But again, he saw nothing green.
Bolan took two more steps deeper into the closet to allow Kunkle to enter. Just past the clothing was a chair, and the other side of the closet was made of drawers that connected to the bureau. Hanging from the rear wall on a hanger was a gray sweatshirt. But not even the sweatshirt said anything about the New York Jets.
Bolan held up a hand, which told Kunkle to stop, and the detective froze in his tracks. The soldier handed the man his Beretta, then opened the top drawer as quietly as possible. In the corner of his eye, he could see that Kunkle was somewhat surprised that he’d been trusted with the machine pistol. But in Bolan’s eyes the man had proved that a change really had taken place in his heart.
Bolan found nothing but folded clothing in the top drawer. Or in any of the drawers beneath it.
Bolan glanced at the sweatshirt hanging on the wall once more, then turned away. But just as quickly, he turned back. Something had caught his attention. What was it? He stared at the shirt again, concentrating, and suddenly saw what had struck his subconscious mind.
It wasn’t the shirt itself. It was the crack in the wood paneling of which the closet walls were constructed. Running from the ceiling to the floor, behind the hanging sweatshirt, the crack was at least twice as large as the spaces between the other panels on the wall.
Bolan reached out and took the hanger off the wall, laying the sweatshirt down on the chair. Reaching out, he stuck his fingers into the crack and it opened slightly wider.
Staring down at the floor, Bolan saw that the panel had moved out toward his feet an inch or so. And a second later, he had slid the piece of wall out and leaned it against the drawers.
Bolan had seen no signs of green before, but in this hidden room he saw nothing but green. There seemed to be no apparent order to the chaos. Two tables and four chairs were piled high with New York Jets programs, autographed papers, news clippings, T-shirts, jerseys and bobble-head dolls. On the walls were pennants and autographed photographs, as well as several green jerseys, including one number 12, framed under glass and signed by Joe Namath.
Behind him, Bolan heard Kunkle whisper, “I think we’ve struck gold.”
“Or green,” Bolan replied in a quiet voice. “Go back and get the two biggest suitcases you can find in that study closet,” he whispered. “We’ll take all of this stuff we can carry.”
Kunkle nodded and turned back away.
Bolan moved on into the room. He knew that McFarley didn’t want the Jets collection for himself. He just didn’t want Dill to have it, and he wanted Dill to know who was behind the theft. So it wasn’t particularly important that he get the more fragile items—like the bobble-head dolls and other breakable memorabilia out in one piece—just that they get them out.
Kunkle returned a few seconds later with two huge, soft-sided suitcases. The two night prowlers began, swiftly but silently, filling the luggage with the souvenirs. Bolan thought while he packed. They weren’t out of the woods quite yet. On their way out they had to slip past the sleeping gangster and his wife again, then dodge, or kill, any remaining bodyguards on the premises. And this all had to be done while carrying suitcases at least twice the normal size, which would easily weigh over a hundred pounds apiece when packed.
Not to mention making good their escape without any harm being done to Dill’s wife or daughters.
When they had finally stuffed everything they could into the suitcases, Bolan said, “Okay. Let’s go. But keep in mind that just jiggling these things as we carry them is going to make extra noise. So if it comes down to it, we leave this stuff behind and get out without the women getting hurt. Understand?”
“I understand,” Kunkle whispered back.
Bolan led the way back out of the hidden room, let Kunkle pass by him into the closet again, then replaced the removable panel. He pulled up on the suitcase, then let it slide to the end of his fingers, hearing a soft clinking and clanking of the contents. Repeating the procedure twice more, he let the souvenirs settle in the hope that they would make less noise as they left the house.
Kunkle caught on to what he was doing, understood why and copied the procedure with his own bag.
Bolan killed the closet and hall lights, then slowly opened the door to the bedroom. The snoring continued just as it had, but as he stepped back onto the carpet and moved past the bed, he was surprised to notice for the first time that the loud snoring came from Mrs. Dill and that it was McFarley’s nemesis who snored softly.
