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  He looked closer at Bolan. “We do time together?”

  “Quite the opposite.”

  “Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Winslow demanded. Then his eyes went wide. “It’s you!”

  Bolan gave a nod. “Me.”

  “B-b-but...” He stopped to start again. “I thought we had a deal!”

  “Did and do,” Bolan said. “The last time we meet, I let you walk in exchange for some information and your promise to forget all about me.”

  “Vital information, you said,” Winslow muttered, sweat appearing on his forehead.

  Bolan nodded. “At the time, it was vital. But that only bought you one free pass, James. Now, toss the piece.”

  With obvious reluctance, Jimmy reached inside his vest and, using only two fingers, hauled out a titanic .357 Remington Magnum automatic pistol. Jerking his wrist, he sent the weapon sailing away to land in the pile of sawdust near the washroom.

  “Smart move,” Bolan said, turning to aim both weapons at the door at the top of the stairs. A long minute passed in silence, when suddenly there came the sound of muffled shouts and running feet on the other side.

  Firing both guns, Bolan hammered the padded door, the leather cover ripping away, the wood underneath splintering. Even louder shouts could now be heard as the running noises quickly faded away.

  “That’ll hold them for about ten minutes,” Bolan said, turning. “By then, I’ll be long gone.”

  “And me?” Winslow asked.

  “That all depends upon what you can tell me,” Bolan stated, reloading one of his guns then the other.

  Relaxing slightly, Winslow sat back in the patched leather chair. “About what?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  “James, I have no use for stupid people,” Bolan stated, leveling his gun.

  With a sigh, Winslow leaned on the table and templed his hands. “Right, my recent departure from the Iron Hotel.”

  “Ten prisoners and six guards were killed by the initial explosions,” Bolan said in a monotone. “Fifty more escaped prisoners died when the Claymore mines were turned on. Running into the hills, ten were crippled by dogs, sixteen shot by police, two by civilian hunters, four died in a car crash and one guy voluntarily went back—said that he just wanted a beer.”

  “Pussy,” Winslow said, sneering.

  “And then there’s you, the only prisoner to truly escape,” Bolan said slowly. “Jimmy the Snake, small-time art forger, with less than a year remaining on his original nickel. Nobody in the world would pay a fortune to bust your sorry ass out of jail. No offense.”

  Jimmy waved it aside. “None taken. I’m small change. Always have been. That’s why I survive when the big boys start killing each other. Don’t want to be king, just a small slice of the pie.”

  “Steal a little, leave a little.”

  “Exactly! Live and let live!”

  “And yet half of Preston is in rubble, dozens of people are dead but here you sit sipping bourbon.” Bolan paused expectantly.

  “Look, I had nothing to do with those deaths,” Winslow said earnestly. “Nothing!”

  “Convince me.”

  Glancing around the empty bar as if afraid that he still might be overhead, Winslow brushed back his hair and took a deep breath. “Look, I was asleep in my bunk when, wham, the whole world explodes. Sounded like the damn place had been nuked! There’s fire and smoke, and my cellmate is legging it out through a hole in the wall, then running to a helicopter.”

  “Do you know what kind of a helicopter it was?”

  “It kind of looked like a Black Hawk.”

  “Who was your cellmate?”

  “Ziggy Nine.”

  “Now you’re lying to me, James,” Bolan growled. “Lynn Fairweather died in the riot.”

  “Holy shit. Is that his real name?” Winslow laughed in astonishment. “No wonder he used Ziggy Nine!”

  “Goodbye, James,” Bolan said, leveling the pistols.

  “Whoa, dude! I ain’t lying!” Winslow replied hastily, raising both hands. “I saw him running to get on the copter. The guy is alive. I swear. Alive!”

  Bolan paused. There had been a mention of an unauthorized helicopter in the area. He had assumed it was for Winslow, which made no sense. But if Ziggy Nine was involved...

