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  The softly giggling Arnie had led her out of the chalet and away from the main buildings to the place she had come to think of as a prison cell. And Elena had realized with an awful finality that the only way she would ever see the outside world again was if she escaped.

  Thoughts of Ricke and her imprisonment were driven from her head as a black shape stepped out from behind the shelter of a tree and swung a lump of wood, catching her full in the solar plexus as she ran into it.

  She retched, spitting out strings of bile, then looked up into the wolfish, leering face of Duane.

  “Sugar, you didn’t really think you could outrun me, did you?”

  Chapter 3

  First stop for the soldier was a Miami naval base. Flown in by routine flight from Washington, he alighted and was greeted by the site’s chief security officer, who showed him to a one-story block on the perimeter of the airfield.

  Waiting for him, laid out on a table, was a driver’s license, rental car registration, a billfold with cash and cards, a TEKNA knife and sheath, a Desert Eagle, gleaming and loaded with spare clips, and a shoulder holster. Sitting on a chair by the side of the desk was an attaché case with surveillance equipment including a monocular night vision headset, a camera and monitor with fiber-optic leads, and long-distance eavesdropping equipment with mic and receiver.

  “I didn’t know what kind of ordnance you required, Mr. Cooper, and as for a cell or tablet...well, I figured you’d probably be carrying your own. I can supply extra if you require.”

  Bolan nodded appreciatively. “No, that’ll be fine, chief. You’ve done a great job, thanks. Did they give you any indication of why I’m here?”

  The security man shook his head. “No, sir, and it’s none of my damn business unless someone decides otherwise. The only thing I will say is that should the need arise, you just call in. Someone with your level of clearance has the privilege of telling me to jump, and how high.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, chief, but I appreciate the offer. As for the ordnance, I figure it’s best for all concerned if I sort that out. No trails,” he added cryptically. “There is one thing you could tell me, though.”

  “Just ask,” the chief replied. He was in his late thirties, and had the deep tan of a man who had spent a long time around Miami and the Florida Keys. It was a good bet that he had the kind of local knowledge Bolan needed to tap.

  “I’m heading over toward Griffintown, and I could use any on-the-ground intel that I won’t pick up from regular background. You know the place?” The answer was obvious from the way the chief’s eyebrows raised at the mention of the town, despite his attempts to keep a straight face.

  “If I may say so, sir, it’s a little off the beaten track for anything major to happen. Sleepy, small-town America—the kind of place they’d set some TV melodrama. The only thing that’s happened there for the last fifty years was a recent bank robbery, where the guard was killed, and even that was supposed to be out-of-towners.”

  “Maybe, but isn’t that kind of odd? All my other intel points to the county being a swampland free-for-all. Moonshine and buckshot,” Bolan added for effect.

  “That’s true enough, but you’ve got to remember that they’ve got the Midnight there. No one wants to end up on the front page, so they keep their noses clean. It’s always been one of those tabloids that peddles morality, and as it’s the main job provider, it doesn’t pay to cross them. It helps that a lot of whackos are attracted to the area because of it, too. Guys who want to be abducted by little green men don’t tend to be making moonshine,” he added with a grin.

  “That figures. Plenty of whackos around here, too, right? Cults and communes?”

  “I hear there’s one in an old amusement park, but they act like they’re the Amish, you know? Keep to themselves and don’t have much time for modern technology. They’re harmless.”

  “That’s good,” Bolan said, keeping his voice level. Unless someone had reason to look below the surface, the Seven Stars must seem ineffectual from afar. But then, people had said that about Manson, his family and the Spahn Ranch half a century earlier.

  For now, though, it was best that the security chief keep his illusions intact. Bolan thanked him and left the base, picking up the Ford sedan from the parking lot before heading out of Miami and into the less populated swamplands. Florida had one of the largest populations of any U.S. state, but the people were tightly packed into areas around the coast, such as Tampa and Miami, state capital Tallahassee and the largest single city, Jacksonville.

  That gave Bolan pause for thought. Myres, the security guard who had been brutally struck down, had spent a long and distinguished term of service with the Jacksonville sheriff’s department. Even at his age, he should have been ready for the quartet that had invaded the bank. The fact that they had taken him out so ruthlessly and efficiently suggested that they knew what they were doing, and that they were professional enough to have done their research. This gave the soldier two warnings: one, that they were not going to be caught out on their home turf that easily, and two, that they had sources of information in at least one town in the county. Either that or a source that could cover the whole county...a source such as the sheriff’s office.

  Bolan didn’t want anyone to get a scent of who he was or why he was in the area. That meant the press, the Seven Stars themselves, and maybe even the local law enforcement.

  Extract the target before her value—other than her human value—became a known commodity. Extract her with a minimum of disruption and consequent attention.

  If he was going to do this, he would need more than just a handgun, and he knew where to get ordnance without raising questions or creating ripples in the swamp waters.

