style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ll contact him immediately, Mr. President,” Brognola said, hanging up with a polite goodbye.
The man for the job was Mack Bolan. And if there was anyone who could hunt down and stop bad guys, it was Striker. The man sometimes called the Executioner.
2
The Military Demarcation Line—the line that divided North and South Korea—was as real as the line 8 Mile Road represented to the residents of Detroit. The road marked the barrier between black and white, rich and poor. It was a boundary in some ways, and in others, it was a no-man’s-land where only the strong survived. The Executioner watched the street below through the cracked glass of his window.
His room was on the second floor of the 8 Pine Motel, an establishment that let rooms by the hour, day, week or even month, depending on how long a person could pay. Most paid by the day or week, depending on whether their income was from drugs or prostitution. The johns paid by the hour, and the elderly, living on a fixed income and a bit wiser than the others, paid by the month. None of them were particularly happy, but Bolan couldn’t blame them. The 8 Pine Motel was not a happy place.
Sadly, it was representative of many of the buildings on this stretch of road. Cracked, broken or boarded-up windows, peeling paint, gang graffiti, bad water from lead pipes, and everywhere the smell of fear and desperation. Bolan’s room was little more than a mildew-scented mattress with a broken frame, a scarred bedside table and a bathroom where the only thing that ran were the cockroaches. He’d stayed in worse places, but most of them had been in other countries that were either impoverished or at war. It was little wonder that the major drug smugglers had decided that Detroit was a target-rich environment.
He’d been in the city for the past two weeks, cultivating information about the now-booming heroin trade that had found its focus here. On the street below him, he watched as a car stopped and the man driving bought some crack and then drove on, while the dealer stepped back to his wall to wait for the next customer. There was little concern about the police in this area—they didn’t want to come near it unless they had to, and when they did, they came in force, giving the street dealers all the time they needed to disappear.
The next customer turned out to be a kid about thirteen. Bolan watched as the girl obviously begged for more. The dealer stood his ground. He stepped forward and began to grope the girl and then nodded toward the alleyway.
Bolan slipped out of his room and into the alley just in time to hear a smack resounding off brick walls.
“I thought I could, I can’t, but I’ll get you the money. I just need...”
Another slap rent the air and Bolan stepped out of the shadows as the dealer raised his hand high in the air again.
“I don’t think you want to do that.”
The dealer turned just enough to see Bolan, but kept his quarry on the ground in front of him. Tears spilled from the dark-ringed eyes of a girl who was growing up way too hard, way too fast. She tried to move, but he pushed her back down.
“Get the fuck out of here, man. Don’t be messin’ around in my business.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t, but you picked the wrong target today and the wrong corner to stand on.”
The dealer pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at Bolan as he swaggered down the alleyway.
“Look, bitch, this is my alley and my street and that bitch there, yeah...she’s going to be mine, too. Now if you don’t want me to leave you bleedin’ here, you’ll turn your ass around and get the fuck outta here.”
The dealer moved closer, confident in the gun he was swinging around in his hand. Bolan was patient until he was just in range. He grabbed the gun and yanked the dealer forward as he brought his knee into the man’s ribcage. Bolan heard the satisfying sound of the ribs cracking and then brought his elbow around to break the dealer’s nose.
Blood spurted as the man dropped to the ground and cried. Bolan was surprised that he didn’t just yell, but actually lay in the alley, crying. He picked up the gun and went to check on the girl who’d remained motionless during the confrontation.
“You could have been shot, why’d you do that?”
“Because everyone deserves a second chance. You got parents?”
She nodded. “My dad, but he’s never home.”
“Look, I’m going to make a call. There’s a rehab center close to here, it’s inpatient and this guy owes me a favor. Will you go?”
“I can’t pay.”
“I didn’t ask if you could pay, will you go?”
“Why?”
“Because everyone deserves a second chance.”
* * *
BACK IN HIS ROOM, Bolan stood, and stared out the window at the corner where the girl had gotten in trouble. Turned out her name was Violet and she’d really needed the help. He’d made sure the dealer was picked up and put away and couldn’t blow his cover and then sat back and enjoyed his mediocre cup of coffee and contemplated his next move.
So far, all his leads had been toward the Muslim community and some kind of pipeline out of Afghanistan. His cover was flimsy, but holding so far: he was representing a buyer from Los Angeles who trusted his muscle more than the information he’d received so far. The process of building trust, however, and getting close to the source, had proven tedious at best.
In fact, without some new leads, Bolan was going to have to try to get his information in a more direct way. The biggest challenge was a simple one: he was a Caucasian from the United States trying to convince a group of Muslims from the Middle East that he was trustworthy. It wasn’t going well.
These were the thoughts running through his head when his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his belt and recognized the number on the display as a secure call sign. “Bolan,” he said, answering it.
“Striker, it’s Hal,” the reply came. “We’ve got a situation.”
“Don’t we always?” he asked.
Brognola chuckled, but he had to force it out.
“Okay, so it’s a serious situation,” Bolan intimated. “What’s going on?”
“Have you made any progress on your investigation in Detroit?” he asked.
Stepping back from the window, he took a seat on the bed. “Not very much,” he admitted. “It’s slow going. Why?”
“I’d like you to change focus. This is more pressing than any pipeline heroin and comes straight from the White House.”
Bolan could almost hear his old friend chewing his cigar stub to shreds. “Fill me in,” he said.
“There’s a potential nuclear threat inside the city,” Brognola said. He quickly filled him in on the boat found by the Coast Guard, along with the results of their sweep, and Denny Seles’s quick response so far.
“That
