Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  There was smoke in the room now, and the acrid odor of gunfire. When the stunning effect of the multiple concussions subsided, Max rose to his feet. He seemed quite unafraid now that Bolan's gust of fury was spent.

  He walked across to a window that overlooked the street. "Perhaps, Mr. Bolan, your questions are answered now?" he said calmly. "Like who ordered the ambush from which you escaped."

  "And why?"

  "I cannot help you there. This man…" he glanced with distaste at the gory body on the floor "…was what you Americans term a gun for hire, a professional murderer. We supplied certain… facilities… because we were asked…"

  "Such as three killer kids on bikes? And a guy with a double-barreled rifle? A guy known maybe as the Marksman?"

  "And because it might have suited us to assist those for whom Sadegh Rafsanjani was working. But he wasn't one of us. To find out his reasons, you would have to ask his employers."

  "Not one of us? Who is 'us'?"

  Max slid a gold cigarette case from an inside pocket, selected one, lit it with a jeweled Cartier lighter and blew smoke. He made no reply.

  "And your reasons? For helping out?" Bolan insisted.

  Max smiled frostily. "I am afraid that is a professional secret. In any case…" he looked down once more into the street, his voice suddenly hardening "…such questions have now become irrelevant."

  The warble of police sirens was very loud. Bolan heard gunned motors, the screech of brakes outside, the sound of running footsteps.

  "The police are raiding this establishment. As arranged. They will find nothing amiss, no rules broken, nothing out of order below. But up here there is a dead man," Max said.

  He paused. Bolan heard a commotion downstairs. There were shouts, scuffles and the shrill of whistles. The word "Police" was repeated several times. A girl screamed. In the blackjack room nobody moved.

  "Apart from myself," Max continued, "there are seven witnesses here who saw you shoot down this man in cold blood — a man seated in a chair who had made no attempt to threaten or attack you. An unarmed man. The same witnesses can testify that you forced your way in here with guns already in your hands."

  Bolan's lips twisted into a wry smile. "Neat. And the confessions that prompted me to… shoot? I suppose nobody heard those?"

  "I think you will find that nobody heard anything. In fact, you burst straight in and fired without a word. Isn't that right, gentlemen?" He looked around the room.

  The doorman and the silent hoods nodded. One of the card players said, "Busted in and blasted the poor bastard. Just like that." The other three said nothing.

  Bolan didn't hesitate. There were footsteps on the stairs. Faced with a setup… and cops, possibly cops on Max's payroll, tipped off in advance, there was only one thing to do.

  Get out. Fast.

  Covering his face with his arms, he took three quick steps and launched himself through the rear window in an explosion of glass and splintered wood.

  10

  Mack Bolan landed on the iron grille separating two flights of the fire escape, the impetus slamming him against the rail.

  There were cuts on his hands, his sweater was ripped and one razor-sharp glass fragment had gashed a shin. But the damage was minor — the barrels of the pistols, smashing first into the pane, had knocked away most of the window before his body had followed.

  Angular shards were still separating themselves from the shattered frame and clattering to the ironwork as Bolan took to the stairway.

  Not the section leading down but up.

  His fighter's eye, taking in the scene at a glance, had picked out the blue uniforms lurking in the yard at the foot of the fire escape, the disguised prowl cars blocking the lane outside and the suspiciously idle loungers in windbreakers, hardmen who had cop written all over them, standing nearby.

  He had no wish to become involved with the French police — especially with a rigged murder charge and a genuinely dead man to explain away. Justice, as meted out by the Executioner, wasn't looked upon with favor by the functionaries of the law.

  There was a second advantage to an upward climb: if he could get away in an unexpected direction, there was a chance he could shake off the invisible mystery men tailing him, whether or not those guys were connected with the ambush and the police trap.

  There were three more floors above him, and then the dormers projecting from the mansard roof. The fire escape went all the way. Bolan took those stairs three at a time. But he didn't go all the way.

