Bolan strapped Big Thunder low on his right hip, unleathered his Beretta and went EVA into the night.
Into the killing ground.
When the Toyota he was tailing turned into a parking lot, CIA agent Bob Gridell steered his unmarked Ford Granada to the curb and doused the lights and engine.
The Toyota driven by Mustafa Izmir was out of sight somewhere on the blacktop on the far side of a low brick office building.
For a moment Gridell found himself wishing that he was across the river in suburban Arlington with his family.
Tonight was his second pull of duty after coming off a two-week vacation with Margie and the kids.
At forty-six, Gridell thought he was getting too old for this kind of work. Then he blocked those thoughts and checked the action of his pistol, a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver.
He holstered the gun and reached for the under-dash mike of the car's two-way radio. He glanced sideways at his partner.
Robbins was also doing a last-minute check, his own piece a .45-caliber automatic.
"It's going down," Gridell told the younger man. "Our marks will hit that building on the corner, I'll lay you any odds."
"Bad odds," grunted Robbins. "You haven't been wrong yet. We'll have to take that building from both ends."
Robbins got out of the car. He closed the door soundlessly and stood scanning the terrain.
Gridell contacted their control and reported their position and what was going down.
"Do you require backup?" asked control.
"Not at this point," said Gridell. "Keep a unit standing by. This might not be the biggie. Don't want to spook these boys before we know what they're up to."
"We just hit the shop where they made their connection," said the control crisply. "We found two dead Armenians. One in the house, one out back."
"Damn. It couldn't have been our boys. The contact was alive and well and saw them out the door. We saw it."
"There is a wild card," acknowledged control. "A man named Phoenix. That's all we have at this point. It's top security, but we're breaking it a piece at a time."
"Keep me posted," said Gridell. "Right now, I've got two sightseeing Armenians to check up on."
"Be careful," said control.
"Always," said Gridell, and he broke the connection.
He joined Robbins outside the car.
Bob liked Dave Robbins. The younger guy had only been with the Company for eight months, all of that time spent assigned to apprentice under Gridell. The two had not yet seen action as a team.
Guns in hands, they split up wordlessly, moving toward opposite ends of the building at the quiet intersection.
As he jogged along, Agent Bob Gridell's spine chilled. He hoped he would not die tonight. I'm getting too old for this, he thought again.
Two terrorist hit men.
A rookie partner.
And now, a wild card named Phoenix.
Two men had dinner in the private room of an exclusive French restaurant on Q Street in Georgetown.
"Tell me about Phoenix."
"I followed your instructions. I put two men on the CIA stakeout of Izmir and Kemal."
"Can they be traced?"
"To us? Of course not. I'm not using our own personnel on this. Not with Phoenix."
"What are their orders?"
"Phoenix is screwing up a Company operation. He could get caught in a cross fire."
"With a little help."
"Yes, with a little help. My men have been told to hold back. If the CIA doesn't hit Phoenix and if those Armenians don't get him, then my people take him out. I don't care how good the bastard is. He's boxed in, and he doesn't even know it. He's dead."
"What about Stony Man Farm?"
"Our contact inside is in touch. They're still without satellite communications. One sour note. Phoenix has requested a double check on all Farm security clearances."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't think so. Our contact is being doubly cautious tonight, that's all. After tonight, it won't much matter."
"What time do you attack?"
"Don't you think it's best to keep you in the dark on some things, sir?"
"Yes, you're right, I'll need to appear suitably surprised. But it is tonight?"
"It's tonight. Tonight we level Stony Man Farm and Colonel John Phoenix."
9
A row of brick houses occupied the east side of the street, opposite the offices of the Interstate Loan Association. Light shone from some of the windows, but most of them were dark.
The Executioner moved through backyards, silently negotiating shrubbery and at one point a five-foot-high chain link fence. The moving shadow encountered no one in the night. Twice he spotted the bluish glow from television sets behind windows, but that was all. There was no nightlife in suburbia. Not from its inhabitants, at any rate.
Bolan advanced on the loan office via a circuitous route that brought him to the building from its northeast corner.
A Toyota was parked at the curb of the street where blacktop met a row of four-foot-high hedges that ran back from the street to disappear behind the darkened building. The hedges divided the Interstate property from its neighbors.
Bolan scanned the night with cold eyes and a colder Beretta as he came within ten feet of those hedges.
Suddenly he stopped.
He saw blurred movement near the inky splotches of shrubs adjacent to the parking lot.
Bolan could barely make out a figure, several yards down, gripping a rifle. Closer toward his own position, he could discern more clearly the figures of two men, standing together. These men were carrying Remington 870 pump shotguns.
They had Mafia written all over them.
They were lying in wait, obviously. Their attention was focused on the parking-lot entrance of the Interstate Loan office.
Bolan was putting two and two together in his mind and very quickly getting a read on what was going down here. But he had to be sure before the killing started.
There was no sign of the Armenian terrorists, Izmir and Kemal. They had already entered the building.
There was only one way Bolan could confirm what he was thinking.
He crouched slightly, ready to spring into the deeper shadows around him if he had to.
"Identify yourselves," he said quietly.
The whispered words cracked like a gunshot.
Shrubbery rustled as all three men spun around in the direction of Bolan's voice. The man up the line stayed where he was, melding with the shape of the hedge.
Three shotguns pointed at Bolan.
The men who had been waiting along the hedge were all cut from the same mold of beefy hulks in expensive street suits. But the shotguns did not look out of place in their hands.
The one nearest Bolan, bulkier than the others, spoke to the nightfighter.
"Identify your own damn self."
"Frankie. From New York," said Mack Bolan. "I've got a black ace of spades in my wallet, soldier. Come here and take a look."
There was hesitation from the men drawing beads on Bolan.
Ace of spades.
The anonymous calling card of the Mafia's autonomous enforcement arm. The Black Aces.
The aces were a traceless crew of killers who altered their looks with plastic surgery so often to match new names that even they themselves might not remember how they began. They were the gestapo of organized crime, responsible only to the ruling commissione in New York. The elite unit kept undesirable hands out of the till and the rightful percentage of commissione's tax funneling through laundered setups like Interstate.
Mack Bolan, a master of role camouflage all the way back to Nam, had penetrated Mob defenses posing as a Black Ace before.
"You better tell me more," snarled the voice to Bolan, cautious but a little respectful.
"There's no time for bullshit, soldier," growled Bolan. He started advancing on the two men nearest him. "Check with Riappi if you've got a two-way."