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Human trafficking was a profitable business

Bolan watched as the slides showed girls and women being led from seedy rooms by uniformed police. Stretchers were used to carry out the ones who couldn’t walk, either because they had been drugged or their abused bodies had rebelled.

“Kurti answers to this man, back home,” Brognola said as the next slide revealed an older man.

“Rahim Berisha,” the big Fed said. “Think of him as Albania’s Teflon Don. He’s got the best friends money can buy on both sides of the law. He’s been indicted seven times, but something always goes off track at the Ministry of Justice—paperwork misfiled, warrants thrown out on technicalities, witnesses disappear. You get the picture.”

Bolan wished he could study that face through a sniper scope. “So the job would be…”

“Shut them down,” Brognola stated grimly. “Wipe them off the face of the earth.”

Mack Bolan^®

Resurgence
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

There is no such thing in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except in the moment of execution.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804–1864

I guess that all depends on who you execute, and why.

—Mack Bolan

For Master-At-Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor

September 29, 2006 God keep

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Off Cape May Point, New Jersey

“Could be a fishing trawler, sir,” Ensign Jared Decker said.

“Could be trouble,” Lieutenant Commander Julio Martinez replied as he tracked the target with his AN/PVS-14 monocular night-vision goggle.

Martinez and Decker occupied the bridge of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Thresher, one of the eighty-seven-foot Marine Protector class vessels that were always named for aquatic predators.

The Thresher and its ten-member crew were on routine patrol from the Coast Guard’s Cape May Training Center, merging education with some practical experience. Their main targets were drug smugglers, but in the new world forged by 9/11’s flames they also had to watch for terrorists seeking a beachhead on American soil.

Three hours out from home, this might-be fishing trawler was their first suspicious contact.

“I can’t make out the name from here,” Martinez said.

“I couldn’t, either,” Decker answered.

“Better hail them, then, and see what’s up.”

“Yes, sir.”

He passed the order to the Thresher’s radio officer, seated no more than fifteen feet from their lieutenant commander. Decker had no doubt that Ensign Rachel Wells had copied the instruction, but Martinez demanded adherence to chain of command.

Wells gave him an “Aye, aye” and did her thing, trying to raise the trawler’s captain on a range of frequencies. No answer from the nameless target vessel, but they did get a response.

“It’s turning,” Martinez said, “and increasing speed.”

“Yes, sir!” Decker had trouble reining in his natural excitement.

“All hands to their duty stations,” the lieutenant commander ordered. “Run them down.”

“THEY’RE AFTER US,” Gjergj Cana observed.

“Of course. Are you surprised?” Masiela Dovolani asked.

“No. I just—”

“See to the cattle,” Dovolani ordered. “Keep them calm for now.”

Cana made no reply. There was no military discipline aboard the stolen boat, once known as the Adeline before its owner had been killed and dumped at sea, its name and registration numbers falsified and weathered artificial for maximum obscurity. But Cana didn’t hesitate when Dovolani told him what to do.

An act of insubordination could be fatal on this run-down pirate’s boat.

The “cattle” Dovolani spoke of was a group of twenty-seven frightened, hopeful men, women and children crammed belowdecks in a space that would have crowded half as many. Cana guessed they had fouled the head by now, as peasants will, but that was not his worry at the moment.

He was more concerned about survival.

Staying out of jail.

He scuttled to the hatch, a hunched shadow figure until he was pinned by the glare of a spotlight. Raising an arm to shield his eyes, Cana proceeded, wincing as a man’s amplified voice reached out for him across the water.

“Unknown vessel, stop your engines! This is the United States Coast Guard! Heave to and stand by for boarding!”

Not likely, he thought, and ran to the hatch. It opened easily enough, faint light below revealing troubled faces. Some of the women and children were crying.

“What’s wrong?” one of the grim-faced men called up to him.

Good question, Cana thought.

“The police are after us,” he told them, keeping it simple and watching their faces convulse. They didn’t have to know it was the armed forces chasing them.

“Keep quiet,” he added.

He had no real hope that any of them would be quiet, but Cana slammed the hatch shut before he faced any more questions.

Cattle shouldn’t speak in the first place.

The Coast Guard cutter hailed him once again on his run back to the wheelhouse. Cana braced himself for bullets, but they didn’t come.

“Well?” Dovolani challenged as Cana entered. “Did you quiet them?”

“They’re calm,” Cana said, “for now. Where can they go?”

“To hell, for all I care,” his boss replied. “This tub can’t hope to outrun that cutter.”

“So? What then?”

“We need a fire,” Dovolani said.

“What!”

“Just do it!” Dovolani snapped.

Cana opened a nearby drawer and grabbed a fat thermite grenade.

God help the cattle now.

“THEY’RE BURNING, sir!” The break in Decker’s voice embarrassed him.

“Burning and still running,” Lieutenant Commander Martinez said. “Stand by with the firefighting gear, but stay alert on those Fifties.”

“Aye, sir!”

Decker passed on the order via intercom, with no doubt in his mind that both gunners were ready for action behind their .50-caliber machine guns. Nervously, he dropped a hand to his right hip, where a SIG-Sauer P-229 R DAK semiauto pistol nestled in its tactical holster. Other members of the crew would be armed with M-16 A-2 assault rifles and Remington M 870 P 12-gauge shotguns, ready for boarding.

Assuming that the trawler didn’t burn up and sink before they could reach her.

“Is that someone going overboard?” Martinez asked.

“Can’t see them, sir,” Decker replied. “It might—”

There was no doubt then, in the next split second, as a human torch ran stumbling across the trawler’s rear deck, tripped and plunged over its side into the sea.

“Jesus!”

“Come on!” Martinez snapped. “Get up alongside!”

The helmsman was already taking action as Decker relayed the order, no standing on protocol now. The Thresher surged forward, gaining on the boat as it seemed to stall, wallowing in the Atlantic swells.

Gaining, for sure.

But Decker feared that they were already too late.

