Terrorist Dispatch (Executioner) Read online

  Survival of the fittest, right?

  A limousine and two black SUVs were rolling south along Brighton’s Second Street, toward the playground. At the same time, Bolan saw O’Leary’s unmarked Ford approaching from the west, as if on a collision course. With any luck, they’d park together, opposite where Bolan lay in wait to bring them down.

  As patient as death, he settled in to wait.

  * * *

  “I OUGHTA HAVE my goddamned head examined, doing this,” O’Leary told his silent backseat passenger. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t get wasted, much less make it out of town.”

  O’Leary’s passenger, predictably, said nothing in reply. That was appropriate, since he possessed no mouth, no tongue, no brain. The backseat rider was a dummy borrowed from the NYPD’s police academy in Queens. Recruits used it to practice carrying a wounded or unconscious man over diverse terrain and under fire, to save his life. Those who managed it were one step closer to a badge and street patrol.

  Up ahead, O’Leary saw the Russian convoy turning onto Brightwater from Second Street, pulling away from him since they were meeting on a one-way street eastbound, and drifting to the curb. O’Leary passed them, tapped his brakes at last and parked his car half a block in front of Brusilov’s point vehicle.

  “Sit tight,” O’Leary told the dummy, feeling foolish as he stepped out of the Ford. In fact, the man-thing couldn’t get out, even if it wanted to. The Ford’s back doors could only open from the outside, never from within. The backseat of his unmarked vehicle had no cage, but since the dummy couldn’t spit or even move, that made no difference to O’Leary.

  Georgy Vize was on the sidewalk now, two shooters flanking him, and who was that just climbing from the jet-black limo? Brusilov himself, in the substantial flesh. O’Leary paused and made a show of saying something to his man-shaped cargo, then put on a smile and went to meet the Russians.

  “That’s him?” Brusilov asked without preamble.

  “In the flesh,” O’Leary lied.

  The Russian boss started forward, stepping out to go around O’Leary. “I’ll see him now,” he said.

  “Hold on,” O’Leary cautioned. “First, we’ve got some business to discuss.”

  Brusilov stopped and turned to face O’Leary. “Business? What’s this business that can’t wait?”

  O’Leary swallowed hard and forged ahead. “My bonus first, for catching this guy and delivering him to you. Every kind of shit you can imagine’s going to hit the fan if anyone finds out I gave him to you.”

  “You think I tell my secrets to the police if I don’t own them?”

  “Cash on the barrelhead,” O’Leary said. “No pay, no play.”

  Scowling, Brusilov went through a pantomime of patting down his pockets, finally announcing, “I don’t carry money. People always give me things.”

  I’ll give you something, O’Leary thought, but said, “Somebody in your crew must have some. This one costs five grand, all by himself, considering the risk to me.”

  “Have you considered it?” Brusilov asked.

  “Five grand,” O’Leary repeated, “or no one meets the Muppet.”

  That one almost made him laugh aloud—damn he was funny—but he had his hands full then, as Brusilov’s men searched their pockets, handing bills of various denominations to their boss. It looked and felt like five large, more or less, as Brusilov handed it over.

  “So,” the Russian said, “we see this killer now?”

  O’Leary stuffed the cash into a trouser pocket and said, “Let’s get it done.”

  * * *

  BOLAN WATCHED AS O’Leary talked to Brusilov and Vize, their conversation lost to him, although the Russian boss’s body language was replete with tension. A dozen shooters stood around and watched, some covering their godfather, the rest eyeballing traffic as it passed by. At last, O’Leary turned and led his Mob paymasters toward his cruiser, where the outline of a human form was visible in Bolan’s scope, through the rear window.

  This would be the tricky part for the detective. Bolan had not dictated his moves beyond requiring that O’Leary make a call to draw his Russian cronies out of hiding, placing them where they were clearly visible. The business with the dummy was O’Leary’s scheme from start to finish, and the trick—for him, at least—would be surviving once he’d done the great reveal.

