Damage Radius

“Then let’s quit playing footsies and get down to business,” McFarley said. “As of now, you’re no longer managing the gym. Let’s talk about what I want you to do first. What I want you to do tomorrow, in fact.”

McFarley then laid out, in detail, what Cooper would be doing the next day.

And while it hardly shocked the Executioner, he was slightly surprised. He had expected to be assigned to some form of smuggling operation—guns, drugs, or other contraband. But the act McFarley gave him was different, and Bolan recognized it for just what it was.

A test. McFarley had opened his home, his office and the girls of his brothel to the Executioner, and the Irishman had smiled and laughed throughout the entire evening as if he and Bolan had been lifelong friends. But as the criminal kingpin spoke the final few words of their multifaceted conversation that evening, Bolan could see in the man’s emerald-green eyes that McFarley still didn’t fully trust him.

And he’d go no farther with him until he did.

“Do you have your own weapons or do I need to furnish them for you?” McFarley asked.

“I’ll be fine on my own,” Bolan said.

“I understand my men took an enormous folding knife from you before.”

“They did,” he said. “And I’d like it back before I leave.” He stood up, then suddenly reached down the front of his slacks and brought out the North American Arms Pug. Setting it silently on McFarley’s desk, he said, “But they completely missed this.”

The Executioner sat back down in the stuffed armchair.

McFarley’s bright green eyes stared furiously at the tiny handgun on his desk. It was a good minute before he finally spoke again. When he did, he said, “I’d say you are to be congratulated on breaching my security, Matt. Very skillfully done. And it took balls.” The laugh he gave out now was forced. “No pun intended.” Reaching out, he lifted the NAA in his hand, looked at it, then tossed it back over his desk.

Bolan caught the little gun in midair.

“Take it,” McFarley said. “If you’d planned on using it on me, you’d have already done it.”

The Executioner nodded and dropped the Pug into the side pocket of his sport coat.

“But while you’re to be congratulated, my men are going to have to be disciplined,” McFarley said.

“I wouldn’t be too hard on them,” Bolan said. “It’s not fair to compare them to me.”

Then McFarley returned to his genuine laughter. “You don’t lack confidence, do you, boyo?”

“If you don’t believe in yourself,” Bolan said, “how can you expect anyone else to believe in you?”

“I can’t argue with that logic,” McFarley said. He stood up behind his desk, indicating that the meeting was over. “My chauffeur will take you back to the gym to get your things. I own an apartment and condominium development a few miles from here, and he’ll help you get settled into one of the units.

“What I told you I wanted done, I want done tomorrow. But I’m not much of a morning person. Shall we meet here for lunch before you go off to complete your work?”

“Lunch sounds fine,” Bolan said, standing up and shaking McFarley’s hand.

“But wait, I almost forgot,” the criminal kingpin said. “I offered you the ladies. Want a few hours down below with Maria or some of the other girls?”

“Sometime, but not tonight. I’ve got a move to make and a plan to develop so I can get your job done tomorrow and stay out of jail after I’ve done it.”

McFarley nodded. “You’re a man of great self-control,” he said. “I like that.”

“I like it, too,” Bolan said.

A moment later he was being led through the hallways by O’Banion and Westbrook, descending in the elevator and being walked to the front door of the brothel. When the shorter of the men opened the door for him, Bolan stopped and held out his hand.

“What is it you want?” the short man asked.

“My knife,” Bolan said.

The shorter man smiled. “I was thinking I’d just keep it myself,” he said. “Got to playing with it when you were having dinner. I like it.”

“I like it, too,” Bolan said as he reached into the side pocket of his sport coat, brought out the NAA .22 Magnum revolver and shoved it under the goon’s nose. “That’s why I want it back.”

“Where’d that come from?” the short man asked, looking cross-eyed down at the barrel.

“I brought it in with me,” Bolan said as he cocked the tiny firearm. “You missed it. Now give me the knife.”

Slowly, the man with the gun in his face reached into his own jacket and pulled out the Cold Steel folding knife.

Bolan clipped the weapon to his belt over his right hip, then pocketed the Pug again.

He waited while the chauffeur opened the limo door for him, then slid into the backseat of the vehicle.

5

Whenever a police officer was murdered, all cops around the world, both the dirty and the clean, took it personally. And they dropped whatever else they were doing to find the killer responsible.

Unless, of course, they were in on the murder themselves.

Bolan knew that while New Orleans had a reputation for police and politicians “on the take,” there were still far more honest cops in the Big Easy than crooked men and women in blue.

But what McFarley wanted him to do was a little more complicated. The big boss of the Big Easy wanted him to kill a cop who had been on the take, then had a sudden change of heart and had become irritatingly honest.

McFarley’s closing words of the night before still hung in the Executioner’s ears: “This SOB—Greg Kunkle’s his name—went to some church revival or something and got reborn. Now he not only won’t take the payoffs I was getting to him, he’s busted one of my smaller brothels and popped two of my crack dealers down in the French Quarter. I want him dead.”

Bolan had placed his suitcases and equipment bags on the bed in the luxury one-bedroom apartment to which McFarley’s chauffeur had driven him after a quick stop at the gym. In the wee small hours of the dark New Orleans night, he unzipped a short nylon case and opened the same locked hard plastic box he’d looked at earlier in the evening when deciding on what weaponry to take to the meeting with McFarley.

He was no longer posing as a boxing gym manager. The fake police records Kurtzman had set up for him had obviously made McFarley trust him enough to talk more openly. But this hit on NOPD Detective Greg Kunkle was a clear test of loyalty, as well as a way for McFarley to get leverage over Cooper.

Knowledge of a professional execution would be a big hammer that McFarley could hold over his head from then on. A few hints to the right ears, done the right way, could point the finger at Bolan as triggerman without involving McFarley himself.

But Bolan had different plans, and as he looked inside his pistol case, he realized there was no longer any reason not to go fully armed from here on.

The soldier removed his sport coat and slid into the black leather and nylon shoulder rig that housed the Beretta 93-R under his left arm. The rig was custom built to accommodate the sound suppressor threaded onto the extended barrel, and while the term “silencer” was one most often used by the combat noninitiated, the device did keep the noise down to a bare minimum and changed the sound to one less like a gunshot.

Bolan attached the retainer strap beneath the holster to his belt, securing it into place. Then his hands moved to his other side. Held in place by a pair of Concealex plastic magazine carriers were two extra 9 mm mags. While the Beretta itself was filled with RBCD total fragmentation rounds, one of the magazines in the front had been loaded with Hornady hollowpoints. They would pierce slightly deeper than the RBCDs, but still mushroom into an impressive mushroom-head-looking missile that rivaled a .45 in size.

The third magazine in the Concealex holder was filled with needle-pointed armor-piercing rounds. They were made for penetration in case the target took refuge behind metal or some other hard object, or was wearing a bullet-resistant vest.

Bolan double-checked to make sure the Cold Steel Espada was clipped to the back of his belt. Satisfied that the gigantic folding knife was in place, he unbuckled his belt and slid the Concealex holster onto the rear slot, stopping it just in front of the second belt loop of his pants. Then, threading it on through the second slot, he slipped it through the last belt loop and buckled it again. A second later, the Desert Eagle had been pushed down inside the plastic holder, making a clicking sound. A clip-on double magazine carrier, which was big enough to accommodate two more of the Israeli-made.44 Magnum box-magazines came next, and Bolan clipped it just behind his left kidney.

The Espada was flanked by the Desert Eagle and its spare rounds.