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CHAPTER TWO

Two Days Earlier

Winchester Regional Airport

Frederick County, Virginia

“I could have driven down,” Bolan said to Jack Grimaldi after their handshake on the tarmac.

“What, and miss the pleasure of my company?” Grimaldi replied, smiling.

“Point taken. Any idea what we’re looking at?”

Grimaldi shook his head, saying, “I got a call to show up here and prep the chopper. End of story.”

Sitting on the helipad in front of them, the chopper was a Fairchild Hiller FH-1100 four-seater, powered by a Rolls-Royce M-250 turboshaft engine. It was small, as helicopters went, just under twenty-eight feet long and nine feet high, with a maximum takeoff weight of 2,750 pounds. It cruised at 122 miles per hour, with a service ceiling of 14,200 feet and a range of 348 miles. It was enough to make the eighty-odd-mile trip to Stony Man Farm and back four times.

“I’ve done the checklist,” Grimaldi said, “if you want to get on board.”

Bolan secured his carry-on behind the copilot’s seat, then settled in and buckled up, donning the headphones that would be required for any kind of normal conversation once Grimaldi switched on the chopper’s engine. The soldier’s old friend was at his side a moment later, strapped into the pilot’s seat, scanning the perimeter and checking gauges, engaging the clutch switch, contacting the tower in preparation for liftoff. Once they were airborne, Bolan settled back and let himself appreciate the scenery.

Winchester was located in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Blue Ridge range. They would be following the path of Skyline Drive, a 105-mile road running the length of Shenandoah National Park, until they reached Stony Man Farm and set the chopper down some ten miles north of Waynseboro.

It would be safe to land because they were expected. Uninvited drop-ins didn’t happen at the Farm, the secret base of the nation’s top antiterrorist squads—at least not twice for any given trespasser. Tall fences posted with specific warnings kept the normal hikers out. Those who arrived with mischief on their minds—a rare occurrence—would be taken into custody for questioning, all depending on the circumstances. Any aircraft that attempted to land on the property without advance approval would be blasted from the sky by FIM-92 Stinger missiles or shredded in flight by M134 Miniguns spewing four thousand 7.62 mm NATO rounds per minute.

It was serious business if you were on the receiving end.

Bolan normally drove to the Farm, and often spent his downtime there if he was in-country between assignments, but this time he had been mopping up a little something in St. Louis when the summons came from Hal Brognola, routing him to Winchester, where Jack Grimaldi waited with the whirlybird. Brognola would be flying down from Washington—had likely reached the Farm ahead of them, in fact—with information on a rush job he had marked for handling by the Executioner.

It could be anything, as Bolan knew from long experience. He didn’t try to second-guess Brognola based on what was in the news from Asia, Africa, wherever. Crises-making headlines were normally covered by established law enforcement or intelligence agencies, while Stony Man tried to stay ahead of the curve, defusing situations that were working up to detonation or pursuing fugitives who had outwitted every other operative sent to bag them. Stony Man—and, by extension, Bolan—was the court of last resort, employed when following “The Book” had failed and nothing else would do except a hellfire visit from a fighting man who specialized in neutralizing human predators.

So it was going to be bad. He knew that going in, and focused on the woodland scenery below instead of trying to imagine just how bad it might turn out to be. Sufficient unto each day was the evil it contained.

Amen.

A line of white-tailed deer crossing Skyline Drive paused to glance up at the helicopter passing overhead before they bolted, seeking cover in the forest on the other side. Another half mile farther on, two motorcycles rode in tandem, northbound, trailing vapor from their tailpipes in the chilly morning air.

The flight from Winchester took forty minutes, give or take, approximately half the time it would have taken Bolan to drive down from Washington once he had cleared the capital itself. He liked the drive, relaxing in whatever vehicle he happened to be using at the moment, but if Brognola wanted Grimaldi on the new assignment that meant there would be more flying in their future, maybe international.

No problem.

He was up to date on his inoculations, kept himself informed on all the major hot spots of the world and could absorb whatever job-specific information might be necessary as he went along. Specifics varied, but his task remained essentially the same: apply force to some selected enemy or obstacle until said enemy or obstacle had been eliminated. Bolan rarely took prisoners, obeyed no rules beyond a code of conduct that was self-imposed and didn’t worry about finding evidence to build a case in court.

