Killing Trade

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan left the stairwell and moved quietly to the rear entrance to the lobby, opposite the elevators. He peered around the corner with one eye, careful to move slowly. The older couple and the younger man were still seated around the lobby coffee table. There was no one else except for a clerk in the apartment building office, visible through the glass door labeled Management just off the lobby.

  “You’ve got a red dot with two blue dots,” Burnett said in his ear. “Just forward of your position. There’s a room to your left, to the rear of your position.” Bolan glanced to the lobby door. “I’ve got a blue dot and a red dot there, too.” Bolan frowned. He could see only one person inside the management office, seated at a desk.

  Bolan walked casually through the lobby, counting the numbers in his head. At the last instant, the man seated with the old couple turned to see the Executioner approaching. His eyes went wide in recognition.

  Bolan’s Beretta came up and coughed once. The suppressed round slapped into the gunman’s face and took him down. He slumped across the coffee table. The old woman brought her hand to her mouth but did not cry out.

  Even as the thug was falling, Bolan was changing course, running for the glass-fronted office door. He did not even try the knob, instead simply kicking low with one foot to send the flimsy door rocking inward and banging off the drywall facing it.

  The El Cráneo shooter rose at the sudden noise. He was standing over a pretty, young red-haired woman who was tied hand and foot with electrical cords beneath the desk, her mouth covered with duct tape. Bolan fired again in single-shot mode, the suppressed hollowpoint round striking his target in the head. The gunner slumped to the carpet, dead.

  Bolan crouched next to the frightened woman, placed his finger to his lips and then removed the duct tape as gently as he could.

  “Don’t yell,” he said. “I’m with the Justice Department. These men are part of a gang who’ve taken hostages throughout the building. I’m going to free you, but I need you not to call 9-1-1. Just leave, quietly, as if nothing is wrong. You’ve got to give me time to remove the rest of them. If they learn they’ve been discovered, they’ll start shooting. Do you understand?”

  The woman nodded.

  “What’s your name?” Bolan asked.

  “Dana,” she said.

  “Well, Dana,” Bolan said quietly, “I need you to do me a favor. There’s an older couple in the lobby. I need you to take them with you when you leave and see to it they’re okay. Can you do that?”

  Dana nodded again. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. Please go now, and go quietly.” He finished untying her. She was a little wobbly on her feet, but she managed, moving quietly and briskly through the lobby and ushering the man and woman out without raising a fuss. As Bolan left the office, the old woman waved at him. Her husband tipped an imaginary hat. They were stronger than Bolan had given them credit for, he realized.

  “I’ve got two red blips down, eight to go,” Burnett said in his ear. “The trackers fade when a person wearing one dies, apparently.”

  “Makes sense,” Bolan said. “Next?”

  “The next two are two floors up,” Burnett told him. “One’s in unit…let’s see here…it’s going to be 205 and 216, if I’m reading this right. There’s no one but the shooter in 205, but 216 has three hostages.”

  “Got it.”

  “Oh, and, Cooper? I’ve been getting calls from some of them. I mean, Taveras has. I’ve been doing my best Taveras impression.” Burnett’s voice grew more gravelly and took on a Spanish accent. “‘I am okay. Stop bothering me.’”

  “Not bad,” Bolan said. “All right, I’m going.”

  There were a few residents moving through the apartment building, unaware of the drama unfolding around them. Bolan dared not tell them what was happening. If even one panicked resident called the authorities, the resulting chaos would alert the remaining gunmen and lead to possible carnage. Instead, the Executioner would have to neutralize the threat before anyone knew what was happening. He silently thanked Cowboy Kissinger for the custom suppressor fitted to the barrel of his Beretta machine pistol.

  When he got to apartment 205, he tried the knob very slowly. It was locked. Bolan backed off two paces and triggered a suppressed triburst into the locking mechanism. He plunged after his shots with a side kick, shouldering past the door and bringing his Beretta on target as he entered the apartment.

