Extreme Justice

Al-Rachid stood waiting with his Armalite in hand, watching the safehouse burn. He felt the heat from where he stood and knew it had to be hell in there, almost beyond imagining. Still, traitors who abandoned sacred oaths of loyalty deserved no less. The Thermite blaze would give his target a foretaste of hell.

Justice.

Another job well done.

Al-Rachid was starting to relax when bullets churned the sandy soil around his feet, making him skip and dance away. He found cover behind a nearby Joshua tree, amazed that anyone was still alive inside the house, much less in any shape to fight.

Al-Rachid first told himself it might be ammunition cooking off inside the fire, but it defied the laws of physics that a clutch of random cartridges exploding could produce the pattern that had nearly cut his legs from under him.

Those shots were aimed by someone who had managed to survive both rockets and grenades.

So be it. They had planned for this.

Al-Rachid waited, resisted the impulse to fire back at the winking muzzle-flash he glimpsed sporadically. The raging fire would either eat his enemy alive or drive the man from cover where he could be shot at leisure.

All Haroun al-Rachid had to do was watch and wait.

Five minutes later, just when he’d begun to listen for the wail of sirens in the distance, al-Rachid saw a shadow figure move against the background of the flames. It lurched and staggered, nearly doubled over as the sole survivor of the holocaust hacked smoke and other fumes out of his lungs. Al-Rachid could not identify the weapon in his adversary’s hands and didn’t care to try.

He fired a long burst from the Armalite, expending half a magazine when two or three rounds would have sufficed. Al-Rachid was angry at his target, recognized the feeling as irrational and still allowed himself the luxury of overkill. His bullets dropped the man, then set his corpse to twitching, jerking on the arid soil.

When it was truly finished, when the safehouse had collapsed into itself and every part of it was totally engulfed by fire, al-Rachid beckoned his soldiers and they walked back toward their waiting vehicle.

1

San José, Costa Rica

June 19

Mack Bolan held the rented Ford at a nerve-racking fifty miles per hour, staying with the flow of traffic that jammed Avenida Central without ever seeming to slow its pace or stop for red lights. He kept a sharp eye on the drivers around him, many of them seemingly intent on suicide, while flicking hasty glances toward his rearview mirror, watching for police cars.

Bolan didn’t even want to think about what local law enforcement might say about a gringo driving through their capital with military hardware piled up in the backseat of his rental car.

“How much farther?” Bolan asked his navigator.

Blanca Herrera was a thirty-something knockout, her angel face framed by a fall of glossy jet-black hair, above a body that could grace a calendar.

Herrera checked the city street map, measuring with slender fingers. “Two kilometers, perhaps,” she said at last. “Turn right on Calle Quarenta—or Fortieth Street, you would say—then drive north to Avenida Cinco.”

“Right.”

Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately, they weren’t going to a fashion show at Sachs.

“If I may say again—”

He cut her off. “No calls. No warnings.”

“But I wouldn’t have to speak.”

“Hang-ups are worse. We can’t do anything to spook him now.”

The lazy shrug did interesting things inside her clinging blouse. “Ah, you know best. But if he is not home when we arrive…”

“We wait,” he finished for her. “Find a vantage point and settle in.”

“However long it takes?”

“Unless you know some way to read his mind and tell me where he’s gone.”

“No,” Herrera replied. “I can’t do that.”

“Well, then.”

“This gringo is muy importante, yes?”

“Muy importante, right.”

“But you expect to find him home alone? No bodyguards?”

“Gil Favor likes his privacy,” Bolan replied. “Besides, he’s paid your government for years to keep him safe and sound.”

“Some individuals, perhaps,” she answered somewhat stiffly.

“The police, the prosecutors and at least one president.”

“Ex-president,” the sultry woman corrected him.

“Whose squeaky-clean successor hasn’t made a move to change the status quo where Favor is concerned.”

“Are you forgetting that we have no extradition treaty with your country?”

“Nope. Neither is good old Gil. That’s why he didn’t need a troop of heavies. Until now.”

“And you believe he will be unaware of any recent danger to himself?”

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” Bolan replied.