  O’Leary reached the cruiser’s back door on the curb side, bending at the waist to open it, using the same motion to brush his coat back on the right and bare the automatic pistol riding on his hip. The dome light came on when the door was opened. Brusilov advanced, leaning down to view his enemy, lips moving in what had to be some kind of taunting salutation.

  Then he froze, seeing a lifeless dummy belted upright in the car’s backseat, just as O’Leary drew his piece and pressed its muzzle tight against the Russian’s head. Around them, Georgy Vize and the assembled soldiers reached for guns, but even from a distance, Bolan could hear Brusilov commanding them to stop.

  It was a standoff for the moment, but O’Leary had to know it wouldn’t last. To drive away, he had to walk around the cruiser, dragging Brusilov along with him, past Vize and all those fuming goons, then climb into the driver’s seat, fire up the engine and escape somehow before the Russian firing squad sprayed him with lead.

  Damn near impossible—but it was not Mack Bolan’s problem.

  He locked crosshairs on Georgy Vize’s head and sent 220 grains of death sizzling downrange at half a mile per second, his target detonating like a melon with a cherry bomb inside. Before the echo of his gunshot reached the Russians, he had cranked the Model 700’s bolt, chambered another round and picked another target from the thirteen Russians still alive, one of the shooters who had pulled an MP-5K submachine gun from beneath his coat and held it ready, lacking only targets in the night.

  Bolan’s next round drilled through the shooter’s chin, shattered his mandible and plowed into his spine, flipping his shaved head backward at an angle it could never reach in life. Blood sprayed in all directions from the dead man’s ravaged face and throat, dousing the nearest of his comrades and delaying their reactions to the second rifle shot.

  The goons knew they were under fire now, but still weren’t sure from where, or by how many guns. Four of them stuck with Brusilov, guns pointed at O’Leary, each one looking for an opening to take him down. The others scattered, seeking cover from the cars they had arrived in, since there was no other to be found.

  * * *

  BRUSILOV COULD NOT believe the way his plan had gone to shit in nothing flat. He’d been too anxious, too damned hopeful. He could see that now, but what in hell was he supposed to do about it, with a gun pressed to his head and some wildman out in the darkness somewhere, taking down his boys?

  He started out by talking to the cop. “You made a freaking horrible mistake tonight, my friend. You know that, right? Taking our money all this time, and now you pull this shit? You haven’t even got a warrant to arrest me, or you wouldn’t pull this sneaky crap.”

  “Shut up!” O’Leary snarled at him, trying to minimize his sight profile by slouching behind the cruiser, dragging Brusilov along with him. “I didn’t have a choice!”

  “You got one now, though,” Brusilov replied, ducking instinctively as yet another rifle shot rang out. “Just let me go and drive away. My boys’ll deal with the shooter.”

  “And you’ll just let me go, huh? Just forget about all this?”

  That wouldn’t be believable, so Brusilov replied, “A smart man, in your place, would run as fast and far as he could go. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Shit!” O’Leary shoved him then, and turned to sprint around the front end of his cruiser, toward the driver’s side. Brusilov snatched a pistol from his nearest soldier, saw it was a Glock—no safety to delay him—and began to fire befor
e O’Leary reached the front left fender.

  His first round burned through O’Leary’s biceps, maybe penetrating to his rib cage, but Brusilov couldn’t tell, so he kept on firing: four, five shots before his man went down, invisible where he had dropped behind the cop car.

  Just then, death whispered in Brusilov’s right ear, passing him by to strike the shooter he’d disarmed a moment earlier. Luka was lifted off his feet by the impact and slammed onto concrete, blood geysering out of his chest as his eyes locked on nothing and froze there.

  Brusilov dropped to all fours, skinning palms and knees against the rough sidewalk. He peered around, saw half his shooters, give or take, hiding behind the other cars, as he was. He couldn’t blame them for attempting to survive, but now he had to think about escape.

  With this kind of gunfire, cops would soon be swarming to the scene. The Sixtieth Precinct was roughly a quarter mile west of the boardwalk, say five minutes tops before the first squad cars arrived, maybe another five before the SWAT team showed. If Brusilov was still there when the police showed up, he’d be tied up for hours, maybe days.