CHAPTER ONE

East Keansburg, New Jersey

The town was nondescript, one of a couple hundred on the Jersey shore that hadn’t grown notorious from sun-and-sleaze “reality” TV. It claimed three thousand residents and stood ten feet above sea level, with a public beach and small marina filled with cabin cruisers that aspired to being yachts when they grew up.

Mack Bolan wasn’t looking for a suntan or a sailing lesson as he traveled east on Seabreeze Boulevard, three hundred yards inland from Lower New York Bay. He was about to make a house call, crash a party that he hadn’t been invited to attend.

No problem there.

He’d done this kind of work before, more times than Bolan cared to count.

East Keansburg—alias “North Middletown,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau—wasn’t what the media would call a nest of crime. It covered half of one square mile and boasted 1,056 households with a median family income of sixty-one thousand dollars. Less than five percent of the town’s residents lived below the federal poverty line, and thirteen percent of those were senior citizens. Most of the problems handled by police were caused by minors, who comprised eighteen percent of the town’s population.

Overall, it was a pleasant place to live, where white males in particular found peace of mind between commutes to beehive offices in Newark, Staten Island or Manhattan. If it wasn’t Eden as described in holy writ, at least there were no serpents prominently on display.

It took a hunter’s eyes and nose to search them out.

Bolan would have bet his life that most East Keansburg residents had no inkling of evil dwelling in their midst, no clue that every salt-spray breath they drew was tainted by corruption of the foulest kind. What would they do if suddenly confronted with the truth? Consult the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office or the state police? Email their congressman?

Or would they simply turn away?

Bolan was sparing them that choice today, absolving them of any duty to investigate, react or live with their decisions. He’d identified the problem—or, rather, a symptom of a larger problem—and was on his way to operate. When he was done, he’d cauterize the wound and move on.

His job wouldn’t be done, by any means. But it would be a start.

A message would be sent.

A block before Seabreeze Avenue ran out of pavement and changed into woods, Bolan turned south on Weehawken Avenue. The homes and lots got larger there, most of them ringed by trees that shaded swimming pools or tennis courts. Not mansions yet, but like the boats in the marina, they had aspirations. Failure hadn’t left its footprint here.

A quarter mile south of Seabreeze, Bolan turned east onto Port Monmouth Road and followed it out to the end of the line. When he could drive no farther without getting wet, he parked his rented Ford Mondeo Mk4 in a small sandy lot used by beach visitors, removed a pair of compact binoculars from the glove compartment and scoped out his target.

This house was a mansion, though not in the league of the Hollywood spreads. From studying the floor plans, Bolan knew that the home’s three stories above ground amounted to some twelve thousand square feet, with a finished basement adding another thousand. Upstairs, six bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom. Downstairs, a parlor and living room, library, two dining rooms, plus a kitchen and pantry.

As for the basement…

There were no walled estates in East Keansburg, no gated compounds. The house Bolan had come to visit stood among trees, with no apparent guards or other defenses in place, but he knew that view was as deceptive as the mansion’s pristine paint job, hiding black soul-rot inside.

The sun was dipping westward out of sight, as he stepped out of the Ford and shut the door, then walked around to fish inside the spacious trunk. Already dressed for action in a slate-gray turtleneck, black jeans and hiking boots, Bolan removed his charcoal-colored blazer to reveal a shoulder rig supporting a Beretta 93-R pistol underneath his left armpit, with spare magazines for balance on the right.

The trunk gave up a MOLLE FLC vest and LBE web belt heavy with pouches for magazines, grenades and other combat accessories. The Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment system, with its Fighting Load Carrier vest and permanently incorporated Load Bearing Equipment belt replaced the ALICE suspenders and belt worn by U.S. soldiers from Vietnam through Desert Storm. Even distribution of weight on a warrior’s shoulders and hips permitted transportation of extra arms and munitions, including the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle autoloader on Bolan’s right hip and the Mark 1 trench knife on his left. Hoisting an M-4 carbine from the trunk before he closed it, he was dressed to kill.

The Executioner turned toward his target in the dusk.

“YOU LIKE THE WHISKY?” Lorik Cako asked his guests.

One of the hard-faced men grunted, gulping his Dewar’s twelve-year-old scotch. The middle of the three men stared through Cako without answering. His stout companion on the left asked, “When’s the show start?”

“Soon, my friend,” Cako replied. “You have had time to see the catalog?”

“They all look good on paper,” the anxious one said. “Air-brushed and enhanced for all I know. We need to see them in the flesh. You get my drift?”

“And so you shall,” Cako assured him, keeping up the smile that yearned to spit and snarl. “A few more moments, while I make sure that our other guests are satisfied with the refreshments, eh?”

“Whatever. Make it quick.”

It galled Cako to deal with pigs, but he had done so all his life. Experience failed to make the process any more pleasant, but at least it was profitable. This night’s work would put money in his pocket. More important, it would enhance his standing with the men who mattered most.

The hard-faced men who had dismissed him came from Kansas City. Next in line for Cako’s personal attention were two Japanese and two Koreans, standing by themselves in Asian solidarity despite the centuries of animosity that had divided their respective homelands. Three of them were drinking Jameson Gold Reserve Irish whisky, while a fourth—the younger looking of the two Koreans—sipped Smirnoff blueberry vodka.

There was no accounting for taste.

“Gentlemen,” Cako said, “the revue will begin in just a few minutes.”

The four Asians nodded in unison. Any one of them might slit Cako’s throat for a two-dollar debt, but none would risk offending him with rude behavior in his own household. He left them nodding, life-size dashboard ornaments, and wished their courtesy would rub off on Americans.

Cako caught Vasil Majko’s eye across the room and raised a hand, five fingers spread. Majko lifted his chin instead of nodding and departed to prepare the merchandise while Cako kept on circulating, checking on his customers.

They always came in pairs, as if one man might be incapable of choosing products from the lineup. Or perhaps they simply liked the show. Two from Colombia, two more from Mexico, a quartet from the Middle East and two portly Nigerians.

None of their countries suffered any shortage when it came to women, yet they traveled from the corners of the world to bid on Cako’s merchandise. His auctions never failed to lure men of substance, brought together by their common lust and greed.

