The last gunner realized the odds had been narrowed

The gangbanger raised his gun and sprayed indiscriminately in the warrior’s direction. Bolan took cover and grimaced at the thought that an innocent bystander might get in the way.

Unfortunately for the gun-toting hood, he’d never have the chance to kill Bolan or a noncombatant.

The man’s body began to rock under the impact of the half-dozen or so police weapons suddenly aimed at him. The cops doled out a fury of destructive automatic fire from their Colt AR-15s and pistols. The thug staggered a moment and then collapsed to the pavement.

Bolan continued in motion around the corner and sprinted down the street. He would have to lay low for a while, come back later to retrieve his vehicle. He couldn’t spend the next twenty-four hours in a police lockup under interrogation. He still had a lot to do in Phoenix.

The mission had only just begun.

Recovery Force

Don Pendleton’s
The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.

—Leo Tolstoy

1828–1910

What I Believe

I won’t stand by and watch this epidemic of terror spread throughout America. As long as I have breath in me, I will stamp out these kidnappers, murderers and drug peddlers at the source.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

“We’re in the eye of the storm. If it doesn’t stop here, if we’re not able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation.”

—Chief of Police

Phoenix, Arizona

I won’t stand by and watch this epidemic of terror spread throughout America. As long as I have breath in me, I will stamp out these kidnappers, murderers and drug peddlers at the source.

—Mack Bolan, The Executioner

Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

The girl awoke with a start, covered in sweat.

Her heart thumped in her chest; her breath came in short bursts—more like gasping than breathing. She tried to reach up to the pain at the back of her head that throbbed with each beat of her heart. In her state of murky consciousness, it took time to realize that someone had bound her hands….

SHE DIDN’T REMEMBER passing out but realized she must have because she came to again with much the same reaction. She noticed her parched throat this time and it felt as if her tongue had swollen to twice its normal size. She wanted to puke but she realized if she did it could mean death. The gag would prevent her from voiding and she might choke on her own vomit. So she wretched a few times and swallowed back anything more.

Only fourteen years of age, she hadn’t known such terror before and probably wouldn’t know it again.

Then she thought of her boyfriend, Dino Montera, only two years older than her. He was a tall kid, muscular and in good shape, a football player on the junior varsity team. Even Dino had been caught off guard by the men who seemed to come out of nowhere. At least, Ann-Elise thought that they were men, although she sort of remembered hearing a woman’s voice at some point, too. The only other thing she could remember was that they spoke in another language, probably Spanish. Maybe Spanish? Ann-Elise couldn’t be really sure, but she would have to pay better attention because the cops would want to know when they came to her rescue.

Then she looked over to her right, turning her head slowly to stave off the pain. She remembered, as she stared at her boyfriend through blurred vision—poor Dino was tied to a chair, his face blood-caked—that something had struck her in the back of the head. Hard. That’s why it probably hurt so much. God, maybe she had brain damage or something. She’d heard about that kind of thing happening after being hit in the head. And Ann-Elise knew about those things because she’d studied them in her dad’s medical books. One day, she wanted to be a doctor, like her dad.

Her mother, a prominent attorney to residents of Scottsdale, had warned her not to go gallivanting about downtown Phoenix without an adult. What difference would that have made? If the men who had knocked her unconscious were able to take down a young man Dino’s size, they would have been able to take down any adult just as easily.

Ann-Elise didn’t have to wonder anymore about her captors because one of them suddenly appeared, blocking her line of sight. She looked up at the man but he’d concealed his face with some sort of mask. She couldn’t really make out anything about him other than he was very big, and he had dark eyes. There wasn’t any emotion in them. They stared at her without pity or consideration, and Ann-Elise considered in that moment the horrific possibility they might hurt her more. Ann-Elise decided not to think about such things yet. Obviously, they had kidnapped her and Dino for ransom and she knew her father and mother had enough money to pay. They would pay her captors, pay whatever it took. And they had many wealthy friends, too. They lived in a city that was home to some of the wealthiest people in the world. At least, that’s what everyone at the academy said.

Boy, she wouldn’t be able to live this one down.

The man stared at her another moment and then turned his attention to Dino. Ann-Elise watched with a mixed sense of shock and terror as the man reached down to grab something and came up with a large, plastic bucket. He suddenly heaved the bucket in Dino’s direction and doused him with water. Probably cold water.

The bastard!

Dino came suddenly awake and choked back what sounded like a scream. The man stood there a moment, arms folded, and Ann-Elise thought she heard him make a noise. Something that sounded like a laugh. Then the man reached forward suddenly, untied Dino and hauled him out of the chair. Dino staggered and stumbled around like a drunk, and Ann-Elise realized he’d probably put up more of a fight than she had, so they had to beat him up to stop him. Her poor, poor Dino. He had taken punishment intended for her just because he tried to protect her.

The man finally clamped a hand on Dino’s shoulder and steered him out of Ann-Elise’s sight. She began to make protests, screaming against the gag and warning the man with a flurry of threats and curses not to hurt her boyfriend, but she couldn’t see if it had any effect. Not that she thought it would…. She began to cry, trying to refrain because that made it more difficult to breathe. Her cries became sobs as she heard an incessant thumping noise—a sound that could only have been Dino taking another beating.

Why were they hurting him? What had he done to them?

Her mind screamed at them to stop but she knew she could do nothing about it.

And then for a long time the sounds stopped and she heard no more noise, nothing. Then the sound of voices, angry voices arguing or something.

Yes, it was definitely Spanish.

Then she heard a door open and the man came back into view, walking backward and dragging something, but Ann-Elise couldn’t tell what. Although she knew it was probably Dino, she didn’t want to think about it. Maybe not. Maybe it was just some equipment, a bag or box or something. Whatever it was, the man wasn’t too gentle about dumping the load onto the floor next to her. The man didn’t give her a glance as he stomped out and slammed the door behind him, causing Ann-Elise to jump.

And she began to cry again, moaning Dino’s name past the gag, the sound of her cries muffled in her own ears.

1

Mack Bolan lowered the binoculars and frowned. Too quiet.

He sat in his vehicle parked a half block from the residence where he believed members of the Sinaloa drug cartel were holding a teenage girl and her boyfriend. The sun beat through the windshield, threatening to roast him out. All windows were down and the sunroof open to facilitate air movement, but there didn’t seem to be much of it today in southwest Phoenix. So Bolan sat practically motionless and ignored the heavy sweat that soaked his face, neck and areas where his clothing fit snugly.

The warrior looked a bit out of place.

Although he’d dressed like a native in khaki-style shorts and a loose-fitting polo, it still looked idiotic for him to be sitting in his car in the midmorning heat. Fortunately, activity in the neighborhood had seemed minimal, most everyone already having gone to work or run the day’s errands. Bolan had been sitting there since about 0730 hours and it was nearing eleven.

There hadn’t been so much as a stirring around or in the target house. The shades were pulled and only a dusty, early-model SUV sat in the drive. Bolan scanned the place one more time through the binoculars, then studied the black-and-white print made from a yearbook photo of the missing girl, and a similar one taken around the same time of her boyfriend.

The Executioner’s intelligence had been sketchy, but he knew the information provided by Stony Man would be much more solid than anything the Phoenix police could give him. Trouble had come to the Sun City and it seemed nobody could do anything about it. Half the country believed the press when they touted the war between the Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels out of Mexico as the primary reason for the rise in kidnappings. The other half chalked it up to nothing more than media hype. The naysayers were convinced the kidnappings were mostly related to the higher likelihood ransoms would be paid due to the fact Arizona had long attracted the rich and elite.

