Poison Justice

by Don Pendleton

  Ready and set, but for what exactly?

  That he had not been able to raise Brognola after four attempts only darkened the soldier’s foreboding. Since the big Fed never strayed out of arm’s reach or cell phone or satlink range when a mission was launched…

  The chopper touched down. Bolan decided there was only one way to start getting answers. He was out the door, M-16 leading his march, when he sensed the armed shadows stiffen, then one mouthed what looked like an order to one of his men. Combat senses searing adrenaline through his veins, Bolan picked up the pace and lifted the M-16. Instinct took hold and veered him toward the cover of the task force’s Crown Victoria. It hadn’t escaped his prior observation that the other unmarked vehicle was missing, but the soldier was locked on the shadow sliding up the side of the GMC, the vehicle backed-in for obvious quick exit. Bolan was about to announce himself when he glimpsed the slender tube, up and aimed outside the door. The LAW was spitting its 66 mm HEAT round next, the missile wobbling on, whooshing past the soldier within arm’s reach on a tail of smoke and flame; as the HK subguns cut loose, the shotgun thundered in sync.

  Bolan hit the deck as glass blew over his head and a fireball erupted behind in a thunderclap, pounding him into earth with seismic shock waves.

  EYES STUNG BY BLOOD, Brognola kept capping off rounds, bent on taking the bastards with him as he toppled. Sight and sound seemed to mesh with the fire racing through his body as reality fractured into a dreamy mist. Somewhere in the bellow of silent rage in his head, he knew he was dead on his feet, cursing Rollins, as he felt another round tear through his side. Shooting wild, he thought he heard a sharp grunt. He was still falling, it seemed, from a great height. Instinct, reflex and fury gripped Brognola, his head and shoulders slamming off a solid object, stars exploding in the sky. He heard the snap of bullets in his ears, slivers of something lashing his face. His finger kept hitting the trigger, the weapon taking on a life of its own as he sprayed rounds into the darkness.

  He became aware that he was down, flat on his back. The angry life force inside seemed to roll him over, behind whatever he’d hammered against and was now shielding him from the barrage.

  And Brognola heard the groan tear from his lips, hover next, it seemed, up there in the blackness. There was a rustling sound, drifting away, a blurred glimpse of a shadow in the night fleeing.

  Brognola felt himself go utterly still, tasted the blood in his mouth. He listened to the rasping wheeze as it slowly began to fade away, the sky turning blacker. There was no rolling collage of the sum total of his life, but Brognola pictured his wife, thought about Bolan, then found it strange how the stars appeared to wink out, one by one.

  SOMETIMES THE GODS of war intervened and helped those who were on the side of the angels. With the roar of the blast and the invisible hammer of shock waves, the Executioner felt superheated wind rush over his shaky cover. No time to consider his good fortune—another few yards closer to the fireball and he would have been incinerated—he glimpsed wreckage winging past the Crown Victoria.

  And flying straight for the hardforce.

  A jagged strip of rotor blade whirled for blacksuit and sidekick, their weapons going silent as they ducked the airborne guillotine.

  And Bolan seized the lull to help himself.

  Popping to his feet, the Executioner returned the explosive favor, triggering the M-203. Mr. LAW was chucking away the spent antitank launcher wheeling to run, and made it all of two lurching steps when the projectile slammed into the GMC’s grille. He sailed away, blast and body appearing to be vacuumed through the obliterated bay window to the living room.

  Gone and forgotten.

  The blast had dumped the other blacksuits on the ground. One was howling mad as metallic flying piranhas fed on his carcass. He was hauling himself off the ground, bracing the barrage of fire and brimstone, bringing the combat shotgun to bear when Bolan blew him off his feet with a 3-round poleax to the chest.

  With a good idea of who the opposition was, Bolan moved toward the lodge. Closing in, he found the third blacksuit was missing part of his skull, half his face sheared to the bone. Whichever blast sealed the deed, his brains now dribbled out, one eye fixed on eternity.

