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  Stopping at the front portico, Bolan tossed the van’s keys to a hesitant valet, whose demeanor changed instantly when the soldier flashed him a U.S. one-hundred bill for a tip, and strolled inside.

  “Welcome to Grand Imperial, sir!” a showgirl said, flashing perfect teeth. She was dressed in nylons and sequins, feathers and a headdress, but her breasts were completely bare, aside from a light dusting of gold.

  Smiling politely, Bolan shook her hand and went inside. The lobby was filled with slot machines, both the old-fashioned mechanical ones with an actual lever, the classic “one-armed bandit,” plus the new computerized versions with a swipe for your credit card, and a cushioned seat where you could relax and comfortably lose every penny you had in the world.

  The main room was enormous and overly decorated with oil paintings, mirrors, ferns, chandeliers and velvet ropes. Just as in every other casino in existence, the crowd was excited but quiet, the general murmur of the patrons barely discernable over the chiming of the slot machines, ringing bells and the calls of the dealers. Most of it was in Portuguese, the language of Brazil. However, Bolan understood some of the more familiar phrases.

  “Twenty-one, a winner!”

  “Craps, sir, you lose.”

  “New player!”

  “Fresh deck!”

  “Next!”

  An endless parade of feathered showgirls in outrageous outfits strolled along, offering free drinks to everybody. Lubricant for the opening of hesitant wallets. Along one wall were several small auditoriums with glass windows in front, soundproof, of course. Customers could see the show, but not hear what was being said, which lured them inside like sheep to the shearing. On one stage, a magician was sawing a topless woman in two, while in the next, fifty topless women were dancing in some bizarre version of the French cancan, and a third stage held a stand-up comic talking into a mike, the audience silently throwing back their heads with laughter.

  Just then, a casino guard started to walk his way. The man held a radio in his hand to call for help in case of trouble, but his belt held a stun gun, pepper spray, handcuffs and a police baton. All of which weren’t necessary, since he looked more than capable of benchpressing a fully loaded Cadillac Eldorado.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but weapons are not permitted on the casino floor,” the guard said in perfect English.

  “Good to know,” Bolan replied, impressed that the guard could tell he was armed. Most guards wouldn’t have been able to do that. Clearly, he had been trained by an expert. “Now, please call the Gorgon, and tell him to haul ass down here, pronto.”

  The guard scowled. “Who was that again, sir?”

  “Just ask Security, and tell them somebody has a message for the Gorgon.”

  “We have nobody here by that name, sir,” the guard said, as four more guards come out of the crowd. Their faces were smiling, but their body language told an entirely different story.

  “Just do it. Bill Kirkland and I are old friends,” Bolan said calmly, keeping his hands by his side. A gunfight with unarmed men in the middle of a crowd was absolutely the very last thing he wanted here.

  As the guards formed a tight wall around Bolan, the first one made the call. Almost instantly, there was a response.

  “The Gorgon?” a voice crackled over the radio. “Nobody has ever had the balls to call me that except for… Mack, is that you?”

  “None other, Bill,” Bolan said toward the radio. “Nice to see you’re doing so well.”

  “What was that?” William Kirkland crackled over the radio. “Sergeant Padestro! Please give Mr… .Smith the radio and return to your usual duties.”

  The cadre of guards visibly relaxed as the first passed over the radio. Then they departed without a backward glance.

  “Your staff is well-trained,” Bolan said, thumbing the transmit button, while turning toward the video camera in the ceiling.

  “Damn well should be. Did it myself,” Kirkland told him. “Man, I never thought to see you again, old buddy. Head for the private elevator near that statue of Pegasus and come on up! I’ll have the chef slap a couple of T-bones on the grill, and we’ll start toasting the fact that we’re not dead yet.”

  “Sounds good, but I’m here to collect on a debt.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Be right down.” Kirkland sighed, and the radio went dead.

  Going over to the marble statue of the famous winged horse, Bolan gave the radio to a passing security guard. He had to wait only a few minutes before the gold-tinted doors to a private elevator opened and a large man walked out wearing an expensive three-piece suit.

  Born and raised in the Scottish Highlands, former NATO Special Agent William “The Gorgon” Kirkland stood over six feet tall and appeared more than ready to repel Roman legionaries from his beloved homeland.

  Painfully clean-shaven, with a dimple in his lantern jaw, Kirkland had a suit of military body armor slung over a shoulder and was carrying a black nylon equipment bag that clanked with every step.

  “Bill,” Bolan said in greeting.

  “Prick,” Kirkland muttered in reply, then broke into a broad smile. “Damn, it’s good to you again. Even under these circumstances.”

  “Same here.” Bolan chuckled. This close, he could catch glimpses of military tattoos under the other man’s silk collar, and hidden up both sleeves. Having patched bulletholes in his friend, Bolan knew that Kirkland was covered with enough tattoos, some of them extremely unsuitable for public display, that he could have been an exhibit in one of his casino’s sideshows.

