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  Seeing his only opportunity, Bolan grabbed his duffel bag off the bed and hightailed it out the window and on to the rickety fire escape. The entire structure felt as if it could come down around him at any second, but he was halfway to the ground before he heard the shouting of Lacroix and the still mobile detective following him.

  “Go get him, you idiot!” the police chief yelled. Bolan heard as much as felt the fire escape adjust to the extra weight on it, and was glad to be close to the ground.

  He reached the end of the fire escape, jumped the last six or so feet and headed down the alley. At the first intersection, he went left and simply kept twisting and turning, avoiding refuse and several sleeping homeless men before he stopped to rest. Crouching near a garbage Dumpster near the mouth of an alley, he watched the alley behind him for several minutes before he was convinced that he’d lost his pursuers. Satisfied, he opened the duffel bag and saw that everything was still inside.

  The biggest item—a smaller, silver briefcase—was what he truly needed. He pressed his thumbs against the locks and let the microchips read his prints, which opened the case. Inside was a global cell phone, an envelope with several hundred dollars in cash, as well as the paperwork for an alternate ID and a Micro Desert Eagle. Like the Walther PPK, it was perfect to stick in your pocket as a carry-concealed weapon. While the .380 round didn’t have the same exciting impact as his usual .44-caliber rounds, it would do as a backup gun. One thing an experienced shooter learned was that being comfortable with a particular weapon or even brand, was almost as important as consistent practice. He put the weapon away, then pulled out the phone.

  He dialed a number from memory, hit the send button and waited to be connected. Eventually he heard the reassuring voice of Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, and the man who ran the show.

  “Striker,” Brognola said.

  “I’m glad I reached you, Hal,” he said. “I’m in it up to my eyeballs here in New Orleans.”

  “What kind of trouble do you have? Do you have any leads on Rio?”

  Bolan quickly sketched in what he knew, then added, “Hal, Rio wasn’t just onto something random down here, he was onto something huge. The Mafia is alive and well in the Big Easy, and the corruption is top to bottom.”

  “The authorities should have listened to the marshal when he started having suspicions. Do you think he’s still alive?” Brognola asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bolan said. “Maybe. If so, they must want something from him, but I can’t figure out what it would be.”

  Brognola was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “I can’t think what it would be, either, but then we don’t know everything this Costello has a finger in. I’ll look into some of the cases he’s been involved with and see if I can dig up anything. Are the locals any help at all?”

  “Plenty,” Bolan said, “if you mean trying to pin a murder rap on me and stringing me up as gator bait, then yeah, very helpful. At the very least, the chief of police and the DA’s office are both dirty. They just tried to arrest me for the murder of the assistant DA.”

  “You aren’t normally quite so sarcastic,” Brognola said. “They must have really pissed you off.”

  “I’m not happy,” Bolan admitted.

  “Who was the assistant DA?”

  “A man named Trenton Smythe. He and his sister are involved, but it sounds like Smythe is dead. The DA himself is MIA—can you look into his story as well? If he’s not dead, then he’s hiding somewhere.”

  “Yeah, I’ll check it out. So maybe we should get you out of there,” he said. “We’ll send in a recon team and take them out. I know you don’t like giving in, but these are not great odds.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Hal. No one leaves me for alligator bait without getting a personal visit in return. And I’m not just going to leave Marshal Rio here. I’m in it until it’s over.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll work on what I can from my end, try and track your missing DA and see what I can dig up on these other guys. What else do you need?”

  Bolan thought about it for a minute, then said, “I need a full refit of field gear, including a Desert Eagle, communication units, the whole kit.” He paused, then added, “And a local law-enforcement contact who isn’t dirty. There has to be someone down here who isn’t crooked.”

  Bolan could hear the sound of keys clicking, then Brognola said, “There’s an FBI agent down there named Grady Black. He’s done some back-channel work for us, and he’s clean. I’ll arrange for him to meet you with supplies and offer any help he can.”

  “When and where should I meet Black?” Bolan asked.

  The keys tapped once more. “Your phone is equipped with GPS,” he said. “I’m sending the coordinates now. It’s an old, abandoned farmhouse in Belle Chasse. Pretty remote. Can you make it out that far?”

  “I’ll get there,” he said.

  “All right. I’ll have Grady Black meet you there in about two hours. And Striker…” Brognola’s voice trailed off.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Try to get Rio out of there alive, and keep the body count down. New Orleans is still a hot button issue for the Feds. We can send a bunch of guys in, but no one is going to like it, and it would be as messy as hell when I had to explain it to the Man.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, ending the call. Bolan put the briefcase away in his duffel bag, and decided it was safe to keep the cell phone for the time being. Once he had been re-supplied, he’d ditch it and get a new one if he needed to. He knew that Costello’s people would be monitoring the channels and didn’t want to make tracking him any easier than it had to be.

  Bolan stepped onto the street and began walking, looking carefully but casually into the windows of the parked vehicles. He rubbed his head as he walked, running his fingers over the healing cut from the rubber mallet. Eventually he found what he needed: a car with the keys in it. The old Malibu wouldn’t win any beauty prizes in its current condition, but it had an engine that would make any young man weep.

