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He had taken on the job for old times’ sake, driven by feelings long suppressed if not forgotten, paying an installment on a debt of loyalty he knew would never fully be discharged.
In truth, he didn’t want to cut that tie, however tenuous it was. Sometimes even a scarred and bloodied warrior needed something to remind him of another time. Another life. It might be lost beyond recall, but memories were precious, all the same.
He palmed the GPS device and got his bearings, let the compact gadget point him toward his goal. A stranger waited for him there, not knowing it. Bolan had come to save that stranger from himself, at any cost.
Old ghosts kept pace with Bolan as he struck off through the jungle on a trail invisible to human eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Five days before he stepped out of the Cessna into Congo skies, Bolan had followed cowboy footsteps through the streets of what was once a wild and woolly frontier town. He dawdled past gift shops, a bookstore with a lot of history and Western fiction in the windows, glancing at his watch again to verify the time.
Almost.
He didn’t know that much about Wyoming—big-sky country, open range, the Rockies—but it didn’t matter. Dressing like a tourist didn’t make him one. Bolan had business here, and it was causing him a teaspoon’s measure of anxiety.
He was surprised to see a pair of middle-aged civilians pass, both wearing pistols holstered on their hips. No badges visible, and Bolan took a moment to remind himself that this was still the wild frontier, in certain ways.
His own sidearm, the sleek Beretta 93-R with selective fire and twenty Parabellum rounds packing its magazine, was tucked discreetly out of sight beneath a nylon windbreaker. He much preferred the fast-draw armpit rig and had no need to advertise that he was armed.
As long as he could reach the pistol when it mattered.
Bolan had two minutes left to wait, but it was getting on his nerves. That was peculiar in itself, considering that patience was a sniper’s trademark and a trait that kept him breathing, but he wrote it off to special circumstances in the present case. The message from his brother had surprised him and had kept him revved since he received it.
He wasn’t nervous in the classic sense, afraid of what would happen in the next few minutes, worried that he might not find a way to handle it. Bolan had outgrown such emotions as a teenager, had any remnants of them purged by fire as a young man. That didn’t mean he was immune to feelings, though.
Not even close.
He’d driven past the Chinese restaurant first thing, an hour early for the meeting, checking out the street. That part was instinct, watching for a trap. It made no difference that his brother would’ve died before collaborating with an enemy. Betrayal wasn’t even on his mind.
The drive-by was a habit, ingrained for good reason. Johnny would’ve taken care when calling, but that didn’t guarantee their conversation had been secure. What really was, these days? Each day, the NSA’s code breakers intercepted countless e-mails, phone calls, radio transmissions, television programs. Other ears and eyes were also constantly alert. There was a chance, however miniscule, that Johnny had been singled out, his message plucked from the air or off the wires and passed along to someone who would pay to keep the rendezvous.
For one shot at the Executioner.
The drive-by had been wasted, nothing on the street that indicated any kind of trap in place. That didn’t mean the restaurant was clean, simply that Bolan couldn’t spot a snare if one was waiting for him. Call it eighty-five percent relaxed as Bolan turned from the shop window he’d been studying, using the glass to mirror the pedestrians passing behind him, watching both sides of the street. His windbreaker hung open, granting easy access to the pistol if he was mistaken and a trap awaited him within the next block and a half.
The call from Johnny had been short and sweet.
“Val needs to see you, bro,” he’d said. “Can you find time?”
And it was wild, how a three-letter word could reach across the miles and years, clutching his heart in a death grip.
No, that was wrong. Make it a life grip, and it would be closer to the truth.
Val needs to see you, bro. Can you find time?
Hell, yes.
The day seemed warmer as he neared the corner where a left turn was required to reach the restaurant. Bolan could feel a sheen of perspiration on his forehead and beneath his arms. It wasn’t that hot, and the physical reaction made him frown.
It’s been a long time, he admitted. Then, as if to reassure himself, There’s nothing to it. Get a grip.
The nerves were partly Johnny’s fault. He could’ve spelled it out directly, or at least suggested why Val needed him. It had been years since they’d seen each other last, and she had been hospitalized, recuperating from one of those traumas that dogged Bolan’s handful of loved ones and friends. It was his final memory of Val, and he had no idea how well she had recovered from her injuries. What scars remained, inside or out.
At least she wasn’t one of Bolan’s ghosts.
Not yet.
Val needs you.
Why? Presumably she’d tell him to his face.
He cleared the corner, gave the street a final sweep and walked on to the Bamboo Garden, halfway down the block. The door made little chiming sounds as he pushed through it, brought a smiling hostess out to intercept him.
