15
It was a 9mall two-story farmhouse on a deserted stretch of dirt road, just twelve kilometers beyond Mannheim. Strategically it was a strong enough hardsite, with easily defendable perimeters and plenty of unobstructed view from the farmhouse. This was not going to be easy. A frontal assault would be suicide. The sixteen of them charging up the dusty driveway leading to the farmhouse could be picked clean by a twelve-year-old with a slingshot. Trying to bluff their way in with a broken-down-car story would not work either: these people had tried most such ploys during their own careers as terrorists. Tanya tapped Bolan on the shoulder and pointed her gun where he wanted him to go. He nodded, cradled the H and K in the crook of his arm, and crawled on his elbows and knees through the heavy underbrush near the barbed-wire fence that circled the darkened land. Rudi had already cut an opening and most of the troops had bellied through. It was an outrage of history that half the law enforcement agencies of the world knew all about this farmhouse, and yet did nothing. There were a lot of embarrassed mumbles about "circumstantial evidence" and such, but the real reason was that they were afraid to make arrests for fear of reprisals. No, if the law was goilig to take them at all they would have to kill them, outright and immediately. And that, they found themselves unable to do. Thus the place existed, a sitting target for the Executioner, awaiting its fate from beyond the law. Good. Mack Bolan knew this Black Sunday group for what it was, a mindless collection of writhing vipers with no purpose but destruction and murder.
They had started out as the Zwilling Horde had started, with random bombings and occasional murders. But they made their public debut with a more spectacular public crime, and were destined for even bigger publicity resulting from even greater horrors.
Eventually, indeed, the publicity had been too much, altogether too negative, and the PLO'S Arafat had demanded they stop. But most of these creeps could not stop, did not want to, no matter how it hurt their "cause." Bolan looked around at either flank as a half moon of sixteen terror soldiers advanced on the farmhouse. He appreciated the irony of his situation. As bad as the terrorists holed up inside were, these Zwilling Horde people were even crazier. And now one group was going to destroy the other. Bolan smiled a wide, honest smile.
Yeah, he liked that idea.
He would have preferred to be clad in his own assault outfit, the .44 AutoMag Thundermaker strapped to his side, the whispering Beretta tucked under his arm, the M-1 with the 40mm grenade launcher clutched to his gut. Still, this H and K was one hell of a weapon. It would have to do for now. The lunatic Thomas Morganslicht had his Beretta, and the regaining of that would be a substrategy of its own. The advance was halfway from the vans to the farmhouse when the first shot cracked loudly through the crisp night air. It was followed by stuttering automatic fire from one of the Horde, a piercing scream, silence. Bolan saw a Black Sunday hardguy stumble forward off the farmhouse porch. So now the element of surprise was lost. The Zwilling Horde opened fire on the farmhouse. The crackle of imitation Makarov pistols sounded in the dark. The Horde was pinned down by automatic fire with still thirty bulletriddled yards to cover.
Bolan spotted Tanya across the field to his left and crouched toward her, bullets kicking up dirt clods, nipping at his heels. He dived the last ten feet.
"I told you to hold your position for the cross fire," she uttered angrily. "Disobeying orders is punishable by death, Sergeant." She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and once more took aim at the farmhouse. She pumped round after round at the old building. Bolan ran forward, aware that at least seven other men were with him as the farmhouse was sprayed with repeating rounds. After covering ten yards, these men dropped for cover and began firing as the next seven soldiers came up over the same ground.
One of the seven that had run with Bolan had caught a slug in the forehead and lay sprawled five feet from the second wave of soldiers and ten feet from the top of his head. Two more men were picked off in the second wave.
Tanya Morganslicht dropped to her chest next to Bolan as he continued to fire the H and K at the nearest farmhouse window. The increased volume of shouting in the farmhouse indicated the terminal nervousness in there. Bolan led the next charge, gaining ten more yards but bloodily losing another man. Tanya led her own group through the hell of bullets, and she also losl a man, with another wounded in the groin. The last run cost them two more soldiers, but now they were pressed against the solid farmhouse walls. They were safe here, as long as they kept away from the windows.
