs and esophagus, were unnecessary, as the .38-caliber round tore the aorta to pieces, beyond the ability of even the finest hospital to repair.

A cacophony of voices exploded in the bar.

“Shit!”

“He killed Valentino!”

“Shoot the bastard!”

“I never liked the little asshole.”

Pointing his Desert Eagle at the man’s head, Bolan said, “Drop it now.”

The man dived under the pool table. Bolan fired two rounds at the table, the .357 rounds blowing massive holes and sending splintered wood and pulverized felt everywhere.

As Bolan ran toward the pool table, the man popped up, now holding a second S&W .38 and firing both as he ran toward the door.

The Executioner was forced to dive for cover as bullets whizzed over his head.

The other men in the bar—including the pockmarked Latino who had signaled the assassin—had mostly moved toward the exits. Apparently, no one thought highly enough of Kenny Valentino to avenge his death.

Except for the Executioner. Valentino had survived all this time by being useful to the right people. Now, just when Bolan was about to talk to him about his role in informing on a federal agent, a professional showed up to put four bullets into him.

On the one hand, it meant that Bolan was on the right track. On the other, it meant that he couldn’t question the man.

The shots stopped, and Bolan clambered to his feet, running to the front door.

Valentino’s assassin was getting into a white Chevrolet Aveo, which made it much like every other car in south Florida.

Bolan risked throwing a shot, which would require him to steady his stance. Being light on your feet was not a blessing when you fired a .357 Magnum. He felt the tremendous recoil from the Desert Eagle vibrate through his entire body as the bullet sliced through the air, but he held his ground, his feet planted firmly in what martial artists called a three-point stance: one foot slightly in front of the other, toes inverted toward each other, knees bent, center of gravity dropped. It was one of the most stable stances possible, and people who mastered it couldn’t be easily knocked down. Bolan had long ago achieved such mastery.

The round pulverized the back window of the Aveo, which shattered in an ear-splitting explosion of glass. The Executioner also saw shreds of leather and padding, indicating that the round had gone through one of the seats as well.

Bolan had obviously missed the assassin, as he then started the car and drove off. Even a glancing shot from a .357 round would leave someone unable to operate a motor vehicle.

As he ran as fast as he could down the street to where he’d parked Maxwell’s Mustang, Bolan took some solace in the fact that he’d blown out the rear window of the Aveo, which would make it easier to pick up on the road.

Keeping his eye on the vehicle for as long as he could, Bolan saw it turn left at the end of the road, which meant the assassin was heading for the Overseas Highway—U.S. Route 1, the only road that traversed all the Keys. That was a mixed blessing. It meant that the assassin hadn’t stashed a boat here on Sugarloaf Key, which meant Bolan could keep tailing him. But it also meant that the Executioner had to catch up to him before he reached Route 1, otherwise he wouldn’t know whether he went south toward Key West or north toward mainland Florida.

As he approached the Mustang, Bolan leaped into the driver’s seat, grateful that he’d left the top down. Sliding the key into the ignition, the Executioner knew he was about to find out how well Maxwell maintained her vintage vehicle.

Apparently, she did so very well. The ’65 Mustang accelerated smoothly and quickly, and Bolan soon found himself behind a white Chevrolet Aveo with no back window that was turning left onto Crane Boulevard toward Route 1.

The Aveo was a solid, reliable car, often used by rental car companies, but never by car enthusiasts who preferred speed over function. So all things being equal, Bolan would have no trouble keeping up with the assassin with Maxwell’s Mustang.

But all things were somewhat unequal, as there were other cars on the road, and for all that it had the designation of “boulevard,” Crane was just a two-lane road.

Heedless of driving regulations, and common sense, the assassin weaved his Aveo in and out of his side and the oncoming-traffic side, almost getting clipped by vehicles any number of times.

When they reached Route 1, the Aveo swerved more than turned left through a red light. Bolan did likewise. The Executioner had been hoping that the Aveo would have gone right, and south toward Key West. There was a U.S. Navy station on Boca Chica Key, and the Executioner knew that facility well. He also could possibly have called upon some backup from the sailors on the ground there.

