Justice Run

For all intents and purposes, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had rendered the weapons untraceable. If someone ran the prints on the weapons, they’d find nothing. Any prints the soldier had left behind as Mack Samuel Bolan or under his aliases Matt Cooper or, before that, Mike Belasko, had been scrubbed. Whenever he had any brushes with the authorities, the Farm’s cyber team hacked into the computers after the fact and erased any mug shots or fingerprints that might have been taken. As far as the world was concerned, Bolan was dead and had been for years. It was a fiction that Stony Man Farm went to great lengths to maintain.

From the corner of his eye he saw Rodriguez standing there, watching them. Bolan raised his right foot, set it on the bumper and pulled up the cuff of his pant leg. A small Glock pistol rode on his ankle in a holster. He drew the pistol. He sensed Rodriguez tensing, saw her back away a step. Turning toward her, he extended his hand and offered the weapon.

“You need a little something,” he said.

Nodding, she took the pistol from him, pulled back the slide and looked to see whether a round was in the chamber. Satisfied, she let the slide snap forward and slipped the pistol into her waistband.

“Thanks,” she said.

Spinning away from the car, the Executioner strode toward the mouth of the alley. When he reached it, he paused for a couple of heartbeats and glanced in both directions to see whether Dumond’s men had followed them. Men and women, tanned and fit, walked up and down the sidewalk, smiling and laughing.

Bolan slid the Beretta into the shoulder holster under his jacket and stepped from the alley, with the others moving behind him. As they moved up the street, he glanced at Rodriguez. The woman had plastered a smile on her face and was walking with a steady, confident gait, all of which took attention from her mussed hair and ripped jacket. In the distance, Bolan could hear sirens. He assumed police and emergency vehicles were speeding to Dumond’s estate. Once they arrived, they’d find the place littered with bodies.

And, if prowl cars weren’t already sweeping the area for Turrin and him, they soon would be. Once the police found the Jaguar, they’d realize whoever had driven the car had moved away on foot. They’d establish a perimeter that would make it harder for Bolan and the others to get away quickly.

They needed to move fast before that happened.

They’d put a couple of blocks between themselves and the Jaguar when Bolan spotted a police car halted at the intersection just ahead of them. The officer driving the car stared at them. Had Dumond or his people given the police a physical description? Bolan doubted it, but he felt himself tense up just the same.

“Is he looking at us?” Turrin asked, his voice low.

“Seems like it,” Bolan replied.

Rodriguez cast a glance at the soldier. “What if he is looking at us?” she asked.

“Let him look,” Bolan replied with a slight shrug.

“We can’t fight him.”

“You’re right. We can’t. And we won’t.”

One of the few rules Bolan had in his War Everlasting was that he never would draw his weapon on a police officer, even if the cop was about to shoot him. A second later, the traffic light changed and the squad car lurched forward and turned onto the street Bolan and the others were walking along. The officer at the wheel gave them one last look as he drove past, but kept going.

“Thank God,” Rodriguez said quietly.

“Yes and no,” Bolan said. “We just gained a couple of minutes. But if the guy’s instincts nag at him enough, he may turn around and want to talk to us. Look at us. We don’t exactly look like rich, carefree tourists.”

“True.”

When they reached the intersection, Bolan veered right down a side street and followed it away from the main drag for three blocks. An older-model blue Citroën parked along the curb caught the warrior’s eye. He walked up to it, peered through a side window, looking for blinking red lights that might signal an alarm, but saw nothing. Pulling his arm back, he shot forward and drove the point of his elbow into the glass. The window shattered on impact, glittering shards falling to the ground and into the car.

Bolan reached through the window, unlocked the door and within seconds was seated inside the vehicle, working to hotwire the starter while Turrin watched their surroundings. Once the engine growled to life, Turrin opened the passenger-side door and gestured for Rodriguez to climb into the backseat. As she settled inside, he stuck one leg into the car before the sound of yelling caught his attention. He turned and saw an elderly man, silver hair contrasting against deeply tanned skin, running down the street, yelling in French and shaking his fist.

Turrin folded himself into the car and slammed the door just as Bolan began wheeling it from its parking space. He gunned the engine. The Citroën gained speed as it hurtled away from its owner who was now standing in the street, shaking a fist at the thieves stealing his car. The soldier navigated the car out of the neighborhood and aimed it toward the safehouse.

CHAPTER SIX

“How did you screw this up?” the voice on the phone asked.

Seated in the helicopter, Dumond bit down on an angry reply and squelched a desire to heave his phone across the floor. He hated the son of a bitch on the other end of the line. He didn’t even know his name. Not his real name, anyway. But he knew he’d love to put a bullet in the bastard’s head.

“It’s complicated,” the Frenchman replied, regretting the words instantly.

“Perhaps you need an easier job,” the other man said.

“No.”

“You lost the woman.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“You lost her.”

Dumond heaved a sigh. “She got away. Yes.”

“Was she looking for me?”

“No.”

“No?”

Dumond squeezed his eyes closed. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“She never asked about you.”

“Which means nothing.”

“I told you someone attacked us. I lost eighteen people today.”

“How many did they lose?”

“You bastard!”

“Well?”

“None,” he said.

“And how many men were there?”

“You know the answer!”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“Two. It was just two men.”

The other man fell silent. Dumond thought he heard a lighter being worked, followed seconds later by the sound of a slow exhale. The pause only heightened Dumond’s anxiety.