  It was too obvious. The cops would have radios. Already there was shouting below, although no gun had fired yet. By the time he made the top, he would be under surveillance for the rest of the trip.

  One story below the dormers, the fire escape platform was beneath a small double window that looked as if it could belong to a kitchen or shower room. On either side of it, cracked and peeling shutters were pegged back against the brickwork of the wall. The wood of the window frames was dried out and in need of paint, too.

  The windows of French houses open inward. With the butt of the AutoMag, Bolan thumped once, hard, at the two frames level with the catch.

  The old wood splintered, the catch tore away from the hasp and the windows burst open. He vaulted over the sill.

  He was in a kitchen that was absolutely bare except for two used wineglasses and a cup half full of cold coffee in the sink. An antique gas-operated icebox hummed noisily by the door. He heard cries of alarm from an inner room. He ran through.

  The apartment was a seedy one-room walkup. On a bed Bolan saw two naked figures. They lay on their backs and were propped on their elbows, looking at him in disbelief.

  Stunned at the sight of the blood-streaked apparition brandishing two guns, the two people on the bed were unable to shout a second time. Bolan ran to the front door. "Please, don't mind me, carry on," he panted, nodding to the dark-skinned man on the bed.

  Bolan slid back the bolt on the door and erupted onto a narrow landing that revealed a flight of uncarpeted stairs leading upward.

  The door to the top-floor apartment was flimsy. He holstered his guns and charged it with his shoulder. The door crashed open. The apartment was the same as the last. Only this time it was empty.

  He opened the dormer window above the street. Below, the roadway was jammed with police vehicles, but most of the cops seemed to be inside the building. The few left to guard the cars weren't looking up. Bolan climbed out onto the rotted wood of the sill, hauled himself up onto the tiles roofing the dormer and began a perilous traverse of the mansard's upper slope.

  From the far side of the street, helmeted construction workers stared out at him from the empty egg-carton cells of an uncompleted concrete apartment block.

  Crouched below the level of the ridgepole, Bolan made his way between tall stacks of chimneys to the building next door. Easing himself up to the crest, he peered down the far slope.

  He was looking at the backyard of the supermarket. The yard was busy. A semitrailer with the name of a mass-producer of canned soups emblazoned on its side was backing up through the gateway. Youths in white coveralls helped direct a forklift to unload cartons from a container on a flatbed. In between, girls stacked empty packing cases and cardboard boxes by a row of small delivery vans.

  Bolan ducked back out of sight and continued his crawl until he reached the building beyond. The roof here was ten feet lower. But once again there was a fire escape.

  He made up his mind. There was no way he could make it to the yard down the supermarket's own fire escape. They'd watch him all the way… and the cops would be waiting with open arms when he landed. But if he could make it on this third stairway down as far as the wall dividing the two properties, maybe he could drop over into the yard unseen.

  He was betting that all the inhabitants of this third block would be hanging out their front windows to see what the hell the law was doing inside Las Vegas Nights.

  The hunch paid off again. Bolan lowered himself ove
r the gable end until he was suspended at the full stretch of his arms. That left him only a couple of feet to drop to the roof below.

  Even so, it wasn't easy. The tiled slant was steep. He turned one ankle under as he landed, fell backward into a sitting position and began to slide. Only a desperate grab at the lead jacket crowning the ridge saved him from plummeting to the street four floors below.

  Thanking his lucky stars that the mansard wasn't slippery with rain, he regained the crest, slid down the far side until he was astride a dormer and jumped from there to the fire escape.

  Nobody challenged him as he cat-footed down the zigzag flights of the iron stairway.

  Finally there was just one more flight to go. Luckily the owners had invested in a counterbalanced extension, the kind that couldn't be reached from the ground but swung down to earth when someone stepped onto it.

  Bolan leaped from it to the top of the wall as it began to tilt. He dropped into the supermarket yard behind the packing cases.

