Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  The telescopic antenna of a radio! A walkie-talkie transceiver. And still no more shots.

  The killer was calling base. That disposed of the idea that this was a casual villain on the lookout for an easy mark. Bolan was the victim of a planned ambush. Planned since he had gone into the strip club, for he hadn't known he'd be crossing the lot until just before he'd left there.

  Either the guy's rifle was so damaged by the Beretta slugs that it was no longer usable, or he'd run out of ammunition. With that kind of target rifle, Bolan knew, snipers carried only a handful of spare rounds, since there was no clip and customarily they would be confident enough, sure enough of their skill, to rely mainly on a first-shot capability. Bolan wondered if this was the killer they called the Marksman.

  If so, was he calling for reinforcements or for fresh supplies of ammo?

  The answer wasn't long in coming. A section of fencing at one side of the wire gates was swung aside, and a powerful motorcycle roared into the lot. The rider, crouched low over his tank as the machine bounced across the rough ground, was clad in black leather, with a shiny black crash helmet and visor covering his head.

  Zigzagging between the pits and puddles and refuse piles, the bike zoomed up to the far side of the tricar, halted for a second with the exhaust snarling as the rider revved the engine, and then, gears whining, howled back toward the exit.

  Only this time the rifleman and his weapon were on the back.

  The gunner was leaning forward, one arm around the rider's waist, the rifle clasped to his own chest with the other. It was difficult to make out individual features at that distance, but Bolan thought he'd know him again if he saw him — a lean man with a lined, cadaverous face.

  The bike and its two riders leaned over and roared out through the gap in the fencing.

  Strategic withdrawal, or just a tactical retreat?

  Bolan rose to his feet and stepped out of the open engine compartment of the wrecked truck. He hesitated. Was he being watched from a window of one of the old houses surrounding the lot? Through a telescope from an upper story on one of the tower blocks? Spied on through a hole in the fence?

  He recharged the Beretta's magazine and unleathered Big Thunder from beneath his sweater. With a quick glance around him, he began striding toward the gates. Whether the killer was returning with a fresh supply of ammunition, with a new weapon, or with reinforcements, it made good sense to get out. Or as far out as he could.

  He had about two hundred yards to go. He was a little over halfway when he again heard the roar of motorcycle engines, more than one this time, approaching beyond the fence.

  Fifteen yards away he saw the remains of a ramshackle cabin — probably constructed by kids — built out of a collection of oil drums, corrugated iron sheeting, lengths of rattan and rotted gunnysacks. Most of the roof had gone, but it was better than open ground. He ran toward it and dropped behind the waist-high walls.

  Three bikes, smaller and noisier than the first, swung into the lot. Between two drums Bolan could see that the helmeted riders each held a mini-Uzi on the saddle before him.

  He was familiar with the weapon. The scaled-down version of the full-size Israeli submachine gun could be fired on full-auto from the hip — a perfect weapon for a biker steering with one hand — and its 9 mm deathstream, spewed out at a rate of twelve hundred rpm, could make mincemeat of a victim at anything up to a hundred and fifty yards.

  Bolan dropped to his hands and knees. The shack was built on a slight rise on the undulating surface of the lot, and there was a depression in the center of the hillock — not deep enough to be used as a foxhole, but again better than nothing.

  The riders had spotted him. The bikes accelerated and began to circle the cabin at a distance of about fifty yards.

  That was fine by the Executioner. At least the attackers weren't at the limit of his range this time. But he had to act fast… and first.

  The moment those blowback-operated miniature SMGs began pumping their deadly hail at the shack from three different directions, he was finished. Right now they were on their third lap, revving the bikes one after the other so that the rattle of the detonations beneath those wraparound bolts would be masked once they started shooting.

  Bolan had to act before that. They knew he was there, but they didn't know his exact location. He would take out one for starters at least.

  Prone now in the depression, he sighted Big Thunder between two of the drums and waited for one of the machines to wheel into view. The rider had just raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. Bolan shot it out of his hand.

