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Most of what he’d just heard didn’t make sense to Bolan. “So your superiors ordered you to keep it under wraps?”
“Until the other night. You know, it’s a little easier to keep this quiet when the drugs aren’t accompanied by seven corpses aboard a boat owned by one of the most famous actors in Hollywood.”
“Raul Montavo?”
Amherst nodded and expressed distaste. “Yes, but I don’t know why they called him the Latino Angel. I can testify he was anything but.”
“Why’s that?”
“The only reasons we even ran that raid was because of a reliable tip and a very friendly judge. Hell, he’s probably one of the few judges on our side.”
“You’re too young to be that jaded,” Bolan replied easily.
She frowned. “I got a lot on my plate, mister, believe me. There’s more graft in the L.A. County court system than hookers on Hollywood Boulevard.”
Bolan got to his feet. “I don’t doubt you have a lot on your hands, so I’ll keep out of your way and you keep out of mine. But you can bet I’ll look into this further.”
“That a promise or do you really mean it?” Amherst quipped.
“Funny,” Bolan said. “You could help by keeping word of my involvement strictly need-to-know for now.”
She did nothing to hide the derision in her tone as she threw up her hands. “Oh, great, another person who wants to keep this all hush-hush. Oh, well, who would I tell?”
“I don’t want to keep it quiet because I have some hidden agenda,” Bolan said in an even tone. “I just don’t want to attract attention. If there are legit reasons the sheriff has kept a gag on this, fine. But if there’s corruption involved, then it would be better if they didn’t know anything about me until I can determine how deep it goes. Make sense?”
Amherst nodded. “Yes. And I owe you an apology, Cooper. I’m just tired, I guess. It seems like nobody wants to do anything about this.”
“I do,” Bolan said. “Trust me.”
B OLAN SPOTTED THE TAIL in a nondescript sedan as soon as he left the parking lot of the LASD station. It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been in-country even twelve hours, and nobody outside of Stony Man Farm would know of his existence or mission. That meant one of two things: Amherst had arranged for her people to follow him and see what he had up his sleeve, or someone already had the station under surveillance and Bolan’s sudden arrival sparked their interest.
Bolan bet the latter scenario as the likeliest.
He’d use the next few minutes to decide if the followers were friend or foe. As Bolan merged with traffic on the interstate, he kept an eye on the tail through his rearview mirror and considered his options. Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man’s ace pilot and longtime friend to Bolan, waited at the airport with the plane that had brought them there. Bolan had skipped renting a hotel room; he didn’t figure they’d be long in L.A.
The Executioner didn’t have a hotel, sure, but his tail probably didn’t know that. The soldier quickly formulated his plan and then took the next exit when he spotted a hotel sign. Bolan kept to the outermost exit lane. His eyes flicked to the rearview in time to see the sedan slide into the lane next to his and keep back a couple of car-lengths. The maneuver left no doubt in Bolan’s mind the followers weren’t new to the game.
Bolan spotted the large hotel ahead of him and signaled early enough to make sure his tail saw where he planned to go. He swung into the parking lot and parked in one of the side-lot spaces. The L-shaped hotel was actually split into two sections separated by a breezeway at a right angle to the main office.
Bolan walked into the breezeway and broke into a jog after moving from view of the observers. He reached the other end, then turned right at the end. He followed this causeway to the rear of the hotel and crossed around the windowless back side of the office. Bolan waited about half a minute, then vaulted the eight-foot wall. He dropped to the pavement and skirted the wall to the edge of the lot.
Bolan peered around the wall and quickly spotted the sedan. The driver had pulled into the parking lot of a taco joint directly across from the hotel. It afforded them a virtually unobstructed view of the hotel. It seemed they meant no violent threat to the Executioner—at least not an immediate one—and Bolan planned to make sure it never got that far. He’d learned that sometimes discretion wasn’t the better part of valor, and this was one of those times.
Bolan turned and strolled to the stoplight half a block away. He crossed with the light and then doubled back so he could approach from the rear. When he reached the building next to the taco stand, he circled it and came up on the sedan from the rear. He took the last twenty yards in a crouch and approached on the passenger side. Two men in crew cuts and short-sleeve shirts occupied the front seats. Bolan kept low and quietly tested the rear door handle. Locked.
Bolan went in hard.
He reached into the open window and grabbed the passenger by the collar. With his left hand, he shoved the man to the left and produced the Beretta 93-R in his right fist, pointing it toward the head of the driver.
“You packing?” he asked them.
The passenger yelped something as Bolan’s rock-hard knuckles pressed against his neck, and the driver’s eyes went wide. The men were young and inexperienced. They hadn’t expected their quarry to become the aggressor, and Bolan had taken them by total surprise.
“I asked a question,” Bolan said. “You guys packing?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the driver replied.
