calling this unorthodox behavior for a law-enforcement officer would be the understatement of the century.”
“Don’t sweat it, Jessup,” Bolan said. “Yes, I’m in charge of this operation. But I’m not a law-enforcement officer.”
The DEA man threw his head back against the neck rest atop his seat. “Oh, that’s great,” he said. “So you’re a spook. CIA? Department of Defense? Homeland Security?”
“Uh-uh,” the Executioner said. Ahead, he could see where the dirt rose up to the two-lane highway leading from Guyman to Boise City. “None of those.”
“Okay,” Jessup said. “I’ll quit wondering exactly who you are or who you work for. It doesn’t matter. You’re one hell of a…” He stopped talking for a second, looking for the right words. When he didn’t find them, he continued, “You’re one damn fine fighter. You immediately adapt to whatever situation presents itself.” Across the front seat, the Executioner saw him frown. “But do you not have to answer to anyone? Anyone at all?”
“Just the President,” Bolan said. “And we get along just fine.” He withdrew his scrambled satellite phone and tapped in a number. A few seconds later, Jack Grimaldi answered the summons.
“Yeah, Striker,” the ace pilot acknowledged. “What’s up?”
“We got the dope but missed the money,” Bolan told him. “We’re headed back to Guyman now to meet you.”
“You can do that if you want,” Grimaldi said, “but there’s no need to. I took a little recon flight an hour or so ago. Spotted your bright yellow vehicle on the road. But the important thing here is the terrain I saw. It’s so flat, I’d have to try hard to find a place where I couldn’t land.” He stopped speaking for a second so Bolan could take it all in, then said, “Want me to come to you? It’ll be a lot faster.”
“Sounds fine,” the Executioner said. He pulled off the highway onto the shoulder and threw the Hummer into Park. The entire roadway was asphalt, pocked with holes the size of volcanoes and, in general, rougher riding than the cow pastures had been. Pulling a small handheld Global Positioning Unit—GPU—out of his shirt pocket, he read the Hummer’s coordinates to Grimaldi. “When you start smelling smoke and seeing flames below, you’ll know you’re close.”
“That’s affirmative, big guy,” Grimaldi said. “I’m revving her up now. See you in a few.”
Bolan heard a click in his ear and folded his phone back before dropping it and the GPU into his pockets again. Then he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “You never know when we’ll get another chance to rest once this mission gets off the ground,” he told Jessup. “So I’d suggest you take advantage of it now.”
IT SEEMED THAT BOLAN had just closed his eyes when he was awakened by the distinctive sound of twin Pratt & Whitney PW305 turbofan engines. He turned to Jessup, grabbed the DEA agent’s arm and gently shook him to consciousness.
Bolan smiled when the pilot landed and brought the Learjet 60 to a halt less than twenty yards away. His friend controlled whatever craft he was flying as if it were an extension of his body. Aircraft were to Grimaldi what firearms and other weapons were to the Executioner.
When Jessup was awake, both men got out of the Hummer, walked down and then up across the bar ditch, then climbed over the fence. The Executioner found the door to the Learjet already open when he reached it, and Jack Grimaldi grinning at him below his sunglasses.
A second later, Bolan had strapped himself into his seat next to the pilot and Jessup took the seat behind Grimaldi. The ace pilot revved the engines, and the plane began to pick up speed again in preparation for takeoff.
The Executioner withdrew his sat phone and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, America’s top-secret counterterrorist headquarters. Bolan maintained an arm’s-length working relationship with Stony Man, and his and the Farm’s missions often coincided.
Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, didn’t answer until the fourth ring. “Sorry, Striker,” she said. “I was busy transferring some data to Bear.”
Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was in charge of the banks of computers and personnel who gathered the Farm’s electronic intel. Kurtzman spent most of his life in front of a computer. Once a strong bear of a man, he had been paralyzed from the waist down during a gun battle years ago and was now confined to a wheelchair.
And he was the best. There were simply no programs into which he couldn’t hack if given enough time, and there was no computer that came close to the power of his own brain. He had proved invaluable to Bolan and the other teams that worked out of the Farm.
“So what’s new on the western front?” Price said.
“We got the Mafia scum and the coke,” Bolan told the honey-blond mission controller. “Just missed the sellers.”
“Did you hear any of them speak?” Price asked.
Under normal conditions, the question would have sounded straight out of left field. But Bolan knew why Price had asked him. “Uh-uh,” he said. “We never got close enough to hear voices. They spoke to us with bullets and a bazooka.”
“A bazooka?” Price said.
“That’s right,” the Executioner said. “They missed.”
“Obviously,” Price said. “You need to talk to Hal?”
“Yeah,” the Executioner said. “Put him on.”
Bolan heard a click in his ear as Price put him on hold and went about her search for Hal Brognola, the Farm’s director. But he was also a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. High enough, at least, that no one questioned his frequent and unexplained absences from Washington, D.C., during which time he manned the reins of Stony Man. He was also Bolan’s link to conventional law enforcement, and could get most things done with a simple phone call.
The Learjet continued to gain altitude, then leveled off as Bolan waited. A few minutes later, he heard the voice of another old friend.
“What’s happening, big guy?” Hal Brognola said into the phone.
“Just finished with the coke deal. Killed the bad guys, exploded the dope. There may be a few hundred cattle who get wired if the wind blows in the right direction, but that should be the only damage.”
Brognola laughed. “Better them than humans,” he said. “Barb already told me. Sounds like you came close to catching the pushers, too.”
“Yeah. Too bad we weren’t playing horseshoes.”
“Any idea who they were?” Brognola questioned. “Any chance they were this Islamic terrorist group that’s been robbing banks and creating other forms of havoc all over the place?”
“Hard to say, Hal,” the Executioner replied. “We didn’t get close enough to really get a good look at them. And as I suspect Barbara already told you, we couldn’t hear them speaking.”
“So tell me what your hunches are, big guy,” Brognola said. “They usually turn out to be as accurate as anything that can be proved.”
“My
