Terrorist Dispatch (Executioner)

by Don Pendleton

  By the time Bolan got to Newark, he had a sequence of events in mind. It was a plan of sorts, but flexible, bearing in mind that things would start to shift and change the moment that he squeezed a trigger for the first time. Nothing would be static, much less guaranteed. The battle would unfold, and Bolan would be swept along with it, correcting course whenever he could manage to, otherwise going with the flow until it crested and the losers drowned in blood.

  It was familiar territory. Names and faces changed, but otherwise it felt like coming home.

  2

  East Village, Manhattan

  The hub of Ukrainian culture in New York City—known for decades as “Little Ukraine”—was located in the neighborhood of East Village. An estimated sixty thousand immigrants inhabited the area immediately after World War II, and while that population dispersed throughout Manhattan’s five boroughs over time, two-thirds of the city’s eighty thousand ethnic Ukrainians still remained in the old neighborhood, with its familiar markets, restaurants and shops, dwelling in the shadows cast by All Saints Ukrainian Orthodox Church and St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church.

  Like any other group of new arrivals, from the first European colonists to the latest Hispanic and Afro-Caribbean waves, the vast majority of Ukrainian immigrants were hardworking, law-abiding individuals with nothing on their minds except adapting to the land of opportunity. And just as certainly, a small minority were criminals at home, maintaining that tradition in the country they had adopted.

  Mack Bolan had his sights fixed on that clique, as he launched his campaign in Little Ukraine on a crisp autumn evening, around the dinner hour.

  His target, chosen from the list Hal Brognola had provided, was a restaurant on East Sixth Street, halfway down toward Avenue B. The place was called The Hungry Wolf, known as a favored hangout for the thugs who served Stepan Melnyk. Bolan’s drive-by recon had revealed that the restaurant was closed to walk-in diners for a private party. Two men on the door guaranteed that no tourists wandered in by accident.

  Was it a celebration of the carnage in DC? Some kind of session called to lay out future strategy? Or did the outfit gather periodically to let off steam after a hard week of extortion in the neighborhood?

  No matter. They were in for a surprise, regardless of the reason for their banquet.

  Bolan perched atop a seven-story office building opposite The Hungry Wolf, with a clear view inside the restaurant through two large plate-glass windows. Peering through the Leupold sight mounted on his Remington bolt-action rifle, he felt almost like a guest invited to the party, moving in among the four-and six-man tables, touching-close but unseen by the men whose night he meant to spoil.

  For some, it would be their last night on Earth.

  The Model 700 was not designed with war in mind, though Remington did sell a special “Entry Package” model for urban police departments, and the US Army had adopted an altered version, dubbed the M24 Sniper Weapon System in military speak, for long-range use in combat. Bolan’s civilian version held four .300 Winchester Magnum rounds, one in the chamber and three in a round-hinged floorplate magazine. Its barrel measured twenty-four inches and could send a 220-grain bullet downrange at a velocity of 2,850 feet per second, striking with 3,908 foot-pounds of cataclysmic energy.

  All good news for a sniper on the go.

  Bolan had been in place awhile, spotting the restaurant’s arrivals as they entered, scanning faces already seated at tables when he took his post. Stepan Melnyk was nowhere to be seen, but Dmytro Levytsky was making the rounds, slapping shoulders and laughing at jokes from his soldiers, here and there bending to whisper in ears. A maître d’ in a tuxedo loitered on the sidelines, muttering to waiters as they passed, dispersing drinks and appetizers. No one on the staff looked happy to be there, but they were working quietly, efficiently, focused entirely on the task at hand, avoiding eye contact with any of their customers.

  Bolan did not plan a sustained attack, his first time out, but he had four spare cartridges lined up beside him on the rooftop for a quick reload if time allowed. The shooting would be loud, and there’d be no mistaking it for anything mundane, such as a vehicle’s backfire in the street. Once he began, there’d be no stopping until Bolan disengaged and fled the scene, hopefully well ahead of any armed pursuit.