The old saying “No rest for the wicked” crossed Bolan’s mind. But experience had taught him that it was an adage upon which you could never rely. Some men seemed to be born without a conscience, and they could cut the throat of an innocent baby and then go to sleep like one five minutes later.
The two intruders were halfway to the door leading out of the bedroom when Dill suddenly sat upright in bed. In the streetlight that shone though the window, Bolan could see that there was a gun aimed at him in the shadows.
“Frank? Jeff?” the sleepy voice said. “I told you… Wait, you’re not—”
And that was as far as Dill got. They were his dying words just before a sound-suppressed 9 mm bullet caught him squarely on the bridge of his nose.
But the words were not the criminal’s last sound. That came from the pistol in his hand, and whatever caliber it was, Bolan knew it was loud enough to be heard throughout the mansion.
The time for stealth was suddenly over.
And the time for open battle had begun.
14
Dill’s wife had been awakened by the explosion. She sat up in bed and screamed at the top of her lungs. The shriek was even more piercing than Dill’s pistol round had been.
Bolan turned toward Kunkle, knowing there was no sense in whispering anymore. As the sounds of the gunshot and Mrs. Dill’s scream died down around them, he spoke in a loud, commanding voice. “We’ve got to get this fight away from the wife and girls. That includes the bedroom right across from us.” Without another word, he threw open the door and stepped outside.
One of Dill’s hired killers had just come into the area with the railing around the stairs. In his hand was a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. The open door to the long hallway told Bolan that was the area of the house from which he’d come.
The man was directly in front of the door to whichever of the daughters occupied the bedroom across from Dill and his wife. And Bolan had no idea how the furniture was arranged inside the room behind the barrier. But what he did know was that when using 9 mm ammo—even the RBCD total fragmentation rounds he had in the Beretta—there was always the chance that a missed round would penetrate the door. If it did, it might also take out the girl in bed behind it.
So without thinking, Bolan instinctively dropped to one knee, angling the Beretta upward at the man’s head. Without further hesitation, he fired another soft-sounding round that took the goon’s right eye. As well as his life.
Bolan jumped back to his feet. He had set the suitcase down beside him when he knelt, and he grabbed the handle again. It was also time to quit using the Beretta. Silence was no longer in his favor, and the more pandemonium and confusion he could create the better.
Drawing the huge.44 Magnum Desert Eagle from his web belt, Bolan rounded the railing. In doing so, he had to pass the open hallway to the other end of the house. And as he did, a 3-round burst of what sounded like M-16 fire flew by him, one round passing so close to his ear that he felt the breeze it generated.
He could have gone on. But since the man—or men—down the hallway knew that there was one intruder, they’d guess there might be more. Which meant that Kunkle was likely to catch multiple rounds when he crossed the open door. So, pressing his back against the wall just out of sight, Bolan shifted the big .44 to his left hand and held the awkward suitcase in his right. He looked at Kunkle, who was still just a step out of Dill’s bedroom, and held up a hand, signaling for the detective to wait. Then dropping to one knee ag
ain, he peered around the corner and saw a shadowy form holding an assault rifle still standing in the hall. Pulling back for a moment, the soldier let another 3-round burst fly past him, then leaned out with the Desert Eagle and put a semi-jacketed hollowpoint bullet into the middle of the rifleman’s chest.
Lugging his suitcase in one hand, Kunkle joined him on the other side of the hall door.
Bolan led the way down the steps, the Desert Eagle in one hand, the suitcase filled with Jets memorabilia in the other. He had seen Kunkle draw his SIG-Sauer when he’d traded the Beretta for the Desert Eagle, and he realized he would at least have some sort of backup as he fought his way out of the house. Bolan had no idea how many guards were still on two feet inside the mansion, so he would have to deal with them as he came to them.
And he came to another pair almost immediately.
Bolan was barely halfway down the front stairs again when one gunner appeared from out of the living room. At the same time, another man came from the other side. From the drawing of the house, Bolan knew the man had to have emerged from the formal dining room with its swing door that led to the kitchen. Not that it mattered much. Regardless of where he had come from, he was there at this moment. And armed.
