Fatal Combat

The squalid tenements on either side of the narrow street were crawling with people and sagging with furniture, garbage and other debris. A tangled maze of clotheslines linked facing buildings across the channel dividing them. As the unmarked Crown Victoria threaded its way around a series of abandoned, stripped vehicles, some of them bearing the scorch marks of past fires, children and adults scattered. Davis drove while Bolan watched from the passenger seat, his eyes scanning the rooftops and tracking the figures that ducked in and out of the shadows. The Executioner was no stranger to house-to-house close-quarters battle in urban environments. This neighborhood looked like yet another battleground awaiting the first shot to be fired.

“I hate coming down here,” Davis said. “It’s like a war zone sometimes.”

Bolan nodded. He checked the list Davis had given him. “According to this,” he said, “we want 1021, third floor, apartment C. A Ms. Kendall Brown. It looks like her son Mikyl was the first documented victim of these ritualized blade murders.”

“Kendall Brown,” Davis repeated. “Got it.”

It took them a while to find the right building, as most of the designations were either worn, missing completely, or covered by piles of junk or even cardboard signs. In a few cases, the numbers on the buildings had been spray-painted over or even switched. Bolan raised an eyebrow at one of the more obvious examples; the street signs at that intersection were also missing on one side.

“Trying to hide,” Davis explained. “Could be a lot of things. Enemy gangs. Rival dealers. Creditors, tax collectors, any of countless state agencies, like Child Protective under the Department of Human Services. Most of the veteran agency folks know where they need to go, so these games don’t fool anybody. But I bet it’s hell trying to get a pizza delivered.”

The dark humor in Davis’s comment, which seemed otherwise unlike what Bolan had seen of the man so far, bespoke bitter experience, perhaps as a uniformed cop on the streets. Bolan let it go. He had seen enough ghettos and poverty-stricken crime zones like this one the world over to know it for what it was. It didn’t matter if a place like this existed among the shantytowns of a third world banana republic, or in some of the worst overrun cesspools in Europe, or anywhere in the industrialized West. Poverty and desperation were feeding and breeding grounds for predators, who made those very problems worse, as they incestuously preyed on the communities that spawned them.

Bolan’s jaw tightened. As many times as he saw this, it always moved something in him. There were innocents here, among the predators. They would be vulnerable to the creatures that hunted among them, terrorized them, bullied and brutalized and subjugated them. It turned the soldier’s stomach.

Davis parked the car as close to the building as he could, wedging it between a derelict pickup truck—the rusted bed was full of trash—and a garbage bin overflowing with neglected refuse. The two men could hear children playing in the bin. When the detective leaned on the horn, the kids took the hint and climbed out, scampering off while shooting glares of mistrust and disappointment back at Bolan and Davis.

“One of them’s going to get picked up and thrown into the back of a garbage truck one of these days,” he said.

“No time soon, from the look of it.” Bolan shook his head. “You’d better wait here.”

“I was worried you were going to argue with me about that,” Davis said. “I’ll keep the motor running.”

“Good idea.” Bolan nodded. He reached into his war bag and removed a pair of translucent plastic cases. Inside each case was an earpiece that resembled a wireless telephone earbud. Bolan fitted one of the small devices behind his left ear, where it all but disappeared. He offered the second case to Davis.

“What’s this?” Davis asked, accepting the earbud.

“These are short-range transceivers,” Bolan said. “They’re smart. They filter gunfire but provide good, audible communication between them. Speak in a normal tone of voice. You’ll be able to listen in on everything I’m doing, and I’ll be able to hear you if you speak or if anything goes down.”

“Standard issue at the Justice Department, Agent Cooper?” Davis said. He tucked the earpiece in his own ear.

“Something like that,” Bolan said. The devices had been developed, in fact, with the help of Stony Man Farm electronics genius Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz. Bolan had used them in the field many times.

“The useful range varies,” he told Davis. “If we get too far away to hear each other, there’s a problem.” He paused, double-checked and stowed his Beretta, and then checked the massive .44 Magnum Desert Eagle before replacing the handcannon in the Kydex holster behind his hip.

“Cooper,” Davis said.

Bolan stopped with his hand on the door handle, shouldering his canvas war bag with his free arm. “Yeah?”

“You’re not a cop.” It was not a question.

“No,” Bolan said. “I’m not.”

