Crucial Intercept

The first urgent contact from the Farm had come just before midnight. Bolan had been staying in a motel near Langley, taking some long-overdue down time to rest after his latest debriefing trip to Wonderland and a meet with Hal Brognola. While he maintained an arm’s length relationship with the United States government’s covert counterterrorism network, Brognola transcended any bureaucratic boundaries or barriers. He liked to keep the big Fed informed of what he learned, each and every time he stepped onto the latest battlefield in his endless war against terror and injustice. The cyber team at the Farm could use the intel to update—or close—files on various threats.

The call alone, when it woke him, would have been enough to leave him instantly alert—but the words of Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, had left no doubt.

“Striker,” Price had said, using the Farm’s code name for the Executioner, “somebody’s shooting up Virginia.”

Bolan had switched on the large color television, after finding the oversized motel remote on top of the set. Predictably, every one of the cable news channels and at least two local Virginia television stations were all over the story. A series of high-profile shootings, committed by groups of men wielding automatic weapons, had torn up several public locations in Charlottesville. The first, in the early evening, had ripped apart an Internet café just off the campus of the University of Virginia, which had sparked fears of another Virginia Tech–style massacre. Nobody had been killed, but significant damage to the facility had been done.

Less than an hour after the computer lab shooting, another one-sided gun battle had shot up a public Laundromat in downtown Charlottesville. Then, an hour and a half after that, a convenience store on the outskirts of the city had taken a broadside from what one witness described as “four Chinese men with Uzis.” This was the worst of the incidents, to that point; a clerk working behind the front counter had been tagged by a bullet. The young man had died on the way to the hospital.

It was the report of “four Chinese men” with automatic weapons that worried the men and women at the Farm, and it was this concern—as well as the shootings occurring in close succession in a major metropolitan area—that had tripped warning flags. There were no current reports of new terrorist threats from Asian fringe groups, Asian gangs, or even from within elements of nominally hostile governments such as China. Bolan’s jaw had tightened, at that. It had not been so long ago that he had found himself dealing with heavily armed and very hostile Chinese sleeper cells on American soil in Hawaii. The Chinese government had dismissed the attacks as the work of rogue elements in their military. A lot of people had died before it was over, and Bolan had no desire to see a repeat performance from yet another highly organized and disciplined gathering of “rogue” operatives trained and equipped in Communist China.

When he had said as much, Price had dismissed it as unlikely. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man’s computer expert and the leader of the Farm’s cyber team, had found no indication of a coordinated terror effort. There was no communications traffic or Internet traffic to indicate it, and very little in the way of official government maneuvering. At least, there was nothing to which the Farm’s team could trace the violence. That was enough to satisfy Bolan on that score, at least for now, but it did leave the question of what was happening in Virginia—and he had said as much.

“That,” Price had replied over the secure line, “we think we do know, at least in part. Bear and his people have been burning up the ether trying to get what surveillance data there was to be had. We’ve managed to extract security camera images from two locations. The first is from the Internet café, and the second is from the convenience store. Using image enhancement technology on the convenience store video footage, we’ve compared it to a fairly clear picture from the Web cameras in the computer lab. There’s a link, which I’m sending to your phone now.”

Bolan had taken his phone from his ear to see the data transfer icon blinking. It did not take long for the image to load on his own small color screen. The picture itself was black-and-white, bearing the unmistakable pixel dithering of an image that has been put through the digital wringer to make it more clear. It was the face of a man with long, dark hair.

“Who’s this?” Bolan asked, putting the phone back to his ear.

“That,” Price said, “is Daniel Baldero. Thirty-years-old. Five-foot-ten, 270 pounds. Paid for college by joining the Air Force. Honorable discharge. Earned a couple of degrees in computer programming before he was finished going to school, in Newport News. Last address of record, according to the Virginia DMV, is Charlottesville, Virginia. Mr. Baldero can be, thanks to the footage we’ve used to identify him, positively placed at the scene of two out of three of those shootings.”

“Doing what?”

“Running for his life, from what we can see,” Price said.

“So he’s not one of the shooters.”

“No,” Price said. “And of course we can’t place him at the laundry shooting because there were no functioning cameras there. But as coincidences go—”

“It’s a pretty big one,” Bolan agreed. “This Baldero is either the unluckiest man in Virginia, or something’s fishy and he’s involved.”

“It gets more interesting,” Price said. “Mr. Baldero is a computer programmer and cryptographer by trade, formerly employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Formerly,” Bolan repeated.

“As of two weeks ago,” Price reported. “He resigned without explanation.”

“Is he on the run?”

“We checked, and they deny it,” Price had said. “Logically, there’s no reason he should be on the run, at least not from the CIA. They have no reason to chase him down. He’s just a former employee, as far as they’re concerned, and not one with any sort of contract to which they could hold him.”

“But again, as coincidences go,” Bolan said.

“It’s a pretty big one,” Price echoed. “The Man wants us on this, Striker, and Hal’s given us the green light.”

“I’ll leave immediately,” Bolan said. “But I’m going to need transportation. The rental I’m driving hasn’t got the guts for a field operation.”

