Vigilante Run

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1

Camillus, New York

The hollow-core wooden door cracked and fell inward as Mack Bolan kicked it off its hinges. He stepped over the shattered particleboard, the barrel of his Beretta 93-R machine pistol leading the way. He swept left and right, his support hand gripping a small but powerful combat light and tracking with the pistol. The white beam illuminated the debris within the ramshackle trailer. The place was a mess and smelled worse than it looked. It stank of decay and reeked heavily of ammonia. The Executioner’s eyes watered as he stepped forward into the darkness.

The mobile home was a dump in more ways than one. The “lawn” outside was little more than mud dotted with weeds. Behind and on both sides of the moldy trailer, piles of garbage told the soldier exactly what he was about to find. Empty cans of paint thinner were stacked four and five high together with jugs of industrial chemicals, mostly hydrochloric and muriatic acid. There were other drums and barrels that he could not identify, and several broken wooden shipping pallets.

The refuse outside, piled ten feet high in some places, had smelled bad enough exposed to the open air; in the close quarters of the mobile home it was suffocating. A card table toppled as Bolan brushed past it. Dozens of empty cardboard boxes of generic dollar-store sinus and cold medicine fell to the floor.

Wading through the shin-high rubbish strewed on the floor—empty mason jars, spent bottles of camp-stove fuel, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers and more bulging bags of rotting garbage—Bolan tore away one of the black plastic trash bags taped over the nearest window. The glass was filthy and cracked, but through it he could see waning twilight. The stars above the snow-covered field would have been pretty if seen anywhere else. Here, they were only a backdrop against which to contrast man’s viciousness.

Bolan found the first body not far from the window.

The dead man was dressed in filthy denims under a leather biker jacket. He was covered in blood. The top of his head was gone and Bolan could not determine through the gore how old he might have been. Toeing the corpse over with the edge of his combat boot, the soldier got a good look at the logo on the back of the jacket: CNY Purists. He hadn’t heard of that one before. Slipping a tiny digital camera from a slit pocket of his blacksuit, Bolan snapped a couple of shots of the symbol, a stylized and fairly typical skull and snake surrounded by the letters of the gang’s name. The team at Stony Man Farm would be able to turn up intel on the group.

In the debris, Bolan almost missed the gun. The Colt Python was sticky with congealing blood. He left it there. The owner wouldn’t be needing it and evidence gathering was best left to the local police. Bolan was no cop, and he wasn’t there to tag and bag the obvious.

The floor creaked as the man in black made his way down the narrow hallway joining the trailer’s living room to what he presumed was once a bedroom. There was less garbage. The space was full of camp stoves, bottles of drain cleaner and a mess of tangled plastic tubing, metal drums and broken glass. The ammonia fumes were so intense that Bolan had to back out of the room. As he did so, the beam of his flashlight played across the bullet holes pocking the bare, water-damaged drywall.

There was a second bedroom at the end of the hall. It was a wreck like the rest of the trailer, but with more domestic debris. The litter was mostly dirty clothes and empty liquor bottles. A sawed-off pump shotgun, jacked open and empty, was lying on the floor amid a pile of fired plastic shells. Bolan’s light showed buckshot peppering the walls and even the floor in the bedroom and hallway. There were several more bullet holes here, too, large enough to be .44 or .45 slugs.

Two more bodies were sprawled on the floor. One was a long-haired, shirtless male wearing leather pants and engineer’s boots. The other was a half-naked woman. She was stretched out at the foot of a baby’s crib.

Bolan’s jaw tightened. The crib was missing slats from its railings and was covered in peeling paint. It was shoved against the wall under the room’s single window, the only one in the trailer not covered with black plastic. One leg was broken; it was propped on a broken piece of cinder block. There were bloodstained blankets inside.

In the center of the railing, the wooden spokes had been blasted apart, leaving a larger hole lined in splintered and broken dowels. The wall beyond the crib, visible through the slats on the far side, was dotted with three more large bullet holes.

