Killing Trade

by Don Pendleton

  “Gearing up? For what?”

  “We’re taking the armored personnel carrier in. I don’t know what you think you can do, but it’s going to be over with pretty soon.”

  “You can’t do that,” Bolan told him. “They’ll cut you apart.”

  “Look, Cooper,” Pendergast said disdainfully, “you may have some high-powered backers in Washington, or whatever the hell, but we aren’t exactly amateurs here. Stay out of my way. I don’t have the authority to warn you off this site, but you don’t have authority over me, either.” He turned on his heel and walked away to confer with some of the officers nearby.

  Bolan didn’t waste time trying to argue. He made for the APC, a six-wheeled tanklike truck with no turret. Gun ports were placed strategically on the sides and in front. The rear loading doors were open. Bolan identified himself to the personnel there and waited while they conferred with Pendergast by radio.

  “Sir,” one of the officers told him, “please move out of range of the vehicle. We’re about to move.”

  “Do you understand what you’re driving into?” Bolan asked him. “This vehicle isn’t going to protect you.”

  “They may have armor-piercing ammo, sir,” the young officer said, climbing into the hatch, “but they don’t have anything heavier than rifles. We’re more than a match for them.” As he spoke, several armed officers piled into the rear of the vehicle, securing the hatch doors behind them.

  Bolan ran for it. He moved quickly in the direction of the barricades, looking for an opening. Behind him, the APC started up and began rolling toward the center of Times Square.

  The Executioner reached the barricades, which were set well back from the circle of trucks in Times Square. Several officers were crouched behind shields, as well as the engine blocks of their police cruisers and support vehicles. The El Cráneo forces were crouched well out of sight behind the barricade formed by their trucks. All of the SUVs were black with deeply tinted windows. There was no way to see who might be inside them, or what they were doing. Some men were visible moving around behind trucks, but they were careful to stay as hidden as possible. There would be no way to get a clear shot at them, even for the police snipers who were doubtless watching from nearby rooftops.

  Bolan took his secure phone from his blacksuit and dialed the number Burnett had given him.

  “Burnett,” the detective answered.

  “You were right,” Bolan confirmed. “They’re already headed in, come hell or high water, and they don’t want to hear that it’s not going to work out.”

  “Told you,” Burnett said. “What next?”

  “I have a plan,” Bolan said. “Are you in position?”

  “Circulating through the crowd, just like you said,” Burnett answered. “Just another asshole talking on his cell phone in a crowd of strangers. What do you want me to do?”

  “There’s no way El Cráneo would trap itself like this, just to send a message,” Bolan told him. “They’re going to have eyes and ears outside their barricade, someone coordinating things undercover. I need you to use your detective’s eyes to spot whomever that might be.”

  “Eye,” Burnett said.

  “Whatever,” Bolan told him. “You up to it?”

  “Leave it to me,” Burnett told him. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Making trouble,” Bolan said. “It’s going to get ugly when the police move in. Keep your head down.”

  “Will do.”

  Bolan snapped the phone shut and weighed his options. The APC was rolling inexorably toward the police barriers.

  The Executioner made his decision, checked the drum in the Ultimax and fell in behind the moving vehicle. As the myriad flashing, strobing, neon and high-intensity lights of Times Square blinked above him, the Executioner noted the shadows and observed his opposition. Beyond the police barricades, crowds of New Yorkers gawked, watching the scene unfold with no knowledge of just how dangerous the battleground was about to become. The APC rolled slowly onward. The police inside were similarly unprepared for the firestorm that awaited them.

  When the signal came, the El Cráneo killers were waiting. As one they brought the barrels of their weapons around from the cover of the SUVs. Bolan caught the movement, a subtle change that would be hard to see from within the armored vehicle.

  “You in the APC!” Bolan shouted at the top of his lungs. “Officers, this is Cooper, Justice Department! Turn back now! You are outgunned! I repeat, you are outgunned!”

  Whether the men in the vehicle heard Bolan and ignored him, or never heard his warning, the Executioner would never know. A shot rang out—from behind his position, somewhere within the crowd. The DU bullet burned into the back of the APC just over Bolan’s shoulder.

