Deep Recon

Except for the Executioner. Valentino had survived all this time by being useful to the right people. Now, just when Bolan was about to talk to him about his role in informing on a federal agent, a professional showed up to put four bullets into him.

On the one hand, it meant that Bolan was on the right track. On the other, it meant that he couldn’t question the man.

The shots stopped, and Bolan clambered to his feet, running to the front door.

Valentino’s assassin was getting into a white Chevrolet Aveo, which made it much like every other car in south Florida.

Bolan risked throwing a shot, which would require him to steady his stance. Being light on your feet was not a blessing when you fired a .357 Magnum. He felt the tremendous recoil from the Desert Eagle vibrate through his entire body as the bullet sliced through the air, but he held his ground, his feet planted firmly in what martial artists called a three-point stance: one foot slightly in front of the other, toes inverted toward each other, knees bent, center of gravity dropped. It was one of the most stable stances possible, and people who mastered it couldn’t be easily knocked down. Bolan had long ago achieved such mastery.

The round pulverized the back window of the Aveo, which shattered in an ear-splitting explosion of glass. The Executioner also saw shreds of leather and padding, indicating that the round had gone through one of the seats as well.

Bolan had obviously missed the assassin, as he then started the car and drove off. Even a glancing shot from a .357 round would leave someone unable to operate a motor vehicle.

As he ran as fast as he could down the street to where he’d parked Maxwell’s Mustang, Bolan took some solace in the fact that he’d blown out the rear window of the Aveo, which would make it easier to pick up on the road.

Keeping his eye on the vehicle for as long as he could, Bolan saw it turn left at the end of the road, which meant the assassin was heading for the Overseas Highway—U.S. Route 1, the only road that traversed all the Keys. That was a mixed blessing. It meant that the assassin hadn’t stashed a boat here on Sugarloaf Key, which meant Bolan could keep tailing him. But it also meant that the Executioner had to catch up to him before he reached Route 1, otherwise he wouldn’t know whether he went south toward Key West or north toward mainland Florida.

As he approached the Mustang, Bolan leaped into the driver’s seat, grateful that he’d left the top down. Sliding the key into the ignition, the Executioner knew he was about to find out how well Maxwell maintained her vintage vehicle.

Apparently, she did so very well. The ’65 Mustang accelerated smoothly and quickly, and Bolan soon found himself behind a white Chevrolet Aveo with no back window that was turning left onto Crane Boulevard toward Route 1.

The Aveo was a solid, reliable car, often used by rental car companies, but never by car enthusiasts who preferred speed over function. So all things being equal, Bolan would have no trouble keeping up with the assassin with Maxwell’s Mustang.

But all things were somewhat unequal, as there were other cars on the road, and for all that it had the designation of “boulevard,” Crane was just a two-lane road.

Heedless of driving regulations, and common sense, the assassin weaved his Aveo in and out of his side and the oncoming-traffic side, almost getting clipped by vehicles any number of times.

When they reached Route 1, the Aveo swerved more than turned left through a red light. Bolan did likewise. The Executioner had been hoping that the Aveo would have gone right, and south toward Key West. There was a U.S. Navy station on Boca Chica Key, and the Executioner knew that facility well. He also could possibly have called upon some backup from the sailors on the ground there.

But instead, the assassin went north.

The Overseas Highway was also two lanes, which meant that traffic moved only as fast as the slowest person on the road. Paying no heed to other cars, the Aveo zipped in and out of lanes, clipping some vehicles. Bolan wasn’t sure if he did so to increase his speed, or in the hopes that one of the cars he hit would interfere with Bolan’s own ability to keep up, but if it was the latter, it didn’t work. The Mustang turned on the proverbial dime, and Bolan was easily able to avoid the other cars on the road.

They continued over Summerland Key and into Big Pine Key, his quarry continuing to treat the Overseas Highway as his own personal slalom course.

When they reached the Seven Mile Bridge, a stretch that traversed the Gulf of Mexico over the eponymous distance between Little Duck Key and Key Vaca, the traffic lessened—only the Mustang and the Aveo were on this stretch. Bolan wasn’t sure how long this would last, but he would take advantage of the lack of innocent bystanders and the distraction they posed.

About a mile onto the bridge, the assassin stuck an arm out the driver’s window and pointed the muzzle of his S&W in Bolan’s direction and squeezed off three shots.

None of them connected, as the assassin swerved and rubbed up against the concrete railing that kept drivers from going over the edge into the Gulf of Mexico. Sparks flew as the passenger side ground against the guardrail. The assassin righted the car soon enough, but the slowdown from the friction and the swerving allowed the Executioner to close the distance between them.

