Radical Edge

The term caught in Bolan’s mind. That was what bothered him. The position of the bodies indicated that the skinheads had barely had time to process the assault on the safe house. They weren’t arrayed behind cover or braced in fatal funnels such as the hallway from the living room to the kitchen. They were, instead, dead where they’d probably been sitting when the attack came. Bolan paused just long enough to snap pictures of the dead, wondering if he would fine Shane Hyde among them. But the Twelfth Reich leader wasn’t there.

He moved down the corridor to the kitchen, holding the FN P90 before him. Two more dead men waited here, one stripped to the waist, his tattoos proclaiming the supremacy of his race and stretching in blues and blacks across his back. He had been shot as he sat at the kitchen table. He lay in a puddle of his own brains amid the mess of an overturned cereal bowl and an opened can of beer.

The fire licking up from the stove and consuming the ventilator hood was almost out of control. Bolan grabbed the dusty fire extinguisher from its strap on the kitchen wall, pulled the pin and sprayed its contents across the stovetop. The extinguisher was long expired, according to its pull-tag, but it did the job. Whatever had been burning was now a black, frosted mess in the center of a charred frying pan.

Food, still cooking on the stove…and the man lying dead at the table had been shot down in the middle of his skinhead’s breakfast of champions. Something about this was very wrong. Bolan took out his phone and photographed the dead men, noting the flashing icon that indicated transmission to the Farm.

“Sarge,” Grimaldi said in his earbud. “The first of the emergency responders is inbound to you in less than three minutes. A pair of uniforms. You’re about to have company.”

“Understood,” Bolan said.

There was a groan from nearby.

At the back of the kitchen, a door that appeared to have been punched several times—perhaps during some skinhead’s drinking binge, producing several fist-size holes in the cheap pressboard—led to the basement. The sounds of pain and distress became louder. They were coming from behind the door, which stood slightly ajar.

Bolan didn’t wait. He simply ripped the door open the rest of the way, angling the short barrel of the P90 against his body so he could target the space without turning his weapon into a lever to be used against him. The gaunt, shaved-headed man lying on the stairs within had full tattoo “sleeves” up his arms. The mesh muscle shirt he wore was ragged and bloody. He was hugging himself, holding his guts in, trying to staunch the massive wound where he had been shot.

“Don’t move,” Bolan ordered. The man held no weapon that the soldier could see, but that didn’t mean he was unarmed. In his time fighting terror and crime, Bolan had seen every sham I’m-wounded ploy in the book. He wasn’t easily fooled. “Who did this?” he said. “Who hit you?”

“I think I’m dying,” the skinhead said. “Hell…I think I’m dying… .”

“Tell me,” Bolan snapped. “Before it’s too late. Before you’re out of time. You can get even. You can hit back at whoever did this. Tell me who it was.”

“You gotta…” the man said. He tried to draw breath and apparently couldn’t. “You gotta…”

Just what it was Bolan had to do, he would never know. The man stopped gasping. The light left his eyes.

That was that. There would be no intelligence to be had here.

“Sarge,” Grimaldi said in Bolan’s ear, “I’m transmitting to the locals. I’m warning them that there is a Justice Department agent on the premises. They don’t like it. I’m not getting confirmation that they’ll hang back.”

“Understood,” Bolan said again. “Out.”

He placed two fingers against the dead man’s neck, knowing he would feel no pulse. A quick check of the skinhead’s pockets revealed nothing. Up once more, Bolan made his way carefully back through the kitchen, just in time to confront a pair of uniformed Alamogordo Police Department officers with their guns drawn.

“Freeze!” they shouted, almost in unison.

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan said, citing the cover identity that appeared on the credentials issued him by Stony Man Farm. “Justice Department.”

“Drop the weapon!” one of the cops called.

“You were contacted,” Bolan said. “You’re interfering in a federal operation.”

“Drop your weapon!” the police officer repeated. His partner looked at him dubiously, though he didn’t lower his own gun.

“Continue pointing that weapon at me,” Bolan said, “and we’re going to have a problem.”

“Are you threatening to fire on duly appointed law-enforcement officers?” the first cop demanded.

