Night's Reckoning

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan had made the roof of the unit opposite the target and presently nestled into the shelter of the flat roof, a narrow coping for drainage giving him all the cover he would need. The shotgun sat beside him, ready to switch if necessary; for the moment, though, the Micro-Uzi was a better choice, set to trigger short bursts.

  He waited, counting off to himself the gap between the first and second burst, then between second and third. There was no sign of movement from within the unit, and no audible notice that the blasts had caused concern.

  A crooked grin swept across his face. Were they calmly preparing for evac, or were they rushing around like a chicken that’s met the ax but won’t give up?

  His question was answered when the rear of the unit came to sudden and unruly life. The exit from the loading bay crashed open, and two men ran out, clutching SMGs. They were jerky and panicked in their movements, scouting the area around the exit and the service road—but not doing a good job of it.

  Their actions seemed in contrast to the organization and efficiency that had marked the removal of Grozny from detention just a few hours earlier. Either these were men who hadn’t been considered as good enough for the mission, or the loss of Kowalski and the others had sent them spinning off the axle.

  Equally, either way it was a good thing for Bolan. He sat tight while they completed their ramshackle attempts at recon. After a hurried run up and down the street that would not have satisfied him had Bolan been their commander, they signaled back through the loading bay and into the unit. There was some indistinct noise, and then he heard a van engine come to life.

  Bolan settled himself on the rooftop, and moved the Benelli nearer to his grasp while sighting the Micro-Uzi before bringing both hands to the SMG.

  The van edged out into the road, almost tentatively, while the two foot soldiers kept point. They had settled into static positions that made them easy targets—one tap took out the man on the left, his head reduced to mush; a swing and a second tap stitched the other from chest to head. A wider target area to compensate for the arc taken in moving position, but still the emphasis on the head as they may have been wearing Kevlar. From the way red spread across the second man’s chest, it didn’t look like it.

  Two down. The van had at least two more people in front that he could see through the windshield. How many were in back he couldn’t tell: Grozny must be among them, as neither of the targets presented resembled the warlord.

  Bolan laid down the Uzi with one had while bringing up the Benelli with the other. A smooth adjustment to bring the shotgun into sighting, and he was ready. He aimed for the fender, grille and windshield. With enough speed and just a little luck he could disable van and crew with two quick shots. Moving aim fractionally between squeezes, riding the hammer into his shoulder as he fired, he placed the two rounds.

  There were twenty-seven shots in each round, and each of those shots was a .33-calibre pellet. Double 0 buckshot can do a lot of damage, especially if the distance is close enough that the shot doesn’t spread wide, and is concentrated within a small area. Bolan may have been above the van, but the roadway was narrow, and the diagonal line of fire was such that the pellets were still clustered in such a way as to effect maximum damage.

  The windshield exploded inward, and even through the haze of powdered glass Bolan could see that his shooting had taken out the driver and the man riding shotgun, both of whom were thrown back before slumping forward. The tires on the front of the van had been punctured, and the grille area was peppered with shot. The engine stalled and died—maybe it was the shot, or maybe it had been stalled by the dying driver. Whatever the reason, the vehicle was immobilized and formed an impassable obstruction to the loading bay.

  Bolan was already off the roof and halfway down the side of the building before the engine noise fully died away to allow the commotion within the unit to be heard. Panic—just what he wanted.

  With no longer a need to heed the CCTV cameras, Bolan took the quickest route to the front of the unit. They would have to come out this way, and he needed to pin them down before they had a chance to make good an escape. He ran down the side of the building, sizing up the cover that was available around the front.

  Nothing. The car park left an expanse that was wide open, with the nearest unit a long way off if he needed to get under cover quick.

  In the interests of time and wrapping this up before he had any unexpected company, there was only one thing to do. As he made the front of the unit, he took an explosive grenade from his duffel bag, pulled and rolled it toward the entrance of the unit. There was no sign of this starting to move, so without worrying unduly about covering his back, he veered away to seek cover and an angle away from the blast that he knew would hit....

  Now.

  Bolan hit the tarmac of the car park and felt the wave of the blast roll over him. He kept his mouth open to try to equalize the pressure. Even so, there was a moment of silence followed by a dull roar as his hearing returned, ringing painfully. Ignoring this, he rolled and came to his feet with the Uzi leveled.

  Dense smoke covered the front of the building. Alarms set off by the shock wave formed a screeching background chorus. No one rushed to greet him through the smoke.

  Let’s hope it stays that way, he thought grimly as he maneuvered the gas mask into position and took out a CS grenade. He pulled and lobbed it across the gap between himself and the unit. He waited until it detonated—almost silently in comparison, or was that just his ears?—and moved forward quickly, keeping low and poised to mop up any resistance that remained.

  Under the circumstances, he wasn’t too bothered at that moment whether or not Grozny had become a casualty of this action. It would be preferable if he was still alive, or at least in one piece. At the moment, though, it was more important to prevent him from remaining free—at any cost.

