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“When you say missed…”
“My people found the place, all right. Just where you promised it would be. A scout saw people in the camp, guerrillas, some of them on stretchers.”
“So?”
“We still aren’t sure what happened. By the time he came back with the main force and they had the camp surrounded, there was no one there.”
The spook reached for another cancer stick. “You tipped them off somehow,” he said accusingly.
“We’re looking into it.”
“Fat lot of good that does.” He smoked and fumed.
“It’s worse,” the caller said.
“Worse than another empty bag? All right, tell me.”
“The team took casualties. One man dead, another six or seven injured.”
“How the hell? You said there was nobody there.”
“Some kind of booby trap, or maybe just an accident. We’re—”
“Looking into it, I know. This isn’t what we talked about at all. You understand that, right? This doesn’t just reflect on you.”
“Of course, you’ll blame me all the same,” the caller answered back, showing some attitude.
“I call ’em like I see ’em,” the spook said. “You said yourself, the intel I provided led your hunters to the target. They saw people in the camp, for Christ’s sake! Now you see ’em, now you don’t. What kind of crazy shit is that? You want to say it’s my fault that your people can’t throw down on targets standing right in front of them?”
“I will find out what happened.”
“Beautiful. And what about the mark?”
“We’ll have to try again.”
“Just like that, is it? Let my fingers do the walking through the goddamned business pages, maybe. See what they’ve got listed under traitor comma dirty fucking.”
“You have contacts,” the caller replied. “We have contacts.”
“And they’ve told us where to look for him three times. How many strikes are you entitled to, I wonder?”
“Strikes?” The caller was confused now.
“Never mind. Forget about it. I’ll put on my thinking cap again and see if I can find another angle. In the meantime, it’s your job to make sure that the latest screwup does not go public under any circumstances. Are we clear?”
“I hear you.”
“Right. But are you listening?”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I hope so, for your own sake.”
And for mine, the spook thought as he dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle. Once again he felt the urge to rip, discard, destroy.
Instead he lit a fresh smoke from the one he’d had clenched between his teeth and waited for the nicotine to work its magic on his jangling nerves.
Spilled milk, he thought. No use crying about it.
What he needed now, and goddamned soon, was some spilled blood to solve his problem. One more chance, if he was very lucky, and he didn’t dare waste it.
But what was left?
He needed specialists.
And with that thought in mind, he reached for the hated telephone.
CHAPTER TWO
San Diego, California
Mack Bolan took his time on Harbor Drive, westbound, checking his rearview mirror frequently. He hadn’t been in San Diego for a while, no reason anybody should be looking for him here, but vigilance was the price of survival. The first time Bolan let his guard drop, taking personal security for granted, it was safe to bet that negligence would turn and bite him where it hurt.
No tails so far.
His progress in the rented Chevrolet was leisurely enough that other motorists were glad to pass him, but he wasn’t driving slow enough to risk a ticket for obstructing traffic. Just the right speed, Bolan thought, for someone seeking a specific address in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
The address in question belonged to a block of professional offices, one of those buildings designed to resemble a twenty-first-century bunker. It was bronze and brown, metal and stone, with windows that reflected sunlight in a painful glare across the nearby lanes of traffic. In short, it was an eyesore, but the ritzy kind that advertised the affluence of those who had their offices within.
He wheeled into the parking lot and checked the rearview mirror once more, just to play it safe. Nobody followed him, none of the other drivers slowed to track his progress as they passed.
Now all he had to think about was what might be inside the ugly building, waiting for him.
Theoretically, it was a friend he hadn’t seen in better than a year. The contact had been clean, secure on Bolan’s end, no glitches to excite suspicion. Still, he was alive this day because he always took that extra step, preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.
The parking lot was only half full at this hour, approaching lunchtime, and he found a space within a short sprint of the revolving glass door. No one was loitering outside, but tinted windows wouldn’t let him scan the lobby from his vehicle.
Twelve minutes left.
He didn’t have the hinky feeling that an ambush often prompted, small hairs bristling on his nape, but Bolan didn’t live by premonitions. Instinct, training and experience all went together in the mix, occasionally seasoned by audacity.
Do it or split, he thought.
He didn’t need to check the pistol slung beneath his left armpit in fast-draw leather—fifteen cartridges in the Beretta’s magazine and one more in the chamber—so he simply had to squeeze the double-action trigger. Two spare magazines in pouches underneath his right arm gave him forty-six chances to kill any assailants who might try to jump him at the meet.
Relaxed? No way.
Frightened? Not even close.
He locked the car and left it, crossed the sidewalk, stepped into the maw of the revolving door. This was the first chance for an enemy to take him. Shooters waiting in the lobby could unload on him while he was sandwiched between panes of glass, most likely take him down before he could retaliate. It didn’t happen, though, and in another moment he was standing in the lobby, bathed in frosty air-conditioning.
There was an information desk to Bolan’s left, manned by a senior citizen. Off to his right, a wall directory served those who didn’t want the human touch. Bolan ignored them both, sweeping the empty lobby as he moved directly to the dual elevators.
Bolan didn’t need to check the floor or office numbers. They had been supplied, and he’d memorized them, end of story. Now he simply had to hope there would be no nasty surprises waiting for him on the seventh floor.
