The horde of gunners filtered throughout the building, some of them running up the stairs while other teams began a room-to-room seek-and-destroy on the ground floor. At the same time, a four-man demolition team of «bankers» hit the storage room that had been fortified and turned into a vault.
A shuddering roar swept throughout the fortress as C-4 plastique charges went off one after the other, unhinging the metal-reinforced doors of the vault and dropping them flat on the floor with a loud thud.
Then the bankers raced inside.
The heavy canvas that covered the stacks of bullion nearest the vault doors had been scorched and shredded by the blasts. And below the canvas, the counterfeit bullion was revealed. Streaks of gold paint had been burned off by the blast, revealing the iron beneath.
"It's fake," one of the men said. He stared at Fowler, who suddenly looked hypnotized.
The German turned away from the gold, slowly looking around him as if he could no longer recognize where he was. This was supposed to be his crowning moment, but he'd been duped, made to look a fool.
That point was struck home when Gauclere came running toward the vault. "There's no one here!" he shouted. "Not a single goddamn guard in the whole tucking place! A setup, dammit, it's a setup."
Molembe, Fowler thought. He'd been led here, and he'd blindly followed every step of the way.
"Come on!" Gauclere shouted, hammering Fowler on the shoulder, trying to drag him from the trance he'd fallen into. "Let's get the hell out of here before…"
Lightning bolts rocked the inside of the fortress. White searing blasts went nova, blinding and blasting the hardmen caught inside. Stun grenades and high-explosive rounds thumped through the breached entrance, through the smashed windows. Tear gas and acrid smoke turned the air into a choking cloud.
Fowler instinctively covered his eyes and staggered to one side of the room, waiting until the magnesium nova went away. Several seconds passed before he could see again.
* * *
The ZIS commandos emerged from the trees and the gardens surrounding the front of the fortress. They came out firing, sending a fiery wall of machine-gun bursts and grenade blasts in front of them.
Grenade launchers kept up a steady barrage of stun and gas grenades. Molembe's blue berets opened up with Armsel Strikers, the automatic shotguns tearing into Fowlers' lead van and punching jagged holes through the other cars in the mercenary convoy.
Bolan and Molembe spread out the line of commandos encircling the fortress, crouching and firing as they advanced.
Smoke, fire and screams poured out of every entrance. The entire fortress had become a booby trap.
* * *
Fowler shouted from the depths of his soul. It was a war cry that had had its birth generations ago and had echoed down through the ages. The Fowlers had been a proud family of warriors who'd cut their path across Europe and Africa, and wasn't supposed to end here in a godforsaken block house.
He clutched his Skorpion machine pistol.
The voice that had been shouting beside him suddenly became clear. It was Gauclere. He was jabbering about the chopper, telling him there was still a chance to escape if they could survive until the Lynx touched down.
"No chopper," Fowler said. "It won't be coming." No transfer of gold had ever been made, he realized, even though his people had seen it made. Even Julian had witnessed the "transfer."
"Even Julian," he murmured. The pilot had been deceived or captured, or he'd gone back over to the other side. It didn't matter. Even if Julian was still free, he wasn't the type of pilot to drop down in the middle of a freefire zone.
The fortress shook on all sides as grenades and automatic fire thumped into it, reducing the walls and windows to rubble.
Fowler headed for the entrance to the fortress.
"Where are you going?" Gauclere shouted, tugging at his glasses as if they could help him see the Heinrich Fowler — he was accustomed to Fowler the victor, not a Fowler in shock.
But Fowler was no longer listening.
He stepped out into the night. All around him he saw his men falling. Some of them dropped their weapons and put their hands over their heads.
A spiderweb of red lights darted through the night, coming from all sides. Laser sights, he realised. They'd prepared the ambush well.
He stood in front of the shattered entrance, his machine pistol hanging down at his side.
Dark uniformed shapes bore down on him as a spot of laserlight knifed through the blackness.
The red beam traveled up his chest, stopping at his breastbone.
"Drop your weapon!"
"Don't move!"
The shouts came from all around him, blending into one constant demand for his surrender.
Fowler looked down at the red dot, then shook his head and raised the machine pistol.
A half-dozen men opened fire before he could get off a shot. Fowler staggered back toward the fortress entrance, his arms thrown up over his head. Then he sagged to the ground, his dream of controlling Zandesi gone forever.
Gauclere dropped beside him, his glasses shattered and his skull shriven with bullets.
Bolan and Molembe lowered their weapons.
All that remained now was the mop-up operation throughout the fortress grounds and a seaside villa north of Zandeville, where even now a fleet of ZIS cruisers was landing. In exchange for leniency, the turncoat pilots had revealed the location of Nashonge's comfortable prison.
Nashonge would stand trial or he'd die resisting capture. The choice was up to him.
Bolan felt a sense of satisfaction. Either way, Zandesi was free the leadership of the Desert Knights had fallen.
This mission was over.
Warrior's Edge Page 14