As he had before, he took cover behind the corner leading to this latest hallway. Then he aimed his Beretta at the lenses and started shooting. One by one they shattered. Bolan checked again with the monocular before replacing it in his bag. The corridor was clear as far as he could see. Nothing had happened when the beams ended, however.
He took a step forward, then another, checking the floor for more pressure points or wires. The beams might have been a decoy, or they might simply have been designed to alert someone to the fact that an intruder had gotten this far. Bolan did not suppose that made much difference, though if the light beams were a decoy, that meant some other threat was waiting for him.
When he reached the halfway point of the hallway, an alarm sounded. It was a distant but loud mechanical bell, like a school bell. A few seconds after it started, the wall at the end of the corridor opened. It split apart on both sides, the camouflaged double doors fronted with plywood but clearly steel underneath. Bolan raised the Beretta as the first of the security detail pushed through the doorway.
There were four of them, and they carried ballistic shields before their bodies. From what Bolan could see past the shields, they wore full body armor and face shields. He flicked the selector of the 93-R to 3-round burst and filled the air between him and the guards with 9 mm interference as he turned and ran back the way he’d come. The guards opened up with their weapons—bullpup-style, high-tech Steyr AUG assault rifles—just as Bolan rounded the corner. The 5.56 mm DU rounds tore through the wall behind the soldier, igniting small fires that smoldered fitfully amid the treated lumber.
Bolan dropped the empty magazine in his Beretta and swapped it for one of the 20-round magazines he’d loaded that morning. He had marked the end with an X of white-out fluid. It and several more like it were full of DU rounds stripped from the submachine gun magazines he had recovered from the El Cráneo shooters in Times Square. Racking the slide of the gun as if he was trying to rip it free of the machine pistol, Bolan brought his weapon on target as the first of the armored guards rounded the corner.
The triple-bursts of DU penetrators punched through the man’s ballistic shield as if it wasn’t there. He screamed as the rounds found his body, boring flaming holes through his flak vest and chest cavity. The smell of burning flesh reached Bolan’s nostrils as the guard fell and began to writhe in agony. Bolan spared him a mercy round that chewed through his helmet without difficulty, splashing Lexan and brain matter through the exit wound onto the floor.
Bolan backed off a few paces. It would take the others a moment to decide what to do, with the tables turned on them as they’d been. The Executioner did not give them that time. He aimed at the corner of the wall, estimated the height and began triggering 3-round bursts through the wall itself.
The angle of Bolan’s fire took his DU rounds through the corner and into the hallway beyond. There were more screams and a burst of flickering light from the flames the rounds generated. Bolan swapped magazines for a fresh supply of depleted uranium slugs, then charged around the corner with the Beretta and his flashlight in his hands.
The scene that greeted him was something out of a horror film. A second armored trooper, convulsing in his death throes, was burning brightly on the floor. The other two were retreating, headed back for the double doors. As they lined up single file, Bolan snapped the Beretta to head level and triggered another burst.
Three 9 mm rounds slammed into and through the helmet of the first guard. They continued into the back of the second man’s head. Bolan saw sparks and a shower of blood as the man in front fell forward. The guard behind him landed on him, both of them dead before they hit the floor. The Executioner advanced, following them to the doors and stepping through. A heavy plastic curtain made of overlapping sheets of black Mylar waited beyond the doors. When he pushed through that, he blinked in the sudden bright light of multiple overhead fluorescents.
“Don’t fucking move!” someone shouted.
Bolan froze where he stood. He was in a large room with two levels, the second level a railed catwalk that traveled around the perimeter. The paint was peeling and the railing of the catwalk was dotted with rust. A layer of dust coated the floor. There were doors at the far end of the room at the right and left sides, plus the double doors from which Bolan had emerged. A man in urban-camouflage fatigues stood on the railing aiming a .45 pistol at him. Four men with AR-15s stood loosely arranged around Bolan, their weapons trained on him and their faces grim.
