Two shots fired by them, three by the Executioner. The team leader with the hog leg reached his thumb up to the hammer, but Bolan had already closed the distance between them. He slapped down the barrel of the hand cannon just as it spewed a hot fireball. The concrete between Bolan’s feet cracked, split by the unmatched power of a .44 Magnum slug.
In one fluid movement, the Executioner stepped forward and rammed his forearm under the leader’s chin. He felt the hard tube of the man’s windpipe flex against his impact. The gunman’s eyes bugged and he staggered backward. Bolan turned toward the third gunman who had yanked the hammer back then pulled the trigger. Sure enough, his Colt .45 made a very loud click as the firing pin struck empty air. Bolan seized the stunned team leader by the throat and heaved him at his poorly trained comrade. Both men crashed to the ground, but the guy in charge retained his grip on the big, heavy gun.
That man was definitely well trained in comparison to the others in this group. Bolan kicked at the beefy revolver, but its owner rolled away. The second gunman lunged for the weapon dropped by his companion. That weapon had fired, was cocked and ready to go. The Executioner pulled his Beretta and punched a round just behind the hitman’s ear. The precision-fired 9 mm Parabellum bullet scrambled the would-be hardman’s brain, abruptly ending his dive for the handgun.
The boss tried to bring Bolan into target acquisition, but as the man was prone and rolling, he didn’t have a straight shot at his adversary. Bolan wanted some answers, and the leader of this group might have intel on the attack against the women’s health center. He shot the gunman outside the center of mass, aiming along the man’s arm. Biceps and forearm sprouted bloody blooms of ruptured flesh.
The Ruger .44 finally clattered onto the ground, the man’s ruined arm unable to send signals to the fingers to hold on. Torn muscle and shattered bone left the six-gunner unable to rise from his prone position. Bolan bent down and seized him, then pushed the wounded man into the back of his own van.
Blood poured from ruinous wounds all along the gunman’s right arm, so the Executioner had to manhandle him from the left side. Too much pain would make him unable to talk and divulge who was behind the anti-abortion conspiracy. He pulled a cable tie from its pouch and turned it into a tourniquet around the man’s upper arm. The nylon restraint pulled taut and the arterial squirts faded immediately.
As the Executioner was about to close the rear doors, he saw a familiar face appear at the back of the van. It was Annis Hassan, and she was out of breath.
“What are you doing here?” Bolan asked.
“I heard gunfire. I figured it was you.”
“And you wanted to walk into a cross fire?”
“I wanted to supply aid to the injured.” She looked at the folded forms on the street at curbside.
“Two fatalities. A third man with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and this guy, who’s bleeding,” Bolan explained.
“I’ll watch over him. You drive,” Annis replied.
Bolan saw something stuffed into her waistband as she climbed into the back of the van. The handle of a pistol.
“Supply aid to the injured?” Bolan asked.
“Well, if you’d been shot, part of that aid would have been covering fire,” Hassan told him.
Bolan snaked behind the wheel and fired up the van. From there, it was a short hop to his Ford Transit. They left the concussed hardman in the back of the vehicle as they transferred their prisoner to the Transit and then peeled out of there. The gun battle would have drawn a police response, and no doubt they’d soon be on scene.
Chapter Four
Annis Hassan was impressed with the first-aid kit that Matt Cooper had assembled in his van. Enough tape, gauze and actual IV solution bags to make an ambulance crew jealous. “Where’d you score this load?”
“I’ve got a few friends scattered across the country. Some of them have vocations useful to my needs. I paid a veterinarian a fair price for all of these supplies,” Bolan told her.
Hassan looked at the IV solution, which had reached its expiration date a few days ago. “And it’s stock that wouldn’t necessarily be missed. Where did you get the money to pay full price?”
“A pharmaceutical entrepreneur donated it posthumously,” Bolan returned.
Hassan didn’t have to put two and two together to figure out that he was using a euphemism for a drug lord. The van itself looked well-equipped, and she noticed a couple of cases looking much like the luggage that mercenaries carried. Rifles, ammunition and other dangerous items would be within the locked, hard-shelled cases, just like the firepower he’d brought with him to that deadly assault in Afghanistan.
Hassan thought that she was going to save Matt Cooper with her flat little Smith & Wesson M&P 45 Shield? Sure, it was a big-caliber pistol, and threw seven of those heavy bullets out with respectable authority, but Cooper had a machine pistol tucked into his waistband and more firepower hidden in his vehicle. Plus he’d disarmed three of the opposition.
“They sent five men after me,” Hassan said softly, numbed by the sheer overkill.
“To be fair, only four were given the firepower to blast your apartment to splinters,” Bolan said, looking for a place to park. “He’s stable?”
Hassan nodded. “You did well with your initial tourniquet. He might even get the use of his arm back in ten to twenty years.”
“Sometimes I don’t even know my own strength,” Bolan told her. “Too bad.”
She could tell that he wasn’t being serious. Cooper, from the moment she’d met him, was not a man who wallowed in cruelty. The damage done to the would-be assassin’s limb was to disarm him swiftly and certainly. It was a well-spaced line. And the efforts Cooper had taken to control the bleeding were those of a man concerned with life. No matter the crime he was about to commit, she knew Cooper would not engage in petty punishment.