  He scoped the two hardmen on the entrance first, decided not to kill them yet, and let the Leupold scope take him inside The Hungry Wolf. He felt like one himself, at times, when it was time to thin the herd of savages who preyed on so-called civilized society. He wasn’t bloodthirsty and hadn’t killed out of anger since the first strike that avenged his family, many years ago, but there was no denying that eliminating vicious predators lifted a weight from Bolan’s soul, if only temporarily.

  So many goons, so little time.

  He chose a laughing face at random, framed it with the Leupold’s reticle, inhaled and let half of the breath escape as he began the trigger squeeze.

  * * *

  AT FIRST, DIMO LEVYTSKY thought some stupid tweaker high on meth had lost his mind and tossed a rock or something through the broad front window of The Hungry Wolf. It took another second for his brain to wrap around the fact that Trofim Kulik’s bald head had exploded, spraying blood and brains in all directions as he toppled forward, headless, into his eggplant mezhivo.

  Even as the others at his table were recoiling, reaching for their sidearms, Levytsky saw a second bullet crack the window, this one bringing down a goodly portion of the clean plate glass. Round two drilled Marko Shestov’s pudgy neck and almost took his head off, severing the arteries and loosing crimson jets that might have made Levytsky laugh in other circumstances, thinking of a whacked-out Rain Bird sprinkler.

  But Levytsky wasn’t laughing as he hit the carpet, reaching up to push over his table, which gave him at least some flimsy cover, while his free hand fumbled for the Colt .380 Mustang XSP pistol he carried tucked beneath his belt, around in back. It wasn’t easy, going for a quick draw with his right arm underneath him, as he was scared to rise and make a target of himself.

  The rifle’s third shot—it could only be a sniper, the Ukrainian had concluded—made a wet sound slapping into flesh, as more voices raised in snarls and curses from the restaurant around him. He could hear somebody puking, hoped it was a waiter or the maître d’ and not one of his soldiers publicly embarrassing himself.

  Levytsky had no idea where the sniper was firing from, but since his lookouts on the street weren’t firing back, he took for granted that it had to be someplace high up and out of pistol range. Or maybe his two spotters, skinny Sasha and fat Illia, had already split, fleeing to save themselves. It was a damned pain in the ass finding decent help these days.

  Levytsky gave up on the Colt, useless for any kind of long-range work, and fished out his cell phone instead. Job one was to inform his boss of what was happening, in case the rifleman was part of something bigger, threatening the brotherhood. He hit speed dial and waited while a fourth shot took out half the second street-side window, drilling someone who began to howl in agony, as if a real-life hungry wolf was gnawing on his leg.

  It rang once at the other end, then twice, three times, and someone picked up midway through the fourth ring, growling, “Yeah?” Levytsky knew he should have recognized the voice but couldn’t place it with the world collapsing all around him.

  “Put the boss on!” he commanded.

  “Who is this?”

  “Dimo, you dumb shit! Go get him! Now!”

  “Okay.”

  Levytsky thought the shooting might have stopped—maybe the sniper figured out he ought to cut and run—but then a fifth shot came, just as a deep, familiar voice came on the line, asking him, “Dimo? What the hell?”

  “They’re killing us down here!” he said. “You hear this?”

  Levytsky raised his cell phone
aloft, above the capsized table, actually praying for a sixth shot now, so that Stepan Melnyk wouldn’t mistake him for a drunken ass. The shot came, answering his silent prayer, but not as he had expected.

  When the phone exploded in his hand, it sent a hard jolt all the way to the Ukrainian’s shoulder, as if some big ape had struck his forearm with a baseball bat. He yelped and yanked his arm back, half expecting that his wrist would be a bloody stump, but all five fingers wiggled at him when he tried them. Nothing broken, no blood on his hand or sleeve.

  It was a freaking miracle—or damned good shooting on the sniper’s part.

  Huddled on the floor behind his fragile barricade, Levytsky asked himself, who was this guy?

  * * *

  BOLAN LEFT HIS brass behind when he departed from the rooftop, one shell anchoring a slip of paper to prevent a breeze from snatching it away before somebody found the sniper’s nest. That done, the Remington tucked more or less beneath the knee-length raincoat he wore, the Executioner cleared the rooftop access door and hurried down the service stairs to reach the back entrance to the ground floor.

