Chapter 21
“SITREP, BEAR,” BOLAN said. The soldier crouched behind a garbage bin about a block away from the warehouse with a frontal view of the target. “Any change in target status?”
“Striker, the van is still inside,” Kurtzman reported. “No verification on how many got out of it. No individuals have left through the front or the back. We had two armed men entering about half an hour ago. Be advised there is a man on the roof.”
“Status of roof sentry?”
“He appears to be alone, and reports in with his cell phone. He has a rifle. Be advised, thermal imaging shows a bright heat source within the warehouse near the rear entrance.”
That raised mild alarm bells with Bolan. “What kind of heat source and how hot?”
“It’s a mostly a steady five hundred degrees above warehouse ambient. Frankly, my best guess is they’re cooking something on the grill. We’re not getting much in the way of smoke telltales, so I’m thinking the Aryans are using propane.”
Bolan’s stomach growled in response. He was running on fumes. “How is Barbara?”
“She has left hospital and is back at the Farm. The beating took a bit of a toll on her. She’s resting against her will, but wanted me to tell you that Billy the C was a perfect gentleman and charming company.”
“And the nuke?”
“I got word from Renzo. Some very serious suits from the Pentagon showed up and after about twenty minutes left and took the device with them. A Block has been cleared. I got a report from the hospital. Barnes is going to be fine and should be able to resume work in six to eight weeks. Your pal Kal has been stabilized. He had a lot of internal bleeding, but he has been moved out of surgery to the ICU. His prognosis is excellent.”
“What’s his prognosis for parole?”
“You spend a lot more time talking to presidents than I do. I don’t know, excellent?”
“I told Kal he and I would surf Redondo same time next year. Tell the Man at the top I intend to keep that promise, even if I have to break Kal out.”
“I don’t think he’ll be surprised. Be advised you have someone closing on your six, and Ottewalt has signaled Patrick is on approach.”
“Copy that.” Bolan smelled Patrick before he heard him, and it wasn’t the stench of their trip through the sewers. The young man squatted on his heels and presented a take-out bag. The scent was almost maddening. Bolan raised an impressed eyebrow. “Meat loaf?”
“Cracker Barrel takeout, Cooper! I told Deputy Ottewalt that I figured after three days of nutraloaf you needed to get back on the horse. She got on the stick while you ran your recon.”
“You are the wind beneath my wings, Patrick.” Bolan tore into the ketchup-smeared half brick of take-out meat loaf with his hands.
“I put ketchup on top. That’s all right, right?” Patrick asked. “You like ketchup?”
Bolan spoke around a crocodile-worthy wad of meat. “Ketchup is good.”
“And I told her you needed coffee.” Patrick handed out a take-out tall. “I figured you needed coffee.”
Bolan took the cup of joe gratefully. “I needed coffee.”
“I told her to put a shitload of sugar and cream in it.”
“A shitload is pretty appropriate right about now, Patrick.” Bolan ate meat loaf and drank coffee. He knew he had injuries that would take weeks to heal. The soldier didn’t want to contemplate what percentage of fighting effectiveness he was at currently, but whatever it was he could feel it being braced and buttressed as he ate.
“Where’re Deputy Ottewalt and your dad?”
“They sent me in on foot with the food. They’re hanging back in the cruiser until you decide on a plan.” Patrick tucked into some steak fries. “So what’s the plan?”
Bolan licked his fingers clean and sipped coffee. “Nothing left to do but assault.”
“Could we wait for the cavalry or something?”
Bolan thought of Able Team and Phoenix Force. “I know some guys, but they’re currently deployed elsewhere. It would take too long to put together a Special Forces team, and I don’t want local or state law enforcement turning this into a siege. It would go from standoff to assault, and if that happens I think we all go up. We have to go in with what we have. Now or not at all.”
Patrick contemplated that. “How many do you figure are inside?”
“We got a lookout on top with a rifle. Have to figure on Linder, Schoenaur and Force. Figure they met at least one or two guys inside, and they have a couple guys for security. Two more arrived half an hour ago, so at least ten, most likely heavily armed. Possibly more.”
