As Levesque tried to retrieve his blade, Bolan slammed his switchblade into the hollow of Levesque’s throat, jerked it left then right and then turned it as he yanked it out.
The terror leader collapsed in a gurgling, bleeding, dying mess.
Bolan stepped over him and walked away without a second glance. He pushed through the doors leading from the library and headed for the pool area.
He found the man who would be France’s next president hiding under one of the pieces of pool furniture. But he was not alone. He was flanked by two more uniformed ES terrorists.
“Now that’s masculine imagery,” Bolan said. He drew the Desert Eagle from his belt and shot the first armed man through the face. The second tried to raise his Makarov, but Bolan simply moved the triangular muzzle of his chromed .44 Magnum hogleg two inches to the right. The bullet dug a crater through the man’s skull.
Now Gaston was cowering underneath a table while a pool of blood closed in on him from both sides.
“Gaston, I’m going to have to ask you to come out from hiding.”
Gaston looked up at him. “You’re going to murder me.”
“That’s not what I do.”
“You murdered all of them,” he said. “What of Levesque?”
“He was alive when I last saw him,” Bolan said, which was true.
“Alive?”
“A little. Let’s go, Gaston, we’re done here.” He reached down, grabbed the man by the collar of his button-down shirt and dragged him bodily from behind the table.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“You’re going to write a letter of resignation,” Bolan said. “Or whatever you call it. You’re going to handwrite it. Say you’ve changed your mind. You’ve given up on politics. The cost is too great and all that. Come on. Let’s go find you some stationery in the library.”
The sight of Levesque’s staring corpse galvanized Gaston. He wrote the letter Bolan asked him to write and left it on the writing table in the library. Then, as if this had lifted a weight off him, he turned to Bolan.
“I kill people, you know. I’m just like you.”
Bolan stared. “What?”
“It’s just something we do. We’re alike. You killed Levesque. I’ve killed people like that before. Well, not quite like that. But I have. We don’t have to be enemies. We could work something out. I can pay you a great deal of money.”
“You’re going to prison for what you’ve done,” Bolan said. “Complicity in terrorism. Murder of your rival. A host of lesser crimes. You won’t see the sun for a long time.”
“But I will,” Gaston told him.
Bolan stopped and looked at him.
Gaston, encouraged, grinned widely. “I have the best lawyers and plenty of money. They will let me out soon enough. And when they do, I will kill again. I will devote my next victim to you and to America. And every time I kill again after that, it will be because you couldn’t stop me.”
Bolan grabbed the Frenchman and dragged him back to the pool.
“Wait!” Gaston cried. “What are you doing! Stop!”
The big American said nothing. He was thinking of innocent lives. Innocent lives that would be taken by a damaged soul like Gaston’s, a man who had just told Bolan that he would murder other people in the name of shaming whomever let Gaston live.
He walked into the pool at the shallow end, dragging Gaston. In a desperation play, the Frenchman tried to ram his elbow into Bolan’s throat, but it was no go.
The soldier wrenched away his arm and hip-rolled the man into the edge of the pool. As Gaston recovered and tried to head butt his adversary, Bolan grabbed him by the neck and the top of the head, pushed him down into the water. He held Gaston there until he stopped moving.
And that was all there was.
EPILOGUE
Washington, D.C.
Hal Brognola watched the waters of the Potomac, leaning on the railing running along the edge of West Potomac Park. In the distance the Lincoln Memorial was visible. Around him a few civilians walked or ran. It was a warm day in Wonderland, and Brognola was feeling the heat under his suit jacket. He reached up and loosened his tie.
“Isn’t this the park where we almost got mugged that time?” Mack Bolan asked, walking up to join his old friend at the railing.
“You almost got mugged,” Brognola stated. “You draw trouble like a magnet draws metal.”
“Seriously, Hal,” Bolan said, turning to him. “I know what this had to have cost you in political capital. You know I wouldn’t have put you through that needlessly. It had to be done.”
Brognola sighed. “I do. And so does the Man. But he isn’t thrilled about where we ended up, if only because of how we got there.”
“Do we have a problem?”
“No. He’s a pragmatist, just like every man before him who’s held that office. He won’t interfere with SOG. You saved the French elections, Striker. Although...I have to be honest. You’re putting an awful strain on the Cooper identity.”
“Another legend is born,” Bolan said. “So what’s the word from the French government?”
“The DCRI is cleaning house. They’ve appointed an up-and-comer to head up the investigation, and apparently he’s taking scalps. Fellow by the name of Flagel.”
“Flagel?” Bolan asked. “Seriously? Bayard thought he’d been killed.”
“He was wounded by compromised elements from within the DCRI. I think that’s one of the reasons they picked him. They have a flair for the dramatic. It’s a real Eliot Ness kind of scenario.”
“I wish him luck,” Bolan said. “And Jean Vigneau?”
