Fatal Combat

“Junk,” Bolan said, snatching the TEC-9 from the man’s hand. He shoved the black muzzle of the Beretta into his face. “Always were a jam waiting to happen.”

“I want a lawyer!” the disarmed shooter squealed. “I got rights!”

“Give me a name,” Bolan said. “Or all you’ll get will be a bullet in the brain when I’m finished with you.”

The dialogue sounded corny even to Bolan, but it was the kind of language spoken by punks-for-hire. Bolan could hear Davis coming up behind him and hoped the young detective wouldn’t overreact to the soldier’s bluff.

“A name,” Bolan said. Sirens were erupting from the lot across the street as the police, having cleared their part of the gun battle, moved to seal off the area. It would be only moments before some of them blundered into this little scene. Bolan didn’t have time for that. He heard Davis behind him, running interference as the first of the Detroit PD closed in and started asking questions. He gave Davis mental points for that. The kid was doing well during his trial by fire. The noise and activity behind them increased as emergency response personnel started to arrive. More Detroit PD were showing up by the carload, too. The sudden war on this already tainted city block had brought half the department out in a bid to clamp down on the chaos.

In the noise and confusion, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Bolan’s prisoner tried to make play. The knife came out with surprising speed. Bolan heard the snick of the blade opening just as he caught the movement; he was ready for it. He grabbed the would-be killer’s knife hand and wrist in a crushing grip. Behind him, Davis gasped, probably because he was watching Bolan’s knuckles go white. Something cracked in the wounded man’s hand and he yelped. The folding combat knife fell to the pavement.

“Give me a name,” Bolan repeated. “Or I’ll break the other one.”

“Don’t know,” the man blurted, shaking his head as his pride gave way to pain. “Contract job. Never saw a face.”

“Contract on who?” Bolan demanded.

“Jacket…” the man said, gritting his teeth. “Jacket pocket.”

Bolan carefully reached into the man’s jacket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. The sheet was a photocopy of a photograph. The photograph showed Bolan meeting with Adam Davis outside the station house to which Davis was assigned. It was grainy and had obviously been taken with long-distance equipment. Bolan’s face was circled in a whorl of yellow highlighter.

Bolan signaled to the police officers nearby, who closed in to take custody of the wounded shooter. The Executioner led the confused Davis several paces away from the main knot of uniforms and support personnel before showing him the paper.

“But this…” Davis looked at it. “What does it mean?”

“It means somebody knew to watch,” Bolan said.

“Watch for what?”

“Outside interference.” Bolan folded the paper and pocketed it. Turning, he watched the wounded gunman being ushered, under guard, to an ambulance that was just rolling up. Several men in suits, badges displayed prominently on their belts, clustered around Bolan and Davis, giving them the hairy eyeball; these would be Detroit detectives eager to ask this representative from Washington just what the hell was going on, and what Bolan thought he was doing. The soldier could almost write this dialogue himself; he had heard it often enough.

Bolan took out his secure smartphone and began moving deliberately from corpse to corpse, kneeling over his fallen enemies with the phone so he could snap their pictures. Davis followed him, looking as if he was ready to draw the Glock he had only just reholstered. Bolan couldn’t blame the kid. The abrupt battle had the Executioner’s own system working against the fight-or-flight dump of adrenaline that lingered even though the gunfight itself was over.

“What did you mean by ‘outside interference,’ Agent Cooper?” Davis spoke up.

“Somebody knows that a Justice Department agent was assigned to poke around this case,” Bolan said. “Seeing you with me was all it took for our man with the telephoto lens, or whoever hired him, to finger me as that agent.”

“You’re talking about somebody inside the Department.”

“I am,” Bolan said.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m not.” Bolan continued his grisly work, photographing all of the dead men. Then he walked to the bullet-riddled Charger and put his back to the car’s pocked flank. “Keep an eye out for me while I do this,” he said.

Davis nodded. He watched nervously, looking this way and that, hand near his gun, as Bolan transmitted the photographs and a terse report of what had produced them. The Farm would collect the data and run the images through advanced facial recognition software, comparing the dead men to profiles in meta-databases across the globe. There was no law enforcement or government agency whose files Stony Man Farm could not access. At least, if there was, it was hard even for Bolan to imagine what those might be.

No, if these men had criminal records, Barbara Price and her people would dig them up. Bolan had no doubt that most if not all of the shooters would have long rap sheets. Things would get really interesting, however, when Bolan had the chance to see just where these gunners’ backgrounds pointed.

In the meantime, he would just have to keep shaking the tree, despite the target painted on his back. Davis, as his liaison, was no safer.

“You think I’m a dirty cop?” Davis asked bluntly. The steel in the man’s tone was mildly surprising. Again Bolan raised his estimation of the younger man.

Bolan looked at Davis. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t have asked you what I did.”

Davis looked away. Bolan could see him thinking about it. Finally, the set of Davis’s shoulders relaxed. “You’re right,” he said. “Everyone knows it, and nobody wants to say it out loud. Everyone knows the walls have ears. Nobody wants to say who’s on the take and who isn’t.”

Bolan nodded. He didn’t say so, but he liked that Davis was still idealistic enough to be offended when he thought his integrity was being challenged. There wasn’t enough of that in the world, as far as Bolan was concerned.

“Is the CIA analyzing your pictures?” Davis ventured.

“Not exactly,” Bolan said.

“But somebody is,” Davis pressed. “You’re running identifications on the gunmen.”

“Which reminds me,” Bolan said. “Make sure we get a full run-up on the guy they’re taking in.”

“I’ll check back with the station and make sure. Unless someone suicides our boy in Holding.”

Bolan looked at Davis sharply. The detective managed not to grin for only a moment.

Bolan shook his head. “Let’s hope not.” Davis laughed.

The pair surveyed the damage to the Dodge Charger, but it was clear the car was critically wounded. Bolan paused just long enough to grab the rental car agreement from the glove compartment and pocket it.

“I don’t think you’re going to get your security deposit back,” Davis said mildly.

“I almost never do,” Bolan said.

Davis managed to beg, borrow, or steal an unmarked Crown Victoria from among the police personnel on the scene. He did not explain and Bolan did not ask. The silver-gray sedan was among three other vehicles parked along the increasingly crowded, chaotic street.

Bolan climbed in as Davis brought up the car, transferring his war bag from the Dodge to the Ford. As he did so, Davis pointed past him to the cordon being set up. There were a pair of television vans and a crowd of reporters gathering, shouting questions at the officers keeping them at bay.

“That’s going to be trouble, isn’t it?” Davis said.

“Yeah,” Bolan told him. “Nothing we can do about that now. Let’s get started.” He looked through the list Davis had provided and read the first address aloud. “You know this place?”

“There isn’t a cop in the city who doesn’t,” Davis said. “It’s not exactly one of our more affluent neighborhoods. A real hellhole, to be honest, Agent Cooper.”

Bolan said nothing at first. He opened his war bag and removed several loaded 20-round magazines for the Beretta. Davis looked over, wide-eyed, as he caught a glimpse of the hardware and ordnance inside.

“You don’t exactly travel light, do you, Agent Cooper?”

“If I could carry more, I would,” Bolan said. He began replacing magazines in the pouches of his shoulder holster. “Welcome to the war, kid.”

“Yeah,” Davis said. “Yeah.”

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