Nicholas frowned. “There are procedures to follow in order to—”
A hard glare from ice-blue eyes riveted Nicholas, freezing the words in his throat.
“A local bunch of good ole boys also targeted her. You could have informed law enforcement that she developed an additional threat, but you kept it under your hat. Why is that?” Bolan asked. He stepped closer. “You wanted your people to do some shooting? Well, congratulations. Your people doubled the dead cops, threw in a paramedic, and a dozen injured. That makes the antiabortion boys a second-rate threat.”
“You’re trying to intimidate a Federal agent,” Nicholas said.
“Not trying. Intimidating.”
* * *
Bolan wrapped his hand around Nicholas’s throat and, with a surge of momentum, tapped the back of the man’s head on the bathroom mirror with a loud thump. “Islamic terrorists mean that you get a big packet of funding, more agents under your command and a stepping stone to a higher office. Am I right?”
Nicholas croaked around the relatively gentle choke hold on his windpipe. Bolan wouldn’t leave bruises, if he could help it. Like it or not, the FBI agent was still a “soldier on the same side.” If he came to harm directly due to the Executioner’s hand, it would be a violation of his code of ethics. And without that code of ethics, he would be nothing more than a mass murderer. It would be time to end his War Everlasting.
“Listen, this nation is at war with radical Islam,” Nicholas said.
Bolan shook his head. “The whole world, even Islam, is at war with radical Islam. Manipulating things to get more funding for your personal vendetta is called aiding and abetting the enemy, reckless endangerment, and you are a party to capital murder.”
“You can’t prove that,” Nicholas answered.
Bolan was tempted to close his fingers until Nicholas’s eyes bulged, and then snap his neck. “I don’t have to prove it. Your emails gave you away.”
Nicholas stopped gasping.
Bolan released his hold on the agent’s throat. “You and your buddies in the office. The flurry of activity yesterday, and this morning after listening in on Asada’s conversation with Majnuna.”
“That’s illegal. You don’t have a warrant,” Nicholas told him.
Bolan kept his face a grim, emotionless mask. He kept himself loose, calm, even though every instinct told him to end this bastard. “You don’t need a warrant to be fired and your name leaked to Majnuna and his people.”
That last line struck Nicholas as if it were a sledgehammer to the ribs. Bolan didn’t pity him.
“You son of a bitch.”
“I was going to give you a chance to walk yourself in, to help put Majnuna and his killers away before they hurt anyone else, but your attitude told me you don’t care. You’re more interested in getting that win.”
Nicholas reached for the Glock on his hip. The Executioner’s reflexes kicked in. He reached out, hand locked around Nicholas’s wrist with the speed of a striking python, the grip just as crushing. Bolan took a step forward as the FBI agent tried to lean back in the same instance he reached for the weapon. The sudden surge of movement and the Executioner’s leverage on Nicholas sent the man crashing backward. The agent’s lower back hit the corner of a sink with a loud clunk.
Nicholas wrestled and twisted, his fingers still wrapped firmly around the butt of his pistol. If he got the gun free, there would be little that Bolan could do. He’d either take the shots, or be forced to kill a soldier on the same side. He knew dozens of ways to disarm a man, but many of them were permanently crippling. No matter Nicholas’s betrayal of his oath, the Executioner couldn’t even rationalize shattering his arm.
Bolan stabbed his knuckles right at the bottom of his adversary’s breastbone. Nicholas’s breath exploded violently from his lips. His face reddened as Bolan’s jab paralyzed his respiration. The FBI agent’s free hand went from clawing at Bolan’s face to clutching his own chest. That gave the Executioner the opportunity to grip Nicholas’s forearm with both hands.
With a twist, he snagged the man’s trigger finger in the Glock’s trigger guard and used it to bend the digit past its breaking point. Knuckles popped with an ugly wet sound, and Bolan pulled the handgun free from its owner’s grasp.
“You should be glad that I have no intention of killing you,” Bolan said.
