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  “We came right here from another assignment,” Bolan said. “There was concern that this might be the first of several attacks.”

  Dorao shook his head. “Let us hope not. But your weapons are of little importance to me at this point.” He gestured toward the elevators. “There were two bodies in the elevator. Others in the security office. Come. I will show you the rest. Upstairs. Be warned. It is not pretty.”

  After leading Bolan and Grimaldi through the rest of the building, pointing out where each fatality had occurred, Dorao looked visibly drained. The last scene was a large room on the second floor into which a group of people had been herded. The floor was splattered with pools of blood. A profusion of small, yellow, plastic markers with bold, black numbers covered the floor, indicating expended shell casings. These were 7.62 mm—rifle shells for an AK-47 or SKS.

  A row of computers and monitors lined up on a series of desks near the inside wall had been totally destroyed, the screens riddled with holes, the computer themselves smashed.

  “They expended a substantial amount of rounds on those,” Bolan said, pointing to the ruined devices.

  “A few computers in the building survived, but are infected with a virus of some sort,” Dorao advised, raising an eyebrow. “Interesting, do you not think?”

  Bolan studied the debris and nodded, saying nothing as he continued to look around. Lines of blood had been scribbled on the lemon-colored wall next to the door. Although the bodies had been removed, the stench of death still hung in the room. Bolan could smell something else, as well...a faint trace of smoke.

  “Was there a fire set in the building?” Bolan asked.

  Dorao nodded. “In the office down the hallway. How did you know?”

  Bolan tapped his index finger against his nose, his face maintaining a grim expression. “Did the sprinkler system activate?”

  Dorao shook his head and shrugged. “The system was turned off.”

  “I’d like to see that area, Inspector,” Bolan said.

  “I will show you.”

  “That say what I think it says?” Grimaldi asked, pointing to the wall.

  Bolan nodded. “Allah akhbar. Arabic. God is great.”

  There were more crime scene technicians taking pictures inside the first office, which had apparently been an administrative section. The floors and walls showed the burned, black arches of an accelerant. A large pile of ashes sat near a series of file cabinets, the drawers of which had been left standing open. The computer monitor had several bullet holes spider-webbing the screen.

  Bolan pointed to the pile of ashes. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

  Dorao raised an eyebrow and then shook his head. “I try to make no assumptions until I have examined all of the evidence.”

  They moved to the other office, which had belonged to Mr. Chevalier, the company president. More blood stained the desk in the anteroom, where the secretary’s body had been found. A similarly damaged computer was on the floor next to her desk. They walked through a door into Chevalier’s office. The back of the leather chair behind the mahogany desk showed a series of bloodstained holes and more blood was centered on the paper blotter on top of the desk.

  “The bodies of Monsieur Chevalier and his personal assistant were found in this room,” Dorao said.

  Bolan glanced around. “You said that all of the computers in the building were damaged?”

  The inspector nodded. “Most of them. As I told you, two were left unharmed but were infected with some sort of virus. This one also had a bullet in it. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  Bolan and Grimaldi exchanged glances. Before they could ask anything further, Dorao’s cell phone rang and he answered it. Bolan tried to follow the one side of the conversation as best he could, but the inspector didn’t say much and his French was much too rapid. As he terminated the call and lowered his hand, his nostrils flared and he stared at the two Americans.

  “Bad news?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Perhaps so, perhaps not,” Dorao said. “More bodies about five kilometers from here.”

  Private Learjet

  Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

  THE TALON GLANCED at his watch and assumed the police would have discovered the bodies in the Chevalier Institute by now. His plan had been perfectly executed, right down to the final details. Smiling slightly, he wondered if the additional bodies had been located yet. It would have been safer to dump the rifles into a well or canal, but the tight time schedule and the possibility of someone seeing him had prohibited it. As it stood, the chances that the authorities would eventually see through the terrorist ruse was a strong possibility. But no matter. The media would immediately pick up on the Allah akhbar scribbled on the wall and that would take precedence. By the time everything was sorted out, the whole incident would have faded from the news.

  And he would be retired and lying on a beach somewhere, the Talon thought.

  Tying up loose ends had delayed his departure, but it could not have been avoided. Recalling how the bodies fell, he felt a twinge of regret as he thought about leaving the Heckler & Koch pistol. It had such a smooth trigger pull, and the higher sights allowed quick target acquisition with a silencer. The added benefit of the trimmed grip allowed for such a nice, tight feeling as the weapon recoiled. It was an almost erotic feeling. But such dalliances were counterproductive and at times even dangerous.

  The Talon recalled a former associate, a German, who’d developed a misplaced and almost perverse affection for his favorite pistol, a SIG Sauer P-220, keeping the gun after it had been used in several assassinations, and even going so far as to name it Adolph.

  The perversion, and the gun, proved to be his undoing when two police officers caught him and matched the ballistics, tying him to the murders.