  * * *

  FROM THE MOMENT that Grozny had roared with relish at the first explosion, a long dormant fire for battle awakened within him, there had been pandemonium within the industrial unit. Half the men were new to any kind of combat experience, and were thrown into panic by the unexpected. This had an effect on the four men who had taken part in the raid to free Grozny: their own experiences had been severely limited. All of them had experience of violence in a criminal context, but had never had anyone set an explosion on them.

  Thus it was that the four who remained calm did so only by the greatest of efforts, and the van driver was pushed to the limits of his patience by trying to marshal the forces that had become, by the fact of his being the most senior man left standing, his to command.

  “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled repeatedly, and for too little effect.

  It was Grozny who took the initiative. He seized a gun from one of the men surrounding him and fired a short burst into the floor. It worked—a stunned silence fell over them.

  “Listen to him. Always listen to your commander.”

  They were good words, but said in the tone of a man who could not quite believe the amateurs he had been delivered into.

  Thankful for the aging warlord’s intervention, the van driver sent two of the men out the loading bay to recce the immediate area, while he ordered the squat man to ride shotgun for him. The remaining four men were to get in the back of the van with Grozny and act as guards.

  “We’re to concentrate solely on the one method of exit?” Grozny asked mildly.

  “The explosions have been at the front. This is our only chance...now hurry, for fuck’s sake,” the van driver urged.

  Grozny said nothing, but made certain that he kept hold of a gun as he allowed himself to be hurried into the rear of the gray van. There were no windows, and it struck him that one well-aimed blast from a mortar could turn it into a serviceable oven.

  As the doors were slammed shut on him, and on the other gunmen, he heard the squat ma
n’s voice shouting the all-clear. He sounded nervous, and inspired no confidence.

  This was only confirmed when the van juddered to a halt that threw the men in back across the interior, banging painfully off the walls and across the floor of the vehicle. It stalled after two bursts of fire that echoed within the back of the van. Before that, Grozny had heard the chatter of SMG fire, but no return. It didn’t take much to guess that it was not the men sent to recce who were firing.

  The five men spilled out the back of the van and back into the body of the building, Grozny careful to stay at the rear and slightly apart. His instincts told him that although they had been carefully drawn to the rear, that didn’t mean that it was the only point of attack.

  His suspicions were confirmed when the front of the building was rocked by an explosion that threw the four men backward. Remaining close to the rear of the unit, he kept a weather eye on the loading bay. Anyone who wanted to get in that way would have found it hard to pass the obstruction of the van, but even so, it occurred to him that this was not the work of a large force. Although the dust from the explosion was choking, he still felt that to remain here and see how the situation played out would be the best course of action.

  Something that was confirmed when the CS grenade exploded with a dull thwump, and the cloud of gas started to expand within the small space of the building’s interior.

  It stung his eyes, scoured his nose and throat. Tears streamed from eyes that were already blurred by smoke and gas. But still he knew that he must take action—not against those attacking, as he was pretty sure that they would want him alive. No. While he still had time, he must make sure that he looked to be as much of an innocent and unwilling party as possible. Given the deliberate impression made at the PIH, this shouldn’t prove beyond him.

  Through the smoke and gas he could see that the four men had moved forward to greet whoever was oncoming. It was almost impossible from his position to see who that might be. But one thing he did know was that the way they moved left them wide open and easy to pick off.

  So why not help? Making sure that he had taken cover, he fired a short burst that hit one of them in the back, throwing him forward. This elicited a burst of fire from the car park beyond the smoking ruin of the entrance. A short, accurate burst, he noted, in that it took out another of the men.

  Two left—both of whom had turned toward him, believing him to be an enemy intrusion. They fired indiscriminately, panicked shots flying wide of the mark. Nonetheless, Grozny did not wish to take chances, and returned the fire, taking out one more of the men. He was about to switch to the last man standing when another tap from the front of the building took out the threat.

  Time to act innocent and dispose of his weapon: he threw it toward the rear of the unit, his lungs burning, and gave in to the fit of coughing that willpower and the need to shoot straight had barely kept at bay. Raising his hands, he yelled, “Don’t shoot. It is Vijas Grozny. I am unarmed. I was taken against my will. Don’t shoot.”

  “No need to say it twice, fella,” a steel-hard voice returned. “Step forward, arms raised. Slow...” Then, when he did this, the voice continued. “Now down on the deck. Arms behind your back...”

  Grozny did as he was bid, and felt handcuffs slipped on his wrists. He was then flipped over onto his back. Through the mist of gas and streaming eyes, he could see a man standing over him, a gas mask covering his lower face. The eyes bore into him.

  There was a silence around them that puzzled him. He looked around, and even with his reduced vision, he could see that they were alone, although he could hear sirens in the distance.

  “Just the one of you?” he asked, his voice a mix of admiration and surprise.

  * * *

  “JESUS H. CHRIST, STRIKER, I said this needed to be discreet and under the wire! What part of that did you take to mean that you and flyboy should turn into Rambo and a Thundercat?”

  “Airwolf, Hal,” Bolan said calmly.

  “What?” Brognola’s anger was temporarily waylaid by puzzlement.

  “Airwolf was the helicopter thing. Thundercats was a kids’ cartoon.”