  The El Cráneo man inside was sitting on the couch, eating a sandwich. He jumped up as Bolan burst in, grabbing for the revolver in his belt. The Executioner shot him in the head, watching dispassionately as he fell. A quick search of the apartment revealed a dead man in the bathroom, his throat cut. This was obviously 205’s resident. For whatever reason, he’d been killed when the building was initially taken. Bolan frowned and looked back at the dead man in the living room. A life for a life seemed just, to many, but the life of the El Cráneo thug was worth far less than that of any innocent civilian as far as the Executioner was concerned.

  “Neutralized,” he said aloud.

  “Got it,” Burnett responded. “No change in 216. Everyone’s clustered in one of the rear rooms of the apartment, must be the bedroom.”

  Bolan didn’t like the sound of that. He moved quickly to apartment 216. “Burnett,” he whispered, “are they still in the bedroom?”

  “Yes,” Burnett told him.

  “Stand by,” Bolan said quietly. He took out his pistol-grip lock pick and worked it into the door lock. Then he eased the jimmied door open, creeping in as quietly as he could across the carpeted floor.

  A scream sounded from the bedroom.

  Bolan ran for it, ramming the bedroom door with his shoulder. There was a grunt from the other side as the door met the resistance of a human body. Then Bolan was through, almost tripping over the El Cráneo gunner. He aimed and fired a 3-round burst, stitching the fallen gunman. The man’s eyes stared at the ceiling in death, his face a mask of shock.

  Another man in his thirties and a boy of no more than five were bound with duct tape and lying on the floor next to the king-size bed. The man looked at Bolan with hatred in his eyes, while the boy merely looked terrified. On the bed, her wrists tied to the bedposts, was an attractive woman with auburn hair and brown eyes, wearing only her underwear. Bolan took in the shreds of what had been a blouse and a pair of slacks, lying on the floor. The El Cráneo thug’s knife, a cheap switchblade, had also fallen nearby. The woman was sobbing, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Bolan holstered his Beretta. He drew and opened his knife, using it to cut the tape holding the woman’s wrists. She shrieked and shrank from him as he knelt over her. Bolan managed to get his arms around her, careful not to cut her with the knife he still held, and whispered in her ear as she trembled against him.

  “You’re okay,” Bolan told her. “My name is Cooper and I’m with the Justice Department. You’re okay. He can’t hurt you.” He gently set the woman back on the bed, where she curled into a ball trying to cover herself. Then he went to the husband and son on the floor, deducing their relationship from the expression on the man’s face.

  “Did you hear me?” Bolan said, cutting the tape from the man’s wrist and letting him free the son. “I’m with the Justice Department. The man who attacked you is part of a gang of thugs in this building. I know where they are, but to get them all, I need your help.”

  “He was going to—” the husband started.

  “I know,” Bolan said.

  “He tied us up and there was nothing I could—”

  “Listen to me,” Bolan said. He went to the corpse, found a Bersa Thunder .380 automatic pistol on the body and brought it over. “Can you use a gun, sir?”

  “I used to target shoot,” he said.

  “Can you operate this?” Bolan held up the pistol.

  “Yes, I think so,” he said. Bolan handed it to him. The shaken husband ejected the magazine after fumbling for the catch. Then he racked the slide, ejecting an empt
y round. Bolan watched as he fed the round back into the magazine, reloaded the gun and chambered it. He did know what he was doing, it seemed. Bolan did the only thing he could do for any man forced to sit helplessly and watch his woman be attacked. He gave him a chance to get his manhood back.

  “Look,” Bolan said, “I’ve been in situations every bit as bad as what you just faced. I know how angry you are. You can help me and you can keep your family safe.”

  “What do you need me to do?” The man looked up at Bolan as his son clung to his leg, burying his face in the man’s flank.

  “Don’t call 9-1-1,” Bolan said. “Don’t leave this apartment. Move a piece of furniture in front of the door after I’ve gone. Guard your family and don’t let anyone in. Eventually, the police will come. Stay here until they do, because once they’ve come, it will mean this is all over.”