“Look, Cooper,” Davis said. “I am a cop, and I like to think I’m a good one. I know this place. It’s very unlikely anybody’s going to talk to you up there. You’ll be lucky even to find this Brown woman at home, and if you do, she probably won’t open the door for you. Nobody sees anything here, Cooper. They don’t call the police if they can help it, which means if they do call, all hell is breaking loose down here. They don’t talk to anybody if they don’t have to. It’s like this isn’t even the United States down here, Cooper. It’s bad. I know you’re some kind of government superhero or something, but it could be that all you’ll accomplish in there is burning the place down around your ears.”

“Understood,” Bolan said. “Keep your eyes open, Detective.”

Davis nodded. He watched, looking anxious, as Bolan made his way through the scattered garbage at ground level to enter the tenement.

The smell hit Bolan as soon as he cleared the outer doorway. The stairwell reeked of refuse, human waste and mold. There was a mound of trash blocking the inner entrance; he stepped over it, hands ready to go for the Beretta under his jacket.

The floor was covered in carpet so stained its original color was impossible to determine. It creaked under Bolan’s combat boots. Through the thin walls, he could hear and smell the usual signs of living at close quarters in an environment like this. Televisions blared. Repellant food odors hung heavy in the air. A domestic altercation of some kind simmered in one of the apartments he passed; there were angry screams in both Spanish and English. Bolan paused, hand drifting nearer the Beretta, wondering if intervention was required, until the voices grew more calm and quieted.

He moved on.

“Cooper,” Davis’s voice sounded in his ear. “Do you work alone?”

“What?” Bolan asked.

“There’s an old blue Chevy Caprice full of guys down here,” Davis said. “They’ve circled the block twice now, but I can’t read the plate from where I’m watching. They’re a little out of place in this neighborhood, and I don’t recognize them. I was kind of hoping you were going to say you had called in reinforcements.”

“No such luck,” Bolan said. “Watch yourself down there, Davis. Keep me informed if anything changes.”

“Will do.”

Bolan picked up his pace. He traversed the next stairwells with less caution; he could feel the numbers working against him and Davis. When he reached the third floor, he found apartment C and stepped well to the side of the doorway. He flattened himself against the wall, reached out and rapped on the edge of the hollow-core door.

It took several tries before he got a response from within. Finally, a woman’s voice answered, “What do you want?”

“Kendall Brown?” Bolan asked, as he came to the front of the door.

The door opened to the length of its chain revealing a middle-aged black woman wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and bracing a toddler on her hip with one thick arm. The little girl, who was chewing on a pacifier, looked up at Bolan with wide eyes.

The woman nodded slowly. “What do you want?” she said again.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said, smiling briefly at the child. She continued to regard Bolan with amazement. “I need to talk to you about Mikyl Brown, your son.”

The woman wanted to shut the door; Bolan could see her knuckles turn white. To her credit, she held her ground.

“Cooper,” Davis said over their wireless connection. “I think that car I saw is parked behind the building. I saw it nose out and then reverse.”

“Mikyl is dead,” Brown said. “Murdered. Police already been here. Can’t say they much cared about him, if you ask me. But they were here. They asked their questions. They left. Mikyl is still dead. What the hell you think you’re gonna do now?”

“I understand,” Bolan said. “I really do, Ms. Brown. I’m hoping that if I can better understand the circumstances of Mikyl’s death, I can bring his killer to justice. I’m part of a special task force.”

“Cooper,” Davis’s voice sounded in Bolan’s ear again. “Cooper, I think you’d better hurry.”

Kendall Brown closed the door, removed the chain and opened it again, after putting the child on the ground and giving the girl a gentle pat to send her toddling in the opposite direction. She lowered her voice. “I don’t know who you are, mister,” she said, “but it’s damned cruel what you’re doing. Mikyl was murdered in a gang fight. Stabbed to death. The boy who done it, not even a year older than my son, is in prison. Probably get out sooner than he should, too. Just how things go.”

Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “Mikyl’s murderer was convicted?”

“Cooper.” Davis’s voice was growing more urgent.

“Who the hell are you, mister?” Brown said. “I don’t need you coming up in here and reminding me of my boy.” She slammed the door in his face with considerable force. Bolan looked up and down the corridor; nothing moved.

“I’m coming out,” Bolan said. “Something’s not right, here. Keep the front covered.”

“Understood,” Davis answered.