“No,” Bolan said. “I don’t shoot the ‘good guys.’ However, if you don’t stop pointing those guns at me—” he paused, and his voice became steel “—I will take them away from you and beat you unconscious with them.”

“Put it down, Jimmy,” the man’s partner whispered urgently.

Reluctantly, the first officer lowered his weapon. The second breathed a noticeable sigh of relief as he did the same.

“How many are you?” Bolan asked. It was only a matter of time before the safe house was swamped with law enforcement and emergency response personnel. He would need to move quickly if he was to find anything useful amid the debris before the place was overrun with competing administrative concerns. The crush of jurisdictional red tape would make Bolan’s job more difficult no matter how well-meaning the cops themselves were.

The officers exchanged glances, probably trying to decide if it was safe to tell Bolan anything sensitive. Stepping toward them and lowering his own weapon, the Executioner removed the Justice Department identification from his web gear and waved it under their eyes. That seemed to mollify them, though the cynical part of Bolan’s mind told him that it shouldn’t have. Were the soldier some sort of assassin or other well-equipped hostile operative, forged credentials would pass such a quick inspection.

“Backup is on the way,” Jimmy said. “We’re it for now. What happened here, Mr.…”

“Cooper,” Bolan repeated. “Agent Matt Cooper, Justice Department.” He leaned on the last two words heavily. It wouldn’t hurt for these men to know he had the authority of Washington, D.C., behind him.

“I’m looking for this man,” Bolan said. He held up his satellite phone and called up the most recent mug shot of Hyde. “Shane Hyde. A wanted extremist with ties to several domestic terror organizations.” That simplified the issue quite a bit, but it would be enough to get his meaning across.

“You thought he might be here?” the second officer said. “Did you…did you kill all these people?”

“Negative,” Bolan said. He pressed his lips together. Even the implication was disturbing. “This location has been assaulted by a force of armed operatives, size unknown, affiliation unknown.”

“You don’t talk like a Fed,” Officer Jimmy said.

“You talk like a military man,” his partner stated.

Bolan ignored that. He gestured toward the kitchen. “Everything around you is potential evidence. Don’t touch anything. There’s a basement. I intend to investigate.” He turned to leave them. Over his shoulder, he said, “Stay out of my way.”

He didn’t enjoy being brusque with police, who were just trying to do their jobs. He simply didn’t have time to be diplomatic. Hyde wasn’t here and, if he had been, the assault on the safe house opened multiple worrisome possibilities. Had he already been taken out, possibly by one of the terrorist organizations to which he was connected? Had they mounted a daring coup, hoping to silence the security threat Hyde represented to them?

Bolan rejected that idea. Until his strike at the first of the pair of safe houses, Hyde and Twelfth Reich would have no reason to believe they were being targeted. Hyde’s allies, then, would likewise have no reason to be any more concerned than they already were about working with him.

Unless there was something else at ploy here. Some kind of leak, possibly within the web of law-enforcement agencies already homing in on Hyde. The man had, after all, been previously targeted, with disastrous results for the agents involved.

The Executioner dismissed this speculation. There was little value in it. He would simply have to keep moving forward through the priority list until Hyde, or some sign of him, shook loose. Until he could uncover new intelligence, there were no other options.

The temperature dropped to comfortable levels as he descended the open stairway to the basement, flicking on the combat light attached to the FN P90’s rail system. He was ready to fire through the stairs, if need be; he had ambushed plenty of men himself from such a position. The basement was largely empty, however. There were a few cardboard cartons of what appeared to be trash, a water heater, what looked to be a nonfunctioning furnace and several empty metal garage shelves.

Satisfied there was nothing here, Bolan started back up the stairs. It was then that he heard the sound of a thump in the living room.

He hurried back in that direction to find the police officers had ripped a heavy-metal band poster from the plaster wall, ignoring his instructions. They had uncovered a cavity into which a small but sturdy-looking safe had been set. Officer Jimmy and his partner had apparently removed the lockbox and dropped it on the floor of the living room. The safe was oblong, painted black, covered in deep gouges where its paint had been scraped away near the lock and handle lever.

“Don’t touch that,” Bolan ordered. Jimmy looked up, annoyed.