Bolan thought both sides of the issue had merit. But with the numbers at an all-time high, the Executioner realized the time had come to put an end to it. And while he couldn’t completely eliminate it, the problem was large enough that it could branch out. The best way to stop it was here and now—terminate the enemy’s plan of action before it reached that point.

And Bolan planned to start with two innocent teenagers.

Bolan put the photos away, secured the binoculars and then checked the action on his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. The pistol had served him well on many past missions, and recently he’d upgraded to the newer Mark XIX model with a brushed chrome finish. The Beretta 93-R that he normally wore in shoulder leather rode in a hip holster concealed by the loose-fit polo. His best offense would be surprise, in this instance, since the place wasn’t likely to be heavily fortified or guarded. Additionally, the Sinaloa cartel had probably been using it as a stash house for a while, which means any of its occupants would be relaxed and not too alert. That made it a perfect target for someone with the Executioner’s special talents.

Bolan laid the Desert Eagle on the passenger seat, started the rental car and coasted down the street until he came within a few yards. He then swung the nose into the driveway at an angle as he picked up speed and drove across the pavement onto the lawn of half-dead grass. When he got within a few feet of the front door he gave the horn a blast before snatching up the pistol and going EVA.

Less than a minute elapsed before the door opened and a stocky, bare-chested Mexican with a shaved head and tattoos covering half his body emerged from the house. He looked angry as he gave the sedan a once-over, but then his eyes tracked to the right. But he was too late and Bolan was on him before the hood could react in time to bring up the pistol he’d been holding behind his baggy jeans. Bolan caught him with a kick that broke several ribs and drove the cartel gangster into the unyielding metal of the foreign-make rental. As the guy’s body bounced off of it, Bolan followed with a backhand that drove the butt of his pistol into a point behind his opponent’s ear. The guy dropped to the pavement like a stone.

Bolan pushed through the front door in time to see another hood emerge from a hallway off the main living area. The man raised a pistol, holding it gangster style with the ejector port pointed up. Bolan snap-aimed the Desert Eagle and squeezed the trigger twice. Happenstance favored Bolan because that first round struck the gunman’s hand that held the pistol and sent it flying. The second round landed dead-center in the chest, fracturing the breastbone before coring through tissue to the spine and driving the hood into the wall behind him. He collapsed on the carpet in a heap.

Another gunner jumped into view, framed by an entryway into the kitchen, a shotgun in his hand. Bolan dove in time to avoid the first blast of buckshot that winged over his body and blew a massive hole in the drywall. The warrior rolled and that saved him from a second blast into the carpet that sent dust, dirt and chunks of crushed carpet fibers in every direction. Bolan followed through the roll and into a firing posture on one knee. He acquired his target in milliseconds and triggered a round before the man could get off a third shot. The 280-gram slug busted through the hood’s left side, perforating his heart as it traveled upward at an angle and exited out his right armpit. The impact spun the enemy and he slammed against the wall. The shotgun clattered to the linoleum followed by the corpse a heartbeat later.

Bolan swept the muzzle of the Desert Eagle across his immediate field of fire, eyes and ears attuned to any further threats. Eventually, he relaxed and got to his feet, although he didn’t let down his guard. He held the .44 Magnum at a ready state while he scoured the rest of the house. Eventually, he found a door concealing a stairwell that emerged onto a semifinished basement.

The sight of a breathing, conscious girl tied to an old table sent a ripple of satisfaction through Bolan’s tired body, but he also noticed the lump of bruised, beaten flesh on the ground. He rushed to the boy’s motionless form and checked the pulse at the neck. Nothing. Bolan pressed his lips together in a hard mask as he rose and approached the girl.

“It’s okay,” he said as quietly and evenly as he could manage. “You’re going to be all right, now. I’m not going to hurt you. Okay?”

She nodded, blinking those red-streaked crystal-blue eyes hard—she’d obviously been crying.

Bolan disposed of the gag that had left red welts across her cheeks and then cut away her bonds with a pocketknife version of the Cold Steel Tanto fighting knife. She choked and wheezed at first, and he watched her with concern. The moment proved short-lived and only Bolan’s reflexes saved his tennis shoes from being covered by the significant amount of vomit she projected over the side of the table.

When it seemed she was finished and left only with dry heaves, Bolan said, “You don’t look much like your yearbook photo.”

She eyed him with a queer expression as he helped her sit up.

Bolan continued with a smile, “You’re much prettier in person. I assume you’re Ann-Elise?”

She nodded and wiped the side of her mouth. Her voice cracked when she said, “Dino? Is Dino okay?”

The warrior wished she would have asked him anything but that, although he knew it wasn’t as if he could put off the subject indefinitely. Despite the trauma through which she’d gone, the young girl deserved to know the truth no matter how painful it might be. Until she could come to terms with his death, the healing could not begin.

“I’m sorry,” Bolan whispered. “He didn’t make it.”

Ann-Elise looked at Bolan a moment and then let out a blood-curdling scream and threw her arms around him. He decided it was time for them to get the hell out of there, and he hauled her off the table and up the stairs without another look at Montera’s corpse.

Once they were outside, Bolan seat-belted Ann-Elise into the passenger seat of the sedan and then ran around and climbed behind the wheel. He cranked the engine, backed off the lawn and onto the road, then proceeded at a conservative pace down the quiet street. He could have just as easily left in a display of screeching, smoking tires but he figured there was little point in drawing attention. The street still looked relatively deserted and he didn’t detect the approach of police sirens.

That meant the commotion inside had probably gone unnoticed.

Good, he needed to buy some time. It wouldn’t help his mission to risk unplanned contact with the police so early in the game. He had to get on the other side of the blue wall, sure, but on his terms. Anything less would only create more problems for him, more things to worry about.

Bolan had chosen to take this one on his own. At Stony Man Farm, Hal Brognola and Barbara Price were preoccupied with larger matters. Bolan had it on good authority from pilot Jack Grimaldi, that both the Phoenix Force and Able Team units were on assignments of a grave nature. So what else was new? Bolan thought about the battle-hardened veterans of Stony Man taking it to the enemy—he wished them well.

So yeah, he would go it alone this time.

Ann-Elise simply sobbed and curled her arms around herself. Bolan had rolled up the windows so the winds wouldn’t buffet her as he pulled onto the highway. She didn’t say anything to him and he didn’t press it. He’d saved her from what would certainly have been a long and brutal captivity. That’s what he did best, and he’d leave the social work and other similar services to those better qualified to render it.

In under thirty minutes, Bolan had arrived at the large home in a peaceful, residential section on the west side of Scottsdale, close to where it bordered Phoenix.

Bolan got out of the car, opened the door and unbuckled the seat belt. He offered a hand, but the girl chose to exit without assistance. She started to walk up the sidewalk to the door and then looked back at Bolan, who stood there with arms folded as he watched her.

“Go on, Ann-Elise. Go home, your family’s waiting for you.”

“You’re—” She bit off the reply and seemed to chew uncertainly at her lip. When she took a deep breath she appeared to have mustered whatever courage it seemed to take to speak to him. “You’re not coming?”

Bolan shook his head. “There would be questions. Too many for me to answer at this moment. Do you understand?”

“Funny,” the girl replied with a slightly wistful smile. “But I guess I do.”

Bolan nodded, winked and then got in the sedan and drove away.

AFTER DROPPING OFF Ann-Elise McCormack, Bolan returned to his hotel to clean up a bit.

