Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan ran through.

  As he passed beneath the arch, a floodlight set in the brickwork above his head blazed into life. He halted, pinned against the dark and as vulnerable as a specimen on a microscope slide. Blinded by the brilliance, he squeezed his eyes almost shut.

  "Mr. Bolan!" a deep voice intoned. "How nice of you to pay us another visit. But why go to all that trouble? Why not just knock on the door and ask your questions directly?"

  Bolan said nothing. The voice stirred no memory in him. On the fringe of the pool of light cast by the flood, he could just make out the figure of the florid man with white hair.

  "In case you should be contemplating anything foolhardy," the voice continued, "I must warn you that two of my colleagues are standing in the darkness, one on either side of me. Each one is armed… and although we may not be experts like yourself, at this range, in this light, you would be a target hard to miss."

  The Executioner's muscles tensed; his fingers itched for the feel of Big Thunder's butt, so near on his right hip. There were bushes no more than ten feet away on his right. How far away were the other two? Could he beat their reaction times? Did he dare risk a sudden dive — and a punishing burst from the AutoMag to cover his retreat?

  "All right, Mazarin…" the white-haired man was staring at a point behind Bolan's shoulder "…don't hit him too hard."

  The oldest trick in the world. Bolan of all people, seasoned fighter as he was, didn't intend to fall for it.

  Except that this time it wasn't a trick.

  He heard the whistle of the blackjack as it zeroed in on his skull.

  Then, for the second time that week, the sky fell in on him.

  16

  It was raining in Amsterdam. Too bad, Information Minister Jaap van Leeuward thought as he waited to greet his guests beneath the scarlet canopy outside the Central Station; the city should have been at its best in this summer season, with the tall, narrow houses reflected in sunlit canals, a blue sky visible between leaves not yet fallen from the waterside trees. Oh, well, there was always the hope that the color inside would compensate for the lack of it in the streets.

  Van Leeuward was to accompany his opposite numbers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and West Germany to the official opening of an exhibition at the world-famous Rijksmuseum. The show, intended to reunite modern masters from all over the world, would make a fascinating contrast to the traditional Vermeers, Van Dycks and Rembrandts that were normally the museum's main attractions. It was expected to draw big crowds during the two months it would remain open.

  The ministerial cavalcade crossed the bridge that spanned the network of waterways surrounding the station and rolled slowly down the Damrak toward the Koninklijk Palace. The route had been closed to ordinary traffic, and there were black-leather-suited mobile police every few yards, but the bad weather had kept the expected crowds away. At the last moment a Mercedes 600 and three Cadillac limousines had been substituted for the open cars originally planned.

  The rain blew in gusts across the huge square in front of the palace and silvered the Gothic spires of the Nieuwekerk just behind it. The square was deserted, though small groups of Amsterdammers waved from beneath the trees lining Rokin and around the Mint Tower.

  Police outriders leading the procession turned right between two canals and then swung left to cross the bridge over the Singelgracht. The huge bulk of the museum, set in formal gardens, was on the far side of the wide canal.

  As the driver of the Mercedes twirled the wheel to follow them, a man sitting behind an upper window in a house beside the canal pressed a remote control button on a directional radio device, detonating a hundred pounds of plastic explosive packed into a motorboat moored close to the bridge.

  There was a livid blast of flame and a shattering roar as the boat disintegrated and the bridge parapet with half the roadway was sheared off and sent hurtling skyward.

  Three of the six motorcycle outriders, together with their machines, were blown to pieces — a shower of metal fragments, entrails and bloodied morsels of flesh and bone fell back onto the remains of the bridge along with chunks of masonry pulverized by the explosion.

  A fourth policeman was wrapped around a lamp standard with a broken back. The two survivors sat dazedly on the sidewalk, staring at the gaping hole in the roadway through which their machines had fallen into the water.