And why not, in a world where everything was for sale? There was no reason for a rich man to deny himself whatever pleased him, society and its ever-shifting conventions be damned.

Lorik Cako was a specialist in supplying illicit desires. The men he served appreciated his inventiveness and the completely ruthless way in which he dealt with opposition on the rare occasions when it surfaced.

He would be a superstar someday—was nearly there, in fact—and owed it to a total disregard for the well-being of his fellow man.

Or woman, as the case might be.

This night he had on offer twenty-seven females, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty years. Three were certified pure, and some of the rest barely used. All were lovely in different ways, something offered for every taste.

Blondes and redheads for the Third World market. More exotic specimens for the Americans and the Colombians. Sometimes Cako might take an order in advance, for a specific type—or a specific individual, the riskiest and most expensive service of them all. Whatever was demanded, Lorik Cako lived to please.

“My friends,” he said, raising his voice above the murmurs of his customers, “if you will follow me downstairs, we shall begin.”

They trailed after him like hungry dogs.

Like jackals closing on a wounded animal.

BOLAN APPROACHED the house from the southeast, cloaked by shadows as night descended on North Middletown. A Friday night, with locals starting to unwind, their working week behind them, ready to relax with friends or lovers, food or alcohol, and greet the weekend with a smile.

His targets, in the bid house, should be getting down to business anytime now. Bolan planned to interrupt them, cancel their festivities and send them home in body bags.

He owed it to the Universe. The very least that he could do, under the circumstances.

And a foot inside the door for things to come.

He knew the auction was beginning when the guards emerged to start their foot patrols around the grounds. Two men, both swarthy types with bodybuilder arms and torsos, armed with folding-stock Kalashnikovs on shoulder slings. They came out through a side door, separated and began to walk around the house in opposite directions.

Perfect.

Bolan slung his carbine, palming the Beretta with its sound suppressor attached. The 93-R was selective fire—its R was short for raffica, “burst” in Italian—and it packed a 20-round box magazine plus one 9 mm Parabellum mangler in the chamber. Firing 3-round bursts, using the pistol’s foldable foregrip, Bolan could take down seven men before he needed to reload.

One target at a time.

The first mark passed within twenty feet of Bolan, barely glancing toward the shadows where death waited to claim him. The soldier hissed between clenched teeth, bringing the guy around to face him out of curiosity, and stitched him with a rising burst from sternum to larynx. Toppling backward through a haze of crimson mist, the rifleman was dead before he hit the ground.

Bolan retrieved him, holstering his pistol and dragging the corpse by its ankles until it was swaddled in darkness. He could rush the house now, use the side door where the sentries had emerged, but that meant leaving one man with an AK at his back.

Unwise at best. Potential suicide at worst.

So Bolan waited, timed his second target by the time it ought to take for him to stroll around the house. And when he showed, coming around the northeast corner at an easy walk, the Executioner was waiting.

Ready for the kill.

The sentry faltered, visibly confused at failing to encounter his companion coming from the opposite direction. Slowing further as he neared the spot where they had separated moments earlier, he made a face and fiddled with the strap of his Kalashnikov, as if to slip it free.

Too late.

Bolan’s Beretta stuttered three more muffled rounds and dropped the lookout in his tracks. Unlike the other one, he fell facedown, his arms spread as if to hug the earth or mimic crucifixion.

The Executioner hauled the second corpse to join the first, leaving them side by side in shadow, fifty feet out from the house. He yanked the magazines from both AKs, tossed them as far into the night as possible and found no rounds in either rifle’s chamber.

Done.

The dead weren’t concealed to the extent that any passerby would overlook them, but there were no other strollers on the grounds just now.

Only the Executioner.

And it was time for him to move.

As far as he could tell, all windows with a view of his direct approach were curtained, but that didn’t mean he would pass unobserved. Surveillance cameras were so small and unobtrusive these days that they could be hidden in a tube of lipstick, pair of glasses or an artificial flower. Tucking one or more away beneath the eaves of a three-story house would be child’s play.

A risk, then, but he had to take it.

There was no way to complete his mission without entering the serpent’s lair.

Once he’d decided on the move, action immediately followed. Bolan ran across the open stretch of lawn to reach the door his first two kills had used, wearing his carbine slung and clutching the Beretta in his right hand, while he reached for the doorknob with his left.

Clasped it. Felt it turn.

So far, so good.

He opened the door and followed his pistol into a washroom of sorts. A big stainless-steel washer and dryer stood to one side, with open shelving on the other. Various household supplies that could be used to clean the place or whip up crude explosives with the proper know-how.

Smells and voices drew the soldier toward a kitchen, his index finger taut on the Beretta’s trigger as he left the laundry room behind and went in search of prey.

THE FIRST GIRL WAS ONSTAGE downstairs, a nearly naked figure, clothed only in a gossamer see-through wrap, lit by spotlights mounted on the basement’s ceiling while her audience—prospective buyers—lounged in three rows of well-padded theater seats, their part of the auction room darkened. Lorik Cako stood behind them, rocking on his heels with carpet underfoot, ready to answer any questions that arose.

The one he got most often, as the show progressed, was a request for samples of the merchandise. Cako always refused, good-naturedly, reminding his potential customers that they weren’t permitted to consume food in a supermarket without paying for it first.

A second question, asked almost as frequently, involved the younger specimens whom Cako certified as “pure.” How could he prove the claim that justified a higher asking price?

Cako was ready with detailed reports from Dr. Paul Koprulu, a gynecologist. Dr. Koprulu supplied full documentation, diagrams and photographs for each certified virgin, but customers were free to have their own physicians examine the products.

For a nonnegotiable price fixed by Lorik Cako.

Business was good. Cako controlled himself around the merchandise, maintained strict supervision over his employees and was merciless with anyone who soiled the goods. The last example he had made—nineteen-year-old Vasil Ghica, barely off the boat himself—would stick forever in the memories of each man Cako had compelled to view the young transgressor’s execution.

Ghica had spent six hours dying. For the first two, he had wept for mercy. In the last four, he had begged for death. Cako had made his other soldiers mop up afterward, to drive the lesson home.