“Right or southpaw?” Bolan asked him.
“Say what?”
“Are you right-or left-handed?”
“Right,” he said. “Why?”
“You first, then. Use your left hand and dump the piece out the window.”
“You’re making a big mistake, asshole,” the passenger finally squealed in outrage.
“So is he,” Bolan said, gesturing in his partner’s direction with the muzzle of the Beretta. He returned his attention to the driver. “Last chance. Lose the sidearm or it all ends here.”
“Fine, fine,” he said.
When Bolan heard the pistol hit the pavement outside, he ordered the passenger to carefully hand over his weapon. The guy complied. Bolan immediately recognized the Glock 21. He tucked the pistol at the small of his back, then commanded the pair to put their hands on the dash. He opened the rear door once they had done it and slid to the center of the backseat.
“Okay, let’s have it,” Bolan asked.
“You just stepped in a whole pile o’ shit, pal,” the passenger said. “You’ll be at the top of Homeland Security’s most-wanted list by close of business today.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” the Executioner replied.
2
“I don’t get it,” Hal Brognola said when Bolan related his encounter with the federal agents. “Why would this interest Homeland Security? In fact, how would they even know about it?”
“No clue. But they admitted their orders were to pressure local authorities to keep this thing under wraps,” Bolan replied. “I kept my cover but it won’t last. I’m sure they’ll make calls. I need them to back off this thing. I don’t want to have to worry about friendlies getting caught in the cross fire if it goes hard.”
Brognola sighed. “You got it. I’ll make sure the order to stand down comes straight from the top. I’m sorry about this, Striker.”
“Not your fault, Hal. This wasn’t on my radar screen, either.”
“So Captain Amherst told you they’ve seized three thousand kilos of high-grade opium, huh?” Brognola recited. “That’s seriously heavy weight.”
“Yeah, and it’s obviously drawing more attention by the moment. That’s why I need to move on this right now before the entire area gets flooded with real DEA.”
“If the press gets wind of this, DEA will be the least of your problems. All the major papers are carrying the yacht-raid story, and you know sooner or later someone’s going to leak the rest of it. Reporters will swarm that town like nobody’s business.”
“Exactly,” the Executioner replied. “And I’m not real big on having my face splashed all over the six-o’clock news.”
“You have a plan?”
“It’s sketchy, but it’s all I have to go on. Amherst told me about the other surrounding towns within her jurisdiction where they also seized large quantities of the same purity. One of them is Ladera Heights. According to my LAPD contacts, the Bloods control all major drug action in this area. I need to know who’s in charge.”
“I’ll put Bear to work. You’ll have it within the hour.”
Bolan believed him. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman wore his nickname well. Not only because of his wrestlerlike body, but also because of the heart to match. The leader of Stony Man’s crack cybernetics team seemed serious, but he hadn’t permitted the internal man to mirror that gruff exterior. That sensitivity set him apart from most men who’d experienced the kind of trauma he had—confined to a wheelchair by a bullet in the spine—and Bolan considered Kurtzman to be one of the most intelligent people in the world.
“You can send it through the plane’s uplink,” Bolan said. “I’ll be waiting there with Jack. Out here.”
Bolan broke the connection, then took the exit ramp leading to LAX and the private hangar leased under one of Stony Man’s paper companies. While the ultracovert group operated at the pleasure of the President, its actions weren’t consistent with constitutional law. Some of Stony Man’s past operations inside the territorial borders of the U.S. would have been considered by most as highly illegal, even with the leeway granted to federal agencies investigating terrorism. That’s why Brognola insisted on the provision of cover names and federal-agency credentials, as much to reduce Stony Man’s culpability as to protect the identities of its operatives.
The Executioner didn’t really need the forged documents, since he could get what he wanted by other means. He disliked working with allies—the other team members of Stony Man notwithstanding—and what he couldn’t glean from his many intelligence contacts or free access to Stony Man’s databases, he could get through enemy interrogation. Bolan rarely had to implement the latter solution and he didn’t believe in torture, chemical or otherwise, although he occasionally understood the need for such methods.
Bolan reached the airport in fifteen minutes. He pulled his rental car around the rear of the hangar—the section not visible from the tarmac—and then strolled inside. In the center of the hangar sat a converted Gulfstream C-20 jet. At just over eighty feet in length, it sported a pair of Rolls-Royce Spey engines and had a range of more than thirty-six hundred nautical miles. Any casual observers wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary until they looked inside. Bolan had become quite familiar with the decor, which included state-of-the-art surveillance, countersurveillance and secure communications equipment. A weapons locker took up the rear of the plane and contained the latest gadgets. John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man’s resident weapon smith, had stocked it with enough firepower to start a small war. Nothing unusual for the man they called the Executioner.
