FREEDOM BROKERS

When notorious killers and drug lords break out of a maximum security penitentiary, it soon becomes clear that these weren’t escapes; they were highly organized rescues. A covert organization is selling prison “insurance,” promising to bust criminals out of jail for a hefty price. With the justice system in shambles, the President is on the verge of declaring martial law—until Mack Bolan steps in.

Undercover as a rival insurance salesman, Bolan hires his own team of con men. Establishing himself as a major player in the ‘’criminal relocation’’ business should bring him face-to-face with the operation’s kingpin. He’ll need more than his war skills to destroy this ruthless businessman. But when the Executioner sets up shop, he won’t back down until he obliterates the competition.

“You’ll have to go undercover and earn a street rep.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bolan replied. “I’m going to need a crew as backup. Street soldiers, good old-fashioned hardcase killers. Real criminals.”

“What about Ziggy?” Brognola queried. “He might talk and blow the whole thing.”

“We made a deal, and so far he’s keeping up his end with hard intel. The Farm is keeping him safely under wraps until this is over.”

“So, you’ll call Leo? Man, this is going to be bloody.”

“Hal, I’ve got no choice. I have to make Castle approach me. Then I’m going to burn their house down.”

THE EXECUTIONER

#348 CARNAGE CODE

#349 FIRESTORM

#350 VOLATILE AGENT

#351 HELL NIGHT

#352 KILLING TRADE

#353 BLACK DEATH REPRISE

#354 AMBUSH FORCE

#355 OUTBACK ASSAULT

#356 DEFENSE BREACH

#357 EXTREME JUSTICE

#358 BLOOD TOLL

#359 DESPERATE PASSAGE

#360 MISSION TO BURMA

#361 FINAL RESORT

#362 PATRIOT ACTS

#363 FACE OF TERROR

#364 HOSTILE ODDS

#365 COLLISION COURSE

#366 PELE’S FIRE

#367 LOOSE CANNON

#368 CRISIS NATION

#369 DANGEROUS TIDES

#370 DARK ALLIANCE

#371 FIRE ZONE

#372 LETHAL COMPOUND

#373 CODE OF HONOR

#374 SYSTEM CORRUPTION

#375 SALVADOR STRIKE

#376 FRONTIER FURY

#377 DESPERATE CARGO

#378 DEATH RUN

#379 DEEP RECON

#380 SILENT THREAT

#381 KILLING GROUND

#382 THREAT FACTOR

#383 RAW FURY

#384 CARTEL CLASH

#385 RECOVERY FORCE

#386 CRUCIAL INTERCEPT

#387 POWDER BURN

#388 FINAL COUP

#389 DEADLY COMMAND

#390 TOXIC TERRAIN

#391 ENEMY AGENTS

#392 SHADOW HUNT

#393 STAND DOWN

#394 TRIAL BY FIRE

#395 HAZARD ZONE

#396 FATAL COMBAT

#397 DAMAGE RADIUS

#398 BATTLE CRY

#399 NUCLEAR STORM

#400 BLIND JUSTICE

#401 JUNGLE HUNT

#402 REBEL TRADE

#403 LINE OF HONOR

#404 FINAL JUDGMENT

#405 LETHAL DIVERSION

#406 SURVIVAL MISSION

#407 THROW DOWN

#408 BORDER OFFENSIVE

#409 BLOOD VENDETTA

#410 HOSTILE FORCE

#411 COLD FUSION

#412 NIGHT’S RECKONING

#413 DOUBLE CROSS

#414 PRISON CODE

#415 IVORY WAVE

#416 EXTRACTION

#417 ROGUE ASSAULT

#418 VIRAL SIEGE

#419 SLEEPING DRAGONS

#420 REBEL BLAST

#421 HARD TARGETS

#422 NIGERIA MELTDOWN

#423 BREAKOUT

Breakout

In a market economy…the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.

—Peter L. Berger,

American sociologist

Money may allow some people to escape the power of the state, but no one will escape my brand of justice.

—Mack Bolan

THE

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 com-mand 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

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 1

Preston County, West Virginia

A thundering explosion ripped apart the night, chunks of concrete and tattered pieces of human remains soaring high and away into the starry sky. In a wild panic, birds erupted from the laurel and pine trees, and fat raccoons frantically waddled from their lairs to head for the nearby river.

Unconcerned with such earthly matters, a full moon peacefully illuminated the West Virginia foothills and the river valley beyond. The cool, clear glow from above cast the rocky terrain in purest silver, every shadow an ebony pool of the deepest black.

The echoing boom of the stentorian blast was still spreading across the landscape when the debris began to arrive, the horrid chunks smacking into the grass and river weeds with the sounds of a hard autumn rain.

Instantly dozens of proximity sensors hidden underground went off the scale at the hellish impacts, and then a score of nonlethal land mines erupted into action, spraying huge clouds of tear gas and launching salvos of bright red flares skyward to show the prison guards exactly where to shoot.

Automatically, thick steel slabs emerged to block every access road. The box-trestle bridge rose before turning slightly and blocking any possible access across the white-water river.

Moments later piercing sirens started to howl and powerful searchlights crashed into operation. The blinding beams brilliantly illuminated the cracked walls of the Preston State Penitentiary and the surrounding countryside.

Dense volumes of acrid smoke poured from a gaping hole in the middle of the eastern wall, the smoldering bodies of guards and prisoners mixed among the smashed tons of concrete, broken bricks and twisted steel rods.

By now, the remaining prisoners were fully awake in their cells and shouting at the tops of their lungs. Some wanted to know what had happened, but most were just delighted that anything had occurred to break up the endless monotony of staring at four gray walls. With an audible crackle, the generators died and every cell door slammed aside. Pausing for only an instant, the prisoners boiled out of their cells, dashing madly around in every direction. There was no plan, coordination or scheme. Only mindless chaos.

Closely surrounded by a cadre of guards armed with M16 assault rifles and wearing full-body armor, Warden Davis O’Hara blinked the sleep from his eyes and struggled to close his robe as he stumbled along the dark corridor toward his office. He had barely managed to tug on shoes before the guards arrived in force.

“Emergency lights!” O’Hara shouted as they passed a darkened security camera.

“Sir, there is no chance that the main computer is still operating,” the chief guard snarled.

But just then a soft green glow started radiating from the thick tubes set deep into the smooth concrete ceiling. Startled, the warden paused at the sight of cracks in the terrazzo floor. The damage was this far into the prison? How was that possible?

Shrugging off the matter, O’Hara rushed forward to press his hand against a small BRS plate set alongside the riveted steel door to his office. The Biometric Refusal System scanned his fingerprints against those in the files, then sent a measured jolt of electricity through his flesh to make sure the hand was still attached to a living body. That aspect of the BRS had been a major selling point to the warden.

A moment later the BRS plate softly chimed, there came the hard click of a metal bolt disengaging and the door silently swung aside on multiple hinges.

Somewhere deep inside the prison, a man shrieked in unimaginable agony, then abruptly stopped.

Rushing into the office, Warden O’Hara scowled at the array of blinking red lights on the status board. With a head shake he dismissed them, went behind his desk and heavily sat.

“Okay, what the hell happened?” he demanded, flipping a row of switches to activate the emergency control panel. With a sigh, the top of the wooden desk rotated over to display a complex array of dials, levers, buttons and meters, even as a flat-screen monitor descended from the ceiling.

“We’re not sure yet, sir,” the chief guard replied, gesturing to the other men to take positions near the doorway. “All I know for certain is that—”

He was rudely interrupted as the entire penitentiary rocked from another explosion. Then it happened twice more. On the last blast, which sounded like hundreds of glass windows loudly shattering, the noise combined into an almost animal growl. With that, the prisoners shouted even louder than before, hooting and whistling as if in a sports arena.

“Are we being bombed?” a guard asked, pressing his face against a reinforced window to try to see above the complex.

“Radar is clear,” O’Hara muttered in reply, his hands flying across the controls. “And sonar shows nothing unusual in the sewer or the nearby river.” Then he scowled. “However, half of my sensors are dead.”

“I’m not surprised,” the chief guard growled, twisting both hands on the assault rifle. “I saw the first blast and thought we had been nuked!”

“Nuked?”

“Nuked. Honest to Christ, there’s a hole in the outer wall wider than Route 80!” a guard added grimly. “There’s no way of knowing how many of us are dead.”

Tactfully, the warden said nothing. He knew that “us” only referenced the guards or civilian personnel. The prisoners were considered livestock, barely human, little more than animals to be controlled. “Did any prisoners escape?”

“Unknown.”

“Damn!”

“...entral to the warden,” a voice crackled from a small speaker set into the desk. “Repeat, this is Central to the warden. Come in please!”

“O’Hara here,” the warden replied, thumbing a button on the control panel. “What’s the situation down there, Central?”

“Total madness, sir,” the man replied breathlessly. “Rockets...or maybe bombs blew holes in the primary walls and secondary walls. Then we lost power and all of the cells opened!”

The warden felt himself go pale. “All of them?”

“Yes, sir. Most of the prisoners are loose and fighting each other with their bare hands, shivs...table legs...anything they can find!”

“Any breakage?” O’Hara asked just as the chief guard demanded, “How’s the fence?”

“No known guards missing,” the man replied. “But the electric fence is dead. There’s a crater where the transformer used to be. A crater!”

“Impossible!” the warden snapped.

Just then an intense growl sounded from deep within the complex of buildings, thousands of angry voices combining into a mindless roar.

“Central, what’s happening?” O’Hara demanded anxiously.

There was a muffled reply, but the words were lost amid a rush of static and hash.

Instantly the four guards dropped into firing positions, their weapons aimed at the closed steel door to the office. Escaped prisoners either headed for the wall or straight to the warden’s office for bloody revenge. They had to be ready to handle both.

“Okay, Central, grab a mask and find someplace to hide,” O’Hara said, his hands almost a blur operating the control board. “Because I’m releasing the sleep gas.”

“Should have installed tear gas.”

“Illegal. And yes, we should have.”

Unexpectedly, a soft chuckle came from the speaker.

“Hi. It seems that Central is on a coffee break,” said a strange whispery voice.

“Fair enough,” the chief guard said, his face an iron mask of control. “Who is this?”

The only reply was laughter.

Muttering curses under his breath, O’Hara typed a long string of commands on a keyboard and then flipped several switches.

“Okay, National Guard units are on the way and state police are blocking the main roads,” he announced with marked satisfaction to the other people in the office. “Once the gas hits them, most of the bastards will race back into their cells to try to pretend that they never left in the first place.” He grimaced. “That should hold down the deaths to a minimum.”

The chief guard snorted in disdain. “Except for the hard cases and the lunatics.”

“They’re all freaking lunatics,” a guard commented hatefully.

Outside the bulletproof window of the office, there came the deep throb of a helicopter, then a shadow darkened the office as something briefly blocked the beam of a searchlight.

“The bastards are on the roof?” a guard shouted in surprise.

“Bullshit, it’s a diversion,” O’Hara stated, going to a blank section of the wall.

“How do you know?” the chief guard demanded.

“It’s what I would do to throw off pursuit,” O’Hara replied, removing a picture of the state capital to press his palm to a cinder block. It grew warm at his touch, and then the plaster cracked apart as a hidden door slid aside to reveal an armored safe room.

“If anybody wants to stay in there, it’s your call,” said the warden, going to a wall cabinet. Yanking open the door, he started pulling out military-grade body armor.

“If you’re going to do a cakewalk into the gen pop, then we got your six, sir,” a guard stated proudly, slowly standing.

“Thanks,” O’Hara said, strapping on the chest shield. “But it is your legal right to stay if you wish. Any takers? Last chance....”

“Stop wasting time,” the chief guard growled impatiently. “We want to find out what happened down there just as much as you do.”

“Then let’s go,” O’Hara said, sliding on a gas mask.

Checking over their own equipment, the guards flanked the warden as he left the safety of the office and returned to the outside corridor.

Small vents along the floor issued a steady stream of white gas as the group proceeded deeper into the prison. Soon the distant sounds of the rioting prisoners were replaced with an eerie silence, the bursts of machine-gun fire coming less often.

“Sounds like we got most of them,” a guard stated confidently.

“Yeah? Well, that’s what they said at Attica,” the chief guard replied grimly.

“That was over fifty years ago, sir!”

“And there have been jails since the dawn of time,” the warden snarled from inside his gas mask. “What’s your point?”

Having no possible reply to that, the guard said nothing as he stepped over the twitching form of a civilian janitor. He appeared to have been beaten to death with his own mop.

“Computer, activate protocol nine!” the warden shouted into the microphone dangling from the rafters by a single wire.

There was no reply.

The blue-white beams of their flashlights sweeping through the swirling fumes, the men said nothing as they gazed at the mounds of broken debris mixed with countless pieces of human bodies, some of them wearing prison gray, others guard uniforms.

Quickly reaching the third-floor balcony, the warden looked down into the heart of the damaged prison. In the unearthly glow of the emergency lights, he could see that all of the cell doors were wide open. Bodies lay everywhere and dark pools of blood dotted the littered floor.

Just then, a large group of prisoners charged out of the billowing clouds. Wet strips of cloth were tied around their faces as crude gas masks, and each of them was armed with a club made from broken furniture.

Immediately the guards opened fire with their automatic weapons. Hammered by the streams of rubber bullets, the prisoners dropped their makeshift weapons as they were brutally slammed against the cinder-block walls. As each man fell, a guard would use the hard plastic stock of an M16 to knock him unconscious.

“Bastards...” a prisoner weakly growled, pulling out a sharpened toothbrush.

Without a qualm, the warden shot the man in the face with his 9 mm Glock pistol. The copper-jacketed round punched a neat hole into the middle of his forehead and the back of his head exploded across the wall in a ghastly spray of bone, brains and blood.

The sound of the discharged weapon echoed through the swirling clouds as the group continued farther along the railed overlook.

“Everybody saw him threaten me with a deadly weapon, right?” O’Hara said, proceeding deeper into the murky darkness.

“Absolutely,” the chief guard muttered. “Is was you or him. There was no choice.”

Unexpectedly, a gust of wind blew into the prison, thinning out the sleeping gas and revealing a tremendous hole in the wall.

Another gust of wind briefly cleared the air and the warden could see outside the prison: the exercise yard, dog runs and the smashed electric fence. Then the wall vents loudly hissed, issuing a fresh volume of the foggy chemical.

“Dozens of the sons of bitches must be over the foothills by now!” a guard muttered, both hands twisting on the assault rifle. “We’re gonna need the freaking Army to help herd them back into the cells!”

“What cells?” another guard asked, glancing backward at the sagging doors and cracked walls.

“Wait a minute, this is all wrong,” the chief guard stated, moving the beam of his flashlight along the broken masonry.

“What do you mean, sir?” a guard asked, nudging a headless body on the floor with his boot.

“I know explosives. I blew a lot of bridges in Korea,” the chief guard said, instinctively touching the gray at his temples. “And these patterns...the striations...” He turned toward the warden. “Sir, these walls weren’t blown in—”

“They were blown out,” O’Hara finished, advancing to the gaping hole. The triple layer of bricks, concrete and cinder blocks was more than a yard thick. It would be impossible for a prisoner to dig through or to blow up by any form of homemade explosive.

Looking up, the warden made an inarticulate noise at the sight of another hole in the ceiling. The full moon was only partially visible, and then not at all as a cloud lazily drifted into view.

“That fucking helicopter...” a guard said in sudden understanding. “It blew a hole in the roof—”

“So that it could safely fire down into the prison and blow out the main wall,” the chief guard finished in a tight voice. “This isn’t a goddamn escape!”

In the distance, a machine gun chattered and a man screamed.

“This was a rescue,” O’Hara whispered, the words almost lost in the cold night wind.

Chapter 2

Columbus, Ohio

Gently braking the car to a full stop, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, turned off the headlights and killed the engine.

Waiting a few moments for his sight to become adjusted to the darkness of the side street, he checked the 9 mm Beretta machine pistol hidden under his trench coat. There was nobody in sight on the rain-damp streets, aside from a small dog nosing through some trash in the gutter.

It was a cool night and the air smelled of fresh rain. The sky was full of bright stars, but none of the buildings in the area showed any light through their closed windows. But then, this was a “depressed area.” That was the new politically correct way of saying slum these days, but Bolan preferred to call things by their proper name. A spade was a spade, not an entrenching tool or a “dirt relocation device.” There were very few shades of gray in a soldier’s world. Almost everything was black or white. Good or bad. Yes or no. Alive or dead. Combat was the ultimate binary experience, which was probably why Bolan disliked mystery so much.

After hearing about the gas explosion at the Preston Penitentiary a few days earlier, Bolan had been more than a little surprised to learn from his network of contacts that James Winslow was on the streets of Ohio again. That was rather impressive, since Winslow had been listed among the dead at the penitentiary. That meant that either his network was wrong, Winslow was a zombie or something very odd had occurred at Preston.

Considering the fact that the state penitentiary held some of the most ruthless killers alive, if there had been a mass escape, Bolan needed to have an answer as soon as possible. That translated into a fast trip to Ohio and a quick visit with James Monroe Winslow, aka “Jimmy the Snake.”

Bright lights splashed across the side street as a delivery truck rumbled past. Taking that as his cue, Bolan tucked the key under the floor mat and got out. If he came back in a hurry, the last thing Bolan wanted was to fumble for the keys. Timing was everything in battle. Even a soft recon like this. And if he didn’t come back, the soldier wanted the car easy for the locals to steal. The company he had rented it from was a front for a car-theft ring, and having a vehicle stolen from them was just the wheel of life.

The neighborhood was calm and rather peaceful at this hour of the night. The homes and buildings were old, but in relatively good condition. There was only the gentle wind and the howl of a train in the distance. Walking along the damp sidewalk, Bolan could actually hear his own footsteps and the click of the traffic lights changing colors. Unlike a Hollywood movie, there was no music playing anywhere. A stereo merely told the crackheads whom to rob. True poverty was silent.

Turning the corner, Bolan felt a low heavy beat on his cheeks a moment before he heard the muffled music. Set off by itself in the middle of a vacant block, the Snake Bar and Grill radiated a steady thumping that filled the damp night air with a tangible presence. Bolan felt pity for the neighbors. Sleep was probably a rare commodity anywhere near the illegal tavern.

The source of the music was a converted warehouse, the windows covered with plywood and the front gate chained shut. Going around to the rear, Bolan found a large man in a Navy peacoat sitting on a concrete loading dock. Smoking a cigarette, the guard barely looked up at Bolan’s approach.

“Private party tonight. Get lost,” he said, gesturing with the cigarette. A thin trail of white smoke exactly copied the movements of the tattoo-covered hand before fading away.

“Yeah, I know,” Bolan said, pulling out a stun gun and firing.

As the twin barbs buried themselves into the guard’s neck, he gasped in surprise, then shuddered as half a million volts surged through him. The cigarette fell from his fingers and he slumped over unconscious before it hit the cracked pavement.

Hauling the unconscious body into the shadows, Bolan propped the man up against an iron-pipe railing. The ruse wouldn’t fool anybody for very long, but the soldier only needed a couple of minutes alone with Jimmy.

Pulling open the door to the basement, Bolan was hit with a palpable explosion of music, smoke and heat. The air smelled of weed, sweat, beer and cheap perfume.

A long hallway led past a small room full of coatracks. A pretty young woman was leaning on a Formica countertop, noisily chewing gum and filing nails the color of a freshly gutted pig.

“Check your coat, sir?” she said in a bored voice, popping the gum. Then she smiled at Bolan, arching her back to thrust out her breasts. As she was wearing only cut-off jeans and a bikini top, there really was no need for the posturing, but Bolan appreciated the courtesy.

“You’ll thank me later for this,” he said, using the stun gun again.

Without a sound the young woman dropped behind the counter and Bolan continued onward, then paused and returned to stuff a fistful of cash into a wicker tip basket. Compensation for the headache she would have in the morning. Bolan had felt no such compulsion for the armed guard outside; he was a legitimate target this night. But the young woman was merely an employee.

Bolan would have ordered her to leave if he thought it might have worked. But more than likely, she would have started screaming and then the body count would rise to unacceptable levels. His visit was a soft probe for intel, not a blitz. Fast in, fast out. With luck, he wouldn’t have to draw his gun.

At the end of the hallway was a padded leather door lined with shiny brass studs. Brightly colored light flickered underneath and Bolan could see the surface move slightly from the thunderously loud music on the other side. Showtime. Reaching up, he smashed the overhead lightbulb, then eased open the door and slipped inside. Almost instantly he started to sweat from the heat.

Ready for anything, Bolan looked over the underground tavern. A short flight of stairs led to the main floor, and every table was full of people laughing, drinking and smoking. The walls were covered with cheap wood paneling and decorated with diamond-shaped mirrors. The ceiling was bare concrete and the floor was covered with sawdust and peanut shells.

A long bar dominated the opposite wall; a bald man pulled beer for the customers from a tap bearing the logo of a brewery long out of business. Waitresses in very short skirts maneuvered through the noisy crowd gathering empty glasses and dispensing fresh drinks with the speed and skill of stage magicians.

The crowd was an even mixture of men and women in casual clothing, jeans and T-shirts, mostly. But there were also a couple of bikers still wearing their heavy leather jackets in spite of the oppressive heat. Dutifully, Bolan marked them as possible trouble.

A group of men was shooting pool in the far corner, a similar cluster of older women played dominos near an empty fireplace. A young man and a woman—correction—two women were passionately kissing near the entrance to the lavatory, and an old-fashioned jukebox pumped out a disco tune from another era. In spite of everything, Bolan grudgingly approved of the place. If he was an ordinary man, this was exactly the kind of establishment he’d patronize to relax after a hard day’s work and knock back a few cold beers with some friends.

Suddenly the door to the lavatory swung open, bright fluorescent light sweeping across the tavern.

“Jesus H. Christ, what is this shit?” a man said as the door swung shut once more. Weaving slightly, his words were slurred. “I’m only gone for a minute, this is what starts playing?”

Without turning, one of the women slammed a fist directly into the face of the drunk. With a strangled cry, he dropped to the floor.

“This is Jimmy’s homecoming party!” the muscular blonde growled, brandishing a bloody fist. “So he can listen to anything he wants. Understand?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” the man muttered, both hands holding his nose.

With a curt nod, she went back to her waiting partner.

Moving behind a large plastic fern, Bolan scanned the crowd for Winslow. The cloud of smoke was too thick for him to make an easy ID, so he watched the older of the two waitresses, betting that she would be serving the guest of honor.

Snagging an expensive bottle of imported Maker’s Mark whiskey, the busty redhead moved quickly across the room, her hips in constant motion to avoid bumping into the tables and the fumbling hands of drunks.

“Here you go, Jimmy,” she announced, setting the bottle on a small table in the corner. “Compliments of the house!”

“Thanks, Lucille.” Everything Winslow wore was denim: shirt, vest, pants and even the shoes. There was an oversize military watch on his left wrist and the checkered grip of a large automatic pistol peeked out from inside the open vest.

“Last one, though,” Lucille added, resting the tray on a hip. “We’re glad to have you back, but there’s still rent to pay.”

“Not a problem, darling.” Winslow chuckled. Producing a large roll of cash, he peeled off a couple bills and stuffed them into a pocket of her apron. “Keep the change!”

“For Maker’s Mark?” Lucille laughed, retrieving the cash. “What change, ya cheap bastard?”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Yes, I know I am. But what are you?”

“Free!” Winslow shouted, spreading his arms wide.

At those words, Bolan almost smiled. Target acquired. He wasn’t worried about the gun. Most cons got a weapon the moment they were out of prison, and Winslow was known to favor hand cannons, the bigger the better. Guns with bullets powerful enough to stop a cop in full body armor.

Not kill, of course. Winslow talked a lot of bullshit, but as far as Bolan knew, the little man had never taken a life. Which was the one, and only, reason why the Snake was still wiggling and had not been stomped into the dirt a very long time ago.

Settling back into his chair, Jimmy the Snake draped his arms across the bare shoulders of two very drunk women. One of them had an eye closed as if struggling to stay awake and the other was having a great deal of trouble applying the flame of her butane lighter to the cigarette in her mouth.

Both women were painfully skinny with abnormally huge breasts. Their hair was bleached to the point of death and their makeup had been applied thickly.

“Drink?” Winslow asked, proffering the bottle.

“Abso-freaking-lutely,” slurred one of the women, wiggling her eyebrows.

Taking away the butane lighter, Winslow tossed it over a shoulder. Topping off her glass, he refilled his own. “To freedom!” He laughed, clicking glasses.

Immediately, Bolan started down the stairs and across the room. The last thing he wanted was the man too drunk to answer his questions.

* * *

LOADING HER TRAY with several mixed drinks, Lucille caught the subtle movement near the entrance. Turning, she beamed a wide smile at the new customer, then paused, uncertain. Striding across the tavern was a big man, very handsome in a rugged sort of way. He was easily over six feet tall and had the wide shoulders of a professional boxer. She liked that. Nothing wrong with a bit of beefcake!

Unfortunately, the newcomer was dressed all in black, and she could tell from the way he moved that the man was packing heat. He headed straight for Jimmy. Oh, shit.

“Give me a b-b-banana daiquiri, Fred,” she muttered, backing away until bumping into the wall.

Looking up from drawing a beer, the bartender frowned. “What did you just say?” he demanded.

“Banana daiquiri, ya dipshit!” Lucille whispered tersely, then jerked her chin toward the entrance.

Glancing in that direction, Fred frowned and hauled an old pump-action shotgun from behind the bar.

“Call the cops,” Lucille hissed. “Please!”

“Not a chance,” he growled, working the pump to chamber a cartridge, which was as far as he got.

A split second later the weapon suddenly flew out of his grip. With a cry, Fred grabbed his bleeding hand and stumbled into the wall shelves. A dozen bottles smashed under his weight, then the boards tilted and more of them slid off to crash on the bare floor.

All conversation stopped at the noise and Bolan drew both pistols and fired. The .50 Desert Eagle boomed louder than thunder and a chattering stream of high-velocity rounds poured from the Beretta. In the far corner the jukebox violently exploded, rainbow-colored disks flying everywhere, fat electrical sparks crawling through the smashed stereo equipment like mad insects.

As the music died, everybody stared aghast at Bolan slapping a fresh magazine into the Beretta.

“I’m not a cop!” he announced loudly, then fired a single round. Over at the pool table, a man cried out as the Bowie knife in his hand spun away.

Everybody started raising their hands in surrender, except for a couple of the older patrons who placed their hands flat on the table to show they were unarmed.

“Bastard cops never gonna take me alive!” a bald biker snarled, dragging out a TEC-9 from inside his battered leather jacket.

The weapon never cleared before Bolan fired. The thunderous discharge of the Desert Eagle rattled glasses behind the bar, and the TEC-9 exploded, loose rounds and broken pieces scattering as the cursing biker hugged his broken hand to his chest.

“Those were rubber bullets!” Bolan announced, sweeping the two weapons across the startled crowd. “However, the next ones are armor-piercing rounds, and I’ll blow the head off anybody who stands between me and Jimmy Winslow!”

“Bullshit,” a bald man snarled as he stood, aiming a Skorpion M61 machine pistol at the Executioner.

Without expression, Bolan fired from the hip. The stream of 9 mm Parabellum bullets stitched a line of bloody holes across the gunner’s chest. His arms flailing, the dead man slammed into the wall, shattering several of the diamond mirrors before collapsing to the sawdust and going still forever.

Instantly chairs and tables loudly scraped as the crowd moved to clear a path between the two men. Deathly pale, Winslow sat at his table, sipping whiskey as if it was a matter of national importance.

Bolan gestured with both weapons and the crowd moved farther back. Starting forward, he paused to extend the Desert Eagle toward a woman with her hands out of sight below the table. In extreme slow motion, the woman raised her arms to show empty hands. Satisfied, Bolan flicked the Desert Eagle toward the exit and she scrambled from the table and up the stairs.

“If anybody else wants to leave,” Bolan growled, “now is the time!”

There was a brief pause, and then everybody surged into action, shoving and pushing their way to reach the exit. In only a few moments, Bolan was alone with Winslow.

“So what’s the deal?” Winslow asked, wiping the back of a hand across his mouth. “This ain’t no hit ’cause I’m still breathing.”

“You always were a smart man, James,” Bolan said, holstering the Beretta and pulling around a chair.

“Always?” Winslow asked with a scowl. “We know each other?”

“Absolutely.”

He looked closer at Bolan. “We do time together?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Winslow demanded. Then his eyes went wide. “It’s you!”

Bolan gave a nod. “Me.”

“B-b-but...” He stopped to start again. “I thought we had a deal!”

“Did and do,” Bolan said. “The last time we meet, I let you walk in exchange for some information and your promise to forget all about me.”

“Vital information, you said,” Winslow muttered, sweat appearing on his forehead.

Bolan nodded. “At the time, it was vital. But that only bought you one free pass, James. Now, toss the piece.”

With obvious reluctance, Jimmy reached inside his vest and, using only two fingers, hauled out a titanic .357 Remington Magnum automatic pistol. Jerking his wrist, he sent the weapon sailing away to land in the pile of sawdust near the washroom.

“Smart move,” Bolan said, turning to aim both weapons at the door at the top of the stairs. A long minute passed in silence, when suddenly there came the sound of muffled shouts and running feet on the other side.

Firing both guns, Bolan hammered the padded door, the leather cover ripping away, the wood underneath splintering. Even louder shouts could now be heard as the running noises quickly faded away.

“That’ll hold them for about ten minutes,” Bolan said, turning. “By then, I’ll be long gone.”

“And me?” Winslow asked.

“That all depends upon what you can tell me,” Bolan stated, reloading one of his guns then the other.

Relaxing slightly, Winslow sat back in the patched leather chair. “About what?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

“James, I have no use for stupid people,” Bolan stated, leveling his gun.

With a sigh, Winslow leaned on the table and templed his hands. “Right, my recent departure from the Iron Hotel.”

“Ten prisoners and six guards were killed by the initial explosions,” Bolan said in a monotone. “Fifty more escaped prisoners died when the Claymore mines were turned on. Running into the hills, ten were crippled by dogs, sixteen shot by police, two by civilian hunters, four died in a car crash and one guy voluntarily went back—said that he just wanted a beer.”

“Pussy,” Winslow said, sneering.

“And then there’s you, the only prisoner to truly escape,” Bolan said slowly. “Jimmy the Snake, small-time art forger, with less than a year remaining on his original nickel. Nobody in the world would pay a fortune to bust your sorry ass out of jail. No offense.”

Jimmy waved it aside. “None taken. I’m small change. Always have been. That’s why I survive when the big boys start killing each other. Don’t want to be king, just a small slice of the pie.”

“Steal a little, leave a little.”

“Exactly! Live and let live!”

“And yet half of Preston is in rubble, dozens of people are dead but here you sit sipping bourbon.” Bolan paused expectantly.

“Look, I had nothing to do with those deaths,” Winslow said earnestly. “Nothing!”

“Convince me.”

Glancing around the empty bar as if afraid that he still might be overhead, Winslow brushed back his hair and took a deep breath. “Look, I was asleep in my bunk when, wham, the whole world explodes. Sounded like the damn place had been nuked! There’s fire and smoke, and my cellmate is legging it out through a hole in the wall, then running to a helicopter.”

“Do you know what kind of a helicopter it was?”

“It kind of looked like a Black Hawk.”

“Who was your cellmate?”

“Ziggy Nine.”

“Now you’re lying to me, James,” Bolan growled. “Lynn Fairweather died in the riot.”

“Holy shit. Is that his real name?” Winslow laughed in astonishment. “No wonder he used Ziggy Nine!”

“Goodbye, James,” Bolan said, leveling the pistols.

“Whoa, dude! I ain’t lying!” Winslow replied hastily, raising both hands. “I saw him running to get on the copter. The guy is alive. I swear. Alive!”

Bolan paused. There had been a mention of an unauthorized helicopter in the area. He had assumed it was for Winslow, which made no sense. But if Ziggy Nine was involved...

Lynn Fairweather, better known by the street name of Ziggy Nine, origin unknown, was one of the biggest manufacturers of crystal meth in North America. Fairweather was worth about half a billion dollars, most of it safely hidden in offshore accounts that the Feds couldn’t find.

“Details,” Bolan commanded, clicking back a hammer.

“It was midnight, or close enough,” Winslow said quickly, the words rushing together in his haste to appease. “When bang, crash! Suddenly alarms went off, the lights died and every cell opened. All of them! It was like Christmas, baby! Everybody headed for the yard, but I decided to tag along with Ziggy. That nice big hole was just sitting there...”

“Waste not, want not.”

“Exactly! We’re scrambling through a maze of crumbling shit, broken bricks coming down like meteors. Pow! Some guards show up just as a section of the roof collapses and they go down hard. Squashed like bugs. I tried to help, but...” The man spread his arms wide.

“Keep going,” Bolan said impatiently.

Pouring himself a shot, Winslow tossed it back. “Anyway, I did an Elvis.... You know, left the building.” He waited for a laugh, but when none came, he hurriedly continued. “So, anyway, I make it into the exercise yard, and there was the helicopter! I figured it was waiting for Ziggy, and headed over to see if I could get a lift. I mean, we were cellmates! But as I ran over, this short guy with slicked-back hair and a goatee steps out of the thing and starts spraying every con in sight with this old-fashioned Thompson.”

“How short?”

“Dunno, shorter than me...and crazy.”

“Crazy how?”

Winslow frowned. “Kill crazy. The guy was smiling when he shot folks. Laughed when a guard begged for mercy. He drew a pistol to nail the poor guy right between the eyes.”

“And you saw all of this?”

“Yeah, from behind a pile of bricks! When Mr. Thompson started to sing, I got out of there.” Winslow paused. “Fast as I could. It was chaos. There were cons running all over the yard by then. Several of them even tried to get on the helicopter in spite of Shortie, and he gunned them down like dogs in the street.”

“Did you actually see Ziggy get on the helicopter?”

“See? No, but he made a beeline for it.” Reaching for the whiskey, Winslow poured a shot glass full, but this time only took a small sip. “But where else could he have gone? Everything was on fire, the sirens are going, bombs are still exploding, people are screaming. Shortie’s in the helicopter, shooting people like it’s the end of the world, so I head for the largest gap in the outer wall and start running. Didn’t stop until I was out of state.” Winslow shrugged. “Stole some clothes from a laundry, jacked a car, got back home, my friends throw me a welcome-home party...” He smiled. “You know the rest.”

The story was incredible, but had the distinct ring of truth. “Kill anybody on the way?” Bolan asked in a deceptively easy voice.

“Nope, not my style. I’m a lover, not a fighter!” Winslow scowled. “Probably couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. Every inch of me hurt, nose to nuts. Didn’t get shot or anything, but every inch of me aches.”

“That’s from the concussion of the blasts,” Bolan said, finally convinced. “You don’t really feel it at the time, adrenaline numbs you to the pain, but afterward...”

“Yeah, afterward. Felt like I had been beaten with a baseball bat.” Winslow shook his head in remembrance. “Back in Riker, I was once actually beaten by a baseball bat, so I know what I’m talking about!”

“Been there,” Bolan said in a friendly voice, knowing Rikers Island, New York, was one of the toughest prisons in the world. Winslow had been lucky it was only a baseball bat and not a lead pipe.

There were so many tattered bodies at the Preston prison, it would have been easy for Ziggy to cut himself and leave some fresh blood for the CSI teams to find and identify his DNA. It was exactly what Bolan had thought. Jimmy Winslow’s escape had been a coincidence. The whole operation had been to simply get one man, a multimillionaire, out of prison. Bolan wondered if Ziggy was rich anymore. That type of breakout didn’t come cheap.

“So...we’re square?” Winslow asked, hope rich in his words.

Before Bolan could respond, there came a thundering explosion from upstairs. The entire club shook so hard the remaining bottles rattled behind the bar and people began screaming in the distance.

“Get under the table!” Bolan commanded, leveling his weapons. “Pretend you’re dead!”