The smooth and solitary ride lasted no more than ninety seconds, but it gave him ample time to think about the call that had surprised him, coming out of nowhere with a plea for help. The caller was a man whose martial prowess nearly rivaled Bolan’s, one who rarely bluffed and never folded if he had a prayer of staying in the game.
They hadn’t talked details, an indication that the caller was concerned about security, despite precautions taken when he made the link-up. The arrangement of their meeting was another warning sign, behind closed doors, using the office of a lawyer Bolan didn’t know from Adam.
Hinky? Not so far.
Cautious? Believe it.
Bolan’s circle of devoted friends was small and dwindling over time. It was the nature of his life and his profession that attachments came with price tags. Sudden death or worse lay waiting for the careless. He had more friends in the ground than standing on it, and the trend would always run that way.
It was a law of nature in the hellgrounds where he lived.
Bolan had no suspicion that the caller might betray his trust. It was unthinkable. That didn’t mean, however, that some rude third party couldn’t find a way to horn in on the meet. Technology was only one short step behind imagination, these days, and he couldn’t discount pure bad luck.
There was a chance, however minuscule, that Bolan’s contact might be followed to the meet, or that a leak inside the lawyer’s office might produce a most unwelcome welcoming committee. Bolan doubted it, but it was possible, and that meant he would have to be on full alert throughout the interaction.
SOP, in other words.
Another normal day in Bolan’s life.
He felt the elevator slowing into its approach and stepped back from the door, to the left side. A straight-on spray of bullets when the door slid open wouldn’t take him, though he’d have to watch for ricochets.
Jacket unbuttoned for swift access to his pistol, Bolan stood and waited with his hand almost inside the jacket, feeling like a caricature of Napoleon. The elevator settled and its door hissed open to reveal an empty corridor.
A small sign on the facing wall directed Bolan to his right. He moved along the hall with long strides, radiating confidence and capability. He had no audience, but they were qualities the tall man couldn’t hide. He might not stand out in a crowd on any given street corner, but when push came to shove he was the leader of the pack.
Make that lone wolf, most of the time.
But not today.
His destination was a door like every other on the floor, with a bronze plate that gave a number and the lawyer’s name. The knob turned in his hand and Bolan stepped into a small but suitably luxurious reception room.
Four empty chairs faced an unattended desk. No sign of a receptionist or anybody else.
He didn’t need to check his watch. A stylish wall clock told him he was right on time.
Bolan was running down a short list of his options when a door behind the vacant desk swung open to reveal a smiling face.
“I’m glad you found the place okay,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales said.
BLANCANALES HAD EARNED the “Politician” nickname in another life, a tribute to his skill at soothing fear and agitation among Asian villagers whose lives and homes were threatened daily by the ever-shifting tides of war. He had been part of Bolan’s Special Forces A-team, one of several thrown together in the hellfire moment who had forged lifelong alliances.
One of the few who somehow managed to survive.
“I guess the staff is out to lunch,” Bolan remarked as they shook hands.
“We have an hour to ourselves. Friend of a friend, you know?”
He didn’t bother running down the details of a family in peril, spared against all odds, with gratitude that reached beyond the limits of a long lunch on a busy afternoon. Pol knew that Bolan didn’t need the details, didn’t really care how they had come to find themselves alone in an attorney’s office on the seventh floor of a building he’d never visited before this day and wouldn’t see again.
“He sweeps the place, I guess?” Bolan asked, thinking of security.
“I swept it, coming in. It’s clean.”
“Okay.”
“You want to talk out here or use the inner sanctum?”
“This is fine.”
Bolan took one of the four matching chairs. Blancanales noticed that he didn’t touch the arm rests with his hands. It was a small precaution, probably unnecessary since his law-enforcement files across the country had been closed and marked “Deceased,” but playing safe was second nature to the Executioner.
“I’m glad you had some time,” Blancanales said, easing into it.
“No sweat,” Bolan replied. “What’s going on?”
“I caught a squeal the other day, through Toni.”
Toni Blancanales was the Politician’s sister. She was also CEO of Team Able Investigations, a private security firm Rosario Blancanales had launched years ago with another war buddy, electronics wizard Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, to make ends meet in peacetime. Now that Pol and Gadgets operated more or less full-time for Hal Brognola and Stony Man Farm—the same covert nerve center that fielded Bolan for various do-or-die assignments—Toni ran the show and rarely needed her big brother’s help.
“Why that route?” Bolan inquired.
“Long distance. A long time out of touch.”
“A mutual acquaintance?” Bolan asked him, frowning.
“You remember Bones.”
Blancanales didn’t phrase it as a question. There was nothing wrong with Bolan’s memory, and he saw instant recognition in the warrior’s eyes.
The nickname came from “sawbones,” as in “doctor”—or from Star Trek, same damned thing. In their Special Forces days together there’d been many medics, too many M.A.S.H. units, but only one Bones.
“Nate Weiss,” Bolan said.
Blancanales nodded. Make it Captain Nathan Weiss, M.D. A wizard with a scalpel, long on empathy for patients, short on tolerance when military red tape hampered his attempts to care for sick and wounded soldiers. Thinking back, Blancanales could remember Weiss cutting and stitching under fire, while Bolan’s team faced down the enemy, one of their own guys on the table leaking life.
The frown was still on Bolan’s face. “I haven’t thought about him in…”
“About a hundred years?”
“Seems like it. How’d he track you down?”
“It wasn’t him, exactly.”