  There would be no reporting back to base on this action. If Bolan made it to the base, he wanted it to be a surprise.

  The second flesh-shredder from the stainless-steel AutoMag catapulted the rider from the saddle with blood jetting from his chest and neck. He crashed to the ground as the bike fell on its side, rear wheel still spinning and motor screaming.

  His two companions opened fire as Bolan hurled himself to the far side of the shack. Slugs ripped through the iron sheeting, tore the rattan to shreds and pierced the drums in a murderous tattoo.

  They were aiming downward at the depression where they figured he would be. But Bolan was on his feet now, bent low to stay below the wall, on the far side of the shelter. Sweeping it from side to side, it could only be seconds before one or the other of the remaining killers caught him below the knee.

  So it had to be surprise yet again. Plus the fact that they would be forced, facing an armed adversary, to be careful with their own ammunition.

  It doesn't take long for a thirty-two-round magazine on full-auto, firing at twelve hundred rpm, to exhaust itself. So they had to shoot in very short bursts, because once they were forced to reload — unless they rode out of range and allowed the Executioner to take the initiative — they would be sitting ducks.

  He relied on this… and on the unexpected; something that would faze them while they were still directing their fire through the flimsy walls at the ground.

  They continued circling, the rasp of the two exhausts rising and falling as they wrenched at the handgrips.

  Immediately after a brief volley from each that scored the entire floor of the shack, Bolan played his wild card.

  He slammed one of the oil drums onto its side and kicked it to start it rolling toward the lead biker. Since they were within one bike length of each other, the first rider had to stop firing and try to regain control of his machine with the other hand. The second rider ran into the same problem.

  But the surprise move had the desired effect, and in the instant that their attention was distracted, Bolan leaped up onto another drum, Big Thunder making target acquisition. He unleashed a quick double punch at both bikers, before they had a chance to correct their mounts.

  The first rider fell forward over his handlebars with his torso smashed open. He toppled to the ground with the machine, its motor stalled, on top of him.

  The second arched backward in the saddle with a gurgling shriek, gloved hands flying up to the scarlet jet spraying from the flayed shreds of his throat. The mini-Uzi dropped to the ground.

  The bike careened on, veering from right to left as the imperfections in the ground altered the angle of the front wheel.

  Finally, as the machine gradually lost way, the wheel dropped into a pothole, twisted at right angles, and the rear of the bike canted upward.

  The dead rider was flung clear, his mount tipped over onto its side. Gasoline from a hole in the tank, which had been punctured by one of the Executioner's 240-grain slugs, gushed over the hot cylinders.

  There was a sudden burst of flame, the smothered whump of an explosion as the vapor from the volatile liquid ignited, and then the whole tank went up in a blazing fireball, a column of black oily smoke boiling skyward.

  Bolan ran from the shack to escape the scorching heat. If the command post for the assault had been at the Bluebird or Las Vegas Nights, he wanted to be there before news of his own su
ccess filtered through the grapevine.

  He releathered his two guns, selected the bike in the best condition, kick-started the engine and rode out of the lot.

  9

  The Bluebird was a cafe-bar. It was across the street from one of the stained concrete tower blocks, a corner site loud with jukeboxes and pinball machines, bright with chrome and gaudy plastic tables.

  Bolan knew instinctively — as instinctively as he had ridden straight there on his acquired bike — that it wasn't the right place to find Graziano or whoever it was who had organized the ambush in the vacant lot.

  It was too sleazy. A villain might have a stake in the place businesswise, but he would never use it himself.

  In the many countries and cities that his everlasting war had taken him, Bolan had noticed that the predators on the wrong side of the law — whether they were terrorists, pro killers or ordinary hoods — invariably hung out in the same kind of place.

  However much money was spent, however high the denizens had risen in the hierarchy of crime, there was always an atmosphere, a social context, a certain sleaziness that characterized these places. They were manicured fingers stained yellow with tobacco, tuxedos worn with a stubbled chin.

