The Heckler & Koch VP 70 was scuffed and worn, but the weight was right when he scooped it up from the floor. He fired twice into the nearest terrorist, a man standing at a workbench in the room beyond the entry chamber. It was another bomb workshop, and Lemaire’s forces were hard at work constructing explosives for use on the people of Paris. There was no telling how many volatile substances might be arrayed here, but there were half a dozen men standing within, all of them moving to take cover behind the benches and their dangerous stock.
Bolan ripped the knife from his shoulder harness and cut through the strap of his canvas war bag. Dropping the bag on the floor, he reached in, took a single grenade and yanked out the pin.
He dropped the grenade back in the bag.
The Executioner wrenched the door open, made his way through the chamber and climbed up the ladder leading to the door. The moment the door opened, his ears found the sounds of magazines being changed and bolts being pulled back. In a fraction of a second the gunners on the ground floor would—
The entire building rocked as the explosives in the basement detonated.
Bolan rolled away from the door just in time. It was blown to fragments by the gout of fire that rushed up from below. The soldier could feel heat on his back through his jacket. Splinters pierced his flesh. The chain reaction of explosions beneath the floor shook fragments from the wall and ceiling, raining down still more plaster debris and pieces of the ceiling above.
The shock waves from below had sufficiently distracted the gunmen on the ground floor, allowing Bolan to expend precious seconds examining the M16. The receiver was bent and the selector switch jammed. The rifle had absorbed either shrapnel or a bullet meant for him; it had saved his life. He unclipped his sling and left the weapon where it lay, his borrowed VP 70 ready in his hand. He stood. Vibrations from the basement were still causing the floorboards to shudder under his feet.
Bolan ran.
He pushed himself through the corridor as quickly as he could, and at each doorway, at each alcove, he pumped bullets into the men sheltering there. The running, gunning blitz took the stunned gunmen completely by surprise. When the Heckler & Koch ran dry he let it fall, drawing his Beretta 93R and switching the weapon to fire 3-round bursts.
Four of the enemy met him on the stairs. They raised their guns; Bolan shot the closest one through the face.
The Beretta was empty.
Even as he shoved the Beretta behind his belt, he was drawing the Desert Eagle. The first of its .44 Magnum rounds blew a crater through the forehead of the second gunner. The dead man’s fingers clenched and the MAT-49 submachine gun discharged, carving a furrow in the steps in front of Bolan’s boots.
The soldier continued charging the stairs. He collided with the third man before the terrorist could acquire his target. Bolan shoved the barrel of the Desert Eagle up under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger, blowing his skull apart.
Suddenly he was staring down the barrel of a .45-caliber pistol.
The muzzle of the 1911-pattern gun was huge in his vision. Bolan did not think about what he was seeing; he simply reacted, snaring the gun arm and snaking his own limb up and through, driving himself through the last of this knot of enemy operatives. The gunman screamed as his elbow snapped. Bolan brought the butt of the Desert Eagle down on his adversary’s face, crushing the bridge of his nose. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed.
The second floor door was another heavy wooden barrier with metal crossbars. Bolan hit it with his shoulder and grunted with the impact. Taking a step back on the landing, he kicked it hard. It did not budge.
Bolan’s ears were ringing from the gunfire and the explosions. The air was heavy with smoke. The building was likely on fire; the conflagration he had started in the basement would have to be moving up through the floor and walls. It was only a matter of time.
He aimed the Desert Eagle and emptied its magazine into the lock mechanism of the door. The rounds chewed away at the wood and battered the locking mechanism into a shapeless lump of metal.
Bolan threw himself at the door again. It moved but did not give completely. He hit it again and finally the hinges gave, tearing away from the wall. The door crashed to the hardwood of the second floor. Bolan was now in an antechamber that looked like an improvised office.
A single terrified man stared back at him through the eye holes of his black ski mask. He started to raise a revolver.
“Put it down,” Bolan growled.
The revolver continued to rise.
Bolan lunged and smashed the terrorist in the face with the heavy Desert Eagle. The blow caused the man’s head to snap to the side. He collapsed to the floor in a heap.
The Executioner located the remaining loaded magazines among his gear. He reloaded both his pistols and, with one weapon in each hand, smashed through the door separating him from the rest of the second floor.
Already the air of the second floor was beginning to grow hazy with smoke. The acrid mist stung his eyes and made them water.
With the Beretta in hand, he checked the first of the bedrooms. It was empty. The second bore what had to be an ES banner tacked to the wall.
Farther on he found a pair of double doors that had been erected to divide the second floor of the estate. He put his ear to the door and listened for a moment. Silence had overtaken the building. Gunfire had been replaced with the distant crackle of flames.
Outside the tactical teams—speaking in French through a bullhorn—were broadcasting orders to the estate. Since they were talking, that meant they weren’t attempting to breach the perimeter. Likely, with Bayard’s input, they were waiting to see if Bolan—or anyone—emerged alive from the war zone Agent Cooper had created.
Some part of Bolan’s mind could see the humor in that. He had performed exactly to Inspector Bayard’s expectations.