Nicholas’s chest heaved, and he gulped down air, recovering his ability to breathe. “You won’t kill me? I’m definitely going to kill you!”
“Don’t try it. You’ll only go to prison hurting,” Bolan warned.
Nicholas surged. Though both of his hands were otherwise occupied, the man’s high forehead jabbed hard into Bolan’s chin. The impact didn’t land solidly; the Executioner’s reflexes saved him from a broken jaw, but the blow still blurred Bolan’s vision. He toppled backward from the sudden flush of pain, but he kept his balance.
The agent lunged again, his shoulder catching Bolan right in the breastbone, his arm snapped around his opponent’s waist. The Executioner stamped his foot behind him and braced against the shoulder tackle. Logic dictated that he shoot Nicholas, but Bolan was unbending in his vow not to cause permanent harm to the FBI agent. He’d need the system to deal with this egotistical bigot.
That didn’t mean that the rooted Executioner couldn’t pivot, shift his weight and hurl Nicholas away. Leverage and Nicholas’s own momentum conspired to launch the crooked agent into unyielding tile wall. Porcelain cracked, and Nicholas turned around, eyes livid, forehead split. A trickle of blood seeped from where he’d gashed his forehead. Any semblance of sanity in Nicholas’s eyes evaporated like a snowball in a blast furnace.
The agent lashed out with his fist, even with the dislocated index finger, striking Bolan hard and true in the shoulder. Even that shoulder blocking Nicholas’s punch was only a last-minute reprieve. If Bolan hadn’t seen the strike, the punch would have rocked the Executioner’s jaw. Bolan slipped the swinging blow and kneed his foe in the abdomen. The joint’s impact pumped more breath from his lungs. Bolan seized Nicholas’s arm and twisted.
Ligaments popped, Bolan felt them through his opponent’s skin and muscle. The stretch of those tendons might have caused a less enraged man to cease his struggles, but Nicholas heaved, a human bronco trying to unseat the Executioner from his back.
Nicholas’s one hand was pinned, the other injured, but his legs were free. He kicked off the wall, and Bolan slammed to the floor with more than enough force to make him see stars, burning floaters that swam in the air around them. The warrior twisted harder on his opponent’s captive arm, but couldn’t kick or knee the agent due to the weight across him. Nicholas brought his skull down hard on Bolan’s clavicle, and only his lack of leverage kept the Executioner safe from a broken bone. Still, dazed beneath his foe, Bolan struggled to keep control of Nicholas.
There were options, but none of them complied with his ironclad ethics. Strangulation or a choke hold at this level of conflict would ultimately prove fatal, from a crushed windpipe or a broken neck.
The bathroom door slammed open and a familiar, hulking form appeared in the doorway. Carl Lyons glared down at the pair of bloody men on the tiled floor.
“Jesus, another one,” Nicholas gasped.
“Do you want this prick alive or dead?” Lyons asked.
“Alive, but feel free to break the fight out of him,” Bolan grunted.
A grim smile crossed the face of the former LA cop. “This is the one who let that Taliban guy shoot up two police officers?”
“Yeah, it is,” Bolan said.
“Listen, you don’t have to gang up on me...” Nicholas said.
Bolan had been a few moments from figuring out a way to subdue the renegade FBI agent without causing him permanent harm, but he’d been slowed down. A day of sleepless driving, a short nap and three physical conflicts had worn on him.
>
Carl Lyons, Bolan’s first recruit for the Sensitive Operations Group at Stony Man Farm, leader of Able Team, was fresh and untouched by battle this day. And he had few qualms about being excessively brutal to a deserving prisoner. Lyons was a former detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, so he knew how to make a perpetrator comply. He was fully aware of all the methods necessary to stop a man, especially if he wanted answers from said man after being put to rest.