The woman on the floor in front of the crib clutched a .38 snubnose revolver in lifeless fingers. She was emaciated, with deep, dark circles under her eyes. From what Bolan could see, she was toothless. Her chest was covered in blood and she’d taken multiple shots. Bolan pried the .38 from her grasp, his gloved thumb pushing the cylinder release and snapping it open. There were no indentations on the primers. She’d never gotten off a shot.

Steeling himself, the soldier rose and stepped closer to the crib.

The baby had taken at least one slug, maybe two.

Blue eyes hard with anger, Bolan stared down at the innocent life cut short by violence. He turned—

The window shattered. Something heavy and metallic bounced across the unmade and bloodstained bed before clattering to the floor.

The hand grenade rolled to a stop at Bolan’s feet.

His eyes widened. Without hesitation, the soldier threw himself out the already broken window, tumbling though the mud and slush and crashing through a stack of empty paint-thinner cans. Ignoring the noise of the falling containers, he ran as fast as he could pump his legs, doomsday numbers falling as he put most of a snow-covered and weed-chocked field between himself and the mobile home.

The muffled thump of the grenade—an incendiary, Bolan realized—was followed almost immediately by a series of deafening explosions. Waves of heat rolled over Bolan. The mobile home became an instant funeral pyre, its volatile contents consuming themselves and everything within the trailer as chemicals and cooking equipment went up in flames.

“He’s there! He’s there!”

Prone, Bolan whipped his head to the side as a shot rang out, digging a furrow not six inches from where his face had been. He rolled and got up, the Beretta still clutched in his fist. He’d lost his flashlight in the mad dash from the mobile home. Sighting on the muzzle-flashes, he drilled a series of 3-round bursts into the night. One of his unseen opponents cried out.

“Benny! Benny, you okay?” demanded the voice.

Whomever Benny might be, he was out of the action. Bolan was already moving, the noise of his steps drowned by the crackling fires eating the meth lab. There were at least three of them, plus the unfortunate Benny. They were fanning out, backlit by the dancing flames.

Bolan took careful aim and tapped out a single 3-round burst, tagging one of the moving figures in the head. The other two fired in his direction—one with a handgun, the other with a machine pistol of some kind. The stuttering of the full-auto zipper followed Bolan into the darkness. It was a 9 mm, most likely; probably a micro-Uzi or an Ingram. Bolan doubted a single round had come near him. The threat came from the aimed fire to his left, from the man who’d called out to Benny. The speaker’s partner was the spray-and-pray type.

As the deepening night filled more space between Bolan and the burning drug lab, he circled, flanking his pursuers. The two men were stumbling blindly after him. It would be easy to take them both, but he needed answers. That meant trying to get one of them alive.

“Carver! I don’t see him!” It was a different voice, the voice of the man with the machine pistol.

“Shut the fuck up, Stick,” Carver barked. “Watch for movement and then—”

It was good advice and Bolan took it, emptying his Beretta into Carver. The man went down without a sound. Another wild burst of Parabellum rounds went wide of him as Stick reacted. Shoving the empty Beretta into his web belt, Bolan dropped to his left knee, drawing his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the tactical thigh holster on his right leg. The gas-fed hand cannon thundered as Bolan triggered two boattail rounds low and left. The first one missed, but the second took Stick in the abdomen. The thug’s knees buckled and he dropped to the ground.

Fishing in a pouch of his web belt, Bolan produced a small LED backup light. He held the little aluminum cylinder between the fingers of his left hand as he advanced on Stick, Desert Eagle at the ready. Stick was moaning and rocking slightly, clutching at his guts with both arms wrapped tightly around his stomach as he knelt doubled over and sobbing. Not far away, steaming in the snow, was Stick’s fallen MAC-10, the bolt closed.

“You son of a bitch,” he blubbered.

Stick was a lanky man of thirty to forty years with greasy shoulder-length hair and a face like a rodent’s. His chin was covered in a scraggly growth that made him look even more like a rat. In the blue-tinted glare of his pocket light, Bolan could see the logo on Stick’s sleeveless denim shirt—CNY Purists.

“Talk,” Bolan said simply.