  Bolan took the first turnoff on the road out of Miami, which would take him to Kendall. It was one of the smaller cities in the Miami metropolitan area, but it was still big enough to have more than its fair share of criminal activity, and not so small that being there would attract any undue attention.

  Kendall had a number of housing projects and run-down inner-city areas where businesses and homes had gone to the wall, leaving gangs and street corner crime in their wake. But it also had some areas of regeneration that had sprung up before the double dip recession had hit, and in these areas, entrepreneurs had made some good out of the bad. Suburbs that were buoyed by these pockets of cash still had manicured lawns and stucco one-story haciendas with well-maintained pools. It was into one of these areas that Bolan piloted his rented Ford, pulling up before a house whose address he’d had to check with Stony Man. It had been a long time, and maybe his contact had moved. A large sum from one of Bolan’s war chests had also been wired into a bank account connected to the cards he had picked up. He would probably need it.

  Leaving the sedan, Bolan walked across the lawn and through the open side gate. He could hear laughter and voices from the backyard. Three teenage girls in bikinis were frolicking in the pool, splashing each other and laughing. A bony man with cropped graying hair, clad in an orange robe, sat under an umbrella sipping iced tea.

  As Bolan approached, the man spoke without turning around. “You’d better have an appointment, old chap. If not, then a lawyer and a doctor, though maybe not in that order.”

  “Knock knock,” Bolan replied. “If I knew appointments were necessary these days, I would have called. And you can tell your shadow he can drop the piece. If you still talk in those terms. A Glock semi, right? He’d better be accurate if he wants to be stupid, because I’ll bet I’m quicker.”

  “Matt Cooper,” the man murmured in an immaculate—if fake—British accent. “How nice to hear from you again. I always like returning customers, even if they do take several years to come back. Carl,” he added in a louder voice, “do as the man says. He’s not given to exaggerating. And please learn to be a little more discreet.�
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  Bolan glanced over his shoulder. Through the open patio door he could see a man in a floral shirt and shorts lower his gun with a sour glance at the soldier. Bolan allowed himself a small grin. Nothing wrong with his peripheral vision.

  “Don’t be too hard on him, Yates,” Bolan said. “Not many men would have noticed him there.”

  “It only takes one, dear boy,” Yates said, languidly rising from his chair and turning to face the soldier. “You’ve worn well, I’ll give you that. Better than I have. Better than anyone in our business has a right to.”

  “You’re still alive,” Bolan countered. “That’s all that counts. And you’re still pretending to be English.”

  “I am English. At least, my father was. I might have been born in Chicago, but my blood is that of the aristocracy, not the Mafia.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Bolan shrugged. “This is a pool party, is it?” he added, gesturing toward the girls.

  “My daughter. Her mother was my maid. I think she’s back in Mexico now, though I really don’t care. I like her friends to come over.”

  “That’s sweet,” Bolan said heavily. “Now, if you don’t mind, much as I’d like to chew the fat, I’m here to do business.”

  “Of course.” Yates gestured toward the house. Leaving the girls to continue splashing around, seemingly oblivious to the men’s activities, Bolan went in through the patio doors.

  Inside, the house was richly furnished in whites and creams, with splashes of purple from the drapes, rugs and cushions. It had a feminine touch.

  “Carl, stop looking so pissed off and let Mr. Cooper through. He was always a good customer,” Yates said in an almost prissy tone. From the way Carl deferred to him, with a barely concealed petulance, Bolan wondered how the hell the faux Englishman had ever managed to conceive a daughter.

  “He doesn’t look much like a Carl,” Bolan remarked as they descended the stairs hidden by inset shelves. The walls were decorated with hangings depicting historical battles, and as they reached the basement he could see that the heavy oak desk and cases of weapons were more in keeping with the man as he knew him than the decor upstairs. A plasma-screen TV and a laptop were the only signs of the twenty-first century on display. A glass-fronted bookcase contained a large number of old books in lurid dust jackets.

  “He isn’t. That’s just my little conceit. I call him Carl Petersen, just as I call myself Dornford Yates. The IRS call both of us something else completely. Or at least they would if they could find us.”

  “Touching, I’m sure. But that’s none of my concern.”

  “Don’t mind me, I just like to keep the personal touch,” Yates murmured, leading Bolan through an aperture into the three connected rooms that housed the illegal ordnance that had paid for Yates’s luxury.

  Two things came to Bolan’s mind as he followed. The first was that the supposed “personal touch” was an intriguing ruse. Yates was in a position to extract secrets from his customers that would no doubt be useful as leverage, or playing one buyer against the other. The second was more practical: Florida was one of the most waterlogged states in America. Although many richer homes had panic rooms and bunkers, shoring up a basement complex this large must have been expensive and disruptive. To do this unremarked spoke of Yates’s ability to snake out tentacles of influence. Another time, and Bolan would maybe have to take him out of the game. But not now. There was other work to be done.

