LITMIR.BIZ

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free and tucked it under his arm as he went to work on the left.

      As he began unlacing the other glove, Bolan’s eyes skirted the gym, taking in the men of various ages, sizes and abilities who had returned to the speed bags, heavy bags, double ended striking balls, jump ropes and other equipment. Most of them were innocent, honest fighters who were doing nothing more than trying to achieve their own personal dreams of success in the ring. But, unknowingly, they were actually part of one of the most extensive criminal organizations operating in the United States.

      The Executioner eyed them again as he wiped a single drop of sweat from his brow with his forearm. This was only the starting point for the mission he had undertaken. And he was certain to engage in many more fights as he worked his way toward the goal of taking down Tommy McFarley’s criminal organization.

      But there was one point about the fight he had just won that stood out in the Executioner’s mind as unique.

      It was likely to be the only skirmish with rules, without weapons and without blood.

      The Executioner was going to war yet again.

      2

      As the rat-tat-tat of the speed bags filled his ears like machine-gun fire, Bolan walked from the ring to the glass wall of his new office. Tossing the gloves he had just removed to a man on his way to the water fountain, he pushed the door open and left the gym proper. Through the glass, he could still hear the speed bags, the crunching of the canvas bags and the tapping of jump ropes as the door swung closed behind him.

      The Executioner looked at his desk as he moved toward it. It was cluttered with the personal effects of Sy Lennon, the former manager of McFarley’s New Orleans gym. But Lennon would not be back to collect them.

      He, along with a middleweight named Bobby “the Killer” Kiethley, was dead. Their bodies had not yet been found, and Bolan suspected they never would be.

      The rumor was that three of Tommy McFarley’s henchmen had dropped them out of one of McFarley’s private aircraft somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. Their crime? Not throwing a fight that McFarley had “fixed,” and upon which he had consequently lost close to a million dollars in bets.

      Bolan spied an empty cardboard box thrown carelessly into the corner of the office and quickly retrieved it. Without ceremony, he used his forearm to sweep the desktop clear. Papers, paperweights, a brass clip in the shape of a whale and a small plastic “Snoopy” wearing boxing gloves fell into the box. Returning the carton to the corner of the room, the Executioner dropped it and took a seat behind the desk.

      For a moment, he stared out through the glass at the men still working out in the gym. New Orleans was the center of McFarley’s operations, but his chain of boxing and body-building/power-lifting gyms stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They were the “front,” and the money-laundering operations, for his real businesses, which included international drug trafficking, arms dealing, gambling and white-slavery prostitution throughout the Western Hemisphere.

      Bolan glanced at the scarred black rotary telephone that was now the sole object on his desk. It was a throwback to an earlier era, and the chances of it being tapped by McFarley were slim. Still, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks, so the soldier leaned down to the gym bag he had dropped by the desk chair when he’d first arrived a few hours earlier. Fishing through the clothing and other contents, he found a smaller, zippered bag that contained both cell and satellite phones. Choosing the cell, he pulled it from the bag and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, the top-secret U.S. site that fielded counterterrorist teams and trained specially picked soldiers and police officers from America and its allied nations. The call was automatically routed through a number of cutout numbers on three continents on the offchance that someone—someone like McFarley—had stumbled onto the frequency.

      Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, answered the phone. “Hello, Striker,” she said. “How’s training?”

      Bolan chuckled softly. “Barely worked up a sweat yet,” he told the beautiful honey-blonde. He pictured her briefly in his mind. He and Price had a “special relationship” reserved for those rare occasions during which he was out of the field and spent the night at the Farm. But both were true professionals, and they never allowed that relationship to interfere with their work. “Had to prove myself a few minutes ago,” Bolan went on.

      “I doubt it lasted a full round,” Price said.

      “About a minute or so,” the soldier replied. “I didn’t see any reason to show off.” He paused, then got to the point of the call. “Can you buzz me through to Hal?”

      “I could,” Price said. “But it wouldn’t do you much good. He’s at Justice today.”

      Hal Brognola wore two hats. In one role, he was the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. But in another, he was a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. “I’ll call him there, then,” Bolan told Price.

      “Good luck and be careful.”

      “Always,” he said and ended the call.

      A moment later he had dialed the numbers to the big Fed’s direct line at the Justice Department. A gruff voice answered. “Brognola.”

      “Striker here.”

      “Hello, big guy,” Hal Brognola said after turning on the scrambler. “How’s the new job?”

      “Terrific,” Bolan answered. “If you like starting at the bottom. I’m in, but I’m still a long way from McFarley’s real action. Unless we can figure out a way to speed things up, it’s going to take me a lifetime to get next to the man.”

      “You haven’t met McFarley, himself, yet, have you?” Brognola asked.

      “No,” Bolan said. “I was interviewed and got hired by one of his goons. It seems the big man doesn’t dirty himself with small jobs like hiring gym managers.”

      “Well,” Brognola said, “I’ve got something else working right now that ought to lead to a meeting. The same undercover DEA agent who’s managing McFarley’s gym in Cleveland—the guy I went through to get you in there in New Orleans—has let a few things ‘slip’ about your less-than-spotless past. It shouldn’t take long for loose lips to reach McFarley’s ears that you’ve run both guns and dope in the past, and that you’re just trying to keep a low profile by managing boxers for a while.”

      “Your DEA man in Cleveland,” Bolan asked. “How much does he know?”

      “Not much. He’s a good man. He understands the need-to-know concept and realizes he doesn’t need to know anything past recommending you, alias ‘Matt Cooper’ of course, for the New Orleans job.”

      “You think this rumor-passing stunt is going to work?” Bolan asked.

      “I think so,” Brognola said. “Guys like McFarley are always on the lookout for men with Matt Cooper’s experience.”

      A tap on the glass door to his office caused Bolan to look up. When he did, he saw a man wearing striped overalls and a tool belt, with a paint can in his hand. Bolan knew what he was there to do, and he nodded.

      The man in the overalls set the can down, pulled a razor-bladed paint scraper from his tool belt and began scraping Sy Lennon’s name off the glass door. In its place, he would paint Bolan’s undercover ID—Matt Cooper.

      “Okay,” Bolan said, turning his attention back to the phone. “I guess all I can do right now is wait.”

      “It shouldn’t take long,” Brognola came back.

      Without further words, Bolan disconnected the line.

      He looked up again just in time to see a blurry form through the glass. It shoved the man in the overalls aside and pushed through the door.

      Jake Jackson, the fighter the Executioner had KO’d only a few minutes earlier, strode angrily

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