And then the Black Sunday hardguys burst through the front and back doors simultaneously, spilling six or seven troops from each exit into the smoke-filled night. They were all armed with new Uzi machine guns, and they knew how to use them. But they were at the disadvantage of having to come out into the open to fire them, and the Horde was waiting with guns trained on each door. There was a fearful echo of explosions, the Horde opened fire on the rival terrorists, literally shredding their targets.
According to Tanya, Thomas and Rudi were on the other side of the building which was just as well, because Bolan did not want to have Rudi and his shotgun behind him during this next phase.
"Und jefts?" Thomas Morganslicht yelled out from the other side of the house.
"Any suggestions?" panted the woman terrorist leader.
"Sure, but it'll cost you." answered Mack Bolan.
"How much?"
"Two men at least. And that's for sure dead, not maybe."
"Acceptable," she said without hesitation.
"Okay. We blast the doors, send a man through each, one at the front and one at the back. Once both doors are open, we chew up the survivors in a cross fire as long as we're aware of where our own people are. Naturally the first men through each door are dog meat."
"Dog meat?"
"Dead."
"Naturally," Tanya Morganslicht said.
She waved three of her nearest men over to her, then whispered instructions and they hurried off to pass the instructions on. "Erich," she called to one of the younger men, the one who had gotten the American cigarette from Bolan. "You will have the honor of leading us through the door." Erich tried to smile to acknowledge the honor. But it was a sick smile, full of the knowledge of death.
"Don't worry, Erich," she said in a soothing voice, "we will cover you." He tried to speak but only choked on the words. Instead he just nodded.
Then, suddenly, he was running across the porch toward the front door, his Uzi blasting away at the lock.
Bolan could hear the same commotion coming from the other side of the building as another kamikaze "volunteer" charged the back door. Bolan gripped the H and K tightly in his fists, and hunched into a ready position.
Erich's concentrated fire on the lock caused the door to swing open, but that was all that Erich would get to see of the inside. A flurry of automatic fire punched through the space and continued on into Erich's face, spraying blood and wet clots of brain and chips of skull over his waiting comrades.
"Go!" Tanya screamed, and her followers opened fire on the doorway until everything that surrounded it was nothing more than a mass of splinters and sawdust. There were screams of pain from inside and the sound of footsteps clambering up wooden stairs.
"Go!" she hollered again and her three remaining troops piled through the front door, their Uzis chattering diatribes of death. When the last of her men had made it through the door, Tanya followed with her own captured Uzi blazing from chest level.
Bolan was happy to let the kills continue.
He heard a second-story window being opened.
He ducked into the recess of the front door, his back pressed against the wall so that those above could not see him.
It wasn't much more than a fifteen-foot drop, and the first two made it with no problem. Someone from above tossed their Uzis to them, then they waved for the third person to follow. She did. But when she hit the ground, Bolan could hear her ankle snap with a crack. She muffled her scream so as not to warn the att
ackers inside, but it was obvious she would not be able to walk.
The two men exchanged looks, then glanced back at her. She was apparently pleading for them to take her with them, but the two men had already made up their minds. They could not make it with her dragging them down, nor could they risk leaving her behind to scream a warning.
But nor did they want to alert the troops inside where they were, so they could not shoot. So while the girl continued her whispered pleading, the taller man assured her that they would help. As his comrade soothed her, the second man drove the butt of his gun into the side of her head, crushing her skull.
It was not a blow meant to stun or knock out. It was meant to kill, and from the way she toppled backward like a bludgeoned steer, Bolan knew it had done its job. The men started to run.
"Hold it," Bolan said softly. The menace in his voice found their ears despite the loud carnage inside the house.
The two hardguys brought their Uzis up as they pivoted in a low crouch, but Bolan was already firing, stitching a row of wet red buttons across their chests.
He zigzagged another row from head to crotch for each, spinning them around before they collapsed.