That was the rub, of course. The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service had been sitting on the WITSEC murders, pulling every string available to maintain a media blackout, but any form of censorship had limits and the voluntary kind was typically as leaky as a sieve. Even without the press or television, Favor would have contacts in the States to warn him of a shift in climate, someone turning up the heat.

What would he do? Sit tight or run for cover with a new identity established in advance? Was he already running, gone before Bolan could corner him?

Or had the others, those who wanted Favor dead, already come and gone?

We’ll see, Bolan thought. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

“I’ve been here once before,” he said. “But farther south.”

“A job like this one?”

“Not exactly.”

“I am sorry,” Herrera informed him, face diverted to scan shops and restaurants. “It’s not my place to ask such things.”

“You’re right.”

She knew better, but they’d run out of small talk after ten or fifteen minutes. “If we find Favor at home—”

“We’ll find him.”

“When we find him, what approach will you be using?”

“Short and not so sweet,” said Bolan. “Someone wants him dead. His best chance of survival is to hop a flight with me and put his enemies where they can’t do him any harm.”

“Will he believe that? Knowing who and what they are?”

“No way.”

Gil Favor wasn’t stupid. He was something of a genius, in fact, where numbers were concerned, and he was also as crooked as a swastika. He’d realize that locking up the man in charge, even inside a death row cage, wouldn’t remove the price tag from his own head. Whether Favor testified or not, his chances of survival on the street—or anywhere outside protective custody—were slim to none.

“Why should he help you, then?”

“It’s my job to persuade him,” Bolan answered.

“And may I ask how you intend to do that?”

Bolan frowned, making his right-hand turn, dodging a motorcyclist who seemed to think lane markers were an optical illusion. His answer was curt and to the point.

“I’ll let him flip a coin.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Give the man a choice,” Bolan elaborated. “He can deal with me right now, or with someone else’s shooters down the line.”

“I see. And if he’s not persuaded by your logic?”

“Favor’s coming with me one way or another,” Bolan said. “This time next week, he’ll be in New York City, on a witness stand.”

“What happens if you take him all that way and he refuses to cooperate in court?”

“Somebody else’s problem,” Bolan answered. “My job is finished on delivery.”

They rode in silence for a time, then Bolan saw the sign and said, “Fifth Avenue.”

“Go west,” Herrera said. “His house will be the third one on our left.”

Bolan followed her directions, thankful that the major rush of traffic was behind them. Fifth Avenue was quiet by comparison, with stately homes on either side.

Here’s money, Bolan thought as he counted houses on the left.

“You see it, yes?” she asked. “Just there, the brick and stone.”

“I see it,” Bolan said. “And he’s got company.”

GIL FAVOR DIDN’T SIMPLYlike his privacy. He craved it, needed to be left alone the same way that he needed food, water and oxygen. It was the best—perhaps the only—way for him to stay alive.

Throughout his forty-seven years, no single interaction with the other members of his species had left Favor with a sense of what his fellow humans called fulfillment. Granted, he was happy while stealing and spending someone else’s hard-earned money, even found release with prostitutes who idolized him for an hour with the meter running.

But as far as anything resembling a normal life?

Not even close.

That was to be expected now, given the circumstances of his present situation. He had millions of dollars in a bank account the U.S. government could never crack, lived well beyond the reach of federal warrants and didn’t really mind being a man without a country in his middle age.

He was about to pour himself another after-dinner brandy when the first alarm chimed softly. Nothing to get overwrought about, beyond the fact that any chime at all meant trespassers outside his home.

Now what the hell?

Favor had never been a violent man—well, almost never. He had earned the bulk of his ill-gotten gains by cooking the books and washing blood money for heavy-duty predators, skimming off a portion for himself when the distractions of a thug’s life blinded him to what was happening beneath his very nose.

Still, the survival reflex was as strong within Gil Favor as in any other human being who had lived by wits and guile for the majority of his or her life.

A second, louder chime told Favor that his uninvited guests were drawing closer to the house, along the driveway from the street outside. He wasn’t expecting any deliveries, but his mind still offered innocent suggestions for the visit.

Fat chance, however.

