“Well, it’s satellite based,” Jackson pointed out. “Maybe the satellite is down.” He tapped away on the laptop. The mobile hotspot was slow, but it worked. Finally he turned to Hargrave and said, “The satellite has shrugged off our piggyback protocol. There’s no way that would have happened by accident.”
“You’re sure?”
“Somebody has to have interfered,” Jackson said. “Which means they know.”
“They know nothing useful. They’ve figured out how it works. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, how do we find him, then?”
“We keep going the way we’re going,” she said. “Check the map. What’s on this heading?”
Jackson took out his phone, called up the GPS map application and compared it to the last known tracking data for Octavios. “If we keep going, we’ll eventually come to a river. There’s a steel plant between us and it.”
“Then that has to be it,” Hargrave said. “A massive factory. From the looks of this neighborhood, it’s probably been closed for years. That’s the perfect place to hide. Lots of cover. Lots of space. It would take a small army to find someone hiding in a place like that, right?”
“I guess.”
“Well? We have a small army,” she said, grinning.
Chapter Fifteen
Monongahela River Steel Works, Pittsburgh
Bolan drove the Malibu straight into the cavernous steel factory. Abandoned, rust-covered equipment was everywhere. In the center of the giant space, which had once been some kind of staging area, there was a vehicle the size of a large SUV covered by an automobile tarp. Bolan drove past it and toward a smaller structure built within the larger one. It had an overhead garage door.
“What’s that back there?” Hazan asked. “That was obviously just put there. The tarp has no dust or debris on it.”
“You don’t miss much,” Bolan commented. He wasn’t being sarcastic; he was quite impressed with how sharp Hazan was. “I need you to stay with Octavios. Guard his life with your own.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “From the look of him, he may expire all on his own.”
“Let’s hope not.” Bolan got out of the car, opened the overhead door and drove the Malibu into the structure, making sure to back it in so they could make a fast getaway if need be. He took out the Tavor and several magazines, giving them to Hazan. Then he removed the M-16/M-203 combo from the trunk, filled his war bag with spare magazines, and donned a bandolier of 40 mm grenades. Closing the trunk and buttoning up the overhead door, he went on foot past the tarped vehicle and out of the plant.
Once outside, he surveyed the landscape. The river was at his back, so he wasn’t terribly worried about an attack from that direction. The access road leading to the steel plant wound around several curves. That was good, too; it would prevent a mad, suicidal charge in a straight line with a vehicle. Old equipment, some of it machinery Bolan didn’t recognize, was scattered everywhere. Evidently, when the plant closed, it had been easier to abandon much of the gear and write it off.
He was surprised a lot of it hadn’t been picked over by scrappers. In depressed areas, it wasn’t uncommon for scavengers to tear out copper pipes and wires just to sell them for pennies at a local scrap yard. The size and weight of the machinery seemed to be the reason nobody had tried that here.
He knew what he wanted already. He’d seen it from what seemed like miles out, as they’d approached the plant. There was an ancient crane at one end of the building, overlooking the entrance access road. He went to it and began to climb.
What he was doing was very unsafe. The scaffold ladder leading up the side of the crane was badly rusted. Twice, his foot almost went through oxidized rungs that seemed held together by nothing but paint. That danger paled in comparison to what was about to happen.
No, thought Bolan. Not what was about to happen. What he was going to do. This wasn’t something he was experiencing. It was something he was going to bring about.
The area around the steel plant looked like an alien world. Everything was dusty, dirty, rusted and covered in debris. There were no trees. The only growing things were hard-scrabble weeds that pushed up through cracks in the pavement. Bolan had seen more desolate areas, but not many. This one was among the most foreboding.
A crow cawed somewhere in the distance. Otherwise, the morning was quiet and crisp.
Bolan loaded a 30-round magazine into the M-16, fed a grenade into the M-203 and brought the rifle up to his shoulder. He found a good position on top of the crane, using a rusted section of the railing on the top platform for a rest. With a little shifting, he found a good arrangement of rifle and man. The key was to make sure he could maintain the same position for hours at a time. Only if a person was comfortable could he or she endure something like that while remaining absolutely still. This method, combined with his patience, had made Bolan a very effective sniper.
He was shooting with iron sights, not through a scope, but the distance from the top of the crane to the ground below wasn’t too bad. He should be able both to see his targets and to hit what he was looking at with great accuracy.
That was the sniper game.
Well, it was part of the sniper game. The other part was waiting.
In the distance, the crow cawed again.
* * *
The minivans raised a cloud of dust as they drove up the gravel access road. The steel plant loomed in front of them. Sheila Hargrave rolled down her window, despite the dust, and stuck her head out, craning her neck. “Javier!” she shouted. “Javier!”
“What are you doing?” Jackson asked. “You’ll give us away!”
“So what?” Hargrave demanded. “So what if I do?” She gestured toward the back of the minivan. “We’ve got car after car full of committed Codex Freedom fighters! We’ve got guns! We’ve got ammo! There’s nothing that Fascist government pig can do that we can’t—”
Jackson’s head exploded.