  Bolan filled two duffel bags with grenades and plastic explosives, a Steyr and ammunition, a micro-Uzi with spare clips and an HK with the same. He had to balance the need for firepower with the need for speed and moving light. As he left the house with the bags, Carl shadowed him, to make sure he did so without delay. Bolan cast an eye toward the girls in the pool and wondered if they had any idea how their friend’s father paid for all this—and whether they would even care if they did know.

  Carl watched the soldier get into the sedan and pull out. Bolan could see him in his rearview mirror as he turned off the quiet suburban street, and he felt a prickle at the back of his neck. Instinct was an inexact science, but it had kept him alive long enough for him not to ignore it.

  * * *

  AS THE SEDAN moved out of sight, Carl went into the backyard, closing the gate behind him. He called out to the girls to make sure they kept it shut, before moving back through the house and down to the basement. Yates was seated at his desk, staring into space.

  “I don’t like him,” Carl said without preamble.

  “We don’t have to like them, we just have to like their money,” Yates replied. “Frankly, I don’t like any of them. But you’re right about Cooper. Terrible name, obviously made up by some desk monkey with no imagination. No man who was completely in the fold would ever need to use a dealer like myself to supply his needs. However, someone who was working in such deep cover that they didn’t officially exist...”

  “If he’s here to cause trouble, then chances are it’s going to be with your customers,” Carl said.

  “Indeed,” Yates said drily as he reached for the phone. “I don’t mind setting them against each other if it makes me a profit, but someone like Cooper is not going to give me that kind of pleasure. If he’s a government man of any stripe, then I think I may have a shrewd suspicion of where he’s headed.” As he spoke, he punched in a number.

  “Ah, Ricke,” he purred into the mouthpiece, “I think I have something that might be of interest to you.... No, no, Duane hasn’t been causing any problems.... I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but I think you should be aware of a few facts that have come to my attention....”

  * * *

  BOLAN TOOK A COUPLE hours to get away from the Miami metropolitan area and out into the county that was his destination. Once he crossed the border, he left the highways and took the smaller roads that led him to Griffintown. By the time he drove down the main drag it was dusk, and some of the larger stores were shut. The smaller mom-and-pop operations were still open, as were the diners and coffee shops. There was no mall on the outskirts of this town, so the streets were still busy. It looked idyllic.

  At one end of the community was the small industrial park that housed the Midnight Examiner’s printing plant and editorial offices. Six stories tall, the building dwarfed everything else in town. In the evening light, it wasn’t too fanciful to see how the town was dominated by the tabloid and its owners. How much they knew about the secretive cult on their stoop was something Bolan wanted to probe, if possible, without alerting an eager staff to a potential story.

  Right now, he needed a hotel, a shower and a chance to study the rest of the intel Kurtzman had sent him, before getting some rest and checking out the area around Eveland.

  He found a quiet hotel with a white-painted wooden facade, a terrace and a swing in the front yard. Inside, the owners had gone for the colonial look. A man who appeared to be the same age as the dead security guard, Myres, signed Bolan in. The ex-soldier and sheriff’s officer should have been doing a job like this, not peddling his waning skills and waiting to be taken down. There was a lesson here, if Bolan cared to pay attention.

  He was shown to his room, then thanked the proprietor, ordered a meal and took a shower. Over steak, Bolan studied the maps and topographic reliefs he’d downloaded. He had a fair idea of what to expect.

  But there was nothing like the real thing.

  Chapter 4

  Bolan left the hotel at sunrise. As this was a soft probe, he dressed in casual clothes rather than his blacksuit, although he wore combat boots for ease of movement on what might prove to be treacherous terrain. He had on a dark T-shirt and pants, with a loose jacket under which he carried the HK, plus spare magazines in his pants’ pockets. The TEKNA knife was sheathed at the small of his back. In one of the duffel bags—the one not safely hidden with the rest of his ordnance
back in his room—he carried the surveillance equipment, audio and visual, he’d picked up in Miami. He didn’t foresee any real dangers at this stage, since he wasn’t expected, as far as he was aware. Nonetheless, caution had to be balanced with traveling light and fast.

  As he drove the sedan through Griffintown he saw very few signs of life—just a couple delivery trucks and a few people on their way to an early start at work. The monolith of the Midnight Examiner building loomed dark and brooding over the town.

  Bolan was no reader of tabloids, but it did strike him as strange that the Seven Stars had never been mentioned in the pages of the Midnight Examiner—at least, not according to the background intel on the group he had asked Stony Man to collate for him. To have a loopy pseudo-religious cult in your backyard would, he assumed, have been perfect for the tabloid’s agenda. It could be worth his while to find out if there was a reason. Anything that might stand in the way of his mission was worth a few minutes’ detour. But right now, there were more pressing matters.

  The road before him was empty. Lush, tropical vegetation and low-lying trees hung over the edges of the black ribbon of asphalt, threatening to take it back and absorb it into the swamps and rich loam that lay beyond.

  He traveled on for several miles until his GPS told him he was approaching the old service road that cut through to the derelict amusement park. He scanned the sides of the highway for a spot where he could pull over and take the sedan into some kind of cover.