“What say ye, Sarge?” Grimaldi asked, looking up briefly from an air chart. He’d never dropped the moniker, a reference to Bolan’s early days as a sniper sergeant in the U.S. Army.
“We’ll be sticking around for a bit longer,” Bolan said as he took a seat at the table across from Grimaldi.
The pilot nodded, then stabbed a finger in the direction of a small stainless steel carafe. “There’s some java if you’re interested.”
Bolan shook his head. “Not really attractive in this heat. What are you doing?”
“Looking over some charts,” Grimaldi said. “I got talk from Hal we might end up going out of country. There was some mention about the sunny beaches of the Golden Triangle, perhaps?”
“Yeah. You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, most of your navigation is done solely by computers these days. Why do you still use paper charts?”
“Computers fail, navigation systems go out and GPS units have been known to land pilots in Alaska who were going to Hawaii. I’m all about a backup plan, Sarge.”
“Far be it for me to interfere with a master at work,” Bolan said with a chuckle.
The soldier rose and went to the reinforced doors of the weapons locker in the aft compartment. He punched in a nine-character alphanumeric code on a keypad attached to the heavy steel and the latch came free. The weapons reflected the dim blue lights recessed in the sides and top of the cabinet with an oily gleam. The complement included an M-16 A-4/M-203 combo, M-4 5.56 mm carbine and one FN FNC submachine gun. The armory also held a SIG-Sauer SSG 3000 sniper rifle, a spare Beretta 93-R with twin clips and a dozen Diehl DM-51 grenades. Finally, Bolan’s eyes rested briefly on the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. This gas-operated hand cannon utilized a rotating bolt system and fired 300-grain rounds at a muzzle velocity just shy of 1,500 feet per second.
Bolan picked the Beretta and FN FNC for this trip, as well as a few DM-51 grenades. He’d be entering gangland territory, which meant some autofire and a few low-yield antipersonnel grenades might come in handy, but heavy assault weapons probably wouldn’t be necessary. In fact, he didn’t even know if he had a target yet. He could only hope Stony Man’s intelligence would point him in the right direction.
After drawing his selections, Bolan secured the armory doors, then left the plane with his utility bag. He crossed the hangar to the living quarters, where he found a shower. He stripped, turned on the hot water and enjoyed the high-pressure spray, washing away the grime and dirt of the day. He then turned the nozzle to allow about two minutes of icy spray to cool his body. Bolan finished showering, toweled dry and then donned his skintight blacksuit and slid his feet into a pair of combat boots with vulcanized neoprene soles. He then returned to the plane.
Grimaldi jerked his thumb at a computer terminal set into the two-seater communications panel against the starboard side. “Your transmission from Bear just arrived.”
Bolan nodded and took a seat at the computer terminal. He punched in his access code, and the information immediately displayed across two separate LCD screens. One screen rendered photographs and dossiers taken from LASD evidence computers, with detailed reports of every raid where they had recovered drugs matching the parameters Stony Man already had. Bolan shook his head, unable to resist grinning at Kurtzman’s ability to hack straight into any computer network to get the intelligence Bolan needed. The Executioner scanned the information, which basically confirmed what Amherst had said.
“Well, at least Amherst is telling the truth,” Bolan said aloud.
“What’s that?” Grimaldi asked.
“This Rhonda Amherst,” Bolan replied. “She’s the Marina del Rey station chief with LASD. It looks like she gave me the straight story.”
Grimaldi just hummed an acknowledgment as Bolan turned his attention to the second screen. He tapped the paging key and quickly identified the key information he’d been looking for. Records from the Gang Support Section of the LAPD currently listed Lavon Hayes as the leader of the Bloods, but his current whereabouts were unknown. The file gave too many possible locations, so Bolan mentally filed the information for future reference and pressed on. And then the Executioner got a hit. The GSS briefs listed Antoine Pratt as being Hayes’s second-in-command. Already Pratt had spent the better part of his life in juvenile for everything from petty theft to drug possession, and he currently had a half-dozen warrants pending for additional crimes.
A real pillar of the community, Bolan thought. “Looks like this intel from Bear might pan out,” he said as he stored the downloaded intelligence and put the computer into hibernation. He went to where he’d stashed his equipment and geared up.
“Where you going?”
“It’s time to find out who was supposed to be on the receiving end of these shipments.”
“Going to knock on some doors, are you?” Grimaldi asked with a knowing wink.
“More like kick them down,” the Executioner replied.
M ACK B OLAN PLACED his first kick in the most literal sense.
The soldier put his foot against the front door of Antoine Pratt’s two-story flat in Ladera Heights. He stood out like a specter, his blacksuit stark against the cream-colored walls illuminated by mood lights. Mostly warm earth tones set off the decor, which looked more luxurious than its run-down exterior. Pratt had probably tried to keep up appearances with the other houses along the block so his didn’t stand out in any way. Bolan swept the area with the muzzle of his FNC and locked on viable targets almost immediately.
