Exit Code

by Don Pendleton

“What’s going on?”

  “We found everything from customer databases to inventory records of warehouses stocking entertainment media, such as books, CDs, and video games. Hell, the list is practically endless. The problem is that none of this data is valid. While on the surface it would appear that Lenzini’s running nothing more than an Internet-based business, the reality is something else entirely. Bear’s telling me it’s all just a sham. It gets pretty technical, but what we know for a certain is that all of this data, when unencrypted using what’s called assembly language, will actually do something. What we haven’t yet figured out is how to decode it, and once we have, we don’t know what it will do.

  “But MacEwan was able to tell us that she thinks this proves a definite link to our theory about Malcolm Shurish being involved with NIF. We’ve got teams out searching for him right now. He hasn’t reported to work all week at DARPA. I’ve had Justice keep a very tight lid on our suspicions of him and his culpability in all of this, so we don’t send up any warning flags.”

  “Sounds like the right approach, Hal,” the Executioner replied. “Chances are that he could be hacked into every federal information channel across the country and watching for any mention of his name.”

  “That was our assessment, as well,” Brognola said. “I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to find him. MacEwan said something about having to shut down every system on the network, or having to shut down the source system. We think that explains Shurish’s disappearance. He may be at the source system, ready to implement this code and bring the whole thing online.”

  “Is there any chance my destroying the network on a site-to-site basis will be enough?”

  “MacEwan seems to think so,” Brognola said, “but Bear believes we should have a backup plan. The thing that has us most concerned is the timing of it. We’re not sure how long you have, and we know we need a failsafe plan in case the NIF implements this system before you’re able to destroy the network.”

  “I’ve managed to get a few things cooking,” Bolan said. “This wasn’t the way I wanted to do it, but I don’t see we have any choices. For whatever reason, Lenzini’s people tried to smoke me in San Francisco. I neutralized Pescia’s crew there, and now I’m in L.A.”

  “What’s happening there?”

  “This is one of the network sites, and according to the intelligence you gave me at my initial briefing, the NIF has people here working on the getting the system up and running fully. I plan to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “It sounds to me like you’ve got things well in control, Striker.”

  “I appreciate the confidence, but this isn’t going to be as easy at it sounds. The key to getting everyone in the Mafia to agree with you is to make them think it was their idea. That’s worked so far, and I’ve managed to rally some pretty heavy hitters.”

  “Such as?”

  “A guy named Ray Donatto, for one,” Bolan said. “He’s apparently quite well-respected out here on the West Coast.”

  “You mean well-feared,” Brognola reminded him.

  “Fair enough,” Bolan conceded. “In any case, he’s rallied some support for the cause, and I plan to use that to my advantage. I just need to be careful. I don’t think he totally trusts me.”

  “You need to be careful no matter what, Striker. We can’t afford to lose you.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Bolan replied. “I know eventually I’ll go, but it won’t be today.”

  “What time is this hit supposed to go down?” Brognola asked.

  “Midnight, sharp, according to the plan. I figure the NIF will be in there working full tilt. Pescia tells me they were working on the systems during the night because they didn’t want to draw attention.”

  Brognola sighed. “It’s a sad idea, but I guess I can see how thirty or forty Middle Easterners operating out of an office building in the heart of Los Angeles would be fairly conspicuous.”

  “Yes, but the nice thing about the timing is that it will help me eliminate the risk of innocents getting in the way. I’ll have to find some way to draw any security guards out of the line of fire.”

  “Any ideas yet on how you’re going to do that?”

  “Not a clue, but I’ll come up with something.”

  “All right, well then I’d better let you get to it. Try to keep us informed.”

  “Understood.”

  “Good luck, Striker.”

  “Ditto. Out here.”

  Bolan clicked off the line and then checked his watch. He still had almost six hours before showtime. He hadn’t really formulated a full plan yet, but he had some ideas he thought were pretty sound. Based on what Brognola had told him, he was running out of time. He had to make sure the job went off precisely here, and there were still the locations in Seattle to deal with, not to mention that he’d have to return to Boston and finish off Lenzini. And then there was the NIF to worry about, and the disappearance of Rhatib. There was only one certainty, and that was the numbers were ticking off. Time was no longer an issue, because the warrior didn’t really have any.

  Yeah, things weren’t about to just heat up in Los Angeles—they were going to heat up across the whole country.

  12

  The building was tall and ominously foreboding, nestled in a seemingly abandoned area of downtown Los Angeles. Only a few lights dotted the front of the building, leaving the majority of the offices dark.

  Bolan could tell that Pescia’s intel was true, because many of the offices on the floor where Lenzini’s sham business operated were lit, cutting a bright line through the otherwise darkened steel and glass facade. Within a very short time, that was about to change entirely. In fact, before the night was over, those offices would become dark, cold tombs for a great many of the enemy.

  Bolan and Pescia sat in a van borrowed from one of the mobster’s dealers, and watched the place carefully for any possible police activity. That was something the Executioner could definitely not afford at this point in the game; he could see how some poor overanxious rookie might start poking around the area and end up putting the warrior in a position of having to change his plans. Still, Bolan wasn’t going to worry about it. He was confident this mission would come off as planned. They had been sitting there for nearly an hour and not a single squad car had passed through.

