4

      “This is a money-laundering operation?” Bolan asked.

      “This is it.”

      “This right here.”

      “This right here,” Pierce repeated. He put his hand to his face. Bolan realized he was struggling not to laugh. Bolan, himself, could not help but grin.

      The words “Coin Op Laundry” had been painted, many years ago, on a sign that was struggling not to fall off the ancient brick building. The street it faced was narrow even by congested Chicago standards. Trash was piled high on either side of the building, strewed in clumps across the pavement and blowing past in whirls and eddies of dust and debris kicked up by passing traffic.

      “Get your shotgun,” Bolan ordered.

      “How you want to do it?”

      “You take the back. I’ll go straight in the front.”

      “They’re loaded for hell and gone in there, Harmon,” Pierce replied. “You sure you want to just stick your junk in a hornet’s nest like that?”

      “I’ve done it before.”

      “Not here to judge you,” Pierce said.

      Bolan shot the Mob enforcer a quizzical glance before stepping out of the car. The pair went to the Lincoln’s trunk. This time Bolan selected an AK-47 knockoff and threw a MOLLE rifleman bag loaded with 30-round magazines over his shoulder.

      Pierce raised an eyebrow at the assault rifle. “Why the AK?”

      “I want to make an impression.”

      “It does do that,” Pierce admitted. The little enforcer waved, took his shotgun and made his way around the corner of the laundry building into a fetid alley so narrow he had to turn sideways to get through.

      Bolan, meanwhile, held the AK lowered, against his body. He glanced up and down the street. There was no police presence and no civilians moving around that he could see, which was good. They were about to make enough noise that police response would be inevitable. They would need to get in, get this done and get out before they could be confronted by law enforcement.

      No time to be subtle, in other words.

      Bolan put the AK-47 to his shoulder, snapped the selector switch to automatic fire, then kicked in the front door of the laundry. The largely hollow receiver of the Kalashnikov rifle rang like a drum when it was fired, making the weapon sound like the Hammer of God to the uninitiated in close quarters. Bolan was counting on that blitz effect to take down however many Toretto gunmen might be holed up in the laundry.

      First, though, he had to make sure he wasn’t dealing with any innocents. It was fine for Pierce to claim this was a Mob money laundry, but as the old Russian proverb said, “Trust, but verify.”

      “Federal agent!” Bolan bellowed. “Hands where I can see them!”

      The irony of impersonating a Mob hit man impersonating a federal agent was not lost on Bolan. He was nominally a federal agent himself, even if he had kept the government at arm’s length for many years now.

      The cramped coin-op laundry looked like any of others Bolan had seen over the years. The walls were dominated by inset dryers. Rows of large, front-load washing machines were laid out in three long lines that jutted into the square space. The floors were scuffed-and-stained linoleum that probably dated to the moon landing.

      Then there was the fellow with the Beretta 93-R, presumably a Toretto gunner, who leveled the piece at Bolan but did not fire. He was standing behind the dingy service counter at the back of the room, the sort of place an attendant would dole out change and sell single-use packets of detergent and fabric softener. He stared openmouthed at Bolan, his eyes wide.

      “I said,” Bolan enunciated carefully, keeping his sights between the gunman’s eyes, “federal agent. Put the gun down.”

      “You’re no Fed. You put yours down.”

      “Last chance,” Bolan said. “You one of the Torettos?”

      “You stupid cop.” The sound of a bell ringing came from the rear of the laundry, echoing along a small hallway that led to the back of the building. Footsteps pounded on the linoleum.

      Reinforcements, Bolan thought.

      Where was Pierce? Why wasn’t he covering the back?

      The gunman grinned. Clearly he thought his own guys were coming to back him up, which made all the difference in his attitude. “You stupid cop,” he said again. “Yeah, we’re Torettos, all right, and that’s the last name you’re ever going to—”

      Bolan shot him in the face.

      A lot of guys thought if they just kept talking, it would mask their movements, like the telltale clenching of a hand on the butt of a gun as the owner prepared to fire. Bolan had seen every trick in the book. He had walked battlefields from one end of the Earth to the other. He wasn’t falling for something like that. It was obvious the gunner was going to plug him, and now that he had confirmed these were Mob goons, he didn’t have to worry that this might simply be the best-guarded laundry in the state.

      He didn’t know too many shopkeepers or hired clerks who carried Beretta machine pistols, though.

      The sound of Bolan’s shot brought the other gunmen boiling out from the back room. He noted a couple of pistols, a sawed-off shotgun and what had to be Spectre subguns, something he didn’t encounter in the field too often. He dropped to one knee and started slapping the trigger on the AK, fanning the barrel from left to right at knee level.

      The gunmen screamed and started toppling. Bolan dived behind the nearest line of washers. The machine shook and rattled as the gunmen hammered the appliances, screaming and trying to drag themselves back toward the rear hallway. The linoleum was suddenly awash in blood. There was a good chance at least one of them had been nicked in an artery and would bleed out quickly...but it wouldn’t be quickly enough for Bolan’s purposes.

      Bullets had a nasty tendency to go right through interior walls and hollow-core doors. Appliances were among the few household items that could stop small-arms fire. Bolan didn’t want to trust his washing machine to stop many more rounds, though, so he rose, bringing the AK to his shoulder. A few quick bursts was all he needed to put down the opposition for good. He bounded over the bodies, conscious of the numbers counting down before the law would arrive.

      The gunman hiding in the rear hallway nearly took Bolan’s head off. The Executioner ducked at the last second as rounds from the man’s pistol tore into the wall near the doorway.

      The sound of a shotgun blast at close range was followed by the toppling of a body. Bolan risked a fast glance around the door frame and then took a second, longer look. Pierce was standing there. His scalp was covered with blood, but he was holding his shotgun and standing over the body of the Toretto gunman.

      “What happened to you?”

      “Don’t ask.” Pierce gestured to the rear door of the laundry. “I’ve got some unfinished business out back. This door—” he jerked his chin at the door facing the exit “—leads downstairs. I don’t know how many guys are going to be down there, so if you want to wait for me...”

      “I’ve got it,” Bolan said, reasoning that an assassin like Harmon would take pride in being able to handle business himself. “Try not to take any more shots to the head.”

      Pierce grunted and headed back outside. Bolan eased the door to the basement level open