  Hell erupted.

  Bolan threw himself flat on the ground. Streams of DU ammunition poured from the El Cráneo shooters within the circle of SUVs. The focused fire poured over the APC, punching and burning through the vehicle as if its armor wasn’t there. From his position only feet from it, Bolan could hear fragments ricochet within the armored vehicle as its occupants were at once torn apart and roasted alive. The screams of the dying men drowned out the shouts and cries for help from among the suddenly terrified throngs of spectators.

  The cross fire grew more intense. Bolan realized the rear of the APC had taken more fire. He did the only thing he could do. He began rolling to the side, trying to move his body away from the APC. Burning DU rounds ripped the air above him and tore into the pavement where he’d been.

  Bolan’s only chance was to avoid being hit. There was no body armor and no obstacle he could put between him and the El Cráneo guns that would save him if he took a round somewhere critical. Even a relatively survivable wound would be much worse if made by one of the DU bullets. With no way to defend and no place to hide, he had one choice.

  He attacked.

  From his back, Bolan brought up the Ultimax and sighted between his feet. There, beyond the nearest of the police barricades, he saw them—the El Cráneo gunners who had to have been posing as spectators. They were armed with submachine guns and were still spraying the APC, fixated on the larger target. Knowing he would have only seconds at most, the soldier carefully lined up his shots. The angle would send his 5.56 mm rounds into the concrete facade of building beyond. He could afford no misses if he was to minimize the risk to innocent New Yorkers beyond his targets.

  Battle-callused fingers tightened on the grip of the Ultimax. Bolan pressed the trigger again and again. The red-dot scope picked out the silhouette of each shooter’s head against the lights of Times Square. The El Cráneo gunners fell one after another.

  The APC began to burn like a pyre. Flames licked the sky, bright enough to rival the frenetic electronic billboards. From the circle of SUVs, the gunners began to track secondary targets. The police returned fire from their barricades. Several were shot through their cruisers as the El Cráneo gunners sprayed the vehicles. The merciless DU rounds did their work only too well.

  With the threat from behind neutralized, Bolan rolled back into the dubious shelter of the burning APC. Using the lee of the vehicle as both cover and concealment, the Executioner crouched and scrambled away from the killzone. When he reached the dead men behind the police barrier, he began searching quickly through the bodies.

  Several of the men had 9 mm machine pistols, while one had a MAC-10 chambered in .45. One of them, however, had wielded a short-barreled M-16. Bolan appropriated the dead man’s loaded magazines, the cartridges bearing unusual red and silver tips. He tossed several magazines of 9 mm DU ammunition into his war bag, as well. Then he swapped out the drum magazine in the Ultimax, praising Cowboy Kissinger’s custom magazine adapter as he slapped the M-16 magazine into place.

  The night was bright with tracer fire against the city lights. The cops were firing back but taking a pounding from their positions. Bolan lost count of the number of officers he saw go down, cut to pieces behind their cruisers or shot t
hrough concrete barriers that should have protected them. The tracer rounds fired by the police marksmen were ineffective against the circle of trucks. Taveras’s vehicles were armored. Most of their tires were now flat, but the vehicles themselves were intact. The men behind them continued to rain merciless DU fire over Times Square.

  Bolan retraced his steps, again using the burning APC to cover his approach. Taveras’s plan had been bold and smart. Men hidden in the crowd had helped him create a deadly cross fire and would have provided him with an escape route, given him a means to punch through the police line when his men were ready to leave. The cops nearby had been gunned down with the first salvo. Pendergast and his men were now fighting for their lives and pinned down where they fought. The tactician in Bolan could admire the way the operation was supposed to work, even as he fought to dismantle it.

  The burning APC and the dead El Cráneo men beyond formed the only safe channel where Bolan could operate without being targeted by the police, too. While Pendergast—if he was still alive—had met Bolan and presumably knew not to shoot him, there were too many other officers on-site who wouldn’t know Bolan from the gang members. That was a risk the Executioner had assumed by crashing the party. He was more than used to watching his own back for friendly fire.