The jobs reserved for him had gone beyond that stage of civilized behavior. Bolan’s specialty was going for the jugular and hanging on until his enemies no longer had an ounce of fight or life left in them. Whether it was sniping from a mile away or fighting hand to hand, he was a master of his craft.

Thirty-seven minutes out, Grimaldi raised the Farm by radio and confirmed that they were cleared for touchdown at the heliport behind the rambling farmhouse that served as headquarters for the Stony Man teams. Once they were cleared, he veered away from Skyline Drive, flew over treetops and then swept across cultivated fields that marked the Farm itself.

It was a farm, in fact, producing crops in season, but the “farm hands” were selected from elite groups of the U.S. military, Special Forces, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and the Marine Special Operations Regiment, as well as the occasional police officer or FBI agent. They worked a short rotation under oath-bound vows of secrecy, dressed in civilian garb but never without weapons close at hand. Those assigned to watch the gates were courteous but firm with wayward travelers. And if a prowler managed to intrude, well, courtesy was no longer an issue. On occasion these farm hands, also known as blacksuits, provided backup to Bolan.

The soldier saw the farmhouse now. It felt like coming home, but any sanctuary that he found at Stony Man was temporary. As Grimaldi hovered for his landing, Bolan wondered where his War Everlasting would take him next.

* * *

STEPPING FROM THE chopper in a whirl of rotor wash, Bolan saw Barbara Price, Aaron Kurtzman and Hal Brognola waiting for him on the far side of the helipad. The big Fed had begun to show his age, but kept in shape with a determined regimen he cheerfully despised. Price was drop-dead gorgeous; no change there. Kurtzman—“the Bear,” to friends—was in the wheelchair where a bullet to the spine had left him when Stony Man’s security was seriously breached.

They all knew Bolan too well for the standard handshake ritual, reduced in Brognola’s case to a nod as Jack Grimaldi joined them after shutting down the copter. “You made good time,” he observed.

“Tailwind,” Grimaldi offered with a crooked smile.

“Something to eat or...?”

“We might as well get to it,” Bolan said.

Brognola nodded and then led the way inside. They got a “Hey, guys!” from Akira Tokaido, the youngest member of the Farm’s cybernetic team, who passed them in a hallway, doing something with a tablet.

There was room for all five of them in the spacious elevator; it was a short ride to the basement. Kurtzman led them to the War Room, his wheelchair moving silently toward a door with a keypad. He keyed in a short sequence of numbers and gained entry.

Inside, a conference table with a dozen seats stood waiting. Brognola went for the single chair at the far end, where a 152-inch flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall behind and above him. Bolan took the chair to the big Fed’s left, facing Price across the table, with Grimaldi at his side. Kurtzman rolled to the table’s other end, where a keyboard controlled the room’s lights and the giant TV.

“We’ve got a problem in New York,” Brognola said by way of introduction. “There’s a drug war coming, and it has already claimed three civilian lives.”

Bolan decided not to ask why it was their problem instead of the DEA’s or the NYPD’s. Brognola liked to set the stage, and as he spoke, the giant screen behind him came alive with news footage of bodies on a sidewalk stained with blood, two uniformed policemen grappling with a Chinese man who tried to bull his way past them, tears streaming down his face.

“Mott Street,” Brognola said. “Manhattan’s Chinatown, two days ago. The target was a member of the Wah Ching Triad, who was carrying a key of heroin. In one shot there, you see some of it on the sidewalk.”

Bolan saw it, like a sugar dusting on the sidewalk mixed with blood. A pastry recipe from Hell.

“The shooters, we believe, are from an Afghan outfit that’s been growing since the DEA took down the Noorzai organization in 2008.”

Bolan knew the basics on Haji Bashir Noorzai, the widely touted, widely hated Asian counterpart of Medellín’s late Pablo Escobar. He’d battled Russian forces in the Reagan years and then served as mayor of Kandahar while selling weapons to the Taliban regime, then switched to aid the U.S. after 9/11, handing over tons of small arms and antiaircraft missiles to the CIA. Since then he’d made a fortune smuggling heroin, largely ignored—some said protected—by America’s intelligence community. Finally convicted in 2008, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, leaving the remnants of his empire up for grabs.

