Resurgence

So, blood and thunder, then.

The first round was HE, aimed toward the middle SUV in a three-car lineup. All black, all branded with the leaning L inside an oval that denoted Lexus products. The last he’d heard, their prices started around seventy-seven grand and went up from there as the options piled on. None of them had an automatic fire extinguisher, however.

Not that it would’ve done any good.

Bolan’s high-explosive round punched through the middle LX10’s rear window and exploded, shattering the glass on vehicles to left and right before the target SUV’s fuel tank erupted into roiling flames. A lake of fire began to spread beneath the other cars while Bolan sprinted toward the southwest corner of the house, Volkova on his heels.

As planned, the blast brought soldiers pouring from the dwelling. Not all of them, of course. If they had any kind of discipline at all, a sizeable contingent would remain inside to guard their principles and see to any preparations for escape.

If there was any way to flee.

If they had anywhere on Earth to go.

Bolan supposed the men he’d come to kill would think about their homes. Some might give passing thoughts to lovers, wives and children. None of that affected Bolan’s plans or his determination to succeed.

He knew one side of those he hunted, and it was enough. He didn’t care if they loved puppies, said grace over dinner or got dewy-eyed watching an opera. The fact that evil men might have a spark of goodness buried somewhere deep inside wasn’t his personal concern.

Bolan was not their final judge.

He was their judgment.

Another car blew up as Bolan cleared the corner of the house and kept going. He could hear Volkova close behind him, footsteps keeping pace with his, no hint that she was running out of breath or stamina after their long hike through the pines.

That Spetznaz training coming through.

Ahead of them, a door swung open and a swarthy gunman stepped into the roseate light of dawn. Bolan zipped his chest with three rounds from the M-4 carbine, slowing just enough to keep a crimson mist from settling on his face as he brushed past the falling corpse.

The door opened into a mudroom, boots lined up on vinyl flooring, jackets hanging on wall hooks, a metal trash can doubling as an umbrella stand. Bolan covered the room beyond, a kitchen, braced for opposition every step along the way.

And found it when he’d cleared the kitchen doorway, dropping as the loud metallic rattling of an AK-47 stung his eardrums. The rifle’s 7.62 mm bullets chewed their way across the kitchen wall and cabinets, shattering glassware inside. He crouched behind an island in the middle of the kitchen, hoping it was stout enough to stop the next few rounds, no clear idea of where Volkova was or whether she’d been caught framed in the kitchen entryway.

He had to take care of business first, let the lady warrior watch out for herself.

Bolan switched guns again, swapping the M-4 for the shorter but heavier M-32. Aiming would be a problem in his present circumstances, so he pressed a button to collapse the launcher’s stock and thereby shaved eight inches off its total length.

Now it was shorter than a Spectre M-4 submachine gun or Beretta’s famous M-12 model, easier to handle in a cramped space when there was no option for a well-aimed shot.

Nothing to do but let it rip and hope the play paid off.

He pushed off with his feet against the island’s base, cursed when he felt the thing moving, then he was committed, squeezing off his first shot as he glimpsed the doorjamb, triggering a second right behind the first, then rolling back toward cover.

The Kalashnikov stuttered again, but its voice was eclipsed by the hard double slam of explosions nearby. Someone screamed, or he may have imagined it.

Lurching upright, Bolan made for the doorway, plunged through it and into a snapshot of hell.

NATALIA VOLKOVA’S ears were ringing, nearly deafening her, as she vaulted from the kitchen floor to follow the big American through the next doorway in line. She knew where he was going—where he meant to go, at least—but wasn’t sure exactly how to get there.

Cako would have stashed the captive women underground if possible. If not, he’d have them under lock and key upstairs, out of the way until their new prospective owners were prepared to watch another flesh parade. In either case, she and the tall American had to dispose of Cako’s men before they could remove the prisoners.

And then, what?

Set them free to roam New Jersey or America at large, without a source of income or, in some cases, a grasp of English? What would happen to them then? Would it be any better than a sale into the living hell of slavery that she was trying to prevent?

