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The Hummer’s front tires squealed in protest as the retired sergeant rounded the curve leading to the workout area. The Uzi was cradled in his lap. Brower sat next to him with a slightly larger 9 mm L-34 A-1 Sterling, the mainstay subgun of Britain’s Royal Marines. Glowing in the rearview mirror were the headlights of the Jeep that Marcus Yarborough was driving.
Eddie Chang was riding shotgun alongside Yarborough in the rear vehicle, having ignored Cummings’s orders to stay behind with Joan VanderMeer, Louie Paxton and Xavier Manuel. Having no idea what was at stake, the martial-arts expert was treating the whole affair as a lark. He was unarmed and assumed that Yarborough’s Uzi was loaded with blanks.
“C’mon, admit it,” Chang shouted over the roar of the Jeep’s engine. “This is one of those improv exercises, right? Like that time the sergeant hired those Green Berets to barge in pretending they were armed robbers fleeing a bank job.”
“Zip it!” Yarborough yelled back, eyes fixed on the road ahead. He took the next turn sharply, staying close behind the Hummer. Up ahead, he thought he could see a figure charging out of the storage shed. Yarborough thought back to earlier in the day when he’d grudgingly helped Mitch Brower haul several weapons crates into the shed from the back of a Ford pickup. He wondered if he’d gotten himself caught up in some kind of government sting operation, and as he quickly scanned the surrounding grounds, he half expected to see a SWAT force materialize out of the shadows. What he got instead was the sudden, blinding glare of a flash grenade that had just detonated on the road in front of the Hummer.
“What the hell?” Eddie Chang raised a hand before his face, but the grenade had already left him temporarily blinded.
Yarborough was similarly stricken, and he feared Cummings and Brower had probably been blinded in the Hummer directly ahead of him. He figured Cummings would go for his brakes and did likewise.
The Jeep’s tires screeched, and Yarborough felt the vehicle go into a skid. Any second he expected to slam into the rear of the larger vehicle.
“We’re dead,” he muttered.
BOLAN KNEW the incendiary flash was coming. Before the grenade burst forth with its blinding light, the Executioner turned his back to the explosion and cast his eyes downward, locking them on the 7.62 mm Belgian FN FAL carbine he’d wrested from one of the crates inside the storage shed. He’d already fed a 20-round cartridge into the breech and cleared the weapon for firing. The grenade had tipped the balance in his favor, but only for a moment. Bolan knew he was outnumbered. If he didn’t act fast, any second he would be outgunned, as well.
Once he heard the crunch of colliding metal, Bolan turned back toward the road and drew a bead on the Hummer, which had slewed sideways and skidded halfway off the road. The vehicle was so large it was difficult to even see the Jeep that had rear-ended it. Not that it mattered. Bolan’s focus was on the men in the front seat of the Hummer. He could tell that Brower and Cummings were still half-blinded, but they both had their subguns in view and would likely start firing once they could see their target.
Bolan wasn’t about to let it come to that. Finger on the trigger, he cut loose with the assault rifle, raking the Hummer’s front windshield with a concentrated autoburst. The glass shattered and the men inside the vehicle shuddered as the rounds slammed into them, killing them both before either could get off a shot.
By now the afterglow of the flash grenade had dissipated, leaving the grounds even darker to the eye than before the explosion. Far behind Bolan, past the tree-lined knoll, the Executioner could hear the first cries of the fantasy campers as they rushed from their barracks, drawn by the blast. Bolan suspected guards from the main gate would also be racing to the scene any second, joined perhaps by more men from the main building. No one had yet emerged from the Jeep that had crashed into the rear of the Hummer, but Bolan wasn’t about to waste precious seconds moving forward to engage them. He wasn’t about to stand around waiting on the arrival of Jack Grimaldi, either.
