"Not when we have twenty-nine hostages left," Lutfi laughed. "Shall we make a wager? No, you won't be here to pay me."
A speaker on the desk between them clicked on. A voice in excited Italian spouted a sentence. Lutfi listened, gave a curt command, then snapped off the speaker.
"In case your Italian is weak, that was one of my men reporting that he now believes only one man is responsible for the problems we're having. He says we now have this invader under fire and that our sharpshooters will bring me his head in a bucket within five minutes."
"One man? You're being foolish, Lutfi. No one man could cause you all the losses you've en-countered. Fifteen men killed, two helicopters destroyed. It's at least a ten-man squad of experts. I wouldn't plan on dinner if I were you."
"Rubbish. Five minutes and I'll be toasting my victory. If not, then in ten minutes I'll be marching you out on deck and my second-in-command will put a dozen rounds from an AK-47 rifle through your heart. And no one will weep for you."
The speaker came on again. The Italian words were sharp, excited. Sounds of small-arms fire could be heard.
"So, it won't be long," Lutfi said. "They are attacking this ten-man army of yours right now. Already your life is forfeited because of this fight. Soon we shall see if your death has been in vain. Even if the crazy man attacking us dies, you still die. I have given the men my word, and they will cheer as you fall."
13
The Executioner had been working his way aft on the tanker. He was trying to get into position to take out the next chopper, but four well-trained gunmen cut him off and pinned him down.
These were a different class of enemy than he had seen so far among the terrorists. They were quick, disciplined—they were soldiers.
For a moment he could only fire and fall back. He spent one of his frag grenades and threw them off the track. He already had the French gunship, piloted by Jack Grimaldi on the destroyer, ready to lift off, but that was his reserve. Only if worse came to worst, would he call in Grimaldi to give cover and more firepower.
Bolan made a wide detour around the opposing riflemen. He figured they had out-flanking protection so he faded into the darkness and angled for the stairway door on the superstructure. If he could not get at the chopper, he would have to get Lutfi—and personally prevent the terrorist leading from making any more moves of death.
Most of the terrorist activity and personnel seemed to be near the elevators and the choppers. Bolan needed to examine the office area of the ship in order to locate Lutfi himself. He darted into the stairwell and ran quietly to the second floor, where he cracked open the door and looked into the hallway. Six doors led off it. He had to take a chance. Bolan ran into the corridor.
The first door was locked. Bolan bypassed it and checked the second. It was unlocked, but the room empty. The third door on the same side of the hall opened into a bomb factory.
The Executioner stepped inside and let go of the door, which swung shut automatically. The latch clicked. The lights in the room snapped out, leaving Bolan in coalmine-at-midnight blackness.
A wild heartbeat later the combatman heard a snap, then a soft laugh. A recording. The laugh turned into a strident voice. Lutfi's voice.
"So, the rat fell into my trap. It's good to have you here. Do be careful moving about. The room is filled with small-and large-charge explosive devices, all set for hair triggering in the most ingenious ways. And all of the bombs will detonate at once if you attempt to force open the door. Now that we understand each other, I'll turn on the lights."
The lights came on, fluorescent, recessed under heavy plastic shields in the ceiling.
"As you must have guessed," intoned the bodiless voice, "this is a recording set to activate as soon as someone entered the room. A little game I play. Oh, yes, I have failed to tell you the rest of the rules. There is a time limit. You have exactly one hour in which to unravel the puzzle to all of the twelve explosive devices. Any not defused after an hour will automatically detonate.
"The room? Not to worry. This room is specially built to withstand and contain the explosions. Unfortunately, no human can stand such forces.
"One more suggestion. These devices are all wired and constructed differently. It's a hobby of mine and I'm extremely good at it. There are make-to-break detonators, there are break-to-make types, and there are some that explode if they are moved vertically, some if moved horizontally. There's one that must even be kept absolutely level. And, of course, you know about the big one already activated by the timer. So good luck."
