The soldier checked his six, then each point of the compass, assessing his surroundings. Somewhere, a worker whimpered. Bolan tracked the noise and found a twentysomething man with lanky blond hair, dressed in a flannel shirt and ripped jeans. He was cowering under one of the workbenches. He still wore a wrist strap connected to a ground wire, a precaution against electrostatic discharge.
Bolan gestured with his rifle. “You.”
The young man’s eyes went wide. He looked left, then right, crouched on his back in a near fetal position. “M-m-me?” he stammered.
“You.” Bolan nodded. “How many armed guards?”
“What?”
“Armed guards. Men with firearms. How many in this facility?”
“J-ju…just those two,” the young man managed to tell him. “Plus the guy at the door. Jesus, you killed them. You killed them both.”
“Stay with me,” Bolan said, kicking one of the man’s feet with his own combat boot. He didn’t bother to point out that he hadn’t, in fact, killed the door guard. “Focus, kid. Why were they here? Why attack me?”
“I don’t know,” the young man admitted. “We…we just work here, man. We just work here.”
“Work here doing what? What are you building?”
“How should I know?” the man said, indignant. “They give us the specs and we build the boards. I don’t ask. I get paid by the board. I just do my job.”
“Get up,” Bolan said. “Get the rest of the workers together. Get out of here.”
“Why?” the kid asked, pulling himself up, using the workbench for support. He was rapidly regaining his composure; it was dawning on him that Bolan didn’t intend to kill him.
“You’re out of a job, kid,” Bolan told him. “Get the others and get gone. Don’t make me tell you again.”
The young man did not need any further urging. He ran among the benches, grabbing each of his fellow assemblers, urging them on and even shouting at them when they hesitated. Under Bolan’s watchful eye, the workers hit the bullet-pocked double doors and ran for it.
The numbers were ticking down in the soldier’s head. One of those workers was bound to call the police, if a silent alarm hadn’t already been triggered. He thought it unlikely, though, that there was such an alarm, at least not one connected to local law enforcement. Those whose facilities were guarded by gunmen wielding presumably illegal, full-auto Kalashnikovs probably didn’t welcome police involvement in their affairs.
Still, one of the assemblers was probably on a wireless phone to the cops right now. Bolan would have only a little time before the place was overrun.
The wounded gunman was still rolling around on the floor, holding his legs and groaning. Bolan walked up and stood over him, the Tavor held loosely in one hand, the barrel of the rifle pointed at the man’s forehead.
“I want to know everything you know about your employers and this facility,” Bolan said. “I don’t have a lot of time. If you can’t tell me anything, your usefulness to me is limited. If I have to hurt you to make you talk, I will.” This was a bluff, of course; Bolan, the man once known as Sergeant Mercy, would never torture a helpless, unarmed and wounded man. The Executioner had seen far too many victims of torture and interrogation in the course of his personal war. He would never join the ranks of the butchers who did such things to prisoners. This particular prisoner, however, couldn’t know that.
“Don’t, man, don’t,” the gunner said, clenching his teeth through the pain. “I got nothin’ here.… Let me—”
The revolver appeared in the man’s hand as if by magic, pulled from a holster in his waistband, behind his hip. Bolan triggered a single round from the Tavor into the man’s head, the shot echoing across the assembly plant floor.
Searching the dead man’s pockets, Bolan finally found something of value: a laminated identity card bearing the corporate logo of a company called Security Consultants and Researchers. The letters SCAR were emblazoned in heavy block letters across the bottom of the card, which also bore the man’s name. Bolan took a moment to remove his secure phone, snap a digital photograph of the card and transmit the image to the Farm. He took and sent a picture of the dead man, too, for confirmation of ID if nothing else.
There wasn’t much more time. Bolan began to move among the assembly tables, snapping photos of the components he saw waiting there. These, too, were transmitted automatically to the Farm for analysis. He gave the rest of the room a cursory search, then paused outside the door to the office, ajar by perhaps two inches.