“What’s happening?” Winslow asked, clearly confused. “Is it the cops?”

“When you got a look at the short man in the helicopter,” Bolan snapped, “did he also see you? Through all of the fire and the smoke?”

“Sure, the wind from the blades forced back the smoke,” Winslow said, his smile disappearing. “But I’m a nobody! Who’d ever—”

Suddenly the door behind the bar crashed open and several men charged into the room firing handguns in every direction.

Diving to the side, Bolan rolled across the floor, spraying 9 mm rounds from the Beretta machine pistol at the dimly seen legs of the invaders. Several of them shouted in pain and fell clutching the gushing wounds. As each of them hit the floor, Bolan triggered the Desert Eagle, the booming .50 rounds ending their lives in ghastly eruptions of bones, brains and blood.

Reloading again as he rolled away, Bolan got a brief glimpse of a fat man wearing combat boots entering the room. Fearing the worst, Bolan rolled to his feet and saw the man aim an M79 grenade launcher at a cringing Jimmy Winslow and pull the trigger.

Diving for cover, Bolan was still in the air when a thunderclap shook the entire tavern. Violently thrown against the wall, the Executioner cracked his head on the paneling and everything went blurry for a moment.

Crouching, he shook his head to clear it, then kicked over a table, both guns out and ready for battle. But there was nobody else in sight, only roiling black smoke. Straining to hear any movements over the ringing in his ears, the soldier moved fast along the splintered wall paneling and past the broken door to the washroom, until reaching the overturned pool table. He paused for a moment as a horrible wave of nausea swept through his body, then with a sheer effort of iron will, Bolan stood and raced around the mounds of burning rubbish to reach the former location of the bar. As expected, the newcomers were gone.

Ramming through the swinging exit door, he charged through a storeroom and up a flight of stairs until emerging into the cool night. Instinctively taking cover behind an old station wagon, Bolan scowled over the hood at a parking lot full of assorted cars, old and new. Roughly a dozen of them were revving their engines and heading off in different directions, mostly with the headlights on, but some without. It was total chaos and Bolan had no way of knowing which cars contained the assassins.

Reluctantly holstering his weapon, the soldier headed for his own car parked a few blocks away. There was nothing more that he could do here, and the police were probably already on the way.

Reaching the corner, Bolan dimly heard a muffled underground explosion and glanced back over a shoulder. The old plywood was gone from the windows of the warehouse and the entire building sagged just before bursting into flames.

Chapter 3

San Diego, California

Staring intently at the corrugated steel floor between her shoes, Seanan MacGuire was deeply lost in thought when the state prison van suddenly slowed to a stop.

“That was a short trip,” she said to nobody in particular.

“Too damn short,” stated a man similarly chained on the other side of the armored van.

There were six prisoners chained inside the vehicle, four men and two women, heading toward...wherever. MacGuire had heard the name of the penitentiary. But after the judge had pronounced her guilty, her mind sort of lost focus and everything after that was a blurred jumble of people in uniforms, cold hands touching her, clipboards, handcuffs, shackles on her ankles, rising, walking, sitting, rising and finally a lot of boring sitting.

In her research about prison, MacGuire had learned some valuable things, the top one being that she did not want to ever go to prison, even the so-called minimum-security ones. They were jokingly called “state-run country clubs,” but she saw little difference between those and any of the other medieval institutes of confinement.

“Guard, what’s happening?” a prisoner at the front of the van demanded in a loud voice. When there was no reply, he wrapped the metal of his handcuffs against the connecting door. “Hey, I gotta use the bathroom!”

Silence.

“Something is wrong,” a big bald man muttered, his arms and neck covered with crude tattoos.

“Brilliant,” MacGuire said with a sneer. “What was your first clue?”

Slowly the bald man turned toward her. “If you weren’t going to a different prison, fish, we’d be having a lot of fun tonight.”

She grinned back. “You mean, searching for your lost balls?”

Just then both rear doors were thrown open and everybody inside the van flinched at the intrusion of bright sunlight.

Protecting her face with a raised hand, MacGuire could only dimly see black shapes in the glare and guessed that this was more than sunlight. Headlights from a truck or maybe an arc light?

“Kill it,” somebody said.

There was an audible crackle of electricity and the glare began to ease. The shapes took on form and color, and soon MacGuire could see a large group of men and women standing on the road. They were all wearing National Guard uniforms and some weird sort of body armor, and carrying Russian assault rifles. None of them seemed to be wearing name badges or even dog tags.

The group was clustered around a large truck: a bread delivery van. The rear doors were open and inside the van was a searchlight, one of those huge monsters that large companies used to sweep the sky and announce some important event, such as a really big sale or a new movie.

“There are two women,” a corporal growled, craning his neck to look over the shackled prisoners.

“That’s her, the dye job,” a lieutenant said, pointing at MacGuire.

“I’m a natural blond,” MacGuire growled defensively.

The lieutenant chuckled. “Liar.”

She scowled in reply. The man was short, but compactly built. He reminded her of a closed fist, all bones and muscle. There was a little rosebud in the lapel of his uniform, his hair was slicked down and a tiny diamond sparkled from his left earlobe.

Several fake soldiers lumbered into the van, and one of them dropped to a knee and started working on the shackles attached to her ankles.

“Rook to queen four?” MacGuire whispered, her face bright with hope.

“Checkmate,” the lieutenant said without looking up from the clipboard.

“Thank God,” MacGuire exhaled, her voice almost breaking with a sob.

“What the fuck is going on here?” the bald prisoner demanded, rattling his handcuffs.

“Shut up,” a private snapped. Pulling a small box from a pocket, he started pointing it everywhere inside the vehicle.

“According to the police records, there are no hidden surveillance cameras,” the lieutenant said, patting a clipboard.

“Never hurts to double-check,” the private said grimly, finally tucking away the compact device. “But you were right. No bugs. It’s clean.”

“Hey...you’re not soldiers,” a young prisoner called out, his face scrunched in confusion.

“Wow, check out Einstein junior,” a corporal snorted, jerking a thumb at the teenager.

The prisoner seemed offended. “I didn’t mean nothing.”

“Then shut up.”

“But—”

Flipping over the AK-47, the corporal rammed the wooden stock into the prisoner’s face. Violently thrown backward, the teenager slammed into the steel wall and slumped over, a sticky trail of blood smeared along the steel.

“Anybody else?” the corporal asked, raising the rifle for another strike.

Nobody spoke or moved.

There was a hard click and MacGuire looked down to see the shackles open. As the private gently pried them off, MacGuire reached down to massage her ankles. “Thank you!”

“All part of the service, ma’am,” the private said, touching two fingers to his forehead in a sort of salute.

“Hey, if you’re letting people go, do me next!” the bald man shouted, rattling his chains.

“Sorry, you’re not on the list,” the lieutenant said, sliding the clipboard under an arm.

That made the rest of the prisoners start growling and muttering.

“List? The hell with that. Look, I got cash,” the bald man started, trying to rise. “Tons of it! Almost a million bucks hidden away safe and secure.”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” the lieutenant replied, walking closer to extend a hand.

Clumsily, MacGuire shuffled to the edge of the van, and he helped her step down to the grass. That caught her off guard. Grass? The highway was nowhere in sight. The prison van was parked near the edge of a grassy field, pine trees rising tall on every side.

There were several still forms sprawled in the weeds, the tattered clothing soaked with blood, and shiny objects sparkled in the grass. MacGuire frowned. Spent brass casings? It looked like there had been a major firefight between the National Guardsmen and the prison guards, but she didn’t recall hearing anything unusual, not even a single shot.

Burning with curiosity, MacGuire started to ask a question, but stopped. She was physically free, but her mind was still in jail. After only a few weeks in lockup, a person soon learned to never speak unless absolutely necessary. Silence was a form of armor. It confined and protected at the same time.

“Okay, here are some clothes, money, weapons and fake identification papers,” the lieutenant said, proffering an old suitcase. “Your new name is Mira Jones. Got that?”

Wordlessly, MacGuire took the case, still barely able to believe what was happening. “Mira Jones,” she repeated woodenly. “So I’m free?”

“Of course,” the lieutenant replied. He raised an arm to point toward the woods. “Now, follow the edge of the forest until you reach a creek. On the other side, you’ll find a car waiting for you. An old Dodge sedan. The key, insurance papers, title and such, are under the seat.”

“What about a passport?”

“Canadian. Inside the suitcase, ma’am.”

Almost smiling, MacGuire tightened her grip. “Excellent!”

“What about us?” a prisoner still chained in the van bellowed. “Set us free, too, or we’ll squeal to the cops the moment they get here!”

“Idiot!” snarled the bald man, trying to reach across the van to throttle the other prisoner.

“Best turn away, Ms. Jones. You won’t want to get any of the splatter in your hair,” a private said, swinging up the AK-47 assault rifle.

In sudden understanding, MacGuire quickly turned away and four of the soldiers opened fire with their weapons. The combined roar of the assault rifles was almost overpowering, and MacGuire moved away as the other prisoners screamed then went terribly silent.

“Well, that was pretty grisly,” a sergeant commented, closing the rear doors of the van.

“Just part of the job,” another private replied in a bored tone, removing the curved magazine from his smoking weapon and inserting a fresh one.

“Okay, clear the area,” the lieutenant commanded, pulling a cylindrical object from a pocket.

All of the soldiers moved fast as he yanked out the safety ring, flipped off the arming lever and gently rolled the cylinder underneath the prison van.

Running away, MacGuire was barely able to reach the trees before there came an oddly soft explosion, closely followed by a well of bright light and searing heat.

Following the others, MacGuire zigzagged among the trees. Her mind was awhirl with emotions, ideas and fears. But mostly she was concerned with her own preservation. Every tree, every leaf and blade of grass was in sharp relief, crystal clear, as if she was looking at the world with new eyes. She knew it was just the adrenaline rush, but the effect was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

Slowing to catch her breath, MacGuire threw a fast glance over a shoulder to see the entire prison van engulfed in flames. Thick columns of black smoke rose off the tires as the sides of the armored van began to turn a bright cherry-red, then sag and melt.

As a breeze blew smoke her way, MacGuire mentally commanded herself to only breathe through her mouth. But the impulse to take a sniff was impossible to resist and she gagged on the reek of hot metal, melting asphalt and burning tires, mixed with a sickly sweet smell of...roast pork? Her stomach lurched. That’s what cannibals said human flesh tasted like.

Coming to a small clearing in the forest, the lieutenant called a halt and everybody paused to catch their breath.

“Was that...really...necessary?” MacGuire asked, holding a stitch in her side.

“The police won’t hunt for a dead woman,” the lieutenant said, brushing down his hair.

“I suppose. But still...”

“A pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Jones,” the lieutenant said curtly, and he started away with the rest of the National Guardsmen.

A million questions flooded her mind and MacGuire took a hesitant step toward them. But then they were gone, vanished into the thick shadows under the dense pine trees.

Standing alone, she listened to the crackle of the distant fire, wisely breathing through her mouth when the next breeze blew some of the foul smoke her way. Stiffly, MacGuire turned and headed for the creek and the old Dodge sedan. A new life awaited her in a foreign land very far away from here. Preferably one with a less stringent code on arson and more easily bribed judges....

In the distance, a Black Hawk helicopter rose into the sky and angled away to head north.

Bloomington, Indiana

EVENING WAS STARTING to fall when Bolan gently braked the big BMW motorcycle to a stop.

Turning off the softly humming engine, he slid on a pair of U.S. Army night-vision goggles and scanned the area to see if anybody had noticed his arrival. But there were no life signs or anomalous heat sources registering on the infrared goggles. There were only sagging ruins, windowless brick buildings crumbling back into the soil from which they’d originally risen and vacant lots choked with weeds.

Climbing off, Bolan pushed the motorcycle into a pool of dark shadows behind a splintery billboard displaying an advertisement for a movie that had come out years earlier. The BMW bike was his preferred vehicle for a mission such as this. Instead of a chain, the motorcycle had a transmission like a car. This made it one of the quietest vehicles on Earth, perfect for covert reconnaissance.

The sprawling industrial complex was a decaying junkyard of abandoned technology. Huge dark factories sat like menacing toads, the windows so filthy it was impossible for Bolan to tell if they were simply dirty or had been painted that color. Enclosed catwalks, electrical cables and heavy pipe extended between every building, merging them into a single homogenous machine now turned off and unwanted. The area was devoid of all living souls. The neighborhood was as deserted as the moon, with one remarkable exception.

Standing like a precious jewel tucked neatly into a pile of fecal matter was the Belvedere Fertilizer Factory. A tall brick fence topped with coils of razor wire separated the buildings from the surrounding decay, the enclosed acres a sylvan glade of slashing fountains and ornamental bridges, as if this was a giant terrarium and not a workplace. Unlike the rest of the neighborhood, there was no graffiti on any of the walls or buildings, and the main structure was made of chrome and glass, the manufacturing plants of glass and steel.

A brace of guard kiosks blocked the front entrance, the uniformed men inside heavily armed with pistols and shotguns. However, none of them carried mace, batons or handcuffs, which was normal standard issue for any guard.

Adjusting the focus on the goggles, Bolan grunted at that. Obviously the guards had orders to kill on sight and take no prisoners. That wasn’t really surprising as this was the main drug lab for Ziggy Nine’s criminal empire. It was easy to deduce how the plant remained untouched by the locals. Shoot a few in the face and the rest would stay far away. Brutal but efficient.

Where the meth labs were hidden and how the drug was distributed across the nation was unknown. But that was not really on the soldier’s agenda this night. First and foremost, he wanted information about the prison break. However, if he got a chance to burn the labs...

Recovering some of the spent shell casings from the machine pistols used at the bar, Bolan had driven swiftly to a nearby safe house set up by Brognola.

Checking with ViCAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—he’d found nothing on the group of men who’d killed Jimmy Winslow. There were no serial numbers on the shells they’d used. But then, Bolan would have been very surprised if there had been. Those men had clearly been professionals, and only amateurs and fools used store-bought ammunition for illegal activities.

There had been no real reason to go after the hit team aside from revenge, and Bolan had bigger fish to fry at the moment. They had merely been street muscle, hired for a single job then cast aside. Even if he had managed to find them, the hit team would have told Bolan nothing. He needed the man who had hired them.

The ViCAP file on Ziggy Nine had been extensive. On his way to the top of the drug trade, the man had committed nearly every crime there was on the books. A check for his known associates had not produced any mention of a short man with a beard, so he was probably new to the organization.

Unfortunately, Ziggy was extremely good at hiding his criminal activities. Material witnesses ready to testify against him vanished on a regular basis; once, an entire police station had burned down, all of the incriminating evidence against Ziggy destroyed in the blazing evidence room.

Ziggy was the undisputed king of crystal meth in the Midwest, and yet the FBI had only gotten him on a minor charge of tax evasion. Same as they had the legendary crime boss Al Capone. However, Capone had died in prison, while Ziggy had been incarcerated for less than twenty-four hours before escaping. Very impressive. He’d clearly had everything prepared far in advance of his trial, and he did not give a damn about murdering police officers or civilians.

Ziggy Nine had been on the edges of Bolan’s radar for a long time, but now the drug lord was dead center and the crosshairs were tightening into a sharp focus.

For this mission, Bolan was wearing a formfitting combat blacksuit under his trench coat. His younger brother had once joked it looked like something that a superhero would wear, and Bolan had reluctantly agreed. However, it was purely functional and standard issue to both Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, some of the most grimly serious people in the world.

Overtop of the blacksuit, Bolan wore Threat Level Four body armor with trauma pads underneath. Body armor would stop most small rounds, but the impact of the bullet could seriously bruise internal organs, leaving the wearer in terrible pain the next day and often with internal bleeding. Trauma pads could take care of that, although they did slightly hinder his movement.

To make up for that, along with his usual Beretta and Desert Eagle, Bolan was also carrying a Neostead combat shotgun. Invented by the military police of South Africa, the oddball weapon had two magazines, each carrying four 12-gauge cartridges. The trick was that the operator could switch back and forth between the magazines with the flick of a switch. Bolan had one magazine loaded with stainless-steel fléchettes that could blow a gorilla into hamburger at sixty feet. The other carried non-lethal stun bags, just in case he encountered somebody he wanted to keep alive for questioning. Unlikely but possible.

In addition, Bolan was carrying a backpack full of ordnance and assorted supplies. Just for a moment, he had a flashback to Basic Training, and running twenty miles through the obstacle course while carrying a full kit weighing eighty pounds. Ah, youth.

Patiently sitting in the shadows, Bolan waited until the darkening purple of twilight became the deep black of night, and then he moved. Removing the ignition chip from the motorcycle, the soldier hid it inside a rusty coffee can on the ground, then started off through the dirty back alleys and weedy fields, slowly circling several blocks around the Belvedere building until coming back in from the opposite direction, far away from the guard kiosk.

Sweeping the ground ahead with an EM scanner, Bolan easily avoided several proximity sensors and what appeared to be a couple of staggeringly illegal land mines. Ghosting closer to the brick wall, Bolan easily climbed over. Dropping to the other side, he landed in low crouch with the silenced Beretta ready. But there was, again, nobody in sight; he saw only parked cars.

Easing forward, Bolan crept through a maze of flowering bushes and started around a small lake, only to stop and reverse his course to not disturb a sleeping mother goose and her brood of goslings. Incredible as it sounded, he knew for a fact that back in the Middle Ages geese, not dogs, had often been used as alarm systems for the rich nobles of England. They were easily startled and their squawks would all but wake the dead.

Easing through a hedge maze surrounding a splashing fountain, Bolan went motionless as a couple of guards strolled into view. The uniformed men were relaxed, carrying M14 assault rifles in the crooks of their arms.

“Ammonia, Jack?” one of the guards asked, arching an eyebrow.

Jack nodded. “Ammonia.”

“That’s how the Feds caught Harry?”

“Hey, people sweat ammonia,” Jack stated. “Which is why the boss has our lab inside a fertilizer factory.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look, Stretch. When you cook meth, a by-product is ammonia. And when you cook fertilizer...” He waited.

“More ammonia?” Stretch asked.

“Correct-a-mundo.”

“Damn, that’s smart,” Stretch said in admiration.

His companion shrugged. “That is why we work for him, and not the other way ’round.”

As the guards disappeared around a turn in the maze, Bolan adjusted his goggles until their footprints in the soft ground were dimly visible. Following them backward, he soon reached the opening of the maze.

Straight ahead was the main factory. Every floor was brightly illuminated with electric lights. Swarms of men and women wearing company jumpsuits were busy working forklifts, loading and unloading trucks of pallets of sealed plastic drums and pallets stacked with bags of fertilizer and weed killer. The atmosphere hummed with activity. A foreman walked by, checking a computerized clipboard, a janitor was mopping up a spilled coffee and several workers were tightly clustered inside a designated smoking room, the atmosphere an impenetrable fog.

Moving behind a decorative bush, Bolan reached underneath his body armor, pulled out some loose cash and tucked it into his gun belt. Then, assuming a firing stance, he carefully aimed the Beretta, held his breath and gently squeezed the trigger. The silenced machine pistol fired, the discharge barely louder than a hard cough.

Far inside the loading dock, a fire alarm shattered and there instantly came a clanging alarm. Pausing at their tasks, the workers glanced around in confusion, then quickly headed out of the factory.

While the mob began spreading outward, Bolan chose a large man and tossed a fifty-dollar bill into the air. When it fluttered past, the big man jerked in surprise at the sight, then grabbed the bill and stuffed it inside his shirt. As he eagerly looked around, Bolan released a couple more bills.

Trying to appear casual, the man strolled quickly toward the money, and as he stepped into the maze, Bolan jabbed him in the neck with a stun gun. Hissing in shock, the big man doubled over unconscious and Bolan dragged the fellow behind a turn to quickly strip off his jumpsuit. It was a tight fit over the blacksuit and body armor, even with all of his weapons stuffed into the backpack, and there was absolutely no room for the shotgun. But there was no time to try to find somebody more suitable, so Bolan stuffed the Neostead shotgun into a bush and boldly strolled out of the maze.

Mixing into the muttering crowd of workers, Bolan kept his face turned away and edged closer to the factory. Reaching a side door, he stepped inside and locked the door behind him. As soon as somebody discovered the smashed fire alarm, security would start looking for him, so speed was his best defense now.

Rearming himself, Bolan moved fast down the corridor until reaching a stairwell. Taking out the security camera with the Beretta, the soldier then primed a thermite grenade and rolled it back down the corridor toward the exit. The military canister almost reached the fire door when it burst apart, spewing its blazing white contents.

As the allotropic blaze steadily increased in size until it filled the corridor, another fire alarm sounded and Bolan started up the stairs. With luck, that would buy him a few minutes. But anybody who had ever served in the military would recognize it as a thermite fire and not natural combustion. Now seconds counted.

Reaching the top level, Bolan saw that the lock on the door was one of the best non-electronic versions in existence. It used a key shaped like the letter H, with hundreds of ridges and holes. It was flat-out impossible to pick, and an explosion would only reveal his presence. If they didn’t already know that somebody was there.

Feeling the pressure of time, Bolan slid off the backpack and pulled out an insulted bottle. Careful of his hands, he squirted the thick contents onto the lock, then kicked it. Crystallized by the stream of liquid nitrogen, the lock loudly shattered and tumbled away. The door swung open.

Still carrying the empty bottle, Bolan proceeded through the frost-covered door and onto the roof. Tossing the useless bottle aside, the soldier closed the door and slapped a block of C-4 high explosive on the cold jamb to keep it in place.

Just then a grunt from behind made Bolan spin with the Beretta leveled.

“Stop right there, buddy!” a guard growled, still in the act of pulling a pistol from his belt holster.

Firing twice, Bolan blew the weapon out of the other man’s grip. With a cry, the guard stumbled backward, holding on to his broken hand. Moving in close, Bolan jabbed him with the stun gun, then hid the body behind an air-conditioning duct. Normally, Bolan would have simply shot the man between the eyes, but there was no way of knowing which of these people knew they were working at the largest meth lab in the world and which thought it actually was a simple fertilizer factory. That made this a lot harder than a usual probe, but Bolan had long ago sworn to die himself rather than take an innocent life.

Proceeding across the roof, Bolan saw a subtle movement in the darkness below a water tower and paused. Suddenly a bright cone of light appeared as a guard stepped into view. Trusting his instincts, Bolan fired and the guard cursed as the flashlight exploded in his grip. Then the guard unexpectedly swung away to move behind one of the wooden support legs of the tower.

Aiming carefully, Bolan fired and a chunk of the wooden beam exploded into splinters near the guard’s leg. With an anguished cry, he stumbled back into sight, a hand clutching the prickly wound.

“Please don’t kill me!” the guard begged, his other hand out of sight behind his back.

Suspecting a trick, Bolan waited a full second for the guard to draw the hidden weapon, then he fired again, this time hitting him in the shoulder. The guard staggered, but there was no explosion of blood. The bullet simply flattened into a silvery gray pancake.

Body armor!

Quickly changing targets, Bolan fired again, this time at the groin. The same as before—the 9 mm bullet pancaked on the body armor. The guard violently exhaled, his Colt .45 pistol falling from a twitching hand. With a low groan, the guard fell, the Colt tumbling away.

A brief inspection made sure that the man was simply unconscious and not badly wounded. Satisfied, Bolan started to go when the radio holstered on the guard’s belt crackled with static.

“Section four, sitrep,” a woman ordered over the small speaker.

Yanking out the radio, Bolan thumbed the transmit switch and crudely grunted in reply, then continued to make assorted sounds of pain.

“Sweet Jesus, Hannigan, just give me a goddamn Code 19 if you’re on the crapper,” the woman snarled, clearly disgusted.

“Nine...teen...” Bolan groaned, then broke into a rough cough.

“Acknowledged!” she snapped in annoyance, and the radio went silent.

Turning off the radio, Bolan did a fast sweep across the roof for any more guards, but found only a few lawn chairs next to a cooler full of melting ice cubes and some bottled beer. Great. This was where the staff hid for a beer break. It would be the first place that security would check once they discovered that—

The fire alarm stopped.

In the ringing silence, Bolan rushed to the nearest exhaust fan and shot the retaining bolt. It snapped off with a loud crack and went flying away. Yanking off the rotating housing, he pulled the arming pin from a smoke grenade but left the safety lever in place, and threw the bomb down the dark shaft. Bouncing and clattering off the sides of shaft, the military sphere disappeared into the darkness below. Going to the next fan, Bolan did the same thing again.

The smoke was harmless. However, there was no way to find Ziggy Nine inside the labyrinthine structure, so Bolan would simply have to make the drug lord come to him. Fire was dangerous enough in any factory, but the fumes of a burning meth lab were worse than lethal. Even if you initially survived, the fumes could cause permanent damage to the lungs, so Ziggy would probably be the first person out of the building. If not, there was a police-issue gas mask in the soldier’s backpack, along with a filled NATO syringe of antitoxin, just in case of an emergency.

Running out of smoke grenades, Bolan sprinted toward the other end of the long building. There were no radio antennas, exhaust fans or anything else sticking up from the roof along this stretch. As he approached, Bolan saw that his guess had been correct. It was a small helipad.

Just then he heard muffled explosions far below and a new alarm started; a wailing that cut through the clanging bell of the fire alarm like a laser through butter. Bizarrely, he also heard the sound of several chattering machine guns, although what the guards were shooting at Bolan had no idea.

Without warning, a section of the roof cracked apart and hinged doors slammed aside as an elevator full of people rose into view. There were six big men wearing body armor and carrying M16 assault rifles, along with a short skinny man in a dark business suit, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

Nice to finally meet you, Ziggy, Bolan thought.

“Freeze! This is the police!” the soldier yelled. “You’re all under arrest!”

Snarling a curse, Ziggy dropped into a crouch as the guards ruthlessly cut loose with their assault rifles. With the enemy clearly identified, Bolan answered back with the Beretta and the Desert Eagle, the combined discharges splitting the night.

Three of the guards fell, their throats spewing geysers of life at the distant stars. But the others kept firing, spraying streams of hot lead blindly into the darkness.

Even though he was moving while shooting, Bolan got hit twice by the guards, but the 5.56 mm hardball rounds failed to penetrate his NATO body armor. The 9 mm rounds from the Beretta flattened on their armor in turn, but the steel-jacketed .50 rounds from the booming Desert Eagle punched clean through the chest of the remaining guards in crimson ruination.

“Give it up, Fairweather!” Bolan shouted, reloading.

“Blow me, pig!” Ziggy snarled as the line of landing lights edging the helipad started brightly glowing and there came the dull throb of a helicopter from above.

“Kill the son of a bitch!” Ziggy screamed.

As if in reply, there came the high-pitched whine of an electric Gatling gun spinning to operational speeds.

Knowing what to expect next, Bolan took refuge behind a squat air-conditioning unit. A split second later a thundering barrage of high-velocity bullets slammed into the roof where he had just been standing. A ricochet slammed into the middle of his back and Bolan was galvanized motionless for a moment, nearly blind from the unexpected burst of incalculable pain.

As he struggled to recover, the Gatling gun ceased firing and a Black Hawk helicopter landed on the helipad in a hurricane of hot air and exhaust fumes.

Ducking under the spinning turbo blades, Ziggy rushed forward to yank open the side hatch.

In a surge of adrenaline, Bolan broke cover and charged forward. “Freeze!” he bellowed, brandishing the Desert Eagle.

Laughing in reply, Ziggy started to close the hatch.

With no other course available, Bolan threw the empty Beretta with all of his strength. It landed on the track and the hatch jammed in place, still half open.

“Son of a... Take off!” Ziggy yelled, struggling to close the hatch. “Now! Take off right fucking now!”

His face unseen inside a mirrored helmet, the pilot nodded in reply and the engines revved to full power.

The aircraft started to lift off the roof when Bolan reached in through the partially open hatch and grabbed Ziggy by the throat. Horrified, the man pulled out a 9 mm Glock pistol and fired at point-blank range. The Executioner managed to turn just in time, the slug glancing off his body armor, but the impact knocked the air from his lungs.

The Black Hawk was still rising and now the pilot angled the helicopter to try to dump Bolan out. As it tilted, the soldier smacked aside the Glock and grabbed Ziggy by the arm.

“If I go, you’re coming with me!” he snarled, trying to get a leg inside the aircraft.

Wild eyed, Ziggy screamed in terror, his hands grabbing at anything for purchase. His fingers slipped off a leather seat, and then he jerked open the door to a refrigerated liquor cabinet and a bottle of vodka fell out to roll away. In a panic, Ziggy clawed at a dangling seat belt and finally got it firmly in his grasp.

Now that the drug lord was anchored, Bolan used Ziggy as a ladder to try to climb on board.

Realizing his mistake, the pilot quickly leveled out the Black Hawk, then accelerated toward the water tower.

As the structure loomed, Bolan exerted his full strength and hauled himself into the helicopter a split second before the roof of the wooden vat noisily scraped along the side of the aircraft.

“Nice try,” Bolan growled, drawing the Colt and firing. The Beretta was slammed free from the track, spinning away into the night, and the hatch slammed shut.

“Are you insane?” Ziggy demanded, rummaging underneath one of the leather seats.

As the drug lord pulled out a revolver, Bolan smacked the weapon out of his grip with the barrel of the Desert Eagle.

“No more games, Fairweather,” Bolan rumbled, pressing the hot barrel of the gun against the man’s temple.

Ziggy cried out as the steel sizzled on his flesh. “Whatever you want, it’s yours!” he blurted. “You got no idea how rich I am! Don’t kill me. Anything you want is yours! Girls, gold, just name it!”

“Keep flying on these coordinates,” Bolan commanded, passing a folded slip of paper to the pilot. “And if you say anything on the radio, anything at all, your boss dies.”

Accepting the paper, the pilot merely grunted and leveled out the flight path of the speeding aircraft.

Shoving the drug lord into a seat, Bolan sat opposite the man and said nothing, letting the tension build.

“Okay, what’s the deal?” Ziggy said slowly, testing each word as if it were a splintery wooden board. “You ain’t no cop—that’s obvious, right?”

Bolan waited a moment before giving a small nod.

“Thought so,” Ziggy said. “So is this a kidnapping, revenge or do you want information?”

“Everybody says you’re smart,” Bolan said. “Here’s the deal. You tell me what I want to know...then you go away and retire someplace very far away.”

“Retire!” Ziggy gasped. “Me?”

“Either that, or buy a coffin,” Bolan said. “I really don’t care which it is. Your choice.”

A long minute passed with Ziggy breathing hard.

“Deal,” he muttered. “You got me once, which means you can get me again.”

“Yeah, I can.”

“Fair enough. What do you want to know?”

Bolan started to reply when he saw the man’s face go blank. Honed in a thousand firefights, his combat instincts flared and Bolan twisted with the Desert Eagle blazing.

The pilot gave a high-pitched scream as the .50-caliber slug slammed a derringer out of his hand, a finger flying away with the tumbling weapon. As the pilot grabbed his hand, blood gushed from the ragged stump to splash across the control console. In response, the helicopter veered to the side, the engines revving madly.

Without turning, Bolan grabbed Ziggy by the throat and shook him hard, but never took his eyes off the cursing pilot. “Keep flying and you live,” Bolan declared.

“But my finger...” the pilot yelled, trying to fly with one hand, the other tucked under a blood-smeared arm.

As the tilt of the helicopter took on a more pronounced angle, Bolan reluctantly looked around to find the finger lying on a rubber floor mat. Picking it up, he yanked open the liquor cabinet and tucked it into a plastic tray of crushed ice.

“That’ll keep it fresh for an hour,” he said. “So land at the nearest hospital. Got an ETA?”

“Fi-fifteen minutes,” the pilot spluttered, struggling to operate the control stick. “But I can’t land with just one hand.”

“I’ll help...when the time comes,” Bolan said, turning his gaze back upon Ziggy. “As for you...”

“Thought we had a deal,” he said nervously.

“We do,” Bolan replied, leaning back in the comfortable leather seat. “Start off by telling me how you escaped from prison so fast.”

Ziggy wet his lips. “Well, you see...” he began with a crooked smile.

Bolan raised the Desert Eagle. “One lie and you die,” he stated bluntly.

Hunched low in the leather seat, Ziggy stared at Bolan with open hatred. “Fine. How much detail do you want?”

“Everything,” Bolan said. “Tell me everything.”

“Well, there was this big-ass Black Hawk helicopter....”

Chapter 4

Tucson, Arizona

A clatter of utensils and plates filled the air of the prison dining hall, along with the hushed murmur of a thousand low conversations.

“What am I still doing in here?” David Styers muttered under his breath.

“Did you just speak without permission, convict?” a nearby guard growled, a hand going to the electric-shock baton hanging at his side.

“No, sir!” Styers said hastily, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. “Never, sir!”

Some of the older prisoners chuckled at his prompt response.

“Keep it that way, convict,” the guard snarled, tapping the baton.

Eyeing the baton, Styers said nothing in reply. He’d heard that, many years ago, a prisoner had grabbed a baton to use on a guard. For some unknown reason, the device had violently exploded, blowing off his hand. Nobody had tried again since then.

As the guard walked away, somebody at a nearby table softly meowed. Impotent rage filled Styers at the lack of respect, and he flushed in embarrassment. At the sight, everybody at the table silently laughed.

A wild rush of emotions flooded the man and Styers burned to shout at everybody it wasn’t his fault. But bitter experience had taught him that was a bad idea. Not only would nobody believe him, but the beating he’d receive from the guards would be swift and merciless.

Dimly, a small part of his mind chided Styers that he had never showed anybody mercy, even when they’d begged. But he dismissed that fleeting revelation as just a lingering ghost of his foolish childhood. There was no God, no heaven, no hell, no right, no wrong. Merely pleasure and pain.

The dining hall of FCC Tucson was huge, large enough to hold all 2,000 prisoners in case of a natural disaster. The orderly rows of steel tables were welded to the rebar buried under the concrete floor, the soft plastic chairs were too pliant to use as bludgeons, and the cheap aluminum plates and cups too flimsy to sharpen into shivs, prisoner-made knives.

Even the aluminum sporks—there were no forks or knives—were too lightweight to use for anything dangerous without first melting them down in an industrial forge. On top of which, each spork was numbered and counted after every meal. If any went missing from the inventory, every prisoner and cell got thoroughly searched. Plus, until it was found, the prisoners ate with their bare hands. So sayeth the lord, more commonly known as the warden.

A maximum-security facility, all of the steel doors locked from the outside, the windows were too small to crawl through and were made of Lexan plastic capable of resisting a .50 rifle round. There were no fire exits.

Pairs of guards in full combat armor and helmets patrolled the catwalk above the dining area, carrying bulky Thompson machine guns. A lot of the newcomers thought it odd that the guards would carry such old-fashioned weapons. That was, until they saw the mandatory demonstration.

The Thompson was equipped with a computerized laser pointer. Wherever the red dot of the laser was, that was exactly and precisely where the bullets would strike. It was impossible for a guard to miss. Shuffling along the line of prisoners, David Styers could feel the eyes of the other prisoners watching his every move. Most were just curious. Anything new was interesting. But a few of the more hulking prisoners looked at the slim man as if he was a fresh item on the menu yet untasted.

I’m a mass murderer! You should all fear me! Styers silently screamed at them, his temples throbbing. The FBI certainly had. When they’d finally tracked him down, there had been dozens of police cars, helicopters and snipers all over the place.

Running into a college, Styers had killed a dozen people as a diversion, but the Feebs had been relentless. They’d ignored the dead and the dying, leaving them to the mercy of the police and paramedics following close behind. The FBI had concentrated on getting him at any cost.

At first it was tranquilizer darts, but when those failed, out came the handguns. The noise of the discharged weapons had echoed inside the college library, ringing like holiday bells to overwhelm the screams of the terrified people Styers had run past, stabbing some, shooting others. What fun! If it hadn’t been for the body armor he’d stolen from the crippled soldier, Styers would have died then and there.

Which would have been preferable, Styers mentally raged, shuffling along the line. A dozen people. He had killed a dozen people at the college just that day alone.