Volkova closed her mind to those considerations, concentrating on the methods and mechanics of survival in a combat zone.

They were outnumbered ten to one, perhaps. Or more? Only surprise and sheer ferocity could save them, now that they had stepped into the dragon’s den.

But would that be enough?

She followed her ally and saw a gunman rising on her left, behind a couch, and spun to drop him with her AKSU-74. One round punched through his cheek, another through his upper lip, and he was nearly headless as he toppled over backward, out of frame.

Ahead of her, another high-explosive charge went off. More men were shouting, cursing in Albanian. And there! Was that a woman’s voice? She thought so, turned to track it with her ringing ears and met another scowling shooter with a pistol leveled at her face.

There was no time to crouch or dodge the shot. Volkova gutted him with 5.45 mm rounds, braced to receive the bullet that would kill her, but the impact of her own rounds spun him like a dervish and his shot went wild, striking a wall or ceiling panel somewhere in the smoky room.

The Russian agent looked for Cooper, saw him disappearing through another doorway, bodies scattered in his wake. She had a choice to make—follow the man, or seek the women on her own.

Another scream decided it.

Volkova wished Matt Cooper well and veered off to pursue the sound, sidestepping corpses as she went. She cleared another doorway, stepped into a hall with doors on either side and waited for another cry.

Closer, this time. Somewhere ahead.

When she had covered half the hallway’s length, one of the doors opened downrange. A gunman stepped into the corridor, didn’t seem to notice her at first, as he was more focused on the man who followed close behind him.

Lorik Cako.

He cursed someone in the room, still out of sight from where Volkova stood, and reached back as if to drag the person through the doorway. Then his gunner saw the Russian and brought all movement to a halt.

“Look out, boss!”

But Cako couldn’t look out. It was too late for that.

Too late for anything.

Volkova cut them down, kept firing even as they fell and after they were on the floor, dead meat twitching from bullet strikes. She caught herself in time to ditch the AKSU’s empty magazine and slip a fresh one into the receiver, then advanced to peer around the doorjamb.

Panicked faces stared back at her, shaded by a stark light overhead. Volkova didn’t bother counting. Didn’t have the time to spare, and couldn’t say how many captives Cako was supposed to have, for starters.

“Come with me,” she said, not knowing if they spoke English or not. She tried Albanian and then Russian before she ran out of languages.

One of them worked, apparently. Huddled together, weeping softly, the women filed out to follow her.

FURIOUS AND frightened at the same time, Arben Kurti lapsed from English back into his native language, raging at the soldiers who surrounded him.

“A diçka!” he demanded, but the broad command to “do something” provided no direction. Failing that, he cursed them, while they hunched their shoulders, hung their heads and took it like submissive children, long inured to rigid discipline.

And, somehow, it actually helped.

Not them, of course. But Kurti suddenly felt better after venting his accumulated anger and frustration. Now, if only he could get his hands on Lorik Cako’s throat and squeeze until the little bastard’s eyes popped out, he would be almost happy once again.

Except for one small detail.

He was in the line of fire from enemies whom he couldn’t identify, and it appeared that they were closing in.

“It’s time to go,” he informed his men but telling them that hardly ensured that they could actually leave the house alive.

If there were enemies outside…

Kurti moved to the nearest window, crouching there, and peered into the pale morning. He saw no gunmen waiting there, from either side, but the three Lexus SUVs that had delivered Kurti and his team to Cako’s hideaway were burning, spewing oily smoke across the landscape.

Never mind.

The nearest of the limousines was still intact. If they could reach that car and get it started, they could still escape. Let Cako deal with the attackers. It was his place, after all, and he’d been after Kurti for the past two years, begging for more authority.

Would there be keys in the limos?

Kurti grabbed his nearest soldier by one arm and ordered him to check the car for keys. “Signal if you can start it, and we’ll join you.”

The young man bobbed his head, muttered, “Yes, sir,” and made a beeline for the nearest exit.

