Enemies Within Read online

  He’d have to wait and see.

  Knowlton glanced at his watch and saw the fiancée would have to catch her bus soon if she planned on working through the night at Tweety Pie’s. Most of her neighbors would be getting off work in the next hour or less—the ones who worked at all, that was—and that could mean an audience. Reluctantly he said, “I’d better call this in,” and palmed his cell, speed dialing Major Darby, who in turn picked up before his burner could ring twice.

  “Sitrep?” the major asked.

  “Two suits got here ahead of us,” Knowlton stated. “They’re inside the target’s place now.”

  “Proposal?”

  “It’s a narrow window now. Unless we fade, we’re losing any prospect for a quiet lift.”

  “Proposal?” Darby said again, putting an edge on it this time.

  “Go in or wait for them to exit. Either way...”

  “Trouble. Assessment?”

  “There’s a chance they might just leave her, if she’s empty.”

  “But you doubt it.”

  “That’s affirmative.”

  “Use your best judgment, then. Minimize flapping tongues.”

  “I copy that.” Darby clicked off without a word, leaving dead air in Knowlton’s ear until he shut the burner off.

  “Sir?” Rashid prodded him.

  “‘Best judgment,’” Knowlton said. “And ‘minimize flapping tongues.’”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Knowlton knew what he was thinking. Sixty rounds between them with their M-4s, then their sidearms, with another thirty-two 9 mils before they had to hassle with reloading anything. Knowlton wished they had brought suppressors, but it wouldn’t matter diddly if a bunch of lookie-loos came by while it was going down.

  Mass murder then, potentially, but that was always on the table anyhow. The terrorism angle put it out there, and fantasizing that it couldn’t fall that way was just a waste of time and energy.

  Get hard, stay hard and do the goddamned job.

  “Door’s opening, Colonel.”

  Knowlton had nearly missed it, sitting there, woolgathering. He grunted, swung his door open and rose to meet the enemy.

  * * *

  Bolan and Grimaldi were on their feet, waiting, Juanita Alvarado touching up a few things in the small apartment’s kitchen, then looking around the place as if she thought she might not see it again.

  Safe bet.

  Grimaldi and Bolan were traveling light, all things considered; one handgun a piece and a total of four spare magazines. That made it forty-six rounds for Bolan, with one in the pipe, and Jack with forty total. That would be enough in any normal circumstance, but since when had anything in Bolan’s life been “normal”?

  “Ready, I suppose,” Alvarado said.

  Grimaldi muttered something that sounded like “About time,” but she either didn’t catch it or decided just to let it go. She had a purse over her shoulder, open, when she passed by Bolan. He stopped her, reached inside and took out her cell phone.

  “Hey, now!”

  She reached for it, but by the time her hand snaked out, Bolan had snapped the flip phone in two pieces, tossed its dead screen toward the couch, yanked its battery and crushed its SIM card underfoot.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded furiously.

  “Making sure nobody follows us,” Bolan replied.

  “Keeping me safe, I guess?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “And what if ’Nesto tries to reach me now?”

  “He hasn’t for a week and now he can’t. You’ll have a setup to contact him where we’re going, if he wants to reach out.”

  Another Spanish curse slid past him and he let it go. They moved in lockstep toward the door, Grimaldi first to cross the threshold, then froze three abreast.

  “Keeping me safe, huh.” Juanita fairly sneered. “Now what?”

  Two men, dressed casually, stood beside a RAV4 on the far side of the complex driveway, both with M-4 carbines angling their muzzles toward Juanita’s second-story apartment.

  Bolan immediately recognized the older of them as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Knowlton, the younger, darker one as AWOL Staff Sergeant Afif Rashid.

  “Colonel,” Bolan addressed the has-been senior officer, then added, “Sergeant.”

  “Putting our names out there,” Knowlton called back across the blacktop. “But is anybody listening?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bolan replied.

