“We have him. And he’s alive.” It was Bolan’s turn to taunt, but he kept it subtle. He didn’t want to provoke Dark into hurting Sable.
Dark sighed. “You’re not going to trade him for this girly girl here. Even though I know you fancy her.”
“That’s straight.”
“Well, he must be in good shape, if you’re still referring him in the present tense.”
“I’m not guaranteeing he’ll survive. He took a bullet to the head,” Bolan replied.
As callous as Dark tried to make himself sound, Bolan could feel the man seething on the other end. The brutal mercenary was loyal to his giant friend, and Adonis was the one thing the Executioner knew he cared about.
“Which is more important to you, Dark? Your mission or your partner?” Bolan asked.
“Once I finish with you here in Chicago, I’ll go pick up my friend, and the RING will take care of their own,” Dark answered. “You’re living in your final hours, Stone.”
“I’ve been living my entire adult life as if it were my final hours. If the secondhand reaches zero when I’m facing off with you, so be it. You’re not going to murder any more innocents,” Bolan informed him.
Dark chuckled. “And you’re not going to murder any more guilty.”
“This isn’t fun and games, Dark. Your partner thought it was, and now he’s half dead.”
“You think I’m joking, Tall, Dark and Spooky? Watching you operate is like looking in the mirror. I’m ready for anything you can throw at me. Fun and games? No, I know you. I almost was like you once, but I just got tired of all the bullshit, Stone.”
“The only bullshit I smell is your grasping for justification.”
Dark sighed. “Well, if you can do your job in good conscience, I envy you. For me, murdering an airport full of useless eaters is the same as putting a bullet in the head of a sovereign government official who doesn’t agree with our President. A few thousand people die? So what. Millions will wake up to the fact that they’re no longer safe and that their so-called elected leaders only need them as votes and sheep for the slaughter. You mean to tell me you believe in a system you have to work outside of?”
“I believe.”
“It’ll be a shame to kill you, Stone.”
“It’s a shame you took the path you did,” Bolan answered. “But there’s no such thing as a ‘useless eater.’”
“It’s been a nice chat, Stone, but I must go. You’ll know where to find me.”
Dark disconnected and Bolan looked at the cell phone. He checked the Caller ID readout and realized that the mercenary hadn’t called from Sable’s cell phone. Bolan went back to the communications center.
“Barb, I need a quick rundown on a phone number,” Bolan said. “It’s 312-555-1326.”
“Bear’s got tracking software for that. We’ll narrow it down in…we got it,” Price answered. “It’s the same neighborhood where you encountered the AHC and Fist of God soldiers.”
“Figures,” Bolan said. “Dark wants me to come visit.”
“And leave our defenses of O’Hare that much weaker,” Price returned. “Striker—”
“There’s an innocent life at stake. And there’s a chance I can head off those mercs. We already have O’Hare Security, FBI SWAT, the National Guard and the Chicago Police Department on full alert. You have the cyberteam working on a way to kill the enemy’s taps?”
“Yeah, they’re good. Dammit, you know how much of a difference one man can make.”
“I’ll make it back as fast as I can,” Bolan replied. “In fact, I have an idea.”
Jack Grimaldi came out of the locker room, freshly showered, his hair still wet, a mug of coffee in his hands. “Sarge?”
“Jack, feel up to taking the Lady for a spin downtown?” the Executioner asked him.
Grimaldi raised an eyebrow. “Dragon Slayer? Over Chicago?”
“A quick chopper insertion.”
Grimaldi grinned. “Charlie, wanna come with? Just in case?”
Charlie Mott looked over from the back of the borrowed C-130. “Ready, willing and able…or do only Lyons and the gang get to say that last part.”
“Come on, smart-ass. We’re going to make some bad guys sweat,” Grimaldi called.
The Lady, Dragon Slayer, was an impressive piece of machinery. Weighing a shade over three tons when fully mission equipped, it was a powerful, sleek machine. Thirty-eight feet from its sharklike tail to its graceful nose, with a rotor diameter of thirty-nine feet, it was as compact as possible, yet still capable of great speed and offensive capability. Grimaldi had taken the helicopter up past 200 miles an hour, skimming along at high speed. All that power stemmed from twin 742-horsepower Lycoming engines, providing nearly twice the combat range of an AH-64 Apache, and almost twenty miles an hour faster and more agile than the tank busting gunship.
