wrong?” one of the grim-faced men called up to him.
Good question, Cana thought.
“The police are after us,” he told them, keeping it simple and watching their faces convulse. They didn’t have to know it was the armed forces chasing them.
“Keep quiet,” he added.
He had no real hope that any of them would be quiet, but Cana slammed the hatch shut before he faced any more questions.
Cattle shouldn’t speak in the first place.
The Coast Guard cutter hailed him once again on his run back to the wheelhouse. Cana braced himself for bullets, but they didn’t come.
“Well?” Dovolani challenged as Cana entered. “Did you quiet them?”
“They’re calm,” Cana said, “for now. Where can they go?”
“To hell, for all I care,” his boss replied. “This tub can’t hope to outrun that cutter.”
“So? What then?”
“We need a fire,” Dovolani said.
“What!”
“Just do it!” Dovolani snapped.
Cana opened a nearby drawer and grabbed a fat thermite grenade.
God help the cattle now.
“THEY’RE BURNING, sir!” The break in Decker’s voice embarrassed him.
“Burning and still running,” Lieutenant Commander Martinez said. “Stand by with the firefighting gear, but stay alert on those Fifties.”
“Aye, sir!”
Decker passed on the order via intercom, with no doubt in his mind that both gunners were ready for action behind their .50-caliber machine guns. Nervously, he dropped a hand to his right hip, where a SIG-Sauer P-229 R DAK semiauto pistol nestled in its tactical holster. Other members of the crew would be armed with M-16 A-2 assault rifles and Remington M 870 P 12-gauge shotguns, ready for boarding.
Assuming that the trawler didn’t burn up and sink before they could reach her.
“Is that someone going overboard?” Martinez asked.
“Can’t see them, sir,” Decker replied. “It might—”
There was no doubt then, in the next split second, as a human torch ran stumbling across the trawler’s rear deck, tripped and plunged over its side into the sea.
“Jesus!”
“Come on!” Martinez snapped. “Get up alongside!”
The helmsman was already taking action as Decker relayed the order, no standing on protocol now. The Thresher surged forward, gaining on the boat as it seemed to stall, wallowing in the Atlantic swells.
Gaining, for sure.
But Decker feared that they were already too late.
CHAPTER ONE
East Keansburg, New Jersey
The town was nondescript, one of a couple hundred on the Jersey shore that hadn’t grown notorious from sun-and-sleaze “reality” TV. It claimed three thousand residents and stood ten feet above sea level, with a public beach and small marina filled with cabin cruisers that aspired to being yachts when they grew up.
Mack Bolan wasn’t looking for a suntan or a sailing lesson as he traveled east on Seabreeze Boulevard, three hundred yards inland from Lower New York Bay. He was about to make a house call, crash a party that he hadn’t been invited to attend.
No problem there.
He’d done this kind of work before, more times than Bolan cared to count.
East Keansburg—alias “North Middletown,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau—wasn’t what the media would call a nest of crime. It covered half of one square mile and boasted 1,056 households with a median family income of sixty-one thousand dollars. Less than five percent of the town’s residents lived below the federal poverty line, and thirteen percent of those were senior citizens. Most of the problems handled by police were caused by minors, who comprised eighteen percent of the town’s population.
Overall, it was a pleasant place to live, where white males in particular found peace of mind between commutes to beehive offices in Newark, Staten Island or Manhattan. If it wasn’t Eden as described in holy writ, at least there were no serpents prominently on display.
It took a hunter’s eyes and nose to search them out.
Bolan would have bet his life that most East Keansburg residents had no inkling of evil dwelling in their midst, no clue that every salt-spray breath they drew was tainted by corruption of the foulest kind. What would they do if suddenly confronted with the truth? Consult the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office or the state police? Email their congressman?
Or would they simply turn away?
Bolan was sparing them that choice today, absolving them of any duty to investigate, react or live with their decisions. He’d identified the problem—or, rather, a symptom of a larger problem—and was on his way to operate. When he was done, he’d cauterize the wound and move on.
His job wouldn’t be done, by any means. But it would be a start.
A message would be sent.
A block before Seabreeze Avenue ran out of pavement and changed into woods, Bolan turned south on Weehawken Avenue. The homes and lots got larger there, most of them ringed by trees that shaded swimming pools or tennis courts. Not mansions yet, but like the boats in the marina, they had aspirations. Failure hadn’t left its footprint here.
A quarter mile south of Seabreeze, Bolan turned east onto Port Monmouth Road and followed it out to the end of the line. When he could drive no farther without getting wet, he parked his rented Ford Mondeo Mk4 in a small sandy lot used by beach visitors, removed a pair of compact binoculars from the glove compartment and scoped out his target.
This house was a mansion, though not in the league of the Hollywood spreads. From studying the floor plans, Bolan knew that the home’s three stories above ground amounted to some twelve thousand square feet, with a finished basement adding another thousand. Upstairs, six bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom. Downstairs, a parlor and living room, library, two dining rooms, plus a kitchen and pantry.
As for the basement…
There were no walled estates in East Keansburg, no gated compounds. The house Bolan had come to visit stood among trees, with no apparent guards or other defenses in place, but he knew that view was as deceptive as the mansion’s pristine paint job, hiding black soul-rot inside.
The sun was dipping westward out of sight, as he stepped out of the Ford and shut the door, then walked around to fish inside the spacious trunk. Already dressed for action in a slate-gray turtleneck, black jeans and hiking boots, Bolan