Standing to one side of the threshold, he reached out and gave the door a push. As he yanked his hand back, a shotgun blast ripped through the flimsy hollow-core door, throwing splinters in every direction. There was the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun being racked. A second blast, deafening in the close quarters, followed the first.
Bolan wasted no time. As the gunner beyond desperately racked his pump shotgun again, the soldier planted a combat-boot sole in what was left of the door, shoving it aside as he plunged through. The man standing in the cluttered office looked up in stark terror as the soldier hurtled toward him. Bolan slammed the butt of the Tavor into the shotgunner’s head. He collapsed without a sound. The shotgun hit the floor, its action still open, another round from the tubular magazine waiting to be pushed into the chamber.
The man was dazed but not completely unconscious. Bolan propped him up against the scarred wooden desk that dominated the little office. A name tag on the man’s stained and rumpled white, button-down shirt read Hal West, Manager. He didn’t have the look of a professional; he looked like exactly what he was, the manager of a mechanical assembly plant. Bolan searched the man’s pockets and turned up a wallet, a pair of car keys and a few other personal items. Bolan found a pair of glasses in a vinyl case in the man’s shirt pocket. He took these out, unfolded them and placed them on West’s face.
“West,” Bolan said. He snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face a few times.
“Wha…?” West sputtered.
“West,” Bolan said more forcefully. “Wake up.”
“Who…who are you?” West managed to focus on the soldier.
“I’m with the government,” Bolan said. He risked flashing his Justice credentials. It was a test, and he wasn’t disappointed. West’s eyes went wide and he visibly paled.
“You…you’re…”
“That’s right,” Bolan said. “You just took a shot at a government official.”
“I’m sorry!” West blurted. “I didn’t know! I thought… I mean… I thought you were…”
“Slow down,” Bolan said, though he was keenly aware that his own time was running out. He would have to move fast if he wanted to get out of the building before becoming entangled with the local law.
“They just told us to keep an eye out,” West stated. “They said if anyone ever showed up and got violent, it was the terrorists. We couldn’t trust the workers, of course, but I brought the shotgun in from home, kept it here in the office.”
“Terrorists?” Bolan asked. “What terrorists?”
“You don’t know? That isn’t why you’re here?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” Bolan said.
“The parts—” West gestured toward the wrecked door “—the assemblies. We’re making transmitters.”
“Transmitters,” Bolan said. “Not, say, parts for DVD players.”
“No, no,” West said. “That’s the cover. That’s what they told us to say if anybody asked. They said it was top secret. The folks on the floor didn’t know, just management. Just me.”
“Who is ‘they,’” Bolan said, “and what exactly did they tell you?”
“Consolidated Funding and Liability,” West said. “That’s who pays us, anyway. That’s who hired me to run this place. They told me it was top secret, told me I would be helping my country. They said the transmitters are used by the Department of Defense. Missiles or something, hell, I don’t know. I didn’t need to know
. The components showed up, and the plans were given to me, and my people just put the boards and everything else together. We didn’t need to know. It was better if we didn’t, they said.”
“Who at this Consolidated Funding and Liability did you actually talk to?” Bolan asked.
“Some guy.” West shrugged. “He said his name was Richard Smith, which I thought was strange.”
“Why?”
“He was Chinese,” West said. “Or Japanese, or Korean, or whatever. Beats me. But he had an accent and didn’t look like a Richard Smith to me. But I figure, the government, it has its secrets and its reasons.”
“How were you contacted to take this job?”
“I just answered an ad in the paper,” West said. “They told me I was hired, and then told me I was sworn to secrecy, and told me it was my patriotic duty not to tell anybody what was really being built here, because it was for defense. Of course, man, why wouldn’t I? I love my country. I’d never sell it out.”
“How did they know they could trust you?” Bolan asked.
