Poison Justice Page 5

  Where Groovy landed was somewhere between cool and grim.

  It just so happened Marelli found the marinara had come to a simmering bubble when the TAC radio crackled with Head Asshole’s voice. He was slipping on the pot holder when he felt Groovy go as tight as a rising cobra.

  “How you looking?” the voice sounded on the radio.

  “Everything’s beautiful in here, boss,” Grevey answered.

  A glance over his shoulder—Groovy was checking his watch, something from his boss about placing a bet on the Jets game this weekend, plus five—and Marelli knew it was on the way. Five seconds and counting, he figured.

  The shotgun blast that came from somewhere around the corner, out in the living room, killed any doubt. Marelli was turning, pot in hand, Grevey rising, when staccato bursts of rifle fire added to his mounting fear. They were killing their own.

  Marelli wasn’t about to hang around and ask questions, aware he was the focus of the massacre. The marshal was lifting the rifle off his lap when Marelli hit him in the face with a scalding marinara shower. As Grevey screamed, the assault rifle flying up but cracking a round into the ceiling, Marelli followed up his attack, turning the bottom of the pot into a club. Cursing, he put 260 pounds of fear and fury behind the blow and slammed a home run, dead center in the marshal’s face. It was the area he believed the police sketch artists called the triangle, just outside the eyebrows down to the mouth, where distinguishing facial characteristics defined one person from the next. One glance at the mashed and ruined mess that was the marshal, and Marelli knew that the man’s own mother wouldn’t recognize his face anymore.

  Blood and marinara sprayed the air and counter like a burst fire hydrant, but Marelli forged into the gory rain, flinging the pot away to fill his hands with the dumped assault rifle. As the marshal bounced off the wall and slid down on his haunches, lights out, he considered putting a round through the marshal’s brain, one less hassle to deal with.

  Then the cavalry barreled around the corner.

  IF NOT FOR THE DANGER of the moment, Bolan would have found the hasty flight slapstick comedy.

  He saw the wheelman, .45 out and fanning the corridor, burst through the back door, when Cabriano bounded off the steps. Behind the Don, the accountant split the air with a shrill scream, spinning, this way and that, shielding his face and shoulders with a briefcase. The bookkeeper shimmied along in a sort of spastic tap dance, then stumbled and slammed into Cabriano’s backside. As they went down in a tangled heap, Bolan hugged the corner of the wall and adjusted his aim. He tagged the wheelman with a 3-round stitching across the shins, dropping him flat on his back. The soldier was intent on sticking to the game plan.

  Cabriano was cursing and triggering the .45 over the accountant’s head, the shots drowning out both sets of screams. Two wild rounds snapped past Bolan’s ear, then the Don freed himself from the bookkeeper with a heel to his face. Cabriano lurched to his feet and cannoned another round over his shoulder. The wheelman was pleading for the Don’s help, but Cabriano was clearly hell-bent on taking care of number one.

  Which, in this instance, meant bolting out the back door, riding on.

  Bolan let him run.

  If Cabriano didn’t believe it before, the Executioner knew he’d just made the Don fearfully aware the future was growing darker and more terrifying by the moment.

  Soon Bolan would make certain Cabriano ran out of future altogether.

  MARELLI FELT ELATED, even as he knew death was coming. All things considered it was better this way, he decided, more honor and respect, out from under their talons, able now to fight and die on his feet, or maybe somehow beat it out of there. Never again, though, to endure their disrespect, the sneers, the snubs. He was finished playing rat.

  Instinct for survival, though, took over, as he backpedaled through the kitchen, capping off two quick rounds. The headcock, he was sure, could have sawed him in two with the big, nasty riot gun, but had opted to pull back behind the counter, cover himself from two more bullets chewing up the wall. With no spare clip, believing the mag he had in the assault rifle held twenty rounds tops, Marelli charged into the sitting room. One hand aiming the assault rifle at the doorway, he cupped a hand under the quarter-backrest of the heavy wood chair, spun and hurled it through the bay window. He knew it was roughly a ten-foot drop, with some bushes at the bottom to cushion his fall, but the ground then sloped hard, toward the woods. There would be rocks, vines and who knew what other potential bone breakers or flesh-eaters along the tumble. He glimpsed a few hanging shards of glass and cursed, but there was no choice. Unlike Hollywood, where the hero was always diving through windows getting nothing more than a few slivers in his coiffed do, he knew glass cut, and it could kill. He’d seen guys fall or get tossed through doors and windows more than once. They were lucky if they got piled onto a gurney for a hundred or so stitches.

