The second cage rose on the way to the top floor. As Bolan had guessed, the cops were trying a pincer movement, hoping to bracket him from above and below on whichever level he was. He kicked away the oilcan that was jamming the elevator doors, edged inside as they slid shut and pressed the Down button. A stream of slugs pierced the metal outer doors as the elevator car sank out of range.
One floor above the hotel entrance Bolan quit the elevator and ran down the ramp, past the barriers and out into the night. The BMW was waiting at the curb-side fifty yards away. The passenger door was ajar and smoke curled up into the mist from the twin tailpipes.
Sally Ann was at the wheel. He leaped in and slammed the door. "All right," he panted, "we're on our way!"
The engine roared, and the heavy sedan laid rubber on the wet street and arrowed away toward the lake.
"Your friend Kraul," Bolan said as the BMW crossed the bridge at the northern tip of the Alster, "may have been forced out of the rackets in St. Pauli, but he sure knows how to take care of himself outside."
"Come again?"
"Take the situation as of now. Mercedes, BMW, something else in his garage under a tarp that could have been a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. A mansion complete with houseboy. Two bodyguards with silenced automatics. How does he get away with it?"
"Ferdy plays it real cool," Sally Ann said. "Personally speaking, he stays away from the action. You dig?"
"I'm talking about the law. If he bossed all the rackets before Lattuada horned in, how come he's not behind bars?"
"They could never pin anything on him. Like I say, he distanced himself. He knows every scam there is. Also, Ferdy pays his taxes."
"You mean he's in the clear with the local tax people?" Bolan was amused.
"Hell, no. He don't mess with that crap. He drops his bread at the right time, into the right pockets. Know what I mean?"
The Executioner sighed. "Yeah," he said, "I know exactly what you mean." Police headquarters, city hall, administrators in the state parliament, the routine was always the same, however many frontiers you crossed.
"In any case," Sally Ann said, "he never bossed all the rackets. He doesn't have Lattuada's organizing talent. There were always small-timers, punks, hoods from other cities, trying to muscle in. That was the price he paid for staying clear himself."
"He just sat in his beautiful house and let his gorillas kill on his behalf? Is that it?"
She shrugged. "If you want to put it that way."
"Can you think of any other way to put it?" Bolan said.
There was no reply. She turned off the brightly lit parkway into a wide residential street where the streetlights only swam at long intervals through the mist. "So Lattuada's got it all sewn up now, but Kraul aims to make a comeback?" Bolan asked.
"Of course."
"I did hear a rumor he'd been knocked off and his body dropped into the sea from an airplane."
"He started that himself," Sally Ann said. "There's a turnaround here. You wanna switch seats and collect the gear from under yours?"
"Okay," Bolan said. "This isn't the route we followed when we came into town, is it?"
She shook her head, braking the BMW to a standstill. "Out the front entrance, return the back way, approaching from a different direction. Routine."
From beneath the seat the warrior recovered his second Beretta, spare clips, a wire garrote, papers and the flat-bladed throwing knife he liked to keep strapped to his left ankle. He buckled on the autoloader's quick-draw leather and slid behind the wheel as the girl shifted to the other seat. "Wise me up on the lefts and rights," he told her.
The Kraul property was about four blocks away. Bolan saw the crimson reflections flicker on the underside of the low clouds when he was halfway there, but the mist, thicker still here on the northern side of the lake, muffled the sound of gunfire until he was within two hundred yards of the tall wooden gates that opened on a stableyard in back of the mansion.
He jammed on the brakes, cut the BMW's lights and engine and opened the door. "Stay here," he told the girl, "while I go see what's cooking. Don't move until I tell you, okay?"
Keeping close to the ten-foot-high wall surrounding the property, he ran to the open gates. Beyond them a big Ford had been run up onto the sidewalk, and behind that was the white Cadillac. There was a lamp on the far side of the street, and he could just make out the license number — HH777-CDE. It looked as if the Team was paying a call.