  “Eyes in the sky, all that,” Knowlton said. “But unless they want to drop a Hellfire on us where we stand, make this a real Flame Tree Estates, it won’t mean much.”

  “Can’t rule it out, though,” Bolan told him.

  “I guess not. Anyway, you know what’s up. She tell you anything?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not. We’ve all got orders here.”

  “Your major’s going to be disappointed,” Bolan countered.

  “He won’t like that. I won’t, either.”

  “Disappointment’s part of life.”

  “And death,” Knowlton added. “Your friend there doesn’t talk much.”

  “Yours, either.”

  “I guess they do their talking in other ways.”

  Between Bolan and Grimaldi, Juanita cringed, a whine escaping from between clenched teeth. Bolan side-whispered, “Be prepared to drop.”

  “Drop?”

  Grimaldi muttered over her, lips barely moving, “Left or right?”

  “Whoever’s on your side,” Bolan replied. Which made his mark Afif Rashid, leaving Knowlton to Grimaldi.

  Downrange, the colonel smiled. “Come on, kids. Remember grade school. If you’ve got something to say, feel free to share it with the class.”

  “Just getting tired of waiting here,” Bolan replied.

  “Well, we won’t keep you, then.”

  Bolan was ready when the twin M-4 muzzles began to rise another tick. He grated, “Drop!” to Alvarado and cleared his M-9 from its shoulder rig at the same time, not bothering to cock it.

  The first round off was double action, with a trigger pull of thirteen pounds, compared to five pounds after on the next fifteen. Bolan was strong and deft enough to handle it in either mode without a second thought, pinning the front sight’s small white dot on Rashid’s sharp chin and waiting for the recoil’s ripple through his wrist.

  Chapter Seven

  The rest all happened in a split second or two.

  Bolan saw blood spray from his target, not quite on the mark, but close enough to mean he’d hit Rashid’s left clavicle, part of the collarbone and maybe grazed a vertebra. That compromised the deltoid muscle, the trapezius and the subclavian—the underpinnings of his target’s shoulder—while the crimson gusher hinted at a nick or worse of the carotid artery and/or jugular vein.

  All bad, for anyone on the receiving end of 124 grains of Federal FMJ lead, traveling 1,150 feet per second and delivering 364 foot-pounds of explosive energy on impact. Rashid fell, but went down firing 3-round stutter bursts from his carbine, enough off-target that the 5.56 mm rounds scored plaster over Bolan’s ducking head and missed their mark.

  At the same time Bolan heard Jack Grimaldi’s Glock bang out two shots in rapid fire, its first round flying single action with a hot one in the chamber, nothing to restrain it but the built-in trigger safety that was freed as soon as the pilot cranked a round into the chamber. At least one of those rounds hit, slower and heavier than Bolan’s hot 9 mm slugs, but Andrew Knowlton didn’t fall. Maybe he had a vest on underneath his jacket, or he’d turned at the last instant. Either way, he staggered back toward the RAV4, still laying down short bursts of cover fire from his M-4, and threw himsel
f into the driver’s seat.

  Bolan and Grimaldi both tracked him, firing, before the black Toyota’s engine revved to life, and the colonel dropped it into gear and burned tires peeling out of there. It didn’t matter when they shot his back window to smithereens. The second mark was off and rolling in a cloud of rubber smoke.

  “Get after him!” Bolan snapped. “I’ll call DC for backup, security.”

  “Copy!” Grimaldi was already vaulting down the old apartment building’s stairs without a backward glance, sprinting to reach the Mazda CX-5 crossover they’d left below.

  Alvarado was sobbing at Bolan’s feet as he stood fast and watched Rashid, abandoned by his colonel at the scene. The staff sergeant was still alive and struggling to his knees, raising the M-4 carbine to his shoulder, telescoping stock extended, braced against his still uninjured side, with bloody fingers wrapped around the weapon’s custom foregrip.