The shell was designed out of state-of-the-art corrosion-resistant, composite-structure materials that allowed for maximum strength and maximum weight savings. Thanks to the efficient engines and lightweight structure, the Dragon Slayer was able to cruise for three hours at 138 miles per hour, or go tearing across the sky at a blistering pace.
The helicopter had weapons pods that recessed into the side of its sleek frame. A .50-caliber GECAL machine gun was one of Grimaldi’s favorite weapons mounts on the deadly bird, a beast of a cannon capable of spitting out 2000 rounds of ammunition per minute. And considering that each of those rounds weighed nearly two ounces and traveled at nearly three times the speed of sound, the GECAL could destroy anything less than a five-foot-thick concrete bunker. The missile pods were a mix of two 2.75-inch artillery rocket pods and four TOW missiles, for those ten-foot-thick concrete bunker walls. For backup and pesky lighter targets such as riflemen and terrorists, an XM-134 minigun was mounted on each side, each capable of spitting out an almost literal death ray of 7.62 mm bullets at the astonishing rate of 3000 rpm, more than enough to sweep all but the most determined ground forces off the face of the planet with one long pull of the trigger.
Avionics were nothing short of amazing, too. The helicopter possessed a computerized flight management system that allowed Grimaldi or Mott the ability to set the aircraft into a stable hover fifty feet above a selected target, leaving the pilots free to take command of the weapons systems, operate the sling winch or concentrate on search and rescue with the helicopter’s Foreward Looking InfraRed cameras and ground effect radar, which would allow the Stony Man pilots the capability to operate in near complete darkness without exposing themselves to gunfire by turning on lights. To cut the sound signature, speakers mounted around the rotorshaft projected the sound of the helicopter’s rotorslap at right angles, the counter-vibration deflecting and flattening the sound waves. The muted helicopter wasn’t totally invisible and silent, and it still would kick up a whirlwind at lower altitudes, but it would keep the chopper from being as easily noticed as possible. In fact, Bolan was counting on the “stealth” rotor system to drop him right on top of Dark’s inner-city headquarters before he even realized what was going on.
“I’ll keep in radio contact with you guys,” Bolan explained. “Once you drop me off, get the hell out before they notice the winds you’re kicking up. If I need close support, swing in and provide it, but O’Hare has top priority.”
Grimaldi looked at Bolan, then out over the airport. “You think Dragon Slayer’s going to be needed here?”
“I know it. Harpy’s alive and kicking. If anything, she might be trying to use the systems they ripped out of the SmarTruck,” Bolan said. “We didn’t see the Skycrane back at the mill, or any of the electronic warfare systems from Terintec.”
“It would have a pizza rack.” Mott spoke up. His mirrored sunglasses flashed under his green-and-yellow baseball cap as Grimaldi and Bolan looked confused for a moment. “Harpy’s helicopter. It would have a pizza rack.”
“Like on the Air Force PAVE Lows and PAVE Hawks,” Grimaldi stated. “An electronics cabinet
with a series of slots, like on a pizza oven, where you could slap a motherboard into it.”
Bolan nodded. “Modular electronics systems racks. Of course. The SmarTruck was designed for battlefield use. A modular pizza-rack system would only make sense for the truck’s components. If one gets damaged, plug in a fresh one. And if you have a second truck, just take a redundant board from the first.”
“Only in this case, the SmarTruck’s electronics boards can be popped out and put in a helicopter. No heavy sawing. They just wanted us to think it would take that kind of effort so that we’d be expecting them to be armed with a helicopter that could sneak up on the airport and usurp the communications and navigation systems,” Grimaldi concluded.
Moss lowered his mirrored shades and winked. “Elementary.”
“Don’t go trading your baseball cap in for a deerstalker yet, Sherlock,” Bolan replied. “I still need my top pilots to get me on target.”
“Done,” Grimaldi said.
