Don Pendleton - Lethal Diversion

“Hal Brognola,” he said.

“Hal, this is the President.”

Brognola felt his tension return with a sudden vengeance. “Mr. President, sir.”

“Hal, there’s a situation in Detroit,” the President said. “It could be very serious.”

“Go ahead, sir,” Brognola said.

“The Coast Guard found a boat run aground in Lake St. Clair. Three dead men and a container that had recently housed uranium. Hal...we have weapons-grade radioactive material on U.S. soil.”

“How can we help, Mr. President?”

“All the usual organizations are already doing their song and dance. They’ve activated the Detroit Emergency Operations Center and all the field agencies are coordinating through them.”

“That sounds right,” Brognola said. “Do you foresee a problem of some kind, sir?”

“I wish we had foreseen any of this. That’s the problem.”

“We can only react to what’s in front of us, Mr. President.”

“All right, Hal, here’s the deal. All our normal agencies are going to be up to their eyeballs in protocol and their little fiefdoms and covering their own asses. I’ve already had the Directors of the NSA and the FBI in here, shouting at each other about whose fault it was. In the meantime, before they get it all together, these terrorists could blow up Detroit. I want you to send someone in to cut through all the red-tape bullshit. If he runs into any snags with the locals, tell him to have them authorize through the Office of the President. I want this found and handled.”

Brognola knew that sometimes fate put the right man in the right place at just the right time. “As it happens, Mr. President, I have a man in the area already who will be perfect for the job.”

“Then get him working, Hal. We don’t know what we’re up against or how long we’ve got until these bastards do whatever it is they plan to do.”

“I’ll contact him immediately, Mr. President,” Brognola said, hanging up with a polite goodbye.

The man for the job was Mack Bolan. And if there was anyone who could hunt down and stop bad guys, it was Striker. The man sometimes called the Executioner.

2

The Military Demarcation Line—the line that divided North and South Korea—was as real as the line 8 Mile Road represented to the residents of Detroit. The road marked the barrier between black and white, rich and poor. It was a boundary in some ways, and in others, it was a no-man’s-land where only the strong survived. The Executioner watched the street below through the cracked glass of his window.

His room was on the second floor of the 8 Pine Motel, an establishment that let rooms by the hour, day, week or even month, depending on how long a person could pay. Most paid by the day or week, depending on whether their income was from drugs or prostitution. The johns paid by the hour, and the elderly, living on a fixed income and a bit wiser than the others, paid by the month. None of them were particularly happy, but Bolan couldn’t blame them. The 8 Pine Motel was not a happy place.

Sadly, it was representative of many of the buildings on this stretch of road. Cracked, broken or boarded-up windows, peeling paint, gang graffiti, bad water from lead pipes, and everywhere the smell of fear and desperation. Bolan’s room was little more than a mildew-scented mattress with a broken frame, a scarred bedside table and a bathroom where the only thing that ran were the cockroaches. He’d stayed in worse places, but most of them had been in other countries that were either impoverished or at war. It was little wonder that the major drug smugglers had decided that Detroit was a target-rich environment.

He’d been in the city for the past two weeks, cultivating information about the now-booming heroin trade that had found its focus here. On the street below him, he watched as a car stopped and the man driving bought some crack and then drove on, while the dealer stepped back to his wall to wait for the next customer. There was little concern about the police in this area—they didn’t want to come near it unless they had to, and when they did, they came in force, giving the street dealers all the time they needed to disappear.

The next customer turned out to be a kid about thirteen. Bolan watched as the girl obviously begged for more. The dealer stood his ground. He stepped forward and began to grope the girl and then nodded toward the alleyway.

Bolan slipped out of his room and into the alley just in time to hear a smack resounding off brick walls.

“I thought I could, I can’t, but I’ll get you the money. I just need...”

Another slap rent the air and Bolan stepped out of the shadows as the dealer raised his hand high in the air again.

“I don’t think you want to do that.”

The dealer turned just enough to see Bolan, but kept his quarry on the ground in front of him. Tears spilled from the dark-ringed eyes of a girl who was growing up way too hard, way too fast. She tried to move, but he pushed her back down.

“Get the fuck out of here, man. Don’t be messin’ around in my business.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t, but you picked the wrong target today and the wrong corner to stand on.”

The dealer pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at Bolan as he swaggered down the alleyway.

“Look, bitch, this is my alley and my street and that bitch there, yeah...she’s going to be mine, too. Now if you don’t want me to leave you bleedin’ here, you’ll turn your ass around and get the fuck outta here.”

The dealer moved closer, confident in the gun he was swinging around in his hand. Bolan was patient until he was just in range. He grabbed the gun and yanked the dealer forward as he brought his knee into the man’s ribcage. Bolan heard the satisfying sound of the ribs cracking and then brought his elbow around to break the dealer’s nose.

Blood spurted as the man dropped to the ground and cried. Bolan was surprised that he didn’t just yell, but actually lay in the alley, crying. He picked up the gun and went to check on the girl who’d remained motionless during the confrontation.

“You could have been shot, why’d you do that?”

“Because everyone deserves a second chance. You got parents?”

She nodded. “My dad, but he’s never home.”

“Look, I’m going to make a call. There’s a rehab center close to here, it’s inpatient and this guy owes me a favor. Will you go?”

“I can’t pay.”

“I didn’t ask if you could pay, will you go?”

“Why?”

“Because everyone deserves a second chance.”

* * *

BACK IN HIS ROOM, Bolan stood, and stared out the window at the corner where the girl had gotten in trouble. Turned out her name was Violet and she’d really needed the help. He’d made sure the dealer was picked up and put away and couldn’t blow his cover and then sat back and enjoyed his mediocre cup of coffee and contemplated his next move.

So far, all his leads had been toward the Muslim community and some kind of pipeline out of Afghanistan. His cover was flimsy, but holding so far: he was representing a buyer from Los Angeles who trusted his muscle more than the information he’d received so far. The process of building trust, however, and getting close to the source, had proven tedious at best.

In fact, without some new leads, Bolan was going to have to try to get his information in a more direct way. The biggest challenge was a simple one: he was a Caucasian from the United States trying to convince a group of Muslims from the Middle East that he was trustworthy. It wasn’t going well.

These were the thoughts running through his head when his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his belt and recognized the number on the display as a secure call sign. “Bolan,” he said, answering it.