"We just hit the shop where they made their connection," said the control crisply. "We found two dead Armenians. One in the house, one out back."
"Damn. It couldn't have been our boys. The contact was alive and well and saw them out the door. We saw it."
"There is a wild card," acknowledged control. "A man named Phoenix. That's all we have at this point. It's top security, but we're breaking it a piece at a time."
"Keep me posted," said Gridell. "Right now, I've got two sightseeing Armenians to check up on."
"Be careful," said control.
"Always," said Gridell, and he broke the connection.
He joined Robbins outside the car.
Bob liked Dave Robbins. The younger guy had only been with the Company for eight months, all of that time spent assigned to apprentice under Gridell. The two had not yet seen action as a team.
Guns in hands, they split up wordlessly, moving toward opposite ends of the building at the quiet intersection.
As he jogged along, Agent Bob Gridell's spine chilled. He hoped he would not die tonight. I'm getting too old for this, he thought again.
Two terrorist hit men.
A rookie partner.
And now, a wild card named Phoenix.
* * *
Two men had dinner in the private room of an exclusive French restaurant on Q Street in Georgetown.
"Tell me about Phoenix."
"I followed your instructions. I put two men on the CIA stakeout of Izmir and Kemal."
"Can they be traced?"
"To us? Of course not. I'm not using our own personnel on this. Not with Phoenix."
"What are their orders?"
"Phoenix is screwing up a Company operation. He could get caught in a cross fire."
"With a little help."
"Yes, with a little help. My men have been told to hold back. If the CIA doesn't hit Phoenix and if those Armenians don't get him, then my people take him out. I don't care how good the bastard is. He's boxed in, and he doesn't even know it. He's dead."
"What about Stony Man Farm?"
"Our contact inside is in touch. They're still without satellite communications. One sour note. Phoenix has requested a double check on all Farm security clearances."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't think so. Our contact is being doubly cautious tonight, that's all. After tonight, it won't much matter."
"What time do you attack?"
"Don't you think it's best to keep you in the dark on some things, sir?"
"Yes, you're right, I'll need to appear suitably surprised. But it is tonight?"
"It's tonight. Tonight we level Stony Man Farm and Colonel John Phoenix."
9
A row of brick houses occupied the east side of the street, opposite the offices of the Interstate Loan Association. Light shone from some of the windows, but most of them were dark.
The Executioner moved through backyards, silently negotiating shrubbery and at one point a five-foot-high chain link fence. The moving shadow encountered no one in the night. Twice he spotted the bluish glow from television sets behind windows, but that was all. There was no nightlife in suburbia. Not from its inhabitants, at any rate.
Bolan advanced on the loan office via a circuitous route that brought him to the building from its northeast corner.
A Toyota was parked at the curb of the street where blacktop met a row of four-foot-high hedges that ran back from the street to disappear behind the darkened building. The hedges divided the Interstate property from its neighbors.
Bolan scanned the night with cold eyes and a colder Beretta as he came within ten feet of those hedges.
Suddenly he stopped.
He saw blurred movement near the inky splotches of shrubs adjacent to the parking lot.
Bolan could barely make out a figure, several yards down, gripping a rifle. Closer toward his own position, he could discern more clearly the figures of two men, standing together. These men were carrying Remington 870 pump shotguns.
They had Mafia written all over them.
They were lying in wait, obviously. Their attention was focused on the parking-lot entrance of the Interstate Loan office.
Bolan was putting two and two together in his mind and very quickly getting a read on what was going down here. But he had to be sure before the killing started.
There was no sign of the Armenian terrorists, Izmir and Kemal. They had already entered the building.
There was only one way Bolan could confirm what he was thinking.
He crouched slightly, ready to spring into the deeper shadows around him if he had to.
"Identify yourselves," he said quietly.
The whispered words cracked like a gunshot.
Shrubbery rustled as all three men spun around in the direction of Bolan's voice. The man up the line stayed where he was, melding with the shape of the hedge.
Three shotguns pointed at Bolan.
The men who had been waiting along the hedge were all cut from the same mold of beefy hulks in expensive street suits. But the shotguns did not look out of place in their hands.
The one nearest Bolan, bulkier than the others, spoke to the nightfighter.
"Identify your own damn self."
"Frankie. From New York," said Mack Bolan. "I've got a black ace of spades in my wallet, soldier. Come here and take a look."
There was hesitation from the men drawing beads on Bolan.
Ace of spades.
The anonymous calling card of the Mafia's autonomous enforcement arm. The Black Aces.
The aces were a traceless crew of killers who altered their looks with plastic surgery so often to match new names that even they themselves might not remember how they began. They were the gestapo of organized crime, responsible only to the ruling commissione in New York. The elite unit kept undesirable hands out of the till and the rightful percentage of commissione's tax funneling through laundered setups like Interstate.
Mack Bolan, a master of role camouflage all the way back to Nam, had penetrated Mob defenses posing as a Black Ace before.
"You better tell me more," snarled the voice to Bolan, cautious but a little respectful.