Seconds later, Kurti saw him jogging toward the limousines, looking around in all directions as he moved, squinting against the smoke. He reached the nearest vehicle, opened the driver’s door and leaned inside. A moment later, he was facing toward the house, thumb raised above a clenched fist in the universal sign of victory.

“Come on!” Kurti snapped at the rest. “We’re leaving this cursed place to the rats.”

And it did seem to be cursed. Kurti had heard the grim Pine Barrens legends. Surely, it had been bad luck for those he’d executed there, as an example to the rest of his subordinates. Now, somehow, it was coming back to haunt him.

But Kurti had found his escape hatch.

He would beat the curse, yet.

One of his soldiers led the way outside, the others taking up positions that would shield their chief from incoming fire as they moved toward the limo. They were halfway there, his point man urging them to hurry, when it happened.

Suddenly, with just an unobtrusive popping sound for warning, a grenade lofted above and past them, detonating as it struck the long black limousine dead-on. One second, Kurti’s rifleman was waiting for them by the vehicle; the next, he was a flaming scarecrow, dancing in a lake of fire.

Kurti cursed, and his soldiers turned to face their enemy. It startled him to find a single man confronting them, and hope sparked in his chest before the stranger’s automatic rifle started spitting death among them, toppling Arben Kurti’s human shields.

At last he was alone, with nothing left to do but close his eyes and wait for death.

The house he’d fled seemed strangely silent now.

A heartbeat later, darkness swallowed him.

BOLAN HEARD female voices coming up behind him, turned to face them with his finger on the M-4’s trigger, then relaxed. Volkova, trailed by thirteen women clad in terry robes and rubber flip-flops, focused on the bodies strewed across the parking area.

“So Kurti made the party,” she remarked.

“I think it disappointed him,” Bolan replied.

“Cako’s inside,” the Russian said. “He didn’t want to let these go, but I persuaded him.”

“The buyers?” Bolan asked.

“No sign of them. I hoped you might have found them. I suppose we’ll have to go back in.”

“No need for that,” Bolan said, as he broke the Milkor’s cylinder and started to remove spent cartridges, dropping them at his feet. “I brought some party favors for the housewarming.”

He filled the empty chambers with alternating HE rounds and pyrotechnic cartridges, closed the cylinder and stepped aside to give himself a clear shot past the huddled, frightened women. All of them stood watching as he raised the grenade launcher and started firing, putting hot rounds through the windows of the house where they had been confined most recently.

Ear-spanking HE blasts covered the pop and hiss of his incendiary rounds inside the house, but flames quickly took hold. He waited until smoke was billowing from the shattered windows, half expecting some of Cako’s customers to break for daylight, but they didn’t show.

So be it.

“Do you think they found some way out through the back?” Volkova asked.

“It’s fifty-fifty,” Bolan said. “If they’re out wandering around the barrens, we can leave them to the state police. If they’re inside…”

He didn’t need to finish it and didn’t plan to wait around for stragglers. Even in the barrens, the smoke signals raised by Cako’s burning house and cars would draw attention. Bolan planned to call it in himself, once they were on the road. Fire-fighters should be on the scene in time to save the woods.

But not any survivors hiding in the house.

“What should we do with these women?” Volkova asked.

Bolan surveyed the former prisoners and said, “They won’t fit in the Porsche.”

Volkova frowned and said, “Perhaps the barn? It seems safe from the fire.”

“Let’s check it out.”

They crossed the smoky open ground together, found the barn unlocked and pulled its broad front door aside on creaking rollers. It was relatively clean inside, a farm tractor standing in the central aisle between two rows of empty stalls. An ancient hint of animal manure lingered in the air.

“Suit you?” he asked.

“They should be safe here while they wait for the police,” Volkova said.

“Okay by me.”

“And then our work is finished here?” she asked.

“Here,” he agreed. “But I’m not finished yet.”

“Where, then?”

“I’m following the pipeline home,” Bolan explained.