The shots were coming from the far side of the stable block. Above the roof he could see flames that must be spiraling up from a building somewhere in the grounds. Unsheathing the Beretta, he sidled into the yard.
Around one side of the block, a driveway curled through shrubbery toward the house. Some of the shooting seemed to be concentrated there. Bright flashes stabbed the dark and briefly illuminated patches of snow still lying beneath the bushes.
Bolan was ten yards inside the gates when he realized some of the shooters were firing at him. Brick dust from the wall stung his face as a near miss gouged the surface. Another slug struck sparks from the cobblestones by his feet, and a third smashed glass in a greenhouse behind him on the far side of the gates.
He flung himself to the ground at one side of a wooden bin full of coarse sand that was used to treat the yard when the ground was frozen. Half a dozen more bullets thudded into the box, and then there was a lull.
Were they stealing around the far side of the block to take him from behind? Advancing stealthily under cover of the bin? He didn't wait to find out. On elbows and knees, keeping the dark bulk of the bin between him and the shrubbery, he crawled back to the gates. Out on the sidewalk he rose to his feet and ran back to the BMW. The girl's face peered anxiously at him through the windshield. "Take it easy," he murmured. "The place is under attack, but you should be okay here. Wait while I check things out more."
He jumped lightly onto the sedan's hood and then the roof. The top of the wall was level with his eyeline, about five feet away. It was studded with shards of broken glass set in concrete. He stripped off his trench coat and flung it across the barrier, launching himself across the gap with an agile spring that landed him facedown across the wall. He heard the cloth rip, but none of the glass penetrated his clothes.
For two seconds Bolan rested there, the Beretta in his right hand, anticipating the sudden burst of fire from below, the numbing shock of a hit, a screaming ricochet. There was no sound, no movement. For the moment, at least, the gunmen seemed to have withdrawn.
Cautiously he rose half upright on the narrow strip of brickwork. There was enough light from the streetlight for him to see the reflected gleams where the glass was set. Still bent almost double, he made a crouching run for the shelter of a tall tree growing on the inner side of the wall, beyond the shrubbery. He dropped silently to the ground, picked his way carefully across a carpet of fallen leaves and skirted a patch of lawn that sloped down to the house.
From here, wide of the stables, he could see the fire — a pool house on the far side of an Olympic-size basin was burning furiously, with flames, sparks and black smoke roaring up into the sky. In the pulsating scarlet light he distinguished shadowy figures flitting toward the big house between clumps of vegetation.
The windows at the rear of the building were dark, but part of the driveway curving up to the portico in front was illuminated with light that streamed, Bolan imagined, from the long windows recessed behind the pillars. There was a burst of gunfire from somewhere inside the mansion: three short bursts from a submachine gun and a series of deeper, harsher shots from a heavy-caliber handgun.
On the far side of the driveway he heard a crashing of branches. Then someone screamed, followed by an answering volley from the dark. A bulky figure crossed the bars of light. Bolan thought he recognized the formidable shape of Hansie Schiller. The suspicion was confirmed a moment later when he heard the tough, yet slightly mincing voice bawl out, "Keep the fuckers pinned down until we blow it!"
There was more gunfire — twinkling points of flame, at least six if not more, from positions in a half circle around the front of the house. The SMG and the big handgun replied. It was quite possible that the goons who had accompanied Bolan into the house earlier were outposted someplace with their silenced automatics, waiting for a chance to make a kill without giving their own positions away.
Bolan moved into the darkest of the moving shadows cast by the burning pool house, traversing what he imagined to be a rose garden as thorns plucked at his pants and the tail of his jacket. He was approaching the corner of the building when an enormous weight smashed into his back and knocked him flat on his face. The impact jarred the breath from his lungs and sent the Beretta spinning out of his hand.