Bolan had taken a second grenade with him when he’d left the storage shed, this one an avacado-sized M-61 fragger. Once he’d stepped several yards to the edge of the man-made pond, he thumbed free the safety pin, then lobbed the projectile back toward the shed. He’d left the door wide open, and the grenade sailed clearly through the opening. Bolan couldn’t recall exactly how much of a delay the grenade was equipped with, but he took advantage of what little time he had, casting aside the carbine and diving into cold, murky depths of the training pond. By the time the grenade detonated, he’d clawed his way inside the half-submerged sewer pipe.
THE INITIAL BLAST of the frag grenade was fierce enough. But when shock waves and incendiary bursts ripped through the weapons carts and triggered secondary explosions, the shed was turned into the equivalent of one large bomb. For a second it looked as if the sun had briefly awakened from a nightmare, as the shed gave off a glow far more baleful than that of the flash grenade.
Off in the distance, the campers who’d rushed from the barracks clutched at the nearby magnolias to keep from being thrown to the ground by the earthquakelike trembling beneath their feet. Downhill, the shock waves were even more intense, rocking the Hummer sideways and sending it tumbling on top of the Jeep, which had already been rendered inoperable after rear-ending the larger vehicle.
Eddie Chang, dazed and still half-blind in the front seat of the Jeep, opened his mouth to scream when the Hummer loomed above him like some pouncing beast. The scream died in his throat, however, as he was crushed by the three-ton juggernaut. Marcus Yarborough was spared a similar fate, as he’d been thrown sideways out of the Jeep during the initial impact. He’d landed hard on one knee, then passed out when his head struck the asphalt.
When he came to moments later, roused by the trembling of the road beneath him, Yarborough’s first impression had been that someone was shaking him awake. Disoriented, a din in his ears and his field of vision swarming with blips of light that zoomed about like errant spaceships, Yarborough groaned and slowly sat up. A shiver of pain radiated from his bruised knee. The Hummer had come to a rest on its side only a few feet away, and he could see Mitch Brower’s bloody corpse dangling halfway out the shattered windshield. The nearby Jeep had been left half-flattened, its tires blown out, Eddie Chang crushed nearly beyond recognition.
By the time Yarborough had fully regained his wits, a handful of fantasy campers were on their way down the slope leading to the workout area. Their eyes were not on the sharpshooter, however, so much as on the fiery crater where the storage shed had once stood. Nothing remained of the structure but a few chunks of foundation and smoldering bits of cinder block lying in the surrounding grass. Recalling the weapons crates he’d helped transfer into the shed earlier in the day, the sharpshooter began to realize what had just happened.
Before the campers could reach him, Yarborough heard the bleat of a car horn. Turning to his right, he saw the BMW Z3 pull up alongside him. Its lights were off, and he couldn’t see who was behind the wheel until Joan VanderMeer leaned over and swung open the passenger door.
“Hurry!” she urged. “Get in!”
Yarborough grabbed hold of the door and stood up, then tumbled into the front seat next to VanderMeer. He barely had time to close the door before the woman had shifted the car back into gear. She drove off the road long enough to circle around the other two vehicles, then returned to the asphalt and accelerated as she headed back toward the camp headquarters and the mountains that loomed behind it. As she switched on the headlights and gave the sports car more gas, VanderMeer told Yarborough, “We’re outta here!”
THE HALF-SUNKEN SEWER PIPE Bolan had crawled inside withstood the concussive force of the blasts that had neutralized the storage shed, but the pond had been showered with debris. When he emerged from the concrete tube and stood, drenched and shivering in the waist-deep pond, the Executioner was surrounded by floating bits of shrapnel, some of it giving off wisps of smoke. He’d lost his earbud somewhere in the pipe and wasn’t about to go back searching for it. Instead, he slogged his way to the steep embankment and pulled himself up to level ground.