  The Executioner watched the doorway, looked into the living room, strained to hear through the twin crackle of bonfires for any sound that other blacksuits were on the loose. He would check, of course, but sensed the utter stillness of death, inside and out.

  Beyond cold anger, the soldier knew his problems had only just begun. The lodge, he knew, had been used to house federal witnesses before Marelli. It had been selected for its remoteness from campgrounds, hikers, Park Service, with a NO TRESPASSING-GOVERNMENT PROPERTY sign posted at the end of the dirt drive. Bolan knew the lay of the land from a previous trip and a recon of the area in question. Something like eleven thousand acres of dense forest and rugged hills surrounded the lodge in the Blackhead Range. Tucked between Lake Capra and Black Dome, he knew the nearest campground, lean-to or hiking trail was miles away in any direction. Same for any Park Service outpost.

  A quick backtrack to the Crown Vic, finding keys in the ignition, and the soldier knew, providing luck held, he could beat any wandering officialdom out of there.

  Bolan stole a moment to look back at the funeral pyre in the clearing. Traitors walked among the ranks, but the Executioner would hunt them down. There was no place for the animals to run or hide. Make no mistake, there would be an answer for this treachery.

  There was no time now to grieve for the Justice pilot or curse that his satlink and cell phone with secured line went with the man. Bolan was alone, cut off from the world, walking among the hyenas. So be it.

  Near the front of the lodge, Bolan looked at his two murdered agents and vowed to himself their deaths would not be in vain. Next a frisk of the two blacksuits found no identification. The Executioner ventured into what he already knew was a charnel house.

  BROGNOLA COULDN’T SAY if he walked or floated toward the light. He vaguely recognized a voice as his own, just on the edges of the ringing. The rasping in his ears told him to keep going.

  He was still on the planet.

  There was a gradual awareness of a burning sensation all over, mounting in anger, it seemed, the closer he drew to the light. There were indistinct shadows in the light, he believed, evanescent then in the white shroud as he felt blood and sweat burn into his eyes. Were those voices he heard? Were those faces, mouths open, shouting?

  They were spinning angry demon faces, Brognola feeling tugged on by their presence, a shadow of instinct telling him what they were, that he was plodding toward his car.

  “Drop the weapon!”

  Cops, he thought. He believed he said “Brognola. Justice Department.”

  Then the darkness came once more to take him away.

  FOUR DOWN, FOUR GONE, and no Marelli.

  As he listened to the hungry flames eating away beyond the door, Bolan knelt beside the last body. Hobbs. Young guy, he thought, virtually no experience. Handpicked, the soldier suspected, for the slaughter. Bolan had only met him the one time he was briefing the task force. More life, another promising future brutally snatched away by the evil of other men. The soldier couldn’t say if Hobbs had family, but had to believe there would be grief enough to go around when the word of his murder reached home.

  Brushing shut those young lifeless eyes, Bolan pondered the scene, the dilemma. A thorough walk-through of lodge and perimeter, covering every foot and every nook and cranny of the building, Bolan could pretty much picture what happened. The dead agents never knew what hit them. A check of their weapons showed they had capped off plenty of rounds, but the way the walls were scarred, the furniture shot up, it was over-play for the staging of the crime scene. Figure Peary and his jackals had cut down the others in seconds with backup hardware, hands gloved, then borrowed their weapons to shoot up the place. A phantom firefight. He wondered exactly how the traitors planned to dig themselves out of
this pit. They were in it for the money, most likely, corralled by Cabriano or maybe the blacksuits for the job or both. Figure the transgressions of Peary and the others were used for blackmail. Good guys gone bad, Bolan knew, could prove the most dangerous animals.

  Marelli, it appeared, had been in the kitchen, whipping up a hot meal. Whoever took the marinara facial on the stool, the imprint in the bottom of the pot could get a police sketch artist started on bringing the perp to picture. One of them, at least, was wearing his shame, ruing the night. Small comfort in light of the fact Bolan figured at least three packs of savages—between the Mob, the blacksuits and the traitor foursome—were on the prowl. Whoever the blacksuits—figure NSA, DIA or some black ops arm of DOD—they added a new wrinkle. If there were more of them in the Catskills or on the way to beef up the first group, Bolan knew they would be armed with high-tech tracking, surveillance and countersurveillance that could rival anything he was equipped with.