Bolan was a big, strong, capable man, even battered down by multiple fights, but Lyons was on another level entirely. Big, crushing paws wrapped steel spring fingers around Nicholas’s wrists, and peeled him off Bolan’s prone form as if he were a blanket. With the grace and efficiency of a linebacker with additional years of karate and arrest training, Lyons snapped Nicholas bodily into the wall. It was as if the FBI agent were a rug he was knocking the dust from, but the thing beaten out of his body with one hit was any urge to resist. Tiles on the wall shattered, splinters of porcelain flew, one of them spearing Bolan in the biceps, a minor scratch, but just one more insult to the Executioner, courtesy of the rogue Fed.
Nicholas slumped to the floor, tears, snot and spit flowing from their respective holes in his face, and blood dripping from the gashes on his forehead.
Lyons offered a hand to help Bolan to his feet. “Barbara thought that you might need some assistance in dealing with the alleged fellow good guys.”
Bolan clapped Lyons on the shoulder. “Thanks. You got a place to settle and work out of yet?”
“Nah. I flew down, and came right to the Federal building to see what was what. I heard the fight and figured you were here,” Lyons told him.
“Really?” Bolan asked.
“I used to be a detective. Who the hell else is going to get into a loud, mirror-smashing fight in an FBI office washroom with a bent agent?” Lyons returned.
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Bolan said. “I’ll text you the address of my motel.”
“You look rough. Gonna get some rest?” Lyons asked.
“Miles to go before I sleep,” Bolan returned. “Places to kill, people to do, things to go.”
Lyons raised an eyebrow. “Did you just make a Gadgets joke?”
Bolan grinned. Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz was one of Lyons’s Able Team partners. The electronics genius turned commando often engaged in nonsensical wordplay. “Maybe.” The Executioner turned and headed out.
Lyons whispered in Nicholas’s ear as he snapped the cuffs on the now captive Federal agent. “You are so lucky that he held back because of your badge.”
“I think you broke things inside me when you tossed me against the wall,” Nicholas murmured.
Lyons chuckled. “If he didn’t care, he’d have ended you like you were nothing.”
Chapter Eight
Krahiat Majnuna listened to the police scanner. The garage at his gas station was a hive of nervous activity as the rest of the cell wondered what the response to Ghamdi’s shooting would be. Right now, he did hear an all-points bulletin that sought Dr. Annis Hassan, but there were no orders for officers to shoot to kill.
Maybe they wouldn’t put such an announcement over even the relatively secure airwaves of police radio, but Majnuna’s scanner wasn’t something bought at a department store. It was the latest technology, and had the best encryption-cracking hardware and software that the Jihad could pay for. If the Mobile police had technology better than the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency, then the Islamist State had underestimated the Deep South.
Hadib Asada looked up from where he was cleaning a field-stripped Beretta, and noticed Majnuna across the desk from him, earpiece held to his head by two fingers.
“Anything?” Asada asked.
Majnuna shook his head. “And there’s nothing that says they are searching for anyone matching our appearance. They are looking at an abandoned parking lot full of dead Southerners with assault rifles.”
“Someone stole our thunder?” Asada questioned. “Full of dead Southerners...”
“We’re talking the whole package. Fifteen and counting,” Majnuna reported. “It was in a secluded area, but the corpses were fresh after someone called them all in.”
Asada frowned. “A bunch of armed men, all of them killed. It is the Soldier.”
“Don’t mention him.”
“It’s too late. If he’s protecting Hassan, he knows about us,” Asada explained. “We’re on his hit list.”
“You think those dead men were also against the doctor?” Majnuna asked.
“You saw him at her apartment. You watched him destroy those others. He probably had a prisoner whom he dangled as bait to bring more of them,” Asada said. “She was in the news because of an attack on the women’s health center. So, those dimwits probably thought that she was an abortion doctor.”
“She’s an abortion doctor?”
Asada shook his head. “No. From what I’ve overheard, the women’s health center doesn’t get money for that. They apparently have ties to planned parenthood organizations, but they spend more effort on other things. If anything, they do more to protect pregnancies and mothers than to end them.”
“You mean to tell me that American religious thugs don’t get the facts on who they’re trying to kill?” Majnuna asked.
Asada chuckled. “We know who our enemy is. They don’t care. We have the righteous will of God behind us, while they succumb to the ideals of false prophets.”