One moment the man was sitting there, staring at her and looking upset. The next, there was a crater in his forehead and his blood was everywhere in the minivan. The Codex Freedom fighters in the back of the van started to scream and shout.
In the chaos and commotion, Hargrave lost control of the minivan. She skidded, overcorrected and slammed into a broken-down forklift. The impact shredded the front of the minivan and brought it to a bone-jarring halt.
The other minivans turned left and right, forming a semicircle as they fanned out. Hargrave, stumbling in the dirt as she fell out of her wrecked vehicle, watched as several of the people climbing out of her crashed van were immediately cut down. One was shot in the neck. Another was hit in the face. Still another was shot through the side of the head.
The horror of it, the brutality of it, shocked her loose from her fear. She ran for the forklift, hiding behind it, shrinking down as much as possible. Gunfire cracked through the air. Bullets continued to take out Codex Freedom members.
They’re begging for your leadership, Hargrave realized. They need to be told what to do.
“Everyone, follow me!” she shouted. “Count off by twos! Every first person, take up position behind the ring of vans. Every second person, follow me as we take the building. Let’s go!” She drew the .38-caliber revolver she carried in addition to her kerambit, raised it high in the air like a revolutionary figure and took exactly three bold steps toward the steel plant.
From above, she heard something that sounded like bloop!
Several Codex Freedom members were flattened by an explosion. Shrapnel cut through them like razor blades through butter. There was more screaming. Before she could think of another order, Hargrave was forced to watch as a mixture of gunfire and explosions took out one group of her people after another.
Then she caught sight of him.
He was high up, on an old crane, wearing all b
lack and firing a massive rifle. He was also shooting what had to be grenades from the rifle. Hargrave cursed him for the Fascist she knew he was, raised her revolver and began to shoot.
* * *
Bolan continued to track the Codex Freedom hackers with ruthless, methodical precision. They were too committed to admit they were overmatched and run. They were bloodthirsty, sure, but they had no idea how to fight and it showed. All of that was fine with him. Even one run-in with these data terrorists was one run-in too many. And they wouldn’t quit. It was time to show them that playing at murder, traveling around looking to take out their enemies in the name of freeing their leader, could go only one way. His way.
The soldier was almost surprised when a bullet raised sparks from the crane’s superstructure some distance below him. Sweeping the field with the barrel of his rifle, he found Sheila Hargrave crouched behind an old forklift. She was shooting at him with a snub-nosed revolver, guaranteeing she’d hit nothing at this distance. Cut-down .38 revolvers were great for close-quarter self-defense, and had once been the standard by which concealed carry was judged...but that was back in the 1970s. Compact pistols had come a long way since then, but there was no way a snubbie .38 with a two-inch-and-change barrel was going to do more than deafen its owner at this range.
Bolan took careful aim with his rifle. He’d shot her once and she’d survived. This time she wouldn’t. He put his sights over her, but she kept ducking behind the forklift after each shot.
A slight swaying alerted him to activities at the base of the crane. He looked down to see multiple Codex Freedom members climbing the structure, following the path he’d used to get to the top. Things got hotter when they started shooting at him with pistols. One of them carried a .22 LR rifle, an old lever-action slung across his chest by its sling.
Bolan didn’t know if he could give them credit for planning this deliberately. It was more likely that they’d seen the opportunity and taken it; he doubted they were savvy enough, tactically, to divert his attention with one big, loud attack while they flanked him and came up from beneath. Either way, there was now a threat from below. Hargrave would have to wait.
He shifted in position, bringing the M-16 to bear pointing downward. Then he loaded another beehive round in the grenade launcher. Triggering that, he shucked open the launcher and loaded another, then fired again. The data terrorists coming for him were blasted off the crane and into the gravel below.
The Executioner wasn’t done yet. He started loading thermobaric rounds into his grenade launcher, firing them out in arcs that landed among the semicircle of minivans. Screaming again filled the air as heat and overpressure scorched the attackers who tried to shoot back.
Going after the vehicles themselves, Bolan began hitting them again and again. Several gas tanks exploded. He hit the bodies of the minivans, too, hammering them repeatedly. When he ran out of thermobaric rounds, he started shooting out full magazines from the M-16.
The rifle, from Stony Man’s armory, was an older M-16, capable of full-auto. Some variants offered semiauto or 3-round-burst mode alone, part of an ongoing effort down through the years to stop soldiers from panic-firing their guns dry. Panic wasn’t a problem for Mack Bolan, however. He burned through first one magazine, then another, being careful not to get the weapon’s barrel too hot.
He tried to reacquire Sheila Hargrave, but couldn’t find her amid the rest of the carnage down there. He was also running low on ammunition. He changed position to climb down from the crane, but movement from the road brought him up short.
More vehicles were entering the steel mill property, and some were armored military hardware.
* * *
“What has happened here?” Smyrnoi asked.
“The Warlock has happened here,” Mikhailov told him. “Do you not recognize the tactics he used on us? He has drawn his enemies into a trap and then rained death down on them from an elevated position.”
“Aren’t we in the trap, as well?”
“Nonsense.” Mikhailov pointed abruptly. “There!” he said. “There he is, climbing down from the crane!”