He showered, changed into lightweight cotton slacks and a black muscle shirt. He then transferred the Beretta 93-R to shoulder leather before donning a buttoned maroon shirt to conceal it. After cleaning the Desert Eagle and stowing it in his equipment bag, Bolan sifted through the yellow pages of the phone book until he found the address of a pharmacy on Phoenix’s southwest side. He memorized the address and then stuffed the equipment bag under the bed, leaving the privacy tag on the outside of the door to wave off maid service.

The Executioner considered his options as he drove across town. He’d approach this part of his mission with a soft probe, at first. Bolan had intel the pharmacy was a Sinaloa cartel front for laundering drug money. A narco-military unit known as Los Negros provided protection and enforcement for Sinaloa cartel ops according to Bolan’s DEA connection, Vince Gagliardi. Officially, Gagliardi was breaking every rule in the book by revealing anything he learned to Bolan. He’d been working deep undercover within the local drug distribution network as a low-ranking mule. Gagliardi had been building a case against Los Negros for some time by infiltrating Los Zetas, chief enforcement and operations for the competing Gulf cartel.

At their secret rendezvous in a Flagstaff coffee shop three days earlier, Gagliardi told Bolan, “Phoenix P.D. hadn’t been able to gather enough evidence to hit the place until now.”

“And why’s that?” Bolan asked.

“Los Negros is an extremely efficient organization,” Gagliardi said. “They’re well-equipped and highly mobile. You see, after the Mexican army brought down Osiel Cárdonas in 2003, the Sinaloa cartel saw their opportunity to move into the Nuevo Laredo region. You familiar with that?”

Bolan nodded. Nuevo Laredo had always been the hotbed of activity in the war between the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels. The region had become an extremely important drug corridor. Nearly half of all drug exports from Mexico were smuggled through the area connected on the south side of the Rio Grande with Laredo, Texas. It seemed almost ironic the area had been nicknamed la puerta a Mexico, or the door to Mexico. If anything, Nuevo Laredo had definitely become that for the drug runners.

“Okay, so everybody inside knows that Edgar Valdez Villareal runs Los Negros, but the guy who’s pulling the strings behind the move into Phoenix is a dude by the name of Hector Casco.” Gagliardi surreptitiously slid a folder across the table and then lit a cigarette while Bolan glanced through various documents. “That contains a copy of his dossier and all the shit I could dredge up on him inside our computer files. Some of it was a little tough to come by because he’s actively under investigation and there are things for which I don’t have clearance.”

“I appreciate it,” Bolan said with a nod.

Indeed he did because despite the fact Bolan had saved Gagliardi from certain death once, the DEA man was once again putting his career and his life on the line. If anyone inside the Gulf cartel suspected betrayal and put a tail on him, Gagliardi wouldn’t last twelve hours after leaving that coffee shop, never mind the heat he’d take if his handler found out he’d broken protocol to help out a friend and outsider. And the Executioner fit both those descriptors.

“What’s Casco’s angle?”

Gagliardi shrugged. “I can’t be sure yet, but I think he’s vying for the favorite-son position in this part of the border states. Maybe looking to become independent, as it were.”

“That would make sense. If Casco can gain sole control of the pipeline from Nogales to Phoenix, he’d have an operation equal to or even exceeding the one out of Nuevo Laredo.”

“Right,” Gagliardi said. “But now the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad within the Phoenix P.D. has obtained information about this pharmacy. Word has it that a major meet is scheduled there three days from today. And according to everything I can gather this HIKE squad plans to be there for it. There’s even talk Casco’s going to make a personal appearance.”

“Yeah. But for what reason?” Bolan said. “If your intelligence is good, they wouldn’t risk such a meeting without some purpose.”

“That I can’t tell you,” Gagliardi said. “But I can tell you my intel comes from pretty high up. I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t the real thing.”

Bolan had nodded in understanding. He couldn’t bring himself to doubt the information because Gagliardi had risked a lot to get it to him. It also made some sense in that it appeared Hector Casco was out to make a name for himself; Casco obviously wanted a larger cut of the action if nothing else. Those two facts alone made it important enough to check out. Bolan’s only choice, then, would be to do a soft probe of the place and see what turned up.

With Ann-Elise McCormack out of danger, Bolan felt the time had come to explore this a bit further. By this point, the police would be at the cartel residence on the other side of town in force, not to mention swarming the McCormack and Montera homes. That left the field wide open and bought Bolan a little more time to check out Gagliardi’s intelligence.

Bolan pulled his vehicle into the back parking lot of a diner positioned directly across from the corner pharmacy. He stepped into the cool interior, sat down and ordered a sandwich. As he waited, the warrior studied the facade. The place looked plain, unremarkable really, save for the striped awnings that jutted from above the pair of large plate-glass windows—one each facing the cross streets. That old-fashioned look seemed out of place in this kind of “upscale” neighborhood and yet Bolan saw some wisdom in that. It made it seem like another friendly, neighborhood drugstore, maybe something out of Norman Rockwell.

Then the glint of light catching on metal from the rooftop of the three-story building across the street caught Bolan’s eye. He watched with interest, never taking his eyes from the building save for a brief acknowledgement of the waitress, who set the plate on the table with a clank.

“Can I get you anything else, honey?” she asked, tossing her blond hair as she cracked her gum.

By the time Bolan answered her, he’d spotted a second rooftop enemy position and three more at street level. “There a pay phone around here?”

She nodded. “Out back.”

Bolan held up a ten as he slid out of the booth and said, “Keep the change.”

“Wow, a whole dollar-twenty-five,” the waitress said with mock admiration. “Thanks, sir. Hey! What about your sandwich?”

But Bolan was already out the door and walking casually along the side of the building. He could have called from his cell phone but he didn’t want any of the diner occupants to overhear him. Beside the fact, the pay phone would be at least a bit more secure for Gagliardi. If anyone traced the call to the undercover agent’s own mobile phone, at least they wouldn’t be able to tie it to anything solid.

Gagliardi answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Bolan replied. “Can you talk?”

“At the moment. What’s up?”

“You said the other day that rumor control had it Casco was going to be at this meet.”

“Right.”

“Any idea what time it was planned for?”

“Not a clue. I only know it was supposed to go down today.”

“You know how to reach this guy who’s heading up the HIKE squad?”

“Nope, but I got a name.”

“What is it?”

“Captain Joseph Hall. Why?”

“Because I think he and his team are about to walk into a trap,” Bolan replied.

2

No sooner had the words left the Executioner’s mouth than he heard the squeal of tires on pavement.

He bid Gagliardi a hasty farewell, then skirted the building until he reached the corner and risked a glance in the direction of the pharmacy. Two unmarked units had arrived and parked on the sidewalk, flanked by two uniform squads blocking the intersection. A large police van arrived a moment later, probably dispatched to haul away whomever the cops took into custody.

Bolan whipped the Beretta from his shoulder holster and dashed along the side of the diner until the first rooftop sentry he’d spotted came into view. The warrior had only seconds to take the guy down before the sentry started sniping at the cops. He was packing SJHPs, subsonic to suppress noise, but at only 125-grain apiece it would also severely limit the chances for a first-hit kill. Bolan thumbed the selector to 3-round-burst mode. He then sighted on the shadowy figure visible just above the parapet and squeezed the trigger. A trio of 9 mm Parabellum rounds hit home, one striking the rifle mounted to a bipod while the other two slammed into the sentry’s head. The guy dropped from sight in a red spray brightened by the blazing midday sun.

The muzzle of Bolan’s 93-R attended the second rooftop position but he found it vacant. Either the sniper there had seen Bolan moving or he’d gone to alert the others at the arrival of Hall’s squad.