Cako’s customers weren’t required to call out bids like peasant farmers at a cattle yard. Each seat was fitted with a button in its left armrest, opposite a molded plastic cup-holder attached on the right. A simple finger tap logged silent bids in Cako’s control room next door, where Qemal Hoxha monitored the bidding and reported each new bid to his boss through a tiny earpiece.

As each new specimen appeared on stage, Cako announced a rock-bottom reserve price, ranging from fifty thousand dollars to three times as much, depending on the item’s beauty and her purity, where applicable. He then declared each bid as it was logged anonymously from the audience. These women weren’t earmarked for seedy brothels staffed by groggy drug addicts. Thus far, not one had ever failed to sell above the base rate Cako had established.

Now and then, a nervous customer might bid mistakenly. Cako allowed retraction of the offer, but only if the clumsy customer announced his error to the group. Embarrassment prevented most from rectifying such mistakes, and in any case they were rich enough that five grand more or less meant nothing to them anyway.

It was pure profit for the syndicate that Cako served, since they had literally plucked these women off the streets of cities all around the world. Their transportation costs were minimal, covered by drugs or other outlawed merchandise that traveled with them. A few, ironically, had even paid their own way to the States in hopes of finding a career in Hollywood or on the Broadway stage.

Such fools.

Bids stood at ninety thousand for the redhead in the spotlight, when his earpiece crackled. Cako smiled, preparing to announce another raise, but then heard Hoxha say, “Come quickly, sir! We have trouble!”

Frowning, Cako told his assembled patrons, “Please excuse me, gentlemen. A minor difficulty requires my brief attention. I’ll rejoin you momentarily. The bidding, meanwhile, stands at ninety thousand dollars.”

All of them tracked Cako with their narrowed eyes as he retreated through a side door, joining Hoxha in the small control room with its monitors, computers and microphones.

“What is it?” he snapped at Hoxha.

“Vasil says that the outer guards aren’t answering on their radios, and—”

Even underground, Cako heard the explosive rattle of an automatic weapon firing somewhere overhead. Inside the house. His house.

The buyers had to have heard it, too.

A rack in the control room held a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun and two AKM assault rifles. Cako grabbed the shotgun and told Hoxha, “Get in there with the customers and calm them. If we need to move them out, I’ll let you know.”

“And the women?” Hoxha asked.

“If there’s need and time, we’ll move them, too. Always take care of money first.”

“Okay, Lorik.”

Clutching his weapon, Cako left the small control room through its second door and stormed the nearby flight of stairs.

IT HAD TO HAPPEN sometime. Bolan had been hoping he could clear a portion of the house without attracting any notice. But when he reached the kitchen, there were two armed men negotiating something with a cook dressed all in white. Both shooters gaped at Bolan as he entered, reaching for their weapons simultaneously.

One fell without managing to draw his pistol, faceless from a 3-round burst of Parabellum rounds that punched his nose and forehead deep into his mangled brain. The other guy was faster, managing to pull his piece before another burst ripped through his chest. He triggered one shot as he fell, a wasted ricochet off tile that served as an alert to anybody else inside the house.

Bolan was moving as the second body dropped, waving the frightened cook away and holstering his pistol, going with the M-4 carbine as the other housemen started shouting back and forth, rushing to find out what had happened. Bolan couldn’t translate most of what they called out in Albanian, but he could track the gist of it.

They were coming prepared for a fight, coming to kill him.

Or they’d die trying.

Bolan cleared the kitchen’s exit and found two men armed with submachine guns double-timing toward him, grim-faced and determined. Dropping to a crouch, he stitched the pair from left to right and back again, watching them slam-dance into each other as they fell. The dying gunner on his left began to fire as he went down, the point-blank muzzle-flashes from his SMG setting his partner’s shirt on fire.

The Executioner was up and moving in a heartbeat, ducking to his right as someone at the far end of the corridor squeezed off a pistol shot. It missed him by a yard or more, but Bolan couldn’t see the shooter yet, since he—or she?—had drawn back out of sight around a corner.

Bolan had two goals—to liberate the women caged in Lorik Cako’s house and to eliminate the man himself, together with as many of his gunners as were willing to engage the Executioner. He guessed that would be all of them, which suited Bolan to a tee.

Long odds, but not the worst he’d ever faced.

Not even close.

Six down and counting, with how many more to go? Perhaps a dozen; maybe twice that, with an auction under way. If he could tag the buyers, too, so much the better, but he wasn’t feeling greedy.

Bolan edged along the hallway, watching doors to either side and waiting for the shooter at the far end to reveal himself once more. It happened seconds later, as the guy popped out to fire another round, then jerked back under cover while a burst from Bolan’s carbine filled the air with plaster dust.

No score.

Bolan paused long enough to palm a frag grenade, release its safety pin and pitch the bomb underhanded toward the shooter’s hiding place. It struck the wall down there and bounced around the corner, out of sight, starting a scramble with a frightened cry.

Four seconds later it blew, shrapnel scoring the walls, smoke and more dust erupting downrange. There were cries of pain, or perhaps pleas for help, all gibberish to Bolan’s ears as he advanced to deal with the survivors, whittling down the odds while there was time, before Cako’s troops got their act together and came at him in force. The more he could eliminate before that moment came, the better off Bolan would be.

Not home and dry, by any means, but still more likely to survive and help the women who were waiting for him somewhere in the house. Praying for help, perhaps, and waiting for an Executioner.

CHAPTER TWO

Virginia, two days earlier

Skyline Drive ran through Shenandoah National Park, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Its course covered 105 miles from Front Royal, the northern terminus, to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro, where it connected with Interstate 64 and U.S. Highway 50, branching off eastward to Charlottesville or westward to Staunton. Those who hadn’t seen enough trees yet could keep on rolling down the Blue Ridge Parkway for another 469 miles, to wind up in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Mack Bolan wasn’t going that far—or even to Rockfish Gap—in his rented Toyota Prius Model NHW20. He’d be leaving Skyline Drive between Luray and Skyland Lodge, taking care of ugly business on a lovely summer’s morning.

