Tonight, Carl Lyons had survived, against the odds. But there was still tomorrow, waiting for him, hungry, anxious to be fed. Alone with darkness, Lyons wondered who was on the menu for the bloody day to come.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
David McCarter lit another Players cigarette, held out the pack to Bolan, tucked it back inside a pocket when the Executioner declined. They had been waiting for the best part of an hour, and the Phoenix warrior had already been through half a pack. His nonstop smoking was the only clue that he felt less than totally at ease.
"I think we're blown."
"We're fine," Katz told him evenly.
Their rental car was parked beside the central lake of Steyr's Schlosspark, with the sixteenth-century castle clearly visible to the northeast, dominating the junction of the Rivers Enns and Steyr. They were on the high ground, with the lights of river craft remotely visible from where they sat, but Bolan's eyes and mind were concentrating on the narrow roadway that approached their vantage point from either side.
"They're late," he said, unnecessarily.
"They'll be here," Katz replied.
"You're sure they bought your line?" McCarter asked.
Katz sighed, his breath a frosty plume that hung before his face a moment, finally lost.
"They set a time," he told the Englishman. "They picked the drop. You know as much as I do."
"Bloody hell."
Katz frowned. "They had some kind of party get-together scheduled," he reminded his companion. "Something's held them up, that's all. They'll be here."
Bolan wondered. He was having second thoughts about the drop, remembering Toronto as they waited in the darkness, huddled in their sheepskin jackets, weapons clasped beneath their coats to keep the metal warm and working smoothly.
In the place of Bolan's normal side arm, he was carrying an H&K 9 mm VP-70. The heavy pistol lacked his own Beretta's option of selective fire, but it was double-action, with a magazine capacity of nineteen rounds. He wore the lethal hardware in a clip-on holster fastened to his belt, butt foremost, for a cross-hand draw that would provide him with a fraction of a second's edge in case the meet went sour.
McCarter and the burly Israeli both wore Uzi submachine guns underneath their jackets, rigged in leather harnesses for easy access on a moment's notice. Neither Bolan's piece nor theirs were fitted out with silencers; if anything went down, the sleepy town of Steyr would know about it in a hurry.
It had been almost providential, Katzenelenbogen's smooth connection with a secretary at the Steyr weapons plant. The lady knew a guy who knew a guy... and after several days, the ex-Mossad commando was in touch with individuals who didn't mind diverting shipments, if the price was right. He had already paid his money, promising a great deal more if all went well, but his connections in the plant refused to deal directly with a stranger. They relied on intermediaries, for security, and thus Katz had become involved with politics.
Ostensibly, the Earth Party was composed of pacifists, repulsed by war in all its forms. They led parades against the Bomb, surrounded military installations with their chanting pickets and monopolized the media whenever possible. With faces painted, skull-like, they were fond of blocking traffic outside embassies and legislatures, grabbing headlines for their doomsday message. It was an echo of the sixties, but with an evil eighties twist that banished any brief nostalgic memories of flower children instantly.
Mack Bolan knew about the Earthers' leftist leanings, their proclivity for targeting the Western nations, carefully avoiding any deviation from the Moscow line. They were concerned about American or British nukes, and never mind the Soviets, East Germany, Bulgaria. The pickets chanted anti-NATO slogans, but they managed to ignore the Warsaw Pact entirely. Outraged by the rumors boiling out of Nicaragua, they had no time left to worry over wholesale slaughter in Afghanistan.
The Executioner was not dismayed by the phenomenon. Two decades earlier, he had observed a different generation, equally committed, that condemned the war in Vietnam... or, rather, that condemned a portion of the war. United States involvement was the "crime" that rallied countless thousands, braving jail and beatings to express their anguish over nightly bulletins of slaughter on the network news. They never saw, and never raised their voices to protest, the other crimes, committed in the name of people's liberation by the Vietcong, the Soviets and the Chinese. The Executioner had grown accustomed to all sorts of bleeding hearts, and recognized that most of them were totally sincere — however sadly misinformed.
