Rebel Force

In undercover intelligence work, drops were made in public places to explain movement patterns to unfriendly surveillance. They weren’t meant to be cache points. There was seldom longer than an hour between delivery and retrieval at such points, nor was one site usually meant for more than a single stringer.

Bolan slid out five manila envelopes of varying thickness. He knew things were bad. Operational security was dissolving all around him. He stood and slid the envelopes into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He needed to get out and away from the drop site. He had to assume he was made. That didn’t necessarily mean the operation was over. He decided that if he needed to do open source or interview-based investigations, then it was still better for him to do it than risk the cover of another operative.

He wasn’t going to make it easy for the opposition, however.

Bolan unlocked the door to the booth and stepped out into the gloomy hallway. He sensed movement at the intersection of the theatre hall and looked up. The broad-shouldered man with the crew cut from the casino rounded the corner. Their eyes met, locked in recognition.

The soldier didn’t believe in coincidences. He couldn’t believe in them and continue to survive in a covert operations environment. He launched himself instantly, driving straight at the man, using his momentum to rise off the ground, swinging his right knee up. He drove his knee hard into the man’s ribs. The guy grunted and staggered backward from the impact.

Bolan landed and swept his hands up to grip the back of the man’s head in a maneuver designed to control him. The man’s reflexes were lightening quick, and he struck the inside of Bolan’s right arm at the nerve cluster just behind the elbow. Pain flashed up the Executioner’s arm and it was knocked aside, leaving an opening.

The crew cut man stepped forward and struck Bolan with a fist to his exposed ribs. The big American stumbled, bruised, hurt and surprised. He brought his arms up in front of him and instinctively turned to the side and raised a leg to ward off further blows.

Instead of pushing his advantage physically, the man from the casino shuffled backward and his right hand went for the small of his back. Bolan saw the movement and moved forward. The man’s hands reappeared holding a flat, black automatic pistol.

The Executioner stepped forward, moving to the outside of the muscled killer’s arm. The tight space of the hallway hampered his movements, slowing him. He twisted so that he faced the man at a nearly ninety-degree angle. Bolan’s left hand caught his adversary’s wrist just behind the pistol and, using the man’s own forward motion, pulled him off balance. Bolan used his right hand to snap a straight punch into his opponent’s temple.

The impact was loud in the confined space, and the man sagged under the sharp force. Bolan stepped away, twisting at the hips. The hand that had just delivered the brutal punch twisted to became a claw, sweeping the man’s head backward while Bolan pulled the gun hand back and thrust his chest out against the trapped arm, over extending the elbow.

The gun clattered to the floor and the man dropped as well. Without thinking, operating on instinct, Bolan lifted his foot and drove his heel straight down into the man’s throat. The killer’s eyes startled open wide, then slid upward into his head.

Bolan moved quickly. He glanced around him and saw no one. The altercation had lasted only heartbeats, and the computerized music system still blared out the same song. Bolan knelt and slid the man’s pistol into the small of his back before expertly patting down the body.

He pulled out a wallet, a cell phone and a knife. Bolan pocketed the items and stood. He smoothed down the front of his jacket over the bulge made by the envelopes from Sanders’s drop point. He held his head up and coolly walked out of the dark hallway.

Bolan’s nerves were on fire as he made his way for the door. He had no intention of being in the building when the body was found. He pushed through the door and out into the street. He looked around carefully. The point man might have had backup.

The soldier started walking, looking for a taxi. It was possible the man had been assigned surveillance and had decided to take Bolan out on his own. If he was a Russian stringer, then it was even possible he had been working alone on a “zone defense” surveillance. Bolan had no intention of taking that possibility for granted, however.

He needed to get to his safehouse and take stock of what he’d learned since hitting the ground in Chechnya, just four hours earlier. Bolan pushed his way through a lively crowd as he looked for a taxi. He didn’t see one, and he decided to head back toward the train station. He’d have his choice of taxis there, and the walk would give him a chance to shake out anyone shadowing him.

He crossed the busy strip, ignoring angry shouts and beeping horns. Such things were commonplace. This section of the city stank, and the cold, seasonal damp made him feel like his skin was covered in a greasy film. Reaching the other side of the street, Bolan ducked into the alley he’d used to reach the porn shop.

He stepped passed an unconscious man sprawled in the mouth of the alley. The man reeked of strong, cheap booze. Bolan entered alley, his nostrils flaring at the stench of rotting garbage and piles of refuse. Halfway down the alley he turned to look over his shoulder. No preternatural combat sense had warned him, just good tradecraft. A simple matter of being careful. He saw a silhouette enter the alley and he spun, dropping to one knee. He pulled his pistol free and crouched.

The figure at the end of the alley already had his pistol out and it barked twice. Two rounds buzzed through the air above Bolan’s head, just where his heart would have been were he still standing. He answered with a trio of 9 mm rounds.

His vision was blurred by the blinding flash of the weapon and his ears buzzed from the sudden, sharp reports. At the end of the alley he had a sense of a figure spinning away. He heard the sleeping man shout in surprise and saw him sit up.

Realizing that the figure was going for the cover of the building edge, Bolan popped up and shuffled quickly backward. The figure came around the edge of the alley and got off a hasty shot that sang wide. Bolan answered with a single shot designed to impact the wall near the figure’s head and spray chips. His round drove the gunman back behind cover and Bolan took his opportunity to escape out of the alley.

The Executioner hit the street running, shouldering his way through the crowd like a running back pushing for open field. He knocked several pedestrians to the ground, ignoring their cries of outrage.