The Blue Ridge Mountains never changed. Thrust upward by cataclysmic forces some four hundred million years earlier, they comprised a rugged spine of granite laced with quartz, sedimentary limestone and metamorphosed volcanic formations.

A motorcycle passed him, doing seventy or better, north of Thornton Gap. On any other morning—any other highway— Bolan wouldn’t have considered it a threat, but trips to Stony Man Farm, home to the nation’s most covert strike teams, were different, demanding even more alertness than he normally applied to daily life.

There was a possibility, however slim verging on nonexistent, that he might have picked up a tail in D.C. or at the previous night’s stop in Falls Church, Virginia. Officially, Mack Bolan didn’t exist. He’d been dead and buried for years, his various dossiers stamped Closed, filed and forgotten after a historic flameout in Manhattan’s Central Park.

But still… He’d been out there with various personas, and in his current incarnation as Matt Cooper, he’d been rather active lately. Most of Bolan’s enemies were well and truly dead, but there were bound to be some stragglers somewhere who had glimpsed his mug in passing, on some bloody killing ground or in some seedy dive. Hopefully, no one was on his tail. He hadn’t spotted anyone as yet.

Bolan turned off Skyline Drive onto the Farm’s single-lane access road. No gates were visible at first. Approaching vehicles or pedestrians had to round a corner first, by which time they had tripped two sets of sensors and were screened from view of any other passing travelers.

Alone, where they could be examined and condemned without an audience.

As soon as Bolan saw the gate, he keyed a pager-size device that would alert the Stony Man Farm team to his arrival. They already knew that someone was approaching, from the hidden sensors, but his signal would prevent a mobilized reaction in defense.

The gate still didn’t open, though. For that, he had to nose the Prius in and power down his window, leaning out to let a hidden camera focus on his face without a layer of tinted glass obstructing biometric measurements. The Farm was far removed from Hollywood in every way—not least among them being that a new arrival couldn’t pass on looks alone.

Bolan supposed there had to be intercoms somewhere around the gate, but no one greeted him by verbal communication. Instead, the steel gate topped with razor wire rolled open on its hidden track, taking its sweet time. He waited, then drove through and saw the gate reverse direction in his rearview mirror, shutting out the world.

It felt like coming home, if any place deserving of that label still remained on Earth, but even Stony Man wasn’t invulnerable. Some years back, a rogue CIA agent had pierced the Farm’s veil of secrecy and mounted an attack that claimed the life of April Rose, Bolan’s love. That debt was paid, but it would never be forgotten.

As he rolled up to the farmhouse, Bolan saw three figures waiting for him on the porch. Hal Brognola, stationed in the middle, was his oldest living friend and overseer of the Stony Man operation, working mostly from his office at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. Before the current program was created, the big Fed had been a G-man, hunting Bolan nationwide, drawn slowly into grudging admiration of the Executioner’s technique and its results, then into a covert alliance that could have cost Brognola his pension, if not his life and freedom.

On Brognola’s left stood Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller. Bolan caught her smile as he stepped from the vehicle, returned it with feeling, then turned his attention to the man on Brognola’s right.

Aaron Kurtzman, nicknamed “the Bear” for his beard and hulking size, had been shot in the spine on the same night April Rose died, confined to a wheelchair since then. The chair was low-tech, as Kurtzman had refused a motorized chair.

“You’re early,” Brognola declared by way of greeting.

“Caught a tailwind,” Bolan said, and shook hands all around.

“You need to freshen up, or shall we get to work?”

“Work’s good,” the Executioner replied.

THE FARM’S WAR Room was a basement chamber, accessible by stairs or elevator. Bolan’s party used the elevator for Kurtzman’s sake, those who were ambulatory taking familiar seats around a conference table built for an even dozen. So far, within the project’s history, there’d been no need to bring in extra chairs.

Brognola sat at the head of the table, with Bolan on his right, Price on his left. Kurtzman took the other end and manned a keyboard that controlled the War Room’s lighting and its audio-visual gear. He dimmed the lights a little, leaving them bright enough to read by without eye strain, and lowered a screen from the ceiling behind Brognola’s chair. Beside him, a laptop hummed to life.

“What do you know about Albania?” Brognola asked without preamble.

“It’s on the Adriatic, in southeastern Europe,” Bolan answered. “Facing toward the heel of Italy. Russia took over after World War II, but then there was some kind of break that pushed Albania toward China in the early sixties. The communist regime collapsed along with Russia and the rest of them, in 1991 or ’92, followed by chaos and violence. It’s one of the poorest, most backward countries in Europe. Beyond that,” he added, “not much.”

“That’s better than average,” Brognola said. “But you forgot the Albanian Mafia.”

“Okay.” Bolan breathed and bided his time.

“Like every other place on Earth,” Hal said, “Albania’s had its share of criminal clans and secret societies throughout history. I know you faced one of its organizations not long ago. They operate under a loose set of laws called kanuni, as you know, similar to the Mafia’s rule of omertà, triad initiation oaths, and so on.”

The big Fed paused, then proceeded when Bolan said nothing.

“Albanian mobsters made their living from vice and black-market trading under the old Red regime. They got their first real boost during the war in Kosovo, which interrupted the flow of Turkish heroin to western Europe through Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Rerouting tons of smack through Albania changed the drug landscape. So much heroin passed through Veliki Trnovac that the DEA started calling it the Medellín of the Balkans. Today, the Albanian Mob has active branches in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and they’re giving the Cosa Nostra a run for its money in Italy. Scotland Yard’s tracking Albanian operators in the U.K. And—huge surprise—they’ve made it to the States.”

“Sounds like a problem for the FBI,” Bolan said.

“And it would be, if we lived in normal times. By which I mean pre-9/11 times, without two wars in progress overseas and half the G-men in the country eavesdropping on mosques. It’s no great secret that the Bureau shifted its priorities after the towers fell. Hell, it was in the papers and on CNN—twenty-four hundred agents removed from ‘traditional’ investigations to work the terrorist beat, while Mafia and white-collar prosecutions dropped by 40 percent or more. They’re trying to redress that imbalance today, over at the Hoover Building, but they left the barn door open too damned long.”