  The front of the Mercedes 600 was crumpled by the shock wave, and both front wheels were blown off as the huge limo slewed across the bridge. The chauffeur and a bodyguard beside him were cut by glass fragments. But Van Leeuward and his guests, sitting behind armored windows in the rear of the car, were unharmed.

  The six cops bringing up the rear of the cavalcade screamed to a halt. Five of them raced toward the column of smoke and dust hanging in the air above the damaged bridge, leaving one to shout an urgent report into his radio.

  Doors jerked open as shocked officials poured out of the three Cadillacs; men and women ran from the canalside houses. Van Leeuward and his companions emerged from the leading car, wondering helplessly what they could do.

  This was where the bomber and his associates had been smart. It was assumed that the very carefully calculated and minutely prepared explosion was a near miss, a failed attempt to assassinate the five politicians.

  In fact, Van Leeuward alone was the target, and the blast had achieved precisely the effect desired: to halt the motorcade and get him out of his car.

  The bodyguard, mopping the blood streaming into one eye from a gash on his forehead, must have had in that split second a premonition, for he swung around and tried to push the information minister back into the Mercedes.

  He was too late.

  Two distant rifle shots cracked out above the hubbub of voices and whistles and sirens.

  The bodyguard was flung backward over the hood of the limo with blood frothing from a fist-sized hole between his lungs.

  Van Leeuward was hit between the shoulder blades, the high-velocity bullet tearing away half his heart as it burst out through his rib cage. He took a single step forward on rubber legs and fell, dead before he reached the chasm at the side of the bridge and dropped into the canal.

  Eight towers with pyramid roofs crowned the Rijksmuseum. By an attic window beneath the rain-wet tiles of one of the two tallest, the Marksman focused field glasses on the commotion around the blown bridge. Satisfied, he broke the twin-barreled Holland & Holland rifle, ejected the cartridges and stowed them in his pocket. The gun, still hinged in a wide-angle V, he stuffed into a gunnysack along with the binoculars, a waterproof coat, the remains of a packet of sandwiches and a roll of wallpaper.

  He was wearing stained white coveralls. Slinging the sack over one shoulder, he picked up a can half full of white paint with a wide brush suspended from the handle. Making no attempt to move quietly, he plodded down the hundred and eighty stairs that spiraled from the roof to the foot of the tower. A uniformed commissionaire waved from the main entrance as he walked out into the rain.

  The Marksman waved back, rolled his eyes heavenward in disgust at the weather and called out, "Fucking rain! Wouldn't you know when there's outside work to do!"

  The commissionaire nodded sympathetically. The Marksman trudged around the corner and loaded his stuff into a small unmarked panel truck. He got in, started the engine and drove away.

  Half an hour later, when most of the available police in the city were cordoning off the area around the museum, a young woman pushed a baby carriage onto the Arrivals concourse of the Central Station and joined the crowd waiting to meet passengers from the Antwerp-Rotterdam express.

  The streamlined flyer drew into the terminus. The crowd surged toward the barrier. Nobody noticed the young woman walk quickly away from the baby carriage.

  The explosion killed seventeen people, maimed more than fifty and slightly injured one hundred more.

  Two leather-clad youths on motorbikes were waiting outside the station. The girl leaped astride the pi
llion of one, and they rode away.

  Approaching the first intersection, they saw a prowl car approaching at high speed, the blue light on its roof flashing.

  Momentarily the solo rider panicked, believing the cops were already on their tail.

  The rider signaled wildly to the other two, leaned his bike steeply over and headed for a narrow side street. But the pavement was slick with rain, the tires lost their grip, the machine slid away from under him and he rolled onto the road.

  The police driver could do nothing. He was traveling at fifty miles an hour, and the boy was dead ahead. The body was thrown twenty feet, and the biker's skull cracked open on the sidewalk.

  The dead man carried no papers. His clothes were unmarked. The motorcycle had been stolen three weeks before in Belgium. The mini-Uzi beneath his windbreaker was part of a consignment hijacked by the Red Army Faction from a West German army base two years previously. The body was never identified.