"There's no time for bullshit, soldier," growled Bolan. He started advancing on the two men nearest him. "Check with Riappi if you've got a two-way."
Bolan paused within four feet of the two nearest men.
He held the Beretta down at his side. They stood with shotgun barrels still pointing at the center of his chest.
"Uh, maybe I'd better see that card," growled a voice from behind one of the shotguns, and Bolan knew they'd bought it.
Bolan slowly brought out his wallet with his left hand. He did not break eye contact with those he knew would be gauging his every move from behind the Remingtons. He extracted the ace of spades and extended it.
The guy to Bolan's right reached out for it. Bolan could have killed the guy then, but the odds were against him. The other soldier standing next to the spokesman had his shotgun trained on Bolan. Still another hardman would be covering this confrontation some yards away.
The man who took the card studied it, made a grunt of assent and handed the card back to Bolan. He lowered his shotgun as he did so.
"Put it down, Chuck," he instructed the man next to him. "Can't be too careful," he said to Bolan. "You know how it is."
Then the guy made a waving motion to the hardman down the line and that gunman returned his attention to the Interstate building and the parking lot.
Bolan pocketed the specially laminated card that he always carried even though the Executioner's war against the Mafia was a thing of the past.
"I know how it is. You the headcock here?"
"Yes, sir. My name's Giancola. The boys call me Pepsi."
"Riappi didn't say anything about backup?" asked the Executioner.
"No, sir, no backup. Just me and Chuck and Horse down there. Uh, sorry, sir, about drawing down on you like that."
"You d
id right, Pepsi. You call me Frankie."
"Uh, sure, Frankie. Thanks."
"You going to call Riappi?"
"Naw. No one knows about them black cards, sir, uh, Frankie, except the organization. Impersonating one is suicide."
Bolan nodded toward the dark Interstate office building beyond the hedge.
"The Armenians. You going to hit them when they come out?"
The headcock nodded.
"They figure to find Mr. Spinelli and his men in there in the basement cutting up the day's take like always. The guy who set us up for them is on our payroll. When these crumbs don't find nothing, they pull out. That's when we mow their asses down. But, uh, of course, now with a Black Ace sent down to handle this, uh, if you got any other ideas, Frankie?"
"I've got an idea," acknowledged Black Ace Bolan.
He raised his Beretta and blew away a chunk of Pepsi Giancola's skull.
The mob headcock was still pitching backward into the hedge when Chuck brought up his Remington pump shotgun. But he was not fast enough to stop Bolan's Beretta from tracking sideways like lightning and spitting another 9mm challenger that blasted a hole through Chuck's left nostril.
Horse, several yards away, heard the silenced chugs of the Beretta. He called out in a hoarse whisper.
"Hey, what the hell? Pepsi?"
Bolan fell away in a racing half-circle to come up behind the third mobster.
The Executioner materialized out of the shadows behind Horse. His left arm went under the hardguy's throat and yanked him back.
Horse dropped his shotgun.
Bolan smashed the butt of his Beretta down against Horse's skull hard enough to cave in the man's head.
Bolan released the dead body and cautiously advanced toward the building. He came to a side window facing away from the parking lot.
He tapped the corner pane of the window.
The glass fell inward. Bolan reached in and unlatched the window. He raised it and climbed in, lowering it behind him. He crouched in the darkness of a room, waiting to see what the noise of the shattering glass would bring.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he realized he was in some kind of an office. He made out the forms of a desk and filing cabinets.
The noise brought a response from outside. Bolan heard approaching footsteps and a whispered exchange.
"Here's a broken window," a voice said close to where Bolan crouched with the Beretta, ready.
"And here's a damn sight more," an older voice said from a bit farther away. "Jesus for breakfast. Three dead guys. I wonder. Phoenix."
"You call it, Bob," the younger voice said.
"We go back out front," said the older man. "Be careful, Davey. Three dead already. Whatever way this breaks, there's going to be more blood."
"You too," said Robbins, and the footsteps padding out of Bolan's earshot.
It played clear enough to Bolan. The Mafia thought they were canceling out two Armenian strongarms most likely seeking revenge in a drug deal turned sour. The Riappi family had conned the terrorists who supported their activities with drug trafficking. The Justice Commandos of Armenian Genocide were out for blood and were supposed to walk to their deaths when they thought they were hitting a family bank.
Bolan moved out of the office, into the main corridor of the unlighted Interstate Loan Association building.
He heard whispered voices, foreign, guttural, from the end of the hallway.
Bolan flattened himself against the wall, bringing up the Beretta and flicking the 93-R to its automatic three-shot mode.
He had found Ismet Kemal and Mustafa Izmir, the terror merchants from Istanbul.
The Armenians sounded angry after finding an empty building where they had hoped to recoup their losses.
The Executioner raised the Beretta to terminate these scum.
A door latch clicked.
Kemal and Izmir ran from the building, not even aware that quiet death was so close behind them. Bolan went after them.