“So, let’s hear it,” Bolan said.

“Last week,” Brognola said, “a Coast Guard cutter on patrol along the Jersey Coast tried to stop and search an unidentified trawler. The trawler’s captain made a run for it, then set the boat on fire and bailed. He got away somehow, or maybe drowned, with whatever crew he had aboard. The boat—a shrimper stolen from New Orleans six weeks earlier—burned to the water line with nineteen people still aboard.”

Bolan frowned. “You said—”

“That the captain and crew got away. These were passengers.”

As Brognola spoke, photos of a blackened, listing boat began to scroll across the screen behind him. Soon the focus shifted to recovery of charred and shriveled corpses, while the trawler did its best to sink and disappear.

“Illegals,” Bolan said.

The big Fed nodded. “From the autopsy reports, it was eight men, seven women and four children. Cooked alive belowdecks, for the most part.”

“Jesus.”

“Maybe He was watching,” Brognola told Bolan, “but He didn’t lend a hand.”

“They were Albanians?” Bolan inquired.

“Affirmative. Against all odds, the Coast Guard saved some papers from the wheelhouse. Traced a bill for fuel back to a dock on Bergen Neck, New Jersey. Sift through the standard bs paperwork, and you’ll discover that the dock belongs to this guy.”

Bolan watched new photos march across the screen above Brognola’s shoulder. Each image depicted a man of middle age and average height, with an olive complexion and black hair going salt-and-pepper at the temples. His meaty face reminded Bolan of a clenched fist with a thick mustache glued on.

“Arben Kurti,” Brognola said. “He runs the Mob on this side of the water, moving drugs, guns, people—anything that he can milk for cash.”

“So, human trafficking,” Bolan said.

“Split two ways. He offers immigrants a new start in the States, complete with bogus green cards, if they pay enough up front. Sometimes they get here and discover that they still owe more. You’ve heard the stories.”

“Sure.”

“The other side of it is purely what we used to call white slavery, before the world went all politically correct. Today its labeled compulsory prostitution. If the Mob can’t dupe women into using their underground travel agency, thugs snatch them off the streets of European cities, maybe some in Asia and Latin America, too. Age only matters if it helps to boost the asking price.”

Across the table, Barbara Price mouthed a curse that Bolan hadn’t heard her use before. Her ashen face was angled toward the screen as Kurtzman kept the pictures coming.

Girls and women being led from seedy rooms by uniformed police. Stretchers employed to carry out the ones who couldn’t walk, either because they had been drugged or used so cruelly that their bodies had rebelled, shut down in mute protest. A couple had the pallid look of death about them.

Bolan wondered whether it had come as a relief.

“Kurti answers to this man, back home,” Brognola said. Another string of slides revealed a somewhat older man, larger in girth if not in height, dressed stylish by southern European standards without working the Armani trend. He was fat-faced, with bad teeth and tombstone eyes.

Bolan wished he could study that face through a sniper scope.

“Rahim Berisha,” Brognola announced, by way of introduction. “Think of him as Albania’s Teflon Don. He’s got the best and worst friends that money can buy, on both sides of the law. Some say he knows the president of Albania, but we can’t prove it. There’s no doubt that he has connections to the Albanian army, moving weapons out the back door for a profit. Double that in spades for the Albanian State Police and RENEA—their Unit for the Neutralization of Armed Elements. Word is that Berisha uses SWAT teams to back up his hardmen when there’s any kind of major trouble.”

“Makes it rough to bust him,” Bolan said.

“So far, it’s been impossible,” Brognola said. “He’s been indicted seven times, but something always goes off-track at the Ministry of Justice in Tirana. Paperwork misfiled, warrants thrown out on technicalities, and so on. As you might suspect, witnesses called to testify against him qualify as an endangered species.”

Once again, no great surprise.

“So, the job would be…?”

“Shut them down,” Brognola stated. “Hell, take them off the map. This pipeline needs to close, for good.”

For good, indeed. And Bolan thought, at least for now.

He harbored no illusions about cleaning up the world at large, saving society or any such high-flown ideal. The best that any soldier on the firing line could do was fight, carry the day in one location at a time and hope he wouldn’t have to win the same ground back again before he had a chance to rest, regroup and savor something of his hard-won victory.

And every victory was transient. There was no such thing as killing Evil in the real world, only in the text of so-called holy books forecasting distant futures that the Executioner would never live to see.

But he was doing what he could, with what he had.

“I’ll need a rundown on the syndicate and major players,” Bolan said unnecessarily.

“All right here,” Brognola said, sliding a CD-ROM across to Bolan in a paper envelope. “You want to check it out before you go, in case you think of any questions?”

“Will do,” Bolan said.

“I’ve got a meeting back in Wonderland, with the AG,” Brognola said. “Barb or Aaron should be able to fill in the gaps, if I’ve missed anything.”

“You won’t have,” Bolan said with full assurance.

“Well.”

“Don’t keep them waiting,” Bolan said, already on his feet.

“They have an auction coming up in Jersey,” Brognola observed. “We don’t have any details, but it’s soon. You’ll find a couple guys on there who might know when and where, in case you want to drop around and place a bid. Or something.”

“That’s a thought.”

They shook hands once again and Bolan trailed the others from the War Room, back in the direction of the elevator. Brognola was talking while he led the way.

“Remember, it’s a different world there, in Albania. Picture the worst bits of Colombia, without the jungle. Their constitution guarantees all kinds of rights, and everybody from the cops to the cartels ignores it. Human rights? Forget about it. The legitimate economy is in the toilet, circling the drain. But hey, you’ve dealt with worse.”

And that was true.

But every time he faced long odds, the laws of probability kicked in. Some day…

Bolan derailed that train of thought before it reached its terminus. Only a would-be martyr went to war anticipating failure. Just as only fools ignored the risks involved.

“Safe trip,” he told the big Fed on the farmhouse porch.

And wished himself the same.