Bolan quickly surveyed the aftermath of the mayhem he’d unleashed, then glanced skyward, alerted by the sound of an approaching helicopter. Soon he could see the aircraft sweeping past the magnolia treetops. He wasn’t sure if he was still giving off a GPS signal, so he made a point to wave his arms. If Grimaldi was looking his way, Bolan figured the pilot would be able pick up his silhouette backlit by the still-blazing crater.
One of the campers thought Bolan was signaling to him and waved back, shouting, “I see you, man! What the hell happened?”
“Is this for real?” another of the campers said, eyes fixed on the bodies ensnarled in the overturned Hummer and the half-crushed Jeep. “Hell, those guys look like they’re fucking dead!”
Bolan paid no heed to the questions. He’d shifted his gaze back toward the administration building and the hills behind it. He could see taillights up on the mountain road, and once he checked the parking lot next to the building, he knew that someone was fleeing in the BMW. He also knew that by the time Grimaldi picked him up, it would likely be too late for them to give chase. Just on the other side of the mountain was the main highway, as well as the residential sprawl of Sykesville. Too many escape routes, too many places to hide.
As he waited for Grimaldi to land the chopper, Bolan glanced back at the crater. At least he had the satisfaction of having destroyed the weapons cache before it could be put to use by enemies of the state. Even that realization was tempered somewhat, however, as Bolan couldn’t help wonder what had happened to the one rocket launcher left unaccounted for. It was still out there, he realized, like a proverbial loose cannon.
1
McLean, Virginia
Edgar Byrnes’s breath clouded in the chilled March air as he brushed snow off the woodpile and gathered a few logs for his evening fire. It was dusk. The moon was out, a thin, waxing sliver poised like a scythe above the dark storm clouds rolling in from the Atlantic. A faint breeze stirred through the forest of elms and sycamores surrounding the four-acre farm Byrnes called home. Leaves were budding on the trees despite the late frost, but through the branches Byrnes was still able to glimpse the outline of a monolithic building located a quarter mile away on the other side of the woods. It was the only visible trace of modern civilization, and in another week or two Byrnes knew the trees would fill in, obscuring the structure from view entirely.
We can’t wait much longer, Byrnes thought to himself as he carried the logs past a weathered lean-to shared by three cows, two horses and menagerie of pigs, chickens and sheep. One of the horses, a sturdy roan with a jet-black mane and tail, was out in the corral, snorting as it paced back and forth through the mud.
“Sorry, Jefferson,” Byrnes called out. “Too cold to go riding tonight.”
Once he reached his small one-room cabin, Byrnes freed one hand to let himself in, then kicked the door shut behind him. Last month, shortly after he’d been hired to work the farm, his first job had been to patch cracks in the mortar between the hand-hewn logs that formed the cabin’s four walls. He’d done a good job but such crude insulation could only keep out so much of the cold; inside it was still freezing.
After setting the logs onto a bed of kindling in the large stone fireplace, Byrnes blew on his hands and rubbed them over the lone flame of an oil lamp he’d left burning on a nearby table. Once the feeling came back to his fingers, he plucked a few hay straws off the dirt floor and used the lamp to light them, then crouched before the stacked wood. The straws’ flames crackled as they took hold of the kindling and began to spread. Soon the logs had caught fire as well, sending smoke up the chimney.
Byrnes pulled a wooden rocker close to the hearth and sat down. His workday, which had begun nearly twelve hours ago at the crack of dawn, was finally over. He smiled tiredly, filled with a sense of accomplishment.
It would soon be a full eight weeks that Byrnes, a thirty-two-year-old Gulf War veteran, had been working at the Michael Conlon Farm, a state-owned Colonial homestead painstakingly maintained to reflect what ordinary farm life had been like back in the days of the country’s founding fathers. For Byrnes the experience had been a joyful revelation, so much so that there had been times when, for days on end, he had forgotten the true reason he’d come to work here. He’d learned so much in that time: how to make soap from tallow; how to tan animal hides and use the leather to make shoes and clothes; how to spin wool from sheep; the best way to fetch water from nearby streams and boil it with fresh vegetables from the garden to make a nourishing stew.