In four years and counting in his minipalace, he’d never had a salesman on his doorstep. No neighbors visited without an invitation, and he hadn’t issued any.

That meant trouble was coming, one way or another.

Favor set down his brandy snifter, rose from his recliner and retrieved the sawed-off shotgun from its hidden cubbyhole beside the liquor cabinet. The first cartridge was rock salt, for a wake-up call; the four that followed it were triple-aught buckshot.

“You should’ve picked another house,” Gil Favor muttered as he left his study, moving briskly toward the parlor and front door.

THE OCCUPANTS OF TWO CARS were unloading near the mansion’s broad front porch as Bolan passed the driveway, counting heads. He saw no uniforms, no proper suits that would’ve indicated plainclothes officers.

“They’re not police,” he said.

“What, then?” Blanca Herrera asked. “Maybe he has a dinner party.”

“Doubtful,” Bolan said. “You saw them, right? They don’t fit with the neighborhood.”

“He is a fugitive from justice,” she reminded him. “Why would his friends be chosen from the social register?”

“Good point.”

But Bolan knew Gil Favor wasn’t one for making friends. And if he did, the self-made billionaire would handpick those who best served his camouflage of affluent respectability.

“Why are you stopping?”

“I just want to check this out,” Bolan explained. “If they’re sitting down to surf and turf, we’ll wait and tag him after they go home.”

“And if it’s something else?” Herrera asked. “What then?”

He nosed the Ford into an alley two doors down from Favor’s driveway, switching off the lights and engine. “Then I intervene,” he said.

“Against eight men?”

“I’ll do my best.”

She scrambled out to join him in the darkness, while he was extracting hardware from the larger of two duffel bags on the backseat.

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’ve left the keys,” he told her. “If it gets too raucous, or I’m not back here in fifteen minutes tops, clear out.”

Herrera gnawed her lower lip, then said, “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“How will you stop me?”

He pinned her with a glare that made her take a slow step backward. “This is my part of the deal,” he said. “You got me here. Now step aside and let me work.”

“I’m fully trained,” she challenged.

“Not for this.”

“How would you know?”

He fought an urge to squeeze her slender neck just hard enough to break her grip on consciousness for twenty minutes, give or take. But what might happen if he left her in the car that way?

“All right,” he said through gritted teeth. “You asked for it.”

Her smile was fleeting but triumphant. Bolan wondered if she would live to regret her rash choice.

Already armed with a Beretta Model 92, snug in its armpit rig, Bolan retrieved a classic Uzi submachine gun from his duffel bag of lethal gear, spent three seconds attaching a suppressor to its threaded muzzle, filled his pockets with spare magazines to feed the SMG and clipped a flash-bang grenade to his belt.

His overanxious sidekick wore some kind of smallish pistol tucked inside her waistband. From his quick glimpse of its grip and the extended magazine, Bolan surmised either an HK4 or Walther PPK. She didn’t ask for anything more powerful as he prepared to leave the car, and Bolan hoped that she would have the sense to simply stay out of harm’s way.

Assuming that was possible.

They walked back from the alley to Favor’s driveway, Bolan covering the Uzi with his windbreaker. No traffic passed them on the quiet street, but he imagined neighbors peering from their windows, wondering about the sudden flurry of activity at Señor Favor’s place.

They wouldn’t call for the police right now, but at the sound of gunfire…

Bolan scanned the sweeping driveway and the house beyond, saw no one standing near the cars that had pulled in a moment earlier. Eight men had either gone inside the house or fanned out to surround it, vanishing from Bolan’s field of view.

“What now?” Herrera asked. “Do we knock on Favor’s door?”

“Not quite,” he said. Spotting the motion sensors ranged along the driveway, Bolan added, “Follow me. Stay off the pavement.”

She followed without asking questions. Bolan took advantage of the property’s strategically located trees as he approached the mansion, moving at an urgent pace. He had discounted booby traps upon discovering that Favor had no gate to keep stray dogs or children from the occacional intrusion. Blowing them to smithereens or crushing tiny ankles in a leghold trap would certainly have caused his stock to plummet with the neighbors.

