Don Pendleton - Exit Code

And that was exactly where it belonged.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Mack Bolan rubbed his eyes, yawned and stretched in his chair, his combat hardened sinew and muscles pushing through the torn, dirty blacksuit.

Barbara Price watched him with concern, but he didn’t really acknowledge her attention. There was a time and place for more intimate contact, and Bolan knew that Stony Man’s mission controller understood that all too well. Besides, Bolan was pretty tired and stiff from his long journey. The Executioner had been unable to do more than doze on the flight from Pakistan, and the coffee he’d consumed had left him no more rejuvenated and with a sour stomach to boot. Even without having to worry about the NIF’s terrorist whiz kid—taken into custody at Peshawar and escorted back to the United States by CIA agents—Bolan’s job had really only just begun.

The situation still hadn’t stabilized such that Bolan could exit and let Stony Man handle the cleanup phase. Sadiq Rhatib was refusing to talk and unless they could get him to start squealing, they stood a snowball’s chance in hell of bringing down the roof on all of the participants. Still, there were a few players in the game dangling out there, and Bolan was thinking that if he couldn’t get Rhatib to roll over, maybe he could get someone else—someone less hardened by religious fanaticism and patriotic fervor—to betray the NIF’s real purpose.

One man topped that list. Nicolas Lenzini ran most of the numbers games along the East Coast, and his ties to organized crime were hardly a secret. Anybody who was somebody inside the law-enforcement community knew that it was Lenzini, or one of his immediate Family members, who had control over numbers activities in Washington, D.C. Knowledge wasn’t the problem; it was how to get inside the guy’s very tight circle of friends. There was only one man who had the kind of experience required for that.

Although he’d kept an eye on things, Bolan had let Lenzini’s activities slide, preferring to let the wheels of justice grind away until they got enough solid evidence to put him behind bars. But with the recent intelligence gathered by Stony Man that tied Lenzini and his crew to the New Islamic Front terrorist cell operating inside the United States, it was time to deal with the problem in the only way Bolan knew how: cover, role camouflage and—when the time was right—a full blitz. The rules hadn’t changed any since Bolan’s first campaign against the Mafia so many years ago, the same campaign that had kicked off his War Everlasting.

Bolan was about to open his mouth and speak to Price when Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman suddenly wheeled himself through the doorway, immediately followed by Harold Brognola, the Stony Man chief.

The team was gathering to discuss Sadiq Rhatib’s campaign for the NIF to seize control of the FBI’s Internet packet-sniffer, Carnivore.

“How’s it going, Striker?” Brognola asked, an unlit cigar jammed between his teeth.

As the Executioner rose and gripped the man’s hand in greeting, he replied, “I’ll let you know after a shower, change of clothes and some shut-eye.”

Brognola nodded as he pulled the cigar from his mouth and sat. “I know you need to rest, but I wanted to give you what we know so you can plan your next step.”

“I’m all ears,” Bolan replied.

“I assume Barb briefed you on the situation with Nicolas Lenzini.”

“A bit,” Bolan said, looking at Price, “Haven’t really had time to get more in-depth on it, but I do think there’s enough evidence to assume he’s heavily involved with NIF activities here in the States.”

“And abroad,” Brognola added, not missing a beat. “At least, it would seem that way. I’ll let Bear fill you in on that.”

As the lights in the War Room dimmed, Kurtzman punched a button on the remote keyboard and the overhead projector mounted into the ceiling displayed the image of a swarthy-looking character in a tailored three-piece suit. The photo image wasn’t the best, but Bolan immediately pulled the face from his list of mental files.

“Lenzini?” Bolan asked Kurtzman.

The Stony Man cybernetics expert nodded. “Age sixty-one, place of birth, Boston.” Kurtzman looked at Bolan, winked and replied, “A homeboy, Striker.”

“I feel so honored,” Bolan replied with an expression of mock humility.

Bolan’s remark produced smiles from the rest of the team. The Executioner had been born in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam, but his battle on the home front had begun in the small town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

“Six years ago, Lenzini started taking an interest in more than just the numbers rackets,” Price said. “He began investing in dot-coms all over the place, focusing particularly on the larger ones that provided Web-based services and Internet technologies to anyone requiring them. At first a large number of local law-enforcement agencies were convinced he was just using these companies to launder funds or take bets electronically. Nothing ever came of it though.”

“Why?” Bolan asked.

“They couldn’t build enough evidence to support a grand jury indictment,” Brognola said.

“So they just dropped it,” Bolan stated.

“You’ve got it,” Price continued. “After the attacks on the WTC, priorities suddenly shifted. Nobody figured it was worth their time because terrorists were the bigger fish to fry.”

Bolan shook his head. “The problem with that kind of thinking is that it doesn’t account for the real foundation of organized crime—greed. They obviously didn’t figure the syndicate might use that to their advantage, and even go as far as to crawl beneath the sheets with terrorists if it meant easy money.”

“True,” Price agreed. “And that, coupled with the collapse of dot-coms, left the FBI convinced that Lenzini had simply made a bad investment and lost enough to put to rest any ideas he had about maintaining his legitimate businessman charade.”

“But now we think differently?”

“Absolutely,” Kurtzman said. He tapped a key and displayed a 3-D map of the United States. The map showed a series of gold stars in various areas of the country, with dotted blue lines connecting those areas.

“Once I got into Lenzini’s network, I found quite a few interesting little tidbits.”

“Such as?” Bolan asked.

“Well, for one, his system has network-wide security protocols that very much mirror those Rhatib used to cover his tracks inside Carnivore.”

“I’d say that’s a pretty strong connection,” Brognola chimed in.

Bolan nodded.

“Additionally,” Kurtzman continued, “he’s got an infrastructure as large as the federal information system repositories, and damn near as large as Stony Man’s own network. This map shows only the connections within North America, but there are also hits in twenty-seven foreign countries, including a concentration in Europe, and scatterings throughout every remaining continent.”

Bolan couldn’t refrain from whistling his surprise. “Sounds like Lenzini’s been busy.”

“What bothers us most is that we didn’t catch it before now,” Price said. She sighed with a look of frustration.

“I wouldn’t get too down on yourselves,” Bolan replied. “Not even Stony Man can be everywhere at once. You can’t plan for every contingency.”

“That’s for sure,” Brognola added with a grunt.

“No, but we sure as hell can do something about it now,” Kurtzman continued. “My team is already working on a new detection program that can head off something like this in the future by allowing us to see it ahead of time. You see, every programmer and technologist has his or her own set of signature work. You could almost compare it to the signature of a bomb maker or arsonist.”