the hem on one, it was clear that the woman wore nothing underneath but tan lines.
Taking LoMonaco by the arm, Greene pulled her aside. “Samantha, are all the supplies ready at Compose?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “All set, sir.”
“Excellent,” Greene said with a brief smile, then he turned. “Victor, what did you tell the colleges about the party?”
“That I was an alumni and just wanted to help the kids celebrate the big win.”
“What big win?” Thomas asked.
Layne shrugged. “Who cares?”
“Alumnus,” LoMonaco corrected, walking onto the balcony with the Neostead resting on a shoulder. “ Alumni means several, alumus is the male singular.”
Layne scowled. “You’re kidding. Alumnus?”
“God’s truth.”
“Then God is an idiot,” Layne snorted, walking back into the darkness.
Down on the beach, the party was starting to get out of control as naked people began running about, and numerous students were having sex on the beach. Mostly it was couples, but sometimes there were three people involved.
“Bah, sex on the beach,” Thomas muttered in frank disapproval.
“It’s sort of romantic,” LoMonaco countered. “Even for these drunken fools.”
“But the sand gets everywhere. And I do mean everywhere!”
“So you shower afterward,” Layne contributed. “Let’s let them enjoy what little time they have remaining.”
Just then, they heard the crackling of explosions, and suddenly rockets soared high into the night sky to explode into colorful blossoms.
“Fireworks,” Greene grunted, sliding on clear surgical gloves. “Nice touch.”
“Thanks,” Layne said “I thought it might stimulate a faster response from the local PD.”
Softly, in the distance police sirens howled. Soon flashing lights appeared along the coastal highway.
“How many?” Greene demanded, grabbing the banister with both hands, and squeezing tight. “How many did they send?”
“Six, eight...ten cars!” LoMonaco reported, dialing for enhancement on a US Army–issue monocular. Computer-operated, the device took the ambient light of the stars, blocked out the bonfires, and delivered a perfectly clear black-and-white image of the beachfront debauchery.
“Excellent,” Greene exhaled, sliding on a ski mask. “Okay, time to go to work, people.”
“Daylight!” Thomas shouted, brandishing a Colt revolver.
“Daylight!” the armed people in the suite repeated, and surged out of the room.
In the hallway, a young couple gasped at the sight of the armed mob pouring from the suite.
“Go to your room,” Greene commanded, cradling an F88 assault rifle. “This has nothing to do with you!”
The man nodded and dragged the terrified young woman inside with him, and slammed the door shut.
“Why leave them alive?” Thomas snarled, hefting an Atchisson autoshotgun.
“We do not harm our own kind,” Greene stated, just as the elevator opened.
Inside the cage were three Latina maids dressed in clean white uniforms, and carrying the various tools of their trades.
Firing from the hip, Greene, Layne and LoMonaco ruthlessly slaughtered the dark-skinned women in a hail of gunfire.
Leaving the bodies where they fell, Greene and Daylight moved through the luxury hotel, wounding any Caucasian they encountered, but ruthlessly executing everybody else.
In the lobby, one of the terrorists drew a bead on the desk clerk, but LoMonaco stayed his hand.
“One of us,” she whispered.
Exiting the building, Greene and his people paused to reload, then moved out, heading directly for the main access road to the secluded beach, and their scheduled meeting with the Mexican police.
CHAPTER ONE
Columbus, Ohio
Firing from the hip, Mack Bolan, aka The Executioner, took out both of the liveried guards, the discharge from the silenced 9 mm Beretta no louder than a hard cough.
As the dead men crumpled to the ground, Bolan moved in fast, smashing both of their handheld radios. Then he put a squirt of fast-acting glue onto the slides of their automatic pistols. If anybody found the corpses, they’d spend precious minutes trying to get the jimmied weapons to work again, and that was all the soldier needed now, just a few more minutes to get the job done.
The search for Eric “Mad Dog” Kegan had been long and hard. The gunrunner shed identities the way most other people did socks, and he always left behind a trail of bodies, most of them innocent bystanders who saw his face. But that reign of bloodshed would end here and now. If only Bolan moved fast enough.
Dressed for full urban combat, The Executioner was wearing a loose trench coat, and soft fedora. Underneath he wore a military blacksuit, Threat-Level-Four body armor, an old canvas web harness rigged with a wide assortment of weapons and tools of war and dark combat sneakers. They didn’t offer the full protection of combat boots, but made less noise.
Easing through the dark Bolan paused just before reentering the sunlight. Across the street was a small building nestled amid leafy trees and shrubs. He could see brick walls and a house set far back from the road. White stucco, the structure was two stories tall, probably a shoe store or something similar in the past, big picture windows on either side of a nice wooden door. The shutters on the second story were closed, with a small red-and-white For Rent sign in the left window that was partially obscured by streaked dust. Old, dirty, valueless, abandoned and forgotten, the store was just part of the neighborhood—there, but never truly noticed.
Crossing the busy street, Bolan attempted to look through the window, but couldn’t see anything. The pebbled glass was tinted a deep blue. Nice. Only a foot away, Kegan would have total privacy to conduct his business.
Easing into the greenery, Bolan checked for traps and hidden alarms, but found the area clear. The interior of the building would contain an advanced security system, but to maintain his cover, Kegan had to relay upon plain, ordinary locks outside so as not to draw any suspicion on the place.
Studying the building, Bolan wondered if the second floor was an apartment. This was an older neighborhood and lots of stores used to have living space above them in order to save money.
Going to the door, Bolan tried the handle but it was locked. Reaching under his windbreaker, he unearthed a keywire gun and shot the lock full of stiff wire, then turned the gun. The lock disengaged with a subtle click.
Wiggling the device free, Bolan tucked it away and drew his Beretta 93R machine pistol before sliding inside the dark building. Using a small can of pressurized talcum powder, Bolan filled the air with a swirling dust cloud to check for laser beams. But the powder revealed nothing, and he continued onward, staying alert for hidden video cameras and trip wires. This was home for Kegan and it was guaranteed to be a major hard site. He simply hadn’t found any security devices yet, which made Bolan slightly nervous. You never heard the bullet that got you. He had to stay alert, watch for everything and live another day. That was all any soldier could hope for in war.
And that’s all this was, a covert war for the streets of America, Bolan noted. On one side were Kegan and his kind, cannibals in thousand-dollar suits, and on the other side was civilization. Long ago, Bolan had decided that he wasn’t Animal Man’s judge, or jury, but his executioner. The soldier wasn’t here to enforce the law, but to dispense justice, hard and absolute. Street