The first .44 Magnum round exploded into the head of the man from the living room as he tried to bring his Colt Government Model .45 auto into play. He stood still for a moment, half his head gone and the other half a mass of brain tissue, blood and skull fragments. As he finally collapsed, Bolan turned the big gun on the man who had come from the dining room. As he fired a second shot into the gunman’s heart, he saw a mist of blood shoot out of the man’s front while bloody tissue and spinal parts blew out the back.
Behind him, almost deafening in his ear, he heard Kunkle’s 9 mm pistol erupt and put two more rounds into the body.
Bolan vaulted down the steps, lugging the clumsy suitcase with him. When he reached the bottom, he turned to look at the doorway that led into the living room. Should he lead Kunkle back out the same way they had come? At least they knew the terrain that way.
Bolan peered into the living room and the decision was made for him when a half-dozen men with assault rifles, shotguns and pistols opened up, narrowly missing him as he jerked his head back to cover.
Bolan felt the vibrations as the rounds hit the wall in front of him. And he silently thanked the Universe that the house was old enough to have had the walls built with plaster and lathe rather than the thin plasterboard of newer homes.
Bounding past the front door and into the dining room, Bolan saw a huge dining table, matching chairs and several china cabinets. He circled the table and chairs, hearing Kunkle’s footsteps right behind him. He was almost to the swing door to the kitchen when he heard another double-tap of 9 mm rounds. Looking over his shoulder, Bolan saw that another man had entered the foyer, and that Kunkle had downed him before he could lift the semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun in his hands.
Bolan pushed the swing door open, then went in low. As he did so, a blast of three 7.62 mm rounds from an AK-47 streaked over his head. Another of Dill’s guards stood next to the sink, a Russian Kalashnikov rifle in his hands, preparing to fire again.
The soldier pointed the Desert Eagle at the guard and sent a pair of .44 Magnum rounds into his chest and throat. Then, rushing toward the fallen man, he lifted the Russian rifle and checked the magazine. It felt full—except for the three rounds fired at him. That was good because Bolan found only one other magazine in the back pocket of the man’s slacks. It was loaded with pointed, armor-piercing rounds.
Bolan shoved the extra magazine into one of the pockets of his blacksuit.
By this point, Kunkle had entered the kitchen and Bolan saw that the NOPD detective had appropriated the semiauto shotgun from his last victim. Not that you could call any of these house guards victims, Bolan thought. They had given up such status when they’d gone to work for a man like Dill.
They had, instead of victims, become enemy combatants.
From the plans of the house that he had studied, Bolan knew that the door to his right led past the back staircase and onto a small porch. The porch had two outside doors, one leading into the garage, the other to the outside and another small, screened-in area. With the AK-47 stock under his right arm, and the huge suitcase filled with Jets memorabilia in his left hand, he started that way.
But there was another side door to the kitchen that connected it to the hallways where the downstairs bathroom stood. As the soldier crossed the kitchen, a shaved head with a huge handlebar mustache and a Ruger automatic pistol gripped in two hands appeared, framed in the doorway. The face above the mustache looked frightened.
Bolan let the suitcase fall from his left hand to the floor. He twisted hard to get the barrel of the AK-47 around and pointed toward the man. When he did, a full-auto stream of rounds stitched the man from groin to mustache. He was dead before he hit the kitchen floor on his face.
Kunkle had picked up on the fact that the man he knew as Cooper wanted to leave the house through the kitchen exit. With the shotgun’s stock under his arm—similar to the way Bolan held the Kalashnikov—and his own suitcase gripped in his left hand, he stepped out in front of the back staircase. Almost immediately, the 12-gauge semiauto shotgun erupted in two distinct roars, and another pair of Dill’s henchmen came tumbling down the back steps into view.