“There was a tear in the poster,” Officer Jimmy’s partner offered. He appeared embarrassed. “We weren’t intentionally—”

“He’s a Fed,” Jimmy said. “He’s not God, Gray. Relax. We’ve as much jurisdiction as anyone until—”

“And what happens when everyone else gets here?” Gray asked.

“How many times you going to try to call it in?” Jimmy said, irritated. He reached for the safe.

“I said,” Bolan interjected, “don’t touch that.”

Jimmy looked up. “Listen, Agent Cooper—”

He held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Jimmy asked.

“Oh, crap,” Gray said. “I hear it. Metal moving. Like a spring uncoiling. A rasping sound.”

Bolan pointed. The sound was coming from the safe.

The soldier went to the wall and examined the cavity. There was a piece of simple, light gauge wire jutting from a hook screwed into the hole in the plaster. Removing the safe had torn something free and snapped the wire.

Bolan looked past the two cops and through the damaged bay window. Despite his warning, civilians had begun to gather before the house, milling about and craning their necks for a better look. The squad car belonging to the police sat in the drive, its LED light bar cycling red and blue.

“We’ve got to move this fast,” Bolan said. He suspected a bomb. The safe was booby-trapped. Whoever had hit the house had missed it during their assault. Now the two police officers had triggered some deadly insurance left in place by the skinheads, probably to prevent their secured information from falling into law-enforcement hands.

There was no way to tell how big the explosion might be. Containing even a moderate charge, the safe would become a huge pipe bomb. Pressure would build within it until the safe itself became shrapnel. They had to get it away from the bay window and the civilians beyond.

“Basement,” Bolan ordered. The police officer complied and the three of them managed to lift the safe and shuffle through the corpses and debris toward the kitchen.

“It’s speeding up,” Gray said. “I can feel it vibrating faster.”

“Move, move, move,” Bolan urged. They reached the kitchen. “Dump it down the stairs, then take the back door! Get out!”

The cops shuffled with him as far as the dead man at the top of the basement stairs. Then Bolan used one hand to shove the door all the way open before he put his shoulder under the safe.

“Go!” he commanded.

The cops backed away, through the rear doorway. Bolan heaved with all his strength, feeling the muscles in his shoulders burn, sensing the tipping point as the bomb started to fall down the stairway.

He was framed in the basement doorway, his arms outstretched, his hands open before him as he released the heavy, booby-trapped metal box—

The world burst into blinding flame.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mack Bolan was on fire.

He could hear nothing but the wall of pressure building in his head, ringing through his brain, driving an iron spike through his skull. Angry, unseen ants crawled up his arms, burning him with their touch, tearing at his flesh with their phantom jaws. He tumbled in free-fall, unmoored from gravity. Blunt pain in his shoulder and hip, so different from the sharp, searing agony of his hands and forearms, told him he had crashed into a wall or the floor. He tried to force his eyes open and saw only a black-red miasma of exploding, interweaving Rorschach inkblots, tumbling and rolling through his vision.

Knife blades thrust through his palms in dozens of places. He fought the pain and found the stock of his

FN P90, fought the pain and found the broad, uneven surface of the torn floorboards, fought the pain and made himself put his legs beneath him. His thighs screamed as he stood, swaying and staggering, crashing into another barrier that could only have been the doorway.

From memory, from his flash-picture of the kitchen layout, he found the back door, careened off the frame, found the door again. Pushing, he plunged through, stumbling through the gravel, rolling, crawling, collapsing. The pain in his head worsened, crushing his skull, reaching a crescendo that threatened to burst his sightless eyes from within…and then slowly, tortuously receded, until the jet-engine whine became only the drumbeat of a sledgehammer crashing against his forehead. As the pain diminished, his hearing began to recover, and the blobs of painful light swimming across his vision began to resolve into shapes.

“Cooper. Cooper. Cooper.”

Why did he hear that name? Who was Cooper? What did Cooper want? Was Cooper—

“Agent Cooper!” shouted the mass of burning light that was Officer Jimmy. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

The lines defining the cop slowed and then stopped crawling. Bolan still saw blooms of actinic afterimage as he blinked, but now he could see, could really see. Jimmy and Gray might have been shouting at him from the bottom of a swimming pool, but he could hear them, too, well enough. They were holding his arms by the elbows.