Bolan turned his attention to the three ground-level heavies. One of them was using the door of a black SUV for cover as he sighted down the barrel of an assault rifle. From that vantage point, Bolan couldn’t tell what kind of rifle it was but he knew that mattered very little. The gunner could intend only one thing and if he had enough guts to level a rifle at the police in broad daylight on a busy street, he sure as hell had the guts to use it.

Bolan didn’t plan to give him that chance. He dashed across the street in the direction of the cops massed outside the front doors of the pharmacy and prepared to make tactical entry. Bolan sighted down the slide of the pistol and triggered a 3-round burst on the run. He nearly reached the sidewalk before triggering a second and then a third. None of the rounds hit but they came close enough to distract the hood holding the rifle. The staccato of autofire echoed through the air as the rounds went high and wide of the cloistered cops.

Bolan leaped onto the sidewalk as he dropped a clip into his palm, pocketed it and slammed home a fresh one. He body-checked an older, white-haired guy donned in a Kevlar vest. The impact sent the cop into one of his colleagues who was suited in full tactical gear just as a fresh volley of rounds chewed up the wall where the cop had been standing a moment earlier.

Bolan ignored the cops who shouted at him and turned their weapons, instead rolling away from them and coming up behind the grill of the police van. Bolan skirted around it and pressed toward the position of the guy yielding the rifle. The shooter still hadn’t seemed to notice Bolan—he acted like the cops had spotted him and were shooting back—so the Executioner’s fast approach went unchecked. By the time the hood realized his mistake Bolan had drawn close enough he couldn’t miss. And he didn’t. A trio of rounds perforated the man’s left chest, cutting through heart and lungs with a fury. The man’s rifle clattered to the pavement and he staggered backward under the impact, blood flowing freely from not only the wounds, but also the corners of his mouth. The enemy gunner, appearing to be a man of twenty or twenty-one, dropped to the ground and expired with a shudder.

By that time, the cops realized Bolan wasn’t shooting at them and that their real enemy had sprung an ambush that the Executioner, friend or foe, seemed bent on putting to rest before the party got wound up. And by all accounts it looked to them like the warrior was doing a damned good job of it.

Bolan swung the muzzle of the Beretta 93-R until he acquired target number two in his sights and delivered another volley of slugs. While they might have been subsonic, the rounds did the job of neutralizing the gunman. The guy triggered a burst skyward before dropping his weapon and hitting a wall. He fell in almost slow motion, his eyes wide open in a vacant expression of death as blood seeped from the third eye left by one of Bolan’s rounds.

The last gunner saw that within a moment the odds had been narrowed by two-thirds, and it didn’t look like he stood much of a chance against the Executioner and the cops. He decided to take his chances with Bolan. He believed he could take this guy—he had the firepower and the guts. The hood raised his machine pistol, an older-model mini-Uzi, and sprayed in the direction of Bolan indiscriminately. The Executioner took cover and grimaced at the off-chance an innocent bystander might get in the way.

Unfortunately for the gun-toting hood, he’d never have the chance to kill Bolan or a noncombatant.

The man’s body began to rock under the impact of the half-dozen or so police weapons suddenly aimed at him. The cops doled out a fury of destructive autofire from their Colt AR-15s and pistols. The thug staggered a moment and then collapsed to the pavement.

Bolan continued in motion around the corner and sprinted down the street. He would have to lie low for a while, come back later to retrieve his vehicle. The warrior knew he still needed to make contact with Joseph Hall, but he had to do it on his own time and his own way. For the moment they would only try to apprehend Bolan, and the Executioner didn’t feel like spending the next twenty-four hours in a police lockup under interrogation. He still had a lot to do in Phoenix.

The mission had only just begun.

JOE HALL, CAPTAIN OF the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad, stared with angst at the mess of bodies strewn along the streets of downtown Phoenix. This was his city, and the mysterious stranger who had saved his life managed to disappear without a trace. No, the raid on the pharmacy hadn’t gone as planned. They had five corpses, all of whom Hall assumed would eventually be tied back to affiliations with either a local street gang or Los Negros. In spite of the sudden change in plans, they had managed to round up everyone inside the pharmacy, a total of three employees and one manager, but he didn’t think anything would come of it. They had no evidence of wrongdoing on the parts of any of the pharmacy workers, and all of the bad guys, any one of whom he might have coerced into talking, were all deceased.

Sergeant Larry Murach joined Hall as he stood over one of the dead. The coroner had arrived quickly enough and at least managed to get the bodies covered. It wasn’t as if Hall cared much about protecting their dignity, but dead was still dead and it helped cut down the number of free gapers. A large crowd had formed but with the place taped off and the backup on scene, the uniforms were doing a pretty good job of keeping the looky-loos and press hounds at bay.

“What do you have?” Hall asked Murach, not taking his eyes off the covered body.

“Not much,” Murach said, flipping through the couple of small pages of notes he’d taken. “All four of the deceased are gangbangers. Two actually have some ink that marks them as members of Los Negros, the other two are wearing colors but nothing else.”

“Witnesses?”

“Nobody I talked to is really sure what the hell happened. I guess whoever saw these guys decided to stay healthy by giving them a wide berth.”

And the only man with enough smarts to have spotted them ahead of time somehow managed to slip through our fingers, Hall thought. “What about our mystery man?”

“I canvassed that diner over there,” Murach said, pointing at it. “A waitress there says a guy came in about ten minutes before the shooting started. Says he ordered a sandwich and then got up and left without eating it.”

Hall looked sharply at Murach. “Why?”

“She wasn’t sure,” Murach said with a shrug. “She said he ordered and then when she brought the food he asked for a pay phone and split. Paid for the meal but apparently isn’t much of a tipper.”

“She give you a description?”

Murach didn’t bother referencing his notes. “Big with dark hair. That’s about all I got.”

“I could have told you that much.”

“She was more pissed about the tip than anything else. That’s all she really talked about. Just kept bitching about the tip.”

And now here was Murach bitching about the waitress bitching. “You got her name and address?”

“Yeah.”

Hall looked at the body again. “I’ll go by later. See if I can get something more out of her. In the meantime, let’s get this place cleaned up as quickly as possible.”

“What about the shooting team?”

“Screw them assholes,” Hall said. “I don’t have time for that right now.”

BOLAN ENTERED THROUGH the frosted-glass doors of the HIKE squad room at the Phoenix P.D. headquarters on the heels of a uniformed female cop.

A single plainclothes officer occupied one of the many desks within the squad room, and he barely gave them a cursory inspection as they passed before returning his attention to a newspaper. The rest of the room appeared abandoned—quiet as a morgue, almost. The officer led Bolan to an office in back and rapped on the closed door. At the sound of a muffled reply she opened it and poked her head in.

“Someone here to see you, sir,” she said.

“Who is it?” the voice asked with an impatient tone.

“Says his name is Cooper. Claims he has information about the shootings today.”

“Have him give his statement to Murach.”

“Sergeant Murach stepped out, sir,” the officer replied with some trepidation.

“Oh, for crissakes, don’t—” The man broke off and said, “All right, send him in.”

The officer stepped aside and smiled, obviously a bit uncomfortable, and gestured for Bolan to enter.

The Executioner smiled back and nodded as he stepped through the doorway and far enough into the room that the young woman could close the door behind him. The man who stood and came around the desk wasn’t anywhere near Bolan’s imposing height, maybe five foot ten, and Bolan immediately recognized him as the lead officer he’d shoved out of the way of enemy gunfire earlier that day. Bolan wondered if that man was Captain Joseph Hall, but the letters stenciled on the door of his office had now confirmed it.

