Resurgence

It sounded like an army coming down the stairs, maybe another on the second floor, and the Executioner still had to reach the women he presumed were quartered in the basement. All the while he had to somehow manage to stay alive and dodge any police who might arrive before he finished up.

A piece of cake.

Bolan angled toward the stairs, letting the carbine lead him, squeezing off a burst when only feet were visible and hearing angry cries in answer. One man tumbled into his field of fire and jerked helplessly as Bolan’s next burst found him, opening his chest.

The M-4’s magazine had to be running low. The soldier ducked into an open doorway, seeking cover while he switched it out, releasing the mag with two rounds left inside and swapping it for a full one. He was about to feed the hungry carbine when a wheezing figure rushed at Bolan from his blind side, strangling hands outstretched.

Bolan reacted without thinking. He slammed the carbine’s butt into his attacker’s ribs and dropped the magazine, drawing his trench knife as he turned. He swung the weapon butt-first, cracking his opponent’s forehead with the short spike on its pommel, smashed his teeth in with the knuckleduster built into the grip, then drove the six-inch blade between the stunned Albanian’s ribs.

One twist, and it was done.

He sheathed the knife, scooped up his fallen magazine and checked it, seated it into the carbine’s receiver and got himself back in the game.

PANIC WAS WEAKNESS, and in many situations it was fatal. Lorik Cako didn’t plan to die this evening, but he had a great deal more to think about than simply getting out alive without a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

His customers, for one thing, and the women who were living, breathing evidence against him, capable of sending him to prison for a hundred years simply because of their existence in this time and place.

Above all else, he had to think of Arben Kurti and the men behind him, what they’d do to Cako if he failed them, or if they suspected that he might cooperate with the police to save himself from jail. On balance, Cako realized that he’d be better off exactly where he was, shot dead, than carried to some slaughterhouse where Kurti could interrogate him and dissect him over time.

Regis Bushati met him as Cako reached the ground floor, with sounds of automatic gunfire echoing around them.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Cako demanded.

“Intruders!” Bushati replied.

“How many?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, find out, for Christ’s sake! And call out the cars. Have them come to the back door at once.”

“Yes, sir!” Bushati responded.

While Bushati ran off to obey his instructions, Cako hesitated in the corridor, smelling gunsmoke. His first instinct told him to go and meet his enemies, destroy them all, but he also had to think about his customers downstairs. If they were killed or injured in his care, there would be hell to pay from their respective syndicates.

Not only in New Jersey, but beyond.

That thought made Cako wish that he could flee the house and simply keep on running. But where could he go? Where in the world would he be safe, once Arben Kurti and Rahim Berisha started hunting him?

Nowhere.

Turning back to the stairwell behind him, he retraced his steps, descending once more to the basement. Qemal Hoxha met him, looking anxious, holding one of the AKM rifles.

“They want to get out of here, Lorik,” he said.

“Can you blame them?”

Cako returned to the theater, where the first nearly naked woman still stood under spotlights, her eyes glazed from the drugs she’d been given to keep her in line. She reminded him of an animal caught in a car’s charging headlights, paralyzed with fear.

The buyers started shouting at him all at once. Despite their babel, Cako got the gist of it. They wanted explanations for the noise upstairs—and more important, as Hoxha had already said, they wanted out.

“Gentlemen, please! I can’t respond if all of you are shouting!”

Cako gave them two full seconds to quiet down, then took a backward step and raised his shotgun, squeezing off a blast into the basement’s ceiling. Shattered fragments of acoustic tiles rained down over his guests as they flinched from the weapon’s roar.

And shut their mouths in unison.

“As I was saying, cars are being brought around to take you safely out of here. You’ll be protected on the way, and I sincerely hope you will accept my personal apology for the disruption. At a later time, the merchandise will be available for bidding at substantial discounts, as my compensation for the inconvenience. Now—”

“What is happening?” one of the Japanese demanded, cutting Cako off.

“It seems there are intruders on the property,” Cako replied. “I’m taking steps to deal with them, but in the meantime it is best for you to leave, before police arrive.”

