“Anybody concerned about waking up the building?” Lambrisi said. “I’m talking cops?”
“We’re here, Tony ain’t, I say we roll, take our chances,” Timoli said.
“Lou? You game to go the distance?”
“Count on it,” Gamboni wheezed.
Lambrisi was out the door gathering steam as he hustled across the parking lot. With Gamboni huffing on his heel, Timoli jogging hard and grabbing the lead, Lambrisi searched the sprawling lot.
Clear.
But he didn’t like it. All these mystery faces, Tony dropping off the planet. Plus he had the feeling they were being watched.
“Take a look at this.”
Lambrisi skidded up behind Timoli, thought he was talking about the young kid, wasted where he sat behind the lobby desk, but found his wheelman staring at the key lock.
“Damn near melted the whole thing off like hot butter.”
It was true. Lambrisi saw the lock had been reduced to liquid.
Timoli reached out to open the door, hesitating, as if he were about to touch a snake. No scream from Timoli. Lambrisi wondered what kind of opposition they were faced with. Something warned him this would not bode well for the three of them, but the door was open.
Lambrisi entered the lobby and ordered, “We’ll take the stairs. Think you can manage two flights, Lou?”
“Hell, yeah,” Gamboni huffed.
“EZEKIEL TO STRIKER, come in.”
Mini-Uzi in hand, Bolan followed the woman through the apartment door, took in the foyer at a glance and motioned for Gabriel to grab a fire position in an alcove off the side of the landing.
“Here,” Bolan called to Gabriel, and tossed him a frag grenade.
“Get it,” he ordered the woman, who hesitated. “Let’s go. Now.”
A gentle shove and she was on her way, leading Bolan to what he assumed was her bedroom. As he plucked the TAC radio off his belt, Bolan watched her delve under the mattress.
“Go, Ezekiel.”
“A party of three, looks like Bartino’s people, just walked in behind our two pros.”
Five on the way, Bolan thought, which left two others on the premises, maybe more waiting outside the building. The woman produced the disk and handed it to Bolan, scowling.
“I copy, Ezekiel. Stick to the plan.”
“Copy, Striker.”
“Must be pretty damn important, since I assume Bartino and his goons were going to rough me up before they took it,” Tina said sullenly.
“Trust me, they would have done a lot worse than just slap you around.”
Tina grumbled, “And, no, I couldn’t get on. I don’t know the access code.”
Bolan took her by the arm and led her into the living room. It was less than two minutes since the blacksuit called Ezekiel informed him the pros had breached the building. The warrior could feel them coming. There was no other way, in his experience, to retrieve the disk than march right in, the hellhounds on their heels. If they wanted to bulldoze the action, then Bolan would be waiting.
They did.
Bolan was slinging the stripper behind a couch when the muffled crunch of a small C-4 charge blew in the front door.
MARELLI BURNED WITH ANGER and resentment, feared he was going to take the mother of all screwings. He didn’t mind the big guy giving him a belt to the chops, nor wasting Bartino and the others, all of whom he knew—or so he’d heard the rumor—badmouthed him, thinking his rep was overinflated.
Punks, all of them. Try walking a day in his big shoes.
No, the way his nightmare began, Feds looking to snuff him on Cabriano’s orders and cash, then a so-called agent of the U.S. Department of Justice running around racking up the body count, he figured it was time to fly. Whether or not the big shooter kept his promise about seeing Marelli still got full immunity no longer mattered.
The disk had been his only leverage. Once they got their mitts on it they could dictate the terms, tighten the clamp until he squealed for mercy.
He could just hear the words now. “Sorry about that, Jimmy. Deal’s off the table. You’re going away for life. No book deal, no movie, no beach, no broads.”
Up yours.
Marelli knew the action was heating up again. The black-clad shooter with the HK subgun taking his orders from the big guy was already out the side door.
Leaving him all alone with the driver.
Marelli was torn between going for the wheelman or diving out the door. Say he clocked the wheelman, a double-fisted clobbering to the side of the head, snatched his side arm, then maybe put one through his brain. Take the wheel, drive out of Miami. He still had a couple of wise guys in south Florida he could trust.