The guy reached out a hand and Bolan shook it. Scrutiny, not recognition, flashed in Hall’s eyes and Bolan eased out the breath he’d been holding. Hall hadn’t gotten a look at his face.

“Have a seat, sir,” Hall said.

Bolan casually plopped into the chair as Hall returned to his desk and adjusted his tie. “You have information about what happened today?”

“I was part of what happened today,” Bolan replied easily.

Hall’s eyes flicked up from his desk and locked on Bolan with a hard stare. Then something dawned on him, something like a realization, and his body tensed.

Bolan held up a palm. “Easy, Hall. I’m not looking for trouble.”

“Then you shouldn’t have walked in here.”

Bolan remained impassive.

Hall continued, “You realize I can arrest you right here just on the suspicion that you were involved in today’s incident?”

“As long as you realize I’m the one who spared your wife and kids a lot of grief today,” Bolan said.

“That’s the only reason you’re not in handcuffs yet.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“No. And why not?”

“Let’s just say that we’re on the same team.”

“How do I know that? You a cop?”

“Not exactly.”

“Work for the government?”

“Sometimes.”

Hall chuckled and sat back in his chair a little, although Bolan noted he still hadn’t let down his guard. The Executioner didn’t doubt Hall had a gun in reach. “You care to show me some kind of identification to prove that? An authorization signed by the FBI or Justice Department, perhaps?”

Bolan smiled. “Let’s pretend for this moment that I’m telling you the truth. Give me five minutes to explain. After that, if you’re not convinced, you can do what you like.”

“Why should I?”

“The intelligence you got on that meet today was bogus,” Bolan said. “The Sinaloa cartel was setting a trap and you walked right into it. If I hadn’t intervened when I did, you’d all be dead. That enough reason?”

Hall sat in stony silence for a while before finally saying, “Fine…you got your five minutes.”

“Hector Casco wasn’t going to be at that meet,” Bolan continued. “In fact, I doubt there was any meet at all. I got there before you and I marked five scouts, two above, three at street level.”

“It was you at the diner?”

Bolan nodded.

“Yeah, you were a real hit for the waitress there,” Hall said matter-of-factly and scratched his neck. He smiled at Bolan and then said, “You care to elaborate on how you know about Hector Casco?”

“I have sources of my own,” Bolan said. “I called one of them right before your raid went down. My source told me that this was some of the best hard evidence you’d obtained since the beginning of this year. When I heard that, I figured you’d be itching to jump on it and that you’d do whatever was needed to obtain a warrant. Problem is, Hector Casco had already figured that out.”

“So you still haven’t answered my question,” Hall said. “What do you know about it?”

“A lot. Casco’s recent activities here make it obvious he’s trying to take over the pipeline from Nogales. Only trouble is, he’s playing for keeps, which means he’s not looking to take on partners or put up with the competition.”

“What’s your point, Cooper?”

“That you’re about to get in over your head,” Bolan said. “Take Ann-Elise McCormack. You think that was about ransom money?”

“Why not?” Hall asked. “What happened this morning. That you, too?”

Bolan nodded. “Montera was already gone when I arrived, but yeah, I’m the one who took down the kidnappers and returned the girl to her home.”

“She’s one tough kid,” Hall replied. “Apparently, every time the FBI asked who it was that rescued her she’d just start crying, insisting she really didn’t remember.”

“She was grateful,” Bolan said. “Look, the fact is that if Casco plans to take control of the drug and gun-running action in this area, things will heat up quickly between him and the competition. Before you know it, you’ll have a war on these streets between Los Negros and Los Zetas that’ll make what’s happening down in Mexico pale by comparison. You’ve already gotten a taste of how little they care for innocent bystanders.”

“So what are you offering?”

“At this point, a sort of partnership,” Bolan said. “You can still handle the cases the way you feel you need to, and any intelligence I gather during my own operations, I’ll screen and pass on to you if I think it’s relevant.”

“If it’s not enough to get warrants, it does me no good. I got plenty of CI’s out there willing to rat out a nickel-and-dime-bag crook for a few bucks. I don’t need any more of those.”

“It’ll be more than enough,” Bolan said. “And at least you can rest assured it’ll be accurate.”

“So you still haven’t told me why I should work with you,” Hall said. “Or even trust you, for that matter. For all I know you could be working for Casco.”

“The current case count for your squad is up to what now, Hall, maybe a hundred-sixty?” Bolan calmly asked.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“At that rate, I wouldn’t be turning down any help.”

“But how do I know you’re legit.”

“I could have let you die today,” Bolan said and gestured with the flat of his hand. “I could have just walked away and left you and your men to deal on your own.”

“What does that prove?”

“Look, Hall, I threw you one lifeline this morning and I’m throwing a second one this evening. The difference is, are you smart enough to reach for it? You’re not convinced for the sake of your own life, then at least be convinced for the sake of those you’re responsible to protect. There’s a war about to break out right here in Phoenix. Maybe I can’t stop it, but I might be able to contain it long enough for the spark to die. And I can give you some breathing room to operate so that when you do step in to take down Casco, at least it’ll count for something.”

Hall fell silent and Bolan gave him the time to let the wheels turn. He could empathize with the policeman but he also didn’t have time for games. If Hall didn’t go for it, Bolan knew he might end up in a cell. He’d taken a risk doing this, but like most things, the Executioner was playing a hunch and it was one he figured would pay off. Hall and his team had been at it a while and had come up empty-handed, so far. That couldn’t be looking good on Hall, a career-minded cop if Bolan didn’t miss his guess, and that had to be eating up the guy’s insides. Through the years Bolan had become a very good reader of people, and his gut told him Hall would take the deal.

As usual, his gut was right.

“All right, Cooper,” Hall said. “We’ll try this your way and see where it leads. Where do we start?”

3

The Executioner peered through the night-vision scope of the PSG-1 sniper rifle.

Night had overtaken Phoenix several hours earlier, and Bolan began to feel weariness ebb into his body. In spite of it, his mind remained fully alert to any dangers. There would be plenty of chances to rest later—at least that’s what he told himself during the more time-critical missions—but at the moment he needed to stay at peak operational readiness.

The lives of several young women depended on it.

The girls were working in a club owned by Los Negros. When most people heard that name, they typically thought of the Afromestizos group seeking to be recognized as a third ethnic voice within Mexico, a country that had not become a truly pluralist society until the 1990s in order to buy in to the good graces of the United States.

Most didn’t know about the other Los Negros, a group that had kidnapped, murdered and terrorized the American Southwest. Even with major successes by the DEA and joint agencies in operations like Xcellerator in 2009—the genesis of which began in Imperial County, California, and ultimately spanned more than twenty-five states and seized approximately one billion dollars in Sinaloa cartel assets—the fight continued. Like all such organizations, Los Negros continued to rear its ugly faces like the multiheaded monster it was. Well, Bolan had something for the Hydra, something that it would not soon forget. He had a battle plan, the opening of which involved Bolan behind the sniper rifle, concealed by a tarp over the bed of a large pickup truck. While it might have seemed a crude way of establishing a point from which to strike, it provided Bolan with the position he needed and would buy him the element of surprise. Plus from his vantage point, Bolan had a perfect view of the club entrance.