  His escape plan relied on the small Renault panel vans with sliding doors being ready to go. There were three of them, all parked facing the gateway and with their loading doors open. He could see through into the cab of the two nearest, which held no supplies at the moment.

  No keys hung from the ignition of either van.

  Bolan bit his lip. The girls stacking the crates were indoors right now, but they would be back in the yard again with a fresh consignment at any time. He looked over at the third vehicle.

  Filled paper bags and cartons laden with groceries covered the loading space… and the engine was idling. A thin plume of exhaust smoke curled from the tail pipe.

  No driver was visible. But to reach the van, Bolan would have to pass the guys who had been directing the forklift. They had now moved across to the semi and, with the aid of the forklift, were shifting a huge pyramid of soup cans down from the tailgate.

  He glanced swiftly around. There was an open door behind him. He could hear the girls' voices approaching along the passageway beyond. The men moving the soup cans had their backs turned. Then the light suddenly faded as clouds obscured the sinking sun and a few drops of rain fell.

  It was now or never.

  Bolan rose to his feet and ran.

  Grimy with soot from the roofs, one pant leg blood-soaked, his face also stained red where his gashed hands had brushed it when he'd hung from the gable end, Bolan presented a frightening sight. One of the girls screamed. The men near the semi swung around, open-mouthed. Two cops he hadn't noticed darted out from behind the dairy produce flatbed. A third appeared in the open doorway that led to the supermarket storeroom.

  "Hey! Where are you going?" a voice shouted.

  "Stop! Police!" another yelled. A whistle blew.

  "He's making for the gates!"

  "Cut him off!"

  "Stop that man!"

  The driver of the flatbed leaped down from his cab and joined the two cops, sprinting across the yard in an attempt to make the gateway before the Executioner. The men in white coveralls near the semi stood and stared. The semitrailer driver was nearest the Renault. He stood squarely in the Executioner's path, a burly colossus in denims and a fatigue cap, his wrestler's arms held wide.

  Bolan had no time to trade punches. A karate offense was the answer. Without pausing in his stride, he launched a flying jump kick at the driver's head. The blow knocked the big man off-balance long enough for Bolan to dodge around him, but the others were close behind.

  The forklift operator had lowered the wooden pallet stacked with soup cans almost to ground level. Bolan whirled, his arms windmilling. The carefully stacked pyramid erupted, toppled and burst apart. Cans clattered, bounced and rolled all over the yard. The flatbed driver went down, bringing one of the cops with him. The semi's driver hopped on one foot, howling as he nursed a cracked shin. The second cop was brought to a standstill and the one dashing from the storeroom stepped on a rolling can and landed on his back.

  Bolan leaped in through the open door of the delivery van, dropped into the driver's seat, slammed the lever into first gear and gunned the engine.

  As he pointed the Renault in the direction of the gateway, Bolan had a confused impression of plainclothes police converging from both sides of the lane, of onlookers scattering as he slammed two wheels onto the sidewalk to squeeze between a prowl car and the wall. Then the cops in windbreakers were behind, and he was sliding the van around a right-angle turn into a broad highway with stores on either side. A single shot had smashed a side window and gouged a fresh cut where the first wounds had already congealed across his knuckles.

  The rain was falling more heavily now, spotting the windshield and making the roadway slick. Bolan switched on the wipers and kept his foot down.

  He was heading south and east, away from the center and police headquarters on Ile de la Cité, toward the huge traffic circle at Place de la Nation. From there he could easily make the woods surrounding the lake in the quarter of Vincennes by the confluence of the Seine and the Marne.

  But it was almost five-thirty; at any moment office workers would debouch onto the streets. Traffic, already heavy, would become snarled in the rush hour jam.

  He had to make Place de la Nation before the half hour.

  In the Vincennes woods he could ditch the van and make a clean getaway. After that? He shrugged. He wasn't going back to the hotel, that was certain. He'd play it by ear.

  Just as long as he could somehow pick up the scent again and follow Brognola's directive.