He was in launch mode, legs tensing, the wheelman rolling them down the north side of the condo, when the gun flew out of nowhere.
And in his face.
“Going somewhere?”
THE FARM’S BLACKSUITS were professional military men, handpicked by Buck Greene, Brognola and Price, from the elite corps of Special Forces, Delta, SEALs, Marine Recon, Rangers and, occasionally, certain law-enforcement agencies. Not only were they the best of the best, they were sworn to secrecy when signed on by the Farm.
No loose tongue had ever flapped about the ultracovert agency, all blacksuits professional to a fault.
And the one called Gabriel lived up to billing.
One adversary came in blasting, a spray-and-pray barrage that might have made a lesser man flinch. Tina understood round two of screaming her lungs off, but she was muted when the blacksuit’s steel egg blew the competition away.
That left maybe one, Bolan thought, if he’d kept himself shielded from the brute force of the blast. Only one way to determine that, as the soldier yanked Tina to her feet, hauled her to the blacksuit.
“Take her,” Bolan ordered Gabriel. “Stay behind.”
Opting for two-fisted measuring of the enemy, the Executioner unleathered the Desert Eagle. As dust and plaster rained down, Bolan heard the groan, then saw the shredded enemy reeling into the door. He was quick, likewise opting for the double whammy of HK-Beretta, but Bolan beat him to the punch. A few rounds snapped past the Executioner’s ears, but the black op couldn’t quite bring the warrior on target. Skin flayed by shrapnel, he was nothing but pain and senselessness, and Bolan put him out of his misery. The Desert Eagle reared, tunneled a bloody fist high in the chest. Whirling, the black op held on, firing both weapons wild. Bolan hit him with a rising burst up the back.
Problems three, four, five, he was sure, were in the vicinity.
LAMBRISI KNEW they’d made a mistake as soon as the blast blew out the door and spun the two-fisted shooter away from the wall. Whoever these guys were, they were packing serious heat. Figure professional soldiers. He knew the three of them were outclassed.
But try telling that to Timoli.
The sight and smell of blood seemed to charge Timoli, the wheelman taking the lead, worked up into a frenzy when the mangled shooter went sailing across the hall. Lambrisi figured him down and out.
Lambrisi glimpsed a huge silver hand cannon jutting like some wand of doom out of the roiling smoke. It thundered, making Lambrisi realize the tattered heap on the far side of the hall hadn’t given up the ghost.
He did when his head exploded, though. A great wash of blood and brains painted the white stucco wall like giant new wave splatter art.
“Hey…wait for me!” Gamboni said, lagging behind. Lambrisi wanted to laugh at the absurd notion the fat man even wanted a piece of this horror.
Whether the doomsday slayer inside the door sensed Timoli coming or felt the thundering drum of his shoes, Lambrisi would never know. And for all of his blustering Timoli never fired a shot.
The big guy whipped around the corner. A handgun that looked the size of a howitzer to Lambrisi unleashed two maybe three rolling peals of thunder. Lambrisi howled as the retort pierced his eardrums.
It was a flash of a face, carved in granite, blue eyes lik
e two chips of ice, then a storm of bullets was blowing past Lambrisi. There was a split second when he realized he hadn’t been hit, found it damn strange. The pro had made a mistake. Lambrisi was hell-bent on making him pay the ultimate price, finger hitting the trigger—
He heard the roar of Gamboni’s shotgun from behind. He wanted to laugh, aware in an instant what the ice-eyed shooter had done. But it was impossible to laugh. He felt his body flying down the hall, when his lungs were blown out of his chest.
BOLAN COULD ONLY IMAGINE the treachery, the blood on the hands of the black ops. Whoever they pledged allegiance to didn’t matter to the Executioner. Whether selling dual-use technology or radioactive waste for a dirty bomb, it all boiled down to one thing.
Treason.
On that grim note, he figured into every black op life a little pain and blood must fall.