The past few weeks in particular, when he’d come to be the sole caretaker living on the premises, had been like heaven. Having the place to himself most days, he exulted in the solitude and isolation, the sense that he had indeed been transported back to a time when America was the home of those who were self-reliant and bound by high ideals—a time before values had eroded in the face of complacency and the government had grown into what Byrnes felt was a festering cancer eating away at the foundation upon which the nation had been built.
Staring into the fire, stroking the thick brown beard he’d grown to cover chemical burns sustained during his time in the Gulf, Byrnes found himself wondering, as he had so many nights before, what it had to have been like to have been a part of that simpler and nobler past. Of one thing he was certain: back then the men who’d put their lives on the line to fight the Revolution had been treated as heroes and looked after once the war had been won. Nothing like today. No being shuttled through some uncaring bureaucratic maze; no denial of hard-earned benefits; no shameless attempts to dismiss claims of illness stemming from exposure to carcinogens and other toxins while in the line of duty. And all those years ago, Byrnes knew there had been no insidious attempts to silence those who might dare to band together to give their grievances a stronger voice. Back then, the notion of a citizens’ militia had been applauded and championed, not spit upon by self-serving federal agents and the brainwashed masses.
Byrnes felt he’d been born in the wrong century. And the penalty for his bad luck? Instead of being honored as a returned warrior, he saw himself viewed as a pariah. An outcast and fringe lunatic. Little wonder it had taken the isolation of the farm for him to find even the faintest glimmer of inner peace. And he knew that peace was as illusory as it was temporary. Soon he would be called upon to carry out his mission, and when that happened, all his memories of the past months would be just that: memories. The realization darkened Byrnes’s mood as surely as nightfall had begun to press its inky blackness on the cabin windows. Byrnes could feel himself tensing in the chair as his rage, like some roused beast, began to once again overtake him.
By now the fire in the hearth was blazing. Agitated, Byrnes began to fumble with the buttons of his coat. The buttons were made of bone, and it was no easy task to work them through the hand-sewn loops. He was struggling with the task when an overheated strip of bark was launched out of the fire at him. Startled, Byrnes let out a cry and recoiled, overturning the rocker in his haste to throw himself to the dirt floor. Panic seized him as he crawled away from the fire and curled into a fetal position, clutching his head protectively. Sweat beaded his face and his heart convulsed inside his chest. He was overwhelmed by a mad rush of flashbacks taking him back to the hell that had been Khamisiyah. The rattle of gunfire, the stench of diesel, men howling in pain, the splash of something hot as molten lava against his face—the sensory overload was as intense as it was sudden. Within seconds the beleaguered veteran gave in to the recurring nightmare and blacked out.
Moments later he came to, cold earth pressing against his bearded face. The ember that had triggered his blackout lay a few inches away, still glowing faintly. Byrnes watched the ember burn itself out with cold detachment, waiting for his mind to clear and for his pulse to return to normal. Finally he was able to struggle to his feet and right the toppled rocker. He sat back down again, drained, trembling, eyes trained on the fire. A racked sob shook through him. He clenched his fingers around the arms of the chair, determined not to give in to his sorrow and feeling of helplessness.
“No more,” he murmured aloud, his voice hoarse. “No more.”
For the next hour, Byrnes remained in the chair, rocking gently, transfixed by the fire, watching it slowly burn itself out. The lamp on the table beside him went out as well, and as the cabin grew dark, several more embers snapped out onto the floor.
Finally, as the last few flames licked at what remained of the charred logs in the fireplace, the evening chill crept back into the darkened cabin. Even colder and darker now, however, was the expression in Byrnes’s eyes. He had the look of a man at the end of his tether, a man who’d reached a point where he saw but one course of action and was steeling himself for the demands that course would entail. Byrnes was through waiting for the call from his superiors. He’d decided it was time to take matters into his own hands, to renounce his inner demons and seize control of his own fate.