But when the FBI sniper wounded him in the leg, Styers had shot back blindly and killed a kitten sitting on a windowsill. Big deal. They were just rats that purred. He’d slaughtered dozens of them with a hammer as a child before he’d switched to the homeless. But no, shoot a fluffy kitten as an adult, and suddenly everybody starts meowing at the mere mention of his name.

Was that his legacy? Was he going to be remembered, not as a towering monster, a terror in the night, but as a punch line? It was almost too much to bear.

“What’ll ya have?”

With a start, Styers awoke from his reverie.

Standing behind the long row of steam tables, the trustees in aprons and hairnets were dutifully ladling out strictly measured portions of some kind of food-like substance with the dull regularity of robots. The smell was revolting, but there was nothing else to eat in this living hell.

“I said, what’ll ya have?” asked a bald prisoner in a stained apron. The words were spoken as if he said those exact words a million times a day.

“Anything good?” Styers asked hopefully, looking over the display of steaming meats and vegetables with obvious dismay.

“The potatoes are rather Castle,” the bald man said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Icy clarity shot through Styers at that word. He almost smiled but managed to stop himself just in time. “Queen’s pawn to queen four,” he replied in a hushed voice.

Nodding, the bald man slapped a hot dog onto the plate, followed by a heaping mound of potatoes. Then he covertly sprinkled a white powder onto the potatoes before ladling hot brown gravy over everything.

“Next! What’ll ya have?” he asked, turning to serve the next man.

Almost bursting with excitement, Styers rushed off with the tray of food, barely able to contain himself. Finding an empty table, he sat and stared at the potatoes like a gypsy trying to commune with the spirit world. Then he grabbed a spork and dug in, stuffing the food into his mouth.

Surprisingly, the potatoes and gravy were rather good, although with a slight metallic taste. Not sure if that was normal or something special just for him, Styers continued eating until the world seemed to slow down and voices muted.

Groggily, he looked around. Everything was blurry, as if he was underwater, and by now Styers could only hear weird gobbling sounds. A cold was seeping into his limbs, spreading out from his stomach, and he eagerly went back to the food and tried to shovel more into his mouth.

Suddenly there was a guard by his side, shaking his arm and flapping his mouth as if shouting. But Styers only heard the sound of the distant ocean. Smiling widely, Styers rammed a finger into the left eye of the guard and started to laugh as the man staggered away, leaving the sticky orb behind.

Dipping it in the gravy, Styers took a bite of the floppy little sack, and then he was surrounded by more guards hitting him with their batons, and the world went warm and black....

* * *

STYERS AWOKE TO searing pain coursing through his entire body. With a scream, he sat bolt upright, fighting to breathe.

“He’ll live,” an elderly man stated, placing aside the electric paddles for a defibrillator.

“So I see, Doctor,” said a short man with a beard. “Well done. Brutal, but decisive.”

“That’s what you paid for,” the doctor muttered, turning off the humming machine. “Now, where is my money?”

The short man passed over a fat envelope. Without opening it, the doctor tucked the envelope inside his shirt and promptly left the room.

Rubbing his aching chest, Styers concentrated on breathing for a while until the tingling aftereffects of being electrocuted began to fade away.

“Glad to have you back among the living, Mr. Styers,” said the small man, pulling a chair closer and sitting.

The stranger was wearing a dark blue suit that almost looked like a military uniform. There was a fresh rose tucked in his lapel and a tiny diamond sparkled from his left earlobe. His black shoes were bright with polish and the checkered grip of a pistol in a shoulder holster peeked out from within his jacket.

“How...” was all that Styers could get out before his throat closed and he spent the next few minutes raggedly coughing.

As the spasm subsided, somebody handed him a plastic bottle of water. Greedily, he started drinking. It was clear and tasted like oranges, but was obviously more than just flavored water as new strength flowed into his body. In short order, his mind cleared and all of the pain went away. It was like drinking liquid life.

“Feeling better?” the small man asked with a quizzical smile.

“Yes, much,” Styers managed to reply. “Who are you?”

“First things first... Bishop to queen four.”

Styers blinked in confusion for a moment, then weakly smiled. “Knight takes rook, check.”

At the countersign, the other man visibly relaxed. “Call me Dooley.”

“Okay, Mr. Dooley—”

“Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant Dooley, what happened to me?”

“We poisoned your food, of course,” Dooley replied. “When you were sent to the prison hospital, we switched bodies, then switched ambulances, faked a crash, switched bodies again and here you are! Free and presumed dead.”

“As easy as that?”

“Oh, it was anything but easy, I assure you.”

“Yes, of course,” Styers returned, taking another sip from the magical bottle. “Then nobody is even looking for me?”

Dooley grinned. “The entire world thinks you’re dead. Dead and buried.”

“So I’m free...” The words filled him with a bright light. Looking around, Styers realized that he was in a morgue, or rather a former morgue, as he appeared to be the only customer present. Alive or dead.

Swinging his legs off the steel table, Styers drained the last of whatever it was from the bottle and reverently placed it on a small steel table. “Okay, what’s next?”

“There is a washroom around the corner if you need a moment,” Dooley said. “And in the corner is a suitcase containing clean clothes, fake identity papers, some food, medical supplies, a new passport, the keys to a Volvo in the parking lot and a map to a safe house in Nebraska. Good luck!”

“That’s it?” Styers asked, a surge of anger flashing briefly.

“That is everything you arranged for, sir,” Dooley said tolerantly. “We got you out of a maximum-security prison in under twenty-four hours. Our business is completed. What happens next is entirely your decision.”

“There are other things that I need,” Styers persisted, flexing his fingers. “Knives, guns, body armor...”

“Indeed? None of that was in our contract.”

“But I need them!” Styers started to explain about the vital necessity of killing more policemen until nobody ever made cat noises at him again. But it was too complex to explain properly, and he could only repeat how much he needed the things.

“I see,” Dooley said, rising from the chair and unbuttoning the front of his jacket. “We can, of course, arrange for such items...if you have the ability to pay for them.”

“Good lord, no! Your premiums used up the last of my cash.”

“A pity. Well, good luck!”

“Wait!” Styers called out. “Perhaps I can help you.”

Halfway out the door, Dooley paused to turn around. “Meaning...what exactly?” he asked politely.

“In this line of work, you must occasionally have the need of a man with...unique skills,” Styers said, his heart beating rapidly. “Think about it! Can you truly trust the doctor who just left, or is he a liability that needs removal?”

Just then, there came the distant sound of a gunshot.

“He’s already been dealt with,” Dooley said, walking back into the morgue. “But I concede your point. Let me think about this for a moment.”

Impatiently, Styers stayed on the table, wiggling his toes and relishing the feel of the cold steel slowly warming to his body heat.

“We...accept your offer,” Dooley said, touching a small cellular bud clipped to his ear.

“Excellent!”

Reaching into a pocket, the lieutenant withdrew a cheap cell phone. “This is a burner, totally untraceable. Keep this with you at all times. We’ll call when we need you.”

“At all times!” Styers said eagerly, folding the device. “So what does this get me right now, in the way of additional assistance?”

“There will be fifty thousand dollars in small bills in the trunk of the Volvo, along with some of the...tools of your trade,” Dooley said, then his face darkened. “Just don’t use them unless we call. Understand? You work for Castle now. No freelance assignments!”

“Not a problem.” Styers smiled widely, offering a hand.

Pausing for only a moment, Dooley accepted and they shook. Then he turned on a heel and left.

Styers cleaned up in the washroom as best as possible under the circumstances, then got dressed and headed outside. The sky was full of ominous black clouds, warning of an impending storm. Lightning flashed on the horizon, but there was no accompanying rumble of thunder. Styers chuckled. The storm was far away from here. At least, for the moment.

In the distance a Black Hawk attack helicopter rose high into the sky and vanished among the storm clouds.

There were several lampposts edging the parking lot, but none of them was working. Pressing the fob on the key ring, Styers saw a flash of headlights off to the right and made his way carefully past an array of potholes until he reached the Volvo.

Immediately checking the trunk, he found a folded blanket on the mat. Inside was a rather impressive collection of medical supplies, knives, hatchets, dental equipment, a shovel and even a bag of quicklime to help hide a body.

“They were expecting me to join,” Styers muttered, a momentary rush of blind rage filling the man to nearly overwhelming levels. Slowly it faded, and he closed the trunk, got behind the wheel and drove away.

The GPS on the dashboard claimed that he was in Oklahoma, of all places, and it took him only a few minutes to find the interstate highway.

Stopping at the first diner he saw, Styers bought several hamburgers and a six-pack of beer to go, eating while he started his journey toward whatever lay ahead. He eventually acquired a hitchhiker, a pretty young woman from Florida on her way to Hollywood to become a movie star. She never left the car alive.

Washington, D.C.

THE CHURCH BELLS were still chiming midnight when Hal Brognola parked his car in a commercial lot and started walking through the city.

As befitted the capital of the most powerful nation in the world, downtown Washington was comprised of the marble and granite of the countless government buildings, with gleaming glass walkways and constant military and police patrols. But out here near the beltway, the buildings were in far worse condition with graffiti everywhere. There were countless homeless people sleeping under bridges and in cardboard boxes. The sight broke Brognola’s heart, and he gave small amounts to anybody who asked.

“Thanks, but ya really shouldn’t be out at this hour,” an old man said in a raspy voice, swiftly tucking away the bills. “Not safe for a downtowner like you.”

“I’ll stay sharp,” Brognola replied politely.

“Better watch your six,” the old man warned, shuffling back into a dark alley.

The words saddened Brognola. He was a soldier? Suddenly Brognola was sorry he hadn’t given the man a lot more, but then he wasn’t rich enough to help everybody on the streets. He would if he could, but in a perfect world...

Continuing onward, a somber Brognola found a small park that had actually been built by some of the locals. Formerly a vacant lot overgrown with weeds and used as a trash dump, it was now a garden full of flowering trees, gravel footpaths and even a small fountain. Washington was a good city, full of decent people. Sure it had problems. What town did not? But it was slowly fixing them, one at a time.

Spotting an empty wooden bench under a streetlight, Brognola headed that way and was cut off by a teenage girl wearing a low-cut T-shirt and nylon windbreaker bearing the name of a rap group.

“Hey, sweetie, got the time?” she asked, flashing gold filigree covering her teeth.

Instantly turning sideways, Brognola pulled two short-barrel S&W revolvers from inside his overcoat. One he pointed directly at the startled girl and the other back toward a hulking boy just rising from behind a laurel bush.

“Drop ’em,” Brognola commanded, clicking back both of the hammers.

Caught off guard, the two teenagers paused in confusion and then slowly opened their hands. Short lead pipes wrapped in duct tape fell to loose gravel with heavy thumps.

“Now start walking or die,” Brognola said in a monotone, gesturing with the guns. “Your choice.”

In exaggerated slowness, the teenagers backed away from the man, their hands raised in surrender, until the shadows swallowed them whole.

“I’m glad to see that you took the advice of that old Marine,” said Mack Bolan, stepping out from behind an oak tree. “This is a dangerous part of town.”

“More dangerous with you here,” Brognola growled, tucking away the S&W Police Special .38 revolvers. “Have you been following me since the parking lot?”

“Since you left the Department of Justice. I had to make sure that you weren’t being followed.”

“Why?” Brognola asked, sitting on the park bench.

“Not sure who I can trust on this,” Bolan answered bluntly, also taking a seat.

Without a word, Brognola reached into a pocket and set a small plastic device on the wooden bench between them. Softly, it started to hum a low monotone.

“This is a new model Humbug. Everything within a hundred is jammed,” Brognola said.

Just then, a small flock of pigeons arrived to walk and strut around, looking for any dropped crumbs.

“Rats with wings,” Brognola commented, pulling a brown paper bag from his coat pocket.

Unrolling the top, he reached inside, pulled out a handful of popcorn and sprinkled the morsels across the gravel. The birds scattered at the motion of his hand, then immediately flocked back for the food.

“Rats, huh?” Bolan said with a knowing smile.

“They make good cover for two men sitting in a park at night,” Brognola countered, offering the bag. “We’re either feeding the birds or doing something that the Extreme Right would not approve.”

“Reading books?” Bolan asked, taking a handful.

“Funny. Don’t quit your day job.”

“Never,” Bolan said, tossing out the kernels.

“So what’s this about insurance?”

“A couple of years ago a group of masked men busted Ziggy Nine out of a Florida work farm...essentially a chain gang. They then offered to do so again, anywhere, at any time. For a small monthly fee, of course.”

“Of course.”

“The price was reasonable, and the group had already proved that it could deliver, so Ziggy agreed. Then he got arrested a few months ago, and on the day he was sent to prison...they busted him out again within twenty-four hours.”

His brow furrowed in thought, Brognola was silent for a long time. “If this is true—”

“It is.”

“It would indicate a very large and extremely well-coordinated organization. Any chance of a name?”

“Castle.”

“Is that the person in charge or the name of the group?”

“That I don’t know...yet.”

“Castle, a fortified stronghold,” Brognola stated, tossing out more popcorn. “Odd name for an escape agency...unless it refers to the chess move where a rook and king swap places.”

“The rook protects and the king goes free. Makes sense.”

“Insurance against going to jail...” Brognola said. “Any chance of a description?”

“The man in charge is short, with slicked-down hair and a pointed beard, possibly a goatee.”

“Doesn’t sound like anybody I know. Did you get his business card?”

“Actually, I did,” Bolan said, passing one over.

Frowning deeply, Brognola took the white card and turned it over several times. It was blank on both sides. “Cute, very clever.”

Bolan waited expectantly.

“A plain white card,” Brognola said. “What better business card for such an organization? It’s a carte blanche.”

“I see. Like in the Middle Ages, unlimited authorization from the king to do anything you wished. In this case, quite literally a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Only not so free. What are the monthly premiums?”

“A hundred grand a year at first, now a cool quarter million.”

“A year?”

“After being busted out of Preston, Ziggy was more than happy to agree to any price they asked.”

“I’ll bet,” Brognola said, leaning back in the bench. “Son of a bitch, selling insurance against going to jail.... How come I haven’t heard anything about this? The DOJ keeps close contact with the Bureau of Prisons.”

Suddenly the pigeons took off in a fluttering rush. A few seconds later a large man walked into view leading a miniature poodle on a leash. The dog was groomed to a continental clip and there was a tiny bow on its collar.

“Evening,” the man said, nodding as they walked by in tandem.

Nodding in reply, Bolan and Brognola watched until the dog finished his nightly business and the man walked him out of the park.

“A bow.” Brognola laughed, releasing the S&W revolver tucked under his coat. “Did you know poodles are hunting dogs? They use them to retrieve ducks and other waterfowl.”

“I didn’t know. Looks to me like Pinky there would be too froufrou to go for a swim, never mind pick up a duck,” Bolan said with a half smile.

“Sad but true.”

“On the other hand, things are not always what they seem,” Bolan said. “I do believe there’s a reason for that traditional clip.”

“Also true.”

“Now, I’m not sure the Board of Prisons knows anything to tell the Department of Justice,” Bolan said. “The escapes are carefully disguised as failures, merely attempted escapes where everybody involved dies.”

“Damn, that’s smart. Too smart, if you ask me. Shorty knows his business.”

“Agreed. This has to be stopped fast, and hard.”

Cooing softly, a lone pigeon returned, closely followed by the rest of the flock.

“So how does a client contact Castle?”

“They don’t. Part of the deal is that Castle watches for you on the news. If you’re big enough to afford the premiums, then they’ll hear about your conviction on cable television or the internet.”

“No direct communication,” Brognola said, crushing a handful of popcorn into bits and sprinkling the food around generously. “How are the payments handled?”

“Once a year, a wire transfer to a numbered account, and a different bank every time.”

“Yeah, thought it might be something like that,” Brognola said. “Whoever is behind this is no fool, Striker. This is about as far away from strong-arm tactics as we can get.”

“Brains, balls and a total disregard for the law,” Bolan said with a scowl. “If this spreads, civilization is in serious trouble. Without the fear of going to prison, every crime boss, mobster and drug lord in the world will run amok.”

“The entire balance of crime and punishment will collapse, and soon there’ll be chaos in the streets with armed troops guarding cities like they did back at the turn of the century.”

“That’s how I read it.”

“Think Shorty might be working with a terrorist organization—al Qaeda, Red Star or Shining Path?”

“No, this is too subtle for them.”

“I guess,” Brognola said. “Okay, how do we proceed? I could have you arrested and... No, damn it. Castle contacts you before going to jail.” He looked up. “This means that you will have to go undercover and earn yourself a street rep. Fast.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bolan said in a hollow voice. “I’m going to need a crew as backup. Street soldiers. Good old-fashioned hardass killers.”

“What about Ziggy? He might talk and blow the whole thing.”

“We made a deal, and so far he’s keeping up his end with hard intel,” Bolan said. “The Farm is keeping him safely under wraps until this is over.”

Stony Man Farm was the secret base of the Sensitive Operations Group, which was comprised of America’s top antiterrorist teams, Able Team and Phoenix Force. Hal Brognola was its director.

“What about using Phoenix Force as your crew?”

“Already asked. The guys are busy in Australia on some other matter, out of touch until further notice.”

“Pity.”

Bolan shrugged. “Also, they don’t have a street rep.” He paused. “I may need to do things they can’t condone to get the job done. For this mission I need real criminals. Not names, but known faces.”

“Which means...Leo?”

“He’s never let me down before.”

“Man, this is going to be bloody,” Brognola said slowly, resting a hand on the shoulder of the larger man. “You ready for this?”

“Got no choice,” Bolan said with a shrug. “I have to make Castle approach me. Then I arrange to meet the person in charge and burn down their house.”

“Sounds simple enough, but you and I know that the truth is far different,” Brognola said, rubbing an old scar under his shirt. “You need anything? Fake identity, special weapons... I have a discretionary fund of a couple million.”

“Thanks. I’m fine on that front.” Bolan emptied the brown paper bag onto the ground. The pigeons attacked the sprinkling of popcorn crumbs like the Allies at Juno Beach. “And my own discretionary fund is slightly bigger than yours.”

“No doubt.”

“But, Hal... If this should go wrong...”

“I’ll keep a watch on your brother like he was my own kid,” Brognola said. “Promise.”

“Good enough.”

Bolan offered a hand and the two men shook. They separated as the pigeons exploded off the gravel in a flock, swirling and circling like windswept leaves. Chaos with feathers. Then they abruptly darted skyward and vanished into the night.

“Rats with wings,” Brognola said, turning back to his friend. But the bench was empty. Bolan was gone, already moving toward the dark rabbit hole of the insane mission.

Chapter 5

Tarrytown, New York

Taking off his tailored linen jacket, Torval Johnson hung it neatly in the closet, then pulled both of the modified Glock pistols out from his shoulder holster and laid them on top of the dresser for easy access. She would be here soon, and he wanted to be ready.

Outside the bulletproof window of the room, Johnson could see soaring mountains and a whitewater river ending at a thundering waterfall. He smiled. As the pundits liked to say, location was everything!

The heavily forested Catskill Mountains rose and fell in jagged majesty across upstate New York. A seemingly endless vista of blue-green pine and fir trees, many of the peaks were snowcapped even in the summer, but the deep valleys and misty glens stayed deliciously cool in the hot summer months.

Wide and smooth, Route 95 cut through the lower foothills, extending downward all the way to the Florida Keys and upward into Maine. It was the main artery of travel along the entire eastern seaboard.

In the Catskill Mountains, a wild tangle of paved roads connected the interstate to a host of lodges and resorts. Summer or winter, they were packed with visitors. Thus strangers were commonplace in the Catskills, out-of-state license plates attracted no attention whatsoever, and the occasional helicopter was considered uninteresting by the local residents. Even a Black Hawk. Summer or winter, the Catskills were the playgrounds for New Yorkers and Bostonians alike.

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Come in,” Johnson said, stepping in front of the dresser.

The door swung open and in walked a tall, leggy blonde wearing a loose summer dress and ankle-strap wedge sandals.

She was young and beautiful, looking like she had just done a commercial for a new health drink. Her makeup was simple, almost demure. Her natural blond hair hung loose to her waist and her toenails were painted a bright red, the exact same color as her fingernails and lipstick. As per standing instruction, she was not carrying a purse or anything else that might hide a deadly weapon.

“All ready, I see, Thor,” she said with a smile.

He smiled. “You’re the highlight of my week, Lu.”

“So I gather,” Lucinda Stevenson said, closing and locking the door. “Well, sit down. I know this is a quickie.”

“Sadly, yes,” Johnson said, removing the shoulder holster and hanging it off a mahogany coat rack. “Business... You understand.”

“Who better?” Stevenson laughed, sitting to remove her shoes. She was a lot shorter now; the sandals added almost six inches of height.

Most men she encountered liked tall women. But not Thor. He was so damn big that even professional female basketball players seemed short in comparison. Her guess was that he had given up looking for taller women years ago and now settled for average woman. As average and commonplace as he could find. But then, many unusual men sought acceptance through the embrace of a normal woman, even if it had to be paid for in cash.

“I always wanted to ask, where do you get your clothes?” Stevenson asked, loosening the straps of her dress. She shrugged and the dress slipped off to form a loose silk puddle around her bare feet. There was nothing underneath but tan lines. She posed for a moment to let him admire the view.

“Savoy Road, London,” Johnson replied in a husky voice.

“Really?”

“When you’re this big, everything needs to be hand-tailored,” Johnson said with a dismissive shrug. His voice sounded oddly similar to the waterfall outside.

“Wow, that must cost a fortune.”

“So do you.” Johnson laughed, removing his pants. He folded them neatly on the dresser, near the guns, but not covering the weapons.

Going to a massive oak chair, he sat and spread his legs wide.

Allowing herself to giggle, Stevenson slowly walked closer and knelt in front of the giant to start using both hands. He inhaled sharply as her nails raked tender flesh. “You know, I’ve seen bigger,” she said.

Breathing heavily, Johnson raised an eyebrow. “Have you?”

“Sure, on a race horse!”

Johnson chuckled politely at the joke, even though he had heard numerous variations of it ever since he was ten years old.

In his youth, Johnson had read a lot of medical books to see if there were any others like him. There were not. Giants were as rare as dwarves.

Everything Johnson wore had to be specially made, including his weapons. His fingers were too massive to fit into the trigger guard of a standard handgun. His Glocks had cost thousands to modify properly, which was why Johnson always carried two. In case he dropped one or lost one in a fight, he’d have a spare.

Outside of a circus or a freak show, work for a genuine giant was extremely hard to find. Thus he had been delighted when the local prison had accepted his job application to be a guard. The warden had decided the minor cost of modifying the uniform would be more than paid back by the sheer intimidation factor of the colossal teenager.

Foolishly, Johnson had assumed the job would be mostly walking dark corridors and escorting people into their cells. There had been a riot on his first night and Johnston had been forced to gun down two prisoners to keep them from killing another guard.

Disgusted with the savage brutality of the system, Johnson had started smuggling small items into the prison to comfort the prisoners: instant soup, chocolate bars, cigarettes and such. However he was soon caught, jailed and sent right back into the very system he had tried to improve. Johnson got a view of life behind bars from the other side. Before long he’d reestablished his old smuggling network, rapidly escalating to drugs and weapons.

Then on a cold November night, Johnson had broken out and faked his own death. A free man again, he’d immediately started work on a new organization to legally change the prison system. But for that he’d needed huge amounts of cash. To get it he began helping rich prisoners escape, and thus Castle was born. Although many others disagreed, at first Johnson thought of himself as a folk hero, fighting fire with fire. But with wealth came power, and soon that was all that mattered anymore. The exhilarating sense of freedom that came from unrestrained power....

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door.

“Busy!” Johnson bellowed.

“Albania, sir!” a muffled voice announced.

Johnson snapped his head toward the door. “What did you say, Carter?”

“Albania!” the man repeated in an urgent tone.

Growling unhappily deep in his throat, Johnson pushed the woman away and stood. “The money is on the dresser, Lu,” he said, grabbing his pants and stepping into them. “There’s a car waiting outside to take you back to town.”

“But I haven’t... I mean, you haven’t...” Stevenson spluttered.

“Business,” Johnson growled, quickly getting dressed.

Checking the magazine in both Glocks, he swiftly left the room, leaving the door open behind him.

“See you next week, honey!” Stevenson called out, her voice echoing along the bare concrete hallway.

Impatiently following Carter, Johnson waited until they went down the stairs and across the hall before asking anything. The last thing Johnson wanted was Lucinda hearing anything about his real business. She thought he was a Wall Street banker named Brian Gunderson. If she learned the truth, Johnson would have to bury her in the stone quarry with the rest of the people who had gotten too close to Castle. Secrecy was paramount in this line of work. Exposure meant disaster. It was that simple.

Entering a library, Carter closed the door. A cheery fire blazed in a stone fireplace and every wall was lined with books. Newspapers and magazines from around the world were neatly stacked on a row of tables, and fluorescent lights softly hummed from the smoke-stained timbers overhead. In the far corner was a weapons cabinet, the door ajar to show racks of AK-47 assault rifles.

“All right, what is it?” Johnson demanded gruffly. “Are the police here?”

“No, sir, nothing like that,” Carter said. “One of the guards from Preston attempted to track down Lieutenant Dooley. We intercepted the online search, backtracked it to his ISP and...” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Any chance they’re old friends?”

“No, sir, it was blackmail.”

“Idiot.”

“Sir?”

“I meant Dooley,” Johnson huffed, cracking his knuckles. “I told the man that ridiculous beard was not enough of a disguise.”

“Yes, sir, but you know the lieutenant.”

“Stubborn as a Mississippi mule.” Johnson rubbed his face with both palms. “All right, where are they?”

“Dooley is still in Texas. The guard is downstairs in the basement.”

“So the lieutenant doesn’t even know about this yet?”

“No, sir. Lane wanted to break radio silence, but I refused.”

“Wise move,” Johnson said, pulling out a Glock. He racked the slide to chamber for immediate use. “Okay, let’s go have a chat with our guest.”

Cutting across the spacious library, the two men walked past the empty dining hall, then down a long flight of stairs. The door at the bottom was sealed with BRS, and Johnson placed his hand against the glowing plate set into the wall. There was a short buzz, and the door unlocked.

Walking inside, they saw several more guards standing in a loose group around an old man tied to a metal chair. The chair was bolted to the concrete floor and the man was securely tied in place, each limb lashed to the chair with a different rope. A cloth was tied across his mouth and there was dried blood in his hair. His eyes were closed, his head bowed in sleep.

“Why didn’t you use a Taser?” Johnson asked with a scowl. “He’s useless to us dead.”

“We did,” Carter replied. “But he still managed to pull a gun. So we had to get...aggressive.”

“Tough old bird,” Johnson said in grudging admiration. “Who is he?”

“Dana Rathburg.”

Johnson scowled. “Did you search his apartment?”

“Apartment, car, garage and toolshed,” Carter said. “We found nothing.”

“Damn! Okay, wake him.”

Carter snapped his fingers and another guard crossed the basement to fill a plastic bucket full of tap water. Returning, he splashed it across Rathburg. The man awoke sputtering and coughing.

Pulling another chair in front of the prisoner, Johnson waited until the man settled down. “Hello, we’ve never meet before,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’m Torval Johnson, the owner and operator of Castle.”

Writhing in his bonds, Rathburg flinched as if being beaten with a whip.

“What’s that?” Johnson asked, cupping an ear. “If you know my real name, then I’ll have to kill you?” He smiled without any warmth. “That is sadly true. This is the end of your life. Nobody likes blackmailers.”

Breaking into a sweat, Rathburg mumbled some sort of a response through the gag.

Flicking open a knife, Johnson cut away the dirty cloth and Rathburg spent several moments spitting and clearing his throat.

“I don’t know...what you’re...talking about,” he wheezed.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe you.” Johnson sighed, closing the knife and tucking it away. “So now I’m going to ask questions about where you hid... Well, whatever it is you hid to try to blackmail Dooley.”

“Who?” Rathburg asked, blinking in confusion.

Reaching out with a hand, Johnson slapped the old man across the face. Rathburg’s head snapped to the side and blood exploded from his broken nose.

“You have two choices,” Johnson said in a friendly voice. “Tell me the truth and get a painless death. Or play stupid and we will take you apart until there’s nothing left but your bones.”

Suddenly going pale, Rathburg began trembling.

“Nothing personal,” Johnson said. “It’s just business.”

“No, please...” Rathburg whimpered. “Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Wrong answer.” Johnson held out a hand.

Stepping closer, one of the guards placed a cordless electric drill into his palm.

Tapping the button a few times to listen to the revving electric motor, Johnson then gently laid the steel drill bit against the man’s left knee. “What do you have, where is it hidden and who else have you told? The police? A friend? A lawyer?”

“In the name of God, don’t do this!”

“Damn, another wrong answer,” Johnson said, pressing the starter button.

The drill whined, the man screamed, red blood spurted and the interrogation began in earnest....

Chapter 6

Los Angeles, California

Throwing her legs off the bed, the naked woman rose and walked across the hotel room. Knowing that the man would be watching, she rolled her hips as much as possible to give him a good show.

“Well, that was fun,” she said, checking her makeup in the dresser mirror.

“I’ll say,” the man replied happily. A crumpled sheet covered his groin and his skin glistened with sweat.

Turning, the woman lit a joint and inhaled deeply, allowing the sweet smoke to fill her lungs completely before slowly exhaling.

“Ever been with a congressman before?” the man asked, putting both hands behind his head.

“No, you’re my first,” she replied, walking closer to the bed. Demurely she sat on the corner and primly crossed her legs at the ankles. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Ashtray?” the congressman asked, reaching for one on the nightstand.

She smiled. “No, nothing like that.” The woman inhaled again, exhaling the smoke through her nose this time in twin columns. “Would you stop that investigation into the strange prison breaks?”

Jerking his head around sharply, the congressman stared at the woman for a minute, his features slowly hardening.

“I should have known a gorgeous babe like you wouldn’t have anything to do with a guy like me unless it was business,” he rumbled, sitting up in the damp bed.

“Half business,” she said with a laugh, gesturing with the joint. “You are very sexy, and I do like older men with money and muscles.”

Muttering crude vulgarities under his breath, the congressman rose and padded naked to the chair in the corner. “Hope you had a good time,” he said, grabbing his pants and stepping into them. “Because we’ll never do this again.”

“Oh, but I think we will,” she replied, bending to get something from under the bed.

Straightening, she pointed a remote control at the flat-screen television on the wall and pressed a button. The screen swirled with colors and then cleared into a view of the two of them naked and having sex.

“You bitch!” the congressman roared, charging across the room and slapping the remote control out of her hands.

“That hurt,” she said in a small voice, rubbing her fingers. “Now be nice, or else this will be emailed to your constituents, political party, every major TV station, your wife, kids and oh, yes, the President of the United States.”

Breathing deeply, the congressman said nothing, his hands opening and closing into fists as if by their own accord.

Smiling demurely, she patted the bed. “Now sit down and let’s talk a little business. Okay?”

“Fine, how much do you want, whore?” the congressman growled, going back to his jacket and pulling out a checkbook.

“I don’t want any money, silly,” she said, brushing back her long blond hair. “My employer pays me more each week than you make in a year.”

His hand stopped writing. “Really?”

“Guaranteed.”

“But if this is not blackmail...” he started slowly.

“Oh, it is!” she said, tapping the ash off the end of the joint. It sprinkled onto the carpet. “Just not for money.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” the congressman said, sitting.

“Good. Now pay attention,” she said in a whip-crack tone. Every trace of the early playfulness was gone; the girlish giggle no longer present in her voice. “What I want is for you to cancel the investigation into the prison breaks.”

“I don’t have that kind of authority,” he said slowly, looking at her sideways.

“Oh, my employer thinks that you do,” she replied. “Kill the investigation and you’ll receive a lovely fat deposit into that supposedly secret bank account in the Cayman Islands, and you can have me again.”

“Tempting,” the congressman muttered. “But how do I know—”

“Oh, you don’t,” she interrupted, rising to walk closer, her full breasts swaying to the movement of her rolling hips. “But you’re trapped between greed, the fear of discovery and all of the dirty things you like to do with a woman less than half your age.”

“You asked me to do that!”

“And you did,” she whispered. “Several times. With me yelling ‘No, stop, please.’”

“I thought that was part of the game...”

“It was! But in court it’ll look like rape. A man like you in prison? The animals in general population would eat you alive.” She smiled. “Well, eventually they would.”

Sweat forming on his brow, the congressman grabbed a tissue from a box on the nightstand and blotted his face dry. “I see,” he whispered, tossing it into the wastebasket. “Fine. You win. I’ll kill the investigation.”

“Excellent!”

“Happy now?”

“Once you bring me the files.”

“What? Impossible!”

“Oh, not the originals,” she said, running her hands through his damp hair. “Just duplicates of the DOJ files. Then you get the money, freedom, everything.”

Grabbing her by the hips, the congressman pulled her closer. “Including you?”

“Yes, including me.”

Burying his face between her breasts, he slid both hands around her hips to roughly cup her buttocks. “Turn around,” he rasped deep in his throat, clutching the soft flesh.

“Whatever you want,” she purred.

Breathing heavily, the congressman advanced and soon the hotel room was filled with the sounds of their coupling. They were so loud the noise completely masked the low hum of the second video camera hidden inside the television screen dutifully recording everything....

Boston, Massachusetts

LOWERING THE CAR window, Bolan breathed in deeply, recharging his lungs like a deep-sea diver returning from the murky depths.

The air smelled clean and sweet and cold. Promising snow, just not quite yet. There were little stands alongside the road, where the local farmers sold jars of homemade apple butter, pumpkin pies, sweet corn still in the husk and apple cider that was so good you felt like it could cure anything.

Fall in New England, when the trees catch fire, Bolan thought, driving through the rolling countryside. The forests of northeast America were dazzling at this time of year, the red and gold of the trees almost making it look like they were ablaze.

It didn’t matter where Bolan roamed across the globe, home was where the heart was, and that meant New England. Especially the beautiful mountainous state of Massachusetts, where the American Revolution had started and the Red Sox were practically a religion.

Turning into the spaghetti-like maze of streets that filled Boston, Bolan shook off the reverie and headed into the section of town that had once been called The Combat Zone. Formerly a destitute area controlled by brutal pimps, now it was rejuvenated, almost reborn, into antique shops, art galleries, a movie theater for Indian and Pakistani films and several bookstores.

Easing to a stop in a handicapped spot just outside an Italian restaurant, Bolan saw a cop on the corner scowl but say nothing and deliberately turn away. The former Combat Zone was also the retirement village for certain old men of Sicilian ancestry, and the Boston police allowed certain small laws to be bent, as long as no real crimes were committed. Peacekeeping, instead of law enforcement. Bolan strongly disapproved, but found it a useful attitude this day.

Climbing out of the car, Bolan tossed the key to a waiting valet. “Wash her and park it somewhere close,” he said.

“Whatever you want, sir!” the young man replied, catching the keys. “Gas it up, too?”

“Whatever,” Bolan said, tucking a folded hundred-dollar bill into the shirt pocket of the valet. “But scratch the paint and I’ll break your knees.”

Since he obviously got this sort of idle threat ten times a day, the valet started to laugh in reply but then stopped. Then was something in the eye of this man. It was almost like looking down the barrel of a gun.

“S-sure, wh-whatever you say, sir,” the valet stammered, pulling out a pair of white cotton gloves. “I’ll have my guys detail her for free. No charge! She’ll shine like new.”

Nodding, Bolan shot the kid with a stiff finger. For this mission, the soldier was dressed in an electric-blue linen suit with woven leather sandals, and his shirt was slightly unbuttoned to show off a gold chain and Roman gladiator medallion. Designer sunglasses hide his eyes, and Bolan left them in place as he walked into the restaurant and past the pretty hostess holding an armful of garishly decorated menus.