“Don’t move. Don’t try anything. It’s over,” the man on the catwalk said.
“Place the weapons on the deck,” one of the riflemen ordered. Bolan complied, removing the Desert Eagle and placing it next to the Berretta on the floor. He stood over his guns with his hands low near his sides. He was careful not to move.
“Good. Just like clockwork,” the man with the .45 said. “I told Stevens that whole James Bond tunnel thing was ridiculous. I figured we’d get a few dead homeless guys in there and not much else. I can’t believe it worked just like he said it would. His little funhouse kept you busy while we got into position to collect you. We watched on closed-circuit TV, you know. You were supposed to die in the third tunnel. I got to hand it to you. You’re not bad.”
“Who are you?” Bolan said calmly.
“I’m Rawl,” said the man, “Jordan Rawl, Hills Protective. My people and I provide security for the facility you have just invaded. You are an armed and obviously dangerous intruder. You forfeit your life in your trespass of this facility.”
“I’m with the Justice Department,” Bolan told him. “You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this.”
“Tragically,” Rawl said, extending his pistol and sighting on Bolan’s head, “you will be killed before you can identify yourself. On the off chance that your body is ever discovered, my men can hardly be held liable for terminating an armed stranger breaching our defenses through hostile action.”
“Shooting an intruder is one thing,” Bolan said. “Dumping the body is another.”
“I would do nothing of the kind,” Rawl told him. “It seems my men, trying their best not to kill you, will only wound you, allowing you to limp away. It would seem you survived only long enough to meet your end while in hiding.”
“Lots of men with bullets through the brain crawl off to die alone,” Bolan said.
“You’d be amazed what a wad of money will do for the average medical examiner,” Rawl said. His face turned deadly serious as he aimed the pistol. “All right, enough screwing around. So long, asshole.”
16
Bolan dropped to one knee and hurled the object he’d quietly palmed from a pocket of his blacksuit. The sharp little saw blade spun through the air and sliced into Rawl’s face. He jerked back, screaming, triggering several shots from the .45, but his aim was off and Bolan was already in motion. The Executioner dropped and spun, bracing himself on his hands as he whipped his right leg around in an arc that toppled two of the nearest riflemen and sent the third crashing into the fourth. One of the AR-15s fired, but Bolan ignored it, grabbing up the Beretta and the Desert Eagle and bringing them on target together.
The Desert Eagle boomed in the enclosed space. The first rifleman went down, a gaping hole where his head had been, his rifle falling from his grip. Even as he took the forward target, Bolan aimed the 93-R at a forty-five-degree angle, drilling a second guard with a 3-round burst of DU ammo to the chest. The man shrieked as he burned from within, until his brain finally got the message that he was mortally injured.
Rawl recovered and began firing methodically from the railing. One of his shots cratered the floor near Bolan’s foot, so the soldier took a moment to throw a .44 Magnum round that way. The heavy bullet slammed into Rawl’s face. He was dead before he fell over the railing, dropping to the floor below.
Bolan kept firing on the move. He emptied both guns as he whirled and dodged, lining up the other shooters as they tried desperately to fix on him. Just as he killed th
e third rifleman with a shot to the midsection, the fourth man emptied his magazine with a burst that went high and wide over Bolan’s right shoulder. Bolan’s own guns were also empty.
The rifleman heard the hollow, ominous click of an empty AR-15 and began clutching at the pouches on his web belt, struggling to produce another magazine. Bolan dropped his pistols, closing the distance between himself and the shooter, drawing and thumbing open the Cold Steel Gunsite knife in a single fluid motion. Just as the guard managed to bring a new magazine up to the well of his rifle, Bolan was on him, slashing him across the throat on the upstroke and then again on the backstroke as he took the man down to his right side, dropping him bleeding to the floor. He dropped an ax kick on the back of the fallen man’s head, driving the heel of his combat boot into the doomed man’s skull. The shooter twitched several times and was finally still.