Stick looked up accusingly. “What the fuck do you want?” he wheezed.

“I want to know what happened here.”

“You should goddamned know well enough what you done here, you bastard,” Stick sputtered. “You killed Chopper Mike! You killed his old lady! You killed their freaking kid, man. Why would you do that? Who are you?”

“Start from the beginning,” Bolan commanded. The triangular nose of the Desert Eagle never wavered. Hugging himself, Stick squinted at the man in black and appeared to look him up and down.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” he whimpered. His voice hardened. “I ain’t telling nothing to no tall, dark-haired badass dressed like a commando who just hit our place on Route 173.”

Bolan’s eyes grew wide again. He pistoned a vicious straight kick into the biker, sending him sprawling. There was a lot of blood, but Stick wasn’t wounded as badly as he’d let on. The wireless phone he’d been hiding—and into which he’d been speaking for someone’s benefit—landed in the snow a few feet away.

Growling like an animal, Stick surged to his feet. The serrated blade of a folding knife flashed in the beam of Bolan’s light. As the biker lunged, Bolan fired twice. Stick was dead before what was left of him settled wetly into the snow.

The Executioner retrieved the phone, a cheap and untraceable prepaid unit. The connection was still open. As his thumb went for the “status” button, the call was terminated from the other end. The local number Stick had dialed was the only one in the phone’s call log. Looking at the dead man and then glancing back in Carver’s direction, Bolan shook his head. For meth-running bikers, they were far from stupid. Still, he at least had a few clues to feed to the Farm.

As the meth lab continued to burn, Bolan heard the first of the sirens approaching.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

A S B ARBARA P RICE ENTERED Stony Man Farm’s computer room, nose wrinkling at the smell from the pot of industrial-strength coffee warming on a nearby countertop, she had to dodge Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman as he rolled by.

“Hal’s waiting on the scrambler and I’ve got work to do,” Kurtzman said, wheeling past and circling her in his chair as he transferred a memory stick from one computer to another, juggling a handful of processed satellite images and doing it all while holding a beer-stein-size coffee mug. The barrel-chested computer expert gestured with one massive forearm toward the communications gear at the far end of the room.

Smiling, Stony Man’s honey-blond, model-beautiful mission controller stepped past him. Kurtzman always got grumpy when he was short staffed. The rest of his team was on leave or at conferences in various parts of the States, leaving him to field most of their duties during a mercifully light week free of nation-endangering crises. There was more than a little humor to that, Price reflected; Kurtzman had suffered without complaint the injury that had left him a paraplegic for life—but he got testy when asked to answer the phone too often.

The man from Justice was waiting for her on the satellite feed. Though Hal Brognola didn’t appear too worried at the moment, Price knew it was only a matter of time before the big Fed would be forced to fight yet another looming disaster. The fact that he hadn’t come to the Farm in person was a promising sign. He’d have shown up in person if there were serious problems, Price thought.

“Barb,” Brognola said.

“Hal,” Price acknowledged, sitting down and holding the headset to her ear without putting it on. “What can we do for you?”

“It’s not me, at least not directly,” Brognola said. When Price did not comment, he continued. “I asked Striker to look into something that’s had Justice very concerned for the past two months.”

“Something we’re tracking?” Price asked, though she knew that was not likely.

“Too vague for that. We’ve been getting reports through Homeland Security of what was supposed to be terrorism, or isolated events that at least looked like terrorism. I did some checking and what I found was a series of murders across central New York.”

“Nothing new about that,” Price said evenly.

“No, nothing new about that,” Brognola admitted. “These were disturbing, though. A family and several others killed in a home in Skaneateles. Three cops shot in Syracuse. A string of arsons in a suburb of the city that claimed the lives of four children and at least three adults. On the surface they’re the usual crimes, though the rate is a lot higher for an upstate city that sees maybe twenty homicides in a normal year. We almost missed it.”

“Missed what?” Price asked.

“The pattern,” the big Fed said with a frown. “Larry Kearney is a contact of mine, used to be a reporter here in D.C. He runs a think tank in central New York now and has his hands in a local alternative paper. He spends his time doing what got him run out of Wonderland in the first place—pissing off politicians and raking muck.”