The restaurant was mostly empty, with only a few old men here and there, spooning soup from china bowls and chewing on rolls as if it was a test of manhood. The walls were decorated with idyllic scenes of Sicilian farmers tilling the rocky landscape.

Past a long buffet table, he saw an area roped off for private dining. Sitting alone at a table for six was a middle-aged man with wings of gray at his temples.

Leo Turrin had formerly been known as Leo the Pussy, as he had run a series of high-priced brothels for the Mafia before going into retirement. No one had known he was an undercover agent for the Department of Justice. These days Turrin rode a desk at Justice, was a member of various task forces and helped Bolan from time to time. Turrin still had contacts within the Mob.

“Damn, it’s been a while, Sarge,” Turrin said, offering a hand.

“It’s good to see you again, Leo. All recovered from your last shenanigans? And how’s the wife?”

“Yeah, I healed better than ever. The wife’s prettier than ever. Milk and whiskey. Am I right, or am I right?”

Bolan knew the old saying. Some women were milk, others were whiskey. Some soured on you after only a few days, while the years made others sweeter and more wonderful.

“So what can I help you with?” Turrin asked.

Bolan told him.

“Wow, that’s quite a thing,” Turrin said, choosing a breadstick as if it was a fine imported Cuban cigar. He took a bite and chewed for a while. “I may know some people who know some people.... What you want is a crew for a job.”

“I’m going to be assuming control of an existing business,” Bolan said, lifting a steaming urn to pour himself a cup of black coffee. “The owner recently disappeared and will soon be found dead.”

“So you’re moving in before this becomes common knowledge.”

“Something like that,” Bolan said, taking a sip then placing the cup on the saucer.

“Think there’s going to be a lot of breakage?”

“Some, but I want this business intact, so I’m going to try to convince them to see the logic of accepting new management.”

“Sometimes that takes a lot of convincing. Greed makes some people very stupid.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Do I know the business?” Turrin asked.

“Ziggy Nine, of Ohio.”

“The king of crystal? Nice guy, we only met once. You sure he’s dead?”

Saying nothing, Bolan drank some more coffee.

“That sure, eh?” Turrin chuckled. “Okay, then you’re going to need some muscle, a yegg, a fine wire, a Samurai and a boomer, maybe two.”

“That’s about what I figured. Know anybody who can get them for me?”

“People with the right pedigree? Two years in Oz, five in parole, that sort of pedigree?”

“Exactly.”

“Sure. Me.”

Bolan arched an eyebrow.

“Screw you. I’m still the best grease man in North America,” Turrin snorted, pointing the breadstick. “And you damn well know it.”

With a smile, Bolan raised both hands in surrender. “I meant no disrespect.”

“Smart man.”

“These are some real cowboys I’m going up against.”

“Thrill killers?”

“Pain-in-the-ass ball busters.”

Turrin snorted a laugh. “I know the type. But no problem, I’ll smile nice, grease a few palms, break a few heads... I’ve done this a million times before with the Mob.”

“Those days are long gone.”

“But coming back strong. Haven’t you heard, this is the twenty-first century. Everything old is new again!”

“Then I’ll have to do something about that soon,” Bolan said. “But not today. This is an entirely different matter.”

“Bull. Crime is crime. Get the cash and keep your ass intact. Crime hasn’t changed since the Bow Street Runners and Sir Robert Peel.”

“You do know your history.”

“Read a book once,” Turrin stated.

“The whole way through?”

“Damn near.”

“Impressive.”

Turrin took the urn and poured a cup of coffee, adding lots of sugar and just a drop of milk. “So, who are we after?”

“No name for the person in charge yet, but I think the organization is called Castle.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Good, because it’s my job to keep it that way.”

Outside the restaurant, a tour bus rumbled by, the people inside snapping endless pictures through the closed windows.

“You mean our job,” Turrin corrected, offering a hand.

“No, just mine,” Bolan stated. “If you come along, the natural assumption would be for them to think that the Mob wants a piece of the action, and that will only muddy the waters.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Sipping at the coffee, Turrin put the cup aside. “You feeling a tad old these days, Sarge? Taking on a crew isn’t your style.”

“And if there was any other way to get this done, I wouldn’t,” Bolan said in grim honesty. “But I need a crew to be taken seriously myself.”

“Instant reputation, eh? Thought so. And you need this company intact and fully operational.”

“Yeah.”

“Because?”

Bolan told him.

“Holy shit.” Turrin exhaled. “I thought I’d heard everything, but this is new. Brand new! Goddamn, with the right people in charge Castle could—”

“Cripple law enforcement for the next fifty years?”

“At least!” Turrin added. “Okay, Mack, I’m in. These people have to be taken down hard, or this will spread like a cancer across the world.”

“I’m just worried about America at the moment.”

“America is the world,” Turrin said with a snort. “Now, whom do I tell the crew they’re working for?”

“Same name that I gave on the phone,” Bolan said with a smile. “Anthony Giancova.”

“Didn’t you use that name once before?”

“A long time ago.”

“I see.... ‘Mad’ Tony? No, too ordinary.... Tony ‘The Hammer’ Giancova. Tony Beretta?”

“Now, where am I supposed to get a pet parrot?”

“Just a thought,” Turrin said, allowing himself a half smile. “Okay, you’ll get a crew...Mr. Giancova. Logan, six o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Make it noon,” Bolan replied, rising. “We have some flying to do.”

“Not a problem. Nice seeing you again, Sarge.”

“My best to the wife, Leo,” Bolan told him, flashing a brief smile.

As the Executioner left the restaurant, Turrin pulled out a cell phone and pressed a speed dial number.

Chapter 7

Lyon, France

Anyone driving along the Quai Charles de Gaulle would have suspected nothing as they passed the long array of office complexes.

Each of the boxy buildings was artistically different, the assigned architect had needed to earn his fee, but they were also all painfully similar, large chrome-and-glass boxes with flat roofs. Each had a spacious parking lot edged with tasteful greenery; many had a statue or a small water fountain directly in front of the front doors. Even the main entrances were the same: two double doors with an oversize rotating door in the middle for easy access for handicapped personnel.

Of course, that was all just on the outside.

One of the big chrome boxes was edged with counter-surveillance devices buried in the ground and had a United Nations telecommunications satellite anchored directly overhead, locked in a geosynchronous orbit. Several of the parked cars were fakes, emergency exits in case of trouble, and one van opened onto an elevator shaft that lead directly to a bomb shelter buried deep enough under lead-lined ferroconcrete to withstand a direct nuclear blast.

Not a large bomb, of course, nothing thermonuclear. But a simple slap-and-thunder atomic bomb in the range of a quarter kiloton would not harm the people safely hunkered deep down in the dark bowels of Mother Earth.

Every window was triple thick, with a vacuum between each panel to prevent a maser or directional microphone from overhearing a conversation. The glass was also 10 mm Lexan military-grade plastic tough enough to stop a .50 armor-piercing bullet. There were three Ashanti heliports on the roof, a hidden 20 mm gun emplacement and the air-vent fans were fakes. All air was pulled in through vents hidden in the trees. The roof entrance was made of reinforced concrete and equipped with both a Biometric Refusal System and a purely mechanical lock in case there was a power failure.

Inside the plain, almost dull, building were three colossal supercomputers, two of them assigned to permanently service the internet. Almost a thousand civilian personnel handled assorted paperwork. Mixed in among the rows of corporate headquarters and office complexes was the headquarters for Interpol, the world’s supreme law-enforcement agency.

Standing alone in a small cool room, a young woman chewed on a well-used pencil and scowled unhappily at a huge whiteboard spanning the wall. Filled with a Vector diagram of the United States of America, almost every inch of the whiteboard was covered with scribbled notations and sticky notes, many of them circled and attached to each other by a complex web of colored lines.

“Namaste, Agent Chandra,” a man called out as he entered the room without knocking. “Sorry, I am late. There’s something odd happening in Australia.”

He was a broad, handsome man, his skin tone and close-cropped hair telling of a strong African heritage. He spoke flawless French, and his impeccable two-piece suit had come directly from downtown Paris, as had the compact 9 mm FN pistol tucked into a holster at the small of his back.

“Sorry to hear that, Mr. Dumas,” Special Agent Suzette Chandra replied, advancing closer to the board. “I hope she feels better soon....”

“You didn’t hear a damn word I just said, did you?” asked Henri Dumas, the Supreme Director of Interpol.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Chandra replied without turning. “Mr. Dumas, there is something odd happening in America.”

“Is it their President?” Dumas asked.

“President?” Chandra almost smiled. “No, nothing with him. But look here...” She pointed with the chewed pencil. “And over here. These numbers are off the scale!”

“Yes, I see,” Dumas said, taking a chair. “Could these be simple statistical anomalies?”

“What? Impossible, sir,” Chandra stated. “Everything here has been confirmed and verified.”

“Fair enough. Which yields what as a conclusion?”

“There have been an extraordinary number of deaths in their prisons, nearly three times the usual amount. Three times!”

“Deaths or escapes?” Dumas asked, studying the board. “Even our own Devil’s Island let a few slip away. Nothing is perfect.”

“Agreed,” she said, handing him a sheaf of papers. “What man can build, man can destroy. But it is the timing of these escapes that I do not like.”

Studying the most secret documents for a few minutes, Dumas began to openly frown. “And all of this has been confirmed, you said?”

“Absolutely, sir! Within twenty-four hours of their arrival at a maximum-security facility, major criminals have abruptly died under a wide variety of truly bizarre circumstances.”

“Incredible! Have you contacted their Ministry—I mean, their prison board?”

“Along with the Department of Justice. The Board of Prisons refused to admit, or deny, that anything untoward had happened, and someone from the DOJ named Brognola promised that the matter was under consideration.”

Dumas snorted. “That’s American for ‘it’s out of control, but we have a plan in operation.’”

“Agreed, sir,” Chandra said, an eager note creeping into her voice. “I was wondering if we should send a few agents over, covertly of course, to offer some assistance.”

“And to try to impress the Secretary General of the United Nations?”

“Two birds have sometimes been killed with a single stone, yes, sir.”

Taking in a deep breath, Dumas let it out slowly. “No, let the Americans handle this as a purely internal matter. But if any similar events occur outside their national boundaries...”

She gave a curt nod. “Absolutely! I’ll have a team prepared and ready to go in a moment’s notice.”

“Good job. Well done. I want detailed reports every day.”

“Yes, sir!”

After the director left, Chandra waited a few minutes before going to the washroom and then exiting via the side elevator.

Walking to her car, a small green Citroën, she drove down to the coast and bought a cell phone at a gas station. Getting back on the highway, Chandra drove into the mountains and parked in a secluded rest stop to tap in a memorized number.

“He gave oversight to me,” she said. “There will be no interference from us.”

“Good to know,” Hal Brognola said. “My friend was afraid there might be some of your people on the job.”

“No. We’re clear.”

“Excellent! I owe you one.”

“No, I still owe you six,” Chandra replied with a sigh. “But at least the ledger is starting to lean back in my favor.”

“Fair enough,” Brognola replied. “But any time you need something from me, just ask.”

“Go away, you crazy American,” she said. “I’m trying to be an honest cop.”

“Me, too. It’s a real bitch sometimes.”

“Preaching to the choir.” Chandra sighed, turning off the phone. Deleting the number for that call, she then dialed a number for the German soccer score, deleted that, also, and tossed the phone out the window.

It gracefully sailed over the cliff, tumbling and turning in the strong winds as if trying to fly, then crashed onto a jagged boulder, shattering into a thousand untraceable pieces.

Boston, Massachusetts

EARLY THE NEXT day, Bolan drove to an isolated section of the airport reserved for private planes. As he parked his vehicle, a 777 thundered upward from the airfield, the hot wash blowing across the macadam like a tortured summer breeze.

Before he turned off the car, a jumbo jet came screaming in for a landing, the array of wheels squealing loudly on touchdown.

Turning off the engine, Bolan glanced across the boisterous airport as he got out, watching the planes land and take off in a carefully orchestrated ballet of steel. He liked airports. Nobody could overhear a private conversation.

“Hypnotic, isn’t it?” said a familiar voice.

Turning, Bolan nodded at the lanky man leaning against the side of the private hangar.

Jack Grimaldi was an old friend, and one of the best pilots alive. These days, Grimaldi worked for Stony Man Farm. However, Hal Brognola was in charge of that, and Grimaldi had been more than willing to assist Bolan in any way possible.

“Glad you could make it,” Bolan said, coming closer.

“We aim to please. You know I’d make myself available to fly you straight into hell, if need be.”

“Bet you could get us out again, too.”

“Of course! Just go to the waterfall on the fifth level and ask the demon Geryon for a ride. Nothing to it, Sarge.”

Just then, an old 707 landed at the far end of the airport, while an Airbus took off nearby with a deafening scream of turbojets. The wash sent a roiling cloud of dust over the men, and they had to turn away to protect their eyes.

“Okay, I know this was short notice,” Bolan said, “but what were you able to get as transport?”

“Come see,” Grimaldi said, pulling out something that resembled an ordinary garage door opener.

He pressed the button on top and the massive doors of the hangar slowly rumbled apart to reveal a Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport.

Side by side, the two men walked into the hanger.

“Couldn’t find anything bigger?” Bolan asked in a mocking tone.

Grimaldi snorted rudely. “Not on this planet.”

The C-130 Hercules was a colossal airplane with enough power to airlift an Abrams tank full of lead safes, but Bolan had decided upon something a little less noticeable for the peaceful streets of Columbus, Ohio.

“Gonna be just like old times,” Grimaldi said, affectionately patting the smooth fuselage of the huge airship.

“Sure as hell hope not,” Bolan muttered. “Be nice to leave a drop zone without lead in my ass for once.”

“Complain, complain.”

Bolan glanced around for any cargo pallets or shipping trunks. Normally the TSA would check every trunk, even those going onto private planes inside private hangars. Brognola had helped out there.

“Did the supplies arrive?”

“Less than an hour ago. You’re scheduling this pretty tight.”

“Have to. TSA gets better all the time.”

“However, we now have enough munitions to storm Iran.”

“I expect some resistance,” Bolan said, pulling open the side hatch. Inside the plane were numerous plastic crates, all neatly sorted and securely lashed to the floor by heavy canvas straps. “However, this is not a blitz. We’re going in to stay and take over. I need the factory intact and operational.”

“Which explains all of the rubber bullets and stun grenades. Still, a gunfight in a meth lab,” Grimaldi drawled, tilting back his cap. “One stray bullet into the wrong vat and we land somewhere in the hills of Kentucky as a fine red rain.”

Bolan grunted in reply. Unfortunately, what the man said was absolutely correct. Meth labs were a devilish combination of high-explosive chemicals, fire, poison gas and idiots. They exploded on a regular basis across the country, or worse, leaked a form of crude phosphine gas that dissolved the lungs of anybody who got a whiff. It was a very bad way to die.

The basic ingredients were easy enough to get: cold medicine, coffee filters, road flares and such. But one wrong move in mixing them, one slip, one dropped beaker, and everybody in the lab died in agony coughing out bloody chunks of their dissolving lungs. Not even regular gas masks would protect them. The cooks needed military gas masks, which were incredibly expensive and carried a stiff sentence just having them in your possession. The only reason anybody made meth was for the enormous profit.

Ignoring the even larger debt of human misery, Bolan added privately.

After Castle was destroyed, he would call the DEA and have the Ohio factory dismantled brick by brick. But first he had to seize control of the powder keg without blowing it up.

A dark green bus stopped in front of the hangar, the air brakes hissing loudly.

Sounding the horn, Leo Turrin waved from behind the steering wheel. “Morning!” he called, turning off the rumbling diesel engine.

As it died, the doors of the vehicle opened and the passengers climbed out. Bolan counted four men and two women. All were dressed in casual clothing and carrying military python bags.

Each also carried what Bolan sometimes called the Mark of the Beast—a defiant attitude mixed with a sort of dogged world-weariness. These people were professional criminals, sure enough. He only hoped they were good.

“Who’s in charge?” asked a handsome Latino, his smile flashing like lightning across the night sky. He had a neatly trimmed black mustache, a long scar on the side of his neck and a huge revolver tucked into his Garrison belt.

“I’m Giancova,” Bolan said, walking closer. “Anthony Giancova.”

“Hector Gonzales,” the man said, jerking up his chin in greeting.

“What are you good at, Hector?” Bolan asked.

“Cracking safes,” Gonzales replied, flashing his smile again.

“Hector could teach Houdini some new tricks,” Turrin added, setting small suitcase onto the pavement. “Best fingers in the business.”

“Funny, I thought you couldn’t come?” Bolan said in a disapproving tone.

“My crew, my rules,” Turrin stated, looking back steadily.

Mentally debating the matter, Bolan finally nodded in agreement. If Turrin was determined to come along in spite of suffering a serious injury last time he was in the field, then he could always help Grimaldi guard the plane while the rest of them stormed Belvedere Fertilizer.

“Call me Glenn,” a big man said. “T. J. Glenn. I’m the chef.” He was tall and lanky, resembling a professional athlete, with his long hair tied off in a ponytail.

Turrin jerked a thumb in his direction. “Never seen anybody who cooks books better than T.J.”

“Thought you were a lumberjack.” Gonzales chuckled.

Glenn glowered at the other man. “I thought you were a leprechaun.”

The two men sneered at each other and Bolan guessed they’d soon become close friends or kill each other.

“Rhan Cosentini,” a bald man rumbled without preamble. “I kill people.” He was the only person carrying two python bags, the contents of one jutting out at strange angles.

From the shape, Bolan took an educated guess that the bag held an M134 electric minigun, shoulder frame and battery pack.

A modified Gatling gun, the six rotating barrels of the M134 threw out eight thousand rounds per minute. Anchored in a steel frame, the 7.62 mm version was used to defend fortifications such as the Pentagon, NORAD and the White House. Unfortunately, the monstrous recoil was impossible for any soldier to control in the portable version, despite what Hollywood showed in the movies.

However, the 5.56 mm version was controllable, although even at the slower rate of fire of three thousand rounds per minute, any portable ammunition pack was quickly depleted. But for a few thundering seconds, any enemy facing the M134 thought the gates of hell itself had opened wide just for them.

“I’m Becca Weinberg,” the tall brunette said. “Best not to get me confused with Bekki.”

“Bekki Kolawski,” the short blond woman added in a defiant tone.

“Becca and Bekki?” Bolan asked, a touch of a smile on his lips. “Which of you is the Samurai?”

“Me,” Kolawski said, running stiff fingers through her long golden hair.

Without expression, Weinberg spread her leather duster open wide to show the double shoulder holster underneath carrying a brace of Uzi machine pistols. “I’m the cleaning lady,” she said in a monotone.

“Any good?” Grimaldi asked curiously.

She started to shrug and suddenly Grimaldi was looking down the barrel of her Uzi.

“Wow.” Grimaldi laughed. “Okay, you’re fast.”

“None better,” Weinberg stated, resting the stubby weapon on a shoulder. Then she saw Bolan was aiming a Beretta and a Desert Eagle at her. “Now, how the hell did you... When...” She gave a short chuckle. “Done some wet work yourself, I see.”

“A little,” Bolan said, tucking away the weapons. That was when he noticed that Cosentini was cradling a sawed-off shotgun in his hands, both barrels pointed directly at Weinberg.

“Now, everybody just calm down,” Turrin said, walking boldly between them. “We’re all badasses, meaner than snake piss. There’s no need to try to impress the boss. I’ve already told Mr. Giancova everything about each of you, and you got the jobs.”

“A thousand a day, plus expenses,” Gonzales stated, holstering his .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. “That’s all I care about.”

“In cash, if you want it that way,” Bolan added.

“Cash works for me,” Glenn rumbled.

Silent, the last man stood leaning against the green bus, his thick arms crossed. There were crude prison tattoos on his neck and wrists, and a long scar on his jaw where somebody had obviously once tried to cut his throat but failed.

Bolan looked at him expectantly.

“John Hogan,” he said in a deep voice. There was just a faint trace of an Australian accent, as if the man had worked very hard to remove it and nearly succeeded.

“Giancova.”

Hogan asked, “We really going to take over Ziggy Nine’s operation?”

“If possible. What’s your specialty?” Bolan asked.

“High explosives. I can blow the feathers off a chicken and not crack the egg inside.”

That would come in handy. Bolan expected a lot of resistance gaining control of the hidden meth lab.

“Funny, in the bus you claimed to be some kind of a martial artist,” Weinberg said with a scowl.

Hogan shrugged. “Used to be a Bushmaster in the Australian Army, so I know Double H.” He frowned. “I also know a good thing when I hear it.” Without another word, he jerked both arms forward and something dark inside his sleeves began loudly spitting flames.

With a strangled cry, Kolawski fell back with a piece of her forehead gone, a spray of brains and blood splattering across the fuselage of the Hercules. Spinning, gushing blood, Turrin hit the ground hard and did not move.

As everybody else clawed for a weapon, Bolan dived to the side and opened fire with the Beretta. But Hogan was already behind the bus, his trick guns firing at the hard pavement.

Dropping to a crouch, Glenn swung up Weinberg’s laptop just in time and the ricocheting slugs flattened on the Lexan housing of the military laptop. Cosentini unleashed both barrels of his sawed off, the double charge rocking the bus so hard that the springs squealed.

Switching to three-round-burst mode, Bolan racked the entire length of the bus with 9 mm rounds from the Beretta. Holes appeared along the chassis and several windows shattered, covering Hogan in broken glass.

Cursing, Hogan disappeared fully behind the bus and a pair of tubular machine pistols hit the pavement to skitter away.

As a descending 757 roared overhead, Hogan reappeared cradling a weird-looking machine gun, the compact weapon chattering steadily.

Blowing a tire on the bus with his Desert Eagle, Bolan saw the chassis hit Hogan, throwing off his aim. The stream of bullets hit only sky until he got the weapon back under control.

Bolan wanted the traitorous bastard alive for questioning, but he recognized the new weapon as a Chang Feng, a dual-feed 5.8 mm machine pistol. The range was poor, but it threw out a wall of lead, and at this range it was more than good enough to cut down everybody.

Taking cover behind their python bags, Glenn and Gonzales returned fire with handguns, while Bolan rolled across the pavement, firing the Beretta nonstop. The barrage of 9 mm rounds stitched a crazy pattern of holes into the bus. Gasoline gushed from a ruptured fuel line, sparks flew and a fire started. Then Hogan cursed as his ankle erupted into bones and blood from the arrival of a 9 mm Parabellum round.

The prolonged chatter of an M16 came from the direction of the Hercules.

Slapping in a fresh magazine, Bolan saw Grimaldi firing the military assault rifle through the tiny sideview window of the cockpit of the colossal airplane. The angle was wrong, but the noise had driven Hogan down for cover, which was all Bolan needed.

Rising from behind the stacks of supplies, Weinberg sprayed the bus with both of her Uzi machine pistols. The double discharge was continuous, the arching spray of spent shells flying high and wide. The bullets tore pieces off the bus, shattering windows and the sideview mirror and exploding two more tires, and then steam loudly hissed from the puncture radiator.

Charging directly at the explosion of green steam, Bolan used it as cover to get close to the bus, and then he broke away and dived past the vehicle with both weapons blazing. Caught in the act of reloading, Hogan was startled at the appearance of Bolan; the 9 mm Parabellum rounds drilled into his torso.

Staggering blindly, Hogan tried to fire back and Bolan shot once more, the booming .50 round from the Desert Eagle blowing open the back of his target’s head. Twitching horribly, Hogan slumped to the pavement and went still.

“Son of a bitch!” growled Cosentini, appearing out of the smoke and steam. He aimed the sawed off, then stopped and sauntered away slowly. “He’s dead!”

“Good,” Glenn said, glancing around. “Anybody hurt?”

“The blonde, Becca, is dead,” Gonzales said, making the sign of the cross.

“She’s Bekki,” Weinberg said, slapping a fresh magazine into one of her smoking weapons. “Think Ziggy sent him as a warning?”

“Ziggy is out of the picture. Hogan was alone, just trying to cut us out of the deal for himself,” Bolan said, checking the pockets of the dead man. He had no wallet, no keys, not even a cell phone. Just a Swiss army knife, cash and spare magazines.

“If the word is on the street that the lab is in play,” Cosentini growled, “we’re going to have to move fast to secure it before others do.”

“We’re also going to need a new hacker,” Bolan said, slowly standing.

“I can do it,” Glenn stated as a shadow passed over the group from a descending airplane.

Bolan scowled. “You sure?”

“Unless we need to hack into the NSA mainframe, I can do the job,” Glenn stated confidently. “Never knew a meth addict who had more brains than a high school freshman.”

“Hey, Leo got hit!” Grimaldi called from the other side of the burning bus.

Quickly rushing over, Bolan saw that Turrin’s pants were soaked with blood and his silk shirt had been torn to shreds, but underneath was molded body armor with several flat gray lumps across the front.

“You had me worried there for a minute,” Bolan muttered, feeling the tension flowing from his shoulders.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Turrin quipped.

“Watch him, I’ll get a med kit,” Grimaldi said, breaking into a sprint toward the Hercules.

“Only got hit in the arm,” Turrin panted. “Had much worse last time out...”

“Quit talking,” Bolan ordered, yanking off his belt to use as a tourniquet.

Obviously thinking along the same lines, Gonzales gingerly pressed a clean white handkerchief to the wound. Turrin inhaled sharply at the painful contact, but the blood flow noticeably slowed.

“The bullet went through clean,” Gonzales said, tying off the cloth in a field dressing. “Only hit the flesh.”

“Glad to hear it.” Kneeling in the blood, Bolan started to cinch the belt into place. “This could have been your brains splattered across the pavement, Leo.”

“Never had...many to...begin with.” Turrin laughed, but it turned into a ragged cough.

“He needs a hospital,” Glenn said, towering above them.

Whipping out a cell phone, Weinberg tapped in a number. “Hello, police?” she asked in a terrified voice. “There’s some sort of a gang war or something going on at hangar nineteen at Logan. Yes, bodies are everywhere! There’s explosions and gunfire...Some sort of machine guns...How should I know?...Oh, Christ, they’re here, they found me! No, God, please...!” Screaming loudly, she cut the connection.

“Airport security will be here in five minutes, maybe less,” Weinberg stated calmly, holstering the piece, “with Boston PD right on their ass.”

In the distance a siren began to howl. In perfect harmony, the four big turbo engines of the Hercules surged into operation, the propellers spinning into roaring blurs.

“Time to go,” Bolan said, walking into the hangar.

Chapter 8

Saddle Brook, New Jersey

Parking the stolen sheriff’s car at the curb, Johnson got out and walked toward a small cottage. The man was wearing dark sunglasses and a nylon police windbreaker. It was a tight fit, but had been the only item of the clothing from the dead deputy that Johnson could squeeze into. With his size, disguises were almost impossible. But he’d deemed it wise to try anyway.

The cottage with the correct address was situated in the middle of the block. It was a single-story unit with aluminum siding, wooden window boxes and an old chimney that was starting to come away from the wall.

Reaching the front door, Johnson pulled open the screen door, taped a bright red eviction notice on the door then loudly knocked. There was no reply.

Alberta Drive was a quiet street in a rustic neighborhood in a small town. The streets were lined with old trees, many of them equipped with tiny birdhouses or tire swings. All of the dark green lawns were neatly edged, the white picket fences freshly painted. There were no rusty old junk cars being repaired in the driveways, windows patched with duct tape or abandoned toilet seats in the yards.

This was true suburbia, quiet and clean, almost to the point of boredom. Neatly trimmed hedges and low brick walls separated each property. Automatic water sprinklers swept back and forth, creating brief rainbows. A dog barked in the distance and somewhere kids laughed.

Impatiently, Johnson knocked again.

This time there came the sound of footsteps.

“Yeah, who is it?” asked a woman.

“Death,” Johnson said, firing his twin 10 mm Magnum pistols.

The attached sound suppressors reduced the noise of the blasts to a low cough, but large black holes appeared in the wooden door and somebody inside the cottage gasped in pain.

The rear doors of several delivery vans parked along the street suddenly slammed open and out came swarms of men wearing ski masks and carrying construction equipment.

Converging on the cottage, they used pneumatic nail guns to secure a thick sheet of plywood across the front door. Then they knocked off the window boxes and also closed off those.

Removing the sound suppressors, Johnson studied the neighboring homes for any reactions as his people continued to seal off every possible exit from the cottage. So far there had been nothing, the muffled sound of the Glocks firing probably mistaken for the noise of the pneumatic hammers, which had been the general idea. Anybody looking would see the sheriff’s car and men boarding up windows. The natural assumption would be that their neighbor was being evicted for failing to make the mortgage payments. Very sad, but not their concern.

Cradling an empty air hammer, a short man with a beard approached. “The target is secure, sir,” Dooley reported crisply. “Somebody tried to get out of the basement, but we drove them back inside using the nail guns.”

“Very good,” Johnson said. “Okay, burn it.”

Returning to the delivery vans, the team of men soon returned carrying industrial flamethrowers. Surrounding the cottage, they began liberally spraying it with liquid napalm. The unit was completely engulfed in writhing flames within only a few moments.

Screams came from inside the burning cottage, then the shattering of a glass window, followed by a desperate pounding.

“Idiot news reporter,” Johnson growled, his voice thick with hatred. “She never should have trusted prison guards to keep their mouths shut.”

“To be fair, sir,” Dooley said, “everybody talks after being tortured.”

“I suppose.”

By now, wild screams were coming from inside the cottage, the flames rising high into the sky.

Suddenly they heard the wail of an approaching police car. Swarming into the street, the men with the flamethrowers cut loose and the squad car drove directly into the crisscrossing streams of fire. With the vehicle drenched in sticky napalm, the police officer behind the wheel blindly steered the car around until crashing into an oak tree. Every window loudly shattered as a maelstrom of leaves sprinkled down from the vibrating branches. Inside the car, the police officer began noisily shrieking.

“Lieutenant, please shoot that man,” Johnson said, adjusting his sunglasses. “He’s done nothing to warrant such a death.”

“Unlike the asshole inside the cottage.”

“Exactly.”

Strolling over to the burning wreck, Dooley pulled out a 10 mm Heckler & Koch pistol and fired three fast rounds through the flames. The screaming stopped.

“The local PD will come again, and soon,” Dooley said, walking back. “This time in force. A hundred people must be calling in the fire by now.”

“Not within a three-block radius,” Johnson stated, patting the softly vibrating Humbug inside his jacket pocket. “And if somebody does arrive, well, too bad for them.”

Calmly watching the cottage being consumed by the flames, the men listened to the screams from inside get steadily weaker. Then the chimney broke away and crashed into the driveway. With the wall ripped open, Johnson could see directly into the cottage. The interior was an inferno, but through the flames and smoke he could still vaguely see a horribly charred human corpse splayed on the living room floor.

“Okay, we’re done,” Johnson said. “You there! Did the film crew get everything?”

“Flames are a little hard to record clearly, sir,” said a woman holding a digital video camera. “But yes, I got it all.”

“Then start sending out copies to every website you can,” Johnson directed, heading back to the sheriff’s car. “Flood the internet! I want everybody in the world to see what happens when somebody tries to cross us.”

“Should I use our standard encryption, sir?”

“No, send it undoctored from a ghost modem,” Johnson said, awkwardly getting back into the idling vehicle. Then he leaned out the window. “And make sure that the file is signed—”

“Never cross Castle,” she interrupted. “Yes, sir, no problem.”

“Good girl,” Johnson said, shifting into gear and casually driving away.

Corning, New York

THE FOUR POWERFUL engines filled the Lockheed C-130 Hercules with a low hum. A normal conversation was possible, but the noise permeated everything with a feeling of compressed excitement.

The hurried departure from Logan Airport had been a split-second race to avoid being blocked by the speeding vehicles of the TSA. Contrary to what was often showed in the movies, a taxiing plane was quite vulnerable and relatively easy to stop. But apparently not with Jack Grimaldi at the controls.

Broadcasting a recorded warning on every radio channel—civilian, commercial, police and military—Grimaldi sent the colossal Hercules skimming across the tarmac, cutting sideways through the array of landing strips. Several takeoffs and landings had to be quickly aborted, but the Hercules easily avoided the TSA and got airborne without undue troubles.

Standing at a window, Bolan had watched through a U.S. Army monocular as an ambulance arrived for Leo Turrin, closely followed by a phalanx of police cars. “He’s safe!”

“Good to know!” Immediately taking refuge in the clouds, Grimaldi jammed the commercial radar. Less than an hour later a pair of USAF F-16 fighter jets streaked by dangerously close...and then were gone.

“And...the radar is...clear,” Bolan reported, straightening from the glowing screen. “That was some exit, Jack. You can make me believe in miracles.”

Lounging behind the steering yoke as if he did not have a care in the world, Grimaldi arched an eyebrow. “Don’t lose faith in me now, Sarge.”

Bolan grinned. “Okay, better change our transponder ID,” he directed, turning off any unnecessary electronic equipment to reduce their EM signature. “Then alter the black-box code, ILS and lay in a false flight plan to someplace far away. Toronto, maybe, or Miami.”

Keeping one hand on the steering yoke, Grimaldi ran a finger behind his ear and displayed it to his friend.

Check. Not wet behind the ears. Taking the not-so-gentle hint, Bolan rose from the copilot seat to leave his old friend alone to work his particular brand of avionic magic. Logic said it was impossible, but Bolan firmly believed that if lives were at stake, somehow Grimaldi could fly a plane through a monsoon without getting hit by a single droplet of water. The man wasn’t just good, he was the best alive.

Tucking his sunglasses into a wall cabinet, Bolan got out his monocular and paused at a starboard window to study the landscape below. There were gentle rolling hills, small towns, the occasional nuclear reactor and broad vistas of lush farmland neatly laid out in orderly rows. Then, abruptly, mountains; just towering, rugged mountains of upstate New York.

Hanging the monocular on a wall hook, Bolan opened the door and left the flight deck. A short flight of aluminum stairs led down to the cargo deck. Two of the new crew were busy unpacking weapons from the plastic trunks anchored to the vibrating deck. The rest were gathered around Glenn, who was typing steadily on Kolawski’s battered laptop.

Filling the rear of the cargo deck was a large mound covered with a sheet of canvas and securely strapped into place with a web of thick nylon straps.

“That laptop really is bulletproof?” Weinberg asked incredulously.

“Bet your shapely ass,” Glenn said as the screen suddenly scrolled. “Yes! I’m in!” he announced. “Her firewall was good, but I’m better.”

“Told ya,” Gonzales said with a smile, holding out a hand.

“Beginner’s luck,” Weinberg muttered, slapping a fifty into his open palm.

“We’re clear,” Bolan announced, jumping down the last couple of steps. “There’s no pursuit.”

“Cool,” Cosentini said, working the arming bolt of a brand-new Kalashnikov Model 101 assault rifle. “This feels different from my old AK-47. Better balance.”

“The barrel of a 101 is heavier,” Bolan explained, “to help prevent ride-up. Ejector port is wider, too, so there is less jamming.”

“Any homogenized oil around?”

“Nylon bushings. There’s no need to constantly oil the works.”

“Nice. Any shells for the 30 mm grenade launcher?”

“In the red trunk with the black stripe. Standard color coding. There’s a chart inside, if you need it.”

“Not since I was twelve,” Cosentini said, hefting the Russian assault rifle. “Damn fine balance. Are these part of our pay?”

“No. But keep one if you want.”

“Why only these weapons?” Glenn asked, slinging the laptop across his chest.

“Standard operating procedure,” Bolan said. “If one of us falls, another can use their magazines to keep fighting. If we all have different weapons, we’re screwed.”

“Grisly.”

“No, necessary.”

“But we can keep our own sidearms?”

“Those are purely a matter of personal choice.” Bolan would have preferred a more militaristic approach to the strike, but the man knew that he could bend these people only so far. After all, they were mercenaries, not combat-trained soldiers.

Patting the sawed-off Remington holstered at his side, Cosentini smiled. “Good.”

“Very nice weapon for a raid,” Weinberg stated, accepting one of the assault rifles and dropping the magazine to look inside.