The Warlock, dressed in black and wearing a leather field jacket, saw them and picked up his pace. He moved briskly into the steel mill proper.
“Order the faster vehicles to follow us,” Mikhailov ordered. “Vystrels, form a perimeter short of those burning vans. We will chase down the Warlock and, when he flees, we will drive him right into the jaws of our armed and armored vehicles.”
Smyrnoi gave the orders into his radio. Mikhailov urged their truck on, picking up speed, as the other tour vehicle and the Land Cruisers followed.
“Wait!” Smyrnoi shouted.
Mikhailov hit the brakes, the SUV squealing to a stop. The other vehicles, meanwhile, struggled not to plow into the lead light truck. The commander looked to his subordinate, dismayed. “What? Why did you stop us?”
“He will have set a trap,” Smyrnoi explained. “Just as he did before. There may be covered pits in the road. Or other traps. There is no telling with this man. If we pursue, we must do so with caution.”
“You’re right. I do not want this man to get the better of me again.” He pressed his foot down gently on the gas pedal. The SUV moved slowly forward and the trailing vehicles slowed their pace to follow. Smyrnoi rolled down his window, stuck his head out and watched the road carefully as they approached. If there were any signs of tampering, any signs of booby traps, he would find them.
A single shot rang out.
“Egor,” Mikhailov said. “Did you see where—?” He stopped speaking. Smyrnoi was hanging with his head and one arm out of the truck. The Russian halted the vehicle, put it in Park and dragged his friend and subordinate’s body back inside.
Smyrnoi stared back with glassy eyes. A single bullet wound had dug a hole through his forehead, leaving a bloody exit wound on the opposite side.
This is my fault, Mikhailov thought. I didn’t warn him. He was looking for danger to all of us...and did not think to look for danger to himself. Now the Warlock has another notch on his rifle stock.
The commander took his radio out of his pocket and ordered his men to hold their positions. He stood on the gas pedal, driving all the way to the edge of the steel plant. Leaning over, both to project out the passenger’s-side window and to keep his head down should the Warlock fire on him, he cleared his throat.
“You in the steel plant!” he said. “Come out. We have you surrounded. You cannot murder us all in cold blood the way you murdered my friend. You have one chance. Come out and surrender.”
“Cold blood,” came the reply. The Warlock’s voice was deep, confident. “That’s a strange definition. You’re foreign agents operating on American soil to commit acts of war, all in the service of kidnapping or killing a man who is in the custody of the Justice Department of the United States. From where I stand, it’s open season on all of you. Don’t forget, I’ve stared through sights at you before, Dobry Mikhailov of the OMON. I know who and what you are.”
“Do you? Do you?” Mikhailov roared. He reached into Smyrnoi’s waistband and removed the double-edged combat knife the man had favored. “I’m going to put Egor’s knife in your guts,” he vowed, “and I’m going to look in your eyes when I twist the blade.”
“Then I guess you’d better come after me. If you dare.”
The Warlock disappeared into the steel mill. To hell with caution. He was being manipulated, being made to feel anger, and he did not care. He decided to give in to the anger. He was going to wash his hands in this American’s blood. And then, for good measure, he would use Egor’s knife to cut off the man’s head...and he would bring that back to Moscow to make his report.
He floored the gas again, pushing his vehicle forward, clearing the doors of the steel mill and blinking as he tried to adjust to the suddenly dim lighting. The enormous space, once a testament to the Americ
an economy—and now a testament to American arrogance—threatened to swallow him up.
Where was the American? Where had he gone?
There! Mikhailov watched as the man pulled a cover from a black Chevy Suburban. The Warlock got into the vehicle. The headlights switched on.
He had him now, Mikhailov thought. He palmed his radio. “Stay on me,” he ordered the pursuing SUV and Land Cruisers. “I am going to ram that black vehicle. When I do, fan out. Do not create a chain collision.”
Mikhailov accelerated once more.
The Warlock, meanwhile, appeared in a hatch that opened in the roof of the Suburban.
He was aiming a Gatling gun built into the vehicle.
Chapter Sixteen
The Dillon M-134D Gatling was an electrically driven, hand-operated weapon with six barrels generating 3,000 rounds per minute. Chambered in 7.62 mm NATO ammo, it was a favorite of executive protection specialists—particularly the Secret Service. The entire rig remained concealed in the back of the black Chevy Suburban until deployed. Then, once the hatch in the Suburban’s roof opened, the gun came up and the gunner could position himself accordingly.
That was exactly what the Executioner did.
The M-134D was designed for extended bursts. Bolan triggered a long blast that tore into the lead SUV and blew it apart. The driver, Mikhailov, dove out and scrambled for cover as Bolan walked the Gatling gun over the next vehicle in line, which was decimated. No one aboard survived.
The Toyota Land Cruisers behind it started to back up, to turn, to seek safety, but there was nowhere they could go within that space that wasn’t within range of the fearsome M-134D. Gunmen in some of the Toyotas tried to return fire, but Bolan was well protected in the hatch of the Suburban. The individual doors were bullet-resistant and formed a shield behind which the gunner sat.
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