That got them moving when the gunfire might have kept them rooted where they stood. When Cako turned to lead them up the stairs, they crowded on his heels, jostling one another for position in the line. Bringing up the rear, came Qemal Hoxha to cover their escape.

IN RETROSPECT, Bolan couldn’t have said exactly when he felt the tide turning against him. He’d been headed for the mansion’s basement, accessed through a kind of study where the books lining three walls appeared untouched except for weekly dusting, but had found the stairs too late. The place was empty, though a smell of sweat and perfume told him that it had been occupied quite recently.

He had a look in the control room, saw the empty gun rack on one wall and double-timed to check backstage. There was a kind of dressing room—perhaps undressing room was more appropriate—with scraps of lingerie strewed here and there on furniture that didn’t match the pricey tone out front, and stronger perfume in the air.

Baiting the hook.

An elevator served the dressing area, its small car built to carry four passengers, tops. Call it seven trips for twenty young women, if someone rode the elevator up and down with them.

Bolan admitted to himself that there’d been time to clear them out since his first gunshots, but would Cako send them back upstairs into a firefight? Never mind humanity. It sounded like a risk of valuable merchandise, and any living witness could be used against him if she fell into the hands of medics, cops and prosecutors.

Since they hadn’t been exterminated in the dressing room, it followed, then, that Cako had removed them from the premises. Or he was trying to. They might be going with the buyers, in the fragile hope that he could still log sales despite the interruption of his little show.

No time to waste.

Bolan was turning toward the stairs once more when he heard shooters coming down to join him. He couldn’t guess their number or determine how well they were armed, but once he dropped the first of them the rest could hold the stairs forever with a single gun, keep Bolan bottled up below until they either smoked him out or the police showed up to make things infinitely worse.

Long years ago, Bolan had vowed that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Occasionally he had broken that rule when faced with an extremely brutal, or murderous law enforcement officer. He regarded everyone who wore a badge as soldiers of the same side in his war against the predators. He would help honest cops arrest their dirty comrades, but would never kill an everyday officer to save himself.

If the cops found him here, with no means of escape, he’d surrender. Face trial yet again, with no help from Brognola or anyone else at the Farm. And beyond that?

The end.

He fired a short burst toward the stairs, discouraging the enemy advance, then looked around his prison. He could take the elevator up a floor or two, but if the shooters knew he was downstairs, they would cover all the stops, automatic weapons poised to smother him with fire before the door was fully open.

What, then?

If Cako’s buyers and their merchandise had left the house without going upstairs, there had to be another exit somewhere in the basement. Something Bolan could discover, given enough time.

But time was one thing that he didn’t have to spare.

“Start looking, then,” he muttered to himself.

It had to be right there. Somewhere.

With grim determination, Bolan started searching for a way to save his life.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Bolan found it. There was yet another staircase hidden at the southwest corner of the house, disguised as storage space. The door was still ajar when he reached it, peered inside and saw steep stairs ascending to ground level. When nobody shot his head off, the soldier forged ahead, mounting the stairs and wondering where he’d wind up.

Fresh air washed over Bolan as he cleared a ground-floor doorway, hesitating long enough to verify that no gunmen were waiting for him to emerge. Maybe the housemen didn’t know about the stairs. Maybe they’d just forgotten.

When the Executioner emerged, a minicaravan of limousines was rolling off along the driveway that would take them out through Cako’s wrought-iron gates and off to anywhere they pleased.

Unless he stopped them first.

Bolan triggered a short burst toward the final car in line and saw his bullets spark off armored steel. He guessed the limos would have run-flat tires, as well, but even if they didn’t he was bent on stopping all of them, not just the train’s caboose.

Which meant he needed wheels.

Some fifty yards away he saw a seven-car garage standing with doors wide-open, as if all those shiny toys inside were left on permanent display. As for ignition keys, he’d have to work that out.

But first…

Below him, Bolan heard his trackers penetrate the basement, shouting, firing, drawing closer by the heartbeat, closing on the staircase that they couldn’t miss.

