Kill Shot

“I wish I could help you, sir, but I honestly don’t know. My best people are on it.”

“I’ve got people on one side of me telling me to declare martial law,” the Man said. “There’s a group of people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have already drawn up a contingency plan, but my instincts tell me that’s the wrong approach. I need your honest opinion.”

“I think you should level with the people, sir,” Brognola replied. “You should go on television and tell them we have a dangerous situation to deal with. They should be vigilant, but not fearful.”

The President pondered the advice. “That might work for a short time,” he said. “But if we have a wave of shootings tomorrow, people are going to riot. And if that happens, I’ll have no option but to declare martial law.”

I’ve seen enough cruelty and brutality to understand the difference between garden-variety guilt and genuine evil. Some people claim that there’s no such thing as genuine evil, but they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. I know that pure evil exists because I’ve stared it down countless times. And as long as it continues to appear, I will continue to face it unflinchingly.

—Mack Bolan

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

—Ovid

43 BC–AD 17

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Boston, Massachusetts

Tom Gardner pushed the two-wheeled truck cart out into the bright sunlight that bathed the loading dock. He let his eyes adjust to the sun, then continued toward the orange Cantus Uniform and Linen Service van he’d backed up to the concrete ramp. After pushing the cart a few steps, he gave up on his aging eyes ever adjusting to the bright light after emerging from the gloomy interior of the diesel repair shop. He stopped to put on a pair of sunglasses. Even though the clock had yet to strike twelve, Gardner had already had a long day. He’d gotten an early start, making the first stop on his route before 5:00 a.m., and he only had two stops left.

Once he had the sunglasses in place, Gardner looked around at the bright blue sky rising above the tops of the warehouses, workshops and processing plants that comprised the Boston Marine Industrial Park. It was a sweet route; rather than driving all over the state, most of his stops were clustered around Logan International Airport and the Charles River Basin, meaning he could hit twice as many stops in half as much time as most Cantus drivers, which in turn meant that he earned twice as much money as most other drivers since they worked on commission. The choice route was a perk he’d earned for spending twenty-nine years on the job. The drivers with the most seniority got the best routes, and Gardner had the best of the best. It was hard work, and lugging uniforms and linens in and out of the truck year in, year out had taken a toll on his knees, but they only had to hold out another six months and he could retire.

Gardner glanced at his watch, which was synchronized with the atomic clock used to measure International Atomic Time. A precise man, Gardner knew that the international system of units defined a second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation, and when his watch showed that it was exactly noon eastern time, it was exactly noon eastern time. His watch showed that it was seven seconds away from noon, meaning that he’d arrive at his delivery van at two seconds past noon. Gardner left no detail to chance.

He began the countdown in his head. As always, his timing was perfect. Barring unforeseen traffic jams, he’d finish his route at 1:15 p.m., be home eating lunch by 1:50 p.m. and be napping in front of his television by 2:30 p.m.

He looked at his watch to see the digital display flicker from 11:59.59 to 12:00.00. At that moment he felt a massive blow to the back of his head, and then all consciousness ceased. He didn’t feel the bullet penetrate the back of his skull, drive through his reptilian brain stem, then exit out through his face in a geyser of blood, bone fragments and brain matter. He didn’t hear the report, and he didn’t feel a thing as his body was pitched forward over the two-wheeled truck cart and hurled to the concrete floor of the loading platform. For all his careful planning, Gardner’s retirement had come early.

Manhattan, New York

STEVE GANSEN COULDN’T WIPE the stupid grin off of his face. He’d gambled everything, his entire career as a stockbroker, making a massive investment in what appeared to be a dying industry: book publishing. It had cost him his credibility, the respect of his peers and nearly his job—and his marriage—but today it had paid off. Big.

Not that Gansen was surprised that his apparent long-shot bet had come through. He’d studied a decade’s worth of the company’s quarterly business reports and he knew it was undervalued precisely because publishing was a dying industry. It was dying, but not quite dead yet, and Gansen knew that there were still a few dollars left to be made in the archaic technology of books. Now he clutched the Wall Street Journal in a white-knuckled death grip, rereading the lead story about a giant German publishing operation purchasing the publishing house in which he’d invested, quadrupling his investment, as well as the investments of those clients with the testicular fortitude to stay with him throughout this endeavor.