  “You’re kind of quiet, Frankie,” Pescia said.

  Bolan looked at the high-priced junk dealer and said, “Nothing to say.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Not really,” Bolan said with a shrug. “Are you?”

  “I guess a little bit. I haven’t done nothing like this for quite a long time. I got out of the business as a soldier because I don’t really have a taste for killing. I mean, at least not like Donatto or any of his people. Now Ray, man, that guy loves to kill. Don’t know what that’s about, and never have understood it, but I do know he’s got quite a reputation for it. They say he once—”

  “Look, Gino,” Bolan cut in, “nothing personal but I don’t really give a crap what Donatto’s done. All I care about is that everyone does their job tonight.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Pescia replied uncertainly. “I understand, Frankie.”

  Bolan nodded and went back to watching the building, enjoying the silence as Pescia decided to shut up and smoke a cigarette. He was having a hard time sitting in the enclosed van, inhaling all of the smoke. The Executioner had chosen to kick the habit long ago, and while he didn’t begrudge other smokers, it was hardly tolerable in the confines of the van. Bolan thought for a moment about complaining, but he opted against it. If it kept Pescia quiet and occupied, he didn’t care if the guy chain-smoked both of them into a cancer ward. It didn’t bother Bolan enough to distract him from watching for trouble.

  In a sense, these kinds of activities in his war plan were like playing chess. There were moves and countermoves and having to constantly outthink the opposition. Not to mention the fact that the Mafia was an enem
y with which to be reckoned.

  It was Bolan’s job to hold the savagery in check, and make sure only the enemy was the subject of it. Whether it was the New Islamic Front or the Mafia that ultimately fell this night, at least the warfare would be kept to those who were involved, and Bolan could get the innocents out unscathed.

  He’d made a radical decision in dealing with the security guards. He was taking a big chance on this one, but he could only nut up and do it, and hope his risk paid off. Bolan wasn’t just gambling with his own life, he was gambling with the lives of the security personnel who were posted at the desk in the lobby of the building. After making a few calls, Bolan also obtained information that there was a pair of roving guards, but they traveled together rather than moving through the building separately. So, it was a fifteen-story building with four guards—that meant he’d have to get the quartet together and do it quickly.

  Bolan started to open the door but stopped when he felt Pescia grab his jacket. The Executioner turned a hard look on Pescia, and the guy winced in reflex action.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  Bolan smiled. “I’m going to handle those guards inside. Somebody has to do it.”

  “I thought we planned to take care of that when we went in.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  Pescia snorted and shook his head. “Donatto’s not going to like this.”

  “Donatto’s not in charge here,” Bolan replied, stabbing him in the chest with his finger. “You are. Now, you want to risk our guys or you want to let me go in ahead of them and do this sensibly?”

  Bolan could see the wheels turning as Pescia thought furiously about it. He decided to take a different approach and closed the door so the interior light stopped illuminating them. “Listen, all one of those guys has to do is push a button. That’s it, Gino, just push a button and it’s all through. Now yeah, we will probably get to them before they can do that. But what if we don’t? What if one of the guys blows it? We’ll be done with this before it ever gets off the ground, and then the Arabs are going to know we’re onto them and they’ll lock down tighter than a drum, and we’ll have no chance. And we’ll both have outlived our usefulness to Don Lenzini. Is that what you want?”

  Pescia finally shook his head. “No, you’re right, Frankie. As usual. I got to tell you, I’m sure glad to have a stand-up guy like you around. This comes out good for us, Frankie, and I’m going to make you something. I’ll make you bigger than Grano or my lead guy now.”

  Bolan nodded in way of thanks and then got out of the van and walked nonchalantly in the direction of the office building. He’d been wearing an overcoat, and in the darkness Pescia hadn’t really noticed what he had underneath it. Bolan could only be thankful it was a cold time of year, otherwise such a get-up would have looked strange. The overcoat concealed his blacksuit and weaponry, including the Desert Eagle and Beretta. He also had the FNC folded and swinging beneath his right armpit, suspended on his shoulder by a strap.

  The Executioner was girded for war, but he didn’t know who the real enemy would be. On the one hand, it was possible that the syndicate’s goons well outnumbered whatever minimal security the NIF had inside, possibly because they were relying on Lenzini to play straight with them and protect their interests. That was, after all, how he’d first encountered Gino Pescia at the Garden of Allah in D.C. The other possibility was that the NIF—distrustful of the Mafia—would have nothing short of an army protecting their investments. In either case, it promised to be a very dangerous encounter, and Bolan had to keep things balanced. He was the wild card, and while he didn’t like the idea he knew there was little in the way of a choice.

  As always, Bolan would do his duty no matter what the personal cost.

  The Executioner reached the heavy, double plate-glass doors and rapped his knuckles heavily on one of them. Both guards behind the front security desk looked up simultaneously, surprise registering in their expressions. Obviously, they weren’t used to someone knocking on the doors at that time of night. Bolan knew that there was only a slim chance they’d let him in, but he’d already calculated that into his plan.

