LITMIR.BIZ

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his line of fire. The face and accent of his speech made him American, though Bolan couldn’t place where he’d been born and raised.

      No matter. He was dying here.

      A 3-round burst surprised the mercenary, dropped him on his backside in the dust with an amazed expression on his face. He clearly hadn’t planned to die that afternoon, but now he had no choice.

      It took a moment for the dead man to collapse backward, and by the time he’d managed it, Bolan could hear an engine revving on the far side of the garbage mountain. Snatching up the merc’s AKSU, he ran around the pile and was in time to see the Prius barrel across the waste ground, toward the street.

      Bolan fired after it, peppered the trunk and took out half of the rear window, but the car kept going. He had missed the driver, and a sharp left turn at the next intersection put his target out of range.

      “I missed him, too,” Falk said, approaching with her Glock in hand.

      “And I,” Barialy added, sounding glum.

      “It was his lucky day,” Bolan replied. “And ours, too.”

      “He’ll report back to the man,” Falk said.

      “No doubt,” Bolan replied. “While he’s running, we can ditch the Ford, pick up another ride. And then, we need to talk.”

       CHAPTER THREE

       Chesapeake Bay, Two Days Earlier

      Standing on the dock at Tilghman, Maryland, Mack Bolan felt as if he had gone back in time, not merely to some past familiar day but to a bygone century. The ticket in his hand entitled him to one two-hour cruise aboard the skipjack Rebecca T. Ruark, departing at 11:00 a.m. and returning at 1:00 p.m.

      It might as well have been a time machine.

      When Hal Brognola had proposed the cruise, suggesting that a sail would grant them maximum security, Bolan had not known what a skipjack was. He’d looked it up online, discovering that it was a type of nineteenth-century sailboat, developed by fishermen on Chesapeake Bay for oyster dredging. Despite modern advances in technology, the boats remained in service because Maryland state law banned use of powerboats for oyster fishing.

      The Rebecca T. Ruark, built in 1886, was a classic skipjack, with its V-shaped wooden hull, low-slung freeboard and square stern. A dredge windlass and its small motor—the only mechanical engine aboard—were mounted amidships, but conversion of the ship to tourist cruises had given the Chesapeake’s oysters a long, welcome respite.

      Bolan boarded with a dozen other passengers and made a brief walking tour of the ship—all fifty-three feet of it—trying to forget that a freak storm had sunk it in 1999, trusting that its owners had refurbished the vessel and kept it seaworthy since then.

      If not, he reckoned he could swim to shore from any point where they went down, but Bolan had his doubts about Brognola.

      Speaking of Hal, where was he? They had five minutes before the ship set sail, and if the man from Justice had been stuck in traffic or distracted by some crisis, Bolan was about to waste two hours on the briny deep.

      He spent the time remaining in a futile bid to read the big Fed’s mind. Brognola often presented mission briefings at Stony Man Farm, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, or on walking tours of Arlington National Cemetery. The vast graveyard of heroes offered ample solitude, and with the exception of a single disastrous lapse, Bolan had never questioned the security at Stony Man.

      “Too many ears around these days,” Brognola had explained, without really explaining anything. “A sail sounds good.”

      And so it had. Bolan had no problem with seasickness, no fear of open water or the gliding predators that it concealed. A cruise had sounded fine…but he still wondered why the change in their routine was necessary.

       Ears, of course, meant spies —but whose?

      The Department of Homeland Security had risen from the 9/11 rubble, tasked with coordinating intelligence collection and defense against all manner of enemies, both domestic and foreign. It was supposed to end the age-old bickering and backstabbing that put the CIA at odds with FBI and NSA, and sparked unhealthy feuds among the several branches of the U.S. military.

      Note the qualifying phrase supposed to.

      In reality, no branch or bureau of the government had ever given one inch to a rival without bitter resistance, sometimes verging on mutiny. Bolan knew, as a matter of fact, that tension was rife throughout all of America’s intelligence and security agencies, each on tenterhooks from fear of another terrorist raid—and each determined to expose that plot, whatever it might be, before “the other guys” could vie for a share of the glory.

      It was the same old story, made potentially more dangerous by the official mask of peaceable cooperation that concealed the dissidence and subterfuge within.

      But was it what Brognola had in mind?

      Or was there something— someone —else?

      One minute left until the ship cast off, and Bolan had begun to think that the big Fed was cutting it too close for his own good. A panting sprint along the dock would only call attention to him—which, presumably, was the last thing Brognola wanted.

      Bolan drifted to the dockside rail, shook hands in passing with the ship’s captain and settled into the countdown.

      If Brognola did not appear, he had a choice: jump ship and eat the thirty-dollar ticket’s cost, or take the cruise alone and hope that his old friend was waiting for him when the skipjack berthed again. He had his cell phone, for a point of contact, but a ship-to-shore briefing made absolutely no sense to him, when a thousand different listeners could snatch their words out of thin air.

      With forty seconds left, a black sedan appeared and coasted to a stop at the far end of the dock. Bolan saw Brognola exit the shotgun seat, dressed in a sport shirt, nylon windbreaker and jeans, surmounted by a shapeless fishing hat, with size-twelve deck shoes on his feet.

      Compared to Brognola’s habitual dark suits, it might as well have been a clown costume, but Bolan realized that no one else aboard the ship would notice the discrepancy. Hal was a total stranger to them all, and dressing in his normal Brooks Brothers’ attire would have raised caution flags among his fellow travelers.

      The big Fed didn’t sprint along the pier. Rather, he walked “with purpose,” as the drill instructors used to say in boot camp, and he reached the gangway just as crewmen were prepared to take it up. He muttered an aw-shucks apology for being late, which was dismissed with airy smiles.

      Eye contact from the dock told Bolan that Brognola knew exactly where to find him. They would seem to meet by accident, fall into casual discussion of the ship, the bay, whatever, and conduct their business at a distance from the other passengers who jammed the rails or lingered near the loudspeakers to catch the captain’s commentary.

      No unwanted ears aboard the skipjack, unless some demonic master of disguise had learned Brognola’s plan and come aboard with Bolan and the other passengers who’d paid their fares at dockside.

      The big Fed waited for the lines to be cast off and let the vessel find its course before he drifted toward Bolan, walking with hands in pockets, still testing his sea legs.

      “Nice day for it,” he said.

      “Seems like,” Bolan agreed.

      “I’d buy a round of drinks, but the sloop’s BYOB.”

      “Skipjack,” Bolan corrected him.

      “What’s the difference?”

      “Sloops were warships, intermediate in size between a corvette and a frigate,” Bolan said.

      “You live and learn.”

      “With any luck.”

      “I haven’t been out on a boat in years,” Brognola said. “I used

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