disturbingly like the one he’d run across the previous day, right down to the team of experts poring over the remains of the vehicle. Again the vehicles had been burned. The team investigating the vehicle he’d chased the day before had discovered that the vehicle had been rigged to explode in the event of a crash, with explosives strategically placed to ensure the maximum amount of destruction. Whoever was behind these incidents wanted to make certain that they left behind as little evidence as possible.
Whoever it was, they were thorough. They’d scrubbed the crime scene clean. The officers in the squad car had been torn apart by a couple of thousand large-caliber bullets, meaning that they’d gotten caught in the cross fire of what had to have been heavy-caliber machine guns, most likely .50-caliber weapons.
Barbara Price had informed Bolan that the man in charge of the operation would be Detective Kevin Maurstad of the Kansas City Police Department. Bolan didn’t know what Maurstad looked like, but he had a pretty good idea that he’d be the big guy in the center of everything, the guy everyone else lined up to talk to. The soldier went up to the man who seemed to have the most control of the chaos and said, “Detective Maurstad?”
The man wheeled around, trying to identify a new irritant. He studied the tall stranger and said, “You must be the yahoo the Feds sent down to help us.”
“Yeah, I’m the yahoo to which you refer,” Bolan said.
Maurstad stood in a defensive stance, as if he expected Bolan to attack him. He relaxed a bit after assessing the soldier. “You don’t look like the usual dipshits they send down here.”
“We’ve been busy,” Bolan offered. “We’re fresh out of the usual dipshits, so they sent me instead. It looks like you’ve got a mess on your hands.”
“Yeah,” Maurstad said, “it’s a class-A clusterfuck, that’s for sure.”
“What have you got so far?” Bolan asked.
“Not a hell of a lot. Two cops shot to hamburger in that squad car over there.” He pointed at a black-and-white police car with a passenger compartment that was completely perforated. “Their squad car was blown to pieces by a .50-caliber machine gun, judging by the holes in the vehicle, most likely a Ma Deuce. There was barely enough left of the officers inside to identify them as human. We policed the area for spent .50-cal shell casings but found nothing.”
“How about the shooter’s vehicle? Find anything?” Bolan glanced at the burned-out carcass of the Impala and knew what Maurstad’s answer would be.
The detective saw Bolan looking at the destroyed vehicle and answered with a question of his own: “What do you think?”
“I think it looks like someone destroyed the evidence with military precision,” Bolan answered.
“And military weapons,” Maurstad replied. “It looks like they destroyed the vehicle with some sort of thermite antimatérial grenades.”
“Probably thermate-TH3,” Bolan offered, referring to a standard antimatérial grenade used by all branches of the military to destroy left-behind vehicles and weapons in a hurry.
“That would be my guess,” Maurstad said.
“You were in the military?” the soldier asked.
“Marines. You?”
“Army,” Bolan said. “Any bodies in the vehicle?”
“None,” Maurstad said. “The shooter either got out of the vehicle on his own or someone pulled him out. We did get a serial number off the car, though.”
“Let me guess,” Bolan said. “Stolen?”
“As of nine o’clock this morning, yes.”
One of the officers who had been scouring the edges of the ditch alongside the road came up with a rifle shell in a sealed plastic bag. “Sir,” he said to Maurstad, “I found this.”
Bolan let Maurstad examine the bag, and then asked to see it. Maurstad handed the soldier the evidence bag. The shell casing was a Hornady brass shell, chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum round. The .338 Lapua Magnum round had been developed specifically as a round for military sniping. Its ballistics rivaled the .50 BMG round; a good shooter could hit targets out to 2,000 meters, and even an average shooter could count on a 1,200-meter effective range. But the round was uncommon in civilian use; only the most specialized gun shops carried the .338 Lapua Magnum round, and among those that did, most didn’t stock a firearm with which to fire it.
“If you don’t mind,” Bolan said, “I’m going to send this to our lab.”
Maurstad clearly minded, but he just said, “You’re the boss.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“I’M SORRY, SIR,” THE administrator at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, told Mack Bolan, “but we can’t release that information to you regardless of how impressive your credentials might be.”
Bolan had expected as much. He knew getting the records released would be virtually impossible, but he had to give it a shot because the alternative didn’t stand a much better chance of success. He’d have to break into the VA hospital at night.
The soldier looked around the administrative offices, at the rows and rows of wide-drawer filing cabinets, knowing that the information he sought likely rested within one of them. One row, marked Vendors, looked especially promising. He had the name of a vendor, the ship date and the serial number. That should be enough to get him a name.
Getting in and out looked less promising. The administrative offices were on the top floor, off a twelve-story atrium around which the hospital was arranged. Several wings branched off from the central atrium area, with the head nurse of each floor posted at the end of each wing, near the edge of the atrium. It was a massive complex, one of the nicest VA hospitals Bolan had ever seen, modern and sophisticated in just about every aspect. Every aspect except record keeping, Bolan reminded himself. In this case, the Veterans Administration’s antiquated record keeping turned out to be an advantage; the only reason the information the soldier needed hadn’t been purged was because it hadn’t been in electronic form. It was a small oversight on the part of Bolan’s opponents, but so far it was the only clue the soldier had.
The hospital wasn’t located in Minneapolis proper, but rather in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis, home of the Mall of America. Given that the gigantic shopping center was a tourist destination, the area had an abudance of hotels. Bolan had a room in a little low-budget motel about halfway between the Mega Mall and the VA hospital; the sort of place where he could lie low for a few hours without drawing any attention.
After scoping out the VA hospital campus, which wasn’t well-guarded, Bolan returned to his room to grab a nap. He set his alarm for 1:00 a.m., but he needn’t have bothered; he awoke at exactly 12:55. By the time his alarm went off he’d already brushed his teeth, showered and slipped into his blacksuit. He threaded a sound suppressor onto his Beretta 93R machine pistol and sheathed it in the shoulder holster. Normally he’d also pack a Desert Eagle on his hip, but this was a soft probe. The Beretta was an old habit. There were no bad guys in the hospital; there were just hardworking healthcare workers taking care of American heroes. Under no circumstances was Bolan going to let the situation devolve into a shooting match. Stealth, quickness and silence were much more important than heavy artillery in this mission, and the