  One of the men leaned over the desk and touched something unseen, and the intercom just outside the door crackled to life. “Can I help you, sir?” the guard asked.

  “Um, yes sir, my name is Matt Cooper, and I’m with Pro-Tech Office Cleaners. I’m doing a spot inspection on our people. They were supposed to call and let you know I was coming.”

  The guard looked puzzled for a moment, and then replied, “One moment, please.”

  An office building of that size had to maintain quite a cleaning crew, and it wasn’t at all unusual for someone to do a spot check on those crews. Earlier that evening, after hanging up with Brognola, Bolan had contacted a number of cleaning services specializing in office maintenance. In doing so, he’d asked for references and he’d expended a considerable amount of change before someone had finally dropped the name of Lenzini’s dot-com there in L.A. Then it was a simple matter of calling the security company and making them aware they would have a late-night visitor. Getting the forged credentials had been the least of his problems.

  Stony Man had contacts everywhere, and could reach even into the most remote places and areas for assistance if required. That was the advantage of being backed by the most powerful political office in the world.

  The guard tried to look as official as possible as he consulted with the second guard, and after a moment they nodded at each other in agreement. The intercom clicked on and the guard instructed Bolan to stand away from the door. A moment later, it swung open automatically and the warrior moved inside before either man had a chance to change his mind. Once he was past the vestibule he surrendered his forged credentials.

  “Guess your company takes this stuff seriously,” one guard said, making idle chitchat while the other took Bolan’s identification and logged him in.

  “Yes, sir,” Bolan replied. “They’re trying to improve customer service across the board.”

  “Did you get some kind of poor ratings or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Bolan said with a mock shrug. “I was just recently hired by this company.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering why I’d never seen you before. Of course, that’s not really surprising. Last time we had someone come out here from your company on one of these, was—” he scratched behind his ear and concluded “—well, hell, I can’t even remember now.”

  Bolan tried to smile a disarming grin. “They don’t let us out much either.”

  As the guard returned Bolan’s forged credentials, his talkative partner shook his head and said, “Well, I’d bet they’re paying you a hell of a lot better than they pay us. And you’ll probably be stuck here…what, an hour?”

  “If that,” Bolan replied. As the Executioner reached inside his jacket in a show of returning his wallet, he wrapped his hand around the butt of the Beretta and brandished it before either of them could react. “Now let’s play real nice with each other. Keep your hands where I can see them and step away from that desk.”

  “What the—”

  “Just do it!”

  Both guards got up, and Bolan moved quickly around the desk to place himself between them and their console. There were computer cameras everywhere, and the Executioner knew he wouldn’t be able to take all of them out. He’d have to keep his face averted as much as possible.

  “Listen carefully,” Bolan said sharply. “I’m not here to hurt either of you.”

  “Could have fooled me!” the older, talkative guard exclaimed.

  “I said listen,” Bolan snapped. “In about two minutes, you’re going to have the real enemy coming through the door. Now the only way I can keep you alive is to lock you away where you won’t get in any trouble. But I also know that there are two more of you walking post on one of the upper floors. Where would they be now?”

  “I don’t know, and I sure as hell wouldn’t tell y
ou if I did,” the younger guard replied.

  “Sorry to hear that, because you may very well cost them their lives if you don’t tell me.”

  The two guards exchanged uneasy glances, and Bolan let them chew on it for a second. He had to get them out of the line of fire, and he had to find the other two as well. The Executioner had gambled, risked that they would cooperate, but there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot he could do about it if they chose not to help him. He wouldn’t get another opportunity if he didn’t sway them immediately.

  “Time’s up, gentlemen,” Bolan said. “Which way is it going to be?”

  One of the guards started to reach down and Bolan moved the pistol in his direction. The guard said quickly, “Easy, fella, I’m just reaching for my radio. I’m going to find out where they’re at.”

  “Make sure that’s all you do.”

  The guy nodded slowly and then snapped the radio off his belt and called one of the guards by his first name. He answered immediately, and it took only a moment for him to say they had just finished on the seventh floor and were headed up to the eighth. Bolan nodded to the guard that was enough information and waved them in the direction of the stairway. The guard looked at him with a funny expression, and Bolan could tell the older, paunchy guard wasn’t quite prepared to climb eight flights of steps.

  “You got some aversion to the elevators?” he asked Bolan.

  The Executioner responded to the man’s question with a frosty grin. He said, “The stairs will keep all of us alive.”

  The guard snorted. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Move out.”

  The two guards led Bolan to the stairwell and the men began to ascend. The younger guard and Bolan definitely had an easier time of it than the older, out-of-shape man. Bolan could hear him huffing and puffing by the time they’d reached the third landing, and the guy wanted to stop there and rest but Bolan wouldn’t hear of it. He advised the man to keep going. By the time they had reached the sixth floor, Bolan knew he was out of time.

  He stopped the guards and said, “You guys keep going until you find your friends, and then stay out of the way.”