  “Thank you,” the husband said. He rose and went to comfort his wife, the gun still in his hand.

  Bolan left as he’d come, hoping they’d be able to do as he’d instructed. The sight of a family traumatized by Taveras and El Cráneo, by the gang’s indifference to human life, filled him with righteous rage. He would not stop until he’d cleaned the building of these vermin.

  Burnett’s voice sounded in his ear again. “They’re getting a little jumpy, big guy,” he said. “I’m holding them off, but I think they’re starting to get suspicious at being ignored. You’d better move. We’ve still got six in the building.”

  “Give me the locations.”

  “I’ve got one on the fifth floor,” Burnett said, “moving around in apartment 518. I’ve got another on the seventh floor who seems to be pacing back and forth in the hallway, or just running laps around the building. Probably one of the nervous nellies who keep calling. I’ve got three of them clustered in apartment 901 in the living room. The last one’s in apartment 1114, not moving at all.”

  “I’m moving,” Bolan said. “Stay with me.”

  The Executioner took the stairs to the fifth floor, then walked quietly to unit 518. From the left side of the door, he pressed his back against the wall and started knocking quietly.

  “Who is it?” called a voice.

  Bolan knocked again, more softly this time.

  “I said, who the hell is it?”

  Bolan knocked again, even more faintly than before. As he did so, he drew the Beretta.

  The door whipped open. A tall Hispanic man stood there, a big stainless-steel Ruger pistol in his hand. “Enrique, man, if you don’t stop screwing around, I’m going to—”

  Just what the El Cráneo man was going to do to Enrique was lost in the triburst from Bolan’s Beretta. The hollowpoint bullets blew a cavity through the man’s throat and out the back of his neck, causing his head to flop at an odd angle as he collapsed to the carpet below. Bolan stepped over the corpse, reloading, as he checked the apartment. It was empty, save for the dead El Cráneo member.

  Bolan then took the stairs to the seventh floor. He eased the stairwell door open very carefully, listening for sounds of the nervous gunman Burnett had described. It wasn’t long before he heard someone moving down the carpeted hallway, with the distracted pace of someone who was walking to walk, rather than walking to get somewhere.

  Bolan lined up the shot on the man’s center of mass as he rounded the corner. He fired once. The man staggered and backed up around the corner, falling to the floor beyond. Bolan came around to check him and found the man digging, not for a weapon, but for a phone.

  “Fausto! Fausto, I have been shot!” the man shouted into the phone, just before Bolan put a bullet in his brain.

  The Executioner snapped up the phone and put it to his ear.

  “Jorge?” a voice said. “Jorge, all you all right? Jorge!”

  Bolan closed the phone. “Burnett,” he said aloud, “we’re blown!”

  “Go to 901,” Burnett said. “They’re starting to stir and there’s three of them. Go, go, get them now!”

  Bolan didn’t waste time responding. He flew down the hallway, his feet pounding on the carpet, and ripped open the stairwell door. Then he took the steps two at a time, thundering up to the ninth floor, bursting through the fire door.

  Room 901 was only a few doors down the corridor. Its door was opening and the El Cráneo men were emerging. Two had pistols, while one carried an Uzi submachine gun. Bolan threw himself on his stomach as the submachine gunner cut loose. Bullets filled the air above Bolan’s head as he returned fire from the floor.

  His angle was low. His shots slammed into the El Cráneo men at ankle level, chopping them down like saplings. They screamed as they fell. Bolan was immediately up, shoving himself to the side to avoid their wild shots as he let the empty Beretta 93-R fall from his hand. He drew the Desert Eagle and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, his .44 Magnum rounds finding their targets among the fallen men. When they stopped moving, Bolan kicked one of them over, checking the holes beneath him. The .44 Magnum bullets had dug into the floor but had not gone much farther after blowing apart the El Cráneo killers. Bolan let himself feel relieved; at least he did not have to worry that his shots would strike someone on the floor below. He holstered the Desert Eagle and then retrieved and reloaded the Beretta.