Initially Hall hadn’t been keen on Bolan’s plan to turn Los Negros on its ear, but eventually he listened to reason. Bolan convinced him by outlining the wisdom of such a move. There was only one way to keep a guy like Hector Casco from establishing a foothold in Phoenix and that was to turn his operation upside down. And keeping the enemy off balance and teetering on the brink of chaos was what the Executioner did best.

The skintight blacksuit Bolan wore exacerbated the stifling heat. He made a final adjustment to the scope and then pulled his eye away from it long enough to inspect the luminescent hands of his watch. It was nearing 0230 hours and the club had pretty much emptied of the majority of partiers. A few stragglers had emerged in the past thirty minutes—some single men and a few couples, but not Bolan’s targets. The warrior realized he could have a very long wait and that wouldn’t do, considering the sweat that soaked his body and had on more than one occasion run into his eyes.

The double wooden doors of the club swung outward again, their ornate carvings painted bright hues of red and black, the enamel shimmering under the streetlights. The three VIPs Bolan awaited stepped into the muggy air. All of them were gaudily dressed and accompanied by about a half-dozen bodyguards wearing slacks, silk shirts and black jackets. Each of the VIPs also had a woman on each arm.

At last, Bolan’s opportunity had presented itself.

He recognized one of those faces as he lined it up in the blue-green shorthairs of the 6 × 42 scope. A brainchild of Heckler & Koch, the Präzisionsschorfschützengewehr-1 sniper rifle dispatched the 7.62 × 51 mm NATO round at a muzzle velocity exceeding 2800 feet per second. With Bolan less than two hundred feet from the guy, he couldn't miss and a first-shot, first-kill probability was imminent.

Even as the first report thundered inside the confines of the truck bed, Bolan had confirmed the hit to the first target and was already working the silent bolt as he swept into acquisition of the next in line. No more than two seconds elapsed before Bolan had taken out the second target with a kill shot that struck the guy in the chest and caused his heart to burst. The bodyguards reacted with incredible enthusiasm—too bad their reactions were so utterly ineffective.

As the bodyguards fanned out and drew their weapons, Bolan was easing back the 3-pound trigger on the third and final target. The round struck the guy in the top of the head and blew his skull and most of his brain out the other side. However, the round struck at just such an angle that the impact sent the hood spinning and he twirled several times with all the grace of a drunken ballerina before collapsing to the pavement.

Bolan withdrew the rifle and pawed at the back of the pickup to lower the tailgate. He coiled his body before launching off the bed and rushing to the driver's side. Bolan hopped into the massive F-350, started the engine and rocketed down the street. He checked his rearview mirror as he did and felt some satisfaction as he saw four of the six gunners rush for a sedan.

Bolan made a hard left at the first street, proceeded two blocks and then made another hard left. He continued on until he passed the first street that would move beyond the club, and then the second, then made one more left. The last thing in the world the Los Negros thugs would think he would do is return to the scene. Not to mention they would have their own hands full in about a minute when a passel of Phoenix P.D. squad cars suddenly converged on them from every direction.

Bolan rounded the corner and found the two remaining gunmen seated on the curb, pistols dangling from their hands, neither of them completely recovered from what had transpired. Bolan bore down on their position and brought the truck to a screaming halt at the last second so that he was in a direct line of sight. He aimed out the window with the MP-5 that he'd left on the seat and triggered a sustained burst while sweeping the muzzle in a rising, corkscrew fashion.

Neither of the Los Negros gunners knew what happened. The first caught a volley that ripped him open from crotch to sternum and the second was nearly decapitated by two rounds that blew his head open. Not to mention the half-dozen or so rounds that stitched him across the chest.

The quintet of young women were still seated on the sidewalk or hiding behind whatever solid object they'd been able to find when the shooting started. Bolan collected them quickly and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the truck.

“Get in back,” he commanded them.

“No way, mister!” one of the young, frightened girls screamed and she began to sputter a flurry of curses. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

The others, who had started to comply, now hesitated and Bolan knew he had to act quickly. He lowered the MP-5 and raised one hand. “Look, I’m not here to hurt any of you. I’m here to bring you where it’s safe. I’m here to take you home.”

“I ain’t got no home!” the girl said in a shaky tone.

“Okay,” Bolan said. “Then I’ll take you wherever you want to go, wherever you feel safe. But you can’t tell me that’s here. These men have abused you. All of you. And those days are over for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” one of the other girls said. “And what’re you expecting in return?”

Bolan kept his voice low. “Nothing. I just want to get you out of here. These are bad men and eventually bad things would have happened to you. I’m giving you a second chance. You can trust me or you can take the risk you’ll be right back in a situation like this. Or worse, when their friends come looking for witnesses.”

That seemed to convince all but one of them and Bolan made one last, desperate plea, but the girl chose to turn and run. He noted it odd how fast she could run with heels on but then pressed his lips together, shook his head and went to assist the girls into the cab. Once everyone was in, he got behind the wheel and drove away.

“THAT’S YOUR IDEA OF gathering intelligence?”

Bolan shifted the pay-phone receiver to his other ear. “I told you it could get ugly, Hall.”

“Is that what you’re calling it? Ugly?” Hall sighed. “I’ve got a whole mess of bodies on my hands and very few answers. I told you before, Cooper, the politicos are breathing down my neck from the special ops chief up to the mayor. You know a representative from the governor’s office showed up here this morning, for crissakes? I thought we had an agreement.”

“We did,” Bolan replied. “And I’m sticking to it.”

“How so?”

“I noticed you mentioned the dead bodies but not the four live ones sitting in your jail cell.”

“You mean those four who lawyered up? What good are they going to be?”

Bolan clucked his tongue. “I can’t control what happens inside your house, Hall. So far I’ve delivered just what I promised—don’t try to back out.”

For a long time Hall didn’t say anything to that. Bolan hated having to bottom-line the cop but he didn’t have time for games. The fact remained he’d held up his end of the bargain and he was going to need Hall’s support.

“You realize what you’re asking me to do? You want me to look the other way while you start a war right here.”

“I’m trying to prevent a war, not start one,” Bolan reminded him. “The Los Negros aren’t going to just roll over any more than Los Zetas did in Nuevo Laredo. And you can bet Hector Casco’s burning up the phone lines right now trying to figure out what happened. That kind of traffic is sure to give you more leads. I know you have at least a few of their operating locations under surveillance.”

Hall chuckled. “Well I’ll be…”

“What?”

“I’d sure like to know where you get your information,” Hall said. “You obviously knew almost as much about our ops as I did. And you’re such an enigmatic bastard you don’t have any record. It’s like you don’t exist, Cooper. No fingerprints, no driver’s license and no financial records.”

“You checked on me.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No, I would have done the same.”

“So what do you have up your sleeve next? Run a tank through the Sinaloa cartel’s headquarters?”

“Nothing quite so dramatic,” Bolan replied. “As I said, I figure Casco will be making inquiries and he’ll probably be working up some sort of retaliation.”

“You want him to assume that Los Zetas did the hit.”

“Exactly. That’s why I took the girls off the streets, too.”

“What about the one that got away?”

“I’m hoping she’ll go underground,” Bolan said as a grim lump formed in his gut.

“If she tries to contact others inside Los Negros and gives up what actually happened, your plan might fall apart.”

“If she contacts them she’ll only end up dead, which unfortunately could be the very best to hope for. Casco won’t take this lying down. I believe he’ll respond and he’ll do it quickly. He can’t afford not to.”

“And how’s that going to help us?” Hall asked.

“Wherever Casco hits Los Zetas, he’s going to make noise doing it. That’s going to draw attention and when it goes down I’m going to be one of the first to hear about it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Bolan said.