“Who’s filling in for him?” Bolan asked.

“It’s a whole new crew,” Brognola said. “The man on top, we understand, is one Khalil Nazari.” Cue a string of mug shots, candid photos and a strip of video that showed a swarthy, mustached man emerging from a Humvee, flanked by bodyguards. “He’s forty-five years old and everything a drug lord ought to be. We all know what’s been going on with heroin since the invasion.”

More bad news. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, regional warlords had financed their guerrilla war with opium, then kept it up with CIA support as they struggled to fill the power vacuum left by Soviet withdrawal in 1989. The Taliban had dabbled in drug trafficking, producing a bumper crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999, then collaborated with the United Nations to suppress the trade, encouraged by a $43 million “eradication reward” from Washington in early 2001. Everything changed that September, and the warlords had returned with a vengeance, pushing opium and heroin production to the point that drugs accounted for 52 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and an estimated 80 percent of the world’s smack supply. The Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan had eclipsed Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle in drug exports, and Bolan knew the triads weren’t exactly thrilled by that development.

In fact, it was enough to start a war.

And now, apparently, it had.

Brognola forged ahead, saying, “Nazari’s front man in New York, we’re pretty sure, is this guy.” Cue a younger thug on-screen. “Wasef Kamran, age thirty-one. Supposedly provided information on bin Laden to the Company, but nothing that panned out.”

“So they’re protecting him?” Grimaldi asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Brognola responded, “but I couldn’t rule it out, either.”

“Terrific.”

“On the triad side,” the big Fed said, pressing ahead, “their ‘dragon head’ or ‘mountain master,’ as they like to call him, is a character called Ma Lam Chan.” More video and still shots on the giant flat screen. “Home for him is Hong Kong, where it seems he’s reached some kind of an accommodation with the PRC authorities.”

Bolan translated in his head. The People’s Republic of China had reclaimed the teeming offshore island of Hong Kong in 1997, after something like 150 years of British colonial rule. Despite Washington’s fears that the Reds would wreak havoc on Hong Kong’s thriving capitalist economy, little had changed overall. The worst problems suffered so far had been unexpected outbreaks of disease, each claiming several hundred lives. Meanwhile, cash registers kept ringing and the drugs kept flowing to the West.

“Chan’s guy in New York—” pictures changed on the screen once more “— is Paul Mei-Lun. I’m never sure about his rank. He’d either be a ‘red pole,’ which is an enforcer, or a liaison officer, which they call a ‘straw sandal.’ Take your pick. Either way, he’s in charge on our end and he’s squared off against the Afghans.”

“Deport him,” Grimaldi suggested. “What’s the problem, if you know he’s dirty?”

“That’s the problem,” Brognola replied. “Somehow he came into Manhattan squeaky-clean, at least on paper. He has all the proper documents from Beijing’s end, and State saw no good reason to reject his entry visa. Now he’s here and all that DEA can say is that they’re working on a case against him. There’s nothing solid they can hang a warrant on.”

“Homeland Security?” Bolan suggested. “If the Reds have bent the rules somehow to smooth his way—”

“There’s still no proof of that. And while we’re working on it, Chinatown’s about to be ground zero in a war that’s making no allowance for civilians.”

“So, we’ll be putting out the fire,” Bolan observed.

“For starters,” Brognola agreed. “Beyond that, we should think about discouraging round two, three, four, whatever. Make them gun-shy, somehow. As for details...”

Bolan nodded, thinking that was where he came in.

* * *

THE SOLDIER’S “HOME” at Stony Man was modest; nothing but a bedroom with a private bath. There were a few books on a solitary shelf, mostly suggested reading from Kurtzman, a small TV with DVD player and a laptop with a DSL connection. When his downtime found him there, it was enough.

The only ghosts in residence were those that traveled with him—inescapable.