“I guess they must have looked at my records,” West said. “I mean, I just assumed I have a file somewhere, you know? And they paid me a ton of money. A guy would have to be crazy not to take that deal. Six figures to watch the factory floor and not tell anybody we’re making transmitter parts. Seemed okay to me, and I’m as patriotic as the next guy. They arranged for the security guys, too. I figure they’re like, what, contractors, like those guys in Iraq, right? Those company guys who go over and guard convoys and stuff. They never talked much and I didn’t ask. Why did you shoot them?”
“Because they were trying to shoot me,” Bolan said. “West, forget everything you were told. This wasn’t a government facility. You’ve been duped, plain and simple.”
“I…what?”
“You weren’t protecting a government secret,” Bolan said. “I have my suspicions, but let’s just say you were working for the other side.”
“Oh, God,” West said. “You’re kidding. What, like terrorists?”
“It’s difficult to say,” Bolan said. “Don’t worry about it. Cooperate and everything will be fine.” He stood and helped the still-wobbling West to his feet. “Leave that shotgun right where it is. I suggest you get out of here and wait for the cops. Tell them what you told me. Are there any schematics or plans here?”
“Oh, God,” West said, ignoring the question. “Oh, God, I tried to shoot a cop.”
“I’m not a cop,” Bolan said.
“You might as well be!” West said. “Look, man, you gotta help me. You gotta make them understand when they get here. I was just trying to do my patriotic duty, man. The owners said that ecoterrorists might show up and want to take us down, something about lead in the circuit boards. I didn’t ever figure it would come to that. Man, man, you gotta help me. I wasn’t trying to kill a cop, honest!”
“I’m not a cop,” Bolan said. “Listen to me. Are there any schematics or plans here, any data on what you were building?”
“I’ve got them,” West said. He rummaged absently around on his desk before producing a flash drive, which he handed to Bolan. “This should have all the latest designs on it. They haven’t changed much. Everything’s very much at the component level. No real way to tell what these go into, or what they do beyond the most general.”
“All right,” Bolan said. “You should—”
“You! In the building!” a voice amplified by a megaphone shouted from outside. “Come out with your hands up!”
“They’re here already!” West said. He bolted before Bolan could grab him.
“Wait!” Bolan said.
“I have to make sure they understand!” West called, running. “I’m no cop killer!”
Bolan took off after him, but as West hit the double doors, the soldier had one of his battlefield premonitions, a flash of instinct. As he threw himself to the side of the doors, catching a glimpse of West running outside through the outer pair, he realized what had tipped him off. There had been no sirens.
The automatic gunfire cut down Hal West. Bringing up the Tavor, Bolan quickly loaded a 40 mm grenade in the launcher mounted under the barrel.
He waited for a lull in the gunfire, indicating the men outside were reloading. The Executioner had expected them to stagger their fire, but they were apparently overconfident in their numbers. He risked a quick peek around the edge of the doorway, through the mess of what had once been both sets of double doors.
Two gray Suburbans were parked out front. The men firing from behind the cover of those vehicles wielded M-4 assault rifles, dripping with accessories. Every weapon had an elaborate red-dot aiming system, foregrip, laser and flashlight pods, and a variety of other add-ons.
“There!” one of the armed men pointed in Bolan’s direction. The soldier ducked back behind cover as 5.56 mm bullets chipped away at the battered door frame.
He’d seen enough. He thrust the snout of the Tavor and its grenade launcher through the opening, trusting to luck and his own speed to prevent the weapon from catching a round, then he triggered it.
The grenade caught the lead Suburban, blowing apart the first quarter of the vehicle and sending hot shrapnel in every direction. As the explosion died away, the soldier could hear the screams of his enemies. There was more than one wailing voice. At least two, perhaps more of the shooters had been caught in the blast.