  The other biker and his passenger rode on unchallenged and made their way through Belgium to Luxembourg and then France.

  * * *

  It was raining in Neuchâtel, too — a thin drizzle blowing off the lake that woke Mack Bolan to the fact that he was lying on wet grass and his head ached like hell.

  On wet grass? He opened his eyes and saw clouds. At the edge of his vision there was a wall. Beside the wall a Honda 250 scooter was balanced on its kick-stand.

  What the…? With the return of consciousness, the instant combat-trained awareness of the world, his place in it and the events leading up to the crack on the head that had knocked him out, came a flood of questions.

  Why had they released him? Why here, back with the scooter? Once they realized he was onto the terrorist-clinic connection, as they must have done, why hadn't he been killed?

  What was this "You again!" from the giant who had slugged him, and the reference by the old guy to another visit?

  Was he injured? Had he been drugged, tortured, interrogated?

  Bolan sat up. He was wearing the sweater he had taken off and stowed in the Honda's saddlebag before he'd made his clandestine entry into the clinic the night before. They must have dragged it on over the blacksuit when they'd dumped him.

  He couldn't have been here long, because the garments weren't sodden, only damp on the outside, and clearly the drizzle had been falling for some time.

  He felt each limb experimentally. No broken bones, no cuts, no scars. Even the lump on the back of his aching head was barely noticeable. He pulled up sleeves, unfastened zippers. No needle marks.

  Even the Beretta and the AutoMag were still in place, snug beneath the sweater in their holsters. He unleathered both and examined them. The magazines were there, both loaded. Spare clips still rested in the pouches attached to his belt.

  Only the electronic sensor detector and the magnetic auto picklock were missing.

  Why?

  Drugs — and they sure had plenty in there — didn't have to be administered with a hypo syringe of course. But if he had been fed pentathol or some other truth drug while he was out, then questioned, there wasn't much he could have told them.

  That his mission was to track down the terrorists? They would have known already through Boardman and the fact that he had killed Graziano in Paris.

  That he had found out nothing else and still had no lead — except the clinic's connection to the plot? The fact that he had been caught breaking in there would already have proved he was wise to that.

  In any case, in his experience people exposed to truth drugs usually retained some hazy recollection of the session. He remembered nothing.

  What was crystal clear — it was unarguable — was that the plotters, or at least those connected with the clinic, wanted him free, were prepared to release him armed, wished for some reason to leave him on the loose.

  When he would presumably continue the chase. And they didn't give a goddamn? Bolan didn't get it. It was baffling beyond words. They had treated him like a fish too small to count among the catch and thus thrown back into the sea.

  Did that mean the racket was so big they didn't have to fear anyone, even the Executioner? Or could it imply that the doctors at the clinic were more squeamish than the terrorists about killing in cold blood… that there was a conceivable difference of opinion that could be exploited?

  Obviously priority number one was to find out every single thing he could about the damned clinic and the people working there. His pierhead waiter friend, and others like him, were the most likely source of useful gossip.

  Before that, a couple of strong black coffees would help clear his head; after that, maybe he could straighten out his thinking.

  Bolan started the scooter and rode back into town. If anyone was checking his departure from the gatehouse, they didn't show themselves.

  He stopped at a workers' cafe on the outskirts and ordered his coffee. Somebody had left an English language newspaper on the next table. Idly he leaned across and scanned the front-page headlines.

  "Dutch Government Resigns over Security Issue," he read across five columns in the number one spot. And then below: "Opposition Chief Accuses Police of Laxity in Van Leeuward Killing."

  A separate panel boxed farther down the page carried the query: "Was Dead Gunman the Station Bomber?"

  Bolan pulled the newspaper over and read the stories through. There had been antigovernment riots in The Hague, the lead story said, after the Amsterdam atrocities. Railroad workers were threatening strike action unless more stringent precautions were taken against terrorists.