Bolan was working on the laptop now, absorbing details on his adversaries that had been archived for future reference. He started with the Wah Ching Triad, which had surfaced in the 1970s after a rift developed in its parent syndicate, the Sun Yee On. Ironically, that translated to New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild, a mouthful of nonsense describing China’s largest triad “family” with some sixty thousand members worldwide. The Wah Ching faction had spun off on its own, as criminal gangs often did, and had survived the shakedown battles to establish an empire of sorts built on gambling and loan-sharking in Hong Kong and Macau, plus exports of heroin from the Golden Triangle to Canada, the States and Western Europe. Prior to the Afghan incursion on their turf, they’d fought a bloody war with soldiers from Mexico’s Juárez Cartel to keep a foothold in Texas.

In most respects, the Wah Ching was a traditional triad, with tattooed members who took the usual thirty-six vows prescribed since sometime in the eighteenth century. Their structure was familiar, from the Dragon Head down to the “Vanguard”—operations officer—and “White Paper Fan”—administrator—down to the oath-bound members known for some reason as “forty-niners,” and the uninitiated prospects called “blue lanterns.” Up and down the chain, each member of the crime family—an estimated six thousand in all—was pledged to sacrifice himself if need be, for the greater good.

Make that the greater evil.

Their Afghan rivals, on the other hand, had no such rigid structure or tradition spanning centuries. Theirs was a tribal sort of operation, where the man in charge had proved himself by ruthless violence, eliminating his competitors, making examples of them to the world at large. The man in charge, Khalil Nazari, rarely left Afghanistan. In fact, he rarely left his fortress compound in the desert west of Kandahar, where he lived under double guard by his own thugs and mercenaries from a private outfit also known for its extensive contracts with the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Call him untouchable...unless he could be lured out into the open somehow for an unexpected meeting with the Executioner.

It was something to think about, but in the meantime there was New York City, where Wasef Kamran ran the show for Nazari, moving in on Wah Ching territory with no apparent concern for collateral damage. If they’d just been killing one another, Bolan might have been content to let the bloodbath run its course, but that was not an option in a metro area with twenty million innocent bystanders.

The Farm’s computer files contained whatever information was available on the Wah Ching Triad and the Nazari syndicate from sources including the DEA, FBI, NYPD, Interpol, Britain’s MI-5, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Afghanistan’s State Intelligence Agency, the Khadamat-e Aetla’at-e Dawlati, or KHAD. Some of it was contradictory, and some was out of date, but the archives showed Bolan faces, some with home addresses, and gave him directions to known or suspected syndicate properties. There would be no shortage of targets, and the soldier guessed he would find others as he went along, by one means or another.

The key was focus, and accepting tough realities. He’d never stop the trafficking in drugs from Southeast Asia or the Golden Crescent, obviously. Wiping out the Wah Ching’s membership was clearly an impossibility, and taking down Nazari at his Afghan stronghold posed a list of difficulties that included forcing Bolan to contend with U.S. troops. When those ideas were taken off the table, what remained?

His brand of blitzkrieg, for a start, refined in battles with the Mafia, with criminal cartels and terrorists around the world. The opposition would be tough, determined, and they’d pull out all the stops to keep from losing any ground, but neither side had any practical experience with the phenomenon Hal Brognola once labeled the “Bolan Effect.” Long before some White House ghostwriter dreamed up the buzz words “shock and awe,” the Executioner had honed those methods to a razor’s edge and taught his enemies to spend their final hours in fear.

Unfortunately, humans being what they were, that was a lesson that required unending repetition. Each new wave of predators seemed to believe they were immune to repercussions for their actions. There were always new ones to replace the fallen, endlessly recycling common themes of plunder, savagery and exploitation. They were doomed by ignorance and arrogance to replicate the errors of their predecessors, until someone knocked them down with force sufficient enough to ensure they would never rise again.

Someone like Bolan, who would do the job because he could.

* * *

BOLAN WAS STRIPPING for a shower when a rapping on his door stopped him. Shirtless and half expecting Price, he moved to let her in and was surprised to find Grimaldi standing there.

“Bad time?” the pilot asked.

“Just washing up,” Bolan replied. “It can wait.” He stood aside for his friend, then shut the door and slipped his shirt back on, leaving it loose, unbuttoned.

“I was thinking we should talk about tomorrow,” Grimaldi said. “New York, that is.”

“Okay.”

“I’m thinking we can fly directly there,” Grimaldi said, “unless you need to stop somewhere beforehand.”