  Since the Talon had assisted the German in two of them, and knowing that anyone who would be stupid enough to affix a name to an inanimate object could not be trusted, the only option was to kill the man, which he did. A long-range shot to the head as he was being escorted from the jail building to the car had resolved the problem, just as eliminating the hired thugs who had helped him with the Chevalier Institute had provided a similar resolution. He did feel a twinge of regret about Henri Lupin, however. He had been the best passport forger in the game. But all of this fell under the heading of necessity: the importance of tying up all loose ends.

  After all, this was to be his final assignment.

  He stretched and contemplated retirement on a beach or an island in the Caribbean surrounded by beautiful, sun-tanned bodies and icy-cold drinks in frosted glasses.

  But those fantasies were best left for another time. He had much work ahead of him, and all of it challenging.

  One of the two flight attendants, a pretty black woman in a gold-colored uniform with a Stevenson Dynamics patch above her left breast, walked to his seat.

  “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Holland?” she asked, using the name on his false passport.

  “Sure,” he said, affecting his American accent. “Ah, what time will we be landing?”

  “About 8:00 p.m., sir,” she said, her smile unwavering.

  “Okay, I guess I’ll take a screwdriver then.” He smiled. “After all, it’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”

  She nodded and left.

  The Talon unbuckled his seat belt and stood to stretch, appreciating the luxury. He was the only passenger. One thing about this man Stevenson: it was first class all the way. The Talon almost lamented that he’d never get to meet him, but keeping client contact to a minimum was his standard procedure. He preferred to negotiate all business transactions through a third party, and would complete the job only after the deposit was made into one of his special accounts in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

  The Talon also preferred to work alo
ne, or almost so. Recruiting the expendable group of lackeys for the first phase at the Chevalier Institute was easily handled. But this next part, which was to take place in the United States, was a bit more complex. He was going to need more operational support since he would be on unfamiliar ground. Although he’d been to the U.S. on several occasions, the targets had always been foreign nationals, who were also fishes out of water.

  The flight attendant returned with his drink.

  “You really should remain seated, sir,” she said, holding the glass in one hand and gesturing toward the seat with her other. “With your seat belt fastened.”

  He smiled and sat before accepting the glass. It was a real glass, too, not some plastic cup like the ones they used on commercial airlines. First class all the way.

  He took a sip and nodded. Looking up at her and winking, he said, “How about joining me for a real drink once we land and get through customs?”

  She turned and left without comment, but her smile and expression told him there was a possibility there. Perhaps a bit of female distraction would be a nice cap upon a very busy day. He took another sip of the drink and felt the alcohol burn on the way down. It was affecting him more than he liked, and he realized he’d had nothing to eat since early that morning. Setting the drink in the holder, he decided to have no more of it. There was much to do, much to plan, and he could not afford any diversions. There would be time enough for dalliances later.

  After all, he told himself again, this was his final assignment.

  Luxembourg, Belgium

  DARKNESS WAS DESCENDING by the time Dorao’s unmarked police car wound its way through the wooded expanse to the new crime scene. Since the inspector sat in the front passenger seat, this time both Bolan and Grimaldi had been forced to sit in the back of the Citroën.

  A police officer dressed in a dark, tactical uniform used a flashlight to direct them to turn onto a side road that intersected the main highway. The headlights illuminated several other police vehicles ahead on the dirt-and-gravel roadway. Beyond them Bolan could see the vague outline of a medium-size truck. Dorao’s driver pulled up behind the parked police vehicles and shut off the engine. He placed the car in second gear and set the parking brake.

  “The crime scene is just beyond,” the inspector said, indicating the area in front of them as he got out. The driver exited and held the door open as Bolan pushed the seat forward and slid out of the vehicle. Grimaldi did the same on the other side.

  “Are the bodies still in place?” Bolan asked.

  “Yes,” Dorao said. “Not a thing has been disturbed.”

  They walked between the parked police cars, their feet occasionally making crunching sounds on the loose gravel, until they came to another officer standing in front of a line of yellow crime scene tape.

  Several portable floodlights had been set up in the area beyond the taped barrier and Bolan could see the medium-size truck and several bodies lying on the ground behind the vehicle. Two passenger cars were parked to the right of the truck, under some trees.

  They stopped and Dorao spoke to the guard in French. After a conversation of approximately four minutes, during which both the guard and Dorao gestured emphatically at the truck and the bodies, the inspector turned to them and began speaking in English.

  “Our—how do you say?—CSI guys are still processing the scene,” he said. His tone sounded noticeably more upbeat than it had at the Chevalier Institute. “However, it appears that these victims were not so innocent. Criminals, perhaps even the same criminals who were involved in the massacre at the institute.”

  “What makes you think that?” Bolan asked.

  Dorao turned his head and yelled in French to one of the men inside the crime scene. The man, who was squatting, stood and carefully made his way toward them.

  “This is my good friend Leonard Jellema,” Dorao said with a broad smile. “He is Dutch, but he is still a good investigator.”

  Jellema, a tall man with a mustache, grinned and said in English laced with a British-sounding accent, “Yes, I was born in the Dutch area, but I grew up fighting with so many Frenchmen that I learned their language, as well.”

  “And English, too,” Bolan said.