“Red are tracers, black are armor piercing, blue are rubber.”

“Rubber bullets?”

“We want some their people alive, especially the lab technicians,” Bolan stated. “Ziggy made the best crystal meth, pure crystals. The business is worthless without his cooks.”

“What’s under the tarp?” Gonzales asked, trying to see underneath. However, the canvas straps were too tight for him to budge the protective tarpaulin more than an inch.

“A little something to get us inside the factory,” Bolan said. “We are the proud new owners of a Canadian Armed Forces Grizzly class transport.”

As the other gathered around, Bolan pulled out an advertising insert and spread it across the top of a trunk full of grenades.

The Grizzly was a squat, angular, machine with a sloped prow and slat armor on the side. There were four rear tires, and two up front, almost a yard away from the others.

“For better turning?” Weinberg asked.

Bolan nodded. “She’s as nimble as a figure skater.”

“Two hundred and fifteen horsepower,” Glenn read from the upside-down glossy. “With twin propellers in the rear.... She’s amphibious?”

“Based on the LAV-25 Piranha.”

Cosentini grinned. “Excellent!”

“This will go through their defenses like crap through a goose.” Weinberg chuckled, running a hand across the plastic sheet. “Any weak spots?”

“Just one. It floats,” Bolan said, “but a duck would win any race.”

“Check. Stay on land. But crashing through those fountains is no problem?”

“Piece of cake.”

Squinting at the glossy picture, Cosentini poked a Vector diagram of the machine with a finger. “I don’t see any weapon mounts.”

“There are none,” Bolan admitted. “But this version of the Grizzly has enough slat armor to stop anything short of an ATM.”

“They’re going to throw a cash machine at us?” Glenn asked, clearly confused.

“Antitank missile,” Weinberg said. “Just concentrate on the typing and we’ll do the heavy lifting, stud.”

“Try writing C+ code sometimes, girl genius,” Glenn said. “Then we’ll see who’s who.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Look, if you two want to be alone,” Cosentini interrupted, “nobody’s using the closet under the stairs—”

“Next to the washroom?” Weinberg snapped, her face flushing. “Besides, why would we want to be alone?”

“The man’s crazy,” Glenn muttered, stuffing both hands into his pockets. “Mondo loco!”

“Please, never try to speak Spanish again,” Gonzales asked, pressing fingertips to his forehead. “You’re giving me a migraine.”

“Yes, this is all very interesting,” Cosentini drawled, clearly bored. “But I’d rather discuss the battle plans.”

Going to a honeycomb set into the wall below the stairs, Bolan choose a roll and walked back to spread the map across the top of an ammunition trunk.

He had let them talk freely to try to clear the air, let them get to know one another better. They were supposedly professionals and needed to merge into a team quickly. However, it didn’t seem to be working. They were four incredibly stubborn individualists, each positive that only he or she was in the right. With luck, they’d start working together when the lead began flying. If not, this whole mission was going to become a bloodbath.

“Okay, we land in this fallow field just outside town,” Bolan said, smoothing out the paper with his hands. “We cut cross-country in the Grizzly until reaching the beltway here.” He circled the area with a yellow highlighter. “The factory is just across the river. Parking is over here, helipad here, loading dock here.”

Turning, Glenn smiled at the canvas lump filling the rear of the airplane. “This is why you got an amphibious transport.”

Bolan nodded. “Exactly. The river is their blind spot. We avoid everything dangerous by ramming them in the ass.”

“Unfortunately, the river is also when we’re at the most vulnerable,” Weinberg stated. “If we’re spotted and they have a LAW rocket launcher or a Carl Gustav...”

“Spam in a can,” Cosentini said with a scowl.

Bolan shrugged. “Every plan has risks,” he stated. “Once back on dry land, we cut directly through the decorative hedges and charge the front gate. If the timing is right, everybody outside the factory will be a viable target. Kill on sight.”

“Any reserve troops?” Gonzales asked, tugging on his mustache.

“None.”

“Stupid.”

“Overconfident,” Bolan said, circling the revolving doors. “The day shift ends precisely at five, the night shift comes in at six and they start cooking again a few minutes after that.” He looked up at the others. “Come the dawn, they switch. Aside from those two hours, the factory cooks meth nonstop.”

“So we hit the place at 5:30 p.m.,” Glenn said slowly, “and catch ’em with their pants down.”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“A thirty-minute window,” Weinberg said, chewing a lip. “This is going to be tight. A few minutes either way and we’re screwed.”

“It’s a gamble,” Bolan said honestly. “But worth the risk to take the place intact. I’m not paying you to knock over a fruit cart.”

“Easy, chief. We can get the job done,” Gonzales said confidently.

“Let’s hope so,” Bolan replied gruffly.

“What normally happens during that hour?” Cosentini asked.

“Lab maintenance,” Bolan said, touching the map in several locations with the highlighter. “Glassware has to be washed and filters replaced, or else the cooks would die from the fumes. Or even worse....”

“Worse? What could possibly be worse than death?” Weinberg asked with a scowl, then smiled. “Ah, worse would be the excess exhaust fumes triggering the atmospheric sensors of the DEA!”

“Ammonia is a bitch to control,” Bolan agreed. “Everything goes into the sewage system, along with the day’s accumulation of waste from the public washrooms.”

“Damn, that’s a lot of ammonia to mask...” Gonzales said skeptically.

“Ziggy regularly purchases a couple of tankers full of waste from a local septic-system cleaning company to mix in with that from the factory employees.”

“Clever man.”

Staying in character, Bolan grinned widely. “He used to be.”

“So sneaking in through the sewer line is not an option?” Cosentini asked.

“There are iron grates every ten feet, along with spinning blades to mix the run-off wash with the waste,” Bolan replied. “It would be like trying to swim through a wood chipper.”

“Pass!”

“How accurate are these?” Gonzales asked.

“Very. I was there only a few days ago. These were made from the digital pictures I took.”

“You just strolled in and started taking a few?”

“Oh, they objected,” Bolan said, trying to sound like he was bragging. “But not very strenuously.”

Weinberg punched the man on the arm. “That took real balls,” she said, grinning. “These fences hot?”

“Yes, with razor wire on top.”

“Dogs?”

“No. But guards here, here, here and here.”

“Piece of cake,” Weinberg told him. “Although it would be even easier if we could fly over the factory and drop the Grizzly on them.”

“Tempting, but no.”

“Pity.”

“With Mr. Turrin, Kolawski and Hogan gone,” Cosentini said slowly, “we’re already down three people. Any chance we could hire some local muscle to help?”

“Not a chance,” Bolan stated as the Hercules tilted slightly. “Everybody in this section of the state works for Ziggy.”

“And there’s no time to find people out of state,” Weinberg muttered, scratching under her holster. “Okay, then, we go at dusk.”

Pulling an old-fashioned pocket watch out of his pants, Glenn pressed the stud on top and the lid snapped open. “That will be in three hours,” he said, closing it again. “Adjusting for our current speed and headwind.”

“Just enough time for food and a quick nap,” Cosentini said.

“After which we prep the Grizzly,” Bolan countered, pulling out a buck knife. Walking toward the canvas lump, he snapped out the blade and started cutting a hole in the resilient sheet.

Chapter 9

Columbus, Ohio

Pausing in the lee of the hedge maze, a pair of uniformed guards shouldered their assault rifles to light a joint, and dragged the sweet, dark smoke deep into their lungs.

“Ah... That’s the stuff, Cletus,” the guard said after a long exhale. “Not like the shit they cook in the lab.”

“Weed is natural, Devon,” Cletus agreed in a high-pitched voice, trying not to exhale yet. “Meth is just a bunch of chemicals. Rots your teeth, rots your brain...”

“Weed cures cancer,” Devon said, accepting back the joint.

“Does it?”

“Near enough,” he replied with a shrug. “Weed is legal in California. Just need a doctor’s prescription.”

“Doctor Feelgood? I know that guy.”

“You are that guy.” Devon chuckled. “So what do you think happened to the boss? Haven’t seen him in days.”

“Who the fuck knows? We work for a zoner. The man puts enough product up his nose to kill a velociraptor.”

“Meth,” Devon said as if expelling a piece of offal from his mouth. “You ever see the guys in the lab? They look like astronauts in those crazy suits.”

“Crazy,” Cletus said with great feeling.

Suddenly a low roar filled the evening air.

As the guards turned, a hulking great machine exploded out of the hedge maze and charged straight for them.

Screaming in fright, Devon dropped his M14 and dashed away, shouting for help. Working the arming bolt, Cletus stood his ground and opened fire. The stuttering stream of 5.56 mm rounds musically ricocheted off the armored prow of the Grizzly like autumn hail.

It only took a moment for him to switch to the 40 mm grenade launcher, but that was enough. As he swung up the barrel, the Grizzly slammed into the man and he violently doubled over the armored prow then rebounded, spewing red life from every orifice.

“That was disgusting,” Weinberg said, using the back of her hand to wipe some splatter off her face as more blood continued to drip through the gun port.

Careening the Grizzly past a marble fountain, Bolan sent the machine crashing through a flower garden, then braked hard. The end of the Grizzly fishtailed wide and slammed into the guard kiosk at the front gate. The bricks exploded in every direction, and the men inside never even had a chance to scream as they died, brutally reduced to crimson pulp.

Slamming the pedal to the floor, Bolan shifted into high gear. The diesel engine roared with power and the wheels squealed as the Grizzly shot forward.

“Brace yourself!” Bolan shouted, aiming for the front door.

They only got halfway there before incoming rounds peppered the hull of the Grizzly from several directions. The vehicle hit the revolving door like the fist of God.

Noise and chaos ruled for a moment and everything loose inside the Grizzly went flying from the recoil of the jarring impact. Then they were through and speeding across the smooth terrazzo floor of the spacious lobby.

As guards appeared, Weinberg and Gonzales opened up with their AK-101 assault rifles and the men danced like mad puppets from the hammering barrage of 5.56 mm hardball rounds. Only one of them got off a shot, and the bullet smacked into the Lexan window alongside Bolan, the .45 slug going flat and just sticking there like a bug on a windshield.

Some sort of twinkling kinetic statue filled the center of the lobby, so Bolan smashed through the reception desk to the sound of splintering wood.

“Welcome to hell, boys!” Glenn shouted, triggering short bursts from his weapon.

Unexpectedly, a grenade dropped into the lobby from an upper level, but the Grizzly was already moving down the side hallway when the charge detonated. The blast sounded louder than doomsday inside the building, and shrapnel rattled the rear doors of the Grizzly. Cosentini flinched and touched his cheek, the fingers coming away streaked with red.

“Damn gun ports,” he snarled, wiping the hand clean on his pants.

Unstoppable, the Grizzly barreled down the long hallway, killing two more guards in the process, the terrazzo floor smeared with red tire prints. The sides of the transport were loudly scraping out chunks of plaster from both walls, and behind them was a billowing cloud of drywall dust and diesel exhaust.

Banking hard, Bolan sent the Grizzly down a side corridor, killing two guards before he even registered their presence. In a cold dose of reality, the soldier slowed the armored transport. If those had been some of the civilian workers, Bolan would have betrayed his own code. That was unacceptable.

“Something wrong with the engine?” Gonzales asked, yanking a spent magazine from his weapon.

“Don’t want to miss the turn!” Bolan lied, redoubling his efforts to watch everything. Unfortunately, there was blood and dust on the front windows. Combined, they had formed a sticky paste that he knew from experience the wipers would only smear and not remove.

By now, alarms were howling and linked steel gates began rattling across the hallway.

Maintaining speed, Bolan hit the first gate halfway down, and the Grizzly punched through with the tortured sound of twisting metal. The second gate barely managed to lock into position before the Grizzly hit. The prow rose high and a Lexan headlight shattered as the engine controls slung into the red. For a long second Bolan thought they weren’t going to make it through, but then the entire gate ripped free from the walls to violently crash onto the floor.

Jouncing forward, Bolan lost control of the rampaging machine and clipped a photocopy machine set into a small alcove. A blizzard of loose papers filled the hallway as he regained control and took another sharp turn. Directly ahead of him was a set of ordinary-looking swing doors.

Bolan had not told the others, but this was the weak point of his plan. He had not been able to get a good look at them when he was here last. If they were reinforced strong enough to stop the Grizzly, the mission ended here. But there was no other option. As he had so many times before, Bolan put his life in the hands of fate and let the dice roll.

The Grizzly crashed through the flimsy doors, ripping them off the hinges and sending them hurtling away. One of them hit a stack of crates, causing a minor avalanche, and the other landed squarely on a guard struggling to eject a jam from his rifle. Blood splattered for yards.

Banking hard, Bolan barely avoided plowing into a huge stack of fertilizer bags. Everywhere men and women wearing uniforms were madly running around, cursing and shouting.

Just then, something slammed hard into the Grizzly. A tire blew and the shuddering transport started curving to the right.

Fighting to regain control, Bolan frowned at the sight of a forklift alongside the APC, the blades jammed underneath the armored chassis.

Glenn cut loose with his AK-101, the hail of rounds throwing off bright sparks as they ricocheted off the protective cage around the driver.

As Weinberg and Gonzales also tried to kill the driver, Cosentini yanked open the roof hatch. Climbing halfway out, he jerked as a bullet slammed into his chest, the slug glancing off his body armor and merely ripping away a large swatch of cloth. However, the man lost his grip on the hatch and it slammed on the assault rifle, bending the hot barrel.

Throwing the useless weapon away, Cosentini drew his sawed-off shotgun and fired both barrels. The driver of the forklift was blown out of his seat by the hell storm of fléchettes. The motor died instantly.

Now only dragging a half ton of steel, Bolan angled for a concrete pillar. Cosentini barely had time to close to hatch before there was a deafening crash. The Grizzly jerked around in a semicircle, but the forklift came free and Bolan headed back toward his original goal.

There was a prolonged explosion; it sounded like the transport was driving through the worst hailstorm of all time. Another tire blew and Weinberg cut loose with her assault rifle.

“Atchisson!” she announced, reloading her AK-101.

“Where?” Glenn demanded, angling his weapon for a target.

“Dead!”

Passing the badly scorched entrance to the stairwell, Bolan finally saw a plain brick wall off to the side. There was nothing stacked in front of it and he almost smiled.

“Okay, here it gets tricky,” Bolan announced, braking to halt. “Glenn, open that!”

“Open what?” the man demanded, looking around the warehouse.

“I don’t know!” Bolan snapped, pointing at a thermal scanner on the control board. “But there are people on the other side, so find the sliding door, trapdoor, secret elevator, whatever, and make it fast.”

Nodding, Glenn slung the assault rifle, grabbed the laptop and opened the rear doors. Almost instantly a prolonged burst of incoming rounds flattened on his body armor and the laptop. The big man staggered but kept moving and made it to the lee side of the Grizzly.

“Okay, let’s buy him some time,” Bolan ordered, unbuckling his seat belt and grabbing a Kalashnikov.

Jerking open the roof hatch again, Cosentini started heaving out stun grenades. He was hit twice before the first one detonated, the dazzling flash illuminating the warehouse with hellish intensity. As the glare faded away, a dozen guards could be seen blindly stumbling around, and the people in the transport mercilessly gunned them.

“Six o’clock,” Gonzales said calmly, firing his assault rifle.

Lumbering in from the loading dock, another forklift was headed their way, the blades in front extending through a steel waste container. Weinberg peppered the crude armor with her assault rifle as a diversion while Bolan drew the Desert Eagle, carefully aimed and squeezed off a single booming round.

The canister of compressed propane gas on the back of the machine erupted into a fireball, engulfing the driver. A human torch, he shrieked insanely and fell off as the forklift veered randomly away to crash into a tall stack of empty pallets.

“How’s it coming over there?” Cosentini shouted, slapping in a fresh magazine.

“One minute!” Glenn replied. “Almost there!”

“Freaking hope so,” Weinberg muttered, working the arming bolt to eject a jammed round. The bent cartridge went spinning away to land amid the mounds of spent brass covering the floor.

Replacing Cosentini in the roof hatch, Bolan kept watch with the AK-101 cradled loosely in his grip. Every movement in the distant shadows was rewarded with a short burst of rounds, often accompanied by a cry of pain.

However, it was getting more difficult to see. The air in the warehouse was murky with smoke from the countless small fires. Glancing backward, Bolan saw Glenn kneeling on the floor, typing madly on the laptop. A maze of wires ran from the military computer to an electronic lock inside an open hatch in the fake wall.

“They’ll kill the power next,” Weinberg stated, just as the overhead lights died.

Quickly, Bolan and the others pulled on night-vision goggles, then dialed for infrared.

Sure enough, several barefoot people were silently running their way holding Claymore mines. Bolan let them get halfway, then carefully took them out with head shots, ending their brief span in this dimension.

Suddenly, there was a loud grinding noise and a bright white light flooded the warehouse.

“We’re in!” Glenn announced.

Scrambling back behind the wheel, Bolan shifted the APC into Reverse and started backing into the opening. Gonzales held the back door while Glenn clambered inside.

“Good job,” Weinberg said, nudging the man with a hip.

He flashed a smile. “Ain’t nothing but a chicken wing, babe!”

“Babe?”

“You’re not quite done yet, lover boy,” Cosentini stated, pointing a finger.

Ahead of the reversing Grizzly was a solid sheet of clear material. There were no doors, hatches, vents or openings of any kind. The meth lab was visible on the other side of the barrier. A dozen men and women in full-body environmental suits were huddled protectively under a long table in the far corner. The rest of the room was filled with bubbling retorts, reduction vats, cooking trays, boiling flasks and a crazy web of glass tubing.

Deep inside, Bolan was disgusted, and ached to destroy the crystalline poison. Just one tray could destroy a hundred lives, turning weak men and women into slaves, willing to do anything to obtain the money necessary for another hit, to smoke just one more bowl of sweet death.

“Excellent,” Bolan said, trying to force some enthusiasm as he braked to a halt. “Glenn, find us a way in, but don’t open that wall! Everything on the other side is both flammable and poisonous.”

“And worth millions,” Cosentini added, grinning widely. Grabbing the battered laptop, Glenn nodded curtly and exited the transport. As he began probing the wall, the people on the other side watched him with eyes filled with fear.

Turning on the remaining headlight to hinder anybody coming his way, Bolan took the handheld microphone from the dashboard and thumbed the button on the side.

“We have control of the lab,” he said, the amplified words booming across the war-torn warehouse.

“Screw you, cop!” somebody shouted from the shadows.

“Oh, we’re not the police.” Bolan chuckled. “Even more important than the lab, my hackers have crashed your mainframe and seized all of the overseas bank accounts.”

He gave them a moment to absorb that information. “I am now in charge. This factory, and everything in it, now belongs to Anthony Giancova. Remember that name. I’m your new boss.”

“Bullshit!” a man replied from somewhere. “When Ziggy returns he’ll—”

“Dead,” Bolan interrupted. “Ziggy is dead. He was weak, and got burned.”

For a few moments there was only silence. Then a group of heavily armed men walked out of the darkness.

“When he was kidnapped off the roof, we kind of guessed that Ziggy was history,” the leader of the group said slowly, an Atchisson autoshotgun expertly balanced in his hands. “You do it?”

“Yes.” Turning off the engine, Bolan exited the Grizzly and walked into the beam of headlight.

There were hushed whispers at that. Bolan needed these people on his side to continue to run the business. A lot of them had just died in the battle, but that was just part of the job, part of their world.

“Well, you got guts, that’s for damn sure. My name’s Holden. I head security.” He lifted the Atchisson to rest it on a shoulder. “So, what’s the deal, Gian...nova?”

“Giancova. Anthony Giancova.”

“Okay, Mr. Giancova, what’s the deal? If we leave, we get to stay alive?”

“Screw that,” Bolan said, resting a boot on the dented grille of the transport. “I want everybody to stay and keep doing the exact same job.”

This announcement was clearly unexpected and generated a buzz of excitement.

“What’s the catch?” Holden demanded suspiciously.

“Columbus is a free city. No cartel or Mob owns it,” Bolan said. “Others will try to take over the business. Work with my people to keep it going and I double everybody’s salary.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Plus, anybody who got iced, their family gets their full salary for as long as I’m alive and in charge.”

More hushed whispers greeted that.

“Sounds good,” said a bald security man. The sleeve of his left arm was soaked with blood, the hand tucked into his gun belt to keep it still. “But how do we know you’re not going to kill us later?”

“I can kill you now,” Bolan stated honestly. “But that’s bad business. This is a sweet deal, and I’m willing to spread the wealth around to those smart enough who know that the only way they stay alive is to watch my six.”

As the security people began to murmur among themselves, Bolan knew they were on the cusp. Time to sweeten the deal. “By the way, whatever Ziggy got you for body armor is crap.”

“Armor?” Someone laughed. “We got some bulletproof vests and some ballistic shirts we bought online with our own money....”

“We have body armor,” Weinberg said, walking up behind Bolan. “Military grade, the good stuff.”

“That part of the deal?” Holden asked hesitantly.

“Absolutely,” Bolan said, then added in a sober voice, “But if you work for me, there are a couple of conditions. None of them negotiable!” He paused to let that sink in. “First, anybody betrays me, and I kill them. Rat me out to the DEA and I go after their family. Wives, kids, cousins, they all die. Are we clear on that?”

A general murmur from the guards showed grudging acceptance.

“Good. Second, nobody uses product.”

“Then you don’t...” The man touched his nose.

“I prefer Scotch,” Bolan said truthfully.

Slowly, all of the guards started to smile.

“That does it for me,” Holden said, clicking the safety on the Atchisson. “Where do we sign...sir?”

Chapter 10

It took Bolan and his team several days to repair the damage to the warehouse and properly fortify the factory. During that time, the production of crystal meth continued unabated.

Judiciously, Bolan stayed out of sight when the local police came around for their weekly payments. Cosentini handled that. But Bolan always greeted the couriers of old customers personally, to help spread the word that Ziggy was gone and Anthony “Mad Dog” Giancova was now in charge.

The next week, Weinberg and Gonzales went on a recruitment drive to fill out the depleted ranks of the factory guards, while Glenn tracked down all of the assorted assets of Lynn Fairweather and transferred them to new banks.

Bolan was surprised at the sheer size of the hidden funds, and guessed that Ziggy had several million stashed away somewhere in secret accounts not listed in the computer files. It was annoying, but the drug lord was upholding his side of the deal, so Bolan had to let the matter slide. As long as Ziggy stayed retired when cut loose by the Farm, that was good enough. For the moment anyway.

Slowly, another week passed, and when nobody from Castle attempted to contact the new owner of the drug lab, Bolan decide to attract attention to himself in the only safe way possible: expansion.

Assembling a crew, Bolan had Grimaldi fly them all to Atlanta, Georgia. That was the home base for Ziggy’s biggest rival in the drug trade, Joe Brown, the so-called king of Southern crystal. An enormously fat man, Brown was also known as “Gator,” because he disposed of the bodies of his enemies by tossing them into the swamp for the alligators to eat. The victims were not always dead during the process and occasionally given stimulants to keep them horribly awake as they were eaten alive.

Landing at a private airfield, Bolan and his team drove a caravan of three limousines far out into the countryside to finally turn off the main highway. A private road meandered through gentle rolling hills to finally end at a massive estate that encircled a private lake.

The rolling hectares of manicured lawn and peach trees were entirely surrounded by a formidable wall that stood an easy eight feet tall and was topped with a wrought-iron fence that rose another six feet. That was the absolute legal maximum of height for a fence in the state. Publicly, Brown liked to maintain the appearance of a reclusive millionaire who stretched, but never quite broke, the law. Privately was a different matter entirely.

As his limousine approached the entrance, Bolan saw that the front gate was bracketed by a pair of guard kiosks, each with several armed men inside. The gate itself was a massive barrier of thick steel bars polished to a mirror sheen and thick enough to simply be another section of the fence.

“Pity we didn’t bring the Grizzly,” Gonzales said, squinting out the tinted window.

“Not sure it could have smashed through that,” Bolan said honestly. “Glenn, are you in his systems yet?”

“Working on it,” Glenn muttered, typing steadily on the laptop. The screen scrolled with arcane symbols and binary codes.

“Well, work faster,” Weinberg said, shoving a 40 mm shell into the grenade launcher of the AK-101 assault rifle.

“Security cameras everywhere,” Grimaldi said, braking the limousine to an easy stop.

“Good,” Bolan replied, throwing open the door and stepping out.

Taking his time, Bolan sauntered to the nearer kiosk. The armed men inside gazed at him through the bulletproof glass as if inspecting a new species of insect.

“Morning,” Bolan said, giving a friendly smile. “Tell Gator that I want to see him.”

Both guards seemed startled at the unbelievable act of using their boss’s hated nickname on his own property.

“Sir, this gate is under surveillance,” the younger guard whispered tersely, a hand resting on the Glock holstered at his hip.

“Well, that should get the fat son of a bitch out of bed.” Bolan chuckled and threw a friendly wave to the mirrored dome attached at the roof.

“Yeah, and who the hell are you, dead man?” a deep voice growled from a wall speaker.

“Anthony Giancova,” Bolan said, shooting his cuffs. Diamonds flashed from the gold cuff links and the platinum Rolex Presidential watch on his wrist was the size of a computer mouse. “I’m the new owner of Belvedere Fertilizer.”

There was a short pause.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So what happened to Ziggy?”

“I ate him,” Bolan said in a bored voice and started picking his teeth with a thumbnail.

A low chuckled sounded. “Well, you’ve got balls, I’ll say that much for you,” the voice said. “Guards, let Mr. Big Balls and his people inside.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Brown,” the older guard replied crisply, shooting a disapproving look at his partner.

There was the low thumping of hydraulic pumps building pressure, and then underground locks disengaged with loud clangs and the thick gate silently swung open.

Motioning to the others to follow, Bolan started walking up the long curving driveway leading to a sprawling mansion. This was both a sign of contempt, that he was not worried about anything, and an excellent way to perform a low-level reconnaissance.

Late the previous night, Grimaldi had flown over the private estate of the drug lord, taking as many pictures as possible using high-resolution cameras set on both the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. Bolan knew where most of the machine guns and video cameras were hidden, as well as the supposedly secret escape tunnel from the main house to the boathouse on the lake.

Something large and metallic was parked inside the building. Bolan’s best guess was that it was an escape vehicle, perhaps a hovercraft, something that could move over water and land. But the boathouse could just as easily be a fallback position for Brown and contained an APC, or even an Apache gunship. Unless Glenn could hack into the security system of the estate, there simply was no way for Bolan to know for sure.

Marking the location of the structure out of the corner of his eye, Bolan saw a busty woman with long flowing red hair waving an arm. She was dressed in a microbikini that left nothing to the imagination.

Motioning for Grimaldi and the other limousine drivers to stay where they were, Bolan headed in that direction. Funny that Gator would have a woman greet strangers....

Just down the sloping hill, a beautiful garden spread out in front of Bolan, hedges and flower beds laid out in an orderly display around an Olympic-size swimming pool. Country music was playing from speakers inside the flowering bushes, and the wooden patio edging the pool was lined with lounge chairs. Many of them contained grim-faced men in swimming trunks, their muscular bodies covered with overlapping scars. Beautiful young women stood near each man, most of them wearing only sunglasses, scraps of cloth that barely passed as swimsuits and flip-flop sandals.

Off by himself, Joe Brown lay facedown on a massage table, a pair of tiny Asian women using their hands to spread suntan lotion along his fat, hairless legs.

The woman with flowing red hair sat nearby, her hands demurely folded in her lap. Her skin was deeply tanned, the white bikini making her appear even darker in color.

“Big Balls,” Brown said in greeting without looking up.

“Gator,” Bolan replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. “Did I interrupt a business meeting?”

“You couldn’t interrupt me taking a dump,” Brown snorted, swinging out his legs to sit upright.

The man’s entire body was soft, the tanned flesh dimpled and covered with a network of stretch marks. But there were also dozens of puckered circles, scars from where the fat man had been shot in nonvital areas, along with a few hard ridges of healed knife wounds.

Quickly, the Asian girls rushed away to bring back a terry-cloth bathrobe for the man. “Okay, Balls, now who the hell are you really?”

“As I said before, Anthony Giancova,” Bolan said, taking out a gold cigarette case.

“I’ve heard of that name up north somewhere...” Brown muttered as the girls helped him into the robe. He stood and tied it shut. “New York, maybe...or Boston.”

“Pittsfield, but Boston is close enough,” Bolan said, lighting a slim cigar.

“Thought you handled weapons or something like that.” Brown said it as a question.

“Everybody sells guns these days,” Bolan stated, blowing a smoke ring. “Now I deal in recreational pharmaceuticals.”

At that, Brown snorted a laugh. “You’re a funny guy, Balls.”

“Thanks, Gator, your approval is what I live for,” Bolan said.

Brown snapped his fingers.

Instantly the woman with red hair stood to bring over a chair for Bolan.

“Thanks, doll,” he said, patting her affectionately on her mostly exposed buttocks.

She blushed and hurried back to her own chair.

“Damn, you are Mister Ice,” Brown growled, cracking his knuckles. “Which means either you really are this tough or you’re the dumbest son of a bitch on the planet.”

“I’m not worried about those snipers in the trees to the north and east,” Bolan said, gesturing with the cigar.

“You spotted them, huh?”

“Along with the guy in your house,” Bolan said, making a vague motion over his shoulder.

That was a calculated gamble. The windows of the mansions were tinted darkly, impossible to see through from the outside. But unless he was reading the man wrong, Brown never told anybody the entire truth about anything. There were wheels within wheels here....

His face tightening, Brown straightened. “Now, how in the hell... You’re guessing.”

“Am I?” Bolan asked, inhaling deeply then exhaling through his nose.

Slowly, Brown crossed his gargantuan arms and frowned. “No, you’re not making a guess,” he said at last.

“Yeah, I was,” Bolan countered. He took a long drag, then dropped the unfinished cigar to the wooden deck and crushed it under his shoe. “I’m trying to quit.”

“Yeah, who isn’t?” Brown laughed, scratching at the nicotine patch on his arm. “Want a drink?”

“Sure.”

Brown didn’t make a move. The redheaded woman jumped up to get a couple of frosty cans of beer from a small refrigerator near a barbecue pit. Popping the tops, she gave one to each man.

“Love the scenery,” Bolan said, watching the woman leave, her full breasts swaying in time to the roll of her hips. “But can we talk here?”

“No place safer,” Brown stated, taking a long draft. Finished, he crushed the can in his hand and tossed it away. It landed near a wicker wastebasket and one of the Asian women bent to deposit it properly. “Okay, you’re in charge of Ziggy’s...factory,” Brown said, stressing the last word.

“Let’s just call it a meth lab and cut the bullshit,” Bolan said, taking another small drink.

“Fair enough.”

“Okay, I’ve got some of the finest crystal in nineteen states, and I’m expanding production with three more labs.”

“Three!”

“At first,” Bolan said, reclining in the lounge chair. The sun was warm on his face and he deliberately shrugged to let his jacket spread open wide and show his double shoulder holsters.

Brown started to react to the sight, then caught himself and chuckled. “Clang, clang.” He laughed. “You testing me, Big Balls? That hasn’t happened in a long time. I got a good rep.”

“No, you got a monster rep,” Bolan stated. “Which is why I want us to be business partners.”

“Yeah?”

“Who else? According to my guy, you distribute crystal across twenty states and handle over a hundred pounds a week.”

“Close enough.”

“Can you handle more?”

“Hell, yes, it’s a seller’s market. Crack is wack, meth is king these days.”

“Two hundred pounds too much for you?”

“A week?”

“Yes.”

Brown lowered his head like a bull about to charge. “Maybe,” he whispered. “Okay, yeah, sure. I could handle three hundred if I could get it. Clear blue crystals, mind you, no misty crap cut with laundry detergent or God knows what else.”

“Only the best. Three hundred pounds it is. Is Friday okay?”

“Are you shitting me?”

Bolan smiled. “Joe, how can you say that? After all we’ve been through over the years?”

Lifting his head, Brown snorted. “Yeah, we’re gonna get along just fine, Anthony.” He leaned closer. “But really...no shit...three hundred pounds?”

“Each week. My personal guarantee, Joe.”

“No money up front?”

“Nope. But cash on delivery.”

“Well, then...” Holding out his hand, Brown waited as the redhead got him another beer. “Three hundred from you means I don’t have to buy ten pounds here and five pounds there from all of the little labs,” he said, pulling the top and rolling the frosty can along his pudgy arms. “They won’t like that.”

“Not my problem.”

“And if, say, Alabama Sue objects...perhaps strenuously?”

Bolan said nothing.

“Fair enough,” Brown said with a wide grin. “Always would rather do business with a man than a greedy bitch. She’s been a pain in my ass for years.”

“Then consider me your personal proctologist.”

“I will!” Brown laughed, sliding off the table. He landed with a pronounced thud, the deck vibrating for yards. “All right, call in your people and let’s celebrate. I’ll go fire up the grill and cook us some T-bones the size of Dobermans!” Brown slapped one of the Asian girls on the backside and she squealed in delight.

“Sounds good, but I’ll have to pass this time,” Bolan said, standing. “I want to get back and kick my crew into high gear. Lots of crystal to cook.”

“Business before pleasure, eh?”

“Are you testing me, Joe?”

“Bet your ass, I am,” Brown said, his smile vanishing quickly. “Only fools party before the cash has been counted.”

“Agreed.”

“Also, Tony...you should know that I am not a tolerant man, and I always keep my word. You promised three hundred pounds. You’d better deliver three or my boys will come visiting.”

“Are they as tough as these lovelies?” Bolan asked, jerking a thumb at the nearby woman.

“Much tougher,” the redhead said with a giggle, fluffing her hair.

“Was anybody talking to you?” Brown growled.

The woman paled. “No, sir!” she said quickly. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything, Gator.”

“What did you call me?”

“Mr. Brown!” she declared desperately. “Brown. I said Brown!”

Walking over to the nearby lounge chair, Brown pulled the leather belt from a giant pair of pants and wrapped half of it around his fist. The buckle dangled freely, the sharpened edge glinting harshly in the bright sunlight.

“Come here, Audrey,” he ordered.

“Oh, cut the crap, Gator, I like her!” Bolan said, walking over to the trembling woman and ruffling her hair. “Mind if I take her back to the factory? It’s a long ride and I could use some entertainment.”

Trembling, Audrey looked up at Bolan with tear-filled eyes, and he looked away, maintaining his character.

Staring at the woman, Brown did nothing for a long moment, then slowly eased his stance. “Keep her. Never did like the mouthy broad.”

“Thanks! Grab whatever things are yours, then get in the car,” Bolan snapped, jerking a thumb toward the limousine parked outside. “You have two minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Audrey whispered, grabbing a terry-cloth robe from a table piled high with them.

Sipping drinks, the other women said nothing as the redhead hurried up the sloping hill toward the house.

“Nice taste in women,” Bolan said, forcing a chuckle into his voice. “Okay, see you Friday!”

“Friday, Tony,” Brown repeated. “Don’t disappoint me.”

“No fear.” Bolan waved goodbye.

Returning to the limousine, the Executioner found the woman sitting in the rear with a small bag, huddled near the liquor cabinet.

“When I got in,” Audrey said, “everybody else moved to the other limo and the driver closed the privacy window....”

“Good,” Bolan said, getting in and closing the door.

As the limousine pulled away, the woman licked her lips and forced a smile. “You won’t regret this, Mr. Giancova,” she said, brushing back her long hair.

“No?” Bolan asked.

“Oh, no... You and I are going to have good time,” Audrey said, shrugging off the robe. Dropping to her hands and knees, she started crawling toward the soldier. “I can make you real happy...Tony...”

There was no denying the fact that she was a beautiful woman, and Bolan felt himself start to respond to her charms. Undercover or not, he was still a healthy man.

“Sorry, I’ve got calls to make first,” he lied, waving her back. “Have a drink and relax.”

“Sure, whatever you want,” Audrey said, continuing closer. “But first...” Touching the front of her bikini top, she pressed some sort of clasp and it came apart, her naked breasts spilling into view.

