Recovery Force

He bid Gagliardi a hasty farewell, then skirted the building until he reached the corner and risked a glance in the direction of the pharmacy. Two unmarked units had arrived and parked on the sidewalk, flanked by two uniform squads blocking the intersection. A large police van arrived a moment later, probably dispatched to haul away whomever the cops took into custody.

Bolan whipped the Beretta from his shoulder holster and dashed along the side of the diner until the first rooftop sentry he’d spotted came into view. The warrior had only seconds to take the guy down before the sentry started sniping at the cops. He was packing SJHPs, subsonic to suppress noise, but at only 125-grain apiece it would also severely limit the chances for a first-hit kill. Bolan thumbed the selector to 3-round-burst mode. He then sighted on the shadowy figure visible just above the parapet and squeezed the trigger. A trio of 9 mm Parabellum rounds hit home, one striking the rifle mounted to a bipod while the other two slammed into the sentry’s head. The guy dropped from sight in a red spray brightened by the blazing midday sun.

The muzzle of Bolan’s 93-R attended the second rooftop position but he found it vacant. Either the sniper there had seen Bolan moving or he’d gone to alert the others at the arrival of Hall’s squad.

Bolan turned his attention to the three ground-level heavies. One of them was using the door of a black SUV for cover as he sighted down the barrel of an assault rifle. From that vantage point, Bolan couldn’t tell what kind of rifle it was but he knew that mattered very little. The gunner could intend only one thing and if he had enough guts to level a rifle at the police in broad daylight on a busy street, he sure as hell had the guts to use it.

Bolan didn’t plan to give him that chance. He dashed across the street in the direction of the cops massed outside the front doors of the pharmacy and prepared to make tactical entry. Bolan sighted down the slide of the pistol and triggered a 3-round burst on the run. He nearly reached the sidewalk before triggering a second and then a third. None of the rounds hit but they came close enough to distract the hood holding the rifle. The staccato of autofire echoed through the air as the rounds went high and wide of the cloistered cops.

Bolan leaped onto the sidewalk as he dropped a clip into his palm, pocketed it and slammed home a fresh one. He body-checked an older, white-haired guy donned in a Kevlar vest. The impact sent the cop into one of his colleagues who was suited in full tactical gear just as a fresh volley of rounds chewed up the wall where the cop had been standing a moment earlier.

Bolan ignored the cops who shouted at him and turned their weapons, instead rolling away from them and coming up behind the grill of the police van. Bolan skirted around it and pressed toward the position of the guy yielding the rifle. The shooter still hadn’t seemed to notice Bolan—he acted like the cops had spotted him and were shooting back—so the Executioner’s fast approach went unchecked. By the time the hood realized his mistake Bolan had drawn close enough he couldn’t miss. And he didn’t. A trio of rounds perforated the man’s left chest, cutting through heart and lungs with a fury. The man’s rifle clattered to the pavement and he staggered backward under the impact, blood flowing freely from not only the wounds, but also the corners of his mouth. The enemy gunner, appearing to be a man of twenty or twenty-one, dropped to the ground and expired with a shudder.

By that time, the cops realized Bolan wasn’t shooting at them and that their real enemy had sprung an ambush that the Executioner, friend or foe, seemed bent on putting to rest before the party got wound up. And by all accounts it looked to them like the warrior was doing a damned good job of it.

Bolan swung the muzzle of the Beretta 93-R until he acquired target number two in his sights and delivered another volley of slugs. While they might have been subsonic, the rounds did the job of neutralizing the gunman. The guy triggered a burst skyward before dropping his weapon and hitting a wall. He fell in almost slow motion, his eyes wide open in a vacant expression of death as blood seeped from the third eye left by one of Bolan’s rounds.

The last gunner saw that within a moment the odds had been narrowed by two-thirds, and it didn’t look like he stood much of a chance against the Executioner and the cops. He decided to take his chances with Bolan. He believed he could take this guy—he had the firepower and the guts. The hood raised his machine pistol, an older-model mini-Uzi, and sprayed in the direction of Bolan indiscriminately. The Executioner took cover and grimaced at the off-chance an innocent bystander might get in the way.

Unfortunately for the gun-toting hood, he’d never have the chance to kill Bolan or a noncombatant.

The man’s body began to rock under the impact of the half-dozen or so police weapons suddenly aimed at him. The cops doled out a fury of destructive autofire from their Colt AR-15s and pistols. The thug staggered a moment and then collapsed to the pavement.

Bolan continued in motion around the corner and sprinted down the street. He would have to lie low for a while, come back later to retrieve his vehicle. The warrior knew he still needed to make contact with Joseph Hall, but he had to do it on his own time and his own way. For the moment they would only try to apprehend Bolan, and the Executioner didn’t feel like spending the next twenty-four hours in a police lockup under interrogation. He still had a lot to do in Phoenix.

