Fatal Combat

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He fired.

The Desert Eagle bucked in his fist, its gas-operated action, tuned by Stony Man Farm armorer John “Cowboy” Kissinger, cycling smoothly and lethally in Bolan’s grip. The Beretta sang in deadly harmony, tapping out a staccato rhythm with each squeeze of the trigger. Bolan’s 3-shot bursts found their mark, stitching first one, then another, blasting the gunmen center of mass. The Desert Eagle’s heavier rounds took two more targets as Bolan angled for precise head shots. The hollowpoint slugs dug wide holes through their targets. Bolan’s mercy, for mercy it was, lay in a quick end to enemy lives lived cruelly and violently.

Bolan never stopped moving, never stopped closing in. As he got to contact distance he fired a triburst through the throat of one man, emptying the Beretta’s 20-round magazine. He fired the last shot in the Desert Eagle, too, but that did not slow him. Instead he savagely pistol-whipped the nearest gunman, bringing the butt of the Desert Eagle down across the bridge of the man’s nose. He drove a follow-up knee strike into the man’s abdomen and then slammed the empty pistol onto the back of the man’s neck as the gunman doubled over.

His foes were all neutralized.

Still moving, seeking cover behind the chase car, he reloaded and checked every direction around him. Rarely was a professional killed by the enemy he could see; the deadliest bullets came from guns fired by unseen hands. Bolan, once in combat, maintained vigilant awareness of his battlefield throughout the engagement.

He heard the steady cracks of Davis’s Glock from the other side of the abandoned structure he faced. The pistol’s bark was punctuated by long, withering blasts from an automatic weapon. It was a Kalashnikov rifle, judging from the distinctly hollow metallic sound Bolan knew only too well. Davis was outgunned, for certain—but not for long.

Bolan holstered the Beretta and held the Desert Eagle before him in a two-handed grip. He ran for the gap separating two almost contiguous buildings, turning sideways and pushing the weapon forward in his right as he sidestepped. He cleared the far side, looking for Davis—

A tire iron missed his head by inches.

The soldier’s habitual combat half-crouch saved him. The enemy, a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit whose head was as bald as an egg, swung the tire iron again, trying to bring it down on his adversary’s shoulder, perhaps to break his clavicle. Bolan snapped out a low side kick and broke the man’s ankle.

There was a revolver in the thug’s belt, but Bolan took quick note of the long, empty casings on the ground. They were .357 Magnum shells, at a glance. Bolan and his attacker stood in the lee of an abandoned, burned-out station wagon that had to be more than thirty-years-old. Beyond that, Davis, taking shelter behind a makeshift battlement consisting of a stack of rusted and stripped appliances dumped in front of the building, was holding his own. He was firing from cover at a knot of gunmen crouched behind a concrete barrier. The barrier was apparently something installed to prevent through traffic.

The bald man was howling in pain. He clutched at his ankle and made no attempt to go for the gun in his belt. Bolan surmised that this was why he’d been wielding a tire iron in the first place. Evidently he had run out of ammunition and had withdrawn to a backup position, perhaps even lying in wait for Bolan specifically. If that was true, and odds were good that it was, the opposition was even more organized than the soldier had suspected. This implied not just professional, paid hitters, but gunners of at least moderate experience.

Bolan paused long enough to secure the injured man with two sets of plastic zip-tie cuffs, binding the prisoner’s hands and then securing his good leg to his wrists. That would hold him for the moment, anyway; there was no time to do more.

The Executioner took a two-handed grip on the Desert Eagle and braced himself against the roof of the derelict station wagon. As he did so, one of the gunners tracking Davis saw him and jumped up. He swung his Kalashnikov in a wide arc, trying to track Bolan while holding the trigger down and spraying on full-auto.

The bullets went wide. The shots ripped across the torso of the fallen hitter, ripping open his chest and killing him. Bolan took careful aim and put a single .44 Magnum slug through the left eye of the man who had done it. The gunman fell instantly, firing out the remainder of his magazine harmlessly into the littered asphalt. Bolan ducked briefly to avoid a bees’ nest of ricochets.