He didn’t rear-end the Aveo—that was a zero-sum strategy. With two cars of roughly equal size, the rear-ender always got it worse than the rear-endee. In this case, the impact would severely damage the Mustang’s grille and have almost no effect on the Aveo’s bumper.

Instead, Bolan took advantage of the presently nonexistent traffic to get into the northbound lane and pull up alongside the Aveo.

The assassin tried to fire his .38 again. But before he could get a shot off, Bolan swerved right, counting on the more solidly built 1965 car to be able to withstand the impact better than the much lighter and flimsier modern vehicle.

Again the Aveo ground against the concrete railing. Bolan saw the other man struggle to keep the steering wheel under control—and fail miserably. The Aveo was being crushed between the irresistible force of the barricade and the solidly built Mustang.

Headlights then shone in Bolan’s face as a truck came into view going southbound on Route 1. The Mustang was still halfway into the southbound lane, and the only way to avoid a collision was to stop smashing the Aveo against the guardrail.

Swerving left long enough to disentangle the two vehicles from each other—which happened with another screech of metal against plastic—Bolan then put his right foot on the brake, causing the Mustang to decelerate sharply.

The Aveo continued to scrape against the guardrail for several seconds before the assassin also swerved left.

But unlike the Executioner’s maneuver, the assassin went too far. The Aveo spun counterclockwise. Tires squealed against pavement as the car went into an uncontrolled spin.

The truck didn’t slow.

Bolan slammed his foot on the brake, bringing the Mustang to a screeching halt.

The truck did likewise, but had considerably more momentum on its side, and so did not stop immediately.

Bolan watched as the truck smashed into the Aveo.

2

Lola Maxwell fumed.

It wasn’t bad enough that Johnny McAvoy was dead, but they had to send him to avenge his death?

No—that was the problem. The man they’d sent had no interest in avenging McAvoy’s death. He was just there to finish the job McAvoy had started.

In truth, that was the difference between them. Maxwell honestly couldn’t give a damn about bringing Kevin Lee to justice. If it wasn’t him selling illegal foreign firearms to the soldiers in the drug trade that ran rampant in south Florida, it would be someone else.

But Lee was the reason her lover was dead—and she intended to kill him for that.

Sleeping with McAvoy had never been part of the plan. Maxwell was a professional, and a professional never slept with a partner on an operation.

At least, that was what the rule book said. But the problem with the rule book was that it was hard to find when you were on a long-term deep-cover op.

It wasn’t so bad for Maxwell. She was playing the ex-cop hanging out in her old stomping grounds. The only difference was that she was still on the job, just nobody knew it apart from McAvoy and Faraday.

But McAvoy had been all alone out there except for her. He spent his days and nights living a lie, and the only person he could truly confide in, besides a handler he spoke to once a week or so, was Maxwell.

It was four months into the op when it had happened. One of the guys in Lee’s employ got his girlfriend knocked up, and they decided to get married. “Donald Kincaid” was trying to ingratiate himself into Lee’s world, and going to a bachelor party was definitely a way to endear yourself. So he joined them in barhopping and strip-club attending, working their way up and down Duval Street in a drunken stupor.

Afterward, he stumbled to Maxwell’s bungalow at five in the morning. He banged on her door, apparently too drunk to even operate the doorbell properly. She climbed out of bed, slipped into a silk robe and opened the door to see McAvoy, much drunker than he should have been while undercover, babbling on and on about how horrible these men were, the way they treated the other people in the bars and especially the way they treated the strippers. And when management tried to rein them in, one of them pulled his Beretta and shoved the muzzle right in his face.

The group of men had been left alone after that, but McAvoy—who’d been pretending to go along with the macho bullshit up until then—had a hard time with this incident. So he drank more.

The ironic thing was that it worked. Finley, one of Lee’s top guys, confided in McAvoy as the party was breaking up that he had been suspicious of him, but seeing him three sheets to the wind with the rest of them proved he was an okay guy.

McAvoy had been crying at this point, and Maxwell took him in her arms, the silk of her robe sliding open to reveal her ample cleavage. McAvoy started kissing her neck and working his way down to that cleavage, and Maxwell found herself completely uninterested in stopping him.

Eventually, they made it back to the bedroom, the bathrobe long since discarded, as were his clothes. Because Maxwell looked the way she did, she could have her pick of men, but because of that, she was extraordinarily picky about whom she chose to sleep with outside the confines of the job.

Of course, this was technically within those confines, but it was hard to argue with McAvoy’s hungry need that morning. Or hers, if it came to that, as McAvoy was a most sensitive lover.