  It seemed the disasters had shocked Holland two days earlier. He was surprised he hadn't heard of them before.

  He sighed. The death campaign was heating up. How much worse would it have to get, how many more innocents must die, before he was in a position to throw a monkey wrench in the works of the scum planning these horrors?

  He drained a second cup of coffee, glanced at his watch — and froze.

  It was ten to eight, but he wasn't looking at the time. His eyes stared unbelievingly at the date.

  Yesterday was Tuesday. Today should be Wednesday.

  The window in the watch face told him it was Friday.

  He grabbed the newspaper and scanned the frontpage masthead beneath the Gothic-lettered title. Friday.

  Bolan bit his lip. It was a replay of the Paris hotel scene. Once again he had lost two whole days. Only this time there was no thousand-mile journey in a Mercedes to account for it.

  If they'd held him at Friedekinde's place since Tuesday evening, how come he didn't remember any of it? Not even the fuzziest, spaced-out recollection?

  It worried the hell out of him, not because of this particular mission, but for a more personal reason.

  Was his body, his head, finally beginning to succumb to the ravages of his everlasting war? Was nature, aided by events like the double blackjacking he'd suffered recently, conspiring to bring him down?

  It was a sobering thought — a thought he wanted to push away but one that had to be taken into account.

  But before he could worry any further, life supplied a more immediate problem.

  Across the street from the cafe there was a gas station. A black Mercedes sedan had just stopped by the pumps for a refill.

  There were, of course, plenty of black Mercedes sedans in Neuchatel. But this one happened to be the antique model he had seen in the stable yard at the Friedekinde clinic. As part of his routine combat pattern, he had played his flashlight beam on the license plate and memorized the number — that was one thing he did remember. Now the limo was within fifty yards of him.

  The chauffeur, a swarthy, stocky, bullet-headed man, was alone in the car. While the attendant was filling the tank, he climbed out and crossed the road to a cigar store next to the cafe.

  Bolan threw coins on the table and left. He crossed the road.

  The tank filled, the attendant had returned to the gas station office.

  The rear of the big car w
as hidden behind the pay kiosk.

  Bolan acted on impulse. Good or bad, the risk he was going to take would provoke a reaction — and here was an opportunity too good to pass up.

  Was the trunk unlocked?

  He pressed the button above the license plate. It was.

  The lid swung slowly open. Bolan checked that the locking mechanism could be operated from inside. It was simply a matter of manipulating a hook-shaped catch against a strong spring.

  With a hasty glance around — empty sidewalks, the attendant still in the office, the chauffeur at the cigar store — he folded himself over the sill of the trunk and pulled the lid down on top of him.

  Soon afterward Bolan heard voices. Then a door slammed, the engine started and the car moved away.

  In total darkness the Executioner weighed the chances of his impulse paying off. If the Mercedes returned to the clinic, he'd be inside again, unobserved, and there was surely intel to be gathered there someplace. If, on the other hand, the Mercedes was tanked up because a journey was planned, he wanted to know the destination.

  Provided no baggage was stowed in the trunk.

  If it was… well, he would have to rely on the Beretta, already unleathered and in his right hand, the surprise element and his own talent for survival to get him out of it.

  From the shortness of the trip and a gravelly scrape that could have been iron gates opening, he guessed they had returned to the clinic.

  Almost at once four, perhaps five, passengers got into the car. The body sank slightly on its springs. Doors slammed again. The Mercedes turned around and started off again.

  The huge trunk wasn't hermetically sealed, but fresh air was scarce, and the aromatic stink of gasoline from the newly filled tank helped to make breathing even more of a chore. In the close, hot darkness of his self-imposed prison, Mack Bolan soon found that his lungs were laboring. His clothes dried quickly on the outside… but inside they were damp with sweat.

  It was a long journey, at first uphill and then down again — crossing the misted crests of the Jura? — followed by an interminable flat stretch, and then more uphill twisting.