“Don’t you think—”

He shushed her with a hiss and kept moving toward the house. They’d closed the gap to twenty yards or so when muffled gunfire echoed from inside the house. A shotgun, by the sound of it, one blast immediately followed by the pop-pop-pop of pistol fire.

Bolan made for the front door, thinking it would be the quickest way to get inside the house. He didn’t care if it was locked, already thinking past the first obstruction, wondering if he had come too late and Favor was already dead.

Vengeance was one thing he could definitely handle, but it would mean mission failure and freedom for another predator three thousand miles away.

He reached the porch and found the front door levered open, then pushed shut again by someone who had come before him. Bolan shouldered through it, smelling gunsmoke as he crossed the threshold.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ CLUTCHED his Ingram MAC-10 SMG and waited for a target to present itself. Nearby, not quite within arm’s reach, his point man lay facedown on white shag carpeting.

The gringo had surprised them with a shotgun blast from nowhere that had toppled Paco Obregon before they even glimpsed the man they’d come to kill. It was supposed to be an easy job, and now Rodriguez thought maybe he wasn’t being paid enough.

Their target was holed up inside a room no more than twenty feet from where Rodriguez crouched behind a sofa, painfully aware that springs and stuffing would not save him if the gringo kept on shooting. A glimpse had shown Rodriguez books inside the room, perhaps some kind of library. They’d have to rush the gringo soon, behind a wall of lead, and—

What was this?

Madre de díos!

Right before his eyes, Obregon was struggling to his feet, gasping and coughing, one hand pressed against his stomach while the other fumbled for his pistol on the carpet.

White shag carpet, without any stain of blood.

Rodriguez watched as Obregon brushed the rock-salt pellets from his shirt, wincing at contact with the bruised flesh underneath.

It was a trick! The damned gringo had tried to scare them off, as if Rodriguez and his men were children. The warning shot would cost the gringo his life.

Rodriguez was about to order the attack, when Paco Obregon retrieved his pistol, snarled a curse and rushed the door alone. A second, louder shotgun blast rang out, and this time there was blood aplenty, spilling everywhere as Paco vaulted over backward, crumpling in an awkward attitude of death.

Rodriguez crouched lower behind the sofa, all thoughts of rushing the door banished from his mind. Yet he couldn’t simply wait there and allow the gringo to terrorize him into immobility.

He had six more handpicked killers left, against one man who was accustomed to the soft life, swaddled by his money. Not so soft that he’d forgotten how to pull a trigger, obviously, but it would be shameful to retreat.

Worse yet, it would be fatal.

If Rodriguez failed, it wouldn’t be enough to simply return the money. He couldn’t just apologize and take a scolding.

No.

The man who had employed him wanted blood.

Rodriguez flashed hand signals at the two men he could see. The other four had entered through the back door of the mansion and were doubtless waiting for his signal somewhere on the far side of the library.

Frontal assault was the only option that he could think of, and if that meant losing men, so be it. He would be behind them all the way.

Rodriguez flashed another hand sign, and his soldiers nodded in response, both edging forward, clutching weapons tightly. They didn’t look at Obregon, leaking blood on the carpet, but rather focused on their target. Like professionals.

Rodriguez nodded, and they rose together, shoulders hunched into the charge—then started jerking, twisting, lurching through the half steps of some crazy, spastic dance Rodriguez didn’t recognize. It took a heartbeat for his mind to grasp what he was seeing, then he heard the whisper-stutter of an automatic weapon with a silencer attached.

His soldiers fell together, nearly sprawling over Obregon’s limp corpse. Rodriguez spun to face the new and unexpected source of peril, squeezing off a burst with his Ingram before he had a target in his sights.

Diving and rolling, wishing that the parlor’s furniture were made from steel and concrete rather than mere wood and fabric, Rodriquez glimpsed another gringo firing at him with some kind of submachine gun.

Bullets ripped through the upholstery of the stout recliner where he’d come to rest. Rodriguez raised his hand into the gringo’s line of fire, emptied the Ingram’s magazine and hastened to reload.

The target was supposed to be alone, goddamn it! He’d been told that there would be no bodyguards. It was a promise. In and out, with nothing to detain him at his task.

