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  Both men wasted little time in opening fire.

  The .45 rounds bounced off the APC, which was to be expected, but the fire also kept the deputies and whoever else the sheriff's office had sent along from coming in.

  Next to them, Rico and his two thugs whipped out a trio of AK-74s. Lee had given Rico the three Kalashnikovs as samples a month earlier.

  As the bullets flew through the air, Lee cursed to himself. There was no way that the local yokels were onto him. Hell, BATF couldn't get to him without his finding out about it, so there was no way the damn sheriff's office was getting anywhere near him.

  Rico, though, was another story. Besides, this was his warehouse, which meant that some deputy or other had found out where it was and got enough probable cause for a warrant.

  This was bad on several levels. For one thing, he risked getting arrested, and being caught associating with a drug dealer in a warehouse full of heroin wasn't exactly the sort of thing that kept your career as an arms dealer under the radar.

  For another, the way bullets were flying, he was like as not to get hurt. He'd been shot at enough times in the Middle East that he was more than happy to avoid it as much as possible now, which was why he generally went weaponless. If you were unarmed, people were less likely to shoot at you.

  And then there was the simple fact that there was no way, after today, that Rico would be a paying customer. He'd either be arrested or dead.

  Lee needed to find another buyer.

  Once he got out of the warehouse.

  Nieto just kept shooting until his clip ran out of bullets. Most of his shots bounced off the APC, but he was okay with that. As long as he and the rest of them kept shooting, they weren't being shot at.

  Then he ducked behind another crate and ejected the clip, which clacked to the floor. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out another, checked to make sure it was full — it'd be just like him to shove an empty clip in his pocket by mistake — then Nieto shoved it into the .45, cocked it and rose to fire another volley over the crate.

  Though it took a little longer, when Thorne did run out of bullets, he dived for cover, letting the drug dealer and his two goons keep the covering fire going.

  * * *

  Rico glanced at the gun dealer and his bodyguards with disgust. Hiding when there's work to be done. Just typical. That was why Rico didn't like dealing with white folks. They tended to hire weak-ass coward types.

  But Rico's boys, Po-Boy and Light Bulb, they were tight. They were his best boys. Po-Boy was from New Orleans — that was why he had that nickname — and he'd moved here after Katrina. As for Light Bulb, they called him that because he was always getting ideas. Problem was, they were all stupid ideas, which was why he was still muscle and not management.

  Besides, Rico did fine handling management by himself.

  They all had their AK-74s on auto and just kept pounding. Rico vowed wasn't no police gonna take his ass down without a fight.

  From behind the APC, Hal Diaz held his 5.56 mm Smith &Wesson M&P15T rifle. The helmet he wore was fitted with an earpiece, and the voice of Deputy Sheriff Marquez sounded tinny in it. "Anyone got a shot?"

  As soon as the two guys with the .45s stopped firing, Diaz leaned his helmeted head out enough to see the inside of the warehouse past the APC, which was half in, half out of the shattered doorway.

  On the right side of the APC as he was, he was mostly clear of fire. The three guys with Kalashnikovs were mainly hitting center and left.

  Holding up the rifle and peering through its scope, he saw that he had a clean shot on one of the three guys.

  Marquez's query was met entirely with negatives, but then Diaz said, "I've got a shot on the one in the blue shirt."

  "Take it," Marquez ordered.

  Pausing only long enough to make sure his aim was true, Diaz fired.

  The 5.56 mm round cut through the air — which was becoming filled with smoke from all the gunfire — and hit Light Bulb right in center mass, the bullet cutting swiftly through flesh, rib and aorta.

  As Light Bulb fell to his death, he lost the ability to aim his AK-74, and he sprayed his fire all over the warehouse.

  Most of the bullets that flew freely hit walls or crates or other inanimate objects, some ricocheting to other places.

  Seven such bullets riddled Po-Boy's chest, slicing his rib cage, heart, lungs and esophagus to ribbons in an instant.