  Jellema smiled. “I studied forensics in London. I seem to have a facility for picking up languages.”

  “We’re more interested in what you picked up here,” Grimaldi said. “What’s it look like?”

  “Seven bodies,” Jellema said. “Initially shot from a distance of perhaps two to three meters, judging from the shell casings we found over there.” He pointed to a group of seven plastic tags placed on the ground about twenty feet away.

  “Initially?” Bolan asked.

  “Yes. It appears as though the seven men were shot as they stood at the rear of the truck. There are seven shell casings from a 9 mm Heckler & Koch VP9 by those markers.” He pointed again toward the scene. “Then, after downing each man, the shooter walked among them and shot each one in the head, execution style. There are more shell casings scattered among the bodies.”

  Grimaldi emitted a low whistle. “Cold-blooded.”

  “The shooter was thorough,” Jellema said. “I believe he created a diversion by throwing some euros into the crowd. The currency is also scattered on the ground among and under the bodies, replete with bloodstains. This would indicate that the money was most likely disseminated immediately prior to the shooting.”

  Bolan surveyed the scene. “You seem pretty sure about the weapon used.”

  Jellema smiled again and called to one of his assistants. He said something in Dutch and the man nodded and moved carefully to a box on the perimeter of the scene. He retrieved something and, a few seconds later, made his way toward them, giving a pistol encased in a plastic evidence bag to Jellema, who thanked him.

  “It does seem a bit presumptuous,” Jellema said, “but we recovered this at the scene.” He held up the bag, showing Bolan the pistol.

  Bolan studied the weapon, noting that it was, indeed, a 9 mm Heckler & Koch VP9. He also noticed that the grip had been professionally trimmed down.

  “Looks like our killer has small hands,” he said.

  “Yes, it does,” Jellema said. “And although we haven’t had time to compare them in the lab, I’m willing to bet that the extraction marks on these shell casings will match those we recovered earlier at the institute.”

  “Tell him what else you found, Leonard,” Dorao said.

  Jellema again pointed to a stack of boxes next to the one that had contained the H & K. “Rifles. Six of them. And a submachine gun. They had been stacked in the back of the truck. Again, we haven’t yet begun to compare the ballistics, but I’m betting we’re going to find matches to the casings we recovered from the institute.”

  Bolan surveyed the scene and the most likely scenario ran through his mind.

  Whoever was running this operation had entered the institute alone and shot the security guard and the two men in the elevator. His backup team, seven men, had then entered, rounded up the occupants of the building and herded them into the large meeting room. During this time, Mr. Chevalier and his personal assistant were taken to his office and shot.

  The computers had been ruined by downloading an encrypting virus and then physically damaged. Some of the hard-copy files had been removed from the cabinets and burned on the floor.

  After everyone was killed at the institute, and the killers had what they’d come for, they’d traveled to this spot, where the mastermind was most likely supposed to pay off the backup team. They’d likely dumped the rifles in the bed of the truck, jumped down to get paid, and planned on leaving in those two cars. The boss man had tossed them some euros and, when they were distracted, shot them, added the finishing touches of the head shots, and then left in another vehicle. But why leave the guns? This was looking l
ess and less like a terrorist incident and more like a ruse designed to look like one.

  “How many sets of tire tracks did you find?” he asked.

  “Four,” Jellema said. “Three of them match up to the vehicles still here. A fourth set, leaving here, appears to belong to another passenger vehicle.”

  “Looks like what we’d call a good old-fashioned double-cross,” Grimaldi said. “What do you think?”

  “Looks like,” Bolan agreed.

  “Well,” Grimaldi said, turning to Dorao, “at least you got a clue that the killer’s got small hands. Might mean he’s a little guy.”

  “Perhaps,” Dorao said, “but it is wise to remember, as you Americans say, that dynamite comes, sometimes, in small packages.”

  “I’d say this guy’s pretty dangerous, Inspector,” Bolan said. “But I don’t think he’s a terrorist in terms of having political goals, jihadist or otherwise.”

  “Nor do I,” Dorao said, shaking his head. “But he is just as despicable. And I will not rest until I have tracked him down.”

  Bolan nodded, appreciating the inspector’s determination. “We’ll be heading back to the U.S.,” he said, handing Dorao a card with his special number on it. “I’d appreciate it if you kept us in the loop.”

  4

  Stevenson Dynamics

  Fairfax County, Virginia

  Stevenson watched the scene on the newly installed widescreen TV, the images almost life-size at the other end of the long table. A large Cuban cigar smoldered between his fingers and he tapped a quarter-inch of ash into the glass ashtray. Nelson, who held the remote, eyed the accessory nervously. Stevenson smirked.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t throw anything this time. I was just going through nicotine withdrawal yesterday.” He motioned for Nelson to turn up the volume.

  The camera focused on two men seated behind a table, a crowd of onlookers standing behind them. A folded piece of card stock in front of the man on the left of the screen was adorned with his name: Simon P. Oakley. His hair was closely cropped on the sides and long on top. His slender fingers were tilted upward like a steeple and his rather thin face had an octagonal shape to it.