  And the blacksuits, he knew from his briefing with Brognola, were part of the bigger, nastier picture. The big Fed suspected, but couldn’t prove, radioactive waste was being sold to Cabriano from traitors on the home team. From there it was, allegedly, going to be handed over to the Cali Cartel, who intended to turn around and unload it to an unknown group of Mideast terrorists.

  Marelli was the key. The hit man claimed to have the facts of life on the Cabriano Family, the cartel and the skinny on the blacksuit-radioactive-waste angle, all on a disk he had squirreled away, his ace in the hole. Well, the hit man was right then running scared, alone, hunted by Peary. Bolan guessed Marelli was armed, grabbing whatever weapon from the agent now walking around in search of a plastic surgeon. A chair through the bay window, and Marelli would be down the slope, into the woods.

  And Bolan knew they were some big woods.

  The hit man’s escape route would be south. Bolan pictured the lay of the land from prior foot and aerial surveillance. Two narrow serpentine dirt roads ran north to south, leading toward the Colgate Lake Trail. No reason to assume Marelli had a clue what was out there. He could wander for miles in any direction before he reached anyone or anything to help him. Marelli was every bit hung out there by himself, Bolan knew, as he was at the moment. Forget calling any pals in New York City, Cabriano had probably offered a nice chunk of change for The Butcher’s head on a pike.

  As far as Bolan was concerned, the only one he intended to keep breathing was the hit man.

  The Executioner offered a final thought for the slain agents and loved ones left behind.

  Then he rose and walked out the door.

  5

  It boggled the mind.

  The mobster, he thought, was a city slug, five-and-a-half feet, packing an extra sixty to seventy pounds of suet. The closest he probably ever got to country was somewhere out in the Jersey woods to bury a stiff. God only knew the tonnage of cannolis, calamari and pasta devoured, all the Scotch and red wine that swelled ample belly, ate up brain cells, all the acreage of tobacco smoked over five-plus decades. Talk about a walking toxic waste dump. And he was decked out in aloha shirt and slacks whiter than pure ivory that would have dimmed the sun in comparison. Peary thought it should have been as simple as strolling out of the lodge to pick up the trail. Practically bathed in pungent aftershave on top of it all, there was also the soft leather of Italian loafers, hardly footwear suitable to absorb a hard double-time over ground studded with rock and twigs. The unrelenting turf should have resulted in an angry yelp, a curse, anything.

  But there they were, traipsing through the forest, spread out at roughly fifty foot intervals, east to west, moving north, hoping to intercept Marelli in light of his original running point. Not a sound so far, no whiff of poisons or cologne, not a fleeting glimmer of the guy in the green hue of NVD headwear.

  It was like the mothership came down and beamed him up.

  Peary maneuvered his way through the forest, avoiding tangled brush. Searching for a footpath, Mossberg out and fanning, he heard a sudden snap. Jolted, he pivoted, found only Jenkins to his far right, blundering through some brush, muttering an oath. Great, he thought, the slug was apparently escaping, as silent as a ghost, and his guys were showing all the stealth hunting skills of a T-Rex on the rampage.

  According to his watch, daybreak was an hour or so away, but the birds were already out, chirping and squawking, helping to muffle the slightest indicator Marelli was in the neighborhood.

  Bad news had already hit the other concerned parties at bullet speed, leaving Peary to anxiously ponder how much worse things could get. After the verbal flogging by Cabriano, then getting his ear burned up by the spook—and where had those bastards come from anyway, much less gotten their TAC frequency?—he’d ordered his men to turn off TAC radios and cell phones, stick to com links and break radio silence for an emergency or a Marelli sighting only. Yet two more hassles, tightening the noose. Say Cabriano and the spooks decided he couldn’t turn the crisis around, the Catskills could find an army of shooters in the area by sunrise. He could hear the blame game in his head already, the threatening noise about dereliction of duty, that maybe he was getting paid too much, and for a simple job a greenhorn hit man could have done for half the price.