“Corrupt as they come. He has ties to the gangs currently operating in Paris, or what’s left of them. Apparently the issue was building for a while. We’ve uncovered evidence of some pretty serious financial traffic between the gang leader, Roelle, and Vigneau’s office. It explains why the situation on the ground in Paris was allowed to get as bad as it did.
“When you upset the balance of power on the street, you hurt Vigneau financially. He pulled out all the stops to nail you and forgot to cover his trail in the computer. Not to mention giving up any pretense of using the DCRI for anything but his personal hit squad. You beat him mentally, Striker. You broke him. He did the rest of the work for us.”
“He’s in custody?”
“In the worst prison they have,” Brognola replied. “The French aren’t thrilled about a glorified criminal holding such a high position of power. I think if they still had the Bastille, they’d throw him in it.”
“And Alfred Bayard?”
“Per your recommendation, and thanks to our renewed relationship with the French government, Inspector Alfred Bayard will be awarded posthumously with membership in the Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur.”
“The National Legion of Honor?” Bolan said. “Yeah. I think that works. He was a good man, Hal. Maybe he took some shortcuts to get there, maybe he forgot what he was supposed to be doing along the way...but, when it came down to it, when it counted, he was there. He was on it. And he died doing the right thing, fighting against the corruption and the evil that Vigneau, Levesque and all of their cohorts represented.”
“I know,” said Brognola. “You don’t have to sell me.”
“What about the elections?”
“As you probably know from the news,” said the big Fed, “it’s been a mess. The proof you provided to the Farm has been vetted and already made the news over there. Deparmond—for all the good it does the poor dead bigot—has been cleared of any wrongdoing. Gaston’s connections to the ES and to the terror attacks on French soil have come out.
“Apparently a few very imaginative conspiracy theories are becoming popular, at least one of which holds that Gaston was all a p
atsy to some shadowy organization bent on running France from the confines of a proxy government. His very convenient suicide by drowning just encourages these rumors.”
“He left a note and everything, resigning from the elections,” Bolan said.
“Striker, don’t whiz on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
“I looked up conspiracy theories on the internet once. Apparently reptiloid aliens from the center of the earth control everything.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Brognola deadpanned. “The French have scheduled new elections. The candidates are boring and a lot more moderate. Neither really strikes a chord with the Man, so however things work out, we’ll be better off, most likely. But with international politics, you just never can tell.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Brognola said. “You’re thinking if their government turns bad on us, you’ll just go in and topple it.”
“Was not.”
“Were so.” Brognola stood at the railing, looked around and took a deep breath. “You know something, Striker? It really is a wonderful day.” He took off his suit jacket, folded it across his arm and checked to make sure nobody had noticed him transfer the clip-on holster from his waistband to under the bundle made by his jacket.
“Glock?” Bolan asked.
“Yeah. The .45. I was feeling nervous when I got up this morning.”
“I know the feeling,” Bolan said.
“Speaking of nervous, how is your arm healing? Your debrief said you took a pretty bad slash.”
“It wasn’t deep. Healing fine. I didn’t even need stitches.”
“I’d hate to pay your medical bills,” Brognola said.
“Don’t you?” Bolan asked. “I submit for reimbursement, you know.”
It took Brognola a moment to realize Bolan was joking. Or at least he thought the soldier was joking. “At any rate,” he said, “with the French voters rejecting extremists on both ends of the spectrum, it looks like the White House won’t be displeased with the eventual outcome. You saved the French from a colossal blunder, Striker.”
“How are we on the interagency front?”
“Nothing succeeds so much as success,” said Brognola. “INTERPOL, the DCRI and some other elements within France have got religion about police corruption. Everybody’s conducting investigations, and the status of the no-go enclaves in Paris and other major urban centers is being reevaluated.”
“You think anything will change?”
“Hard to say,” Brognola replied. “Stranger things have occurred.”
“Yeah.” Bolan turned. “I guess I’ll leave you to your stroll then.”
“All right, Striker. You’re taking your downtime at the Farm, I assume?”
“Yeah,” Bolan said. “I’m overdue. I tell you, Hal. I wish this victory felt more like a win. A lot of good people have died. We managed to blunt the impact on the innocent, but Bayard wasn’t the only decent guy who bought it this time out.”
“You think the cost is too high?” Brognola asked.
“No, I think the fight is worth it. I always have. I just don’t want to get complacent. As long as people need me, I’m going to fight for them.”
“I know that you will.”
“Yeah,” Mack Bolan said, leaving his longtime friend to walk back to his parked rental car. Over his shoulder, he said, “Watch yourself on the street, Hal. You never know what sort of people you’re going to meet.”
Brognola watched the Executioner disappear into the crowd. He shook his head, looked back out over the waters of the Potomac and thought of all the criminals, terrorists and predators who were still alive and free.
“Good hunting, Striker,” he said quietly to no one. “And thank you for your service.”
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460327814
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Phil Elmore for his contribution to this work.
TERROR BALLOT
Copyright © 2014 by Worldwide Library
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Terror Ballot Page 27