The soldier watched as the politician's hand began to move slowly toward a drawer in the small end table.
Good, thought Bolan, he's going for hardware. It'll make the fight even fairer. Because the rage that coursed through the warrior made him realize that he would have felt no remorse at choking the senator to death with bare hands right where he sat. The man was too dirty to let him live.
But no, let the scum try to save his life.
Dutton's hand was almost out of the drawer now, and Bolan saw the unmistakable shape of a small handgun.
Far enough.
The sleek Beretta filled Bolan's fist and a single discreet chug echoed in the basement's silence as a 9 mm stinger pinned the politician against the armchair.
Bolan turned to the VCR that sat on top of the TV set.
He ejected the child porn tape from the machine, then turned around to Dutton's lifeless body and dropped the foul video on the dead man's chest.
He left the room, noiselessly retracing his way out of the house, briefly recalling that he had wondered, after his first visit with Dutton at that fund-raising dinner earlier tonight, if he was not going soft when he had let the senator off the hook. But then, Bolan realized now, he had been in the process of putting the picture puzzle together.
No, the Executioner was not going soft.
He took as much satisfaction as ever in eliminating lice like Senator Mark Dutton.
He felt sorry for the senator's wife and daughter having to find the body in the morning. They were victims of the rottenness of Dutton's soul. But so were the children Bolan had to rescue before David Parelli and his mother sent them off to whatever unspeakable fate awaited this shipment of helpless human cargo. These were the victims whose welfare drove Bolan. The children.
And the puzzle of a cop named Griff, a man tormented by inner devils, who figured into this somehow.
And, of course, the woman.
Lana.
Where was she?
Griff's and Lana's whereabouts were the only puzzles left on this night of sudden death.
Bolan returned to the Camaro and gunned it away from the curb, U-turning to head west, toward the next suburb over, Skokie, and the address Dutton had given him.
It was time for the children to be saved and the Parellis to pay for their sins, past and present.
And time had almost run out for those kids being shipped from that Skokie trucking company at midnight.
Bolan wondered about a cop who could be friend or foe.
A kidnapped woman, in danger.
Missing children.
The time bomb that had been ticking beneath Chicago was about to explode with awesome fury.
Retribution time, yeah.
The Executioner only hoped he would be in time.
19
Aaron Kurtzman practically jumped out of his skin when the phone rang.
The phone.
The one unlisted even in top classified government circles; the line connecting the Stony Man Farm command center computer room with a scrambler and relay system outside the standard loops of even such ultrasecret government agencies as the CIA or the FBI.
There were such sensitive lines in and out of the Farm, to be sure, but this was the line over which Bolan and only a very select few others made contact.
Kurtzman had been doing his best, as he went about his duties in the computer room, trying not to think about a guy named Bolan in a city named Chicago.
Not that there weren't enough things for him to worry about. Able Team and Phoenix Force were both out on dangerous missions at the moment, and that was plenty to occupy a guy like Kurtzman who took it almost personally any time another mission came up for the fighting men of the Farm. The difference of course was that Able Team and Phoenix Force were a bona fide part of that team.
Mack Bolan had elected to sever ties with Stony Man, to walk alone through the fields of fire.
Kurtzman did not have any new information for the big guy, except some surface background on Lana Garner, but it was just that Kurtzman wanted more than anything at that moment to know that his friend Bolan was okay.
The odds against the Executioner increased with each new campaign he decided to undertake, and Kurtzman had an uneasy hunch that tonight in Chicago could be the chanciest blitz since the Executioner had gone back into the cold.
The odds had never been higher.
Kurtzman answered the phone.
A gruff voice he immediately recognized said, "Bear, this is Hal."
He tried to conceal his disappointment.
Harold Brognola was the Farm's White House liaison. He had been the man to bring Bolan his assignments when the Executioner had worked for the government. Brognola had long been a close friend and supporter of Bolan and his cause, and he continued to be one of the key supporters... off the record... of the one-man wars waged by Bolan against the forces of evil.
'"Lo, Hal."
"Any word from our man?" asked Brognola.
"Afraid not. I was hoping this might be him."
"I'll get off the line to keep it clear in that case," Brognola grunted. "I'm worried about him this time, Bear."
"You and me both, buddy," Kurtzman growled. "One guy taking on the whole damn Chicago Mafia would be bad enough odds, but with the police and so many intangibles..."
"I know," Hal said grimly, "and the word out of Chi is that holy hell is busting loose. The streets are running red with blood."
"Let's just hope it's not our guy's."
"Yeah, let's."
"Phone me the minute you hear anything."
"Likewise, Hal."
"Will do."
They broke the connection.
Kurtzman replaced the receiver and leaned back in his wheelchair, watching the phone as if that might get Bolan to call in faster. But he knew that the situation in Chicago would prevent Bolan from phoning in.
"Give 'em hell, big guy," Kurtzman said to the silent instrument.
There was a large-living spirit on the loose in Chicago this night, delivering justice and retribution to those who had escaped them for far too long.
Bolan.
The eternal warrior, thought Kurtzman.
Ever on guard.
Ever vigilant.
Weary of war.
But unable to stop because there was always a task at hand.
Kurtzman wondered what Mack Bolan was doing at this moment...
Mack Bolan bellied beneath thorny berry bushes that were frozen solid.
Stray fragments of moonlight shone on the icy terrain.
How quickly a suburban industrial park with its vast complexes and fenced-in perimeters became a hell-ground, he thought.
He had shed the overcoat and was combat-ready in blacksuit again, his face smeared with camouflage cosmetic. The NVD goggles were in place, and Big Thunder rode low on his right hip. The Beretta nestled in shoulder leather beneath his left arm, military webbing with ammo, grenades and the like draped across his chest, the MAC-10 looped from its strap beneath his right arm.
The Parelli-owned trucking and shipping company was separated from other similar concerns by open acreage across which Bolan had jogged until he came to within thirty feet of the perimeter.
Lamp standards inside the property cast circles of illumination here and there, but there were still plenty of patches of relative gloom and it was toward one of these that he made his way.
He reached the fence.
He used a set of tiny but effective wire cutters to clip a hole large enough for him to squeeze through.
He came erect and darted forward, crouching next to a wall of a warehouse that sat next to the one-story office building.
Tractor trailer trucks were parked everywhere like dozing metal beasts.
The low rumble of one truck's engine, idling somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, drifted through the still night air to his ears.
As did the scrape of shoe leather of someone approaching.
A sentry. Bolan hit the ground, then rolled into the legs of the guard who now came around a corner of the building.