Blood Vendetta

Blair grinned. “So you can speak, eh? Okay, fair enough. What questions can I field for you two?”

The Executioner noticed the other man didn’t promise to actually answer the questions, but let it slide.

“What’s your take on the Nightingale?” Bolan asked.

Leaning back in his chair, Blair glanced at the ceiling and rubbed absently at his throat for a moment, apparently collecting his thoughts.

“She—our psychologists believe she’s a woman—she’s lost something. More likely she’s lost someone, maybe even several people, and she’s enraged. Probably so enraged she no longer feels or notices it. It’s like an arthritic joint. Bugs you all the time, affects how you move, maybe your choice in activities and lifestyle. But you’ve become so accustomed to it, you barely pay attention to it. Or you only do so on a limited basis.”

“I don’t buy it,” McCarter said. “How can someone be that bloody angry and not know it?”

“Pot meet kettle,” Blair said

“Don’t put me on the shrink’s couch,” McCarter growled.

“Above my pay grade.”

“She’s angry,” Bolan interjected.

“Enraged. Enraged, but conflicted. She obviously feels some guilt over what she does. That means she’s going against her grain by stealing.”

“Our analysts guessed the same thing,” the Executioner added.

Blair nodded. “That’s all low-hanging fruit. The real question is what does it all mean? And what is it about her that makes her handle her anger this way? A lot of people have bad things happen to them, things that change their lives and their perspectives. But this made her, well, a little daft. Not insane in the classic sense, mind you, but it knocked her off course. Our shrinks believe underneath all the rage and activity lies a lot of guilt.”

“For?”

“Whoever got hurt, she probably feels—or felt—responsible for them. Not for the action that hurt them, but for not being there to save that person. Maybe even for not being killed, too.”

“You mean survivor guilt,” Bolan asked.

“Sure. And a little bit of that is normal, especially with a tragedy. But this—starting a whole new life, going underground—smacks of someone trying to atone for something. Not just wondering why a bullet or a bomb didn’t take them instead. But really trying to atone for something done or, hell, not done for that matter.”

“That being?” McCarter asked.

Blair shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Thanks for crystallizing it, lad,” McCarter said.

Blair’s neck and cheeks turned scarlet. “Sorry, didn’t realize I was supposed to do all your damn thinking for you.”

Uncrossing his legs, Bolan leaned forward.

“You’re a smart guy,” Bolan said, his voice even. “You have a theory.”

“Lots of theories. That’s how I spend my days, collecting information and spouting theories. When it comes to this young lady, though, it seems pretty damned easy actually.”

Bolan gave what he hoped was an encouraging nod. Apparently it worked.

“If we have traced her history back far enough—and it’s a big bloody ‘if’—her first two strikes occurred less than five years ago. Hit the money men for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi branch. Pretty nice piece of work, that. From what we know their IT crew came straight from Saddam’s government, a Sunni who studied computer science at Oxford. Once we knocked Saddam out of power, this guy suddenly found himself out of a job, got pissed off and joined al Qaeda. Lots of Sunnis did that in those days.”

“Got a name?” McCarter asked.

“He does,” Blair replied. “Khallad Mukhtar. Not that it matters. The Americans took him out years ago. Hit his car with a Hellfire missile while he was tooling ’round Tikrit. Took out three other al Qaeda guys, his security detail, in the process.”

“Good show, that one,” McCarter said.

“Indeed. But here’s my point, Nightingale already hit him months before that. She also hit two guys in London, a couple of Saudis, couple of fire breathers. They collected all kinds of money from sympathizers, not just in the Middle East, but also Europe, and funneled it back to al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. One of those assholes got deported back to his own country. Saudis put him into a government-sponsored rehabilitation program. When he reappeared six months later, he was a changed man, denounced al Qaeda and the Jihad.”

“A real beacon of light,” McCarter said. He took a swig from his Coke and swallowed loudly.

“An organic change of heart to be sure,” Blair said, allowing himself a dour smile.

“So she went after Islamists from Iraq,” Bolan said. “You thinking she’s related to a soldier killed in Iraq?”

“That was my original thought,” Blair said. “But that didn’t sit well with me. Not entirely, anyway.”

