Bolan shoved the already wounded man by the door backward, knowing that he had only one good leg. The thug stumbled on the weak knee and went for his gun. Bolan drew the Desert Eagle in a smooth motion and fired almost point-blank. The heavy round slammed the man backward into the wall, which was now spattered with blood and bits of tissue.
Bolan dismissed him and turned to see Remy’s struggle with the two remaining thugs come to a sudden halt. In his experience, the Desert Eagle often had that kind of effect on a fight. Costello’s men stopped and slowly raised their hands into the air.
“Cut him loose,” Bolan told them. “Carefully.” One of the men pulled a simple switchblade from his pocket and cut the twine binding Remy to the chair, which dropped to the ground with a thud. The ex-Navy SEAL stood to his full height.
“Thanks,” he said. “They got the drop on me.”
Bolan looked him over, and other than some good bruises, he didn’t appear much worse for the wear. “You look like you’ll live,” he said.
“They hit like girls,” Remy said. “My baby sister punched harder than this one when she was six.”
“Hey…” the guy closest to him started to say, and Remy moved so quickly that even Bolan had a tough time seeing the action. His hand flashed out in one nearly invisible motion, a knife-hand blow to the larynx. The man’s eyes widened and he made a weak coughing sound as he went to his knees.
“See, now that’s how you hit someone,” Remy told him.
“Enough playtime,” Bolan said. “The cops will be here any minute.”
“You shouldn’t have fired that rocket launcher you call a handgun,” he replied.
Bolan shrugged. “I’m starting to run out of patience. Did you find it?”
He shook his head. “I never got that far.”
“Sandra, you can come in here,” Bolan called out, and she entered the room. “Close the door,” he added.
She did and moved into the dimly lit room, stepping over the dead man on the floor, keeping her eyes averted. The thug left standing looked at her with his eyes wide.
“You’re crazy, Sandra,” he said. “Victor will kill you. You know that. He trusted you, and you go betraying him like this. Yeah, he’ll kill you and he’ll enjoy doing it.”
“I’m done with Victor,” she said. “I’m done with this whole city. I just want out. Victor killed my brother. I only ever wanted to make sure Trenton was safe. But you people would have never let him go. It took me a long time to realize that you were never going to let me go, either. I’m sick of all of this. No more killing and blood. I don’t like any of it.”
“You’ll never make it out of this city alive,” the thug said, his voice turning to ice. “Traitorous bitch. If I have to kill you myself, I’ll make sure that you rest right next to your dear old brother.”
Remy’s arm flashed out again, and he thumped the man a good one on the temple. He staggered sideways and Remy caught him easily, then put the man in the chair he’d been tied up in moments before.
“Go ahead and tie him,” Bolan said. “Sandra, come here.” He moved over to the small closet and opened the door. Inside, he popped off the cover that gave access to the water pipes in the bathroom. Sticking his arm in the wall, he went in all the way up to his shoulder, found the laptop case and pulled it out. A quick search wouldn’t have found it, even if the searcher had removed the panel.
He handed it back to Sandra. “Hold this, would you?” he said, giving it to her.
“Sure,” she said, taking it, then moving away to give him room to stand up.
Bolan got to his feet and turned. In the few milliseconds it took him to realize what was about to happen, it was already too late. Remy’s back was to the man on the floor, and he’d somehow made it to his knees and taken out a small 9 mm. He was pointing it straight at Sandra, who didn’t even register the situation, because her eyes were on Bolan.
“Fucking traitor,” the man snarled, and pulled the trigger.
“Look out,” Bolan started to yell, but it was too late.
The sound of the weapon seemed puny, small in comparison to Bolan’s own Desert Eagle, but it was more than enough to do the job. Sandra’s expression was a study in confusion as her brain tried to catch up to what had just happened. Then she looked down.
The bullet had pierced the laptop case with ease, passed through the computer itself and embedded itself in her chest. She took one small step forward, then collapsed to the floor in a limp heap.
12
Remy lashed out with one massive leg and kicked the gun from the man’s hand, breaking bones in the process. The thug howled, but that didn’t slow the ex-Navy SEAL, who spun away from the man he’d just tied to the chair, yanked the shooter up from the floor and broke his neck with an audible crack that was nearly as loud as the gunshot.
“Jesus,” the other man muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “Who the hell are you people?”
Remy turned to face the last remaining thug, his face flushed with anger. “You boys are pretend bad,” Remy told him in a deep voice that sounded as if it came out of the bowels of some volcano. “You play at being tough, but mostly you play dirty.”
“Yeah, what of it?” he asked.
Remy jerked a thumb in Bolan’s direction, then pointed at himself. “We’re the real bad,” he said. “And like my buddy here already said—playtime is over.”
Since Remy had the thugs under control, Bolan ran to the bathroom, yanked a handful of towels off the shelf, then returned to Sandra. She’d fallen facedown on the floor, and there was no exit wound on her back.
Remy knelt next to him and together they gently rolled her over to assess the damage. Bolan pulled the remains of his laptop case away from her chest, and immediately put towels down, trying to staunch the blood.
“No exit,” Remy said, “but that computer must have slowed the bullet some, reduced the impact.”