  Bolan didn’t give his adversary opportunity to try again. Using the Weaver stance, with his Beretta in a good two-handed, push-pull grip, he took just time enough to place his round half an inch above Rashid’s right eyebrow, opening the AWOL Ranger’s skull in back to loose a gray and crimson spray containing all his final, fragmentary thoughts.

  By then the fleeing RAV4 and pursuing Mazda CX-5 were out of sight and vanished from Flame Tree Estates. Bolan holstered his M-9, helped Alvarado to her feet and back inside her apartment, while fishing out his cell and speed dialing Brognola with a single touch.

  “Justice,” the gruff voice answered.

  “We have target acquisition,” Bolan said, “with complications. One rogue down, another in the wind, with Flyboy in pursuit. I need some of your marshals, pronto, and a guaranteed safehouse. Head off the locals long enough to make it happen, if you can.”

  “Location?” Brognola asked,

  “At the target’s home address.”

  “Hang tough. I’ll see what I can do.”

  When they were double locked inside the small apartment, with Alvarado trembling on the couch, Bolan told her, “You see now what you’re up against. If you’ve got something else to say, this is the time.”

  * * *

  Knowlton was hit, all right, no Kevlar underneath, but it was only once and it was through-and-through, more of a bloody graze than anything. He’d suffered worse, much worse, in The Sandbox, and had survived just fine, but now he had a wild man chasing him, hoping to finish it.

  His blood was soaking through the fabric of the RAV4 driver’s seat. He could live with that awhile, based on experience and the pressure he was even then applying with the fingers of his slick right hand while driving with his left. No numbness setting in as yet, as far as he could tell, but Knowlton had to touch base with the major, let him know how it had gone awry, and get his orders for the next step.

  What if Darby wanted him to cut the link, meaning himself, and leave the hunters guessing where his fellow Rangers were? Knowlton knew that he couldn’t lead his tracker to the rest of them. No way in hell.

  The cell buzzed twice before Darby replied.

  Knowlton gave it to him straight, no frills; a bitter dose to swallow all at once.

  “How close is this pursuer?” the major asked.

  “Coming up a block or so behind me, and fast.”

  “Well, can you ditch him?”

  “I’ll find out. If not, just list me KIA.”

  “Try not to let that happen, Andy.”

  “No. You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  He killed the cell and slipped it back into his pocket, bloody-fingered. Given time, he’d strip the SIM card, wiping out its memory, but failing that, he knew that Darby would already have the others scrambling for a bug-out, lighting up the short-term apartment if nothing else would do the trick.

  Knowlton spotted a sort of strip mall coming up on his left side. It wasn’t standard fare, one line of storefronts facing on the street or on a parking lot, but built up and expansive toward the rear, with room to walk around inside, and maybe three, four times as many shops as could be counted from the street. A sign out front listed a good half dozen Knowlton couldn’t see while veering out of traffic and across blacktop, toward the front doors.

  No, scratch that: not toward the front doors, tall glass, but up across the curb and through those doors, the needle on his dashboard reading close to seventy before he hit and crashed his way inside, shouting with pain, the RAV4 plowing on as if he’d breached a frozen waterfall.

  * * *

  It took a few long moments for Juanita Alvarado to control her breathing, with the help of some cheap white wine that Bolan poured. She fairly gulped down half a glass before she said, “I knew one of those men out there. Met him, at least, one time with ’Nesto. Not the older one. The Arab man.”

  “Ethnic Iraqi parentage,” Bolan replied, correcting her.

  “Whatever. He was quiet. Came for tacos once and barely said a thing the whole time he was here. Is he dead now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sent here to kill me.”

  “Or interrogate you first, most likely. Smart money says you would’ve disappeared when they were finished with you, if they’d caught you on your own.”

  “Smart money? Dinero de la muerte, eh?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “A higher ranking officer. Unless you met him formally, that’s all you need to know right now.”