The tone in Hall’s voice betrayed he wasn’t happy with Bolan’s response. “A relationship like ours is built on trust, Cooper. We got nothing else going for us.”

“I can’t tell you, so let’s leave it alone. What I can tell you is that when I do hear about Casco’s retaliation, it will come from the same place I heard your men were walking into a trap at that raid.”

“Well, that particular bit of information saved my life and those of about six good men. I guess it’ll have to be enough—but only for now.”

“I understand the position you’re in, Hall. I have a suggestion for you if you’d like to hear it.”

“Shoot.”

“Call the Department of Justice in Washington. Ask to talk to a guy named Brognola. Just explain your situation and ask him what he might be able to do to get some of the heat off your back. I can promise your troubles will abate by sundown.”

“Brognola, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Hall sighed again. “Okay, I’ll give that a shot.”

“As soon as I have something for you, I’ll call back.”

Bolan disconnected the call, field-stripped his cigarette and returned to his car. He couldn’t have risked making that call on his phone. The warrior didn’t doubt for a moment that one or more of Casco’s people monitored the airways. The Los Negros network was larger and more powerful than even Joseph Hall would have admitted, and Bolan couldn’t see risking his demise over sloppy tactics. Such decisions had saved his life many times before.

As he got behind the wheel, Bolan’s cell phone vibrated, demanding attention. He saw the number, recognized it and answered. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Can you meet me?” Vince Gagliardi’s voice inquired.

“Where and when?”

“I’ll get back to you within an hour.”

Dead air followed and Bolan realized Gagliardi had hung up. He pushed the disconnect button, stared a moment at the screen and then tucked the phone in his shirt pocket. The call had all of Bolan’s senses on alert. The Executioner and Gagliardi had agreed that if the DEA agent sensed he might be in trouble or his cover blown, he’d contact Bolan with those words so that Bolan would know to stay clear. Their agreement was if something like that went down, no calls and no meetings.

Okay, so the heat was already ramping up. Bolan had figured that his assault on Casco’s three underbosses at the club might generate quite a bit of suspicion. After all, the police wouldn’t have conducted such an attack, which narrowed the possible source of information regarding Los Negros’s use of the club as an official meeting place for Casco’s people. That left either the hitters coming from Los Zetas or a traitor inside Los Negros. The search for a leak would eventually work its way into Los Zetas, as well, and that would put Gagliardi at risk irrespective of the fact he was still pretty low in the ranks.

Bolan had prepared for such an eventuality. He knew he’d have to tap some alternate sources of information. His first concern had to be Gagliardi, however. He didn’t want to blow the DEA agent’s cover but he also owed the guy a hell of a lot. He couldn’t just take the risk that Gagliardi would be discovered, never mind the fact that if Gagliardi got blown, Casco’s people would force him to talk. The DEA trained their undercover agents to resist many forms of torture, but every man had a breaking point: Gagliardi couldn’t hold out forever.

Bolan keyed in a number by heart and the voice of Aaron Kurtzman answered on the first ring. Affectionately known as “Bear” among his close friends and allies, Kurtzman served as Stony Man’s chief technical wizard. He was a specialist at computer programs, data manipulation and retrieval and cybersecurity; he commanded a team of some of the greatest technical minds ever assembled. The skills of his team rivaled even those in places like NASA, DARPA and the NSA.

“Striker, how are you?” Kurtzman greeted his friend.

“Doing good, Bear.” Bolan hadn’t planned to enlist his Stony Man friends but with the life of a DEA agent and good man on the line, he didn’t see much choice. “I need your help.”

“Name it.”

“I need to get a location on a DEA agent named Gagliardi, first name of Vincent. He’s currently working an undercover narco op here in Phoenix. His probable location should be recorded in the files of his case officer.”

“And you need me to crack it.”

“You mind?”

Kurtzman let out a booming laugh. “You kidding? Been looking for a little excitement since I got back from leave. How soon you need it?”

“Yesterday,” Bolan replied. “This guy’s in trouble, and I need to find him before his cover’s blown.”

“Give me a quarter-hour and I’ll call you back.”

“Roger that. And thanks, Bear.”

“Don’t mention it.”

True to his word, Kurtzman called fifteen minutes later with a location. Bolan hadn’t even bothered changing out of his blacksuit. He barely had time to return to his hotel and retrieve his equipment bag, where his full arsenal was stowed. There might not be another chance. The mission had gone into high gear. The stakes were up and the numbers were running down. A totality of the circumstances had dictated the parameters of the mission this time, and Bolan found little choice but to follow the trail Fate had laid ahead of him. Either way, it didn’t matter to Bolan. If he could create more chaos for Casco by hitting Los Zetas while buying Gagliardi time to break away from whatever mess he’d stepped in, so much the better.

Bolan had become an expert in improvisation long ago. From jungle hell-grounds to battlefields littered with Mafioso vermin, the Executioner forged a new kind of warfare. He’d learned to hit the enemy hard and fast, give them no corner. He continued his War Everlasting with the maintenance of one primal goal: put the enemy down and keep them there. And that’s what Bolan had come to Phoenix to do.

Yeah, the Sun City blitz had begun.

4

“I’m telling you, Rumaldo, this cabrón was no damned Zeta. This dude was some kind of soldier or something.”

Rumaldo Salto, enforcer and head of Hector Casco’s personal guard, folded his meaty arms and leaned against a pillar of the portico outside Casco’s home. “A soldier, eh?”

“Yeah,” Claudia Pacorbo said. “Like a commando, see. Dressed all in black. Big and mean. And he had some kind of special gun, you know, like an automatic gun.”

The story was too wild to make up and yet Salto had serious trouble believing her. For one thing, Pacorbo was known to do a little too much nose candy and that kind of habit didn’t promote clear thinking. Second, the boss had assigned him to stay put and watch the house and grounds while he sent his spies to the streets to get the full story. But nearly an hour before dawn, Pacorbo showed up at the front gate in a taxi cab without a dime to her name—Salto had to fork out nearly a hundred bucks for Pacorbo’s twenty-mile ride from south-central Phoenix to the east side of Scottsdale—with a cockamamie story about a commando dressed all in black and toting a machine gun.

Then again, Salto had already heard the first reports coming back as evidence that supported Pacorbo’s wild story. First, two of the guys assigned to protect Casco’s chief shot-callers were dead and riddled with too many bullets to have come from one or two guns. Second, the other girls had gotten into the truck this alleged commando had been driving under the promise he was going to “take them home.” That most definitely smelled of serious trouble. The only thing Salto wondered was if the trouble was coming from the cops, Los Zetas, or a freelance troublemaker looking to score some action.

“Okay…okay, chica. I’ll tell you what, I’ll talk to the boss and see if he’ll meet with you. But I’m telling you, girl, if you’re pulling my leg just to score some money for smack, you’re going to get a smack. And it won’t be the kind you’re thinking.”

“Fine,” Pacorbo said, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder with smug indifference. She folded her arms and added, “You go talk to Hector.”

Salto shot her a dirty look before turning to head inside. The cool air felt good against his face. Barely morning out there and it was already muggy and hot. Salto wasn’t much for the heat, a surprising twist of fate for a native-born Mexican raised near Juárez on the American-Mexican border. Before joining Los Negros, Salto had trained quite a while in the Sonoran Desert and resided for some time in Hermosillo. Eventually, like so many of his Los Negros brothers, Salto entered the U.S. illegally for the sole purpose of working in the employ of Hector Casco.