Sandra’s breathing was raspy, and the first towel was quickly soaking through. “She’s going to need an ambulance,” Bolan said.
“Every cop in town is looking for you,” Remy said. “We can’t just call 911.”
Bolan grabbed the phone out of his pocket and punched in the number that Grady Black had given him earlier. The FBI agent answered on the second ring and Bolan quickly filled him in on what he needed, not bothering to add extra details.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Bolan said, turning his attention back to Sandra. Her breathing was getting more and more shallow as her chest cavity began to fill with blood and oxygen. He tried putting on more pressure, but could feel the ribs that were broken by the bullet’s passage begin to move. A strange slurping sound was coming from her wound. “Her lung has collapsed,” he said. “This is going to hell in a hurry.”
“Sucking chest wound,” Remy said. “Hang on.”
The ex-Navy SEAL got to his feet and began rummaging through the room, and when that didn’t work, he tore through the door like a madman and ran down the hall. Bolan kept the pressure on as best as he could, but he knew that she was going to fade fast without help. And the Executioner realized that if he didn’t get out of here soon, most likely he’d be dead or in jail.
Remy came back into the room, carrying a roll of tape and some plastic wrap. “Had to find the housekeeping closet on this floor,” he said. “Hold her still.”
Bolan held her firmly while Remy taped the plastic down over three sides of the wound, leaving a tiny section uncovered. “That should help some,” he said. “The air can escape, but it won’t get sucked down to where it doesn’t belong.”
“Guard the door,” Bolan said. “We don’t know who will get here first, and I’m not up to being arrested.” Through the windows, he could hear the pelting siren of an ambulance and several long minutes later, two paramedics came through the door, followed by Grady Black.
The paramedics moved Bolan out of the way and began treating Sandra immediately. They knew she needed a hospital and a surgeon as fast
as possible, and they didn’t waste valuable time asking Bolan questions. Once they inserted two large bore IVs, they were making their way out of the room.
After introducing himself to Remy, Black gave the room a quick once-over and shook his head. “You’re a force of destruction, Cooper,” he said. “But you’d better get a move on. It took the city cops a couple of extra minutes to decide who to send this way, but they’re en route and will be here any minute.”
“How do you plan to keep her safe?” Bolan asked, watching as Sandra was wheeled out of the room.
“The paramedics and the hospital are going to report that she’s a nineteen-year-old kid with a gang history. It won’t stay that way long, but it will give us time to take care of whatever is going on.”
He nodded. “Is Lacroix still in custody?”
“Yeah, but unless we get some hard evidence against Costello I’m going to have to turn him over to the DA, and the most they’ll charge him with is Smythe’s murder. And with as many fingers as are in the legal pie down here, it will never stick.” He looked over at the man tied to the chair. “I’m not interested in the little fish. I want the big one in this case.”
“I think this may have what you want,” Bolan said. He pulled out the flash drive they’d removed from the safe-deposit box. “I was coming here to get my laptop and decrypt it, but my computer got demolished in this chaos, so you’re going to have to handle it from here.”
“I’ve got a good guy on my team who can take care of any encryption and remove any booby trap that might destroy documents. Is the drive password protected?” Black asked.
“Probably,” he said. “If so, try Beau Breaker for the password.”
“Beau Breaker?” he asked.
“Too long a story to get into,” Bolan said, hearing the police sirens closing in on the building. “We’ve got to go.”
“Stay in touch, Cooper,” Black said. “And stay alive.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said, then turned to Remy. “Let’s get going.”
“I think we need to take you someplace out of the way while you work on your plan,” Remy said. “We can go into the swamp. No one will find us there.”
“So far, I haven’t really enjoyed my swamp time,” Bolan said, following the giant man into the hallway.
“It’s almost alligator-free,” Remy replied. “Most of the time.”
NICK COSTELLO hung up the phone and lowered his aching head into his hands. One of his informants inside the local FBI office had just informed him about the flash drive that Smythe had left for his sister to find, and then she’d immediately given it to this Cooper character, who’d then given it to FBI Special Agent Grady Black. He was one of the agents he didn’t have in his pocket yet.
“Victor,” he said, “I told you that woman was trouble, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, boss, you did,” Victor Salerno replied. “Everything’s just happened so damn fast. I haven’t had time to deal with her yet.”
“Forget her for now,” he said. “We’ve got other problems.”
Nick didn’t see himself as the kind of man to give in to panic, but at the rate things were collapsing, no one could blame him if he had some kind of a nervous breakdown. The evidence that would sink him was mounting rapidly, he was losing men left and right, and every time he thought he had the noose around Cooper’s neck, the man slipped through it like a greased pig.
“This guy Cooper has gone past being an irritation,” Nick said. “We’re going to go after him with everything we’ve got. I want him dead.”
“Okay,” Salerno said, “I agree with you. But we still have a shipment to see to.”
“The shipment can wait!” Nick yelled, standing up so fast his chair fell over behind him. “If we don’t get rid of this guy and whatever evidence Smythe left on that drive, the shipment won’t matter. We’ll both be in jail or dead!”
