“No, but it needed to be done,” she replied. She gave a small shrug even though Maxine couldn’t see her.
“I’m sure it needed to be done. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
Davis said nothing.
“What’s your next move?”
“Get out of here,” Davis replied.
“And go where?”
“Tell you when I get there.”
“You don’t know? Or you don’t want me to know?”
“The latter.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not like that. Someone’s looking for me. They found me. Who knows what else they know—about me, the network, you. I need to disappear. It’s probably better that no one knows where I am.”
“I understand,” Maxine replied, her tone telegraphing that she didn’t understand.
“Do me a favor.”
“Of course.”
“I had to leave in a hurry. Call Nigel. Ask him to do a remote wipe of my systems. Please. I’ll also need some equipment. Cell phone—the usual stuff. Need to replace what I lost.”
“Consider it done. What else?”
“Nothing. Yet. I’ll be in touch.”
Davis ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her belt pack. She shut her eyes, rubbed her temples with the first two fingers of each hand. An image flashed across her mind, the first man she’d gunned down, body thrust back by the shotgun blast, his midsection ripped open. Her eyes snapped wide open and she covered her mouth with her hand. My God, she thought, I killed two people on this night, murdered them. A heaviness settled over her, dragged her to her knees. She hung her head, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
Chapter 1
Mack Bolan, a.k.a. the Executioner, rolled into the War Room at Stony Man Farm.
He wore blue denim jeans, a black turtleneck and black leather tennis shoes. Gathered around the room were Hal Brognola, Director of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Group, Barb Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, and Aaron the “Bear” Kurtzman, the head of the Farm’s cyber team. Brognola, shirt sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows, the top button of his dress shirt undone and his tie pulled loose, was seated at the head of the briefing table. Kurtzman sat to Brognola’s right, in his motorized wheelchair, a laptop computer open on the table in front of him. Price, her honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, saw Bolan first and flashed him a smile.
“Welcome back, Striker,” she said. “It’s good to have you back.”
Bolan nodded. “I have a feeling I won’t be here long. Am I right?”
“Very perceptive, Striker,” Brognola said. “As always, the choice is yours. But I think you’ll want a piece of the action on this, once you hear about it.”
The big Fed gestured at one of the high-backed chairs that ringed the table and Bolan settled into the nearest one. He set a brushed-steel travel mug filled with coffee on the table.
Kurtzman studied the cup for a couple of moments before giving Bolan a puzzled look.
“What’s that?”
“Coffee, last I checked.”
“I can see it’s coffee.”
“Then why ask?”
Kurtzman gestured with a nod at the drip coffeemaker that stood on a nearby counter.
“I made coffee.”
“I know.”
“You could have had some.”
“True.”
The creases in Kurtzman’s forehead deepened.
“But you didn’t want my coffee.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I just wanted this coffee, that’s all.”
“Because it’s better than mine.”
“I just wanted this coffee,” Bolan said. “That’s all.”
Brognola cleared his throat. “Seriously, I could listen to you clowns do this all day. But if you’ll indulge me.”
Kurtzman scowled. “This isn’t over,” he said, jabbing at the air between them with his forefinger.
Bolan nodded and gulped some coffee from his mug.
“Sorry to call you back in, Striker. Especially on the heels of another mission. But I wanted to give you first crack at this one.”
“I’m listening.”
Brognola pulled an unlit cigar from his mouth, set it in an ashtray.
“You ever heard of the Nightingale?”
“Assuming you don’t mean Florence or the bird, I’d have to say no.”
“You’re right. I don’t mean either of them. It’s a person, maybe several persons—we’ve not been able to nail it down. But there’s someone out there who’s been ripping people off for years, stealing money from their bank accounts.”
“White-collar cyber crime? Not exactly my area.”
“Agreed,” Brognola said. “But it’s not what you think. This—well, let’s assume it’s one person for the sake of argument—this individual targets a lot of the same people you do. Mobsters, terrorists, arms smugglers, even heads of corrupt states.”
“Steals their money?”
Brognola nodded. “Right from under their noses. He, she, whatever, is very good at this, too. Best we can tell the Nightingale steals pretty much with impunity.”
“From some very deserving people,” Bolan said. “Sorry, Hal, still trying to see how this applies to me.”
“Getting there, Striker. We don’t know what this individual does with the money. Rumor has it he or she has passed some of it along to crime victims, through a series of cutouts.”
“An altruistic thief,” Bolan said.
“Altruism or a big middle finger to her victims,” Brognola said, “we’re not really sure. Maybe both. Psychologists at Langley did a work-up and believe it’s as much as anything a way to salve this person’s guilt.”
“Guilt for?”
“For stealing,” Price answered.
“From scum,” Bolan countered. “Bad people.”
Price shrugged. “Good people, bad people. If you’re raised not to steal, you’re going to feel bad about it. Doesn’t matter if you know in your heart you’re doing the right thing. You’re still going to feel guilty.”
Bolan nodded his understanding. In his War Everlasting, he’d tried to maintain a few basic rules. Don’t harm police, even crooked ones. Don’t put innocent bystanders in harm’s way, even if it means letting a target escape. These rules had helped him maintain his humanity even when surrounded by hellfire and chaos. Though he’s killed countless times, he takes no joy from it.
“I can understand that,” he said.
“Thought you could,” Price replied.
“So, again, what does this have to do with me? And Stony Man Farm, for that matter?”
“We’re