“Oh, man, Jimmy, look at his hands,” Gray said. Bolan’s vision cleared and he focused on the man’s nametag: Graham, P. The tag on Jimmy’s uniform read Hernandez, J.

“G-Force,” Bolan said. “G-Force. Striker to G-Force.”

“What’s he talking about?” Officer Graham asked.

“The g-forces, Agent Cooper?” Officer Hernandez suggested. “Is that it?”

Bolan reached up and fumbled at his ear. His earbud was gone, lost in the explosion. He patted himself down, searching for his secure satellite phone. He found it, and when he brought it to his face, he saw the ruggedized unit had been cracked almost in two by the force of the explosion. He tucked it back into his web gear without thinking.

Bolan’s hearing cleared further as the sound of squealing tires reached him. He rolled over and onto his hands and knees. As he did, automatic gunfire churned the gravel where he had been. Graham and Hernandez rolled in opposite directions.

The battered, primer-spotted Chevy Caprice swerved as if in slow motion. Bullets fired from the Uzi submachine gun in the hands of the unseen passenger ripped across the flank of the squad car, flattening both tires on the driver’s side. The car continued on, spraying gravel as it crossed the lawn at the far end. It could only have been concealed on that side of the house, between the bullet-riddled safe house and the residence next door.

Bolan didn’t speak. He left Graham and Hernandez to shout after him as he took off from his position on his hands and knees, a track-and-field athlete launching at the starter’s pistol. His target was the beat-to-hell Toyota Camry parked across the street. The car was so dented it looked as if it had been rolled down a hill. It was, however, pointed in the right way: aimed to pursue the Caprice.

The soldier then rolled his battered body over the hood of the car, ignoring the pain, and landed on the other side. He smashed out the driver’s window with the butt of the FN P90, popped the lock and wrenched the door open. Distant alarm signals were jangling in the back of his brain, jarring his awareness every time he used his hands. He ignored them.

Bolan didn’t believe in coincidences, nor did he believe “Matt Cooper” was such important a figure on the national scene as to warrant seemingly random assassination. The would-be killers in the Caprice were linked to whomever had assaulted the safe house and killed the skinheads. The gunner, or the man behind the wheel, could even be Shane Hyde. Stealing a car was the lesser of the possible evils. Bolan needed to catch that Chevy.

Once behind the wheel of the Camry, he was as brutal as he’d been gaining entry. The FN P90 was once again his hammer as he smashed, ripped and tore, gaining access to the wires he wanted. He twisted one pair together and was rewarded with dash lights. Using his Sting knife, he cut sections of insulation from the next pair, struck them and made the engine turn over. Dropping the knife on the seat next to him, he floored the accelerator. The beat-up Camry responded ably, leaving a six-inch length of rubber behind the front tires as he spurred it onward.

He drove straight, grateful that traffic was light. Pushing the car as fast as he dared, he trusted his instincts, following his nose, avoiding turns until he came to a fork. Traffic was heaviest to the left; he bore right, hoping the traffic pattern hadn’t altered in the last two minutes.

The light ahead of him changed. He ignored it, pressing the accelerator to the floor, veering around honking, outraged drivers who brought their vehicles to screeching stops to avoid him.

Bolan clenched the steering wheel, which felt like sandpaper beneath his bloody palms. Each minute turn of the wheel caused a stabbing pain, and when he glanced down he could see the ragged sleeves of his blacksuit and the livid flesh beneath. He was burned badly, maybe seriously.

He flexed his right hand, picturing the butt of the Beretta beneath it, feeling the FN against his body on its sling, the weight of his canvas war bag, the pressure of his web gear over his blacksuit. His body was screaming, racked with pain and vibration, coming alive again as the numbing effects of the explosion wore off.

Curling his hand into a fist hurt. He was ready for it, expected it, and still it hurt badly enough to surprise him. He would need medical attention.

Later.

Far ahead, at the end of the block, he saw the paint-spattered trunk of the Chevy Caprice. He had guessed correctly. His quarry was there and, for the moment, moving slowly enough that he was gaining ground.