  From the days of Al Capone, through the Genovese wars, right up to the Executioner's own conflict with the Mafia, mobsters as well as international con men, smugglers and fanatics from one or the other of the lunatic revolutionary organizations had this one thing in common: the spending of money in haunts that were usually flashy, expensive… but inelegant.

  Places in fact where they felt at home. Among friends.

  Spaggieri and Jacques Mesrine, the two most wanted men in France during the seventies and eighties, weren't to be seen dining at Maxim's; the Baader-Meinhof killers didn't rent suites at the Four Seasons in Hamburg; Albert Anastasia wasn't a habitue of Sardi's; and neither Biggs nor Roy James among the Great Train Robbers ever checked into the Connaught Hotel when they were in London.

  Las Vegas Nights in the Belleville quarter of Paris would have suited any or all of them — and doubtless had, at one time or another, numbered Mesrine and Spaggieri among its clients.

  It was on the first two floors of a gray stone block between a Moroccan couscous restaurant and a minisupermarket boasting a sidewalk display of oriental spices and tropical fruits.

  There would, Bolan knew without looking, be a fire escape and a rear entrance with a yard off a lane that led to a street in another block.

  High-backed booths separated dining tables ranged on each side of a narrow entrance hallway, and behind this there was a wider space with a long bar, a cold food counter and marble-topped tables where drinks were served by shirt-sleeved waiters wearing long white aprons. A brass foot rail shone below the bar, and an illuminated sign reading Billard stood over the entrance to a poolroom in back.

  Although it wasn't five o'clock yet, huge seafood platters were being served to several couples in the entrance hall. Inside, groups of dubious-looking men played card games around the bar.

  But the real gambling, Bolan knew, would be in rooms on the floor above whose approaches would be monitored by video cameras.

  A wide staircase at one side of the poolroom led there.

  Two girls, their breasts barely covered by low-cut sequin tops, displayed their legs as they sat on bar stools. A third, with a close-cut cap of black hair, was talking to a curly-headed blonde with fishnet stockings and a Cupid's-bow mouth who stood behind the hatcheck counter at the foot of the stairs.

  Bolan wondered if the dark one could be Clara. He walked through and approached her. "Emilio around?" he asked curtly.

  She jerked a thumb at the stairs. "In the blackjack room."

  He nodded and climbed up into an atmosphere combining equal parts of air freshener, sweat and the odor of stale cigar smoke. A hundred-piece string orchestra replayed easy-listening music through speakers positioned alongside the cameras above each door along the hallway.

  No guards with double-breasted jackets not quite concealing the bulge of a shoulder holster stood near these doors. The cameras were better informed. The rooms, labeled Baccarat, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker, would be supervised by mild-mannered little men with lapel mikes who would politely enquire, "Who?" each time anyone wanted in.

  Bolan didn't give the mild-mannered little man on the far side of the blackjack door time to ask his question. He twisted the handle, shouldered the door and made his entrance with a gun in each hand.

  "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Just answer the questions," he growled.

  There were six men around the baize-covered table, plus the guy on the door and two enforcers who stood behind the dealer with their backs to an exit.

  "Hands on the table," Bolan advised the six. "And you…" he turned to the doorman "…go stand with your buddies in back. And don't try anything stupid." He thrust the Beretta and the AutoMag out a little farther to emphasize his point.

  His cold blue glance swept the table. Graziano was sitting on the dealer's right. "Okay," Bolan said. "Who ordered the ambush… and why?"

  The dealer was a dark, muscled man with a mustache, a pockmarked skin and the eyes of a Mideasterner accustomed to giving orders. He and the other four players — they could have been Algerian diplomats, Turkish white slavers or football managers from Morocco, all with the same hard stare — turned their faces toward Graziano.

  Graziano made no attempt to bluff his way out of it. "So you got away?" he said. The big nose, the gold-rimmed glasses and the mustache were gone. His hair was different, too, but no doubt he still limped.

  "You should have sent back the first guy," Bolan said.