CHAPTER THREE

East Keansburg, New Jersey, the present

A shotgun blast shredded the wall two feet above Mack Bolan’s head, frosting his hair and shoulders with a cloud of plaster dust while streamers of wallpaper flapped like dying tentacles. He answered with a short burst from his carbine, saw his adversary lurch and stagger out of sight beyond a corner, but he couldn’t guarantee the kill.

The odds were in his favor this time, since few human beings managed to survive a torso wound from 5.56 mm NATO rounds. The relatively small projectiles started to tumble when they penetrated a medium more dense than air, thereby creating catastrophic wound channels through flesh and bone. While entrance wounds were smaller than a quarter-inch across, inside the target might be virtually disemboweled.

Which didn’t necessarily equate to instant death.

The gunner with the 12-gauge had been moving on his own two feet when Bolan saw him last. Whether he dropped dead after passing out of sight or was prepared to fire again, lying in wait, remained to be discovered.

He hugged the nearest wall, aware that it could offer little in the way of physical protection from a bullet, but concealment had to count for something. Moving in an awkward crouch, Bolan held his carbine in the low-ready position with its butt against his shoulder and its muzzle canted toward the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. The hold facilitated forward motion and allowed “big picture” scanning of the target zone, without sacrificing any significant first-shot speed.

Six feet from the corner, he paused, listening. It didn’t help much, with the shouts and sounds of running feet that echoed through the house from every side, but Bolan didn’t plan to blindly rush around the corner and be gutted by a buckshot charge.

So much to think about.

Besides the unknown number of assailants still inside the house, he had the captive women and their prospective buyers on his mind. Meanwhile, somewhere in the ritzy neighborhood, someone was probably alerting the police to sounds of gunfire from the Cako spread.

East Keansburg had no law enforcement of its own, relying on the county sheriff’s office for protection in a pinch. The internet told Bolan that their 9-1-1 commo center was in Freehold, the county seat, ten miles to the south. That didn’t mean the nearest cruiser would be starting out from headquarters, but it would take some time to organize a SWAT team after first-responders reached the scene and called for backup.

Every second counted, even so.

With that in mind, he made his move. Stepping off from the wall he’d been hugging, Bolan aimed his M-4 carbine at the corner, picked a spot where someone might be crouching if he had an ambush on his mind and fired off half a dozen probing rounds.

It wouldn’t be precision work, by any means, but 5.56 mm rounds were made to penetrate three millimeters of steel at six hundred yards, or twelve millimeters at a hundred yards. Drywall or lath and plaster was merely tissue paper to a bullet traveling more than twice the speed of sound.

A strangled cry rewarded Bolan’s searching fire. He followed it around the corner, found his adversary stretched out on one side and dying with a fresh wound in his chest to match the first one in his shoulder. Bolan kicked the shotgun out of reach and stripped a pistol from the gunman’s belt, dropping the magazine before he pitched it back the way he’d come.

Keep moving. Find the women. Find Lorik Cako.

Simple intentions, but they weren’t so easy in a labyrinthine madhouse with an enemy of unknown numbers now on full alert.

As if in answer to his thought, Bolan heard footsteps slamming down a nearby staircase, soldiers hissing back and forth to one another in Albanian. He’d memorized a photo of the scum who owned the mansion, but that pockmarked face had thus far managed to elude him. Meanwhile, any other male he spotted on the premises was fair game until proved innocent, and Bolan wasn’t in the mood to check IDs.

It sounded like an army coming down the stairs, maybe another on the second floor, and the Executioner still had to reach the women he presumed were quartered in the basement. All the while he had to somehow manage to stay alive and dodge any police who might arrive before he finished up.

A piece of cake.

Bolan angled toward the stairs, letting the carbine lead him, squeezing off a burst when only feet were visible and hearing angry cries in answer. One man tumbled into his field of fire and jerked helplessly as Bolan’s next burst found him, opening his chest.

The M-4’s magazine had to be running low. The soldier ducked into an open doorway, seeking cover while he switched it out, releasing the mag with two rounds left inside and swapping it for a full one. He was about to feed the hungry carbine when a wheezing figure rushed at Bolan from his blind side, strangling hands outstretched.

Bolan reacted without thinking. He slammed the carbine’s butt into his attacker’s ribs and dropped the magazine, drawing his trench knife as he turned. He swung the weapon butt-first, cracking his opponent’s forehead with the short spike on its pommel, smashed his teeth in with the knuckleduster built into the grip, then drove the six-inch blade between the stunned Albanian’s ribs.

One twist, and it was done.

He sheathed the knife, scooped up his fallen magazine and checked it, seated it into the carbine’s receiver and got himself back in the game.

PANIC WAS WEAKNESS, and in many situations it was fatal. Lorik Cako didn’t plan to die this evening, but he had a great deal more to think about than simply getting out alive without a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

His customers, for one thing, and the women who were living, breathing evidence against him, capable of sending him to prison for a hundred years simply because of their existence in this time and place.

Above all else, he had to think of Arben Kurti and the men behind him, what they’d do to Cako if he failed them, or if they suspected that he might cooperate with the police to save himself from jail. On balance, Cako realized that he’d be better off exactly where he was, shot dead, than carried to some slaughterhouse where Kurti could interrogate him and dissect him over time.

Regis Bushati met him as Cako reached the ground floor, with sounds of automatic gunfire echoing around them.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Cako demanded.

“Intruders!” Bushati replied.

“How many?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, find out, for Christ’s sake! And call out the cars. Have them come to the back door at once.”

“Yes, sir!” Bushati responded.

While Bushati ran off to obey his instructions, Cako hesitated in the corridor, smelling gunsmoke. His first instinct told him to go and meet his enemies, destroy them all, but he also had to think about his customers downstairs. If they were killed or injured in his care, there would be hell to pay from their respective syndicates.

Not only in New Jersey, but beyond.

That thought made Cako wish that he could flee the house and simply keep on running. But where could he go? Where in the world would he be safe, once Arben Kurti and Rahim Berisha started hunting him?

Nowhere.

Turning back to the stairwell behind him, he retraced his steps, descending once more to the basement. Qemal Hoxha met him, looking anxious, holding one of the AKM rifles.

