The Killing Rule

MacJory started in her seat.

Finch shouted in alarm. “You can’t—” Bolan clicked his phone shut and stepped forward. MacJory cringed as far as her restraints would let her. Bolan pressed the muzzle of the BXP between her eyebrows and pinned her head to the back of the chair like an insect.

“You’re of no more use to me.”

“No!”

The safety clicked off beneath Bolan’s thumb with grim finality.

MacJory screamed. “Please!”

“Who do you work for!” Bolan roared.

The woman shook her head, crying. “I don’t know!”

“You’ve got five seconds.”

“Please—”

Bolan knew MacJory’s type. She wasn’t a terrorist. She was a genius. Breaking code and committing crimes in cyberspace was a game to her. Even after her conviction, she still didn’t believe she had done anything wrong. He wouldn’t shoot her, but he had to make her believe he would.

Nothing had prepared her for gutter-level, get-your-hands-dirty fieldwork.

“One…”

“Please!”

“Two…”

“I don’t know who I work for!”

“You’re working for the IRA. You’re a traitor to the U.K. Three.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Four…”

“I don’t know anything about the IRA!” The woman wept uncontrollably. “I swear it!”

Bolan read her body language and pulled the gun back. MacJory started to suck in a breath of relief and gave a strangled shriek as Bolan fired a burst into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on her, and he aimed the weapon at her again. “Okay, you’re a merc. Who brokered the deal? Who pays you?”

She shuddered with her betrayal. “Aegis…”

Bolan cocked his head slightly. “Aegis Global Security?”

“Yes! I swear! I freelance for Aegis!”

That was not good news. Aegis was one of the oldest, and in the controversial world of executive VIP protection, military advisement and “solutions by other means,” Aegis Global Security was one of the most respected.

Bolan clicked his phone open. Finch picked up midring. “Jesus, bloody—”

“She’s still alive and unharmed. She freelances for Aegis. I suspect the other three are permanent men on the roster.”

Finch was flabbergasted. “Aegis Global Security?”

“That seems to be the situation.”

“Not good.”

“No, it’s not. I’m going to turn Miss MacJory loose in a couple of hours, and I’ll let you know where you can find her.”

“Listen, I need you to—”

Bolan clicked off and went back to his computer. “You get all that?”

Kurtzman nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

“Get me everything you can on Aegis.” Bolan already knew a lot about it. “Where’s David McCarter?”

“You’ve got a bit of luck there. He’s in the U.K. right now visiting family.”

Bolan nodded. “I need him.”

Guernsey, The Channel Isles

“RED-HOT WILLY.” David McCarter stared at Bolan accusingly as he drove the Land Rover over the bleak, bumpy countryside of the island. “You know the man’s a bloody legend.”

Bolan glanced off across the gray chop of the English Channel toward Normandy. “Red-Hot” Willy was indeed a legend. The man’s biography read like an adventure novel. A television series on the BBC and two lines of pulp fiction paperbacks had been loosely based on his life. Just about anyone who had ever been in the military community had heard of Colonel William Glen-Patrick. However in England, formally, he was Lord William Glen-Patrick. The Glen-Patrick line had held the title of baron in England since the Middle Ages. Like a Dickens novel, little Lord Willy had been orphaned at the age of five when his parents had crashed their Lotus Elan into the wall of a cattle enclosure. The executors of his estate had been unscrupulous and absconded with the greater part of the family fortune, and by the time Willy had reached the age of seventeen the Glen-Patrick family had been bankrupt. Unable to pay his taxes, Lord William had sold the family castle and estates and used his family name to wangle a commission in the Life Guards, the most senior regiment in the British Army. He had served with distinction in Aden and Borneo and become the British army welterweight boxing champion. In the late 1970s he had joined the SAS, being one of the few members of the English peerage to ever successfully qualify and serve in English Special Forces. During the Falkland Island War, he had won the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery.

The wounds he’d received in the Falklands had forced him to retire from the British army, so he had taken his name and reputation and gone to West Africa, where he had gotten himself involved in the constant wars and revolutions. He’d come back with a personal fortune in diamonds. Throughout the 1980s Lord William had been famous for winning and losing fortunes at the baccarat tables in Monaco, reaching a respectable ranking on the Grand Prix circuit when not crashing his own personal sports cars, climbing Mount Everest and K2, sailing around the world, dating a different girl every month and even occasionally flexing his hereditary right as an English peer to cast his vote in the House of Lords. He was a nobleman, a hero, a mercenary, a professional adventurer and a dilettante. For decades he had been constant fodder for the British tabloids and earned the sobriquet “Red-Hot” Willy.

In the military community he was known most for pioneering what may have been the first VIP/executive protection mercenary outfit. In West Africa, war and violence had been and still were endemic. At the same time gold and diamonds flowed out of the area and guns and money flowed in. Glen-Patrick had seen the need not just for bodyguards for VIPs, but men who were soldiers in their own right. Developers, businessmen, African royalty and heads of state needed more than just bullet shields. Glen-Patrick had used the contacts he’d made in the army and the SAS, finding highly qualified men from around the world not just to guard VIPs, their families and business interests, but men who would act proactively. Glen-Patrick had developed a simple, three-step plan. When a threat was determined, it would be bought off. If it couldn’t be bought off, it would be intimidated. If it couldn’t be intimidated, it would be eliminated.

The work had been lucrative, but it was the international business contacts he had made that had made him a millionaire.

Lord William had slowed down upon reaching the age of sixty and retired to an estate on the Isle of Guernsey, living with three women, none of whom he was married to, and again, very occasionally, casting his vote in the House of Lords, usually on environmental issues. His mercenary group had gone from Aegis Incorporated to Aegis Global Security and was reputed to be less bloodthirsty in the new century. According to its prospectus, it was doing a thriving business in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bolan took note of Lord William’s service record with the Life Guards and the SAS. He’d seen service in Northern Ireland with both units. What he had done there with the SAS had been redacted.

Bolan closed the file. “I see a few red flags, David.”

“Oh, I know, millionaire playboy entrepreneur moves to a tiny island in his dotage, goes quietly bloody bonkers and starts engaging in crazy politically motivated actions.” The former SAS man shook his head as the Land Rover rumbled and bumped along the narrow, muddy lane between the hedgerows. “Don’t think I haven’t thought it.”

David McCarter was the leader of Stony Man Farm’s Phoenix Force and another man whose instincts Bolan trusted. “You knew him?”

“I met him. We’re two different generations of SAS. He was ending his career when I was starting mine. But he’s peerage and he won the Victoria Cross.” McCarter glanced meaningfully at the brown gorse all around them. “That bloody well means something in these islands.”

Bolan knew by “islands” McCarter meant the entire United Kingdom.