Scowling at the retreating limos, Bolan primed another frag grenade and waited until he heard footsteps on the stairs below him, then released the spoon and counted off four seconds. He dropped the lethal egg with only two seconds remaining on its fuse, and ran like hell.

He barely registered the blast, was focused solely on the long garage and cars inside it. On arrival, Bolan spied a small space off to one side where a wall rack held assorted automotive tools.

And keys.

He snagged one for a Rolls-Royce Phantom, dropped into a driver’s seat that felt more like an easy chair and gunned the 6.5-liter V12 engine into snarling life. After releasing the parking brake, the soldier stood on the accelerator and roared out of the garage.

He was in time to see a line of gunmen spilling from the exit he had used, a couple of them looking wobbly on their feet. Bolan had no time to examine them for wounds, determined as he was to catch the limo caravan, but they saw him and moved to intercept the Phantom as he powered out along the driveway.

Was the Rolls-Royce armored against small-arms fire?

He’d find out any second now.

They opened up at thirty yards with two Kalashnikovs, an Uzi and another SMG resembling an old Smith & Wesson M-76. It sounded as if Bolan was driving into one hell of a hailstorm, bullets scarring glass and gouging divots in the Phantom’s paint job, but they didn’t make it through to nail the driver in his comfy padded seat.

He could’ve saved himself some time by driving past the firing squad and simply leaving them behind, but they were running out to meet him now, still firing as they came.

A quick twist of the padded steering wheel and he was in among them, startled faces gaping at him in the high-beam glare of headlights. One was quick enough to dodge and throw himself aside, but Bolan took the other three.

A glancing blow for Mr. Uzi, maybe a broken hip of shattered ribs to pain him for the next few decades when it rained. His two companions took the full brunt of the hurtling Rolls. One rolled up on the hood, squealing, and smeared the windshield with blood where his face collided with the glass, before he slipped away to starboard and was gone. The other fell beneath the car, tires thumping over flesh and bone, five thousand pounds and change turning the shooter to a screaming pancake on the pavement.

Then he was off in hot pursuit of Cako’s limo train, the Phantom gathering momentum as he kept its pedal to the metal—or, to be precise, it’s stylish carpeting. Bolan could see the first black limousine already passing through the open gate, taking off. Number two was close behind it, with the others lining up to take their turns.

Bolan saw a bright spark in the rearview mirror, then a trail of fire was chasing him along the driveway, gaining fast. Before he had a chance to twist the steering wheel, the RPG projectile struck the Phantom’s left-rear fender and exploded, slamming the Rolls-Royce off course while delivering a solid kick to its tail.

Bolan hung on, feeling the tire go flat at the back, and kept the pedal down, grinding along the driveway, trailing smoke and sparks behind him.

HOW LONG BEFORE THE gas tank detonated, if it did at all? Bolan knew he was pushing it, stretching his luck to the consistency of tissue paper, but he had to reach the gate before it closed. Even if he was forced to let the limos slip away, he still had to escape from Cako’s walled estate, live on to fight another day.

He almost made it.

From a distance, the Executioner could see the rolling gate begin to close behind the final limousine. It wasn’t fast, but didn’t need to move like lightning, with the Rolls still sixty yards or more away. With the Phantom’s left-rear bumper scraping blacktop, he couldn’t squeeze another mile per hour from the straining engine.

If he didn’t make it through the gate, what, then?

Stop short, perhaps, and climb atop the Rolls, then jump from there and roll over the gate. He’d be an easy target for the shooters coming up behind him, one of them presumably still carrying the RPG. It was small satisfaction to suppose that they’d be trapped inside when the police arrived.

What difference would it make to Bolan, if they killed him first?

The gate was slightly more than halfway shut when Bolan reached it, rumbling across his path from right to left. He swerved to aim directly for the closing gap, uncertain if the Phantom’s six-foot-six-inch width would clear.

Almost.

He scraped the stone and concrete gatepost on the driver’s side, got roughly halfway through, and then the gate crunched up against the Phantom on his right. Cursing, he tried to power through, flayed paint from both sides with a high-pitched grinding sound that resonated through his teeth like talons on a chalkboard.

Stuck.

