The stick cracked against the side of his opponent’s skull. The gang member bleated like a goat before the air rushed from his lungs. He collapsed in a heap, as still as any man Bolan had seen, and the Executioner knew he’d managed a killing blow with one shot. It was rare to kill a man with a single blow to the head with a relatively light tool like the lacrosse stick, but it was not unheard of.
Bolan knelt, searched both gang members and came up with a pair of pistols. One was a Tokarev. The other was an FÉG, a copy of the Browning Hi Power. This particular FÉG had seen a very rough life. Its finish was almost completely worn away to bare steel. He tucked the FÉG in his waistband and held the Tokarev low next to his thigh, but not before checking the gun to make sure a round was chambered.
It felt good to be armed again, but it was not exactly the weapons-free rule the old man spoke of. Bolan could not afford to have the police descend on the bazaar any more than could the market’s denizens. So far his isolated acts of violence did not seem to have triggered a panic...but then, they wouldn’t. Everyone around the danger zones would be trying very hard not to get involved. The worse the environment, the greater the survival instinct.
There would be no shopping for armament here, not with the Red Spiders combing the bazaar and hoping to assassinate Bolan. He would withdraw, find another location and count himself lucky for acquiring the two handguns he had already obtained.
He nearly tripped over a trio of Red Spiders blocking the path to exit the bazaar. They collided and crashed in one three-headed mass, blundering through a pen full of live chickens and then smashing a table carrying recording equipment that was decades old. Bolan picked up a wood-paneled hi-fi turntable and smashed it down on the head of one of the gang members, flattening him. The man went limp.
The second man had a long Japanese-style knife with a traditionally wrapped handle. Bolan slapped the man’s forearm, passing the blade, and smashed the gang member across the bridge of the nose with his recently acquired Tokarev. The blow staggered the man but did not stop him. The third man was pulling an expandable baton from his belt. He snapped it open and raised it to smash Bolan’s skull.
The Executioner had no choice. He pointed the Tokarev and shot his attacker through the neck.
The gunshot had immediate consequences. People screamed and began fleeing the bazaar. That was good; it would get innocents out of the line of fire. The soldier was close enough to the perimeter of the market that he would draw other gang members away from the center of the bazaar, closer to the outside. Having already crossed the point of no return, Bolan pumped a second round into the man he had pistol-whipped. The gang member had fallen to one knee and was struggling to stand. The round entered through the top of his head. Bolan plucked the long knife from the corpse’s fingers.
Bolan reversed the knife in his hand so that the blade projected downward. With the Tokarev in one hand and the knife in the other, he backed up to the very edge of the bazaar. Scanning the running, screaming people, he picked out of the crowd several knots of Red Spiders gang members. When Bolan was sure he was not standing between them and any civilians who would be caught in the line of fire, he stood at his full height and waved his arms.
“Hey, you! Over here!” he shouted at them.
The gang members pointed and yelled. One of them drew a pistol and took a shot. Bolan crouched, resting on one knee, the Tokarev braced on his left forearm and the knife at the ready in his left hand. The approaching hostiles continued to close. The man with the pistol kept shooting, but his aim was poor. The bullets struck tables nearby but came nowhere close to injuring the soldier.
“Stop!” one of the hard cases shouted.
Bolan simply waited, moving to his left to put another table between him and the pistol-shooter, making sure he did not simply take a bullet as the enemy got near.
The trio of gang members was on top of him. Bolan popped up, on his feet, and slashed out with the knife, opening the gunner’s neck. Blood sprayed, and the pistol fell to the pavement under the awnings. Bolan kicked it away, as he couldn’t risk bending to pick it up and didn’t want the other two hard cases to grab it.
He shoved his Tokarev into the belly of the closest hostile and pulled the trigger until the weapon was empty. Then he pushed the dead body of the gut-shot man to the side and smashed the Russian-made pistol barrel-first into the eyeball of the third gang member.
The man screamed.
Bolan released the Tokarev, its slide now embedded in the man’s eye socket, and watched him fall. He drew the FÉG from his waistband and checked it. There was no time to find the fallen pistol. He was armed, but still far outgunned, and he needed to get out of there before more Red Spiders reinforcements showed up.
The activity in the market hadn’t died down, and that was a bad sign. He bent and peered through the maze of awnings and half-wrecked stalls as best he could. There were at least two dozen men, all of them wearing mismatched and outlandish clothing, and here and there he saw a flash of red from one of the gang’s bandannas. They were closing on his position fast.
He knew he had value as a target. If the Red Spiders truly were the combination of the gang he had faced before, taking him down would go a long way toward establishing their power, “making their bones” on the street. “You mess with us, you kill some of us,” they would probably say, “and we find you and make you pay for challenging our power.”
It was the way things worked all over the world, in wretched neighborhoods, ethnic enclaves and entire impoverished nations. There weren’t too many differences among people, really, for all that their cultures might differ in the small things.
Human beings, and the predators among them, were a constant.
He did not have enough rounds to take on all of the Red Spiders that were coming at him. Much as he hated to withdraw, that was the only option. He turned, made for the exit of the bazaar and fled.
