San José, Costa Rica June 19
Mack Bolan held the rented Ford at a nerve-racking fifty miles per hour, staying with the flow of traffic that jammed Avenida Central without ever seeming to slow its pace or stop for red lights. He kept a sharp eye on the drivers around him, many of them seemingly intent on suicide, while flicking hasty glances toward his rearview mirror, watching for police cars.
Bolan didn't even want to think about what local law enforcement might say about a gringo driving through their capital with military hardware piled up in the backseat of his rental car.
"How much farther?" Bolan asked his navigator.
Blanca Herrera was a thirty-something knockout, her angel face framed by a fall of glossy jet-black hair, above a body that could grace a calendar.
Herrera checked the city street map, measuring with slender fingers. "Two kilometers, perhaps," she said at last. "Turn right on Calle Quarenta—or Fortieth Street, you would say—then drive north to Avenida Cinco."
"Right."
Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately, they weren't going to a fashion show at Sachs.
"If I may say again—"
He cut her off. "No calls. No warnings."
"But I wouldn't have to speak."
"Hang-ups are worse. We can't do anything to spook him now."
The lazy shrug did interesting things inside her clinging blouse. "Ah, you know best. But if he is not home when we arrive…"
"We wait," he finished for her. "Find a vantage point and settle in."
"However long it takes?"
"Unless you know some way to read his mind and tell me where he's gone."
"No," Herrera replied. "I can't do that."
"Well, then."
"This gringo is muy importante, yes?"
"Muy importante, right."
"But you expect to find him home alone? No bodyguards?"
"Gil Favor likes his privacy," Bolan replied. "Besides, he's paid your government for years to keep him safe and sound."
"Some individuals, perhaps," she answered somewhat stiffly.
"The police, the prosecutors and at least one president."
"Ex-president," the sultry woman corrected him.
"Whose squeaky-clean successor hasn't made a move to change the status quo where Favor is concerned."
"Are you forgetting that we have no extradition treaty with your country?"
"Nope. Neither is good old Gil. That's why he didn't need a troop of heavies. Until now."
"And you believe he will be unaware of any recent danger to himself?"
"I've got my fingers crossed," Bolan replied.
That was the rub, of course. The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service had been sitting on the WITSEC murders, pulling every string available to maintain a media blackout, but any form of censorship had limits and the voluntary kind was typically as leaky as a sieve. Even without the press or television, Favor would have contacts in the States to warn him of a shift in climate, someone turning up the heat.
What would he do? Sit tight or run for cover with a new identity established in advance? Was he already running, gone before Bolan could corner him?
Or had the others, those who wanted Favor dead, already come and gone?
We'll see, Bolan thought. It wouldn't be much longer now.
"I've been here once before," he said. "But farther south."
"A job like this one?"
"Not exactly."
"I am sorry," Herrera informed him, face diverted to scan shops and restaurants. "It's not my place to ask such things."
"You're right."
She knew better, but they'd run out of small talk after ten or fifteen minutes. "If we find Favor at home—"
"We'll find him."
"When we find him, what approach will you be using?"
"Short and not so sweet," said Bolan. "Someone wants him dead. His best chance of survival is to hop a flight with me and put his enemies where they can't do him any harm."
"Will he believe that? Knowing who and what they are?"
"No way."
Gil Favor wasn't stupid. He was something of a genius, in fact, where numbers were concerned, and he was also as crooked as a swastika. He'd realize that locking up the man in charge, even inside a death row cage, wouldn't remove the price tag from his own head. Whether Favor testified or not, his chances of survival on the street—or anywhere outside protective custody—were slim to none.
"Why should he help you, then?"
"It's my job to persuade him," Bolan answered.
"And may I ask how you intend to do that?"
Bolan frowned, making his right-hand turn, dodging a motorcyclist who seemed to think lane markers were an optical illusion. His answer was curt and to the point.
"I'll let him flip a coin."
"I'm sorry?"
"Give the man a choice," Bolan elaborated. "He can deal with me right now, or with someone else's shooters down the line."
"I see. And if he's not persuaded by your logic?"
"Favor's coming with me one way or another," Bolan said. "This time next week, he'll be in New York City, on a witness stand."
"What happens if you take him all that way and he refuses to cooperate in court?"