“Two to one odds at best.”
“We will have surprise on our side. Just like A Block.”
“We lost some good people on A Block.”
“We did, but there we were outnumbered seven to one. Now we’re better armed and can pick how we hit them.”
“So how do we hit them?”
Bolan had worked every angle a hundred times. “The key to everything is taking out the sentry on the roof.”
Patrick’s budding tactical mind considered the problem. “We don’t have any silenced weapons. What are you going to do? Climb up the to the roof and Hunger Game him or something?”
“Given the circumstances, that’s how I would normally play it. But the fact is, Patrick, I’m just about done.” Bolan gave an honest assessment. “I’m not climbing anywhere tonight.”
Patrick bit his lip and nodded. “You want me to do it?”
Once again Bolan found himself admiring the young man’s grit. “That’s very kind of you, but we have to do it silent, and we have only one shot at this.”
“But we can’t do it silent. You said so yourself.”
“Right, so we have to do it as quietly as possible, and that means we need a new plan.”
Patrick gave Bolan a wry look. “I think we’re fresh out of giants, swordsmen, holocaust cloaks and wheelbarrows, Cooper.”
Bolan smiled wearily. “That we are, but we do have a tear-gas gun, a police cruiser—” the soldier returned Patrick’s look “—and a punk hoodlum.”
Patrick stopped mid–French fry. “Punk hoodlum is cold, Cooper.”
* * *
BOLAN SLID A CS tear-gas shell into the single shot, 37 mm grenade launcher’s breech and snapped it shut. The battery on Renzo’s tablet was dying, with no way to recharge it, and that and Ottewalt’s cell phone were all Bolan’s team had in the way of tactical communications. Rudy crouched behind him with his commandeered D-Town riot gun ready. Bolan spoke into the chat window. “You two ready?”
“Copy that, Cooper,” Ottewalt responded.
“Ready,” Patrick said.
“Go.”
Bolan waited while his assault came together at a walking pace. Three blocks away Patrick was deploying out of Deputy Ottewalt’s cruiser and heading toward the warehouse. Bolan had removed the buttstock of Patrick’s Thompson submachine gun, effectively turning it into a giant machine pistol, and one he had concealed in a carry-all from the back of the cruiser, along with his two spare drums.
Deputy Ottewalt spoke across the link. “Patrick deployed. Swinging wide, ETA ninety seconds on reestablishing Patrick.”
“Copy that.” Bolan turned to Rudy. “If it all goes south, we hit that door. Kill anyone in your way. Whatever happens, secure the nuke. Got it?”
“I wish my son wasn’t here.”
“Me, too, and right about now so does he. But I’m proud of him.”
“So am I.”
“We’re all volunteers on this one, Rudy.”
“We took an oath,” Rudy agreed.
“That we did.”
“Cooper, I know you can’t get us a pardon, but if we don’t make it, my wife
—”
“It’s already taken care of,” Bolan affirmed. “You have my word.”
Rudy slowly nodded. He had a loaded Glock in the front of his waistband and another in the back. In his hands he held a 12-gauge, and he had a pocket full of spare shells. “Then let’s do this.”
Bolan slung Buddy. He took up the 37 mm and put two spare gas grenades in his shirt pockets. “Well, all right then.” The soldier spied Patrick walking down the alley toward the warehouse. “I have eyes on Patrick.”
“Copy that,” Ottewalt responded. “I have eyes on. On your signal.”
“Copy that.” Patrick wandered up the street like a young man who had jumped out of a boxcar and found himself in the wrong town and on the wrong side of town. “Kid’s a natural,” Bolan commented.
Rudy grudgingly admired his son’s gall. “That’s one way to describe him.”
Bolan kept most of his attention on the man on the roof. “The sentry sees him. He’s phoning in.” The soldier shouldered his launcher. “Here we go.” Patrick walked past the warehouse, the sentry tracking him with his rifle.
Bolan spoke low. “Deputy, you are go.” The soldier saw the sentry hunch down as Ottewalt slowly rolled her cruiser down the street. “Bear, status on sentry.”