Except that he couldn’t.
The soldier faced three cars full of the gangsters. The doors of the late-model BMWs had been spray-painted sloppily with red. Across this canvas, stencils had been used to paint, in black, a crude spider logo. There was no mistaking what Bolan faced: these were “troop vehicles” of the Red Spiders, a gang strong enough, at least, that they did not fear identification by any law enforcement they encountered. Then, too, Bolan was in one of the no-go ethnic enclaves on this side of the bazaar. There was every reason to think that these hostiles were the law in this part of Paris.
The car doors opened one after another and the gang members stepped out. If they had a leader, it was not apparent. What they had, however, was enough firepower to level the bazaar. Bolan saw three Kalashnikovs, a short-barreled AR-pattern rifle with a massive twin-drum magazine and at least one man wielding dual single-action revolvers with pearl grips, of all things. Their dress was as outlandish, and as street-trash typical, as that of the other gang members in the bazaar had been. At the very least they were consistent.
Bolan got off one shot then a second and a third, taking down two of the gunners and managing to wound a man who ducked behind the cover of his vehicle. Then the return fusillade came, and it was all Bolan could do to avoid getting his head shot off. He hugged the pavement as bullets tore through the now mostly empty bazaar behind him.
Mostly empty except for the Red Spiders gunners approaching him.
He was caught in a cross fire, but for the moment, so were the gunmen climbing up his six. The heavy rain of automatic gunfire from the men at the BMWs tore through the unsuspecting gang members in the bazaar. In seconds they were mostly dead or dying, their moans and cries like something from a horror movie.
Bolan ejected the magazine in his FÉG as he lay prone. He had four rounds left.
He had no other options.
The Executioner considered that. He was outnumbered, outgunned. If he tried t
o run he would be shot. The words came, unbidden, to his mind.
Forward. Toward the danger.
He rose and, shouting bloody murder in an attempt to confuse the enemy, ran at them as fast as he could, all the while shooting his FÉG.
The gunners standing at the BMWs saw him but did not know what to do. A couple took cover. Still another started shooting, too wide, too late. Bolan was closing the distance before they had assessed what threat Bolan truly represented. If he could just get to the cars, put the vehicles between him and the main body of his adversaries, he would have the cover he needed to fight at close quarters.
It was a desperation play, a wild play, the sort of charge that used to be preceded by the fixing of bayonets. Bolan reached the BMWs and planted the long Japanese-style knife in the throat of the gunner he came to first. The knife stuck, held fast in the gunner’s flesh, and, as the body fell away, the weight of the corpse jerked the knife from his hand. There the knife stayed, lodged in the dead gang member’s neck at Bolan’s feet.
It was the man with the double-drum AR, a cut-down weapon whose selector read only Safe or Auto.
In Bolan’s hands, its shells fall like rain.
The muzzle-blast of the short-barreled weapon was tremendous. A gout of flame leaped from the gun, and with it came a withering spray of 5.56 mm rounds that shredded the adjacent BMW’s hood and roof while scattering its auto glass in a snowstorm of pebbled debris. The Red Spiders hard cases were cut down, their blood splashed across their vehicles.
Bolan still had plenty of ammunition left when he saw a taxi speeding toward him. It was headed directly at him; there was no mistaking the driver’s course.
Settling into his shooter’s stance, he leaned into the weapon, lining up the sights for the longer shot, prepared to work the trigger to milk from it only a short burst. The taxi grew ever closer, closer still and Bolan took a deep breath.
The taxi skidded to a halt on squealing brakes. The driver’s window was down.
“Get in!” Alfred Bayard shouted.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They had not gone more than two blocks deeper into the enclave when another group of Red Spiders vehicles, two Jaguars and a Mercedes, met them. Bolan rolled down his window, swiveled in his seat until his back was against the dashboard and knelt in place. The chopped barrel of the AR-15 was now leaning on the open window. He was using the car door to steady the assault rifle.
“Inspector,” Bolan said over the rushing wind. “It’s good to see you.”
“Despite myself,” Bayard replied, “I must admit that it is good to see you, as well, Cooper. Shall we commence with the rampage?”
Bolan grinned at the Frenchman. “Let’s.”
He pulled the trigger of his assault rifle.
Empty shells sprayed the side of the car and trickled through the window to pool in the floorboard beneath Bolan’s seat. The weapon was deafening, and Bayard shouted in exhilaration. The Mercedes’s hood was pocked in thirty places in less time than it took for Bolan to estimate the damage. He shot out the windshield and sprayed the blood of the driver and his front-seat passenger all over what was left of the car’s interior.
One of the Jaguar sedans pushed past the Mercedes, nudging it out of the way. The collision left a long streak of black paint down the flank of the white Jaguar. Both Jaguars, in fact, were white, with their black spider logos stenciled on the doors.
“The gangs wasted no time consolidating,” Bayard observed.
“We can discuss that later,” Bolan said, “when we’re not trying to not get shot.”