  And if they linked the pistol he was holding to O’Leary’s death, he might be locked away forever, doing hard time in some supermax hellhole for taking out a cop.

  Brusilov shouted at his men, the ones that he could see, commanding them to get up on their feet and fight like men, to get in their cars and help him get the hell away from there. A couple of them, younger ones, began to rise, then saw the others holding still and sank back down, each soldier clinging to his gun as if it were a holy talisman.

  Brusilov cursed at them. “The cops’ll be here any minute! We’ve got no time left to dick around!”

  “Hey, Boss,” a hulking thug named Mischa answered back, “you know we got a sniper out there, right?”

  “I don’t care if we got a hundred of them. If we’re still here when the law shows up, we all go down for one dead cop. That’s mandatory life, unless they stick a needle in your arm.”

  Mischa considered that, was rising to a kind of Quasimodo crouch, and died there as a bullet struck his forehead, split his head wide-open. When he went down, Brusilov saw his other soldiers cowering, avoiding eye contact with their godfather, maybe praying this would all just go away.

  Brusilov had a sudden thought. What if O’Leary had been careless, left his cruiser’s key in the ignition since he didn’t plan to linger? Just a quick peek ought to settle it. He crawled up to the Ford’s passenger door and chanced a look.

  The key was there!

  Grinning fiercely, Brusilov climbed in, dragging himself across the shotgun seat, wedging himself behind the steering wheel. It was a tight fit, but he made it, firing up the engine and releasing the parking brake. Cackling in triumph, he put the car in Drive and squealed off from the curb.

  * * *

  BOLAN HEARD SIRENS WAILING, and knew that in another minute, maybe two, he’d see the flashing lights atop squad cars as they responded to the shooting call. Somebody on the boardwalk might have phoned it in, or residents in some nearby apartment building.

  It made no difference. His work was nearly done.

  Brusilov made it easy for him, trying to escape alone in Sean O’Leary’s cruiser. If the Russian’s men had rallied to him, piled into one of their hulking SUVs, it would have been more difficult, more time consuming, trying to take out the man in charge.

  But the Ford Fusion Hybrid was another story altogether. It was smaller, and its windows weren’t blacked out like those on Brusilov’s crew’s wagons. Better yet, the rear right door was still ajar, which kept the cruiser’s dome light burning bright, granting a clear shot at the man behind the wheel. The problem of a moving target complicated things, but Bolan’s long experience behind a scope took care of that.

  His sniper’s mind ticked off the necessary calculations in a heartbeat: range, velocity, the distance he would have to lead his target for a hit. The driver’s window, Bolan saw, was open, so there would be no deflection from its glass.

  Bolan struck his pose and held it, welded into place by muscle memory. He took a breath, released half of it, held the rest. His index finger curled around the Model 700’s trigger, eased it back until he felt it break, then Bolan rode the rifle’s recoil, eye glued to the Leupold’s reticle.

  Downrange, a burst of scarlet splashed over Sean O’Leary’s dashboard and the inside of his cruiser’s windshield. Nearly headless at the wheel, without a seat belt to restrain him, Alexey Brusilov slumped to his right and out of Bolan’s view. The cruiser followed his direction, swerving toward the park, jumping the curb and jolting to a halt when it collided with a lamppost.

  Bolan didn’t stick around to see what happened when the cops arrived, whether they found the other Russians waiting for them, or the living managed to escape. He had removed the viper’s head, and while it would inevitably sprout a new one, that was not Bolan’s concern this night.

  He had another hand to play in East Village, and he was already running late.

  6

  Szold Place, East Village

  Stepan Melnyk did not trust his penthouse anymore, despite the private access elevator that required a special key card for the swift ride up to the eleventh floor. He was afraid to step out on his rooftop terrace, with a sniper lurking somewhere in the night, and even with the drapes drawn over windows advertised as bulletproof, he did not feel secure.