He fired once, then again. Twice his bullets found their marks, snapping back the skulls of gunmen who did not realize they were vulnerable. The distance was long for a pistol, but there was no finer long-distance marksman than Bolan. The soldier waited to see if another enemy would be careless enough to move into the kill zone. There was more gunfire from the opposite side of the barrier, which drove Davis back to cover as he tried to join in the fray.

The angle was bad. Bolan shifted his position to the other end of the station wagon, but this presented a new problem. Davis was between him and the rest of the shooters.

Bolan carefully surveyed the situation. He watched for a rhythm, if any, as the gunmen broke cover to shoot at Davis and in Bolan’s general direction. A few bullets struck the old station wagon. They were nowhere near him.

He spoke aloud for the benefit of his earbud transceiver.

“Davis,” he said. “Duck.”

The detective dropped immediately. Bolan fired once, taking one of the remaining gunmen between the eyes. The others reacted to that, crouching down more carefully behind their concrete shield. Bolan simply waited.

Somewhere in the distance, police sirens could be heard. The firefight had finally drawn the attention of law enforcement. Davis hadn’t had a chance to call for backup, at least not while within the range that Bolan could overhear. No doubt the gunfire itself had generated frantic calls from citizens near this abandoned zone.

“Stay down,” Bolan said.

Bolan retrieved a fragmentation grenade from his war bag. He pulled the pin, let the spoon pop free and waited, counting in his head. Davis caught the movement and eyed him curiously from his vantage point, covering the top of his head with his folded arms as he lay on his stomach. Bolan nodded once and then tossed the grenade.

The bomb exploded just as it hit the lip of the concrete barrier. The men not caught by shrapnel from the grenade absorbed the spray of concrete fragments the explosion kicked up. Guns clattered to the pavement. As the boom echoed from the nearby brick buildings, nothing else moved.

Davis pushed himself to his feet.

Bolan moved from cover. He walked over, weapon ready, listening and watching to see if another ambush would be forthcoming. They had been attacked too many times already for him not to expect it at any moment. The sirens continued to close, but they were still some distance off.

“They’re going to take a few minutes to find us,” Davis said.

“Do I look that excited?” Bolan asked.

“You’re a one-man war, Cooper,” Davis said. “And I’m willing to bet this won’t be the first time you catch hell for walking into someone’s jurisdiction and setting the place on fire.”

“You catch on fast, Detective,” Bolan said. In his pocket, his secure satellite phone began to vibrate. He snapped it open.

“Cooper,” he said. Using his cover identity would inform the Farm that there were others present.

“Striker,” Barbara Price said. “I hear police.”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “You do. I’ve just engaged targets comprising a hit team. Armed professionals, mixed kit. Civilian clothing on the formal side. You caught me before I could send you pictures. I’d actually like to take those before company gets here.”

“Do so,” the Farm’s mission controller told him. “We have a database pulled up. I’ll explain when you’re ready.”

Bolan made a fast circuit of the dead men closest to him and Davis. The ones on the other side of the abandoned building would have to wait. He said as much to Price when he reestablished the connection.

“You may not need to,” Price said. “We’re working on a theory, and Bear has some preliminary, rough matches pulled up. It looks like we’re right.” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was Stony Man Farm’s resident computer genius.

“Why?” Bolan said. “What’s the theory?”

“Your gunmen,” Price told him, “are old school Mafia. Hit men for the Mob.”

Bolan took that in for a moment. He had, over the course of his war, been on the receiving end of Mob guns before, even had a price on his head. It was among the Mafia that the Executioner had first become known, then famous, then infamous.

“I thought something seemed familiar about all this,” he said, deadpan.

He could sense the smile in Price’s voice. “I’ll bet,” she said. She went on more seriously. “We’ve checked the pictures you sent first, and checked them thoroughly. Each one of those men has a rap sheet. Most of them are career criminals. A few are young enough that they haven’t quite reached the majors, but they were headed that way before you got to them. Each and every one has ties, directly or indirectly, to Detroit-area underworld figures.”

Davis, unable to hear Price’s side of the conversation, shot Bolan a quizzical look.

“But that doesn’t scan at all,” Bolan said, considering her report. “Unless…”

“Unless your cover has been breached and the whole of the Michigan Mafia wants your head?” Price said. “We thought of that. Your cover is secure. There’s been no chatter from the usual sources that we would see if word about you got out. There’s no reason to believe anyone’s targeting you for any reason other than the obvious—you’re an interloping federal agent looking into these serial killings.”

