Resurgence. Don Pendleton

the rest of his subordinates. Now, somehow, it was coming back to haunt him.

      But Kurti had found his escape hatch.

      He would beat the curse, yet.

      One of his soldiers led the way outside, the others taking up positions that would shield their chief from incoming fire as they moved toward the limo. They were halfway there, his point man urging them to hurry, when it happened.

      Suddenly, with just an unobtrusive popping sound for warning, a grenade lofted above and past them, detonating as it struck the long black limousine dead-on. One second, Kurti’s rifleman was waiting for them by the vehicle; the next, he was a flaming scarecrow, dancing in a lake of fire.

      Kurti cursed, and his soldiers turned to face their enemy. It startled him to find a single man confronting them, and hope sparked in his chest before the stranger’s automatic rifle started spitting death among them, toppling Arben Kurti’s human shields.

      At last he was alone, with nothing left to do but close his eyes and wait for death.

      The house he’d fled seemed strangely silent now.

      A heartbeat later, darkness swallowed him.

      BOLAN HEARD female voices coming up behind him, turned to face them with his finger on the M-4’s trigger, then relaxed. Volkova, trailed by thirteen women clad in terry robes and rubber flip-flops, focused on the bodies strewed across the parking area.

      “So Kurti made the party,” she remarked.

      “I think it disappointed him,” Bolan replied.

      “Cako’s inside,” the Russian said. “He didn’t want to let these go, but I persuaded him.”

      “The buyers?” Bolan asked.

      “No sign of them. I hoped you might have found them. I suppose we’ll have to go back in.”

      “No need for that,” Bolan said, as he broke the Milkor’s cylinder and started to remove spent cartridges, dropping them at his feet. “I brought some party favors for the housewarming.”

      He filled the empty chambers with alternating HE rounds and pyrotechnic cartridges, closed the cylinder and stepped aside to give himself a clear shot past the huddled, frightened women. All of them stood watching as he raised the grenade launcher and started firing, putting hot rounds through the windows of the house where they had been confined most recently.

      Ear-spanking HE blasts covered the pop and hiss of his incendiary rounds inside the house, but flames quickly took hold. He waited until smoke was billowing from the shattered windows, half expecting some of Cako’s customers to break for daylight, but they didn’t show.

      So be it.

      “Do you think they found some way out through the back?” Volkova asked.

      “It’s fifty-fifty,” Bolan said. “If they’re out wandering around the barrens, we can leave them to the state police. If they’re inside…”

      He didn’t need to finish it and didn’t plan to wait around for stragglers. Even in the barrens, the smoke signals raised by Cako’s burning house and cars would draw attention. Bolan planned to call it in himself, once they were on the road. Fire-fighters should be on the scene in time to save the woods.

      But not any survivors hiding in the house.

      “What should we do with these women?” Volkova asked.

      Bolan surveyed the former prisoners and said, “They won’t fit in the Porsche.”

      Volkova frowned and said, “Perhaps the barn? It seems safe from the fire.”

      “Let’s check it out.”

      They crossed the smoky open ground together, found the barn unlocked and pulled its broad front door aside on creaking rollers. It was relatively clean inside, a farm tractor standing in the central aisle between two rows of empty stalls. An ancient hint of animal manure lingered in the air.

      “Suit you?” he asked.

      “They should be safe here while they wait for the police,” Volkova said.

      “Okay by me.”

      “And then our work is finished here?” she asked.

      “Here,” he agreed. “But I’m not finished yet.”

      “Where, then?”

      “I’m following the pipeline home,” Bolan explained.

      “It’s a coincidence,” Volkova said. “I’m going back that way, myself.”

      “Free country,” Bolan said, and stood back while she led her thirteen charges inside the barn.

       CHAPTER SIX

      Kombinat, Tirana, Albania

      Rahim Berisha hated to receive bad news. That quality didn’t set him apart from any other person on the planet, but his temperament and reputation made his various associates leery of breaking news Berisha might not wish to hear.

      Killing the messenger, for him, was more than a cliché.

      Still, problems had to be recognized, examined—and, if possible, resolved. The first step toward a solution was admission that a failure had occurred.

      Berisha slept till noon most days, as a concession to his night-prowling lifestyle. Most days, his business was concluding as the sun rose, driving the nocturnal folk back into hiding.

      Pimps and whores. Drug addicts and compulsive gamblers. Thieves and smugglers.

      All were creatures of the night. Berisha’s people.

      No. They were his subjects.

      In the afternoons, he dealt with daylight dwellers: politicians and police, judges and lawyers, so-called “honest” businessmen who came to him with hats in hand and open palms outstretched for money.

      Everyone Berisha knew craved something. It was human nature, and the failing of his race. That understanding had already made him rich beyond his childhood’s wildest dreams.

      And in the months to come, he would grow richer still.

      Unless someone spoiled it for him.

      That was always possible, of course. Berisha might be rich and powerful, a cunning strategist and ruthless fighter, but was not superhuman. He couldn’t be in two places simultaneously, much less several hundred places, supervising every transaction carried out by his subordinates.

      A leader had to delegate authority, which meant he had to trust the people he had placed in charge of different tasks and territories. Those subordinates had to fear him more than they feared loss of cash and status. More than they feared prison.

      More than they feared sudden death.

      His servants had to be constantly aware that failing him, betraying him, would bring about worse punishment than anything their adversaries could devise—a screaming death that might go on for days.

      Berisha understood, therefore, how Zef Kaceli felt when he came knocking on the study door and said, “There’s another call from the United States.”

      Kaceli added an apology and said, “Line one, sir.”

      “Thank you.”

      Berisha braced himself as he picked up the telephone, depressed the lighted button for line one, and said, “Hello.”

      He didn’t recognize the voice that answered him, wasn’t expected to, in fact. The caller introduced himself as Ali Dushku and the name clicked instantly. Dushku was Arben Kurti’s chief lieutenant in the far-off territory of New Jersey, U.S.A.

      “What is it, Ali?” Berisha asked, taking pains to keep it casual, while he was calculating time zones. Half past noon in Tirana made it 6:30 a.m. along the eastern seaboard of