LITMIR.BIZ

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their points of entry. Other windows of the safehouse shattered, front and back doors trembling in their frames but holding fast.

      So far.

      Before the echoes of the triple blast had time to fade, al-Rachid had palmed his Thermite canister, armed it, stepped closer to the stricken house and pitched it through the aperture where flames were visible already, spreading, feeding on the rubble, generating toxic smoke.

      After the rockets, the grenades were relatively quiet. They made muffled whumping sounds inside the house, immediately spewing white-hot chemicals that would incinerate on contact virtually any man-made substance. Thermite would burn through tempered steel and concrete. Flesh and bone were nothing, in the scheme of things.

      Al-Rachid stood waiting with his Armalite in hand, watching the safehouse burn. He felt the heat from where he stood and knew it had to be hell in there, almost beyond imagining. Still, traitors who abandoned sacred oaths of loyalty deserved no less. The Thermite blaze would give his target a foretaste of hell.

      Justice.

      Another job well done.

      Al-Rachid was starting to relax when bullets churned the sandy soil around his feet, making him skip and dance away. He found cover behind a nearby Joshua tree, amazed that anyone was still alive inside the house, much less in any shape to fight.

      Al-Rachid first told himself it might be ammunition cooking off inside the fire, but it defied the laws of physics that a clutch of random cartridges exploding could produce the pattern that had nearly cut his legs from under him.

      Those shots were aimed by someone who had managed to survive both rockets and grenades.

      So be it. They had planned for this.

      Al-Rachid waited, resisted the impulse to fire back at the winking muzzle-flash he glimpsed sporadically. The raging fire would either eat his enemy alive or drive the man from cover where he could be shot at leisure.

      All Haroun al-Rachid had to do was watch and wait.

      Five minutes later, just when he’d begun to listen for the wail of sirens in the distance, al-Rachid saw a shadow figure move against the background of the flames. It lurched and staggered, nearly doubled over as the sole survivor of the holocaust hacked smoke and other fumes out of his lungs. Al-Rachid could not identify the weapon in his adversary’s hands and didn’t care to try.

      He fired a long burst from the Armalite, expending half a magazine when two or three rounds would have sufficed. Al-Rachid was angry at his target, recognized the feeling as irrational and still allowed himself the luxury of overkill. His bullets dropped the man, then set his corpse to twitching, jerking on the arid soil.

      When it was truly finished, when the safehouse had collapsed into itself and every part of it was totally engulfed by fire, al-Rachid beckoned his soldiers and they walked back toward their waiting vehicle.

      1

      San José, Costa Rica

      June 19

      Mack Bolan held the rented Ford at a nerve-racking fifty miles per hour, staying with the flow of traffic that jammed Avenida Central without ever seeming to slow its pace or stop for red lights. He kept a sharp eye on the drivers around him, many of them seemingly intent on suicide, while flicking hasty glances toward his rearview mirror, watching for police cars.

      Bolan didn’t even want to think about what local law enforcement might say about a gringo driving through their capital with military hardware piled up in the backseat of his rental car.

      “How much farther?” Bolan asked his navigator.

      Blanca Herrera was a thirty-something knockout, her angel face framed by a fall of glossy jet-black hair, above a body that could grace a calendar.

      Herrera checked the city street map, measuring with slender fingers. “Two kilometers, perhaps,” she said at last. “Turn right on Calle Quarenta—or Fortieth Street, you would say—then drive north to Avenida Cinco.”

      “Right.”

      Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately, they weren’t going to a fashion show at Sachs.

      “If I may say again—”

      He cut her off. “No calls. No warnings.”

      “But I wouldn’t have to speak.”

      “Hang-ups are worse. We can’t do anything to spook him now.”

      The lazy shrug did interesting things inside her clinging blouse. “Ah, you know best. But if he is not home when we arrive…”

      “We wait,” he finished for her. “Find a vantage point and settle in.”

      “However long it takes?”

      “Unless you know some way to read his mind and tell me where he’s gone.”

      “No,” Herrera replied. “I can’t do that.”

      “Well, then.”

      “This gringo is muy importante, yes?”

      “Muy importante, right.”

      “But you expect to find him home alone? No bodyguards?”

      “Gil Favor likes his privacy,” Bolan replied. “Besides, he’s paid your government for years to keep him safe and sound.”

      “Some individuals, perhaps,” she answered somewhat stiffly.

      “The police, the prosecutors and at least one president.”

      “Ex-president,” the sultry woman corrected him.

      “Whose squeaky-clean successor hasn’t made a move to change the status quo where Favor is concerned.”

      “Are you forgetting that we have no extradition treaty with your country?”

      “Nope. Neither is good old Gil. That’s why he didn’t need a troop of heavies. Until now.”

      “And you believe he will be unaware of any recent danger to himself?”

      “I’ve got my fingers crossed,” Bolan replied.

      That was the rub, of course. The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service had been sitting on the WITSEC murders, pulling every string available to maintain a media blackout, but any form of censorship had limits and the voluntary kind was typically as leaky as a sieve. Even without the press or television, Favor would have contacts in the States to warn him of a shift in climate, someone turning up the heat.

      What would he do? Sit tight or run for cover with a new identity established in advance? Was he already running, gone before Bolan could corner him?

      Or had the others, those who wanted Favor dead, already come and gone?

      We’ll see, Bolan thought. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

      “I’ve been here once before,” he said. “But farther south.”

      “A job like this one?”

      “Not exactly.”

      “I am sorry,” Herrera informed him, face diverted to scan shops and restaurants. “It’s not my place to ask such things.”

      “You’re right.”

      She knew better, but they’d run out of small talk after ten or fifteen minutes. “If we find Favor at home—”

      “We’ll find him.”

      “When we find him, what approach will you be using?”

      “Short and not so sweet,” said Bolan. “Someone wants him dead. His best chance of survival is to hop a flight with me and put his enemies where they can’t do him any harm.”

      “Will he believe that? Knowing who and what they are?”

      “No way.”

      Gil

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