  Lynn Fairweather, better known by the street name of Ziggy Nine, origin unknown, was one of the biggest manufacturers of crystal meth in North America. Fairweather was worth about half a billion dollars, most of it safely hidden in offshore accounts that the Feds couldn’t find.

  “Details,” Bolan commanded, clicking back a hammer.

  “It was midnight, or close enough,” Winslow said quickly, the words rushing together in his haste to appease. “When bang, crash! Suddenly alarms went off, the lights died and every cell opened. All of them! It was like Christmas, baby! Everybody headed for the yard, but I decided to tag along with Ziggy. That nice big hole was just sitting there...”

  “Waste not, want not.”

  “Exactly! We’re scrambling through a maze of crumbling shit, broken bricks coming down like meteors. Pow! Some guards show up just as a section of the roof collapses and they go down hard. Squashed like bugs. I tried to help, but...” The man spread his arms wide.

  “Keep going,” Bolan said impatiently.

  Pouring himself a shot, Winslow tossed it back. “Anyway, I did an Elvis.... You know, left the building.” He waited for a laugh, but when none came, he hurriedly continued. “So, anyway, I make it into the exercise yard, and there was the helicopter! I figured it was waiting for Ziggy, and headed over to see if I could get a lift. I mean, we were cellmates! But as I ran over, this short guy with slicked-back hair and a goatee steps out of the thing and starts spraying every con in sight with this old-fashioned Thompson.”

  “How short?”

  “Dunno, shorter than me...and crazy.”

  “Crazy how?”

  Winslow frowned. “Kill crazy. The guy was smiling when he shot folks. Laughed when a guard begged for mercy. He drew a pistol to nail the poor guy right between the eyes.”

  “And you saw all of this?”

  “Yeah, from behind a pile of bricks! When Mr. Thompson started to sing, I got out of there.” Winslow paused. “Fast as I could. It was chaos. There were cons running all over the yard by then. Several of them even tried to get on the helicopter in spite of Shortie, and he gunned them down like dogs in the street.”

  “Did you actually see Ziggy get on the helicopter?”

  “See? No, but he made a beeline for it.” Reaching for the whiskey, Winslow poured a shot glass full, but this time only took a small sip. “But where else could he have gone? Everything was on fire, the sirens are going, bombs are still exploding, people are screaming. Shortie’s in the helicopter, shooting people like it’s the end of the world, so I head for the largest gap in the outer wall and start running. Didn’t stop until I was out of state.” Winslow shrugged. “Stole some clothes from a laundry, jacked a car, got back home, my friends throw me a welcome-home party...” He smiled. “You know the rest.”

  The story was incredible, but had the distinct ring of truth. “Kill anybody on the way?” Bolan asked in a deceptively easy voice.

  “Nope, not my style. I’m a lover, not a fighter!” Winslow scowled. “Probably couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. Every inch of me hurt, nose to nuts. Didn’t get shot or anything, but every inch of me aches.”

  “That’s from the concussion of the blasts,” Bolan said, finally convinced. “You don’t really feel it at the time, adrenaline numbs you to the pain, but afterward...”

  “Yeah, afterward. Felt like I had been beaten with a baseball bat.” Winslow shook his head in remembrance. “Back in Riker, I was once actually beaten by a baseball bat, so
I know what I’m talking about!”

  “Been there,” Bolan said in a friendly voice, knowing Rikers Island, New York, was one of the toughest prisons in the world. Winslow had been lucky it was only a baseball bat and not a lead pipe.

  There were so many tattered bodies at the Preston prison, it would have been easy for Ziggy to cut himself and leave some fresh blood for the CSI teams to find and identify his DNA. It was exactly what Bolan had thought. Jimmy Winslow’s escape had been a coincidence. The whole operation had been to simply get one man, a multimillionaire, out of prison. Bolan wondered if Ziggy was rich anymore. That type of breakout didn’t come cheap.

  “So...we’re square?” Winslow asked, hope rich in his words.

  Before Bolan could respond, there came a thundering explosion from upstairs. The entire club shook so hard the remaining bottles rattled behind the bar and people began screaming in the distance.

