Don Pendleton - Justice Run

“It is,” Bolan said. “We need to focus.”

Kellogg had set the mugs on an end table next to a carafe of coffee. Bolan poured himself some coffee, put the stopper back in the carafe and sipped the brew. Kellogg backed into an armchair and looked at Bolan.

“Let me say right up front, I feel shitty how this whole thing went down,” Kellogg said. “My team and I were planning to back her up every step of the way. She was going to wear a wire. That prick Dumond has a penthouse in Monte Carlo, and the meeting was scheduled for there. We had, um, appropriated some maintenance uniforms so our agents could put themselves within striking distance just in case things went south. I ran operations like this for years before I went deep cover. My people are pros. I—we—were going to have her back every step of the way.”

The guy’s eyes were bloodshot and rimmed by dark half circles.

“No doubt,” Bolan said. “Obviously someone figured out her identity beforehand, though, and nabbed her.”

“Yeah.”

“Which raises the question—was there a leak?”

Bolan had expected the guy to get defensive. Instead he shook his head wearily.

“I’ve asked myself the same question a few dozen times. I’ve gone over everyone’s file. If there’s a leak here, I can’t spot it.”

“Maybe you’re too close,” Bolan said.

“Maybe. I’d like to think you’re wrong. But, yeah, maybe. That’s why I asked Washington to shadow me on this. Headquarters has people going through the files of every agent and tech involved in this. If they say my team’s clean, they’re clean.”

Bolan sipped more coffee and set the mug on a table. His gut was telling him Kellogg was right; there wasn’t a mole in the guy’s organization. If that was true, it only made finding Rodriguez harder.

“A former FBI agent was killed here three months ago,” Bolan said.

“Yeah, Fred Gruber. Did you know him?”

“No, but Rodriguez did.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Not sure I have a point,” the soldier replied. “But it’s something to think about.”

“He died from a random mugging,” Kellogg said. “I read the reports myself.”

Bolan responded with a noncommittal shrug. Chances were Kellogg was right and there were no links between Gruber’s death and Rodriguez’s disappearance, though it still nagged at him.

“You don’t look convinced,” Turrin said.

“I’m not.”

“Shit,” Kellogg muttered. Pulling a notebook and a pen from his jeans, he scribbled something in the notebook.

“I’ll have someone look into it.”

“Thanks,” Bolan said.

“I’m not sure what we’ll find, though,” Kellogg added. “Last I heard, he had his laptop with him when the mugging happened. The SOBs who killed him made off with his computer, his wallet and his phone.”

“You’ll probably find nothing,” Bolan conceded. “But it doesn’t hurt to check.”

“Fair enough. Without the hardware, it may take a while to find anything, unless he backed stuff up somewhere else.”

“Understood.”

“Okay,” Kellogg said. “Now that you’ve added to my to-do list, what’s next? Do you need weapons?”

Bolan shook his head. “We brought some.”

“Good,” Kellogg said.

The phone clipped to the agent’s belt began trilling so he answered it.

“What?” he said. He went silent for several seconds, occasionally nodding. The caller spoke loudly enough that Bolan could hear the voice, but couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“How sure are you about the information?” Kellogg asked. “Reasonably sure? What the hell does that mean? Fifty-fifty? Seventy-thirty?” The caller responded and Kellogg went back to listening and nodding for another minute or so. “Okay,” he said. “Put some people on the house. Keep track of every vehicle coming in and out of the estate. Try to be discreet, though. Good job.”

He ended the call, set the phone on top of his right thigh and looked at Bolan.

“Okay,” he said, “I think we caught a break. Dumond has three residences in Monaco. One of our sources knows which one.”

“Knows or believes he knows?”

“My agent is ‘reasonably certain,’” Kellogg said. He gestured air quotes when he spoke the last two words.

“Wow,” Turrin said.

“Man, you’re getting on my nerves.”

“Just trying to make you think,” Turrin stated. “The last thing we want is to bust into the wrong house and let Dumond know we’re here. Once that happens, he’ll disappear and take Rodriguez with him.”

“News flash,” Kellogg replied. “He already has disappeared.”

“I’m talking ‘leave the country’ disappear. You ready to deal with that?”

Kellogg glared at Turrin for a few seconds. Finally he heaved a sigh and nodded slowly.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“So, do you have an address?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah.”

“Get us some floor plans,” the soldier said. “We need to figure out our next move.”

CHAPTER TWO

Jennifer Rodriguez knew she needed a miracle.

She paced her makeshift cell and wondered about her next move. Her captors had taken away her watch and, obviously, her smartphone, and her cell contained no clocks. Combine that with the fact she was apparently in a basement of some kind, with no windows, and she really had no idea how long she’d been down here. She guessed it’d been twenty-four hours, but she couldn’t be sure.

She did know she was losing precious time. She’d come to Monaco to find answers. In the past several months, there’d been murmurs in the underworld about Dumond’s gunrunning operation expanding. A lot of the talk had been troubling because the Frenchman supposedly had begun acquiring large quantities of weapons from rogue military generals, particularly in the Middle East, where the U.S. supplied weapons to friendly nations. Dumond had a record for selling weapons to anyone willing to pay the price.

Initially, some had worried he’d sell arms to China so it could study the technology. Working undercover, Rodriguez had learned the weapons weren’t advanced enough to pique China’s interest. She’d also learned the tools of the death trade that were being trafficked also were coming from countries at odds with the U.S., such as Libya.

Once they crossed espionage threats off the list, at least as far as major powers were concerned, the problem became identifying the buyer. Was Dumond going to sell weapons to al Qaeda, Hezbollah or another major terrorist organization? They’d tried for months to get an answer, but kept coming up empty. While Dumond wasn’t discerning about his clientele, he did fret over security.

U.S. intelligence had found it damn near impossible to hack his computer. He switched phones regularly, handing the old ones to his lieutenants to carry and use. This confounded the intelligence agencies trying to track him and often kept him a step or two ahead of authorities.

That was why Washington had decided to send Rodriguez after him. She’d spent months infiltrating another arms-smuggling ring, had made lots of contacts, many of them mutual “friends” of Dumond and her. She’d put out the word she wanted to meet with him. The wheels had started turning, albeit slowly, and it had taken weeks before she got an audience with him.

She thought she’d gotten a break. Instead she’d walked into a trap.

Dumond’s people had overpowered her and searched her for a wire. The absence of one hadn’t improved her situation. They’d knocked her out and transported her from the meeting site to here, wherever that was. She had no idea whether she’d been moved across town or across the globe.

The whole thing had taken a weird turn when they’d started asking her about Fred, her first boss with the FBI. She’d tried to play stupid. That strategy had fallen apart when Dumond had held out a smartphone to her.