  Another ricochet got Thorne in the back of the head just as he had finished reloading his .45, splintering the back of his skull and severing his spine instantly. The bullet flew out of his mouth and embedded itself in a wooden crate.

  Seeing his comrade fall, Nieto got pissed. He and Thorne had been best friends since they were kids growing up in Tampa, and he was goddamned if he'd let his boy's death go unanswered.

  But he didn't aim at the cops. No, he aimed at Rico. After all, it was his boy's shot that took out Thorne. That wasn't right.

  For his part, Rico was pissed off, and started screaming as he continued to fire at the cops.

  With fewer weapons aimed at them, more of the cops came out from behind the APC to try to get a shot off. Two of them were hit, one in his Kevlar — which still sent him to the ground on his back — and the other in the arm, which wasn't fatal, but kept him out of the firefight.

  Meanwhile, Nieto took aim and let a .45-caliber round fly right at Rico's head.

  Unfortunately, he missed, the bullet instead bouncing off the warehouse's corrugated metal wall.

  Still screaming, Rico didn't even notice the near miss.

  But when his AK-74 ran out of ammo and the Kalashnikov kept dry-clicking — that, he noticed.

  "Shit!" he cried as he dived to the floor to get Po-Boy's AK-74, but doing so left Rico open to a shot from Diaz, who fired at his head. The rifle bullet entered right under his ear, shattering his jawbone and pulping his gray matter.

  Meanwhile, another cop, Jeff Zbigniew, took aim with his own M&P15T rifle and sent a bullet right into Nieto's temple. The bullet, along with skull fragments, brain matter and sizzling hot flesh, blew out the other temple, and Nieto fell to the ground.

  The warehouse was then silent. Diaz and Zbigniew, along with Sergeant Russell, moved in, covering each other. They checked the entire warehouse, but all they found were five dead bodies and a whole lot of bullet-ridden crates.

  "Clear!" Russell said, with Diaz and Zbigniew repeating the pronouncement.

  Russell looked at his two sharpshooters. "Where's the other one?"

  Diaz frowned. "What?"

  "We had six guys in here — four Latinos, one black, one white. I only count five bodies — the white guy's missing."

  Zbigniew and Diaz both shrugged, and Russell shook his head.

  "All right, tear apart these crates. There's another asshole in here, and I want him!"

  The search, however, turned up no other bodies, dead or alive. It did, however, turn up a huge amount of uncut heroin, with a street value of close to a billion dollars. It was the biggest drug bust of the year, if not the decade, and Marquez was pleased with the end result.

  Except for that missing person.

  Diaz then found something: there was a side door, which was unlocked, and it was right behind the crates where the three guys who took cover had all dived.

  * * *

  Kevin Lee had used that door right after Thorne was killed. There was no percentage in staying, and he knew that Nieto would never cooperate with the police if captured — and he certainly wouldn't if he was killed, though Lee was getting tired of people in his employ meeting their ends — so he felt confident in looking out for himself.

  For reasons unknown, the cops had failed to secure the perimeter before taking the door — or if they did, the people on that perimeter had left their posts when the shooting started. One was as likely as the other — the sheriff's office was having manpower shortages of late, and cops also tended to go to the defense of their fellows.

  E
ither way, Lee had been able to take advantage and make his escape. He left the Lincoln Towncar he'd arrived in behind. It was Thome's anyhow, with no connection to Lee, so he could safely leave it. Once he was far enough away on foot, he'd call for a cab.

  And then he'd call Delgado. They needed a new buyer, and fast.

  11

  Erica nearly jumped out of her skin when the disposable cell phone that Delgado had given her rang.

  It had only been about fifteen minutes since Lee's right-hand man had called "Mike Burns" with a potential job offer. Obviously Delgado was doing a considerable amount of phone work.

  "Hello?" Erica said slowly.

  "Star, that you?"

  "Oh, God, Danny," Erica said breathlessly, "I'm so scared! I don't know what to do!"

  Erica was trying to sound panicky, which wasn't all that much of an effort, all things considered.

  "Calm down, Star, baby, it's all right. Tell me what happened."