“We’ve got a car on its way to you by courier,” Price said. “Hal’s made an arrangement with the CIA. You’ll get one from their motor pool.”

“There’s that word again.” Bolan frowned at the phone. “I’m going to need weapons and equipment for an extended field operation.”

“Already in the car and on the way to your door,” Price said. “Cowboy keeps a few specially prepared care packages ready and waiting for little emergencies like these.” John “Cowboy” Kissinger was the Farm’s armorer. He had personally tuned the Beretta 93-R machine pistol in the leather shoulder holster Bolan was strapping on, and he had custom-built the suppressor fitted to the weapon. He had also done an accuracy job on the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle that was Bolan’s other nearly constant companion, which he carried in a Kydex holster in his waistband on his right hip.

“Then I’m not going to waste any more time talking,” Bolan said, watching headlights pan across the curtains of the motel room’s window. “Unless it’s another coincidence, the car is just arriving. Your timing is impeccable.”

“We try,” Price said. “Oh, and be sure to check inside the trunk.” When she spoke again, her tone was warmer, but also more anxious. “Be careful, Striker.”

“Always, Barb.”

“Good hunting.”

“Thanks. Striker out.” He closed the phone.

The courier was at the door just as Bolan opened it—the man said not a word. He was dressed in slacks and a blazer and had about him what Bolan thought of as the “junior G-man” look. He nodded and tossed the keys to Bolan, which were for the Crown Victoria now idling in front of Bolan’s open motel-room door. Then he disappeared around the corner of the building.

Bolan looked at the car, then back to where the courier had been. He shook his head slightly.

There was work to do.

THAT PHONE CALL had been one long, tiring drive ago on only half a night’s sleep, fueled by truck-stop coffee and a fast-food breakfast consumed at highway speed. Since then, the Executioner had tracked the increasingly violent outbreaks of gunfire from site to site in Virginia. The Farm relayed to him the location each time it happened, but Bolan knew as well as Price did that they would not get ahead of the shooters by playing a reactive game. They needed to get in front of the gunners, whoever they were.

He had checked each site, the latest a motel in Williamsburg that had been blown half to hell. Yet again, there was no evidence of the shooters themselves. He had phoned in and reported as much. Price had promised that the follow-up field team, a covert Justice analysis unit protected by blacksuit gunners from Stony Man, would check for evidence he might have missed in his cursory inspection, as they had been doing behind him all night. They would also see if there were any local surveillance sources to be pulled for analysis. That didn’t concern Bolan, at least not immediately. He would be surprised if the tapes showed anything of use except to confirm Baldero’s presence. Intelligence on the shooters would be helpful, but even that wasn’t crucial at the moment. The only thing that mattered was getting out in front of the shooters, and that depended on the pattern analysis Stony Man had been working on.

“Price here.”

“Striker,” Bolan said. “Same story here.”

“You’re still outside Williamsburg?”

“Yes,” he said. “Your crew can move in on the motel. I saw a lot of shell casings but not much else. No sign of our boy, and nothing of use. Barb, you’ve got to get me in front of this. Has Bear run his pattern analysis?”

“Got you right here, Striker.” Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came over the line. “I’m here with Barb. Our instincts have been right all along. We’re plotting the shootings and they make a line, more or less. That puts the next possible cluster of targets in a more or less straight line through Hampton, Newport News and Norfolk, if the pattern holds.”

“Then I’m headed to—” Bolan began. He stopped.

“Striker?” Price asked in Bolan’s ear. The soldier’s head snapped left, then right. His eyes narrowed.

“I hear gunshots,” Bolan said. He snapped the phone shut and half-vaulted the hood of the Crown Victoria, throwing himself behind the wheel and slamming the door shut. The big tires squealed and the engine roared as he floored the vehicle, tearing out of the convenience store parking lot. Horns honked as he cut off several vehicles. The car whipped onto the highway and he hit the automatic windows, rolling them all the way down on both sides, fore and aft.

He heard it again, then—the unmistakable sound of automatic gunfire in the distance, moving away from him. He pushed the interceptor onward, yanking the wheel hard left, cutting across a side street and taking another.

When he heard the next burst of shots, it was louder. He was getting closer. He scanned the traffic far ahead of him.

Logistically, this was very bad. It was broad daylight. A running gun battle in an American city, especially an American tourist city, was going to pour gasoline on the already raging media fire over the cluster of shootings throughout the night. The Executioner had been listening to news-talk radio throughout his nighttime chase. Every station was bubbling over with sensational reporting on the “terrorist attacks,” with hysterical talking heads manning their desks and filling the airwaves with commentary from “experts.” The incessant speculation and mindless chatter had eventually become so much background noise to Bolan, who understood only too well the reality that the reporters were playing at analyzing.

From a pocket of his blacksuit—the formfitting black combat clothing that could pass for casual street clothes to the untrained eye, especially when worn under a light windbreaker as he was doing—Bolan removed a tiny earbud headset and donned it. He flipped open his secure sat phone and replaced the device in his pocket after hitting the first speed dial. Price’s voice came to him almost instantly, filtered through the earpiece.

“Striker?”