LITMIR.BIZ

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and Bolan entered the offices. The stairway was at the west end of the office suite; the east side of the suite was a glass window looking out at the balcony that in turn overlooked the atrium. Bolan saw a figure walk past on the balcony outside the suite and stop. It was a security guard, making his rounds. Bolan crouched behind a cubicle wall while the figure swiped a key card, opening the door into the office suite. The figure shone his flashlight around the suite, and then began walking toward the soldier.

      The cubicle in which Bolan crouched had a desk along one side and a table along another. It was part of a two-person cubicle suite, and another table separated one work space from the other. He crouched and slid under the table separating the work spaces, then slowed his breathing almost to a standstill. A large courier mailing box sat on the floor next to him. As silently as possible, Bolan placed the box between himself and the opening into the aisle that formed the boundaries in this cubicle kingdom.

      He slowed his breath even more as the security guard approached the cubicle in which he hid. In his mind, Bolan formulated a plan for neutralizing the guard in the most humane way possible. When the guard stopped to shine a light into the cubicle where Bolan hid, pausing longer than he had at other cubicles, the soldier thought he was going to have to put that plan into action, but after a few moments of scoping out the scene of the crime, the security guard moved on. An interminably long five minutes later, the guard left the office suite.

      After the man had moved on, Bolan extricated himself from under the table, went over to the filing cabinets and found the one marked Vendors. The cabinet was locked, but the lock was a simple blade affair that the soldier was able to twist open simply by inserting the tip of his knife into the key hole and turning. Once he figured out the organizational system, he was able to locate the vendor that had provided the hardware. He coordinated the dates of the delivery with the names of patients receiving the hardware in just moments. A bit more searching revealed that the piece the technicians had extracted from the body at the lab in Quantico—titanium braces used to reshape mangled tibia and fibula plateaus—had been installed in one Theodore Haynes, a veteran of the Iraq war from Plainfield, Wisconsin.

      Bolan took out a black cloth from the drop pouch, placed it over his head like a shroud, then crouched beneath the cloth and took digital photos of all the documentation regarding Mr. Theodore Haynes. The camera was connected to his notebook computer and downloaded the images directly to a secure FTP site at Stony Man Farm. In all, it had taken Bolan less time to gather the information than it had taken the security guard to make his rounds at the office.

      He replaced his equipment and was getting ready to exit the way he’d came when the security guard once again shone his flashlight through the glass separating the suite from the atrium balcony. Bolan dived behind the cover of a cubicle wall, but he worried that the security guard had seen him. The man swiped his key card, which dangled from a chain around his neck, entered the suite, handgun drawn, and made his way to Bolan’s position.

      The Executioner scurried around the corner of the cube wall before he could be discovered, and found that he’d backed himself into a narrow corridor without any cover. The soldier crouched and when the man rounded the corner, he sprang up, grabbed him around the neck, at the same time putting his hand over the man’s mouth to stifle an outcry. He guided his target to the ground, using his own body to absorb the impact of the fall to avoid hurting the man any more than necessary. Bolan grabbed the guard’s pistol in the process, and when he had the man down, he put the barrel of the pistol in the guy’s mouth. What the guard didn’t know was that Bolan had decocked the weapon and flicked on the safety; he had no intention of putting this innocent man in danger and regretted having to treat him so roughly, but there were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of lives on the line. There was no way the guard could know this, and he was terrified.

      Bolan removed the gun and put a piece of duct tape over the man’s mouth and zip tied his hands behind his back and his feet together. Then he unloaded the pistol, tossed the magazine and bullet from the chamber to one side of the room and the gun toward the other, and bolted for the stairway. He pushed open the stairwell door, only to find that several other security guards were rushing up the stairway from lower floors. The guard had to have called for backup before entering the office suite. It sounded like there were at least four men pounding their way up the stairs. There was no way the soldier could subdue that many guards without someone getting hurt; his only chance for survival now was speed.

      The soldier lunged up the stairwell toward the roof, the security guards hot on his heels. He kicked the door open and ran at top speed for the rope he’d anchored to the air-conditioning unit. Grabbing the figure-eight descenders he’d clipped to the ropes, he flung himself over the edge of the roof. By the time the first of the guards had emerged from the stairwell Bolan was in a near free fall toward the ground below. He plunged down in a barely controlled descent, braking only as he neared the ground. It was hard to judge his progress in the dark, and he’d slowed his descent barely enough to keep from doing serious damage to his body when he landed.

      When his feet touched the grass, Bolan pitched himself into a roll, which turned out to be a good move because gunfire from the roof tore up the turf on which he’d just landed. The gunfire tracked him as he sprang up from his roll and ran at top speed for the wall. When he reached the wall, he grabbed the top and powered over the top of it. By this time he’d put enough distance between himself and his pursuers that he only needed to worry about catching a stray bullet, but he also knew a stray bullet could kill him as dead as an aimed bullet could, so he didn’t stop running until he was at his car.

      He could hear sirens approaching the VA hospital. Rather than panic, Bolan calmly drove through the residential district in which he’d parked, following a route that he’d prepared in advance, one that led him to Cedar Avenue. He followed it south until it turned into State Highway 77, which in turn led him straight to his motel. When he pulled into the lot, pimps and dealers were doing business in the lot. They sized him up, decided he was more trouble than he was worth and let him pass into the motel unmolested.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “So what have you got on Theodore Haynes from Plainfield, Wisconsin?” Bolan asked Kurtzman over his cell phone once he was safely ensconced in his two-bit motel room.

      “Army Ranger,” Kurtzman replied, “one tour in Afghanistan, two tours in Iraq, heavily decorated, had his left knee crushed when his Humvee hit an IED and flipped over. He was the only survivor. His three buddies were killed in the blast. He recovered full use of his leg, but not quite to the degree required to remain a Ranger, so he left the military.”

      “I’m going to take a wild guess and say he was trained as a sniper.”

      “Right first time.”

      “Anything else?” Bolan asked.

      “Yeah. He’s been officially dead for years. According to every record I could access, he committed suicide soon after washing out of the Rangers.”

      “I don’t believe that,” Bolan said. “I sincerely doubt that these killings are the work of some sort of undead zombie.”

      “There wasn’t much we could tell from what was left of the bodies you brought in yesterday,” the computer expert said, “but one thing we could tell was that the bodies inside the vehicle had been alive prior to the vehicle crashing, so I don’t think we have to worry about zombies.”

      “Where is Haynes buried?” Bolan asked.

      “Plainfield, Wisconsin, and I know what you’re thinking. I’m one step ahead of you. Hal is having the body exhumed tomorrow morning.”

      “I take it that means that I’m heading to Plainfield tonight,” Bolan posited.

      “You take it correctly,” Kurtzman said. “I’ve already called Jack and told him to get the plane ready.”

      “You pull any information off that shell casing I sent you yesterday?” Bolan asked.

      “Yes and no.”

      “Give me the ‘no’ first.”

      “We

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