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  There was no doubting Sabaroff’s intelligence, either. He was a sharp observer, yet he gave the impression of not listening too closely. Because of that, people tended to talk loosely around Sabaroff while he soaked up conversations, never forgetting the important points.

  Leopold Marchinski trusted his lieutenant without question. Over the years, they had weathered setbacks, gang rivalry and the successes that followed. No one had been more shocked at Leo Marchinski’s arrest and incarceration, but Sabaroff had stepped into the breach, ostensibly helping Gregor, but in fact taking control of the organization. His ascension was not contested—for two reasons. Sabaroff was the natural choice to stand in during Marchinski’s absence. Secondly, no one had the nerve to openly challenge the man. They had all seen the effects of his anger. The unfortunate ones who stood in his way never forgot the treatment they received.

  Sabaroff waited for someone to speak. He was standing in front of Leo Marchinski’s desk. Gregor slumped in his brother’s swivel chair. His slight frame was dwarfed by the large piece of furniture.

  “Have you all been struck dumb?” Sabaroff asked.

  “No,” one of the three said lamely. “It’s...”

  “We expected this might happen,” Sabaroff said. “With Leo in a cell, Tsvetanov has chosen his moment. We don’t let him get away with it. We hit back. I don’t care which of his places you take down. Just organize and do it. Make sure he knows we mean business.”

  Sabaroff turned to Gregor. He realized the three men were still there.

  “You’re waiting for a drum roll?”

  “No.”

  “Then get the hell out of here and do the job you’re paid for.”

  As the office door closed, Sabaroff swung around to face Gregor.

  “Am I going to have trouble with you, as well?” he asked.

  Gregor shook his head. His tanned face looked haggard, with darkening shadows beneath his eyes.

  “When will we get Leo out?”

  The question was asked often.

  The answer was always the same.

  “The situation is being handled. Gregor, I told you from the beginning this would be difficult. Mason is working on a solution, but we can’t expect this to come together instantly. Much as I don’t like it, we’re going to have to be patient.”

  “Jesus, Lazlo, it’s getting worse. My brother is in jail. We have Tsvetanov taking shots at us. All we need now is for the cops to knock on the door. We’ve had that undercover ATF son of a bitch work his way inside. What comes next?”

  “The ATF agent has been dealt with. He’s at the farm. We can make him talk and then the boys can feed him through the wood chipper. Just the way we’ve done before.”

  Gregor subsided a little.

  “Maybe I can take a run up there. See how things are being handled.”

  Sabaroff smiled, nodding. Inside, he was curled up. Gregor was showing his true self.

  As far as Sabaroff was concerned, Gregor was a sick little creep. He would enjoy watching the ATF man being disposed of. There was an unhealthy aura around Leo Marchinski’s brother. He would never get his own hands dirty, but he got some kind of kick watching others being hurt. There were times Sabaroff wondered if Leo and Gregor were really brothers.

  His thoughts were disturbed when someone knocked on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  The door opened and one of the crew stepped into the office. The expression on his face warned Sabaroff that the man was not bringing good news.

  “What now? Did you come to tell me we’re being done for tax evasion?”

  “Relief crew just called from near the farm,” the man said. “The place is swarming with ATF men and cops.”

  Sabaroff maintained his blank expression. This wasn’t the kind of news he wanted to hear. His only comfort was the knowledge that any of the men taken by the cops would keep their mouths shut and wait for the organization’s lawyer. Jason Keppler was good at his job. He cost a lot of money, but the guy knew the law every which way from sundown.

  “Get Keppler on the phone,” Sabaroff said. “I need to talk to him. Now.”

  The bearer of bad news hesitated. The look on his face suggested he hadn’t finished his delivery.

  “What?” Sabaroff barked.

  “That call we got over Corbett’s cell. We checked it out. Corbett’s dead. Somebody splattered his brains across the roof of his Charger. And Harry Jigs’s body was inside the warehouse where Corbett had him.”

  There was a half groan, half nervous laugh from Gregor. Sabaroff dismissed the messenger, then glanced at the younger Marchinski.

  “Don’t you get the feeling this isn’t our day?” Gregor said. “Maybe even our damned year.”

  “These things happen,” Sabaroff said. He couldn’t think of any other response.

  Sabaroff wouldn’t allow it to show, but he admitted to himself that the situation was heating up. Too many things were going wrong. Isolated, they might not have been all that serious, but adding them together made Sabaroff more than a little nervous.

  Maybe it was time he worked on righting the balance—letting Tsvetanov and his crew know they couldn’t keep hitting the Marchinskis and get away with it.

  Lazlo Sabaroff had his own personal agenda to work on. But until the right moment, he needed to keep things running as normally as possible. For now, he needed to send a message by taking a piece of Tsvetanov’s business and destroying it.

  * * *

  Baltimore Docks, Maryland

  A COUPLE OF hours later, a black panel truck swept in from the road and headed for the dock area. The rain had been drifting in most of the afternoon. Now a downpour was coming in off the water in sheets, falling from a cloud-ridden, darkening sky. Raindrops bounced off the dock and hammered at the buildings edging the area.