But here in Steyr he was facing something else.
According to the evidence produced by Katz, the Earthers — or their leadership, at any rate — were not the sixties-style idealists they appeared to be on camera. Their covert links with brutal terrorists — the Baader-Meinhof crew, the Red Brigades and ETA — were amply documented. There had been covert meetings, payoffs, sanctuaries opened up to killers on the lam...and lately, there had been a steady flow of arms from party sources to the arsenals of half a dozen trigger-happy private armies on the Continent. There had been insufficient evidence for prosecution up to now, but Bolan wasn't interested in convictions. He was looking for the answer to a deadly riddle, and the clues began in Steyr, with a weapons leak and functionaries of the party who were said to deal in stolen arms.
"You might have set the meet indoors," McCarter groused.
"You need the air," Katz told him gruffly.
"I've got your air right here."
He was about to light another Players when a pair of headlights made the turn off Blumauergasse, headed south into the park. The former SAS man flicked his cigarette away and snapped his lighter shut, already opening the buttons on his heavy jacket. Beside him, Katz and Bolan were alert and occupied with preparations of their own.
The headlights were approaching slowly. At one hundred yards, the high beams blazed for half a second, and again the signal eerily reflected on Mack Bolan's face. Katz leaned in through the driver's window of their rental, flashed the lights in answer twice, before rejoining Bolan and McCarter on the firing line.
Bolan didn't know precisely what to look for, but he imagined something in the nature of the van that had contained the shipment in Toronto. Now, instead, a sleek sedan was rolling toward them through the darkness, lights extinguished as it coasted into range.
"Small load," he said to no one in particular.
"It's a foot in the door," Katz replied. "If we're lucky, it's all we'll need."
"If we're lucky," McCarter said gruffly, "we won't need a hearse when we're finished."
Close up, Mack Bolan saw that the sedan was a Mercedes, and he was impressed. From all appearances, the business of promoting peace paid very well indeed. He watched as doors sprang open on both sides, the dome light momentarily illuminating faces.
And a moment was all it took.
He recognized the left-side passenger from tabloid photographs and glossies in the file at Stony Man. Beside him, he could feel the Phoenix warriors tense with recognition of their own. McCarter muttered something indistinct beneath his breath.
The Raven had surprised them once again, appearing where he had been least expected. And Bolan felt the gooseflesh rising on his arms, his stomach twisting into knots the way it had so recently in the Toronto cemetery. The way it had aboard Flight 741. He sensed a certain hesitation now in Katz's attitude and wondered if he recognized the face from Mittenwald. Assuming that their theory was correct, that there was not a single Raven in the field, this might or might not be the man they had encountered earlier. Despite the darkness, Bolan was convinced that he had not seen this man before.
The Raven in Toronto had been someone else entirely. Bolan would have bet his life on it. In fact, he realized, he had already done exactly that.
But if the Raven clone in front of him had not been in Toronto, which one had been aboard Flight 741?
"You're late," Katz told the new arrivals, speaking now in flawless German, keeping any trace of tens
ion from his voice.
Bolan only followed bits and pieces of the conversation after that. He gathered that the Earthers had been unavoidably delayed, that they were anxious to conclude their business now. But he was concentrating on the Raven, fighting down an urge to draw and fire that had been growing in him since he recognized the face.
There were four men in the sedan, and Bolan was convinced that he could take them, with Katz and McCarter backing up his play... but it was not that simple. They had come in search of information, and a corpse could not participate in dialogue. Far better, Bolan thought, to follow Katz's script and see precisely where the dark charade might lead.
He noticed that the Raven stood apart from his companions, keeping silent while the Earthers haggled over terms with Katz. They were being cautious, glancing frequently about them at the lurking shadows. There was something furtive, overanxious in their manner, and he wondered if it might not be his own imagination. Cut off from communication with McCarter, suddenly convinced that any spoken word of English might prove fatal, Bolan felt a brooding sense of dread. He couldn't put a finger on the source of his anxiety, but there was something...