Rising from the chair, the veteran relit the oil lamp, then crossed the room and stood on a small wooden bench set in the corner. He reached up and gently worked free two loose boards straddling the rafters that made up the cabin’s ceiling. There was a small cavity between the slats and the roof. Byrnes used the space to store several of his concessions to modern-day technology. He made frequent use of his cell phone and notebook computer, but this night it was a third item—which he’d been given just two days earlier—that commanded his attention. He reached deep into the cavity and carefully pulled out a forty-inch-long M-136 AT-4 rocket launcher.
The fifteen-pound weapon—a high-tech fiberglass-wrapped tube housing an 84 mm warhead—was equipped with a night-vision sight and had an effective firing range of nearly a quarter mile, roughly the same distance between the farm and the building located on the other side of the woods.
Byrnes stepped down from the bench and set aside the stolen launcher long enough to place his cell phone and computer into a backpack, then added a few more items before carrying both the pack and weapon outside. A light snow had begun to fall. The large, almost weightless flakes reminded Byrnes of the ashes that had once rained down on him from the fiery skies of Khamisiyah. He did his best to shrug off the comparison. Now was not the time to give in to the memories. He needed to keep his focus on the present, on the task at hand.
As he passed the lean-to, Byrnes could see lights through the woods, illuminating the outline of the building that would be his target. The wind had died, increasing the chances of his getting off a good shot. He’d fired AT-4s during his tour of duty in the Gulf, and prior to coming here he’d taken a few refresher courses with similar weapons at the American Freedom Movement compound fifty miles away in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He was confident he could hit his mark. After that? Byrnes had no set plan, but he knew that this would be his last night at the Michael Conlon Farm.
The roan horse was still out in the corral.
“Change of plans, Jefferson,” Byrnes called out as he hung his backpack on the corral’s gate latch. Clutching the rocket launcher in both hands, he told the horse, “It looks like we’re going to go riding tonight after all.”
2
Washington, D.C.
The Fourteenth Capitol Partners Spring Gun Show, one of the largest such annual gatherings held east of the Mississippi, had ended a little over an hour ago. The three-day event had been a rousing success, with sales running into the tens of millions of dollars, but there was still plenty of stock left over. A handful of larger suppliers had just finished taking down their stalls and were transferring leftover inventory into trucks parked behind the building, a one-time appliance superstore located in an isolated industrial park fourteen blocks from Georgetown University. The parking lot, like the surrounding neighborhood and the handful of other vehicles parked along the street, was lightly dusted with freshly fallen snow.
Inside a nondescript panel truck with tinted windows, Mack Bolan watched the activity taking place around the loading docks. Earlier, the Stony Man warrior had roamed the aisles inside the hall without spotting anything suspicious. Now, hours later, the crowds had dispersed along with most of the vendors, but he was still on the lookout.
The surveillance mission was a consequence of Bolan’s visit to the Wildest Dreams fantasy camp. As Bolan had feared, those who’d fled the camp in the BMW had eluded capture, and neither Louie Paxton nor Xavier Manuel had claimed to know who had been driving the vehicle. Since Marcus Yarborough was missing, along with the woman Bolan had seen with Mitch Brower, he suspected they’d ridden off together in the sports car.
Bolan had been on the lookout for Yarborough inside the exhibition hall, but he’d been even more intent on finding the missing AT-4 rocket launcher. According to evidence found in the fantasy camp’s administrative office, the launcher had been sold to a Viriginia-based militia called the American Freedom Movement. The AFM was already under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and one of BATF’s informants had confirmed the launcher transaction. He’d also claimed the militia outfit had been dragging its feet on a deal to purchase the remaining weapons Jason Cummings and Mitch Brower had stored at their Sykesville facility. According to the informant, if Brower and Cummings didn’t drop their asking price, the AFM had already concocted a backup plan: to bolster its arsenal instead by stealing wares from the Capitol Partners Gun Show. The militia had already been linked to several similar thefts over the past two years. While casing the exhibit booths, Bolan had seen enough collective firepower to sustain a small army. He wanted to make sure the AFM didn’t wind up being that army.