But instead, the assassin went north.

The Overseas Highway was also two lanes, which meant that traffic moved only as fast as the slowest person on the road. Paying no heed to other cars, the Aveo zipped in and out of lanes, clipping some vehicles. Bolan wasn’t sure if he did so to increase his speed, or in the hopes that one of the cars he hit would interfere with Bolan’s own ability to keep up, but if it was the latter, it didn’t work. The Mustang turned on the proverbial dime, and Bolan was easily able to avoid the other cars on the road.

They continued over Summerland Key and into Big Pine Key, his quarry continuing to treat the Overseas Highway as his own personal slalom course.

When they reached the Seven Mile Bridge, a stretch that traversed the Gulf of Mexico over the eponymous distance between Little Duck Key and Key Vaca, the traffic lessened—only the Mustang and the Aveo were on this stretch. Bolan wasn’t sure how long this would last, but he would take advantage of the lack of innocent bystanders and the distraction they posed.

About a mile onto the bridge, the assassin stuck an arm out the driver’s window and pointed the muzzle of his S&W in Bolan’s direction and squeezed off three shots.

None of them connected, as the assassin swerved and rubbed up against the concrete railing that kept drivers from going over the edge into the Gulf of Mexico. Sparks flew as the passenger side ground against the guardrail. The assassin righted the car soon enough, but the slowdown from the friction and the swerving allowed the Executioner to close the distance between them.

He didn’t rear-end the Aveo—that was a zero-sum strategy. With two cars of roughly equal size, the rear-ender always got it worse than the rear-endee. In this case, the impact would severely damage the Mustang’s grille and have almost no effect on the Aveo’s bumper.

Instead, Bolan took advantage of the presently nonexistent traffic to get into the northbound lane and pull up alongside the Aveo.

The assassin tried to fire his .38 again. But before he could get a shot off, Bolan swerved right, counting on the more solidly built 1965 car to be able to withstand the impact better than the much lighter and flimsier modern vehicle.

Again the Aveo ground against the concrete railing. Bolan saw the other man struggle to keep the steering wheel under control—and fail miserably. The Aveo was being crushed between the irresistible force of the barricade and the solidly built Mustang.

Headlights then shone in Bolan’s face as a truck came into view going southbound on Route 1. The Mustang was still halfway into the southbound lane, and the only way to avoid a collision was to stop smashing the Aveo against the guardrail.

Swerving left long enough to disentangle the two vehicles from each other—which happened with another screech of metal against plastic—Bolan then put his right foot on the brake, causing the Mustang to decelerate sharply.

The Aveo continued to scrape against the guardrail for several seconds before the assassin also swerved left.

But unlike the Executioner’s maneuver, the assassin went too far. The Aveo spun counterclockwise. Tires squealed against pavement as the car went into an uncontrolled spin.

The truck didn’t slow.

Bolan slammed his foot on the brake, bringing the Mustang to a screeching halt.

The truck did likewise, but had considerably more momentum on its side, and so did not stop immediately.

Bolan watched as the truck smashed into the Aveo.




2


Lola Maxwell fumed.

It wasn’t bad enough that Johnny McAvoy was dead, but they had to send him to avenge his death?

No—that was the problem. The man they’d sent had no interest in avenging McAvoy’s death. He was just there to finish the job McAvoy had started.

In truth, that was the difference between them. Maxwell honestly couldn’t give a damn about bringing Kevin Lee to justice. If it wasn’t him selling illegal foreign firearms to the soldiers in the drug trade that ran rampant in south Florida, it would be someone else.

But Lee was the reason her lover was dead—and she intended to kill him for that.

Sleeping with McAvoy had never been part of the plan. Maxwell was a professional, and a professional never slept with a partner on an operation.

At least, that was what the rule book said. But the problem with the rule book was that it was hard to find when you were on a long-term deep-cover op.

It wasn’t so bad for Maxwell. She was playing the ex-cop hanging out in her old stomping grounds. The only difference was that she was still on the job, just nobody knew it apart from McAvoy and Faraday.

