Killing Trade

Bolan counted himself lucky. In a city where mere mortals couldn’t get permits to carry guns without a great deal of wealth and political influence, more than a few who valued their lives over petty politicking had made the choice to go armed illegally. The Executioner would not have been surprised if one of the locals had taken a shot at him. Bolan changed magazines and took cover behind one of the stone lions, covering the street as the hired shooters closed on him. The timing was going to be tight.

As they moved up on either side, Bolan crouched low. Gunfire pocked the pedestal of the stone lion. Then a group of four men made their move, trying to flank the Executioner and get a clear shot at him as he engaged the others. Bolan, again on one knee, took a careful two-hand grip on the Beretta, sighted and fired.

He took the point man in the head, the hollowpoint round doing its deadly work as it punched through the gunman. Bolan fired several more times, taking the second man in the chest and driving the others back. The remaining two began to backpedal, moving smoothly on bent knees. They fired as they went, almost gliding. They were well-trained. Bolan’s bullets chased after them, but when he was certain they were backing off, he returned his attention to the main group. Above him, the statue took several high shots, spraying him with stinging debris.

Reloading again, Bolan drew a bead on another enemy as the man crouched behind a suddenly abandoned pickup truck. The gunman, tucked behind the protection of the engine block, nevertheless exposed too much of his bent arm and gun hand. Bolan’s bullets shattered the man’s elbow.

The Executioner had time to watch a pair of men advance to back up their fallen comrade. Each one carried a slightly longer AR-15, the heavy match barrels of the stainless-steel weapons gleaming in the afternoon light. Bolan ducked back behind the lion’s pedestal as they opened fire.

The Executioner flinched as a quartet of shots punched through the stone of the pedestal. His eyes wide, Bolan watched as tiny fires flared up in gaping exit holes in the stone. He barely had time to throw himself from behind the pedestal as a fusillade of heavy slugs split the pedestal and broke large pieces from the lion above. Several bullets dug into the stone of the library steps, sparking more small fires that burned with unnatural intensity. Bolan rolled, feeling the heat, squinting against the grit and debris that coated him. He shoved the Beretta forward, slightly canted in one fist, burning through the magazine as fast as he could. The angle was bad, but the shots forced the gunners back behind the pickup truck.

The slide of Bolan’s pistol locked open again. Bolan’s support hand slapped the ejected magazine away from his body where it couldn’t end up under his feet. He brought the last of his spare magazines from the holder at his belt, slapped it home and racked the slide briskly as he advanced smoothly, knees bent, in an aggressive isosceles crouch. As he pushed the gun to full extension again, ready to engage his attackers with his last fifteen rounds, he finally heard the sirens through the ringing in his ears.

The first of the NYPD cars roared up, tires squealing as they cut through the chaos of Manhattan’s traffic. Bolan’s eyes narrowed as he watched the gunmen, already backing off and buttoning up, their weapons disappearing under long coats or simply held behind their bodies as they faded back in the noise and confusion. Bolan hit the magazine release on his Beretta and racked the slide as he stood, moving out into the middle of the library steps. As police officers with Glocks and shotguns drew down on him, screaming commands at him, Bolan let the Beretta swivel out of his grip, dangling from his finger by the trigger guard. He held it high over his head as he settled to his knees, his free hand behind his neck.

No, Hal Brognola was not going to be happy—but Bolan wasn’t finished yet.

He was only getting started.

2

Bolan sat at the small table in the corner of the coffeehouse, an insulated cup of overpriced coffee untouched before him. Checking the heavy stainless-steel watch on his wrist, he sat back in the wooden chair. Brognola had managed to straighten things out, more or less, and much more quickly than Bolan would have thought. The local authorities hadn’t detained Bolan long before cutting him loose, though it was clear they were not happy about it.

After conferring with the Farm following the shootout at the library, the big Fed had started pulling strings and pushing buttons, hard. The Farm had identified the person most likely to be of use to Bolan in his search through the city—Detective Len Burnett. Burnett was head of a multijurisdictional drug-trafficking task force operating in the greater New York City area, with the authority and the connections Bolan would need. He was on record concerning investigations into several of the shootings that had flagged the Farm’s interest. He was also a veteran officer with a good record, by all accounts. Brognola had arranged to have Burnett assigned as liaison to Bolan. He knew that wasn’t likely to go over well with Burnett or his bosses, but it couldn’t be helped.

The Executioner couldn’t blame NYPD for resenting his presence. He hadn’t started the war—it was raging long before Bolan had arrived for his most recent tour of the Big Apple—but he’d brought it boiling over onto their front steps within view of countless civilians. Fortunately, despite waging a running firefight in midtown Manhattan, Bolan’s attackers hadn’t killed anyone. The property damage was extensive, but the cost in lives was zero.

So far.

The bad news was that Bolan could see no way this wasn’t simply the opening salvo of a much bloodier battle.

The soldier watched the entrance to the coffeehouse. He did not wait long before a man matching the description he’d been given pushed open the door and let it slam none too gently behind him. The newcomer was male, late thirties to early forties, with an unruly mop of curly, receding brown hair, three days’ worth of beard stubble and a paisley tie at half mast. He was a large man, standing a couple of inches over six feet, with a slight paunch and a lanky, big-boned frame. He wore an off-the-rack suit that actually fit him quite well, the jacket of which didn’t quite conceal the bulge of the gun on his right hip. He quickly surveyed the coffeehouse and zeroed in on Bolan without hesitation. The soldier’s corner was secluded enough, the ambient noise loud enough, that the men could speak in reasonable confidence on what was, Bolan calculated, neutral ground. He did not intend to antagonize Burnett if he could help it, given that he needed the man’s assistance.