Pain flared through his kidneys, and he felt callused fingers scrabble for his throat as the man who had jumped him knelt on his back and groped for a stranglehold with both hands. The Executioner thrashed from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the guy, but the attacker was big, heavy and fast. The guy's knees clamped on either side of Bolan's waist, while his hands locked around the warrior's neck with the thumbs pressing remorselessly into the nape. He tore at the throttling grip, humping up his hips in an attempt to at least unbalance the man enough for him to get out from under. It was no more successful than the first try.
Bolan's senses swam. The crackle of flames and the concussion of firearms began to fade in his ears. The leaping orange light dimmed. Blood thumped in his temples as his lungs cried out for air.
One flailing arm swept across the flagstones paving the rose garden, and at the edge of a flower bed his fingers touched something cold, hard and sharp — a fragment of pavement split off by the frost. Grabbing it in his hand, he used all his remaining strength to arc his arm back and up toward the unseen face breathing beery fumes over his head.
The sharp edge of the stone homed in on flesh and bone. The attacker cursed, his hold slackened, and Bolan felt hot blood splash onto his cheek. The Executioner flung himself over on his back, gasping for air, and the hood was thrown among the rose bushes.
The guy yelled as the tough thorns tore at his face, hands and knees. Woody stems snapped. He struggled to his feet. At the same time Bolan leaped for the nebulous shape wriggling in the dark and struck out with his right hand held flat.
The hood took the karate blow on the forearm and launched a tremendous right that landed over the heart and sent the Executioner reeling. He followed through swiftly, bursting out of the rose bed to slam a one-two left and right punch to each side of Bolan's head.
Bolan staggered, crouching defensively as he sucked in air that seared his savaged throat. A sudden, brighter flare from the fire showed him the hood — a heavyweight with a jutting chin and glittering eyes — shaping up for a roundhouse blow that left the jaw, daubed with blood from a cut beneath one eye, wide open.
Bolan uncoiled like a steel spring, lifting an uppercut from hip level that connected like a battering ram and rocked the thug on his heels. It was then that the guy's right hand flew between the open edges of his lumber jacket.
Firelight gleamed redly on steel as the gun came out. The arm rose, pointing a metal finger. But Bolan had already ducked down to snare the throwing knife from its ankle sheath. He flicked the blade with deadly accuracy before the hood's finger tightened on the trigger.
The wide, flat, razor-sharp knife sank into the soft flesh beneath the guy's jaw. He tottered backward, arms flung wide, the trigger finger powering a shot that plowed uselessly into the earth. Then he slowly sank to his knees, twin streams of gore pumping out each side of the knife hilt, and keeled over onto his back.
Bolan stood over him. The man was gurgling blood, drowning in his own lifestream. The Executioner plucked out his knife, plunged it into the cold earth several times to cleanse the blade, resheathed it, then went in search of his Beretta.
The pool house fire was dying down, and he had to lie flat on the flagstones and squint along the surface of the lawn beyond before a glint of reflected light revealed the Beretta's location in the grass. He picked it up and hurried around to the rear of the house.
Until then Bolan had been of two minds. One band of evil men had been assaulting another, each of them bloodsuckers adhering to the innocent, terrorizing the inoffensive, reaping a black harvest from the fears of the weak. Normally in such a situation his inclination was to let them slog it out together… and the more dead left lying on the ground after the battle the better.
In this case, though, he was personally involved with both sides. The attackers had framed him for a murder, and now that he was at liberty, they were after, as the treacherous Hugo had said, his balls. They had already kidnapped and beaten him up once, and he had been lucky to escape. The defenders were every bit as bad. But Kraul had at least fixed it so that he'd gotten his car and gear back. The mobster had coerced Bolan into a line of action for selfish ends, but it was a line that happened to fit in with Bolan's own aims. That, however, didn't necessarily mean the Executioner was obliged to join battle on Kraul's side.
He had been content to stay on the sidelines until the lookout had jumped him. Now he was personally involved in this specific battle, too. Although he shrank from associating himself, even temporarily, with the ex-gang boss of St. Pauli, he would do what he could to bolster Kraul's defense.
