LITMIR.BIZ

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the engine went smoothly into reverse at Lola’s moving of the gearshift.

      This late at night, the traffic was fine on Whitehead, and moving decently on Route 1 to the bridge, though it seemed agonizingly slow to Lola.

      A pit opened up in the bottom of her stomach as she turned off Route 1 onto the side road that led to the dive shop, the warehouse and the restaurant across the street.

      But Lola saw none of those things. She saw only the flashing lights and the yellow crime-scene tape.

      Dozens of sedans and SUVs were parked, all with the rapid-fire sequence of colored lights that indicated they belonged to law enforcement. There were people wearing the uniform of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and plainclothes agents wearing windbreaker jackets with “BATF” stenciled in big white letters on the back.

      The tape cordoned off both the warehouse and the dive shop.

      The pit in Lola’s stomach grew wider.

      She parked the Mustang and managed to talk to Deputy Hobart, who’d always had the hots for her, into letting her past the tape.

      Several agents were standing over two dead bodies, using various pieces of crime-scene investigation equipment. One victim was a giant of a man, wounded in both the forehead and left arm, the former likely to have been the fatal shot. But Lola barely noticed that, instead focusing on the one with the mangled left thigh: Agent John McAvoy.

      “Noooo!” Lola cried out as she raced toward the body, her eyes welling with tears.

      One of the agents stopped her, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug that kept her arms at her side.

      “Let me go!”

      Another agent stared hard at her. “Who the hell are you, lady? And what are you doing in my crime scene?”

      “My name is Lola Maxwell—I was working with Johnny—with Agent McAvoy.” Then she remembered the password Johnny had given her in case she ever found herself speaking to a BATF agent about this case. “Galleria.”

      The agent blinked twice, then looked at the person manhandling Lola. “Let her go.”

      After she was free, Lola knelt so she could see Johnny better, years of training keeping her from actually disturbing the body and any evidence it might contain. It looked like his thigh had been hit by a large-caliber bullet that shredded the femoral artery. He would’ve bled out in moments.

      The other body meant that nothing would come of it from an investigative standpoint. The Samoan—who looked like one of Lee’s goons, the one they called Pooky—killed the BATF agent, and the BATF agent killed Pooky. Lola had been a cop too long to know that this was just two murders that had conveniently solved each other. The paperwork would be clean and easy, the cases would improve the county’s crime stats, and life would go on. No one would avenge Johnny’s death because they knew who killed him.

      Her heart ached from the sight of his glass-eyed stare, but she vowed that she would carry on, the cold fire of vengeance burning behind her tear-filled eyes.

      1

      The satellite phone had interrupted Mack Bolan’s fishing.

      Strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been on a rented boat in the middle of Bear Lake near Atlanta, Michigan, all day, but not a single salmon had taken the bait at the end of his line. Was it really fishing if you didn’t catch any fish?

      Bolan rarely took downtime, as there was always something that needed his attention. He valued his R and R, and he was a practical man. He had never subscribed to the notion that the rest and relaxation was the most important part of fishing. If one wanted to rest and relax, there were plenty of ways to do it, and he wouldn’t have had to leave his rented cabin or take the small motorboat into the middle of Bear Lake.

      No, he wanted to fish. But the salmon weren’t exactly cooperating.

      The Executioner took very few vacations, but it was time for him to kick back and clear his mind, take time so that his body could heal from all that he’d put it through in the past few weeks.

      But he’d been in Montmorency County for twenty-four hours, and he was bored, so he quickly snatched up the sat phone when it signaled an incoming call.

      “Striker,” the gruff voice of Hal Brognola said, “sorry to interrupt your time off, but it’s been twenty-four hours, so I assume you’re ready to go back to work?”

      Brognola knew him well. “What’s the mission?”

      “There’ll be a Stony Man plane on the tarmac at Atlanta Municipal Airport within the hour to take you to Key West International Airport. The full mission brief will be there.”

      “Anything else?”

      “It’ll all be in the intel package. Let me know if you need anything else.”

      Bolan disconnected with Brognola after his goodbyes and steered the boat back to the shore.

      It took fifty minutes to return the boat, pack his few things into a duffel, check out of the cabin, and take his rental car to the airport, where he returned it. Stony Man had sent a private jet just as Brognola had promised. Bolan could see Charlie Mott, one of Stony Man’s pilots, waiting on the tarmac.

      Bolan went easily through security, his credentials allowing him to bring his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 handgun into the airport without question. He had only the one weapon—he was, technically, on vacation, after all.

      Boarding the plane, he saw that Brognola had anticipated his needs, as usual. An ICC aluminum case covered in black ballistic nylon sat on one of the eight comfortable chairs, and a Pelican 1780W HL Long Case on another. A quick look revealed they held a Mark XIX Desert Eagle .357 Magnum pistol and an RRA Tactical Entry 5.56 mm automatic rifle, respectively. On one of the two seats opposite where the weaponry had been placed was a laptop.

      Mott quietly closed the door to the plane and clambered into the cockpit. “We’ll be in the air in two shakes, Striker. Nice to have you aboard.”

      “Thanks, Charlie. Good to see you again.”

      Taking the seat next to the laptop after stowing his duffel, the Executioner picked it up and opened it, settling it on his lap while the machine left standby mode.

      The laptop’s desktop—which was from a proprietary operating system created by Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man’s computer expert—had only one folder visible on it, simply labeled Striker. Bolan double-clicked on it.

      For the rest of the trip south, Bolan read through every file in that folder. The latest in a series of attempts by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get close to a Key West–based gunrunner named Kevin Lee had failed, a long-term undercover agent named John McAvoy had been found dead near an empty warehouse. According to McAvoy’s partner, an operative named Lola Maxwell, McAvoy had believed the warehouse to be one of Lee’s main stashes for illegal weaponry he wanted to move, but McAvoy was made, and the warehouse cleaned out. The forensics report from the warehouse didn’t provide any useful evidence. And a dead body was left behind to take the rap.

      McAvoy had gotten much deeper than any previous undercover operative. His identity was known only to his handler, who had specifically been given autonomy to pick his own agent in the hopes of avoiding a leak. Still, he was made and executed.

      BATF had a leak. Bolan’s job was to find the leak and plug it once and for all.

      Bolan knew both Maxwell and McAvoy by reputation. The latter was a solid agent with a good record, including an impressive bust of an operation working out of Chicago during his days as a CPD detective, after which BATF recruited him. He would be sorely missed.

      Maxwell was more of a wild card. A sheriff’s deputy in Monroe County, Florida, she moved on to the CIA and then became a freelance operative much like Bolan himself, though with less latitude, secrecy, or support than Bolan enjoyed. The CIA let her go for

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