Dragon's Den. Don Pendleton

All he’d encountered so far were thugs bent on murder and destruction. But his trip hadn’t been entirely for naught. He’d come to an assured conclusion the L.A. gangs were not behind the drug shipments.

      Nuñez’s crew had followed Bolan out of their home neighborhood, and then a chase ensued down Lincoln Boulevard before eventually terminating in the parking lot of a major mall. Bolan had learned a few things in his years of soldiering experience. One of those lessons involved securing a strategic holding position when preparing to launch an assault against an enemy of superior numbers.

      Tonight had proved no exception.

      From the limited cover of his vehicle, the Executioner swung the FN FNC into target acquisition on one of his gangland targets and squeezed the trigger. The weapon chattered as a flurry of 5.56 mm NATO rounds zipped through the young banger’s chest and ripped exit holes in his back. The youth left his feet and his body slammed into the Lincoln “ghetto-cruiser” behind him. This impact broke the side mirror of the black, flashy Lincoln, and he left a gory streak on the window.

      Bolan turned to his next target, a hood with a teardrop tattoo and twin pistols clutched in his fists. The warrior grimaced a moment as the kid didn’t look more than sixteen or seventeen. It was hardly Bolan’s preference to shoot teenagers and misguided youths, but he also knew the gang member knew right from wrong and had chosen a path. And whether the Executioner liked it or not, the gleaming. 45-caliber semiautomatics clutched in his fist were real, and Bolan had to assume they were loaded with real bullets. Bolan triggered a second short burst from the FNC. The rounds cut a deep swathe in the gangbanger’s gut and dropped him to the pavement.

      Another gangland cruiser pulled up and Bolan decided to go EVA. He’d parked his car in a strategic position in the dark, deserted parking lot of the mall, which would give him the angling room he needed to deal with this new threat. The thudding in his ears of exertion drowned out the sounds of his boots slapping the serpentine sidewalk that wound through the exterior landscape of the mall. Bolan could barely make out the sounds of pursuit.

      To the casual observer it would have appeared the quartet of gang members that bailed from the second vehicle were chasing down their quarry, but, in fact, Bolan had a plan. He would draw them into an ambush and turn the tables on them when they least expected it. Bolan quickly located a point near the main entrance doors of the mall that would provide adequate cover but take his pursuers by surprise. He didn’t have to wait long. The foursome rounded the corner, and Bolan let loose with the FNC.

      The first one to fall took two full bursts, one in the stomach and the other in the chest. The high-velocity rounds threw him into the gangbanger at his heels and the two violently thrashed about. The other pair began to run in circles, the shock and unbelief apparent on their faces, which glowed with ghostly pallor even in the poor lighting from faraway streetlights. Bolan caught the pair with a controlled, sustained firestorm from the FNC. The two gang members twisted and screamed with the repeated impact of slugs in tender flesh.

      Bolan dropped the nearly spent magazine from its well and loaded a fresh one. He put the FNC in battery and heard the scuffle of feet behind him. The warrior dropped as he turned and swung the muzzle of his assault rifle to deal with any threat. Bolan’s eyes tracked to the source of the noise as he started to squeeze the trigger. He let off just in time to keep from gunning down Captain Rhonda Amherst.

      “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

      Bolan noticed she hadn’t lowered her pistol so he didn’t let the FNC waver. “I could ask you the same question.”

      “I’m responding to a call.” She cocked her head. “Are you the call?”

      “Probably,” he replied in a grim tone.

      She gave a curt nod and finally lowered her sidearm. “I think we better talk.”

      “Sure, but right now my hands are full.”

      She shook her head and jabbed her thumb in the direction of her SUV. “I have a scanner. There won’t be any more trouble. Two of our units just stopped a car headed this way filled with Thirteenth Street Gang reinforcements.”

      Bolan lowered his own weapon now. “Fine. My car’s back there.”

      “Leave it. This place will crawl with both my people and LAPD in less than a minute.”

      “So what?”

      “They’re going to have questions. You want to be around here to answer them? I don’t. And I sure as hell can’t keep you being here quiet if you’re going to draw this much attention to yourself.”

      Bolan got to his feet. “It wasn’t by design.”

      “Maybe not, but it is what it is.”

      He couldn’t argue with her logic. Bolan said, “Let’s go.”

      Amherst nodded and then led him to her SUV. Bolan took shotgun. Amherst had just cleared the parking lot on the north side of the mall when they heard the first reports from units arriving at the scene of the Executioner’s conflagration with members of the Thirteenth Street Gang. One of officers called in a make on the license plate of Bolan’s rental less than a minute later.

      Amherst cleared her throat as she rolled under the interchange and merged onto Slauson Avenue. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

      “I told you today why I’m here,” Bolan said, deciding to play his cards close to vest. He liked her, but he didn’t yet trust her.

      “Yeah, I know. I got the party line about truth, justice and the American way. Listen, Cooper, if you want my cooperation you’re going to need to start leveling with me. Do you really work for the DEA?”

      Bolan smiled coolly and looked at her in the illumination from the dash lights. “Even if we were to say hypothetically that I don’t, you know I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

      “You could if you trusted me.”

      “I never said I didn’t,” Bolan said.

      “You never said you did, either,” she fired back.

      The Executioner sighed. Okay, so he couldn’t easily fool her. Amherst had been around awhile and he didn’t have time for games. His instincts told him she wouldn’t let up. She wouldn’t interfere but she had enough intelligence and spunk to try digging into this thing without his confidence, and that wasn’t something he could afford this early in his mission.

      “Okay, here it is,” Bolan said. “I work for people you don’t know anything about, and trust me when I say it’s better we keep it like that. As to why I’m here, it’s simple. The kind of drugs you’re talking about means major players are involved. I know one of the deceased on that boat was Kara Lipinski, and I also know everyone thinks these drugs are about gang rivalries and control over distribution territories. Given the recent number of successes you’ve had with minimizing gang activities, the last thing your higher-ups want to do is draw attention. But after what I learned tonight, I think you’re way off.”

      “About what?”

      “This isn’t about gangs or local politics. This goes deeper…way deeper.”

      “Deeper how?”

      “I don’t know yet. What I do know is the gangs of Los Angeles don’t have anything to do with it.”

      “And how do you know that?”

      “Simple,” Bolan said with a shrug. “Neither of the two bigwigs knew anything about the drugs. They were genuinely surprised when I mentioned pure heroin and opium.”

      “What makes you think it wasn’t all an act?”

      “I’ve been in this business awhile, lady,” Bolan replied. “And that’s not ego talking, it’s fact. I’ve learned to read people pretty well, and I have an instinct for liars.”

      “So it was you who hit Antoine Pratt’s place.”

      Bolan