* * *
Bolan pulled onto a secluded stretch of road, turned into a dilapidated parking lot and then drove out of sight behind some walls and Dumpsters. No one would have a clear line of sight, especially with an abandoned factory blocking the van from two directions. Bolan slid into the cargo area of the vehicle where their prisoner sat.
“Colton Howard,” Bolan said. “I took your thumbprint and ran it against the IAFIS. You’ve been a very bad boy, Colton.”
“You’re a cop? I want my lawyer,” Howard growled.
Bolan shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. I looked you up on the Bureau’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. But I’m as much a cop as you are a decent human being.”
“Then you’re a cop,” Howard insisted.
The Executioner looked at his smartphone. “Decent people sell meth? Decent people shoot up neighborhoods for no good reason?”
“They was cutting into our...”
Bolan narrowed his gaze. “Decent people have four counts of sexual assault against them? And I’d bet good money that there are more that weren’t reported.”
“Those bitches had nothing on me,” Howard said.
Bolan looked at Hassan.
“I’m a surgeon,” she whispered in the prisoner’s ear. “I know which parts of your body I can remove to keep you still alive and talking.”
Hassan saw beads of sweat form on Howard’s forehead. His eyes widened, pupils shrinking.
“You’re a...a cop. Stop this,” Howard stammered.
Bolan drew a knife from his belt. He opened it and then handed it to Hassan, handle first. “I told you. I’m not a cop. And you’re not a decent person. You rape women and then, out of some misguided religious propaganda, you force women who are impregnated by monsters like you to give birth. And you attack women’s health centers that have nothing to do with abortion.”
Howard’s nose wrinkled. He glanced between Hassan and the Executioner. “You can’t prove we had anyth
ing—”
Bolan gave Howard an open-handed pat on the cheek. It was gentle. “Give me a break. You show up at the chief physician’s apartment building with enough firepower to knock over Fort Knox the very day after your friend killed two people at Foster Portman.”
“Circumstantial evidence!” Howard bleated.
“I told you. I’m not a cop. I’m not a federal agent. I can act on circumstantial evidence—and by act, I mean put you in a shallow grave,” Bolan said. “You’ve got some options on how you want to have your funeral. In old age, as a relief after my friend pulls out your organs in alphabetical order, or with a quick bullet between your eyes.”
Howard stiffened, the sweat visible on his face. “You...”
“I am not your judge. I am your judgment,” Bolan told him. “Make yourself useful.”
“Okay. Okay,” Howard said. “Yeah, we know the shooter.”
“Anderson Williams,” Bolan said. “Your rap sheet intersects with his. You two were suspects in an armored car robbery. Evidence disappeared, so no one could fill out the warrant for you.”
Howard blinked. He looked to Hassan. She didn’t let him see anything except a scowl of disgust.
“So, how is the Society of American Lawful Theists?” Bolan asked.
“SALT? That’s your name?” Hassan challenged Howard.
“Salt of the Earth. It’s a good thing,” Howard muttered at the mocking accusation in Hassan’s voice.
“They’re a part of this. You and Williams were receiving handyman jobs from the group over the past year,” Bolan said.
“If you know so much, why ask me anything?”
“I know enough to tell if you’re going to lie to me,” Bolan told him. “And I still have questions.”
Howard trembled, and it wasn’t because the van’s air conditioning was blasting. It was a hot, humid Alabama day, and the vehicle was quickly becoming a roasting oven.
“What are your questions?” Howard asked. He’d lost all of his defiance and arrogance. His shoulders loosened from the tense rocks they’d been moments ago.
Bolan spent a half hour interrogating the man, pulling out information with deft skill. Through the threat of pain, and careful wording, he was able to do far more than someone with the cruelest torture tools.
He was persistent, repeating the same questions at random intervals to keep Howard from settling into creating a false narrative. If the stories remained the same with the surprise callback questions, then Bolan proceeded with further questions.
No water boarding. No cuts. No tapping the sore arm. A cold introduction, a few menacing gestures, and then the nail in the coffin—a seemingly endless rap sheet on Howard, full of damning information.
Hassan folded the knife and gave it back to the Executioner.
Howard followed the knife’s movement. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“No,” Bolan told him. “We’re dropping you at an ER. They’ll report your gunshot wound. And the cops won’t—”
“No. They’ll kill me,” Howard said. “They’ll kill me if I’m arrested.”
“Like Williams?” Bolan asked.
“Like Williams,” Howard answered.
“You didn’t pull that one off?”
Howard shook his head. “No. But nobody told us anything.”
“Why should they? They’d only be warning you of your own death,” Bolan countered.
“I think Williams’s execution was warning enough not to get caught,” Howard said.
“But you did. And your two surviving friends should be on their way to jail by now,” Bolan informed him. “They’ll be dead soon, too.”
Howard’s shoulders slumped. “Jethro. He’s my cousin. I can’t let him die. Can we do something to help him?”