“He’s on his phone.”
Ottewalt pulled her cruiser up behind Patrick. She flashed her lights and blooped her siren twice as she screeched to a halt. The sentry rose and aimed his rifle, pressing his phone against his ear with his shoulder as he reported what was going on outside. Deputy Ottewalt got out and gave Patrick a professional hassling. Without prompting, she suddenly grabbed her radio, spun and ran to her car, as if she had just received a major incident call. Patrick ran as if God on high had given him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Ottewalt hit her lights and siren full blast, and her tires screamed on the asphalt as she pulled away.
Bolan stepped out of the shadows and into the street. Timing now would be everything.
A rifle or pistol shot was a high decibel crack that was unmistakable, while 37 mm grenade launchers were only rated for tear gas and rubber buckshot. They made a low thump that sirens and screeching tires might mostly hide. Ottewalt tore down the street. The sentry lowered his phone and raised his rifle to track Patrick. He jerked when he caught sight of Bolan stepping into the glare of the streetlights.
Bolan raised Ottewalt’s grenade launcher and fired.
The launcher shoved against the soldier’s shoulder. Its low-decibel half bloop–half thud sounded as loud as doomsday to Bolan. He could only hope it was masked or confused with the sound of sirens, revving engines and screeching tires for the men within the warehouse. None of that changed the fact that a tear-gas grenade weighed half a pound and the launcher threw it at over a hundred feet per second. Bolan caught some luck and the roof sentry flew backward as he caught the grenade in the teeth. Gray gas began billowing from the rooftop. Bolan snapped open the launcher’s smoking breech and reloaded. He dropped the weapon on its sling and took up Renzo’s carbine.
“Sentry is down and not moving,” Kurtzman reported.
“Copy that. Ottewalt, take position,” Bolan ordered.
“Copy that, ETA thirty seconds.”
Bolan motioned his team forward. “Let’s move.”
The soldier marched across the street with Rudy on his six. Patrick stopped his headlong flight and Bolan waved for him to join them. The young man ripped his Thompson out of the bag and racked the bolt. Ottewalt cut her lights and sirens four blocks up and swung back around wide to take the back door. Rudy and Patrick both jumped as the sentry above let out a gurgling scream of agony.
“Jesus!”
“Shit!”
The light behind the peephole in the door occluded as the guard in the office looked out at the sound of the scream. Bolan put a burst through the door, then shoved his foot into it. The door to the warehouse office bounced against the guard behind it. The soldier gave it a second kick, and the door broke off its hinges and fell atop the fallen sentry. There was no time to wait for Ottewalt. Bolan took point. Like most warehouses, the office had a wide window giving a panoramic view of the main storage bay, where men were shouting and unlimbering weapons. The office window shattered in a cascade of glass as Bolan put a burst through it into the closest man with an Uzi. “Covering fire!”
Rudy’s shotgun hammered and Patrick cut loose as Bolan put his shoulder into the office door and rolled behind the cover of a forklift. The Rudolphos dived through the window. Rudy took cover behind a trio of industrial barrels and Patrick a pallet of crates. Bullets began flying in all directions. Bolan heard Scott booming orders. “It’s Cooper and the Rudolphos! Screw them! Out the back! Go! Go! Go!”
An Uzi-armed man with a ponytail lunged for the back door. It was an emergency exit and by code had to open outward. The Aryan bounced off it as if he had run into a brick wall. Ottewalt had parked her cruiser against the door. The orders Bolan had given her were simple. None shall pass.
A blast from Rudy’s shotgun bounced the man against the door again, and this time he left a massive red smear as he slid to the floor.
Bolan popped up just beneath the driver’s seat of the forklift and caught sight of a redheaded man with a Thompson submachine gun scuttling from one pallet of crates to another. The soldier put three rounds into the man’s chest and dropped him.
“Lem!” An identical twin of the man rose screaming from behind the cover his brother had been running for, and began unloading at Bolan. “Lem!” Sparks flew off the forklift like fireflies as the soldier dropped back down.
“Walking fire!” Scott bellowed. “Swarm them!”
