it rough to bust him,” Bolan said.
“So far, it’s been impossible,” Brognola said. “He’s been indicted seven times, but something always goes off-track at the Ministry of Justice in Tirana. Paperwork misfiled, warrants thrown out on technicalities, and so on. As you might suspect, witnesses called to testify against him qualify as an endangered species.”
Once again, no great surprise.
“So, the job would be…?”
“Shut them down,” Brognola stated. “Hell, take them off the map. This pipeline needs to close, for good.”
For good, indeed. And Bolan thought, at least for now.
He harbored no illusions about cleaning up the world at large, saving society or any such high-flown ideal. The best that any soldier on the firing line could do was fight, carry the day in one location at a time and hope he wouldn’t have to win the same ground back again before he had a chance to rest, regroup and savor something of his hard-won victory.
And every victory was transient. There was no such thing as killing Evil in the real world, only in the text of so-called holy books forecasting distant futures that the Executioner would never live to see.
But he was doing what he could, with what he had.
“I’ll need a rundown on the syndicate and major players,” Bolan said unnecessarily.
“All right here,” Brognola said, sliding a CD-ROM across to Bolan in a paper envelope. “You want to check it out before you go, in case you think of any questions?”
“Will do,” Bolan said.
“I’ve got a meeting back in Wonderland, with the AG,” Brognola said. “Barb or Aaron should be able to fill in the gaps, if I’ve missed anything.”
“You won’t have,” Bolan said with full assurance.
“Well.”
“Don’t keep them waiting,” Bolan said, already on his feet.
“They have an auction coming up in Jersey,” Brognola observed. “We don’t have any details, but it’s soon. You’ll find a couple guys on there who might know when and where, in case you want to drop around and place a bid. Or something.”
“That’s a thought.”
They shook hands once again and Bolan trailed the others from the War Room, back in the direction of the elevator. Brognola was talking while he led the way.
“Remember, it’s a different world there, in Albania. Picture the worst bits of Colombia, without the jungle. Their constitution guarantees all kinds of rights, and everybody from the cops to the cartels ignores it. Human rights? Forget about it. The legitimate economy is in the toilet, circling the drain. But hey, you’ve dealt with worse.”
And that was true.
But every time he faced long odds, the laws of probability kicked in. Some day…
Bolan derailed that train of thought before it reached its terminus. Only a would-be martyr went to war anticipating failure. Just as only fools ignored the risks involved.
“Safe trip,” he told the big Fed on the farmhouse porch.
And wished himself the same.
CHAPTER THREE
East Keansburg, New Jersey, the present
A shotgun blast shredded the wall two feet above Mack Bolan’s head, frosting his hair and shoulders with a cloud of plaster dust while streamers of wallpaper flapped like dying tentacles. He answered with a short burst from his carbine, saw his adversary lurch and stagger out of sight beyond a corner, but he couldn’t guarantee the kill.
The odds were in his favor this time, since few human beings managed to survive a torso wound from 5.56 mm NATO rounds. The relatively small projectiles started to tumble when they penetrated a medium more dense than air, thereby creating catastrophic wound channels through flesh and bone. While entrance wounds were smaller than a quarter-inch across, inside the target might be virtually disemboweled.
Which didn’t necessarily equate to instant death.
The gunner with the 12-gauge had been moving on his own two feet when Bolan saw him last. Whether he dropped dead after passing out of sight or was prepared to fire again, lying in wait, remained to be discovered.
He hugged the nearest wall, aware that it could offer little in the way of physical protection from a bullet, but concealment had to count for something. Moving in an awkward crouch, Bolan held his carbine in the low-ready position with its butt against his shoulder and its muzzle canted toward the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. The hold facilitated forward motion and allowed “big picture” scanning of the target zone, without sacrificing any significant first-shot speed.
Six feet from the corner, he paused, listening. It didn’t help much, with the shouts and sounds of running feet that echoed through the house from every side, but Bolan didn’t plan to blindly rush around the corner and be gutted by a buckshot charge.
So much to think about.
Besides the unknown number of assailants still inside the house, he had the captive women and their prospective buyers on his mind. Meanwhile, somewhere in the ritzy neighborhood, someone was probably alerting the police to sounds of gunfire from the Cako spread.
East Keansburg had no law enforcement of its own, relying on the county sheriff’s office for protection in a pinch. The internet told Bolan that their 9-1-1 commo center was in Freehold, the county seat, ten miles to the south. That didn’t mean the nearest cruiser would be starting out from headquarters, but it would take some time to organize a SWAT team after first-responders reached the scene and called for backup.
Every second counted, even so.
With that in mind, he made his move. Stepping off from the wall he’d been hugging, Bolan aimed his M-4 carbine at the corner, picked a spot where someone might be crouching if he had an ambush on his mind and fired off half a dozen probing rounds.
It wouldn’t be precision work, by any means, but 5.56 mm rounds were made to penetrate three millimeters of steel at six hundred yards, or twelve millimeters at a hundred yards. Drywall or lath and plaster was merely tissue paper to a bullet traveling more than twice the speed of sound.
A strangled cry rewarded Bolan’s searching fire. He followed it around the corner, found his adversary stretched out on one side and dying with a fresh wound in his chest to match the first one in his shoulder. Bolan kicked the shotgun out of reach and stripped a pistol from the gunman’s belt, dropping the magazine before he pitched it back the way he’d come.
Keep moving. Find the women. Find Lorik Cako.
Simple intentions, but they weren’t so easy in a labyrinthine madhouse with an enemy of unknown numbers now on full alert.
As if in answer to his thought, Bolan heard footsteps slamming down a nearby staircase, soldiers hissing back and forth to one another in Albanian. He’d memorized a photo of the scum who owned the mansion,
