"Oh, sure. I thought you said no heat."
"It's private," Bolan answered. "And that's all you need to know."
"I give up any of my steady customers, I'm dead."
"You're dead already, sport. I'm offering some extra time."
"Well, since you put it that way..." Noonan hesitated. "How about you let me up?"
"I like it this way," Bolan told him. "Makes a shorter drop in case I think you're shitting me."
It registered, and Noonan paled. "Okay. Tell me what you wanna know."
"MAC-10s," Bolan answered.
"Hey, no sweat. I got some beauties at the warehouse."
"Moved any of them lately?"
"Yeah. How many pieces are we talking?"
"Four, at least. There may be more."
"What happened to 'em?"
"They were used aboard a 747, out of Frankfurt."
"Wow, no shit? I heard about that gig." Beneath the cunning and fear, there was an undeniable excitement in the dealer's eyes. It pleased him to be linked in any way with a notorious event.
"I want the buyer's name."
"Hey, what's a name? You gonna tell me yours is really Breslin?"
Bolan slipped the Magnum out from underneath his chin to let it rest against Noonan's temple.
"I guess there's no way you can help me then."
"Not so fast. I didn't say I couldn't help you, man."
"I'm listening."
"The buyer was Canadian. He used the name Vachon. He paid me extra for delivery."
"To where?"
"A warehouse in Toronto."
"I assume you can remember the address."
"It's comin' to me, man. Le's see, it's on the waterfront, I think."
Another moment was sufficient for him to recall the number of the pier, the warehouse logo — Viking International — and a description of the man who called himself Vachon.
"That's all I've got, man. Honestly."
His voice was pleading, but the eyes were something else again. They had a crafty gleam, and he was looking over Bolan's shoulder now.
And Bolan heard the telltale scuffle, cursed himself for being so caught up in questioning the dealer that he hadn't double-checked the Hispanic. There was time to glance a blow off Tommy Noonan's temple, time to spin and raise the Magnum, barely time to fire before his adversary sprang.
The weapon bucked and roared, a hollow point impacting on the slender human target just below his breastbone, lifting him completely off his feet. The guy was dead before he fell, rebounding off a table loaded down with submachine guns, sliding to the floor.
Without a moment's hesitation, Bolan shot the dealer at point-blank range. Noonan would be on the phone to tip his customer before the Executioner could book a northbound flight from Kennedy, and he couldn't well afford to have his interest in the stolen Ingrams mouthed around. It was imperative that the arms dealer be silenced.
This left the outside gunner, doubtless acting in response to the explosive gunfire. Bolan straightened and waited for him, the captured Smith & Wesson braced before him in a double-handed target stance.
The door swung inward slowly, confirming that the sentry had a key in case of such emergencies. The guy was being careful, but there are times when careful has its drawbacks, too.
Mack Bolan drew a bead on the partition, slammed a round directly through the flimsy plasterboard, the hollowpoint exploding through a fist-size hole, raining dust.
Again, twelve inches to the left, and if he couldn't hope to nail the gunner blind, it was enough to keep him on the move.
The guy erupted from his shaky cover with a silenced Uzi, seeking target acquisition. Bolan never let him find it, ripping off the Smith & Wesson's final round at twenty feet, explosive impact taking off the gunner's face and spinning him around. His dying reflex milked the Uzi, and a short parabellum burp chopped abstract patterns in the wall.
Bolan dropped the Smith & Wesson, confident that checkered grips and target trigger wouldn't hold his fingerprints. He spent a moment wiping down the CAR-15, intent on leaving nothing of himself behind on this one, certain that police would blame a deal gone sour, once they got a look at Noonan's stash.
The subterfuge would provide him with the breathing room he needed for the operation's second phase. That second phase would take him to Toronto and a meeting with the buyer — who was almost certainly a middleman. Vachon was not the Raven, Bolan would have bet his life on that, but he might have some inkling where the Raven could be found.
