Deep Recon. Don Pendleton

but I’ll take it from here by myself. Like I said before, I don’t work with incompetents.”

      Bolan put his hand on the front doorknob when Maxwell said, “Wait!”

      Turning, Bolan asked, “For what? You’re not going to convince me that this op is anything but botched from the start. You’re too close emotionally, and that clouds judgment—people end up dead. I don’t want one of those people to be me, so we’re done.”

      “But I told you, I know who fingered Johnny.”

      That got Bolan’s hand off the doorknob—temporarily. “Why didn’t you tell the BATF agents at the scene this?”

      “Because I wasn’t thinking straight at the scene. I’ve had a day to think about it, and I know who it has to be—Kenny V. The V is short for Valentino, his last name, but a lot of the boys call him Hot Lips.”

      “A good kisser?” Bolan asked.

      “No,” Maxwell said. “No, they call him that ’cause his lips are always flapping, and the boys all think that his mouth’ll catch fire, they flap so fast.”

      “If he’s that good a talker, how is he still alive?”

      “He doesn’t just talk well, he hears everything and knows everybody. He always makes deals that are good for both parties, and he never squeals.”

      “Time to break that streak, then,” Bolan said, confident in his ability to extract information. “Where is he?”

      “A bar on Sugarloaf Key called Micky’s. He practically lives at the corner table between the jukebox and the pool table. We can be there in twenty minutes.”

      “No, I can be there in twenty minutes. I work better alone.”

      “Dammit, Cooper, you don’t know the players, and you don’t know the territory.” She chuckled. “And look at you. You stand out like a sore thumb.”

      “Maybe. But I can’t do my job and babysit you two. So stay here.” Looking at Faraday, he said, “Car keys.”

      Faraday looked confused.

      Glowering at Maxwell, Bolan said, “You want my help, we do things my way, and that means I go alone with no chance of you two following. I either take your car, or I slash the tires and go rent one of my own. Pick one.”

      Maxwell bit her lower lip, then nodded toward Faraday, who handed over the Mustang’s keys.

      “Smart choice.” Bolan departed the bungalow.

      The Mustang’s engine turned over as soon as Bolan applied the key. The old car hummed like the well-oiled machine it was, and the Executioner was silently impressed with at least one aspect of Maxwell’s character: she kept this four-decade-old car in pristine shape.

      Once he’d put some distance between himself and Maxwell’s bungalow, he took out his sat phone, which was also equipped with a GPS and a secure Internet connection. The latter enabled him to quickly obtain the precise address of Micky’s on Sugarloaf Key, and the former provided directions.

      Sure enough, it took almost exactly twenty minutes to get there. Bolan found a parking lot belonging to a bowling alley a block away from Micky’s, and he parked the rather distinctive Mustang there.

      The Executioner played a serious game, one with his life on the line constantly, and he would only trust someone he could count on to back him up. Every indication showed that Maxwell and her “associate” didn’t qualify.

      He pulled his jacket around him closer as he walked toward Micky’s. The sun was setting and the temperature was plummeting. The wind that came in off the Atlantic was bitter and cut through Bolan.

      Micky’s was a large shack that probably had been used for storage once upon a time. From a distance it looked fairly rickety, and Bolan wondered how it survived hurricane season. But as he got closer, he saw evidence of steel reinforcement. A battered sign gave the name of the place, and what few windows there were were frosted over.

      This area of Florida specialized in open-air eateries and drinkeries, and for a place to be this enclosed bespoke a certain illegality.

      As if to reinforce that, Bolan walked through the thick metal door to find his nostrils assaulted with cigarette smoke. There were few interior public spaces left that allowed smoking, and while Bolan wasn’t completely up on the Florida State code, he was fairly certain that bars in this state qualified. Places like this, though, bars that catered to the scum of humanity, tended to be smoke-filled throwbacks to a bygone era, a testament to how little the criminal element had changed.

      The bar floor was nowhere near large enough to cover the full space of the building. In and of itself that didn’t say much: the Florida Keys weren’t structurally sound enough geologically to support much by way of basements, so the bar’s storage facilities were probably aboveground. Still, Bolan was sure there was more than liquor stored in the area he couldn’t see.

      Bolan strode in like he owned the place, heading straight for a wooden stool at the bar. With a single glance he took in the interior: a bar along the left wall, a bartender standing behind it drawing the tap for a customer who sat at the far end, and a floor with a lot of wooden tables. While most of those tables had one or two men sitting at it—there wasn’t a single woman in the place—the one between the jukebox and the pool table was empty.

      So much for “practically living there.” Bolan was running out of patience with Lola Maxwell already, and the op was less than twenty-four hours old.

      He ordered the lightest beer they had. The bartender glared at him, and Bolan glared right back.

      “You a cop?” the bartender asked.

      Assuming a cover identity without a moment’s hesitation, Bolan spoke in a New York accent. “Jesus H., is that a stupid question, or what? You really think I’m gonna just say, ‘Yeah, I’m a cop’? I swear to Christ, the sun must bake your brains down here.”

      “When’d you come down from the Big Apple?” the bartender then asked with a smile.

      Florida was filled with transplanted New Yorkers, so the accent wouldn’t be hard for a bartender to place, but Bolan’s cover required him to play dumb. “What makes you think I’m from New York? And we don’t call it ‘the Big Apple,’ either, asshole.”

      “Look, maybe you’ll want to try one of the places out on Route 1.”

      “Yeah? Kenny V hang out there, too?”

      The bartender frowned. “You’re here to see Hot Lips?”

      “Christ, you don’t really call him that, do ya?”

      At that, the bartender smiled. “I’ll get your drink.”

      As the bartender pulled the tap for the light beer, the door opened to the sound of someone talking a mile a minute.

      “So I says to the bitch, I says, ‘Hey look, bitch, if you don’t wanna be doin’ the deed, then you shouldn’t’a been all cozyin’ up to me like you was.’ And she was sayin’, ‘I thought we was just dancin’,’ and I told her, ‘Yo, bitch, when you dance with your cootchie all up against my leg, my guess is that you wanna be doin’ more than dancin’, you feel me?’”

      That had to be Kenny Valentino. He had a shaved head, a chin beard and a gold tooth on the left side of his mouth. He seemed to be talking to himself, but as he entered Micky’s, Bolan could see the wireless phone device in his left ear.

      “I’m at the joint now, I gotta bounce. Hey, tell Delgado that Lee owes me, a’ight? Good. Peace.”

      He tapped the side of his wireless device, then signaled the bartender. “Yo, Marty! Draw me a beer!”

      Marty, the bartender, nodded as he brought Bolan his beer. “That,” Marty said to Bolan, “is the guy you’re looking for.”

      “No