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  “Only got hit in the arm,” Turrin panted. “Had much worse last time out...”

  “Quit talking,” Bolan ordered, yanking off his belt to use as a tourniquet.

  Obviously thinking along the same lines, Gonzales gingerly pressed a clean white handkerchief to the wound. Turrin inhaled sharply at the painful contact, but the blood flow noticeably slowed.

  “The bullet went through clean,” Gonzales said, tying off the cloth in a field dressing. “Only hit the flesh.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Kneeling in the blood, Bolan started to cinch the belt into place. “This could have been your brains splattered across the pavement, Leo.”

  “Never had...many to...begin with.” Turrin laughed, but it turned into a ragged cough.

  “He needs a hospital,” Glenn said, towering above them.

  Whipping out a cell phone, Weinberg tapped in a number. “Hello, police?” she asked in a terrified voice. “There’s some sort of a gang war or something going on at hangar nineteen at Logan. Yes, bodies are everywhere! There’s explosions and gunfire...Some sort of machine guns...How should I know?...Oh, Christ, they’re here, they found me! No, God, please...!” Screaming loudly, she cut the connection.

  “Airport security will be here in five minutes, maybe less,” Weinberg stated calmly, holstering the piece, “with Boston PD right on their ass.”

  In the distance a siren began to howl. In perfect harmony, the four big turbo engines of the Hercules surged into operation, the propellers spinning into roaring blurs.

  “Time to go,” Bolan said, walking into the hangar.

  Chapter 8

  Saddle Brook, New Jersey

  Parking the stolen sheriff’s car at the curb, Johnson got out and walked toward a small cottage. The man was wearing dark sunglasses and a nylon police windbreaker. It was a tight fit, but had been the only item of the clothing from the dead deputy that Johnson could squeeze into. With his size, disguises were almost impossible. But he’d deemed it wise to try anyway.

  The cottage with the correct address was situated in the middle of the block. It was a single-story unit with aluminum siding, wooden window boxes and an old chimney that was starting to come away from the wall.

  Reaching the front door, Johnson pulled open the screen door, taped a bright red eviction notice on the door then loudly knocked. There was no reply.

  Alberta Drive was a quiet street in a rustic neighborhood in a small town. The streets were lined with old trees, many of them equipped with tiny birdhouses or tire swings. All of the dark green lawns were neatly edged, the white picket fences freshly painted. There were no rusty old junk cars being repaired in the driveways, windows patched with duct tape or abandoned toilet seats in the yards.

  This was true suburbia, quiet and clean, almost to the point of boredom. Neatly trimmed hedges and low brick walls separated each property. Automatic water sprinklers swept back and forth, creating brief rainbows. A dog barked in the distance and somewhere kids laughed.

  Impatiently, Johnson knocked again.

  This time there came the sound of footsteps.

  “Yeah, who is it?” asked a woman.

  “Death,” Johnson said, firing his twin 10 mm Magnum pistols.

  The attached sound suppressors reduced the noise of the blasts to a low cough, but large black holes appeared in the wooden door and somebody inside the cottage gasped in pain.

  The rear doors of several delivery vans parked along the street suddenly slammed open and out came swarms of men wearing ski masks and carrying construction equipment.

  Converging on the cottage, they used pneumatic nail guns to secure a thick sheet of plywood across the front door. Then they knocked off the window boxes and also closed off those.

  Removing the sound suppressors, Johnson studied the neighboring homes for any reactions as his people continued to seal off every possible exit from the cottage. So far there had been nothing, the muffled sound of the Glocks firing probably mistaken for the noise of the pneumatic hammers, which had been the general idea. Anybody looking would see the sheriff’s car and men boarding up windows. The natural assumption would be that their neighbor was being evicted for failing to make the mortgage payments. Very sad, but not their concern.

  Cradling an empty air hammer, a short man with a beard approached. “The target is secure, sir,” Dooley reported crisply. “Somebody tried to get out of the basement, but we drove them back inside using the nail guns.”