  Bolan took a shooter’s crouch on one knee, bracing the Ultimax on its folding stock against his shoulder. The heat was almost too much to bear. Sweat poured down the Executioner’s face and stung his eyes as he put the red-dot scope over the engine block of the nearest SUV.

  The soldier’s practiced eye caught movement behind the truck. He fired. The Ultimax vibrated under his hands, its low recoil allowing him to keep his deadly shots on target one after another.

  The DU rounds bored through the armor-plated SUV, sparking and flaming, taking out the man behind. Bolan quickly engaged the next target at the rear of the same vehicle, tracking the shadows of feet visible beneath the trucks. He saturated the rear of the SUV with DU rounds and was rewarded with another kill.

  The front of one and the rear of a second SUV were within Bolan’s field of fire. He dropped his first spent M-16 magazine and slapped home another. Walking the shots in, following the bursts of flame that erupted whenever one of the rounds scored a hit on the pavement or the trucks, Bolan ventilated the ends of both vehicles and the men who believed themselves safe behind their armor. It was fitting, the Executioner thought, that these men should die from behind and within the false shelter of their vehicles, as had so many of their victims.

  The rest of the El Cráneo gunners had caught on to what was happening and were moving. Bolan broke from his position and headed straight for them, taking the fight to the enemy. The sudden onslaught put them off balance. Bolan followed his DU bullets in, spraying down the trucks and burning through them. With nowhere to go except into the crosshairs of the waiting police, they froze. The Executioner burned down each of them in turn.

  The SUVs began to smoke and flame as brightly as the APC. Bolan shut out the stench of burning flesh as he stalked among the bodies, checking each one carefully. The police began to advance on his position, covering each other in groups of four, led by Pendergast. The stocky man held an MP-5 in his hands and looked around at the carnage with wonder. The blazing, dancing firelight turned Bolan’s face demonic as shadows danced across it.

  “Are you all right?” Pendergast asked finally.

  Bolan nodded at the hulk of the APC. “Better than they are,” he said grimly. “Take a long, hard look around, Pendergast. If you can’t accept the reality of what you face, this is the result.”

  Pendergast said nothing.

  Bolan left the man standing amid the smoking ruins of the El Cráneo vehicles. He checked the bodies, looking for Taveras, but saw no one he recognized. In the pocket of his blacksuit, his phone began to vibrate.

  “Cooper,” he answered.

  “It’s me,” Burnett said. “I’m at Seventh and Forty-first. I think I’ve got what you wanted.”

  Bolan rushed toward the detective, dodging the ever present New York City crowds. Media vehicles were pressing through the thick traffic, followed by still more police cruisers, with some beleaguered ambulance crews switching their sirens on and off trapped in the bumper-to-bumper mess. The Times Square conflagration, while not the equal of terrorist attacks the city had seen, would not stand alone in the eyes of the authorities or the city’s residents. Taken in total with the other high-profile shootings, Bolan knew it would be the last straw. He did not relish the phone call he was likely to get from Hal Brognola in response to this latest incident, but deep down he knew the big Fed would understand. At least the Executioner had managed to minimize the damage and stop the massacre before it could encompass more civilians.

  He found Burnett waiting with a pair of uniformed officers outside the entrance to a chain seafood restaurant.

  “Here?” he asked.

  “You should try their cheese-garlic biscuits,” Burnett said without smiling. “Here’s the deal, Cooper. Officers Hickey and Messina.” He gestured to each of the cops in turn. “I grabbed them as we were leaving the barricades. Two more, DiFlorio and Sober, are watching the back. Our man’s inside.”

  “Our man?”

  “It’s July de la Rocha.” Burnett nodded. “You were right. While everyone was watching the action, I scoped out the crowd like you said. De la Rocha was circulating through the spectators with a cell phone. When the sleepers in the crowd cut loose, I’m pretty sure it was de la Rocha who gave the word.”

  “How did he end up here?” Bolan asked.