  Slowly, haltingly, Erica told the story exactly as Bolan had instructed her to. Most of it was a true rendering of what had occurred. It veered from the truth only at the very end.

  "After I didn't hear anything anymore, I — I opened the bathroom door, and there was Jean-Louis! He was dead! And so were the two guys you sent!"

  "Describe them," Delgado said.

  "I don't know, they were two dead guys!" She took a deep breath. "One was black, one was white."

  "No third person?"

  "Not that — not that I saw, no."

  "Okay, good. I mean, not good, but good that you're okay. What'd you do, then?"

  "I ran! Oh God, Danny, what was I supposed to do? Jean-Louis left the keys to his Olds on a hook by the door, and I just took it and ran. I've been driving all night."

  "Where are you now?"

  "Key Largo."

  The Executioner nodded. That was what she was supposed to say.

  They talked for a few more minutes, mostly Erica blubbering and Delgado reassuring her that everything was all right.

  Finally, Delgado said, "Look, throw that phone away, okay? And come to work tonight like usual — I'll give you the other 5K."

  "But — but I didn't..."

  "You did exactly what you were supposed to do, baby. Ain't your fault it went sideways. All right?"

  "O-okay."

  She pressed the End button, then tossed the phone to the couch.

  Maxwell was suddenly there next to her, handing her a mug filled with herb tea. "Here you go."

  Grateful, she took the mug, steam rising from it, and held it close to her.

  Maxwell's phone rang. "It's Vin," she said after checking the display. She went into the kitchen to take the call.

  At Erica's confused look, Bolan said, "One of her contacts in the sheriff's office."

  While Maxwell took the call, Erica told Bolan what Delgado had said. As she spoke, Bolan took out his Desert Eagle to clean and reload it.

  "If he's going to pay you at the club, then he's probably on the level as far as that goes," Bolan said. "If he wanted to take you out, he wouldn't do it in public. He'd have a private place to pay you off."

  Somehow, Erica didn't find that reassuring.

  Pocketing her phone, Maxwell came back into the living room, holding a mug of her own.

  "Vin was calling to show off," she said with a feral grin. "Apparently, Deputy Marquez just made the biggest drug bust of the decade. They found a ton of H in a warehouse on East Rockland Key. There was a shootout, but all the good guys were just winged. Got five dead bodies, though."

  "While I'm thrilled that the Monroe County Sheriff's Office is doing its job, I don't understand..."

  "Give me a second, okay?" Maxwell said quickly.

  Bolan held up his hands in a "go ahead" gesture, then went back to cleaning his weapon.

  "One of the DBs was Rico Pinguino, one of the local drug honchos, and two others were two of his muscle. That's not the interesting part — the interesting part is that the other two corpses were ID'd as Rafael Nieto and Jose Thorne." She smiled at Bolan. "Remember how we were saying that we took out most of Lee's muscle last night? Well, Nieto and Thorne were about the only ones left. What's more, Vin said there was a sixth person, a white guy, who got away."

  Having finished cleaning and reassembling the Desert Eagle, Bolan snapped a clip of ammo into place. "So Lee was doing a deal with a local drug kingpin, and now it's gone south. That means he's going to need a new buyer."

  * * *

  Danny Delgado sat at the table near the door of Niko's Diner. The place was about to go out of business when the lieutenant had bought it. He kept the short-order cook and the busboy, fired everyone else and used it as his personal restaurant. It was a good place to hold meetings, for one thing, as it was out of the way on Big Pine Key, but not so far out of the way that it was hard to get to from Route 1.

  And the food didn't suck too badly.

  Delgado puffed on the first cigarette from his third pack that day. He usually didn't plow through them that fast, but this had been a particularly lousy twenty-four hours. Their six best guys were all in the morgue, and the only thing they knew for sure was that two of them were killed by cops.

  And their biggest deal of the year just fell apart.

  The lieutenant's yacht was full of guns, and they needed to unload them, and soon. Kevin Lee had even made noises about selling at a discount. They couldn't let them sit on the boat too long. Since September 11, the Coast Guard made regular spot checks of yachts that traveled in the Gulf of Mexico, and while those had lessened in frequency of late, the lieutenant's yacht had been hit more than once by such checks.