  “Right... Nice to know that you have time to keep up with popular culture in between trashing half of the Dutch capital,” Brognola snapped in icy tones.

  “Everyone has downtime, Hal, even me. Now, you going to stop letting your blood pressure go through the roof and listen to me?”

  “Give me one good reason why I should,” the big Fed barked.

  “You called me. Must be because you want me to report,” Bolan said in level tones. “Now, are you going to let me?”

  There was a pause—presumably Brognola marshaling his anger and reining it in—before the answer came. “Okay, Striker. Fair point. And it’s not like you do that kind of thing without a good reason.”

  “Damn right I don’t. The last thing I want is to have the locals all over me. I like covert. But this wasn’t exactly what I was briefed on, Hal. I’m not blaming you for that, as you’ve never sold me short. But if you didn’t do that to me, that’s exactly what someone’s been doing to you.”

  “In what way? All I have to go on is what my contact in the embassy tells me...and what I’ve seen on CNN,” he added bitterly.

  “Yeah, well, I’d be asking a few questions about your contact and where he’s getting his intel. Then you wouldn’t have to rely on TV for an update,” Bolan said. “Let me call you back in five. I’m not as secure as I’d like here.”

  Bolan disconnected before Brognola had a chance to reply. He was on the third floor of a hospital. Down in the morgue were the men from the industrial unit. He still hadn’t been able to get identification on any of them, hampered by the fact that he was back in his cover. All he knew of were the whispers that had reached him concerning their right-wing affiliations and a terror group known as the Serbian Unity Party. Here on the third, Grozny was in a heavily guarded side room. There was nothing wrong with the warlord apart from the need for observation and to clear out his lungs. In truth, he was here and surrounded by armed men purely because the Dutch were temporarily at a loose end as to where they could house him.

  There were cameras everywhere on the floor, but as he exited onto the emergency stairs he noted that cameras were only on every second landing. A small but stupid economy but one he was thankful for as he found a blind spot and hit speed dial. This might take some time, and he had no desire for his presence to be noted in the meantime. He just had to hope that he could get a signal in the stairwell.

  “Striker. This needs to be good.” Brognola’s tones were more conciliatory than the last time they’d spoken, but the concern was still evident.

  “There is no good about it,” Bolan said flatly. “I need you to level with me about this. When you handed me this one, you said it was because the Koninklijke and UN forces here were being compromised by leaks from within, and also because there was a possible source of embarrassment to the homeland if any action took place. You didn’t tell me that one of your retired operatives had gone rogue.”

  “Okay, I knew Kowalski was involved. But this is not about me wanting to cover my back against one of my boys coming back to haunt me. Kowalski has history with the Serbs. He’s no spring chicken—”

  “Was, Hal. I saw to that personally.”

  Brognola paused, then he said, “It was a different world back then. The curtain was only just down and that was one hell of a wasteland. We needed to make sure things fell the right way—”

  “Did they?”

  “Depends on your point of view. I guess you could say that they did for us in the end. There was heavy Chinese involvement at the time. It was a question of who would come out on top, and which of those warlords would be funded by whom. The usual.”

  “And Grozny was one of our boys, which is why Kowalski was involved?”

&nb
sp; “No,” Brognola replied, to Bolan’s surprise. “Kowalski never met Grozny. He was funded by the other side. Kowalski was backing another nag for us—one that didn’t have to go into hiding.”

  “Then why was he involved in today’s snatch? Money?”

  “I doubt it. Kowalski was an idealist. It was just that his ideals were not in tune with the administration’s.”

  “So he was a true believer. But it would drag up too much dirt if he was discovered to be involved now?”

  “Right. And you’ve got him nailed and right under your feet. Did you ID him?”

  “None of them have been ID’d as far I know. Leave him to me, Hal. Was he the only reason I was here, or is there more?”

  “Whispers. The Chinese have an interest.”

  “Why? It makes no sense.”

  “As I hear it, it’s not part of an overall strategy, but things are changing in Beijing. There are factions within the regime that have a few skeletons rattling a little too loudly. Grozny being on trial could bring those out of the cupboard and into a little harsh daylight.”

  “Just rumors?”

  “There’s a new attaché flown into the embassy in the Hague. His name is Xiao Li, and intelligence puts him in the right place at the right time to have been the legman between that regime and Grozny. It might just be coincidence—”

  “But that’s not likely, is it? Do your whispers tell you if the Chinese have anyone inside the security systems surrounding the UN and the Hague, because there are holes everywhere you look. There’s either too much complacency, or there are a lot of people with dual agendas.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  “Do I ever exaggerate, Hal? My contact is good. I trust him and he keeps his ear close to the ground. It was thanks to him that I was able to get to the PIH today.”

  “I think you’d better fill me in on that, Striker. Just what did happen?”

  Bolan briefly outlined the events that led him to the hospital. When he had finished, he added, “I asked Jack to hang around, just in case I needed him. I had no other backup, and within twenty-four of arriving I had a bad feeling about this. I got onto Bear and got him to rustle up Jack from whatever flyboy bar he was R & R-ing. I didn’t want to be so conspicuous, but the way the authorities here were moving, it had fail written all over it.”