  He climbed in, started the engine and drove off, heading for Belle Chasse and the beginning of the end for Nick Costello and his entire operation.

  8

  The farmhouse in Belle Chasse was close to the naval air station, though Bolan would’ve been hard-pressed to determine what could have ever been farmed there. It seemed like it was too close to the water to have been much good for anything. The house was pretty run-down, with rotted clapboard siding, and clearly deserted. Strangle weeds had grown up in the gravel driveway, most of the windows were broken out and some kind of snake was curled up on the wooden doorstep taking in the sun.

  Bolan parked the stolen car behind a large grouping of lilac bushes and went to the back of the house. The door there had long since fallen in, but due to its angle, he couldn’t see inside.

  The soldier pulled the Micro Desert Eagle from his pocket and moved along the back of the house, then slipped inside. The old floor creaked with protest as he placed his foot on the wooden slats, and for a moment, he wondered if he was going to fall through.

  “Black?” he called.

  “Cooper?” a voice answered from the next room.

  “That’s me,” he replied.

  Grady Black moved out from the next room and holstered his weapon. He wore the traditional FBI suit of black and white, and a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses were stuck in his suit coat pocket. Bolan saw that Black was younger than he expected, perhaps early thirties, with dark brown hair, pale skin and nervous blue eyes. The soldier also noticed that he moved with a kind of grace.

  Black gave him a critical once-over, then said, “You look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

  “I only made it out of the city by the skin of my teeth,” Bolan said. “I ran into a rough crowd.”

  “This is a bad place, all right. New Orleans will eat you alive,” he said. “It was bad down here ten years ago, and it’s j
ust gotten worse since Katrina. The biggest problem is corruption, and those who aren’t corruptible have a real bad habit of dying mysteriously. It’s made it difficult to nail the bastards involved, because we can’t put a finger on them.”

  “It’s hard to put your finger in the leak when you’re standing in the flood,” Bolan said.

  “So I’ve been hearing,” he said. “Brognola brought me up to speed on your situation. I hear you’ve been making friends all over the city. Especially with Nick Costello.”

  “You’ve got something on him?”

  “Everything I’ve got, I brought to you here,” Black replied. “Along with the supplies you requested.”

  Bolan followed him into the kitchen, noting the careful grace the agent displayed as he moved around floorboards that had rotted out or looked weak. The dark room that had once been the center of a family’s life sat empty and lifeless. The sinks were gone, with only broken pipes sticking out of the floor, and most of the cabinet doors had come off. An old laminated table and two metal chairs were the only furnishings remaining, and these had obviously seen better days.

  On the table was a large black briefcase. Black walked over to it and popped the latches, opening it completely. Bolan moved to stand next to him as he removed a file. He saw the matched set of Desert Eagles and removed them without hesitation. He checked the magazine on each one, and when he was satisfied, he nodded to Black.

  “You know,” the agent said, “those are very big guns. It’s like carrying a cannon. You ever think about using something different?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a hint of humor, “once in a while, I think about carrying a cannon.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. Black held up the file. “Here’s what we know about Costello. Back in the mid-nineties, Nick Costello was arrested several times on drug charges, but they never stuck—everything was either dropped or expunged. Then he fell off the radar until right after Hurricane Katrina. Suddenly he was in New Orleans running a construction company and making money off the Feds hand over fist. We know he’s dirty, we know he’s Family, but everything we’ve got is circumstantial. His damn lawyer would have him out in less than a day.” Black handed over the file. “I just don’t have enough to put all the pieces together and really nail him.”

  Bolan opened the folder and glanced at its contents. “What about Lacroix? How’s he linked to Costello?”

  “We know he’s very wealthy for a chief of police,” Black said. “He was pretty good at hiding the money until recently, but we can’t prove where it’s coming from. Until we have that, picking him up would be pointless, too.” He paused, then added, “Oh, and get this. When Costello showed up in New Orleans, he was in debt up to his eyeballs. Then, all that debt suddenly disappeared right about the time he starts working the town hard. If we’re really lucky, we not only get Lacroix connected to Costello, but we get whoever is backing Costello, as well.”

  “What do you need?” Bolan asked.

  “Records would be nice,” Black said. “A confession would even be better.”

  Bolan nodded. “Everything else I asked for in the vehicle?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s a black Ford Expedition, parked another quarter mile down the road on the right. There are a lot of vehicles there—it’s a good fishing spot.”

  “Good,” he said. “Take the vehicle I brought back into the city for me?”

  “Is it stolen?” Black asked.

  “Borrowed,” he corrected. “See how I’m asking you to return it for me?”

  Grady sighed heavily. “Do you think you can get what I need to make this bust, Cooper?”

  “Leave it to me,” he said. They shook hands and Bolan slipped back out of the house and jogged down the road to get the SUV and head back into the city. There was plenty of work left to be done, and he still needed to rescue Marshal Jack Rio.

