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  “And, unfortunately,” Maxwell interjected, “if the U.S. loses its influence in some of the areas it could well spell doom for our allies and put some of those dangerous countries back on the map in terms of their military capabilities.”

  Bolan nodded. “It would be almost like a reset of the Soviet war machine and the cold war.”

  “Global consequences,” Bindler muttered. “It’s unthinkable.”

  “That’s why it’s important we stop it. Now I have a plan to get inside, but I’m going to need your help.”

  “What can we do, Colonel?” Bindler asked.

  “I understand you have eyes on Gastone Amocacci?”

  Maxwell nodded. “Yeah, we got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

  “Then listen up,” Bolan said. “Because we can use that to get me an introduction.”

  International Airspace

  WHEN DEREK SAVITCH heard Wehr’s report and received news that the American had escaped Central America, he realized their plans were coming apart.

  Somehow, Amocacci had managed to screw it up, and Savitch had no idea where to begin to try to fix it. His first thought had been to call for the immediate elimination of Gastone Amocacci and his woman, but he recanted the idea. It would serve no purpose, and it would especially create more problems than it would solve. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might be Amocacci himself who was the leak in the Council. If that were true, to kill him would only bring potentially worse consequences and a whole shitload of revenge onto Savitch’s head. He didn’t need that.

  Savitch had never been crazy about the whole idea of the Council of Luminárii when Hurley Willham had first brought the idea to him. In fact, he’d thought maybe the crazy Brit had let his time in the SIS and his shit assignment in Bulgaria drive him to desperation. But when he’d seen the money it could make and the other potential benefits to such an alliance between various intelligence groups, he’d begun to understand the long-term profits to be reaped. This thing was a cash cow, and Savitch had only begun to make money.

  Amocacci had wired a quarter-million dollars into their secure account. After Wehr’s cut, that left a fifty-fifty split between him and Willham. A cool fifty-thousand dollars of untraceable cash. And for what? To order someone to pull the trigger on some spy. And there was no way any of it could be traced back to Savitch. He could disappear back to his home territory in Montreal and nobody would ever be the wiser.

  Only one problem: it wasn’t enough.

  It wasn’t nearly enough to live the lifestyle to which he wished to become accustomed. He supposed he could have stiffed Willham out of his money, but it was Willham who had the upper hand and the inside line to the Council. Willham knew how to manipulate each of his colleagues whereas Savitch didn’t have a clue. And it wasn’t Savitch’s way. To be sure, he believed in keeping a legitimate face to all of his business dealings. There was no point in pissing off men who had the potential to make him lots of cash, and Willham definitely did at that, even if he had to take a circuitous route to attain it.

  Now, soaring above the Atlantic aboard a private jet courtesy of the Council of Luminárii, Savitch considered his next move. The death of Quon Ma would most certainly result in some sort of retaliation. It wouldn’t be long before Turkey was crawling with a veritable army of MSS agents, if not men who were loyal to the MSS cause. They wouldn’t take the death of one of their most able men lightly, and they would want to make certain that someone paid. And they would succeed in making a public example of the individual or group they deemed responsible. For the Chinese, it wasn’t about revenge or even about honor. It was about making a statement that warned everyone else who might want to seize the advantage from the situation.

  Given the terms of his contract with Amocacci, Savitch knew he needed to get to Istanbul and do some damage control before it all came apart on him.

  The personal phone aboard the jet rang and he picked it up gingerly. “Hello, Hurley.”

  “Don’t hello me,” Willham replied. “What the bloody hell is going on with you? I give you one simple task and you can’t even pull that off.”

  “What are you going on about?” Savitch asked. “We got the job done.”

  “The hell you did! You dumb, stupid, bloody prick!”

  “Careful, Hurley,” Savitch said. “I’m quite fond of you and our arrangement, but don’t think to take it so far that I’ll stand idly by and let you hurl abuses at me for no reason. Now calm your ass down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Ma’s still alive.”

  “What do you mean ‘alive’? He’s dead. I have complete assurances he’s nothing more than a corpse.”

  “Well, then, someone’s lying to you because I just got wind an hour ago that one of my people saw him alive and well. Your little errand boy failed.”

  “Wehr isn’t my little errand boy. He’s a complete professional with a one hundred percent success rate. If he says he killed Quon Ma, then I believe him.”

  “So what are you trying to say? My man’s wrong? That my contact—who I can assure you I’ve known for more bloody years than I care to count and relied upon time and again—is seeing ghosts?”

  “If Ma’s still alive, why hasn’t he contacted you?”

  “Because he’s safer if whoever it is who tried to kill him knows he’s dead. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to figure that out.”

  “Okay, let’s suppose for a moment that your people are right and Ma is still alive. What can we do about it? Will Amocacci ask for the money back?”

  Willham was quiet for a moment, and his lack of an immediate response told Savitch those wheels were turning. Willham had an utterly convoluted mind, and Savitch admitted that at times he had difficulty keeping up with the British agent’s intuition, let alone his keen intellect.

