CHAPTER FOUR

      Bethesda, Maryland

      The dark sedan pulled into the parking lot of the Ambassador Hotel and took the first spot available among the limousines and imported sports cars.

      As the door opened, a middle-aged man got out and started walking briskly toward the outside swimming pool. He wasn’t quite running—that would have drawn unwanted attention—but the man certainly wasn’t out for a casual stroll, either.

      Hal Brognola was a bulldog of a man, still physically fit even though middle age had added a light sprinkling of gray to his dark hair and a bit of paunch to his midsection. Brognola was also the person in charge of the Sensitive Operations Group, a clandestine antiterrorist organization based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia. He handled a lot of black-bag operations, ferreting out the secret enemies of freedom, and bringing them to a hard and swift brand of justice.

      Mack Bolan had helped put the Stony Man teams together and at one time had had a hand in running the program, but these days Bolan had an arm’s length relationship with the big Fed. He’d take on a mission if it was mutually beneficial. He rarely turned one down.

      The hotel’s swimming pool was particularly busy on such a warm day, families splashing about, bored teenagers texting, a cadre of diplomats and attachés at the bar already knocking back shots of straight vodka in a futile effort to hide their early morning consumption of alcohol.

      Mixed in with the others were quite a few strikingly beautiful women in skimpy bathing suits. Relaxing on chaise longues, the ladies were slowly oiling their perfect skin, obviously enjoying the admiring looks they garnered.

      Slowing his brisk pace on the wet concrete, Brognola smiled at several of the older women. Then one of them smiled back, and shifted on her longue to make room for a guest. Pausing for only a moment, Brognola nodded in thanks for the offer, then touched the plain gold wedding ring on his finger and moved on. A man could appreciate a gorgeous sunrise without trying to take it home.

      The damp air was redolent with the aroma of pool chlorine and coconut-scented suntan lotion, the dulcet smells of summer, and Brognola breathed it in deeply, briefly invoking memories of his younger, more carefree, days, days before he’d joined the police force and eventually entered government service.

      Times past, youth gone, but sweeter still for the missing or however the poem went, Brognola thought he couldn’t recall the last time he’d read a book for the fun of it. His life was purely work, with little time for family and friends anymore. Just another sacrifice for the greater good.

      A velvet rope closed off a private section of the swimming area, but Brognola walked in as if he owned the place. A frowning lifeguard started his way, but the big Fed simply flashed his Justice Department credentials, and the man turned and went back to his business watching over the assorted swimmers. This was Washington, and everybody knew not to bother a member of the Alphabet Gang at anything they did.

      Stretched on a cushioned table, Mack Bolan was getting a vigorous massage from an elderly Chinese woman, his face set into an emotionless mask of control as her strong hands kneaded his bruised skin to reach the hard muscles underneath.

      “Does this story have a happy ending?” Brognola joked.

      Looking up, Bolan grinned at his old friend. “Better not say that again, or Mrs. Feinstein will kick your ass.”

      Brognola arched an eyebrow at the Jewish name, then shrugged. After he had learned that back in the sixties the mayor of Dublin had been a rabbi, he’d stopped trying to pigeonhole anybody and simply took people as they came.

      “Wu, my last name is Wu,” the woman said in lightly accented English. “My old friend is trying once more to be funny.”

      “Trying?”

      “No wonder so many people shoot you,” Mrs. Wu snorted, drying her hands on a towel. “You wouldn’t know a joke if it bit your ass.” With that, she slapped him on the said area, then turned and walked away, humming a tune.

      “You have the strangest friends,” Brognola said with a chuckle.

      Sitting up, Bolan stretched and flexed his arms, the muscles visibly moving under the skin. “A strange few,” he said. “There’s no better massage therapist than Cindy. She’s a black belt in kung fu, and can kill just as easily as heal with those old hands.”

      Brognola paused, then realized it wasn’t a joke. “Cindy Wu? Like in the Dr. Seuss books?”

      “I think that was Cindy Lu, and she prefers to be called Cynthia.”

      Bolan slid off the table and pulled on a robe. “Walk with me.”

      Moving away from the busy pool, the men entered a hedge maze and soon found a more secluded area. There was a table with two chairs, a pile of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced coffee.

      “So what’s up?” Bolan asked.

      “Sorry about this. I know you just got back, but I’ve got one of those feelings,” Brognola said, pouring himself a glass of the iced coffee.

      “What happened?” Bolan asked, all of the humor gone from his voice and demeanor.

      Laying a briefcase on the table, Brognola pressed a thumb to the glowing biometric lock. He felt a brief tingle as an electronic sensor confirmed that it was living flesh pressed against the contact plate, then it read his fingerprint, compared it to those on file. The case disarmed the self-destruct charge, then unlocked.

      “Roughly twenty-four hours ago some people disguised as the Mexican police destroyed a Mexican military base in the Azules Mountains,” Brognola said, opening the case. Inside was a US Army laptop.

      “They attacked the base?”

      “Destroyed is the correct word.” Flipping up the screen, Brognola tapped a button, and the monitor flickered into life. “These shots were recovered from a dozen smashed cell phones, and the one security camera that the terrorists didn’t find and smash.”

      “Terrorist is a big leap from thieves,” Bolan said, his full attention centered on the disjointed images: running shoes, a rain of spent shells, fire and destruction everywhere. A soldier firing his handgun from the ground, then instantly torn apart by converging streams of bullets from several different directions.

      “Are those M16 assault rifles?” Bolan asked, furrowing his brow.

      “F88,” Brognola corrected him. “Standard issue for the Australian military. They use the same ammo that we do, but it cycles a little bit slower than an American version.”

      “That’s what caught my attention,” Bolan said, playing the images again.

      Brognola was impressed. Bolan heard the difference in the middle of a firefight? “Now, they didn’t take the payroll in the commander’s safe, or even the loose cash in the register at the officer’s club. They did take a hundred kilos of pure heroin that was waiting to be incinerated, but ignored an even larger amount of crystal meth.”

      Bolan gave a low whistle. That made no sense since the meth would be worth twice, maybe three times, more than the heroin. Everything seemed to point to the thieves being be narcoterrorists, but again, why leave behind the crystal meth? Why in the world would anybody need that much heroin?

      “How do you know they’re not really the police, the drugs are purely misdirection, and in fact this was some kind of a political junta?” Bolan asked pointedly.

      “No way they’re blue,” Brognola stated. “The fat guy is way too big. The woman is too short. The Mexicans have a minimum height requirement for female officers, and there is no record for anybody over seven feet tall ever working for the Mexican police.”

      “Fair