  “Okay, who do we kill?” Kirkland asked, shifting the body armor to a more comfortable position.

  “As ever, the soul of tact.” Bolan laughed, offering a hand.

  “Why change perfection?” Kirkland grinned as they shook.

  A passing waitress paused for a moment to smile openly at the two huge men, then sighed and walked away, but put a little more motion into her hind quarters than was normal.

  “I think she likes you,” Kirkland noted.

  “I think she knows you own the place.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Dreamer.”

  “But hey, it came true!” Kirkland gestured grandly with his free arm. “I own a casino! Welcome to Wild Bill’s Old West Palladium of Honest Cards, Easy Women and Cold Beer!”

  “Now called the Grand Imperial.”

  “A minor name change, I assure you.”

  “Love to hear the story,” Bolan said, checking his watch, “but we’re short on time. Are you ready to travel?”

  “Money, guns and passports, right here,” Kirkland said, jiggling the equipment bag.

  “Now why would a respectable citizen like yourself have need of more than one passport?” Bolan asked, suppressing a grin.

  “Believe it or not, there are a couple of countries where William ‘The Gorgon’ Kirkland wouldn’t be greeted with open arms.”

  “More like ‘open fire’?”

  “It has been known to happen,” Kirkland said with a shrug. “Okay, where to first, Sarge?”

  Bolan noted the change in address. “I have some supplies stored just outside of town, then I’ve arranged a very expensive off-the-grid flight to Miami,” Bolan said as he began walking around the statue. “We need to pick up an expert in advanced electronics.”

  “Sure, not a problem. I know a guy… Wait, did you say Miami?” Ki
rkland asked, stopping in his tracks. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t to do that to me.”

  Bolan said nothing.

  “Damn it, Sarge, you are a prick,” Kirkland growled, angrily starting forward once more. “Fine, okay, she can come! But if that crazy bitch ever mentions what happened in Hong Kong, I’ll take her over my knee for a bare-bottom spanking that’ll have her eating off a fireplace mantel for a week!”

  “I’d love to see that,” Bolan said. “Because immediately afterward, Heather would rip out your beating heart and shove it up your ass.”

  Kirkland grinned in memory. “Yeah, she’s something special, all right.”

  “One of the best knife fighters I’ve ever seen.”

  “And I have the scars to prove it!”

  “Me, too.”

  As the men exited the casino, Bolan saw that the staff had already brought around a Rolls-Royce, and a liveried chauffeur was holding open the rear door.

  “Not today, James, I’ll be slumming it with this hobo for a while,” Kirkland said in passing. “Don’t do anything on the Duesy until I get back.”

  “Whatever you say, sir,” James said in heavily accented English. “Any idea when that might be?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Very good, sir,” James said, closing the door to the Rolls. “Then I shall continue the modifications on the Lamborghini until your return.”

  “Good man.”

  “You own a Duesenberg?” Bolan asked, giving the ticket for the van to a valet.

  Casting a brief glance at Kirkland, the teenager bolted toward the parking garage as if his pants were on fire.

  “I have a few,” Kirkland boasted, then added, “Won the new one in a poker game. Okay, she’s a total wreck, but Jimmy and I will get it running again. He’s a wizard at remanufacturing antique parts.”

  “Nice to have a hobby,” Bolan said cautiously, then felt compelled to add, “Bill, maybe you shouldn’t come along on this. It could get rough.”

  “Rougher than Afghanistan, Beirut or the Congo?”

  “Maybe,” Bolan admitted, “and you’ve been pushing papers for a long time.”

  In a blur, Kirkland pulled a Webley .455 revolver from inside his jacket, only to see that Bolan had a Beretta out and ready.

  “You were saying?” Kirkland asked coolly.

  “Never mind,” Bolan replied, holstering the weapon.

  Just then, the van arrived. Bolan unlocked the rear doors and Kirkland stowed his equipment inside.

  As Bolan got behind the wheel, Kirkland climbed in the passenger side and closed the door. “Okay, we’re alone now,” he said, pulling out the Webley to start loading the empty revolver. “Start talking.”

  “How much do you know about lightning?” Bolan asked, pulling away from the curb to merge into the busy stream of traffic.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mumbai, India

  A hard cold rain pelted the sprawling expanse of the eastern metropolis. Thunder constantly rumbled, and sheet lightning flashed from cloud to cloud, occasionally hitting the ground in a blazing display of nature unbridled.

  Glistening skyscrapers of glass and steel dominated the vast landscape of gated homes, stores and tar-paper shacks. Freight trains moved slowly along the complex network of railroads, and the mighty Ganges River was high, threatening at any moment to overflow its banks and flood the city.

  Washed clean by the unrelenting downpour, the downtown streets were nearly empty of merchants and tourists, unusual for the teeming city. The day’s accumulation of trash was gone, flushed into the wide drains, and the traffic was reduced to taxicabs, trolley cars and the mandatory army of unstoppable bike messengers. Only the street people remained.