He found Ezekiel and Nehemiah already working on the problem. Taking the lead, Bolan angled east, his blacksuits engaged at the deep end of the front lot with the enemy. Nehemiah had been the jump-man, bailing the van to come up the enemy rear once Ezekiel blocked their vehicle. Both sides were blazing away with subguns, the enemy duo trapped in their van. Ezekiel and Nehemiah were in the process of a leapfrog act, holding back on the triggers on their subguns, blistering the enemy wheels, stem to stern. One hardman tumbled out the driver’s door and swept his Uzi in Bolan’s direction. A line of parked cars provided the soldier with cover as the avalanche of lead blasted through windows, punching metal. A sharp grunt, then a howl, and Bolan saw two, maybe three spurts of dark fluid shoot from the hardman’s upper chest. Mini-Uzi in one hand, the Desert Eagle in the other, Bolan cut loose with a double-clobbering that kicked the hardman into the van’s side. As he folded and hit the deck, Bolan, with Gabriel bringing up the rear and Tina in tow, sidled to the far end of the van. He hit the other side of the bumper, just in time to find Nehemiah was number two, a line of 9 mm rounds ripping the hardman up the chest, driving him down the side of the van.
Bolan leaped over the fallen enemy, charging for their ride. Already he heard the wail of sirens in the distance.
He heard Nehemiah curse.
And Bolan discovered their next problem. Turning, ordering his people to get on board, he heard the huffing and puffing, three cars down. The mammoth hand cannon out and ready, Bolan whipped around a parked SUV and thrust the weapon in Marelli’s face.
“Going somewhere?”
Marelli scowled. “Guess not.”
BOLAN HANDED GABRIEL the disk as Tina boarded the Gulfstream jet.
It had taken a good hour for Price to hammer out the details on the detainment of Marelli and Tina, and another fifteen minutes for Bolan to explain the facts of life to both.
The Executioner was anxious to be on his way.
He was expected in Colombia, his own Gulfstream fueled and ready to fly.
Marelli hesitated at the ramp-ladder and gave Bolan a long look. “So this is it, huh?”
“And after all we’ve been through.”
“I still got my deal, right?”
“If you ask me that one more time, I’ll shoot you right here.”
“Tina stayin’ with me?”
“No conjugal visits on this go-round.”
Marelli grunted. “You’re a peach of a guy.”
“Get going, Marelli.”
“Anything else, Colonel?” Gabriel wanted to know.
Bolan turned, began heading for his Gulfstream, threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Just make sure you take the trash with you.”
It was the last Bolan ever hoped to see the likes of Jimmy Marelli.
Good damn riddance.
13
Jorge Quintero didn’t see where they needed this deal. The truth was, he found it all distracting and dangerous nonsense. If not for his older brother, Fabio, who had, in essence, built the empire with his own sweat and blood, and who had more than once saved his life during an ambush by rivals, the younger Quintero would send them all packing. He had never quite understood his brother’s unquenchable hatred of Americans. Fabio often railing that it wasn’t enough to destroy their country with white poison. No, he wanted to see the Yankees attacked by the invisible force of terror, their streets running in blood, heaped with the dead and dying, weapons of mass destruction claiming lives by the thousands, the tens of thousands. Try to explain to Fabio that had already been happening in America for over three decades now. Their infrastructure, from families to entire communities, had been under the onslaught of cocaine and heroin for so long, they had, in effect, unraveled America from within. If he did not respect Fabio so much, if he did not owe him his very life…
Dressed in his safari outfit and broad-brimmed hat, he built another Scotch and water while working on his second cigar. Checking his diamond-studded Rolex watch, he decided he’d kept the gangster and the four American intelligence operators waiting long enough. The ten Saudis had been in the guest house, near the airfield, for more than a day now, making impatient noise about how they needed their own affairs concluded here. When would the other parties arrive? How did he know, Quintero thought. The American operators would call when they called, the shipment, as he understood it, was already packed up and en route. Relax, he told them. Take a swim.
Drink in hand, he was in no mood to play host, not with the number of bad questions about the disappearance of Hildago and his New York crew hanging over his head. Weighted down with the stainless-steel .50-caliber Magnum Desert Eagle on his hip, he nodded at Calabro to hold the door open for him. The world was becoming a more complex and strange place by the day, he decided. He longed for the simpler times, when the biggest concern was creating new routes and distribution points in America. When it was just the business of funneling merchandise and fattening their bank accounts.
