Don Pendleton - Justice Run

“And still no word from Rodriguez,” Bolan said.

“Right.”

“Where was she?”

“Monaco,” Price said.

“Because?”

“She was tracking someone for the Bureau,” Price told him. “Ever hear of Jacques Dumond?”

Bolan thought about it for a few seconds before the name clicked with him.

“Weapons dealer,” he said. “French.”

“Right,” Price said. “He’s got a pretty impressive record. Sells a lot of weapons in the Middle East and Asia. His semiofficial client list includes North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. The non-state groups include Hezbollah as well as a couple of minor al Qaeda-inspired groups.”

Brognola leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Obviously we’re interested in all those clients,” the big Fed said. “With the large countries, it was at least a little easier to track the purchases. Not easy, but easier. Plus, those countries are a little more cautious about how they use those weapons.”

“A little,” Bolan agreed.

“But the radical Islamist groups? The U.S. had almost no information about Dumond’s transactions with them. We knew he was selling weapons. But what types of weapons was he selling them? In what quantities? We had no idea. You can imagine how happy that made us.”

“And Rodriguez was checking into this.”

“Right,” Brognola replied. “It was supposed to be low-impact. She wasn’t supposed to infiltrate too deeply. She was supposed to set up a couple of purchases, make a few contacts, pass along what she found and move on. The FBI set up a front company for her a few years ago to give her cover for some of her activities. It’s really just a shell. But it gives her some kind of base to use when she knocks on doors.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Bolan leaned back in his chair. Grimaldi slid into the seat next to him.

Brognola continued. “A lot of the work she does is monitoring the sales of high-tech weapons and large military weapons systems. Since she was involved in counterintelligence, she’s usually looking for Americans who are selling bad stuff to other countries or terrorist organizations.”

“But,” Price interjected, “Dumond likes the ladies, so the U.S. figured it might be good to have a pretty woman with lots of cash knocking on Dumond’s door. He might be a little more receptive. And it never hurts to cloud a target’s judgment with a little sex.”

“A French guy’s who’s also a skirt chaser?” Grimaldi said. “What are the odds of that?”

“Did she learn anything?” Bolan asked.

Brognola shook his head slowly. “We don’t know for sure, but considering how little time she was there, it’s highly unlikely.”

“We think Dumond had made her as an FBI agent before she ever arrived. We’re not sure how he did that. She’s worked in deep-cover operations for years, under another name. It’s all in the dossier we gave you. But anything she knew, she had learned from existing FBI files.”

“Maybe Dumond has a mole in the FBI,” Bolan said.

Brognola, who’d been digging in his pants’ pocket for a packet of antacids, heaved a sigh. “It’s possible,” he said. “The Bureau is investigating, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything on that front.”

Bolan leaned forward in his chair and fixed his gaze on Brognola. “I assume we aren’t just shooting the bull here?”

The big Fed was peeling the foil away from the roll of antacids. He glanced up at Bolan and shook his head.

“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have stomach problems. You know that?”

“At least you quit smoking.”

“Well, I suppose chewing on a cigar doesn’t count.”

“To each his own.”

“To answer your question, no, we’re not just shooting the bull. This whole thing’s got the attorney general spooked. Unfortunately, FBI agents go missing sometimes. It’s not that. It’s the fact that someone apparently had outed her before she ever stepped foot in Monaco. Also, she has a head full of secrets. A lot of them concern Dumond’s competitors and our country’s efforts to curb illegal weapons trafficking. She also has an expertise in al Qaeda, Hezbollah and some Pakistani Jihadist groups. It was something she developed as part of her undercover work. Unfortunately, for her and us, that’s valuable information, information a lot of bad people would pay for.”

“He could use her like a Pez dispenser full of classified information,” Grimaldi said.

“Not the image I was expecting, Jack, but thanks for that,” Brognola said. “Bottom line is I’m asking you to swoop into Monaco, find the lady and get her the hell out of there. Or, God forbid, if she’s dead, find out who killed her and burn them down. I’m a big believer in letting the underworld know messing with American agents will only get you dead. I know you feel the same way.”

Bolan nodded his agreement, but stayed silent. He kept an arm’s-length relationship with the U.S. government. That meant he undertook missions on behalf of his country, but only the ones he agreed with. As much as he loved his country, he wasn’t an employee of its government, its military or its intelligence services. He rarely turned down Brognola’s requests for help, though he had a few times when something about the mission didn’t feel right.

This was not one of those times, though.

“I’m in,” he said.

* * *

THE FLIGHT FROM Washington, D.C., to Monte Carlo, Monaco, took about nine hours. Bolan slept the first six hours while Grimaldi piloted the aircraft, a Gulfstream executive jet. On paper, the jet was owned by an import/export company with its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. In reality, the DEA had seized the aircraft from a Colombian drug kingpin, given it a new tail number and registration and put it back into service for undercover operations.

After he woke up, the soldier downed a cup of coffee and pulled a brown valise from the seat next to his. Setting the case in his lap, he popped it open and withdrew a sealed mission folder that Brognola and Price had prepared for him.

Tearing open the seal, he pulled out a handful of papers and began leafing through them. He found a biography on Jennifer Rodriguez first. The picture of the FBI agent that Bolan had seen in the War Room was pinned to the front of the packet. The woman was a stunner. Her black hair spilled well past her shoulders in loose waves. Her eyes were a deep brown, and bore a striking intensity. She obviously was a beautiful woman, but Bolan had no trouble imagining a man twice her size squirming under her gaze.

The soldier removed the paperclip holding the papers and the picture together. He set aside the picture and studied the file. Rodriguez was a first-generation American, the daughter of a Mexican couple who had moved to the United States a year before her birth. Her father, Vidal, had moved to the U.S. to take a high-level job as an industrial chemist while her mother worked as an accountant for the same company.

As Rodriguez grew up, she proved to be a natural athlete and highly intelligent. She ran track while also making dean’s list as a pre-law student. Once she was accepted to law school, she quit competitive sports and focused on her studies.

Her parents had hoped she’d focus on corporate law. Instead she’d joined the FBI. With her ability to speak English and Spanish, she’d been assigned to the Los Angeles office, where she was mentored by Fred Gruber, that office’s special agent in charge. Gruber, who was on the cusp of retirement, and his wife, Kate, had taken the young woman under their respective wings and provided her with a surrogate family. The report noted that Gruber, who’d retired a few years later and started a second career as a private detective, had been killed in Monaco three months ago in a mugging.