The recording had ended.
Bolan made a cautious inspection of the room. Lutfi was, of course, right; there was no way out. The walls were solid.
The bombs all used various amounts of C-4 plastique for the explosive. He stared at the closest one.
It blinked with red and green lights that had no pattern. The next one had a beep that sounded each two seconds, then varied and after an interval repeated some pattern sound.
The Executioner knew a lot about explosives, but he was not a bomb expert. If only Gary Manning, of Bolan's Phoenix Force, were here right now! Just one wrong wire pulled and any one of these bombs could go off, creating a disastrous sympathetic explosion with the rest of the C-4.
Bolan looked around, saw a chair and was about to sit on it when he stopped, knees bent.
He knelt and looked closer at the chair. There was a pressure-sensitive device on the seat, and under it a square of explosive. If he had sat down, it would have been the end of the war.
Mack Bolan stood still, staring at everything in the room. Everything—the chair, desk, picture on the wall, the small sink and mirror—could be booby-trapped.
No doubt bombs were indeed a hobby of the terrorist, but one point in the recorded message did not ring true.
Lutfi had been on board the Contessa less than twelve hours. He could not have constructed this room in that time. The room could not essentially be any different from the others on this deck. All had the same construction.
Bolan walked carefully to the closet wall, the one shared with the vacant room he had just looked at. He found no booby traps on the floor. The wall looked natural enough, no pictures, no signs. Just a plain, painted surface. He touched it, then gambled, tapping it gently.
Solid, but nothing happened, no explosion, no alarm. The booby trapper had not wired everything. Bolan pulled the heavy K-Bar knife from its scabbard and touched the point to the wall. He twisted. It did not dig a hole. No luck that it could be drywall. Cautiously he scraped some of the thick paint off the wall. A shiny metal surface showed through.
Metal, but how thick was it?
The Executioner placed the point of the K-Bar against the metal, waist high. Gripping the knife tightly, he thrust forward with all of his 200 pounds of power. The heavy, flue-flame-tempered stainless-steel blade penetrated and sank inward a quarter inch. He lunged again, and the knife sliced through the thin aluminum alloy, all the way to the hilt.
Bolan withdrew the blade halfway with a scraping sound, then forced it downward, slicing through the metal. He remembered doing the same thing with a pocket knife on a can of beans. Almost any knife could cut thin metal with the right force, although thicker metal required tremendous force from a very, very fit man. Bolan pushed the K-Bar down again and it sliced a foot before it stopped. Now he pried back the metal.
Inside he found insulation, and beyond that another thin metal covering.
Five minutes later he had sliced open a small part of his side of the metal wall, pulled out the insulation and cut through the other metal wall.
Another five minutes and he had carved a hole big enough to crawl through. He was out of the bomb room and into a vacant room.
He walked to the door, opened it slightly and stared up and down the hallway. No one was there. Just before he stepped out, he heard the ship's intercom system come on.
"Punishment call! A dozen hands are ordered to report to hold fifteen, directly besi
de the superstructure, for a discipline call! You have five minutes. Captain Hans Running will be our star pupil for this exercise. Don't miss it!"
Bolan recognized the same voice he had heard on the tape: Lutfi. He had spoken English in this new announcement deliberately. The Executioner slung the AK-47 over his shoulder and prowled back the way he had come.
He did not know where hold fifteen was, but he knew he had to find it fast—Captain Running's life could be at stake. Bolan melted into the darkness under the eight-and-ten-inch-diameter loading pipes and listened. He checked his watch, then squatted on the pebble-rough surface of the gully between the holds. The tough metal surface offered good footing and was painted a dull black.
A moment later he heard voices. Bolan stood on the hold cover and looked for the meeting site. As he did, a floodlight snapped on.