He couldn’t force his door to open, but he powered down the window, wriggled through with difficulty with his web gear, then leaned back inside to grab his M-4 carbine from the seat.

Barely in time.

Bullets were pinging off the Rolls and off the gate as Bolan pulled his weapon free and spun to face his enemies. He saw the RPG man lining up another shot and Bolan didn’t hesitate, slamming a burst into his target’s chest, then ducking as the guy pitched over backward, triggering the rocket. It cleared the gate by about six inches, hurtling off into the night.

And then the rest of them were firing, Bolan spraying them with 5.56 mm manglers as he dodged behind the gatepost. It was solid, but it wasn’t huge. His enemies could flank him easily, set up a cross fire that would root him out and cut him down.

Or they could simply open up the gate.

How long before one of them thought of that? Five seconds? Ten?

When life was measured by a stopwatch counting down, it clarified the mind. Bolan was ready for the flame-out, reaching for another frag grenade, determined to eliminate as many of the shooters as he could before he fell.

With all the gunfire ringing in his ears, he almost didn’t hear the Porsche Boxster approaching, only recognized it as the jet-black convertible slid to a halt on the road some twenty feet from where he crouched. There was a woman in the driver’s seat, leaning across to shout at Bolan through her open window.

“Need a lift?”

He didn’t hesitate. Pulling the frag grenade’s pin, Bolan lofted the bomb over the gate and sat tight for six seconds until the charge blew. Then he broke from cover, firing backward with the M-4, one-handed, not looking or caring to see where his bullets might strike.

The Boxster’s passenger door swung open to greet him. Bolan dropped into the deep bucket seat, slammed the door and felt sudden acceleration press him backward into leather.

Glancing at him while she drove, the woman said, “I’d call that quite a cock-up. Wouldn’t you?”

CHAPTER FOUR

New Jersey Turnpike, northbound

“I didn’t catch your name back there,” Bolan said when they’d covered several miles with no sign of pursuit.

“Natalia Volkova,” the lady said.

That pegged her accent. Russian.

“Okay,” Bolan replied. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful that you helped me out back there. But could you tell me how you happened by?”

She glanced at him around a spill of auburn hair that draped the shoulders of her conservative suit. She hardly needed makeup, but she wore dark lipstick and some eye shadow. Bolan couldn’t be sure of colors in the red-orange dashboard light.

“I did not, as you say it, ‘happen by,’” Volkova corrected him. “I have been watching these Albanian mudaki for nearly six weeks.”

“Mudaki?” Bolan echoed.

“A figure of speech,” she replied with a hint of a smile. “My point is that I am investigating them, not saving you. You understand?”

“I’m getting there. One thing’s still a little hazy, though. Which agency is it you’re representing here, again?”

She lost the smile, so tenuous to start with. “You would argue jurisdiction now? Perhaps I should deliver you back to the place I found you, eh?”

“Relax,” Bolan suggested. “I just want to know where I should send my thank-you note.”

After a silent mile, she said, “I am not from your country, yes? I think you know this.”

“It was sinking in,” Bolan agreed.

“Lorik Cako and those he serves are not only a problem in your great New Jersey and New York. They plague a list of countries, mine among them.”

“Which would be?” As if he didn’t know.

She missed a beat, then said, “The Russian Federation. Are you frightened now? You wish to jump out of my car?”

“I’ll stick at least until we hit a Waffle House,” Bolan said. “So, what are you? FIS or FSB?”

“FSB,” she replied, in a voice that almost made it sexy.

“Aren’t you supposed to operate primarily inside the federation?”

“Primarily,” she said. “But like your FBI, we are empowered to pursue domestic cases when they lead abroad.”

“So Washington knows that you’re here, and what you’re doing?” Bolan asked.

“I’m an investigator, not a diplomat,” Natalia said. “I follow orders, leaving all negotiations in the hands of my superiors. And you?”

“No one’s ever accused me of diplomacy,” Bolan replied.

“From what I saw tonight, you are a man of action. Not entirely legal action, granted. But I envy you a little.”

It was Bolan’s turn to frown. “Be careful what you wish for,” he replied.