Katz was concluding his negotiations, shaking hands in consummation of the deal. He nodded to McCarter, and the former SAS commando faded back, opening a back door of the rental, reaching for the satchel stowed inside. The Earthers were exchanging pallid smiles, their leader glancing at the Raven, and Bolan half imagined that he saw a signal pass between them, carried in a furtive glance.
The Raven smiled, an artificial grimace, and muttered something to his comrades. Bolan felt his stomach churn with bitter disappointment as he failed to recognize the voice. An Hispanic accent, clearly, which would fit the profile on Ramirez — but it was not the voice that had issued from a latex Nixon mask aboard Flight 741.
The clone was drifting back along the length of the Mercedes, ambling in the direction of the trunk. He fished a key out of his pocket, turned the lock, became invisible behind the rising lid. The Earthers' spokesman was explaining something now to Katz, stepping back a pace and talking with his hands. The last remaining trace of color had evaporated from his cheeks.
And Bolan smelled the trap before it closed around him, knew that they were being set up for the kill. He found the H&K 9 mm, ripped it free and was already scanning for a target as the first alarm bells sounded in his brain.
"Look out!" he shouted, knowing it was far too late to salvage the charade. "They set us up!"
Behind the Mercedes, sudden hulking movement as the trunk disgorged a pair of gunners. The Raven suddenly emerged from cover on the left, his flankers on the right, and all of them were armed with deadly Steyr-Daimler-Puch 9 mm submachine guns, muzzles up and spitting flame.
McCarter and the big Israeli went to ground instinctively, their jackets flapping as they clawed for Uzi stutter guns. The initial burst of fire from the Mercedes missed them cleanly, shattering the rental's windshield. The Earthers tried to scatter, obviously stunned to find themselves between the hostile guns. Before they had a chance, their leader caught a parabellum round between the shoulder blades and stumbled into Bolan, throwing off the soldier's aim.
He cursed and thrust the standing corpse aside, already squeezing off a double tap in the direction of the Raven's hiding place. He was rewarded by the sound of breaking glass, and then converging streams of fire were searching for him, forcing him to scramble for the cover of his own sedan. McCarter ripped a burst beneath the chassis of the sleek Mercedes, ankle-high, eliciting a bleat of startled pain.
The two surviving Earthers made a sudden break for safety in the darkness, but a shadow figure lurched erect downrange and dropped them both with a precision burst of automatic fire. The gunner hesitated, perhaps admiring his achievement, and a round from Bolan's autoloader took him in the temple.
One down, one wounded, and the steady hostile fire showed little sign of fading. Belly down beside the rental, Bolan listened to the Uzis dueling their invisible assailants, trading short, staccato bursts at virtual point-blank range. Both cars were taking hits, and neither one would pass the casual inspection of a traffic officer when this was over. Startled by the thought, Mack Bolan realized that there was no assurance that either vehicle would ever leave the Schlosspark.
And time was running out.
Katz and McCarter must have felt the rising tension, too, for both simultaneously redoubled their assault upon the sleek Mercedes, raking fore and aft with automatic fire. Another bleat of pain and there was only one piece answering them now.
He felt the Raven's move before it came, and he was braced to take the bastard down, his autoloader gripped in both hands, elbows locked. The soldier was prepared for anything — except a sudden move by Katz bringing the Israeli right into his line of fire. No time to shout a warning, as the target of a lifetime sprang erect behind the Mercedes, moving swiftly, tracking with the weapon in his hands.
Katz saw the quarry, triggered off a hasty burst, and then the Raven's rounds were sizzling in on target, flinging him aside, his bulk rebounding from the rental's fender, sprawling gracelessly across the tarmac. Bolan's blinding rage erupted through the muzzle of his VP-70, and he had squeezed off half a dozen rounds in rapid-fire before the Raven stumbled, fell.
He kept the Raven covered as he moved toward Katzenelenbogen, feeling for him, half afraid to see the old, familiar damage done by parabellum slugs. He rolled the big Israeli over on his side... and Katzenelenbogen kept on going, groaning, sitting up to look around him in the darkness.