The gentle vibrations of the limousine were yielding the most amazing results. Bolan felt his throat tighten and he quickly drew the Beretta tucked in between the sofa partitions.

“Move again and you die,” he stated, placing the barrel on her throat.

Startled, Audrey froze in place, one hand on his thigh, the other behind her back.

“Drop it,” Bolan ordered, pressing the barrel into the soft flesh. “I can’t miss at this range.”

Defiantly, her green eyes flared with rage, then something dropped to the floorboard carpeting with a dull thud.

“Have a seat,” Bolan said, clicking back the hammer. “Nice and slow now...no sudden moves.”

Breathing deeply, Audrey retreated across the limousine and dropped heavily into the other couch, her breasts rising and falling.

Lying on the carpeting between them was a stiletto, the honed edge shining like new sin.

“Now what, Tony?” Audrey asked innocently.

It took some effort on Bolan’s part, but he remained grim and did not let his sight move from her face. Slowly her confident smile faded and she picked up her robe.

“What are you?” Audrey demanded, narrowing her eyes to slits. “Some kind of eunuch?”

“Just a businessman,” Bolan replied, the Beretta never wavering. “Now, are we going to talk?”

“Fine, we’ll talk,” she said, slipping on the robe. “How... When did you know?”

“That you’re really Gator and not that overgrown lump? Almost immediately.”

“How?”

“Every other woman had an obedient air. They were used to taking orders. But not you.”

Skeptically, Audrey said nothing.

“Also, Fat Boy overdid the belt routine,” Bolan said with a snort. “None of the women present had any scars from previous beatings, which meant that either this was the first time or—”

“It was bullshit,” Audrey finished, belting the robe tight. “And if I was Gator, then...”

“You were here to kill me, and take over my business.”

“It has worked before.”

“I’m sure.” Bolan glanced at the stiletto. The blade was as slim as a pencil. “Poisoned?”

“No need,” Audrey said, opening the liquor cabinet and pouring herself a drink. “One slash across the throat and I’d control another slice of the pie.”

Bolan said nothing as she took a sip and leaned back, her long legs demurely crossed at the ankles. “So are you going to kill me?”

“That’s entirely up to you,” Bolan said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. She was a very desirable woman and, assassin or not, he had fully responded as nature intended.

“Meaning?” she asked, swirling the glass to make the ice tinkle.

“If you’re waiting for your people to hit the limos, don’t hold your breath,” Bolan said. “We’re still in the driveway. We’ve been driving around in a circle for the past ten minutes. So they’re not sure what to do without your signal.”

Shocked, Audrey almost dropped the tumbler. Draining it dry, she placed it aside. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees. “Fine, let’s talk, Mister...?”

“Anthony Giancova,” Bolan said. “Is Audrey a middle name or just something you choose at random?”

“Josephine Audrey Brown,” she said with a shrug.

“Joe Brown. Cute.”

“You’re really not going to kill me, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Wise move. My, my, it will be nice to conduct business with somebody who doesn’t think with their dick.” She gave a genuine smile this time. “A real pleasure.”

“Business first,” Bolan stated, easing down the hammer on the Beretta. “All right, you were there and heard my deal. It still stands. Three hundred pounds a week. Can you handle it or not?”

“Yes.”

“Market price, no discounts.”

“Done.”

A long moment passed with neither of them saying a thing, the sexual tension inside the gently murmuring limousine almost palpable.

“How about that drink now?” Audrey asked, opening the liquor cabinet once more, the bottles tinkling. “We can toast our partnership.”

“We’d be fools not to,” Bolan said honestly.

Chapter 11

Around midnight, Bolan and the others drove back to the airfield and swiftly departed for Ohio.

“So how did the negotiations go, Sarge?” Grimaldi asked, both hands on the steering yoke.

“It took us a few tries,” Bolan said, relaxing in the copilot’s seat. “But we finally got it right.”

Revving the engines, Grimaldi started accelerating the Hercules along the old pavement. “Been that long, eh?”

“Just drive the plane, flyboy,” Bolan said drily as they took to the sky.

A few hours later, Grimaldi landed the Hercules in the fallow field outside Columbus, taxied the huge airplane inside a waiting large prefab hut and killed the engines. Operating the controls, Glenn lowered the rear loading ramp and the three limousines jounced out of the plane. He then joined Weinberg in the last one, and the limousines drove out of the building, their tires kicking up clumps of loose dirt as they sped away.

Standing in the open doorway, Grimaldi watched them disappear into the night, then pulled the heavy door closed, locked it tight and started refueling the Hercules for the next flight. Long ago, the pilot had learned to always be ready for a fast escape. Nine times out of ten it wasn’t necessary. But when it was, every second saved meant the difference between life and death.

* * *

STOPPING AT AN all-night restaurant on High Street, Bolan and others had a few drinks and a quick meal, then took the elevated beltway across town and returned to the fertilizer factory. Spirits were high, and everybody was in a good mood over the new distribution deal. But the smiles faded and hands went to weapons as the limousines went around the fountain in front of the building.

Standing near the new revolving door was Holden, head of security, and several of his people. All of them had stern expressions. Hunched over amid the guards was one of the lab technicians, his head bowed, his wrists handcuffed together.

“What happened?” Bolan asked, stepping out of the limousine.

The evening breeze was cool and carried the smell of the hedge maze and the flower beds.

“One of my people caught this idiot hiding some crystals inside a fountain pen,” Holden stated, reaching into a shirt pocket. He tossed it over.

Making the catch, Bolan unscrewed the cap. The reservoir inside was packed full of glistening blue-white power. Mentally, Bolan calculated the street value at roughly a grand.

“He planted that on me,” the technician cried. “I wouldn’t steal from you, sir!”

Knowing that the chemist was a mass murderer through the manufacture of the deadly drug, Bolan felt no remorse or pity when he told Holden to kill him. Holden drew his pistol, thumbed off the safety and fired a single round at point-blank range. The 9 mm round rocked back the head of the startled technician and he dropped to the pavement, gushing blood.

“Leave the body there until the evening shift change,” Bolan growled, tucking away the pen. “Make sure that everybody gets a good long view of what I do to people who steal from me.”

“Not a problem, sir,” Holden said, giving a slow smile. “And afterward?”

“Use the wood chipper in the basement,” Bolan said, turning to walk away. “And shovel feed what comes out into the sewer system.”

“Will do. You also had a visitor, sir.”

Suddenly alert, Bolan pivoted. “They have a name?”

“I asked,” Holden said, hitching up his gun belt. “But this guy only wanted to talk to you.”

Gonzales snorted. “Probably just some local politician looking for a handout.”

“Hey, the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” Cosentini pointed out.

“No, it gets greased,” Glenn corrected, patting his assault rifle.

“Did he leave a message?” Bolan asked, trying to sound casual.

“Yes, sir. But it didn’t make any sense,” Holden said with a frown. “He said that he hoped the crazy bitch didn’t cut your throat.”

“That a quote?” Bolan asked softly, glancing across the shadowy gardens. The breeze gently stirred the ragged bushes and the ivy, making the entire landscape seem alive.

“Near enough. I thought you went to see Gator Brown?”

“Long story,” Bolan said. “Where is he?”

“Local motel,” Holden replied. “Should I call him in the morning?”

“No, do it now,” Bolan said. “Send him up to my office.”

“Will do.”

“Anybody in the cafeteria?”

“The night staff, getting lunch ready for the lab crew.”

“Have somebody send coffee to my office.” Bolan paused. “Do we stock any beer?”

“Sure.”

“Hale’s Pale Ale?”

“Never heard of the stuff.”

“Send the new guy to go buy a couple of cases.”

“Private stock for you?”

“No, get enough for everybody.”

“Good stuff, eh?”

“Only the best served here at Belvedere,” Bolan stated, his mind whirling with the possibilities.

Heading straight up to the fifth floor, Bolan went directly into his private bathroom, splashed some water on his face, then toweled it off.

Refreshed, he sat behind an antique mahogany desk. The wood was so old it had darkened to nearly black, and the top was green leather rimmed by brass studs. It was impressive, and expensive. Bolan had purchased the piece of furniture because it was thick enough to stop most small-caliber rounds—unlike the flimsy pressboard that most desks were made of these days. The art of craftsmanship was a thing of the past.

Suddenly the office door crashed open and in walked a mature woman pushing a cart loaded with coffee, cream, sugar and mugs. Although clearly middle-aged, her uniform fit snugly and displayed a lot of cleavage. She had a generous mouth, with an easy smile, and flashing blue eyes.

“Evening, sir,” she said in a throaty voice that was almost a purr.

Bolan merely nodded politely in reply. However, he certainly enjoyed watching her leave just as much as he had enjoyed seeing her arrive. Back in her day, the woman had to have been a real heartbreaker.

Less than an hour later there was a soft knock on the door, and in walked a small man carrying a briefcase.

“Mr. Giancova?” he asked, flashing a smile.

Lowering his mug of coffee, Bolan studied the man. He certainly fit the description. His hair was slicked back in an antiquarian military style, and he had a pointed beard, almost a goatee but not quite. His suit was dark and sharply creased, his shoes shiny enough to pass muster at Marine boot camp.

Bolan waved at a leather chair. “Please come in.”

“Thank you.” Taking the chair, the man set down the briefcase. “It’s late, so I will get straight to business.”

“First, who are you?” Bolan asked impatiently.

“Call me...Ishmael.”

“Like the character from Moby Dick?”

“A rose by any other name...” He smiled again. It had all the warmth of an open grave.

Bolan snorted a laugh. “Okay, Izzy, what’s the pitch?”

The man who called himself Ishmael smiled tolerantly. “This will explain everything,” he said, opening the briefcase to withdraw a slim laptop. “Our service is called Castle. If I may...?”

As if he was not very interested, Bolan shrugged.

A video started to play on the small screen. Oddly, it was very similar to almost every commercial for insurance that Bolan had ever seen, except that this one actually showed several of the prison escapes, the faces of the people involved blurred to maintain their confidentiality.

Ten minutes later it cycled to an end and the screen went blank.

“Clever, really clever,” Bolan said, templing his fingers. “How long has this been gong on?”

“Several years. We are a relatively new concern.”

“I see,” Bolan said. “Well...thank you for the truly informative lecture. Goodbye.”

“You are not interested?” Ishmael asked in surprise. “I can supply you with a list of satisfied customers across the world...”

“No need for that,” Bolan replied with a slow smile. “I’m rich enough to provide everything you promise, and maybe even a bit more.”

“Ah! But there’s a new law that forces—”

“Not for me,” Bolan interrupted. “I meant for others.”

That took a moment to process. “You’re going into competition with us?” Ishmael gasped.

Bolan spread his arms wide. “Why not? The profit margin promises to be astronomical, and after a few successes the customers will come flooding in!”

“My employer will not be pleased over this,” Ishmael said, stroking his short beard. “It may be wise to reconsider.”

“No need. The video sold me on the idea too well,” Bolan stated gruffly. “I’ll offer the exact same service that Castle does, but at a much lower price.”

“Please take a moment to reflect upon this,” Ishmael said. “We are very big and powerful. While you own one crystal meth lab still being repaired...”

Bolan poured himself some coffee. “Four.”

“Besides, there are— What?”

“Four. I own four meth labs, a coke smuggling network, seventeen brothels, two casinos, a legitimate oil refinery, a titanium mine and a hundred other legal businesses. I can afford to take a loss for a few months on this until you’re broke, and then I seize all of your former customers and the prices go back to normal. SOP. Just business.”

“Sir...this means war,” Ishmael said, slowly standing.

“Not necessarily,” Bolan said, wiping his hand clean on a napkin before snapping his fingers.

The office door opened and Glenn and Weinberg walked in with weapons drawn. Ishmael did nothing as they placed a suitcase on the floor next to his briefcase.

“Two million in cash,” Bolan said with a gesture.

“A bribe?”

“No, a recruitment bonus. You work for me now.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

Bolan snapped his fingers again. A moment later there came the low roar of a working wood chipper.

It took Ishmael a moment to identify the noise, and he went pale. “I see,” he whispered. “If I may...?”

“Please.”

Bending, Ishmael opened the suitcase. Lifting out a package of bills, he flipped through the money like playing cards, then stuffed it back inside. “They’re warm,” he said with an odd tone in his voice.

“Freshly washed,” Bolan said. “Small bills, nonsequential and thoroughly washed to remove any airborne trace of my product. Some banks scan big cash deposits for isotonic residue of illegal substances.”

“Both wise and wary. Those are excellent traits.”

“I also own a wood chipper.”

“So I heard. It would seem that I have no choice in this matter.”

“None whatsoever. What’s your real name?”

He paused, but only for a moment. “Dooley. William Dooley.... Wait, you had two million dollars in cash ready to go...for what, bribes?”

“For you,” Bolan said, taking another sip from the mug.

“But how... Ah, Ziggy talked.”

“Reluctantly,” Bolan said, as if apologizing.

“I see,” Dooley muttered. “You are a most remarkable man, Mr. Giancova. But Johnson is a very bad man to cross, and also owns a wood chipper or two. May I have a day to decide?”

Bolan kept his face neutral. Johnson. The enemy finally had a name. Was it real, or another false front like Ishmael and Gator? “Sure, take all the time you wish,” he replied, smiling. “There’s a cell phone tucked into the money. Call when you’ve made a decision.”

“I can leave with the money?”

“It’s only a couple million.”

Dooley paused, uncertain, then took the suitcase and departed.

A few moments later Gonzales and Cosentini entered the office.

“How did it go?” Gonzales asked, flopping into the chair.

“As well as can be expected,” Bolan said after filling in the newcomers. He pressed a button on the intercom. “Holden, close the lab and send everybody home for a week...with pay.”

“The guards, too, sir?” His voice crackled through the speaker.

“Everybody else now. You and your men a little later. We’re redecorating,” Bolan said, releasing the button again. “Okay, I’m taking bets. How long until Dooley hits us?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Gonzales said. “He can’t risk us pissing in the pool.”

“Agreed,” Glenn said. “He’ll hit us hard. Maybe burn the factory to the ground as a draconian warning to other upstarts.”

“Upstarts?”

“I said draconian, too.”

“Rhan, better get your little friend out of the bag,” Bolan said, looking at the man.

Flexing his hand, Cosentini grinned. “About damn time.”

“I also want everybody to start hunting for bottles,” Bolan said, pressing the intercom button again. “Holden?”

“Sir?” Holden responded.

“Find me all of the empty glass bottles you can. Along with foam cups, rags and plenty of gasoline.”

“We’re going to make Molotov cocktails?” Weinberg asked with a scowl. “What for? We’ve got military grenades a lot more deadly than crappy homemade firebombs.”

“Not like these,” Bolan countered, and started to explain.

Chapter 12

Crescent City, California

Morning mist flowed heavily across the crashing waves as dawn arrived. In an orderly procession, a convoy of law-enforcement vehicles streamed down the coastal highway, their lights flashing to warn off the curious and the foolish.

Riding as the vanguard in front were six state troopers on motorcycles, and then came two FBI cars, an armored patrol van, two more FBI cars and another six state troopers.

High overhead, a pair of U.S. Army helicopters kept pace with the convoy. A fully armed Apache gunship stayed directly over the patrol van, while a Black Hawk helicopter continually circled the convoy to maintain a wide safety zone in case of trouble.

A few miles outside the city limits, the convoy reached a nameless side road blocked by a wooden barrier. Security cameras hidden in the trees marked their approach and the barrier swung aside to let them pass and then promptly closed in their wake.

The sound of the crashing surf grew steadily louder as the convoy crested a low hillock and started along a single-lane road that cut across a wide field. The green grass was so neatly trimmed it resembled a golf course, except that there were no sand traps, trees or bunkers. Just dead-flat land that couldn’t hide a mouse.

Slowly rising in the distance was the bleak concrete edifice of the Pelican Bay State Prison, aka Pelican SuperMax. Like a medieval fortress, the prison was surrounded by a ring of guard towers and a double fence. Armed guards walked dogs on the inside of the fencing, the razor wire on top audibly humming with electricity.

As the convoy passed a second wooden barrier, a wide expanse of steel spikes hissed as they descended into the pavement to allow them access to the main gate. The power was cut, the gate cycled open and the convoy rolled through, once again, the gate closing immediately behind them.

Braking in formation at the front entrance of the facility, a squad of prison guards wearing full combat armor surrounded the patrol van, their weapons at the ready.

Standing slightly away from the guards was a tall, heavyset man with a full mustache and beard. His gray hair was cropped in a military buzz cut, and a long puckered scar bisected his face, giving him a permanent sneer.

Warily, guards with steel mirrors on steel poles checked the undercarriages for bombs, while the military gunships overhead maintained their constant circling. The wash of the blades startled the gulls living on the rocky shore of the peninsula and they flapped away, loudly announcing their strong displeasure.

“Clear!” a guard announced, collapsing the pole. “No bombs!”

Speaking into a throat mike, another guard confirmed the results.

“Okay, open it up, Sergeant!” commanded the warden, stroking the scar on his face.

Putting their keys into the complex lock set into the rear door of the patrol van, the state troopers counted to three, then turned them in unison. Nothing happened.

“Try again,” the warden ordered.

“No need, sir,” a state trooper reported crisply. “We haven’t unlocked the door yet. We were just turning off the self-destruct.”

“The what?” a prison guard asked, arching an eyebrow.

“If the door is forced open, or if we crash,” another state trooper said, “thermite charges ignite and destroy the vehicle.”

“Including the prisoner?”

“Yes, sir. Especially the prisoner. Nobody wants Seville free.”

Now two of the FBI agents replaced the guards, inserted different keys, counted down and unlocked the doors. They swung aside on a row of thick hinges, revealing a steel cage welded to the middle of the van.

Inside the cage was a man wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. His ankles were shackled. He was wearing a straitjacket, and a bizarre helmet that resembled a hockey mask covered his head. Wrapped in chains, he stood erect, tightly secured through the bars to a small forklift.

“So that’s him, eh?” a state trooper muttered.

Seville remained quiet. “Creepy-looking son of a bitch, wrapped up like that,” a guard muttered, thumbing his shock stick to maximum voltage. “So that’s the Butcher of Seville.”

“Some of the other wardens called him Satan,” an FBI agent said. “He’s escaped six times from six different prisons in under six years.”

“Six-six-six?”

“Exactly.”

“Looks like he’s in there good and snug,” one of the guards said smugly.

“Don’t let the outfit fool you,” said a state trooper. “He’s maimed or killed more than fifty people since we took over.”

“How many?”

“Fifty.”

“You’re joking.”

“Bit the fingers off a dentist fixing a cavity, and a month later broke his own arm trying to get out of the straitjacket. When the doctor came, he stabbed the guy to death with the bone splinters sticking out of his arm.”

“Jesus!”

“Well, he’s never leaving Pelican. We’ve never had a successful escape. Not one!”

“There’s always a first time,” a state trooper pointed out, a hand resting on the Glock in his gun belt.

“Not here!”

“Hope you’re right. Nobody wants to see The Butcher loose. Not even the bleeding-heart liberals.”

“Stop calling him that,” the warden growled. “This is just prisoner 4422378, legal name Mary-Anne Seville.”

“Mary-Anne?”

“According to the trial records, his parents raised him as a girl for the first thirty years of his life. Long hair, makeup, dresses...even gave him breast implants when he was sixteen.”

“Did they cut off his...you know...”

“Medical reports say that was done at birth,” an FBI agent stated, unable to keep a tone of revulsion out of his voice. “His parents were his first victims. Killed them, then found out the house was fortified and he could not escape. After the food in the kitchen was gone, he ate the dog, then...” He shrugged. “Finally he set fire to the place to die, and the fire department rescued him from the flames. He killed a nurse in the hospital, stole her clothes...”

“We know the rest.”

“Sweet Jesus, no wonder the poor guy went bananas and started eating people!”

“More than a hundred known victims, most of them married couples with one daughter.”

“Glad I’m single!”

“I said mostly,” stated an FBI agent, “not exclusively.”

“Any chance of rehabilitation?”

“Unknown,” the warden said, flipping through the transfer papers attached to a clipboard. “There’s never really been anybody like him before. We don’t have a word for what he is.”

“You mean, aside from crazy.”

The warden scowled at the prisoner. “Crazy doesn’t even start to describe Seville.”

“A friendly word of warning before we leave,” an FBI agent said. “Be damn careful removing that mask or else—”

In perfect synchronicity with those words, Seville softly hissed, then violently exploded. The people standing closest to him were thrown yards away to land sprawling on the sidewalk and pavement. Stunned, the other men staggered backward, knocking over motorcycles. Visibly shaking from the concussion, the FBI sedans began blaring their horns, while the state police cars started flashing their light bars.

A split second later a white-hot fireball blossomed inside the patrol van to completely engulf the vehicle, forklift and the tattered remains of the prisoner.

Battling the powerful thermal currents, the two helicopters attempted to get closer to the growing blaze. But the rising column of fiery air was too strong and they had to circle away, retreating to the cooler air above the nearby coastline.

* * *

INSIDE PELICAN SUPERMAX, sirens began to howl and fire alarms started to clang. Gates automatically closed, sealing off critical hallways, a recorded message was sent to the National Guard base asking for immediate assistance and hundreds of prison guards grabbed body armor and assault rifles from weapons cabinets. Inside their individual cells, the prisoners screamed and yelled, banging on the steel doors with their bare fists or flushing the toilets to try to lower the water pressure needed to fight the blaze.

Working in unison, a group of guards forced open the buckled front door of the prison but were forced back by the intense waves of heat radiating from the melting patrol van.

“Looks like the Victims Association finally got Seville,” a prison guard growled, raising an arm to try to protect his face.

“Can’t say that I’m sorry,” another guard stated.

“Did they get Seville?” a guard asked, raising his rifle.

Taking careful aim, he fired a round and blew open a padlock holding a small ventilation window closed. Using the stock of the assault rifle as a cudgel, he hammered the retaining bar free to swing open the window. Wisps of pungent black smoke poured into the prison, flowing along the ceiling like an upside-down river.

“What did you do that for?” a guard demanded with a scowl.

“Take a whiff!” the other guard ordered, craning his neck to get closer to the dark fumes. “I only smell burning rubber and hot steel and gasoline. But no—”

“Pork,” another guard gasped. “People smell like roasted pork when they burn.”

“I’m not getting that,” an old guard said hesitantly, then his face went pale. “Oh, hell, there was nobody inside the van when it blew!”

“Seville escaped again,” growled a guard, starting for the front door. “That son of a bitch escaped six feet away from the prison!”

“How did he get away from the blast?”

“Nobody could have. Look at it! He must have escaped long before reaching the prison, probably put a dummy in his place.”

“How is that possible?”

“How should I know!”

“Okay, what can we do, sir?” a young guard asked, nervously twisting his hands on the assault rifle.

“About Seville? Nothing,” the guard said, squinting to try to see through the billowing clouds of smoke. “Everybody back to their stations! Our job is in here, keeping the animals in their cages.”

“But—”

“The fire department will rescue the people outside!” he snapped, turning to march down the hallway. “And the FBI will just hunt down Seville again.”

“I wish them luck.”

“I wish they’d blow his head off...this time.”

Columbus, Ohio

DAWN WAS JUST breaking when Bolan saw his wristwatch tick to five-thirty. Almost immediately sirens began to howl and a fleet of police vehicles came racing up the driveway toward the factory.

Studying them carefully through a monocular, Bolan counted sixteen cars and an armored response van, which, back in the old days, would have been called a paddy wagon.

“Anybody going into that steel box is never seeing daylight again,” Weinberg said into her throat mike.

“Even if these were the real cops, they’d never take me alive,” Gonzales replied. “I killed an FBI agent down in Austin. That’s life for me.”

“Better dead than in fed?” Glenn chuckled over the radio relay.

“Shut up.”

“Everybody stay loose,” Bolan cautioned, touching his throat mike. “We move on my command, not before.”

“Whatever you say, chief,” Cosentini replied in an eager whisper.

Screeching around the fountain, the police cars stopped in a ragged formation and dozens of men poured out wearing full-body armor, helmets and carrying plastic riot shields. However, everybody was carrying a 9 mm MP5 submachine gun instead of a regulation M16 assault rifle.

“They’re not cops, for sure,” Weinberg growled.

“Hold your fire!” Bolan ordered. “Target is not confirmed yet!”

If these were the police, Bolan would have to call off the attack and surrender. He had long ago sworn to never kill an innocent in his endless war. The man would rather take a bullet himself than kill a cop—even if he was on the payroll of Castle. That was the difference between him and them. There were lines Bolan would never cross.

Surrounding the factory, the people dressed as police officers waited a few seconds until the response van arrived. It braked to a halt, then reversed and turned to park alongside the splashing fountain. Instantly the rear doors were thrown open and out walked a pair of men carrying industrial flamethrowers, the blue flames of the propane preburners licking at the fluted nozzles.

Filling the rest of the van was a Vulcan minigun with Dooley standing at the controls. Adjusting his protective headgear, the man squeezed the controls. As the six barrels spun into a blur, he raked a line of 20 mm rounds across the fifth-story windows of the factory. The top of the building exploded into flames; glass shards and splintered furniture rained to the ground.

In ragged harmony, the others cut loose with the MP5 machine guns. The 9 mm armor-piercing rounds punched holes through the fire doors, while the men with flamethrowers laid down a heavy blanket of liquid fire across the front entrance.

“Sons of bitches are trying to trap us inside,” Weinberg growled. “Satisfied, chief?”

“Yeah, they’re not cops,” Bolan said, an icy calm flowing through his veins. “Let’s do this.”

Cosentini sent a whining stream of .223 rounds from the spinning barrels of his M134, the spent brass cartridges sailing away in a golden arch. But the small-caliber rounds pounded futilely against the resilient riot shields and body armor of the Castle street soldiers.

Instantly the disguised Castle soldiers spun to face this new menace.

Making sure their military-grade gas masks were secure, Holden and his guards hammered the fake cops with their AK-47 assault rifles. The 7.62 mm rounds slammed the MP5 machine guns out of their enemies’ hands and stitched ragged lines of wet red holes across exposed throats.

Then from a dozen assorted locations inside the hedge maze, Bolan and his crew started throwing Molotov cocktails. The bottles sailed high and arched down to crash on top of the police vehicles.

As the dark smoke from the firebombs blew over them, the Castle gunners began to weave, their weapons shooting randomly into the ground or into the air. Their movements becoming steadily slower, the fake cops dropped to their knees, some of them starting to drool.

When the last of the crystal-meth-laced Molotovs was used, Bolan unleashed a .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. The seven-hundred-grain bullets slammed into the drugged men, punching clean through their riot shields and body armor. Gaping holes erupted between their shoulders, white chunks of broken bones mixing with the gory spray of pulped flesh.

Unexpectedly, the response van lurched into gear, the reeling driver struggling to steer the armored vehicle. Losing control, he slammed into the fountain and crashed into the windshield. He stayed there for a moment, then slowly dropped out of sight, leaving behind an irregular crimson smear.

Then the side of the van was ripped apart as a stream of 20 mm rounds tore through, cutting the vehicle in two.

As the dented roof crashed to the ground, an exposed Dooley adjusted his gas mask and started triggering short bursts of shells at the greenery, blowing up flower beds and decorative bushes. Holden’s positioned guards yelled as their lives were ruthlessly taken away, the 20 mm rounds blowing them into ragged pieces.

Diving to the grass, Bolan felt the passage of the bullets just above his head, then rolled over with the Barrett booming death. It was difficult to see clearly because of all the smoke, and the soldier was not overly surprised when his first shot only scored a crimson streak across his target’s neck. But before he could take another shot, Dooley spun the minigun in his direction again and Bolan had to scramble for cover inside the bedraggled hedges.

Firing as he dodged, the Executioner sent three of the titanic .50-caliber rounds through the dense greenery, but there was no answering cry of pain to announce a hit.

Popping into view, Cosentini leveled the M134 to rake the other man with .223 rounds. Bright sparks fell from the small-caliber bullets ricocheting off the spinning barrels of the minigun. Then Dooley shot back. The 20 mm rounds disappeared into the soft grass, and then the ground erupted from multiple explosions and Cosentini went flying. The M134 was still shooting wildly as he landed on a marble bench with a sickening crunch.

Down to his last cartridge, Bolan crept to a flowering bush, aimed and fired. The huge bullet slammed deep into a rear tire of the response van. As the vehicle sharply tilted, Dooley lost control of the minigun. It spun freely, the stream of 20 mm bullets raking across the front of the factory.

Dropping the empty rifle, Bolan stood, drew the Desert Eagle and stroked the trigger. The handgun boomed and Dooley rocked back as red blood gushed from his shoulder.

Cursing vehemently, the man struggled with the controls of the minigun. Charging out of the billowing clouds of smoke, Weinberg and Glenn appeared, their AK-101 assault rifles chattering nonstop. Hit from different directions, Dooley jerked around for several seconds, then collapsed to the floor of the van, his lifeless body moving across the thick layer of spent brass casings.

“Keep your masks on!” Bolan said into his throat mike, checking a chemical sensor clipped to his belt. “The air is still registering toxic.”

By now the factory was a raging inferno, a thick column of roiling black smoke rising high into the morning sky.

“Well, that was expensive,” Weinberg said, looking at the still form of Cosentini splayed across the bench. “How did you know they’d come up the drive and not cut through the bushes like we first did?”

“Castle would want to maintain the illusion that they were the police until the last possible moment,” Bolan replied.

Somewhere far away, a fire alarm began to howl, quickly followed by several more.

“The DEA environmental sensors have been tripped,” Bolan announced, heading for the river. “Let’s move with a purpose, people.”

“What’s next?” Weinberg asked, falling into step.

“Nobody would send this big a force without observers to watch safely from a distance and report back on the results, good or bad.”

“Spies?” Gonzales said, as if it was the filthiest word ever created.

“Want me to send some of the guards to flush him out of hiding?” Glenn asked. “Drive the son of a bitch down here like a quail so that we can end him?”

“Christ, you’re dumb. Holden and most of his men are dead,” Weinberg growled, turning to Bolan. “What’s the call? You want him dead or alive?”

Bring up his monocular, Bolan dialed for infrared function and scanned the horizon. Sure enough, he found a small hot spot, lumpy and irregular on the elevated beltway, almost as if a man was sitting on the edge of the highway alongside an idling car.

Very far away, a helicopter rose into the clouds, but it was too far away for Bolan to even guess at the make.

“Sir?” Weinberg asked.

“Alive,” Bolan replied, lowering the monocular and turning off the device. The computer cycled down with a soft hum. “Definitely alive and unharmed.”

Chapter 13

Briefly glancing over the assemblage of wrecked police cars, the vivisected response van, the bullet-riddled cars of the guards and the burning limousines, Bolan saw that everything with wheels had taken serious damage during the chaotic firefight. There was a Bell & Howell helicopter parked on the roof, but the factory was a raging inferno filled with poisonous fumes, so that was as unreachable as the dark side of the moon.

“River?” Gonzales asked, removing his earbud and throat mike.

“River,” Bolan agreed, tossing the monocular.

Sprinting into the bedraggled remains of the hedge maze, the group got rid of as many superfluous items as they could, especially any incriminating weapons and holsters. There was nothing that could be traced back to them by the police, and speed was at a premium. The city fire trucks were dangerously close now, and everybody knew that the police, the real police this time, would be close behind.

Charging out of the hedges, Bolan and the others quickly yanked off their body armor before wading into the murky river. The water was surprisingly cold. Splashing their way across, the group was forced to hold on to one another as they fought the strong currents. The water rose to their chests and footing was tricky. But they finally reached the opposite shore. Chilled to the bone and soaked to the skin, they lumbered through the tall weeds, wringing the excess water from their soaked clothing.

Behind them, the hellish illumination of the burning factory continued to steadily increase. Then flashing lights announced the arrival of fire trucks and a lot of police cars.

“Even when they realize those are stolen squad cars,” Weinberg said, brushing a strand of wet hair off her face, “the local cops are going to go absolutely ape-shit.”

Looking up at the smoky sky, Glenn said, “If they start sweeping the area with police helicopters, we’re well and truly screwed.”

“There’s too much smoke for them to find us visually,” Bolan said curtly, “and the thermals from the fire will muck up infrared scanners for more than a mile.”

“And after that?” Gonzales asked, dodging around an abandoned bathtub overgrown with weeds.

“Stay low, act casual,” Bolan replied, “and get your asses back to the Hercules!”

With the rugged landscape highlighted by the growing fire, Bolan easily located an old gas station and used the Beretta to blow open the padlock on the door. Proceeding directly to the garage, he yanked away a sheet of canvas to expose six BMW motorcycles. One had been for Cosentini, the spare for Grimaldi.

“Oh, man, I am so happy that we stashed these over here in case of trouble,” Weinberg said, yanking off her dripping clothing.

“Readiness is all,” Bolan replied, grabbing a reserve monocular from a cushioned holster.

“Amen to that,” Gonzales agreed, stepping out of his sodden pants.

While the others got dry clothing out of the rear compartments of the motorcycles, Bolan sloshed back outside and scanned the nearby elevated highway. It took him a minute to find the observer again, but the man had not moved.

Dialing for computer enhancement, Bolan switched to Starlight, and the monocular zoomed in to show the green-tinted image of a young man, clean-shaven, long hair tied into a ponytail, black windbreaker and a Knicks T-shirt. There was also an Uzi machine pistol slung under the windbreaker, the stubby barrel tipped with an illegal sound suppressor. Target acquired.

Talking on a cell phone, the young man was intently watching the distant fire, occasionally snapping pictures with the phone. Lost in the moving shadows, Bolan could dimly see some sort of a car behind the man and struggled to get the make or read the license plate. Unfortunately the youth was blocking his sight.

Just then the flames of the fertilizer factory surged upward and Bolan got a distorted view of a dark Volvo with a roof rack and a trailer hitch. The plates looked like New York State, but it was impossible to tell from the all-too-brief glimpse.

Getting a spare Beretta 93R machine pistol from the rear compartment of a bike, Bolan screwed on a sound suppressor, slipped on a new shoulder holster and tucked the gun into place. Rummaging through the small assortment of loaded magazines, he stuffed several into his damp pockets and then yanked on a helmet.

Climbing onto the BMW motorcycle, Bolan kicked the engine alive. “Everybody back to the Herc,” he commanded over the gentle purr. “This is a one-man job.”

“Bust his ass, chief,” Gonzales said, zipping closed a leather jacket.

Leaving by the same door they had just entered, Bolan angled away from the gas station and streaked off into the night. The 465 beltway was relatively close to the factory, about a mile, maybe less. If he doubled that distance with access ramps and city streets, it meant that Bolan had to cover two miles before he could reach the Volvo. Time was against him now, the numbers were falling, so the soldier cleared his mind of everything else but driving the BMW. Speed was all that mattered right now.

Peeling away, Bolan cut across an empty field to try to save a few seconds. Eventually he erupted onto a main boulevard at full speed. Loud car horns blared at his unexpected arrival, but Bolan ignored them and dangerously zigzagged through the irregular line of vehicles.

As the engine grew warm, the exhaust actually lowered in volume. Bolan twisted the controls, trying for even greater speed. The access ramp to the beltway was only a few blocks away when Bolan saw the flashing warning lights of construction.

Struggling to recall the layout of the neighborhood, Bolan headed west until he found a dry creek running parallel to the street. Cutting across the lawn of a house, he banked sharply, and the BMW dropped down onto the cracked mud. Recovering from the impact, Bolan started upriver, pushing the engine hard. The dried mud spread out behind the big speeding motorcycle in a dusty contrail. During the day, that would have been a dead giveaway, but this late at night it merely vanished in the shadows. Besides, almost everybody was heading for the burning factory, talking on cell phones and taking nonstop pictures.

Reaching a culvert, Bolan briefly slowed, then gunned the engine to charge up the sloping concrete bank. Going almost vertical, he thought the bike was going to flip over, and threw his full weight forward. As the front tire found purchase, the motorcycle savagely jerked and he was suddenly on pavement again.