And that would launch phase three.
Destruction of the parasitic savage who, with impunity, had killed two men in front of Bolan. Elimination of a cannibal who had been preying on the decent folk for too damned long.
The answers would be waiting for him in Toronto, and the Executioner was anxious to begin.
To even up the score.
He owed it to the passengers aboard Flight 741.
Chapter Twelve
The scorpion detected movement nearby and pivoted, its eight legs rippling in reverse like treads on some diminutive but lethal half-track. Pincers spread, the whip tail arched above its back, sting glistening with venom, it was ready to receive another victim. Vibration in the sandy soil, a blur of movement overhead, too distant for tiny eyes to readily identify. The hunter hesitated, reaching upward with its claws, astounded by the size of its potential prey.
Carl Lyons brought his boot heel down and twisted once, for emphasis.
"I hate those goddamn things," he muttered.
In the darkness Campos smiled. "The scorpion is a predator, like you," he answered, speaking in a whisper.
Lyons grunted. "How about yourself?"
"And me. Of course."
"I don't buy that," the Ironman growled.
"The truth is not for sale. It simply is. The scorpion, she feeds on spiders, ticks, las cucarachas — any vermin. Is it not the same with you? With us?"
"You've been out in the sun too long."
"Perhaps."
The sun was not a problem now. Six hours had elapsed since it flamed out behind the tall Sierra Madre, dropping darkness like a velvet curtain on Durango's dusty streets. The darkened alleyway between two shops provided Lyons and his backup with a perfect vantage point for staking out their adversary in the night.
The target was an auto-body shop, long closed according to the business hours posted in its window. But a light still burned inside, and over ninety minutes Lyons had observed six men arriving for the sit-down, bearing heavy satchels or arriving empty-handed, some with furtive glances up and down the street, still others with the quiet confidence of power in their stride.
The last man in looked familiar, profile captured by an errant moonbeam and as quickly lost in shadow. There was something... but the Able Team warrior couldn't pin it down. Besides, it was almost time to move.
He risked a glance along the street in each direction, studying the shadows for suspicious shapes or furtive movement. Finally satisfied, he aimed a pencil flashlight at the roof directly opposite and pressed the button twice. An answer flickered back at him, assuring Lyons that Ornelas held the high ground and was ready to assist them when they made their play.
Lyons spent a moment double-checking the Konzak — his customized version of the big Atchisson assault shotgun. Awesome even on the drawing board, the weapon had been modified by armorer Andrzej Konzaki, late of Stony Man Farm. With Andrzej's death in the line of duty, Lyons had surrendered to a momentary flash of sentiment, rechristening the shotgun in a comrade's memory. But that was the extent of sentiment and softness where the Ironman's weapon was concerned.
Equipped to load a drum of twenty 12-gauge rounds, the Konzak was designed to operate in semiautomatic 3-round bursts, or fully automatic mode. On auto, it could empty out that drum in just four seconds, putting some 240 buckshot pellets in the air, each equivalent to a .33-caliber bullet, at a cyclic rate of 3,600 rounds per minute. Lyons had dubbed the piece his "crowd k
iller."
"You ready?"
Campos nodded, white teeth flashing in the semidarkness. He was balancing a satin-finish, stainless autoloading pistol in his hand.
"No prisoners?"
"Their choice," the blond American replied. "They wanna dance, we brought the band."
At least six men were gathered in the body shop, and Lyons wanted all of them. Alive, if possible; if not... well, he could play it any way the cards were dealt.
He had been working on the solo mission for the better part of two weeks, his Able Team comrades called away on other business. A string of Drug Enforcement Agency informants had been murdered — butchered, really — and the boys in Wonderland were starting to experience some heat. Their own man on the scene, one Manuel Arroyo, had allowed himself to be identified somehow, and he was number seven in the chain of grisly homicides. And the word had come down from Justice, channeled via Hal Brognola's office.
Those responsible would have to pay.