Inside, it was a bloody mess, with weapons and shredded flesh splattered across the walls. Bolan was careful where he walked because the thick pools of blood made the floor slippery.
"This one's still alive," Thomas Morganslicht said, pointing at one sprawled man, his eyes half-open, blood foaming at his mouth. Rudi stepped carelessly over a few bodies and stood next to the man Thomas had pointed out. Then with a mighty cry he lifted his right leg knee high into the air and stomped down on the man's throat with his heavy boot. The body jerked a few times then remained still. Rudi looked over at Bolan and smiled.
"The rest are dead," Tanya proclaimed as she finished her tour. "That takes care of witnesses. Now let's load the weapons."
Bolan counted eight remaining of the Zwilling Horde, including himself. There were at least twenty-five dead among the Black Sunday group, so it had been a successful raid in terms of objectives. However, they had lost eight of their troops. There were more back at the camp, of course... enough for the big operation to come? Bolan would find that one out soon enough.
16
"Let's kill him now," Thomas Morganslicht said, collapsing onto his cot with a deep sigh.
"In time," Tanya answered. She walked over to the stove and poured herself a cup of thick German coffee.
"We don't need him anymore. We have the weapons we need for the day after tomorrow."
"No," she said, shaking her head and blowing steam from the coffee. "We go tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? That's too soon. Everything has been planned for the next day."
"No it hasn't. It never was. I told everyone the wrong day for security reasons."
Thomas jumped up from the cot and wagged his finger angrily at his sister. "But you should have told me! I'm in command here."
"Co-command, was she said icily.
He shrugged. "Well, you know what I mean."
"Yes, dear brother, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes before you even mean it."
Thomas began pacing beside the cot. His voice was petulant but accepting, the way it always was when his sister outmaneuvered him. "Still, I should have been told."
She took a sip of coffee and smiled soothingly. "...Look, Thomas, when we decided to form this little group, we agreed that I would be in charge of security. Okay, I could have told you the truth, but then you'd have had to pretend to everyone else that we were going a day later. And we both know how hard it is for you to pretend. You were never good at it when we were children, nor are you any better at it now."
"Well, I..." he protested.
"There's no need to deny it. I'm glad you're that way. Your honesty and candor is what make our troops follow you so readily into battle. They trust you. That's why you're in charge of training them."
"Yes, yes, that's true."
"Of course it is." She widened her smile until he turned away, then she threw it away like old coffee grounds. As always, she had told him what he had wanted to hear, and that would satisfy him for the time being. Poor Thomas had always been a little weak in the brain. Though he was older by 86 seconds, she always looked upon him as her younger brother. Had it not been for her, he'd have flunked out of the university and be working in a Volkswagen factory somewhere. Some people were born to follow and some were born to lead. But Thomas had his uses. Men still did not like taking orders from a woman. So whenever possible, she gave the orders to Thomas and by the time he had passed them on to the men, he had convinced himself that he'd made them up. It worked quite well.
"Tomorrow we take the sergeant with us on the mission," continued Tanya. "After tonight's raid we are short of men. And we can use his military experience. Despite our own experience, he is still a professional and we are amateurs."
"Why would he help us?" bleated Thomas.
She laughed dryly. "We will offer him money. And after we're successful tomorrow, you and Rudi can kill him."
Thomas smiled. "And make him an example?"
"If you must."
"It's the only way to show the world that we mean business," seethed the brother.
His sister smiled. "After tomorrow, history will know us in all our crimson magnificence. Do what you will, Thomas, do what has to be done."
17
Rudi sat on the edge of his cot, the gnarled log balanced across his knees, his meaty hands wrapped around each end. He scowled across the room at Bolan, huge teeth glistening with saliva.
"We have to stop meeting like this," Bolan grinned.
Rudi tightened his grip on the log. "American humor," he sneered and spat on the dusty floor.
"Yeah, well, you don't exactly keep me in stitches, guy. Though I think you'd like to."