Braking hard while he throttled down the engine, Bolan threw out a leg and banked to swing around fast. He stopped on the opposite side of the road, the rear wheel resting on the edge. That had been close.

Ahead was the exit ramp. There were no cars coming down, so he seized the opportunity and recklessly charged up the downward slope. He cursed as a bus came lumbering into view dead ahead. Popping a wheelie, Bolan hopped onto the grassy median and hastily regained the northbound traffic.

“Crazy nut!” a passing driver bellowed, brandishing a clenched fist.

Nodding silent agreement, Bolan kept in the passing lane until a glow on the horizon said the factory was close. Braking to a full stop, the soldier dug out the monocular and swept the berm for any sign of the observer. There was nobody parked in the berm for as far as the monocular could focus, and he realized that they had already departed.

Bolan climbed back down and streaked away at his best speed. Apparently this would have to be done the old-fashioned way, purely by eyeballing the target.

Trying not to attract attention, Bolan stayed with the flow of traffic, passing every time he could but never letting himself get ahead of the other cars. Leaving the riverfront behind, the night air was cool. Combined with the wind, it sent a chill through Bolan all the way down to his bones. The engine grew warm between his legs, and that helped, but not much.

There were not many cars on the beltway at this hour of the night, and Bolan ignored everything that was not a Volvo. The first one he saw was full of nuns. The second Volvo was driven by a young woman, her headphones visibly jumping from the volume of whatever she was listening to. The third contained an Asian family, the parents in the front seat studying a map, while the kids in the back watched a cartoon on a swing-down TV monitor.

Then he noticed another Volvo half a mile down the road. Allowing the other vehicles to pass by, it was strictly maintaining the speed limit.

Driving with one hand, Bolan awkwardly pulled out the monocular and gave the vehicle a fast look. It was a brown Volvo with New York plates and a roof rack and trailer hitch. Gotcha!

Judiciously dropping back in the flow of traffic, Bolan allowed the Volvo to almost get out of visual range. He had trailed more than his fair share of cars over the years, and this part of the mission was easy. However, he was bitterly cold, sore all over and his stomach was starting to loudly announce the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything for quite a while. There were some MRE food packs in the rear compartments, along with bottled water and several candy bars for quick energy. But to reach any of that would required him to stop the motorcycle.

Forcing his mind away from that thought, Bolan concentrated on following the Volvo. Even if it had a full tank of gas, so did he, and the BMW got much better mileage. Wherever the people in the car went, he could follow.

Maintaining a safe distance, Bolan changed lanes every now and then, and even drove for a few miles with his headlight off. Until somebody specifically noticed you, little variances could make all the difference in staying covert.

Slowly, the long miles passed. Soon, Bolan and the Volvo were the only vehicles in sight as the sun rose and a new day began.

Suddenly, Bolan could no longer see the Volvo, and he quickly slowed. Sure enough, an exit ramp appeared ahead. Slowing even farther, he yanked out the monocular.

A sign read Welcome to Gehenna, which puzzled him as he knew that was the ancient Jewish word for hell. Or rather what passed for hell in that religion. Judaism had no lakes of fire for the wicked, just a terrible wasteland where the evil would languish forever without the glory of knowing God.

Neat rows of two-story houses with attached garages stretched out far and wide, all of them amazingly similar in design. Every backyard had a pool; every roof had a satellite dish. Obviously, Gehenna was a planned neighborhood. True suburbia in all of its glory.

Switching to infrared, Bolan instantly found the hot engine of the Volvo. The brown sedan was turning off the main drag and onto a dirt road that led into the trees.

Marking the location in his mind, Bolan killed the headlight and took off in pursuit. Reaching the dirt road, he could find no trace of the Volvo and proceeded warily, unzipping his windbreaker for faster access to the Beretta. He had no idea where the young man in the Volvo was going, but eventually he’d stop, and Bolan would take him alive for questioning.

There were a lot of loose leaves blowing across the ground, and Bolan throttled down the purring engine. Those would not cause any slippage with the military tires on the BMW, but something inside the man warned him away from the fluttering leaves. However, there were simply too many, and Bolan was forced to go through a small pile.

Instantly he realized something was wrong. The dried leaves did not crunch under his tires...they shattered. Then the front tire blew, the shredded pieces flying off the rim.

Desperately, Bolan threw himself off the machine. At this speed it was probably suicide to try, but it was certain death to stay on the crippled machine.

As the fork dug into the dirt, the BMW flipped over to loudly slam on the ground. The headlight and windshield shattered and the riderless bike tumbled away, gushing gasoline.

Tucking his head, Bolan hit the ground hard, the air exploding out of his lungs. Rolling into a tight ball, he slammed along completely out of control. His head rocked inside the cushioned helmet and the Beretta stabbed into his ribs so hard he thought they might break.

Trying to regain control of his passage, Bolan locked his ankles together and hugged his chest with both arms. It was an old paratrooper move for just such an occurrence. Inertia was in control now, and all the man could do was stay strong and hope that he did not go off a cliff or end up wrapped around a large rock.

Tumbling along the pavement, Bolan was in a whirlwind of chaos and had no idea when he left the dirt road and went down the berm and into the trees. But suddenly there was grass; the jarring was noticeably softer and things began crunch around him.

Finally coming to a stop, Bolan breathed deeply and checked himself for any broken bones. Everything seemed intact, but now he really was sore everywhere. If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet and boots, the soldier knew that he would be dead by now.

Struggling onto his hands and knees, Bolan looked around. In the growing light of the dawn, he could see that he was in a marsh. Tufts of cattails rose in clumps from pools of murky water and the air smelled rich with peat. There was a fat bullfrog sitting on a nearby tree stump. The creature was watching him with an unreadable expression.

Crawling in that direction, Bolan saw the frog hop away to land in the reeds, and then he heard a splash.

Using the tree stump to lever himself off the damp ground, Bolan wearily sat and opened a small NATO medical kit when he heard a twig snap in the trees.

Biting back a curse, he yanked out a syringe and injected himself in the leg. The NATO Hot Shot was a devil’s brew of painkillers, antibiotics and stimulants. It was designed to help a badly wounded soldier get himself off the battlefield and to an aid station. The aftereffects were unpleasant, but in Bolan’s opinion anything was better than dying helpless in the mud. Almost immediately, the Executioner began to feel better.

As his mind started to clear, there appeared a pair of halogen flashlights moving through the trees. The blue-white beams swept back and forth in a search pattern.

Drawing the Beretta, Bolan quickly checked his pockets. The grenades were gone, as were his buck knife and all his spare magazines. He had fifteen rounds. More than enough. That was when he noticed the sound suppressor was askew. If he fired the Beretta now, it could possibly back-blast and remove his hand.

Quickly, Bolan removed it from the barrel. The Beretta would have more stopping power, but would now reveal his location.

Feeling slightly dizzy from the injection, the soldier stiffly moved behind the tree stump and tried to force his vision clear. But everything had faint contrails of blurry colors.

“Deter, look over there. I see blood,” a man whispered from among the trees.

“Okay, you were right, Bob,” said a second man. “There was somebody following us.”

“Told you so.”

To Bolan, the first man sounded young. He marked Bob as the observer from the beltway. Deter had to be the driver of the Volvo. “Those leaf things worked pretty good,” Deter said. “What were they called again?”

“Caltrops,” Bob said with a note of pride. “New version.”

“How did we get any of those?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy.” Bob chuckled.

“Shut up and kill the lights,” a third man growled. “I don’t want Giancova to know we’re coming.”

“Sir, you don’t really think he’s still alive after that crash?” Deter asked.

“Better safe than sorry.”

“Whatever you want, Mr. Johnson, sir.”

The two halogen flashlight beams vanished.

Johnson? Breathing slowly, Bolan sneaked a peek over the tree stump and saw the silhouettes of three men exiting the bushes. Each man was carrying a compact Uzi machine gun equipped with a bulky sound suppressor.

One of the men was slim, one had the broad shoulders of a professional football player and the third... Bolan shook his head to try to clear his vision, then looked again. No, he was seeing correctly. The third man was a giant. Easily eight feet tall.

A rush of adrenaline washed away the last of the fog from Bolan’s mind. Johnson was a common name, and there could easily have been several of them in the organization. But calling the guy by his last name sealed the deal. If a platoon had two or more soldiers with the same name, everybody got a nickname to avoid confusion. “Mr. Johnson, sir” was the man he was after. The man in charge of Castle.

“Switch your mags,” Johnson ordered. “I want him alive.”

“After what he did to the lieutenant?” Bob muttered.

“For questioning. Then we’ll kill him.”

“Now you’re talking, sir,” Deter said eagerly. “I’d love to strap this asshole into the chair and take him apart, nice and slow....”

Easing off the safety on his weapon, Bolan heard the metallic clicks of magazines being exchanged. They wanted him alive, and were switching magazines? Rubber bullets were the only possible answer. Damn. That changed everything.

As much as Bolan wanted to stand and gun down the three of them, in his present condition the outcome would be a total gamble: problematic. And too many innocent lives depended upon his success. He was wounded, and it was now three against one. Torture was not a factor. Death came to every man, but it galled Bolan to consider withdrawing. However, it was basic tactics to retreat in this type of situation. The logic was indisputable.

As Johnson and the others started following the trail of debris stretching behind the smoldering wreckage of the motorcycle, Bolan eased down to the cold ground and began crawling farther into the marshy weeds.

Keeping his movements to a minimum, the soldier tried not to disturb any of the tall plants to reveal his location. The cool mud actually helped clear his mind a little, but it also smeared the cracked visor of his helmet.

Rolling into a trickling stream of water, Bolan tried to wash the visor clean, but that only made it worse. Also, the sight of the dirty water suddenly filled him with a powerful thirst, along with the urge to cough.

Trying to concentrate on what he was doing, Bolan released the chinstrap of the battered helmet and eased it off his head. As it came free, a chunk of the shield came loose and fell into some soft grass, less than an inch away from a rock. Close call.

Blinking his sight clear, Bolan scooped up some of the dirty water, let the swirling contents settle into his palm and took a small sip. That moistened his parched throat enough to kill the urge to cough and he moved onward, following the trickle to reach a small creek.

The water was not deep enough for him to try floating downstream, but any silt he disturbed would at least flow away from Johnson and his men. It was a pity the sound suppressor had been damaged, but Bolan wasted no time on useless recriminations.

Cows and wishes, Bolan thought in wry amusement, remembering his drill sergeant back in boot camp. Put out your hand to the universe to make a wish, and put your other hand under the ass of a cow, then see which is filled first. True words.

Unfortunately, that was when Bolan noticed the stream was winding out of the marsh and back into the suburbs, cutting across several lawns littered with toys. With no choice in the matter, Bolan grimly turned and started back upstream. If this was the hand the universe was dealing out, then so be it. Quickly, he formulated an attack plan. If the stream went anywhere near his destroyed motorcycle...

It did, and Bolan crawled out of the weeds to warily approach the burning machine. The spilled gasoline was long gone, but the seat was still on fire. Dropping the magazine from the Beretta, he thumbed out half of the rounds, tossed them into the smoldering blaze then ducked back down. Slapping the half-filled magazine back into place, Bolan rolled out of the creek and onto the opposite shore. The bank was clear of weeds and he scrambled up the muddy slope to get behind a maple tree.

Bolan barely got there when the bullets started loudly cooking off, the rattle of blasts disturbing the birds in the trees.

A few seconds later men appeared from the bushes, their Uzi machine guns sputtering a dull staccato. The foliage around the motorcycle jumped and jerked from the subsonic passage of the nonlethal rounds. As their magazines cycled empty, Bolan waited until the gunners started to reload, then boldly stepped into view and snapped off a fast six rounds. Gushing hot geysers of life, both men crumpled to the ground.

Both? Bolan advanced carefully, his every sense alert. There was no sign of Johnson.

The Beretta felt uncomfortably light with the two remaining rounds as Bolan knelt alongside the bodies. He took a thirty-round magazine from the bloody hand of Deter and dropped it into his own pocket. The 9 mm ammunition would fit his Beretta, but this was not the time or the place to risk reloading.

Over the soft crackle of the burning motorcycle, Bolan almost didn’t hear the metallic ping of a safety lever being released. Diving into the bushes, he slapped both hands over his ears as protection from the coming concussion.

A moment later a powerful explosion rocked the area, loose dirt, leaves, caltrops and broken bits of the bike flying around in a thundering maelstrom. A piece of chrome-plated tubing slapped into a nearby tree, the ragged chunk of the handlebar quivering slightly. Almost immediately, another grenade detonated, but much farther away.

Not falling for that old trick, Bolan used the precious few seconds to remove a couple rounds from the boxy magazine of the Uzi, and tucked them loose into a pocket.

Rising to a knee, Bolan fired twice, then ducked back down and coolly thumbed the new rounds into the mag for the Beretta. As expected, they were rubber rounds, nonlethal, but still better than nothing.

Picking up a rock, Bolan tossed it straight into the air. It came back down and landed with a clatter on the other rocks at his feet.

There came the sputter from another silenced Uzi a hundred feet away. Partially hidden behind a flowering bush, a big man was facing in the wrong direction, obviously thinking that Bolan was trying to outfox him with a similar diversion.

“Hey,” Bolan said.

As the man spun, the soldier emptied the Beretta into his opponent’s chest. The Uzi went flying as he crumpled from the brutal hammering of the nonlethal rounds.

Watching the bushes for any suspicious movements, Bolan went back to retrieve another magazine from the two dead men, this time making sure it was filled with standard 9 mm, copper-jacketed rounds.

Swiftly reloading the Beretta, Bolan warily approached the groaning man, then moved in fast to kick a 10 mm H&K pistol from his hand.

“And who are you?” Bolan demanded, scanning the surrounding forest and marsh. The man on the ground was clearly not Johnson. He was big, but no giant.

“A-ain’t telling you...sh-shit...” the man gasped, cradling his chest.

There was blood on his lips and Bolan could guess there had to be some internal damage, probably just some broken ribs.

“Unless I call an ambulance, you’re going to die,” Bolan lied with a straight face. “Tell me where to find your boss and you can live.”

With a long sigh, the man went still.

Pressing two fingers to the carotid artery, Bolan could not find a pulse. Killed by rubber bullets. Pure bad luck, for both him and Bolan.

Just then he heard the sound of a car engine. It revved in power, then raced.

Breaking cover, Bolan sprinted in that direction and saw the Volvo streak up the main road to hit the access ramp of the beltway. Sparks flew as the bouncing undercarriage scraped along the concrete, and then the speeding Volvo crested the top and vanished from sight.

Holstering his weapon, Bolan frowned. Instead of using the extra man to help in the search, Johnson had kept him in reserve to be a diversion in case of trouble. Smart and ruthless.

Turning, Bolan started back toward the three corpses to check for anything that might lead to the location of Castle, or better yet, Johnson himself. He found only personal items: chewing gum, cigarettes, a dog-eared paperback and such. But nothing helpful. Bob’s and Deter’s cell phones had been shattered by the blast of the first grenade, and the cell phone of the nameless fourth man turned out to be a fake. It was actually a disguised gun that fired .22 bullets.

Tucking the trick gun into a pocket, Bolan pulled out his own cell phone and started walking back toward the elevated highway. He tried to tap in the number for Grimaldi, but everything was a little blurry, and he kept getting it wrong. Bolan knew what was happening. Now that the adrenaline rush of combat was over, the Hot Shot was starting to wear off.

Fumbling for the medical kit, Bolan tried to get it open for another shot. But his fingers felt impossibly thick and the red plastic box went flying into the ditch alongside the street. Painfully dropping to his knees, Bolan tried to grab the kit and went sprawling, the box tumbling away to burst open, the contents scattering across the ground.

As Bolan lay there, everything kept moving out of focus until the world began to rapidly spin around him, and a warm darkness filled the universe.

Chapter 14

Washington, D.C.

As was usual during business hours, the door to the Oval Office was wide open.

Standing in the corridor just outside, Hal Brognola could see the President sitting at his desk. The chief executive of the nation was dressed in a somber three-piece suit, but with the necktie removed and stuffed into his breast pocket, the fabric lolling like a striped tongue. The desktop was decorated with photo cubes of his family, along with a tall stack of sealed folders. Off to the side was a steaming silver urn surrounded by cups and saucers. The smell of fresh coffee filled the air.

His eyes narrowed in concentration, the President was speed-reading through a dossier, each sheet of paper turning bright red as his fingers touched the top-secret documents. As he finished each page, the President removed it from the folder, then fed it into a humming machine that shredded it into irregular pieces designed to be impossible to reconstruct.

When the President finished, he tapped a button on an intercom complex enough to launch a space shuttle.

“You can go in now, Mr. Brognola,” a secretary said with a smile.

Nodding in reply, Brognola paused at the open doorway and politely knocked.

“Come in, Hal,” the President said, waving him over. “Shift Commander, may I have a minute alone, please?”

As Brognola entered, the Secret Service agents stationed around the room stepped outside and closed the door.

“It always seems a little odd to me that you have to ask your bodyguards to do anything, sir,” Brognola said, walking closer.

“Look up the word Praetorian sometime, Hal.” The President chuckled, gesturing at a chair. “Now sit down. We need to talk.”

Brognola sat. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“First, would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Okay... Hal, what’s going on?”

“Sir?”

“You can lose the innocent demeanor,” the President said, leaning back in his chair. “We’ve known each other for too long to try to hide behind social protocol.”

Brognola leaned forward. “Okay, what have you heard?”

“Just rumors, so far,” the President replied, “but they’re damned disturbing and post hoc ergo propter hoc.”

“One thing does not always lead to another, sir,” said Brognola, translating the Latin. “You’re talking about the prison deaths.”

“Damned right I am,” the President said. “The FBI is checking into the allegations of gross incompetence within the Board of Prisons, or worse, rampart corruption....” He paused. “But I think something else is happening. Something much more sinister.”

“Sinister?”

“Along with the strange deaths, there are wild rumors about files going missing, investigations oddly curtailed long before any concrete results have been produced, lies, malfeasance and plain old-fashioned stonewalling.”

“In which department, sir?”

“All of them...none of them. Hell, if I knew that,” the President said in an exasperated voice, “I wouldn’t have called you.”

“Are we off the record, sir?”

Reaching out, the President tapped a button on the intercom. “Now we are.”

“They’re not deaths, but escapes.”

“Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“I thought it was some vigilante group killing off the worst criminals to make sure they never got parole, or something insane like that, but this...” The President poured himself a cup of coffee. “Is the DOJ conducting an investigation, or just you?”

“This is within the purview of Sensitive Operations,” Brognola said. “I have somebody special handling the matter.”

“I see,” the President said, taking a sip from the cup. “Is our special person close to a solution?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“Damn,” the President muttered, setting down the cup. “Can I assist in any way? I know Stony Man is currently busy with other matters, but perhaps—”

“Striker works best alone, Mr. President,” Brognola said formally.

“Considering his history, I would have to agree,” the President said. “Has any progress been made so far? Are these escapes orchestrated by a foreign power?”

“There is no known connection to any terrorist organization,” Brognola said. “So far, it seems to be a straightforward business deal from a criminal organization that calls itself Castle. Pay them a million bucks and they bust you out of jail within twenty-four hours and fake your death.”

“Castle?”

“Source unknown.”

“To be honest, I’m surprised that nobody has ever thought of this sort of thing before,” the President said, shaking his head. “Then again, perhaps they have.”

“And the matter was kept quiet for the very reasons we are currently experiencing?”

“A valiant attempt by the government to prevent a general disintegration of law and order.”

“We can only rehabilitate a small percentage of prisoners,” Brognola pointed out. “The rest are incorrigible, and there can only be the threat of punishment.”

“Sad, but true,” the President agreed. “Did you know that all the way back in 1950 a pair of French lawyers submitted a report their government that there should only be two classifications of criminals? The impulse criminal, such as when a hungry man steals a loaf of bread...and the career criminal, who has weighed the options and decides upon a life of crime as a business career. The first should be treated and released. The second should be summarily executed as an enemy of the state.”

“Don’t like that,” Brognola said with a frown. “Although there is something to be said for the sheer expediency of the idea.”

“Agreed. Unfortunately, there are a thousand shades of gray between the moral concepts of right and wrong,” the President said, running a hand across his face. “Which is why we have judges, and juries, and parole, and...”

“And when all else fails, there is always Striker.”

A long moment paused between the two men, each of them locked in somber thoughts about the elusive nature of crime versus punishment.

“I wish him well,” the President said, breaking the reverie. “Because the details of this situation are starting to leak, and soon we will have a massive influx of criminals from around the world seeking refuge in America because of Castle.”

He frowned. “Eventually we’ll have gang warfare in the streets over resources and territories, just like it was back around the turn of the century. Then I’ll have to send in troops to assist the police to quell the riots.... To protect the citizenry, America will have to temporarily become a police state.”

“That could easily spark a revolution,” Brognola said hesitantly.

“Yes, I know. The death toll could reach into the thousands, possibly millions, before we regain control.”

Suddenly, Brognola realized that the Man looked much older then he remembered. The terrible pressure of taking responsibility for everything that happened in the nation rapidly aged any man. Smiling politicians marched into the executive office full of life and left as old men.

“Now, I cannot give Striker a direct order,” the President said slowly. “But the stakes are too high for me to wait much longer. He has two days to find Castle, and then I’ll have Homeland Security assume control of the federal prisons.”

“But you don’t have the authority to do that, sir...unless you declare martial law.”

“Yes, I know,” the President said wearily, reaching for the stack of folders and opening another sealed pack of top-secret documents....

Worthington, Ohio

IN RAGGED STAGES, Bolan awoke to the feeling of flying.

Automatically his hands shot up to grab for support and they abruptly jerked to a stop from something on his wrists. Groggily, he glanced around and saw that his arms were lashed into place on steel rails with cushioned Velcro straps.

His body armor had been removed, along with most of his clothing, there was tubing attached to a needle in his left arm and he was covered with white bandages and a few shiny plastic spots. That had to be that weird plastic stuff doctors were using more and more often these days instead of stitching a small wound closed, he thought.

There were also three other beds that he could see, each of them containing a plastic body bag, also tightly strapped into place.

As the small room bounced, Bolan suddenly realized that he was inside a speeding ambulance. Somebody had to have heard the gunfight and called for the police, and they’d found him unconscious on the street. The driver of the ambulance was in terrible danger if Johnson and his people came back for the corpses.

Just then, a folded partition at the front of the compartment slide aside and a young woman walked closer, her hands never leaving the ceiling straps. She was pretty, not wearing any makeup, her hair tightly pulled back in a bun. The nurse was wearing standard light green scrubs and white sneakers. Her name tag read Johnson, Columbus General Hospital.

That jarred Bolan for a second, and then he accepted that it had to just be a coincidence. If this was the wife or sister of the giant from Castle, he never would have woken up in the first place.

“Well, I see you’re awake,” Johnson said soothingly. “Please don’t move around and ruin my handiwork.”

“Nurse Johnson, listen to me very carefully,” Bolan said, putting as much power into his voice as possible. “I’m an undercover DEA agent, and you are in terrible danger as long as I and those bodies are on board.”

“Sure, of course.” She smiled gently. “Now, we’re only a few minutes away from the E.R....”

“Get us out of this vehicle now!”

She paused in concern. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. The people I’m dealing with will kill anybody who gets in their way. Nurses, nuns, small children...anybody. Please, stop the ambulance, and dump us on the street, then get out of here!”

She started to smile, but it turned into a frown. “Got any identification?”

“Not when I’m undercover, damn it,” Bolan snapped, the muscles in his arms bunching as he strained against the straps. “No, wait... Yes, I do! Is there a police officer on board? Maybe the driver?”

“No,” Johnson said, “but my fiancé is a cop...as well as my brother, my father and one of my uncles.”

“Excellent!” Bolan sighed in relief. “Check the bullets in my gun. It must still be on board.”

“I...ah, do what now?”

“Please, time is pressing,” he said as the ambulance took a corner. “Either I’m full of it or I’m a cop. Choose fast.”

Scowling darkly, Johnson looked hard at the man for a long minute, then turned and opened a wall cabinet. Inside was a clear plastic bag filled with his muddy and bloody belongings.

“I shouldn’t be doing this...” she muttered, opening the seal and rummaging around inside to withdraw the Beretta.

Dropping the magazine, she thumbed out a live round and held it up to the ceiling light. “And what exactly am I looking for?”

“Check the base,” Bolan stated. “If you actually come from a family of cops, you’ll know it when you see it. Oh, damn. Wait a minute. Those have serial numbers. Mine are unmarked. I had to get a refill from one of these guys.”

“I know that every round has a manufacturer number for identification,” Johnson stated. “Unless...”

Feeling the mounting pressure of time, Bolan said nothing, letting the nurse get to the conclusion on her own.

“...unless it’s government issue,” Johnson said. “The only people with blank bullets are in the Alphabet Soup.”

“FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, lots of us swimming around,” Bolan agreed.

The nurse remained silent, a battle warring within her.

“Look,” Bolan said, “we’re running out of time.”

“Any chance you got a badge hidden in the heel of your shoe?” Johnson asked in a tight voice.

As the ambulance smoothly rolled over railroad tracks, Bolan kept his face neutral. “We call it a shield, ma’am, not a badge.”

Exhaling in relief. “Okay, I’ll take a chance,” she stated, leaning forward to release the straps. “How deep is the shit?”

“Over my head and still piling.”

“What’s the call?”

“Kill the lights and siren, get off the main road and call for help. Fire department, everybody and anybody,” Bolan said as his arm came free. “Surround yourself with people!” He started to work on the second strap. “Then get me armed and off this wagon...along with the bodies.”

“Just dump you on the street?”

“And run like hell,” Bolan said, sitting upright. He eased the needle from his arm, then jabbed it into the pillow to keep the sharp end from flailing around.

Johnson passed him the bag of his belongings, then disappeared into the front of the ambulance.

As Bolan donned the filthy garments, the siren cut off and the vehicle slowed to sharply turn a corner.

“We’re downtown,” Johnson said, returning. “But Vlad knows an abandoned parking garage. No security cameras, no civilians.”

“Sounds perfect,” Bolan said, tying his laces. “By the way... Vlad?”

“The driver. He’s from Georgia. Not magnolias and moonlight, the one in Europe.”

“Fair enough.” Swaying to the motion of the ambulance, Bolan opened one of the body bags and extracted a filthy Uzi machine gun. Rummaging through the pockets, he found three empty magazines and one loaded with rubber bullets.

“Want to clean that?” Johnson asked. “We have plenty of astringent lotion.”

“No need, an Uzi would fire if you poured maple syrup into the breech,” Bolan stated, slinging the weapon over a shoulder. “Any chance of some coffee?”

With a knowing smile, Johnson produced a thermos. “Thought you might want some,” she said, removing the cap. “Never knew a cop who didn’t live on black, two sugars.”

“Like blood to a vampire,” Bolan agreed, accepting a steaming cup.

He drained the cup, the hot brew flowing inside like a healing balm. Then, suddenly, the ambulance violently slammed to the side as the left wall bent inward. Every loose item went flying, and Johnson hit the wall hard.

From the front of the vehicle, the driver shouted curses in a foreign language as the tires loudly screeched and the ambulance fishtailed madly, then swung around and came to a rocking halt.

Reaching down, Bolan pulled the nurse back onto her feet, then pressed the Uzi into her hands. “Know how to use this?” he demanded.

Bleeding from a small cut on her face, Johnson gave a nod. “Short bursts, safety is built into the grip. Clench a fist and fire.”

“It’s loaded with rubber bullets, nonlethal,” Bolan said, drawing the Beretta. “So feel free to shoot anybody you see. Just stay inside and aim for their stomach.”

“Because the barrel will ride up from the muzzle blast,” she said, expertly cradling the weapon. “What about you?”

But the man was already in motion.

Kicking open the rear doors, Bolan jumped out with the Beretta, sweeping for targets. He was inside a dark parking garage, loose papers and crumbling birds’ nests proclaiming its lack of recent use. There were no other vehicles in sight. Then a pair of bright halogen headlights rose into view on an access ramp.

It was the Volvo.

Snapping off two fast shots, Bolan took out the headlights, then sprinted across the wide-open space. He barely got behind a concrete pillar before the Volvo slammed into the support column. Metal crunched and the windshield shattered, then doors jerked open and eight men stepped into view. Fresh troops! Everybody was holding an automatic weapon. None of them were giants.

As two of them started for the ambulance, the others opened fire with automatic pistols into the shadows. Targeting them by the muzzle flashes, Bolan removed two of the men, their lives splattering across the rough ceiling.

“Spread out and find that bastard!” a man bellowed, pulling out a boxy MAC-10 and working the arming bolt.

Rolling to a new position, Bolan fired a single round and blood erupted from the shoulder of the leader. He bitterly cursed as the MAC-10 opened fire, wildly spraying 9 mm rounds. Ricochets went everywhere, and a flock of pigeons burst into flight, the sound of flapping wings seeming to fill the whole garage.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Bolan moved to another pillar and then scooted under a steel safety barrier. His windbreaker caught on a rusty bolt, and when Bolan jerked it free he felt some of the stitches on his chest snap. Fresh blood welled on his already filthy shirt.

Suddenly, light flooded the garage as the rear doors of the ambulance were opened to reveal two men in windbreakers carrying MAC-10 machine guns. As they swung up the weapons, from inside the ambulance there came the telltale sound of a chattering Uzi, and the two men staggered backward from the pounding barrage of rubber bullets.

The instant they cleared the ambulance, Bolan put single copper-jacketed 9 mm Parabellum round into the head of each man, then turned around fast just as a flashlight sent a out a bright blue-white beam across the garage.

Ducking, Bolan counted the footsteps of four men, then dropped to his belly and fired. As their ankles exploded, the men screamed and fell.

Sprinting across the garage, Bolan grabbed a MAC-10 from a warm twitching hand, then turned and emptied the entire magazine at the crashed Volvo. The windows shattered, a tire blew and a man screamed, the sound ending abruptly.

“He got Fred!” somebody snarled.

“You’re a dead man, Giancova!” another man yelled over a chattering MAC-10, the arch of spent brass falling on the dirty concrete with a musical tinkling. “A fucking dead man!”

Holding the limp corpse as a shield, Bolan felt it get hit twice by incoming rounds before he could recover the other MAC-10. Unfortunately, there were no spare magazines, but the second dead man did have a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver tucked into a holster at the small of his back. Perfect.

“Come get me, Johnson!” Bolan shouted, triggering short bursts to conserve ammunition.

Unexpectedly, the siren of the ambulance wailed into operation, the keen magnified in volume inside the parking garage until it was beyond deafening.

Dropping the corpse, Bolan used both hands to cover his ears from the stentorian assault. Then the siren faded away and a loudspeaker on top of the ambulance cracked into operation.

“The city police are on the way!” a man said in a thick foreign accent. “ETA, two minutes.” He paused. “Ninety seconds!”

“Some other time, Giancova!” called the man from behind the ruined Volvo, and there came the sound of running feet.

Not trusting them in the least, Bolan stayed to guard the ambulance until he heard the wail of police cars coming up the zigzagging ramps of the garage. Leaving the MAC-10 on the floor, Bolan climbed over the safety railing and lowered himself as far as possible before letting go and falling to the next level. His ankles expertly crossed, Bolan rolled with the impact and came to a stop unharmed. But as he stood, a warm feeling spread across his chest and he knew yet another stitch had burst.

Their light bars flashing, sirens wailing, a stream of police cars raced past the man, closely followed by an ambulance and then a fire truck.

Well done, Vlad! Bolan thought.

Satisfied the civilians were protected, Bolan took off for the elevator in the far corner. It was dead, of course, the power having been turned off a long time ago. But that was not important.

Prying open the doors, Bolan grabbed hold of the emergency ladder bolted to the inside of the shaft and started descending. The shaft was pitch dark and reeked of dust, grease and bird droppings. A few minutes later he reached the main floor and strolled out of an exit onto the busy city street.

Staying alert for any police or giants, Bolan flagged down a cab.

“Where to, buddy?” the driver asked, slapping down the flag on the meter. “Holy Jesus, you okay?”

“Huh? Oh, that’s just ketchup.” Bolan laughed, fingering the blood on his shirt.

“Really? Well, don’t get any on the seat, or there’ll be a cleaning charge.”

“Not a problem. There’s an old airfield outside town, south-by-southwest,” Bolan said, getting into the rear seat. “Just off Route 151, heading toward Smithfield. Know it?”

“Sure. Jefferson Airfield, used to be a drag strip back a couple of years ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“That’ll cost you,” the driver said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Smithfield has got to be almost eighty miles away, and then I have to come back empty...”

Checking his wallet, Bolan stuffed a fistful of soggy hundreds through the tip slot in the window. “Wake me when we get there.”

Chapter 15

Tarrytown, New York

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Come in!”

The knob turned and Torval Johnson entered the bedroom, bowing his head slightly to get through the standard-size doorway.

Standing in the corridor outside were several members of Castle with body armor strapped over of their street clothes. The men and women were carrying assault rifles, and electric-shock batons were holstered at their hips just in case their special visitor was unruly or uncooperative.

“Comfortable?” Johnson asked, closing the door.

Off to the side of the room, the door to the bathroom was open, the air still steamy from the shower, the floor covered with crumpled towels.

The person called Seville was sitting on a ruffled divan in front of a table equipped with a lighted mirror. The table was covered with open jars and bottles of cosmetics, and the eunuch was delicately applying mascara to his eyelashes.

“Oh, yes,” Seville said, turning away from the dressing table. “It’s wonderful to be in real clothing again.”

The slim eunuch was wearing a light blue summer dress, the blue material almost perfectly matching his eyes. A long auburn wig covered his prison crew cut, the curled ends just brushing his shoulders. Jeweled rings shone on every finger and amber bracelets neatly covered the scars on his wrists from being shackled for so many years. His slim legs were freshly shaved and the dark hose masked the naturally pale skin tone incurred from so many years inside mental institutions and federal prisons.

To be honest, Johnson was both impressed and slightly disgusted. If he had not known the true state of the poor bastard, he would have believed that this was a perfectly ordinary woman. There was no overt sign of the monster hidden inside Seville.

Outside a curtained window was a postcard view of the Pocono Mountains, pine trees extending to the distant horizon. A waterfall rushed majestically off a nearby cliff and birds could be heard twittering in the nearby bushes.

“So...who are you and why am I not dead?” Seville asked, turning on the divan. Bending, he wiggled his toes and slipped his small feet into high-heeled shoes.

“Insurance,” Johnson said, feeling a surge of revulsion deep inside his stomach.

“Now, that is a confusing answer,” Seville replied.

As their eyes locked, Johnston caught a brief glimpse of the nightmare hidden inside and started to reach for his Glock, but stayed his hand just in time.

“Confusing?” Johnson asked politely.

If Seville had caught the move toward the gun, he gave no reaction. “While I always liked the idea of your services, I am not a client,” Seville said, sitting primly upright. “I come from a middle-class background and I never had the necessary funds to pay your incredibly exorbitant fee.”

Johnson said nothing, waiting for the madman to finish.

“On top of which, I had already been incarcerated for years, so the twenty-four-hour rule was moot, in my case.” Spreading his fingers, Seville inspected the shiny red fingernails. “So I ask again, and for the last time.... Why am I here?”

“Insurance,” Johnson repeated. “My insurance.”

Seville laughed. “Then it wasn’t just for advertising? To demonstrate how good your organization is?” He smiled, flashing dimples. “I do not object. Far from it! Freedom is worth any price.”

“I was extremely careful to make sure that nobody could possibly recognize your disappearance as having been accomplished by Castle,” Johnson said. “It cost me a lot, but my people planted dozens of false clues that you did not escape, but were actually executed by the Victims Association.”

“Such sad people,” Seville said with a sigh. “I really should just kill them all.... But that seems...well...rude.”

“Rude?”