  And it wasn't like the Coast Guard didn't know who Kevin Lee was. They just couldn't prove he was moving guns. Which was why the "random" checks often hit his boat.

  Delgado had made all the phone calls he could, and secured three replacements for their lost manpower. Now he was just waiting for some people to call him back — and for Mike Burns to show up.

  Right at one-thirty, the big ex-Marine entered the diner.

  Minaya and Daley were at the next booth over, and as soon as the man walked in, they checked him out. Daley started patting him down.

  "Want me to strip to my underwear, too?" Bolan asked, putting on his alias's cheeky attitude.

  Minaya was holding a FoxHound Pro bug detector and running it up and down Bolan's body. Since Bolan mostly worked alone, there was rarely any need for him to be wearing a wire, so standing for this was hardly an issue. As for the pat-down, he'd — reluctantly — left his SIG-Sauer and Desert Eagle in the car.

  He'd already driven Erica home, and instructed Maxwell to stay in the safehouse, a direction he was half-expecting her to ignore. She had driven to the safehouse in a Mini Cooper with Alabama plates. The Executioner had debated for several seconds over whether or not to ask her where she'd gotten it, then decided that it wasn't important.

  Once the preliminaries were finished, and Bolan had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of water, he said, "So what's this about my special talents?"

  Delgado grinned. "Well, you're a Marine. That means you have skills most folks don't have regarding, well, violence."

  Bolan laughed. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. Need me to beat somebody up for ya?"

  "Anybody I point you at, actually."

  Shaking his head, Bolan said, "Wait, you're serious?"

  "Of course. You think I dragged your ass out here just to feed you a crappy sandwich?"

  "Thanks for the testimonial," Bolan said with a wry grin.

  Just then, the short-order cook brought the sandwich and the water. It looked flaccid and greasy, which was about what Bolan had been expecting.

  Not bothering to even pick it up, Bolan looked Delgado right in the eye. "What, you wanna hire me for some kinda bouncer gig or something? No offense, Danny, I mean, you're a fellow traveler and all, but that's just a wee bit below my pay grade, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "Really?
" Delgado reached into his omnipresent portfolio and pulled out a few pieces of paper. "See, I understand you were dishonorably discharged. That ain't the sort of thing that leads to high-paying ciwie jobs."

  Bolan provided a smile that Delgado probably read as him being amused. In fact, the Executioner was impressed that Delgado went to the trouble of looking up the USMC record for "Michael Burns," which was still available for anyone who'd look. Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man's computer expert, had created that profile, and Kurtzman did his work well.

  Aloud, he said, "Depends on the ciwie job you're looking for. To give you a for instance, there's some folks 'round this country who think gettin' yourself dishonorably discharged is a character reference. Especially when you were kicked out for shooting some raghead or other."

  Delgado leaned back on the vinyl seat of the diner booth. "Go on." He was now curious as to what, exactly, it was that this Marine did for a living.

  "You ever hear tell of a group calls themselves Oklahoma Pride?"

  Shaking his head, Delgado said, "Can't say that I have. Why?"

  "Well, see, what I do is serve as a kind of broker for folks who need to find things under the radar. In this particular case, Oklahoma Pride needs to get their hands on some equipment."

  "What kind of equipment?"

  Bolan pulled at the sandwich but did not pick it up. "Look, Danny, this ain't none of your concern. I got a line on what I need, so I can..."

  Delgado put a hand forward on the table. "Hang on. The guy I work for — he's a good person to do business with. If you're looking to do business."

  "What I need's kinda specialized."

  Leaning back again, Delgado said, "I'm guessing based on the name of your client and the fact that they consider the reason for your discharge to be a character reference, that they're a bunch of neo-Nazis."

  Bolan grinned. "They prefer the term 'racial purists,' but yeah. Me, I don't have a problem with nobody long as he don't worship Allah. But mostly the only color I care about is green."