  Two minutes later, he was back inside the Mazda CX-5, left waiting for him in the alley behind the office block, and rolling out of there. Bolan turned away from Sixth Street without passing by The Hungry Wolf to judge the impact of his rifle fire. He’d killed five men and used one round to spook Levytsky when he’d raised a cell phone from behind his upturned table, either snapping photos on the fly or letting someone on the line hear Bolan’s shots to make a point. The raised sleeve of the underboss’s sky blue jacket had been unmistakable.

  One target down, a stone tossed into Stepan Melnyk’s pond, and Bolan knew the ripples would be spreading even now. His next mark, chosen at the same time he had picked The Hungry Wolf, was the Flame, a nightclub that advertised Ukrainian cuisine, a wide range of flavored vodkas and a waitstaff dressed in traditional peasant garb. The Flame’s backroom casino was not advertised in any guidebook, telephone directory or tourist flyer, but the players tracked it down by word of mouth. It was, of course, illegal in Manhattan, but it stayed in operation somehow, almost certainly because police were greased to look the other way.

  Bolan did a quick recon on the place and found its two back doors: one for deliveries of various supplies, the other for a hasty exit from the gaming room, in case a miracle occurred and law-enforcement agents came to raid the joint. Both doors were locked from the inside, of course, but that was no impediment.

  For this job, Bolan switched out Remingtons, taking the 12-gauge with its 7-round magazine and an eighth round in the chamber, three deer slugs to start with, and the other five double-aught buck. It was a guaranteed door-buster and man-stopper. He had the Glock for backup, in a shoulder rig, and three spare magazines.

  He wore a baseball cap and kept his head down for the camera out back, as there was no point in giving anything away this early in the game. Bolan took out the raid door’s hinges first, two one-ounce chunks of rifled lead shearing through masonry and metal. By the time he blew the dead bolt out, the door was ready to collapse, and all he had to do was stand aside.

  The shotgun blasts had sparked a panic in the Flame’s casino, setting off a stampede toward the main saloon and dining room. That suited Bolan perfectly. He didn’t want civilians in the line of fire, if there were Melnyk soldiers on the premises.

  He crossed the threshold in a rush, through gun smoke, following the shotgun’s lead. A handful of the nightspot’s well-dressed gamblers were jammed together at the normal exit, those who had preceded them causing a hubbub in the main part of the club as they ran through, men babbling, women squealing out of fright. Behind them, shepherding the stragglers, stood two thugs with pistols in their hands.

  Security.

  The man on Bolan’s left noticed him first and raised his shiny automatic pistol, hoping he’d have time to aim. The Remington was faster, perforating the goon with buckshot from a range of forty feet. The guy was airborne in a millisecond, hurtling backward, slamming hard against a wall and sliming it with blood as he went down.

  His partner broke for cover, squeezing off a hasty shot that wound up somewhere in the ceiling, diving for the roulette table. Bolan dropped and met him with another charge of buckshot as he landed on the carpet, firing through the open space between the table’s heavy, ornate legs.

  Bad move.

  Counting the seconds in his head, waiting for other shooters to appear, Bolan spotted a satchel underneath the dice table immediately to his right. He checked it—empty—and began collecting wads of cash the panicked players had abandoned in their flight. A second table added to the haul. Not great. That made it something like eleven grand, but it would help as stage-setting and added to Bolan’s war chest.

  He was all about sustainable campaigns.

  No slip of paper was left behind this time. He didn’t want to overdo it, and he was swiftly running out of time. Out front, somebody would be on the phone, likely to Stepan Melnyk rather than the cops, and syndicate response time might top that of the police.

  A moment later he was out, jogging to reach his car and get away from there, seeking the next stop on his list.

  * * *

  “SAY WHAT, AGAIN?”

  Stepan Melnyk could not believe his ears. He had to hear Dimo Levytsky say it one more time.

  “The guy left a note, up on the roof he shot from, across the street. Our blue friend let me see it.”

  “So? What does it say?” Melnyk demanded.