The Executioner grabbed his OA-93, then looked at Buck Greene. “Buck, I’m going to need a full load of hollowpoints. I’m going urban, and all I had for this thing was armor-piercing.”
“Right. Toro?” Greene probed.
The gigantic DEA agent unstrapped the pouched 5.56 mm ammunition from his vest, tossing them to Bolan. The Executioner replaced his pouches with the fresh loads. “You’ll be able to refit?”
Martinez nodded. “I can get spare mags loaded for myself. You’re in a hurry.”
Bolan gave the big man a salute.
“Buck, make sure you call these two in case hell busts loose while I’m gone,” Bolan told Greene.
“And what happens if you need air support?” Greene asked.
Bolan set his jaw firmly. “Then hell’s already on the loose in Chicago.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sable Burton’s eyelids felt like sandpaper. She opened them to the harsh light of day and her head hammered. She was lying on a couch just under a window. She remembered being held in the sky by a blond giant, then darkness.
Now she looked up to see Dark walking around, using a cordless phone. He killed the phone link after seeing her awaken, and walked over to her, black trench coat swishing behind him.
“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” Dark greeted, sitting beside her on the sofa.
“Mr. Dark,” Burton muttered, mouth dry and sticky.
“Please, Professor. I’m just Dark,” the tall, lean mercenary said. He tilted his head, his black hair spilling off his shoulder as he grinned warmly at her. “Can I call you Sable?”
“How about calling me a cab?” Burton asked.
Dark laughed. “You get points for spunk right there, babe.”
“Gee thanks.” She looked around and saw crime scene tape on the floor in the shape of a body outline. Stained floorboards told her that there had been a battle here, and she remembered her conversation with Brandon Stone the day of the SmarTruck hijacking. Her head throbbed and she realized that conversation was only yesterday.
The men responsible for killing him are dead or in custody.
This was the place where Stone had come through and slaughtered a group of murderers, meeting violence with violence, spilling blood to avenge blood and prevent further bloodshed. The whole room took on an odd new chill at that realization. Burton winced.
“Figure out that the mess was your boyfriend’s handiwork?” Dark asked. “He’s quite an efficient killer. Three dead. Three wounded. Hardly a scratch on him by the time I ran into him. One might think he’s almost as dangerous as I am.”
Burton’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not a murderer.”
“That depends on who you ask. These men had mothers, fathers, families. You think that everyone Colonel Stone has ever killed grew up in a void?”
“Nobody asked them to be murderers. If they weren’t guilty, they wouldn’t be in his way. He wouldn’t have to fight.”
Dark snorted. “You’re suffering from the same romantic delusions he is.”
“That, or you’re denying what you are,” Burton retorted.
Dark grabbed her by the jaw, squeezing her cheeks together, making her green eyes bulge. The black-haired murderer’s clear blue eyes flashed like lightning, his lips parted in a rictus, showing a mouthful of white, straight teeth. “Denying? Denying what, bitch?”
Burton felt herself shake from top to bottom, but swallowed hard and shook her head free. “Denying that you’re a weakling.”
“You’ve seen what I can do.”
“To helpless people.”
“Armed professionals,” Dark said.
Burton’s eyes narrowed. “And all for what? The men and women who protect people for a living all die, and so do a bunch of innocent bystanders. All for what?”
“To wake up the world.”
“Why not make a real change on your own? You want to eliminate governments? You’re a one-man army. You could leave half the world without its leadership inside of a month,” Burton stated. “You’re just too lazy and queasy to do the work yourself.”
“Professor, you think that killing figureheads would make the real powers pulling the puppet strings even flinch?” Dark asked, rising.
She shook her head. “But you know those puppeteers, don’t you? You could destroy them. Leave them limping at least.”
Dark smirked, then looked at her, as if lost in thought.
“Do I have a point?”
“Quiet.”
“Do I have a point?”
Dark leaned in close to her. “You’ll get a point between your pretty little tits, bitch, if you don’t back off.”
Burton only smiled, Dark’s nostrils flaring as he exhaled and stomped off.