  “Son of a—”

  It was obvious, too, Grevey needed medical attention. Beyond the nose mashed into his face, the man’s lips were split to the bone, his jaw was broken and his eyes were swelling shut. When they ditched the Crown Victoria on the dirt track, Peary briefly recalled how Grevey could barely manage to stay on his feet, wobbling off into the forest, making all kinds of racket. But there was nothing Peary, or any of them could do, but keep going, find the porker before he stumbled across another human being, thus breaking the news, turning wilderness into an armed camp of cops and God only knew who else.

  Then there was the real SAC of the operation to worry about. Some Super Agent dumped in their laps at the last minute. The big guy named Cooper was something of a mystery. The whispers around the Justice Department were he was more than just a run-of-the-mill G-man. What he was exactly—the floating rumor was military—no one knew, or was saying. At present, he was somewhere in Brooklyn, or so Peary hoped. Doing what, he couldn’t say, but most likely causing Cabriano grief. From the ranting and raving on Cabriano’s end it sounded like the crime boss was under siege, businesses getting torched, soldiers shot up under his nose. A big, dark guy, the Don claimed, one man armed with enough firepower to field a squad of Green Berets, was burning down the kingdom.

  Assuming the worst, that would be this Cooper character. Whatever he was, orders from above were to grant him carte blanche. The good news on that front, however, was the fates of two men deemed enemies to the cause were in the process of finding the stone rolled over their tombs.

  Peary stumbled over a large rock and bit down a curse. Suddenly, he heard Markinson patching through, and keyed his com link. “What?”

  “You need to get over here.”

  Peary caught the anxiety in Markinson’s voice and felt his anger rising, wondering why the man just didn’t spit out the problem. “What is it?”

  “You need to see this.”

  “Goddammit, just tell me.”

  He balked, eyes darting around the woods as the snarled words echoed into the dark.

  “It’s Grevey. He’s dead.”

  MARELLI WAS SURPRISED at how quick and quiet he moved through the forest. Fear and adrenaline, though, could work magic, he figured, lighten any load under duress. Still, he knew he was in no shape to keep up the hard jaunt much longer. Even considering he was being hunted like an animal for slaughter, years of indulging every whim and vice would soon take its toll, like a tire with a slow leak.

  In fact, he was already sucking wind, limbs ballooning with sludge, stomach churning with bile, cannoli and wine squirting acid residue up his throat. His clothing—ripped at the knees from his roll down the slope, a gash on his shoulder where glass tore him on the way out the window—was plast
ered to flesh running with sweat mingled with blood. The soft shoes didn’t help cut back on the grief either. Every stone, root, piece of hard vegetation jabbed into his toes, the balls of his feet. The heels, fiery daggers, it seemed, sliced clear to his pulsing brain. For once in his life, though, he kept his mouth shut, but silently cursed every tortured step.

  Damn, but he needed a smoke, a drink. His mind was screaming at him to stop for a rest. He knew if he sat still for a moment, though, his pursuers would gain ground. That, and he might be tempted to stop running altogether, consider handing himself back…

  No way.

  As soon as they broke him—and he was sure torture was on their play card—he was finished. Cabriano or the federal sharks, dead was dead, once they got the disk.

  He thought he heard them, somewhere in the distance. Was that a curse? How close were they? Could they see him? Beyond fading moon and starlight, with the gray wash of predawn fanning over the forest rooftop, there was barely enough light to make out the black sentinels of trees, avoid a header over ground broken in spots, a swan dive into a ravine. No clue where he was headed, he believed a New York cabbie would know way more about hiking through the forest than he did.

  How long had he been running? An hour? Ninety minutes? Two hours? Did it matter? And what would he do if he came across a camper, hiker? With luck, he’d stumble into someone with wheels. A carjacking was the least of his concerns, since it sure looked like any deal of immunity was down the toilet. In fact, he could imagine his hunters hanging the murders of their own on his scalp.