He ran past a kitchen wing, in back of a conservatory and past the open carport to the far side of the house. There had been a lull in the shooting, but now, from behind a screen of bushes, he sensed activity all around the front facade. A match flared in the undergrowth, and then another. A larger flame sprang up. Hansie Schiller shouted something, and a voice answered from the far side of the front driveway near the gutted pool house.
There was a burst of covering fire from behind clumps of ornamental shrubs. And now several of the bigger flames wavered in the undergrowth. All the lights in the house went out. In the sudden darkness the flames rose into the air, moved faster toward the portico. One arched toward the facade, teased out of its own flight by the wind.
Bolan realized what it was an instant before it hit. The Team was attacking with Molotov cocktails. The first bottle smashed itself against a window, shattering the pane as the volatile gasoline spilled out and was ignited by the flaming paper. The second was hurled through the gap to explode in the room beyond. Immediately the room was an inferno. The curtains blazed. Upholstery and wall hangings burned. Flames streamed from the shattered window to blacken the facade.
A third bottle exploded at the top of the portico steps, setting fire to the doors. In the renewed outburst of shooting, a hood about to hurl the fourth was hit. The bottle dropped to the driveway at his feet and broke, transforming the man into a whirling column of flame that subsided, shrieking and thrashing, to the ground.
Over the sounds of battle Bolan now heard in the distance the urgent seesaw bray of fire department trucks and the warble of police sirens. Evidently Schiller heard them, too, for he was shouting again on the far side of the portico, urging some kind of action. A Molotov cocktail plunged through a second-floor window and erupted inside. Two grenades were flung through the glass of the entrance doors to explode with cracking detonations and billows of brown smoke in the hallway. Soon the entire front of the mansion would be a boiling holocaust of flame.
Coughing and choking, some with their clothes smoldering, men burst out of the house and engaged the attackers in hand-to-hand combat. Knives glinted in the light of the fire, clubs and blackjacks rose and fell, someone uttered a high-pitched, ululating scream. Sporadic shots still rang out, and there were motionless figures here and there on the ground, but it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe in the flickering red light.
Bolan saw two thugs drag the white-coated houseboy from the portico and set about him with knives. Folding down the Beretta's forward grip, the Executioner aimed carefully and blew one away with a single shot. Half a second later a three-shot burst sent the other stumbling off w
ith a smashed shoulder. Hansie was flailing at a fallen man with an iron bar, but before the Executioner could line him up in his sights a knot of attackers carrying a struggling victim toward the flames came between them. It was then that he heard the shouts behind him.
He swung around and threw himself to the ground as muzzle-flashes split the dark fifty feet away. Slugs zipped through the leaves around him. He fired back, aiming for the spot where the two gunners had been, but they were already running toward the carport. There was a sudden exhaust roar, a shrill squeak of rubber and the high whine of gears as an automobile shot out of the port.
The big Mercedes that had originally picked Bolan up near his hotel rocketed onto the rear driveway, raced to the stableyard and turned into the roadway beyond. Bolan figured the boss was making his getaway. He hadn't seen Kraul during the combat, and it was predictable that the general would quit, leaving the soldiers to face the music.
For that matter, Bolan reckoned he should disengage. The sirens were very near now, approaching the front entrance. The two gunmen, having emptied their magazine without effect at the Mercedes, had disappeared. Schiller was calling the Team together.
Bolan ran noiselessly around the edge of the property until he reached the tree where he had jumped down from the wall. Dragging himself back up, he ran to where his trench coat still lay over the glass spikes. Schiller and his men were hotfooting it back past the pool toward the stables. Bolan could see pulsing blue light beyond the flames as the sirens died away. He jumped to the roof of the BMW and lowered himself to the ground.
The car was undamaged, but it was empty. Sally Ann had fled.
He shrugged. Had she taken off because she was scared? Had Kraul picked up his double agent on his way out of trouble?
It didn't matter. There were more interesting questions that required answers, he reflected as he started the engine and accelerated away before the goons reached their Cadillac and the accompanying Ford.
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