Bolan wasn’t alone inside the panel truck. His longtime colleague Jack Grimaldi sat up front behind the steering wheel, his ball cap pushed back on his head. True, the wiry-haired pilot was more at home in an aircraft cockpit, but when the occasion demanded it, Grimaldi had proved he could handle ground vehicles with as much finesse as the most seasoned wheelman.
Crouched beside Bolan in the rear of the truck was John “Cowboy” Kissinger, a master weaponsmith familiar with nearly every handgun and rifle that had been on display at the exhibition. Kissinger had designed a few handguns of his own, including the multifunction palm gun Bolan had concealed in his boot during his short-lived assignment at the fantasy camp.
“My money says they’ll try a hijack instead of bringing their own truck,” Kissinger speculated aloud, blowing on his hands to keep them warm. The men had been on stakeout for nearly three hours, during which time the sun had gone down and the temperature outside the truck had dropped more than twenty degrees. Although Bolan seemed unfazed by the extended wait, Kissinger’s anticipation was almost palpable. He was like a coiled spring.
“No bet,” Grimaldi responded, cracking his knuckles to pass the time. “They pull a heist, they get what they’re looking for without having to waste time moving stuff from one truck to another. And judging from the intel we’ve got on these guys, their MO is ‘hit and run’ all the way.”
“We’re all on the same page, then,” Bolan said. He had out his Beretta 92-FS, safety thumbed off, firing selector set for 3-round bursts. Kissinger and Grimaldi were armed with standard-issue Colt Government Model 1911A automatic pistols. Also in the truck was a pair of M-16 A-2 assault rifles, one equipped with an M-203 grenade launcher. The hope was they could nab the would-be hijackers without having to resort to heavy artillery.
The Stony Man crew watched as two trucks—one a converted postal carrier, the other a twenty-foot bed rental—groaned their way out of the parking lot through the light snow and headed down the access road leading to MacArthur Boulevard and the Georgetown Reservoir. That left two semis, both backed up to the loading dock at the rear of the exhibition hall. Four uniformed rent-a-cops stood by watching as vendors wheeled dollies stacked with crated weapons to the dock. There, co-workers helped move the stock into the trucks. The whole operation had a look of practiced efficiency. Nothing seemed amiss.
“Could be we’re on a wild-goose chase,” Grimaldi ventured. “I mean, all we’re going on is a tip from some scumbag informant. Who’s to say he didn’t pull this whole thing out of a hat—”
“Hold it,” Bolan interrupted, signaling Grimaldi to be quiet. He cracked open the window closest to him, letting a cold draft whisper into the truck. Soon Grimaldi and Kissinger could hear it, too: the faint, high-pitched drone of single-cylinder engines. There were at least two of them, approaching from different directions.
“A little cold to be out on a motorcycle,” Kissinger murmured, reaching for the Colt tucked in his web holster.
“Not to mention the snow,” Grimaldi said.
The Stony Man trio wasn’t alone in suspecting the heist was about to go down. A walkie-talkie on the seat next to Grimaldi suddenly squawked to life. It was Mort Kiley, point man for a BATF field team positioned just around the corner inside an unmarked utility van. Kiley had originally intended to have his crew take the point position, but Bolan had pulled rank, using doctored credentials identifying him and his colleagues as special agents with the Justice Department. Kiley and his four-man BATF crew were playing backup.
“Got ourselves a party crasher,” Kiley’s voice crackled over the two-way’s minispeaker. “Guy on a dirt bike approaching at…Wait, he’s slowing down.”