The mission had only just begun.

JOE HALL, CAPTAIN OF the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad, stared with angst at the mess of bodies strewn along the streets of downtown Phoenix. This was his city, and the mysterious stranger who had saved his life managed to disappear without a trace. No, the raid on the pharmacy hadn’t gone as planned. They had five corpses, all of whom Hall assumed would eventually be tied back to affiliations with either a local street gang or Los Negros. In spite of the sudden change in plans, they had managed to round up everyone inside the pharmacy, a total of three employees and one manager, but he didn’t think anything would come of it. They had no evidence of wrongdoing on the parts of any of the pharmacy workers, and all of the bad guys, any one of whom he might have coerced into talking, were all deceased.

Sergeant Larry Murach joined Hall as he stood over one of the dead. The coroner had arrived quickly enough and at least managed to get the bodies covered. It wasn’t as if Hall cared much about protecting their dignity, but dead was still dead and it helped cut down the number of free gapers. A large crowd had formed but with the place taped off and the backup on scene, the uniforms were doing a pretty good job of keeping the looky-loos and press hounds at bay.

“What do you have?” Hall asked Murach, not taking his eyes off the covered body.

“Not much,” Murach said, flipping through the couple of small pages of notes he’d taken. “All four of the deceased are gangbangers. Two actually have some ink that marks them as members of Los Negros, the other two are wearing colors but nothing else.”

“Witnesses?”

“Nobody I talked to is really sure what the hell happened. I guess whoever saw these guys decided to stay healthy by giving them a wide berth.”

And the only man with enough smarts to have spotted them ahead of time somehow managed to slip through our fingers, Hall thought. “What about our mystery man?”

“I canvassed that diner over there,” Murach said, pointing at it. “A waitress there says a guy came in about ten minutes before the shooting started. Says he ordered a sandwich and then got up and left without eating it.”

Hall looked sharply at Murach. “Why?”

“She wasn’t sure,” Murach said with a shrug. “She said he ordered and then when she brought the food he asked for a pay phone and split. Paid for the meal but apparently isn’t much of a tipper.”

“She give you a description?”

Murach didn’t bother referencing his notes. “Big with dark hair. That’s about all I got.”

“I could have told you that much.”

“She was more pissed about the tip than anything else. That’s all she really talked about. Just kept bitching about the tip.”

And now here was Murach bitching about the waitress bitching. “You got her name and address?”

“Yeah.”

Hall looked at the body again. “I’ll go by later. See if I can get something more out of her. In the meantime, let’s get this place cleaned up as quickly as possible.”

“What about the shooting team?”

“Screw them assholes,” Hall said. “I don’t have time for that right now.”

BOLAN ENTERED THROUGH the frosted-glass doors of the HIKE squad room at the Phoenix P.D. headquarters on the heels of a uniformed female cop.

A single plainclothes officer occupied one of the many desks within the squad room, and he barely gave them a cursory inspection as they passed before returning his attention to a newspaper. The rest of the room appeared abandoned—quiet as a morgue, almost. The officer led Bolan to an office in back and rapped on the closed door. At the sound of a muffled reply she opened it and poked her head in.

“Someone here to see you, sir,” she said.

“Who is it?” the voice asked with an impatient tone.

“Says his name is Cooper. Claims he has information about the shootings today.”

“Have him give his statement to Murach.”

“Sergeant Murach stepped out, sir,” the officer replied with some trepidation.

“Oh, for crissakes, don’t—” The man broke off and said, “All right, send him in.”

The officer stepped aside and smiled, obviously a bit uncomfortable, and gestured for Bolan to enter.

The Executioner smiled back and nodded as he stepped through the doorway and far enough into the room that the young woman could close the door behind him. The man who stood and came around the desk wasn’t anywhere near Bolan’s imposing height, maybe five foot ten, and Bolan immediately recognized him as the lead officer he’d shoved out of the way of enemy gunfire earlier that day. Bolan wondered if that man was Captain Joseph Hall, but the letters stenciled on the door of his office had now confirmed it.

The guy reached out a hand and Bolan shook it. Scrutiny, not recognition, flashed in Hall’s eyes and Bolan eased out the breath he’d been holding. Hall hadn’t gotten a look at his face.

“Have a seat, sir,” Hall said.

Bolan casually plopped into the chair as Hall returned to his desk and adjusted his tie. “You have information about what happened today?”

“I was part of what happened today,” Bolan replied easily.

Hall’s eyes flicked up from his desk and locked on Bolan with a hard stare. Then something dawned on him, something like a realization, and his body tensed.

Bolan held up a palm. “Easy, Hall. I’m not looking for trouble.”

“Then you shouldn’t have walked in here.”