The Able Team warrior's backup men were one-time federales, still pursuing predators in Mexico but with a different source of income, different contacts, different channels for receiving their assignments. They had welcomed Lyons grudgingly, a gringo come to reinvent the wheel and teach them how to do their jobs. But slowly a mutual respect had grown between them.
There had been three of them, at first. Ornelas, Campos and a smiling would-be ladies' man named Estevez. He wasn't smiling when Lyons saw him last. In fact, he didn't have a face. The fragmentation bomb wired underneath the dashboard of his vintage Mustang saw to that.
"Let's move," Lyons growled.
A final glance along the street revealed no snipers in the shadows, and he broke from cover, running in a crouch, the Konzak ready to answer any challenge from the enemy. Behind him, Campos kept up easily, his navy peasant shirt and Levi's blending with the velvet night. They sheltered up against the north wall of the body shop, alert to any signal that would indicate they had been seen. Another moment, counting down the heartbeats, waiting while Ornelas had a chance to leap from one roof to another, carrying an Uzi submachine gun strapped across his chest. He should be in place now, crouched beside the skylight, covering the action in the lighted room below.
"They'll break in the direction of the alley," Lyons said unnecessarily.
The federale had anticipated him.
"You take the rear," he whispered, reaching out to tap the shotgun's elevated muzzle with an index finger. "This should stop the rabbits, if they try to run."
The Ironman checked his Rolex. "Give me two."
"You have it."
Lyons pounded back along the alley and found the loading dock behind the body shop. He tried the back door. Locked. He pressed his face against the gritty window set into the panel. Filtered light from the far end of a narrow corridor reflected off stained linoleum and ancient, fading paint. He settled back to wait.
One minute.
Lyons drew a breath and held it, listened to the pulse as it began to hammer in his ears. A grim anticipation was already churning in his stomach, and he recognized the old excitement mounting, knew that it could kill him if he let it take control.
The Ironman was a warrior in his heart and in his soul. He thrived on combat, action — not for killing's sake, although the life-and-death encounters were a part of it. He fought, and put himself in danger's way, because the action made him feel alive, and that was all that you could ask for out of life. The other motivations — nailing down the savages and getting even for a good man's death, eliminating a substantial portion of the narco pipeline feeding poison to the north — were merely icing on the cake.
And Lyons was prepared to cut himself a slice.
Right now.
A flying boot heel snapped the lock and he was suddenly inside, already pacing off the corridor, his shotgun up and probing out ahead of him. He heard a distant crash and a shouted warning — Campos crashing in the front — before a thunderclap of gunfire overrode the other sounds and set his eardrums ringing in the narrow hallway.
Lyons recognized the federale's .45, another answering, and furniture was toppling, a hoarse voice cursing as a medley of handguns joined the tune. Two long strides along the corridor, and now Ornelas brought his Uzi into play, the skylight shattering with a sound like all the windows in the world collapsing simultaneously.
A strangled scream, the gunfire hit a thunderous crescendo, and as suddenly it died away. Two silhouettes exploded into view, and as he hit a combat crouch, Lyons glimpsed revolvers in their hands, already rising.
The custom Atchisson was set for 3-round bursts, and Lyons stroked the trigger once, dispatching thirty-six projectiles at a range of twenty feet. The buckshot did not have time to spread beyond a foot or so before it riddled flesh and fabric, blowing rag-doll men away and pinning them against the greasy, blood-streaked wall.
He passed them as they slithered to the floor, intent on finding out what had happened in the shop. He hesitated for a moment, then cleared the final doorway in a rush. The shotgun in his hands swept up and out, and he was prepared for anything except what met his eyes.
A single man was standing in the middle of the room, an automatic pistol in his hand, and in the fractured second left before he made the choice to live or die, Carl Lyons saw the rest of it.
A body crumpled near the doorway, leaking from a single bullet hole between the shoulder blades.