He reloaded the grenade launcher, then repeated the same rattlesnake-fast movement, shoving the nose of the weapon into the gap of the doorway and triggering a second grenade. The explosion, like the one before it, brought a wave of heat pressing through the shattered double doors. Bolan waited and was rewarded with a secondary blast of some kind. Something in one of the damaged vehicles, perhaps extra fuel, perhaps explosives, had caught and detonated.
Sparing the corpse of Hal West a final glance, the Executioner walked out into the flaming hellscape.
Bodies were scattered in and around the two burning vehicles. Some of the shrapnel had damaged two of the nearby parked cars, shattering their windshields and flattening a tire on the closer vehicle. Bolan checked each of the dead men, making sure no one was playing possum. He found only one man still alive, lying on his back behind one of the shattered trucks, staring into the sky trying to breathe with a collapsed lung. His shirt was soaked through with blood. An M-4 lay on the asphalt nearby, forgotten.
Bolan stood over him. He aimed the Tavor at the man’s head, one-handed.
“You’re…one…tough bastard,” the dying man gasped.
“Who do you work for?”
“Card’s…in my pocket,” the man said. Evidently, as death approached, he felt no compelling urge to remain loyal to his employers.
“SCAR?” Bolan asked.
“Yeah,” the man wheezed. “Was…Army.”
“And now you’re a mercenary,” Bolan guessed.
“Yeah.” The wounded man’s voice was growing weaker.
“Why?” Bolan asked. “What’s going on in there? What are you protecting?”
“Beats…hell…out of me.” The man grinned. “They…pay.”
“Was it worth it?” Bolan asked.
The dead man stared up at him, unseeing. He would never answer that or any other question.
The Executioner shook his head. They fought for money, and they died for nothing. He had seen it countless times.
Shaking his head again, the soldier shouldered his weapon and hurried back to his vehicle. There was much more work to be done.
CHAPTER SIX
Mack Bolan found the Ford Explorer waiting at the pickup and drop-off area just outside the terminal of Kansas City International Airport. He carried his heavy weapons and gear in a large duffel bag, while his canvas shoulder bag was slung under his field jacket. His personal weapons were concealed within the jacket. Flying Air Grimaldi had its benefits; he could, between the private plane and his Justice credentials, bypass any and all security in the airport. It wouldn’t do
to have some overeager TSA official discovering automatic weapons and grenades on Bolan’s person and in his carry-on.
Agent Jennifer Delaney was prettier than her photograph. She was dressed in a silk blouse, a pair of jeans with hiking boots and a well-cut brown leather jacket that almost hid the bulge of the sidearm on her belt. Bolan looked her over as he stowed his gear on the rear seat of the truck. As he climbed in, she was programming the GPS unit.
“Where to, Soldier?”
Bolan stopped short and eyed her.
“Oh, come off it.” Delaney smiled, flashing white, even teeth. “It practically radiates from you. If you’re a Washington desk-rider or even a legal eagle, I’d be very surprised. You’re military or ex-military.”
Bolan pulled on his seat belt, looked over at her and stuck out his hand.
“Matt Cooper,” he said. “Justice Department.”
“Uh-huh,” Delaney said. She smiled again. “Have it your way, Cooper. Agent Jennifer Delaney, FBI.” She shook his hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm. “So, Agent Cooper. Or is it…Captain? Major? Colonel?”
“Agent will be fine,” Bolan said, almost laughing despite himself. He hadn’t been read so easily in a long time. Delaney’s head was screwed on right, that much was certain. “You and I both know it’s probably better if you don’t pry too deeply.”
“Which is why I’m getting my digs in now,” Delaney admitted. “We can continue this witty banter on the road. Where to?”
Bolan rattled off the address. “We’ll want to take 152.”
Delaney finished entering the address on the GPS. “That’s not too far. But far enough out of the city that we may have more privacy than we might like.”
“Privacy is good,” Bolan said. “Cuts down on people who might get caught in the cross fire.”
“‘Cross fire’?” Delaney shot him a sidelong glance as she drove. She guided the Ford easily through the busy traffic exiting the airport.
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