The double doors gave way more easily than previous barriers. No sooner had he breached these than he found himself facing more terrorists with guns. There were three of them, only one of them wearing his ski mask. They were pointing French MAT-49 submachine guns at two men, presumably hostages, who had been stripped to their shorts and were kneeling on the floor with their heads bowed.
The hostages had their hands clasped behind their backs. Bolan quickly surveyed the room. What he estimated was a last set of doors—based on the size of the estate—waited beyond these men. The gunners screamed at him in French to put down his weapons or the hostages would be killed.
It was just too convenient for the enemy to have hostages on hand for such an emergency as a hit on the estate. And the two “hostages” happened to have interesting tattoos.
Mack Bolan had—in his time prosecuting his endless war—faced neo-Nazis and racist skinheads of every possible stripe. They were one of his more common foes. Over the years he had developed a real distaste for such men, for they were simply brutal murderers motivated by irrational fear and racial hatred. The “hostages” were covered in racist ink.
There were no swastikas. On this side of the ocean, even the criminal element wasn’t as free with the old Nazi symbol as American racist gangs tended to be, given the sometimes very strict laws regarding expressions of the war-era National Socialist regime. But there were other slogans and symbols: including the numerals “88,” a reference to Heil Hitler; or the initials HH, as the letter H was the eighth letter of the English alphabet; and other iconography that Bolan had seen before.
The men on the floor probably had weapons held behind their backs. Bolan needed only to spring the trap.
“Easy,” Bolan said in French. “Everyone put down their guns, and this doesn’t become a bloodbath.”
“It already is a bloodbath,” the man in the ski mask replied. “You have slain everyone below us. You have murdered our comrades.”
One of t
he other gunmen spit on the ground.
“You know,” Bolan said, “this whole hostage thing—”
“Silence!” the masked gunman barked. “This is your last warning! We will kill the hostages.”
“Not if I kill them first.” The Executioner snapped his pistols on target.
Both of the kneeling men had time to look surprised. One even managed to yank the snub-nosed revolver from behind his back and squeeze off a shot. The bullet went nowhere near Bolan.
The soldier let one of his legs collapse beneath him. He folded to the floor in a sitting, cross-legged posture known in some martial-arts styles as a “sit,” a way to quickly lower the center of gravity while maintaining one’s balance. The Beretta chugged out 3-round bursts as the Desert Eagle roared its .44 Magnum thunder.
The hostage on the right took a .44 bullet to the face. The hollowpoint round coated the hostage beside him with an oozing wash of dark red blood, bone and brain. The hostage on the left was nearly decapitated by the burst that stitched his neck.
Automatic gunfire hammered Bolan’s eardrums as the uniformed gunmen doused the room in lead. The soldier simply opened his arms, walking his guns left and right, shooting each one of the ES men, pumping round after round into them when they would not go down, enveloped in the chaos of the moment and the deafening, blood-quickening storm of life-or-death close-quarters combat. Bolan continued to lean away and down until his back was on the floor and his legs were uncomfortably stretched beneath him. He could feel the burning in his thighs and lower spine.
The last of the bodies collapsed onto the floor.
Bolan’s back was now wet. Blood was pooling beneath the corpses and spreading across the floor. The soldier looked up at the ceiling and could see smoke gathering. The sound of crackling flames was louder. Outside the estate he could hear the sounds of what he assumed were emergency vehicles responding to the fire. They were distant yet.
Bolan reloaded his weapons again. He was running out of ammunition. It had been necessary to sacrifice the war bag’s payload, and to do it as quickly as he had, in order to end the threat of the bomb factory in the basement. But that did not change the fact that he would soon be outgunned.
Quickly he surveyed his body as he rolled and rose to one knee. He felt several different aches and pains. He was also covered in splashes of blood from his enemies, not to mention the wounds from splinters and shrapnel.
Beneath him, the floor was growing hot. Something in the flooring started to creak.
They were definitely running out of time. He went to reach for the nearest of the MAT-49s. They were an old design but serviceable. The gunmen had sprayed out their magazines most likely, but they might have spares somewhere on their bodies.
The double doors opposite him were thrown open. Bolan continued his roll. Bullets tore into the floor and into the pile of corpses. The shooters wore camouflage BDUs and were trying to acquire their target with AK-pattern rifles. Bolan was a sitting duck.
He did the only thing he could do: he stayed prone and fired his weapons with calm deliberation, despite the fury of the bullets striking all around him, despite the corpses jerking under the onslaught, despite the noise and the nearness of death and the knowledge, the ever-present knowledge, that he was one man against many.
When the discharge smoke from filthy, poorly maintained weapons finally cleared, Bolan was the lone survivor, and his guns were empty. He searched the corpses nearest him, but there was no time to be more thorough. He found no ammunition close to hand, no substitute weapon he could use. The submachine guns of the dead men were likewise empty.
He stowed his guns and drew his knife. Its blade was still discolored from the blood of already fallen men.
Bolan got to his feet and walked through the double doors.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“The house is on fire,” Anton Lemaire stated.