Bolan sprinted silently down the gully between the hold covers. He unslung the Russian rifle, checked the magazine. One more intersection down and he came to a spot where he could see the group and have a good field of fire. Ten men had gathered under the light. Standing on top of the hatch cover with his hands behind his back was Hans Running. Two riflemen jumped up on the cover and stood at attention twenty feet away.
Lutfi's voice babbled rhetoric over a bull horn.
The two riflemen brought up their weapons. As they did so, Bolan fired once, moved his aim and blasted again, both single shots critically aimed.
The first round caught the firing-squad man in the center of his chest, blowing him backward off the hatch. The second bored a round hole through the other rifleman's head.
"Captain—this way!" Bolan shouted as he sent a dozen rounds over the heads of the men who had come to witness an execution. They scattered. There were a few return rounds, but the gunners had no target. Captain Running dropped into the gully between holds, scurried into the maze of pipes, valves and walkways, and was quickly hidden from his searchers.
Bolan met Running at the valley two holds over. "You might need this," Bolan offered.
"They'll come after us," Running said, panting from his run.
"They won't even get close. Besides, they have a more pressing job. And who knows this ship better than you do? Is there anything we can do to disable the elevator they bring up the fuel rods on?"
Captain Running shook his head. "Not without blowing out the power in that section. Then the whole nuclear plant could go down."
"How many men does Lutfi have left?"
"No more than twenty, counting the men from the choppers that just came in. You did all this by yourself, didn't you? All this hell?"
"How many fuel rods can be taken out in one chopper?" Bolan asked.
"We never haul more than two, but he might try three."
"Can you use this?" Bolan tossed the AK-47 at Running in the best army tradition.
Running caught it with both hands.
"Sure. I was a squad leader in the Korean War before I joined the Merchant Marine, about a million years ago.... "
"Good. You know your ship. How can we get close enough to those two undamaged choppers to kill them?"
The Captain nodded, motioned and ran. Bolan followed. Minutes later they bellied up behind a pile of equipment on one of the hold covers. Thirty yards beyond them sat the next chopper. This was as close as they could get.
The deck between them and the aircraft was table flat, and without a pipe or winch or building.
"We take out this one, then move on to the gunship," Bolan said.
Captain Running nodded in agreement.
Bolan drew his AutoMag and sighted in on the cockpit for his first shot. He fired and saw the heavy slug plow through the cockpit. But before he could sight in again, a chattering barrage of fire came back. Bolan and Running slid into the gully as the hot lead continued raking their position.
"They've got most of their defense force around that one ship," Bolan said over the gunfire.
Running put the rifle muzzle over the steel cover and slammed off five rounds, then jerked the weapon down as another heavy volley of small arms and machine-gun fire raked the steel top over their heads.
Bolan waved at Running, and they dashed thirty feet down the alley and peered over the black cover again. Now Bolan could spot the defenses. A systematic line of positions had been created in front of the chopper, using upright steel plates.
Bolan stared at the defenses for a moment and frowned. All he had to do was get through that wall of fire and burning lead and kill the big chopper. But how?
14
Bolan knew from its defenses that this chopper must be the key one, the transporter. He lifted the AutoMag and blasted at the helicopter again, but was driven down by a withering fire storm of small arms and machine rounds.
He and Captain Running hurried along the depression and under more pipes to another vantage spot. They looked over the top of the hold cover. They had moved far to one side of the chopper. Bolan now understood why Lutfi had put up such overwhelming, steel-plated protection: two moon-suited men walked beside a forklift truck that rolled slowly forward on the deck, carrying a coffin like box on its forks. The crate was ten feet long and at least three feet square—an atomic-fuel-rod shipping coffin—sturdy, lead lined and fairly safe.
Bolan reached for the Captain's AK-47, put it on automatic fire and sent a sizzling firetrack at the moon men. He knocked the first guy down, but the rig rolled forward. A fresh volley of terrorist bullets drove the Executioner back into the steel gully.