Bolan moved on out of the kitchen, stepping over the tangled men Kunkle had just shot and stopping less than a foot behind the detective. From where he stood, he could see that yet another set of steps, next to the back stairs, led downward—undoubtedly into a basement. These steps, as well as the basement below, had not been on the drawing. But Bolan saw no sign of gunmen coming up the steps. So he stopped and pivoted, covering the kitchen once more.
Kunkle had to set his suitcase down in order to open the door to the outside, then he stepped through it. Bolan, walking backward, followed. He was almost through the door when a man with long stringy hair and a 9 mm Heckler & Koch 94 carbine appeared in the kitchen through the swing door to the dining room.
A 3-round burst from the AK-47 sent two rounds directly through the long-haired man’s heart. The third round of the burst hit high from the recoil. It entered the gunner’s left eye socket and sent blood, brains and broken bits of facial bone exploding out of the back of the man’s head.
Bolan took the lead again, hurrying around Kunkle and pushing through the screen door to the outside of the house. They had entered the dwelling through the back. But presently they saw that a long winding drive led to a closed gate at the front of the property. Several gate guards stood ready to shoot them as soon as they got the chance. Three others had abandoned their post and were sprinting toward the house. All three carried Uzis.
And all three Uzis were aimed at Bolan and Kunkle.
The Israeli submachine guns began to sputter when the men were still thirty yards away, sending 9 mm rounds past Bolan and Kunkle like a flock of angry birds. The Executioner stopped in his tracks and steadied the AK-47, looking down the barrel through the sights. Firing one-handed, he blasted a lone 7.62 mm bullet from the old Soviet weapon. The round exploded through the lead runner’s chest.
The guard dropped to the driveway, and the man running just behind him tripped over him.
Bolan pulled the trigger again, shooting the second man as he stumbled and fell. The single round caught him on the ear, ripping the flapping flesh away from the side of his head and causing him to scream. The soldier shot one-handed again, and the screaming stopped as the rifle round entered the hole where the ear had been and expanded upon contact, exploding the gate guard’s head as if a stick of dynamite had gone off inside a watermelon.
Kunkle had leveled the shotgun on the third running man. He wore a white shirt, making him an easy target in the moonlight, and a 12-gauge blast caught him in the chest.
As Bolan turned his assault rifle toward the men still at the gate, he watched the white turn black wi
th blood.
A huge pine tree stood to the side of the driveway and Bolan dropped his suitcase momentarily as he dived, then rolled, behind it. Rifle rounds from more assault rifles followed him, kicking up dirt and grass as he rolled, then lodging in the tree trunk as he popped back to his feet behind it. Kunkle, he saw, had flattened on the ground, which made Bolan frown.
It was not a wise move on the detective’s part. Even though he made a smaller target, he was still out in the open and sooner or later one or more of the rounds pounding around him would find their mark.
Bolan squinted in the moonlight, following the angle of the shots back to a man who stood partially in, partially out, of the concrete guard shack. The gate guard was wielding an M-16, and sending a steady stream of 5.56 rounds toward Kunkle.
“Move!” Bolan shouted to the detective, then pulled the trigger of his Kalashnikov again. Two more rounds pounded into the gate guard’s shoulder and caused him to drop the American-made rifle. A look of shock covered his face for a second before Bolan squeezed the trigger again, and the back of the man’s head disappeared.
He fell out of the guard shack onto the pavement.
Kunkle had taken Bolan’s words to heart and had scrambled to his feet. He lugged the suitcase toward the tree where the Executioner hid. “Leave it!” Bolan shouted out. “We’ll get it later!”
The detective dropped the suitcase and sprinted toward Bolan.
The soldier leaned out slightly from the tree trunk and sighted down the barrel again. A lone round took out the second man still at the gate, and he rolled out onto the pavement next to his friend. The third man, however, had seen what had happened to the other two. And he was safely ensconced inside the small building, covered from the waist down by concrete but looking through the glass in the top of the window.
Bolan aimed at the man’s head and pulled the trigger again. His round struck the glass, then ricocheted off with a loud whine. The window was bullet-resistant, Bolan saw. But nothing was completely bulletproof.
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