“So it is,” Bolan replied.
The French terrorist stood at the end of a largely empty room, his back to the door. He stood before a large window with an elaborate carved wooden frame. Heavy blackout curtains hung before it. Bolan noted the drapes; they would prevent a sniper from taking a bead on Lemaire, although Bolan had no idea what orders the tactical teams might have about initiating deadly force.
There were a few freestanding torso dummies here, of the type used in mixed martial arts gyms. There was also a weight bench and a rack of free weights. The room smelled of sweat and disinfectant beneath the odor of smoke.
Lemaire had stripped to the waist. His upper body was powerfully muscular. His hands were at his sides, concealing his belt line on the left and the right. If he had a pistol in his waistband, Bolan could not see it from behind the man.
The range was poor. It was not far enough that Bolan could expect to dodge gunfire, but it was too far for him to close the distance to Lemaire with complete confidence that he could reach the man before taking a bullet.
“You are the CIA man,” Lemaire said. He was completely immobile, a statue. Bolan watched him for the slightest twitch, the first hint of aggressive action. “The man whom Levesque, that traitor, so feared that he took his own life.”
“How did you know?” Bolan asked. If he could keep the man talking, keep his mind engaged, he might be able to take him by surprise. He inched slightly forward.
“I bugged his office,” Lemaire replied. “As brilliant as he thought he was, he never thought to check himself or his environment for something so simple.”
Well, Bolan thought. That certainly cleared that up. The simplest explanations were usually the correct ones.
“You know the old saying?” Bolan asked.
“That only a fool fights in a burning house?” Lemaire said. “I believe I saw that on television. A space fantasy program of some kind.”
“You don’t strike me as a big television watcher.”
“No? I never was as a boy. I was too busy fighting to survive. I have much more leisure time now. But I hate it. I hate to rest, to do nothing. It breeds weakness. Weakness of that type is what made Levesque the creature he became.”
“Lay down any weapons you have,” Bolan said. “We’ll walk out of here before the place burns down. The ES is destroyed, Lemaire. Your men are dead.”
“Killed them all, have you? You. One man.”
“The basement is gone. The first floor is full of dead men. You’re standing on top of a pile of corpses.”
“A pyre, American,” Lemaire said. “A funeral pyre that you created.”
“Last chance,” Bolan warned. “Come with me or you leave here in an ashtray.”
Lemaire threw his head back and laughed. “What dramatic gesture would you accept, American? I have no gun to throw down.”
“Then we have no problem,” Bolan said. “Unless you have other weapons.” His hand clenched on the grip of his own knife. He bent his knees, preparing for what was to happen.
“I’m going to turn around now, American.”
“Do it slowly.”
“I notice you have no gun in your hand,” Lemaire said, glancing over his shoulder. “I don’t think there is anything you can do to stop me. Is there?”
“Don’t.”
The smoke was growing thicker. The roar of flame was audible against the bullhorn shouts in French from outside.
The Executioner saw the flicker of movement he was waiting for.
It was more subtle than most men could pull off, but Bolan saw it nonetheless. The muscles of Lemaire’s neck twitched almost imperceptibly.
Bolan threw himself forward.
Lemaire’s thrown knife shot through the open doorway behind Bolan and lodged somewhere in the room beyond. Lemaire, to his credit, did not waste time cursing his fate or questioning his throw. He simply kept yanking knives from his belt sheath
s and hurling them, his aim precise, his throws expert.
Bolan closed the distance, twisting and turning, narrowly missing the knives, almost dancing his way toward Lemaire. His knife was in his hand when the two fighters collided. The blade went in overhand, edge out, and sank in deep just past Lemaire’s clavicle.
The terrorist leader jerked out of Bolan’s grip. The haft of the soldier’s knife jutted from Lemaire’s body as if his left shoulder had grown a handle. He turned to look at the weapon.
“You were...trying for the subclavian,” he breathed heavily.
He kicked Bolan in the face.
The blow took the soldier by surprise. While Lemaire’s kick was no more nontelegraphic than what had to have been a practiced knife throw, it was damned fast. The edge of Lemaire’s boot caught Bolan across the right cheek and snapped his head backward, hard enough that he saw a flash of light with the connection.
Lemaire had his right hand up now. The left hung limply at his flank, but otherwise he seemed not even to notice the knife rammed into his shoulder. His kicks were fluid, and his reach was long. He spun and kicked, his feet describing long arcs through the air. Bolan managed to avoid the worst of them but caught a glancing blow to his left arm before taking another solid kick to the side of his body. The small wounds he had incurred in his breach of the estate were starting to make themselves felt. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming.
Bolan had to get inside the range of Lemaire’s legs. The style was savate, or something similar—Bolan recognized it readily enough—and it was most dangerous at long range, where the kicks carried the most impact. Close quarter combatives were a game of infighting, of getting right on top of the enemy. That would neutralize Lemaire’s considerable skill and deny him his most powerful weapons, his leg muscles. Close in, Lemaire would be forced to fight with only one hand, for his left side was useless.
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