“Sorry?”

“Forget it. After what you saw and heard tonight, why did you pick me up?”

“Perhaps because you’ve done what I have wished to do since I began tracking these animals. Perhaps I hoped that we could share intelligence and bring them down together. That sounds foolish, I suppose?”

“Not necessarily,” Bolan said. He’d collaborated with the FSB before, but had to ask, “What will your people say?”

Volkova shrugged. “Sometimes, what they don’t know won’t hurt me, eh?”

“I hear that,” Bolan said. “It’s risky, though.”

“You seem to favor risk.”

“The calculated ones, at least,” Bolan stated. “I’ve never cared for jumping off a cliff blindfolded.”

“Did you know what to expect at Cako’s house tonight?” she asked.

“An auction.”

“Da. That bastard sells women and children as if they were cattle. I hoped to gather evidence and give it to your FBI if all else fails. But now…”

“I know. Tonight I missed the women and the buyers,” Bolan said.

“The limousines?” Volkova asked.

“Long gone,” Bolan replied.

“Perhaps not,” the Russian agent said.

“Meaning?”

“First things first,” she answered. “You did not walk out to Cako’s home tonight, with all those guns. Where is your car?”

“Back in East Keansburg,” Bolan said. “A rental. Nothing in it that can hurt me, but I’ve lost my clothes, some extra hardware.”

“We can go back for it,” she said.

“Tonight? Police will have the neighborhood staked out and locked down tight.”

“Perhaps tomorrow, then. Or we can get another car. As for your clothes—”

“About those limousines,” he interrupted her. “What did you mean?”

“I know Cako’s buyers,” Volkova replied. “Every one of them a foreigner, like me. They won’t fly out tonight, for Hong Kong, Bogotá, wherever they come from. First they will wish to shout at Cako, then relax and sleep. Perhaps, when they have slept, even complete the business that they came to do.”

Bolan considered it. Something to hope for, anyway. Better than abject failure.

“Are you on to something?” he inquired. “Or is this wishful thinking?”

“I can tell you where the customers are registered,” Volkova said. “A few calls will confirm if they’ve gone back to their hotel rooms. And if not, I know where Cako is most likely to conceal them.”

“And the women?” Bolan asked.

“They’re valuable merchandise,” she said. “Why throw it all away, if he can make a profit for his masters, after all?”

New Jersey Pine Barrens

LORIK CAKO HAD stepped outside his house to make the call, smelling the pitch pines all around him. He was glad now that he’d left to come outside, as Arben Kurti’s shouting through the cell phone made his ear ache.

“What do you mean, you don’t know who’s responsible?”

“Arben—”

“I have police already calling me, now on their way with questions. What am I supposed to tell them, Lorik?”

“Tell them nothing, Arben. You know nothing. It’s true! They can’t break you on that.”

“Break me? Break me? No one breaks me, you punk!”

Cako cringed and answered, “No, sir. Of course not.”

“What about the women, then? Are they safe?”

“The buyers were my first concern.”

“It should have been security,” Kurti replied. “You’re sure these weren’t police?”

“Impossible,” Cako replied with perfect confidence. “American police don’t come in shooting. They bring warrants, helicopters, lights and cameras. Reporters follow them. It’s not at all the same.”

“Which leaves my question still unanswered,” Kurti said.

“I’ll find out who it was,” Cako assured his lord and master. “You can trust me.”

“I’ve already trusted you,” Kurti said. “Now I wonder if I should regret that choice.”

“I cannot tell you what to think,” Cako replied, bluffing it out. “But if you let me prove myself, you won’t be disappointed, sir.”

Kurti considered it and offered no direct response. Instead, he said, “The sale is ruined, I suppose. We’ll have to pay the clients back for traveling so far for nothing.”

“I believe we can proceed,” Cako suggested, “once I’ve calmed them down. Some discounts may be necessary, but I think that they would hate to go home empty-handed.”

Kurti spent another silent moment on the line, then said, “Do what you can with them. The merchandise cost nothing, after all. Disposing of it may create more problems than a discount sale.”

“My thought exactly, sir.”