  He moved to the street-side windows, peering at Afif Rashid’s body below and its spreading pool of blood, and watching for any passersby or neighbors coming home from work. How long before the Marshals arrived? Brognola might alert him, or they might just show, scoop up the trash and rush Alvarado to a safehouse where she’d be debriefed for hours or days, until the Department of Justice believed its stars had wrung her dry. A waste of time, perhaps, but if the AWOL Rangers didn’t think so...

  “There might be something,” Alvarado said at last, her voice pitched low.

  “What’s that?”

  “’Nesto would...how you say it—ensueño? Daydream. Is that a proper word?”

  “It is. Explain.”

  “Sometimes, after he had a few beers, he would talk about ‘throwaway money.’ Sometimes he would call it ‘fuck you money,’ meaning that if someone had enough, nobody else could ever tell them what to do again.”

  “Throwaway money?” Bolan echoed.

  “Sí. He talked about the billions wrapped in plastic that ‘got lost’ in Iraq or Afghanistan, someplace he called The Sandbox. No one knew what happened to it, as he said, or ever seemed to care. Just there one day and gone the next, like it was nothing.”

  Bolan knew those stories, later documented in the media worldwide: up to twelve billion US dollars shrink-wrapped onto wooden pallets, earmarked for humanitarian aid in the Middle East, then vanished without a discernible trace soon after it landed. The cash was definitely sent, in tons, and certainly had “disappeared.” As far as how and where, no one with any trace of common sense believed it hadn’t been some kind of inside job, likely forever on the books as an unsolved mystery.

  Daydreams? Okay...or maybe not.

  The warrior suddenly had an idea he had to share with Brognola, and knew it couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  When Knowlton crashed into the mall, burst through its doors and rolled the better part of eighty feet inside, his air bags opened with a stunning rush. Cursing a blue streak, he whipped out his Benchmade automatic knife and snapped it open, slashed the driver’s air bag and wound up sitting in powder while he put the blade away. He snatched up his M-4 carbine and bailed out the RAV4’s driver’s door.

  Around him, customers were screaming, running, dropping to the floor or ducking into shops, all to the background clamor of a shrill alarm from somewhere overhead. There was no smoke yet, so
it had to be some kind of antiburglary device that would bring bluesuits running Code Three with lights and sirens. Likely not a SWAT or TAC squad till they had a look around, but after that, all hands on deck.

  Which meant that Knowlton had to be long gone before the first squad cars arrived.

  And to get out, he had to get.

  First thing, looking around, he saw no end of people lying on the floor or huddling inside stores with cell phones in their hands. Had someone snapped his picture yet? Likely. And if they hadn’t, there would be some kind of CCTV cameras inside the mall, for tracking shoplifters and coverage of accidents on-site.

  He had no balaclava, no disguise, only a chance to run, with several exits he could choose from. In the circumstances, Knowlton let whoever wanted to observe him with his M-4 carbine have a good, clear look, and if that meant he had to bite a bullet later, or submit to execution when he joined up with their team again, so be it.

  Death was always in the cards for any soldier on the firing line.

  One thing he could do, now that it occurred to him, was start a fire and add some more confusion to the chaos he’d created when smashing in the mall’s front doors. Stopping and turning where he stood, he raised the M-4, fired a short burst through the RAV4’s buckled grille to help the ruptured fuel line spill its contents, then unleashed two more over the sound of shoppers’ screams.

  The slugs struck sparks beneath his former ride, and by the time he rose to run again, it was engulfed in flames, which would set it raining from the sprinklers overhead while a whole new set of alarms summoned firefighters out of their hutches and onto the scene.

  Content as he could be while wounded, running for his life, the AWOL Ranger colonel started toward the farthest lighted exit sign from where he stood. Beyond would lie another parking lot, perhaps at least a few cars standing idle. With any luck, he could persuade one to accommodate him in escaping from the scene.