Majnuna grumbled. “Sounds like the shit that they say about us.”
“That’s why I laughed,” Asada returned.
“You don’t believe in the Jihad anymore?” Majnuna asked.
“I believe. As a means to an end,” Asada said. “The Jihad’s ultimate goals mean we profit. We get a world that conforms to our needs. Where women are put in their proper place and we only have to acknowledge them when they fulfill our needs.”
“Yes. I’m not a young man anymore. My religious zeal has been tamed by age and experience.” Majnuna agreed with his fellow Taliban veteran.
“Do you think that the Soldier might be at fault here?” Asada asked.
“For what?”
Asada sighed. “For us being off the radar.”
“The killing of all of those Christians?”
“Not just that, but making us a nonentity with the police BOLOs,” Asada said, referring to the Be On the Lookout abbreviation.
“Why would he do that?” Majnuna asked.
The police scanner squealed in his earpiece, a wail of interference that shocked him. Majnuna stiffened upright in his seat.
“I starve you of attention because that’s what bottom feeders such as you crave,” a cold voice growled.
Asada quickly reassembled his pistol, seeing the shock on his partner’s face. “It’s him?”
Majnuna’s throat constricted. He glanced around at the few windows of the garage, wondering how their phantom enemy had heard them. Majnuna could only manage a croaked affirmative and a quick nod of his head.
Asada took a deep, trembling breath.
“Go ahead, warn the rest of your men,” the avenging stranger’s voice taunted. “I want to make sure I get every last one of you.”
Majnuna began to breathe. “Men! We’re getting raided!”
“Good job, Krahiat,” the Executioner drawled over the police scanner.
* * *
Bolan had taken time to watch Majnuna’s gas station. It was a sprawling place with an attached mechanics garage capable of handling at least five automobiles, as well as having indoor storage for another five. The station had a small minimart and six pumps. The station wasn’t in the metropolitan area of Mobile, but in between towns to the north east on Interstate 10. So they had no nosy neighbors, and yellow tape on some of the pumps and across garage bay doors kept too many customers
from rolling in. Bolan suspected the decrease in pumps and garage facilities was a new development.
Terrorist groups within the United States had long been suspected of operating out of gas stations, mostly around Detroit, Michigan. Investigations had uncovered a few, and Bolan and his Stony Man allies had shut down a couple of others. As such, the garages were not intentionally set up as hard sites, but legitimate businesses. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be heavily defended.
The sun had gone down during Bolan’s surveillance, which enabled him to get closer. He utilized not only Kellan Nicholas’s means of observation of Majnuna’s base, but a kit full of high-technology equipment of his own, including a parabolic microphone as well as a laser microphone.
He noticed that Majnuna was paying attention to a police scanner, and his tension was palpable, even at a distance. Bolan switched on his own scanner from his sniper’s hide to listen in on what the Taliban veteran looked for. Of course, he was hoping to keep a tab on the police as they sought the cohorts of the gunman who’d struck down so many first responders.
Bolan had already taken advantage of Nicholas’s hands-off orders and had gotten Brognola to put a further blanket over the authorities’ interest in Majnuna and Asada. He didn’t want Mobile cops or the FBI agent’s more honest friends in the Bureau to get between him and a cell of terrorists. No way did he want them to fall into a cross fire between the Executioner and a group of fanatics.
He counted more than a dozen men inside the garage; possibly more were obscured by the vehicles. A sentry on the minimart roof continually betrayed his position as he swept nearby rooftops and the tree line with binoculars, and every fifth scan, the optics were replaced by a scope atop a hunting rifle.
Bolan was a veteran sniper, and with that background, he not only knew how to use a rifle at long range, he knew how to be invisible in places that were considered plain sight. He also knew how to detect other riflemen, though a blind man could have located Majnuna’s sentry. Also he knew where the attention of another rifleman would be placed. The primary goal of a sniper was the gathering of intelligence over a battlefield at long range, and only occasionally to have to take out a high-value target.
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