  BOLAN SPOTTED one of the unmarked police cars from outside his hotel parked several blocks away, outside a diner. He parked the SUV around the block and finished outfitting himself with clean clothing. He put one of the Desert Eagles in a shoulder holster beneath a light windbreaker, and left the other one in a concealed compartment in the back. The Micro Desert Eagle went in a lower back holster and the combat knife into his boot. Bolan still carried the global cell phone and felt more like himself than he had in hours. New Orleans seemed to have the effect of making people feel out of place.

  He locked the SUV and made sure the theft deterrent was engaged. It wouldn’t stop a determined thief, but the vaguely smart ones would skip it for easier prey. Then he jogged around the corner and back up the street to where the cop car had been parked. He was playing a hunch, but as he walked by the plate-glass window, the Executioner saw that his instincts were good.

  Duke Lacroix was just sitting down to dinner, a prospect he obviously enjoyed. Using a small pair of field glasses that adjusted for the tempered glass, Bolan watched as he cleaned his plate in the diner, then sat back to loosen his belt. This wasn’t a man who let a little thing like killing innocent people or breaking the laws he was supposed to enforce ruin his appetite.

  Bolan waited patiently for the chief to exit the diner. As Lacroix walked to his police car and unlocked the door, the Executioner moved out of concealment and behind the police chief. Barely slowing, he grabbed him by the back of the head and knocked it hard against the door frame. Staggering, Lacroix slumped forward.

  The soldier opened the back door, shoved Lacroix in, then shut it behind him. He noted a woman watching the action from the sidewalk and he gave her a small smile. “Too much wine at dinner,” he said. “Can’t hold his liquor.”

  She laughed and continued on her way.

  Bolan drove the car out of town, and as they reached the outskirts, Lacroix stirred in the backseat. He moaned like a man with a very bad headache before rousing himself enough to sit up and look through the bulletproof glass guard that separated the backseat from the front.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Lacroix snarled.

  Bolan looked at him in the mirror, then signaled for a turn before answering. “I made some friends out here the other day. Since you promised them a good meal and they got stiffed, I thought you might like to have a visit with them. Maybe even find some way to make it up to them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cooper, but if you don’t let me go, you won’t live to regret it.” Lacroix slammed his fist into the divider and cursed.

  Bolan made the turn, then took another side road that quickly became a rutted dirt path. “I’m thinking that your focus should be on whether or not you’re going to live, Lacroix. You worry too much about me, and you could get distracted at a critical time.”

  The path took them behind the trees and into the swamp itself. Bolan pulled the car to a stop when it was clear he couldn’t go any farther without risking getting stuck. As it was, the tires were coated in a muddy slime. He turned in his seat and looked at Lacroix.

  “I’m going to give you one chance, Lacroix, to tell me everything—who killed Smythe, your connection to Costello, all of it.”

  Lacroix stared at him through the divider. “I’m not telling you shit, Marshal. You can threaten whatever you want, but you and I both know that you’ll never convict me getting a confession like this, so go to hell.”

  The soldier stepped out of the car, jerked the back door open and grabbed Lacroix by the back of his shirt as the chief tried to make a run for it. Bolan shifted his weight slightly and landed a clean punch to the solar plexus. Lacroix’s breath rushed out of him in one long whoosh and he leaned back against the car, staring up at the Executioner with genuine hatred in his eyes. Which meant he wasn’t really afraid yet, and Bolan knew he’d have to rectify that immediately.

  He stepped in close. “You’ve got me all wrong, Lacroix. You see, I’m not really a U.S. marshal, and I don’t really give a damn whether any of this ever goes to a court of law or sees the light of day. I care
about justice, and I care about my friend Marshal Rio.” He slammed another punch into the man’s abdomen. “And believe me when I say that justice is going to be served here, but it’s going to be done my way.”

  All the blood had drained from Lacroix’s face, and he was looking at Bolan out of the corner of his eye, obviously trying to determine if he was serious and telling the truth. Bolan needed Lacroix to talk, and if that required more convincing he was happy to oblige the man. He drew the combat knife from his boot and slid the blade up to Lacroix’s carotid artery.

  “Now,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that promised violence and pain. “Who killed Smythe? Was it you or Costello?”

  “You killed Smythe!” Lacroix said. “Remember?”

  His patience was wearing thin. Bolan yanked Lacroix away from the car and pushed him a couple of steps into the muddy water. The man’s dress shoes squelched in the mud, but he froze like a spotlighted jackrabbit when the blade sliced a thin cut along his jawline.

  “Facial wounds bleed a lot,” Bolan whispered. “Almost as much as a head or scalp wound.” Blood dripped into the water. “But I’m thinking that even that little bit will be enough to draw every gator for ten miles around.”

  Lacroix began to breathe faster, and sweat soaked his skin and face. He looked across the bank at the gators that had been napping and sunning themselves. One began to get curious about the visitors and slipped into the water, beginning his patrol.

  “See there?” Bolan asked, gesturing. “We’ll have company in no time.”

  “All right, fine,” Lacroix snapped. “I help Costello from time to time, but just trying to get things to his warehouse.”