The honor was all Salto’s, no doubts there. Casco turned out to be one who ruled with a firm but fair hand, and while he didn’t pay that well, he treated each man with dignity. In fact, most wouldn’t have looked at a guy like Casco and marked him as the second ranking overseer of the Sinaloa cartel. Casco was known among certain circles as a man of distinct tastes who prepossessed a classic air of style and dignity. Additionally, Casco donated to a number of worthwhile charities—anonymously, of course, since it wouldn’t do for his enemies to know his true identity—while rubbing elbows with the social elite in Scottsdale under an assumed identity.

It was Casco’s ability to continue his charade of identity that amazed Salto most. The fact nobody had yet betrayed him spoke to his skill in this area. Actually no one, with the exception of the heads of the Sinaloa cartel, even knew the details of Casco’s alternate alias. They were not allowed to accompany him to the various social events in which he engaged, save for his driver, And neither Salto nor any of the house protection team were permitted to leave the grounds except when off duty.

Salto had once considered following Casco but decided against it as too risky. If he were discovered they would most certainly mark him as a cop or a traitor, and a traitor’s mark was not something he wanted to acquire while inside Los Negros. Not only could it mean death, but even if he were to explain it as mere curiosity he would also be ostracized and no longer enjoy the freedoms and protection of the organization. Salto had worked too hard, come too far, to ever let that happen.

Salto rapped on the slightly ajar door to Casco’s study, and then poked his head through the opening at a grunt of acknowledgement. Casco sat at his desk scribbling furiously on a notepad. There wasn’t a phone or computer in sight; Casco didn’t believe in such things as they could be traced back to him. There was a house phone but that was all. Any correspondence was either handwritten, output via a thermal typewriter or delivered in-person between Casco’s couriers.

A courier had been Salto’s first job after coming into Casco’s employ. The job was tough and extremely dangerous given the list of Casco’s innumerable enemies. A courier was nothing more than an information mule. He carried nothing of material value, but the knowledge a courier possessed was priceless to rival gangs, and particularly to Los Zetas. None of Casco’s enemies had ever caught a courier, which is probably why Casco continued to operate with the freedom he did. Still, he knew that luck wouldn’t last forever. Eventually, they’d get to a courier and the guy would spill his guts, and then Salto would have to start earning his money for real.

“What is it, Maldo?” Casco demanded, using a shortened form of Salto’s name. Nobody else but Hector called him that.

“Boss, the Pacorbo chick demands to see you.”

“I’m busy,” Casco snapped. “And I’m not about to give that bitch any more money. You tell her to go suck it off Julio or one of the clubbers. She ain’t going to get change from me. I know what a gold-hopping whore she is.”

“Uh, sure, boss…but—”

Casco had returned to his work as if he hadn’t heard Salto. Nearly a full minute passed before he looked up and noticed his house boss still standing there and pinned him with an icy stare.

Salto took a deep breath and blurted it out before he got in trouble. “She showed up here looking pretty hard, Hector. And she claims that what happened to our boys last night was not the doing of Los Zetas.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s what I told her and she insisted.”

“And you believed her?”

“When she tells me to basically go fuck myself if I don’t let her see you, yeah, that gets me to start wondering. And then she tells me about this dude, the guy that she claims took them out, dressed all in black like some kind of commando, shooting this chatter gun and stuff. And she claims he took out all three of our guys from quite a distance, almost like a sniper or something.”

Casco’s pallor went a noticeable gray, and something flickered in his eyes. “Did you say he was dressed all in black?”

When Salto nodded, Casco’s mouth dropped open as if he wanted to say something.

“What is it, boss?”

“If that’s true, then that is a problem…a very serious fucking problem.”

It wasn’t often that Casco got excitable, but Salto could tell this had his boss on edge. He talked as if his mouth was dry as cotton, and some beads of sweat were visible as they glimmered in the light. Casco had a reputation of being a tough, fearless son of a bitch who didn’t worry about nothing or nobody. Yet every day the guy had to worry his enemies would track him down and kill him. He had to worry about underlings who might betray him, and rivals who might try to undercut his operations.

“You know who this guy is?”

“Maybe,” Casco said, clearing his throat. “Maybe I do. You remember Jose Carillo?”

“Panchos Carillo?”

When Casco slowly nodded, Salto felt a stabbing sensation to his chest. The very name conjured a cornucopia of memories. Most of it had been before Salto’s time, but he couldn’t imagine too many guys his age not hearing the legend of Jose “Panchos” Carillo. The deceased Mexican mob leader had brokered a deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia to provide protection for his massive drug-smuggling operations after the collapse of his only rival’s empire. Unfortunately, an equally determined faction of a Chinese triad known as the Kung Lok had set their sights on the American Southwest, as well.

As the story went, one man was credited with bringing down both sides in a bloodbath that lasted a couple of weeks and went from Las Vegas, Los Angeles and El Paso to Canada. It was even rumored that this same bastard—who dressed in black and used military tactics—took the fight to Hong Kong and closed the attempted Kung Lok operation into utter chaos. Carillo and his closest advisors were eliminated, along with some high-ranking officials in the American government, and this individual was credited with racking up a body count so great on both sides that they never recovered.

“You don’t think—”

Casco lifted a hand to cut him off. “We won’t make any assumptions. The first thing we must do is verify this. Go get the bitch.”

Salto turned and immediately retrieved Pacorbo. As they entered Casco’s study, Salto caught the strong odor of cigar smoke. This surprised him, since his boss didn’t typically smoke in his home. He chose to go outside to enjoy his cigars, and the fact he’d fired up inside the house—in his study, no less—told Salto all he needed to know about how his boss was taking this news.

“Have a seat,” he said to Pacorbo, gesturing to a nearby couch.

She practically fell into the plush cushions and propped her feet on the coffee table in a most disrespectful fashion. Salto looked in Casco’s direction with horror but it seemed his boss decided to overlook the indiscretion. He would have ordered the bottoms of the feet beaten of anyone else who had done such a thing. Casco appreciated fine furniture and didn’t tolerate anyone treating his possessions with indifference.

Casco sat on the edge of his desk and took a long mouthful of smoke, letting it out slowly before he addressed Pacorbo. “Maldo tells me you have some information about the man who killed three of my people last night.”

Pacorbo said, “You damn bet I do. But I got a question for you, first.”

Casco smiled but it lacked graciousness. “And what might that be?”

“What would this information be worth to you?” Pacorbo said. “Because once I tell you what I saw, I’m gonna have to get out of here for a while. Lay low.”

“Why’s that?” Salto asked.

“Quiet,” Casco said to him. He returned his attention to Pacorbo. “I would have to give the matter some additional consideration, but I suppose that I would initially ask you the same question.”

Pacorbo expressed confusion. “Say what?”

“How much is the information worth to you? Is it worth say, perhaps…your life? Or maybe it is not so much, maybe it is only worth one or two of your fingers. Or how about a nipple? After all, you have two of them.”

“What’re you talking about? You know me, Hector.”

“Yes, I do.” Casco took another purposeful draw from the cigar before continuing. “Which is what begs the question, does it not? You are known for being an opportunist, Claudia, and loose enough to do anything for a little blow. You are also a noted loudmouth, and obnoxious with a zest that borders on stupidity. How you ever got the nickname of Angel I will never understand, because you are anything but. So here is my proposal. If what you tell me sounds legitimate, I will allow you to leave here with all of your body parts intact. I will even arrange for a one-way trip to anywhere you wish. If you lie to me, however, or I believe you are exaggerating even a little, I will have to reconsider our relationship and refer you to some people who are not reputed to be lenient toward your kind.”

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