“I need a Judas goat,” Bolan stated. “Do you understand that term?”
“I’m going to be the one that leads the rest of SALT to slaughter,” Howard said. “You’re going to use me as bait.”
“I can get protection for Jethro. But you have to risk your life,” Bolan said.
Howard nodded. “Make the calls you need to. I can’t let him get fucked like this. I’m the one at fault.”
Bolan nodded and got on the phone.
* * *
Colton Howard looked into the middle distance, his vision unfocused. His breathing was calm and normal. Tears welled on his lower eyelids. His breathing stuttered into a sob.
This man who had been sent to murder her, who was part of other crimes, had suddenly broken down into a human being. A pathetic creature who was willing to give up his life for another murderer.
Hassan knew that the young man thought that she was evil, irredeemably hateful for being part of an “abortion clinic.” That belief had enabled him to take up arms against a defenseless woman. She was torn between feeling revulsion or sympathy. She leaned away from Howard and sat on the bench across from the captured killer.
“I’ve arranged safety for your cousin,” Bolan finally said.
“What do I have to do for you?” Howard asked.
“Call for an extraction. Use your emergency contact.”
“You know—Of course you would. You’ve probably encountered teams like mine and know how we set this up,” Howard answered.
Bolan remained silent.
“Judas goat,” Howard repeated. Bolan handed him the phone they had taken from him while treating his wounds.
Hassan watched the would-be assassin take the phone. He operated it one-handed, thumb sliding across the touch screen.
“Gimme a squeeze, so I sound good,” Howard ordered Hassan.
The doctor knew what he meant. She reached out to his injured arm and wrapped her fingers around it, then pushed her thumb against one of his wounds. Howard’s face twisted in agony.
“I asked for a squeeze, not a death grip,” Howard rasped. Sweat broke out on his forehead and tears flowed from his eyes. His voice was like gravel now. “Wait. This sounds raw enough...”
He spoke into the phone; rushed, agonized tones.
“I got shot. Some big fucker jumped us outside of the bitch’s apartment,” Howard croaked.
“I stole a car.” He gave their current location. “I wrapped up my arm. The bastard shot me up good.”
Silence as he listened on the other end. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good job,” Bolan said. “Would you like something to ease the pain?”
“If you have something,” Howard replied. “I guess I did good?”
Bolan nodded. He prepared a syringe, sizing his prisoner up by weight. “You did fine. This is just ketamine. I backed off the dose some because of your blood loss.”
He showed the syringe to the doctor. “And I’m double-checking it with the surgeon you were sent to murder.”
“That doesn’t comfort me,” Howard said with a grim chuckle. “Either way, I go to sleep, not hurting. Waking up will just be icing on the cake.”
Hassan took the syringe and administered the injection. Within a few moments, Howard slumped into her arms. Bolan helped to lay him on his back.
“It was a nonlethal dose?” she asked.
Bolan nodded. He secured the man’s wrist and his ankles, leaving his bullet-shattered arm unrestrained so as not to put undue stress upon it. Howard had received enough musculoskeletal damage that he wouldn’t have the grip strength to heft a drinking straw. Bolan also positioned the prisoner so that he wouldn’t choke if he vomited. “There’s a time and a place for putting down an animal with a bullet to the head.”
He looked down at the injured man, then went to a cabinet on the left side of the van. He popped the latches and drew out a tan-colored rifle with a folded stock with several nonstandard-looking bits on it. He extended the buttstock, but Hassan couldn’t tell what weapon it was. There was a
bit around the handle and magazine that reminded her of the American M-4 carbines carried by US forces in Afghanistan. But the thing seemed bulkier vertically. It had a thick, round tube on the end of the barrel, which was obviously a silencer, and a scope had been mounted atop a rail.
“You baited them in, but, given what he said, they’ll likely be coming to murder him,” Hassan pointed out.
Bolan nodded. “They’ll be well armed, and they’ll be ruthless.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see your pistol.”
She handed over the .45. “It’s not much...”
“It’s pretty good for self-defense,” he told her. He nudged the slide back and saw that there was a round in the chamber. There was no safety lever, so the pistol was ready to go with just over five and a half pounds of finger pressure. “You didn’t bring spare magazines, though, did you?”
Hassan shook her head.
Bolan reached into his case and drew a square pistol, thicker and a little larger than her Smith & Wesson. “I’ve got spare magazines for this. What you lose in .45 ACP punch, you’ll make up with a longer barrel and sight radius, and more than double the capacity.”
She knew the gun. It was a common import into Afghanistan among American-trained security forces. The Glock 19 in 9 mm Parabellum.
“The trigger is similar to your Shield’s. The recoil will be lighter, meaning faster follow-up shots,” Bolan said. He handed her a holster and a belt with two 17-round magazines. “The mags will dangle out the bottom of the pistol on reloads, but I’d rather you have more shots than looking tactically perfect.”
Hassan accepted the handgun. She slung the holster rig cross-body, one end over her shoulder, the pistol hanging low above her hip. Bolan corrected that. “You won’t have leverage for a clean draw if you do it that way.”
Righteous Fear Page 5