“One for lunch?” she asked.
“I’m meeting someone,” he replied. And as he spoke, he had them spotted. “Over there.”
The hostess bobbed her head. “Please follow me.”
As they moved toward the corner booth, he noted Johnny’s left leg sticking into the aisle, his foot and ankle fattened by a plaster cast. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall beside him.
Val was seated on the inside, next to Johnny on his right. Her raven hair was cut to shoulder length, framing a face with the exotic beauty of her Spanish heritage. Her smile seemed tentative, but what could he expect?
He sat, back to the door, and didn’t even mind. Johnny could watch the street. The hostess handed him a menu and retreated. Bolan knew he was supposed to read it, order food. He simply wasn’t there yet.
“Long time,” Val said. “You’re looking good.”
He wasn’t sure if that was true, but Bolan meant it when he said, “You, too.”
He turned to his brother. “What’s the story on that leg?”
Johnny looked suitably embarrassed. “It’s a classic,” he replied. “Stepped off a ladder, got tangled up and cracked a couple bones.”
“No marathons this season, then.”
“Guess not.”
That much told Bolan part of why Val had reached out for him. Johnny was benched for the duration, and whatever problem had arisen, Bolan guessed it couldn’t wait for him to heal.
“Bad luck,” he said.
“What brings you down from Sheridan?” he asked Val.
Her home was on the far side of the state, near the Montana border, some 330 miles north of Cheyenne. Bolan surmised that Val had picked the meeting place so that she wouldn’t have him on her doorstep.
Just in case.
Trouble had found her in Wyoming once already, and she wouldn’t want a replay. Not if she could help it.
“I thought we could eat first, catch up on old times,” Val said. “Then maybe take a drive and talk about the other when we’re done.”
Where waitresses and busboys couldn’t eavesdrop.
“Sounds all right to me,” said Bolan.
“Good.” Another smile, relieved.
Old times, he thought.
They seemed like bloody yesterday.
VALENTINA QUERENTE had been calling her cat the night Bolan had first seen her, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. On the run and bleeding out from bullet wounds inflicted by a crew of Mafia manhunters, he’d staggered into Val’s life, literally on his last legs, bringing unexpected danger to her doorstep. She had taken Bolan in and nursed him back to health, no questions asked, and in the process her initial sympathy had turned to something deeper, something stronger than she’d ever felt before. Bolan had been startled to discover that he’d felt the same.
The warrior and his lady had spent nearly a month in the eye of the storm, while cops and contract killers turned the city upside down in search of Bolan. Finally, they had decided that he had to be dead, or maybe wise enough to flee the territory for a hopeless life in hiding, parts unknown. His would-be killers left a million-dollar open contract on his head, uncollected, and went back to business as usual.
For some, it was their last mistake.
Bolan had returned from his near-death experience with a vengeance, striking his enemies with shock and awe long before some military PR man had patented the phrase. He left the syndicate’s Massachusetts Family in smoking ruins, but he couldn’t hang around and taste the fruits of victory.
There would be no peace for the Executioner, as he pursued his long and lonely one-man war against the Mafia from coast to coast. No rest from battle and no safety for the ones he loved. Before he left Pittsfield, with no hope of returning, Bolan’s heart and soul were joined to Val’s in every way that counted short of walking down the aisle to say, “I do.” And by that time he’d known that home and family, the picket fence and nine-to-five, had slipped beyond his grasp forever.
There’d be no treaty with the Syndicate, and he could never really win the war he’d started when he executed those responsible for shattering his family. It was a blood feud to the bitter end, and Val hadn’t signed on for that. She would’ve risked it, but he had refused in no uncertain terms.
It had been Val’s idea for her to shelter Bolan’s brother Johnny, at a time when every hit man in the country wanted Bolan’s head. A living relative was leverage, and anyone who harbored him was thus at risk, but on that point she wouldn’t be dissuaded. Bolan might roar off into the flaming sunset and abandon her, but Val knew that he wouldn’t take his brother on that long last ride. She volunteered to make that sacrifice—risk everything she had, future included—to preserve the Bolan line, and thus maintain at least a slender thread of contact with the warrior who had changed her life.
It was a good plan, soundly executed, but the best of human schemes sometimes went wrong. In time, a Boston mobster had divined Val’s secret, kidnapped her and Johnny in a bid to make his prey surrender, trade his life for theirs. Bolan had recognized a no-win situation from the get-go, known his enemy would never let two witnesses escape his clutches. There’d been no room for negotiation as the soldier launched his Boston blitz and damned near tore the town apart. Mobsters and cops alike still talked about the day the Executioner had come to town, but most of those who served the Boston Mafia today had heard the stories secondhand. There weren’t many survivors from the actual event to keep the facts straight as they circulated on the streets.
