LITMIR.BIZ

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arson for hire, collections, extortion, that sort of thing.”

      Bolan nodded and slid the picture to the bottom of the pile of paperwork he held. He scanned down the page until he found the annotation for Scone’s current address. He memorized it.

      “The organized-crime squad put some of their confidential informants in his path and started hearing that Sideways was making a rep for himself as a real gunslinger, hijacking freight trucks and teamsters coming out of the Newark airport.”

      “They nab him?” Bolan asked.

      “Yes and no. A cigarette truck on its way into the city gets nabbed. The Newark police finger our man Sideways and do a takedown on the address I just gave you there.”

      “He was holding?”

      “No. No cigarettes, nothing to connect him to the heist. Still, it looks like they got him on a parole violation because the team found some crystal meth and a handgun in the house.”

      At the mention of handgun Bolan looked up. He knew where Danson was going now and realized why Brognola had organized the meet with the undercover cop.

      “So he’s cooling his heels in lockup?”

      “No. His girlfriend, Shayla, took the rap. Copped to it, said both were hers.”

      “Shayla? The girl he beat up?”

      “Same one. A regular Romeo and Juliet, this pair. Only Shayla has a prior herself. A pandering charge that went to probation she got while the love of her life, Sideways, was upstate in prison.”

      “So she’s in jail now?”

      “Exactly, Sideways is drinking beer and screwing her little sister as we speak at the address that’s in his file.”

      “And the handgun Newark copped on the raid?” Bolan asked. The question was rhetorical.

      “An HS 2000 Croatian pistol,” Danson confirmed.

      Bolan nodded curtly. His finger found the button on the armrest of his car door and he began to power up the window.

      “Looks like I need to pay our friend Sideways a little visit,” he said.

      “You tell Hal we’re square now.”

      Bolan nodded before the window went up and then pushed the accelerator down on his car. Within a minute he had connected to the arterial and was gunning it across the overpass above his rendezvous site.

      Jersey Shore

      BOLAN LEFT THE CAR behind and merged with the night.

      Sideways had made it easy for him. Or rather Shayla had. The house was surprisingly isolated. She’d taken her money from dancing and put it into a rundown, one-story Cape Cod overlooking the shore. It had been a fixer-upper with potential when she’d made the down payment on the house, but nothing had been improved and Sideways obviously wasn’t the handyman type. Now the little white house merely looked shabby, with a weed-choked lawn and three Harley panheads parked under the lean-to that served as a garage.

      Bolan moved up from the trees along the road, his movement masked by the droning of the cicadas and the sound of night surf battering the gray sand forty feet behind the old house.

      Low lights were on in the house behind drawn shades, and the hard riffs of Metallica bled out through the closed windows and doors. The volume was surprisingly subdued given the biker stereotype.

      Bolan, dressed in a blacksuit, crouched in the tall weeds at the edge of the yard. A massive pit bull was curled up on the front steps. It made soft snuffling noises as it slept. From where Bolan knelt the animal looked upward of eighty pounds of solid muscle. The soldier carefully unbuttoned the flap of the cargo pocket on his right pants leg and pulled out the plastic container Danson had given him and opened it.

      Bolan took the two horse pills that had come with the meat and pried them apart, one after the other, and gently sprinkled their contents into the hamburger. Once he had spilled the tranquilizer powder into the meat he rolled it into a ball and held it loosely in his right hand.

      He checked the wind coming in off the ocean, felt it push into his face. Satisfied, Bolan rose out of the weeds like a liquid shadow and lobbed the meatball in an arc over the thirty yards toward the front door of the one-story house.

      The hamburger hit the walkway in front of the stairs with a muted little splat, and Bolan instantly folded himself back down into the weeds. The pit bull got to its feet in the blink of an eye, and Bolan could hear its deep-throated growl clearly. It sounded like the idling engines of one of the Harleys parked in the lean-to behind it.

      The guard dog descended the wooden stair on stiffened legs, back hair bristling and teeth bared. Bolan remained motionless, draped in the night.

      The dog suddenly stopped growling. Bolan saw the beast’s snout suddenly shift as it caught the scent of the meat. Again the dog moved almost too fast to see, lunging forward and snapping up the ball of raw hamburger in a single chomp.

      The dog worked the food around in its mouth, then swallowed it. With a last, suspicious glare into the night, it turned its nose and returned to the porch. It curled up again and went to sleep.

      Bolan counted off the minutes on his wristwatch. He watched the dog’s breathing first slow, then lengthen and deepen until he was sure the animal was securely drugged. Confident, Bolan rose and ghosted across the lawn toward the back of the house. The silenced Beretta was out from its shoulder holster and ready in his hands as he came up alongside the building.

      He crept forward and reached a window, its blind not fully drawn. He stopped at the edge and slowly bent at the knees and lowered his body until he could peek under the shade and into the house through the dirty window.

      Empty beer bottles were lined up on the end table four deep. Just beyond them he saw flickering images on a TV screen. A bed was positioned in front of the TV and Bolan recognized the woman on it from the file Danson had given him as Sheila, Shayla’s younger sister and Sideways’s current girlfriend. She was so skinny Bolan thought the pit bull might have outweighed her.

      She opened her mouth and released the rubber tubing held between her teeth. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she pulled the empty hypodermic from her arm.

      Grim-faced, Bolan turned away and continued toward the rear of the house. He cut through the lean-to, past the panheads and came around the corner where the smell of the sea was even stronger. He eased up to the screened-in back porch and took stock of the situation. Two men sat at a kitchen table drinking beer and shaking their heads in time to the music coming out of a boom box CD player on the counter next to a sink piled high with dirty dishes.

      Bolan scrutinized the men through the open screen door. He recognized Sideways immediately. The man’s gorilla arms hung from a cut-up flannel shirt and swirled with prison tats. A spiderweb had been tattooed on his elbow. The other guy was wearing an oil-stained sleeveless red T-shirt with an Aerosmith decal on the front. His long hair was held back in a ponytail. He was small only when compared to the massive Sideways.

      A piece of glass, a double-edged razor blade and a generous mound of white powder were sitting on the table between the men. There was also a pistol. Bolan narrowed his eyes and took in the details of the handgun. It was a Croatian HS 2000.

      The shorter man said something and Sideways snorted with laughter. He turned his head and called something out over his shoulder, obviously meant for the woman Bolan had seen dosing herself in the bedroom. When he got no answer, the frustrated biker stood abruptly, obviously pissed off, and stalked out through the kitchen doorway toward the front of the house. The second biker laughed to himself, then polished off his beer. He set down the empty and crossed the kitchen toward the refrigerator. As he bent to reach in and snatch up a full bottle of beer, he heard the screen door slam behind him. He straightened, a puzzled expression on his face as he turned.

      Bolan stood before him.

      “Who the fu—?” the man began.

      Bolan

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