"Somebody else's problem," Bolan answered. "My job is finished on delivery."
They rode in silence for a time, then Bolan saw the sign and said, "Fifth Avenue."
"Go west," Herrera said. "His house will be the third one on our left."
Bolan followed her directions, thankful that the major rush of traffic was behind them. Fifth Avenue was quiet by comparison, with stately homes on either side.
Here's money, Bolan thought as he counted houses on the left.
"You see it, yes?" she asked. "Just there, the brick and stone."
"I see it," Bolan said. "And he's got company."
Gil Favor didn't simply like his privacy. He craved it, needed to be left alone the same way that he needed food, water and oxygen. It was the best—perhaps the only—way for him to stay alive.
Throughout his forty-seven years, no single interaction with the other members of his species had left Favor with a sense of what his fellow humans called fulfillment. Granted, he was happy while stealing and spending someone else's hard-earned money, even found release with prostitutes who idolized him for an hour with the meter running.
But as far as anything resembling a normal life?
Not even close.
That was to be expected now, given the circumstances of his present situation. He had millions of dollars in a bank account the U.S. government could never crack, lived well beyond the reach of federal warrants and didn't really mind being a man without a country in his middle age.
He was about to pour himself another after-dinner brandy when the first alarm chimed softly. Nothing to get overwrought about, beyond the fact that any chime at all meant trespassers outside his home.
Now what the hell?
Favor had never been a violent man—well, almost never. He had earned the bulk of his ill-gotten gains by cooking the books and washing blood money for heavy-duty predators, skimming off a portion for himself when the distractions of a thug's life blinded him to what was happening beneath his very nose.
Still, the survival reflex was as strong within Gil Favor as in any other human being who had lived by wits and guile for the majority of his or her life.
A second, louder chime told Favor that his uninvited guests were drawing closer to the house, along the driveway from the street outside. He wasn't expecting any deliveries, but his mind still offered innocent suggestions for the visit.
Fat chance, however.
In four years and counting in his minipalace, he'd never had a salesman on his doorstep. No neighbors visited without an invitation, and he hadn't issued any.
That meant trouble was coming, one way or another.
Favor set down his brandy snifter, rose from his recliner and retrieved the sawed-off shotgun from its hidden cubbyhole beside the liquor cabinet. The first cartridge was rock salt, for a wake-up call; the four that followed it were triple-aught buckshot.
"You should've picked another house," Gil Favor muttered as he left his study, moving briskly toward the parlor and front door.
The occupants of two cars were unloading near the mansion's broad front porch as Bolan passed the driveway, counting heads. He saw no uniforms, no proper suits that would've indicated plainclothes officers.
"They're not police," he said.
"What, then?" Blanca Herrera asked. "Maybe he has a dinner party."
"Doubtful," Bolan said. "You saw them, right? They don't fit with the neighborhood."
"He is a fugitive from justice," she reminded him. "Why would his friends be chosen from the social register?"
"Good point."
But Bolan knew Gil Favor wasn't one for making friends. And if he did, the self-made billionaire would handpick those who best served his camouflage of affluent respectability.
"Why are you stopping?"
"I just want to check this out," Bolan explained. "If they're sitting down to surf and turf, we'll wait and tag him after they go home."
"And if it's something else?" Herrera asked. "What then?"
He nosed the Ford into an alley two doors down from Favor's driveway, switching off the lights and engine. "Then I intervene," he said.
"Against eight men?"
"I'll do my best."
She scrambled out to join him in the darkness, while he was extracting hardware from the larger of two duffel bags on the backseat.
"You can't be serious!"
"I've left the keys," he told her. "If it gets too raucous, or I'm not back here in fifteen minutes tops, clear out."
Herrera gnawed her lower lip, then said, "I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not."
"How will you stop me?"
He pinned her with a glare that made her take a slow step backward. "This is my part of the deal," he said. "You got me here. Now step aside and let me work."
"I'm fully trained," she challenged.
"Not for this."
"How would you know?"
He fought an urge to squeeze her slender neck just hard enough to break her grip on consciousness for twenty minutes, give or take. But what might happen if he left her in the car that way?
"All right," he said through gritted teeth. "You asked for it."
Her smile was fleeting but triumphant. Bolan wondered if she would live to regret her rash choice.
Already armed with a Beretta Model 92, sn...
