like it, too,” Bolan said as he reached into the side pocket of his sport coat, brought out the NAA .22 Magnum revolver and shoved it under the goon’s nose. “That’s why I want it back.”
“Where’d that come from?” the short man asked, looking cross-eyed down at the barrel.
“I brought it in with me,” Bolan said as he cocked the tiny firearm. “You missed it. Now give me the knife.”
Slowly, the man with the gun in his face reached into his own jacket and pulled out the Cold Steel folding knife.
Bolan clipped the weapon to his belt over his right hip, then pocketed the Pug again.
He waited while the chauffeur opened the limo door for him, then slid into the backseat of the vehicle.
5
Whenever a police officer was murdered, all cops around the world, both the dirty and the clean, took it personally. And they dropped whatever else they were doing to find the killer responsible.
Unless, of course, they were in on the murder themselves.
Bolan knew that while New Orleans had a reputation for police and politicians “on the take,” there were still far more honest cops in the Big Easy than crooked men and women in blue.
But what McFarley wanted him to do was a little more complicated. The big boss of the Big Easy wanted him to kill a cop who had been on the take, then had a sudden change of heart and had become irritatingly honest.
McFarley’s closing words of the night before still hung in the Executioner’s ears: “This SOB—Greg Kunkle’s his name—went to some church revival or something and got reborn. Now he not only won’t take the payoffs I was getting to him, he’s busted one of my smaller brothels and popped two of my crack dealers down in the French Quarter. I want him dead.”
Bolan had placed his suitcases and equipment bags on the bed in the luxury one-bedroom apartment to which McFarley’s chauffeur had driven him after a quick stop at the gym. In the wee small hours of the dark New Orleans night, he unzipped a short nylon case and opened the same locked hard plastic box he’d looked at earlier in the evening when deciding on what weaponry to take to the meeting with McFarley.
He was no longer posing as a boxing gym manager. The fake police records Kurtzman had set up for him had obviously made McFarley trust him enough to talk more openly. But this hit on NOPD Detective Greg Kunkle was a clear test of loyalty, as well as a way for McFarley to get leverage over Cooper.
Knowledge of a professional execution would be a big hammer that McFarley could hold over his head from then on. A few hints to the right ears, done the right way, could point the finger at Bolan as triggerman without involving McFarley himself.
But Bolan had different plans, and as he looked inside his pistol case, he realized there was no longer any reason not to go fully armed from here on.
The soldier removed his sport coat and slid into the black leather and nylon shoulder rig that housed the Beretta 93-R under his left arm. The rig was custom built to accommodate the sound suppressor threaded onto the extended barrel, and while the term “silencer” was one most often used by the combat noninitiated, the device did keep the noise down to a bare minimum and changed the sound to one less like a gunshot.
Bolan attached the retainer strap beneath the holster to his belt, securing it into place. Then his hands moved to his other side. Held in place by a pair of Concealex plastic magazine carriers were two extra 9 mm mags. While the Beretta itself was filled with RBCD total fragmentation rounds, one of the magazines in the front had been loaded with Hornady hollowpoints. They would pierce slightly deeper than the RBCDs, but still mushroom into an impressive mushroom-head-looking missile that rivaled a .45 in size.
The third magazine in the Concealex holder was filled with needle-pointed armor-piercing rounds. They were made for penetration in case the target took refuge behind metal or some other hard object, or was wearing a bullet-resistant vest.
Bolan double-checked to make sure the Cold Steel Espada was clipped to the back of his belt. Satisfied that the gigantic folding knife was in place, he unbuckled his belt and slid the Concealex holster onto the rear slot, stopping it just in front of the second belt loop of his pants. Then, threading it on through the second slot, he slipped it through the last belt loop and buckled it again. A second later, the Desert Eagle had been pushed down inside the plastic holder, making a clicking sound. A clip-on double magazine carrier, which was big enough to accommodate two more of the Israeli-made.44 Magnum box-magazines came next, and Bolan clipped it just behind his left kidney.
The Espada was flanked by the Desert Eagle and its spare rounds.
But there was one extremely important weapon that Bolan wanted with him again, and he reached into the side pocket of his jacket where he’d placed it while still at McFarley’s. The .22 Magnum Pug had passed through McFarley’s security earlier. But this time he wanted it as a backup piece for his .44 Magnum and 9 mm Parabellum rounds. Inserting it into a tiny leather inside-the-waistband holster, he clipped it over his belt, positioning it against his back and using the spare magazine holder that sported his extra Desert Eagle ammo to wedge it into place. When he was searched again—and he suspected he would be—McFarley’s man would take the Desert Eagle but likely leave the magazines in place.
At least the Executioner hoped he would. After all, the magazines would be no good without the pistol to go with them.
There was only one problem with the Pug as he saw it; he had not had time to test fire it. And Bolan never trusted any weapon he hadn’t personally fired.
The soldier sat down on the edge of the bed. An hour ago, had someone asked him if there was any sort of combat or criminal problem he’d never faced before, his answer would have been none that he could think of.
But finally he had thought of one. Or, rather, McFarley had thought one up for him.
Bolan lay back on the bed and rested on his elbow. His policy was to never kill cops—clean or dirty. He had in the past made an occasional exception.
And to make matters more complicated in this case, according to McFarley, Kunkle had repented of his past sins and was doing his best to make amends. He was no longer even dirty. He was a new man, different from the one who’d worked both sides of the law in the past.
So Bolan was going to have to fake the hit, convince McFarley that he’d killed Kunkle without actually doing so.
The Executioner had faked similar hits in the past, with the intended victims’ willing to help—and they were almost always willing because they knew if they didn’t help put their enemy in jail he’d just hire someone else to kill them. Bolan had taken photos of ketchup-covered bodies and used other props to make the death look real.
But this job was to be different. McFarley was familiar with the way cops posing undercover as hit men faked murders, and he wanted more solid proof.
McFarley wanted Greg Kunkle’s hands. With his police connections, McFarley could get the fingerprints run through AFIS—the nation-wide Advanced Fingerprint Identification System—and since all law-enforcement personnel were printed when hired, he could see if the prints on file matched the prints on the severed hands.
Which made the operation a hundred times more complicated.
An idea had been floating around in the back of Bolan’s mind for some time, and suddenly it crystallized. Pulling the cell phone from his shirt pocket, he tapped in Barbara Price’s number at Stony Man Farm.
As he’d known she would, Price answered.
“I need some help,” Bolan said without preamble. “Can you transfer me to the Bear?”
“You’re on your way now. I’ll scramble the call,” Price said.
A moment later, Kurtzman answered with, “Hello, Striker. Always nice to hear your voice and know you’re still alive.”
“You