“Yeah. But for what reason?” Bolan said. “If your intelligence is good, they wouldn’t risk such a meeting without some purpose.”
“That I can’t tell you,” Gagliardi said. “But I can tell you my intel comes from pretty high up. I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t the real thing.”
Bolan had nodded in understanding. He couldn’t bring himself to doubt the information because Gagliardi had risked a lot to get it to him. It also made some sense in that it appeared Hector Casco was out to make a name for himself; Casco obviously wanted a larger cut of the action if nothing else. Those two facts alone made it important enough to check out. Bolan’s only choice, then, would be to do a soft probe of the place and see what turned up.
With Ann-Elise McCormack out of danger, Bolan felt the time had come to explore this a bit further. By this point, the police would be at the cartel residence on the other side of town in force, not to mention swarming the McCormack and Montera homes. That left the field wide open and bought Bolan a little more time to check out Gagliardi’s intelligence.
Bolan pulled his vehicle into the back parking lot of a diner positioned directly across from the corner pharmacy. He stepped into the cool interior, sat down and ordered a sandwich. As he waited, the warrior studied the facade. The place looked plain, unremarkable really, save for the striped awnings that jutted from above the pair of large plate-glass windows—one each facing the cross streets. That old-fashioned look seemed out of place in this kind of “upscale” neighborhood and yet Bolan saw some wisdom in that. It made it seem like another friendly, neighborhood drugstore, maybe something out of Norman Rockwell.
Then the glint of light catching on metal from the rooftop of the three-story building across the street caught Bolan’s eye. He watched with interest, never taking his eyes from the building save for a brief acknowledgement of the waitress, who set the plate on the table with a clank.
“Can I get you anything else, honey?” she asked, tossing her blond hair as she cracked her gum.
By the time Bolan answered her, he’d spotted a second rooftop enemy position and three more at street level. “There a pay phone around here?”
She nodded. “Out back.”
Bolan held up a ten as he slid out of the booth and said, “Keep the change.”
“Wow, a whole dollar-twenty-five,” the waitress said with mock admiration. “Thanks, sir. Hey! What about your sandwich?”
But Bolan was already out the door and walking casually along the side of the building. He could have called from his cell phone but he didn’t want any of the diner occupants to overhear him. Beside the fact, the pay phone would be at least a bit more secure for Gagliardi. If anyone traced the call to the undercover agent’s own mobile phone, at least they wouldn’t be able to tie it to anything solid.
Gagliardi answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Bolan replied. “Can you talk?”
“At the moment. What’s up?”
“You said the other day that rumor control had it Casco was going to be at this meet.”
“Right.”
“Any idea what time it was planned for?”
“Not a clue. I only know it was supposed to go down today.”
“You know how to reach this guy who’s heading up the HIKE squad?”
“Nope, but I got a name.”
“What is it?”
“Captain Joseph Hall. Why?”
“Because I think he and his team are about to walk into a trap,” Bolan replied.
2
No sooner had the words left the Executioner’s mouth than he heard the squeal of tires on pavement.
He bid Gagliardi a hasty farewell, then skirted the building until he reached the corner and risked a glance in the direction of the pharmacy. Two unmarked units had arrived and parked on the sidewalk, flanked by two uniform squads blocking the intersection. A large police van arrived a moment later, probably dispatched to haul away whomever the cops took into custody.
Bolan whipped the Beretta from his shoulder holster and dashed along the side of the diner until the first rooftop sentry he’d spotted came into view. The warrior had only seconds to take the guy down before the sentry started sniping at the cops. He was packing SJHPs, subsonic to suppress noise, but at only 125-grain apiece it would also severely limit the chances for a first-hit kill. Bolan thumbed the selector to 3-round-burst mode. He then sighted on the shadowy figure visible just above the parapet and squeezed the trigger. A trio of 9 mm Parabellum rounds hit home, one striking the rifle mounted to a bipod while the other two slammed into the sentry’s head. The guy dropped from sight in a red spray brightened by the blazing midday sun.
The muzzle of Bolan’s 93-R attended the second rooftop position but he found it vacant. Either the sniper there had seen Bolan moving or he’d gone to alert the others at the arrival of Hall’s squad.
Bolan turned his attention to the three ground-level heavies. One of them was using the door of a black SUV for cover as he sighted down the barrel of an assault rifle. From that vantage point, Bolan couldn’t tell what kind of rifle it was but he knew that mattered very little. The gunner could intend only one thing and if he had enough guts to level a rifle at the police in broad daylight on a busy street, he sure as hell had the guts to use it.
Bolan didn’t plan to give him that chance. He dashed across the street in the direction of the cops massed outside the front doors of the pharmacy and prepared to make tactical entry. Bolan sighted down the slide of the pistol and triggered a 3-round burst on the run. He nearly reached the sidewalk before triggering a second and then a third. None of the rounds hit but they came close enough to distract the hood holding the rifle. The staccato of autofire echoed through the air as the rounds went high and wide of the cloistered cops.
Bolan leaped onto the sidewalk as he dropped a clip into his palm, pocketed it and slammed home a fresh one. He body-checked an older, white-haired guy donned in a Kevlar vest. The impact sent the cop into one of his colleagues who was suited in full tactical gear just as a fresh volley of rounds chewed up the wall where the cop had been standing a moment earlier.
Bolan ignored the cops who shouted at him and turned their weapons, instead rolling away from them and coming up behind the grill of the police van. Bolan skirted around it and pressed toward the position of the guy yielding the rifle. The shooter still hadn’t seemed to notice Bolan—he acted like the cops had spotted him and were shooting back—so the Executioner’s fast approach went unchecked. By the time the hood realized his mistake Bolan had drawn close enough he couldn’t miss. And he didn’t. A trio of rounds perforated the man’s left chest, cutting through heart and lungs with a fury. The man’s rifle clattered to the pavement and he staggered backward under the impact, blood flowing freely from not only the wounds, but also the corners of his mouth. The enemy gunner, appearing to be a man of twenty or twenty-one, dropped to the ground and expired with a shudder.
By that time, the cops realized Bolan wasn’t shooting at them and that their real enemy had sprung an ambush that the Executioner, friend or foe, seemed bent on putting to rest before the party got wound up. And by all accounts it looked to them like the warrior was doing a damned good job of it.
Bolan swung the muzzle of the Beretta 93-R until he acquired target number two in his sights and delivered another volley of slugs. While they might have been subsonic, the rounds did the job of neutralizing the gunman. The guy triggered a burst skyward before dropping his weapon and hitting a wall. He fell in almost slow