"Shut up!" spluttered Rudi, saliva spraying from his lips. He struggled to control his temper. It was what the twins would want him to do, but still it was so difficult at times, especially with this infuriating American. There was something about this man that made Rudi seriously nervous. Rudi had, to his knowledge, never been afraid of anything before in his life.
But with this American it was different. The U.S. Army sergeant goaded and pushed in such a way that Rudi wanted to crush him. Breaking his back would not be enough, he would have to use his thumbs to gouge out those taunting eyes, too. He hated those eyes. They were hard confident eyes that somehow drained Rudi of his own confidence. And that could not be tolerated. He would try to control his temper, for the sake of the twins, but there were limits beyond which even he could not be pushed.
"Enough talk," Rudi warned. "You talk too much, but say nothing."
"An American custom," Bolan nodded. "We call it small talk. It's supposed to make us good buddies."
"Buddies, hah!" Rudi snorted and spat on the floor.
"Is it true what they say about you?"
The muscles in Rudi's neck bulged like steel cables on a bridge. "What do they say?"
"That the difference between you and an ape is that the ape smells better."
Three hundred pounds of screaming flesh came hurtling across the small cabin, all of it aimed at Mack Bolan.
The Executioner dived to one side. Rudi went crashing into the cot, smashing it to splinters.
He arose like a maddened bull and lunged at his quarry, grabbing a new hunk of wood, in his hand as he did so. Bolan grabbed the man-mountain by the face, slowing his advance, and held back the club with all the strength of his left arm. Then he smashed his forehead into the thick wide nose of the giant terrorist. Rudi's cartilage cracked dully and a sticky spray of warm blood shot out of his nostrils as if from a garden hose. Rudi cried out, and Bolan snapped his head forward again, even harder. Rudi wailed and his grip loosened in every way. Rudi had had enough. He stood with his frying-pan hands covering his splintered nose and badly bloodied face, gulping air greedily through his mouth. But Bolan was just begin
ning.
He kicked the beast in the stomach. His lightning-fast right combat boot was propelled by a steel-spring complex of thigh and calf muscles that had the power to smash bricks and disintegrate doors.
The impact was the equivalent of a motor being thrown at human flesh. When the force connected with Rudi, it blasted the wind out of him, but he did not crumble.
Fine, thought Bolan. He wants humiliation and that is what he will get. Rudi's rage and shame will be my ally, it will turn against him and will destroy him. Bolan's next kick was higher, connecting with the chest. A blood-soaked Rudi, his sinuses open to the wind, grabbed the foot immediately, even as it sank into his gross pectorals like a cannonball into a listing ship.
He twisted the ankle in his grasp until Bolan was tossed over and facing the floor, head down, only his hands keeping his nose from being ground into the filth of the hovel floor. Rudi was dangling Mack Bolan upside down like some empty which elbarrow.
Bolan grabbed the vile creature's knees and took aim for his next shot. With the swiftness of a karate chop, he brought his head up with a jerk, aiming for the frontal pelvic bone, punching his speeding cranium into the — German's upper crotch with all the Zen overkill of one whose aim goes far beyond the actual target.
This effect was to bend Rudi over into a forward roll as his testicles continued on their new journey back up the bladder into a cave of endless pain. He exhaled hideously as his body tumbled toward the floor, Bolan rolling with him to come upright as Rudi groveled. Bolan was grinning. His head had now bounced three times off of bone, and each time the damage was so much greater than the impact might indicate. The nose hits had completely screwed up the workings of the bloated terrorist's face, meanwhile sending shudders of shock and pain waves of splinter-scrape all through the crazed Aryan's skull, as blood and mucous slime spewed forth unchecked from the facial wreckage. Then the pelvic shot had sent spasms through the beast's scrotum so severe that the solar plexus itself had gone numb with airless apoplexy. Rudi's fat viscera convulsed inside him. The Executioner's smile was not one of pleasure, nor amusement. It was a bitter one, adopted only to restrain his flaring anger. It was a smile of menace, repressing like a pressurized mask the thunderclap fury that could explode at any time.
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