“Something’s not right where that’s concerned, either,” Bolan said. “But I need to see where that takes me before I offer any theories of my own. So why would Detroit’s Mob be involved?”

“The most obvious reason is that they’re the prime employee pool for a job like this.”

“Guns for hire,” Bolan supplied. “You need a hit man or a lot of them in Detroit, a city notorious for its corruption, then you go see the Mob. Something like that?”

“Exactly,” Price said. “Somebody with serious money, a lot of clout, or both is behind this. Somebody with enough resources to throw that many Mafia gunners at one man.”

“Or two,” Bolan said, looking at Davis, who continued to watch him curiously.

“There’s one good thing about all this,” Price said.

“And that is?”

“You’ve made a serious dent in the local crime syndicates,” Price said. “We’ll continue to work up the other identifications you sent. I’ll let you know if anything pops up.”

“I’ll stay after it on this end,” Bolan said.

“Striker?” Price said. “Be careful. And good hunting.”

“Thanks,” Bolan said. “Cooper out.” The sirens of the approaching police cars had become louder. Cruisers were pulling up around the abandoned buildings and closing on both sides. Bolan frowned. He shut his phone and looked at Davis. “Our boys—” he jerked his head at the dead men “—were all Mafia hit men. Hired to kill me, or to kill both of us.”

“Cooper,” Davis said, his face lurid in the red and blue lights of the approaching cruisers, “what’s really going on here?”

“Murder, and covering up murder. It isn’t the what that concerns me most,” Bolan said. “It’s the who.”

5

Reginald Chamblis worked the blades through the air, feeling them move, feeling them sing, feeling them speak to him. Each was a custom bowie knife the exact length of his forearm. Each was razor sharp and handmade. As the cutting edges cleaved the air, as the needle tips of the blades thrust here and there, in and out, he saw the targets he was striking on a succession of phantom opponents.

He moved as he worked. The man was light on the balls of his feet, his knees slightly bent, his entire body coiled with dynamic tension. He stalked his way from one end of the training hall to other, the polished hardwood floor silent beneath him. In the corners, wooden kung fu dummies stood at mute attention, the sticks of their “arms” pointing at specified angles and heights. The rankings and awards arranged neatly on the far wall lent the place an air of respectability.

Not one of the certificates was less than ten years old.

Chamblis had spent his life working to find new and greater challenges. In high school, everything had come easily to him. He was well-liked, good-looking, athletic and smart. He excelled in his classes. He played football and basketball, though not quite at the level of those who earned scholarships for doing just that. He majored in business and minored, simply because he enjoyed it, in philosophy. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA and spent three of his four years at university as the editor of the school newspaper and president of half a dozen student organizations. He conquered it all—and at least a dozen of the campus’s most desirable young women—and never appeared taxed in the slightest by any of it.

The truth was that even then, Chamblis was bored. He had never told anyone, but back in those days, he looked at the people around him who struggled to accomplish their goals and felt a mixture of envy and confusion. They confused him, because he did not understand how any human being could fail to achieve what he or she desired. He envied them, because he had come to associate his boredom with never being forced to work hard.

He vowed to change that.

He hit the street running after graduation. He parlayed his business degree into entry-level positions at first a finance firm, then a high-tech start-up. He moved to Detroit because, of all the cities he had ever visited, it was in Detroit that he had felt the least comfortable, the least safe. He set out to build a career there.

He currently owned three companies, all of them profitable, all of them controlled by him. His firms made circuit boards, time and frequency synchronization equipment, industrial toolholders and tool bits. He had been profiled in every major business magazine on both coasts; he was heralded as the man almost single-handedly bringing domestic manufacturing back to the United States.

It was in Detroit that he first thought to punish and challenge his body as well as his mind. He began studying martial arts. He earned a black belt, and then another. He moved from style to style, learning, doing, being, becoming.

And he was still bored.

He was rich. He could afford to hire other executives with similar promise and drive to run his companies for him, and he did. He took up the sports of the idle rich, traveling the country and beyond. He found extreme sports, and for the briefest of moments, the adrenaline rush of cliff diving, of free climbing, of white-water rafting and other dangerous pursuits almost kept him interested. But it wasn’t enough.