“It’s a coincidence,” Volkova said. “I’m going back that way, myself.”

“Free country,” Bolan said, and stood back while she led her thirteen charges inside the barn.

CHAPTER SIX

Kombinat, Tirana, Albania

Rahim Berisha hated to receive bad news. That quality didn’t set him apart from any other person on the planet, but his temperament and reputation made his various associates leery of breaking news Berisha might not wish to hear.

Killing the messenger, for him, was more than a cliché.

Still, problems had to be recognized, examined—and, if possible, resolved. The first step toward a solution was admission that a failure had occurred.

Berisha slept till noon most days, as a concession to his night-prowling lifestyle. Most days, his business was concluding as the sun rose, driving the nocturnal folk back into hiding.

Pimps and whores. Drug addicts and compulsive gamblers. Thieves and smugglers.

All were creatures of the night. Berisha’s people.

No. They were his subjects.

In the afternoons, he dealt with daylight dwellers: politicians and police, judges and lawyers, so-called “honest” businessmen who came to him with hats in hand and open palms outstretched for money.

Everyone Berisha knew craved something. It was human nature, and the failing of his race. That understanding had already made him rich beyond his childhood’s wildest dreams.

And in the months to come, he would grow richer still.

Unless someone spoiled it for him.

That was always possible, of course. Berisha might be rich and powerful, a cunning strategist and ruthless fighter, but was not superhuman. He couldn’t be in two places simultaneously, much less several hundred places, supervising every transaction carried out by his subordinates.

A leader had to delegate authority, which meant he had to trust the people he had placed in charge of different tasks and territories. Those subordinates had to fear him more than they feared loss of cash and status. More than they feared prison.

More than they feared sudden death.

His servants had to be constantly aware that failing him, betraying him, would bring about worse punishment than anything their adversaries could devise—a screaming death that might go on for days.

Berisha understood, therefore, how Zef Kaceli felt when he came knocking on the study door and said, “There’s another call from the United States.”

Kaceli added an apology and said, “Line one, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Berisha braced himself as he picked up the telephone, depressed the lighted button for line one, and said, “Hello.”

He didn’t recognize the voice that answered him, wasn’t expected to, in fact. The caller introduced himself as Ali Dushku and the name clicked instantly. Dushku was Arben Kurti’s chief lieutenant in the far-off territory of New Jersey, U.S.A.

“What is it, Ali?” Berisha asked, taking pains to keep it casual, while he was calculating time zones. Half past noon in Tirana made it 6:30 a.m. along the eastern seaboard of America.

Dushku made a pathetic gulping sound, as people did sometimes to clear their throats before delivering dire news. And well he might, since this news was the very worst.

Arben Kurti was dead, along with Lorik Cako and at least two dozen of their soldiers. Federal agents and police were picking up the pieces, questioning whatever stragglers they could find. A second large, expensive property had been destroyed by unknown enemies who came and went as if they were invisible.

“What of the clients?” Berisha asked, all business to the bitter end.

“Missing,” Dushku replied. “Most likely dead. The house burned down. They may have been inside it.”

“And the merchandise?”

“Recovered by police.”

Of course. Perfect.

“I’m sorry,” Dushku blurted out. “Arben insisted I remain in Newark. If I’d been there, sir—”

“Then you would be a corpse,” Berisha interrupted him. “I would be learning of your death from someone else.”

Dushku fell silent then, waiting.

“Avoid contact with the police if possible,” Berisha ordered. “If they find you, tell them nothing. Since you weren’t with Kurti, you can’t tell them what became of him. As for the customers and merchandise, you know nothing.”

“Nothing. Yes, sir.”

“Give me your cell-phone number.”

Dushku did as he was told. Berisha memorized the number, as he had so many others. An eidetic memory was priceless in the world of crime, where written records were a threat to liberty or life itself. Albania had ratified Protocol Number 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2007, forbidding capital punishment under any circumstances, but life in prison was no life at all.

Control of evidence and witnesses was critical.

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