But McAvoy had been all alone out there except for her. He spent his days and nights living a lie, and the only person he could truly confide in, besides a handler he spoke to once a week or so, was Maxwell.

It was four months into the op when it had happened. One of the guys in Lee’s employ got his girlfriend knocked up, and they decided to get married. “Donald Kincaid” was trying to ingratiate himself into Lee’s world, and going to a bachelor party was definitely a way to endear yourself. So he joined them in barhopping and strip-club attending, working their way up and down Duval Street in a drunken stupor.

Afterward, he stumbled to Maxwell’s bungalow at five in the morning. He banged on her door, apparently too drunk to even operate the doorbell properly. She climbed out of bed, slipped into a silk robe and opened the door to see McAvoy, much drunker than he should have been while undercover, babbling on and on about how horrible these men were, the way they treated the other people in the bars and especially the way they treated the strippers. And when management tried to rein them in, one of them pulled his Beretta and shoved the muzzle right in his face.

The group of men had been left alone after that, but McAvoy—who’d been pretending to go along with the macho bullshit up until then—had a hard time with this incident. So he drank more.

The ironic thing was that it worked. Finley, one of Lee’s top guys, confided in McAvoy as the party was breaking up that he had been suspicious of him, but seeing him three sheets to the wind with the rest of them proved he was an okay guy.

McAvoy had been crying at this point, and Maxwell took him in her arms, the silk of her robe sliding open to reveal her ample cleavage. McAvoy started kissing her neck and working his way down to that cleavage, and Maxwell found herself completely uninterested in stopping him.

Eventually, they made it back to the bedroom, the bathrobe long since discarded, as were his clothes. Because Maxwell looked the way she did, she could have her pick of men, but because of that, she was extraordinarily picky about whom she chose to sleep with outside the confines of the job.

Of course, this was technically within those confines, but it was hard to argue with McAvoy’s hungry need that morning. Or hers, if it came to that, as McAvoy was a most sensitive lover.

Now McAvoy was dead, and she was stuck with this Cooper guy.

For Johnny’s sake, she hoped that the rumors had at least some truth to them.

“You keep pacin’ like that, you’ll wear a hole in the carpet.”

She glowered at Jean-Louis when he said that. “Bite me, Jean-Louis.”

“You ain’t my type,” Jean-Louis said with a big grin.

Maxwell couldn’t help but grin back at that. Jean-Louis liked his women petite. There were many adjectives that could describe the five-foot-ten Maxwell with her perfect hourglass figure, but “petite” was most definitely not one of them.

She and Faraday had been waiting all night for Cooper to come back with her car. She had changed into sweatpants and a white T-shirt, her breasts straining against the cotton. Maxwell knew that her ample breasts were two of her biggest assets—so to speak—and they had proved very handy in allowing her to get the upper hand over men. It was certainly worth trying with Cooper, maybe giving her the opportunity to get back in his good graces.

She was about to ask Faraday what time it was when she heard the distinctive sound of her pride and joy, the ’65 Mustang, pulling into the driveway.

“About goddamn time!” she said as she made a beeline for the front door of her bungalow and all but threw it open. The early-morning sun—it was less than an hour after dawn—blinded her briefly, but she blinked the glare away quickly with the ease of long practice.

She was about to yell at the man for taking so long with her car when her eye caught a few more things to yell at him about. There were skid marks on the passenger-side door, the side-view mirror was missing and one of the headlights was broken. That was just what she could see from the front door.

She couldn’t help but notice that Cooper didn’t look anywhere near as bad off as her car, which was too bad for him. His being badly injured in a manner commensurate with the damage to the Mustang was the only circumstance under which she was willing to even consider the remotest possibility of starting the process of forgiveness.

But no, the bastard was unscathed, apart from his slightly mussed hair.

“What the hell happened to my car?” she shrieked.

“The other guy’s ride is in much worse shape,” was all Bolan would say in reply. He moved past her and went inside.