  “It’s printed in Russian, like on some kind of computer. I could read it pretty well, though.”

  “Dimo.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I asked you—”

  “Right, Boss. It says, ‘You are finished in New York.’”

  “Say that again.”

  Levytsky repeated it, his voice gone wary, as if he feared Melnyk would blame him for the insulting note’s content. No worries, though, on that account. Melnyk already knew exactly who to blame.

  “Goddamned Alexey.”

  “I don’t know, Boss.”

  “Eh? You don’t know what?”

  “Um, well, I know we’re having trouble with him, but it seems odd, Brusilov leaving a note like that. I mean, it points right to him, like he’s signing off on it. Now the cops’ve got it, and they’re bound to pull him in.”

  “He won’t mind that,” Melnyk replied. “They question him each time a babushka falls down and skins her knee. He’s used to it. I bet he even likes it. Big, tough man.”

  “But Boss—”

  “This way, he rubs our nose in it, knowing the NYPD can’t do squat. They won’t find any CSI crap on the paper, bet your life on that. He skates on this for sure, unless we hold him to account for it.”

  “So, that’s a war, then.”

  “Five of our guys dead? You’re goddamn right it’s war. We gotta—” Melnyk’s other line distracted him, a little cricket chirping in his ear. “Hold on a sec. I got another call.”

  He didn’t recognize the number on his cell phone’s LED display. Melnyk answered, a curt “Who’s this?”

  “Me, Boss.” It was Arkady Cisyk, from the Flame club.

  “Where you calling from?”

  “The phone in the pawn shop, down the street.”

  “The hell?”

  “We got hit, Boss. Some guy comes in the back, drops Taras and Dimal, then grabs up some cash off the crap tables and splits.”

  Melnyk’s mind focused on the money first. “How much did he get?”

  “I don’t know,” Arkady said. “The place was pretty full. This time of night it could be ten, twelve, maybe fifteen grand.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Another thought struck Melnyk. “Did he leave a note?”

  “A what?”

 
“A note. You know, a piece a paper. Writing on it? Like a freaking note?”

  “No. Was he supposed to?”

  Melnyk bit his tongue. Dealing with idiots was like Chinese water torture. “Are the cops there?” he inquired.

  “Just rolling up. I better get back.”

  “Play it smart, eh?”

  “Sure, Boss. I went out for smokes and didn’t see anything. Don’t worry. I have it covered, Boss.”

  Cisyk broke the link and Melnyk switched back to his other line. “Dimo?”

  “Right here.”

  “Some prick just took down the Flame club.”

  “Holy shit! Another sniper?”

  “This one walked in, smoked a couple of the boys and robbed the tables.”

  “Son of a bitch! That Brusilov. What are we going to do?”

  “Chill out, right now,” Melnyk replied. “And then start planning for a trip to Brighton Beach.”

  * * *

  BOLAN’S HAUL WAS thirteen thousand dollars and some change. Not bad for six or seven minutes’ work, plus something like two dollars’ worth of shotgun shells. So far, he had reduced Stepan Melnyk’s reserve of troops by seven men, subtracted from an estimate of fifty. Bolan thought it was a decent start, and he was far from finished for the evening.

  The Melnyk outfit would be going hard soon, locking down while Stepan mounted an offensive of his own, but Bolan thought he still had time for one more decent strike, at least, before he shifted to the second phase of his New York campaign. He had already chosen from the list of targets Brognola had provided, picking a whorehouse Melnyk operated on East Ninth Street.

  It was a short drive—everything in the East Village was close to everything else—and he parked a half block from the target, between a deli and a Mexican taquería.

  The sky was drizzling when he stepped out of the Mazda, perfect cover for the raincoat he was wearing, which in turn concealed his Colt AR-15. The carbine was a semiautomatic version of the classic M16, identical in every way except for the omission of selective fire. The one he’d purchased was the “Sporter” model, with an adjustable stock and twenty-inch barrel, loaded with a STANAG magazine containing thirty 5.56 mm NATO rounds. It couldn’t match the parent rifle’s full-auto cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, but the Executioner didn’t plan on tackling an army division.