A pair of house guards in flannel shirts and bandanas came out of their loungers in the living room and reached for pistols tucked in their waistbands. Neither of the young men seemed to care Bolan already had them dead to rights.
Bolan squeezed the trigger and the FNC chugged in his hands. He couldn’t miss at that range. The hail of 5.56 mm NATO slugs stitched a path across their bellies, tearing through vital organs and sending blood spray in every direction. They twisted inward and collided with each other before dying on their feet. Their corpses hit the carpeted floor with dull thuds.
The Executioner bounded up the flight of steps to his right after clearing his six. He reached the top of the steps and immediately went prone on the upper landing when he caught motion in his periphery. Two more gangbangers opened up on him with pistols. One had enough sense to stay behind the cover of an archway, but the other practically strutted toward Bolan, his pistol held high and sideways as he triggered round after round. The warrior rolled over once, came to his knee and triggered a corkscrew burst. High-velocity slugs riddled the hoodlum’s body and knocked him off his feet. The dead youth’s partner popped off a few more hasty rounds before ducking behind the archway.
Bolan detached a Diehl DM-51 from his load-bearing harness. The German-made hand grenade had proved one of the most effective tools of Bolan’s trade. The hexagonal shape of the grenade body contained more than six thousand 2 mm steel balls packed into a PETN high explosive, making it a superbly effective offensive blast device. When requiring defensive capabilities, the Executioner could attach a plastic sleeve to the grenade with a simple half-twist locking motion, thereby causing a shower of superheated steel fragments to disperse in every direction for antipersonnel effects.
Bolan attached the sleeve, yanked the pin and threw himself into a closed door to get out of the hallway. The warrior didn’t see the grenade explode but he felt it; the resulting screams from his opponent told the rest of the tale. Bolan sensed a presence behind him and spun as he dropped to one knee, finger poised on the FNC trigger. A woman cloaked only in a skimpy towel emerged from a door in the wake of steam clouds and shrieked at the sight of him.
Bolan shook his head, got to his feet and jerked a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “Back inside.”
She didn’t argue with him.
Bolan stepped into the hallway and advanced along it. He could sense the quarry somewhere ahead; his instincts had taken over the moment he entered the house. He could almost smell the fear on his enemy. Pratt had no intention of running. If anything, Bolan suspected the guy would make a stand right here on his own turf, even if it might kill him, and that made it doubly important Bolan take him alive. Pratt remained the only one who could tell the Executioner why so much dope had been funneled into Los Angeles over the past couple of months.
Bolan began a room-to-room sweep, the FNC ready, but met no further resistance. He also didn’t find Antoine Pratt. After completing his search, Bolan headed for the stairs. He made it halfway down before the front door burst wide-open and a trio of hoods in gang colors came through the door followed by a fourth who matched the photo of Pratt in Bolan’s intelligence from Stony Man. Two of the gangbangers had their hands full with cases of beer.
All four wore the same expression of surprise upon seeing the Executioner, but none of them were ready to deal with the threat. Bolan leveled the FNC in their direction and neatly shot holes through the cases of beer they carried. The man walking next to Pratt—who obviously acted as bodyguard to the Bloods lieutenant—seemed to be the only one prepared for action as he reached beneath the loose T-shirt he wore and produced a semiautomatic pistol.
Bolan triggered a 3-round burst that blew the man’s skull apart and showered his companions with gray matter.
The remaining three black youths froze in place.
“Grab the floor!” Bolan ordered the trio.
They immediately dropped what remained of their brews and did as ordered. Bolan continued down the steps and relieved them of their pistols before securing their hands behind them with plastic riot cuffs. That done, Bolan hauled Pratt to his feet and tossed him face-first against a nearby wall. He placed the hot muzzle of the FNC at the base of Pratt’s skull.
“What are you, the feds?” Pratt asked. He made a good attempt to hide the fear in his eyes, but it didn’t fool Bolan for a moment. “I want a lawyer.”
“Shut up, Pratt,” Bolan said. “Here’s how this goes. I ask questions and you give me answers. If I even think you’re lying, I kill you. Simple enough?”
Pratt just nodded, the hatred evident in his features. Bolan didn’t give a damn right at the moment. He would have taken the opportunity to clean out the Bloods altogether had he not felt it would detract from his mission. The key here would be to get to the source of the opium imports. Then, and only then, would he be able to shut down the pipeline. The Bloods couldn’t profit from the supply if he neutralized the supplier.
“Word has it you’re running this outfit with Lavon Hayes out of the picture,” Bolan said. “I know you’re on the receiving end of this recent influx of drugs. Tell me who’s supplying it.”