This just made Maxwell angrier. She followed him in and said, “I can’t believe this. What gives you the right to—”

But Bolan had grabbed a piece of paper off the notepad that Maxwell kept on a corkboard near the front door. She generally used it for shopping lists and notes for herself or Faraday. “What’s the name and address of the place where you get bodywork done?”

Maxwell blinked. “What?”

The Executioner repeated the question, at which point a confused Lola gave an answer. “Ellis Body-works—it’s on Avenue G on Fat Deer Key. Every local cop, every county deputy, and every state trooper in the Keys has their car serviced there. Why, you offering to pay to fix it?”

As he wrote that information down, Bolan said, “Yes.”

Again, Maxwell found herself brought up short by an answer she wasn’t expecting from this man. “Really?”

“I need to make a phone call.” He folded the piece of paper and pulled a sat phone out of his jacket pocket. “After that, you can take the Mustang to Ellis and leave it there. Pick it up when they’re done, and don’t worry about the cost.”

Maxwell was impressed. She’d been in this game a long time, and she never knew of any op that had the budget to do car repairs on the level necessary for this. In fact, just in case, she asked, “You do realize that this is a very old car that they don’t make new parts for it, right? Just replacing that side-view mirror will be fifty bucks, before labor, and that’s the cheapest repair on there.”

“It’s fine,” he said, moving back toward the bedroom. “Excuse me.”

He went into her bedroom and closed the door. Confusion receded in Maxwell, the outrage coming back full force. She yanked the door open to see the man entering information into the sat phone.

“This is my bedroom!” This time, Maxwell straightened her back, making sure Cooper got an eyefull of her chest.

He didn’t once look below her neck. “I’m aware of this room’s function. This call is private. Please close the door.”

Maxwell let out a noise that sounded like a pipe bursting. But she did leave the room and closed the door, which was all Bolan cared about.



HE’D BEEN UP ALL NIGHT, making sure the truck crash was contained and dealt with. Brognola had sent a cleanup crew, and also used his contacts in the FBI to get someone from the Monroe County Field Office to take charge of the investigation, making sure that the Executioner’s role was kept out of any official reports by the local cops, the Feds, or the National Transportation Safety Bureau, not to mention the company that owned the truck, who’d probably do an investigation of its own.

Complicating matters was the fact that the person in the Aveo didn’t have any ID on him, and the credit card and driver’s license he’d used with the rental car company belonged to a ninety-three-year-old retired plumber from Hialeah who’d died a week earlier.

Now Bolan needed a good-night’s sleep before following up on the only lead he had—the “Delgado” person that Kenny V mentioned during the last phone call of his life—but first he had to contact Brognola.

Once he had been connected to the head of Stony Man, Bolan provided Brognola with the information about Ellis Auto Body.

“We’ll take care of it, Striker,” Brognola assured him.

“I should’ve just rented a car,” Bolan said. “I know you said to work with this woman, but I question her professionalism.”

“She knows the players, Striker. And her reputation is sterling.”

“That’s what I heard, too, but all the evidence I’ve seen doesn’t even come close to supporting that reputation, Hal.”

“Be that as it may, she’s a valuable asset. Without her, you’ll have a much harder time of it. And now that Lee knows BATF is on to him, he may circle the wagons and we’ll have lost our chance to put him away. Time is of the essence here.”

“Fine.” Bolan had raised his objection, and Brognola had noted it. There was no point in arguing it further. “Any word on our assassin?”

“Yes, and it’s not good,” Brognola said. “We’ve ID’d him as a merc named Ward Dayton. We were only able to get a positive on him because he’s in the CIA database.”

“As a person of interest or a contractor?”

“The latter, unfortunately. They’ve used him for wet work on any number of occasions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile and a few times in North Africa. In fact, my guy at the Company wasn’t exactly pleased that you’d killed him.”

“I’m only disappointed that he got himself killed before I could find out why he was doing Kenny Valentino—though I have a pretty good guess.” Bolan paused before continuing. “Why is the CIA’s Central and South American go-to guy putting bullets in two-bit errand boys for gunrunners?”

“That’s a good question, Striker. You need to find the answer, but my guess is that this is the first step in that wagon-circling I was just talking about.”