“Because?”

“Originally, it was a gut feeling. But I started piecing this thing together more and found another common strand between our first targets.”

Turning slightly in his chair, the analyst’s left hand disappeared below the desktop and the soldier heard a drawer being pulled open. Blair hummed and Bolan heard papers rustling. When Blair’s hand came back into view, he had a photograph and a couple of newspaper clippings in his hand. He tossed the items on the desk. Bolan and McCarter leaned forward and studied the items.

The picture was a still photo of carnage. The crumpled remains of a train car on its side, its silver skin scorched black, the interior belching oily smoke. It apparently had been ripped from between two other cars and thrown from the tracks. The soldier saw firefighters armed with hoses dousing the car with water. An officer from London’s Metropolitan Police pointed at something unseen, mouth open in a yell, while two other officers ushered civilians away from the wreckage.

Blair smoothed down one of the rumpled newspaper clippings with his palm, pushed it forward so the Stony Man warriors could read it.

“I know I could have printed it out from the internet,” he said, “but I’m still partial to the newsprint-and-ink version.”

Bolan nodded, but focused his attention on the clipping.

Terror Bombing Kills Seven

Seven passengers were killed—including a pregnant woman on holiday—and three others were injured when a bomb planted by an Islamic militant group tore through a train car’s interior.

The dead also included four London residents, a French tourist and another American, a man believed to be the husband of the pregnant woman killed in Sunday’s explosion, authorities said.

In a statement sent to news organizations, a group of Islamic militants with ties to al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the bombing. The act was meant as a protest against the presence of British troops in Iraq, according to the statement.

Bolan scanned through the rest of the article, but found few other details useful to his search. It mostly contained eyewitness statements and comments from police and politicians vowing to hunt down those responsible.

Blair spread out a second article on the desk. Between the headline and the story, Bolan saw the photos of seven individuals lined up.

With his index finger, Blair tapped the picture of a young woman. The photo portrayed her from the shoulders up. Her hair was blond and her mouth was turned up in a warm smile.

“That’s the American. Name’s Jessica Harrison. Beautiful young woman. According to a New York Times profile that ran at the time, she was six months pregnant. Her husband, Jeremy, was fresh from foreign-service officer school and was stationed at the London embassy. He’d been in the country four months before he was killed. She arrived that day. They were on their way from Heathrow to the U.S. embassy compound. Diplomatic cables and other information from your government pretty much confirmed the information in the Times piece.”

It struck Bolan that the analyst was drawing details completely from memory.

“You’ve spent a lot of time on this,” the soldier said.

Blair gave him a lopsided grin. “Shows, doesn’t it? Normal people have hobbies or, better yet, girlfriends. Anyway, I thought for sure this woman was the key. See, she had a twin sister, Jennifer Davis—Davis was the dead woman’s maiden name. Her sister worked for a couple of major U.S. banks. Really understood the nuts and bolts of financial transactions. And did I mention she oversaw information security at another point in her career?”

“Happy coincidence,” McCarter muttered.

“Smart woman, obviously. Quite lovely, too, though more serious than her sister, judging by the photos I’ve seen.”

“So she went underground?” Bolan asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Blair said. “She’s dead.”

“Dead?” Bolan leaned forward.

“Very much so. As I said, she was my favorite guess for the Nightingale when I first started poring over all this stuff. But circumstances have forced me to change my mind.”

“‘Circumstance’ being that she’s dead,” the Executioner said.

Blair nodded. “Seems a logical conclusion to draw, doesn’t it? It’s not likely she faked her own death and just fell off the grid. I mean, right? Who does that?”

Bolan said nothing. In the waning days of his war on the Mafia, he’d done just that, allegedly dying after a bomb destroyed his war wagon. When that ruse fell apart, he’d been forced to stand trial for the blood spilled in his War Everlasting. Ultimately, he’d “died” a second and, as far as the public was concerned, final time. This time it had stuck, but that was partly because of his experiences as a soldier and the help of the White House and Stony Man Farm.

Presumably, this young woman had none of those resources at hand, he told himself.