Salerno held up his one good arm. “All right, Nick,” he said. “All right. Marshal Cooper first, then.”
“Get it handled,” Nick shouted. “I’m done with the games, you get me? I want him dead and out of the way. Tonight.”
Clearly Salerno knew when to stop talking and start walking because he just nodded, turned and left the room quickly. Nick picked up his chair and sat down. Nothing was going right—the marshal downstairs still hadn’t given him what he wanted, and his whole empire seemed to be crumbling before his eyes. He’d waited too long for all of this to come together. This game was supposed to help him get clear of everything, and if it didn’t change directions fast it was just going to put more names on the list of people who wanted him dead.
All because of one guy named Cooper. Who the hell was this guy?
REMY AND BOLAN pulled up to the hidden island that enclosed the secluded shack. Running an airboat in the dark of night took a lot of skill, but the ex-SEAL handled it with aplomb, guiding them without hesitation. Once Remy had tied off the airboat, both men made their way back into the interior, pushing the vines and moss out of their way as they went. It was a good spot to lie low, but it lacked a lot of amenities. Still, Bolan had everything he needed for the moment, and the most important thing was to put together a plan for dealing with Costello.
Once they were inside, Remy offered chicory coffee and brewed up a pot, then poured each of them a cup. Neither man wanted cream or sweetener, and despite the humid night heat, Bolan thought that the coffee felt good going down. They sat at the small kitchen table for a little bit, just resting and getting their bearings. Finally, the soldier cleared his throat. “Okay, my friend, we’re deep in it, and I’ve got a question for you.”
“Go ahead,” Remy answered.
“What’s your story?”
“What do you mean?” Remy asked.
“All this,” Bolan said. He pointed around the room and then looked back at Remy. “This is not a hideout. This is where you’re living. Why?”
“I suppose you’ll just have your friends look it up anyway,” he said. “If you haven’t already.”
Bolan shook his head. “No, I haven’t. And if you tell me to stay the hell out of your business, I will. It’s your life. But since you saved my ass from the gators, and you’ve kept on helping even when it got more than a little dangerous for you, I figure I can at least ask. I like to know who I’m working with.” He finished off his coffee. “Besides, I saw how you handled yourself back at the hotel. Why are you hiding—a man with your skills?”
Remy put his mug on the table and sighed. “I loved being a SEAL, man. There was something about it, you know? That ability to do things that others never had the skills or the balls to get done. I was good at it, too.”
“I bet,” Bolan said.
“Anyway,” he continued as though he hadn’t heard a word, “my last operation was over in Iraq. A shadow op that was FUBAR from start to finish. We had some intel that one of the private military companies doing security over there was torturing prisoners. Not really that big of surprise. It’s war and it happens. But the bigger problem was that the guy running the show was selling information to other terrorist groups, and feeding out false information to our guys. People were getting killed. Our people.”
Bolan kept his mouth shut, and just listened.
“Long story short, I got sent into their little prison camp on a solo recon. That’s all it was supposed to be. If we confirmed, we’d do a full team strike that night.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen things that shoulda turned my hair white and done things that I’m not proud of, but the way this guy was running his camp… It made the Vietcong look like angels of mercy.”
Bolan pitched his voice low. “Lost it?”
“Totally,” Remy said. “My own crew had to come in unprepped, but we fragged that whole place, got the prisoners out. I killed the main guy myself. CNN reported that the prison camp was attacked by suicide bombers.”
“You did your job,” Bolan said, “and got rid of a scumbag.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t joi
n the Navy or the SEALs so I could kill Americans. The whole thing got covered up and those bastards were lauded as heroes for their service.” He shrugged. “I knew I needed to get away.”
“And you couldn’t have chosen a nice sandy beach somewhere? Why an alligator infested swamp?”
“I wanted to get away from people. No one wants to come out here. At least the gators are honest. They want their next meal, but beyond that they haven’t a care in the world. I can deal with an honest killer. It’s the deceit and the lies that get to me more than anything. You start wondering about the guy cutting the orders, and as a soldier you can’t do that. You have to believe that orders are from a good place that understands what they are asking of their men in the field. As a soldier, you can’t decide which order you’re going to follow.”
“I suppose you want my story,” Bolan said.
“I was a SEAL, remember? I understand that you’ll tell me what I need to know. We all have a story.”
“Well, Remy,” Bolan said, “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I appreciate your service with or without the uniform. If we make it out of this particular mess alive, if you want to go back into a life of this kind of service I can help make arrangements for you. I know it may not be what you wanted there for a while, but you’re good and you know the stakes. Either way, for my book, you’ve made an ally. I’ll never forget what I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me, Cooper. I may have saved your life, but you gave me mine back. You helped me remember that there are things that are worth fighting for.”
13
Grady Black had spent long enough in New Orleans to know that the few times hope floated, it was usually eaten by an unseen gator rising out of the muck. His computer sciences tech had decrypted the flash drive fairly easily, especially with the odd “Beau Breaker” password that let him gain access. He’d handed it off to Black a couple of minutes ago, with a quiet, “Easy as pie,” and returned to his station to shut down for the night. He’d been nice enough to stay late at Black’s request.
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