“They have all lost family members, a shattering experience,” Seville said, looking far away at something deep inside his mind. “How can I harm them further? I know they want me dead, but I harbor no ill will to these poor people. I wish them peace. I, too, have lost family members and suffered the agony of separation.”

Your parents died because you ate them. Johnson kept that thought private.

However, something had to have showed on his face as Seville chuckled. “Yes, this is all rather ironic, isn’t it?”

“I’m a businessman, not a philosopher,” Johnson replied, dismissing the topic with a curt hand gesture. “I set you free because I want you to kill a man.”

“Just one?” Seville asked with a laugh in his voice.

“Just one.”

“And you can’t kill him yourself?”

“Not so far,” Johnson growled. “Snipers, bombs, fifty men in armored vehicles...”

“My, my, he sounds like a very special man.”

“The best I’ve ever seen.”

“So I would assume. And if I refuse?”

Johnson gestured toward the door. “You’re free to leave whenever you wish.”

“Yes, I am,” Seville whispered. “And just because of your largesse.”

“Oh, I am sure that you could kill all of my people if you wished,” Johnson said. “But after spending so much time and money to set you free, that would be...rude.”

“Would it?”

“And pointless,” Johnson said with a shrug. “I want to stay alive, and you like to kill. We should work together. I need somebody killed. Why should you not earn a great deal of money?”

“I’m not an assassin,” Seville said. “However, I have been dreaming for a long time about a trip to China. All of those little children slaving away in sweatshops...” His voice took a dark and dangerous tone. “The Communist High Command needs to learn a harsh lesson in humility.”

Johnson smiled. “I could not agree more. Kill this man, and I’ll pay for everything you need.”

“How generous! But all I need is a knife and a map.”

Somehow, Johnson did not doubt that statement, and almost felt a twinge of pity for the leaders of China. Almost, but not quite.

“If you’re not interested in a business proposition,” Johnson said, playing his last card, “would you consider doing it as a personal favor?”

“A favor...” Seville said thoughtfully, resting a foot on top of the dresser to check the seam in his hose. The action made his dress ride high, exposing lacy panties and an old-fashioned straight razor strapped to his thigh.

Clearing his throat, Johnson looked away.

“Oh, my, a gentleman.” Seville laughed, setting both his feet on the floor again. “All right, I accept. It was been many years since anybody has asked me for a favor.” He smiled. “However, I still wished to be paid for this enterprise, and my fee is...a dollar.”

Johnson frowned. “Is that slang for a million dollars?”

“No, one dollar,” Seville said. “A single dollar.” A strange expression crossed his face, his eyes briefly taking on an inhuman aspect. “As I said before, I’m not an assassin. This is a favor for a gentleman.”

“Excellent! Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Torval,” Seville said, and the straight razor was instantly in his hand.

Turning in the overhead lights, the stainless-steel blade was mirror bright, shining like a newborn sin.

“Now, tell us the name of this man,” Seville said, seeming to be speaking to the razor, “and where we may find him....”

Smithfield, Ohio

WITH THE TOTAL destruction of the Belvedere Fertilizer Factory, Bolan and what remained of his people were forced to establish a temporary camp at the Jefferson Airfield.

It was a strain on his war chest, but Bolan had to maintain the illusion that he had all of Ziggy Nine’s millions. So he’d had Stony Man legally purchase the ramshackle airfield, and then sent Grimaldi off with a roll of bills. The pilot returned in a few hours with enough tents, cots, sleeping bags, food and assorted weaponry to hold them through the night. It was mostly just twelve-gauge Remington shotguns and lever-action Winchester .30-06 hunting rifles.

However, Grimaldi promptly left again and returned at dawn with the cargo hold of the Hercules jammed full of a disassembled Quonset hut, AK-101 assault rifles and another APC. However, this time it was a LAV-25 armed with a 7.62 mm chain gun and a rapid-fire 25 mm cannon.

The demoralized crew and remaining guards happily cheered at the arrival of the armored assault vehicle, and now eagerly began to assemble the second Quonset hut. When that was accomplished, everybody, including Bolan, assisted to surround the entire airfield with a defensive perimeter of caltrops, endless coils of razor wire and a score of video cameras.

Every few hours Grimaldi returned with another couple tons of assorted supplies on pallets, along with a forklift to ferry them out of the colossal airplane. Ammunition, grenades, body armor, additional motorcycles... The Stony Man pilot did not seem to require sleep, and in less than a day both Quonset huts were properly fortified. Only then did the man inflate a tent, grab a sleeping bag, crawl inside and zip the doorway shut.

“What do the neighbors think we’re doing here?” asked Glenn, hunched over a new laptop.

Inside the new prefab hut, the man had set up a small command center. Surrounded by a low wall of sandbags, he had a pair of redwood tables holding a dozen flat-screen monitors relaying images from a series of wireless video cameras. The screens displayed a real-time view of the vast empty fields and scrub grasslands surrounding the airfield.

A hundred feet away, a portable generator softly purred. It was connected to a spiderweb of electrical cables. Slightly farther away was a stash of fuel drums, surrounded by a wall of sandbags. At the far end stood the Hercules, fully fueled and ready to fly at a moment’s notice.

“Told them I was making a movie about the end of the world,” Bolan replied, opening a cardboard box.

Nestled inside were dozens of MRE food packs, everything from New England pot roast to rancho huevos. Stacked along the curved wall were a dozen more boxes next to a refrigerator. There was enough food and water to last them a couple weeks.

In spite of the intense work done, Bolan was feeling much more like his old self. A good night’s sleep had put the man back on his feet. “With this much equipment, we could survive anything,” Weinberg said from inside the LAV-25. Standing in the gunner cupola, she was feeding a linked belt of 20 mm shells to the main gun.

“When are we going to get out of here, sir?” a guard asked, flipping over hamburgers on an outdoor grill. “It’s been two days and I hate camping.” The smoke from the grill lazily wafted upward to flow along the curved ceiling and out a small vent.

“You like dying more?” Gonzales asked, loading a huge magazine. Spread across a redwood picnic table was a new M134 minigun.

“No, sir!” another guard stated, strapping on some of the new body armor.

“Besides, we can’t go anywhere until the replacement meth lab is finished,” Bolan lied, going to a gun rack bolted to the aluminum wall. “So we stay low until it’s done.”

“Hope it’s better fortified that the factory,” the guard muttered, adjusting the flames under the grill.

“It used to be a World War I bomb factory. The walls are ten feet thick.”

“Cool. Where is it located?” Glenn asked, glancing up from the glowing laptop. “Still here in Columbus?”

Taking down a Barrett .50 sniper rifle, Bolan worked the bolt to check the cleanliness of the chamber. “No, this one is in Akron,” he said off the top of his head. “Near the sewage plant.”

“To hide the ammonia? Smart.”

“And once we’re back on our feet,” Weinberg said, her voice muffled from inside the APC, “we find those Castle assholes and burn them out of existence.” The rear doors opened with a clang and she stepped into view.

“That’s the plan,” Bolan said. Just then, Grimaldi entered, his hair tousled from sleep.

“Excuse me, Mr. Giancova?” he asked, displaying a cell phone. “There’s a call for you, sir.”

“Leo?” Bolan asked, starting that way.

“Not even close,” Grimaldi replied, tossing over the device.

With one hand, Bolan made the catch and flipped open the lid. “Giancova,” he growled.

“We have each caused the other a great deal of trouble,” a scrambled voice said. “As well as a great deal of money.”

“Yes, we have...Johnson.”

There came a low chuckle. “Most impressive. We should meet to discuss the matter. Perhaps we can negotiate a treaty of some sort.”

“I’m always more interested in making money than shooting people,” Bolan stated.

“As am I.”

“Okay, where and when?”

“Tomorrow morning at the Buckeye Sports Arena.”

“Unacceptable. Nothing local. I suggest neutral territory,” Bolan said, deciding to take a chance. “Since you’re in New York and I’m in Ohio, how about somewhere in Pennsylvania? Perhaps a farm or a truck stop?”

There followed a very long silence.

Bolan was starting to think that he had overplayed his hand when the scrambled voice returned.

“Acceptable. Just outside of Reading there’s a shopping center. The Eastland Mall.”

“Decent coffee in the food court?”

“Now, how would I know that?” the voice stormed, then broke into a laugh. “Oh, I see, clever. No, I have never been there before. It truly is neutral territory.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow at noon,” Bolan said, and cut the call.

“And...we’re clear,” Glenn announced, typing on the laptop. “They tried to trace us but I blocked them. Then I tried to trace them and got the same result.”

“As expected,” Bolan said, tucking away the phone.

“So what’s the verdict, chief?” Weinberg asked, cleaning her hands on a rag. “Does he really want to cut a deal or is this a trap?”

“There’s no way to know yet,” Bolan said. “If he had suggested any place other than a crowded location, it would have been an ambush. But a shopping mall full of people...”

“Nobody wants a public bloodbath,” Grimaldi stated, smoothing down his hair. “That would only get Homeland Security involved. Cops we can handle, but not the Feds.”

“Okay, we go tonight,” Gonzales said, hefting the M134. “Take out the mall security, have some of our guys put on their uniforms and when Castle arrives...” He pressed the trigger and the minigun hummed as multiple barrels spun around in a blur.

Grimaldi crossed his arms. “There would still be civilian deaths.”

“Not very many.”

“Unless something goes wrong.”

“Stop complaining. It’s good plan. What do you think, chief?”

“I like it,” Glenn stated, leaning back in his chair to lace the fingers of both hands behind his head. “Fights are like writing code. The more complex they get, the bigger the chance of a mistake. Clean and simple gets the job done.”

“Sounds good,” Weinberg added. “We go in, kill everybody and leave. Piece of cake.”

“Maybe we could set fire to the mall to cause a stampede,” Gonzales suggested, removing his finger from the trigger. The spinning barrels slowed to a stop. “Can you kill the fire alarm?”

Glenn smiled. “Consider it done.”

With no expression whatsoever, Grimaldi silently looked at Bolan.

Pretending to consider the suggestion of mass murder, Bolan sauntered to the fridge to grab a beer. “No, we’ll talk first,” he said. “Johnson may not show up in person, but send another representative. I want to know he’s dead, and not have to keep looking over my shoulder for the next ten years.”

“Then what’s our move?” Weinberg asked with a scowl. “We’re not really going to trust this prick, are we?”

“Trust him?” he said with a low chuckle. “Not a chance in hell.”

Chapter 16

Reading, Pennsylvania

Landing at the Reading Regional Airport, Bolan and Glenn took a cab into town to rent a civilian version of a Hummer. It was roomy enough for both men and a couple bulky equipment cases.

As they departed, Grimaldi piloted the Hercules to the far end of the airfield and into a private hangar. A few minutes later, Grimaldi cycled open the rear of the aircraft and Weinberg drove out an oversize bread truck. The vehicle was so big that the roof of the truck scraped along the sides of the exit, so she shifted gears and rocked the huge truck back and forth, inching forward until finally breaking free.

Once on the ground, Weinberg stopped the truck and Grimaldi went back inside the Hercules to run out a pressurized air hose. As he refilled all of the nearly deflated tires, the truck rose several inches.

Shooting the man with a finger, Weinberg shifted gears again and slowly built speed as she also headed for the mall, but on an entirely different route.

* * *

“HOW YOU BOYS doing back there?” Weinberg shouted over the throaty rumble of the powerful diesel engine.

There was no response.

“Gonzales?”

Silence.

Annoyed, Weinberg blasted the air horn one time. Again, nothing happened. Her face darkening into a scowl, the woman downshifted gears until the truck came to a stop on the side of the road.

Throwing open the door to the cab, she climbed down and furiously marched to the rear of the truck. “There had better be something wrong with the LAV,” Weinberg muttered. “Because if you idiots are screwing around...”

Raising the rear door just a few feet, Weinberg climbed into the darkness and closed it tightly behind her. The very last thing the boss would want is for some passing motorist spotting the military vehicle inside a civilian bread truck. The shit would really hit the fan then!

Pulling out a butane lighter, Weinberg flicked it alive. “All right, Gonzales, what’s the matter?”

Her voice trailed away at the sight of something red smeared across the tiny front view ports of the armored LAV-25. Then she caught the unmistakable coppery smell of fresh blood.

“Alert,” Weinberg whispered into her throat mike, and her earbud keened in a deafening squeal. Jammed!

Desperately clawing for the Uzi slung under her windbreaker, she saw something silvery flash in the darkness and unbelievable pain exploded across her throat. Letting go of the lighter, the woman instinctively grabbed her throat with both hands as a hot geyser of life sprayed outward.

Blackness enveloped Weinberg as she struggled to breathe, gasping and choking on the rushing torrent of her own blood.

“Hush now,” whispered a strangely feminine voice. “This will all be over soon.”

Then the terrible pain came again and again, slashing white-hot agony across her stomach, both hands, a breast, her face! Soon it filled the universe, overwhelming every other sensation, and Weinberg descended into a swirling vortex of hellish darkness that stretched beyond infinity....

* * *

REACHING THE EASTLAND MALL, Glenn neatly maneuvered through the streams of traffic to park the Hummer at the far end of the lot. As Bolan got out, he plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and opened the lid. “Good luck. I’ll be watching on the security cameras.”

“If I say ‘Piranha,’ send for Gonzales,” Bolan subvocalized, adjusting the turtleneck sweater that hide his throat mike.

“Will do!”

Walking alone through the long rows of cars, Bolan tried to watch everything and everybody. Even though he was hoping this would not end in bloodshed, the soldier was wearing full body armor, and under his windbreaker were both a silenced Beretta and a .50 Desert Eagle. He had also brought along a few M18 grenades this time. Just in case.

The mall was moderately busy this time of the morning, mostly teenagers, and housewives doing some quick shopping while the kids were in school. The stores were all the same, and every mall across the country pretty much carried the same merchandise: expensive sports equipment, cheap jewelry, candles, purses, computers and haircuts.

Pleasantly neutral music played over hidden speakers, the sound seeming to come from everywhere. The floor was the standard speckled terrazzo, perfect for hiding stains, and there was a large ornate fountain near the escalators. No statues of war heroes, of course. Just a decorative pile of rocks and a small waterfall splashing down into a shallow pool, the bottom covered with an assortment of shiny coins.

On the mezzanine overlooking the food court, several large men in trench coats leaned on the banister, their hands inside their pockets, sunglasses hiding their eyes and the direction they looked.

In the food court, Bolan saw a large man sitting by himself, surrounded by an archipelago of vacant tables. He was wearing expensive clothes, and was bent over a wooden chessboard that completely covered his plastic table. The game was already in play, with several pieces off the board and sitting on the side.

“Piranha,” Bolan subvocalized as he headed that way.

There was no sign of any mall security and numerous video cameras mounted on the ceiling stayed oddly motionless instead of sweeping back and forth. The air smelled of fried foods: a pleasant mix of pierogi, pretzels and pizza.

Walking closer, Bolan marked the locations of the stores lining the food court, especially the two empty stalls undergoing renovations.

As Bolan approached the table, the man used a foot to push out a molded plastic chair as green as Ireland in the spring.

“Johnson?” Bolan asked, keeping a safe distance.

Without looking up from the game, the man nodded. “Torval Johnson. Are you Anthony Giancova?”

“Sorry, pal,” Bolan said, trying to buy some time. “I have no idea who you are, but you’re not Johnson. I saw that colossus in the marsh. It’d take four of you to make him.”

Reaching out, the man removed a knight from the board. “You are correct. My name is David Styers, and I’m here to take you to Mr. Johnson. Have a seat. Let’s talk.”

Bolan took a single step forward, then threw himself backward. A split second later, the plastic green chair jerked as something passed through it and ricocheted off the terrazzo floor. There had been no sound of a gunshot.

Rolling across the floor, Bolan hit the counter of an empty store. Standing warily, Bolan saw that Styers was gone. However, the soldier was now located under the mezzanine, and the snipers would have to shift positions to fire down on him. That bought a few precious seconds.

“Piranha!” Bolan snarled, touching his turtleneck. There was no response on the earbud.

Scrambling over the counter, Bolan pulled out the Beretta and smashed the fire alarm situated above the cold grill. Instantly the sappy Muzak stopped playing and a hooting alarm cut loose. Everybody in sight paused in surprise, then surged toward the nearest exit.

Pulling out a grenade, Bolan yanked the pin. The frightened people were getting louder by the moment, their excited voices rising into shouts and then terrified screams.

Bolan saw a young boy stuff an expensive wristwatch inside his shirt, while another boy held open a fire door and let a pregnant woman out first. The yin and yang of life, Bolan thought.

Releasing the handle on the grenade, the Executioner dropped the bomb into the cold grill and then fired the Beretta twice, shattering the glass counters inside a jewelry store. A different alarm started howling as the soldier moved through the deserted kitchen. He reached the fire exit just as the M18 grenade inside the grill ignited and began releasing a thick volume of dense smoke.

Satisfied that the mall would soon be empty, Bolan slammed aside the fire door and spun out of the way in case there was anybody waiting for him. But the area was clear, aside from several closed garbage bins and a stack of plastic pallets. Unlike the food court, the air back here smelled sour, and a decorative wall of white bricks hid the unwanted reality of the food business from any passing cars. Styers charged out the open fire door, a knife in each hand and trailing smoke.

Stroking the trigger on the Beretta, Bolan fired twice, the discharges no louder than a hard cough. Styers wildly jerked as the 9 mm rounds punched through his body, and he collapsed, dead, onto the pavement.

Ripping off the dead comm unit, Bolan pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number.

“Sarge?” Grimaldi asked, his voice going up a notch in surprise.

“Piranha!” Bolan shouted just as something hummed past his cheek. A microsecond later the wall behind the man violently exploded, the blast throwing him away.

Bolan lost the cell phone as he tucked his head and rolled away from the blast. He hit the decorative brick wall as an object flashed through the air to explode inside the smoke-filled kitchen. The blast threw out pieces of broken equipment and countless dented pots and pans. They clattered and clanged along the pavement, making more noise than Bolan would have ever thought possible.

Aiming through one of the many holes in the decorative wall, Bolan chose an old-model Saturn that sat in the parking lot and emptied the Beretta into the vehicle until it burst into flames. Dropping to the pavement, Bolan heard the bricks crack, closely followed by the rolling thunder of a high-powered sniper rifle. No longer constrained by the presence of civilians, the people from Castle were making this a straight firefight. Bolan almost smiled.

Arming his last two M18 smoke grenades, Bolan threw the canisters far and wide. Soon, rolling clouds of smoke filled that area of the parking lot. Going behind a large garbage bin, Bolan mentally shut out the noise of the fire alarms inside the mall and concentrated on the sound of the wind. In the background, he could dimly hear tires squealing as cars raced out of the parking lot, horns blaring and voices cursing.

Suddenly the sniper rifle fired a fast three times. More chunks of the brick wall were broken off, but now Bolan had a rough location of the sniper.

Charging into the roiling clouds of smoke, Bolan zigzagged through the rows of old cars until he reached a refrigerated delivery van. There was no sign of the driver, and Bolan ducked under the heavy truck, staying well clear of the pressurized tank of coolant. The insulated walls of the truck offered better protection from the incoming rounds than anything else in sight. But one hit to the coolant tank and he’d become a very dead Popsicle.

Spotting a car missing a window, Bolan crawled there and studied the pattern of the fallen glass. Trying to mentally reverse the trajectory of the bullet, his best estimate would be a distant billboard. It was difficult to see clearly through the smoke, but there seemed to briefly be a shock path through the smoke from the passage of a high-caliber round.

Even as Bolan watched, a tiny tongue of fire extended from the dark catwalk under the billboard. A Toyota burst into flames and a second later came the rolling boom of the sniper rifle. Target acquired.

There was way too much open ground between him and the billboard, so Bolan looked around at the parked cars. The ones on this side of the mall were less fancy, some desperately needed washing and many had duct tape on the front seats to repair rips in the fabric.

Spotting a battered Ford pickup with an empty gun rack, Bolan crawled to it. The door was locked, but he tricked the lock with his knife and got inside. Jerking the seat forward, he exposed the aft storage area. There were old beer cans, some road maps, flares, a few paperback books, a package of beef jerky and a long plastic box.

The plastic box was locked, but Bolan forced it open to reveal a Winchester .30-06 bolt-action rifle. There was a cardboard box of ammunition holding ten cartridges, as well as a bright orange hunting license on a lanyard. Taking the rifle and bullets, he stuffed his remaining cash into the box and crawled away.

Taking refuge behind a banged-up Cadillac, Bolan loaded the rifle, then stood and aimed for the billboard. The Winchester was only a hunting rifle, the effective range roughly a thousand yards. That was a pittance in comparison to the powerful .50 sniper rifle shooting up the parking lot. That would have a good mile range, with a decent telescopic sight. However, the Winchester had a massively greater range then either the Beretta or the Desert Eagle.

Taking a deep breath, Bolan adjusted for droppage, looked at the billowing smoke for the wind, then fired the rifle as fast as he could work the bolt.

For a long minute nothing seemed to happen, and then a man holding an enormous rifle stumbled out of the shadows and fell off the catwalk. He hit several of the crisscrossing steel support beams on the way down.

“Nice shot,” whispered a strange voice.

Glancing at the car window, Bolan saw a woman walking his way. She was pretty, in a masculine sort of way, but his combat instincts flared at the realization that she seemed completely unaffected by all of the smoke and gunfire. Spinning fast, Bolan raised the rifle...but she was gone.

“Now, I thought that was out of bullets,” came a whisper on the smoky breeze.

The back of his neck prickling, Bolan had the unnerving feeling that he was being played, and briefly debated trying to reload the rifle.

“So who are you?” Bolan asked, taking his right hand off the rifle to draw the Beretta. “Mrs. Johnson?”

There came an echoing laugh, and he turned to fire, but once again there was nobody in sight but the drifting smoke. Then a subtle motion to his left made the man duck, and there was a flash of sunshine off something mirror bright. Firing while moving, Bolan heard a car window shatter.

“Too slow, Blackie...” The woman laughed from somewhere.

Tossing the rifle away, Bolan touched his cheek, the fingers coming back streaked with blood. Damn, the woman was fast!

Suddenly there came a noise from behind and Bolan threw himself forward. He hit the pavement in a shoulder roll and came up with both weapons drawn. The same as before, there was nobody in sight. Just the empty cars and ghostly patches of billowing smoke.

That was when he noticed there was loose hair on his sweater. Touching the back of his neck with the cool barrel of the Desert Eagle, Bolan saw blood on the polished steel. He had quite literally escaped death by the thickness of a hair.

Forcing himself to breathe normally, Bolan slowly turned and quickly reviewed what he knew about this new enemy. A woman...possibly a man dressed as a woman...knife...possibly a straight razor, although that was unlikely....

The speed of the attacks was the key. This person was as good as any black belt in the martial arts. Navy SEAL good. Mossad good. Female... Knife... Ultrafast... Liked to kill... Could Johnson have been desperate enough to release that lunatic Seville? Bolan wondered.

“Too slow, Seville!” Bolan said, staying in motion, both guns held close to his sides. “Did you move this badly when you killed your parents?”

There was no reply, only the low whisper of the wind and the distant clang of an approaching fire truck.

Standing still for a moment, Bolan spun fast and spotted a nylon-clad foot disappearing behind a Buick. No wonder he couldn’t hear any footsteps—Seville was barefoot. He knew that insane did not always equate with stupid.

A low laugh sounded from behind and Bolan turned sideways to fire both of his weapons in opposite directions. The chatter of the Beretta and the boom of the Desert Eagle seemed to fill the smoky parking lot. More windows shattered, but there was no cry of pain.

Unexpectedly, a pair of women stepped into sight from behind a Ford van. Smiling widely, Seville was holding a straight razor tight against the throat of a terrified young woman. She was wearing the uniform of a waitress, her wrists and mouth bound with duct tape.

“Drop the guns or she dies,” Seville said in a mocking voice. The waitress started to silently cry as a bead of red blood began to flow along the mirror-bright length of the razor.

Knowing the madman would kill both of them even if he surrendered, Bolan gambled everything and fired the Beretta.

The chattering stream of 9 mm rounds chewed a path of destruction across a nearby Buick, spraying Seville with broken glass. As the madman flinched, Bolan brought up the Desert Eagle and stroked the trigger.

The gingham dress of the waitress jerked as the .50-caliber round punched through the fabric directly between her legs. Shrieking in pain, Seville staggering backward as a hot torrent of red blood gushed from the ruin of his knee. Then the madman rallied and charged.

Dropping the empty Beretta, Bolan cradled the Desert Eagle in both hands and put round after round into the lunatic, the copper-jacketed hollow-point bullets blowing his dress to reveal molded body armor. A head shot was impossible because of the terrified waitress standing directly behind Seville, so Bolan stepped to the side and let the criminal get closer before shoving the hot barrel of the Desert Eagle into his eye and firing again.

Laughing shrilly, Seville slashed Bolan across the stomach with the razor just as his head exploded, chunks of bones and brains and blood going everywhere. Although nearly decapitated, Seville swayed for a moment as if still determined to finish the task before finally dropping lifeless to the dirty pavement.

Touching the body armor under his ruined shirt, Bolan felt a long thin gouge where the straight razor had almost penetrated.

Starting toward the waitress, Bolan heard the dull throb of a helicopter overhead. He looked up, expecting it to be the police or an ambulance. His stomach tightened at the sight of an armed Black Hawk helicopter coming his way.

Chapter 17

Hastily, Bolan slapped his last magazine into the Beretta.

“Run for your life!” he bellowed at the waitress, triggering the weapon in a long burst.

The barrage of 9 mm rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the chassis of the Black Hawk, which had to have been reinforced, so then he hammered the windshield directly in front of the pilot.

* * *

SITTING BEHIND THE stick of the helicopter, Torval Johnson laughed in contempt as the hail of bullets hit the thick barrier of Lexan plastic and simply stayed there, partially buried, like flies in amber. This was his private conveyance, the pilot seat and controls modified to accommodate his colossal size. The Sikorsky MH-60M Black Hawk was state-of-the-art.

As the shooting stopped, Johnson started to fire a rocket when he realized that he had lost sight of Giancova. The drug lord was nowhere to be seen in the smoke-filled parking lot. There were only the bedraggled corpses of Seville and the waitress. She was motionless on the ground, either dead or merely fainted.

Tapping a button on his helmet, Johnson switched on the IR surveillance program, and a small monocle swung out in front of his right eye. Closing the left to avoid vertigo, Johnson scanned the parking lot once more. The waitress was unconscious, the glow of her body strong and healthy. Merely fainted, then.

However, there were no anomalous hot spots in motion anywhere else in sight. Slowly, Johnson turned the helicopter around for a full view. Where the hell was Giancova?

* * *

ROLLING UNDER ANOTHER car, Bolan paused to catch his breath. After seeing Johnson in the marsh, he knew the giant was right-handed, so when the Beretta cycled empty, Bolan dived to the side and rolled under a nearby Ford Explorer. Then he moved to a tow truck, followed by a SUV, always keeping to the left side of the helicopter.

So far, his plan seemed to be working. There was no direct response from the Black Hawk in the air. However, he knew from the model that it carried more than enough munitions to blow up the shopping mall.

Bolan rolled as far as he could under several vehicles along the row, as fast as possible. A crushed beer can cut his cheek and the rusty undercarriage of an old VW minibus ripped a hole in his pants, but the soldier managed to reach a large SUV alive. He waited for the roar of a chain gun or the blast of a 70 mm Hydra rocket, but a long minute passed and there was only the steady thumping of the hovering helicopter.

Awkwardly, Bolan removed the tattered windbreaker. The Beretta was gone, but he still had the Desert Eagle and four full magazines. However, even the heavy-duty .50-caliber rounds would not penetrate the primary armor of the helicopter.

There was a small arsenal of additional weapons in the trunk of the rented Hummer, but if Glenn was not responding to the radio, that could only mean he was dead, probably killed by Seville. However, there was another possible source of weapons.

Even if he still had a cell phone, Bolan would not have called Grimaldi for assistance. The pilot was brave to the point of being foolhardy, but the mighty Hercules would not have lasted a minute against the armed Black Hawk. Besides, Grimaldi was just crazy enough to try to ram the helicopter, and Bolan did not want the blood of another friend on his hands.

Hopefully the local police were smart enough that when they caught sight of the gunship, they’d quickly retreat and call for the National Guard. If Bolan remembered correctly, their nearest airbase was a hundred miles away, so even at best speed, it would take the Guard an hour to get a wing of Apache gunships to this location.

The nearest Air Force base was even farther away, and a dogfight between an F-16 and the helicopter over a civilian shopping mall would require authorization from the Pentagon. That would take even longer, and by then Johnson would be long gone. So, for the foreseeable future, Bolan was alone on this.

Warily, he peered out from under the SUV. The sky was clear, but Bolan could still hear the beat of the deadly helicopter. Unfortunately, there were no more cars in sight that he could fit underneath. So taking careful aim with the Desert Eagle, he blasted the lock off a dilapidated Buick Grand Marquis. The entire car rocked from the trip-hammer arrival of the .50-caliber round, and as the door swung open, Bolan scrambled out from under the SUV and jumped inside. Slamming the door shut again, he quickly used the seat belt to hold it closed.

This had been a wild gamble on his part, but it appeared to have worked. The engines of the helicopter made too much noise for Johnson to hear a single gunshot, and now Bolan was off the ground and had enough elevation to see the rest of the parking lot.

Every trace of the smoke from the grenades was gone, and aside from the helicopter hovering above the parking lot, the shopping mall appeared perfectly normal. Bolan could only guess that once it had been ascertained that there was no fire, the police had wisely decided to keep all of the employees safely inside and far away from the gunfight that had been raging among their cars.

Checking the glove box for anything useful, Bolan found a half-filled bottle of water. Keeping a wary eye on the chopper, Bolan finished off the lukewarm liquid. As the Black Hawk moved away, the soldier opened the door on the other side and sprinted for the billboard. It seemed to take forever for the Executioner to cross the hundred yards of open space, and he almost could not believe it when he flopped into the tall weeds growing along the edge of the parking lot.

Watching the sky, Bolan crawled forward and found what remained of the Castle sniper, then his rifle. It was a Barrett M107, a personal favorite of Bolan’s. Unfortunately, the rifle was useless, the barrel visibly bent from its rough descent through the maze of steel girders. With the rifle out of the equation, his only choices now were to run or to try to reach the cache of spare weapons in the Hummer.

While Bolan weighed the options, the choice was made for him when Johnson opened fire, the tri-barrel chain gun on the helicopter spewing out a stream of high-explosive rounds. Cars were decimated under the hellish barrage, wheels and dented doors flying around like windblown leaves. Several car alarms went off and a woman screamed, the noise abruptly cut off amid the stentorian barrage.

With civilian lives on the line, Bolan turned to sprint toward the parking lot. As the foliage thinned out, he jumped into a drainage ditch to keep going. The mud wasn’t very deep, and his only real obstacle was the rusty remains of what had once been a supermarket shopping cart.

Finally reaching the entrance to the mall, Bolan bolted out of the ditch and raced to the Hummer. Crouching in the lee side of the rented vehicle, Bolan saw Glenn slumped over the steering wheel as if merely asleep. But the deathly pallor of the man told the truth of the matter.

Carefully opening the passenger’s-side door, Bolan reached past the corpse to pop open the rear door, and then he quickly circled the vehicle and eased up the lid. Neatly laid out in an open row of boxes were medical supplies, weapons, ammunition and grenades.

Trying to ignore the continuous series of explosions in the background, Bolan grabbed a spare Beretta and removed the boxes of small arms to uncover a large canvas bag, the sort used to store tents.

Hauling it out, Bolan dragged it down into the drainage ditch. Yanking open the bag, he withdrew an M16 assault rifle, an M79 grenade launcher, a Neostead shotgun and a LAW rocket launcher.

The Light Antitank Weapon was an old friend of Bolan’s, and had been with him in more firefights than he cared to recall. However, the nearly obsolete weapon did not fire a heat-seeking missile, have a GPS minicomputer or even use a wire-guidance system. It operated on pure marksmanship. Aim and shoot.

As Bolan fully extended the tube, the sights popped up and the launch button was revealed. Resting the LAW on the grass, Bolan drew the Beretta and emptied it toward the distant gunship. Immediately, the Black Hawk banked sharply and charged in his direction.

Standing still, Bolan did nothing.

Moving low and fast, the helicopter streaked across the parking lot. Then the chain gun cut loose, a maelstrom of 30 mm rounds exploding all around the stationary man.

Forcing himself to breathe slowly, Bolan still did nothing. The 30 mm rounds kept missing him, although he was hit several times by shrapnel and ricochets.

Suddenly the Hydra rocket pod erupted into life, the 70 mm rockets flashing out to streak past Bolan so closely that he felt the breeze of their passage and their powerful detonations somewhere in the field behind. His stomach tightened at the loud buffeting. Any sane man would run, but war was a kind of madness, and Bolan stood his ground, willing to die if it meant an end to Castle.

Come on, just a little closer, you murdering bastard....

More rockets streaked away, and the chain gun chattered again, the thundering maelstrom of heavy ordnance gradually starting to target the lone man insanely standing in the weeds. Then, just for a moment, Johnson flew straight and level.

Quickly raising the LAW, Bolan rested it on a shoulder, aimed and pressed the launch button. A volcano of boiling smoke and flames erupted from both ends of the tube, and the 66 mm rocket flashed away almost too fast to track by sight.

As the rocket streaked upward, the aircraft banked hard to the right. But it was too little, too late. The antitank rocket slammed directly into the hull, punching through and detonating inside the helicopter.

In a deafening explosion, the Black Hawk was blown apart, fiery debris spreading far and wide. The shattered blades spun off randomly, and a cloud of debris came straight for Bolan.

With a curse, he hit the ground and heard the chopper’s remnants impact the pavement. The resulting fireball seemed to fill the world, but eventually it started to die away.

Stiffly rising from the ground, Bolan advanced, stepping over twisted pieces of metal and sizzling electronics equipment. Assorted small twinges told Bolan that he had caught more of the shrapnel than expected, but none of it felt serious, his body armor managing to stop most of the damage.

The billowing clouds of smoke were dense and the ground treacherous with loose debris, but Bolan made it to the crash site without incident. What little remained of the Black Hawk lay at the bottom of a shallow crater. Several of the larger pieces were on fire, and the air reeked of spilled aviation fuel.

“D-damn...y-you...”

Jerking up his head, Bolan was startled to see Johnson approaching. The giant was a mess; his clothing covered with fresh blood, half of his face covered with raw blisters. He was also cradling a Thompson machine gun equipped with a laser spotter.

As the red dot of a laser started shakily crawling up his shirt, Bolan drew both of his guns and fired repeatedly.

A line of 9 mm rounds flattened across the body armor of the giant until slamming the Thompson out of his grasp, breaking several fingers in the process. As the Desert Eagle spoke, one of the most dangerous men in America died in a ghastly explosion of teeth and brains.

Holstering the smoking weapons, Bolan checked the corpse for any papers and found a pair of slim booklets hidden under the body armor. The first contained a list of the clients of Castle; names and addresses, along with bought-and-paid-for associates. The other was a deposit book for a Swiss bank.

Leaving the parking lot, Bolan easily avoided the police roadblocks and returned to the airfield.

* * *

DRINKING COFFEE FROM a steaming thermos, Grimaldi was sitting in a canvas chair outside the private hangar. A golf bag was nearby, and Bolan knew it contained a M16/M203 assault rifle.

“Sarge!” Grimaldi said, lowering the cup. “So is he dead, or were you killed?”

“Dead and buried,” Bolan said, too tired to smile.

“Anybody else make it?”

“Sadly, no. Is there any fuel in the Hercules?”

“She’s topped off and ready to go. Where to next?”

“Tarrytown, New York,” Bolan said, heading inside the hangar. “And then Washington. There’s a book Hal needs to read and a lot of escaped felons to recapture....”

* * * * *

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First edition February 2014

ISBN-13: 9781460325957

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

BREAKOUT

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