“She died in a house explosion,” Blair said. “It was six months after her sister died. The local fire department blamed it on a gas leak. Neighbors saw her walk in after work. An hour later, an explosion tears through the house, incinerates the damn thing.”

“They thought it was suicide,” Bolan said.

“According to her coworkers and family, she collapsed when her sister died, took a month off work to recover from the shock. When she finally did come back, people said she’d changed. She was sullen, depressed and withdrawn.”

“No surprise,” McCarter said.

“Agreed. But as time went on, according to the interviews I saw, she got worse rather than better. Since her sister was lost in a terrorist attack, the authorities gave the case a hard look before they closed it, but they found no signs of foul play. She could have died from an accident, which seems plausible. She’d called the gas company to the house at least once about a month before the explosion to report the smell of gas. Or she gave up and killed herself.”

Bolan nodded. “If she’s dead, why tell us all this?”

“More to illustrate a point,” Blair said. “Jennifer Davis fits the profile pretty well. So do a couple of other women. They didn’t check out, either, for various reasons. If you’re trying to find the Nightingale, it won’t be easy. That’s really the point I am trying to make here. You’re chasing a ghost.”

They spent the next hour going through the other information Blair had, including other suspects who’d turned out to be false leads. The Stony Man warriors thanked Blair for his help and left Thames House, along with a flood of civil servants heading out for lunch.

“Fun to yank his chain, but he seems like a good enough lad,” McCarter said. “Not much help, though. Sorry for dragging you out here.”

“It’s been a long flight,” Bolan said. “Let’s see if Kurtzman dug up anything in the meantime.”

* * *

AFTER HIS VISITORS left, Blair forced himself to sit in his office and, for an excruciating twenty-two minutes, pretended to work. Finally, he grabbed his sack lunch from his bottom desk drawer, grabbed his windbreaker from a hook on the wall and headed out the door.

A nervous flutter in his stomach nagged at him and, as he made his way through the corridors of Thames House, he felt as though all eyes rested upon him. He bought a foam cup filled with hot tea from a street vendor and walked a few blocks from MI5’s headquarters, where he bought a couple of newspapers from a newsstand.

Though he tried to look nonchalant about it, he surveyed the streets for any signs he’d been followed. He saw nothing amiss, but knew that meant absolutely zero. He wasn’t a trained field operative. Though he understood surveillance and countersurveillance techniques and principles, he hadn’t applied them in the real world. Said other ways, he was out of his element, over his head or any other clichés one wanted to apply.

Folding the newspapers in half, he put them under his arm and continued on two more blocks to a small municipal park. With the edge of the folded newspapers, he brushed some leaves and other debris from a wrought-iron bench. He seated himself on the bench, drew his tuna sandwich from the bag and took a bite from it. Nerves continued to roil his stomach and he didn’t want to eat. However, he also wanted to make it look as though he was here in the park for a reason, some reason other than the truth.

The sandwich became a sticky ball inside his dry mouth and he washed it down with the tea. Three children played nearby. The middle one, a slim girl with long, blond hair, threw a ball to one of the other children, who caught it and tossed it back to her. She let loose with a giggle. A smile tugged at Blair’s lips, followed almost immediately by a mental image of Eleanor, face pale and still, the sound of his ex-wife sobbing, a swirl of people putting their hand on his shoulder, uncomfortably uttering words meant to comfort. The memory of his ex-wife, Daphne, sobbing, makeup smeared, cut him anew. A dull, all-too-familiar ache formed in the middle of his chest.

He set aside the sandwich. With his thumb and index finger, he reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, withdrew a phone and flipped it open. It wasn’t his phone; it had shown up inside his flat—the bastards had broken into his place while he was at work—and was in a brown envelope on his kitchen table.

With his thumb, he punched in some numbers. On the third ring, a woman’s voice answered.

“Yes?” the woman said.

“I got a visit,” Blair said.

“Okay.”

“They asked questions.”

“About our friend?”

“Yes.”

“And you told them what?”

“What we agreed I’d tell them. Nothing more.”

“Good.”

Chapter 4

Malakov hung up his phone. His ever-present scowl deepened. The Russian, who’d been a bodybuilder and hockey player in his youth, remained thick in the shoulders, neck, arms and legs. He moved with a silence and grace that belied his size.