“They want to get out of here, Lorik,” he said.

“Can you blame them?”

Cako returned to the theater, where the first nearly naked woman still stood under spotlights, her eyes glazed from the drugs she’d been given to keep her in line. She reminded him of an animal caught in a car’s charging headlights, paralyzed with fear.

The buyers started shouting at him all at once. Despite their babel, Cako got the gist of it. They wanted explanations for the noise upstairs—and more important, as Hoxha had already said, they wanted out.

“Gentlemen, please! I can’t respond if all of you are shouting!”

Cako gave them two full seconds to quiet down, then took a backward step and raised his shotgun, squeezing off a blast into the basement’s ceiling. Shattered fragments of acoustic tiles rained down over his guests as they flinched from the weapon’s roar.

And shut their mouths in unison.

“As I was saying, cars are being brought around to take you safely out of here. You’ll be protected on the way, and I sincerely hope you will accept my personal apology for the disruption. At a later time, the merchandise will be available for bidding at substantial discounts, as my compensation for the inconvenience. Now—”

“What is happening?” one of the Japanese demanded, cutting Cako off.

“It seems there are intruders on the property,” Cako replied. “I’m taking steps to deal with them, but in the meantime it is best for you to leave, before police arrive.”

That got them moving when the gunfire might have kept them rooted where they stood. When Cako turned to lead them up the stairs, they crowded on his heels, jostling one another for position in the line. Bringing up the rear, came Qemal Hoxha to cover their escape.

IN RETROSPECT, Bolan couldn’t have said exactly when he felt the tide turning against him. He’d been headed for the mansion’s basement, accessed through a kind of study where the books lining three walls appeared untouched except for weekly dusting, but had found the stairs too late. The place was empty, though a smell of sweat and perfume told him that it had been occupied quite recently.

He had a look in the control room, saw the empty gun rack on one wall and double-timed to check backstage. There was a kind of dressing room—perhaps undressing room was more appropriate—with scraps of lingerie strewed here and there on furniture that didn’t match the pricey tone out front, and stronger perfume in the air.

Baiting the hook.

An elevator served the dressing area, its small car built to carry four passengers, tops. Call it seven trips for twenty young women, if someone rode the elevator up and down with them.

Bolan admitted to himself that there’d been time to clear them out since his first gunshots, but would Cako send them back upstairs into a firefight? Never mind humanity. It sounded like a risk of valuable merchandise, and any living witness could be used against him if she fell into the hands of medics, cops and prosecutors.

Since they hadn’t been exterminated in the dressing room, it followed, then, that Cako had removed them from the premises. Or he was trying to. They might be going with the buyers, in the fragile hope that he could still log sales despite the interruption of his little show.

No time to waste.

Bolan was turning toward the stairs once more when he heard shooters coming down to join him. He couldn’t guess their number or determine how well they were armed, but once he dropped the first of them the rest could hold the stairs forever with a single gun, keep Bolan bottled up below until they either smoked him out or the police showed up to make things infinitely worse.

Long years ago, Bolan had vowed that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Occasionally he had broken that rule when faced with an extremely brutal, or murderous law enforcement officer. He regarded everyone who wore a badge as soldiers of the same side in his war against the predators. He would help honest cops arrest their dirty comrades, but would never kill an everyday officer to save himself.

If the cops found him here, with no means of escape, he’d surrender. Face trial yet again, with no help from Brognola or anyone else at the Farm. And beyond that?

The end.

He fired a short burst toward the stairs, discouraging the enemy advance, then looked around his prison. He could take the elevator up a floor or two, but if the shooters knew he was downstairs, they would cover all the stops, automatic weapons poised to smother him with fire before the door was fully open.

What, then?

If Cako’s buyers and their merchandise had left the house without going upstairs, there had to be another exit somewhere in the basement. Something Bolan could discover, given enough time.

But time was one thing that he didn’t have to spare.

“Start looking, then,” he muttered to himself.

It had to be right there. Somewhere.

With grim determination, Bolan started searching for a way to save his life.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Bolan found it. There was yet another staircase hidden at the southwest corner of the house, disguised as storage space. The door was still ajar when he reached it, peered inside and saw steep stairs ascending to ground level. When nobody shot his head off, the soldier forged ahead, mounting the stairs and wondering where he’d wind up.

Fresh air washed over Bolan as he cleared a ground-floor doorway, hesitating long enough to verify that no gunmen were waiting for him to emerge. Maybe the housemen didn’t know about the stairs. Maybe they’d just forgotten.

When the Executioner emerged, a minicaravan of limousines was rolling off along the driveway that would take them out through Cako’s wrought-iron gates and off to anywhere they pleased.

Unless he stopped them first.

Bolan triggered a short burst toward the final car in line and saw his bullets spark off armored steel. He guessed the limos would have run-flat tires, as well, but even if they didn’t he was bent on stopping all of them, not just the train’s caboose.

Which meant he needed wheels.

Some fifty yards away he saw a seven-car garage standing with doors wide-open, as if all those shiny toys inside were left on permanent display. As for ignition keys, he’d have to work that out.

But first…

Below him, Bolan heard his trackers penetrate the basement, shouting, firing, drawing closer by the heartbeat, closing on the staircase that they couldn’t miss.

Scowling at the retreating limos, Bolan primed another frag grenade and waited until he heard footsteps on the stairs below him, then released the spoon and counted off four seconds. He dropped the lethal egg with only two seconds remaining on its fuse, and ran like hell.

He barely registered the blast, was focused solely on the long garage and cars inside it. On arrival, Bolan spied a small space off to one side where a wall rack held assorted automotive tools.

And keys.

He snagged one for a Rolls-Royce Phantom, dropped into a driver’s seat that felt more like an easy chair and gunned the 6.5-liter V12 engine into snarling life. After releasing the parking brake, the soldier stood on the accelerator and roared out of the garage.

He was in time to see a line of gunmen spilling from the exit he had used, a couple of them looking wobbly on their feet. Bolan had no time to examine them for wounds, determined as he was to catch the limo caravan, but they saw him and moved to intercept the Phantom as he powered out along the driveway.