  “Get under the table!” Bolan commanded, leveling his weapons. “Pretend you’re dead!”

  “What’s happening?” Winslow asked, clearly confused. “Is it the cops?”

  “When you got a look at the short man in the helicopter,” Bolan snapped, “did he also see you? Through all of the fire and the smoke?”

  “Sure, the wind from the blades forced back the smoke,” Winslow said, his smile disappearing. “But I’m a nobody! Who’d ever—”

  Suddenly the door behind the bar crashed open and several men charged into the room firing handguns in every direction.

  Diving to the side, Bolan rolled across the floor, spraying 9 mm rounds from the Beretta machine pistol at the dimly seen legs of the invaders. Several of them shouted in pain and fell clutching the gushing wounds. As each of them hit the floor, Bolan triggered the Desert Eagle, the booming .50 rounds ending their lives in ghastly eruptions of bones, brains and blood.

  Reloading again as he rolled away, Bolan got a brief glimpse of a fat man wearing combat boots entering the room. Fearing the worst, Bolan rolled to his feet and saw the man aim an M79 grenade launcher at a cringing Jimmy Winslow and pull the trigger.

  Diving for cover, Bolan was still in the air when a thunderclap shook the entire tavern. Violently thrown against the wall, the Executioner cracked his head on the paneling and everything went blurry for a moment.

  Crouching, he shook his head to clear it, then kicked over a table, both guns out and ready for battle. But there was nobody else in sight, only roiling black smoke. Straining to hear any movements over the ringing in his ears, the soldier moved fast along the splintered wall paneling and past the broken door to the washroom, until reaching the overturned pool table. He paused for a moment as a horrible wave of nausea swept through his body, then with a sheer effort of iron will, Bolan stood and raced around the mounds of burning rubbish to reach the former location of the bar. As expected, the newcomers were gone.

  Ramming through the swinging exit door, he charged through a storeroom and up a flight of stairs until emerging into the cool night. Instinctively taking cover behind an old station wagon, Bolan scowled over the hood at a parking lot full of assorted cars, old and new. Roughly a dozen of them were revving their engines and heading off in different directions, mostly with the headlights on, but some without. It was total chaos and Bolan had no way of knowing which cars contained the assassins.

  Reluctantly holstering his weapon, the soldier headed for his own car parked a few blocks away. There was nothing more that he could do here, and the police were probably already on the way.

  Reaching the corner, Bolan dimly heard a muffled underground explosion and glanced back over a shoulder. The old plywood was gone from the windows of the warehouse and the entire building sagged just before bursting into flames.

  Chapter 3

  San Diego, California

  Staring intently at the corrugated steel floor between her shoes, Seanan MacGuire was deeply lost in thought when the state prison van suddenly slowed to a stop.

  “That was a short trip,” she said to nobody in particular.

  “Too damn short,” stated a man similarly chained on the other side of the armored van.

  There were six prisoners chained inside the vehicle, four men and two women, heading toward...wherever. MacGuire had heard the name of the penitentiary. But after the judge had pronounced her guilty, her mind sort of lost focus and everything after that was a blurred jumble of people in uniforms, cold hands touching her, clipboards, handcuffs, shackles on her ankles, rising, walking, sitting, rising and finally a lot of boring sitting.

  In her research about prison, MacGuire had learned some valuable things, the top one being that she did not want to ever go to prison, even the so-called minimum-security ones. They were jokingly called “state-run country clubs,” but she saw little difference between those and any of the other medieval institutes of confinement.

  “Guard, what’s happening?” a prisoner at the front of the van demanded in a loud voice. When there was no reply, he wrapped the metal of his handcuffs against the connecting door. “Hey, I gotta use the bathroom!”

  Silence.

  “Something is wrong,” a big bald man muttered, his arms and neck covered with crude tattoos.

  “Brilliant,” MacGuire said with a sneer. “What was your first clue?”