Before the smoke cleared on that hellfire day, Johnny and Val were safely back in Bolan’s hands. He’d passed them on to Hal Brognola, then chief of the FBI’s organized crime task force. He in turn had assigned FBI agent Jack Gray to handle security for Val and the boy who posed as her son.
And something happened.
Bolan’s first reaction, on hearing from Johnny that Val and Jack were engaged to be married, was a warm rush of relief. Despite the love for her that he would carry to his grave, he felt no jealousy. Bolan had offered Val nothing but loneliness, love on the run and damned little of that. He knew that she deserved the finer things in life, and when she married, when her groom adopted Johnny Bolan and his name was changed to Johnny Gray, Bolan had felt a guilty burden lifted from his shoulders.
Val could live and love without a shadow darkening each moment of her life. Johnny could grow up strong and stable, without hearing schoolyard gibes about his brother on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. And if the end came—when it came—for Bolan, they could mourn him quietly, without fanfare.
They could move on with their lives.
That should’ve been the final chapter, but an echo of the Mob wars had returned to haunt them all, long after Bolan had moved on to other enemies and battlegrounds, with a new face and new identity. A mobster scarred by his encounter with the Executioner, maddened by his pursuit of vengeance, had traced the Grays to their new home in Wyoming, making yet another bid to reach Bolan through those he loved. The hunter missed Johnny, a grown man on his own by then, but he had wounded Jack and kidnapped Valentina, dragging her into a private hell as he reprised the Boston plan of forcing Bolan to reveal himself.
It worked, but not exactly as the lone-wolf stalker planned. He got his face-to-face with Bolan, but he’d found the Executioner too much to handle. Perhaps the old maxim “Be careful what you wish for” echoed through the gunman’s mind before he died.
Or maybe not.
In any case, Val had survived, but at a price. She carried new scars on her psyche, from her brutal treatment at the killer’s hands, and Bolan wasn’t sure if they would ever truly heal. He knew some women bore the strain better than others, and while Valentina ranked among the strongest people he had ever known, nobody was invincible. Some wounds healed on the surface, but could rot the soul.
Bolan had checked with Johnny over time, received his brother’s reassurance that Val had recovered from her ordeal. She was “okay,” “fine,” “getting along” with Jack’s rehab and other tasks she’d chosen for herself.
But now she needed him again.
And Bolan wondered why.
“HOW’S JACK?” he asked as lunch arrived.
“Retired,” Val said. “I guess you knew that, though. He’s doing corporate security and helping me with some of my projects.”
“Which are?”
“I teach a class at community college now and then. Do some counseling on the side. I’ve also established a mentoring program off campus.”
“That must keep you busy,” Bolan said.
“I’m thinking of letting it go.”
He began to ask if that was part of the reason she’d summoned him here, but it didn’t make sense and he kept to his agreement to eat first and ask questions later. The food was a cut above average but nothing to write home about. Bolan ate his meal, drank some coffee and went through the motions when the waitress brought their fortune cookies.
His read, “You will take a journey soon.”
There’s a surprise.
Bolan picked up the check, dismissing Val’s objections, then accepting her reluctant thanks. Reluctance seemed to be the order of the day, in fact. Val had a vaguely worried look about her as they left the Chinese restaurant.
“Are we still driving?” Bolan asked. “My rental’s parked around the corner.”
“Mine’s right here,” Val answered, moving toward a year-old minivan. “I’ll drive.”
Johnny kept pace on crutches, telling Bolan, “I can drive, but Val says no. She’s such a mom sometimes.”
“I heard that,” Val informed him. “If it was supposed to be an insult, you need new material.”
“No insult. I’m just saying—”
“That you’re handi-capable. No argument. Just humor me, all right?”
“Okay.”
Johnny maneuvered into the backseat, while Bolan sat up front with Val. He didn’t mind the shotgun seat. It let him watch one of the minivan’s three mirrors as Val pulled out from the curb. They had no tail, as far as he could see, but he kept watching as she drove.
Habits died hard.
Soldiers who let them slip died harder.
“Do we need to sweep the van for bugs, or can we talk now?” Bolan asked.
Val cut him with a sidelong glance. “I didn’t want to get the restaurant mixed up in this,” she said.
“Mixed up in what?”