  Marelli crossed his arms over his face, snarled an oath, then ran and jumped.

  “IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING for me, now’s the time to save yourself.”

  Kicking the .45 out the door, as he heard the Towncar’s engine gun, then tires squealing, the Executioner tuned out the whimpering of the accountant. He set sights and drew a bead with the M-16 on the wheelman.

  “I talk…what do I get?”

  “Another day, and maybe you keep your legs. Your choice.”

  “I wanna deal!”

  “Not my call. Finishing you right now is.”

  The wheelman grimaced. “Okay, okay, goddammit! Marelli—he’s gonna be hit. Tonight.”

  Bolan felt the ice ball lodge in his gut. “Keep talking.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me. You ain’t a Fed? You don’t know? It’s the Feds, the Justice Department. They’re gonna whack Marelli for Cabriano.”

  Bolan felt his heart skip a beat. The world wanted to spin off its axis, but the soldier was out the door in two strides, leaving the hood to bleat at empty air about his deal.

  “MARELLI! LISTEN TO ME! All we want is the disk! You come back, tell us where it is, you walk!”

  Peary crouched beside the shattered remnants of the bay window, shotgun fanning the darkness. Markinson and Jenkins were on the other side, weapons ready, but he’d given them the order to hold their fire, even if Marelli opened up. He hoped the hit man did just that, muzzle-flash lighting up his position. He waited, straining his ears for any sound in the woods, cursing the silence. No rustle of clothing on brush, no twigs snapping, no sound of an angry, frightened man on the move, grunting and cursing his way deeper into the night. Nothing. Not even an angry reply from the hit man as he would have expected, given the situation and the guy’s love of cursing. The fat bastard had just seemed to vanish into the night.

  “We have to go out there and get him,” Jenkins said.

  “I know goddamn well what we have to do,” Peary growled.

  It was the worst of all possible worlds. Sure, they could stage the murders to look like a Mob hit, throw some shots in the walls and furniture, ditch the backup weapons in a lake, as planned. Grevey being down with a face like ground beef could help build the smoke screen: Marelli lashing out in a panic, making his break for freedom, fearing for his life. Mob hits were notoriously messy anyway, and the scene in the living room and just out front was one for a gangster’s scrapbook.

  Peary was shifting through plans A and B, deciding on his next call. Talk about falling into a pit, he thought. The list of those he would have to answer—lie—to could fill half a phone book. The big Fed in Washington for starters. But he was part of Plan B, so it all might work out yet. Then there was Cabriano, the spooks, all of them sure to get riled up that he’d taken matters into his own hands. Which could well mean a long delay in getting paid.

  “These hills are covered with lodges, diners, little one-horse towns. He makes a phone…”

  Peary gritted his teeth and hung his head. He didn’t need
Jenkins to remind him that Marelli reaching even a remote outpost of civilization could seal their doom.

  “Marelli!” Peary shouted into the black hole that had swallowed up their songbird. “Last chance. You have two minutes to get your ass back here! You make us come and get you, I’ll hand you over to Cabriano myself!”

  Silence.

  “Okay,” he told Markinson and Jenkins. “We do it the hard way. Get the night-vision goggles, break out the map.”

  “What about Grevey?” Jenkins wanted to know.

  “What about him?”

  “He needs a doctor.”

  “Screw that noise. Wake him up.”

  Peary gave it a few more moments, hoping Marelli would take the bait, but knew the guy was way too savvy—and now armed and dangerous, a rabid beast on the run—to just stroll back, all’s forgiven. He was pacing when the cell phone with secured line trilled on his belt. One look at the caller ID, and he felt his heart race.