  “Very good,” Johnson said. “Okay, burn it.”

  Returning to the delivery vans, the team of men soon returned carrying industrial flamethrowers. Surrounding the cottage, they began liberally spraying it with liquid napalm. The unit was completely engulfed in writhing flames within only a few moments.

  Screams came from inside the burning cottage, then the shattering of a glass window, followed by a desperate pounding.

  “Idiot news reporter,” Johnson growled, his voice thick with hatred. “She never should have trusted prison guards to keep their mouths shut.”

  “To be fair, sir,” Dooley said, “everybody talks after being tortured.”

  “I suppose.”

  By now, wild screams were coming from inside the cottage, the flames rising high into the sky.

  Suddenly they heard the wail of an approaching police car. Swarming into the street, the men with the flamethrowers cut loose and the squad car drove directly into the crisscrossing streams of fire. With the vehicle drenched in sticky napalm, the police officer behind the wheel blindly steered the car around until crashing into an oak tree. Every window loudly shattered as a maelstrom of leaves sprinkled down from the vibrating branches. Inside the car, the police officer began noisily shrieking.

  “Lieutenant, please shoot that man,” Johnson said, adjusting his sunglasses. “He’s done nothing to warrant such a death.”

  “Unlike the asshole inside the cottage.”

  “Exactly.”

  Strolling over to the burning wreck, Dooley pulled out a 10 mm Heckler & Koch pistol and fired three fast rounds through the flames. The screaming stopped.

  “The local PD will come again, and soon,” Dooley said, walking back. “This time in force. A hundred people must be calling in the fire by now.”

  “Not within a three-block radius,” Johnson stated, patting the softly vibrating Humbug inside his jacket pocket. “And if somebody does arrive, well, too bad for them.”

  Calmly watching the cottage being consumed by the flames, the men listened to the screams from inside get steadily weaker. Then the chimney broke away and crashed into the driveway. With the wall ripped open, Johnson could see directly into the cottage. The interior was an inferno, but through the flames and smoke he could still vaguely see a horribly charred human corpse splayed on the living room floor.

  “Okay, we’re done,” Johnson said. “You there! Did the film crew get everything?”

  “Flames are a little hard to record clearly, sir,” said a woman holding a digital video camera. “But yes, I got it all.”

  “Then start sending out copies to every website you can,” Johnson directed, heading back to the sheriff’s car. “Flood the internet! I want everybody in the world to see what happens when somebody tries to cross us.”

  “Should I use our standard encryption, sir?”

  “No, send it undoctored from a ghost modem,” Johnson said, awkwardly getting back into the idling vehicle. Then he leaned out the window. “And make sure that the file is signed—”

  “Never cross Castle,” she interrupted. “Yes, sir, no problem.”

  “Good girl,” Johnson said, shifting into gear and casually driving away.

  Corning, New York

  THE FOUR POWERFUL engines filled the Lockheed C-130 Hercules with a low hum. A normal conversation was possible,
but the noise permeated everything with a feeling of compressed excitement.

  The hurried departure from Logan Airport had been a split-second race to avoid being blocked by the speeding vehicles of the TSA. Contrary to what was often showed in the movies, a taxiing plane was quite vulnerable and relatively easy to stop. But apparently not with Jack Grimaldi at the controls.

  Broadcasting a recorded warning on every radio channel—civilian, commercial, police and military—Grimaldi sent the colossal Hercules skimming across the tarmac, cutting sideways through the array of landing strips. Several takeoffs and landings had to be quickly aborted, but the Hercules easily avoided the TSA and got airborne without undue troubles.

  Standing at a window, Bolan had watched through a U.S. Army monocular as an ambulance arrived for Leo Turrin, closely followed by a phalanx of police cars. “He’s safe!”

  “Good to know!” Immediately taking refuge in the clouds, Grimaldi jammed the commercial radar. Less than an hour later a pair of USAF F-16 fighter jets streaked by dangerously close...and then were gone.