As Bolan and the others listened, they suddenly heard—both over the walkie-talkie and out on the street behind them—the sounds of gunshots and breaking glass. Kiley shouted something unintelligible before being silenced by yet another round of gunfire.
“Not good.” Grimaldi cranked the panel truck’s engine to life.
“Go check it out,” Bolan told him as he threw open his door. “We’ll handle things here.”
The Executioner slipped out of the truck and hit the asphalt running. He’d exchanged the boots he’d worn at the fantasy camp for lightweight hiking shoes. The crepe soles muffled his steps. Kissinger was right behind him, the Colt pistol freed from his holster and held out before him, ready to fire.
Grimaldi, meanwhile, swung the truck around and fishtailed past the men, raising a fantail of road slush in his wake. By then, Bolan and Kissinger had crossed the street. The Executioner took cover behind a mailbox anchored to the sidewalk near a row of parked cars. Kissinger split off and raced toward a large sign propped on stanchions rising up through a planter box situated near the parking lot entrance.
From his position, Bolan could see most of the lot, as well as the road. In the distance a thick stand of elm trees separated the industrial park from a nearby housing development. It sounded to him as if one of the motorcycles was approaching from the direction of the trees. Those gathered behind the exhibition hall had heard the commotion, as well. The rent-a-cops and several of the vendors had drawn their guns and were looking out into the night, tracking the sound. Bolan and Kissinger both did their best to conceal themselves, not wanting to be mistaken for hijackers.
Moments later, a mud-encrusted Husqvarna 250 Motocross emerged from between the elm trees, lights off, knobbed tires churning up snow and dirt as it raced up a footpath leading to the street. The rider was dressed head-to-toe in black leather, wearing goggles and a stocking cap, but no helmet. He had both hands on the handlebar controls, but visible in a shoulder holster was an Uzi Eagle autopistol. Once he reached the street, he cut across both lanes, clearly bound for the parking lot.
Before Bolan could fix him in his sights, however, the biker suddenly veered to his right and yanked on his handlebars. Goosing the bike’s throttle, he brought up the front wheel and bounded cleanly over the curb. Bolan tracked the biker and was about to cut loose with his Beretta when someone fired at him from behind, creasing the mailbox just inches from his face.
Holding his fire, the Executioner instinctively dropped to the snow-covered sidewalk.
“Sniper on the roof!” Kissinger called out.
Bolan barely heard the warning; he was too busy scrambling clear of the mailbox. He took cover behind a pickup truck parked on the street. From his new position, he could see the biker clear the sidewalk and power through the sparse shrubbery that ringed the parking lot. By the time Bolan got off a shot, the biker had entered the lot and was speeding toward the loading dock.
When one of the vendors raised his gun, the biker slammed on his brakes, throwing the Husky into a sidelong skid. Once he’d laid the bike down, the rider jumped clear, avoiding the gunshot fired his way. The motorcycle’s momentum, meanwhile, sent it clattering across the asphalt.
The vendor let out a howl as the bike knocked his legs out from under him. His gun flew from his hand as he fell, sprawling, to one side. Before the vendor could react, the biker bounded to his feet, unleathered his Uzi and fired into the vendor’s face.
Kissinger caught only a glimpse of the execution; his view was obstructed by the signposts and shrubs in the planter. By the time he changed positions, the leather-clad intruder had already disappeared between the two semis. Worse yet, Kissinger had placed himself in view of the rooftop sniper. When a 7.62 mm rifle round tore through the shrubs, the Stony Man weaponsmith quickly drew back and dropped behind the planter. More gunfire soon came chattering his way, not from the roof but rather from the rear of the exhibition hall.
“You’ve got the wrong guy!” Kissinger shouted.
His warning went unheeded. More rounds hammered at the planter and the sign stanchions, seeking him out.