  This was Tsvetanov territory. Merchandise came in by sea, was unloaded at the dock and either stored in the buildings or put into waiting vehicles for swift distribution.

  A security detail oversaw the dock facility. The men were supplied with uniforms and equipment by the Tsvetanov organization, and the vehicles that patrolled the area also belonged to Drago Tsvetanov. The whole unit was managed by a company set up by Tsvetanov—trading under a different name.

  The panel van parked well away from the patrolled area, the Marchinski crew moving in under cover of rain and the encroaching darkness.

  There were six men—all dressed in black, with ski masks pulled over their faces. They were all armed with suppressed 9 mm Uzi SMGs and similarly suppressed 9 mm Beretta pistols. One man carried a backpack that held prepared blocks of C4 explosive compound.

  Early intelligence had furnished them with the exact numbers of the Tsvetanov detail. There were three security guards on patrol around the facility. Inside the building, there was a work crew consisting of five men, with a further three armed guards overseeing the operation.

  Late in the afternoon, a motor launch had delivered a consignment of Colombian cocaine. As soon as it had been transferred to the warehouse, the cutting crew began their work. The bulk cocaine would be weighed, cut and poured into smaller plastic bags for distribution to the dealers covering the city.

  The Marchinski crew shot the outside security guards with silent, gas-powered pistols loaded with cyanide darts. The three men were dead seconds after they fell to the ground outside the guard station. Once the crew breached the fence, the bodies were quickly moved out of sight behind the parked security cars.

  The man leading the crew had once been a member of the Russian military. Four years ago, when his army unit had been disbanded, Vertikov had found himself without a place in society...until he’d been approached by one of Marchinski’s people. Within a month, Vertikov had been brought to America and provided with papers, a place to live and money
in his pocket. Vertikov started working for his new employer immediately and soon proved his worth. He enjoyed his new position. It allowed him to resurrect his old skills, and today he was about to use those skills.

  Vertikov dispersed his team. They moved fast, silently covering the warehouse frontage. Using hand signals, Vertikov assigned two of his men to guard the exterior before leading the others in through the access door.

  The four armed men were able to enter easily, sticking to the shadows at the edges of the cavernous interior. Most of the space inside was taken up by stacks of crates and barrels, which were used to convey the impression this was simply a transit warehouse. The current activity was taking place farther into the building, where overhead lights cast yellow illumination over the drug operation.

  Three guards were moving around the long tables, which held the drugs, while the five-man transfer crew doctored the powder, dividing the cocaine into smaller bags and packing those into boxes. Each of the workers wore filter masks to prevent the drugs from being inhaled. They also wore thin rubber gloves.

  Vertikov led his men close to the working area, though they remained in the shadows. His hand signals indicated he wanted them to target the three armed guards. When he was satisfied his people were fully in position, Vertikov gave the signal.

  The suppressed Uzis crackled and sent volleys of 9 mm slugs. Caught unprepared, the three guards were dropped without any chance of retaliating. They crumpled to the warehouse floor, bodies punctured by the 9 mm bursts.

  The moment the guards had been dealt with, Vertikov’s men stepped out from cover and surrounded the stunned workers.

  From behind his ski mask, Vertikov spoke for the first time since arriving.

  “Do it,” he said.

  The crew raised their Uzis and the dull rattle of suppressed auto fire echoed around the warehouse. The five workers were taken down, blood staining their clothing as the slugs tore into them.

  “The explosives,” Vertikov snapped, and the man with the backpack nodded.

  He shrugged off the bag, opened it and took out the prepared explosive packs. There were four of them. He placed one on the main table where the drug consignment sat and spread the others around the warehouse. Once that was done, Vertikov ordered his crew out.

  The men exited the warehouse, climbed back into the van, stripped off their masks and dropped them and their weapons into a large carry bag. There was no hurry, no panic. The explosive packs were set to detonate in fifteen minutes. That gave the crew ample time to get clear without having to rush. The last thing they wanted was to be seen driving away recklessly.

  * * *

  THE COMBINED EFFECT of the explosive packs demolished the warehouse. The resultant blaze spread across the dock and ignited other buildings. It took the efforts of three fire units to tackle the inferno.

  It was not until the following morning, when the rain finally stopped, that the fire department was able to check out the gutted buildings. It took them most of the morning to work their way through the smoking debris to the bodies inside. The firefighters had already discovered the dead security men who’d been left behind the parked vehicles. Even they had been partly burned by the heavy blaze.

  The fire marshal and his team slowly began to piece together what had happened, and their investigation moved up a notch once they realized the bodies inside the warehouse had been shot....

  * * *

  Stony Man Farm

  HAL BROGNOLA READ through the report passed to him by Aaron Kurtzman. The Stony Man cyber team had picked up the story from news reportage and followed through by intercepting FBI and police details. With his unerring capacity to locate and filter data, Kurtzman had compiled a concise package for Brognola. As a legitimate civil servant high up in the Justice Department, Brognola had his own sources and by the late afternoon—the day after the incident—he had a comprehensive rundown.