The Chevy’s leisurely pace didn’t last when the occupants noticed the speeding Camry. The vehicle shot through a four-way stop and sideswiped a minivan, tearing off its bumper and speeding away. Bolan guided his stolen car around the damaged minivan, feeling the Camry threaten to pull up onto two wheels as it heeled past the obstacle.

As he got farther from the target zone, with Grimaldi well out of range, he realized his position was worsening. With both his transceiver and his secure phone lost or destroyed, he had no way to call for help except by conventional means—finding an increasingly rare pay phone, or even use a landline, which meant dialing a scrambled trunk line and waiting as the call was routed through a series of encrypted cutouts. He couldn’t do that until he dealt with the immediate threat, followed the immediate lead. He couldn’t risk losing the men in the Chevrolet.

Once he pinned down the killers in the Chevy, then he could call the Farm. They could route Grimaldi back to his location, wherever Bolan ended up. Hell, he would send smoke signals if he had to. It wouldn’t matter once he’d brought the two men down.

Both cars powered through a red light, the Chevy dodging a panel van. Bolan caught an opening created by terrified drivers, all of them pausing to wait out the adrenaline rush caused by witnessing an obvious and flagrant violation of traffic laws before their eyes. The idea almost made Bolan smile, despite the discomfort in his hands and arms. The average civilian would freeze at the sound and sight of gunfire, but run a red light before him and he was apoplectic with outrage.

We all react according to what we know, Bolan thought.

He was drifting. Accustomed to focusing on the combative task at hand, he realized that his injuries were taking their toll. He shook his head, trying to clear it, tromping on the accelerator again and squeezing another few miles per hour out of the abused Toyota. The vehicle wasn’t much to look at, but it responded well, its engine revving gamely as he pushed it for more.

Something was happening ahead. Bolan knew it would be nothing good. The Uzi gunner leaned farther out his window, and as the Chevy passed a slow-moving Smart car, the gunner fired a withering, sustained blast that raked the wheels and punched holes from front bumper to the rear. The Smart car lurched to a stop in the middle of the road, blocking Bolan’s path.

He took the Camry up over the curb, praying the wheels would hold as he struck it at speed. Nothing popped. He managed to get the vehicle back on the road, drawing a line of gold paint across three parked cars doing so. Well, the Camry’s owner probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference… .

Bolan shook his head again and deliberately squeezed the steering wheel. The jolt of pain brought his eyes back into focus. The Chevrolet missed by inches a woman crossing the street. She shouted something he couldn’t hear as the Camry rocked past her.

He had to stop this. He had to stop it now. The danger to innocent pedestrians and drivers and passengers in other cars was too great for a sustained pursuit. Bolan picked his angle. The Caprice was a big, rear-wheel-drive vehicle, much less nimble than the borrowed Camry. It was heavier, but Bolan knew the physics of what he was about to do. He could make it work.

He needed to make the Chevy turn.

Bolan reached to the back of his web belt and found the cylinder of a smoke grenade. The skin of his fingers cracked as he unclipped the lethal orb. Blood smeared the grenade as he wrenched the pin free with his teeth and waited, counting silently in his head. When the canister was almost ready to burst in his fist, he hurled it with all his strength through the broken window of his driver’s door.

The grenade burst in the air. The driver of the Chevy broke right, avoiding the smoke. Moving at high speed, he wouldn’t process that the smoke was harmless; he would simply avoid the potential danger.

As his quarry veered to the side, Bolan cut the arc, aiming the nose of the Toyota for the rear quarter of the Chevy.

It was unorthodox, but it worked. The Chevrolet spun, scraping its passenger-side door along a telephone pole. The two men inside, opting for confrontation over flight, started to climb from the vehicle.

Bolan threw the gearshift into Reverse and jammed his feet on the brakes. The transmission banged heavily and then threw him forward. Slamming on the gas, he shifted again. The Camry lurched ahead once more.

The driver was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and a windbreaker, and he had a SIG Sauer pistol in his hand.

His eyes were very wide as Bolan crushed the life out of him, pinning him between the open door of the Chevy and the grille of the Toyota. Blood erupted from the man’s mouth. As Bolan backed up again, feeling the Camry’s tire fight against its crushed right front fender, the dying man collapsed back into the Caprice.