Bolan, meanwhile, switched to firing single rounds, hoping to conserve ammo as he traded shots with the rooftop sniper. He plinked a shot off the condenser unit his foe was crouched behind, then ducked when a return round shattered the pickup’s windshield. Bolan scrambled to the rear of the truck and dropped the Beretta’s foregrip so he could grasp it with both hands and improve his aim. Up on the roof, the sniper swung around and was ready to fire when Bolan beat him to the trigger. Nailed in the chest, the sniper dropped his rifle and staggered clear of the condenser unit, then teetered lifelessly over the edge of the roof.
The Executioner tracked the man’s fall, then shifted his focus to the activity around the loading dock. Given all the gunfire, Bolan assumed the biker had been cornered and was making a last stand. It quickly became clear, however, that he’d gotten it wrong. Instead of going after the biker, the rental cops—all four of them—had turned their guns on the surviving vendors. Taken by surprise, the vendors were easy targets and fell quickly.
“Inside job,” Bolan murmured, incredulous. Raising his voice, he cried out to Kissinger, “The guards are in on it!”
AS SOON AS Jack Grimaldi steered his panel truck around the corner, he saw that he was too late to come to the aid of Mort Kiley or his BATF cohorts.
Another biker, astride a second Husqvarna, had just put a bullet into the head of a federal agent lying on the road next to the ambushed BATF utility van. Kiley had never made it out of the vehicle; he was slumped on the back floor, his left forearm dangling from the half-opened side door. The driver was slumped behind the steering wheel at an unnatural angle, his blood streaking the window beside him, clearly another victim of the biker’s surprise attack.
“Bastard!” Grimaldi growled, flooring the accelerator. He flashed on his high beams and bore down on the biker, gambling that the other man was out of ammunition.
The gamble paid off.
The biker, helmetless and dressed like his counterpart in black leather, instinctively raised his gun at the approaching truck. He had a clear shot at Grimaldi but pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. He cast the useless gun aside and put his bike in gear.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Grimaldi seethed, focusing on the biker’s hands as he drew closer. When he saw the gunman turn his handlebars to the right, Grimaldi countered, jerking his steering wheel to the left. The biker lurched forward, hoping to veer around the oncoming truck. Grimaldi anticipated the maneuver and swerved into the assailant’s path. His fender clipped the bike’s front wheel squarely and sent the rider vaulting headfirst over the handlebars. The assailant caromed off the truck’s grillework and fell limply to the ground.
Grimaldi slammed on his brakes. The truck brodied across the snow-slicked street and came to a stop mere inches from the slain BATF agent lying on the road. Yanking his Colt from his web holster, the Stony Man operative bounded out into the street and took aim at the biker, who was slowly struggling to his feet.
“Freeze!” he ordered.
The biker was crouched over, his back turned to Grimaldi. He stayed put, but Grimaldi could see his right hand drifting toward the loose vest he wore over his leather jacket.
“Hands out where I can see them!” Grimaldi barked.
The biker stretched his left arm outward and began to slowly turn. He let his right arm drop for a moment, then suddenly reached inside his vest. He was pulling a backup pistol from the waistband of his riding pants when Grimaldi fired.
The biker let out a cry and staggered backward, but managed to stay on his feet despite having taken a close-range shot to the chest. When he turned to Grimaldi, gun raised, the Stony Man pilot figured the guy was wearing body armor, so he aimed higher, putting his next shot through the assailant’s forehead. The biker dropped his gun and sagged to his knees, then collapsed.
Grimaldi slowly moved closer, Colt trained on the biker. The other man was in his early thirties, clean-shaved, with short blond hair. The killshot hadn’t completely disfigured him, and when Grimaldi took off the man’s visor he recognized him from a series of mug shots he and his colleagues had been shown a few hours ago back at BATF’s Georgetown field office. The guy’s name was Byrnes. Grimaldi couldn’t remember his first name, but he knew the guy had two other brothers, linked, like him, to the American Freedom Movement.