  “I can’t believe it,” Peary rasped, but punched on. “Yeah.”

  And heard Don Cabriano ask, “Is it done?”

  4

  Hal Brognola feared for the future of the so-called free world. Beyond the West and its often unfaithful, disloyal, fly-by-night bedmates, there was, of course, the sum total of humanity—six to seven billion people—to consider. No paranoid xenophobe or raving jingoist, he was a realist, a staunch old-school believer in the black and white of right and wrong. That in mind, he was aware that he had not made the rules of how the drama of the bigger picture was played out, but believed, for better or worse, as freedom in the West went so did the rest of the world.

  Sad perhaps, but true.

  Not only was he a high-ranking official for the U.S. Department of Justice, but he was in charge of the “unofficial” ultra-covert Stony Man Farm. As such, between the double duties of protecting America’s national security, he had access to the kind of intelligence—sometimes stolen from cyberspace by the computer team at the Farm—that reached only the President’s desk. And, as such, he not only stayed informed—up to the second on flashpoints and epicenters of critical mass around the globe—but could read developing and frightening trends.

  Case in point, he thought, was the last of the big-time crime Families in New York. And the Cabriano Family and its latest playmates on the world stage were the reason he was driving into Arlington for a predawn meet with those who probably had access to more intelligence…well, in their eyes, he considered it probably put them one step beneath the Almighty.

  Lack of sleep, too much coffee and too many antacid tablets had his mind racing. He tried to pull his thoughts together, focus on the task at hand, but found it hard labor at the moment. A man with the weight of the world on his shoulders once again, eyes that saw and ears that heard, he figured the mind tended to jump around.

  He’d been there before, more times than he could count.

  And if what he knew about the situation in New York was even half-true, then God help the human race.

  Brognola passed a white county cruiser rolling the opposite direction, two more vehicles trailing the policeman to a stop sign. Aware the working force of the town was coming to life, he was slightly annoyed he might have to fight traffic on his way back to his office, knowing the action would be heating up in New York, as it always did when Bolan set his sights on the enemy. Slowly driving past a bank, he spotted two more cruisers, parked side by side, window to window, in the parking lot. He was on the side of the law, but a fleeting sense of paranoia gave him pause. Given Bolan’s current mission, the hanging questions, the dire outcome if the Cabriano Family succeeded in achieving its goals, he passed off his unease as a healthy sign his head was in the game.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d been sought out by intelligence operatives who had—or claimed to have—the facts of life on whatever the present critical mass. Information equaled wealth in his world, but there was something about the setup that wanted to bring the hammer down on the warning bell inside his head.

  He was out there on the request of the assistant director of the department’s Special Task Force on Organized Crime. The joint team of marshals, FBI and Justice agents sitting on Jimmy Marelli fell under Brognola’s control, but Rollins had culled the eight-man detail himself, flexing bureaucratic muscle, rolling out the red tape, until Brognola put the brakes on the one-man show. Armed with the facts on Cabriano as he knew them, Brognola had stepped in, landed Bolan in charge of the operation, from Atlantic City to Brooklyn to the Catskills.

  He recalled briefly the minor resistance Rollins had thrown up. The AD bowed out to put Special Agent Matt Cooper in charge only when Brognola had picked up the red phone in his office, inviting the man to interrupt the President’s Herculean schedule.

  Turning on the designated street, sticking to the AD’s directions, he motored on, mentally playing back some of the last conversation with Rollins.

  “I’ve been working certain sources of mine in the intelligence community, regarding the Cabriano–Cali Cartel–Mideast connection. They say they know where—how should I say—an advanced, highly volatile form of radioactive waste is being smuggled from. They claim to know who is responsible for helping Cabriano and the cartel in this new thing of theirs to sell the raw material for a dirty bomb, which, they claim, is composed of a toxin unlike anything science has ever heard of. Very nasty stuff, or so I’m told. For whatever reason, they requested they meet with you to pass on the details. It’s your call, but I think it’s critical you meet with them.”