  “Burnett!” he said. “I’ve got the ones from 901. What’s 1114’s occupant doing?”

  “Nothing,” Burnett said, sounding surprised. He’s not moving at all. I’ve got a stationary blue blip in the kitchen, too, also not moving.”

  “Where’s our last guy?”

  “Bedroom,” Burnett said after a pause. “Maybe he’s asleep.”

  “He will be soon,” Bolan said quietly. He checked 901 briefly, finding no bodies and nothing else of note. At least El Cráneo hadn’t simply taken over several apartments by killing the occupants. It was likely the apartments sheltering only Taveras’s gunman had been unoccupied when Taveras put his plan into action. The residents would be grateful they’d not been home to be part of it.

  He took the stairs again, the muscles in his legs starting to ache. He found room 1114 and listened outside the door.

  Nothing stirred inside.

  He reached out and tried the knob. It turned. The apartment within was dark. Bolan took out his combat light and let its bright, white beam pierce the gloom. As he moved into the apartment, he swept the beam left, then right—

  “Do not move.”

  Bolan froze. In the beam of his light, a thin man of average height with a craggy, pockmarked face and slicked-back hair was holding the naked blade of a butterfly knife against the throat of a middle-aged woman. The woman’s eyes were wide with terror and she almost completely blocked a shot at the man behind her, who was careful to keep most of his head behind hers. The knife dug into the skin of her throat and had raised a thin line of blood.

  “If you shoot me,” the El Cráneo man said, “if you try to shoot me, you will hit her.”

  “Not necessarily,” Bolan said.

  “Then try,” the thug said, smiling thinly, “but know that I will drag this blade through her neck before you can do it.”

  “You’re not wearing one of Pierre’s little tracking devices,” Bolan guessed.

  “No,” he said. “I did not wish to wear one. I told Pierre I thought it wrong, like something from Revelation. I said I would not wear it. He laughed at me but he said it was unimportant. Now I am glad. I heard the shots. I knew what was coming. I want safe passage from this place.”

  “Let her go,” Bolan ordered.

  “No,” the thug said. “I like her right where she is.”

  “If you’re a religious man,” Bolan said, “you know what you are doing is wrong.”

  “Who said I was religious?” the thug scoffed. “I did not want Pierre’s little mark of the Beast, no. But I am still going to hell. There is no doubt about that. But I am not going today. You are going to let me leave here.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Bolan said.

  “Who will st
op me? You? I do not think so.”

  “Last chance,” Bolan warned. “Where do you think you can go? The police will be on their way here by now,” he lied, “and they’ll have this place cordoned off.”

  “Then I will take her with me!”

  “They’ll never let you do it,” Bolan said. “They’ll know she’s as good as dead if they let you leave with her. Give up. Put the knife down. You can still live through this.”

  “I am warning you!”

  Bolan made the decision to fire. As many times as he had faced scenarios like these, he knew they could end only one way. Allowing predators to hold hostages only gave them more power. Bolan did not intend to let him escape. He would be damned if he’d let the gang member murder an innocent woman. Carefully, he reviewed the mechanics of the shot in his mind, calculating the path the bullet would have to travel.

  He visualized bringing the Beretta on target. He had used the weapon for so long, had relied on it so much, that he could mentally picture every detail of the front sight, every slight blemish and nick. He could picture the luminous white marking on the front blade. Bolan allowed himself to enter the mental zone he had used so often as a sniper, as a warrior, as the man who had earned the name, the Executioner.

  “Drop your gun!” the thug demanded, “or, I swear, I will—”

  Bolan snapped the Beretta 93-R up to eye level and took the shot through the gunner’s right eye, angling for deep brain. The shot was true, taking the man in the head without harming his hostage. The suppressed blast was almost anticlimactic. The butterfly knife fell from limp fingers as the El Cráneo killer simply switched off, dead on his feet. He fell to the ground. The woman looked down at him and then at Bolan, her hands to her face.