LITMIR.BIZ

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morning, then,” Rio said. “Don’t be late.”

      “I won’t,” he said.

      Rio left the restaurant without another word. The parking lot was dark, and his car was parked on the far edge of the lot. He moved with easy grace to the vehicle, sweating already in the humid night air. He unlocked the door, opened it and wedged himself into the seat. Then he put the key into the ignition, started the engine and reached for the air-conditioning. It was too damn humid to not run it on full blast, and he twisted the dial as far to the right as it would go.

      As the vents blasted air into his face, two things happened at once. He recognized the acrid tang of pepper spray, and four large men appeared around his car—one at each door. Almost instantly blinded, he tried the door, but the goon standing there held it shut.

      “Damn it!” he said, sneezing, coughing and hacking. He forced himself against the door with all his strength and it popped open. He fell out onto the concrete, reaching for his gun even as he landed. Blind, he didn’t have much of a chance, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

      “Don’t bother, cowboy,” a voice said in his ear. He felt the cold metal barrel of a gun pushed against his flesh.

      Still coughing, his lungs and eyes burned from the pepper spray, Rio moved his hands away from his coat. The man pulled out the .45 and handed it to one of his pals. The marshal couldn’t make out faces clearly through the tears running from his eyes.

      “What the hell?” Rio started to say, when the Italian leather boot slammed into his head.

      “Welcome to New Orleans, cowboy,” the man said. “The boss wants to have a word with you, and I suggest you cooperate. The gators are hungry this time of year.”

      Knowing that if he fought now, they’d just kill him outright, Rio relaxed. He’d have to wait for a better opportunity.

      “Told you I’d bring him,” he heard Smythe’s voice say. “Didn’t I?”

      “Yeah, Trenton, you did real good,” the man said.

      His eyes were clearing, and Rio saw a man dressed in an expensive suit, Smythe standing behind him. Rio spit blood from his split lip. “I won’t be forgetting this, Smythe,” he said. “Not for a long, long time.”

      “You’ve got more to worry about than I do, Marshal. A lot more.”

      Rio was about to reply when the boot hit him again, this time connecting with his temple, and the world went hot, then dark.

      1

      There weren’t that many people who could call Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, out of the blue and get an instant response, but Hal Brognola was one of them. Apparently one of the big Fed’s colleagues, Jacob Rio—a man Brognola had a great deal of respect for—had become quite concerned lately for the welfare of his brother, U.S. Marshal Jack Rio.

      According to Jacob, Jack was almost a week overdue for a visit they’d scheduled. Jacob had told Brognola that his brother had been slated for a couple of weeks off, and they’d planned to use one of them to go fishing in the Gulf. Brognola had asked him what his brother was doing for the other one, but Jacob hadn’t known for sure.

      “He just said he wanted to check something out,” he’d said. “For him, that usually means a really cold case or something way off the beaten path or both.”

      “You’ve tried all his numbers?” Brognola had asked. “Gone to his house? Contacted his office?”

      “All of the above,” Jacob said. “No one knows anything, and it’s not like Jack to just disappear.”

      Trusting Jacob Rio’s instincts, Brognola contacted Bolan and relayed the details as he knew them. Bolan caught the next flight to Houston out of Denver, where he’d been taking some downtime mountain climbing. From Houston, the drive down to Galveston where the marshal lived wasn’t very long, and Bolan cruised the street looking for the white, two-story house that Brognola had told him Rio called home. He ran through his conversation with Brognola again as he drove. It would seem by all accounts that Rio was the real thing—a tough fighter, a more than competent lawman, and the kind of person you’d want watching your back when all hell broke loose. He wasn’t the kind of man to take off on a whim without telling anyone.

      Rio’s neighborhood was that in name only. It might be an area that would make your average suburban family nervous, as the houses were interrupted by equipment and buildings for the oil companies. It wasn’t an area where people would let their kids play on the street.

      As the driveway came into view, Bolan saw that a black Lincoln Town Car occupied it, so he pulled up short and parked. There was no record of Rio owning a Town Car in the information that Brognola had sent him. The license plate was Louisiana, not Texas, and wasn’t a law-enforcement plate. The Executioner climbed out of the car and eased the door closed, then made his way along a low hedge that fronted the house. He could see that the door was open, but wasn’t close enough yet to hear anything from the inside. It didn’t help that the ocean was less than two blocks away and the incoming tide was making enough noise that hearing anything that wasn’t up close and personal would be difficult.

      Deciding that a direct approach might work just as well as stealth, Bolan straightened and turned up the walk that led to the front door. When he neared it, he could hear the sound of muttered cursing and the crash of drawers being slammed shut. He knocked loudly on the door, and called out, “Hey, Rio, you in there?”

      The sounds from the back of the house stopped. A long moment of silence, and Bolan called out once more. “Rio, you in there?”

      Hurried footsteps moved through the house, and Bolan saw a man enter the small living room. He was dressed in a nice suit, obviously tailored, but looked disheveled. The coat and shirt were both wrinkled, and his hair was mussed and sweaty. “Sorry, sorry,” the man said. He had a distinct accent that marked him as a native of New Orleans. “I was in the back cleaning up.” He gestured with a thumb toward the back of the house.

      “Yeah, I heard,” Bolan said. “I’m looking for Jack Rio. He around?”

      “No, uh, he’s not here right now,” the man said. “Who are you?”

      “Oh, just an old friend,” he said, stepping into the foyer. “We do a little fishing from time to time, and I thought I’d drop by and see if he was up for something this weekend.”

      “Fishing, huh?” the man said. He was large enough to fill the entryway into the living room, and he stepped forward to meet Bolan. “You don’t look like much of a fisherman.”

      “These aren’t my fishing clothes,” Bolan replied, easing the front door shut behind him.

      “Yeah, right, whatever,” the man said. “Look, Rio’s not here, so why don’t you beat it?”

      Bolan closed the final distance between them, stopping just a couple of steps away from the man. “Sorry,” he said, “but I can’t do that.”

      “Why the hell not?” the man demanded. “Come back later.”

      “Because,” Bolan said, jabbing a fist into the man’s solar plexus, “I’ve decided I don’t like you.”

      The man doubled over, but was smart enough to back away at the same time, so Bolan’s follow-up missed. He straightened, coming up with a mean-looking .45 from beneath his coat. “Don’t take another step,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

      Bolan didn’t hesitate. He stepped in close, even as the goon started to speak, and caught his right arm in a reverse lock with his left. He jerked up hard and felt the elbow snap. The man screamed, and the gun hit the wooden floor with a dull thud. Pushing forward with all his weight, Bolan brought his right hand around and drove a hammer blow to the man’s jaw.

      He staggered and started to go down. Knowing that his adversary was likely to recover quickly, Bolan chopped a blow

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