fifteen years, but suddenly his assessment of the organization’s sanction left him alone and chilled. Richards had broken loose from their control, and that made him dangerous. The battles he’d waged across the turn of the millennium to protect his government from deadly threats had been real enough. The Initiative had a stockpile of mega-weaponry housed in its Washington, D.C., headquarters, enough matériel to render the surface of the planet uninhabitable for centuries.
Richards stuffed himself and his gym bag into the back seat of the cab.
“Where to?” the swarthy man behind the wheel asked.
Richards rattled off the name of a hotel he frequented while in town. He wouldn’t stay in the place, since the Initiative knew he’d go there, but he’d be able to find a dozen places to hole up from there. The cabbie nodded and steered out into traffic, cursing other drivers in his foreign tongue.
No wonder the President had swiftly condemned his actions in Los Angeles, Richards realized. The Rose Initiative had been using him as a puppet. A weapon to keep the public in the dark about the countless threats that were really endangering them. Richards’s covert wars kept American citizens from realizing the threats of Islamic operatives and foreign influences on U.S. soil. Rather than smear the menace across the headlines and news programs, they were quietly dealt with so that those who would profit from association with the devils could continue their underhanded deals.
It was all so clear now.
For decades, he’d been a dealer in death, and now, he knew that there was no way to take back the battles he’d waged that had enabled faceless government officials in power. Their chains hung around the American citizenry.
There had to be a way to break that relentless choke hold.
Richards knew of several militia groups who would throw in with him, powerful and trained allies who could help strike several small blows against the dictatorship he’d supported while drugged. Costell would also be a great ally, not to mention Colonel Weist and his mercenary forces.
Still, even with all that manpower, there was no way that Richards could strike a significant blow. The Rose Initiative was a monolithic force.
It would take a blow unlike anything that had been struck before.
Richards thought about the Initiative’s deadly stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. From horrendous, but specific plagues to ultra-low frequency transmitters that could instill murderous rage into entire city populations, they were tools which could carve a new future.
All Richards had to do was break into the stockpile.
That meant distractions, and high-tech equipment.
And an assault on Washington, D.C., itself.
The death dealer nodded, realizing that it would be a suicidal ploy to free the world from its hidden masters, but it would be worthwhile.
Richards realized he had to atone for his wrongs against America.
2
JoAnn Wolfe looked up from the microscope as she examined a sample from the stack of bills. The Los Angeles Crime Lab night shift was no less busy than any other time of the day, but Wolfe had been given a pass on new cases and assigned to examine the evidence sample brought in by Matt Cooper on behalf of the Justice Department.
Wolfe’s dark, red tinted hair was tied back and her smooth brow furrowed with a tiny cleft of a wrinkle between her eyes.
“What?” the Executioner asked.
“I’ve got fingerprints from two sources. Both are in our database. Einhard and Admussen. They’re arms dealers. Heard of them?” Wolfe asked.
Bolan nodded. “No fingerprints from anyone else?”
“Not even on the wrapper for the stack. Normally you get impressions, and while I have fingertip shapes, there are no whorls,” Wolfe said. “Unless this guy regularly trims his fingerprints, he should have left something, but I’ve got nothing.”
Bolan frowned. “Regular use of solvents would smooth out the ridges.”
Wolfe let him look through the microscope. There were round, featureless pads left by skin-based oils on the bill that hadn’t developed fingerprint patterns.
“What about the results on the serial numbers?” Bolan asked.
“That’s something else,” Wolfe replied. “They’re discontinued currency, bills originally scheduled for incineration because they were old and tattered.”
Bolan looked at the pristine, nearly perfect bill. “Old and tattered?”
“That’s according to treasury records,” Wolfe stated. “Of course, the look of this money doesn’t match the records. Granted, the date range on the bills are correct, but they’re so clean they could have been printed yesterday.”
“Maybe they were,” Bolan said.
“If they were counterfeit, they’d have to have access to the right paper and ink stocks, and the plate patterns are perfect,” Wolfe stated.
Bolan nodded. “The right paper style for the date range on these bills?”
“Perfect. But they’ve never been used,” Wolfe said.
“And they were scheduled for destruction?” Bolan asked.
“You think the originals might have been destroyed?” Wolfe asked.
“It’s not impossible. The retired printing machinery might have been acquired by someone else to make these bills,” Bolan stated. “And they could have printed up this cash using the discard list.”
“That’s an awful lot of work for ten thousand dollars,” Wolfe mused.
“Ten thousand in this stack, for this deal,” Bolan noted. “How out of date are those bills?”
“Twenty years old,” Wolfe told him. She chewed her lower lip. “So you’re saying the machinery that printed these notes has been used for at least twenty years?”
“What cheaper way to finance a black-bag operation than to print your own cash?” Bolan asked. “Especially if you’re using the money overseas. Ten thousand a mission, give it about eighteen missions a year,” he said.
“Three point six million, minimum,” Wolfe said. “Not counting local bribes, tickets, accommodations…”
“Paying for backup,” Bolan added. “Let’s call it five million in funny money. Officially printed on retired U.S. Treasury machinery. For a black-bag operation, it’d be obscenely cost-effective.”
“That’s just one operative,” Wolfe noted. “How many organizations have only one top spook?”
Bolan nodded. “They’d be given similar budgets.”
His cell phone warbled and he plucked it from his pocket. “Cooper.”
“Striker,” Hal Brognola’s voice greeted him on the other side. “We have a possible incident in Phoenix involving our quarry.”
“So he did get on a flight at LAX,” Bolan noted.
“It’s likely. We have an unknown body at the airport food court,” Brognola said. “I’ve got local FBI agents running his fingerprints, but they couldn’t get any.”
“Just like our shooter,” Bolan told the man from Justice. “The guy removed his fingerprints. We got tip impressions, but no identifiable markings on the bills or the wrapper.”
“So we’re talking about a serious covert operation,” Brognola said.
“That’s what Wolfe’s thinking. They’re using authentic printing machinery and supplies to cook up their own cash for their operations,” Bolan said.
“Damn,” Brognola grumbled.