  At first, Brognola thought he was looking at a Bolan strike. The first reports had identified at least two of the bodies as members of the Tsvetanov crime mob. On-the-spot fingerprint checking, using a handheld Biometric Fingerprint Reader, found a number of prints that were identified via AFIS with two names—they were known members of the Tsvetanov criminal organization. Brognola knew the Marchinski and Tsvetanov mobs were on Bolan’s list, but he chose to speak with his friend first.

  “Is this anything to do with you, Striker?” he asked once he had Bolan on the secure line and had detailed what had taken place.

  “Not guilty,” Bolan said, and for Brognola, that was enough.

  “Then it’s looking as if your strategy is working.”

  “So it does. I expect you’re reading official reports.”

  “Interesting stuff. There’s more to come,” Brognola said, “but fire department and FBI analysis at the scene has already identified the presence of cocaine and C4 explosive.”

  “I’ll hazard a guess this was a Marchinski strike against Drago Tsvetanov.”

  “I’d have to say your disruptive influence has something to do with this, too.”

  “Getting them rattled was always part of the plan.”

  “Gregor Marchinski and his buddy Sabaroff will have their hands full. Do you think it will take the heat off Mason and Abby a little?”

  “Getting big brother out of jail will still be on the agenda,” Bolan said, “but what’s happening on the streets is going to distract them. Hopefully, it might just give me a little more stretch.”

  “Keep in touch, Striker. Anything breaks at this end, I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 13

  When Bolan had finished speaking to Brognola, he was transferred to Aaron Kurtzman. Bolan had his cell in the cradle on the dash, set on speaker. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead as he listened to Kurtzman’s report.

  “The guy sending Mason those messages has been identified as Lazlo Sabaroff—Leo Marchinski’s lieutenant. After the voice analyzer broke down the sample, it searched for a match. Sabaroff was identified from a sound bite he did on the court steps after Marchinski was arraigned.”

  “So we have our source,” Bolan said. “Anything on the phone signal?”

  “Not so easy. Akira is working flat out trying to pin it down,” Kurtzman said, referring to Akira Tokaido, an extremely gifted hacker who was a key member of the Farm’s cyberteam. “The call came in via a spider web of signals. It was rerouted through providers worldwide. Marchinski must have a top-line tech man on his payroll.” Kurtzman let the words sink in. “No way we can fast track this, Striker, but we won’t give up. Boy Wonder will crack it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We’re scanning the phone image showing the Mason girl. There’s nothing definite so far—just a plain room. I’d say a bedroom.”

  “What about the newspaper?”

  “I knew you’d ask. It’s not a national. I’d say it’s a local rag. We’re trying to pin it down. Trouble is there’s nothing to say where it comes from. Just the name—Daily News. They’re not making it easy for us. I’m running a list of newspapers with that masthead. There looks to be a long list. Leave it with me, Striker. I need a mug of coffee to stimulate my brain cells. There are a few ideas rolling round in there.”

  Bolan sighed. He understood the complexities Kurtzman and his team battled. The needle and haystack came to mind. Even electronic searching had its bad days. He curbed his impatience, pushed thoughts of Larry Mason’s child to the back of his mind. As much as he wanted to snatch her back from the Marchinskis, Bolan had to remain impartial.

  “Thanks, Bear.”

  “So what next?”

  “I don’t intend to let our bad boys off the hook. I need to stir them up some more, keep them wondering what’s going on—especially the Marchinski mob. I get them nervous enough, they might start making mistakes.”r />
  “I have to ask, Striker. Couldn’t you be making things harder for the girl?”

  “She’s already at risk. I’m making a considered choice here, kicking over a few rocks and seeing where it takes me. It’s either that or I stand back and let Mason’s time run out without doing a damn thing. Either way, Abby is under threat until I find her.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have to make that choice. We’ll pull out all the stops—push until something cracks wide-open.”

  “Hell, I know that. You guys always work that way so what’s different this time?”

  Kurtzman offered a deep chuckle. “Now you’re just trying to flatter me so I’ll do my damndest.”

  “Is it working?”

  “His fingers are a blur on the keyboard,” Barbara Price said over the conference line. “Any minute now, I’ll see steam rising.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Bolan said. “I’m suitably humbled.”

  Chapter 14

  New York

  “I don’t know whether this will be of help,” Kurtzman said. “It came up while we were trawling through that cell you wanted checking out. There was a hell of a lot of junk we had to filter through, but after we deleted the garbage, we were left with a few texts in some Russian subdialect. I had the texts translated and I’m sending the one you’ll be interested in, Striker.”

  “I’ll take a look.”

  The message came through on Bolan’s cell minutes later. It detailed a meeting between two people, and one of the names was vaguely familiar. It brought Bolan back to Harry Jigs’s scribbled data. Vorchek. Danton Vorchek. Jigs had him down as a drug dealer for the Marchinski mob. He was low on the ladder, working where he lived—the poorer sections of the city. Despite working a low-income spot, Vorchek pulled in substantial sums of cash. He ran a busy crew of dealers.

  Kurtzman had run a make on Vorchek and had come up with the man’s police file and—more important for Bolan—an address. Vorchek lived in one of the tenements in the underdeveloped section of the city.