  So be it. Call him curious or simply dedicated. Brognola accepted the midnight request.

  Ahead, he spotted the tennis court, his landmark, as he rolled over the rise. Thinking about Bolan, the big Fed turned onto the cul-de-sac, slid up against the curb, parked and killed the engine. The AD informed him two spooks would be waiting for him in the park, on the far side of the court’s mesh fencing. He sat, scanning the Stygian gloom of woods beyond the court. Brognola decided if they were out there they could wait, as he searched his windbreaker for the cell phone with secured line. Slowly—as he patted empty pockets, then found nothing clipped to his belt and swept the seat—it dawned on him he’d left his one source of communication at the office. He muttered an oath, angry with himself. The rare oversight heightened his sense of anxiety, an urgency mounting to conclude this meet and get in touch with Bolan.

  Stepping out, Brognola checked his surroundings. He became aware suddenly of the weight of the Beretta 92-F, hung in the shoulder holster on his left side beneath his windbreaker. Somewhere an engine revved, a car door closed. Brognola’s nerves were edging raw, as he looked in the direction of the sounds, then glanced over his shoulder at the suburban enclave ringing the dead-end street.

  All by himself.

  Deep breath, he thought. He was acting like a rookie, one day out of Quantico. Or was he? He’d been around, seen enough to trust his gut, so…

  Brognola stepped down the grassy knoll, peering into the woods and brush fanning away from the court. He hated this clandestine business, marching into the unknown, always braced for the worst. But he had to admit in the past the intelligence he’d gained from such encounters far outweighed personal feelings.

  Still…

  Brognola thought he spotted a tall shadow, floating, it seemed, in the woods, twenty yards out. A few more steps, catching the movement of a silhouette to his left, and Brognola felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. The gong was going off in his head, then he caught the sound of rustling to his right. His instinct—fight or flight—was split down the middle. Light was poor, at best, a few broken shafts hitting his back from the cul-de-sac dwellings.

  What the hell was going on?

  Brognola reached into his jacket, drew the Beretta, thought he heard, then glimpsed darting movement going from his left to right. If they were there—and Rollins implied two spooks with no names—why the games?

  He sidled off to his right, in the direction where
he thought he spotted the last moving shadow, instinct telling him the area was vacated, his back clear. Brognola slowly turned the Beretta swinging around as he saw two tall shadows roll out from behind a stand of trees. He couldn’t see their faces, but he made out the bulky shapes of large handguns as the weapons rose and drew a bead on his chest.

  Brognola darted hard to the side, but knew it was too late to clear their line of fire. He heard the loud double crack split the darkness, a microsecond before he squeezed the Beretta’s trigger, then felt the sledgehammer force of rounds impact flesh.

  THE RECEPTION COMMITTEE Bolan found framed in the Bell JetRanger’s spotlight did not belong to the task force under his command. As the Justice Department pilot lowered and angled the chopper toward the clearing beside the lodge he ordered for a landing zone, it became clear to Bolan his fears were justified. The mission was on the edge of going to hell. One look at the trio in blacksuits and com links, two wielding subguns and the odd man out toting a large combat shotgun, and the soldier could fairly assume they weren’t park rangers or local ops. The ones standing were not his guys, but the two bodies he saw in front of the lodge beneath the white halo did belong to the task force.

  What happened to his men—and to Marelli?

  During the drive to Newark International, where Brognola had arranged a designated hangar with chopper and Gulfstream for the task force, Bolan had steeled himself for the worst. And the short chopper ride to the Blackhead Range Wild Forest Preserve in the Catskills had been time enough for the soldier to load himself down for all-out combat. Webbing and vest chocked and stocked with spare clips and a mixed assortment of flash-stun, incendiary and frag grenades, the soldier did not want to get caught short when it hit the fan. About to venture into the unknown, his main piece, an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo, was in hand, with the HK subgun slung across his shoulder ready as backup. A commando dagger was sheathed on his shin in case all else failed.