* * *
Bob Gridell crouched near some rhododendron bushes that he hoped offered him some cover. He had a clear view of the glass door that led to the parking lot where the Toyota sat. The CIA man held his .38 revolver in standard two-handed grip.
Gridell's rookie partner, Robbins, was in a similar stance behind some shrubbery on the other side of the door.
Gridell hoped the kid would do all right tonight.
The door swung outward without noise.
Agent Gridell saw it and tensed.
Two men rushed out of the building, walking briskly toward the car: Izmir and Kemal.
"Freeze right there," Gridell snapped from cover of darkness. "You two men. Raise your hands."
The Armenians moved away from each other to opposite sides of the Toyota.
The terrorists raised their submachine guns and opened fire. The angry chatter of automatic weapons split the night and illuminated the killzone with wild strobelike flashes.
Gridell felt an excruciating blaze of pain as he slammed into the ground. He knew that he was hit in his right leg.
"Bob!" cried the younger agent's voice with the shock of seeing Gridell go down.
Robbins materialized from the gloom off to the right, advancing cautiously but still anxious to reach his partner. The two terrorists saw him. The Armenians swung their machine guns in Robbins's direction.
From where he lay on the ground, Gridell felt the hot flashes brought on by loss of blood. He swung his .38 around to track on the two hit men.
"Dave! Fall back!" Gridell shouted weakly.
The Ingrams opened up again.
A tight pattern of double-figure-eight automatic fire hammered Robbins. He twitched and jerked in a wild shudder of rupturing flesh and spraying blood.
"Dave!" screamed Bob Gridell even as he triggered off two fast rounds that thwacked into Ismet Kemal and blew away his face.
Then the wounded Company agent saw the second terrorist tracking his machine gun toward him. In that instant, the CIA man knew he was too old for this work when he saw Death aiming at him.
Then a totally stunned look appeared on Izmir's face as a mighty unseen force made the terrorist stop in his tracks, then stumble a few feet and drop.
The back of Izmir's head was a bloody pulp.
A black figure, which for one crazed moment Bob Gridell thought was Death himself, emerged from the loan-office building.
Gridell saw a big man gliding over the killground, moving across the parking lot like a suburbanite out for a late-night jog.
Phoenix.
"Phoenix! Wait!"
The wounded agent forced himself to stand. Pain ripped through him as he came up on one knee.
He kept a tight grip on his .38.
Four rounds left.
The shadowy specter did not stop.
The night swallowed the wraith that saved Bob Gridell's life.
Grimacing in agony, Gridell hobbled after the nightscorcher.
He averted his eyes from the butchered remains of Dave Robbins.
* * *
Bolan traveled soundlessly through the desolate backyards of suburbia.
The chatter of machine-gun fire in the neighborhood had naturally raised a furor.
The commotion brought frightened interest as night-robed suburbanites appeared on the front porches of the houses that faced the battle zone.
It was clear to the Executioner that he had followed the wrong trail, at least concerning the sabotage and probable imminent attack on Stony Man Farm.
The Armenian terrorists' arrival had been a coincidence.
There was nothing more for Bolan to do here.
Two Armenian enforcers were dead.
So were the Mafia killers who had come to ambush them.
Society would not miss them.
That was enough for Bolan.
A CIA agent died hard tonight. Another wounded, but not bad enough to keep the guy down.
Bolan sensed the wounded Company ma
n on his trail even now, slow and painful, but sure.
This blitzer was withdrawing, rather than fire on an agent. And because this false trail had brought Bolan nothing but trouble, he needed answers.
Fast.
Who?
He was twenty meters from his parked Mustang, moving toward it fast when he saw the dark shape of the van across the intersection from his car. The van appeared not to have moved since following Bolan here.
The van.
The next step.
The nightfighter sensed rather than heard the rustle of movement from the darkness to his right and left.
The Executioner dived to the ground.
A twin barrage of automatic-weapons fire split the night from two directions, stitching the air around him with blistering fusillades of sudden death.
10
The ambushers were using flash suppressors.
Bolan could not tell from which direction the automatic fire issued, only that there were two gunners.
He hit the ground in a loose roll that took him out of their line of fire. Bolan did not return fire, but remained flat on the ground, knowing he would be an impossible target to find now.
There was a rustle of hurried movement somewhere in the night beyond Bolan's range of vision. He heard the slap of receding footfalls on the pavement.
The rental Mustang was now some forty feet away from Bolan's position.
From somewhere back in the vicinity of the Interstate Loan Association building, where the slaughter had just taken place, the wounded CIA agent would be closing in on him, Bolan was sure.
The sound of vehicle doors being pulled shut carried on the night breeze from the direction of the parked van.
Bolan started jogging toward the van.
As he silently glided past the Mustang, he reached down without slowing and picked up a fair sized rock from the garden of the corner residence.
In a crouch, the nightfighter angled closer toward the vehicle's occupants.
Bolan knew this play, a classic urban guerrilla hit tactic. Ifhewas right.
When he was far enough away from the Mustang, he tossed the rock over his shoulder.
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