  “He won’t.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “As long as Ma is able to maintain the legitimacy of his alleged demise, Amocacci and the rest of the Council will have no reason to doubt it.”

  “It will, of course, create a delay in our plans since Kirklareli will soon be overrun with MSS agents looking to capture the assassin.”

  “I don’t see that happening.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ma knows just as well as we do that if the Chinese government believes him to be dead they will respond in force. Ma can’t let that happen since it would risk exposing him before he’s conducted his own search for the assassin. No—until his people have the opportunity to learn everything they can about the reasons behind this incident, Ma will keep his government at bay. He will tell the upper echelon, and he will most assuredly keep them at arm’s length.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Savitch admitted.

  “Well, that’s why I don’t require you to do any of the thinking.”

  Asshole, Savitch thought.

  “So what are you currently planning to do?”

  “I’m heading to Istanbul. It’s time to do some damage control with Amocacci.”

  “Fine. Just make sure he isn’t aware you’re in the country. He may want to meet with you and we can’t have that,” Willham stated.

  “Understood. So who’s next on the list?”

  “Let’s allow it to die down first. Then we’ll get to work on determining our next step. And, Savitch?”

  “Yes.”

  “No more fuck-ups or any future deals are off. Understood?”

  “Yeah.”

  With that, Willham hung up. Savitch would have liked to reach through the phone and choke the pompous jackass to death, but he knew he had to work with Willham as long as possible. It was important to stroke the guy’s ego and keep him on Savitch’s side. Eventually, Willham would probably be like all the others and outlive his usefulness, and Savitch would hav
e to deal with him in the same way he’d dealt with those who’d come before him. But until that day, Savitch would collect as much of a payday and as often as possible.

  After all, there was still so much money to be made.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Istanbul, Turkey

  Mack Bolan sat in the taxi as rain hammered the roof. The driver had stopped at the curb in front of one of the city’s fancier hotels. According to the Executioner’s intelligence, Gastone Amocacci was known to frequent the hotel because of its excellent restaurant. Apparently the food and drink in this place was some of the best to be found, and Amocacci was known to avail himself of places just like it after a long day in his front job.

  Bolan had been waiting outside the hotel for the past twenty minutes. He could see the driver was beginning to get impatient, and he wondered if maybe he should let the guy drop him a few blocks away and rendezvous with Maxwell and his men.

  As if fate had read the warrior’s mind, Bolan felt the vibration of his cell phone. He withdrew the device and put it to his ear. “Yes?”

  “We just spotted his car passing us, sir,” Maxwell said.

  “Good eye,” Bolan stated. “I’ll take it from here. We’ll go just as planned. Fifteen minutes and you park in front of the hotel as conspicuously as possible.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Bolan paid the cabbie with a hefty tip and exited the vehicle.

  Once inside the hotel, Bolan trolled the lobby until he found a plush wing-backed chair that afforded him an unobstructed view of the front doors. He removed his drenched overcoat, sat and took a complimentary magazine from a nearby coffee table. He crossed his legs casually and began to thumb through it. He knew the ruse wouldn’t work with a guy like Amocacci. The former Interpol intelligence agent would spot him as a phony the minute he laid eyes on him. Good. Bolan hoped to play on Amocacci’s natural paranoia and use that to get inside his guard.

  Bolan didn’t have to wait long. Amocacci came through the front doors a minute later and the Executioner locked eyes with him only a moment before returning to his magazine. Amocacci didn’t even break stride and Bolan smiled as if he’d read something amusing, when in fact he knew he’d played his cards right. Amocacci had definitely made Bolan for being more than just a casual observer or guest of the hotel. Now all Bolan had to do was wait.

  Amocacci went to the front desk, which Bolan found a bit odd. Intelligence had it that Amocacci only availed himself of the restaurant. For all they knew he’d never rented a suite at the hotel. Not that he couldn’t afford it.

  Bolan began to sift through the possibilities. Amocacci might be checking for messages, or he might have some sort of connection with the hotel staff. It was possible he was doing this because he’d spotted Bolan. A guy with Amocacci’s background would definitely have alternate plans in place should he think he’d come under observation.

  Bolan wondered if what transpired now was something similar to the events that led to Alara Serif’s disappearance. Of course, they had plenty of evidence to indicate Serif’s captors had tailed her vehicle and then attempted to spring their trap at the most opportune time. But for them to do that they would have to have seen her as a threat. For her to be a threat, Amocacci would have known she’d been tailing him to begin with. The most disturbing aspect of that thought was the viability of Serif’s analysis. If Amocacci had known he was under surveillance, had he fed Serif a whole bunch of false leads? If so, nothing she’d reported back to Washington could be trusted.

  Bolan mentally filed that fact and determined he’d have to exercise a double measure of caution.

  After Amocacci finished having a discussion with the desk clerk, he turned and headed for the elevator. Bolan stood and started to walk toward him, but he didn’t get on. He waited out of sight for the doors to close and then watched as the ticker counted up to the fifth floor. It paused there for a moment and then began to descend again, but oddly instead of stopping at ground level it bypassed and continued to the first and only underground level.