"That was close," he muttered, probing underneath his jacket cautiously.
McCarter stood above his comrade, trembling.
"You bloody sod," he blurted, "you wore a vest!"
Katz grinned, still taking inventory of his battered ribs.
"I can't afford so many chances at my age."
"God damn you!"
Bolan left them to their wrangling, moving toward the Raven in a combat crouch. The guy was dead as hell, he knew it in his heart, but he would not take any risks with this one. Crouched beside his enemy, he felt for vital signs, found none. A single round had drilled the Raven's throat; the other five were clustered in a fistsize ring around his heart.
And he had not been wearing body armor.
The Phoenix warriors stood behind Bolan, listening to sirens drawing closer in the darkness.
"Time to go," McCarter said.
The soldier hesitated. "Do you recognize him?"
"What? From Mittenwald?" McCarter glanced at Katzenelenbogen, shook his head. "It's close, but no cigar."
"And you?"
"I never saw his face," the Executioner replied. "His voice was... different."
"So, it's a scratch."
"Not yet."
He rifled through the dead man's pockets, seeking anything that might reveal the secrets of his life, his alter egos still at large and moving toward some other rendezvous with carnage, possibly a world away. He found the billfold filled with spurious id, and let it fall beside the corpse. Another pocket gave up ammunition magazines, a lightweight automatic pistol worn beneath one arm.
And airline tickets.
"He had a flight booked to Geneva in the morning," Bolan said. A glance inside the folder told him everything he had to know. "And hotel reservations in Zermatt."
"So what?"
McCarter sounded skeptical, and more than slightly nervous as the sirens closed around them.
"So, it's more than we came in with," Bolan told him, rising, turning from the dead.
Katzenelenbogen smiled and said, "He likes the mountains."
Bolan's eyes were hungry in the darkness.
"So do I."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The winding mountain drive between Geneva and Tasch consumed two hours. Toby was enraptured by the soaring Alps, the forests that resembled something from a childhood fairy tale. Bolan concentrated on the highway, with its countless switchbacks, tunnels, hairpin tu
rns. The rented Saab seemed built for alpine driving, taking curves and grades in stride.
He kept an eye on the rearview mirror, spotting Katz and McCarter in their separate cars from time to time, alert for any other sign that they were being tailed. The soldier feared he might be growing paranoid, but he had seen too much and come too far to let his guard down now. The Raven — or his clones — had been a step ahead of them at every turn so far, and he could not afford to let the trend continue if he planned to come out on the other side of it alive, if they were ever to dismantle the conspiracy.
It had been McCarter's plan to make the final drive in separate cars, and Bolan had agreed at once. If something happened now, if they were ambushed on the road, it would require an army of the enemy to tag them all. Whatever happened now, short of a multicar disaster on the highway, two or three of them were bound to make it through alive, at least as far as Tasch.
The Executioner reviewed his knowledge of the target zone. No autos were allowed past Tasch; the transport in Zermatt itself would be by foot, horse cart or electric-powered cab. Perched at the head of the Nikolaital Valley, at something more than five thousand feet in elevation, Zermatt boasted a population of three thousand souls. They might be easily outnumbered, ten or twelve to one, in tourist season, which extended more or less year-round. Zermatt was one of Switzerland's great international resorts, the winter sports capital of Valais. In spring and summer, awe-inspiring scenery, the atmosphere and lavish shops made up for any slump in skiing.
"Lovely, isn't it?"
The lady's voice distracted Bolan from his driving, from his private thoughts of battle, but he summoned up a smile.
"It is."
"I'd like to settle in here somewhere and forget about the rest of it. Just let it go."
"You would?"
He wondered whether this was true, if Toby might be burning out. It happened, Bolan knew; a lifetime in the trenches took its toll, and some would pay more heavily than others. A woman, youngish, healthy, might begin to wonder what she had been fighting for — what cause had managed to consume her private life.
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