  It was a simple fact of life that anybody could be killed, if an assassin was determined and had low regard for personal survival. “Bulletproof” meant nothing in an era when fanatics stockpiled RPGs and Stingers that could blast through masonry as if the walls were made of tissue paper. Tight security on elevators mattered little when the law required that every building also have fire stairs accessible to any tenant.

  For the first time since arriving in America, head filled with dreams, a suitcase filled with cash, Melnyk felt absolutely, dangerously vulnerable.

  He had guards watching the fire stairs, naturally, three men armed with submachine guns who had proved themselves in battle time and time again. Two-thirds of Melnyk’s soldiers had done time in uniform back home, with the Ukrainian Ground Forces or Airmobile teams, a few handling dirty work for the Security Service. The remainder had learned their survival skills on mean streets in Kiev, Odessa and Sevastopol, where life was cheap and death came in a wide variety of forms.

  Melnyk did not believe his men would let him down intentionally. He dismissed the thought that any would desert him when the fighting started, but he questioned whether they were equal to the enemies who might be ranged against them. If—

  Dimo Levytsky barged into the room without knocking, a dazed expression on his face. Before Melnyk could chastise him, he blurted out, “They’re dead, Boss! Someone took them out. It’s all over the news.”

  “Slow down, damn it. Who’s dead?”

  “The top dogs,” Levytsky answered, beaming at him. “Brusilov and Vize! More of their soldiers, too.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just now. Well, I guess it must have been like half an hour ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Down by the Brighton Beach boardwalk. WGN says they got a dead cop down there, too. No name on that one yet, but they’ve confirmed the Russians.”

  Melnyk’s mind was reeling. If his men had taken out the Russian scum, he would have heard about it first, before the news was splashed all over TV. And since his people hadn’t done it, who had? He’d been worried from the start about an unknown player egging on both sides to fight, but had dismissed it as the bodies started piling up. No law-enforcement agency he’d ever heard of would attempt something like that, and none of the remaining Eastern European gangs scattered around New York were big or smart enough to pull it off.

  Another question: Now that Brusilov was dead,
was Melnyk safe?

  God knew he didn’t feel that way.

  “Okay,” he told Levytsky. “Before we start to celebrate, we need to find out what went down. The cops are going to come around with questions anytime now, soon as they put two and two together, asking where we’ve been all night and did we have it in for Brusilov, whatever. When they get here, we can’t have machine guns all over the place, or any other shit like that. We all have to look normal.”

  Which, he knew, meant letting down their guard.

  “I’ve got a call in to our guy at the Ninth Precinct. He’ll contact me if anybody starts to make a move our way.”

  “What if the word comes out of headquarters?”

  “He’s got it covered,” Levytsky said. “Two kids in colleges he can’t afford, so this guy can’t afford to kill the golden goose, you know?”

  “It was the goose that laid the golden eggs,” Melnyk corrected him.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. We need to—”

  Sharp, staccato gunfire interrupted Melnyk, blew his thoughts away. He stood rooted in deep-shag carpeting and swiveled toward the source of that unwelcome sound.

  The damned fire stairs.

  * * *

  WHILE EN ROUTE to his next hit, Bolan had stopped at an all-night convenience store to buy a two-liter bottle of soda and a roll of duct tape. He had dumped the soda in the parking lot, then taped the empty bottle to the muzzle of his Colt AR-15, creating a makeshift and barely adequate suppressor that should serve for one shot, maybe two if he was lucky. After that, it wouldn’t matter, since the home team would be throwing everything they had at Bolan in their bid to take him down. Suppressors were superfluous from that point on, once hell broke loose.

  Bolan was going in heavy. The Colt would be his lead weapon, the Remington backup, slung across his back. He’d have the Glock to settle any close-up arguments. The pockets of his raincoat drooped with the weight of extra magazines and shotgun shells for his three weapons. Getting inside Melnyk’s apartment building was no big deal. There was a sleepy doorman on the street in front, but no one covering the rear. The elevator up to Melnyk’s penthouse was secure, so Bolan took the stairs, assuming they’d be guarded somewhere near the top. That’s where the soda bottle came in, and he hoped that it would serve him well.