Standing amid the corpses, bloody folding knife still in his hand, Bolan paused to catch his breath and survey the damage.
No one and nothing moved.
He wasted no time contemplating his work. Retrieving his pistols, he reloaded and holstered them. He took as many spare magazines of DU ammunition as he could find, searching the dead men. Lastly, he took one of the heavy-barreled AR-15s and examined it.
The weapon was a civilian AR-15 with a chromed match barrel and an obviously modified selector switch. The work done on the weapon was visible but not crude, displaying knowledge of the weapon that Cowboy Kissinger would probably have grudgingly acknowledged. This rifle had settings for single-shot and full-auto, rather than the 3-round burst found on later variant M-16s. The barrel guards had been removed and replaced with guards equipped with accessory rails. A vertical foregrip and Streamlight Tactical Light were mounted to the weapon.
Bolan tested the bright white light and then sighted across the room. He fired the weapon experimentally a few times, satisfying himself that it would hit where he aimed. The DU rounds left burning holes in the wall.
Planting his combat boot, Bolan kicked open the door to the left. The room beyond was full of boxes of paper and trash, roof shingles, pieces of drywall and other construction debris. He reversed course and tried the door on the right. It led to a stairwell, where the hastily erected pathways of plywood and two-by-fours gave way to the concrete-and-cinder-block construction he would have expected from an old warehouse of this type. He could see at least three or four landings above.
A metal fire door slammed somewhere high above him.
More of Stevens’s security guards were coming and they weren’t wasting time trying to be sneaky about it. Bolan watched them take the landing at the top of the building. He moved up half a flight, targeted through the stairwell and held down the trigger of his captured weapon.
The spray of 5.56 mm DU rounds caught two of the men. The explosive penetrators ripped through their legs and through one man’s chest, dropping them both. The man with the chest wounds was killed immediately, while the other man lived long enough to take a second burst through the floor as Bolan finished the job.
The guards realized what Bolan was doing and turned the tactic against him, burning through the stairs and landings below with DU fire of their own. Bolan was forced to retreat back the way he’d come.
Changing magazines on the run, he clicked on the light mounted beneath the barrel and used it to guide him back through the corridors leading to the ambush room. In the hallway of the rotating saws, he triggered one of the remaining trip wires and was forced to throw himself aside to avoid taking a spinning blade in the back. It was only moments before he was back at the door he’d used to breach the building. He shouldered it open, emerging in the bright white light of the morning.
Bolan ran, trying to get into position as quickly as possible. Stevens and his men might be monitoring him through hidden cameras, but it wouldn’t matter if his plan worked. He circled the building, chose a likely spot and crouched to steady the AR-15.
The big black rifle spit DU rounds in a long burst. Bolan emptied the magazine, firing in an arc to the left of his body, from low to high. He hit the magazine release, dropped the empty one and slapped home a fresh round, smacking the bolt release and chambering the first round of the new magazine. Then he emptied it, as well, changing magazines again as he surveyed his handiwork.
The explosive penetrators had chewed an arc through the wall of the building, leaving gaping, burning holes in a line that described an arched doorway. Bolan put his shoulder against the cinder blocks and pushed with all his might. The shattered wall gave, tumbling the cinder blocks over, creating a breach in the building that the soldier could scramble through. He climbed over the rubble with the AR-15 at the ready, the light’s beam thickly visible in the concrete dust.
He found himself on a manufacturing floor. High ceilings above him ended in metal rafters that supported what appeared to be sophisticated chemical-fire suppression equipment. There were multiple machines on the floor, some of them chugging away. Bolan saw empty brass casings being loaded into one machine from a hopper. In another, a spinning drum was separating chemicals of some kind. In a third, red-tipped cartridges were being primed automatically, one after another, as they filed into the bowels of the machine on multiple single-file conveying trays.