He reached the front of the train station and jogged over to the line of waiting taxis, leaned forward and pushed some folded bills into the driver’s waiting hand. He rattled off an address to get the man moving and leaned back into the ratty seat as the driver pulled out into traffic.

The pistol was warm against the small of his back and its weight was reassuring. Finally the taxi driver made it out into the heavy traffic and Bolan allowed himself to relax. The driver said something at him in what he thought was a Georgian accent, and Bolan responded in colloquial Russian.

He reached into his jacket and felt the envelopes there. Brognola wasn’t going to be happy about this.

6

The town house was in an upscale, international resident section of the city, adjacent to the old financial district. Bolan had the taxi driver drop him a couple of blocks away, and he approached from the rear making use of the clean, wide alleys running between the houses.

It was a quiet neighborhood, and Bolan didn’t notice anyone up and moving about at such a late hour. It was place of good security due to the high concentration of foreign businessmen from the petroleum and mining industries. People here, Bolan knew, lived a hell of a lot better than they did in the rest of the Grozny metropolis.

At the back gate Bolan punched the code Barbara Price had given him into the keypad hidden behind a false plaque and disabled the alarm system. He entered the little walkway and shut the gate tightly behind him. At the back door of the safehouse, Bolan tipped up a bird feeder hanging from a low tree branch and got the key to the dead-bolt lock.

Once inside the two-story house he locked the door behind him and reengaged the alarm system. He went into the Western-style kitchen and pulled open the fridge door. The fridge was well stocked, and he pulled out a bright red Coca-Cola can. He leaned against the counter, guzzled the soda and tossed the empty can into the nearby garbage bin.

Bolan pulled the envelopes free of his jacket pocket and threw them on the kitchen table. He removed the handgun from the small of his back and set it next to the envelopes. He took off his jacket and sat down.

Bolan sighed and leaned forward, putting his head in his hands and closing his eyes for a moment. His knuckles were still slightly sore from where they’d struck the man in the porn shop.

After a moment he pulled the first of the five manila envelopes over to him. He reached behind him and drew the knife he had taken from the man he’d killed. He opened the folding handles with practiced flicks of his wrist, then used the knife blade to open the first envelope.

Inside Bolan found computer printouts. He shifted them around, studying the details. It was a schematic diagram. He frowned, knowing he didn’t have the technical expertise to know what the blueprints showed. Perhaps they were the electronics to the guidance systems DNI had been so worried Sable had procured. Perhaps they were something else.

Bolan pushed the schematic printout aside and opened up the next envelope. It contained more of the same. The third one showed a list of numbers running down a spreadsheet. He knew he was looking at an accounting ledger. The numbers showed transactions, dates, amounts and specific account numbers.

“You were getting some good stuff,” Bolan murmured to the absent Sanders.

He threw the papers on top of the pile of information, set the knife on the table and rubbed his eyes. He breathed deeply.

He picked up the next to the last envelope and opened it quickly. Several photos spilled out across the desk. He sat up, suddenly alert, completely surprised by what he was seeing.

In the photos two women were locked together, naked, on a bed. Bolan held them up. It showed a pretty, younger Asian woman kissing a blond woman. The Asian was attractive, but the blonde had an icy beauty, as hard as diamonds, that Bolan had only seen in expensive call girls.

He looked at the rest of the pictures. The women, already naked, progressed quickly beyond the kissing stage. In one shot the brunette had her face buried between the blonde’s smooth thighs. The blonde was looking down on the younger woman, her face haughty as she pulled at the woman’s hair.

“What’s this all about, Sanders?” Bolan wondered.

Bolan pulled two photos out of the pile and set them in front of him. He slid the rest back into their envelope. The two photos he kept out each showed close shots of the women’s faces. Bolan studied them intently, memorizing every detail. When he was satisfied he’d recognize them in person, he put them away and opened the final envelope from the drop.

Inside the envelope was folded piece of stationery. Bolan unfolded it and looked at what was written there. It was a simple series of numbers.

Bolan frowned. If the drop was a fast turnover situation, then it was possible the code was a simple system meant for Sanders to decipher quickly and then destroy, rather than sophisticated encryption.

The soldier got up and stretched. He went back out into the living area where he had seen a desk with a computer on it. It might help with research, but the house had been set up as a hideaway, not a field operations center, and communications were not infallibly secure. There were the cyberequivalents of blind drops, but Bolan had no intention of using them from this location unless absolutely necessary.

Bolan needed a good, down and dirty, field code Sanders might have instructed a stringer in. From the numbers, it seemed to be a replacement code of some sort. Bolan got to work with pen and paper. He was in Operational Theater Six. He added that to the last digit of the day of the date of the drop, then transposed the numbers with letters of the alphabet.

He tried the day Sanders had made his call, got a jumble of alphabet letters, then tried switching the letters out with the next letter in the alphabet. Nothing. He tried it with the letter prior and came up empty. He snarled in frustration and thrust the sheets of paper away.

Bolan got up and went to the refrigerator. He reached in and pulled out a green bottle of Heineken. He idly wondered what poor schmuck had gone all the way through college CIA recruitment only to find himself putting his security clearance to use stocking the fridge in some rarely used safehouse.

Bolan sat the beer down unopened. His mind was cluttered with images, snapshot memories of a hundred different events and a thousand different days from his past. He walked over to the doorway and reached up to grab the lip of the frame at the top. He dug his fingers in tightly and began to pull himself up in slow, deliberate movements. The exercise was an old rock climbing movement designed to strengthen the hands and forearms as much as the biceps and back.

After an easy fifteen chin-ups to get his blood moving, Bolan lowered himself and walked back to the table. He clenched and unclenched his fists, loosening the muscles of his grip. He shrugged back to stretch his shoulders and looked down at the table.