“Valentino had a rep for shooting his mouth off, and unlike Ms. Maxwell’s rep, it was one I have little trouble believing he earned, and that’s based only on the ninety seconds I saw of him before he bought it. If Lee wants to close ranks, Valentino would almost definitely have been near the top of the list of potential loose ends to tie off.”

“What’s your next move?” Brognola asked.

“Kenny mentioned a lieutenant of Lee’s named Delgado. I’m going to pay him a visit. I’ll keep you posted.”




3


After getting a few hours’ sleep on Maxwell’s living-room couch, Bolan went to the kitchen to make himself some coffee. Maxwell was nowhere to be found, which the Executioner found both annoying and a relief. The former because he wanted to ask her about Delgado.

He set the coffeemaker to provide him with a full pot. As it gurgled, he looked out the front window to see that the Mustang was gone. Bolan assumed that Maxwell had taken it to the auto body shop.

Once the coffee had stopped brewing, Bolan poured himself a cup and went back into the living room. Laying out each of his weapons on the coffee table, he carefully and meticulously cleaned each one, inside and out. He had separate cleaning kits for the SIG-Sauer, the Desert Eagle and the RRA rifle.

He cleaned the Desert Eagle first, reassembling it before moving on to the SIG-Sauer. Poor maintenance was a common cause of misfires, and the Executioner’s life had been saved more than once by his opponents being too stupid to clean their weaponry properly.

He had just finished cleaning the RRA rifle when he heard a car pull into the driveway, one that didn’t have the distinctive purr of the ’65 Mustang. Rather it sounded like an Oldsmobile with a muffler problem.

When the noise stopped and the bungalow’s door opened, Bolan saw that it was indeed an Olds, one that looked like it was brand-new when disco was born—only about ten years younger than the Mustang, but in considerably worse shape.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Maxwell said. She had changed out of the T-shirt and sweats she’d had on earlier, and was now wearing a black tank top and hot pink shorts, as well as the same holster and weapon she’d had when he first arrived. Her breasts were bouncing about in the tank top in a manner that she probably hoped would be as alluring as the white T-shirt she’d worn earlier. But Bolan was just as uninterested now as he was before his nap—he had more important things to occupy his mind.

Looking at the coffee and the disassembled rifle, she added dryly, “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks,” Bolan said in a like tone. He grabbed the charging handle and the bolt carrier in order to start reassembling the rifle. “What do you know about someone named Delgado who works for Lee?” he asked.

“Danny Delgado,” Maxwell said without hesitating. “He’s Lee’s right-hand guy. Every time Lee has a meeting of any kind, Delgado stays behind after it breaks up for last-minute instructions.”

Faraday, who’d just come into the room, added, “That’s why everybody’s got their noses right up Danny’s ass.”

“Where can I find him?” Bolan asked as he swung the rifle shut, the take-down pin sliding into its proper place.

Maxwell shrugged. “Don’t know. I never got that close. I only met the man once or twice. What I know about him’s by rep only. Johnny probably knew more. Why?”

“Last night, your pal Kenny V got himself shot in the chest by a freelance assassin who derives most of his income from the CIA.”

Maxwell paled. “Kenny’s dead? Jesus.” She shook her head. “Kenny was your classic cockroach—figured he’d survive the goddamn apocalypse. Why’d this assassin take him out?”

“He had a close encounter with a truck on the Overseas Highway before I could ask him. That’s why your Mustang was so banged up. Anyhow, when he came into Micky’s, Valentino was talking to someone on the phone, and he said to tell Delgado that Lee owed him one now.”

“That could be anything,” Jean-Louis said. “Hot Lips was always doin’ deals for people.”

“Maybe.” Bolan slid a full clip into place with a satisfying click as he spoke. “But the favor he owed might’ve been giving up Agent McAvoy, which means Delgado’s my next target.”

“Fine,” Maxwell said, “let me make a phone call.”

“To who?” Bolan asked.

“Delgado served with Lee, but he didn’t come out of it so good. He stepped on a land mine. He walks with a cane, but his groin didn’t do as well as his legs.”





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