  Music came from a hundred locations: tea shops, taverns, restaurants, discotheques, open apartment windows and electronics stores blaring their latest acquisitions to the world. In the hills, a wedding party continued full-force, undampened by the weather, a cadre of eunuchs dressed as women dancing in front of the house to wish the new couple good luck. Down by the busy docks, a Bollywood crew was frantically trying to film a sequel to an unexpectedly popular science fiction movie.

  A gantry rose high above the crew, technicians, stunt men and government safety inspectors checking the rig attached to the hero. The maze of wires were all painted dark green so that a computer could easily remove them in the lab.

  “Are we ready?” the director said into a hand mike, the words booming out of amplifiers safe inside canvas tents. “Okay then, we go on three…two…one!”

  Backflipping through a store window, the dashingly handsome hero launched into the air using his high-tech battlesuit. Instantly, a woman screamed, a dozen prop cars exploded into wild flames, and a hundred bearded assassins opened fired on rooftops with Russian machine guns and Chinese assault weapons. Easily smashing his way through them, the hero scooped up the woman in his arms and launched into the sky, circling around a billboard promoting a local jeans company.

  “Cut! Great job!” the director said. “Everybody to second marks, and we’ll do the big fight scene!”

  Standing on the sixteenth floor of the Chandra Building, the executive director of RAW scowled at the dimly heard commands. “Everybody to the second marks.” If the hero didn’t win the first time, then just do it again and again until he did. No problem. If only it was that simple in real life, the man thought.

  In the room behind him, the top agents for RAW were sitting around a large conference desk reviewing Most Secret reports. If their conclusion matched his, then the entire world was in more danger than he could possibly imagine.

  The agency was called RAW, the Research Analysis Wing, and was the external intelligence agency for India. Officially located in New Delhi, the covert agency actually operated out of Mumbai, posing as a legitimate business constructing desalination plants to make sea water drinkable. Which they did, but only as a sideline. Reporting only to the prime minister, the organization had stopped hundreds of terrorist attacks since its creation, and often joined forces with the Americans to eliminate terrorist training camps in Pakistan. RAW helped the Mossad capture Nazi war criminals, assisted Ukraine Intelligence to kill former KGB agents and joined forces with NATO in stopping human trafficking, as well as its usual duties of protecting the nation. But this new threat…

  Watching the water trickle down the bulletproof window, the executive director briefly thought back to the warm summer rains of his childhood, playing in the mud puddles and sailing folded paperboats. Ah, youth. However, with the new information they had just obtained, it would seem as if those days were long gone, as antiquated as a coin-operated payphone.

  “Sir, are you sure this HUMINT is hard?” the agent muttered, rifling through the sheath of documents.

  “Yes, the human intelligence has been confirmed from two different sources,” the executive director replied curtly, folding both hands behind his back.

  “Then he’s back,” another agent stated, crumpling a sheet of paper in his fist.

  With a scowl, the executive director turned away from the window. “So it would appear,” he growled. “What’s more—”

  Suddenly, the unbreakable window vaporized into superheated plasma as it was hit by a lightning bolt, then a second came through the opening and the executive director exploded, his steaming internal organs blown across the conference table. The agents hastily dove for the floor, but a split second later it detonat
ed into blackened splinters. Scrambling for the door, the agents got only halfway there before there was a flash of light, terrible pain and then an endless eternity of soothing darkness.

  Again and again, lightning ravaged the office building, blowing out windows on every story and setting countless fires.

  Meanwhile, the movie cameras continued rolling down on the dockyard. However, they were no longer pointed at the actors, but at the bizarre flurry of violent activity that was slowly destroying the entire Chandra Building.

  Baghdad, Iraq

  IT WAS A SURPRISINGLY COOL DAY in the desert, barely out of the nineties. There was no wind worth mentioning, and the sky was a deep azure-blue.

  A trail of dust rose from behind a low swell in the hard-packed ground, and moments later a speeding Hummer came into view, jouncing and bouncing along the cracked pavement of the new road.

  There had been a lot of new roads poured since the invasion and the subsequent fall of Saddam Hussein. Mostly because the loyalists, terrorists and others kept blowing them up with roadside bombs buried in the loose sand. The crazy Americans called them IEDs, improvised explosive devices. But everybody else in the world simply called them bombs.

  For this day’s mission, the three members of Project Ophiuchus were dressed in loose civilian clothing, black combat boots, sunglasses and kaffiyehs, the latter worn more to disguise their features from orbiting spy satellites than to keep the sand out of their mouths. The desert was merely a part of life, neither good or bad, just something to be endured or ignored.

  “Almost there,” Lieutenant Fahada Nasser said, shifting gears as the Hummer raced around a bomb crater. The sand was sprinkled with broken pieces of exploded machines, black ants feasting on any organic remains.

  Although rather short, the lieutenant had a womanly figure that she did her best to hide under loose uniforms. But her eyes were a dark violet, described as “oddly mysterious” by Interpol in her wanted poster.