Bastards! Rodriguez vowed that if he made it out of this alive, there would be hell to pay.

Near panic, sweating through his rumpled shirt despite the mansion’s air-conditioning, Rodriguez started barking orders to the four surviving members of his crew. He didn’t know if either of his gringo enemies spoke Spanish, and he didn’t care. It was still five men against two, and Rodriguez could live with those odds.

One of the other soldiers answered him, a grim affirmative. It was enough.

Rodriguez broke from cover, bellowing his rage and firing from the hip with his MAC-10.

A BURST FROM BOLAN’S muffled Uzi dropped the shouting gunman in his tracks. That made four down, and he could hear the other four men of the home-invasion team before he saw them, coming down the hall in a stampede, all firing on the run.

Bolan saw nothing to be gained by waiting until they were visible. The hallway was a killing pen. He held down the Uzi’s trigger, sweeping its muzzle back and forth, vaguely aware of bright spent brass cascading from the SMG’s ejection port.

An instant later, Bolan’s targets stumbled into view, three of the four still firing, but without a focus to their aim. They peppered walls, floor and ceiling as their feet got tangled up and brought them crashing down. Except for all the blood and screaming, it resembled something from a slapstick comedy.

Bolan reloaded, watched the dying shooters long enough to satisfy himself that none of them presented any threat. Gil Favor hadn’t joined the turkey shoot, apparently preferring to remain invisible and bide his time. Bolan edged forward now, conscious of his female companion moving on his flank, her pistol leveled in a fair two-handed grip.

“Favor!” Bolan called out. “We need to talk.”

“So talk,” a strained voice answered. “I’ve already called for the police. Let’s chat until they get here, shall we?”

“That’s a bad idea,” Bolan replied.

“For you, maybe.”

“I didn’t come to hurt you,” Bolan told him.

“Right. I guess you’re with the neighborhood welcoming committee, then.”

“I’m not with these guys. If I was, why would I kill them for you?”

“I don’t give a shit. If you think I’m walking out of here before this place is full of uniforms, you need to have your head examined.”

“The police can’t help you now,” Bolan stated.

“I’ll just take your word for that, shall I?”

“I’d recommend it.”

“Sure you would. Why don’t I shoot myself right now? Spare you the trouble.”

“I was sent to bring you out of here alive.”

“To where?” Favor demanded.

Bolan took a chance. “Back to the States.”

The hidden fugitive barked laughter. “Thanks but no thanks. I don’t fancy serving thirty years.”

Bolan glanced at his watch, frowning. How long until the sirens wailed outside?

“I’d say you’re in a no-win situation, staying here,” Bolan replied. “The cops you bought and paid for won’t be watching when the next hit team shows up to finish this.”

“Who says I’ll be here?” Favor challenged.

“They’ll be waiting for you by the time the uniforms clear out tonight, if they’re not here already.”

“Pull the other one, my friend. I’m sitting tight.”

I don’t think so, Bolan thought, but he said, “Your call.”

“Damned right it is!”

Bolan unclipped the stun grenade and pulled its pin, ignoring Herrera as he moved in closer to the door that stood ajar, concealing Favor from his view. He’d have six seconds from the time he made the pitch, before his canister lit up the library.

“Hey!” Favor called out from the shadows. “You still there?”

I’m here.

The toss was easy, with a rebound from the doorjamb, putting it across the threshold. Favor blurted out a curse and started scrambling, but he had nowhere to go. Bolan dropped to a crouch, closing his eyes and clapping hands over his ears, hoping the lady would be smart enough to do likewise.

The blast was blinding, stunning, but not lethal. Bolan pushed into the smoky library and found Gil Favor writhing on the floor, convulsed and semiconscious. Once he’d kicked the shotgun out of reach, Bolan reached down and hoisted Favor to his feet, stood underneath the fugitive’s left arm—and found Herrera on his other side, gripping the right.

“We’re out of time,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She flashed a smile and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

They half dragged Favor from the house, past corpses, out the front door and across the sloping lawn. Bolan could hear sirens in the distance as they reached the sidewalk.