“Matt Cooper?”

“That’s me,” Bolan nodded, standing to offer his hand. Burnett took it and returned a firm handshake.

“Burnett,” the man said pleasantly. As he sat, his expression hardened, his smile bearing all the joy of an undertaker. “Would you mind telling me,” he asked with feigned mildness before his voice went completely cold, “just what the fuck you think you’re doing in New York?” He spoke quietly, but the menace in his tone was real enough.

Bolan looked at him blandly. “That’s need to know.”

“Well,” Burnett said, leaning forward, “I damn well need to know.”

The Executioner regarded him for a moment, saying nothing.

Burnett wiped one hand down his face, shaking his head. “Look, Cooper,” he said, using the cover Brognola had supplied and that Bolan’s Justice credentials listed, “I want to believe we’re on the same side. Chief Vaughn told me he’s been getting calls from high-powered types in Washington all morning. That’s the only reason you’re not up on every charge in the book and a few off the books, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve got connections. Okay. I can live with that. But I won’t have you burning down this city around my ears!”

“You’re right,” Bolan said simply.

“What?” Burnett asked.

“We’re on the same side,” Bolan offered. “At least, we ought to be, depending on what your stake in all this is.”

“Drug interdiction’s my stake,” Burnett said. “If your people knew to ask for me, you know what I do. My task force is focused primarily on violent crime related to cocaine trafficking.”

“Crack?” Bolan asked.

“The crack dealers are the small-timers, these days,” Burnett admitted. “It’s the big gangs and the organized-crime families moving hundreds of kilograms of cocaine that concern me.” He turned and stared into space for a moment, looking out the picture window at the busy city street beyond. He sighed. “Cooper, I’ve lived in New York all my life. I’ve watched crime come and go. I’ve seen how bad it can get. As a rookie, I watched the city nearly eat itself alive in the late seventies. Then there was the backlash. Remember those movies, all the vigilante flicks about cleaning up the Big Apple? There was that subway shooter…and that didn’t stem the tide. Things got worse until the last bunch of cronies in city hall decided to clamp down, clean up the joint. We started to turn a corner.”

“It’s never that easy,” Bolan commented.

“No,” Burnett said, turning to face him, “it isn’t and it wasn’t. Now we’re seeing the worst of the violent crime surge again. I’ve got Colombian and Dominican gangs, with a few minor Mexican players for flavor, pushing into Manhattan, of all places. Midtown Manhattan, Cooper! All it takes is one good massacre on Broadway, a hit on the street in front of the United Nations, or, God help us, a frigging war in front the New York Public Library, and we’ll be lucky to see so much as another nickel in tourism. They’ll be rolling up the bloodstained sidewalks by the time we’re done. This city will be the wasteland they were all predicting it would become, back in the bad old days. I want to stop that before it can happen, Cooper.”

“It’s more than drug interdiction and drive-bys,” Bolan told him.

Burnett paused. “That’s right,” he said. “A few months ago, we had an officer shot in the line of duty. Tragic as the death of a good cop is, that wasn’t so surprising. What had us up nights worrying was that the patrolman was shot after taking cover behind the engine block of his Crown Vic.”

“Shot through cover, you mean,” Bolan guessed.

“Exactly,” Burnett nodded. “The rounds—9 mm, forensics tells us—went through the heaviest part of the car like it wasn’t even there. Maybe a .50-caliber rifle could do that. But 9 frigging mm? Show me small-arms ammunition that can do that!”

“That’s why I’m here,” Bolan admitted. “That wasn’t the first such case.”

Burnett’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right,” he said. “There have been almost a dozen shootings, some large-scale, some minor drive-bys. In each one, witness accounts or the evidence and the bodies we found afterward point to something nobody’s ever seen before. The lab couldn’t make much of it, other than to say it was like a miniature depleted uranium round. We sent some samples to the FBI, what we could find, but we haven’t got anything yet.”

“You have,” Bolan told him. “You got me.”

“You’re FBI?” Burnett asked. “I thought you were with the Justice Department.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Bolan told him. “Let’s say for now that the samples you sent raised the right flags in the right departments. Word of what you’re facing made its way to the right people. They’re working on it right now. That’s also why I’m here. That’s what I’m after. Depleted uranium ammo in the hands of violent drug gangs in New York City? That’s volatile business. The fire’s got to be stopped before it spreads.”

“Fine,” Burnett said, growing impatient. “But you weren’t shooting it out with any coke-runners yesterday. My men on the scene tell me they saw paramilitary commandos of some kind.”

“Did your people intercept any of them?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Burnett said, his face reddening. “We pursued several of them but lost them. They shot up a SWAT van, among other things, making their escape.”

“Some of them,” Bolan said, “were using the ammunition we’re looking for. Not all, but at least two.”

“What’s the connection?” Burnett asked. “How did it go down? Why were they shooting at you?”

“We’ll get to that eventually,” Bolan said, putting him off. “Tell me about the gangs you’re working,” Bolan said.

“Why?” Burnett demanded. “How do you fit into this?”

“Trust me,” Bolan told him.

“I guess I don’t have much choice,” Burnett said. He thought about it for a moment and then continued. “We’ve got two gangs at war right now, both of them moving into Manhattan to prove something to the others—and to city hall, if you ask me. One’s the Caqueta Cartel, headed by Luis Caqueta. They’re the Colombians. The other is El Cráneo, the Skull, a Dominican gang fronted by a charming character named Pierre Taveras.”