  “And...the radar is...clear,” Bolan reported, straightening from the glowing screen. “That was some exit, Jack. You can make me believe in miracles.”

  Lounging behind the steering yoke as if he did not have a care in the world, Grimaldi arched an eyebrow. “Don’t lose faith in me now, Sarge.”

  Bolan grinned. “Okay, better change our transponder ID,” he directed, turning off any unnecessary electronic equipment to reduce their EM signature. “Then alter the black-box code, ILS and lay in a false flight plan to someplace far away. Toronto, maybe, or Miami.”

  Keeping one hand on the steering yoke, Grimaldi ran a finger behind his ear and displayed it to his friend.

  Check. Not wet behind the ears. Taking the not-so-gentle hint, Bolan rose from the copilot seat to leave his old friend alone to work his particular brand of avionic magic. Logic said it was impossible, but Bolan firmly believed that if lives were at stake, somehow Grimaldi could fly a plane through a monsoon without getting hit by a single droplet of water. The man wasn’t just good, he was the best alive.

  Tucking his sunglasses into a wall cabinet, Bolan got out his monocular and paused at a starboard window to study the landscape below. There were gentle rolling hills, small towns, the occasional nuclear reactor and broad vistas of lush farmland neatly laid out in orderly rows. Then, abruptly, mountains; just towering, rugged mountains of upstate New York.

  Hanging the monocular on a wall hook, Bolan opened the door and left the flight deck. A short flight of aluminum stairs led down to the cargo deck. Two of the new crew were busy unpacking weapons from the plastic trunks anchored to the vibrating deck. The rest were gathered around Glenn, who was typing steadily on Kolawski’s battered laptop.

  Filling the rear of the cargo deck was a large mound covered with a sheet of canvas and securely strapped into place with a web of thick nylon straps.

  “That laptop really is bulletproof?” Weinberg asked incredulously.

  “Bet your shapely ass,” Glenn said as the screen suddenly scrolled. “Yes! I’m in!” he announced. “Her firewall was good, but I’m better.”

  “Told ya,” Gonzales said with a smile, holding out a hand.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Weinberg muttered, slapping a fifty into his open palm.

  “We’re clear,” Bolan announced, jumping down the last couple of steps. “There’s no pursuit.”

  “Cool,” Cosentini said, working the arming bolt of a brand-new Kalashnikov Model 101 assault rifle. “This feels different from my old AK-47. Better balance.”

  “The barrel of a 101 is heavier,” Bolan explained, “to help prevent ride-up. Ejector port is wider, too, so there is less jamming.”

  “Any homogenized oil around?”

  “Nylon bushings. There’s no need to constantly oil the works.”

  “Nice. Any shells for the 30 mm grenade launcher?”

  “In the red trunk with the black stripe. Standard color coding. There’s a chart inside, if you need it.”

  “Not since I was twelve,” Cosentini said, hefting the Russian assault rifle. “Damn fine balance. Are these part of our pay?”

  “No. But keep one if you want.”

  “Why only these weapons?” Glenn asked, slinging the laptop across his chest.

  “Standard operating procedure,” Bolan said. “If one of us falls, another can use their magazines to keep fighting. If we all have different weapons, we’re screwed.”

  “Grisly.”

  “No, necessary.”

  “But we can keep our own sidearms?”

  “Those are purely a matter of personal choice.” Bolan would have preferred a more militaristic approach to the strike, but the man knew that he could bend these people only so far. After all, they were mercenaries, not combat-trained soldiers.

  Patting the sawed-off Remington holstered at his side, Cosentini smiled. “Good.”

  “Very nice weapon for a raid,” Weinberg stated, accepting one of the assault rifles and dropping the magazine to look inside.

  “Red are tracers, black are armor piercing, blue are rubber.”

  “Rubber bullets?”

  “We want some their people alive, especially the lab technicians,” Bolan stated. “Ziggy made the best crystal meth, pure crystals. The business is worthless without his cooks.”