“With you, Cooper. I question whether there is ever a period of your life long enough without gunfire to qualify.”
Bolan had nothing to say to that.
The first of the Jaguars came up alongside them. Bolan hammered away at the front end of the car, destroying the tire on that side and raking the engine. Smoke began to pour from the grille and from the seams around the hood. Bolan raised his point of aim and shot out the driver, who was trying to level a MAC-10 machine pistol through his open window. The weapon discharged when it hit the pavement, spraying Bayard’s taxi in the right rear and destroying the taillights.
“Were we just shot by a falling weapon?” Bayard asked, incredulous.
“Yeah. That happens.”
“Your world is insane, Cooper.”
Bolan’s endless drum magazines finally ran dry. He looked down at the AR regretfully and then tossed it into the backseat. “Do you have a couple hundred rounds of 5.56 mm in the trunk?” he asked.
“No,” Bayard replied. “But now I know what to buy for you at Christmas.”
Bolan shook his head. “That alley up there. Take the right. They’ll follow us in. We’ll use the same tactic as before.”
“That tactic resulted in a great deal of destruction, as I recall,” Bayard stated.
“If it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid.”
“I have a better idea.” Bayard guided the taxi to the alley, hit the brakes and the parking brake lever and brought the taxi screaming around. Then he pointed the nose at the second Jaguar and tromped the gas, sending them straight toward the oncoming vehicle.
“Okay,” Bolan said, looking at the inspector.
“Yes. Okay.” He put the accelerator to the floor.
Bolan reached up and grabbed the roof handle on his side. If he was going to go out, at least he would go out with a bang.
“Tell me something, Cooper,” Bayard said, as the two cars closed on each other. “We are about to die. Who are you, really?”
“I’m just an American,” Bolan replied.
“A concerned citizen, no doubt.”
“Yeah,” Bolan agreed. “That’s me.”
“You are a liar,” Bayard said, smiling. “And now I die without ever knowing the truth.”
Just before the vehicles collided on the narrow Paris street, the Jaguar swerved.
The violent maneuver rammed the vehicle into the side of a building. There was no doubt that the men in front were instantly killed, had to have been dead the moment the car stopped. Bayard halted the taxi and Bolan got out.
The soldier inspected the rear of the wrecked Jaguar. In the distance, he could hear police sirens. There was no one alive in the rear of the vehicle, either. The weapons he could see were coated with blood. He thought for a moment about climbing in and retrieving them, but the sirens were coming closer. There was no time.
“Cooper!” Bayard said, exiting the vehicle. “A moment!”
Bolan looked at the inspector as if the man had lost his mind, but he did not move when Bayard came over, grabbed the bottom of Bolan’s jacket near the zipper and tore the seam out of the jacket’s lining. A small device the size and shape of a quarter fell out. Bayard took this and tossed it into the back of the Jaguar.
“Is that what I think it is?” Bolan asked.
“I will explain on the way,” Bayard replied. “Let us go now!”
The two men got back into the taxi and Bayard pushed the vehicle for all it was worth, shooting up alleys and down side streets. When both men were satisfied that they weren’t being followed, Bayard slowed the vehicle and pulled over. The neighborhood in which they now sat was one of the worst in Paris.
Garbage was strewed in the streets. The only cars parked here were burned out. The windows were all either boarded up, barred or broken out. No one moved outside, but Bolan saw flashes of movement here and there through the windows that weren’t sealed.
“When I gave you the jacket,” Bayard said, “and earlier, before you lost your own coat, I planted a bug on you. It is standard DCRI procedure. We have been listening to you and following you around the city.”
Bolan considered that. He would have to speak with the Farm about possible counterme
asures for such possibilities in the future. Reviewing in his head, he concluded that nothing he had said out loud would compromise the Farm. The security of the Stony Man counterterror mission was still viable. But he did not like what this had to mean for his position in Paris.
“You said the DCRI has been tracking me,” Bolan said. “That explains how Musson and Flagel found me.”
“Yes,” Bayard admitted. He looked down. Bolan caught the Frenchman’s expression.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Musson and Flagel have been killed. It is why I am here. The director of my agency, Jean Vigneau, is corrupt. He has always been, as one might imagine, one to take a payoff, n’est-ce pas?”
“He’s in bed with the Red Spiders?”
“No, not in the way you are thinking,” Bayard said. “He is ruthless. If something gets in his way, he will do whatever is required. The law, our mission, what is right and what is wrong, these things do not matter to him. And he does not care about relations between our country and yours. When my men and I would not head the detail tasked with bringing you in, when we would not treat you like an enemy of the state, he communicated the frequency of the tracking device to the Red Spiders. He even concocted a lie, telling them that a reward would be paid if you were killed.”
“So he contracted out my assassination, gangland style,” Bolan said.
“Just so. I would not have believed it possible. But I have seen the results. Musson and Flagel stood with me. They remembered that even when pressed, you did not kill them, as you surely were capable of doing. And I think some part of them, the idealistic part, was moved by the deeds you have done on French soil. As I have been.”
Bolan frowned. “What happened to them?”
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