“That’ll work,” Bolan agreed. “I’ll borrow what I need out of the armory.”

“Newark’s the closest airport, if you want to call about a ride.”

“Will do. You want a car?”

Grimaldi thought about it, then shook his head. “I’ll stick to wings for now. If we need a second vehicle for anything, I’ll pick one up along the way.”

“I expect New York won’t be the end of it,” Bolan warned.

“That’s the feeling I get, too. While you’re redecorating Chinatown, I’ll make arrangement for a bird with greater range. The Feds have got some business jets they’ve confiscated. I can probably get one of them on loan.”

“Flying in style.”

“The only way to go. Depending on our final destination, there’s a chance I can finesse some kind of gunship.”

“We can wait and see on that. It might be overkill.”

“Just food for thought. I’d rather have some rockets and a twenty-millimeter I don’t need than wish I had ’em when they’re nowhere to be found.”

“You’ve got a point,” Bolan agreed.

“So, any thoughts on where to start?”

“Find an informant if I can, first thing,” Bolan replied. “If one side or the other has a shipment due, I’ll try to take it down and go from there. Play one against the other if it feels right. Rattle cages. Blow their houses down.”

“Same old, same old.”

“Hey, if it works—”

“Don’t fix it,” Grimaldi said, finishing the thought for Bolan. “Right. I hear you. Want to get a beer or three?”

“I thought I’d catch up on my sleep.”

“Okay. I might try that myself,” Grimaldi said. “A little change of pace. What time tomorrow?”

“Six?”

“I’m there.”

Alone once more, Bolan shrugged off his shirt and had one leg out of his jeans before the knocking was repeated. Opening the door again, he felt his frown turn upside-down.

“All clear?” Price asked.

“Good timing.”

“Not so good,” she said, brushing past Bolan. “Jack was waiting for the elevator. I almost ordered him to wipe the smirk off his face.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean—”

She cut him off, saying, “You didn’t have to dress all fancy for me.”

Bolan glanced down at his blue jeans. “These old things? Just something I threw on.”

“You want to take them off?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“But listen, if Jack—”

“Let’s just pretend Jack wasn’t here.”

Their intimate relationship was not a secret, in the strictest sense. They didn’t advertise it; tried to be discreet within the limits posed by their surroundings and the strict security imposed at Stony Man. The rooms weren’t monitored, but there were CCTV cameras in the corridors, as well as on the grounds outside. No one would question what went on between Bolan and Price, or try to second-guess them. They were warriors seeking solace, and if something more should come of it...

But nothing would.

Their lives were fixed in place, at least as far as Bolan was concerned. While Price might feel she’d had enough of Stony Man one day, might pull the pin and look for something else to do in government or in the private sector, Bolan could not walk away into a new career where everything was rosy and the storm clouds never gathered overhead.

That life was lost to him, a distant, faded memory. His father’s faulty choices had evoked disaster and determined Bolan’s path, an irredeemable diversion from what might have been. He’d never own a house, with or without a picket fence. Would never watch a child or two grow up, go off to school, get married, settle into a career. So what? A soldier learned that it was folly missing things that were denied him, things he’d never had.

What Bolan had, instead, was Stony Man and Barbara Price. He had a small but solid group of comrades who would never let him down—unless, of course, the good of many should outweigh the needs of one. That was a risk he had accepted willingly and would abide by to the bitter end.

And in the meantime, Bolan had a chance to make a difference. He’d made a difference in countless lives, nearly too often to recall. Someday his luck would turn, and he was ready for that, too.

Like the lady said, a happy ending was a story left unfinished.

Nobody got out of life alive.

“Sorry?” Bolan was aware of Price saying something, but he’d missed it.

“I said that you look like you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Nope,” he assured her. “I’m right here. With you.”

“Prove it,” she replied, pulling the zipper on her jumpsuit down around waist level.

“I aim to please,” he said.

“And since you’re a marksman, hit me with your best shot.”

Time enough to put the war on hold for one night and remember in the morning what he would be fighting for.

“I was about to take a shower,” Bolan told her.

“I could scrub your back or something.”

“It’s a deal.”

They moved together toward the bathroom, shedding clothes and apprehensions on the way. Tomorrow was as distant as forever and would take care of itself.