Fire and move. Crouched over, Bolan ran, hidden in the depression, racing back to the chopper, the captain on his heels. Bolan stopped, checked his position, moved another ten yards and pulled two grenades from his pack, one a white phosphorous and the other a fragmentation. He judged the distance to be forty yards. Too damn far.
He pulled the pin on the white phosphorous and, using his strong right arm and all of his experience, hurled the small bomb toward the target.
It hit short, bounced on the hard landing pad and rolled, but was still well shy of the chopper when it exploded.
The sudden fire produced a white smoke that soon nearly hid the chopper. Bolan pulled the pin on the frag grenade and tried a different tactic, throwing a ground ball, trying for as much roll as possible.
But still it was too far. The grenade was rolling when it exploded near the metal bird. Rifle fire blazed through the grenade smoke, slamming into the metal over the hold cover.
Bolan gave the captain the Beretta and two magazines.
"Take this up there about fifty feet and give me some cover. Divert some of the fire your way. I want to pick off the driver on that forklift. No driver, no delivery."
The Captain ran. When Bolan heard the stutter of the little automatic pistol, he rose up and aimed his contribution of 7.62 whizzers from the AK-47 at the transport vehicle. He knocked the driver off the seat and the caravan stopped.
Seconds later, another driver climbed back on board, pushing a heavy steel plate in front of him. Round after round glanced off the steel.
The Executioner tried to shoot out the tires, but the slashing lead had no effect. The rig kept moving. The tires were probably made of solid rubber and could soak up a thousand rounds.
A moment later the slow-moving forklift worked behind the steel shields with their riflemen protection force, and Bolan lost his target. He could not even get a clear shot at the chopper. For a good field of fire he needed to go to the other side.
There wasn't time.
He spotted another forklift advancing. This one came with a steel shell around the driver and no moon men. Unless he could get a lucky shot at the engine, this load would get through to the chopper as well. When he looked at the fork lift again, he realized it was electrically powered—no engine to shoot out.
What he needed was some G-Force.
Bolan unclipped a small powerful radio transceiver from its case on his web belt. He whispered into the built-in mike and speaker.
"Stony Man
One to G-Force."
There was a five-second delay. Bolan could picture Jack Grimaldi reaching for the transmit button as he came out of a deep concentration.
The familiar voice came softly from the small speaker with a tin-can sound.
"G-Force here. That's a go."
"The game's getting serious."
"Give me some numbers and I'm over there."
"Can you give me an ETA of five minutes?"
"You want it, you got it. When?"
"Soon. I'm shy on firepower. We've got two birds here playing truck, hot-cargo type."
"Use me, or work too hard yourself!"
Bolan grinned. "That's a roger. I'll be on the forward half of this big island when you come in. The two whirlybirds are aft near the superstructure under spotlights. I'm moving around the ship like it's Death Star—there are gullies everywhere and I'm using them to stay out of sight and to keep moving at all times. This is one weird battle."
"Save some fun for me," the air jockey said. "Plenty here to go around. Stay hard."
"You got it. G-Force on standby."
Bolan turned off the tiny transceiver and put it back in the pocket on his webbing, then trotted toward where Captain Running should be. There was no sign of the sailor. Bolan kept moving. He still wanted to check the far side of the birds—put one of them out of commission with rifle fire. He had three AK-47 magazines, or ninety rounds left. And Running had the Beretta.
Each time the nightfighter made a turn and peered up to check his progress, the choppers were not any closer. It was like walking through a maze at midnight. Finally he lifted up, spotted them and moved closer. Now he could see the terrorists were loading another lead coffin into the second bird. He sent a 10-round burst at the loaders, but could not tell if he did any damage.
He wanted to blast away, to take advantage of the crazy geography of the ship that allowed so many men so little chance of finding the source of the sniper fire that hounded them from constantly changing positions. But from his present angle and range, he could not hit any vital spots on the chopper. Besides, now he had to start counting rounds.
Executioner 059 - Crude Kill Page 8