Price laughed. “He sounds like your kind of person.”

“More or less.” Brognola managed a faint grin. “It was Larry who put me on the trail. The murder victims—those who weren’t collateral damage—were all connected to the local methamphetamine trade. At least, that’s what Larry believes. He didn’t have much more to go on.”

“Why involve Justice?” Price asked. “Wouldn’t this be a matter for the local police?”

“It might be,” Brognola said grimly, “if not for Larry’s nose for corruption. He suspects collusion with local law enforcement. This isn’t simply drug dealers taking shots at the competition, either. He tells me, and I believe him, that there’s something more methodical at work.”

“A vigilante?” Price raised an eyebrow.

“That’s Larry’s theory. Given the brutality of the crimes and the alphabet soup of government agencies in which Syracuse is now swimming, it’s a circus. He called me to call in a favor. He said he thought I could cut through some of the red tape and produce results.”

“That’s a lot to ask of a man in your position.”

“Not if you know Larry,” Brognola said. “He was one of the best sources of insider information I had here. He knew where all the bodies were buried. That’s what made him enemies here—powerful enemies. I owe him. So I asked Striker to investigate.”

Price nodded. Who better to track a vigilante than Mack Bolan? Bolan had what was at times an arm’s-length relationship with the Farm, but the staff’s commitment to him, and his to them individually, was unwavering. She considered the man for a moment. Where was he? What was he doing? Price had an off-again, on-again relationship with the soldier. Neither of them asked for more than the other could give. It was enough. Still, she worried for him, when she let herself.

“What can we do?” Price asked. If the Farm could assist Bolan, she’d see to it.

“I’m relaying specifications he transmitted to me through his scrambled phone,” Brognola said, typing at his computer beyond the view of the sat link. “He needs a care package from you guys.”

“We’ll do our best to fill his wish list,” Price nodded.

“I also need Bear and his team to dig up anything and everything they can find on a biker gang called the CNY Purists. I’m sending a digital shot Striker took during a raid on one of their facilities last night that might help. You can send the data directly to him through his wireless.”

“We’ll get on it, Hal.”

“Thanks.” He moved to cut the connection.

“Hal?” Price asked.

Brognola paused.

“When you talk to him, tell him to look after himself.”

“I will,” Brognola promised. He cut the feed.

Price stared at the blank screen for a moment before turning to examine the incoming data. There was work to be done.

Camillus, New York

T HE E XECUTIONER LEANED against the black-and-white Syracuse police car, his arms folded across his chest. He’d spent a long night telling and retelling his story, doing his best to wear out the Justice credentials Brognola had provided in the name of Agent Matt Cooper. Now he was simply waiting for the all clear so he could resume his work.

The delay was annoying, but necessary. He would need the cooperation of local law enforcement, and he needed to know who the federal players were. In addition, making himself known might shake loose whomever Brognola’s source believed was cooperating with the murderer or murderers Bolan sought. If he made a big enough target of himself, it was a sure bet someone would take a crack at him to get him out of the way.

At least three government agencies were represented—DEA, FBI and ATF—while the county sheriff’s office and two neighboring police districts had sent units, as well. Bolan had waited patiently while they worked through their histrionics and exaggerated outrage at his presence. One of the ATF agents had held the Beretta 93-R by two fingers as if examining a venomous snake; the FBI duo had threatened to haul him in for interrogation if his ID and story didn’t hold up. The city and suburban police had steered clear of him but shot him suspicious looks. About the only one of them Bolan didn’t immediately dislike was a rookie named Paglia, who watched him carefully but expressed no emotion. That one had the look of a decent lawman who, if he stayed on the force and kept his wits about him, would go far, Bolan thought. He’d seen the type. He’d seen the opposite, too.

When their phone calls and computer queries came back verifying Cooper’s affiliation with the Justice Department, the squawking had largely stopped. Bolan was, however, obliged to stick around until cleared to leave, if he didn’t want to burn any bridges. The mobile home had long since burned itself out, and the agents and police were busily picking through the smoldering debris.