  “When it started to go badly for El Cráneo, he faded fast,” Burnett said. “This guy is smooth, too. He didn’t act like there was the slightest thing wrong. Just snapped his phone shut and walked out of there, as casual as you please. I followed him, got backup and had Sober and DiFlorio take the back after he went in here.”

  “Did he see you before he went in?” Bolan asked.

  “He could have,” Burnett admitted. “There wasn’t time to be real sneaky about it.”

  “All right,” Bolan said. “You men take the door. You saw the target?” Both officers nodded. “Good. He doesn’t come out. Make sure your friends in back know it, as well.”

  He looked at Burnett. “Let’s go.”

  Inside the restaurant, Burnett briefly conferred with the hostess. She directed the two men to the establishment’s kitchen. De la Rocha, or someone matching his description, was apparently a regular visitor to the place, for reasons unknown to the young woman.

  “I’ll bet good money this place is owned by Taveras, or a company we can tie to Taveras,” Burnett said.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Bolan said. “El Cráneo probably maintains a network of safe houses and bought-out locations where their people can disappear.”

  They found the kitchen and Burnett cornered the first cook he saw, describing de la Rocha. The man—a young Hispanic in a dirty white apron and equally soiled white shirt—jerked a thumb toward the cooler. “Yeah, he comes and goes. We call him the Phantom. The manager said not to worry about it.”

  Bolan drew the Beretta 93-R. The cook’s eyes went wide and he backed away. Burnett drew his Glock and covered the cooler door as Bolan pulled it open, covering the opening with his machine pistol.

  Cold air wafted out. The shelves inside bore the usual restaurant items. A bucket of lettuce soaking in water sat undisturbed just inside the doorway. Plates of plastic-wrap-covered desserts waited in their racks.

  “Shit,” Burnett said.

  Bolan, suspicious, moved inside the walk-in cooler. He scanned the walls and then fixed on the back of the space, which was blocked by a rolling cart full of covered plates on racks. He reached out and moved the cart away.

  “Burnett,” he said. “Cover me.”

  A solid shove against the far wall of the cooler was all it took to move it away. It swung on squeaking hinges, revealing a concrete-walled access chamber. Crumbling concrete st
eps led into a low-ceilinged utility tunnel lighted fitfully with battery-powered stick-on dome lamps.

  “Jackpot,” Burnett said.

  “Call your men,” Bolan told him. “There’s no point guarding the back or the front. De la Rocha will be long gone. We’ll want to search the tunnel.”

  A cursory inspection of the access chamber revealed nothing useful. Burnett detailed DiFlorio and Messina to follow the tunnel to its end. They radioed back when they emerged in an alley a block away. De la Rocha was long gone.

  “Shit,” Burnett said again. “Come on, Cooper. Let’s get out of this icebox. I want to find the manager. He might know something.”

  A shot suddenly rang out, blowing apart a crock of salad dressing on the shelf nearest the detective. He flinched and ducked. Bolan punched the Beretta in the direction of the threat and triggered a single shot as his arm hit full extension. A short, dark-haired man with a revolver fell forward on the floor of the kitchen, blood welling from his center of mass. Kitchen staff stood frozen and staring, unable to process what they’d just seen.

  “Let me guess,” Burnett said, standing again and looking to Bolan. “That’s the manager.”

  Bolan said nothing.

  12

  As the first gray-yellow streaks of dawn greeted Camden, New Jersey’s residents, one of them regarded the sunrise through a grime-streaked window overlooking the crumbling waterfront district.

  Donald Stevens sat behind a cheap particleboard desk laden with computer equipment. Three flat-screen monitors stared back at him, their displays covered in three-dimensional rotating drawings of various weapons and cartridges. A small window in the corner of one monitor showed the status of the warehouse’s elaborate security systems, each one armed and ready. Before him, on the only space on the desk not cluttered with printouts, reference books or other pieces of machinery, was a Colt Gold Cup .45 automatic pistol. It had a brushed chrome finish and was loaded with his latest and most powerful explosive-tipped depleted uranium rounds.