Two others were huddled underneath a bullet-riddled conference table, pistols clutched in lifeless hands.
Ornelas lay stretched out on the table, broken by his tumble through the skylight, rugged face a mask of blood where glass and bullets had obliterated classic features.
By the door Campos was still breathing, but with only microseconds left, his punctured lungs already filling up with blood. One hand was clutched to his chest; the other held his .45, the slide locked open on a firing chamber that was empty, like his eyes.
The sole survivor turned to face his adversary, pistol tracking in a classic dueling stance. The familiar eyes were boring into Lyons, almost mesmerizing him before adrenaline and combat instinct broke the lethal spell.
He stroked a 3-round burst out of the Konzak, watched the straw man ripple, spin, disintegrate. He took it all, stone dead before he hit the concrete floor.
Lyons crouched beside the ventilated body, turned it over, spent a moment studying the waxen face. A stray had drilled his jaw, but there was plenty left for Lyons to identify.
And he had seen that face before. Somewhere.
The Ironman racked his brain, aware that he was running out of time. The firefight would attract police, and he was not inclined to wait around and answer any questions at the moment. Not with two dead federates in the game.
But before he split, he had to jog his memory. Complete the link.
The face was Hispanic, possibly a Caribbean type, and he had seen it. But where? On television? On a Wanted poster?
And suddenly he had it. He knew that face, goddamn it. There was no mistake.
The man was "The Raven," sought by Interpol and the police of half a dozen nations on assorted terrorism charges spanning several years. The photos that Lyons called to mind were fuzzy, mostly distance shots and hazy profiles, but the Ironman had devoted time enough to learning certain faces and names that he was confident of his id.
But he would still need proof. Without a doubt his statement would not be believed somewhere down the line. The Raven had been reported dead too many times for anyone to buy another death without some evidence.
He slipped the boot knife from its sheath and weighed it in his hand, selecting the serrated edge. He clipped the Raven's index and middle fingers off at the second knuckle, then wrapped them in a handkerchief and stowed them in a pocket of his tunic. Prints would finally identify the bastard, and an army of determined agents from a dozen nations could at last devote themselves to stalking other cannibals.
Provided that the prints proved out.
<
br /> No further time to argue with himself. The locals would be on their way by now, and Lyons heard the doomsday numbers running in his head. He would have liked to take Campos and Ornelas with him, but it was beyond his present capability. Durango's finest would take care of all the paperwork, notify the next of kin. At the moment Lyons ranked survival as his top priority, and that included breaking clean, without his own name getting tangled up in what had happened here tonight.
But there was more.
For openers, he had to figure out precisely what a terrorist like the Raven had in common with a crop of middle-rank Durango pushers. Something didn't fit, and it was nagging at him now, compelling him to seek the answers, dig until he knew the truth.
For Campos and Ornelas, sure.
But also for the Ironman.
Chapter Thirteen
"There, I've got him."
Yakov Katzenelenbogen took a step back from the window, making room for his companion to observe their target as he crossed the narrow street and disappeared inside the hotel opposite.
"You're sure?"
"There's no mistake."
"All right," replied David McCarter. "We wait."
Their corner room was situated on the second floor of the distinctive Alpenrose, a village inn selected for its commanding view of Obermarkt, the main commercial artery of Mittenwald. Directly opposite, across the one-way street now teeming with pedestrians, the object of their scrutiny was the larger Post Hotel, and those who hid themselves inside.
The village was an alpine classic, strategically straddling a crucial pass in the Karwendel range. It drew the crowds year-round, located as it was within an easy hike of Austria, an hour's drive due south of Munich. Formerly a center of the violin-maker's art, the town still clung to its medieval flavor, buildings decorated with exotic frescoes, furnished with antiques.
The two Phoenix Force members had little time to savor all the sights of Mittenwald. Once contact had been made, survival and their mission would demand 110 percent of their attention. Lives were hanging in the balance, certainly... and still, the body had its needs.
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