As soon as he turned away, she allowed herself a shudder of terror. Dark stalked into the dining room, leaving her alone on the sofa, looking at the outline where a dead man had fallen. She wondered who the man was and began asking herself questions that Dark had asked. Who died? Whose family did he belong to? Who once or still loved him?
The outline of a fallen pistol, also marked in tape, pulled her out of those thoughts. The man who died on that spot was a pistol-wielding killer, who had probably driven from Hector Terin’s house with Shep’s corpse in the back seat. The killer might even have been Shep’s murderer himself.
Burton latched on to the anger. Surrender wasn’t going to drag her soul under. She’d claw her way out of despair, and the first chance she got, she’d make a break for it. Even if she died, the noise would bring the police, or even Stone himself.
She looked around the living room, then to the window. She wasn’t sure if she had enough strength to punch through the glass to raise enough of a racket that could be heard on the street. That was when she saw the shadow flicker overhead momentarily, blocking out the typical gray-white sky of a gloomy, late fall Chicago day. A tingle ran straight up and down her spine and she could feel the coming of Brandon Stone, almost as if he had triggered a long-dormant sixth sense inside her. Outside, the trees, with what few leaves were still on them, bent and swayed in a sudden wind.
She forced herself not to react to the dramatic increase in the breeze. While she was basically involved in lasers and quantum electronics, she wasn’t completely in the dark about other pieces of applied military technology. She remembered being assigned to a program with a stealth helicopter that used lasers instead of radio beams to cut down the radar signature of the aircraft. She’d seen the thing hover, almost silent, despite a whipping wind, something no other fighting machine she’d ever seen had done.
If anyone had access to such technology, it was Colonel Brandon Stone.
Burton lowered her head.
That still didn’t mean his job would be any easier.
DARK HEARD THE THUMP on the roof and froze in midstride. The other AHC and Fist of God soldiers in the dining room were still busy loading their weapons. He raised his fist and the men all stopped what they were doing.
“What?” one of the
Arabs asked.
Dark grit his teeth, sneering at them. “Someone just landed on the roof.”
“But we’d hear a helicopter,” an AHC man said. He kept his voice low, though, to listen for anything further.
“Only one person landed,” Dark whispered.
“If it’s one man…” the first Arab started.
“He’ll wipe the floor with you lot,” Dark snapped back. “Evac now! Down the stairs!”
The terrorists paused for a moment, and the blackhearted mercenary shook his head, then swatted one in the skull with one of his Calicos. That got them moving as they hastily grabbed their weapons and scrambled for the stairwell. Dark spun, trench coat fluttering behind him as he walked quickly to get Burton. She was sitting on the sofa and her gaze met his as he was in the doorway. Defiance was hard-etched into her face. The merc paused.
“You’re going to fight me for as long as you can so your boyfriend can get in here,” Dark concluded.
Burton nodded.
The mercenary took a deep breath and pulled one of his machine guns. “I’m not that stupid. By the way, this is for cutting me with a fucking car antenna.”
Burton’s face flashed momentarily with fear.
The ceiling suddenly imploded and a figure in sleek black dropped with the grace of a panther out of the sky, weapon blazing.
THE EXECUTIONER FINISHED laying the net of detonation cord over where he figured the center of the living room ceiling was. He needed to interpose himself between Sable and the enemy as quickly as possible. Grimaldi, using the powerful infrared optics on Dragon Slayer, managed to peer through the ceiling to detect one heat source in the front and several more in the dining room. The det cord web was normally stuck to a door. Being composed of CV-38 low-velocity plastic explosives, it didn’t make a sound, but still provided a powerful cutting power against doors and reinforced windows. The roof of a two-story residential building proved to be no greater an opposition to it than simple wood or glass.
The hole also was just perfectly sized for Mack Bolan to leap through. As he sailed down the ragged gap, he triggered the OA-93 before his boots even struck the floor, Dark whipping away and firing a wild burst as his aim was thrown off. Burton gave a defiant shout at his back, but the Executioner was in full-blitz mode. He’d brought up his subgun to rip open the trench-coat-clad mercenary when a powerful kick booted the weapon from his hands.
Season of Slaughter Page 23