His hockey teammates had called him “Juggernaut” because, despite his size, he’d glided quickly, forcefully across the ice, and pounded his opponents. A whitish, ropelike scar ran from his temple to the bottom of his jaw, a leftover from his days as a Russian special forces soldier when he’d forced himself on a Chechen woman. She tried in vain to stop him by hitting him in the side of the head with his own vodka bottle. He still recalled how the bottle had shattered. He’d been too drunk to feel the sting of his flesh tearing open, but the haze of alcohol and time had done nothing to dim the memory of his blood bursting forth in a crimson spray on himself and the woman. A rare smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when he recalled how his blood had heightened her terror and his ardor.

Every once in a while, after he’d downed a few drinks, when talk amongst his comrades inevitably turned to sexual conquests, he’d shared that story. Occasionally, it yielded laughter, but more often than not he’d found his comrades greeted the tale with stunned silence. He chalked up their reaction to what he considered Russia’s uptight sexual culture, where people repressed their primal urges. Sometimes his countrymen mystified, even disgusted him.

Hands moving on autopilot scrambled for and located a cigarette. He lit it, took a couple of drags and stared through the windows, which ran nearly from floor to ceiling, of his London penthouse. He saw from his faint reflection he was scowling again and he viewed it like the return of an old friend.

Something was wrong. John Lockwood had sounded different. Granted, he always was an uptight prick, more balls than brains, but loyal to whomever filled his bank account. Malakov had made the British prick a rich man over the last several years and had asked for nothing other than his loyalty.

Now the big Russian worried that he’d lost that. If so, that was a problem because, while he’d tried to keep as much information as possible from Lockwood, he’d had to know at least a little bit.

Enough to do whatever job Malakov had tossed his way.

If he was—how did the Americans say it?—going off the reservation... Malakov didn’t finish the thought. He already knew in his gut how that play would end.

Two members of his security detachment, a couple of former Russian paratroopers, were seated at a large circular table. They smoked cigarettes, drank coffee and played cards. Malakov shook his head in disgust. Lazy bastards, born to be followers, he thought.

“Vasili,” he snapped.

A compact man with neatly trimmed black hair and pale skin whipped his gaze in Malakov’s direction.

“Sir?”

“You’re my security chief, yes?”

Vasili looked confused. “Yes, of course.”

“Yet you sit there playing cards. You think this is—what?—a retirement home? You are ready to retire, it seems.”

“No, sir, of course not.”

“Maybe you consider playing cards working. Maybe for someone as dim as you, that is the case.”

The other man’s eyes narrowed. “No, sir.”

“So I am wrong,” Malakov said. He allowed some menace to creep into his voice.

“Of course not,” Vasili said, shaking his head no. “Perhaps I can do something for you?”

“Perhaps. John Lockwood. You do remember him, yes?”

“Of course.”

“I find myself troubled. Not afraid, but troubled. I want to speak with Lockwood. Find him and bring him here.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and Vasili, bring me a couple of the girls, too. I feel bored and would like some company. Perhaps tonight I can make new memories for myself.”

* * *

BOLAN AND MCCARTER were seated in the Briton’s new Jaguar, parked across the street from John Lockwood’s strip club. Kurtzman had come up with Lockwood as a possible source of information on Yezhov since he had worked within the Russian’s crime ring for years. Bolan looked at the car’s steering wheel. “Nice car.”

“Don’t even think about it, mate,” McCarter said. “I don’t even like you being in the same country as one of my cars. You’ll drive it over my dead body.”

“Only if there were no other escape routes.”

“Funny,” McCarter said, swigging from his can of Coke. “Laugh riot is what you are.”

McCarter stared through the windshield. Bolan followed his gaze and saw a trio of women. All were dressed in low-cut blouses, short skirts and stiletto heels, huddled together near the mouth of an alley, talking.

“Normally, I hate stakeouts,” McCarter said, grinning. “Don’t like to sit still this long. But considering the view, I am willing to make the sacrifice.”

