pistol underneath his left armpit, with spare magazines for balance on the right.
The trunk gave up a MOLLE FLC vest and LBE web belt heavy with pouches for magazines, grenades and other combat accessories. The Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment system, with its Fighting Load Carrier vest and permanently incorporated Load Bearing Equipment belt replaced the ALICE suspenders and belt worn by U.S. soldiers from Vietnam through Desert Storm. Even distribution of weight on a warrior’s shoulders and hips permitted transportation of extra arms and munitions, including the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle autoloader on Bolan’s right hip and the Mark 1 trench knife on his left. Hoisting an M-4 carbine from the trunk before he closed it, he was dressed to kill.
The Executioner turned toward his target in the dusk.
“YOU LIKE THE WHISKY?” Lorik Cako asked his guests.
One of the hard-faced men grunted, gulping his Dewar’s twelve-year-old scotch. The middle of the three men stared through Cako without answering. His stout companion on the left asked, “When’s the show start?”
“Soon, my friend,” Cako replied. “You have had time to see the catalog?”
“They all look good on paper,” the anxious one said. “Air-brushed and enhanced for all I know. We need to see them in the flesh. You get my drift?”
“And so you shall,” Cako assured him, keeping up the smile that yearned to spit and snarl. “A few more moments, while I make sure that our other guests are satisfied with the refreshments, eh?”
“Whatever. Make it quick.”
It galled Cako to deal with pigs, but he had done so all his life. Experience failed to make the process any more pleasant, but at least it was profitable. This night’s work would put money in his pocket. More important, it would enhance his standing with the men who mattered most.
The hard-faced men who had dismissed him came from Kansas City. Next in line for Cako’s personal attention were two Japanese and two Koreans, standing by themselves in Asian solidarity despite the centuries of animosity that had divided their respective homelands. Three of them were drinking Jameson Gold Reserve Irish whisky, while a fourth—the younger looking of the two Koreans—sipped Smirnoff blueberry vodka.
There was no accounting for taste.
“Gentlemen,” Cako said, “the revue will begin in just a few minutes.”
The four Asians nodded in unison. Any one of them might slit Cako’s throat for a two-dollar debt, but none would risk offending him with rude behavior in his own household. He left them nodding, life-size dashboard ornaments, and wished their courtesy would rub off on Americans.
Cako caught Vasil Majko’s eye across the room and raised a hand, five fingers spread. Majko lifted his chin instead of nodding and departed to prepare the merchandise while Cako kept on circulating, checking on his customers.
They always came in pairs, as if one man might be incapable of choosing products from the lineup. Or perhaps they simply liked the show. Two from Colombia, two more from Mexico, a quartet from the Middle East and two portly Nigerians.
None of their countries suffered any shortage when it came to women, yet they traveled from the corners of the world to bid on Cako’s merchandise. His auctions never failed to lure men of substance, brought together by their common lust and greed.
And why not, in a world where everything was for sale? There was no reason for a rich man to deny himself whatever pleased him, society and its ever-shifting conventions be damned.
Lorik Cako was a specialist in supplying illicit desires. The men he served appreciated his inventiveness and the completely ruthless way in which he dealt with opposition on the rare occasions when it surfaced.
He would be a superstar someday—was nearly there, in fact—and owed it to a total disregard for the well-being of his fellow man.
Or woman, as the case might be.
This night he had on offer twenty-seven females, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty years. Three were certified pure, and some of the rest barely used. All were lovely in different ways, something offered for every taste.
Blondes and redheads for the Third World market. More exotic specimens for the Americans and the Colombians. Sometimes Cako might take an order in advance, for a specific type—or a specific individual, the riskiest and most expensive service of them all. Whatever was demanded, Lorik Cako lived to please.
“My friends,” he said, raising his voice above the murmurs of his customers, “if you will follow me downstairs, we shall begin.”
They trailed after him like hungry dogs.
Like jackals closing on a wounded animal.
BOLAN APPROACHED the house from the southeast, cloaked by shadows as night descended on North Middletown. A Friday night, with locals starting to unwind, their working week behind them, ready to relax with friends or lovers, food or alcohol, and greet the weekend with a smile.
His targets, in the bid house, should be getting down to business anytime now. Bolan planned to interrupt them, cancel their festivities and send them home in body bags.
He owed it to the Universe. The very least that he could do, under the circumstances.
And a foot inside the door for things to come.
He knew the auction was beginning when the guards emerged to start their foot patrols around the grounds. Two men, both swarthy types with bodybuilder arms and torsos, armed with folding-stock Kalashnikovs on shoulder slings. They came out through a side door, separated and began to walk around the house in opposite directions.
Perfect.
Bolan slung his carbine, palming the Beretta with its sound suppressor attached. The 93-R was selective fire—its R was short for raffica, “burst” in Italian—and it packed a 20-round box magazine plus one 9 mm Parabellum mangler in the chamber. Firing 3-round bursts, using the pistol’s foldable foregrip, Bolan could take down seven men before he needed to reload.
One target at a time.
The first mark passed within twenty feet of Bolan, barely glancing toward the shadows where death waited to claim him. The soldier hissed between clenched teeth, bringing the guy around to face him out of curiosity, and stitched him with a rising burst from sternum to larynx. Toppling backward through a haze of crimson mist, the rifleman was dead before he hit the ground.
Bolan retrieved him, holstering his pistol and dragging the corpse by its ankles until it was swaddled in darkness. He could rush the house now, use the side door where the sentries had emerged, but that meant leaving one man with an AK at his back.
Unwise at best. Potential suicide at worst.
So Bolan waited, timed his second target by the time it ought to take for him to stroll around the house. And when he showed, coming around the northeast corner at an easy walk, the Executioner was waiting.
Ready for the kill.
The sentry faltered, visibly confused at failing to encounter his companion coming from the opposite direction. Slowing further as he neared the spot where they had separated moments earlier, he made a face and fiddled
