Damage Radius. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ turned toward the ropes that encircled the boxing ring. Everyone else in the gym had halted their workouts in order to watch the match, and they stared up at Bolan with a mixture of surprise and newfound respect in their eyes. Bolan walked to the edge of the ring and rested his gloved hands on the top rope.

      “Okay,” he said. “I know you guys liked the former manager of this gym. I did, too. But he’s dead, and there’s nothing any of us can do about that.” He paused, then motioned toward the unconscious man on the floor. “Jake, here, challenged me because all of you wanted to know if I knew what I was doing.” He turned his head to include more men who had come to the ring on the other sides of the canvas. “Is there anyone here still wondering?” When there was no response from the spectators, Bolan went on. “Come on. I’m just getting warmed up. If there’s anyone else who wants a piece of me, now’s your chance.”

      The silence that had fallen over the gym didn’t change, and no one took the Executioner up on his offer.

      It soon became obvious that there would be no more challengers. “Then get back to your training, all of you,” he said. Lifting the top rope, he stepped under it before dropping to the gym’s concrete floor. Using his teeth, he untied the lace on his right glove, then pulled it free and tucked it under his arm as he went to work on the left.

      As he began unlacing the other glove, Bolan’s eyes skirted the gym, taking in the men of various ages, sizes and abilities who had returned to the speed bags, heavy bags, double ended striking balls, jump ropes and other equipment. Most of them were innocent, honest fighters who were doing nothing more than trying to achieve their own personal dreams of success in the ring. But, unknowingly, they were actually part of one of the most extensive criminal organizations operating in the United States.

      The Executioner eyed them again as he wiped a single drop of sweat from his brow with his forearm. This was only the starting point for the mission he had undertaken. And he was certain to engage in many more fights as he worked his way toward the goal of taking down Tommy McFarley’s criminal organization.

      But there was one point about the fight he had just won that stood out in the Executioner’s mind as unique.

      It was likely to be the only skirmish with rules, without weapons and without blood.

      The Executioner was going to war yet again.

      2

      As the rat-tat-tat of the speed bags filled his ears like machine-gun fire, Bolan walked from the ring to the glass wall of his new office. Tossing the gloves he had just removed to a man on his way to the water fountain, he pushed the door open and left the gym proper. Through the glass, he could still hear the speed bags, the crunching of the canvas bags and the tapping of jump ropes as the door swung closed behind him.

      The Executioner looked at his desk as he moved toward it. It was cluttered with the personal effects of Sy Lennon, the former manager of McFarley’s New Orleans gym. But Lennon would not be back to collect them.

      He, along with a middleweight named Bobby “the Killer” Kiethley, was dead. Their bodies had not yet been found, and Bolan suspected they never would be.

      The rumor was that three of Tommy McFarley’s henchmen had dropped them out of one of McFarley’s private aircraft somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. Their crime? Not throwing a fight that McFarley had “fixed,” and upon which he had consequently lost close to a million dollars in bets.

      Bolan spied an empty cardboard box thrown carelessly into the corner of the office and quickly retrieved it. Without ceremony, he used his forearm to sweep the desktop clear. Papers, paperweights, a brass clip in the shape of a whale and a small plastic “Snoopy” wearing boxing gloves fell into the box. Returning the carton to the corner of the room, the Executioner dropped it and took a seat behind the desk.

      For a moment, he stared out through the glass at the men still working out in the gym. New Orleans was the center of McFarley’s operations, but his chain of boxing and body-building/power-lifting gyms stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They were the “front,” and the money-laundering operations, for his real businesses, which included international drug trafficking, arms dealing, gambling and white-slavery prostitution throughout the Western Hemisphere.

      Bolan glanced at the scarred black rotary telephone that was now the sole object on his desk. It was a throwback to an earlier era, and the chances of it being tapped by McFarley were slim. Still, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks, so the soldier leaned down to the gym bag he had dropped by the desk chair when he’d first arrived a few hours earlier. Fishing through the clothing and other contents, he found a smaller, zippered bag that contained both cell and satellite phones. Choosing the cell, he pulled it from the bag and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, the top-secret U.S. site that fielded counterterrorist teams and trained specially picked soldiers and police officers from America and its allied nations. The call was automatically routed through a number of cutout numbers on three continents on the offchance that someone—someone like McFarley—had stumbled onto the frequency.

      Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, answered the phone. “Hello, Striker,” she said. “How’s training?”

      Bolan chuckled softly. “Barely worked up a sweat yet,” he told the beautiful honey-blonde. He pictured her briefly in his mind. He and Price had a “special relationship” reserved for those rare occasions during which he was out of the field and spent the night at the Farm. But both were true professionals, and they never allowed that relationship to interfere with their work. “Had to prove myself a few minutes ago,” Bolan went on.

      “I doubt it lasted a full round,” Price said.

      “About a minute or so,” the soldier replied. “I didn’t see any reason to show off.” He paused, then got to the point of the call. “Can you buzz me through to Hal?”

      “I could,” Price said. “But it wouldn’t do you much good. He’s at Justice today.”

      Hal Brognola wore two hats. In one role, he was the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. But in another, he was a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. “I’ll call him there, then,” Bolan told Price.

      “Good luck and be careful.”

      “Always,” he said and ended the call.

      A moment later he had dialed the numbers to the big Fed’s direct line at the Justice Department. A gruff voice answered. “Brognola.”

      “Striker here.”

      “Hello, big guy,” Hal Brognola said after turning on the scrambler. “How’s the new job?”

      “Terrific,” Bolan answered. “If you like starting at the bottom. I’m in, but I’m still a long way from McFarley’s real action. Unless we can figure out a way to speed things up, it’s going to take me a lifetime to get next to the man.”

      “You haven’t met McFarley, himself, yet, have you?” Brognola asked.

      “No,” Bolan said. “I was interviewed and got hired by one of his goons. It seems the big man doesn’t dirty himself with small jobs like hiring gym managers.”

      “Well,” Brognola said, “I’ve got something else working right now that ought to lead to a meeting. The same undercover DEA agent who’s managing McFarley’s gym in Cleveland—the guy I went through to get СКАЧАТЬ