Bolan nodded, but said nothing. No doubt, the women who’d stopped by the car were attractive. They’d dutifully flirted and joked with the two men until it became apparent they were not going to make a sale. Then they’d moved on.

“You two are either cops or fags,” a young redhead had snapped.

“Wrong on both counts,” McCarter had called after her.

Finally, thirty minutes later, the women had stopped coming by.

McCarter again turned to Bolan. “You know, it’s going to look suspicious, us just sitting out here. Being a John isn’t a spectator sport, last I checked. We’re going to get pegged as cops.”

“You thinking of sampling the merchandise?”

“Anything for the cause,” McCarter said. “No, I’m just thinking we may want to move on, if nothing happens. Maybe find another spot to watch the goings on.”

Bolan nodded. “You’re probably right.”

McCarter grabbed the ignition key. But before he could turn it, a black SUV cruised by, streetlights gleaming white on the vehicle’s tinted windows. The SUV slowed at the mouth of an alley next to Lockwood’s strip club, turned. Bolan glanced at McCarter, who was also watching the vehicle. Then he popped open his door and went EVA.

He darted across the street. Tires squealed against the pavement as drivers braked hard to avoid hitting the warrior. Irritated drivers honked their horns or flashed their bright headlights at Bolan. The soldier tuned them out and focused his attention on the alley.

Once he’d made it to the sidewalk, he noticed the tail end of McCarter’s Jaguar as the vehicle sped to the nearest corner, slowed and turned. He unzipped his coat, reached inside and drew the Beretta from its shoulder holster, but kept the gun hidden beneath the jacket.

Bolan walked along the front of Lockwood’s club. When he reached the alley, he stopped and peered around the corner. The black SUV stood in the alley. The vehicle’s engine idled, belching a whitish exhaust from the tailpipe.

Two shadows disembarked from the vehicle and walked toward the club. One of them opened the club’s side door and both figures disappeared through it.

Bolan keyed his throat microphone.

“Two just went inside,” he said. “Unsure if we have any more in the vehicle.”

“Roger that,” McCarter replied.

Bolan heard a door latch click and he froze. The soldier melted into the shadows and pressed his body against the club.

The rear passenger’s-side door flipped open and a man stepped from the vehicle. The guy was tall and lanky. His bald pate gleamed under the glow from the single exposed bulb moored to the club. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. He slammed his door. A second man stepped from the driver’s seat, a pump shotgun held in his hands. He rounded the rear of the SUV and moved toward the other guy.

“Hope Lockwood’s here,” said the guy with the shotgun. Bolan noticed the man spoke English with a thick accent. “Malakov’s going to have our asses if we don’t bring this guy back with us.”

“Don’t worry,” the bald guy replied. “Lockwood’s here. He’s not the type to run.”

“Gutsy?”

Mr. Shotgun laughed and shook his head. “Try greedy. He’s got his club. He’s got a couple of flats in London and some collectible cars. He won’t leave all that behind. He’d try to swim with gold bricks in his pocket, if he could.”

Bolan ran the numbers. He figured the two guys inside likely would make it to Lockwood’s office in less than a minute.

The soldier stepped from the shadows. The man holding the shotgun apparently caught the movement from the corner of his eye, wheeled toward Bolan’s direction and raised the weapon to his shoulder in one fluid movement. But Bolan had the drop on the guy and triggered the Beretta. The handgun chugged out a tri-burst, the bullets ripping into the guy’s torso. The impact caused him to backpedal a couple of steps before he crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap.

The second guy, eyes wide with surprise, clawed underneath his jacket for hardware. The Beretta coughed out another burst and the slugs drilled into the thug’s chest. Even as the guy folded to the ground, Bolan stalked past him to the club’s side door.

The Executioner opened the door and saw it led into a storage room at the rear of the club. The Beretta poised before him, he stepped inside, closed the door. Steel shelves stood one behind the next, loaded with boxes of liquor and snacks. He strained his ears for signs of the two other gunners. The only sound he heard was heavy metal music, muffled but discernible, as it ground out of the club’s sound system. Exiting the storeroom, he stepped into a brightly lit corridor, the same one he’d been through earlier that led to Lockwood’s office.