  Slowly the bald man turned toward her. “If you weren’t going to a different prison, fish, we’d be having a lot of fun tonight.”

  She grinned back. “You mean, searching for your lost balls?”

  Just then both rear doors were thrown open and everybody inside the van flinched at the intrusion of bright sunlight.

  Protecting her face with a raised hand, MacGuire could only dimly see black shapes in the glare and guessed that this was more than sunlight. Headlights from a truck or maybe an arc light?

  “Kill it,” somebody said.

  There was an audible crackle of electricity and the glare began to ease. The shapes took on form and color, and soon MacGuire could see a large group of men and women standing on the road. They were all wearing National Guard uniforms and some weird sort of body armor, and carrying Russian assault rifles. None of them seemed to be wearing name badges or even dog tags.

  The group was clustered around a large truck: a bread delivery van. The rear doors were open and inside the van was a searchlight, one of those huge monsters that large companies used to sweep the sky and announce some important event, such as a really big sale or a new movie.

  “There are two women,” a corporal growled, craning his neck to look over the shackled prisoners.

  “That’s her, the dye job,” a lieutenant said, pointing at MacGuire.

  “I’m a natural blond,” MacGuire growled defensively.

  The lieutenant chuckled. “Liar.”

  She scowled in reply. The man was short, but compactly built. He reminded her of a closed fist, all bones and muscle. There was a little rosebud in the lapel of his uniform, his hair was slicked down and a tiny diamond sparkled from his left earlobe.

  Several fake soldiers lumbered into the van, and one of them dropped to a knee and started working on the shackles attached to her ankles.

  “Rook to queen four?” MacGuire whispered, her face bright with hope.

  “Checkmate,” the lieutenant said without looking up from the clipboard.

  “Thank God,” MacGuire exhaled, her voice almost breaking with a sob.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” the bald prisoner demanded, rattling his handcuffs.

  “Shut up,” a private snapped. Pulling a small box from a pocket, he started pointing it everywhere inside the vehicle.

  “According to the police records, there are no hidden surveillance cameras,” the lieutenant said, patting a clipboard.

  “Never hurts to double-check,” the private said grimly, finally tucking awa
y the compact device. “But you were right. No bugs. It’s clean.”

  “Hey...you’re not soldiers,” a young prisoner called out, his face scrunched in confusion.

  “Wow, check out Einstein junior,” a corporal snorted, jerking a thumb at the teenager.

  The prisoner seemed offended. “I didn’t mean nothing.”

  “Then shut up.”

  “But—”

  Flipping over the AK-47, the corporal rammed the wooden stock into the prisoner’s face. Violently thrown backward, the teenager slammed into the steel wall and slumped over, a sticky trail of blood smeared along the steel.

  “Anybody else?” the corporal asked, raising the rifle for another strike.

  Nobody spoke or moved.

  There was a hard click and MacGuire looked down to see the shackles open. As the private gently pried them off, MacGuire reached down to massage her ankles. “Thank you!”

  “All part of the service, ma’am,” the private said, touching two fingers to his forehead in a sort of salute.

  “Hey, if you’re letting people go, do me next!” the bald man shouted, rattling his chains.

  “Sorry, you’re not on the list,” the lieutenant said, sliding the clipboard under an arm.

  That made the rest of the prisoners start growling and muttering.

  “List? The hell with that. Look, I got cash,” the bald man started, trying to rise. “Tons of it! Almost a million bucks hidden away safe and secure.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” the lieutenant replied, walking closer to extend a hand.

  Clumsily, MacGuire shuffled to the edge of the van, and he helped her step down to the grass. That caught her off guard. Grass? The highway was nowhere in sight. The prison van was parked near the edge of a grassy field, pine trees rising tall on every side.

  There were several still forms sprawled in the weeds, the tattered clothing soaked with blood, and shiny objects sparkled in the grass. MacGuire frowned. Spent brass casings? It looked like there had been a major firefight between the National Guardsmen and the prison guards, but she didn’t recall hearing anything unusual, not even a single shot.