  He hurtled across Boulevard de Belleville, took a curving one-way that led to the vast Pere-Lachaise cemetery and forked left into Avenue Philippe Auguste. Just over a mile now to the Place de la Nation circle.

  But the rain was falling heavily. The umbrellas were up. Already the traffic flow was slowing.

  The Renault's steeply raked windshield, immediately above the radiator grille and well ahead of the front wheels, gave the driver a great view, but Bolan wasn't sure how the little van would take a corner on a wet road.

  He found out soon enough.

  Two hundred yards past the Lachaise intersection, two prowl cars, cutting through the traffic with sirens shrieking, passed him in the other direction. He heard the screech of brakes and a squeal of rubber on the roadway. In the rearview mirror he saw the prowl cars skidding around in a tight U-turn to follow him.

  He leaned more heavily on the gas. The van was easily identifiable: it was bright daffodil yellow with Day-Glo green script on either side. Clearly the cops had an APB out for him.

  The engine hummed and throbbed beneath his feet as he kept the pedal to the floorboard. The tall van swayed crazily as he wrestled it past a forty-ton trailer in the face of an oncoming stream, its tires hissing on the wet roadway.

  He swung left into Alexandre Dumas, nearly tipping the Renault over. This was another one-way, heading east. If he could lose the cops, he could circle around and approach Place de la Nation from another direction. The speedometer needle quivered. He had topped sixty. At least there was nothing coming the other way now.

  The images of the prowl cars began to recede in the mirror.

  Then suddenly the cars and trucks ahead began slowing. He was approaching a busy neighborhood shopping center.

  The sidewalks were crowded, and there were fruit and vegetable stalls laid out beneath glistening umbrellas by the curb. Pickups and delivery trucks clogged the street between four shiny strips of asphalt where streetcar tracks had once been laid. Bolan cursed and braked, spun the wheel and accelerated and then braked again. Behind him the clamor of sirens grew louder.

  He cut in between two buses, swerved past a truck loaded with a stack of cases containing mineral water and narrowly missed a head-on collision with a cab. He hadn't realized that the street had become two-way again when he had passed the intersection.

  Suddenly there was a clear stretch. He hit the gas once more. The needle was approaching the limit on the speedometer dial when he took in
the lights at a main crosstown intersection ahead.

  He was less than a hundred yards away when the green turned to amber and then almost instantly to red.

  Bolan braked momentarily, felt the wheels begin to go, released the pedal and then — realizing he could never stop in time — declutched and shifted down, deciding to go through with it.

  He hit the intersection just as the traffic held back by the lights on the cross street was released. Brakes squealed over the furious honking of horns as the van plunged in among the flood of vehicles converging from either side. Bolan leaned on the horn, stamped on the brakes again and wrenched at the wheel. The arc of clear glass swept by the windshield wipers was suddenly filled with the shapes of cars shooting past in every direction.

  Even then he might have made it if one of the Renault's rear wheels hadn't run into a groove worn in the asphalt covering the old streetcar tracks. The wet surface was slick with grease. The little van lurched, slewed sideways and then spun around out of control when the rear end broke away. One of the tires rolled off the wheel rim. Bolan sat helpless in the cab while the intersection whirled dizzily past.

  The Renault sideswiped a bus crammed with standing passengers, skidded between two cabs and then shot across the slippery roadway. Homeward bound crowds screamed and scattered as it mounted the sidewalk, slammed against iron railings protecting a crowded stairway leading down to the subway and then bounced back into the road to cannon off a pedestrian refuge and turn over on its side.

  Bolan found himself clinging to the buckled wheel with broken glass showering all around him. He was shaken but unhurt. Pushing open the driver's door that was now above his head, he dragged himself out.

  The police cars were zigzagging toward him through traffic stalled all over the intersection, the shriek of their sirens drowning the cries of the crowd and the hiss of steam from the Renault's burst radiator. One of the front wheels was still turning as the Executioner dropped to the ground.

  Men and women were rushing toward him, some offering to help, others shouting and shaking their fists.