These days, they were dealing with all manner of rabble, including American agents willing to sell radioactive waste to Mideast terrorists. And for what price? A stinking ten million was their cut off the top, and that included eight hundred kilos that were to go with the Saudis to be distributed on their end to other terror organizations.
Madness.
He found them gathered in what he called the Show Room. The sprawling teak-walled den was choked with animals he’d dropped by his own hand and had mounted for display. The gangster was paying particularly keen attention to the sixteen-foot crocodile he’d shot and killed on the Nile. There were exotic birds, a caiman and an anaconda, but the lion, the elephant and the Asian tiger were his personal favorites.
Quintero strolled into the middle of the room, claimed a white-leather couch for himself. His soldiers, many of whom were FARC guerrillas, were eyeing the strange group meandering about. He had allowed the intelligence operators to keep their subguns. Since his estate was patrolled and protected by close to a hundred men, he figured if they wanted to commit suicide then so be it. At first he found it rude that one operator elected to keep his helmet with black visor on, under his roof, hiding his face. Now he just wanted to be rid of all of them. But he had his own orders from Fabio.
“You kill all these yourself?”
The gangster sounded nervous to Quintero, seeming to go out of his way to admire his collection. “Yes,” Quintero told him. “All of them.”
Cabriano nodded. “Bet you made some taxidermist rich.”
“Very.”
“Enough small talk,” the helmeted operator said. “My people just radioed, they’re—”
“Yes, yes. We know. Ten minutes away. I have already cleared them to land,” Quintero replied.
“So, let’s go meet the Saudis,” the agent said.
“Not so fast,” Quintero said to Cabriano. “I understand our money has not left New York. Explain.”
“I, uh, I had some unforeseen trouble the other night. We were hit by the Justice Department.”
“And you are telling me, what? The American government has the Quintero brothers’ money?”
Cabriano ran a hand o
ver the elephant’s hide. “I’m afraid so, but, before you get yourself all worked up, I should be able to reimburse you for the last shipment from some holdings the casino has in offshore accounts.”
Quintero chuckled, sipped his drink, smoked. “Dummy companies, you mean, with bogus stockholders.”
“Not all of them. Hey, Jorge, look, I lost my ass, too.”
“We are talking a sizeable amount of cash if I understand correctly. In the neighborhood of fourteen million.”
“We can work it out.”
“I’m not here to talk about your drug business,” the helmeted agent interrupted.
Quintero saw the man’s gloved fist tighten around his subgun, and wondered if he and his comrades were crazy enough to start shooting up the room, surrounded as they were by twenty of his best fighters.
“You are here,” Quintero said, growing tired of the agent’s machismo stand, “as guests in my country. I suggest you pay some respect where respect is due. As for this arrangement with the Saudis, I am not in favor of it. If my brother, Señor Cabriano, had not done business with your father for so long, with so much profit and no grief, I would urge him to sever all ties with your organization. We Colombians prefer to use our own people in these matters anyway.”
“Hey, look, Quintero, I got some problems back in New York but I’ll handle them,” Cabriano said.
“See that you do. As for the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Hildago and his men, I will discover the truth. Should it turn out you had something under-handed to do with it…”
Quintero left it hanging, but the fear in the gangster’s eyes told him he wasn’t up for going to war.
“I’m sure your boy will turn up,” the agent said. “Now, can we take care of this business with the Saudis?”
Quintero rose. “By all means.”
GROGEN KNEW HIM only as the Man with the Power. He was a god among the mere mortals of black ops intelligence, a killing ghost, no name, no identity, no past.
Nothing but a bad rep preceding him.
The helmet with visor shield never left the man’s head, and when he spoke, handed out orders, anyone with any good sense listened. It was still the man’s show. Grogen watched as the Saudis trudged from one of three huge red-tiled, white-stuccoed guest houses. Ten in all, four lugged nylon body bags, stuffed, he hoped, with their ten million. There was a lone space suit among the contingent, with a small instrument in hand that Grogen assumed was a Geiger counter.
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