  Bolan had studied the layout of the hotel when first choosing it as his mark, and he knew the basement included laundry and kitchen facilities and a staff access to underground parking for deliveries and employees. Bolan waited at the elevator bank for another minute or so and then when a young couple arrived and pushed the button for the elevator, he turned and went in search of the stairs.

  He found the stairwell a minute later and immediately headed toward the basement level. Amocacci’s attempt to fool him had been sloppy, at best. Amocacci had probably planned for Bolan to take the stairs or another elevator to the fifth floor and not wait to see if the elevator returned to the ground level. It was a pretty good bet there were some goons waiting on the fifth floor, either in the stairwell or hallway near the elevators, or both. They’d have a really long wait.

  The Executioner pushed open the metal door after peering through a small, wire-meshed glass window. The door opened onto a long, narrow corridor that terminated at another door identical to the first. Something pricked the hairs on Bolan’s neck and he liberated his Beretta 93-R from shoulder leather, keeping his back to the wall as he proceeded up the narrow corridor. He was thankful for the sparse, recessed lighting fixtures because the close space would have been like shooting fish in a barrel for even the worst shot.

  Bolan reached the far door unscathed. He peered through the window and saw that it opened onto the parking garage. From that vantage point he could make out the doors off to the right that led to probably other service areas such as the kitchen and laundry. He also spotted a service elevator and its position suggested it had been the one ridden by Amocacci.

  The Executioner verified nobody was visible and started to open the door when he heard movement behind him and the freeing of the door latch. He turned and crouched in time to avoid the volley of autofire unloaded by two men toting machine pistols.

  Bolan leveled the Beretta in a two-handed grip and squeezed the trigger. He’d set the weapon for 3-round bursts. The first two rounds caught one of the enemy assailants in the gut and tore through organs and tender flesh. The third punched through his chest and drove him into the back wall.

  The other man went to his belly and tried to reacquire a sight picture on Bolan, but the Executioner beat him to the punch. Bolan took aim and snapped off another three rounds. The man’s head exploded as the 9 mm hardball slugs caved in his head and smashed through brain tissue, erupting in a bloody spray that painted the area around him in red splotches.

  The echo of gunfire died and Bolan rose and went back to the door. He pushed through and emerged onto the parking garage. The area was more open and gave him a larger span to cover, but at least he had running room and it reduced the risk of being caught in narrow confines should his enemy attempt to pin him down with a cross fire. Bolan crossed the expanse in no time and reached a set of heavy, double doors. He tried a handle, found it unlocked, and then checked his flank before proceeding through the opening.

  Bolan eased the door closed behind him and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. He’d thought this would take him into the kitchen, but instead he found himself in what looked like the boiler room. It was hot and loud, and surrounded by plenty of metal and concrete. There was no better place to find cover from gunfire, although the increased risk of being hit by ricochets was a given.

  Bolan ventured farther into the boiler room and soon found a set of concrete steps that seemed to lead even deeper into the bowels of the hotel. Bolan descended, anyway, thumbing the Beretta’s selector switch to single-shot mode and proceeding with the pistol extended to arm’s length at eye level. There was a light at the bottom of the steps, and just beyond that, a man stood with his back to the stairs, leaning against the wall with his weapon slung casually over his shoulder.

  The Executioner holstered his pistol, cat-footed his way t
o the guard and pounced, twisting the weapon in such a way that the sling pinned the man’s arm to his side. He then snaked his left forearm around the guy’s neck and clamped the muscles against the guard’s throat. He wrapped the hand of the choking arm behind the buttstock of the rifle, which acted as a counter brace and made the chokehold stronger than it would have been without support.

  Within thirty seconds the guard lost consciousness and Bolan eased his limp body to the ground.

  The corridor the sentry had been guarding terminated at a dead end. Bolan continued along the concrete wall that dripped with dampness, turning to look behind him to ensure another ambush didn’t ensue while also watching the area ahead. Two doors stood in the wall to his right, the opposite being either an exterior supporting or stem wall, perhaps part of the foundation. The first room he found was empty. The second room he encountered was quite another story. Lying in a reddish bath of light, crunched together on a bunk with her back to him, was a young woman with long dark hair.

  Through the small open slot of the window Bolan called, “Alana Serif?”

  The woman came awake with a start, flipped her entire body on the bunk and peered at him with dark, intense eyes that seemed afire in the red glow of the single dim light high on the cell wall.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name is Colonel Brandon Stone. I’m with the DIA.”

  “Please tell me you’re here to rescue me.”

  “I wasn’t,” Bolan said. As he saw her face begin to fall he added, “But I am now. Just hang tight while I figure out how to get you out of here.”

  “Did you neutralize the guard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Check his pockets—he’s the one with the keys.”

  Bolan nodded and went immediately to the fallen guard. He rifled through the pants’ pockets first, then checked the breast pockets and finally found a large key. Bolan rushed back to the door of the makeshift cell, opened it and stepped inside. He went to the foot of her bunk and spied the restraint. He withdrew a pocketknife and quickly cut through the leather, since he didn’t have the key to the small lock holding the restraint in place.