Officer Paglia, who looked impossibly young to Bolan despite his air of competence, returned to his car to drop off several evidence bags. They contained shell casings and a few other odds and ends. Bolan did not expect any of the departments involved to turn up much of use from the burned wreckage, but there was always a chance.

Paglia also carried with him Bolan’s leather shoulder harness, in which was slung the 93-R and its spare magazines. He handed the harness to Bolan and then, from behind his belt, produced the Desert Eagle. “They say you can have your roscoes back,” Paglia chuckled. “They weren’t too happy about it.”

“I’m surprised they let you take any of the evidence,” Bolan commented, nodding at the agents in their variously lettered windbreakers.

“There’s enough to go around,” Paglia told him. Something caught his eye as he turned from his vehicle. He bent to retrieve a singed and empty cardboard carton. Several more just like it were scattered across the field, hurled there by the explosion. The agents and police officers had been walking on them for most of the night.

“Cold medicine,” he said.

“Pseudoephedrine,” Bolan told him. “It’s a precursor chemical, cooked from the over-the-counter drugs in order to manufacture methamphetamine.”

“Crystal meth,” the cop said. “This is a drug house?”

“It used to be,” Bolan said.

F ROM THE TREE LINE ACROSS the snow-covered field, Gary Rook watched the big man in black collect his things and return to the unmarked Chevy Blazer in which he’d arrived the previous night. Through the powerful scope of the Remington 700, the dark-haired man’s face was clearly visible. Rook did his best to memorize the intruder’s features. He had a feeling they would meet again, soon.

Rook had watched as the commando rolled up and entered the meth lab. There was something very unusual about the interloper. He moved like Rook himself—like a man who knew his way around a battlefield. His armed entry into the trailer was textbook, though Rook could have told him there was no one alive in the trailer.

The big, bearded man smiled through red-orange whiskers. His forearms tightened as he flexed his fingers on the synthetic stock of the Remington. Briefly he had considered putting a .308 slug through the commando’s head, but he’d decided to wait. It was a very informative delay. When the Purists arrived, more or less silently on foot, he assumed they’d walked in from wherever they’d left their vehicles, responding to some desperate call made from within the trailer before Rook had finished dealing with the occupants. He’d written off the newcomer then, only to watch in surprise as the man finished each of the bikers in turn. By the time the cops began to show it was too late to move without alerting them to his presence, so he stayed where he was. He watched as they detained the commando, went through their usual songs and dances, then grudgingly turned loose the man in black. Whoever he was, he had powerful connections to go with the ordnance he was packing.

The commando was rolling out in his SUV. Rook resigned himself to waiting until the police and the Feds cleared out, as well. Then he’d make his way back to his own truck and plan his next strike. He’d steer clear of the man in black if he could. If not, well, that was too bad.

If necessary, Rook would kill him, just like the others.

2

Syracuse, New York

Roger Kohler was a busy man. As CEO and majority shareholder of Diamond Corporation, Kohler shepherded an empire spanning everything from low-income rental properties throughout Syracuse, to paid city parking lots, to a piece of the Salt City’s inner harbor development area. He owned three of New York State’s six largest shopping malls—though not, much to his chagrin, one in the city itself. He was working to change that; he was brokering a deal to build the largest shopping mall yet in the state, on the city’s south side.

The project was not without its detractors. The Supreme Court had done him the favor of ruling that local governments could seize property for private investors if that property could be used to generate more revenue. Ostensibly that was for the “public good.” Whatever the justification, this de facto elimination of private property worked to Kohler’s advantage—or it would, once he got approval to seize a large enough chunk of the city’s southwest quarter. It had been done before. One of Kohler’s competitors, another major property concern, had successfully muscled out two dozen established businesses in the city to erect a high-priced luxury hotel that had yet to turn a profit. With that precedent set, Kohler expected only token resistance to his new mall. If legitimate companies could be shown the door in the name of higher tax revenues, who would care about a handful of drug addicts and gang members living in the city’s biggest slum?