well, the jacket of which didn’t quite conceal the bulge of the gun on his right hip. He quickly surveyed the coffeehouse and zeroed in on Bolan without hesitation. The soldier’s corner was secluded enough, the ambient noise loud enough, that the men could speak in reasonable confidence on what was, Bolan calculated, neutral ground. He did not intend to antagonize Burnett if he could help it, given that he needed the man’s assistance.
“Matt Cooper?”
“That’s me,” Bolan nodded, standing to offer his hand. Burnett took it and returned a firm handshake.
“Burnett,” the man said pleasantly. As he sat, his expression hardened, his smile bearing all the joy of an undertaker. “Would you mind telling me,” he asked with feigned mildness before his voice went completely cold, “just what the fuck you think you’re doing in New York?” He spoke quietly, but the menace in his tone was real enough.
Bolan looked at him blandly. “That’s need to know.”
“Well,” Burnett said, leaning forward, “I damn well need to know.”
The Executioner regarded him for a moment, saying nothing.
Burnett wiped one hand down his face, shaking his head. “Look, Cooper,” he said, using the cover Brognola had supplied and that Bolan’s Justice credentials listed, “I want to believe we’re on the same side. Chief Vaughn told me he’s been getting calls from high-powered types in Washington all morning. That’s the only reason you’re not up on every charge in the book and a few off the books, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve got connections. Okay. I can live with that. But I won’t have you burning down this city around my ears!”
“You’re right,” Bolan said simply.
“What?” Burnett asked.
“We’re on the same side,” Bolan offered. “At least, we ought to be, depending on what your stake in all this is.”
“Drug interdiction’s my stake,” Burnett said. “If your people knew to ask for me, you know what I do. My task force is focused primarily on violent crime related to cocaine trafficking.”
“Crack?” Bolan asked.
“The crack dealers are the small-timers, these days,” Burnett admitted. “It’s the big gangs and the organized-crime families moving hundreds of kilograms of cocaine that concern me.” He turned and stared into space for a moment, looking out the picture window at the busy city street beyond. He sighed. “Cooper, I’ve lived in New York all my life. I’ve watched crime come and go. I’ve seen how bad it can get. As a rookie, I watched the city nearly eat itself alive in the late seventies. Then there was the backlash. Remember those movies, all the vigilante flicks about cleaning up the Big Apple? There was that subway shooter…and that didn’t stem the tide. Things got worse until the last bunch of cronies in city hall decided to clamp down, clean up the joint. We started to turn a corner.”
“It’s never that easy,” Bolan commented.
“No,” Burnett said, turning to face him, “it isn’t and it wasn’t. Now we’re seeing the worst of the violent crime surge again. I’ve got Colombian and Dominican gangs, with a few minor Mexican players for flavor, pushing into Manhattan, of all places. Midtown Manhattan, Cooper! All it takes is one good massacre on Broadway, a hit on the street in front of the United Nations, or, God help us, a frigging war in front the New York Public Library, and we’ll be lucky to see so much as another nickel in tourism. They’ll be rolling up the bloodstained sidewalks by the time we’re done. This city will be the wasteland they were all predicting it would become, back in the bad old days. I want to stop that before it can happen, Cooper.”
“It’s more than drug interdiction and drive-bys,” Bolan told him.
Burnett paused. “That’s right,” he said. “A few months ago, we had an officer shot in the line of duty. Tragic as the death of a good cop is, that wasn’t so surprising. What had us up nights worrying was that the patrolman was shot after taking cover behind the engine block of his Crown Vic.”
“Shot through cover, you mean,” Bolan guessed.
“Exactly,” Burnett nodded. “The rounds—9 mm, forensics tells us—went through the heaviest part of the car like it wasn’t even there. Maybe a .50-caliber rifle could do that. But 9 frigging mm? Show me small-arms ammunition that can do that!”
“That’s why I’m here,” Bolan admitted. “That wasn’t the first such case.”
Burnett’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right,” he said. “There have been almost a dozen shootings, some large-scale, some minor drive-bys. In each one, witness accounts or the evidence and the bodies we found afterward point to something nobody’s ever seen before. The lab couldn’t make much of it, other than to say it was like a miniature depleted uranium round. We sent some samples to the FBI, what we could find, but we haven’t got anything yet.”
“You have,” Bolan told him. “You got me.”
“You’re FBI?” Burnett asked. “I thought you were with the Justice Department.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Bolan told him. “Let’s say for now that the samples you sent raised the right flags in the right departments. Word of what you’re facing made its way to the right people. They’re working on it right now. That’s also why I’m here. That’s what I’m after. Depleted uranium ammo in the hands of violent drug gangs in New York City? That’s volatile business. The fire’s got to be stopped before it spreads.”
“Fine,” Burnett said, growing impatient. “But you weren’t shooting it out with any coke-runners yesterday. My men on the scene tell me they saw paramilitary commandos of some kind.”
“Did your people intercept any of them?” Bolan asked.
“No,” Burnett said, his face reddening. “We pursued several of them but lost them. They shot up a SWAT van, among other things, making their escape.”
“Some of them,” Bolan said, “were using the ammunition we’re looking for. Not all, but at least two.”
“What’s the connection?” Burnett asked. “How did it go down? Why were they shooting at you?”
“We’ll get to that eventually,” Bolan said, putting him off. “Tell me about the gangs you’re working,” Bolan said.
“Why?” Burnett demanded. “How do you fit into this?”
“Trust me,” Bolan told him.
“I guess I don’t have much choice,” Burnett said. He thought about it for a moment and then continued. “We’ve got two gangs at war right now, both of them moving into Manhattan to prove something to the others—and to city hall, if you ask me. One’s the Caqueta Cartel, headed by Luis Caqueta. They’re the Colombians. The other is El Cráneo, the Skull, a Dominican gang fronted by a charming character named Pierre Taveras.”
“How does the trade play out?” Bolan asked.
“Caqueta moves large quantities of cocaine through Atlanta, using a variety of small-time Mexican groups to move the coke from the southwest. The Mexicans completely control the West Coast and the Midwestern markets, but here on the East Coast, El Cráneo and
