Grave Mercy. Don Pendleton

a bullet in the chest. He’d never staged a battle where civilian noncombatants were on hand, and in instances where others had been endangered, Bolan had done his best to attract attention to himself.

      The blood samples that Bolan had collected in water bottles sat in the little humming refrigerator, a box with a door and its sides and front covered in plastic sheeting colored to look like wooden paneling. He’d transfer it to a cooler to take it to a laboratory for examination, but even refrigerated, the blood and the chemicals within weren’t going to last forever. Within twenty-four hours, natural enzyme breakdowns could erase traces of some toxins and drugs. Freezing the blood was an option, but then again, there was the problem of crystallization of water affecting the chemical makeup.

      Bolan’s laptop screen flickered to life, an incoming call from Stony Man Farm jarring it from sleep mode. Barbara Price, her face illuminated by her monitor’s bleak, harsh light, appeared in the web camera chat box. She was mission controller at Stony Man Farm, the installation that was home to the nation’s elite antiterrorist teams. Bolan sat in front of his own camera, dressed in a black T-shirt and khaki-colored cargo pants. Price’s eyes flicked left, then right, noting the straps of his shoulder holster in place.

      “You’re aware of the attack in the resort,” Price said.

      “I caught a preview. It looked like someone wanted to release my marauders into the wild after they tore up a camp full of unarmed surfers and other kids,” Bolan answered.

      Price pursed her lips in a frown before speaking again. “You said you’d suffered casualties.”

      Bolan didn’t answer.

      “Hal and the President have been going over this. They know that you’re in the region, but they aren’t certain that the situation warrants your involvement,” Price said.

      Bolan still remained quiet, his slitted eyes providing the only sign of a response, a show of annoyance that the Sensitive Operations Group and the White House were able to dictate where and why the Executioner would take action. He finally spoke. “They don’t have to be. I’m certain.”

      Price nodded. “Hal knows better than to deny you your choice of operations.”

      “I’ve got refrigerated blood samples from the berserkers I encountered. Is there a lab handy where I can get this looked at?” Bolan asked.

      “We’ve been checking local laboratories and most in the country don’t have the kind of toxicology skills you’d need,” Price replied. “But we have help in the area.”

      “Hospital ships off Haiti,” Bolan surmised. “U.S. Navy? I don’t want to pull personnel off of the relief effort.”

      “No problem in that regard. We have someone on hand who is a trained medic,” Price said.

      “Is Cal coming to pick me up himself, or do I meet him on the ship?” Bolan asked.

      “A navy helicopter’s coming to get you and the samples to meet him,” Price replied. “Since there’s no need for forensic toxicology, the facilities on board the aircraft carrier devoted to that won’t take away from things.”

      “Good,” Bolan returned. “What’s my cover?”

      “Colonel Brandon Stone,” Price returned. “We’ve already set it so that you can be armed on the carrier, but you do have to carry concealed.”

      Bolan shrugged. “Even military brass can’t be armed on a Navy ship.”

      “Not everyone believes in the inherent goodness of the U.S. Armed Forces,” Price replied. “Unfortunately that includes many commanders in the Navy, the Army…”

      “I’ll deal with it,” Bolan said, tugging on a BDU overshirt, concealing the Beretta 93-R in its holster. As a soldier in the field, and years of interacting with servicemen abroad, the soldier had learned that the Pentagon policies about disarming troops when not in direct contact with the enemy had lead to countless being left vulnerable to ambushes. The death toll, thanks to those policies, was high, a level of loss that caused suffering among families at home and crippling deficiencies among active-duty personnel.

      “The helicopter is coming to the camp, correct?”

      “The less you have to travel with the blood before it can be brought to the lab, the better,” Price told him.

      Bolan nodded. “ETA?”

      “Ten minutes.”

      The soldier looked up from buttoning the jacketlike uniform blouse. “I’ll be ready. Any news on who is claiming responsibility for the attack?”

      “No word per se,” Price said. “Though the zombie-like rage exhibited by the attackers have people talking about voodoo. Someone leaked videos through the internet and they have hit cable news stations.”

      “That may be the point,” Bolan replied.

      Price tilted her head. “How so?”

      “Phoenix, Able and I have had plenty of encounters with real-life voodoo zombies over the years,” Bolan said, referring to Phoenix Force and Able Team, Stony Man’s two action units. “Some were just makeup and bulletproof vests while others were people whose minds were destroyed by traditional houngan treatments, either as cheap slave labor or purpose constructed.”

      Price frowned. “No one is taking responsibility because the targets of this attack will know who was behind it.”

      “It could be part of the local Jamaican drug war, trying to fill in the void I recently knocked in the status quo,” Bolan added. “Or it could be something political, because I can’t see the cocaine cowboys on this island making a mess of their target demographic.”

      “Tourists looking for nose candy and herb,” Price said.

      Bolan nodded. “If they scare off tourism, a lot of their local dealers lose customers. With no income, they can’t bribe the hotels to let them hang around and deal, and the addition of violence in the hotels makes them really out of luck.”

      “That doesn’t mean that the local gangs aren’t helping in some manner,” Price said. “Someone would have to provide ingredients to the chemical cocktails that set off the berserkers.”

      “Calvin and I will look into that if we get a chance,” Bolan told her. “I’d prefer to have him working with me here in the islands because he fits in better than I do.”

      “That’s part of the reason why Calvin is riding a Tomcat to the carrier out of Langley AFB,” Price said.

      “He’s not on hand yet?” Bolan asked.

      “By the time your helicopter drops you off, he’ll be on deck,” Price replied. “They caught a tailwind off the coast of Georgia. Do you want any other help?”

      Bolan shook his head. “If the President doesn’t think this situation warrants my attention, I’m not going to pull in any more official Stony Man personnel than Cal. And how did he get free?”

      “He took some time to meet with an old SEAL buddy,” Price replied. “Building more unofficial relations, so to speak.”

      “What does the buddy do now?” Bolan asked.

      “Security firm,” Price said. “So now, Phoenix Force has more friends in the New York area…just in case.”

      Bolan nodded with approval. “Shame to interrupt that.”

      “Cal made the call to me that he was going down to meet you,” Price replied. “One helicopter transfer to Langley…”

      “I’ll be sure to tell him I appreciate this,” Bolan said. “I hear the chopper coming.”

      “Striker.” Price spoke up, her voice grown soft, losing its hard business edge for a moment.

      Bolan looked into the web cam, knowing that it was the closest that he could get