  "His fancy rifle was fucked," the dealer said sarcastically. "So we had to send in what we had."

  "Punks," Graziano said. There was contempt in his voice. "How the hell would they know what to do?"

  "At least they follow orders," the dealer said. "They don't double-cross the people who trained them to free-lance."

  "They won't be following any more orders," Bolan corrected.

  Graziano, who had flushed angrily at the dealer's rebuke, turned to him now. "What do you say now, Max? Still believe in your goddamn amateurs?"

  "We'll see about the difference between amateurs and pros in just…" very slowly Max turned his left hand so that he could look at his watch "…in just two and a half minutes."

  Bolan frowned. He didn't know what to make of the guy, with his air of authority. What was he getting at? Bolan backed away slowly so that he was within reach of the entrance door. "Nobody's answered my question yet," he said, gesturing with the two guns. "I'm waiting."

  "Look, mister, this is a private game you walked in on," Max said. "Six guys playing cards. Not one of us armed, and…"

  "Oh, sure."

  The dealer spoke over his shoulder to the three men standing behind him. "Rafael, Ahmed, Kemal — show the gentleman."

  "Slow and easy," Bolan warned. The gun barrels shifted slightly their way.

  The three men unbuttoned their jackets and held them wide. No shoulder holsters. The three faces were expressionless.

  "Turn around," Bolan ordered. "Lift the jackets."

  No weapons on the hip or clipped to the belt. That didn't mean there wasn't a .22 on the inside of the thigh or a knife strapped to the ankle, but it would do for now. As long as they stood straight.

  "And you," Bolan said to the card players. "What do you have to show me?"

  One by one the men rose and executed the same maneuvers. The first four were clean. Graziano and the dealer, Max, were the last. Bolan's fingers curled around the triggers of his guns as the terrorist began to rise.

  Suddenly the window glass shivered, and a porcelain vase on a shelf at the far side of the room tinkled against its twin as a distant explosion shook the building.

  "Well, Sadegh Rafsanjani, there's one thing you did right," Max said to Graziano. "Too bad it was just for money rather than the Cause."

  Graziano appea
red annoyed by the use of his real name. "The effect's the same," he said sullenly. "A few dozen more out of the way. The department store in the rue de Rivoli — the Toy Fair on the top floor, just before closing time. It was hidden up among the sprinklers. Six kilos." He smiled then. "With luck, although the blast was directed downward, part of the roof could come down."

  "The way the Alitalia plane came down in Rome?" Bolan queried through gritted teeth. Out of one of the windows he could see a mushroom of black smoke rising above the rooftops down near the river, obscuring the twin towers of Notre-Dame.

  "A beautiful job that was," Graziano said. He shook his head. "And clever, too, the way I used that stewardess." He glared at the Executioner, and the admiration in his voice faded as he added, "If it hadn't been for your damned interference, Tel Aviv would have been even better."

  Mack Bolan's icy reserve had left him only a couple of times in his adult life. Coolness, objectivity, the correct weighing of pros and cons, of cause and effect, refusal to let the heart rule the head — these were all attributes on which his existence often depended.

  It was the cold-blooded smugness, the insufferable self-approval of the man that made Bolan lose his own cool. He had calmly admitted the murder of three hundred and seventeen people and now congratulated himself on the fact that, seconds before, God knows how many more had been ripped to shreds, blasted to bloody eternity or were lying maimed and screaming somewhere below those roofs.

  The smoke rose darkly into the sky. In the distance the shrill warble of police cars and the bray of ambulances increased.

  Seething with fury, Bolan was scarcely aware of the signals from mind to muscle that ordered his fingers to squeeze the triggers.

  He fired both guns at once.

  At a range of fifteen feet, two separate shots from the .44 Magnum and a triple burst from the Beretta slammed into the killer's chest, pulped his face into an unrecognizable hash of raw meat splintered with bone, sprayed brain tissue from the back of his head and catapulted him and the chair in which he was sitting several feet away from the table to crash over backward onto the floor.