He might be thinking in cop terms, more or less, violent death hardly something new in his profession, but Mack Bolan couldn’t help but feel the ghosts of slain American intelligence operatives—a young Marine and a missing civilian who had sounded an SOS to the FBI. The Executioner surveyed the industrial chemical plant from a wooded knoll, his surveillance post roughly forty yards due north of Gate One.
What, exactly, the dead had to do with Wolfe-Binder Chemicals along the Mississippi River he didn’t know. But eight bodies, that he knew of, were already attached to what he believed were several mysteries. He had never talked to the victims before they were murdered—or allegedly committed suicide—but the pieces of a sordid puzzle had been coming together for close to a week. And the mystery darkened with each passing hour.
Several situations begging large nasty questions had been brought to Bolan’s attention by Hal Brognola. His longtime friend was a high-ranking official at the Justice Department, but that was just the public face. In the shadow world of covert ops, Brognola oversaw Stony Man Farm, the high-tech lair in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that housed cyber supersleuths and the warriors who did the dirty bloody work in the field. Off the record, Brognola was liaison to the President of the United States who green-lighted missions for Bolan and the other warriors at the Farm.
This time was no exception.
Soon, Bolan was going to head south, armed with presidential carte blanche to find out if what the dead Marine had claimed about a classified base housing Arab fundamentalists was true.
But first, he had to unravel the mystery of a purported chemical weapons processing plant.
After six hours of watching and assessing, the soldier suspected it wasn’t as virginal as Justice Department and FBI agents had found it a few days earlier. At last count, Bolan had tallied four men in black fatigues armed with HK MP-5s with fixed laser sights and commando flashlights, and military-issue Beretta M-9s for side arms.
The mystery hardforce hovered near what he believed was the main plant, dead center of the compound, as if awaiting orders. On the surface the compound was what it advertised itself to be, but Bolan knew all about classified bases where what the public saw was cosmetic. There was a spider web of pipelines fanning out from processing central, a main generator, and a shack flanked by panels with valves and gauges. Add four two-story storage tanks, a football field stretch of concrete warehouses with forklifts, and all of it painted Wolfe-Binder as innocuous.
The stage job pretty much ended there.
It was the runway, a long asphalt strip to the west, that garnered most Bolan’s attention. The grounded black turboprop was a scaled-down, custom version of a C-130, the kind of bird he’d seen used by spooks who sometimes, in his grim experience, straddled both sides of the fence. Meaning they often pledged allegiance to something other than national security and patriotic duty.
Two armed shadows were at the lowered ramp, one of them on a radio, mouthing what Bolan assumed were orders. Unless he’d missed his guess, they were ready to load the cargo.
Suddenly, he saw two GMCs break from the west gate. They began a slow roll toward the cargo plane. A third matching ride remaining parked roughly midway down warehouse row. Other than hardforce activity, Bolan hadn’t spotted any telltale signs—civilian vehicles for instance—that would betray the presence of a graveyard shift. If and when the shooting starting the absence of an unarmed workforce would make his task that much easier. And, with no guards posted at any of the four gates, the compound had an eerie, dying feel to it.
It seemed everyone was bailing what he suspected was a sinking ship.
Either the federal tour had put nerves on edge, or, Bolan thought, whoever the hardforce swore allegiance to had decided the job was done and it was time to pull up stakes. He decided to hold out a little longer before he made his move, his thoughts weighty with the few facts about this mission as he had them.
Dead intel ops overseas and at home aside, there was the matter of White House leaks. And Brognola had recently discovered the President—at the risk of perhaps his job and legacy—had pulled executive rank and created a group called the Special Countermeasure Task Force. Their function ostensibly being logisticians, intel wizards, super bodyguards. That was merely riddle number one, but for Bolan’s money it would branch out into other darker areas.
Then—perhaps the kicker—there was the former colleague of the Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price. On the flight down in the Gulfstream to New Orleans, Bolan had received yet more disturbing news from Brognola. Two more suicides had dropped on the big Fed’s radar screen. One of them, a high-ranking CIA official, was believed to be the source of leaks that had, directly or indirectly, caused the executions of operatives overseas—unless, of course the Company man was a sacrificial lamb. But it was the dead man from the NSA who had contacted Price with a mixed bag of fact and rumor—about missing weapons of mass destruction and his suspicions about the SCTF—that knotted Bolan’s gut he was set to stumble into a deep serpent’s hole. Too much coincidence and convenient dead bodies were stacking up, and it reeked to Bolan of conspiracy.
One suicide he could buy, but three smacked of staging, given the grim mystery surrounding murders that were connected, he was sure, to some lurking hydra. Bodies were turning up in a timely fashion when it appeared truth was one songbird away. A suicide note and an alleged sordid lifestyle had been uncovered to smear a dead CIA deputy chief’s reputation, which, up to then, had been sterling.
A young Marine, decorated in the second Gulf war, with a wife and children, was assigned to Gitmo. He’d been transferred to the recently established and classified Camp Triangle. Returning home, armed with a nasty story about the torture and murder of detainees, he’d turned up in his vehicle—apparently on the way to the Justice Department—one 9 mm round through the head, gun in hand, a typed suicide note by the body.
The dead, for damn sure, Bolan thought, were talking to him. No witnesses, no clues, no rhyme or reason, other than someone wanted the truth silenced.
The fact the Man in the Oval Office wanted answers from outside the normal channels signaled to Bolan that perhaps he didn’t trust his new and vaunted miniorg of intel geniuses all of a sudden. And if they had a reach all the way down into Brazil, as Price’s former colleague had alluded…
However it all shook out, the Executioner had come to start the mission west of the Big Easy and easing out near Plantation Country with a bang.
He cradled the M-16/M-203 squad blaster, watching as four hardmen fell out of the GMCs. With an extended 40-round clip locked and loaded in the assault rifle, Bolan figured he’d hold back loading the M-203. He’d be able to choose from a bevy of 40 mm projectiles on his webbing—from fragmentation, buckshot, incendiary and armor-piercing high-explosive rounds—depending on numbers or if it looked like he needed to pack extra punch for a steel door or perhaps set off the cargo in a shock attack. He’d make the call on the spot.
For quiet kills the Beretta 93-R was snug in shoulder rigging, its muzzle extended with a sound suppressor. A commando dagger was sheathed on his right shin for the bloodier option of a slashed throat or a blade through the ribs, into the heart. On his right hip rode the big stainless-steel .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, butt aimed at twelve o’clock for a left-handed draw, just in case he needed to go double-fisted with both side arms in a pinch.
Whatever else he’d need—weapons, gear and sat link—was stowed on the waiting Gulfstream being sat on by two of three Farm blacksuits. The odd commando out was in the vicinity, ready to ride in with the SUV rental once the soldiers put in a call on the radio.
He was all set to go through the front door, but for what? he wondered.
Watching the north, east and west ends of the plant, Bolan felt more satisfied the longer he waited that once he breached the razor-topped chain link fence he would have clear sailing on the grounds. Six halogen lights topped around the fencing weren’t much in terms of illuminating the perimeter. Warpaint over exposed skin to match combat blacksuit, Bolan, a master of stealth and using the night