  “What’s under the tarp?” Gonzales asked, trying to see underneath. However, the canvas straps were too tight for him to budge the protective tarpaulin more than an inch.

  “A little something to get us inside the factory,” Bolan said. “We are the proud new owners of a Canadian Armed Forces Grizzly class transport.”

  As the other gathered around, Bolan pulled out an advertising insert and spread it across the top of a trunk full of grenades.

  The Grizzly was a squat, angular, machine with a sloped prow and slat armor on the side. There were four rear tires, and two up front, almost a yard away from the others.

  “For better turning?” Weinberg asked.

  Bolan nodded. “She’s as nimble as a figure skater.”

  “Two hundred and fifteen horsepower,” Glenn read from the upside-down glossy. “With twin propellers in the rear.... She’s amphibious?”

  “Based on the LAV-25 Piranha.”

  Cosentini grinned. “Excellent!”

  “This will go through their defenses like crap through a goose.” Weinberg chuckled, running a hand across the plastic sheet. “Any weak spots?”

  “Just one. It floats,” Bolan said, “but a duck would win any race.”

  “Check. Stay on land. But crashing through those fountains is no problem?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  Squinting at the glossy picture, Cosentini poked a Vector diagram of the machine with a finger. “I don’t see any weapon mounts.”

  “There are none,” Bolan admitted. “But this version of the Grizzly has enough slat armor to stop anything short of an ATM.”

  “They’re going to throw a cash machine at us?” Glenn asked, clearly confused.

  “Antitank missile,” Weinberg said. “Just concentrate on the typing and we’ll do the heavy lifting, stud.”

  “Try writing C+ code sometimes, girl genius,” Glenn said. “Then we’ll see who’s who.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Look, if you two want to be alone,” Cosentini interrupted, “nobody’s using the closet under the stairs—”

  “Next to the washroom?” Weinberg snapped, her face flushing. “Besides, why would we want to be alone?”

  “The man’s crazy,” Glenn muttered, stuffing both hands into his pockets. “Mondo loco!”

  “Please, never try to speak Spanish again,” Gonzales asked, pressing finge
rtips to his forehead. “You’re giving me a migraine.”

  “Yes, this is all very interesting,” Cosentini drawled, clearly bored. “But I’d rather discuss the battle plans.”

  Going to a honeycomb set into the wall below the stairs, Bolan choose a roll and walked back to spread the map across the top of an ammunition trunk.

  He had let them talk freely to try to clear the air, let them get to know one another better. They were supposedly professionals and needed to merge into a team quickly. However, it didn’t seem to be working. They were four incredibly stubborn individualists, each positive that only he or she was in the right. With luck, they’d start working together when the lead began flying. If not, this whole mission was going to become a bloodbath.

  “Okay, we land in this fallow field just outside town,” Bolan said, smoothing out the paper with his hands. “We cut cross-country in the Grizzly until reaching the beltway here.” He circled the area with a yellow highlighter. “The factory is just across the river. Parking is over here, helipad here, loading dock here.”

  Turning, Glenn smiled at the canvas lump filling the rear of the airplane. “This is why you got an amphibious transport.”

  Bolan nodded. “Exactly. The river is their blind spot. We avoid everything dangerous by ramming them in the ass.”

  “Unfortunately, the river is also when we’re at the most vulnerable,” Weinberg stated. “If we’re spotted and they have a LAW rocket launcher or a Carl Gustav...”

  “Spam in a can,” Cosentini said with a scowl.

  Bolan shrugged. “Every plan has risks,” he stated. “Once back on dry land, we cut directly through the decorative hedges and charge the front gate. If the timing is right, everybody outside the factory will be a viable target. Kill on sight.”

  “Any reserve troops?” Gonzales asked, tugging on his mustache.

  “None.”

  “Stupid.”

  “Overconfident,” Bolan said, circling the revolving doors. “The day shift ends precisely at five, the night shift comes in at six and they start cooking again a few minutes after that.” He looked up at the others. “Come the dawn, they switch. Aside from those two hours, the factory cooks meth nonstop.”