“Gentlemen,” Cako said, “the revue will begin in just a few minutes.”
The four Asians nodded in unison. Any one of them might slit Cako’s throat for a two-dollar debt, but none would risk offending him with rude behavior in his own household. He left them nodding, life-size dashboard ornaments, and wished their courtesy would rub off on Americans.
Cako caught Vasil Majko’s eye across the room and raised a hand, five fingers spread. Majko lifted his chin instead of nodding and departed to prepare the merchandise while Cako kept on circulating, checking on his customers.
They always came in pairs, as if one man might be incapable of choosing products from the lineup. Or perhaps they simply liked the show. Two from Colombia, two more from Mexico, a quartet from the Middle East and two portly Nigerians.
None of their countries suffered any shortage when it came to women, yet they traveled from the corners of the world to bid on Cako’s merchandise. His auctions never failed to lure men of substance, brought together by their common lust and greed.
And why not, in a world where everything was for sale? There was no reason for a rich man to deny himself whatever pleased him, society and its ever-shifting conventions be damned.
Lorik Cako was a specialist in supplying illicit desires. The men he served appreciated his inventiveness and the completely ruthless way in which he dealt with opposition on the rare occasions when it surfaced.
He would be a superstar someday—was nearly there, in fact—and owed it to a total disregard for the well-being of his fellow man.
Or woman, as the case might be.
This night he had on offer twenty-seven females, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty years. Three were certified pure, and some of the rest barely used. All were lovely in different ways, something offered for every taste.
Blondes and redheads for the Third World market. More exotic specimens for the Americans and the Colombians. Sometimes Cako might take an order in advance, for a specific type—or a specific individual, the riskiest and most expensive service of them all. Whatever was demanded, Lorik Cako lived to please.
“My friends,” he said, raising his voice above the murmurs of his customers, “if you will follow me downstairs, we shall begin.”
They trailed after him like hungry dogs.
Like jackals closing on a wounded animal.
BOLAN APPROACHED the house from the southeast, cloaked by shadows as night descended on North Middletown. A Friday night, with locals starting to unwind, their working week behind them, ready to relax with friends or lovers, food or alcohol, and greet the weekend with a smile.
His targets, in the bid house, should be getting down to business anytime now. Bolan planned to interrupt them, cancel their festivities and send them home in body bags.
He owed it to the Universe. The very least that he could do, under the circumstances.
And a foot inside the door for things to come.
He knew the auction was beginning when the guards emerged to start their foot patrols around the grounds. Two men, both swarthy types with bodybuilder arms and torsos, armed with folding-stock Kalashnikovs on shoulder slings. They came out through a side door, separated and began to walk around the house in opposite directions.
Perfect.
Bolan slung his carbine, palming the Beretta with its sound suppressor attached. The 93-R was selective fire—its R was short for raffica, “burst” in Italian—and it packed a 20-round box magazine plus one 9 mm Parabellum mangler in the chamber. Firing 3-round bursts, using the pistol’s foldable foregrip, Bolan could take down seven men before he needed to reload.
One target at a time.
The first mark passed within twenty feet of Bolan, barely glancing toward the shadows where death waited to claim him. The soldier hissed between clenched teeth, bringing the guy around to face him out of curiosity, and stitched him with a rising burst from sternum to larynx. Toppling backward through a haze of crimson mist, the rifleman was dead before he hit the ground.
Bolan retrieved him, holstering his pistol and dragging the corpse by its ankles until it was swaddled in darkness. He could rush the house now, use the side door where the sentries had emerged, but that meant leaving one man with an AK at his back.
Unwise at best. Potential suicide at worst.
So Bolan waited, timed his second target by the time it ought to take for him to stroll around the house. And when he showed, coming around the northeast corner at an easy walk, the Executioner was waiting.
Ready for the kill.
The sentry faltered, visibly confused at failing to encounter his companion coming from the opposite direction. Slowing further as he neared the spot where they had separated moments earlier, he made a face and fiddled with the strap of his Kalashnikov, as if to slip it free.
Too late.
Bolan’s Beretta stuttered three more muffled rounds and dropped the lookout in his tracks. Unlike the other one, he fell facedown, his arms spread as if to hug the earth or mimic crucifixion.
The Executioner hauled the second corpse to join the first, leaving them side by side in shadow, fifty feet out from the house. He yanked the magazines from both AKs, tossed them as far into the night as possible and found no rounds in either rifle’s chamber.
Done.
The dead weren’t concealed to the extent that any passerby would overlook them, but there were no other strollers on the grounds just now.
Only the Executioner.
And it was time for him to move.
As far as he could tell, all windows with a view of his direct approach were curtained, but that didn’t mean he would pass unobserved. Surveillance cameras were so small and unobtrusive these days that they could be hidden in a tube of lipstick, pair of glasses or an artificial flower. Tucking one or more away beneath the eaves of a three-story house would be child’s play.
A risk, then, but he had to take it.
There was no way to complete his mission without entering the serpent’s lair.
Once he’d decided on the move, action immediately followed. Bolan ran across the open stretch of lawn to reach the door his first two kills had used, wearing his carbine slung and clutching the Beretta in his right hand, while he reached for the doorknob with his left.
Clasped it. Felt it turn.
So far, so good.
He opened the door and followed his pistol into a washroom of sorts. A big stainless-steel washer and dryer stood to one side, with open shelving on the other. Various household supplies that could be used to clean the place or whip up crude explosives with the proper know-how.
Smells and voices drew the soldier toward a kitchen, his index finger taut on the Beretta’s trigger as he left the laundry room behind and went in search of prey.
THE FIRST GIRL WAS ONSTAGE downstairs, a nearly naked figure, clothed only in a gossamer see-through wrap, lit by spotlights mounted on the basement’s ceiling while her audience—prospective buyers—lounged in three rows of well-padded theater seats, their part of the auction room darkened. Lorik Cako stood behind them, rocking on his heels with carpet underfoot, ready to answer any questions that arose.
The one he got most often, as the show progressed, was a request for samples of the merchandise. Cako always refused, good-naturedly, reminding his potential customers that they weren’t permitted to consume food in a supermarket without paying for it first.
A second question, asked almost as frequently, involved the younger specimens whom Cako certified as “pure.” How could he prove the claim that justified a higher asking price?
Cako was ready with detailed reports from Dr. Paul Koprulu,