and taking a few shaky steps away from the soldier.
“Stop!” Bolan ordered, surging to his feet and leveling the hand cannon. The Asian man seemed not to hear him. He took another drunken step, lost his footing and collapsed on suddenly rubbery knees. His legs were folded beneath him as he stared at the sky and took a last, ragged breath, his eyes wide.
The death rattle was unmistakable.
Bolan checked the body carefully. There was little chance a man could fake that sound; the Executioner had heard it often enough for real. Satisfied that the man wouldn’t be going anywhere ever again, Bolan searched the grass for his Beretta and surveyed his surroundings.
Silence.
The empty field bordered several properties, a couple of them residential. The nearest buildings were quite some distance away. No one had heard the gunfire, or no one thought to check it. Either way, Bolan was alone with the dead man.
He’d hoped to question the Asian, but as viciously as he’d fought, it was unlikely he’d have been very talkative. Bolan knew the type. This man was a fighter. He’d have gone down struggling.
Bolan holstered the Desert Eagle and retrieved the Beretta. He ejected its magazine, catching it in his free hand, then racked the slide and caught the ejected round in his cupped hand. He inspected the barrel of the machine pistol, peering through the open slide up the spout, making sure there was no mud or other foreign matter obstructing the weapon. Then he loaded the loose round back in the 20-round magazine.
“Agent Cooper!” Bolan turned at the sound of his cover name.
“Are you all right?” Officer Copeland asked, breathing hard as he ran to catch up.
“Fine,” Bolan said. He gestured to the dead man. “I can’t say the same for him.”
“You got him,” Copeland said. Bolan made no response as none was required.
Bolan checked the body. The man’s gun, a Glock 19, was on the ground nearby. Copeland retrieved the weapon, checked it, then unloaded it. Bolan nodded his approval. The dead man had nothing on him except a spare magazine for the Glock, a compact pair of binoculars and a short-range two-way radio, the sort of device hunters and other sportsmen used to coordinate groups of people in the field.
“Did you find one of these?” Bolan held up the bright yellow, rubberized radio. “In the van, or on any of the bodies?”
“Yes, actually,” Copeland confirmed. “It was in the van, in the back with a bunch of junk.”
“Junk?”
“An old dog blanket, a few cardboard boxes full of mostly trash.” Copeland shrugged. “The sort of thing that collects in the back of a van. It was rolling around loose back there. We thought it was just part of the debris, along for the ride after the vehicle was stolen.”
“Not an unreasonable conclusion,” Bolan said, nodding. “But this—” he wagged the radio at Copeland “—changes everything.”
“Who was he?”
“My guess,” Bolan said, “is that this man was a spotter. He was watching the service and called in the gunners in the van for maximum effect.”
“Copeland,” a distorted voice said from Copeland’s belt. “Copeland, come in.” The officer unclipped the walkie-talkie from his duty belt.
“Copeland here,” he said.
“We’ve found something. That federal hotshot will want to see it.”
“That federal hotshot is right here.” Copeland grinned at the Executioner. “What have you got?”
“We found a video camera on one of the gravestones,” the voice came back. “It was still running.”
“Set to record what?” Copeland asked.
“It was pointing at the grave site.”
Copeland looked at Bolan.
“Publicity,” Bolan said. “Had this gone off as planned, they would have killed everybody down there, collected their video and left. Chances are the camera was left by this one.” He jerked his chin toward the dead Asian. “He must have decided getting clear was more important than working his way back around to retrieve the camera.”
“So if the shooting had worked—”
“If it had worked,” Bolan said grimly, “the video of those people dying would have been all over the Internet by the weekend. Count on it.”
“Bastards,” Copeland muttered.
“And then some,” Bolan agreed.
The soldier crouched over the dead Asian, once more taking out his secure satellite phone and taking a digital picture. He paused to transmit it to the Farm. No instructions were needed. Aaron Kurtzman and his team of cyber wizards would know that any corpse shot Bolan sent was a request for identification and intel. He did, however, take a moment to text message Kurtzman with the phone number he’d gotten from Mitch Schrader. It was unlikely the number would prove to be useful, but one never knew. So far Bolan’s enemies had been a curious mixture of sloppy and professional. Someone, somewhere, might have been careless and used a number that was traceable in some way.
Bolan and Copeland made the long walk back to the cemetery. The soldier’s own vehicle, a rental SUV, was parked on the opposite end of the access road leading out the front of the property. He would need to collect his gear and get back to the airport, where Grimaldi and the jet would be ready to go. While the Farm checked on the intelligence Bolan had gathered so far, the Executioner would travel to the nearest Trofimov facility from his target list. There was no telling what he’d find, but it was his experience that if he made enough forays into enemy territory, sooner or later he’d find something or someone would take a shot at him. That would be the only break he’d need.
Once the Executioner was certain how far deep the rot went, he was going to slash and burn it out of the nation’s heartland.
The Patriotism Riders remained on the scene, though the police were getting ready to pack up. The police changed their minds about that quickly when Copeland informed them that there was yet another body to account for. As they scrambled, a few of them shooting suspicious looks Bolan’s way, the soldier went to the group of Riders to see what held their attention so firmly.
“I don’t believe it,” Mitch Schrader was saying. This was met by a chorus of agreement from the others, who sounded angry. Bolan looked over the shoulder of the nearest Rider, who noticed him and moved out of the way. Sitting on one of the motorcycles, another of the Riders had a small portable television, apparently something he carried in his saddlebags. The little device showed a newscast with the TBT logo in the corner. Trofimov’s cable news network, Bolan thought.
“You’re not going to like this,” the man on the motorcycle said, looking up at Bolan. “You were military, right? You got the look.”
Bolan had nothing to say to that. He focused on the little television.
“We were getting ready to roll out,” Schrader explained, “when Norm thought to check the news, see if anybody’d