It wasn’t a bad tactic, given the confines of the warehouse, and the enemy had a lot of Thompson submachine guns with 50-round drums. Bullets began sweeping the interior office window and hitting the forklift like hail. There was almost no way to get a shot off.
Bolan dropped Buddy, unslung the gas launcher and sent a grenade blind over the forklift. He quickly reloaded and fired off another. The Aryans shouted and swore in consternation. It was a gamble. The gas would interfere with Bolan and his team, as well. But the enemy was going to eat it for a good handful of seconds before Bolan and the Rudolphos would, and the soldier had been exposed to war gases and continued fighting before. The Aryans came forward, spraying on full-auto. The other redheaded twin came in screaming and holding down the hammer.
He fell as a pistol cracked five times from the office.
Bolan risked a glance back and saw Renzo in the window. She shot another man with an Uzi. Schoenaur popped up, took an extra heartbeat to aim and sent Renzo staggering and falling out of sight with a .357 in the chest. Bolan sent a burst the guard captain’s way, but he had already dropped behind cover.
“Rudy!” Bolan shouted. “Patrick! No one gets out the front!”
Bolan moved out from behind cover. He took six huge, deep breaths and then moved into the gas. He hunted the sound of coughing. He heard it and moved to his left. A bald man in a pink shirt rose and fired a burst from his Uzi into the barrels Rudy was behind. Baldy moved forward and stepped into Bolan’s line of fire. The soldier stitched him with a burst and dropped him.
“Got you, motherfucker!” A giant came out of the gas weeping, coughing and blazing away with a MAC-10 submachine gun in one hand, like a giant pistol, and waving a fire ax in the other. Bolan put three rounds into the big man and Buddy ran dry. “I got you!” the giant screamed.
The gas ruined his aim and bullets drew a line across the floor as Bolan rolled out of the way. The soldier had to breathe, and his lungs made fists as he breathed in gas. The giant tossed his spent weapon and raised his ax in both hands like some Viking of the Apocalypse. “I got you! I got you!”
The ax rang off the concrete an inch from Bolan’s head as he dodged. Bolan drew his D-Town Glock
and fired up into the man.
The giant staggered backward as he took shot after shot center body mass. Bolan kept squeezing the trigger. The soldier ran out of options as the slide slammed back on a smoking empty chamber. Wild Bill Monahan toppled like a human landslide to the warehouse floor.
Bolan rose. He heard a cough behind him, but his injuries and the gas filling his lungs made him a second too slow.
Bolan found himself staring down the barrel of Schoenaur’s .357.
The sadist said nothing, but he took a suicidal heartbeat to smile in victory. Bolan’s left hand struck like a snake across the top of the revolver and squeezed. Schoenaur’s six-gun had been modified into a fast-draw weapon. The hammer was bobbed, so that meant it wasn’t cocked. Schoenaur instantly squeezed the trigger, but in Bolan’s grip that meant the cylinder wouldn’t turn. The former guard captain took another suicidal heartbeat to try to yank the weapon free. Bolan took the opportunity to punch Schoenaur in the throat. He buckled with the blow and Bolan felt cartilage crack as he did it again. The soldier ripped the revolver out of Schoenaur’s palsied grip as the man fell choking and dying.
Bolan tucked the revolver into his belt and reloaded Buddy.
A pair of Thompsons began ripping off long bursts. Linder began screaming and coughing. “You know who I am? I’m the Big U!” The former warden punctuated each outburst with a burst of bullets. “I’ll put every last one of you in the boneyard!”
It sounded as if Linder had lost it. Bolan rose and leveled Renzo’s carbine. Linder caught sight of him through the gas. “Cooper!”
Bolan fired. So did Rudy and Patrick. Linder flapped like a ruptured bird with Thompson submachine guns for wings, and fell before the firing squad. The Executioner dropped back down and his team followed his example. “Patrick, check on Renzo! Rudy, hold position!”
Scott shouted from behind the cover of a huge crate. His voice was ragged from the tear gas. “Cooper!”
“Surrender, Force!”
“I have the nuke!”
Prison Code Page 21