A far wall dominated by large scrolling doors was the entrance to a loading dock. Crates upon crates that Bolan presumed were filled with completed DU ammunition sat waiting for loading. The warehouse floor was piled high with chemicals, explosives and other volatile materials that would make for more than sufficient means to raze the place.
The Executioner intended to leave nothing standing.
He saw no evidence of workers. The machines appeared to be designed to operate on their own with minimal interference, but all required that materials be loaded into them before they could commence their mechanical efforts. Bolan imagined that, if there was no other staff, Stevens might pay his security guards to do double duty feeding the machines. If that was the case, it would make his job easier. If there were factory workers, he could not guarantee they were not innocents pressed into service—illegal aliens, the homeless or any number of marginalized denizens of the area who might be too desperate for money to ask too many questions. He would see to it such workers got to safety before the warehouse came down, if there were any. With luck the only personnel on-site were Stevens and his hired guns.
Bolan moved from machine to machine. He inspected each and decided that there was no need for special plans. A few well-placed DU rounds into some of the stored chemicals would start a fire sufficient to detonate the rest of the explosives. He looked back at the gaping hole he had created and realized just how close he’d come to setting off the explosions already. His rounds, traveling at a slight upward angle, had missed the machinery and chemicals but sprayed an office area on an elevated platform above the manufacturing floor.
The metal mesh stairs leading to the office were intact. Bolan took these two at a time, covering the office as he did so. The large windows of the office, affording a commanding view of the manufacturing area, had been punched through in several spots but had not broken. They were apparently Lexan blast shields, which explained how they’d fared so well under the depleted uranium onslaught.
Inside, Bolan found two dead men on the floor. Both wore fatigues matching those of the security men he’d already taken down. Some papers scattered around the officer were burning, as was a computer terminal in one corner, but the blaze had not grown any larger.
The destruction of the computer was unfortunate. It looked to be a total loss, which meant there was no point in trying to pull the drive. Bolan searched through the debris in the office but could not find anything other than technical specs and programming notes for the machinery below. There was nothing to tie Stevens with Norris Labs International, which meant there was nothing he could pass on to Brognola to help take down the company behind it all. Stevens had gone rogue and committed crimes of his own, yes, but the r
esearch he was using belonged to NLI, and it was NLI that had tried so hard—and killed so many—to cover up the whole thing.
If he had to, the Executioner would bring his war to NLI’s doorstep, doing with blades and bullets what legal resources could not accomplish through the system.
Another door led from the rear of the office area to an adjoining space on what would be, if Bolan correctly estimated the height of the warehouse floor’s ceiling, the top floor of the structure. This was as likely a spot as any for Stevens’s office. Judging from the size of the building and what he could see of the manufacturing floor, there wasn’t room for much else in the structure besides the killing chute and ambush room he’d already visited. Stevens had done a thorough job of converting the available space to his purposes.
The door opened into a wide studio area divided by cloth cubicle walls. Bolan searched these with his light-equipped rifle poised for action. Each cubicle contained a workstation and several other pieces of equipment, including a digitizer tablet of the type used in computer-aided drafting. Bolan suspected that from these terminals, Stevens had designed, and run simulations for, the weapons to which he had devoted his life.
Every station had been destroyed.
The processors had been shot through with DU rounds, their cases shattered, their boards molten. Many were still smoking and a few still burned slightly. A few stations with external hard drives or disk drives had seen the attached hardware smashed with what might been the butt of a gun or knife. There would be no evidence worth gathering among these machines.
The destruction was recent. Bolan spotted the reinforced metal door beyond the cubicles. There was a surveillance camera mounted above it, the red LED beneath its lens blinking slowly. A speaker was set in the wall next to the camera. Bolan approached with the AR-15 pointed ahead, scanning the walls, floors and ceiling for more mechanical threats. There were no booby traps that he could see, but Stevens had proved extremely resourceful. He had no desire to take a tiny saw blade to the neck, or lose a foot in a shower of molten lead.
Killing Trade Page 16